“The Obama trade agenda that Congress is considering fast tracking through Congress will lower wages, export jobs, increase the wealth divide and increase the trade deficit. This is the consistent history of trade agreements written for trans-national corporations. They benefit big business interests at the expense of the people and planet. Senators who vote for…

“Instead, what I found in the national news was ‘a hate crime.’ But that term really doesn’t go to the heart of the matter. Any killing is a hate crime but a racist lynching is not just any killing. Not even ‘terrorism’ is the most appropriate word because terror is what these massacres cause us…

“Some tried to chide me on issuing a call of sorts to white people about the environment that creates a Dylann Roof. Well, the Confederate flag, a flag of white supremacy flies on the South Carolina Statehouse grounds along with a statute of white supremacist ‘Pitchfolk’ Ben Tillman. Countless streets and buildings are named after…

“The Pope unapologetically calls on the global community to address how the chasm between rich and poor people — and nations — is linked to climate change. The encyclical names inequality itself as an impediment to solving a looming planetary and human rights crisis. In order to help remedy these imbalances, developed countries need to…

“The U.S. government put its military at Russia’s door step. The facility we entered into at Oak Ridge is illegal — it’s producing weapons of mass destruction. The government calls it ‘modernizing’ — but they’re making some 80 bombs a year. It’s unconscionable that we know the effects of nuclear weapons and continue to build…

“The corporate trade agenda is stalled in Congress. After a stinging defeat last week on one provision of the fast track trade package on worker retraining, the House considered re-voting on that measure as early as today. Both the worker retraining and fast track trade procedure had to pass identically to the Senate measure for…

“’Elected officials are receiving tens of thousands of calls from constituents opposing fast track trade authority and we want them to see that people opposed to this undemocratic approach to passing laws are so dedicated they will stay outside 24 hours a day. Elected officials need to know the anger of their constituents is deep…

“Those tortured and who remain imprisoned at Guantanamo, the over 2 million imprisoned by the U.S., those murdered by drones, by police, and killed in unlawful wars, and countless others oppressed by the U.S. ask, as Frederick Douglass did about the meaning of July 4 during slavery, ‘What to us is this Magna Carta?’ What…

“It’s serious flashback time for those involved in the 1993 debate over the North America Free Trade Agreement. With the ‘fast track’ trade vote … a Democratic president is once again twisting arms and dangling rewards in a desperate effort to muster votes for a corporate-driven trade deal. … The word is only about a…

“With Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership now on its way to the House floor, it’s time for our Representatives to stand up to the so-called free trade attacks on common sense protections for public health, the environment and consumers. Fast Track will unleash havoc on American workers, offshore millions more jobs, and exacerbate the…