Portside

Anchored by powerful performances from Oscar nominees Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard, Empire features unapologetically black characters operating in a mostly black world. Nielsen says 7.5 million of them are African-American.But that's where the other controversy about Empire emerges. Because some critics say the show has earned its success by trafficking in "badly written dialogue and ham-fisted stereotypes."

"Right to Work" laws are all about removing unions as a political check on the power of corporations. But that will have real costs for working families in Illinois. And the costs will be highest for blacks and Latinos.

Till now, NYSNA has negotiated separate hospital-by-hospital contracts for its entire history—while Service Employees (SEIU) mega-local 1199 was winning high standards and industry-shaping political power through master contracts with the same facilities. Now the nurses union is putting common demands on every table. At most hospitals it’s conducting open bargaining, with as many as 200 members showing up to participate in negotiations.

This is a national problem. Across the United States, most of the people incarcerated in local jails have not been convicted of a crime but are awaiting trial. And most of those are waiting in jail not because of any specific risk they have been deemed to pose, but because they can’t pay their bail. In other words, we are locking people up for being poor. This is unjust. We should abolish monetary bail outright.

Scientists estimate that the first eukaryotes evolved about 2 billion years ago, in one of the greatest transitions in the history of life. But there is little evidence of this momentous event, no missing link that helps researchers trace the evolution of life from simple microbes to eukaryotes. On Wednesday, a team of scientists announced the discovery of just such a transitional form.

Beginning in the 1930s, the LAPD pioneered the use of stop-and-search policing whereby officers flooded an area after a reported crime to question persons found on the street. This was the anti-Friday dragnet — indiscriminate, racist, and the reality for urban, black communities after World War II.

An anonymous customer service representative for a U.S. telecommunications company writes of the tremendous pressures on workers in customer service jobs, which pay just above the hourly minimum wage. Because of the low pay, these workers must rely on end of the month performance-based pay bonuses to get by. “Pay for performance” bonuses can add several hundred dollars a month to a paycheck. But it’s a very precarious way to make ends meet.

The Spanish jurist who issued arrest warrant for Augusto Pinochet reflects on the battle to unseat impunity in Chile and Argentina, and Spain's efforts to shake off its collective amnesia. Impunity, as the absence of justice, is the second of two assaults on both the law and the dignity of victims. Garzon asserts it is a mistake to advocate for peace while disregarding demands for justice. No amnesty law should obstruct access to justice for victims.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed Ayelet Shaked Justice Minister in his fourth government. In the most extremist right-wing government in Israeli history, Shaked is perhaps the most extreme. She has openly asserted “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and made genocidal calls for the destruction of the Palestinian nation, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.”

The displacement of black and Latino households was so dramatic during the recent foreclosure crisis that it should be seen as a 'mass migration event,' according to the lead author of a new Cornell University study. The study found Black and Latino neighborhoods faced home-loss rates at approximately three times that of white areas. This high rate of home-loss, along with white flight, resulted in a massive resegregation of urban America.