Portside

[The people] are supposed to exercise power through parliamentary assemblies. But the financial oligarchy which rule our present situation have taken upon themselves the right to veto their decisions. This is why the system doesn’t fear the left, which it has been able to control … But it has a clear-headed fear of the people.

While the country has evolved on marriage equality, it often appears to be backtracking on just about every other advance we have made, from the racial and gender progress of the 1960s to the most basic principles of the criminal justice system. Below, we’ve listed the top 10 civil liberties nightmares of 2014 in no particular order.

Economic statistics? Evolution? Climate change? If you don’t like the facts, make them up. Or have your benefactors finance “think tanks” filled with hired guns who will tell the public what you and your patrons want them to say. If all else fails, fire experts who tell the truth, and replace them with people who will pronounce falsehoods.

The 50-foot banner on our building’s call for an end to police violence is as urgent this week as it was last week; none of the issues have changed, and the tragic murder of two New York City police officers won't—can't—slow our efforts to end violence, impunity and abuse of power by law enforcement.

The boys and girls teams from Mendocino (CA) High School had worn the shirts, which bear a slogan that has become a rallying cry in nationwide protests against police killings of unarmed black men, before previous games. But the principal and athletic director at Fort Bragg High School, the tournament host, decided that the teams could not play in the tournament unless they agreed not to wear the shirts during it.

Christmas is a commercial, obnoxious holiday. But the so-called golden rule — do unto others — that is ostensibly a core principle of every major religion, well that is a reality we have never approached, but should aim for.

Despite its rich fund of hard-won detail, the Senate report has, at best, produced a neutral outcome, a draw in this political contest over impunity. Unless we inscribe the lessons from this Senate report deeply into the country’s collective memory, then some future crisis might prompt another recourse to torture that will do even more damage to this country’s moral leadership.

The heroes of antiquity are perhaps due for another revision of their status.

Secretary Kerry’s attempt to conclude . . . accords was . . . always quixotic and doomed to failure. A powerful Israeli state simply has no reason to abide by its commitments with a stateless, weak people divided into bantustans and encircled by checkpoints. If Palestinian statelessness is at the root of the crisis, then the solution is obvious. The Palestinians must erect, and be recognized as, a state.

In 1964 . . . Ella Baker said: "Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest. Baker's words continue to resonate today . . . sparked by the police killings of young black men, but rooted in the underlying grievances of racial injustice around jobs, housing, schools, and the criminal justice system.