Portside

Poor diet is not just about individual choice, but about the systems that make eating poorly the default for most Americans.

Earlier this year, hundreds of workers at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, the city's largest hotel, voted to unionize, a rare development locally that labor leaders think could give them a long-sought foothold in the city's mostly low-wage but critical hospitality industry, which employs nearly 80,000 workers.

Part of what made the episode so bracing was this combination of serious material — the way holidays announce whose history is important — and biting jokes that would have no place in your ordinary Let's Learn A Leson episode of TV.

The legislation, which addresses job insecurity, hiring discrimination and workplace safety, was championed by the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative (CWC) and Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ), as well as the Illinois AFL-CIO and Raise the Floor Alliance, a coalition of eight Chicago worker centers.

It’s worth noting how much the five Republican appointees on the Court would have to put their thumbs on the scale to rule in favor of the employers.

"Whoever said a black woman/was always liberated/didn’t walk in my Mama’s heels," says southern California poet Angela Franklin, a poet active in the Social Justice movement.

A hard look at African-American author Chester Himes, whose literary fame and financial success later in life hardly made up for the oppressive racial travails that preceded it and forced him to live much of that life abroad.

Once upon a time, more jobs meant higher wages. Not so today. The combination of globalization, automation, increased corporate strength, decreased union power has broken that connection.

The University of Chicago is fighting its graduate union tooth and nail — with a little help from the Trump administration.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most significant essayists in contemporary U.S. letters. Here is a review of his new book.