Portside

Reparations promise us a monumental re-birthing of America. Like most births, this one will be painful. But the practice of reparations must continue until the world that slavery built is rolled up and a new order spread out in its place.

The shock election result in Britain has been attributed to the youth vote, leading to claims that younger voters don’t/can’t understand the issues at stake. Are the concerns valid?

The Trump-obsessed big media are mostly ignoring it, but Bernie-inspired activists are winning across the country—including in districts that went for Trump in 2016.

It may be good for a few big corporations’ bottom lines, for the Pentagon’s relevance in the region, and for local security forces and their political patrons, but don’t expect this militarized approach to development to solve the ongoing crises in Central America.

Fighting to protect what remains of US environmental protections. Until 2020, or as long as is necessary.

Low-income people have been dealing with the U.S. housing crisis for decades; now the problem is working its way up the income ladder. Many who thought themselves comfortably ensconced in the so-called middle class are now confronting the prohibitive cost of housing. Decent housing is out of the reach of so many. And we need comprehensive housing reform, real living wages, and a reinvestment in the social safety net because it has been a crisis for so very long.

While the politics concentrated on issues rather than identity approaches, it was noteworthy, if not necessarily important in terms of political direction, that women and people of color taken together outnumbered white guys. This was due in part to the heavy involvement of organized nurses, and to the conveners' efforts to ensure diversity. Anyone expecting a gaggle of young, arrogant Bernie Bros would be in for a surprise.

We have to build our organization and not just show up for rallies. DSA will have to “walk on two legs,” sustaining mass opposition to the Trump administration and its red-state equivalents while building social movements for economic, gender, and racial justice that can spur electoral challenges to pro-corporate Democratic incumbents.

Visitors will be invited to reflect on capitalism as if looking back at it from a world in which capitalism is dead.

“It’s time to ask millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share — the same share as the rest of us — to make those investments and generate equitable economic growth across Massachusetts.”