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Subjects Archives: Human Rights

Neil Martinson, A portrait of Annie Spike at work (1978)

Women and work

It has often been claimed that the radical documentary practice of the 1970s attended to class politics to the exclusion of gender. This was one of the core arguments for a staged practice of photography.

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Cold, angry, and surrounded by chicken.

Cold, angry, and surrounded by chicken

For six months, reporter Saša Uhlová worked in the lowest-paid manual jobs in the Czech Republic, having a go at work in a hospital laundry room, a chicken processing plant, as a cashier in a supermarket, in a razorblade factory, and in a waste-sorting plant. All these jobs are indispensable, yet they are severely underpaid. […]

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A meeting of one of the many local Committees.

Spanish state to Catalonia: “Surrender or we’ll take you over”

Catalonia’s Premier Carles Puigdemont officially declared an independent Catalan republic on October 10, only to announce the immediate suspension of independence to allow for negotiations with the conservative Spanish People’s Party (PP) government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The declaration of independence formalised the result of the October 1 referendum held under extreme police repression: […]

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Hurricane Maria survivors receive food and water .

The crisis in Puerto Rico is a racial issue, here’s why

Last week, CNN’s Jake Tapper interviewed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and asked if he thought President Donald Trump’s punishing response to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico had something to do with “race or ethnicity.” Sanders hesitated a bit but ultimately said, “We have a right to be suspect.”

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Making Black Lives Matter in our schools (Damon Davis)

Making ‘Black Lives Matter’ in our schools

How do you kill Mr. Phil and nothing happens?” According to parent Zuki Ellis, this is the question students at J. J. Hill Montessori Magnet School in St. Paul were asking just a few days into summer. On June 16, the Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile, or Mr. Phil as students knew […]

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Oakland Raiders teammates kneel during the national anthem, Sep. 24, 2017

Take a knee: The revenge of Colin Kaepernick

After Trump’s deranged demand that ownership purge NFL athletes who fail a loyalty test, it felt a little miraculous when, by a quirk of a game being played in London, Sunday morning dawned on the vision of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Baltimore Ravens arm in arm during the National Anthem. Standing with them was Shahid […]

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Screen shot of strawberries

What we sow is what we eat

Our treatment of the earth, of the dirt beneath our feet, is directly connected to our system of food production. The pollutants we put in the soil show up in our groceries. And the entire wretched business of agriculture derives from the nature of our economic system, which compels every giant corporation, every “entrepreneur,” to […]

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Sheriff Joe Arpaio standing in front of Arizona inmates at Tent City.

Freedom rider: Joe Arpaio is no aberration

Even most leftish white Americans like to think that their country is good and its institutions are fair and equitable. According to this wishful thinking human rights abuses only happen in faraway places and injustices here are resolved by reining in a few bad apples. The facts say otherwise and prove that the United States […]

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(Photo: Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock)

The alt-right and the 1%

When President Donald Trump let loose at his Tuesday press conference, equating anti-racism protesters with neo-Nazis, it was a big hit with the men who’d taken part in the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

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