Tidbits - October 1, 2015 - Reader Comments: Sanders, Labor Endorsements, GOP Attacks Hillary; Slavery; Syrian Refugees; Unions, Contracts and NLRB; Public Education for Sale; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: Sanders and African American support, Labor endorsements divides union ranks, GOP attacks on Hillary;; Slavery, a national institution; Syrian Refugees and growing movement to welcome refugees; Unions, Contracts and the NLRB; Public Education for Sale; Puerto Rico's new party; Support for UE resolution on BDS; Julian Bond honored; Announcements: The Art of Peggy Lipschutz; more...

books

Fracking Dakota: Poems for a Wounded Land

Lee Rossi The Pedestal Magazine
Fracking Dakota: Poems for a Wounded Land, Peter Neil Carroll's new collection, takes us on a fascinating odyssey across an increasingly broken America. With a cast of characters as disparate as Billy the Kid, closet racists, grave robbers, ghosts along the Natchez Trace, blue collar workers and the short-sighted corporations that exploit them, these poems share an undercurrent of looming disaster, a deep knowing that things are about to turn bad. (Cultural Weekly)

Tidbits - September 24, 2015 - Refugee Crisis, Solidarity; Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Woman Held in Mental Health Facility; Rhiannon Giddens; and more...

Portside
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

Meet the Group of African-American Organizers Building Black Support for Bernie Sanders

Salim Muwakkil In These Times
Sanders faces a problem that often confronts progressive mavericks who strike a chord with the Democratic electorate, but who routinely fail to ring a bell with voters of color. They have often been blinded by cultural assumptions that devalue the sensibilities of the black community. But in 21st-century America, race is fundamental. Sanders has readjusted his policy platform and stump speeches, addressing racism and the criminalization of the black community.

Mothers Serving Long-Term Drug Sentences Call for Clemency

Victoria Law Truthout
Thousands are still imprisoned on federal drug charges who, without presidential clemency, will most likely die behind bars. In 2013, 98,200 people (more than half the federal prison population) were in prison for drug offenses such as trafficking and possession. Within the federal prison system, the overall imprisonment rate for Black women is more than twice that of white women. Latinas are also imprisoned at a higher rate than their white counterparts.

Batman Confronts Police Racism in Latest Comic Book

Spencer Ackerman The Guardian
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.

Steve Earle - Mississippi It’s Time

Singer-songwriter Steve Earle has partnered with the Southern Poverty Law Center to take a stand against the Confederate battle flag and is urging Mississippi to remove the emblem from its state flag with the release of his new song, “Mississippi It’s Time.”
 

books

New Releases in African American Intellectual History

Chris Cameron African American Intellectual History Society
New books and research in African American history and culture. Recent or soon-to-be published books, which the African American Intellectual History Society feels would be of interest to readers. Regrettably the cost for some puts these out of reach of many - but there is always your public or school library. Suggest that these be ordered.

Woman Held in Mental Health Facility Because Police Didn't Believe BMW Was Hers

Samuel Osborne The Independent
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.

Intersectional Black Power: CLR James on Capitalism and Race

Lawrence Ware and Paul Buhle Portside
To ignore race, C.L.R. James often said, in many contexts and many ways, was a disaster in any social understanding; only the ignoring of class would be worse. Or to put it in his own words: The race question is subsidiary to the class question, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental, is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.
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