Portside

A group of young professionals, who initially organized to protest the treatment of Tamils in Sri Lanka, went on to form the Young Tamil Nadu Movement to highlighting problems such as caste oppression, minority rights and gender inequality in the workplace. They have since established the Forum for Information Technology Employees with chapters in nine cities including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi.

National Public Radio's media critic Brooke Gladstone talks with the Poynter Institute about the myth of post-fact journalism and the need for journalists to ferret out and offer common pools of accurate information, if only to provide contending parties with a basis to negotiate and for democracy to work.

In Georgia, undocumented students are barred from the state’s top public schools. Together, students and professors decided to start a freedom school to help fill the academic void. By consensus, the group chose the name Freedom University. It recalled the activism of the past, and, on T-shirts, it also made for a gratifying taunt: “F.U. Georgia.”

The Communist Party U.S.A. had its greatest successes as the country reeled from the Depression. Today, as we are still picking our way out of the rubble left by the crash of 2008, left-wing ideas have gained new purchase.

"Oil industry company Halliburton has been branded “obscene” for advertising unpaid UK internships, which critics say give an unfair advantage to people from privileged backgrounds."

At the end of February immigration agents descended on a handful of Japanese and Chinese restaurants in the suburbs of Jackson, Mississippi, and in nearby Meridian. Fifty-five immigrant cooks, dishwashers, servers and bussers were loaded into vans and taken to a detention center about 160 miles away in Jena, Louisiana.

The acclaimed Indian novelist and essayist whose first novel, The God of Small Things (1997) was a prize-winning, international sensation, has just published a new novel that reviewer Walter describes as "a bright mosaic."

Comey details his instant mistrust of Trump and his conviction that Trump's requests were unusual, inappropriate, and a threat to the FBI's independence.

It is only when there is a particularly dramatic abuse, or a death that can’t be hidden, that the public gets any glimpse of what life on the inside is like for so many Americans. When ordinary citizens learn of atrocities committed behind bars, most are appalled, but the sad reality is that the public has few tools to gain access to those behind bars. Not knowing is what makes it possible for unimaginable suffering to take place in the name of safety and security.

“The Trump administration’s rhetoric on immigration and its approach to enforcement have made immigrant communities obviously fearful in a new way,” says Laura Huizar, a staff attorney with the National Employment Law Project. “This is going to prevent a lot people from filing wage complaints that they otherwise would have.”