Portside

So far, apart from some statements by union leaders, the workforce itself has been silent about the new tax law – which among other things cut the corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent – and how the extra money that will end up in corporate coffers should be spent. Perhaps this is because, by and large, they have lost their voice at work as unions have declined and Wall Street’s voices have ascended and become more dominate in corporate decision making.

This is the second in a two-part article on the debt burden America’s students face. Read Part 1 here. The lending business is heavily stacked against student borrowers. Bigger players can borrow for almost nothing, and if their investments don’t work out, they can put their corporate shells through bankruptcy and walk away. Not so with students. Their loan rates are high and if they cannot pay, their debts are not normally dischargeable in bankruptcy. Rather, the debts compound and can dog them for life, compromising not only their own futures but the economy itself.

And people of color (and white accomplices) who call out such racism must do so without erasing our stories, identities, and existence.

This past year in Louisiana’s St. John the Baptist Parish, a small group of residents began organizing their community to compel the state to protect them against an invisible menace: the air they breathe. Their parish, the Louisiana equivalent of a county, is situated in what’s known as Cancer Alley, an industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that hosts more than 100 petrochemical factories.

As Donald Trump might put it, major weapons contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin cashed in “bigly” in his first year in office. They raked in tens of billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts, while posting sharp stock price increases and healthy profits driven by the continuation and expansion of Washington’s post-9/11 wars. But last year’s bonanza is likely to be no more than a down payment on even better days to come for the military-industrial complex.

Although he has not yet imposed any explicit cuts, on January 11, the Trump administration took another step toward undercutting these essential social programs: It issued guidance allowing states to impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries. This staggering and unprecedented change in health-care policy is expected to adversely affect millions of people in the United States, particularly those with disabilities.

Jonathan Kauffman's new book, Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat, follows the people and places throughout the country that brought organic vegetables and whole wheat bread into the counterculture, and then, eventually, mainstream supermarkets.

The Passaic Textile Strike is notable for the use of force against the demonstrators, the debates over free speech, the role of intellectuals and intellectualism, and for being the Communist Party’s first attempt to organize a large-scale demonstration encompassing the region’s textile industry.

Is network TV ready for a Black Lesbian superhero?

Despite the time elapsed, almost three-quarters of a century ago, a similar text, with the same title, could be written today: “Adrift by the seas of history, without direction, without destination, goes Puerto Rico: for four and a half centuries “ Now it should be added that the situation is worse and the island, hit by fierce hurricanes, especially the most recent and brutal named Donald Trump, faces a decisive moment in its history.