Portside

Here at The Next System Project, we’ve been exploring the connections between space, violence, and gender inequities, looking both at the spaces of the built environment and the way social practices structure those spaces. Part of that exploration is talking to organizers like Jessica Raven, Executive Director of Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS)—read our quick conversation below!

As I watch current events in Venezuela, I am haunted by memories of Chile. I lived in Chile from July 1972 until February 1973, while socialist Salvador Allende was president. I left Chile months before the fascist coup, although I had planned to return. That door closed.

This year, sit back with your favorite beverage or herb, prop up your feet and open your head to consider Independence Day in a whole new way.

Nuclear Negligence examines safety weaknesses at U.S. nuclear weapon sites operated by corporate contractors. The Center’s probe, based on contractor and government reports and officials involved in bomb-related work, revealed unpublicized accidents at nuclear weapons facilities, including some that caused avoidable radiation exposures. It also discovered that the penalties imposed by the government for these errors were typically small relative to contractor profit.

Many Americans don’t realize that 10% of Americans who are fully eligible to vote don’t have the right form of identification to satisfy new voter ID laws. They don’t notice that DMVs and early-voting places have been closed only in certain neighborhoods, disproportionately impacting communities of color. They don’t realize that after Shelby County, even the most egregious laws often aren’t blocked until after an election, when the damage has already been done.

How much mortality in the U.S. will increase if the Senate passes its health-care bill, according to a new analysis by Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, titled “The Relationship of Health Insurance and Mortality: Is Lack of Insurance Deadly?”

Our 21st-century Finland Station won’t be a paradise. You might feel heartbreak and misery there. But it will be a place that allows so many now crushed by inequity to participate in the creation of a new world.

With police killings dominating the headlines, our first guest, historian Ibram X. Kendi, discusses his recent book, "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America," which traces the origins of racist ideas in the U.S. The author examines the impact of historically racist policies on existing racial disparities. His book is the recipient of the 2016 National Book Award.

The decision by Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, to suspend payments to Israel for electricity for Gaza, coincided with his decision to slash funding to Gaza’s hospitals and clinics and to cut the salaries of Gaza’s public sector employees. This is a high stakes gamble. Abbas is prepared to look like he is making common cause with Israel against Hamas while playing politics with the welfare of the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza strip.

“The good stuff never applies to people of color, ever.”