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Nestle Just Gained Control Over This Town's Water for the Next 45 Years

Nathan Wellman U.S. Uncut
There has never been a contract that ties up local water resources for such a long period of time in American history. Water activists worry that this could set a precedent for future corporate attempts to take water from rural towns for extended periods of time.

Revolt of the ‘Chapulines’: After Strike, Indigenous Mexican Farmworkers Vote to Unionize

DAVID BACON In These Times
The strike and union campaign at Klein Management are part of a larger movement among indigenous Mexican farm workers, which is sweeping through the whole Pacific coast. Work stoppages by Triqui and Mixteco blueberry pickers have hit Sakuma Farms in Burlington, Washington, for the past three years. Workers there organized an independent union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, and launched a boycott of Driscoll's, the world's largest berry distributor.

Why It’s Nearly Impossible for Prisoners to Sue Prisons

Rachel Poser The New Yorker
There are currently no regulations governing prison grievance processes, and, in the two decades since the law’s passage, many prisons’ procedures have become so onerous and convoluted—“Kafkaesque,” in the words of one federal judge—that inmates whose rights have been violated are watching their cases slip through the cracks.

Machine Bias

Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner ProPublica
There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks.

New Study Reveals Just How Brutal Meat and Poultry Work Is for Workers

Elizabeth Grossman In These Times
The meat and poultry industry remains exceptionally dangerous, despite a decline in reported injuries and illnesses over the past 10 years, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. Further, says the report, the injury and illness rates reflected in Department of Labor numbers are significantly underreported.

Obama’s Hiroshima Visit: No Action to Stem Nuclear Arms Race

Linda Pentz Gunter The Ecologist
Predictably, President Barack Obama did not use his historic visit to Hiroshima May 27 to apologize for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths that resulted. But, he still can heed the “cry of the soul" of the remaining Hibakusha (survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and take meaningful steps to eliminate nuclear weapons, including canceling the $1 trillion, 30-year plan to upgrade U.S. nuclear weapons.

Union Agreement With Uber Jeered As a 'Surrender'

Joe Maniscalco LaborPress
Last week, IAM District 15 announced the formation of the Independent Drivers Guild [IDG], a new association created to represent New York City’s 35,000 Uber drivers. The IDG will strive to secure job protections and benefits for Uber drivers without actually engaging in collective bargaining...

Is This the World's Most Radical Mayor?

Dan Hancox The Guardian
When Ada Colau was elected mayor of Barcelona, she became a figurehead of the new leftwing politics sweeping Spain. The question she now faces is a vital one for the left across Europe – can she really put her ideas into practice?