JUDD LEGUM – Across the country, right-wing activists are seeking to ban thousands of books from schools and other public libraries. Those promoting the bans often claim they are acting to protect children from pornography. But the bans frequently target books “by and about people of color and LGBTQ individuals.” Many of the books deemed pornography by activities are actually highly acclaimed novels. Now, one state is fighting back.
Oregon Nonprofit Returns Wallowa Land to Nez Perce Tribe
LAUREN PATERSON – Kathleen Ackley is the executive director of the Wallowa Land Trust. As more Northwest lake communities are being developed with vacation homes and Airbnbs, she says her organization’s focus is protecting natural areas, open spaces and farms in Northeast Oregon. The nonprofit recently gifted 30 acres of undeveloped land near the lake to the Nez Perce Tribe.
Looking Beneath the Sabre-Rattling: U.S. Interests in Taiwan
VIJAY PRASHAD – Jared M. McKinney and Peter Harris, in s widely circulated paper from the U.S. Army War College, published in November, 2021, wrote, “The United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain. This could be done effectively by threatening to destroy facilities belonging to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, While Taiwan’s minister of defense Chiu Kuo-cheng responded to Moulton’s statement about a military strike on TSMC, in fact, the U.S. government has already attacked the ability of this Taiwanese company to remain in Taiwan.
A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell?
WILLIAM J. ASTORE – Together, it’s time to find an exit ramp from the wars and weaponry highway to hell that we’ve been on since 1953 and look for the on-ramp to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s highway to peace.
How Workers in the South Are Defying History
TOM CONWAY – Workers at Blue Bird Corporation in Fort Valley, Georgia, launched a union drive to secure better wages, work-life balance, and a voice on the job. The company resisted them. History defied them. Geography worked against them. But they stood together, believed in themselves, and achieved a historic victory that’s reverberating throughout the South.
Understanding the Debt Ceiling Crisis and the Way to Avoid Disaster
BERNIE SANDERS – The debt ceiling is about paying money that has already been appropriated and spent. It has nothing to do with future budgets and future spending. Yet, Republicans have hijacked the debt ceiling process to impose savage cuts on the needs of working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. President Biden has the authority and the responsibility under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to make sure that we continue to pay our bills.