Portside

As many community members start to plan out emergency response teams and community defense, there is a need to think out short and long term organizing strategies that we can use so that we do not fall into patterns of solely doing individual deportation cases, press and mobilizing work, but are also thinking about long-term power building.

The power of black rage was what was so amazing about the Charlotte Uprising. The destruction occurred in an area of concentrated wealth accumulation, the kind of accumulation that drives inequality and necessitates a brutal policing force to maintain that inequality—a policing enacted on black bodies that oftentimes leads to our death.

Scientists who cracked quinoa's gene code say it could solve the world's looming food shortage. Quinoa has never been fully domesticated or bred to its full potential even though it provides a more balanced source of nutrients for humans than cereals. Researchers say that quinoa could provide a healthy, nutritious food source for the world using land and water that currently cannot be used, and the new genome makes it one step closer to that goal.

This story is the first in a new Truthout series, Severed Ties: The Human Toll of Prisons. This series will dive deeply into the impact of incarceration on families, loved ones and communities, demonstrating how the United States' incarceration of more than 2 million people also harms many millions more -- including 2.7 million children.

Almost two years ago, Kalief Browder died after suffering abuse and torture at Rikers Island for three years - all while he was waiting for a court date. This gross injustice happened because many of our towns still rely on money bail, a broken system that keeps Black people in jail even before they are ever convicted of anything.

We have to answer the cries of people who want elected leaders to do something different. They want to be treated fairly and they need a political party who represents them. It’s shameful that the elites have one-and-a-half political parties. Working class men and women have zero parties—or they have half a party. That’s what upset's progressives. I hope the DNC takes a different turn and restore the party’s integrity. I’m hopeful, but won't hold my breath.

“Saturday Night Live” took a departure with its cold open this week, taking us out of the Trump White House — and into the universe of the 1994 movie “Forrest Gump.” Instead of Tom Hanks, it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions (Kate McKinnon) at the bus stop, eating chocolates and confiding in strangers about a rather momentous week.

Declines in manufacturing employment are shaping the structure of the American family.

The capability upgrade has happened outside the attention of most government officials, who have been preoccupied with reducing nuclear warhead numbers. The result is a nuclear arsenal that is being transformed into a force that has the unambiguous characteristics of being optimized for surprise attacks against Russia and for fighting and winning nuclear wars.

Traditionally state vaccination policy and school vaccine mandates have been as close to a nonpartisan issue as we have in this country. There has usually been broad bipartisan support for such mandates and the idea that children should be vaccinated in order to attend school. It’s a consensus that has served the country well for many decades now. What I fear is that this consensus is breaking down, and—even worse—school vaccine policies are becoming a partisan issue.