Portside

"It is an outrage that the secretary of state in Ohio is going out of his way to keep young people — significantly African-American young people, Latino young people — from participating." Sanders said.

The United States rarely sees massive collaborative actions involving workers across unions and industries and non-union activists. Elsewhere in the world, such strikes—whether symbolic daylong actions or more prolonged walkoffs—are more commonplace.

Just in time for this year’s presidential primary, a new law in Maryland will allow former offenders on probation or parole the right to vote.

The press has largely blown the biggest political story of the last fifty years: not the shocking rise of Donald Trump, but how the GOP slowly set the stage for him.

Hillary Clinton's tax plan would result in modest decreases in after-tax income that would figure to irritate America’s most financially fortunate. But that irritation would likely turn to outright outrage if the Bernie Sanders proposals ever went into effect.

Viewing Donald Trump in light of the fascists of the first half of the twentieth century – who used economic stresses to scapegoat others, created cults of personality, intimidated opponents, incited violence, glorified their nations and disregarded international law, and connected directly with the masses – helps explain what Trump is doing and how he is succeeding.

Reader Comments: Celebrating International Women's Day (Bev Grant in song); Democracy Spring - call for national civil disobedience actions in Washington, DC in April; Trumpism - What it Means; Race and Representation; Stephen Hawking and Robots; In Memory of Dr. Quentin Young; Tech Workers and Unions; Report from Palestine; Leonard Peltier Film Series starts in New York.

Events in Germany are truly alarming - with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) moving up into third place and both the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) slipping. This is connected with the immigrant wave but laden with too many nasty memories - and there is rightward shifts in France, Poland, Slovakia, Denmark and Sweden.

In 1970, the United States Post Office Department issued a 6 cent stamp to commemorate the Stone Mountain Memorial. Ken Lawrence summarizes the historical and political background of the memorial and suggests that the stamp was veiled gift to Southern advocates of white supremacy.

Can disruptive social movements change the world or are we better served by take-it-slow, wait-a-year-or-more-to-speak-up, incremental change? Mark and Paul Engler make a case for the former, arguing in their new book, This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century, that supposed pragmatism often stands in the way of genuine progress. The grand slogan of Paris, 1968 -- "Be realistic, demand the impossible" -- is sage and sober advice.