Once-fraught ideas and symbols are now a routine matter of partisan combat. This is scary.
It happened again this week, as it has happened more than 100 times so far this year. Police in Louisiana and Minnesota shot and killed two more black men. Stop asking us to be calm. Stop asking us to wear the mask. Stop asking us to take whips, nooses and now police bullets without emotion. In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, "We are sick and tired of being sick and tired." Two years after Ferguson, police induced murders are continuing...#BlackLivesMatter
The disgraceful history of voter disenfranchisement is no secret. For more than a century, African Americans (and other marginalized groups) were restricted or evendisqualified from voting. Today these practices are formally outlawed, yet we still see patterns in voter turnout that indicate that voting discrimination is alive and well. Non-voters also tend to be younger, less educated, and less affluent than their voting counterparts.
A thoughtful and nuanced look at the role identity played in this year's primary contest between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton by a Sanders supporter. Hillary's passionate female (and male feminist) supporters are speaking with sincerity about their hopes for a gender revolution. The reality is that women work for less pay; do more childcare; are often single parents; must weather sexual harassment, abuse, and assault throughout their lives...
On both sides of the Atlantic, citizens are seizing upon trade agreements as a source of their woes. While this is an over-simplification, it is understandable. Today's trade agreements are negotiated in secret, with corporate interests well represented, but ordinary citizens or workers completely shut out. Not surprisingly, the results have been one-sided: workers' bargaining position has been weakened further, compounding the effects of legislation undermining unions.
Reader Comments: Bernie, Endorse?, What Next?; Dominican Republic; Indigenous Peoples in US; Hawaii; Tair Kaminer - Israeli Political Prisoner - Inspiring People Worldwide; Elie Wiesel - Responses to Max Blumenthal; Austrian Election Update; On Socialism; on the IWW; Angry response to post about Viet Thanh Nguyen;
Resources: The Invention of the White Race; Mining and Resistance in Dinétah; Announcement: From Sanders to the Grassroots: National Student Conference
Actor Jesse Williams took on racism in a BET Awards speech that went viral.
Bernie Sanders delegates and their allies are fighting for a Democratic Party platform that will be able to inspire voters to defeat Donald Trump, and to lay a basis for the political revolution in the years ahead. Here three long-time progressive and socialist activists address the question of what comes next. How do we build and shape a post-election multi-racial politics. Read what Mark Solomon, Joseph Schwartz and David Wilson have to say.
Reader Comments: Bernie Sanders - What We Want; Clinton Campaign Obstructing Change to Democratic Platform; Supreme Court Rules: Abortion Clinics in Texas Cannot be Shut Down; Brexit - Warning Signal for Trump-Era America?; Bombing Syrian Troops Would Be Illegal; Mexican Teachers Being Jailed and Killed; Chilean Military Liable for Victor Jara Murder; Report Clears Rouseff; Remembering James Green; This Week in History - Arbenz Guzman Deposed in Guatemala; and more...
Decades later, the extreme, extrajudicial brutality Emmett Till encountered is almost inconceivable. Nevertheless, violence against African-American bodies still takes place today, sustained by a criminal justice system that provides everything but justice. And mothers like Mamie Till are still at the forefront of the fight for justice for their children and all children.
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