Portside

Readers Comments: Death of Voting Rights Act, Gerrymandering, Confederacy Worship, Gestapo Seizures and Camps; RFK Insanity; Zohran Mamdani; Martin Niemöller's real quote; Italian Dockworkers Threaten to Shut Down All of Europe; No Kings 2 - Oct 18;

The capital has for most of its history been a largely-to-mostly-Black city run by open racists. This takeover by white federal officials is something many in the Black community have been anticipating for decades. There’s even a name for it-The Plan

Mamdani’s agenda will face serious obstacles. A massive wave of new voters doesn’t just carry you into office. It shifts the landscape, it creates political capital that can be turned toward other ends; changes political calculations for others...

Joshua D. Rothman reviews Zaakir Tameez’s biography “Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation.”

Manisha Sinha’s history of Reconstruction sheds fresh light on the period that fleetingly opened a door to a different America.

It is this – and so much more – that makes theirs a truly American story.

The president has gone nuclear against federal union jobs — historically African Americans’ ladder to economic equality.

Discussion of Mr. Musk often misses something: He is a white South African, part of a demographic that for centuries sat atop a racial hierarchy maintained by violent colonial rule. That history matters. He is in fact a distinctly ideological figure.

Printed out of a cattle barn in Missouri, Anvil published some of the biggest leftist writers of the 1930s, including Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. Its popular vision for multiracial socialism in the heart of the US could hardly be more urgent.

Interview with Dr. Maurice Jackson about his new book on the use of sport and music. Traditionally not fields touched on extensively in intellectual history, the book builds on both of these to create a rich tapestry of life in Washington, D.C.