Portside

Scholars from multiple disciplines around the world, weigh in on the social, psychological and political issues impacting transgender students.

Over time, the Web has revealed itself to be no freer of discrimination than the physical world it inhabits.

Before this year, we basically weren’t even able to really provide a very effective number of how many people with mental illness were killed by law enforcement officers. We know, across the country, that people with a mental illness are languishing in jails and emergency rooms, because we simply don’t have enough hospital beds for them.

Worldwide, 90 percent of domestic workers—the vast majority of whom are women—do not have access to any kind of social security coverage, according to the International Labour Organization. In the United States, an estimated 95 percent of domestic workers are female, foreign born and/ or persons of color. They frequently lack protections and face near constant adversity.

The group’s pitch is this: Black workers are losing jobs, and Latinos are losing their rights. Only united can they hold temp agencies accountable.

“It’s worth it, once you realize what you’re fighting for,” says Ahmed Mohamed. And what is he fighting for? He looks around the room, and like any American 14-year-old grappling with issues beyond his control, he answered with the rising inflection of a question. “Not just for Muslims?” he said. “But for anybody who has been through this?”

As the movement for racial justice spurred by the seemingly endless series of police killings of African Americans grows we are reminded that the issues are not new, they are endemic in U.S. history. What happens after the headlines subside? The truth has been buried too often, and for too long and there can be no justice until these stories are resurrected, scrubbed of their racist falsehoods. U.S. history needs to be put right.