Portside

As Jewish New Yorkers, we firmly believe that no community can ever be safe through the oppression of another. Your advocacy of broken windows policing while in Israel reinforces the Israeli government's ongoing policies of discrimination against Palestinians. The military occupation of Palestinian communities, political and economic exclusion ...and discriminatory and violent policing by the military and police do not increase the safety of the Jewish people.

Senator Warren's speech clearly and powerfully calls into question America's commitment to black lives by highlighting the role that structural racism played and continues to play with regard to housing discrimination and voting rights, said DeRay Mckesson, a prominent #BLM activist. Warren understands the protests as a matter of life or death - the American dream has been sustained by an intentional violence...the uprisings have been the result of years of lived trauma

Reader Comments: Refugee Crisis, Solidarity and Worker Rights; Radical Roots of Great Grape Strike and the United Farmworkers; Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders; Woman Held in Mental Health Facility Because Police Didn't Believe Her; Rhiannon Giddens and Old-Time Music's Black Roots; Announcements - New York and Los Angeles - Greece,Spain, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Cuba

Comics critics say they are hard pressed to remember Batman ever addressing institutional racism and its socio-economic dimensions as bluntly as this in the character’s 75-year history.

African American Kamilah Brock, a banker, was driving her BMW in Harlem. Police did not believe that African American woman could own a BMW or be a banker. She was taken into custody, transported to a psychiatric ward, stripped and forcibly, and repeatedly, injected with sedatives - for eight days. She is now suing New York City. Only in America...in 2015.

Police ... sometimes are workers who make very little money, oftentimes receive very little benefits in terms of the capitalist system that we live in and we want to recognize that . . . If police were to excise police brutality and anti-Blackness from their institution, I think we'd be having a very different conversation. And that's also a conversation that I would be happy to have.

How, besides protesting, can we actually make sure no more black people are killed, beaten or tortured by the police? And how can we promote justice and equity in law enforcement more generally? The Center for Popular Democracy and Policy Link have partnered with various protesters and street-level organizers to find some concrete solutions to this problem.

Reader Comments - Obama and the TPP; Stop-and-Frisk; White Americans and Police Accountability; Vietnam and Anti-War History and the Ongoing Debate; Remembering Jackson State Murders; Greece, Organizing New York; Those Who Work in Customer Call Centers; Announcements - Immigration, Work and Wages - Washington - May 21; Film Showing and Discussion - Blood Fruit - New York - May 22

Over a period of nearly 20 years, Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and his "midnight crew" allegedly tortured at least 119 people, forcing them to make confessions. The police officers beat the victims, burned them with lit cigarettes and handcuffed them to hot radiators. They tied plastic bags over their heads and nearly suffocated them. They put cattle prods on their genitals and in their mouths and electrocuted them. (Adeshina Emmanuel, The Chicago Reporter)*

Reader Comments - Baltimore, other cities as "Occupied Territory"; Drop the Charges against those arrested; Government-Sponsored Segregation; Bernie Sanders - a Long Tradition of American Socialism; Alberta NDP Victory; $15 per Hour or Bust; Israeli Soldiers Speak Out-Gaza Atrocities Were Orders; Labor Union Membership Now Just 11%; Feliks Tych - R.I.P.; Announcements - New York, Boston