Portside

Minneapolis is a case study in how police hate speech fosters a climate of violence.

Baltimore prosecutors failed to obtain a conviction after four trials, meaning there will likely be no criminal accountability for Gray’s death from a ‘rough ride’

Lee Saunders, President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, along with other trade union leaders addressed the Illinois delegation to the Democratic Party Convention and pledged support to Council 31, AFSCME who has threatened to go out on strike.

Boal’s litigation is supported by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “We firmly stand with Mr. Boal in his effort to protect these tapes,” says the organization’s executive director Bruce Brown. “Well-established law recognizes that journalists cannot do their jobs to keep the public informed if they cannot work free from government interference.”

Bernie Sanders succeeded in pulling both the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton to the left. But a loud minority fails to see this victory.

Neofash at RNC; Ailes and GOP circle the drain; Pence = death; Return of the lynch mob rope; Election art; Jocks stand up

The complete transcript of the prepared remarks from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ speech to the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

Class in America is a complicated concept, and it may be that Trump supporters see themselves as having been left behind in other respects. Since almost all of Trump’s voters so far in the primaries have been non-Hispanic whites, we can ask whether they make lower incomes than other white Americans, for instance. The answer is “no.” (This article appeared during the primaries this Spring. It is still relevant today as we analyze who are the Trump supporters.)

 Identifying the myriad problems is easy. More difficult—and more important—is to resist seeing them as “general chaos.” We need to avoid the facile explanation provided to me by Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes: “These things happen when you host an Olympics in the developing world.” Instead, we need to understand that Rio’s “state of public calamity” is an extreme version of what happens when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) comes a-calling.

The bottom line is that both platforms are bad policy. If the GOP platform were followed, it would produce policies resulting in disaster, not only for Palestinians and US interests in the Middle East, but for Israel, as well. On the other hand, if the Democrat’s platform were followed, it would result in continuing the region’s depressing and dangerous downward spiral of oppression and violence.