Portside

In the South, America has identified food-system problems and developed solutions. Today, as Americans agitate for food sovereignty, the bold agricultural ideas conceived in the late 1960s by Fannie Lou Hamer and other radical Southerners suggest paths for us to follow out of our food deserts.

Aside from California’s obedient Republican congressional delegation, Stanford is perhaps the most powerful locus of Trump’s support in the state with close ties to the energy industry and its lobbyists, the center of an even more powerful web of connections to Donald Trump, whose administration has moved to help industry in general, and Big Oil in particular—doing away with climate and environmental protections, opening public lands up to mining and drilling, and so on.

This collaborative feature by Truthout and Earth Island Journal is supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. It will be followed by a series of online investigative reports on the environment and mass incarceration.

Arnold August urges all to make public the views of those Cuban revolutionary writers and intellectuals who are leading the resistance to the U.S.-led cultural war. First published in Al Mayadeen, May 29, 2017, and translated from the original Spanish.

The Trump administration recently released its comprehensive budget proposal, optimistically titled "A New Foundation for American Greatness." The budget was immediately condemned by Southern politicians in both parties, as well as advocates for the poor, immigrants, and other vulnerable populations in the South.

Recently the Chair of an exciting UN initiative formally named the “United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination” released a draft treaty to ban and prohibit nuclear weapons just as the world has done for biological and chemical weapons. The Ban Treaty is to be negotiated at the UN from June 15 to July 7.

The OECD should be in the business of helping people build democratic institutions that give them economic and political voice—guardians of equality and democracy. The alternative to addressing wage stagnation and the status of working people in the global economy is not more of the same elite dominated globalization. The alternative is an escalating crisis where the false promises of authoritarianism and racism threaten to overwhelm the democratic ideal.

Master of None's second season tackles the intersection of queer identities and race, as well as the diversity of New York City, painting a fuller picture of the city than shows that have come before like Girls, or even Louie.

In the words of Illinois Network of Charter Schools president Andrew Broy, “Chicago has become the epicenter of charter union organizing in the country.”

In what may seem a paradox, the worse off Illinois government gets the more the wealthy are willing to spend to gain control. It is part of a national trend that has seen ever escalating spending battles for even down the ballot offices. Down the ballot, a $1 million legislative race in Illinois used to be an oddity. Last year 23 topped $1 million, with five between $5 million and $6 million, according to Redfield’s analysis of state campaign finance records.