Tidbits - June 4, 2015 - Korean War End?; Spanish elections; Puerto Rico; Oscar López Rivera; Emmy Noether; Gaza Peace Concert; Tiananmen Square; Angela Acquitted; more...
Portside
Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederate States of America. How do you proclaim your love for America and then yearn for the days when you weren't part of it?
Although Puerto Ricans were granted US citizenship in 1917, the United States continued to exploit, oppress and eventually launch a "war" on the people of Puerto Rico to gain land and resources. The book, War Against All Puerto Ricans, is a vivid, detailed account of the brutal treatment of a people "liberated" from Spain only to be subjugated by the US.
It took only a few minutes for Mr. Obama’s account to attract racist, hate-filled posts and replies. They addressed him with racial slurs and called him a monkey. One had an image of the president with his neck in a noose. But they appeared to be a small number in what was an otherwise social-media-fueled show of love for Mr. Obama, who was drawing followers at a rapid pace — nearly 2.3 million by Thursday afternoon.
The history of public housing in the United States can be read, in part, as a history of the modern impoverishment of racial minorities, in particular, of the African American population. As reviewer Rhonda Y. Williams notes, Edward G. Goetz has written a "multi-layered analysis of housing policy and redevelopment," in a book that "explicitly examines black removal from urban spaces and the perpetuation of racialized poverty."
Producer John Legend set out to document the desegregation of a Southern prom, and discovered that it would turn into a much larger story. Airs May 18.
117 countries criticized, shamed and attacked the U.S. for police violence and racial discrimination at the United Nations Human Rights Council hearing in Geneva. Among the various concerns raised were the failure to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, the continued use of the death penalty, the need for adequate protections for migrant workers and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples.
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