Portside

The struggle for independence upset the “politics of deference.” The colonial elites, explains historian Clement Fatovic, found it “more and more difficult” to reconcile “great disparities of wealth with the animating principles of the Revolution.”

In this very small volume of messed-up corroded metal you have packed in there enough knowledge to fill several books telling us about ancient technology, ancient science and the way these interacted with the broader culture of the time.

Giant infrastructure projects like the proposed Nicaraguan Interoceanic Grand Canal threaten some of the most culturally diverse and ecologically rich regions of Latin America. Due to its enormous scale and the unprecedented power it grants to foreign capital, the proposed canal poses a serious threat not only to the environment but also to the indigenous Rama-Kriol peoples, who are mobilizing against all odds to protect their communities, land, water, and forests.

Written and directed by Gary Ross, “The Free State of Jones” is everything that the overhyped “12 Years a Slave” and “Django Unchained” were not. It is an honest attempt to engage with the historical period it portrays even if it takes liberties with the events surrounding the rebellion of Newton Knight. As I will point out later in this article, they made for a more powerful film with a singular vision even if the truth was sacrificed.

It compares the right-to-work law with laws passed in Southern states in the 1950s as part of the massive resistance to the U.S. Supreme Court’s desegregation orders in Brown v. Board of Education, with legislation intended to discourage membership in the NAACP — laws that were ultimately overturned in court for violating 1st and 14th Amendment rights of free expression and association.

“[Measure 1] will only drive up the price of land and rent as corporate farms expand their land base to gain ‘efficiency’ by spreading costs over more acres. This will cause farming margins to be thinner yet for all farmers and make it difficult for family farmers and especially beginning farmers to compete for land against the deep pockets of corporations.”

Waterkeeper Alliance, North Carolina Riverkeeper organizations and Environmental Working Group collaborate on unprecedented GIS initiative showing the location and waste outputs of more than 6,500 swine, cattle and poultry operations

“In my view it is a very, very, very bad piece of legislation,” Sanders said at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference in Washington last week. “[W]e are taking away virtually all of the political and democratic rights of the people of Puerto Rico. We are treating them as an absolute colony.”

David Hernandez, poet from southern California, brings us to a moment of tragedy--seemingly random, seemingly fated--from the Iraq War.

New York poet Carolyn Raphael offers a not-so subtle warning to those summer readers who bake too long on the sand.