"These disasters drag into the light exactly who is already being thrown away," notes Naomi Klein

After 20 nationally televised, occasionally entertaining, sometimes appalling debates, our presidential candidates this cycle have discussed a number of important issues: immigration policy, gun safety, health care, taxes, U.S. involvement in the Middle East, and the mounting crisis of student debt, just to name a few.

Some of you may remember the Kerner Commission, but many younger members of our audience probably will not. The Kerner Report should be required reading for policymakers and anyone trying to understand how we got to where we are now in terms of the black experience in America, the history of the ghetto and government’s responsibility to its citizens.

Fear of Ebola has been climbing steadily in the United States since Tuesday's announcement that a Liberian traveler in Dallas, Thomas Eric Duncan, was diagnosed with the disease after having been in Texas for eight days. A month ago, a Harvard School of Public Health poll found that 39 percent of Americans thought an Ebola outbreak would come to the United States, and 26 percent felt concerned that they or a member of their family would get the disease.