Portside

Research shows that to prevent next harms to young people, it helps to analyze individual tragedies as part of patterns we can counteract collectively. FBI data shows African Americans comprise around half of all youth arrests for murder. Conclusion: African American youth commit around 2 percent of homicides in the United States--you'd think it was 92 percent from media coverage.

Research shows that to prevent next harms to young people, it helps to analyze individual tragedies as part of patterns we can counteract collectively. FBI data shows African Americans comprise around half of all youth arrests for murder. Conclusion: African American youth commit around 2 percent of homicides in the United States--you'd think it was 92 percent from media coverage.

David McReynolds, co-worker with March on Washington organizer Bayard Rustin, in the War Resisters League, remembers the march, the country and Washington, D.C. in 1963. The slogan was "Jobs and Freedom." The link was very deliberate - for what was freedom without a job? He is also critical of Rustin's rightward turn after the march and his support of the war in Vietnam.

Israeli author Larry Derfner says American Jewish community must refocus anti-Semitism outrage on it's own "dirty laundry." The ADL goes after anti-Semitism with a fist, it goes after Israeli racism with a sigh. When the Jewish state is this riddled with racism, its advocates abroad should be a little less outraged over the offenses of gentiles. They should be a little more humble - and a lot less hypocritical.

The Workers Defense Project, founded in 2002, has emerged as one of the nation's most creative organizations for immigrant workers. Its focus is the Texas construction industry, which employs more than 600,000 workers. It is one of 225 worker centers nationwide, aiding immigrant workers. Workers Centers show what is possible, and may help infuse new life into the labor movement.

In a landmark decision today, a federal court found the New York City Police Department's highly controversial stop-and-frisk practices unconstitutional. Today is a victory for all New Yorkers. After more than 5 million stops conducted under the current administration, hundreds of thousands of them illegal and discriminatory, the NYPD has finally been held accountable. It is time for the City to stop denying the problem and work with the community to fix it.

A coalition of labor, community and environmental groups is making it clear that ALEC isn’t welcome in the union town.

One federal appeals court panel held that the FSA’s reduction of mandatory minimum sentences should apply retroactively, not just because that was the intent of the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, but because failure to do so would amount to unconstitutional, “intentional racial subjugation.” Should this ruling does not survive a full panel review and/or appeal, a bipartisan bill introduced this week by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mike Lee (R-UT) would make the ruling law.

Best leave the mortgage market in government control or abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entirely and let moral hazard rule.

If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe but in a mangled form which contains the information about what you were like but in a state where it can not be easily recognized. It is like burning an encyclopedia. Information is not lost, if one keeps the smoke and the ashes.