Portside

A large majority of Americans, 68 percent, in a recent ABC/Washington Post poll said our economic system favors the rich rather than the majority. About half of those who said they were Republicans agreed. Economist Joseph Stiglitz has been following opinion research and consistently found that the percentages of those who see too much wealth inequality were high among men and women, Democrats and Republicans, people with lower incomes, even those with higher incomes.

If the state says you go to bed by 10 o'clock, then you should make sure that by 11, the streets of our cities are filled with human protest and bodies! The fact that some might have a restless night with the noise downstairs or find it inconvenient because people blocked traffic, well that's the point - to snap you out of your indifference! So those who are turned off by radical thinking, or radical behavior, well, as a matter of fact, in many ways, you are our target.

Vera B. Williams the award-winning writer, illustrator, children's book author and social justice activist, died last Friday. Her best-known picture book, A Chair for My Mother, was named as a Caldecott Honor Book. Long active in antiwar, antinuclear and environmental causes, Ms. Williams was a past member of the executive committee of the War Resisters League.

Grace Lee Boggs died yesterday at the age of 100. Boggs' love for humanity ran strong and deep, serving as a generative force for creating change. She was not a part of an elite intelligentsia. She lived in a modest little house on an even more modest income. She never held a tenured university job. She believed that ordinary people, not academics, had the power to understand their lives and to change the world with that understanding.

Culminating a 90-mile walk for justice and peace across Wisconsin, on August 26th, some of the walkers will commit nonviolent civil resistance at Volk Field, carrying the messages about drone warfare and racial profiling into courts of law and public opinion.

The left isn't important because of its numbers. It's important because its members are the canaries in the coalmine for an unresponsive political process. The left shares something else with that majority: it's heard a lot of empty promises. Many (though not all) progressives will vote for the Democrats once again in 2016, even if they're dissatisfied. But it will take more than rhetoric to win millions of other alienated voters. It will take commitment - and action.

Reader Comments - Vietnam - What Really Happened?; Chapel Hill Murders - Honor Their Memory; Chocolate, Mayan civilization; Ukraine; How Radical Change Occurs; Adjunct Profs; Teacher Unions; West Virginia Coal and Blood; Public Pensions; Water Privatization; Save the Postal Service; Timbuktu; UMass Backs Down on Iranian Student Ban; Artistic Expression; Support the Greek People; Announcements; Today in History - FDR Signs Order for Internment of Japanese Americans

Ebola evades Big Data; Underground networks in Hong Kong; PBS pouts; Streaming battles; Virtual Ponzi; Battlefield Twitter