Portside

Air Force officers at America's nuke sites work 24-hour-shifts in antique underground capsules launching fake attacks straight out of 'Strangelove' — and they're ready to blow

“Delay hurts,” says Kate Bronfenbrenner of the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations, “because they can fire one more worker, or engage in five more captive-audience meetings or three more supervisor one-on-ones per person.” Because of these aggressive tactics, there are far fewer NLRB elections today than in the past.

It is time for change, time for the very best efforts of all who nurture hopes for a saner world.

We live digital lives—from the videos shared on social networks, to location-aware apps on mobile phones, to log-in data for connecting to our email, to our stored documents, to our search history. The personal, the profound, and even the absurd are all transcribed into data packets, whizzing through the fiber-optic arteries of the network. Our daily lives have upgraded to the 21st century, but law and the practice of the private sector don't offer adequate protections.

And how our rush to lock up immigrants has overwhelmed the federal prison system.

The films that opened and closed the Human Rights Watch Film Festival - Marc Silver’s 3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets, and Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution - tell interlocking stories. Although more than four decades separate the events they trace, there is a connection between what happened in the 1960s, when cities exploded in the wake of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Kiing and discord today.

Strict gun laws with harsh penalties aimed at punishing violent criminals can ensnare law-abiding people who make mistakes. That these laws often affect people of color is not at all new. The history of gun control in this country is long and has usually been directly or indirectly tied to race.

Americans' confidence in the police is down to 52%, an all time low since 1993 in the wake of the the Rodney King police beating. Although this Gallup report concludes that the 52% figure means that the "majority of American remain confident in this institution and have more faith in it than in most other institutions," put another way, nearly half of all Americans do not have faith in most institutions including the police. The figures are nevertheless noteworthy.

The incidence of involuntary part-time work surged during the Great Recession and has stayed unusually high during the recovery. This may reflect more labor market slack than is captured by the unemployment rate alone. This suggests that involuntary part-time work may remain significantly above its pre-recession level as the labor market continues to recover.

Many workers are not only fighting for the $15 an hour and a union that first drew them to the campaign. They’re fighting for a better world. They see their actions as re-directing the course of history, as building a future for their children and grandchildren, and as helping workers not only in other fast food outlets but also in many other jobs and industries.