Portside

All it took was a pandemic of potentially unprecedented scale and severity and suddenly it’s like we’re turning into Denmark over here.

Some problems can only be solved when public officials have the resources to act. Today’s public health crisis is that kind of problem. The current disaster threatens our health and our economy.

The American labor movement has been reinvigorated in recent years, with teacher-led Red for Ed strikes, the General Motors walkout, the Fight for $15’s push to raise the minimum wage. Sixty-seven per cent of young people 18 - 34 approve of unions.

Ten days after the Guyanese election, returns have still not been released; and today the head of Guyana's Supreme Court has ordered a partial recount of votes. Two veteran Guyanese politicians call for the creation of a government of national unity.

Reader Comments: Coronavirus Pandemic and GOP Attack on Social Security, Medicare, CDC; Three-Fourths of Democratic Delegates Still to be Voted On; Sanders, Biden, Warren; Coronavirus Factsheet in 20 Languages; more resources, announcements;

Workers denounce draconian immigration policies that repel people who are fleeing for their lives, but they also argue that central Americans should have the right to not emigrate; to live from birth to death in their homeland.

Hilary Mantel concludes her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, preceded by Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies , brilliantly and exhaustively charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, the powerful minister in the court of Henry V!!!

Reader Comments - "I Question America" -- Remembering Fannie Lou Hamer; The Coming Race War Won't Be About Race; Ferguson - Politicians and AFL-CIO - Both Missing; Israelis in US: An Open Letter to American Jews on Gaza; Minnesota Home Health Care Workers Unionize; Ukraine and Neo-Nazis; Sanctions & the Dollar; Economic Democracy Project's first event: Economic Democracy And The Struggle For Black Independence - Sept. 3 - New York

Market Basket employees — who are not unionized — ran a grassroots campaign that included walk-outs, rallies, and online actions. The New York Times describes the saga as "one of the strangest labor actions in American business history," and the Boston Globe notes that these activities "stunned longtime observers of the grocery industry and captured the imagination and attention of a region."

This open-ended cease-fire is fragile. Some of the goals of the two sides will be very hard to attain. And, at root, the Israel-Gaza war won’t really be over until there is a comprehensive peace settlement with either a two-state or a one-state solution to Palestinian statelessness.