Burned at McDonald's

Four out of five fast food workers have been BURNED, often badly, for one simple reason: Fast food companies care way more about their profits than the basic safety of their workers. It’s outrageous and unbelievable. See for yourself.

LBJ: Pass the Voting Rights Act

Fifty years ago (March 15, 1965), in the wake of Selma's Bloody Sunday, President Lyndon Johnson addressed Congress on the subject of 'The American Promise,' calling for the immediate passage of a voting right act that would end disfranchisement of African Americans.

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

henry 7. reneau jr. mandala journal
Fifty years after his assassination, this poem honors El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (aka Malcolm X)

Against Type

Lucy McKeon Boston Review
Popular culture may be getting more diverse in terms of gender and skin color, but it's still mostly flat in presenting diverse human qualities and differences. Few characters play against type, which makes the exceptions all the more remarkable. Part of the power of characters playing against type is simply their insistence, humorous and without qualified explanation, of their existence. In other words, like most of comedy, its power is better experienced, not explained

Right Wing Nation - A View from Jerusalem; Israelis Must Seize the Chance to Recover Quickly

Jeremiah (Jerry) Haber; Ari Shavit
Israel is not a liberal democracy that supports the flourishing of its citizenry. Democracy requires consent of the governed, and Israel controls, directly and indirectly, millions of Palestinians without their consent. There is a progressive, liberal, civil rights movement in Israel - the third largest list in the Knesset. The awful crisis of the right's victory is an unprecedented opportunity for us to learn from our mistakes and create a new mass movement.

Beware of Official Histories of War:The Vietnam Case; The Power of Protest. Telling the Truth

Harry Targ; Tom Hayden, Heather Booth, et al; Doug Rawlings Portside
U.S. Vietnam policy was built on twenty-five years of lies. The Vietnamese fought Japanese occupation during World War II and sought a free Vietnam after the war free of colonial control. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon lied about their escalation of the United States involvement. The only way America can avoid becoming "waist deep in the big muddy" again and again is to clearly understand its history. The Power of Protest. Telling the Truth - May 1 - 2.

Joseph Stiglitz on the Trans Pacific Partnership: "This Is A Big Deal"

Alexandros Orphanides In These Times
The TPP is a massive trade agreement between the United States, Canada, Chile, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Critics of the agreement say it amounts to the promulgation of corporate globalization and neoliberalization and have likened it to "NAFTA on steroids."

Women Up In Arms: Zapatistas and Rojava Kurds Embrace a New Gender Politics

Charlotte Maria Sáenz Other Worlds
In both resistances, women took up arms to fight alongside their male counterparts showing both willingness and capacity to fight as soldiers. However their principal objective in the mountains is not military. Rather, their most important task is to form new persons: men and women in a more equitable relationship to each other--a relationship that is also anti-capitalist. Theirs is a commitment to building democracy, socialism, ecology and feminism.