Portside

Media displaces voters; Deadly president; The gift that keeps on taking; Rahm's emails (and everybody's); Tech, work and organizing; Radio vs on-demand

From sufism to reggae, from construction work to driving taxis, it has been a colorful ride for one of the co-founders of a taxi drivers union in New York.

Ken Loach just became the first British director to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes twice, when his welfare state polemic I, Daniel Blake picked up the prize. The 79-year-old film-maker had previously announced he was finished with directing but became so infuriated by the plight of the poor under the current Conservative government that he came out of retirement to make a new film, addressing the human cost of their policies. ‘Hunger is being used as a weapon.'

Once upon a time, a small group of indigenous people took on the Klan and won in the rural South in 1958.

U.S. law did not even address the issue of separating public restrooms by sex until the end of the 19th century.

The movement against antibiotic use in meat and poultry in the United States is growing, with more and more producers pledging to forego the use of antibiotics in some capacity. As of 2016, it is estimated that only about 5-8% of meat is produced completely without the use of antibiotics, though the demand for and growth of the meat type is expected to dramatically change the landscape of the overall market.

California has become ground zero for the national battle over charter school expansion. Some of America’s richest individuals and largest foundations are pouring resources into what critics view as the privatization of public education. Based on six months of reporting and interviews with experts, elected officials, educators and advocates on both sides of the debate, “Failing the Test” is a comprehensive portrait of how charter schools are changing public education.

He was short in stature, elderly, frail, and couldn't hear particularly well, but what struck me most were his eyes. They were cloudy and rheumy, yes, but there was something else, something deep and troubled, beyond the merely physical, swirling inside them. His eyes were haunted.

No where do America’s wars come home more fiercely or embed themselves more deeply than in USA police forces. Jay Stanley and TomDispatch regular Matthew Harwood, both of the American Civil Liberties Union, write that intrusive new forms of technology, developed by or in conjunction with the Pentagon for battlefield use, are coming to your neighborhood. So welcome to the war zone, America.

More than thirty years have passed since the end of the dictatorship but Brazil's democracy is again being challenged.