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Why Did the Obamas Fail to Take On Corporate Agriculture?

Michael Pollan The New York Times
When Obama took office, it seemed that the food movement — the loose-knit coalition of environmental, public-health, animal-welfare and social-justice advocates seeking reform of the food system — might soon have a friend in the White House. The Big Food stepped in.

Why Did the Obamas Fail to Take On Corporate Agriculture?

Michael Pollan The New York Times
When Obama took office, it seemed that the food movement — the loose-knit coalition of environmental, public-health, animal-welfare and social-justice advocates seeking reform of the food system — might soon have a friend in the White House. The Big Food stepped in.

Rural Oregon Deserves Better

Rural Organizing Project Rural Organizing Project
ROP organizers have shown great courage, educating about - and standing up to - right-wing militia groups in rural Oregon. This post suggests important actions that the rest of us can take.

Rank-and-File Union Members Speak Out at Standing Rock Camp

ICTMN Staff Indian Country Today
Rank-and-File Union Members Challenge AFL-CIO Leadership's Support for Pipeline. A delegation from Labor For Standing Rock, comprised of rank-and-file workers and union members to mobilize growing labor support for the First Nation's fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock camp the weekend of October 29.

Booked: When Slaveholders Controlled the Government, with Matthew Karp

Timothy Shenk Dissent Magazine
Historians are so accustomed to viewing slaveholders at the top of a complex pyramid of class, racial, and gender hierarchies in Southern society that we forgot that they were also the nation’s most powerful political leaders, and the world’s most powerful slaveholding class. Only in the past fifteen years or so have historians begun to look more systematically at slaveholders as leading national and international actors, as well as Southern social elites.

The Election is Rigged After All

Eliza Newlin Carney / Hendrik Hertzberg / Jennifer L. Clark The American Prospect
Voting rights advocates have won a string of court battles, but state election officials have found ways to restrict early voting anyway—often at the behest of GOP leaders. ----- Rethinking about our two party system and our election system: Ranked-choice voting opens up elections to a broader, more diverse range of candidates and ideas. ----- Modernizing our voter registration system.

Unprecedented Spending A Threat to Voting Rights, Unions in Illinois

Curtis Black Chicago Reporter
Gov. Bruce Rauner is on track to spend $50 million on legislative races this year. Even for a guy like Rauner, that’s a lot of money– nearly twice what he spent on his own campaign two years ago. Two Rauner allies, billionaires Ken Griffin and Richard Uihlein, are also spending tens of millions of dollars. The end game is taking down unions and squelching voting rights.