Portside

The “crisis” of Central American children crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, which lasted for months amid fervent and angry debate, is now fading from the news. Since late June 2014, the “surge” of those thousands of desperate children entering this country has been in the news. Sensational stories were followed by fervent demonstrations and counter-demonstrations with emotions running high. There is so much more to the story than what we read in the news.

Violence has been an important element of law enforcement in majority-black communities since virtually the day that African Americans began moving to cities in large numbers during the first Great Migration of the late 1910s and 1920s. Put differently, to be black in an American city at the very moment that those cities were becoming the homeplaces for sizable numbers of black people meant to live in fear of what the police were capable of.

The Hospital Trust Fund accounts for only about half of total Medicare spending. Most of the rest goes to cover physician fees, prescription drugs and to provide incentives for health insurance companies to participate in the Medicare Advantage program and administer the Medicare drug program. The Affordable Care Act could have done much more than it does to curb spending in those areas.

By calling McDonald’s a “joint employer” with its franchisees, the General Counsel—that’s the prosecuting side of the NLRB—sided with workers, who argue the corporation exerts so much control over store operations that it should be held accountable for what happens under its Golden Arches. The General Counsel’s announcement will clear the way for local NLRB offices to hold the corporation, not just franchisees, accountable for the workplace abuses.

Young volunteers spent the summer of 1964 in Mississippi, working to register African-American voters. But leaders of the movement also had a political strategy designed to chip away at the oppressive white power structure in the South, and it was put to the test at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, N.J.

Unless the institutions of international finance are wrested from the control of a few wealthy nations, and unless there are checks on the ability of the U.S. and its allies to devastate a country's economy over a disagreement on foreign policy, those figures bode for some serious trouble ahead.

Understanding the turbulent, complicated beginning of the “Labor Day” holiday can help us to rethink the significance of this holiday today.

The time has come for a balanced and dispassionate discussion that must include difficult questions, such as whether there are experiments that should not be undertaken because of disproportionately high risk.

It's a relatively new invention—is it time to shave another day off?

The Ebola outbreak, which is the largest in history that we know about, is merely a reflection of the public health crisis in Africa, and it’s about the lack of staff, stuff and systems that could protect populations, particularly those living in poverty, from outbreaks like this or other public health threats.