Portside

A writer tells the story of his left wing family. Reviewer Scipes takes us on a tour.

"Around 60 truck drivers and warehouse workers serving the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports began striking terminals across the region Monday morning. The strike was called by the Teamsters union Local 848 to protest what it alleges is illegal subcontracting, misclassification and wage theft by trucking companies."

Podemos has created a new form of struggle based in large part on the ideas of people working in the tradition of Gramsci. Iglesias argued that as the broad mass of people were not engaging in politics through the existing parties, the left had to go where the people were. This was a war of ideology and of position.

Today, the N.A.A.C.P. carries the weight of history and burden of bureaucracy. But it does not seem willing to shed blood, literally, or in terms of the uncomfortable work that characterizes effective activism.

As much as Sunday’s rally was a show of solidarity in Chicago for Castile’s family, organizers said, it also was a reminder that the work of activists was far from finished and that the fight must continue.

Carter, known as Jay Z, is a lauded recording artist, philanthropist and father: "When black and brown people are over-policed and arrested and accused of crimes at higher rates than others, and then forced to pay for their freedom before they ever see trial, big bail companies prosper. This pre-incarceration conundrum is devastating to families."

The decline of the business model of old-style industrial unions may have been economically inevitable, but the lack of any new model to replace it has been socially calamitous. Unions will not be easy to fix, but allowing them to innovate would be a first step, and possibly also a last chance. How a new kind of labor organization could address the grievances underlying populist anger.

Pittsburgh's much-touted revival has remade the region for the wealthy while leaving workers and the poor behind.

As Richard Rothstein contends in “The Color of Law,” a powerful and disturbing history of residential segregation in America, the government at all levels and in all branches abetted this injustice. “We have created a caste system in this country, with African-Americans kept exploited and geographically separate by racially explicit government policies,” he writes. “Although most of these policies are now off the books, they have never been remedied . . .

According to American case law, if cops believe their life is in danger, it does not matter if it truly is or isn't, all they have to do is believe it. The decades old cases of Tennessee v Garner and Graham v Connor both shaped for future juries what police could and could not get away with.