Portside

Her life should have ended at 17, an African American college student and civil rights worker, gunned down under a Coca-Cola sign in the fight for freedom and justice. A white seminarian named Jonathan Myrick Daniels pushed her aside and died in her place.

In Ferguson, the rallying cry - This is what democracy looks like - which echoes W.E.B. DuBois and the older generation's critique of capitalist civilization and imperialist power. And you also had people chanting -We gon' be alright - which is from rap artist Kendrick Lamar, who is concerned with the black body, decrepit schools, indecent housing. This chant is in many ways emerging as a kind of anthem of the movement for the younger generation.

Prominent Jewish Americans, including former officials of AIPAC, in a full-page ad in the New York Times,urged Congress to support the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -the agreement between Tehran and six world powers. Many of the signers have devoted decades to building and enhancing Israel's security and strengthening the US-Israel alliance, designed to counter claims by some on the American right that no supporter of Israel could endorse the agreement.

A focus on violence and looting reduces the people of Watts to “rioters” rather than residents confronting social and economic catastrophe. What they burned is less important than what they built, both before and after the insurrection.

On the anniversary of last summer’s Gaza massacre, in the 48th year of Israeli occupation, the 67th year of Palestinians’ ongoing Nakba (the Arabic word for Israel's ethnic cleansing)—and in the fourth century of Black oppression in the present-day United States—we, the undersigned Black activists, artists, scholars, writers, and political prisoners offer this letter of reaffirmed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

On Aug. 8, 2015, as the Black community prepared to collectively mourn the anniversary of the murder of Mike Brown by Ferguson police, members of Black Lives Matter disrupted a Bernie Sanders rally in Seattle. In the week since that disruption, at least nine Black people have been killed by state-sanctioned violence. #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Patrisse Cullors explains why the movement will continue to disrupt the political process.

The Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School are protesting to hold the Chicago Public School system accountable for destabilizing schools in their community. They created the plan to re-open the Dyett as a global leadership and green technology high school.

Today's conflicts in the Middle East is often played out in a language laden with stereotypes. This can also be true of how history is told and understood. Hasan Suroor offers a glimpse of history that breaks through these barriers, in a review of a new book by Seem Alavi. This book focuses on Islam and nationalism in colonial India, but it also offers a nuanced view of relations between Muslims and the West that contests received wisdom.

The omission of any mention of violence toward women in Straight Outta Compton is a particularly potent example of the biopic dilemma, because it connects to the queasiest part of the legacy of N.W.A. Misogyny has always been part of popular music, whether it’s in vaudeville or rock and roll or even today’s booming electronic-dance scene.

it's possible that Pixar’s obsessiveness about work and employment has somehow been effaced in the public eye by the imaginative diversity of their films’ settings: ant colonies, space, the ocean, a bizarre alternate-world inhabited by sentient vehicles, and so on. But in Inside Out, for the first time, the ground beneath Pixar’s ideological feet comes into view, and it’s the Bay Area, California.