Portside

At the end of February immigration agents descended on a handful of Japanese and Chinese restaurants in the suburbs of Jackson, Mississippi, and in nearby Meridian. Fifty-five immigrant cooks, dishwashers, servers and bussers were loaded into vans and taken to a detention center about 160 miles away in Jena, Louisiana.

At 8:48 a.m. on the morning of February 18, 2015, an explosion at the ExxonMobil Torrance refinery in Southern California ripped through the facility with such ferocity, the resulting shockwaves registered on the Richter scale. Dust was scattered over the densely populated neighborhood up to a mile away from the blast. Four workers suffered minor injuries.

The movement, spearheaded by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), aims to hold accountable institutions and companies complicit in the Israeli state’s denial of Palestinian rights. The BNC is explicit in its condemnation of all forms of racism and bigotry including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

Drawing connections between arguments used by liberal proponents of free speech and the rhetoric of the alt right, I examine how the free speech and open debate arguments being used today to defend the hateful messages of far right speakers have been established over a long period and need to be explored in the context of rising fascism, white supremacy, and extreme social inequality.

What is the appropriate response to the banality of the Op-Ed: “Vietnam’s Unhealed Wounds” by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick in the 2017 Memorial Day edition of The New York Times? Such a trite pronouncement is surely destined for the dustbin of history. But already accompanied by much media hype, Burns and Novick are set to launch their PBS documentary: THE VIETNAM WAR, a ten-part, 18-hour series in September 2017.

Your smartphone, your enemy; All in the family; Twitter has your number too; Cell-trackers; Scoops a la Trump; Fox News confidential

California shoots down bill to strike language barring Communist party members from government jobs as Trump’s alleged Russia ties stoke cold war sentiments.

Cities, counties and even one state are working to push legislation that would force police agencies to disclose their acquisition and use of surveillance technologies to local lawmakers and communities.

To an outsider, the work that a graduate student has to do might seem easy. A bunch of people who get paid to read and write all day, yeah? What could be easier than that?

Land is Power. Land is Liberation. Land is The Commons. On Juneteenth 2017 (Monday, June 19th) Black people across the country will take back land and reclaim space, from vacant lots to empty school buildings.