Portside

Eric Garner and Michael Brown are just two of many victims of white supremacy in America

Low wage workers in more than 180 cities stage strikes and demonstrations demanding a $15 minimum wage and the right to organize. They are protesting an economic order in which they have no way to breathe.

We find ourselves at a similar moment, fifty years after that critical turning point in civil rights movement history, with “Again?” on our lips and a familiar feeling of dread in response to the violence we witness on the video of the killing of Eric Garner, the incredible amount of force used on a man who announced over and over again, “I can’t breathe.” We need again vision and big thinking—a commitment to playing offense and addressing the problems at their roots.

Chokehold Death Protests. Economic Agenda for America. Springsteen: My Oklahoma Home. She's Beautiful When She's Angry. The Feather and the Cannonball.

Reader Comments- Race inequality...by the Numbers; Darren Wilson Acquittal; Workers and Students Leave Jobs, Classes in Nationwide Walkout for Ferguson; Thanksgiving; Univ of Virginia Finally Confronts Its Rape Problem; Madison Teachers Recertify Union; Walmart Black Friday Protests; Price of 13-Year War on Terror; Chile; Israel's Jewish State Bill; 2014 and Future Elections; ALEC Blueprint for 2015; Wanted: A Challenge to Clinton; Chicago's Mayoral Race (correction)

In a normal grand jury proceeding, the prosecutor presents evidence for a few days, then asks the grand jurors to return an indictment, which they nearly always do. Of 162,000 federal cases in 2010, grand juries failed to indict in only 11 of them. The standard of proof for a grand jury to indict is only probable cause to believe the suspect committed a crime. It is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is required for conviction at trial.

Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning exhibit something of Eugene Debs' understanding that dissent is not disloyalty. Drawing on the courage of - yes - Warren Harding, and while offering clemency would not be politically easy, it would in time [to] burnish Barack Obama's dubious civil liberties legacy.

The system is substantially rigged in favor of letting officers off the hook for using excessive force in the line of duty. Policing in America is not broken. With the video of Eric Garner's death, it is impossible not to conclude that the justice system is institutionally biased in favor of using excessive and sometimes lethal force....The judicial system is not broken. American society is not broken. All are functioning perfectly, doing exactly what they have done.

Justice for Eric Garner and an end to discriminatory policing - New York City Council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus; Center for Constitutional Rights Exec Director Vince Warren; Donna Lieberman, Exec Director, New York Civil Liberties Union. Sign your name - Demand the Department of Justice and Pres. Obama do everything in their power to indict Officer Pantaleo on federal criminal charges.

The governor has also said that he doesn't want a repeat of the large protests that accompanied the passage of Act 10, saying in December 2012 that such a move could create uncertainty and cause employers to hesitate on hiring as he believes businesses did in 2011.