About Portside - Carl Finamore, Victor Grossman, Richard
Levins, David Moberg, Barbara Ransby


Forget the Coffee, Just Open My Portside! Sometimes I just
wish I could just sleep through it all; sometimes I wish I
could just turn away for a moment; sometime I wish I could
just find a hobby to distract me; and sometimes I simply
wish I was not receiving these darn emails from Portside.

My mind opens, my brain hurts, my eyes strain and my heart
gets pumping but I am awake, wide awake, emotionally and
politically, and while a bit excited and sometimes even
exasperated, I feel more alive. I am a proud subscriber to
Portside, this is what I do and this is who I am.

Carl Finamore
Delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and
former President (retired), Air Transport Employees, Local
Lodge 1781, IAMAW

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WHAT HAS PORTSIDE MEANT TO ME?

It has meant a great deal. Here I sit in Berlin trying to
describe developments in Germany, so distant for so many
Americans, yet containing so many parallels, so many events
relevant both here and there. Like the plug-ugly actions of
the neo-Nazis. They invoke particularly painful memories in
Germany, but are surely related to rampant racists in
Arizona, Alabama or Alaska. Now the Right has found new
scapegoats, the Muslims, and marches against mosques in
Berlin, Cologne, or southern Manhattan. The reasons are all
too similar: to distract from and split the fight of the
jobless and the underpaid. Then, too, I try to describe the
growth of a progressive party, called (in capitals) THE
LEFT, DIE LINKE, with 76 delegates in the national
parliament and many more in state legislatures. I hear that
I have made some USA-readers jealous; how great if something
similar would be possible over there. But there are traps
and travails enough on this path, about which I must also
report.

And portside has used my articles, reaching a far bigger
audience than otherwise possible on such subjects. I am
truly grateful, especially since they have also been picked
up by blog sites and periodicals, by Greens in Sydney and
Czech Communists in Prague. I'm glad if anyone can use them.

But portside also means I can keep up with news unavailable,
say, in the International Herald Tribune about social action
in Detroit or the Carolinas, or developments in Bolivia and
Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras, most recently in Panama. Some
happy reports, some tragic ones, but I cherish reading all
of them here in my East Berlin apartment.

Thanks for using my articles and keep going, always on the
"port side", to ever wider audiences!

Victor Grossman
Journalist and author, is a resident of East Berlin for many
years. He is the author of Crossing the River: A Memoir of
the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany
(University of Massachusetts Press, 2003)

  ==========

portside in my life

After checking for messages from my kids each morning I look
for Portside and Telesur. I appreciate the range of items
and the stance, from grim expose to encouraging accounts of
peoples' struggles. I would like to see more third world
items, perhaps gleaned from Pambazuka News for Africa and
Encuentros for Latin American peasant movements. It is easy
to think up work for others to do, and I cannot volunteer to
do it, so I hold my tongue. Except that occasional reviews
of issues would be helpful: e.g. factory occupations by
workers, civil liberties legal proceedings, with perhaps a
paragraph on each. But mostly, KEEP IT GOING. We need to be
building and maintaining our infrastructure.

Richard Levins
John Rock Professor of Population Sciences, Department of
Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public
Health; Co-Author, The Dialectical Biologist

  ==========

Amid the daily flood of information I get from newspapers,
magazines, internet lists, blogs, websites, NPR, cable news,
books and interviews, Portside is a resource I greatly
appreciate and enjoy.  The well-edited, manageable selection
almost always has something informative or provocative on
labor, political, global and other topics that I had not
seen previously and might well have missed without
Portside's good work.

David Moberg
Senior Editor of In These Times

  ==========

Portside is a great resource for news and opinions that we
don't get from mainstream media.  I have been repeatedly
provoked, stimulated, educated and inspired by the news and
analysis shared through Portside.  In an information-
overloaded culture, much of the material I get flooded with
is useless and frivolous.  In contrast, I can rely on the
moderator[s] at Portside to sift, screen and highlight the
stories and voices that need my attention the most.  In the
21st century, there is still a great deal of injustice in
the world and in our country.  The various efforts to build
a strong progressive/ left movement to push back against
these injustices require reliable modes of communication.
Portside is one such resource, and it is invaluable.

Barbara Ransby, historian, writer, activist, co-founder of
Ella's Daughters

  ==========

If you would like to contribute to the work of the
Portside community, we invite you to:

i. Send us material: email [log in to unmask]

ii. Forward Portside to your friends and contacts.

iii. Make a financial contribution:
https://portside.org/donate

(Signed) The moderators of Portside and Portside Labor

  ==========

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