Portside

In Ferguson, the rallying cry - This is what democracy looks like - which echoes W.E.B. DuBois and the older generation's critique of capitalist civilization and imperialist power. And you also had people chanting -We gon' be alright - which is from rap artist Kendrick Lamar, who is concerned with the black body, decrepit schools, indecent housing. This chant is in many ways emerging as a kind of anthem of the movement for the younger generation.

Prominent Jewish Americans, including former officials of AIPAC, in a full-page ad in the New York Times,urged Congress to support the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -the agreement between Tehran and six world powers. Many of the signers have devoted decades to building and enhancing Israel's security and strengthening the US-Israel alliance, designed to counter claims by some on the American right that no supporter of Israel could endorse the agreement.

A focus on violence and looting reduces the people of Watts to “rioters” rather than residents confronting social and economic catastrophe. What they burned is less important than what they built, both before and after the insurrection.

On the anniversary of last summer’s Gaza massacre, in the 48th year of Israeli occupation, the 67th year of Palestinians’ ongoing Nakba (the Arabic word for Israel's ethnic cleansing)—and in the fourth century of Black oppression in the present-day United States—we, the undersigned Black activists, artists, scholars, writers, and political prisoners offer this letter of reaffirmed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

On Aug. 8, 2015, as the Black community prepared to collectively mourn the anniversary of the murder of Mike Brown by Ferguson police, members of Black Lives Matter disrupted a Bernie Sanders rally in Seattle. In the week since that disruption, at least nine Black people have been killed by state-sanctioned violence. #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Patrisse Cullors explains why the movement will continue to disrupt the political process.

The Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School are protesting to hold the Chicago Public School system accountable for destabilizing schools in their community. They created the plan to re-open the Dyett as a global leadership and green technology high school.

The omission of any mention of violence toward women in Straight Outta Compton is a particularly potent example of the biopic dilemma, because it connects to the queasiest part of the legacy of N.W.A. Misogyny has always been part of popular music, whether it’s in vaudeville or rock and roll or even today’s booming electronic-dance scene.

Eric Foner on the abolitionists, Reconstruction, and winning “freedom” from the Right.

Sesame Street gentrified; Busting journos in Ferguson; Technocapitalism sucks (blood); