Portside

Brazil ignored inequality and injustice for decades, and failed to enforce proper gun controls, allowing a daunting situation to become truly terrifying. In the United States, inequality is skyrocketing. Economic inequality, coupled lax gun control laws, could prove to be a formula that makes the United States more closely resemble Brazil with every passing decade.

This timely piece of work reminds us that the rights we sometimes take for granted have not always been available to all.

A Review of Chocolate Cities: the Black Map of American Life by Marcus A. Hunter & Zandria F. Robinson, University of California Press. Chocolate Cities is an ode to agency. A work of truth-telling without polemics, this book almost literally breaks new ground, revising our most basic ideas of US geography while questioning the truth claims of social science itself.

On February 21st, the District Attorney's Office announced the initial phase of their bail reform efforts in Philadelphia. Across the country momentum is building and cities, municipalities and states are ending cash bail.

University of Illinois graduate student workers went on strike Monday after last-minute negotiations over the weekend failed to end a protracted contract dispute that has lasted nearly a year.

Remember that public school employee Paul Ryan liked so much who could now pay for her Costco membership?

As Ava DuVernay prepares to release Disney’s eagerly anticipated A Wrinkle in Time adaptation, which has put her in the history books as the first woman of color to direct a film with a $100 million-plus budget, she cautions against thinking that Hollywood has finally solved its diversity problems.

Lead poison; The myth that murders; Black and white in the slave south; Graham, cracker of souls; BS manufacturers; On the new gun control movement

Donald Trump’s retrograde policies on immigration, women’s rights, racial justice, LGBT rights, and economic inequality have spawned an impressive and growing resistance. It remains to be seen whether his generous treatment of the Pentagon at the expense of basic human needs will spur a similar backlash.

Why is Chavismo still so popular amid Venezuela's worst economic downturn in decades?