Portside

Cotus, Facebook, And Free Speech; GOP's Twitter Shell Game; Cisco's Troubles; NYT Disruption Blues; First Look Media Snafu; A Cyber Spectre Haunts The NYP

Food service workers at Harvard are members of UNITE-HERE Local 26. After two years, they earn $21.73 per hour on average, while for many years the DoubleTree hotel in Cambridge owned by the university non-union housekeepers earned only about $15 an hour. Last year, housekeepers at the hotel mounted a push to join Local 26 as well. Hilton, which owns the DoubleTree chain bumped salaries to $18 an hour— but has so far managed to avoid a unionized workforce.

In the 1960s, the agency sought to fight Communism through the students rights movement. There's little reason to think its tactics have changed.

Four Ways a California Police Chief Connected Cops With Communities A critical look at any institution with as much power and authority invested in it as the police is probably a good thing.

An in-depth look at the current political crisis in Mexico, brought about by the murder and kidnapping of students and revelations of governmental corruption.

Stewart Detention Center is operated by the private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Problems at Stewart include the far-flung location of the facility and resulting isolation of people detained there, physical and verbal abuse, spoiled food and non-potable water, lack of recreation time, minimal access to legal materials, substandard medical care,little oversight or accountability and the absence of any meaningful grievance procedures.

Fast food workers plan another nationwide strike on December 4. Ricky Eisenberg provides some background on the campaign.

Hundreds of Los Angeles teachers have been put on leave and in limbo. It’s been called “teacher jail,” and it’s not far off from the “rubber rooms” New York City tabloids have made famous. In both places, the tactic is used to scapegoat teachers and unions.

Even though the four counts do not include cold blooded murder, we in West Virginia and the rest of the world know that the big man is on trial for the deaths of those men just as the nation knew that Al Capone’s trial on tax evasion was for his part in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. There will be no one in the courtroom or on the jury that doesn’t remember that morning. There is no one in Raleigh County that doesn’t know who ran Massey Energy.

The boundary separating white Anglo upscale school districts from the burgeoning non-white and non-Anglo populations in downscale communities is fast becoming a flashpoint inside America.