Portside

On the third anniversary of the El Paso Massacre of Latin Americans, prize-winning poet Martin Espada offers a tribute to a human rights lawyer killed by a shooter.

After a year of contract negotiations in which Kaiser has rejected proposals aimed at increasing staffing and improving access to care, they’re on their first ever open-ended strike.

With friends in the White House, and a pending $49 billion merger, Big Tobacco is back. The US remains the “world’s largest tobacco profit pool” outside of China, with “exciting” prospects for “long term growth”. Mergers and acquisitions have allowed the deadly industry to squeeze huge profits from customers, increasingly the poor, less educated and marginalized, and the supply chain, contract farmers, and workers, including children, who work for poverty wages.