Portside

"The Fast Track train went off the rails today," cheered Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. "The U.S. Senate vote was supposed to generate momentum for Fast Track in the U.S. House of Representatives, where it's in deep trouble, with almost every House Democrat and a significant bloc of GOP opposing it." Democracy for America warned, "We know the forces pushing the job-killing TPP won't stop here, and they should know, neither will we."

Evil champ; Banksy in Gaza; Siege at the Goog; Art against lynching; Jazz for justice; Kid schools Scholastic

Each term my film students watch Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989). And each term they react similarly to the scene in which Mookie (Spike Lee) throws a trash can, igniting a neighborhood riot by breaking the window of the pizzeria where he works. Most students of color feel Lee’s character did the right thing while the majority of white students cannot understand why Mookie would do such a thing to his boss. Why this reaction—term after term, year after year?

Are the machines coming for our jobs? Dean Baker argues that we need to get beyond the fear of robots and address the real causes of inequality, low wages and changes in the labor market.

Study published in Journal of Nutrition finds fruit, not veggies, associated with lower risks of obesity.

Beginning in the 1930s, the LAPD pioneered the use of stop-and-search policing whereby officers flooded an area after a reported crime to question persons found on the street. This was the anti-Friday dragnet — indiscriminate, racist, and the reality for urban, black communities after World War II.

Scientists estimate that the first eukaryotes evolved about 2 billion years ago, in one of the greatest transitions in the history of life. But there is little evidence of this momentous event, no missing link that helps researchers trace the evolution of life from simple microbes to eukaryotes. On Wednesday, a team of scientists announced the discovery of just such a transitional form.

This is a national problem. Across the United States, most of the people incarcerated in local jails have not been convicted of a crime but are awaiting trial. And most of those are waiting in jail not because of any specific risk they have been deemed to pose, but because they can’t pay their bail. In other words, we are locking people up for being poor. This is unjust. We should abolish monetary bail outright.

Till now, NYSNA has negotiated separate hospital-by-hospital contracts for its entire history—while Service Employees (SEIU) mega-local 1199 was winning high standards and industry-shaping political power through master contracts with the same facilities. Now the nurses union is putting common demands on every table. At most hospitals it’s conducting open bargaining, with as many as 200 members showing up to participate in negotiations.

"Right to Work" laws are all about removing unions as a political check on the power of corporations. But that will have real costs for working families in Illinois. And the costs will be highest for blacks and Latinos.