Portside

There are a lot of unsolved mysteries in the Universe, but dark energy is the most confusing. Here’s why.

More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that.

A Forgotten Chapter in the Working-Class Fight for Democratic Rights

But the Kurds have never stopped resisting.

Policymakers should reconsider how the tax code treats the most well-off. Here is a closer look.

We get a crash course in how the bounty-hunting system works, complete with the Bounty Hunters Guild taken extremely literally as an actual unionized workforce of bounty hunters. There are labor disputes over clients refusing to pay guild rates.

Arkansas teachers and students face a well-funded school privatization effort backed by major corporate entities with influence that stretches from the Governor’s office to the state Board of Education to the University of Arkansas.

Reflecting the growing influence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the progressive national network Democracy for America has made candidates’ proposals for addressing racism among the central criteria for its endorsements. DFA changed its endorsement process following the Black Lives Matter protest at Netroots Nation, where Democratic presidential candidates Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders “failed to empathize with and adequately respond” to protesters’ concerns.

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, the author looks at the pain index for those who were left behind. The population of New Orleans is noticeably smaller and noticeably whiter now and despite the tens of billions poured into Louisiana, the impact on poor and working people in New Orleans has been minimal. While not all the numbers are bad, they do illustrate who has benefited and who continues to suffer 10 years after Katrina.

In a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) complaint filed last week against three U.S. government agencies, documentary film maker Laura Poitras charges she was subjected to intense rounds of detention and questioning on more than 50 occasions between 2006 and 2012. It’s an important story with profound implications for the press. Yet, her lawsuit also highlights a second threat to journalism in the U.S., the worrisome way the federal government handles FOIA requests.