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Harry Belafonte: What Do We Have to Lose? Everything

Harry Belafonte The New York Times
What old men know, too, is that all that is gained can be lost. Lost just as the liberation that the Civil War and Emancipation brought was squandered after Reconstruction, by a white America grown morally weary, or bent on revenge.

What Unions Want to See the Next President Prioritize First

Connor D. Wolf [Inside Sources]
Unions are still fighting for several key policies that have yet to be achieved. The next president could determine where labor regulations and the economy go from here. Labor unions hope the next president will focus on the minimum wage, healthcare, immigration and trade, among other important policies.

The Accident-prone Oil Industry Is a Chronic Threat to the Gulf Coast's Environmental Health

Sue Sturgis Facing South
When we talk about the problem of oil industry accidents, we tend to focus on dramatic events like the deadly 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon explosion off the coast of Louisiana, or the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker crash in Alaska's Prince William Sound. But the industry is far more accident-prone than such relatively rare high-profile disasters suggest.

Seizing Freedom: David Roediger with Peter St. Clair

David Roediger with Peter St. Clair The Brooklyn Rail
The North won the Civil War, but the South won the Reconstruction. The victorious Northern armies preserved the Union and the slaves were emancipated but the Confederates won the historical interpretation of those events by perpetrating the myths that became the accepted story over the next one hundred years.

Another human food trend impacts pet food: pseudoscience

Debbie Phillips-Donaldson Pet Food Industry
Pseudoscience is perpetuated by self-declared experts with no scientific background or understanding of food science, or even scientists with credentials but who conduct poor, unscientifically sound research and spread unreliable, false or even debunked results. The trend has hit the pet food industry.

Oilfield Wastewater Used to Grow Food in California May Contain Toxins

Maureen Nandini Mitra Earth Island Journal
Did you know that some of the fruits and veggies out on supermarket shelves are grown using wastewater from oil and gas operations? For the past several years, many drought-stricken farms in California’s Central Valley, which produces 40 percent of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, have been increasingly irrigating their crops with wastewater. Chemicals present include 16 the state classifies as carcinogens or reproductive toxicants, says EWG report.

Standing Rock Solid with the Frackers: Are the Trades Putting Labour’s Head in the Gas Oven?

Sean Sweeney The Bullet
If anyone were looking for further evidence that the AFL-CIO remains unprepared to accept the science of climate change, and unwilling to join with the effort being made by all of the major labour federations of the world to address the crisis, the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) provides only the most recent case in point. Progressive labour must, however, develop its own vision of an energy future.