Portside

As negotiators begin the 13th round of talks to close the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’s (TTIP) deal, new revelations surfaced regarding Chevron Oil’s attempts to incorporate Investor State Dispute Settlement Courts into the TTIP. These panels threaten national sovereignty because they can rule against a country’s social or environmental laws, if they are deemed to have reduced profits below those projected at the time of the investment.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Michael Chabon speaks with The Forward’s Naomi Zeveloff at the end of his weeklong tour of the Israeli Occupied West Bank earlier this month. Chabon was a member of a literary tour organized by the Israeli group, Breaking the Silence, which collects and distributes testimonies of Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied territories. He termed the occupation “the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.”

There’s only one way to make sure no more young girls are body-slammed by uniformed officers.

People in at least 30 states are barred from voting because they're unable to pay their court fines.

Can you believe it? We’re in the last year of the presidency of the man who, on his first day in the Oval Office, swore that he would close Guantánamo, and yet it and everything it represents remains part of our all-American world.

This was written by educator Dave Stovall shortly after Trump was run out of Chicago earlier this year in March and serves as an important reminder: White supremacy predates and will last well beyond Trump. This is not a strange blip in the annals of U.S. history. It is in its foundation. This piece appeared originally on Beacon Broadside.

John Oliver: Puerto Rico. Bernie Challenges Dems. Pres. Obama's Language Games. How Did Life Begin on Earth? Samantha Bee | Twenty-Dollar Tubman.

Campaign finance reform, long a lonely political backwater frequented only by good government groups, is suddenly becoming a hot new address for some of this year’s candidates. Whether that will lead to a vibrant new political community remains the open question.

Socialism isn’t the negation of liberalism. It’s the realization of liberal values made impossible by capitalism.

When I began my academic career over forty years ago, the idea that a sea change from Andrew Jackson to Harriet Tubman would happen within my lifetime, that my students would come to college familiar with not only Harriet Tubman—but also Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Jacobs—seemed unimaginable. The forgotten voices of women, particularly women of color, are being recovered.