Portside

Named after the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, “The 13th” threads together archival footage with modern-day commentary, and focuses on the ramifications of the amendment and its clause: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”

Secretar Clinton in addressing the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Las Vegas called the first day of the Republican Convention "Surreal". AFSCME represents 1.6 million public sector workers. She attacked the anti-worker policies of the Republican Governors of Wisconsin and Illinois, Scott Walker and Bruce Rauner. She said Trump had no solutions to help working families. Later in the day she picked up the support of UNITE HERE.

The question is whether good film presents us a prettified view of the past or challenges us to realize that we are yet living with that past—and that, however comforting the desire to ignore it, we continue to pay a price for failing to own it. We owe the makers Free State of Jones a serious debt for giving us the opportunity to do that.

Copspeak; Cops listen; Cops don’t share; Coup crackdown; Pokemon Go for organizers: Return to start

 There was a visceral and occasionally alarming passion in the hoots and howls of the delegates every time they had a chance to boo Clinton. The only other moments of genuine excitement came when two of the night’s three black speakers declared “Blue lives matter” and “All lives matter,” praising American police and attacking Black Lives Matter protesters. About policy: There was none. 

The ‘new politics’ Jeremy Corbyn proclaims must be an explicit agenda of institutional change, not simply a change of style at the dispatch box, writes Hilary Wainwright

Mr. Erdogan deliberately linked the Gülen movement to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which the Turkish army has attacked in its bases in south-eastern Turkey and in Iraq. To call both the Gülen movement and the PKK ‘terrorists’ is a convenient way to sweep up all Erdogan enemies into one target and use the coup — a “gift from God” — as the opportunity to go after them with vehemence.

It certainly is not anti-Semitic to argue that whatever emancipatory elements that Zionism may have provided some Jews has been more than offset by the expulsion, occupation, repression and killings of the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. While Zionism can be seen as a national liberation movement for Jews, it undeniably also has characteristics of a colonial settler state.

A $10 million effort backed by the Service Employees International Union and billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer will involve intense door-knocking and phone banking in working-class communities, with an emphasis on engaging African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos around the issues of economic inequality and environmental degradation. The initiative part of a broader effort to expand collaboration between the labor movement and environmental activists.

The massacre in Orlando was not the largest mass killing in U.S. history, and the United States has been responsible for the massacre of millions around the planet. We should all be mindful of “the nexus between US foreign policy adventures that plunder and violate countries in search of natural resources and US domestic racist actions.” U.S. crimes against humanity stretch from My Lai to Ferguson.