Today's Liberal News

Decades after the HIV/AIDS crisis, advocates and survivors watch COVID-19 cripple their communities

by Casey O’Brien 

For Rick Vila, HIV will always be associated with roses. Vila became infected with HIV in the 1980s in San Francisco. The day he was diagnosed, a friend of Vila’s asked him to come over to his house so he wouldn’t be alone. As they worked in his garden together, Vila pricked his finger while pruning his friend’s rose bushes. “I scratched myself, and there were these three long lines of blood from rubbing against this rose bush.

The thing about systemic racism is it’s systemic: This week in the war on workers

According to government statistics, the wage gap between white men and Black men has shrunk dramatically since the 1950s. But that’s only true, The New York Times’ David Leonhardt points out, if you compare workers—and the problem is, a lot of Black men have been pushed out of the workforce, in significant part by mass incarceration. When comparing Black men and white men, regardless of if they work, the wage gap is about the same as it was in 1950.

Stop Firing the Innocent

As companies and organizations of all sorts have scrambled to institute a zero-tolerance policy on racism over the past few weeks, some of them have turned out to be more interested in signaling their good intentions than punishing actual culprits. This emphasis on appearing rather than being virtuous has already resulted in the mistreatment of innocent people—not all of them public figures or well-connected individuals with wealth to cushion their fall.

How Far Bill Barr Has Fallen

Many observers breathed a sigh of relief when Bill Barr was confirmed as attorney general. Here was a respected professional who had served in the post once before in an honorable administration. Now, just a year and a half later, what a disappointment he has proved. The man cannot be trusted.Think of the intentionally misleading account he gave of the Mueller report, at a time when the public and Congress had only Barr’s word to go by.

Will Ferrell’s Best Comedy in Years Is Here

Sincerity is the key to every great Will Ferrell comedy. His classics, such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, are surreal satires of American arrogance. But they work because the title characters are earnest creations—buffoons invested with the genuine belief that what they’re doing is special.

The Looming Threat to Voting in Person

The daunting logistics of holding an election during a pandemic were on display in Kentucky on Tuesday, as voters in the state’s primary made their way to just 170 polling places—down from 3,700 before the coronavirus arrived. Considering the logistical challenges of social distancing, record absentee-ballot requests, and uncertainties about whether officials could recruit sufficient poll workers, observers on the ground judged the election to be surprisingly well run.

Repair & Revive: Rev. William Barber on Fighting Racism, Poverty, Climate Change, War & Nationalism

The Poor People’s Campaign offered a counterpoint to President Trump’s sparsely attended Tulsa campaign rally with a mass digital gathering that unveiled a policy platform to spur “transformative action” on five key issues of systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and the threat of religious nationalism. “We have to repair and revive,” says Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.

As Americans rise up in defense of Black lives, Black protest anthems resonate more than ever

Protest songs have seen a major spike in streaming numbers in recent weeks, and the timing of the upsurge is no coincidence: Black Lives Matter uprisings around the country have brought renewed attention to the history and power of Black-led civil unrest in the U.S., of which music has long been an integral part. According to Billboard, protest songs from artists like Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Beyoncé, James Brown, and others have been streamed at high numbers.

A win for the Trump administration: SCOTUS upholds fast-track deportations of denied asylum seekers

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that previously denied asylum seekers cannot challenge their fast-tracked deportation cases in federal courts in a 7-2 decision Thursday. The court found that expedited deportations for migrants at or near the border who fail initial asylum screenings does not violate due process rights or constitutional protections against unlawful detention, the Associated Press reported.