Portside

Eric Garner, a sometime gardener who was killed by a New York City policeman's choke hold in 2014, lives on in Ross Gay's plain tribute to a man who worked with his hands.

The organizers counted 250,000, a quarter of a million. Of course the police scaled that down - to 150,000. But who's counting - it was definitely the biggest since 2003 against the Iraq War. It was a protest against the "Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership", TTIP, and its equally spurned Canadian sister, CETA. Some speakers, and some signs proclaimed: Take TTIP and shove it - and Capitalism with it!

Answer: When the child is Black and the shooter is a police officer. You're not likely to find any law enforcement person within a 100-mile radius who would dare speak out and say what we all know: this went down badly (not just "tragically," as one of the experts put it) and the officers should be held accountable. Law enforcement culture doesn't allow for people to break ranks without consequences. So please, let's not call these hired consultants independent.

After the NYPD broke his leg and charged him with resisting arrest, NBA star Thabo Sefolosha cleared his name in court. Here's what we learned. The NYPD has a racism problem that was just proven in open court. One of the least covered aspects in this trial was the surveillance footage of the initial approach by police. They passed Thabo's white teammate Pero Antic and making a beeline for Thabo. He was in their sights. He was their target. His skin was a bull's-eye.

El Faro was an overaged ship -- and the problem with old ships is that they are about as safe as old trucks. Commercial truckers don't drive 40-year old vehicles on their routes.

Reader Comments: Kunduz, Doctors Without Borders and War Crimes; U.S. Labor Law at 80 - a dissenting view; Grace Lee Boggs; Congress in Chaos; Pinochet Murder and the CIA; Connecticut's Malloy attacks college unions; TPP; Henning Mankell; Prisons and Campaign to Divest from Private Prisons; Ethel Rosenberg Celebrated on 100th birthday in New York; Announcements: Eastampton, MA; New York; San Francisco; Brooklyn' Labor Notes is Hiring

The spread of capitalism as a global system and neoliberalism as its dominant economic policy has its analogue in the triumph of English as its undisputed enabling linguistic. The book under review argues that not only is this single-language sway historically unprecedented in allowing universal communication, but that its flattening effects on native languages and national discourse come with their own disabling downsides.

Journalists working for Al Jazeera America (AJAM) voted to be represented by the The NewsGuild of New York.

Bernie Sanders crushed the debates by every measurable indicator except one: pundits’ opinion.

The Man Booker prize, given annually for best English language novel published in the United Kingdom, was awarded this week to Marlon James, for his novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. He is the first writer from Jamaica to win the prize. The novel is a tale of 1970s-1980s Jamaica, CIA plots, and violence. It is "a story about Jamaica that doesn’t only take place in Jamaica," says Kei Miller, who reviewed the novel late last year.