Portside

National discussion about access to reproductive healthcare remains a hot topic, like the most-recent campaign to defund Planned Parenthood based on a falsified video that is supposed to show that the organization is “selling baby parts.” High stakes and numerous hurdles that undocumented immigrants face to get basic care often remain out of the spotlight. there are literal borders set in place that prevent many immigrants from accessing federally funded clinics.

While hostility to Syrian refugees has dominated the national debate, many local leaders — among them elected officials, community advocates and direct service providers — are sending a different message by calling for compassion instead of fear. Here are seven efforts underway across the South to support Syrian refugees and fight Islamophobia.

When lies are propounded about the American war in Vietnam, they legitimize and justify present USA and future dangerous adventures and prevent us from escaping the dangerous “logic of war” as promoted by our rulers and media.

If you're looking for something special for the holiday table, Meg Favreau has some suggestions from her collection of 1970s and 1980s locally printed cookbooks. These books, she says, are "a window into what communities actually eat – not the idealized version of the area’s cuisine you see in a “real” regional cookbook." Recipes for eggless applesauce squares, the "ribsticker," and gumdrop bread can be found on the article's original website.

Across the nation, students have risen up to demand an end to systemic and structural racism on campus. Here are their demands. Note: These demands were compiled from protesters across the country. These are living demands and will grow and change as the work grows and changes. If you have demands that are not listed, please send them to sam@thisisthemovement.org or @samswey. Last updated on 11/23/2015.

The lack of sound in the recording and the perfunctory way the officers moved and behaved made a horrifying act seem normal. Mayor Rahm Emanuel keeps implying that this incident is a one-off situation. But that’s wrong.

The complex intersectional identities of transgender women of color, who are dealing with the overlapping issues of transmisogyny, racism, and classism, leave them vulnerable to multiple forms of institutionalized oppression.While much more systemic work is needed to improve the quality of life for transgender women of color, transgender activists and organizations are leading the movement to rectify these injustices.

Joe Hill -- executed 100 years ago by a Utah firing squad -- knew the power of harnessing creativity. The Wobblies embraced songs, comics, soapboxing, and other creative tactics in reaching out to unorganized workers as well as in direct actions on the job site. “A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over,” Hill wrote in a letter to the editor of Solidarity in November 1914.

The myth of Thanksgiving creates a cheery, almost cartoon-like narrative of a incredibly dark and bloody period of American history. Native suffering is erased with holiday platitudes. These myths must be dismantled. It is a matter of defending the truth of our history, and the truth of our lives.