Portside

In 2008, Morganton native Molly Hemstreet organized Opportunity Threads to fill the need for ethical labor opportunities for the local community and to produce textiles for companies across North Carolina.

One might ask, what is the problem with a two-state solution, if it will lead to peace between Palestinians and Israelis?

Crickets and other insects are a vastly more sustainable form of protein than livestock as well as an ideal protein source for urban homesteaders.

Our goal should be a living wage, not zero job loss.

Native American chefs and food producers are taking the U.S. dining scene back to its true roots. Native American cuisine focuses on the “pre-contact” or “pre-colonization” foods that naturally existed in this country before Spanish and other immigrants introduced new crops and other goods, which in some areas changed the agricultural landscapes and natural ecosystems dramatically.

In March 2016 the U.S. Department of Justice announced a powerful new effort to stop local practices that unfairly target poor people by trapping them in “cycles of poverty that can be nearly impossible to escape.” Courts across the country are requiring people arrested with minor misdemeanor charges—like driving with a suspended license—to pay fines before getting their day in court. If they can’t afford the fine, they are forced to wait behind bars until they can.

The proposals to “build a wall” and “deport them all” that have animated this election season are quite fantastical. And then there’s the irony that such plans come from a political party that has long criticized government spending and waste. On wasting money, we’re talking textbook cases here.

The world is currently transfixed by the spectacle of American elections. This contest matters. It is the election for the most powerful leader in the Western world, and some - like the Economist Intelligence Unit - regard Donald Trump as a major risk to global prosperity and stability. As citizens of one of the world’s oldest democracies, Americans like to think that the United States provides an influential role model for how elections should run in other countries.

From retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Astore, a powerful portrait of how, in the decades after the Vietnam War, a post-democratic U.S. military became a reality and of the kind of permanent war making it freed Washington to be involved in. It couldn’t be a more vivid account of the ways in which such a military encouraged privatization, cashing in, and secrecy as a way of life and how that way of life rose to such prominence and power in Washington.