Portside

One of the group’s most high profile alumni is Scott Walker. It’s possible that no American politician who holds office today has worked harder to successfully advance ALEC’s agenda than Walker. And no previous candidate for the White House has ever owed so much to ALEC at the outset of his campaign.Walker’s longstanding association with the group dates back to his first days as a state legislator in the early 1990s.

At the recent meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), delegates barely glanced at exhibitors of right-wing groups. One booth promoted what may be the most extreme ALEC initiative yet — an attempt to trigger Article V of the U.S. Constitution in a historically unprecedented call for a national convention of states to amend the supreme law of the USA. Labor economist and veteran ALEC-watcher Jane Carter calls it “terrifying."

This month, the nation acknowledges two political milestones. On Aug. 9, we mark the one-year anniversary of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Two days later, we mark the 50th anniversary of the uprising in Watts. A third civil disturbance offers lessons learned from failures of 1965. It provides a blueprint for how we might begin to rebuild Ferguson and the many American communities that look like Ferguson. The third milestone is the 1992 unrest in South Los Angeles.

What might a global Black Lives Matter movement look like? We may soon find out. Flanders had a chance to sit down with Opal Tometi, who cofounded Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors. Never simply a reaction to police violence against African Americans in the U.S., Black Lives Matter was always conceived of as a strategic response to white supremacy. It's not just an organizing network, but also a strategic concept broad enough to go beyond borders.

Artist Unknown, Offset, Circa 2003, Venezuela

California Domestic Workers Coalition launches statewide organizing drive.

The right-wing Illinois governor is slashing programs for the state and threatening bankruptcy for Chicago Public Schools instead of offering any revenue raising solutions.

How do we call people in even as we call them out?

How social media brought its own set of troubles to U2’s latest tour.

Secrecy, extraordinary levels of classification, lies, denial, and deception became the chief legacy of the initial impulse to censor radiation information from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.