Portside

On June 27, the Supreme Court delivered a blow to public sector unions that could affect many library workers. More than a quarter of librarians (26.2%) and around one-fifth of library technicians (19.3%) and library assistants 22.7%) are members.

Mandela was not just "a brilliant political tactician and legal mind, but also an exquisite writer," says reviewer Goff. These letters give us a man of high ideals whose "fight for survival" in prison adds Goff, "would have broken many of us."

Russian money saved Trump when his projects were on the verge of collapse. Will it now be the cause of his political demise?

Ethiopia agreed to a border commission study that awarded most of the territory disputed by the two countries to Eritrea, ending a state of conflict that followed a 1998-2000 war that cost 80,000 lives and displaced more than 6 million people.

Foreign workers are brought to the United States by outsourcing companies and copy how the employees of Toys "R" Us do their jobs. The jobs are then sent to India and the employees are given pink slips.

The history of racism in our country is sometimes best understood by looking at how that history unfolded locally, and in places outside the slaveholding South, as well as nationally. Fred Whitehead writes about his own experience growing up in Kansas in the 1950s and about what Brent M. S. Campney, in his new study of that state's bloody Civil War and Post-Civil War racial history, taught him.

Anti-Syrian sentiment, along with economic hardship and a growing sense that the civil war will rage on for years to come, helps explain why many refugees are willing to risk everything by leaving Turkey and heading for Europe.

The president of the NEA, the largest union in the US, is reportedly drumming up support for an endorsement of Hillary Clinton as early as next week. However, this has spurred protest from rank-and-file members who argue that a primary endorsement excludes the majority's input. Those who support Senator Bernie Sanders are planning a grassroots campaign in opposition to the what they expect will be a Clinton nod.

For years, schoolchildren in New York City have been subject to overly aggressive practices by police in their schools. There are more police personnel in New York City public schools than there are on the streets of almost every major city in the United States. Amendments to the Student Safety Act will increase transparency by closing loopholes and improve public disclosure of comprehensive data on school suspensions and law enforcement activity.

Powerful truth-telling for every day: written and read by Chicago poet Kevin Coval as the Haftarah for Tzedek Chicago’s Yom Kippur service last week.