Portside

In Staten Island, one union local is propelling a growing labor-community alliance deep in New York’s Republican recesses.

The word “companion” doesn’t sound oppressive at all: It appears quite the opposite. A companion is supportive, nurturing, loyal. But that word was used for decades to deny basic labor protections to workers who provide in-home assistance to people with disabilities.

In his July 21 remembrance of Dr. Herbert Needleman, Dr. Richard Jackson, former Director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health wrote in Environmental Health News, “He was brilliant, but more importantly courageous and generous.” Carrie Arnold’s May 31 PBS article explores the man and his groundbreaking research on the long term effects of lead poisoning, and why Needleman was so hated by industry, and dismissed by many in the medical establishment.

Some of the problems playing out now in the $108 billion private student loan market are reminiscent of those that arose from the subprime mortgage crisis a decade ago, when billions of dollars in subprime mortgage loans were ruled uncollectible by courts because of missing or fake documentation.

Ultimately, preemption of local minimum wage laws is a priority for big business. Advocates, workers, and legislators who support an economy that works for all should oppose the preemption of local minimum wage laws.

Yugoslavia’s “self-managed” socialism appeared to be a real alternative to the Soviet model. Why did it collapse so suddenly?

A brave group have become an example for Britain, and all of Europe, in taking back workplace control

The New York poet Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad offers a soulful Life Jacket to those displaced and forlorn by international tragedies: "remember," she writes, "you were born first/into a province of hope."