INDIGENOUS CUISINE

Amelia Levin FSR Magazine
Native American chefs and food producers are taking the U.S. dining scene back to its true roots. Native American cuisine focuses on the “pre-contact” or “pre-colonization” foods that naturally existed in this country before Spanish and other immigrants introduced new crops and other goods, which in some areas changed the agricultural landscapes and natural ecosystems dramatically.

Criminal Justice: The High Price of Breathing While Poor

Donald Cohen Capital and Main
In March 2016 the U.S. Department of Justice announced a powerful new effort to stop local practices that unfairly target poor people by trapping them in “cycles of poverty that can be nearly impossible to escape.” Courts across the country are requiring people arrested with minor misdemeanor charges—like driving with a suspended license—to pay fines before getting their day in court. If they can’t afford the fine, they are forced to wait behind bars until they can.

Day of the Demagogue Trumpian Deportation Fantasies and American Realities

Tanya Golash-Boza Tom
The proposals to “build a wall” and “deport them all” that have animated this election season are quite fantastical. And then there’s the irony that such plans come from a political party that has long criticized government spending and waste. On wasting money, we’re talking textbook cases here.

American Elections Ranked Worst Among Western Democracies. Here’s Why.

Pippa Norris The Conversation
The world is currently transfixed by the spectacle of American elections. This contest matters. It is the election for the most powerful leader in the Western world, and some - like the Economist Intelligence Unit - regard Donald Trump as a major risk to global prosperity and stability. As citizens of one of the world’s oldest democracies, Americans like to think that the United States provides an influential role model for how elections should run in other countries.

A Force Unto Itself: A Military Leviathan Has Emerged as America’s 51st and Most Powerful State

William J. Astore TomDispatch
From retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Astore, a powerful portrait of how, in the decades after the Vietnam War, a post-democratic U.S. military became a reality and of the kind of permanent war making it freed Washington to be involved in. It couldn’t be a more vivid account of the ways in which such a military encouraged privatization, cashing in, and secrecy as a way of life and how that way of life rose to such prominence and power in Washington.

Friday Nite Videos -- June 20, 2014

Portside
NSA vs USA. George Takei: How It Got Better. Professor Louie: The Cockroach. Orange Is The New Black: Monsanto. Moral Mondays Are Back in Business.

NSA vs USA

Shahid Buttar lays down a bass track with a message:
 
What does it mean to monitor thoughts?
Spying means a lot more than watching what you bought
it's the Feds always knowing what you’ve got in your head
 
Full lyrics here. 
 

Professor Louie: The Cockroach

The good Professor Louie of Brooklyn has a rap for us about why the cockroach is so successful, hoping we will take a hint before our short stay on this planet is over. Live at the People's Voice Cafe, NY, Jan 2012. Accompanied by Fast Eddie.
 

Moral Mondays Are Back in Business

The first Moral Monday since court struck down the North Carolina General Assembly's new rules — interpreted by many as measures designed to silence the Moral Monday Forward Together movement — singing, praying, chanting, and civil disobedience arrests looked a lot like what we saw from Moral Monday in 2013.

The Raleigh News and Observer reports:

Days after persuading a Superior Court judge to suspend some new rules for the N.C. Legislative Building, protesters were back on Monday, raising their voices by many decibels against a state budget and Republican-controlled agenda they describe as "extremist."

As the demonstrators tested the breadth of the order signed Monday by Judge Carl Fox about the overly broad definition of "disturbing behavior," General Assembly police checked with their attorneys on the depth of their authority to remove the noisemakers from the state building.

About 20 minutes after the N.C. Senate went into session, law enforcement officers began wrapping plastic cuffs around the wrists of 20 demonstrators who had continued singing, chanting and speechmaking after being asked to quietly leave the rotunda area outside the General Assembly chambers.

The scene was reminiscent of last summer, when more than 900 demonstrators were arrested for similar actions.

Read more here.