Portside

Hysteria, aggression and gerrymandering are a fading demographic's last hope to maintain political control.

A Florida coalition is working to amend the Florida state constitution so that it guarantees voting accessibility for all citizens—a state-level voting rights act. “We’re focusing on legislation that grants an explicit right to vote in Florida,” says Katherine Culliton-González. “It would aim at big picture issues and make voting a fundamental right so no election law changes could happen that would take us back in time.”

The confirmation hearing for John Brennan allowed the country to grapple with many issues that had been swept under the rug and seldom discussed in public. While few to none of them were resolved, it does seem positive that they were brought up in public.

How the Super Bowl defines what it means to be an American: dueling ads. Stephen Colbert wrestles with bipartisan immigration reform. Republicans think CIA nominee Brennan gives the public too much information. The Union of Concerned Scientists says we can cut oil consumption in half, and who's standing in the way. Beasts of the Southern Wild imagines a surreal realm where little girls and mythical animals coexist.

"Nurses care for patients every day who struggle with health crises aggravated by environmental pollution in its many forms," said NNU Co-President Deborah Burger, RN. "As a society we need to reduce the effects of environmental factors, including climate change, that are making people sick, and endangering the future for our children. That's why we oppose the Keystone XL pipeline."

New employment figures reveal young adults in the U.S. have nearly double (13.7 percent) the unemployment rate of the general population. We must face up to this moral crisis and demand the policies that will employ Millennials.

The Dignity Campaign is a loose network of more than forty immigrant rights and community organizations, unions and churches that has crafted an immigration reform proposal based on "human, labor and civil rights for all." The campaign's member organizations support it as an alternative to the political strategy behind the tradeoff because of what they call the bitter impact of earlier tradeoffs over the last thirty years.

While some of the world's economic and political elite gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum, a United Nations agency reported that there has been an increase in unemployment planet-wide of 28 million since the onset of the current economic crisis five years ago. One million jobs were lost in western capitalist economies last year alone and three million in the rest of the world.

Reader comments on Literature for Labor Activists - A Novel Idea: Fiction for Labor Activists; Academic Freedom Under Attack at Brooklyn College and AFT President Randi Weingarten's Letter to Brooklyn College President; and on Postal Cuts; Henry Wallace; The Treaty of Guadalupe Idalgo. This Sunday, Unity March & Rally

CORRECTION: Savaging Primitives: Why Jared Diamond's `The World Until Yesterday' Is Completely Wrong; Reader Comments on Jared Diamond; Julian Assange; Henry Wallace; Mali; Announcements - Everybody Against Austerity; Rally for the Cablevision 22 - New York - Feb 6; Students are Crashing Fashion Week; Adidas Workers Speak Out at NYC Fashion Week! - New York - Feb. 10