Portside

The fact that slavery caused the Civil War is troubling to people who like to ignore the long history of white supremacy in the U.S. Those in positions of privilege prefer to perpetuate myths about America as a place where people get exactly what they deserve, which is the underlying justification for social inequality in political philosophies throughout time, from the Protestant Ethic to meritocracy.

Last week, as New Orleans completed the controversial and long-awaited task of taking down Confederate monuments from its public spaces, Mayor Mitch Landrieu marked the occasion by delivering a speech that has since been lauded as "stunning," "incredible," "powerful," and "a clear-eyed view of our past as well as our present. "Many said the speech would go down in history.

Herbert presents an airtight case of structural racism in America — and it’s a case I’m laying out at length here in case you don’t see the film. If we are going to throw these words around, we better understand their meaning and use that understanding to inform the work that we — white people — must do.

Mothers who work full-time and have a high-school degree make 67 cents for every dollar made by a dad with a high-school degree. More staggering is that mothers have to earn a bachelor’s degree or more in order for their earnings to outpace fathers with only high-school degrees. At every education level and in every state, mothers are paid less than fathers. On average, a mother makes about 71 cents to a father’s dollar.

In effect, the Chinese government decides what work it wants done, draws on its own national credit card, pays Chinese workers to do it, and repays the loans with the proceeds.The US government could do that too, without raising taxes, slashing services, cutting pensions, or privatizing industries.

Secret U.S. military documents reveal a constellation of American military bases across Africa. With the Trump administration escalating its wars in Africa and the Middle East, and the potential for more crises -- from catastrophic famines to spreading wars -- on the horizon, there’s every reason to believe the U.S. military’s footprint on the continent will continue to evolve, expand, and enlarge in the years ahead, outpost by outpost and base by base.

Most fascinatingly, the film's coda features footage of the now 23-year-old Elian who still lives in Cuba and reveres the late Castro. Articulate and self-assured, he seems none the worse for his childhood trauma. Talking about the current state of relations between the two countries, he comments that Barack Obama’s history-making trip to the island country was important, but that it also “left much to be desired.”

The former political prisoner thanked progressive movements for supporting his decades-long struggle for a free Puerto Rico. Plus articles related to Lopez Rivera's release.

“While many officials champion their status as ‘sanctuary cities’ and have taken meaningful steps to protect immigrant communities, sweeping criminal laws in these places leave many immigrants trapped within an arm’s reach of deportation.”

In a just world, Chelsea Manning wouldn’t have been jailed and tortured, but celebrated as a hero for alerting the public to the crimes of its government.