Portside

The strikers, dubbed the “Corinthian 15” after the now-bankrupt network of for-profit schools they attended, announced the strike with a simple message directed at the Department of Education: “We owe you nothing.”

#BlackWomensLivesMatter. It’s an affirmation that is essential in the face of the reality that Black women’s lives have been consistently devalued and erased. Not only has taking our labor and our lives been part of business as usual throughout this country’s history, so has violating our bodies through systematic criminalization, physical brutality and sexual assault by law enforcement agents, from slave patrols to present day police.

Currently, most students learn history as a set narrative—a process that reinforces the mistaken idea that the past can be synthesized into a single, standardized chronicle of several hundred pages. History is anything but agreeable. It is not a collection of facts deemed to be “official” by scholars on high.

Community food forestry demonstrates a smarter way to grow food locally — which is important, considering that we’re staring at a future of hungry, hungry humans. The Beacon Food Forest is a lush public garden where all of the produce is up for grabs. Instead of dividing the land into small patches for private planting, like most community gardens, volunteers cultivate the whole food forest together and share, well, the fruits of their labor with anyone and everyone.

Last week Citizen, by Claudia Rankine, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. It had been nominated in both poetry and criticism, the first book to be so doubly nominated. A bold, book of experimental writing that takes on the "invisible" practices of everyday person-to-person, interactive racism, Rankine's book is as illuminating as it is, at times, wrenching. Here Parul Sehgal guides us through this outstanding work of contemporary literature.

Oil workers alliance with greens helped win strike.

"India’s Daughter", Leslee Udwin's stirring documentation of the brutal rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, has been banned by the Indian government claiming the film is an international conspiracy to defame India and incites violence against women. The efforts to suppress the film are backfiring, creating what is being called an 'Arab spring for gender equality in India'.

#BlackLivesMatter’s founders; NYPD rewrites Wiki; Whitewashing climate change; Ferguson Confidential; Who’s poor?; Oppression and offense

Kshama Sawant, the socialist on the City Council, is up for re-election this year. The corporate powers, from Seattle’s mayor to the Chamber of Commerce and the area’s Democratic Party, are determined she be defeated, and these local corporate elites have the national elites behind them. This will be one of the most important elections in the country this year.

For German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, “memory” goes back to 2007 when Greece was caught up in the worldwide financial conflagration touched off by American and European speculators. Berlin was a major donor in the 240 billion Euro “bailout.” Schauble wants that debt repaid. Millions of Greeks are concerned about unpaid debts as well, although their memories stretch back a little further.