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Friday Nite Videos -- August 21, 2015

Portside
Meet the Undocumented Immigrant Who Works in a Trump Hotel. Damsel in Distress: Tropes vs Women in Video Games. John Oliver: Sex Education. Neil deGrasse Tyson: A Brief History of Everything. Bad Lip Reading of the Republican Debate.

How the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Keeps Working People Poor and Destroys the Environment

Simon Swartzman In These Times
The Chamber of Commerce is basically a lobbyist for hire that reaches into other arenas of power to set the policy agenda for the nation in areas of central concern for its members. Major businesses hire the Chamber to carry out very particular legislative or other projects to change policies in ways that have big consequences for American consumers, American workers, international workers, the environment, and consumer regulations.

100 Best Novels: One in Five Doesn't Represent over 300 Years of Women in Literature

Rachel Cooke The Guardian
The Guardian is known for it's best of laundry lists. A recent list of the 100 best English-language novels came with a demurrer from culture columnist Rachel Cooke, saying in effect: The ladies not meant for spurning - and that just 20 books by female authors in a best-of-100 list covering a 300-year period--especially in a listing of authors of fiction--is incomplete bordering on bizarre. Cooke elaborates on what should be on, and what she says can surely be removed.

Cornel West: The Fire of a New Generation

George Yancy and Cornel West The New York Times
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.

Top Jewish Leaders Back Iran Deal in New York Times Ad; 340 Rabbis Back Iran Deal in Letter to Congress

Nathan Guttman; Jewish Telegraph Agency Jewish Daily Forward
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.

Watts 50 Years Later: Remember What They Built, Not What They Burned

Robin D.G. Kelley Los Angeles Times
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.

1000 Black Activists, Artists, & Scholars Demand Justice for Palestine

Kristian Davis Bailey and Khury Petersen-Smith Ebony
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.

Why #BlackLivesMatter is Disrupting the Political Process: To Transform America's Systemic Hatred of Black People

Patrisse Cullors The Washington Post
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.