Portside

African American Kamilah Brock, a banker, was driving her BMW in Harlem. Police did not believe that African American woman could own a BMW or be a banker. She was taken into custody, transported to a psychiatric ward, stripped and forcibly, and repeatedly, injected with sedatives - for eight days. She is now suing New York City. Only in America...in 2015.

America's unions have been in retreat for decades - but can history point toward some fresh starts? Steve Fraser's book The Age of Acquiescence reminds us that America's worker movement-100 years ago-was a rather militant creature compared to today. Then, it was worker militias, "bread and roses," and unabashed class conflict; now, it's defense and dwindling membership, and disappointing Democrats. How did we get here? Is there still power in a union?

Meet Greensboro, North Carolina native Rhiannon Giddens; see and hear why she has taken the music world by storm. Hear her music, and that of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. See why she is stretching the borders of traditional folk music, blues, country and old-time music. Hear her tribute to the Charleston Nine.

New books and research in African American history and culture. Recent or soon-to-be published books, which the African American Intellectual History Society feels would be of interest to readers. Regrettably the cost for some puts these out of reach of many - but there is always your public or school library. Suggest that these be ordered.

From Ferguson, Mo., where the "Black Lives Matters" movement took off, to the South Side of Chicago, where Fearless Leading by the Youth launched the trauma center campaign, young people are leading the call for justice. And increasingly across the country, they are strategically amplifying their message to get results.

The Next to Die aims to bring attention, and thus accountability, to these upcoming executions. As impartial news organizations, The Marshall Project and its journalistic partners do not take a stance on the morality of capital punishment, but we do see a need for better reporting on a punishment that so divides Americans.

Here is a guide to the worst refugee crisis since World War II, with information about every country you need to know.

Todd Ashker is one of the leaders of the Pelican Bay hunger strikers and the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit Ashker v. Governor of California. Sometime between 2008 and 2009, Ashker managed to get his hands on “Nothing But an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Inspired a Generation." What does a book have to do with the movement that ended indefinite solitary confinement in California?

The Black Lives Matter movement has extended from social media activism to culture-shaking, provocative artwork.

Centered in the homeless community in New York City, 'Time Out of Mind ' makes no excuses for Hammond's (played by Richard Gere) homelessness, and it avoids the Hollywood trick of pretending he's a man wronged, that in his case there's been a mistake. Instead, it asks us to accept him as a man, period, one of the millions who have found no purchase in the economic systems we're born into.