Portside

"At the Women’s Court, women testified courageously of their experiences of losing family members to massacres, of mass rape and kidnapping, and of ethnic persecution. They demanded that such events never be repeated. This feminist re-imagining of a court in which women victims are the central focus was very inspiring and thought-provoking to me as an international lawyer."

American workers and organized labor have an interest in addressing climate change and in putting millions of people to work making the transition to a climate-safe economy. But much of labor is still committed to an “all of the above” energy policy that promotes all jobs—even those destroying our climate and future. Can that change?

The win marks a major victory for the Pennsylvania Working Families Party, which endorsed Kenney. The endorsement lauded Kenney for his work on Philadelphia’s City Council “supporting efforts to raise wages, improving Philly’s schools, increasing access to housing, ending the discriminatory practices of the criminal justice system, and limiting corporate power in politics.”

Supporters of higher wages say they hope the move will reverberate nationally. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced this month that he was convening a state board to consider a wage increase in the local fast-food industry, which could be enacted without a vote in the State Legislature. Immediately after the Los Angeles vote, pressure began to build on Mr. Cuomo to reject an increase that falls short of $15 an hour.

The history of public housing in the United States can be read, in part, as a history of the modern impoverishment of racial minorities, in particular, of the African American population. As reviewer Rhonda Y. Williams notes, Edward G. Goetz has written a "multi-layered analysis of housing policy and redevelopment," in a book that "explicitly examines black removal from urban spaces and the perpetuation of racialized poverty."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office released a report Monday accusing presidential administrations, including Obama’s, of not enforcing labor protections in trade deals.

During the economic blockade by the US and after a string of serious disease outbreaks, Cuban leader Fidel Castro made biotechnology and medical research a key priority for the allocation of limited government funds. Johnson said: “They’ve had to do more with less, so they’ve had to be even more innovative with how they approach things. For over 40 years, they have had a preeminent immunology community.”

Getting cars off the roads would help combat climate change and improve air quality as well. Government policy could make this happen.

Activists’ decision to target corporations reflects a growing conviction that the government is unresponsive to popular demands because it is unwilling or unable to stop the abuses of the corporate world.

Among the demands being met by the government are requirements that companies get certification ensuring that they’re not using child labor, social security benefits for retired farmworkers, equal rights and pay for women, housing built for laborers, recognition of the farmworkers’ union, and healthcare for workers.