All Views Articles
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John Buell Amid Pandemic and BLM Protests, Why Minimum Wage Must be Defended and Expanded Decades of research have shown that businesses are generally able to absorb higher minimum wages without any meaningful negative impact on jobs. Read more |
![Lawrence Bell (right), moments after being released from East Jersey State Prison on Sunday, is greeted by his friend Ron Pierce [left], who was also incarcerated for three decades.](https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_small_thumb/public/views-article/thumbs/screen_shot_2020-06-29_at_10.16.09_am.png?itok=9o62j8LK) |
Chris Hedges My Student Comes Home In 1990, Lawrence Bell was 14, orphaned and living in an abandoned house when three Camden cops pressured him to sign a confession of murder. Sunday, thanks to the dogged work of his laywer, he was freed. Read more |
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Mandy Smithberger Covid-19 Means Good Times for the Pentagon Or how to vaccinate the military-industrial complex. Read more |
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Eoin Higgins, staff writer An Interview With Mimi Soltysik, 1974-2020 "I feel allied with most anyone who seeks the overthrow of capitalism." Read more |
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Shahid Buttar, Rebecca Parson 'If You Like Your Insurance, You Can Keep It'–Until You Can't Lack of healthcare is a death sentence. Read more |
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Sarah Lazare First You Bomb and Starve a Country. Then You're Praised for Sending in Aid. The perverse diplomatic charade of Saudi Arabia starting a fire then getting credit for providing fire blankets. Read more |
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Robert Scheer, Meagan Day For Many Young People, Socialism Is as American as Apple Pie Bernie Sanders may never make it to the White House, but, just when we need them most, socialists like "Bigger than Bernie" co-author Megan Day have picked up his torch. Read more |
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George O'Connor, Daniel G. Newman 'Electing a President': Exclusive Excerpt From New Graphic Novel on the US Elections System Unrig: How to Fix Our Broken Democracy is out July 7. Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli The Environment, the Trump and Bolsonaro "[A] great empire and little minds go ill together."—Edmund Burke, 2d Speech on Conciliation with America (1775) Read more |
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Michael Arria Palestinian Members of Israeli Parliament Call on Democrats to Oppose Annexation "Democrats have a decision to make. Will they keep wringing their hands and expressing 'concern,' or are they going to do something about it?" Read more |
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David Suzuki Multiple Crises Signal the Need to Change Course People are calling for change. It's time. Read more |
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Freddie Stuart, Aaron White From the Streets to the Ballot Box: New York's Political Revolution Alongside a wave of insurgent progressive candidates, New York's primary elections ushered in a mandate for radical change. Read more |
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Patrisse Cullors 'Black Lives Matter' is About More Than the Police Black life must be valued at every stage and in every facet of society. We won't rest until it is. Read more |
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John Feffer What Will It Take to Defeat Trumpism? Learning lessons from the end of the Confederacy, Nazi Germany, and Saddam’s Iraq. Read more |
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Owen Webster Defunding Police Must Be Paired With Demilitarization and Denuclearization In much the same way that local Black Lives Matter activists are right to call for cuts to militarized police departments, we must pair the current movement with efforts to rein in American militarism extending beyond our borders too. Read more |
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Glen Ford Yes, Defund the Cops–And Put Them Under Community Control Community control of the police means empowering the people to shape and oversee the mechanisms of their own security and end forever the armed occupation of our communities by hostile forces. Read more |
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Suzan DelBene, Earl Blumenauer Voting By Mail Is Now a Necessity During COVID-19 We need to ignore the inflamed rhetoric the president is using and act now. Read more |
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Ralph Nader An Urgent Message to Congress: You Must Hold President Trump Accountable! What your stewardship of the Constitution requires is manifest. Read more |
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Jennifer Mercieca A Field Guide to Trump's Dangerous Rhetoric Trump was so successful in using dangerous demagogic rhetoric that no one could hold him accountable for his words and actions during the 2016 campaign or since. Read more |
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Maritza Perez The DEA’s Most Recent Abuse of Power Should Renew Calls for Divestment A critical look at the DEA is long overdue. The agency has existed for more than forty-five years but little attention has been given to the role it has played in fueling racial disparities, mass criminalization, the surveillance state, and other drug war harms. Read more |
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Kathy Kelly Battleground States: The Time for Manufacturing Weapons of War Has Passed as a Viable Industry for Our Nation The world that our global empire is swiftly creating, through our devastating oil wars in the Middle East and our arriving cold wars with Russia and China, is a world without winners. Read more |
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Harvey J. Kaye In 2020, Reviving the Spirit of FDR In a new book, John Nichols outlines tragic decisions that quashed past progressive dreams but offers hope for the years ahead. Read more |
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Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. The Language of 'Brown Finance' in Climate Finance is Racist If you cannot hear the problem with the term "brown finance" yourself, please let me explain. Read more |
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Tom Gallagher Killing Them Softly With Sanctions Economic sanctions killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Read more |
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Brett Wilkins The Korean War and US 'Total Destruction' Began 70 Years Ago For Koreans of a certain age, total destruction by the United States isn’t just some abstract threat, it is a hellish reality that ranks among the most egregious crimes of a century that witnessed some of the most appalling barbarity in human history. Read more |
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Norman Solomon Progressives Must Fight With—and In—the Democratic Party In the electoral arena, the goal is not only about winning elections. It’s also about replacing the top-down weight of entrenched politicians with the bottom-up power of grassroots activism. Read more |
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Yoav Litvin Black Lives Matter and Lessons From Palestine Lessons from the Palestinian struggle can be crucial for the success of the anti-racism uprising in the United States. Read more |
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Thom Hartmann Why Is Trump So Enthusiastic About Americans Dying? What is it about right-wing leaders embracing death by pandemic? If Trump was the only leader in the world doing this, it might make it easier to figure out. But wealthy oligarchs who have taken over countries around the world are doing the same thing. Read more |
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Tamara Pearson US Drinking Beer, Producing Cars and Military Tech at the Expense of Mexican Lives "All the companies here … do what they want with us. It’s like we’re a market and the politicians are saying, 'Come here, have what you like'" Read more |
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Robert P. Alvarez Land of the Unfree This July 4, let’s lay claim to the freedom and equality we’ve celebrated for centuries, but seldom practiced. Read more |
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Leonardo Flores Bolton Weaves a Tall Tale in his Venezuela Chapter Four major sanctions over 10 months that crippled the Venezuelan economy are hardly indicative of an administration that "vacillated and wobbled", in Bolton’s words. Read more |
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Daniel Costa Trump’s Ban on Temporary Work Visas Is an Attempt to Scapegoat Immigrants During an Economic Collapse Real reform would improve wages and working conditions. Read more |
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Jamal Abdi, Ryan Costello Biden Can Reverse Trump’s Failures on Iran It will be important for a Biden administration to act swiftly to restore international confidence in U.S. policy toward Iran. Read more |
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Simon Whalley The Plant-Based Diet That Our Planet Urgently Needs The gulf between what people say they understand is necessary and what their actions continue to prove otherwise is alarming. It is nowhere more evident than their dietary choices. Read more |
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Yohuru Williams, Savannah Shepherd There’s No Excuse for Blocking the Anti-Lynching Bill It’s 2020—we should’ve made the lynching of Black Americans a federal crime by now. Read more |
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David Cooper Now Is Still a Good Time to Raise the Minimum Wage Higher minimum wages disproportionately benefit women workers and workers of color, both of whom are disproportionately represented in frontline industries and "essential" jobs. Read more |
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Michael Winship President Trump Ain't Just Dog Whistling Dixie In his Tulsa speech and an interview Trump previews his hate-fueled, if incoherent, 2020 campaign strategy. Read more |
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Pierre Tristam Make Masks Mandatory in All Public Spaces Enough denialism. Enough childishness. People are dying and state government is criminally indifferent. It’s up to our local governments to act. Read more |
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Richard Falk The Politics of Kneeling: A Tribute to Colin Kaepernick It takes a dedicated movement, not a string of moments, no matter how searing and memorable, to achieve the deep structural changes that will allow all persons of color to be treated as equal citizens with equal rights. Read more |
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Robert Reich America Is Exceptional in All the Wrong Ways The problems at the core of our broken system, laid bare by this pandemic, have been plaguing this country long before Trump came along. Read more |
