Portside

The movie, Cesar Chavez, documents his life and his role in the 1965 Delano Grape Strike. An aspect of the film is the largely forgotten contributions of Filipino Americans to the farm labor movement. Since the 1920s, when Filipinos first learned to organize into unions in Hawaii, Filipinos were important leaders in organizing farmworkers to fight against unfair working conditions.

Why the verdict? There was the obvious and unrelenting hostility of the judge, the mild-mannered demeanor displayed by Officer Bovell on the witness stand, an inclination on the part of individual jurors to take the word of uniformed authority over that of protesters. That Cecily McMillan was the victim of a brutal sexual assault and wound up being tried as the aggressor - was too disturbing a reality for the jurors to come to grips with.

Looking for another reason to worry about fracking? We're going to bubble-wrap the entire planet with the overabundance of plastic it produces.

Historian Mark Lause discusses an intriguing slice of baseball history, including the Knights of Labor influenced fight for labor rights and against the color bar in baseball. Great even for those who don't associate spring with baseball!

As the truism goes, the personal is political. For many activists and organizers, the political began with their moms. For a special Mother’s Day tribute, Colorlines asked eight racial justice activists and organizers about life wisdom and political lessons their moms imparted to them. Whether it was the example they set for their children in the way they moved through the world, or concrete political values they handed down, these moms have been a guiding force for thei

When school starts next year, nearly 70 percent of the public schools in North Lawndale will be in private hands. Most of those schools were failing or under-enrolled when CPS turned the buildings over to charter operators, or fired staff and put the AUSL in charge. Test scores and other data show the privately run schools aren't doing much better academically and in some cases are performing worse than the schools they took over or the district-run schools that remain.

How Big Pharma’s focus on blockbuster cancer drugs and the use of patents to maintain monopoly control of drug prices squeezes out research and research models and methods leading to potential treatments that are more affordable.

Very few people can avoid struggling daily with the avalanche of bad food and the culture and propaganda surrounding it. Near-hysteria or simple answers lead to unachievable situations and nonsolutions. More effective would be shifting the food culture, the relevant business models and public policies - a gradual and concerted movement toward making production and consumption simply "better." That is what the good food movement should be about.

In a move that is simultaneously discouraging, urgent and deeply unusual, the World Health Organization has declared that the resurgence of polio is a “public health emergency of international concern.” The WHO, the CDC, the fraternal organization Rotary International and a raft of partners have been pressing an international and very expensive eradication campaign since 1988. Every time the world has gotten close, though, polio has flared up again.

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis specifically said the union is willing to consider reducing benefits for those who still are working, although she emphatically ruled out changes for members who already have retired. But such compromise wont come until the city and the school board agree to contribute more to pensions each year in order to at least partially make up for a contribution shortfall that occurred during much of the past two decades.