Portside

The under-regulation of guns is a conscious political project of the NRA. If the NRA is like other elite organizations it follows a general formula of organizing of being not only tied to political power but also media and economic power. Political pressure can be placed on the NRA and these politicians by going after the direct sponsors of the NRA and the corporate sponsors of NRA-politicians.

Despite the growing revolt against the ruling class, it seems likely that the nominees in 2016 will be Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. After all, the ruling class still controls America. But the revolt against the ruling class won’t end with the 2016 election, regardless. Which means the ruling class will have to change the way it rules America. Or it won’t rule too much longer.

The recently published Roadmap for the Future of the Economic and Monetary Union, signed by five “presidents” — of the European Council, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Central Bank and the Eurogroup — it doesn’t contain much that’s strikingly new, but what it does do is systematise and confirm the abolition of national democracy.

People say that the restaurant industry in Portland is incestuous – that everyone’s worked with everyone else – but that’s because people keep switching jobs in search of the mythical balance of tips to hours to number of shifts to physical demand.

Author and professor of political science at the University of Chicago and founder of the Black Youth Project, Cathy Cohen explains the growing role of hashtags in political discussion and what digital media can and can't do for activists.

The barriers to organizing adjuncts are real and difficult to overcome. We often don’t know our coworkers, we are decentralized and our lack of security creates a pervasive fear among adjuncts. However, the only way that we will be able to fight for increased pay, greater job security and a voice in the college is by working collectively.

It’s been 20 years since federal Pell Grants were revoked from prisons during the tough-on-crime heyday of the 1990s, amid a bipartisan political fervor that helped transform U.S. prisons from a corrections system to a punishment business. Two decades later, mass incarceration is a runaway train, and America imprisons so many more people than any other country that it’s hard to even compare the thing in one chart.

There are two reasons abortion rights activists have been boxed in. One is that we’ve been reactive rather than proactive. The second reason we’re stuck in a defensive mode is that too many pro-choice people are way too quiet.

As a discipline, urban planning is dedicated to understanding and addressing the complex problems of the city. Yet public safety is rarely taken up as a sphere of concern. Rather than rationalizing people’s failed life outcomes in a way that blames individuals for poor life choices, urban planners must help hold society accountable for past failures to construct real opportunity structures.

One of the biggest literary stories of the summer has been the controversy over To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee's new novel, Go Set a Watchman. It turns out To Kill a Mockingbird hero Atticus Finch, as portrayed in this new book, was far more racist than fans of Lee's earlier novel remember. Should they have been surprised? Laura Marsh talks to several scholars who say Finch's racism was here all along, if readers had only taken the care to look.