Portside

Reader Comments: Straight Outta Compton; Bernie Sanders and Labor; GOP Racism & Immigration; China's Currency Devaluation; Artic Oil Drilling; NLRB and Faster Union Elections; Amnesty and the Sex Trade; Announcements: Film: Warrior, the Life of Leonard Peltier - New York - September 12; 60 Years of Rebels and Reformers - New York - October 3

Years before the thaw and the restoration of relations between the United States and Cuba, Miles Jackson and a college friend had been building a different kind of diplomacy: one on wheels. Their hope is that skateboarding can help pry open a notoriously stiff relationship and encourage a new generation of skateboarders to join an international sporting community.

Culminating a 90-mile walk for justice and peace across Wisconsin, on August 26th, some of the walkers will commit nonviolent civil resistance at Volk Field, carrying the messages about drone warfare and racial profiling into courts of law and public opinion.

It's way past time for everyone, and certainly anyone who considers themselves a progressive, to center race in our conversations...I'm able to work on a broad range of issues that affect people's lives, while at the same time building trust back with discouraged people who feel like maybe they can start to trust government again.

On the 60th anniversary of Emmett Till's murder, his cousin says history still hasn't told the whole story. His cousin recalls the night he last saw him. It's been 60 years since the murder of Emmett Till, but his story remains unfinished. His death helped spark the civil rights movement and frame the ongoing debate over racism in America.

August 26 is World Dog Day, a good time to reflect on the very reasonable possibility that dogs enabled modern humans to outcompete Neanderthals, and also on the fact that dogs are smarter, more empathetic and more devious than you knew. These days, both ordinary dogs and their ordinary humans can participate in Citizen Science, advancing our understanding of this oldest human coevolution.

Among the findings of a new survey of all public mass shootings in the United States over the last 50 years: we account for one third of all such events in the world, mass murderers here use more weapons than elsewhere, and a nation's civilian firearm ownership rate is the strongest predictor of mass shootings.

Given that gender portrayals in music videos, advertisements, video games and other popular culture powerfully shape expectations and attitudes about gender roles, it is not surprising that the emergence of powerful, but still hypersexualized, heroine images has affected popular beliefs and self-images. But the impact has not always been what you might think.

'Women do not lead single-issue lives,' says Ms. Foundation president on Women's Equality Day

 “I hate the way they portray us in the media,” Kanye said. “You see a black family, it says, ‘They’re looting.’ You see a white family, it says, ‘They’re looking for food.’ And, you know, it’s been five days because most of the people are black…. America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible.”