Portside

It’s been a harsh several weeks in Madison, Wisconsin for demonstrators against the governor and legislature, worse for the Progressive Era reforms being swiftly eliminated, one after the other. For those who aren’t following life in the Flyover regions, Right To Work passed the state Senate and is moving on to the Assembly, this coming week. With Republicans in charge, passage is all but certain.

Oscar show lays an egg; The song and the snub; Arquette’s gaffe; Snowden laughs it off; Clint and the Crusade

As CAPITAL & MAIN's “State of Equality” series has documented, economic inequality poses a grave threat to California’s future. Conditions would be far worse if not for progress made by activists, community leaders and lawmakers. In the last several years, California has generated some of the nation’s most innovative and effective strategies to reverse inequality. Here Judith Lewis Mernit lists 10 landmark achievements worth celebrating,emulating and strengthening.

Radical science fiction written by organizers, change makers and visionaries is collected and co-edited by Walidah Imarisha into an anthology Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Imarisha links her editing efforts to her work as a prison abolitionist and larger social movements' on-going need for envisioning our revolutionary futures.

Social justice activist Ruth Gilmore challenges four opportunist tendencies within the criminal justice movement - with lessons for ALL progressive movements.

As of last week we lifted the ban on selling drones to foreign countries. Arms merchants have neither allies nor enemies. They have only customers. We are a country locked in a permanent war economy. To feed that economy we must have permanent war. And we have never been more successful at securing that combination than we are right now. Our endless wars with Iraq and Afghanistan destabilized the entire region.

Palestinian children dying of hypothermia, 90% of water undrinkable and other daily realities resulting from Israeli criminal occupation and blockade are reviewed by Chris Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), as he discusses the causes and consequences of the fact that only about 5% of pledged donations have reached Gaza.

He may be leading us toward economic catastrophe.

A Prison, Infamous for Bloodshed, Faces a Reckoning as Guards Go on Trial

What good is it to protect ourselves with nuclear weapons if we poison our people in the process? Unfortunately, this sentiment seems to be missing from the Obama administration and Congress, and one of professor Parkinson’s most important lessons—that “delay is the deadliest form of denial”—remains lost on US decision makers.