Portside

Against the self-serving behavior of the elite, we are seeing the rise of two currents. One of them bases its decisions on fear. They want us to direct our anger downwards, to spit on the unemployed, refugees, people who have things even tougher. It’s a trick. By spitting on those below, they are protecting the elite above. In doing so they avoid the question of power. But there is also another current. It is led not by fear but by hope.

Taken together, these sitcoms remind us of the centrality of race, not just to our conversations but to policies around income inequality.

The question is whether public schools owe disabled children “some” educational benefit — which courts have determined to mean just-above-trivial progress — or whether students legally deserve something more: a substantial, “meaningful” benefit.

Ahead of President Obama’s farewell speech in Chicago this week, the author of a celebrated book about the city explains how it works as a microcosm of the US, with its legacy of policies reinforcing ethnic and economic divisions.

Trumpsters against Jews; Trumpsters against Trumpsters; Jews against Jews; Trumpsters against Intellectuals; Intellectuals against Trump; Alt.Right and Guilt.Left

Senator Sessions’ record suggests a remarkable consistency in support of policies that contradict and subvert the Reconstruction amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantee citizenship, equal protection under the law, and the ballot to all Americans.

The old instrumental notion of the state, that it’s a machine, and you grab it and use it for your own purposes, or even more stupidly, that you smash it, are wrong. What does it mean to smash the state? This is our great challenge.

I have a very simple, even modest, proposal, one that offers us means both of having the cake and of eating it too. Why not, in the very same legislation that repeals ObamaCare, instantly entitle all who lose their insurance coverage under the ACA immediately to enroll in Medicare? The enrollment might be permanent, and at the prices that Medicare currently costs its participants, or it might be simply until such time as a viable replacement for ObamaCare is found . . .

In his no-holds-barred book, “The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers,” former Marine and Army Joseph Hickman exposes the knowing contamination of thousands of soldiers stationed on bases with these lethal pits.

Keanga-Yamahtta Taylor has written the most important book of 2016. Published by Haymarket, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation has struck a chord nationwide, garnering major awards but more importantly sparking necessary debates. George Ciccariello-Maher interviews her for ROAR Magazine.