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The Great Land Robbery

Vann R. Newkirk II The Atlantic
Man looking at posted no hunting sign on farm in Mississippi. The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms.

books

Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the ‘Stony Road’ for Black Americans

David Luhrssen Shepherd Express (Milwaukee)
The highly regarded scholar's latest work tackles the deep roots of white nationalism as it emerged from conflicts surrounding Reconstruction and the failure of post-Civil War governments to stamp down racism and secure genuine emancipation.

Tidbits - January 11, 2018 - Reader Comments: Puerto Rican Foreclosures; Israel - Teens Refuse New Ban on BDS Supporters; Pensions; Second Amendment; Jim Crow history; Women's March 2018 - January 20; and more.....

Portside
Reader Comments: Puerto Rican Foreclosures; Israeli Teens Refuse Army; Israel Bans BDS Supporters; Worker Safety; Pension; Free Market; Settler Colonialism and the Second Amendment; Nuclear Testing; Pollution from U.S. Military Bases - in our country; U.S. history - Jim Crow South; Record Numbers Visit Cuba last year (from the U.S.); Women's March 2018 - January 20; Resources, Announcements; and more.....

film

Review: "Mudbound" Is a Racial Epic Tuned to Black Lives, and White Guilt

A.O. Scott New York Times
"Mudbound" is about how things change—slowly, unevenly, painfully. It is also, as the title suggests, about how things don’t change, about the stubborn forces of custom, prejudice and power that lock people in place and impede social progress. Set mainly in the Mississippi Delta in the years just after World War II, when Jim Crow was still enshrined in law and practice, the film tests and complicates Faulkner’s much-quoted claim about the not-even-pastness of the past.

Too Poor to Vote: How Alabama's 'New Poll Tax' Bars Thousands of People from Voting

Connor Sheets AL.com
In nine states from Nevada to Tennessee, anyone who has lost been imprisoned and lost thier right to vote, cannot regain it until they pay off any outstanding court fines, legal fees and victim restitution. In Alabama, that requirement has fostered an underclass of thousands of people who are unable to vote because they do not have enough money.

labor

The Racist Origins of Right to Work

Michael Pierce Labor Notes
As alt-right and white supremacist movements grow it is important to revisit history and see the ways in which most hate movements are intertwined.

Democracy's Critics

Colin Gordon Jacobin
You can't understand the modern right without understanding their fundamental contempt for democracy.

The Unexpected Afterlife of American Communism

Sarah Jaffe New York Times
The Communist Party U.S.A. had its greatest successes as the country reeled from the Depression. Today, as we are still picking our way out of the rubble left by the crash of 2008, left-wing ideas have gained new purchase.

books

To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice

Walter Johnson Boston Review
Not so much as a comprehensive weekly review of one unitary book, the following contribution is a synthetic culling of classics on white supremacy and racialism in the United States. We at Portside believe the essay is must reading, as are the books cited.

books

The Genius of James Brown

Geoffrey O'Brien New York Review of Books
Even in the era of the Beatles and Motown's roster of stars, the brilliant James Brown established a place that was his alone. His was not about magic, it was about power that could not be denied by anyone brought within its field of influence. What the book's author also finds is a wary solitariness that paradoxically found its fullest expression in Brown's ability to give himself so completely in performance to suggest a generosity approaching self-immolation.
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