Portside

The World Needs Doctors? Cuba Trains Them. Elizabeth Warren Rips Citibank. Movie: Selma. The Avian Tree of Life. The Cockroach.

Indian unions protest government plans for massive privatization and deregulation in the name of more ‘flexible’ labour laws that will impact precarious and unprotected workers particularly hard. The proposed changes, which will bring down social standards and social indicators, have been developed without any form of consultation or dialogue with labour unions whatsoever.

Reader Comments - CIA Lied About Torture; A New Civil Rights Movement?; Grand Jury Injustice - Justice Demanded; Members of Congress (and staffers) join protest; Illegal Cop Murders; Police Reform? - Bolder Steps Needed; Low Wage Workers: 'We Can't Breathe'; Slavery, Founding Fathers and Torture; Congress Plots against Pensions; Pardon Snowden, Manning and Leonard Peltier; Israel Lobby and Ukraine; War on Terror; Israel, U.S. and space weapons; New Republic; Correction

Official government statistics document that African American young men are killed by the police at a rate quadruple that of the whole population. In the period 1999 through 2011, police officers killed 4,531 people. Marge Piercy, in poem, captures that reality of being young, African American, Hispanic, Asian or Native American Indian, and a police victim.

One thing that I wanted to learn in talking to a torturer - I guess every person is different - but I wanted to see: did this destroy him? Did this destroy his soul? Is he like a broken man wracked with guilt? And he wasn't.

Congressional Progressive Caucus urged members to reject the so-called Cromnibus if a provision which helps big banks trade derivatives in units backstopped by a government guarantee remained in the spending measure. This kind of activity was a cause of the 2008 crisis - it a giveaway to wealthy campaign donors and Wall Street banks. Analysis for more information about key takeaways from the proposed spending bill, as well as a few controversial surprises.

This movement is not only explicitly about the right to live a life with more opportunity, but the right to simply live. As Howard Zinn said, "You can't be neutral on a moving train." The train is leaving the station, even in the world of sports. The marches in the streets are not done. The die-ins disrupting traffic are not done. And, as part of this moment, athletes are speaking out, with African American sports stars in the lead.

Sen. John McCain spoke Tuesday on the Senate floor following the release of the CIA torture report. The Arizona Republican was a Navy pilot whose plane was shot down in enemy territory during the Vietnam War; he was tortured by the North Vietnamese as a prisoner of war.

LAWCHA sponsored a Teachers/Public sector history committee that has produced an overview of teacher organizing and a bibliography of resources to understand that effort in historical context. We have provided powerpoints graphs and annotations of material organized by geography and specific unions.