Portside

Expecting artists to work for free hands the reins of cultural production to ruling elites.

In response to the wave of demonstrations over austerity programs and bank bailouts that have swept across Spain, a new law took effect on July 1, 2015 that criminalizes demonstrations in front of some government agencies and public buildings, and includes stiff fines for documenting the police response. The so-called Citizen Security Law makes it illegal to disseminate pictures, video and other content deemed “damaging” to Spain’s police and security forces.

Santa Cruz County’s Board of Supervisors recently suspended all business with the five giant banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citicorp, who recently pleaded guilty to felony charges of criminal collusion. While the small California county’s portfolio is only valued at $650 million, Santa Cruz County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty says he’ll be contacting other local jurisdictions to urge them to follow Santa Cruz County’s lead.

According to the Washington Post, which, in the absence of reliable government statistics, is one of the news organizations tallying the number of police killings in the U.S., cops killed some 461 people in the first six months of 2015. And, more than a fourth of those slain, the reporters say, were "in the throes of mental or emotional crisis." The Washington Post estimates that in 2015, on average, police killed one mentally disturbed person every 36 hours.

Will the push to remove and proscribe the Confederate flag and other Old South symbols in the wake of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church massacre in Charleston, SC result in meaningful change? After all, Southern states faced a wave of protests over the flag in the early 1990s and early 2000s that led South Carolina to move its Confederate flag from the capitol dome to the statehouse grounds and Georgia to revise its state flag, but nothing more.

In the recent weeks leading up to Pope Francis’ July 5 visit to Ecuador, the right-wing opposition has staged increasingly violent protests against President Rafael Correa’s government. Correa, who was re-elected in 2013 with 57% of the vote, has likened the opposition tactics of “mobilizations, provocations, victimizations,” to those used by the Venezuelan opposition. (In a 2010 attempted coup, President Correa was injured and held captive for 12 hours.)

The future demands a proud Greece within the Eurozone and at the heart of Europe. This future demands that Greeks say a big NO on Sunday, that we stay in the Euro Area, and that, with the power vested upon us by that NO, we renegotiate Greece's public debt as well as the distribution of burdens between the haves and the have nots.

Last month, the historically ultra-conservative and oil-rich province of Alberta, Canada, did the unthinkable: It elected a left-wing government. And that new government just made one of its first big moves: It announced a serious clamp-down on climate change, including doubling its carbon tax.

Just one hundredth of one percent of people in the United States contributed nearly one third of all the money spent in the 2014 elections, a greater proportion than ever before, according to a new study. In the first full midterm since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the influence of the One Percent of the One Percent continued to grow. Candidates, parties and super PACs depend on the super elite.

If you take a healthy 20 year-old, force them to sit all day, and refuse to let them do any physical labor out of fear they might hurt themself, it would cause them to “age” extremely rapidly. We need to promote more, not less physical activity for our elders. The next time you consider telling your grandmother to sit down, think about whether that’s really in her best interest.