Thirty-Two in a Different Country; Invented Mothers

Zeina Hashem Beck http://heartjournalonline.com
A Lebanese poet from Dubai, Zeina Hashem Beck offers two poems, Thirty-Two and in a Different Country and The Invented Mothers, both touching the deep trauma of warfare on civilians.

Calm Down: SCOTUS's 'Friedrichs' Case Won't Mean the End of the American Labor Movement

David Moberg Working In These Times
Unions have discovered that there are other ways to deal with workers who are not on their membership rolls. For example, for the first half of last year, AFSCME set out to organize as full members 50,000 of the fair share payers or other non-members in workplaces where they had contracts. They organized 90,000.

FBI Joins Investigation Into 'Unfathomable' Death of Sandra Bland

Nadia Prupis Common Dreams
Sandra Bland died in police custody in a Texas jail after a traffic stop. In a video shot by a passer-by, Bland protests that her head is being slammed to the ground during her arrest. Local authorities are calling her death a suicide, but friends and family do not believe that explanation. Twitter users have launched the hashtag #IfIDieInPoliceCustody to counter the narratives that often follow the deaths of unarmed black men and women in police custody.

"Our Selma!" March for Voting Rights

As North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory goes to trial for the suppression of Voting Rights in the North Carolina, thousands turn out for the Forward Together Movement’s Mass Moral March for Voting Rights in Winston-Salem.

Film: Do I Sound Gay?

Is there such a thing as a "gay voice"? Why do some people "sound gay" but not others? Why are gay voices a mainstay of pop culture but also a trigger for bullying and harassment? Do I Sound Gay? explores these questions and more with revealing interviews with Margaret Cho, Tim Gunn, Don Lemon, Dan Savage, David Sedaris and George Takei. In theaters and cable on-demand now.

Elizabeth Warren Keynotes Netroots Nation

Elizabeth Warren calls for a comprehensive progressive agenda and challenges all presidential candidates to support legislation that would curb the revolving door between Wall Street and government.

War / No More Trouble (Playing for Change)

Another stunning collaboration by Playing for Change, a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music, featuring musicians in Israel, Congo, South Africa, Ghana, the United States, India, Ireland (and Bono).

Ninth Rock From the Sun

Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson riff, with scientific rigor and lots of humor, about the New Horizons findings, Pluto weirdness, and the demotion (or elevation?) of Pluto from planet to king of the Kuiper Belt.

Women of Pluto and Other Amazing Plutobits

Tabitha M. Powledge
“The New Horizons mission is a stunning validation of not only astronomy and physics, but of science itself. ... No astrologer could have given us this information. Alchemy could not have powered the rockets so powerfully and precisely ... This will be remembered as an achievement of our species, of our civilization, and of the power of science.”

How Goldman Sachs Profited From the Greek Debt Crisis

Robert Reich Robert Reich blog
Just as with the American subprime crisis, and the current plight of many American cities, Wall Street’s predatory lending played an important although little-recognized role. Undoubtedly, Greece suffers from years of corruption and tax avoidance by its wealthy. But Goldman wasn’t an innocent bystander: It padded its profits by leveraging Greece to the hilt—along with much of the rest of the global economy.