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A Great Vision

Kim Scipes Substance News
A writer tells the story of his left wing family. Reviewer Scipes takes us on a tour.

A Great Vision

Kim Scipes Substance News
A writer tells the story of his left wing family. Reviewer Scipes takes us on a tour.

Rigged, Forced into Debt, Worked Past Exhaustion, Left with Nothing

Brett Murphy USA Today
A yearlong investigation by the USA TODAY Network found that port trucking companies in southern California have spent the past decade forcing drivers to finance their own trucks by taking on debt they could not afford. Companies then used that debt as leverage to extract forced labor and trap drivers in jobs that left them destitute.

Philando Castile Verdict a Painful Result of Laws Rigged to Protect Cops

Shaun King New York Daily News
According to American case law, if cops believe their life is in danger, it does not matter if it truly is or isn't, all they have to do is believe it. The decades old cases of Tennessee v Garner and Graham v Connor both shaped for future juries what police could and could not get away with.

A Powerful, Disturbing History of Residential Segregation in America

David Oshinsky New York Times
As Richard Rothstein contends in “The Color of Law,” a powerful and disturbing history of residential segregation in America, the government at all levels and in all branches abetted this injustice. “We have created a caste system in this country, with African-Americans kept exploited and geographically separate by racially explicit government policies,” he writes. “Although most of these policies are now off the books, they have never been remedied . . .

The Pittsburgh Fairy Tale

Patrick Vitale Jacobin
Pittsburgh's much-touted revival has remade the region for the wealthy while leaving workers and the poor behind.

The Conservative Case for Unions

Jonathan Rauch The Atlantic (July/August 2017 issue)
The decline of the business model of old-style industrial unions may have been economically inevitable, but the lack of any new model to replace it has been socially calamitous. Unions will not be easy to fix, but allowing them to innovate would be a first step, and possibly also a last chance. How a new kind of labor organization could address the grievances underlying populist anger.