Portside

The upsurge of protest in communities of color against the increasingly visible pattern of unrestrained police brutality revealed in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, combined with the rise of student activism over the climate on a variety of campuses in recent months have evoked memories of the civil rights movement in the 1950s.

Lessons the climate movement can draw from Black Lives Matter.

New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio will sign an agreement on Wednesday with DC37, AFSCME to raise the minimum wage to $15. This will cover about 50,000 municipal workers including DC37.

Patricia Highsmith published "The Price of Salt" in 1952 under the name "Claire Morgan," a pseudonym. Since then, the book has become a classic of lesbian literature. Filmmaker Todd Haynes has recently released "Carol," his film adaptation of the novel, to wide acclaim. John Copenhaver reconsiders the original novel, guiding us through this suspenseful tale.

Milwaukee's Turners -- founded by German refugees fleeing political repression and economic hard time in the late 1840's -- issued a statement denouncing racism and xenophobia in calls to exclude Muslim refugees from Wisconsin and called upon all Wisconsinites, including the vast majority of us who are of immigrant stock, to support humane and safe admission of our proportional share of refugees from Syria and other nations.

Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera reminds Americans of a colonial and imperial past whose contours are still visible. Despite a stingy record for commutations and pardons, President Barack Obama could and should use his constitutional powers to commute Oscar’s punitive sentence and grant his immediate release.

Honesty may be poetry's best gift in the coming year, as these writers and others say what needs to be said about guns, anger, racism, family, and how we can think and feel more precisely and truthfully about one another.

The fate of police officers who kill often rests in the hands of the prosecutors they typically work alongside. A Guardian analysis reveals district attorneys cleared colleagues in more than 200 cases this year

City regulators haven’t enforced a 2007 law that requires doormen, janitors and other service workers at taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings to be paid wages comparable to union rates.

City regulators haven’t enforced a 2007 law that requires doormen, janitors and other service workers at taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings to be paid wages comparable to union rates.