Portside

Numbers alone can't convey what the justice system does to the individual black body. Kalief Browder was sent to Riker's Island when he was 16 years old for a crime he did not commit. He spent three years there without a trial.

With their anthology Octavia’s Brood, Adrienne Brown and Walidah Imarisha evoke a world of radical possibility.

Assata Shakur writes about her incarceration at Riker's Island in the 1970s. Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party who went underground to evade police repression, joining the Black Liberation Army. She was captured in 1973 and held as a political prisoner until 1979 (one year after this article was written), when she escaped and made her was to Cuba where she lives to this day, despite increasing pressure from the United States for her extradition.

The events in McKinney make a stronger argument than could almost any lawyer for why the court should affirm the importance of racially and economically integrated residential areas.

Chipotle will offer hourly employees benefits such as sick pay and tuition reimbursements starting July 1. The announcement comes as workers and advocates call for higher wages and benefits so that people in the restaurant industry can make a living without relying on public assistance.

Pittsburgh Labor Board rules in favor of Duquesne adjuncts and rejects the university's religious objections. The vote for the union took place in 2012.

The new Poet Laureate of the United States, Juan Felipe Herrera, was the child of migrant workers. His poetry sparkles with a luminous, richly inventive language and a technical prowess that draws from both traditional and innovative poetics. He is the first Latino to become the country's Poet Laureate, and is the most recent Poet Laureate of California. Here is a review of his New and Selected Poems (2008), and some useful links.

Looking for a decent, memorable biopic about a black woman is like waiting for Haley’s Comet. To find one, you’d have to jump all the way back to Halle Berry’s Emmy-winning turn in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge in 1999, and before that, Angela Bassett as Tina Turner in 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do With It, and before that, Diana Ross as Billie Holiday. Dee Rees’ feature about blues legend Bessie Smith on HBO joins the ranks of those aforementioned films.

IRS OKs THC; Baldwin vs Wright; Serena’s slings & arrows; Guess who’s Jeb’s fave scribe; DNAin’t; China embraces German philosopher

This paper was submitted to portside by the Left Strategy Collective Members: Rishi Awatramani, Jake Carlson, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jon Liss, Garry Owens, Biju Mathew, Merle Ratner, Claire Tran, Helena Wong. The Left Strategies Collective was founded to create conversation within the Left around strategy development.