Portside

Appalachia, the federally defined region that consists of 490 counties in 13 states, is one of the poorest regions in the U.S., beset with unemployment but more importantly, with desperately low income levels among those with jobs. In 2016, 63% of Appalachian voters supported Donald Trump. And his proposed budget would reward them by making them even poorer, while eliminating the agency that compiles the statistics on Appalachian poverty, income, and employment.

The political war being waged against the right to science is challenging scientific evidence as a basis for policy-making, government funding for research, and scientists’ ability to convey their work. The right to science influences everything from freeing wrongfully accused prisoners to crop rotation. But to successfully defend the right to science, the scientific and human rights communities must more effectively articulate its unique value to human advancement.

“We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide. For the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide. But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity has known it. A possibility might be ‘terracide’ from the Latin word for earth. It has the right ring, given its similarity to the commonplace danger word of our era: terrorist." Tom Engelhardt, May 2013

Amid endless political cacophony in Washington, D.C., House Republicans are quietly advancing legislation that would drive a freight train through a central tenet of New Deal-era labor law: overtime. With Obama’s landmark overtime expansion blocked in the courts, conservatives roll out a plan that would undo overtime pay as we know it.

Trump's wars are now all over the map. The peace movement can fight back by joining already thriving intersectional campaigns.

The Science March is about respecting science, the Peoples Climate March is about acting on it. One march is about listening to science, the other is about acting on it. Today's march, taking place on Earth Day, will march in defense of truth and scientific fact. Next week the Peoples Climate March will put forward a vision to build bold solutions that tackle climate change, create and retain fair jobs, and bring forth justice truly for all.

Writers are fighting concentrated power brokers who have devised all sorts of ways to maintain a stranglehold on the billions of people worldwide who fork over money to watch their favorite characters.

Earth Day on our minds, what can be more rueful than what's happened to the once-ignored state of North Dakota, fracked to its core? Poet Debra Marquart sings a lament.