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A Thanksgiving Message

Portside moderator Portside
Just click through the link to the Portside website to explore what we've had to offer, this year and before, about Thanksgiving and lots more.

On Holiday Myths and State Violence

Kelly Hayes Lifted Voices
The myth of Thanksgiving creates a cheery, almost cartoon-like narrative of a incredibly dark and bloody period of American history. Native suffering is erased with holiday platitudes. These myths must be dismantled. It is a matter of defending the truth of our history, and the truth of our lives.

100 Years Later: 5 Timeless Lessons From Joe Hill

Nadine Bloch Waging Nonviolence
Joe Hill -- executed 100 years ago by a Utah firing squad -- knew the power of harnessing creativity. The Wobblies embraced songs, comics, soapboxing, and other creative tactics in reaching out to unorganized workers as well as in direct actions on the job site. “A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over,” Hill wrote in a letter to the editor of Solidarity in November 1914.

State of Emergency, State of Resilience

Cookie Woolner Praxis Center
The complex intersectional identities of transgender women of color, who are dealing with the overlapping issues of transmisogyny, racism, and classism, leave them vulnerable to multiple forms of institutionalized oppression.While much more systemic work is needed to improve the quality of life for transgender women of color, transgender activists and organizations are leading the movement to rectify these injustices.

From Mizzou to Yale: The Demands

Across the nation, students have risen up to demand an end to systemic and structural racism on campus. Here are their demands. Note: These demands were compiled from protesters across the country. These are living demands and will grow and change as the work grows and changes. If you have demands that are not listed, please send them to sam@thisisthemovement.org or @samswey. Last updated on 11/23/2015.

When America Was Overcome with Anti-Japanese Xenophobia During WWII, One Union Fought Back

Peter Cole Working In These Times
The current frenzy is hardly the first time Americans have been stampeded into such wild actions. Just over two months after the attack on Pearl, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which deemed all Japanese and Japanese Americans living near the Pacific Coast (where nearly all lived) a national security threat. FDR’s order led to approximately 110,000 people being relocated, against their will, to one of 10 internment camps in the interior West.

What’s Really at Stake at the Paris Climate Conference Now Marches Are Banned

Naomi Klein The Guardian
The French government’s decision to ban protests, marches and other “outdoor activities” during the Paris climate summit is disturbing on many levels. The one that preoccupies me most has to do with the way it reflects the fundamental inequity of the climate crisis itself – and that core question of whose security is ultimately valued in our lopsided world.