Portside

As long as white children are constructed as innocent, we must continue to demand that children of color are as well. The idea of childhood innocence carries so much political force, we can’t allow it to be a whites-only club. We argue that black and brown children are as innocent as white children, we assume that childhood innocence is purely positive. The idea of childhood innocence itself is not innocent: It’s part of a 200-year-old history of white supremacy.

Although advances for the South African people have been made under ANC leadership, continuing poverty and unemployment made worse by the recession and decline in the value of the Rand. The solution to our frustrations with the ANC will not be solved if the reasons that have led to the failure to assert working class hegemony within the tripartite alliance of ANC, COSATU and SACP is not accurately diagnosed. This was the question before the SACP Convention.

Mumia Abu-Jamal speaks about some of the issues he engages with in his new book Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?, including police violence and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

Doubling down on the drug war is likely to result in increased violence, not increased public safety. The damage these policies have done to black communities has been well documented. But less attention has been paid to the ways that women of color specifically are targeted in drug cases and are subject to abuse or assault by police officers.

The powerful image of Bree Newsome climbing the 30-foot flagpole in front of the South Carolina State House in the aftermath of the the Charleston Massacre to remove the Confederate flag is now ingrained in my memory and the collective memory of America. To see city and state governments following suit has brought about a bitter feeling of approval for me. It shouldn’t have taken a massacre to get to this point.

For the credibility of the left, we have to mark out our own turf in this upheaval. We have to independently offer our own priorities on what’s wrong with Trump.

Dumbing down; Jews divide; Kochs’ revenge; From red states to red tide?; New time of the toad; Southern Baptist: “Basta!”

“Trump came in there to the factory last December and blew smoke up our asses. He wasn’t gonna save those jobs. And, if that’s the case, he would have saved us and Rexnord, a company around the corner from us that makes parts.

"Massachusetts law provides no authority for Massachusetts court officers to arrest and hold an individual solely on the basis of a Federal civil immigration detainer beyond the time that individual would otherwise be entitled to a release from State custody,” the unanimous Supreme Judicial Court ruling states.

The US has a lot to learn from people powered movements, cities across Europe are increasingly deciding to reclaim public services, spearheading a growing movement for "remunicipalization," meaning the return of public services from private to public.