Nicholas Conley – Why the US Should Have Universal Healthcare

In the United States, healthcare has been one of the biggest political battles of the decade. As a healthcare worker myself, it’s an issue that strikes close to home. My years of experience caring for people with dementia, traumatic brain injuries, tetraplegia, cancer, and more has given me a firsthand look into what our healthcare system is like at the …

Henry Giroux on the Pathology of Politics in our Warfare State

Henry Giroux on the Pathology of Politics in our Warfare State September 23, 2016 Editor’s note: Living as we do in the 15th year of the war that began with Afghanistan and Iraq and has now spread to Syria, Yemen, Libya, etc. it is sometimes possible for many of us to accept the militarization of our society as just normal. …

Peter Van Buren – Police are Calculating Your ‘Threat Score’ to Decide How to Treat You

I watched a documentary about North Korea which explained how the government there assigns a score to each citizen, based on how large a threat to the regime s/he is perceived to be. When I lived in Taiwan under a military government years ago, such a number was encoded into every national ID card. Those citizens every interaction with the …

Daniel Lazare – Why US Police Are Out of Control

America is clearly an outlier when it comes to police brutality. According to The Guardian’s highly useful “Counted” website, U.S. police kill more people in a typical day than police in England and Wales kill in an entire year. Where police in Stockton, California, killed three people in the first five months of 2015, police in Iceland, which has roughly the same population, …

Poor Diets Are Lowering Children’s IQ By Amanda Froelich

With an estimated 70 percent of the American diet made up of processed foods [3], we — as a collective — are facing a serious conundrum in which if greater effort is not given to make wholesome, more nutritious fare a priority (with many countries following the lead of the United States), incoming generations will not only not live as long as their …

Damning New Analysis Reveals Deadly Lack of Police Training on Mental Illness – Deirdre Fulton

One quarter of the men and women shot and killed by police in the first six months of 2015 were “in the throes of mental or emotional crisis,” according to a new analysis published by the Washington Post on Tuesday, suggesting that law enforcement officers lack training on how to deal with the mentally ill. “On average, police shot and killed someone who was …

The war on drugs has reached into the womb – and threatens abortion rights – Jessica Valenti

What does the war on drugs have to do with the war on abortion? More than you’d think: the anti-choice movement has been successfully using drug laws to give fetuses legal personhood rights for years. Today, 18 states consider drug use while pregnant to be child abuse – a standard that not only punishes pregnant women who need help, but that has …

Washington needs to tell the truth about police violence By DeRay McKesson

There have only been 9 days this year when the police have not killed somebody. Some news outlets put the number as high as 500 dead in the past six months, according to both The Guardian and Killed by the Police.Net. The Washington Post’s own investigation showed nearly 400 dead as of the end of May. We know these numbers because activists have searched …

The Nasty Blowback from America’s Wars – Ray McGovern

Brutality thrives in American police treatment of common citizens reflecting an ethos of violence that has flourished over the past dozen years with almost no one in authority held accountable. Much of this behavior can be traced back to U.S. wars of choice – and it is not as though we were not warned of the inevitable blowback. On Feb. …

Senator Compares Cops to ISIS- Says He Would Only Own A Gun To Protect Himself From Police

Lincoln, NE– A Nebraska state senator is receiving some major backlash after making very controversial statements at a legislative hearing on a concealed gun bill on Friday. Senator Ernie Chambers is known as the “defender of the downtrodden” for his passionate defense of civil rights. Without holding back, the 77-year-old Chambers, compared American police to ISIS and has since received a barrage of criticism. Chambers …