Portside

Vermont's aggressive health care reform initiatives can serve as a roadmap for other states, according to Laura Grubb, a Master of Public Health candidate at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). "Vermont is progressive," said Grubb, also a fellow in adolescent medicine at the UTHealth Medical School. "They didn't wait until each step of the Affordable Care Act had to be implemented. They voted on their own state-based reform system."

Abuse and Basketball at Rutgers. Pat Nichols Plays Delta Blues in KC. Koko the Gorilla and Jeremy Irons on Gay Marriage. The Hunted and the Hated: Stop and Frisk in NYC. Fast Food Workers Open a New Front. 'Chained CPI' Would Cut Social Security.

A judge called out the Obama administration for its "bad faith" restrictions.

Sign NOW! We have only a few days to stop cuts in Social Security.

Argentina adopted a new domestic workers law March 16. Among its provisions, the law establishes maximum working hours of 8 hours/day or 48 hours/week; overtime pay; a weekly rest break of at least 35 hours; a minimum of 14 annual vacation days; sick leave; and maternity leave. The law sets a minimum age of 16 for domestic work, limits the working hours of those between ages 16 and 18 to 36 hours a week.

Second guided-missile destroyer to join the USS John McCain; annual joint US-South Korean maneuvers that have so far included, fly-overs by B-52 bombers and mock bombing runs close to the North's border by two B-2 Stealth bombers that flew directly from the US. The exercises, appear to have provoked the latest escalation in tensions, already at near-record highs after the UN Security Council imposed new economic and diplomatic sanctions against Pyongyang last month.

The effort to restrict abortion has been a backlash, not just to the decision to end a pregnancy but the decision to treat women like full and equal participants in our society...At work while pregnant? Driving? Working with chemicals or heavy loads? In many states, if something were to happen to your pregnancy that could be traced to your behavior, you could find yourself dragged into jail under fetal protection or personhood laws.

Fast Food Workers Stand Up on 45th Anniversary of Assassination of MLK; Readers Comments on: 1963 March on Washington; BRICS; NCAA; Labor Law Loses Its Watchdog; Media Bits and Bytes; Reader Apprciation. Rally for Immigration Reform - Jersey City - Apr 6; The Safety Net, Sequestration and Austerity Politics - NYC - Apr 8; US Prison Industrial Complex: A Labor Issue? - NYC - Apr 18; Dred Scott Heritage Foundation. In Memoriam: Leo Robinson; Stephen Coats; Harry Kelber

45 years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech in support of the striking sanitation workers at Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968 - the day before he was assassinated.

Forty-five years after King was killed supporting their historic strike, some of the same men who marched with him still pick up Memphis' garbage - and now they are fighting to hold on to jobs that some city leaders want to hand over to a private company.