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Victory for Grassroots as Fast Track Goes Down in Crucial Senate Vote

Deirdre Fulton Common Dreams
"The Fast Track train went off the rails today," cheered Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. "The U.S. Senate vote was supposed to generate momentum for Fast Track in the U.S. House of Representatives, where it's in deep trouble, with almost every House Democrat and a significant bloc of GOP opposing it." Democracy for America warned, "We know the forces pushing the job-killing TPP won't stop here, and they should know, neither will we."

Killing the Future: The Theft of Black Life

Nicholas Powers Truthout
The stages of grief depend on narrative closure, the shoveling of dirt on the casket, eulogizing the dead. But for African-American parents whose children were slain by law enforcement, the stages of grief grind to a halt. The dead cannot be laid to rest because the cop who murdered them is not held accountable, and his violence is condoned.

Yemen’s War Is Redrawing the Middle East’s Fault Lines

Conn Hallinan Dispatches From the Edge
As Saudi Arabia continues its air assault on Yemen’s Houthi insurgents, supporters and opponents of the Riyadh monarchy are reconfiguring the political landscape in a way that’s unlikely to vanish once the fighting is over. The Saudis have constructed what at first glance seems a formidable coalition consisting of the Arab League, the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Turkey, and the United States. Except that the “coalition” isn’t as solid as it looks.

Protect the Public's Right to Free Speech and Free Press

Chelsea Manning The Guardian (UK)
Manning’s latest Guardian op-ed: We're citizens, not subjects. We have the right to criticize government without fear. The American public needs more access to what the government is doing in its name. That requires increasing freedom of information and transparency.

Eyewitness to the ‘Fall’ of Vietnam: It Was Not a Bloodbath

Claudia Krich The Davis Enterprise
Claudia Krich, longtime Davis resident and retired teacher, attended a Sacramento screening of the documentary “Last Days in Vietnam” and was moved to write this essay. The documentary rekindled memories of the unique experience she and her husband Keith Brinton shared from 1973 until July of 1975,when they co-directed a civilian rehabilitation program and hosted visiting journalists and officials near My Lai. They stayed in Saigon and saw what happened April 30th.

Bosnie - Sarajevo: The Women’s Court in the Former Yugoslavia

Marieme Helie Lucas Secularism Is a Women's Issue
May 7 the Women’s Court on war crimes against women during the war in the 1990ies formally started in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Women have come together from all the corners of the former-Yugoslavia to participate in the Women’s Court in Sarajevo, to demand justice for the crimes committed against them during the wars and the enduring inequalities and suffering that followed.

Remembering Guy Carawan: The Man Who Popularized ‘We Shall Overcome’

Peter Dreier The Nation
Guy Carawan's music became the unofficial anthems of the Civil Rights movement. For over 50 years, Guy was the music director of Highlander Center, an inter-racial training center for labor, civil rights, and environmental activists, located in rural Tennessee. Guy graduated in 1949 from Occidental College, where he majored in math, played on the basketball team, and was a member of ATO fraternity - an unusual background for someone who would become a civil rights icon!