How Do Cicadas Know When To Come Out?

Scientists are making computer models to better understand how the mysterious insects emerge collectively after more than a decade underground.

The Particular Cruelty of Colonial Wars

A new history of Indonesia’s fight for independence reveals the brutal means by which the Dutch tried to retain power.

We Need an Exodus From Zionism

This Passover, we don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name

Abortion Rights After Dobbs: The State of the Struggle

The white, nationalist, evangelical conservative movement and the Republican Party targeted women's control over their reproductive life: they have reaped a political whirlwind.

How I Learned What I Learned

Congo Square Theatre presents How I Learned What I Learned by August Wilson. Harry Lennix is featured in this one-man autobiographical play about growing up in Pittsburgh and moving through the experiences that would form him as a man and an artist.

Freedom of Speech Ends Where Power Begins

"I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice," William Lloyd Garrison once said. "On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation."

Mass Graves in Gaza and US News Coverage

The discovery of these mass graves “horrified” UN rights chief Volker Turk. But it has yet to prompt so strong a reaction from several major US news outlets.

Liberation Day and Anti-Fascism in Italy

April 25 -- marking the victory of the Resistance in Italy over Mussolini and German occupiers -- is the day we remember that the Constitution and anti-Fascism are a daily practice, not an occasional celebration.

Mass Surveillance

US Senate and Biden Admin Usher in a Two Year Expansion of Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance

The Right Reads Gramsci: Project 2025 and Neo-Fascism

“We need to understand fascism as a dynamic and revolutionary movement. It is not a conservative political force safely embedded in US institutional power. It has a radical vision of power and reconstruction that Project 2025 gives voice to.”
Read more

Culture

poetry

Climate Change

Eve Sutton
It’s the Idea of Spring and poet Eve Sutton has been reminding us that climate change has been going on for a long time. It is no joke!

food

Strange Soups and Brass Bands

David Bacon The Reality Check: Stories and Photographs by David Bacon
Soups are made from the traditions of the countryside where people are used to eating the animals that live there (the rat is a country creature, not the urban variety) and some think of them even as a kind of medicine.

poetry

Si, Se Puede (It Can Be Done)

Philip Kolin
Marking the anniversary of his death (April 23, 1993), Cesar Chavez continues to inspire support for immigrant farm workers’ rights around the country.

Labor

labor

Journalist Casualties in the Israel-Gaza War

CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists
“.......journalists have been paying the highest price— their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna.

labor

A Valedictory Recommendation for What Unions Need To Do

Harold Meyerson The American Prospect
Taylor voiced both a cautious optimism about his union’s trajectory, and some frustration at the labor movement’s hesitation to exploit the unusually pro-union climate now abroad in the land.

labor

The UAW’s Victory Can Serve as a Model

Steven Greenhouse Century Foundation
How did the UAW pull off its big Southern victory, the first time a union has succeeded in organizing a foreign-owned auto plant in the South? The UAW and Shawn Fain pursued five basic strategies to achieve this victory, and those steps could serve

Friday nite video

Wait! I Said DE-Escalate!

As protests for Gaza ramp up on college campuses, the de-escalation effort doesn't seem to be...de-escalating.

Can AI Help Us Talk to Whales?

AI may soon allow us to understand and talk to whales. But some scientists are asking: SHOULD we talk to whales?