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Exposing the FBI

Lawrence S. Wittner New Politics
A review of The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI, by Betty Medsger (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014) by Lawrence S. Wittner. The Burglary tells the story of how, on March 8, 1971, in the midst of the Vietnam War, eight peace activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in an effort to discover whether the FBI was working, illegally, to suppress American dissent.

Is It Bad Enough Yet?

Mark Bittman The New York Times
Of course it’s the same struggle: “It’s the same people,” says Saru Jayaraman, the director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. “Young people working in fast food are the same people as those who are the victims of police brutality. So the Walmart folks are talking about #blacklivesmatter and the #blacklivesmatter folks are talking about taking on capital.”

The Power of Political Athletes to Puncture Privilege

Dave Zirin The Nation
The great Indian writer Arundhati Roy once said, “…in the midst of putative peace, you could, like me, be unfortunate enough to stumble on a silent war. The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”

Contraception Is Not Abortion, But Right Wing Has Plan to Convince You Otherwise

Deirdre Fulton Common Dreams
The analysis suggests that a coordinated misinformation campaign, spearheaded by conservative groups like the Susan B. Anthony List, Americans United for Life, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Heritage Foundation, is part of an underlying right-wing attempt to chip away at access to commonly used contraceptives such as Plan B or IUDs.

Angela Davis: ‘There is an unbroken line of police violence in the US that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery’

Stuart Jeffries The Guardian
The shift of capital from housing, jobs, education, to profitable arenas has meant there are huge numbers of people everywhere in the world who are not able to sustain themselves. They are made surplus, and as a result they are often forced to engage in practices that are deemed criminal. And so prisons pop up all over the world, often with the assistance of private corporations who profit from these surplus populations.

Thousands March to Protest Against Police Brutality in Major US Cities

Lauren Gambino, Steven W. Thrasher,Kayla Epstein The Guardian
“This is a history making moment,” Eric Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, tells protestors. “It’s just so overwhelming to see all who have come to stand with us. Look at the masses ­ black, white, all races, all religions … we need to stand like this at all times."

Ferguson, Racial Tropes and the Politics of Scarcity

Jonathan M. Feldman CounterPunch
The successes of the civil rights movement were hardly based on simply revealing the racism of the United States. The Black Panthers and civil rights movements were about creating alternative bases of power, e.g. structures be they in law, mass mobilizations or community organizations that went beyond venting a narrative.

No More Eric Garners

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Jacobin
Politicians are getting fat off the destruction of the lives of young black men and women, who are the overwhelming victims of American policing and unjust practices of the judicial system. "Broken windows" policing has criminalized entire communities, leading to thousands of frivolous arrests that ruin people’s lives.

A Letter to My Nephew

James Baldwin The Progressive
It is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

The Echo Chamber

Joan Biskupic, Janet Roberts and John Shiffman Reuters
At America’s court of last resort, a handful of lawyers now dominates the docket.