Portside

100 Parkland students travelled 450 miles to the state capital while others at dozens of high schools walked out in support of #NeverAgain

How Some Democrats Aided The NRA-GOP Agenda. How Tech Giants Feed Off Capitalism's Failures. Students at South Broward High School Protest Gun Violence Jimmy Kimmel on School Shooting in Parkland, Florida. Why Black Panther’s Box Office Success Matters.

There is new interest in the slaughter and massacres that took place during the Vietnam War. This may in part be a response to the fact that last month (January 2018) marked the 50th anniversary of that war’s Tet offensive. In Vietnam many of the massacres (My Lai was by no means unique) were perpetrated by soldiers as well as their officers from the so-called “land of the free.” I use this descriptive term intentionally because one of the things that is often declared to be constitutionally “free” from rational regulation in the U.S. are guns.

Sheryl Crow, who is releasing a song dedicated to Newtown victims, says country musicians are afraid of speaking about gun laws and losing their audience. Money and fear have kept country music artists from speaking out about gun laws, the nine-time Grammy Award-winner said, even after thousands of country fans were targeted in October in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

Of all the ways in which American democracy is showing symptoms of turning into a dysfunctional state, the inability to face down the gun lobby is surely one of the most egregious.

Police violence and interaction could be seen as particularly extreme forms of maternal stress. If one lives in a community that is frequently policed, the accumulative effects of these interactions can have health consequences more insidious than those caused by actual physical violence.