Portside

Dealing with the Forever Prison of America's Forever Wars

If we are to confront white supremacy in its totality, this means that we must understand its place in the war on terror and the ways in which they intersect and fuel each other.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is pushing to kick military recruiters out of high schools and off Twitch. And she’s right: the military’s recruitment strategy of preying on low-income and working-class students is grotesque.

Sharp reductions in spending on police, prisons, and the Pentagon could free up hundreds of billions of dollars for programs that might begin to fill the gap in spending on public investments in communities of color and elsewhere.

Thanks to years of hyper militarization, American police departments are recreating our global war zones here at home. With these weapons on our streets, our history of structural racism becomes that much deadlier.

Reader Comments: Biden-Sanders Joint Policy Task Forces; Voter Suppression; COVID-19 Victims; Prison Labor as Scabs; Somalia; Cuba; Radical Books Sale; How to Absentee Vote NY Primary; Support Postal Workers, Retail and Food Workers in UNITE HERE

More prisoners have died at Guantánamo than have been convicted by the military commissions. 2019 was a bad year for justice for former and present Guantánamo prisoners, and not just prisoners subject to the military commission process.

We hope 2020 is when the American public finally looks at the fateful choice between war and peace with 20/20 vision, and we will start severely punishing Trump and every other U.S. politician who opts for threats over diplomacy, war over peace.

Since the War on Terror was launched 18 years ago, it has spread to 80 countries, yet the full the full consequences of America’s forever wars remain only partially known, including the hidden costs of war to the young, both here and abroad.