Portside

While healthcare workers in Liberia threatened to strike over the dangers of treating ebola patients, nurses in California rallied to demand better training and safety measures to protect nurses handling ebola in the United States.

Are hospitals prepared for dealing with Ebola? The National Nurses Union took a survey of nurses. So far, they say, the data received in the union's survey of more than 1,900 registered nurses at more than 750 hospitals in 46 states and the District of Columbia wasn't encouraging.

Last February, Morales and some of his colleagues, as well as parents whose students attend Holyoke public schools, spoke at a school committee meeting (the equivalent of a school board) and protested a directive from higher-ups to post students’ test scores on the walls of their classrooms, complete with the students’ names. Morales thinks his standing up to the administration has cost him his job. And a preliminary finding from the Ma. Department of Labor backs him up.

Morales, who became Bolivia's first indigenous leader in 2006, will now be able to extend his "indigenous socialism", under which he has nationalized key industries such as oil and gas to finance welfare programs and build new roads and schools.

Weeks after his 1492 landing in the Americas, Columbus thought he had found a large enough supply of gold and slaves to persuade the Christian "Sovereigns within three years [they] would undertake and prepare to go and conquer the Holy Places."Pope Urban II had launched the first Crusade four hundred years before. He hoped the current Pope would ask him to lead "50 thousand foot soldiers and five thousand horsemen" to march on Jerusalem. He never abandoned this hope.

Beyond the massive effort to deliver clean water, there has been an unprecedented surge of interest in organizing for long-term solutions.

"We are not interested in waving Brazilian flags or volunteering for the World Cup… We need jobs. We need education. We need land titles. We need health care. And we need to know where this road they are planning to build is going, and who will be affected.” - Brazilian activist Rafael Lima

Revitalizing labor's commitment for a government healthcare system is essential or we risk the peril of being overwhelmed by an ever increasing cost structure imposed by private insurers "just because they can."

Lee Lorch, a soft-spoken mathematician whose leadership in the campaign to desegregate Stuyvesant Town, the gargantuan housing development on the east side of Manhattan, helped make housing discrimination illegal nationwide.

Micah Uetricht's "Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity" relates the stirring transformation of the Chicago Teachers Union into a democratically organized force for social justice.