Portside

Police in South Florida shot an unarmed black caretaker Monday as he tried to help his autistic patient. I was thinking as long as I have my hands up . they're not going to shoot me, he told local television station WSVN from his hospital bed. Wow, was I wrong. Police then handcuffed him and left him bleeding on the pavement for about 20 minutes.

Astounding increases in the danger of nuclear weapons have paralleled provocative foreign policy decisions that needlessly incite tensions between Washington and Moscow. It's been 71 years since atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and humanity's memory of those events has dimmed. The bombs that obliterated those cities were tiny by today's standards.

Reader Comments: Tair Kaminer Released; Racism in Police Shootings; NLRB Become as More Activist than Labor?; Socialism Comes to Philadelphia; Portside readers have differing views on both the Abdication of the Left and the movie, the Free State of Jones; United States-Land of Terrorists and Massacres; Is Anti-Zionism Inherently Anti-Semitic?; Jay-Z and Beyoncé are donating $1.5m to Black Lives Matter

Both analytical and droll, Terry Eagleton's Culture explores how culture evolved from rarified sphere to humble practices, and from a bulwark against industrialism's encroaches to present-day capitalism's most profitable export. Eagleton both illuminates culture's collusion with colonialism, nationalism, the decline of religion, the rise of and rule over the "uncultured" masses, as well a means for cultivating social life and social change.

Criminally negligent police departments continue to receive billions in federal grants and funding, when instead those dollars could be poured into our nation’s school system, community health care systems and alternative strategies that keep people safe. Everyday elected officials refuse to act, Black lives are put at risk.

Secretar Clinton in addressing the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Las Vegas called the first day of the Republican Convention "Surreal". AFSCME represents 1.6 million public sector workers. She attacked the anti-worker policies of the Republican Governors of Wisconsin and Illinois, Scott Walker and Bruce Rauner. She said Trump had no solutions to help working families. Later in the day she picked up the support of UNITE HERE.

Named after the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, “The 13th” threads together archival footage with modern-day commentary, and focuses on the ramifications of the amendment and its clause: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”

We wrote the Counter-CAPS report to challenge the emerging common sense on police reform. In the past two years, the Obama administration has advocated community policing as a key part of the solution to the “Post-Ferguson” crisis of police legitimacy. The Counter-CAPS Report is an expression of the movement’s rejection of false solutions like community policing.

Who Do You Serve,Who Do You Protect questions the necessity of the police from several different angles. While some might talk about possibly reforming the police, many of the contributors to this anthology question the police down to their very existence. Contributors from different perspectives center the importance of a movement against state violence that appropriately challenges white supremacy.

"Can there be Black liberation in the United States as the country is currently constituted?" asks Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in her new book. "No. Capitalism is contingent on the absence of freedom and liberation for Black people and anyone else who does not directly benefit from its economic disorder." Justin Campbell, in this review, surveys Taylor's analysis of the roots, present status, and future prospects of the Black Lives Matter movement.