Portside

“We call today on law enforcement officers and law enforcement agencies around the state and around the nation to condemn the murderous actions of the Tulsa Police Department." Ryan Kiesel, ACLU of Oklahoma Executive Director

As California voters prepare to vote about legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, promises and omens have become part of the debate over the state’s future if Proposition 64 is passed. Will the traditional small-time pot farmers be replaced by industrial grow operations? Will employees in this newly legalized commerce receive decent pay, working conditions and benefits? Or will the new cannabis worker have more in common with the low-wage, immigrant farm workers?

(Hint: It’s less about income and more about skin color.) This infographic is part of a special report. Banking on Justice: The Bankers Doing Civil Rights Work in the Mississippi Delta.

It is true that the data show the number of families receiving cash assistance fell from 12.3 million in 1996 to current levels of 4.1 million as reported by The New York Times. But it is also true that child poverty rates for black children remain stubbornly high in the U.S.

The ugly legacy of George W. Bush’s torture program continues to haunt U.S. foreign policy as the “poster child” for waterboarding, Abu Zubaydah, makes an appeal for his release from Guantanamo, writes Marjorie Cohn.

On Sept. 9, exactly 45 years to the day after the uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York, prisoners across the United States went on strike.

On September 16, 2004, Mt. Olive Pickles finally came to an agreement with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, ending a lengthy boycott of the company. This groundbreaking farm workers union launched one of the most successful organizing campaigns of the last 25 years in the South and demonstrate the continued vitality of farmworker unions in the present. FLOC was successful with these workers because they became a way for workers to express their own power.

Leaked court documents from ‘John Doe investigation’ in Wisconsin lay bare pervasive influence of corporate cash on modern US elections

The prison strike didn’t merit a single mention in NYT, Washington Post, NPR, CNN or MSNBC.

Just like taxonomists have debated over which physical characteristics warrant a new species designation, they’re conflicted over how much genetic variation you need to prove differentiation.