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Medea Benjamin, Ariel Gold Will Biden Remain Tone Deaf to Palestinian Rights? Biden’s unconditional support for Israel’s rightwing government is not only less and less popular among Americans, but it guarantees continued repression against Palestinians and continued unrest in the region. Read more |
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Negin Owliaei, Sofia Salazar Black Immigrant Domestic Workers Share Notes on the Storm Between Covid-19, the resulting economic depression, and structural racism, Black immigrant domestic workers are at the epicenter of three converging crises. Read more |
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Jeffrey Sterling Whistleblowing, the Pandemic and a 'Law and Order' System of Injustice All vestiges of the current system of white moderate law and order must be obliterated. Read more |
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Andrew Bacevich Racism, Yes, But What About Militarism and Materialism? Martin Luther King's giant triplets. Read more |
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Jonathan Cook "I Can't Breathe": Chokehold on Diplomat Exposes Israel's Special Type of Apartheid An assault by Israeli security officials on a diplomat sounds like an aberration—a peculiar case of mistaken identity—quite unlike an established pattern of police violence against poor black communities in the US. But that impression would be wrong. Read more |
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Emily A. Benfer Coronavirus Rent Freezes Are Ending—and A Wave of Evictions Will Sweep America The distress among renters will surely surge this summer when recently enacted federal unemployment benefits run dry and courts reopen. Read more |
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Claudia Lefko Missing: 505 COVID Masks Destined for Baghdad Hospital via UPS Our human-to-human good-will gesture—the washing, cutting, sewing, assembling and shipping costs along with the sweet anticipation of their arrival in Baghdad—has been denied, stolen from us. Read more |
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Ellen Brown Meet BlackRock, the New Great Vampire Squid No private, unelected entity should have the power over the economy that BlackRock has, without a legally enforceable fiduciary duty to wield it in the public interest. Read more |
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Mark Harris History in the Making: Police Violence vs. People’s Justice This is a people’s movement for a more humane and fair society. Read more |
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Sarah Anderson Virtual Poor People’s Campaign Rally Draws Crowd of More Than a Million Through personal testimonies of systemic racism, poverty and inequality, ecological devastation, and militarism—the event brought the campaign's bold fusion agenda to new audiences. Read more |
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Juan Cole Top 6 Reasons Trump’s Racist Attack on Ilhan Omar at Empty Stadium Is a Lie Trump’s description of Rep. Omar's goals as "no government" is much more appropriate to his own policies. Read more |
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Ted Glick Live From Tulsa: Trump Is a Hideous Lying Pathetic Clown If Trump was a stand-up comic instead of President, this trivial, self-pitying story might become known as one of the best, long, stand-up comic routines of the year. Read more |
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Andrea Mazzarino A Military Spouse’s Perspective on Racism and Armed Violence in the United States The war zone is America. Read more |
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Linda Reinstein Four Years of Failure on Toxic Chemicals It’s become clear we can’t rely on EPA to do its job. Which is why the task once again falls to Congress. Read more |
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Alan Minsky If You Want Joe Biden to Govern More Like FDR Than Jamie Dimon, Vote for Bernie Sanders on Tuesday in New York and Kentucky The progressive base of the Democratic has to let Biden—and the rest of the party's leaders—know which way the wind is blowing. Read more |
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Reese Erlich Lessons From Cuban Police Contrary to the image of brutal and repressive communists, police in Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States. Read more |
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Shefali Sharma Time to Hold Agribusiness Accountable for Its Climate Footprint IATP’s new study on Big Dairy makes the connection between emissions and the rural crisis Read more |
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Bruce T. Boccardy It’s Still the Economy, Stupid Carville Quip Democratic Party and neoliberal political strategist James Carville asserted in 1992 that "it's the economy stupid," when addressing the main strategy of Bill Clinton’s presidential... Read more |
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Richard Eskow John Bolton and Liberals’ Irrational Hatred of Trump It’s irrational to invest someone like John Bolton with credibility, when Bolton lied and deceived us into war. Read more |
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Sam Pizzigati For a Racism-Free 22nd Century, We Need a Billionaire-Free 21st The dead hand of grand fortunes past is still poisoning our present. Read more |
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Basav Sen Cyclone Amphan Is a Warning for the United States The storm ravaged India and Bangladesh all the worse because of social and economic inequality. The same, or worse, could happen here. Read more |
