Bay Area Public Defenders Rally to Show Black Lives Matter

CBS/San Francisco
Hundreds of Public Defenders from Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Solano counties held unprecedented Black Lives Matter protests at their county courthouses December 18th. They demanded body cameras for officers; the investigation of police-involved shootings by outside agencies, not District Attorneys; and no grand juries for police-involved shootings. “We need those three things,”Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods said.

There Is Nothing Natural About Gentrification

Tom Slater New Left Project
Given the pressing worldwide realities of disinvestment, land grabbing, rent increases, evictions and displacement; a class analysis applied to housing and urban issues is more urgent than ever. Gentrification is the neighborhood expression of class inequality. Its positives are only felt by those who profit from the loss of housing opportunities of others. And there is nothing remotely natural about it.

The Secret to the Uber Economy is Wealth Inequality

Leo Mirani Quartz
The so-called Uber or “on-demand” economy is a rerun of the oldest sort of business: middlemen insinuating themselves between buyers and sellers. The vital ingredient, without which this new economy would fall apart, is inequality. All that modern technology has done is make it easier, through omnipresent smartphones, to amass a fleet of increasingly desperate jobseekers eager to take whatever work they can get.

How Foreign Imams Have Radicalized Syria's War

Edward Dark Al-Monitor
When eastern Aleppo fell to rebel factions in 2012, well-organized radical Islamic preachers from abroad quickly moved in and began proselytizing extremist views to the local population. It is an example of methodically planned Islamist radicalization in the chaos and turmoil of war. And it raises fears that the effects of this extremist phase in Syria's civil war will linger for years to come.

Friday Nite Videos -- Oct 31 (Rock the Vote 2014)

Portside
Bad Reputation (music video). Rock The Vote Presents: #TURNOUTFORWHAT. Democalypse 2014 -- Ad of Brothers. Lewis Black Says F#%! Voter Suppression. What Would Happen Under a Republican Senate?

Bad Reputation (Music Video)

In 2013, there were more laws passed to limit women’s reproductive rights than in the entire previous DECADE.

Rock The Vote Presents: #TURNOUTFORWHAT

Rock The Vote Presents #TURNOUTFORWHAT starring Lil Jon and featuring Lena Dunham, Whoopi Goldberg, Natasha Lyonne, Fred Armisen, E.J. Johnson, Darren Criss, Sophia Bush, Ireland Baldwin, Devendra Banhart, Ioanna Gika and Gabriel Valenciano. 

Lewis Black Says F#%! Voter Suppression

At a photo shoot with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project Director Dale Ho, ACLU voting rights ambassador Lewis Black gets so f#%!in’ tired of politicians trying to deny people the right to vote.