How the Keystone Fight Was Won

President Obama's rejection of the Keystone pipeline is the culmination of years of organizing and mobilization. Time to take a moment to celebrate a victory and draw lessons about how victories are won. 

Movie: This Changes Everything

Directed by journalist and filmmaker Avi Lewis (The Take) and produced in conjunction with Naomi Klein's bestselling book of the same name, this urgent dispatch on climate change contends that the greatest crisis we have ever faced also offers us the opportunity to address and correct the inhumane systems that have created it.

Sanders’ Strength? Millennials Back Socialism

Socialist? Populist? Progressive? Joseph Schwartz and Gar Alperovitz discuss Senator Bernie Sanders’ plans for extending democracy to the economic sphere and attacking inequalities in wealth and income.

Matt Taibbi: The Case for Bernie Sanders

Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone
His critics say he’s not realistic – but they have it backwards. The only reason this attention-averse, sometimes socially uncomfortable person is subjecting himself to this asinine process is because he genuinely believes the system is not beyond repair.

Male/Female Brain Differences? Big Data Says Not So Much

Science Daily
A research study has debunked the widely-held belief that the hippocampus, a crucial part of the brain that consolidates new memories and helps connect emotions to the senses, is larger in females than in males.

Cities and States Leading Fight Against Big Money

Benjamin T. Brickner Brennan Center for Justice
Maine's Clean Elections program and Seattle's Honest Elections Seattle swept to notable victories on Tuesday, providing ways that candidates can run for office without relying on big money from special interests. These efforts are a reminder that many of the most important initiatives to fix our broken campaign finance system are happening on the state and local level.

Why Asian Americans Don’t Vote Republican

Cecilia Hyunjung Mo The Conversation
Three quarters of the Asian-American vote went to the Republican presidential candidate just two decades ago. In 2012, three quarters of Asian Americans voted for Barack Obama. This dramatic change in party preference is stunning. No other group has shifted so dramatically in their party identification within such a short time period. Some are calling it the “GOP’s Asian erosion.”

Can’t You Hear the Children?

Fred Norman Portside
War veteran Fred Norman devotes his writing to Peace. His mantra: Each night I ask myself/what did I do today/to end the wars?//If I answer back with/"Nothing"/then the dead that day/are mine.//I beg of them forgiveness.

Secret TPP Text Unveiled: It's Worse Than We Thought, With Limits on Food Safety and Controversial Investor-State System Expanded, Rollback of Bush-Era Medicine Access and Environmental Terms

Global Trade Watch Public Citizen
TPP's fate in congress is uncertain at best; Long-awaited text reveals gaps between administration claims and actual TPP terms on key congressional, public concerns. Many in Congress said they would support the TPP only if, at a minimum, it included past reforms made to trade pact intellectual property rules affecting access to affordable medicines. But the TPP rolls back that past progress and provides pharmaceutical firms with new monopoly rights for biotech drugs.

Activists Need to Realize that Most Americans Actually Agree With Them

George Lakey Waging Nonviolence
A large majority of Americans, 68 percent, in a recent ABC/Washington Post poll said our economic system favors the rich rather than the majority. About half of those who said they were Republicans agreed. Economist Joseph Stiglitz has been following opinion research and consistently found that the percentages of those who see too much wealth inequality were high among men and women, Democrats and Republicans, people with lower incomes, even those with higher incomes.