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Juan Cole Trump at Tulsa as 21st Century Typhoid Mary, as Fauci Warns on Rally, Science-Bashing Science has laws, and we can’t change them by glaring at them or shouting at them or wearing a partisan campaign button. Read more |
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Rev Dr Liz Theoharis, Stephen Miles Dismantle the War Economy To create real security, we must slash the Pentagon budget and invest in meeting everyone’s basic human needs. Read more |
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Jade Begay Prolonged Uprising Is the New Normal This is the new normal. Let’s keep it up. Read more |
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Julian Agyeman, Kofi Boone Land Loss Has Plagued Black America Since Emancipation—Is It Time to Look Again at ‘Black Commons’ and Collective Ownership? The lack of ownership is crucial to understanding the crippling economic disparity that has hollowed out the black middle class and continues to plague black America. Read more |
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Dean Baker Patents and the Pandemic, Again It is not just for purposes of getting a vaccine and treatments quickly that we should want fully open research. Read more |
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Rupa Marya, Edwin Lindo Healing the Nation's "Broken and Scattered" Hoop We are at a reckoning point in history, where we must decide how we will continue as a nation and how we will continue as inhabitants on this planet that supports all of our lives. Read more |
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Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Saru Jayaraman Beyond Police Reform: Why We Must Transform Pervasive Systems of Economic and Carceral Injustice In a nation that says it "cannot breathe," we much reach deep down for fundamental change. Read more |
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Cat Davis, Dorian Warren Walmart Exploits Black Lives While Paying Lip Service to Black Lives Matter Instead of spending $100 million on a 'center on racial equity,' the mega-corporation should give the money to its underpaid African American workforce. Read more |
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Bill Moyers, Rev. James Forbes From George Floyd to Juneteenth, America's Other Independence Day "We will not return to business as usual after the events we have experienced this year," says Rev. James Forbes. Read more |
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Yohuru Williams Police Must Be Guardians, Not Warriors We can’t reform police until we reckon with their history of enforcing white supremacy. Read more |
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Ben Cohen Why Do Police Officers Get Away With Murder Again and Again? We need business to leverage their power to change a bad law and help end the cycle of state-sponsored killing of unarmed black people. Read more |
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Thom Hartmann Treasonous Trump Rejects Bringing US Jobs Home to Get Himself Reelected The president is not only betraying our country and the values that underpin a democratic republic, but he is also selling out the hopes and dreams of the American working people. Read more |
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Chuck Collins, Darrick Hamilton, Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, and Omar Ocampo White Supremacy Is the Pre-existing Condition Eight Solutions to Ensure Economic Recovery Reduces the Racial Wealth Gap. Read more |
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Suzanne Nossel Those Who Exercise Free Speech Should Also Defend It—Even When It's Offensive As path-breaking activists in the antiwar, labor, women’s rights and civil rights movements witnessed, proponents of social change have the strongest stake protecting speech that is unpopular, or even deemed dangerous. Read more |
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Ralph Nader Out of the Ashes of Covid-19 Should Rise Our Unstoppable Medicare for All Movement The battle against this pandemic—and all the associated injustices and inequalities it has exposed—should galvanize a nation to finally embrace the kind of healthcare system it deserves. Read more |
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Mark Hertsgaard Climate-Justice Stories Are in Every Community, Waiting to Be Told Only rarely does mainstream news coverage make the point that such environmental violence is pervasive, chronic, and carries a clear racial and economic bias. Read more |
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Heidi Shierholz Over Three Months Into Pandemic and Job Losses Remain at Historic Levels More than one in five workers are either on unemployment benefits or are waiting to get on Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt The Pre-History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire: A Rant A few thoughts on how the so-called 'American Century' ends. Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler Defunding 'Justified' Murder Defunding the police is part of an enormous process of social reorganization. Read more |
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Gary Olson Was It Only "Fear Itself?": FDR and Today Self-serving actions by the ruling elite. Read more |
