Portside

For more than a generation there has not existed in the United States a political force capable of demanding the kinds of changes that would curtail the daily oppressions faced by people like the residents of Ferguson and tens of millions of Americans like them. Opposition to these injustices takes the form of sign carrying, hashtags, morality plays, and the occasional thrown rock.

The racial disparities that define Ferguson are indeed shocking. More than two-thirds of the town’s residents are black, but almost all of the officials and police officers are white: the mayor and the police chief, five of six city council members, all but one of the members of the school board, fifty of fifty-three police officers.

Raw fury over Brown's killing may slowly fade, but the underlying resentment among Ferguson's young black residents about their treatment by a white police force will likely continue to simmer. Washington Post and Huffington Post journalists detained. Today, Governor Jay Nixon ordered Missouri Highway Patrol to take over supervision in Ferguson, MO.

The foundation of libertarianism is skepticism toward government and a belief in individual freedom. There aren’t many freedoms more fundamental than the freedom to walk to your grandmother’s apartment, as Brown was doing, without getting shot by a representative of the government.

National Forum on Police Crimes held earlier this month in Chicago. Speaking at the closing rally Angels Davis said, mass incarceration and police killings stem from "structural and systemic racism rooted in the failure to fully abolish slavery." Global capital expansion and its pursuit of profit, she said, fuel the prison-industrial complex. Call issued for legislation to create Civilian Police Accountability Councils.

Why the verdict? There was the obvious and unrelenting hostility of the judge, the mild-mannered demeanor displayed by Officer Bovell on the witness stand, an inclination on the part of individual jurors to take the word of uniformed authority over that of protesters. That Cecily McMillan was the victim of a brutal sexual assault and wound up being tried as the aggressor - was too disturbing a reality for the jurors to come to grips with.

Cecily McMillan's ongoing ordeal with the NYPD is a reminder that radical dissent is still so necessary.

The idea that our youth are captured animals who can turn dangerous at any time when they are not under supervision has almost become an instinct to the larger white society.

Bulent Arinc apologises to original environmental protesters as two men die in continuing demonstrations.

The Cambodian factory workers were protesting the western sportswear giant in a plea for fairer pay.