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Teach for America’s Mission in Chicago

Kenzo Shibata Jacobin Magazine
TFA is in crisis mode. With the organization losing true believers within its rank-and-file, it doubled down on recruitment and doubled down on marketing. It’s just a shame that none of this has anything to do with improving teaching and learning.

To Improve Access, Break Up Monopolies

Dipak Gyawali Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Unresponsive power institutions are a bad legacy of the 20th century. And they are the biggest obstacle to improved electricity access for the developing world's poor people -- whether women, children, or men.

Clock Ticking on Bay Area Transit Strike Deadline

Alyssa Figueroa AlterNet
"You hire a union buster, management hides behind this person, you force the workers to strike, you take a hardball/hard line at the table and bank that you will break the union.”

The Backyard Shock Doctrine

Laura Gottesdiener Tom Dispatch
“Internal displacement causes conflict. And there’s no other country in the world that would force so much internal displacement and pretend that it’s something else.”

John Kerry’s Doomed Peace Process is Deja Vu All Over Again

Phyllis Bennis Mondoweiss
In recent years it has become common to see Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller and others responsible for the 22 years of failed U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East relying on their “veteran” status as a credential for continuing their careers.

Boycott Sochi?

Dave Zirin Grantland
Whether or not there is a boycott, connecting Putin's systematic attacks on LGBT people to the Sochi Olympics is a stroke of political genius

Suicide or Not, First Known Death in CA Hunger Strike Reflects Inhumane Prison Conditions

George Lavender In These Times
The department will not negotiate with the prisoners and insist that “in the end, it's up to the inmates to decide to end the hunger strike." But many prisoners say they are committed to continuing the hunger strike. After 13 years in isolation, Duguma says that he and the other hunger strikers are “doing what we have to in order to get the people of this nation to say we have suffered enough and no one should be tortured and stripped of their humanity.”

The Payday Playbook: How High Cost Lenders Fight to Stay Legal

Paul Kiel Pro Publica
Payday, installment and auto-title lenders have more than 1,400 locations in the state — about one store for every 4,100 Missourians. The average two-week payday loan, which is secured by the borrower’s next paycheck, carries an annual percentage rate of 455% in Missouri, more than 100 points higher than the national average. A coalition of faith groups, community organizations and labor unions decided to put forward the ballot initiative to cap rates at 36%.

The Trials of Bradley Manning

Chase Madar The Nation
It would take great powers of imagination to blame any part of our recent military debacles on leaks and whistleblowers. If someone had leaked the full National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, would more people have decided—like then-Senator Bob Graham, who voted against the invasion after reading the unredacted report—to oppose the war before it began?