Today's Liberal News

Finally, a BP subsidiary will finish cleaning up the former smelting site it acquired in 1977

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department announced on Friday that the Atlantic Richfield Company (AR) agreed to finish cleaning up the site of a former copper smelting site that the BP subsidiary had assumed control over all the way back in 1977. The Anaconda Co. Smelter was in operation for nearly a century. It closed in 1980; three years later it was deemed a superfund site by the EPA.

University of Hypocrisy

During the peak of the pandemic, John Katzman and I had a standing phone date at 7:30 on Friday mornings. Katzman usually walked along the beach near his house in the Hamptons while we spoke. I’d sit in my office, try to visualize the beauty of Long Island’s southeastern shore, and listen.Katzman is astonishingly knowledgeable about the American educational system. He founded Princeton Review, the test-prep behemoth, in the early 1980s, and has founded several other start-ups since.

Black Music Sunday: Much ado about Lizzo and James Madison’s flute

The flute is an instrument that dates back to ancient times. The United States Library of Congress has quite a collection of almost 1,700 of them, western and non-western, and until last week, I doubt very much that it was of interest to the general public. That changed when singer, rapper, and classically trained flutist Melissa Viviane Jefferson, who goes by Lizzo and happens to be a Black woman, was invited by our current Librarian of Congress, Dr.

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Hurricanes and Leadership

We begin today with an interesting piece by Aaron Blake of The Washington Post about how hurricanes have a way of defining the careers of municipal, state, and national leaders.

Two prominent examples will always spring to mind. One is Katrina, in which a slow and botched response was among the reasons George W. Bush left office in 2009 as one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history. By contrast, then-New Jersey Gov.

Florida’s Fatal Attraction

Boats on roofs; cars out to sea; coastal towns underwater. The sand from Naples Beach now chokes Naples streets. Hurricane Ian’s 150-mph winds yanked houses off of their foundation in Fort Myers, a pretty town once known for its avenues of royal palms. As many as 50 people reportedly are dead in Florida. In some of our glossiest, most affluent, most densely populated communities, survivors now sift through the ruins of their slice of paradise.

Dead Man Living

At Holman Correctional Facility, in Atmore, Alabama, the prisoners have a tradition of beating their doors when guards take a man from the holding area colloquially known as the “death cell” to the execution chamber to be killed. More than 150 men slam their full strength against solid steel, rolling thunder down the halls.

“I Didn’t See You There”: Filmmaker Reid Davenport on His Directorial Debut, Ableism & More

We speak with the award-winning filmmaker Reid Davenport about his directorial debut, “I Didn’t See You There,” in which he reflects on the portrayal of disability in media and popular culture. “Documentary film has traditionally subjugated disabled people, so I wanted to completely turn that on its head” by filming from his perspective without being seen, says Davenport.

Brent Renaud, First U.S. Journalist Killed in Ukraine War, Honored at New NYC Documentary Cinema

The lobby of DCTV’s new documentary film center in New York will be dedicated to the filmmaker Brent Renaud, who worked out of the historic firehouse alongside Democracy Now! for many years. Renaud was the first journalist to be killed in the Ukraine war after he was shot dead on March 13, 2022, while filming refugees near the capital Kyiv for a documentary series.

Brazil’s Lula Goes into Sunday Election with Massive Lead. Will Bolsonaro Accept an Electoral Defeat?

Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro faces former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s presidential election. Lula is a former union leader who held office from 2003 through 2010. He’s running on a leftist platform to uplift Brazil’s poor, preserve the Amazon rainforest and protect Brazil’s Indigenous communities, and is supported by a broad, grassroots alliance, explains Brazilian human rights advocate Maria Luísa Mendonça.

Fighting California’s fires requires carceral reform and a just transition

by Ray Levy Uyeda

This article was originally published at Prism

Fall is a tough season for Da’Ton Harris, a wildland firefighter who spends multiple weeks at a time attempting to tamp down fires without hoses. Harris and his crew of 20 other firefighters with the Urban Association of Forestry and Fire Professionals, where he’s a superintendent, are responsible for cutting down a forest to its soil so that, theoretically, there’s less fuel to burn.

Even a pandemic didn’t get paid sick days for most low-wage workers, this week in the war on workers

More than two years into the pandemic (still not over, President Biden!), there have been nearly 100 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States. In the early part of the pandemic, some workers benefited from a first-ever federal paid sick leave law, and a growing number of states require paid sick leave for many workers. But many workers have had to face COVID-19 with no paid sick time, and as usual, the burden falls most heavily on the workers who already have the least.