Portside

A documentary delving into Davis' story, Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, recently opened in select theaters nationwide. The activist helps us remember that blacks are part of American history's fabric, says the director.

It's time to start paying close attention to the mechanisms of the deregulation machine. For the past 30 years, the business lobbies have pushed Congress and the executive branch to disassemble the regulatory system that has protected us from the worst excesses of Wall Street and Big Business. The effects of deregulation stretch to all walks of life.

She changed everything, and for millions it was change for the worse. There was nothing like her before, and there has been nothing like her since. Thank God.If anyone is inclined to remind me one should not speak ill of the dead, let me remind them she had nothing good to say about us while she was alive.

Margaret Thatcher is dead. The powerful will praise her, the rest of us will not. " in the aftermath of the demise of the Iron Lady, the first woman to become a British prime minister is generally being lauded from the US right and the middle as a hero for her country and the globe. This Thatcher bubble will not last forever."

From ancient times until the advent of antibiotics, physicians used maggots to help clean injuries and prevent infection. Because the maggots feed solely on dead flesh, doctors did not have to worry about bugs feasting on healthy tissue. The arrival of antibiotics relegated medical maggots to an ancient artifact. Widespread antibiotic resistance, however, rekindled interest in the use of medical maggots, and in 2004 the FDA approved them as a valid “medical device."

Unionized government workers in Texas — including firefighters, police and teachers — don’t have the right to be accompanied by a union representative while being questioned during internal investigations, a divided Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday. Such representation is a basic right for unionized private sector and federal government employees.

People in the UK now fit into seven social classes, a major survey conducted by the BBC suggests.

The US working class has not succeeded in developing a class-based political party to contend for political power, making working people particularly vulnerable. Wealth and power are concentrated increasingly in the hands of a globalized elite. It's hard to identify a period of US history where the need for a labor-based political party was greater than now. Yet the short-term prospects of an independent, pro-worker political movement emerging are virtually nonexistent.