Portside

Forty years ago, the US Senate’s Church Committee conducted a massive investigation into the intelligence community and expressed concerns that the privacy rights of US citizens had been violated by activities conducted under pretenses of foreign intelligence collection. The Secret Fisa courts were supposed to solve the problem -- however, they have made the problem worse.

With the new Investigate platform, people will be able to automatically scan their investment portfolios and find out if companies are invested in the prison industry. This free investment screening tool is provided to help individuals and institutions identify companies on their investment portfolios that are directly complicit in ongoing severe violations of human rights and international law.

The recent release of 6,000 inmates accelerated a decline in the number of inmates—but there's bad news, too.

The “Counter-CAPS Report: The Community Engagement Arm of the Police State” released by multiple Chicago-based organizations argues that the Chicago Police Department has much more to gain through CAPS meetings than do community members. Instead of providing communities with meaningful control over the police, CAPS meetings employ a self-selecting group of neighborhood residents to work with police to deflect criticism and criminalize young people of color.

“This is a Presidential debate,” says the chair of the Republican National Committee. “If people want facts, they can watch ‘Jeopardy.’ ”

A new report released October 26 by Health Impact Partners (HIP) assesses the impact of the proposed $775 million Reef project in South Central Los Angeles on existing residents. HIP found that “the Reef Development Project will place thousands of South Central LA residents at high or very high risk of financial strain or displacement.”

Whenever there’s a black girl on a school campus wielding a dangerous weapon like a cell phone, white macho can always be counted on to come to civilization’s rescue with the full force of fascist violence. These days, unarmed black children rank higher than mass murderers with semi-automatic weapons as public enemy number one on American school campuses.

Based on five years of ethnography, archival research, census data analysis, and interviews, Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries reveals how the LAPD, city prosecutors, and business owners struggled to control who should be considered “dangerous” and how they should be policed in Los Angeles.

Millions of Americans believe that President Obama has normalized relations with Cuba and ended over 50 years of US efforts to strangle its economy. They might have been puzzled when the United States stood up against every other nation save one, in opposing the UN General Assembly resolution that passed, 191-2, on October 27, 2015.

As part of the National Single Payer Strategy Conference in Chicago, the Labor Campaign for Single Payer has released an important new briefing paper "Turning Chevys into Cadillacs: The ACA Excise Tax and the Future of Healthcare Bargaining". The conference was the biggest convening of Single Payer advocates ever in Chicago described as very exciting, great turnout and energy from union activists and leaders across the country.