Portside

The Handmaid’s Tale is less a dystopian nightmare about Trump’s America than a comforting fiction we tell ourselves.

The education secretary was drowned out by jeers upon taking the podium at the historically black Bethune-Cookman University and cut her address short

Given the discrimination, social isolation, health disparities and economic fragility that L.G.B.T. populations as a whole face, this need is especially urgent. The data collection rollbacks don’t just prophesy bad policy. They recall a time of deep discrimination and pain that we have spent decades trying to reverse.

Sinclair eats Tribune Media; Obscene but not absurd; NYT does it again; Women still down in the Valley; Beware the botnets; Canadian breakthrough; California takes on cop tech

On January 20, our organizations -- Project South, GLAHR and SONG -- joined more than 25 other Georgia-based groups for an action we called the People's Inauguration. Together, we demanded that the City of Atlanta declare itself a sanctuary city by addressing a list of demands to protect the human rights of our communities.

A decent future of work and welfare requires a basic income—and much more. We need a revamped public sector and a new and different collective bargaining system

The county’s lawyer defended this policy by arguing that poor defendants — who are disproportionately black and Latino — stay in jail not because they can’t buy their way out but because they “want” to be there, especially “if it’s a cold week.” Judge Rosenthal called this despicable claim “uncomfortably reminiscent of the historical argument that used to be made that people enjoyed slavery.”

Rather than evaluate one’s own behavior in a bad situation, one tends to blame others and to disregard the constraints that others operate under. This is typically considered to be a “self-serving bias”. The character of the man of the West always surmounts the character of the man of the East. The violence of the West is prophylactic, while the violence of the East is destructive.

On a recent visit to Ho Chi Minh City’s (Vietnam) War Remnants Museum I was reminded Americans have never come to grips with our invasion and war on Vietnam. Yet, while we haven’t come to grips with our war on Vietnam, Americans have never come to grips with our own history, specifically how Europeans stole this land from Native Peoples and then built this country on the backs of of African slaves, while institutionalizing white supremacy.

While the executive orders, guidances, rhetoric and tweets of the past 100 days have stirred fear and anxiety in communities around the country and the world, immigrant women and women of color have continued to raise their voices, by organizing, mobilizing, engaging members of Congress and local elected leaders, in order to lead and defend our democracy.