Subjects Archives: Inequality

A new report by In the Public Interest, available at www.inthepublicinterest.org/article/criminal-how-lockup-quotas-and-low-crime-taxes-guarantee-profits-private-prison-corporations, documents the increased use of private prisons to house the large and growing population of incarcerated Americans.  We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, five to seven times that of comparable countries.  See my article “Lawyers, Jails, and the Law’s Fake Bargains,” […]

John Bellamy Foster: My talk is called “The Epochal Crisis.”  The term “epochal crisis” was introduced by Jason Moore to deal with periods in which economic and ecological crises intersect or merge.  We are certainly in the greatest epochal crisis in the history of the world. . . .  Now, we can also talk about […]

Twenty-five years ago, I, a hapless reporter on assignment, went to the DC Jail and met the woman who was to be my life’s partner.  I interviewed her about her political bombing case; we fell in love; I visited her in various prisons for 11 years; she was released; we’re now spending the rest of […]

  The summer of 2012 brought news of dialogues between the government of Colombia and the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) which would begin in November of the same year.  These new conversations are of great importance for the Colombian people and for the continent as a whole.  What is at stake is nothing […]

The KCK (Union of Communities in Kurdistan) Executive Council said that the Gezi Park protests, which began as social resistance, have sent a message calling for a new, democratic Turkey.  The KCK called on the Kurdish people to take initiative, saying that the Kurds should fulfill responsibility by working with the democratic forces in Turkey so that the Democratic Solution Process will develop on the right track.

The KCK Executive Council stated that the social resistance around Gezi Park has an important message.  Noting that the current situation poses significant consequences for Turkey’s transition into a democratic country, the council also warned against “opportunist” approaches.  The KCK called on the democratic and working-class sections of civil society to stand against potential barriers to the Democratic Solution Process.

João Pedro Stédile, second from left, speaks to the Peasant Movement of Papay in Haiti.  Photo: Beverly Bell. João Pedro Stédile is an economist, co-founder and co-coordinator of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil, and leader among Latin American social movements.  He gave the following talk to hundreds of Haitian farmers at the 40th […]

The following comments were made at a panel on the topic “Sexual Taboos and the Law Today” May 19 at a conference titled “Which Way Forward for Psychoanalysis?” and sponsored by the Society for Psychoanalytic Inquiry at the University of Chicago.  While Freud and psychoanalysis were a focus on the event, other themes running throughout […]

“I think that the freedom that we have . . . is the freedom not to repeat things, it is the freedom to discover what is the path we have to build within our context, our history and culture, our aspirations, our sense of belonging, our ideology, what we love most.” — Mariela Castro Espín […]

Gay greetings, LGBT-town!  I’m your out-and-proud lesbian pundit.  You may recognize me from my latest blog entry, “How Gay Was My Condo.”  Today, I bring you a hard-hitting work of in-depth political analysis re: Private First Class Bradley Manning.  It seems some malcontents on the Board of San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade have suggested Private […]

Some 50 to 60 union meat cutters and their supporters turned out on the afternoon of April 6 for a noisy protest against what they said was a lockout by Trade Fair, a chain of nine small supermarkets based in Queens, New York. Standing in a picket line on a busy sidewalk outside a Trade […]

  We went on “Israeli Independence Day” to Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, to celebrate the “ethnic cleansing” along with the people of Israel.  We distributed maps prepared by Zochrot documenting the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the beginning of Zionism to 67.  Reactions?   The “best” you can find on the Zionist streets. Here […]

  On 22nd April, Roza Tuletaeva, one of the activists from the Zhanaozen oil workers’ strike, started a hunger strike.  She has taken this extreme step because she has been refused essential medical aid at the women’s prison colony in Atyrau, where she is currently serving a lengthy jail sentence.  She was arrested after the […]

In the final weeks of a six-month prison sentence for protesting remote-control murder by drones, specifically from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, I can only reflect on my time of captivity in light of the crimes that brought me here.  In these ominous times, it is America’s officials and judges and not the anarchists […]

This video shows a panel discussion, moderated by Gayatri Gopinath, featuring the following scholars and papers: Katherine Fobear, “Queer Settlers: Exploring the Intersections of Colonial Violence and Settler Homonationalism With LGBTQ Refugees in Canada”; Colleen Jankovic, “Paranoia, the ‘Untold Story’ of Queer Palestine, and Non-Aligned Queer Solidarity”; Emrah Yıldız, “Alignments of International Refugee Law, Liberalism […]

  I was fortunate this week.  I had a quick and easy crossing from Jordan back into Israel.  No delays, no questions, no invasive body searches and no lengthy rummaging through my luggage.  The border guard sitting next to the computer took my passport, opened it and looked at the screen, presumably to check for […]

Author and longtime activist Nancy Kurshan’s new book, entitled Out of Control: A Fifteen Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons, has just been released by the Freedom Archives.  Kurshan’s book documents the work of The Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML), which she co-founded in 1985 as a response to the lockdown at the […]

  Message from Samer al-Issawi, day 209 of his hunger strike, via Rona Merrill and Neta Golan I turn with admiration to the masses of our heroic Palestinian people, to our Palestinian leadership, to all forces, parties, and national institutions.  I salute them for standing by our fight to defend our right to freedom and […]

  Neoliberal austerity in crisis-torn Greece has a significant implication for public health and the environment.  The disturbing reality is that the unbearable cost of heating oil for a large portion of the country’s population has led to an increased use of solid fuel heating.  The smog that has appeared in Athens and other Greek […]

  DB: We continue our discussion of the revelations around a memo coming out of the Justice Department that the administration plans to keep up these assassinations and expand the program.  Joining us to take a legal look at this is Marjorie Cohn, Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former President of the […]

  Injustice and judicial failings in the case of Colombian political prisoner David Ravelo are outrageous by any standard.  By December 11, 2013, that well-known defender of human rights, a resident of Barrancabermeja, had spent more than two years behind bars.  The announcement he was convicted and would spend 18 years in jail came that […]