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Norman Solomon California “Berning” for Ro Khanna to Chair the State’s Delegation to Democratic National Convention With so much at stake this election year—fairness, logic, and party unity all argue for progressive U.S. congressman to chair the delegation. Read more |
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Ramzy Baroud The 'Palestinian Chair': Exposing Israel’s Direct Role in US Violence US racism and police violence are intrinsically linked and date back many years, but the militarization of the US police and its use of deadly violence against suspected petty criminals, or even non criminals, is a relatively new phenomenon that has been largely imported from Israel. Read more |
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Karen Dolan The Fight for Equality Just Won a Huge Victory There’s a lot of bad news out there, but I hope we’ll celebrate amid the pain. Read more |
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Mesha Jefferson Protesting for Black Lives in Trump Country Even here, people are organizing demonstrations to protest racism and police violence. Read more |
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Mimi Kennedy, Steven Rosenfeld, & Alan Minsky 2020 Voters' Calendar—The General Election Starts in August This Voters' Calendar will stretch our civic attention span to make high-turnout elections a task that mere mortals can perform, not a superhuman feat that tests the endurance of even the most dedicated voters. Read more |
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Jeff Cohen Just Saying "Systemic Racism" Doesn't Expose Systemic Racism Let us name the system: "racial capitalism." Read more |
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Robert Shetterly The Alchemy of Turning Protest to Affirmation In order for this country and people in this country to perform reprehensible acts, it has to deny its own professed values and laws while pretending to uphold them. Coming to grips with this is not easy, but it must be done. Read more |
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Adam Eichen, Evelyn Li Far-Reaching Prison Reform Must Be Part of Racial Justice Movement The systemic racism and brutality of the criminal justice system extend far beyond police misconduct. Read more |
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Jim Hightower COVID-19 Is Prompting a Societywide Recalculation Constant cutbacks in public resources; the rigid, small-minded mentality; and the corporate establishment's determination to keep the status quo have needlessly boxed us into this full-blown coronavirus catastrophe. Read more |
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Margaret Klein Salamon The Climate Movement Must Learn from Larry Kramer’s Fearless Truth Telling If we are silent about the climate emergency, others interpret our silence as a lack of concern, as a sign that things are normal. We need to channel our inner Larry Kramer, and loudly tell the truth to everyone we know. Read more |
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Chris Hedges Don't Be Fooled. The Corporate Elites Are Gaslighting You Once Again We are trapped in an abusive relationship. When we finally have enough, our abuser comes after us with flowers and apologies, promising never to do it again. Read more |
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Jeanne Mirer, Jerry Wallingford Please Note: GOP Efforts Making It Harder to Vote Are Illegal Now is the time for people to demand that state and local governments take effective measures to ensure all eligible persons are permitted to exercise their constitutional right to vote—and that means removing all barriers and obstacles to voting. Read more |
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Thom Hartmann What Should the Punishment Be for the Crime of Weaponizing a Virus for Political Purposes? Let's be very, very clear: the president is willing to take specific, willful, intentional actions that will lead to the deaths of other people in order to get what he wants, even when they are members of his own family. Read more |
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Robert Lipsyte Donald Trump's Baseball Career Showed Us What a Terrible President He Would Be Remembering Ball Four. Read more |
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Tim Koechlin Whitewashing Capitalism How ECON 100 obscures the relationships among capitalism, racism and racial inequality. Read more |
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Alice Slater Time to Act on Dr. King's Call to Tackle Evils of Racism, Economic Exploitation, and War Mother Earth is giving us a time out, sending us all to our rooms to reflect on how we address the triple evils about which Dr. King warned us. Read more |
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Andy Rowell COVID-19 Crisis Accelerating "Long-term Decline of Coal" Every day new renewables are coming on stream and the reality is we do not need coal for electricity generation. Read more |
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Jesse Jackson Too Many African American Children Are Born in Shackles Led by the passion of a young and diverse generation, the country must finally address the systemic inequality that increasingly endangers all of us. Read more |
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Juan Cole Trump Willing to Kill Hundreds of Thousands of Americans in Effort to Win Election If 100% of the population would simply wear masks when they go out, evidence shows, the rate of transmission falls below 1 and the number of cases dwindles. Why don't so many people? Because the president has told them not to. Read more |