Could Biden’s Climate Policy Invite More Militarism?

Climate change poses an existential threat. That doesn’t mean we should further empower an already bloated Pentagon.

Addressing Black Maternal Mortality in the South

The importance of this campaign, this movement, is not just to address health care issues of Black women but to actually give us the platform to where women like ourselves and women that are coming behind us will not have to deal with this issue...

More Policing: Not the Solution to Anti-Asian Violence

"We believe the solution to violence is to empower our communities with resources, support, and education — this is how we make all of our communities safe.”

Biden's Black History Month: Deport Black immigrants

I have lived it and I have suffered through it and I know that when people say “get in line,” there is no line. I am here to try to change the system so that people have a pathway and if they choose to become a citizen, they can.

Whose Rights Matter in Pandemic America?

Life should come before profit, human rights before property rights.

A New Coronavirus Variant Is Spreading in New York

The variant contains a mutation thought to help the virus dodge the immune system, scientists said.

The Murder Chicago Didn’t Want to Solve

On Feb. 26, 1963, Ben Lewis, the first Black elected official from Chicago’s West Side, won what was set to be his second full term on the City Council -- perhaps next stop Congress. Two days later, Lewis was found shot to death in his ward office.

New York City and the Persistence of the Middle Passage

Even as slavery was being abolished in the North, it continued to flourish, since the slave system was not confined simply to below the Mason-Dixon Line. The financing of the slave trade’s illegitimate commerce was sited heavily in Manhattan.

The Carceral Force of Prosecutor Associations

District attorney associations have been a powerful force in the criminal legal system for decades. They have used their power and influence to increase the power of prosecutors, maintain and grow the carceral state, and shut down reform efforts.

Oldest Dog Fossil Offers Clues to First Americans

The find supports the idea that dogs accompanied the first humans who set foot on these continents—and that both traveled there along the Pacific coast.
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Culture

food

Woke Me When It’s Over

Bret Stephens New York Times
In the humorless world of Woke, the satire is never funny and the statute of limitations never expires, even when it comes to hamantaschen.

tv

The CW’s Superman & Lois Premiere Is Surprisingly Somber

Caroline Siede AV Club
Superman & Lois pointedly comments on real-world issues. The Daily Planet suffers a round of brutal media layoffs and Smallville, once thriving, is crumbling under an economic collapse that sees big businesses buying up all the small family farms.

poetry

Tuff

Fred Norman
California poet Fred Norman offers a beautiful elegy to Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

books

The Dead Are Arising—The Life of Malcolm X

Herb Boyd The Amsterdam News
This award-winning biography mines some hitherto untapped sources, including extensive interviews with members of Malcolm X's immediate family, to present the fullest picture yet of the famed Black Liberation Movement leader.

food

Taking it to the street: Food vending during and after COVID-19

Catherine Brinkley The Conversation
Yusuf Abdullah, one of the city’s horse-cart produce vendors known as arabbers, leads Tony and his cart through the streets of Baltimore, Maryland. Curbside produce vendors often help communities that lack a grocery store to maintain access to healthy, inexpensive food. But long before the pandemic, many cities made it difficult for mobile produce sellers and other street food vendors to operate

Labor

labor

Tyson Poultry Workers Say Their Bosses Have No Regard for Their Lives

Jason Ramirez/Alex N. Press Jacobin
AN INTERVIEW WITH JASON RAMIREZ Few industries in the United States expose workers to COVID-19 at higher rates than the meatpacking and food processing sector. We spoke with a worker at a Tyson poultry plant in Arkansas about his fear of getting sick

labor

Major Victory for London Uber Drivers

Benjamin Sachs onlabor
Today’s UK decision is doubly consequential: the court clarifies drivers’ employment status and the time for which they must be compensated.

labor

Danny Glover: Why I’m in Alabama with Amazon Workers

Sarah Anderson Inequality.org
What role will the Amazon warehouse workers of Bessemer play in the organizing history of the south? We’ll find out on March 30, the day after the workers’ deadline for submitting their mail-in union ballots.

Friday nite video

video

Barre | Songhoy Blues

Malian blues rock band Songhoy Blues performing "Barre," an original song from their latest album Optimisme, live outside in Bamako, Mali. Barre—meaning "change" in Songhai—calls on the youth to rise up and take action.

video

Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln | Driva Man

The opening track of legendary drummer Max Roach's We Insist! Freedom Now Suite. Released in 1960, this album is the result of a collaboration with lyricist Oscar Brown, Jr. and references both the African American civil rights movement and the independence struggles of African countries.