Portside

Looking for a decent, memorable biopic about a black woman is like waiting for Haley’s Comet. To find one, you’d have to jump all the way back to Halle Berry’s Emmy-winning turn in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge in 1999, and before that, Angela Bassett as Tina Turner in 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do With It, and before that, Diana Ross as Billie Holiday. Dee Rees’ feature about blues legend Bessie Smith on HBO joins the ranks of those aforementioned films.

The still fledgling campaign focuses on organizing to raise wages and delays question of union structure. No one seems sure about the shape of a fast-food union. Many formations are possible. Since wages and other employment laws differ by city and state, one could envision local or regional contracts that establish a basic compensation structure, benefits and freedom from arbitrary firing. A more ambitious version would be national in scope: a framework agreement...

Living in the USA where people learn world geography through frequently fought overseas wars, Americans are accustomed to reading about places where we've fought wars - Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. But one formerly war-ravaged part of the world most Americans don't think much about is Okinawa. What's it like to have 20 percent of your small, crowded island home occupied by more than 32 foreign military bases and some 50 restricted air and marine military training sites.

Gilda Haas of Dr. Pop shares insights from her recent study tour of Mondragon.

An Iraqi single mother has assembled an international team of lawyers who are now asking the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit to hear her claim that the Iraq War was illegal under laws set down at the Nuremberg Trials, which govern when and how a country can go to war.

Academic and activist Mazin Qumsiyeh shares his insights on status of Palestine.

Converging Storms 2015: The Crises of Energy, Capitalism, and the Environment CLASS SERIES: Every other Sunday, June 21 – Sept 27, 9:30 am – 1:00 pm (with time for refreshments), WHERE: 675 S. Park View, UCLA Downtown Labor Center, between Wilshire and 7th Street, Los Angeles, CA.

Living in the USA where people learn world geography through frequently fought overseas wars, Americans are accustomed to reading about places where we've fought wars - Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. But one formerly war-ravaged part of the world most Americans don't think much about is Okinawa. What's it like to have 20 percent of your small, crowded island home occupied by more than 32 foreign military bases and some 50 restricted air and marine military training sites.

That's what computers are really good at, relentless grinding. I can't call it intelligence, and I can call it artificial intelligence only in the sense that an inflatable palm is an artificial tree. I realize that we do have to call it something, though, but the term "artificial intelligence" probably confuses more than it illuminates.

Leaders of the union representing 18,000 nurses at 14 private hospitals in New York City said Wednesday the nurses could go on strike over staffing levels if negotiations with management fail. "We need more nurses," said Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, president of the New York State Nurses Association. "Our patients' well-being, their very lives, depend on real staffing standards that enable us to simply do our jobs, to deliver safe, quality care."