Portside

Mel King, the longtime political activist and former state representative from the South End who in 1983 became the first Black person to reach a Boston mayoral general election, died Tuesday morning in his South End home. He was 94.

That so many states have been passing such legislation that forbids considering environment, society, and governance implications of financial investments is anything but a fluke.

Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated 55 years ago today while in Memphis standing in solidarity with striking sanitation workers. His life and radical words stand as a beacon of hope, urging us to keep fighting for economic and racial justice.

Activists known as “salts” have been a key to recent successful organizing campaigns. And they say they’re just getting started.

Iranian American screen polymath Payman Maadi (who made such an impact in films such as Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation) is Samad, a cop waging an apparently unwinnable war on drugs in the Iranian capital. Having rounded up a vast community of addicts living and dying within a hellscape of giant concrete pipes, Samad and his deputy, Hamid (Houman Kiai), treat their captives like cattle, stripping and humiliating them, herding them from one overcrowded prison space to the next.

Authoritarianism vs public media, and other fights for the right to know

One organizer said that if Tennessee lawmakers "actually cared about protecting kids" they would "address what kills kids every single day" instead of banning books and drag shows.

Even though storm prediction is improving, tornadoes are still hard to predict, with a warning typically of only about 10 to 15 minutes. This is why tornado prediction is hard, and what's being done to improve it.

Alon Shaya believes food can help people connect; sharing a meal is a powerful tool against the rising hate against Jewish people and everyone else. “Through cooking, you can share these stories with the goal of stopping prejudice and ending hate."

After World War II, the Indonesian Communist Party threw itself into democratic politics and outreach to broad segments of society. Western intelligence agencies were worried because they knew that the PKI was not coercing people into giving them power — they were simply growing in popularity.