Portside

A Special Investigation by In These Times reporters who gained access to three of the world’s “special economic zones”—and found paradises for corporations and wastelands for workers’ rights.

“We call today on law enforcement officers and law enforcement agencies around the state and around the nation to condemn the murderous actions of the Tulsa Police Department." Ryan Kiesel, ACLU of Oklahoma Executive Director

The business of providing temps to factories and warehouses is booming in New Jersey, which has one of the highest concentration of temps in the country . But New Jersey's "temp towns" have a dark side. Workers say this sector of the temporary employment industry is rife with mistreatment. They complain about low pay or not being paid at all, rampant racial and sexual discrimination, unsafe working conditions and a system that seems to exploit them at every turn.

As California voters prepare to vote about legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, promises and omens have become part of the debate over the state’s future if Proposition 64 is passed. Will the traditional small-time pot farmers be replaced by industrial grow operations? Will employees in this newly legalized commerce receive decent pay, working conditions and benefits? Or will the new cannabis worker have more in common with the low-wage, immigrant farm workers?

(Hint: It’s less about income and more about skin color.) This infographic is part of a special report. Banking on Justice: The Bankers Doing Civil Rights Work in the Mississippi Delta.

It is true that the data show the number of families receiving cash assistance fell from 12.3 million in 1996 to current levels of 4.1 million as reported by The New York Times. But it is also true that child poverty rates for black children remain stubbornly high in the U.S.

The ugly legacy of George W. Bush’s torture program continues to haunt U.S. foreign policy as the “poster child” for waterboarding, Abu Zubaydah, makes an appeal for his release from Guantanamo, writes Marjorie Cohn.

Latin America is transforming itself into a sort of food-policy laboratory. Some of the reforms they’ve enacted have also been proposed in the United States, but have been thwarted by the food industry and its political allies. Brazil has also made huge progress against poverty and food insecurity while supporting the family farmers who produce 70 percent of the food that Brazilians eat.

On Sept. 9, exactly 45 years to the day after the uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York, prisoners across the United States went on strike.

“The original, Southern desire to preserve an exploited, economically deprived non-white agricultural labor force pinned to the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy continues to manifest itself full force,” Law Professor Juan Perea of Loyola University said. “The only difference today is now it’s brown and black people.”