Portside

Culture Clash's play about money, manipulation and red-baiting ending with destruction of a closely-knit LA Latino neighborhood over fifty years ago rings true today as the present economic power of developers and the drive to profitably exploit vulnerable communities within the central city and drastically change their ethnic, class and cultural composition continues to steadily displace the long-time residents of many neighborhoods.

Capital and Main is a news website reporting on the current economy and our collective efforts to create a new and better one. Monday through Friday you will find original content covering politics, business, labor, jobs, the environment, culture – in other words, the economy and all the myriad areas of contemporary life that it touches.

USSA announces Campaign Toolkits are ready for USSA’s big campaigns: Fund The Future and State of Emergency. Toolkits are ready-to-go manuals everything from sample petitions and student government resolutions to tips on planning rallies and meet with legislators. Fund The Future is part of USSA’s efforts to win FREE Higher Education by doubling Pell Grants and increasing student eligibility. State of Emergency seeks to end racial profiling and restore voting rights.

While ‘assigned’ to the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, detective Richard Zuley led one of the most brutal interrogations ever conducted at the prison. ‘I’ve never seen anyone stoop to these levels,’ a former Marine Corps prosecutor said. But Benita Johnson, Andre Griggs, Lathierial Boyd and Lee Harris describe Zuley using familiar techniques on them at Chicago police precincts.

I don’t believe that we have confronted the legacy of our history in a meaningful way…Our interest is really in forcing the country to talk differently about this history,” -- Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative,

If the top one percent were taxed at the same rate as the middle 20 percent, states and localities would raise $68 billion per year. Similarly, if the top 20 percent paid the same as the middle 20 percent, states and localities would generate $128 billion each year.

A skeptic looks at the human side of game theory.

A battle is raging in eastern North Carolina as health and environmental justice groups pressure the state, the second leading pork producing state behind Iowa, to more strictly regulate large pig farms. Researchers say fecal waste from the large industrial pig farms is seeping into waterways, and particularly threatening low-income and minority residents. But, the state and the pig industry continue to resist demands for increased regulation.

The issue is violence against children, particularly low income and minority children. But all violence doesn’t come at the end of a gun. Keeping public schools defunded and dysfunctional is also a form of violence. Promoting privatization and competition when kids really need resources is also cruelty. And when society’s evils are visited upon innocent children, teachers alone can’t protect them.

Last week the U.S. paid tribute to former Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. And while Lincoln’s role in ending slavery is now understood to have been more nuanced than his reputation as the great emancipator would suggest, it has taken longer for us to replace stories about cherry trees with truer narratives about George Washington, president and slaveholder. Perhaps we can also honor Ona Judge, one of Washington's slaves that got away.