Portside

Remember that public school employee Paul Ryan liked so much who could now pay for her Costco membership?

As Ava DuVernay prepares to release Disney’s eagerly anticipated A Wrinkle in Time adaptation, which has put her in the history books as the first woman of color to direct a film with a $100 million-plus budget, she cautions against thinking that Hollywood has finally solved its diversity problems.

Lead poison; The myth that murders; Black and white in the slave south; Graham, cracker of souls; BS manufacturers; On the new gun control movement

Donald Trump’s retrograde policies on immigration, women’s rights, racial justice, LGBT rights, and economic inequality have spawned an impressive and growing resistance. It remains to be seen whether his generous treatment of the Pentagon at the expense of basic human needs will spur a similar backlash.

Why is Chavismo still so popular amid Venezuela's worst economic downturn in decades?

Dennis Magnasco said he’s a combat veteran, a gun owner and a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment. And he’s ready for gun reform. “I recognize the power of firearms. I’ve seen what they can do,” Magnasco said. “And it makes me sick to know that we have high school kids seeing this in their schools.”

Union organizers in states like Tennessee are hoping to change that. Since 2010, the number of union members in Tennessee has grown from 115,000 to 155,000. Still, only 5.7 percent of Tennessee workers are members of a union.How To Patrick Green, even one new member is a big deal. Green is a president of Local 1235, which is part of the Amalgamated Transit Union in Nashville, Tennessee. In the three years that he has been leading the union, the local’s membership rate went up by 36 percent, despite being in a right-to-work state.

Randa Harara is adamant that she will stand up to Israel’s forces of occupation again – once she has made a recovery. On 11 December, Randa – aged 21 – was shot by a sniper hiding at Nahal Oz, a military checkpoint separating Gaza from Israel. She was taking part in a protest against the announcement by Donald Trump, the US president, that he recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Six months after the FBI issued a report inventing from whole cloth the term Black Identity Extremists — claiming this group poses a terrorist threat to police — the first apparent case of the prosecution of a BIE has emerged. The BIE designation has created concern in the Black community that the FBI is launching a new COINTELPRO program targeting Black activists who have committed no crimes, with more arrests and prosecutions of those involved in racial justice movements to follow.

THE PHILIPPINES president has offered a £340 bounty for each communist rebel killed by government forces in a bid to save on the state’s anti-insurgency costs.