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The Ukraine War

Bruce Hartford Civil Rights Movement Archive
Putin's invasion of Ukraine is not an isolated event. It's part of a broader attack against democracy that echoes events of the twentieth century.

Ukraine: Beyond the Postsoviet

Ileana Nachescu Boston Review
The war is shaped by global neoliberalism, sexism, and racism—not just Cold War dynamics. Only by understanding Eastern Europe beyond the old dichotomies of the free West versus the authoritarian East can we begin to grasp the war’s significance.

New York Must Fight for Equity — The Real Kind

Tiffany Cabán New York Daily News
The goal isn’t merely eliminating barriers to ascending the strata, but rather flattening the hierarchy altogether. If “equity” is to be a worthwhile word, it will have to mean de-stratifying the systems that impose sexist and racist hierarchies.

Modern-Day Moses: Rev. William Barber II

Charles M. Blow The New York Times
His sense of purpose and vision for his life is unobscured and unencumbered. This is a man on a mission, the grandest and most noble of missions: to save a country and his countrymen from themselves, to insist that morality ought to dictate policy.

Nurses in Several Chinese Cities Strike over Low Pay and Benefits

Australia Asia Worker Links China Labour Bulletin
Despite a crackdown on labor activists there, Chinese workers continue to strike. The strike wave continues to grow, and strikes are not only in the private sector or in companies that manufacture for export. Last year saw a large wave of teacher strikes, and as this article shows, nurses in public hospitals are also striking.

Sustainability through local food

Rose Hayden-Smith UC Food Observer
A farmland mapping project by a UC Merced professor indicates that most areas of the country could feed between 80 percent and 100 percent of their populations with food grown or raised within 50 miles. The study immediately generated comment, including positive accolades from author and influencer Michael Pollan (also a UC professor). Many have noted the importance of the study in filling a research gap about local food.

What Sparked the Cambrian Explosion?

Douglas Fox Nature
An evolutionary burst 540 million years ago filled the seas with an astonishing diversity of animals. The trigger behind that revolution is finally coming into focus.

Poorest Areas Have Missed Out on Boons of Recovery

Nelson D. Schwartz The New York Times
While some communities are currently enjoying the fruits of the recovery, others have sunk further into poverty. According to the authors, this pattern of distress vs. prosperity not only “diverges between cities and states but even more starkly within cities at the neighborhood level." In the period of recovery following the Great Recession, the authors find, jobs in the median U.S. ZIP code grew at less than half the national rate.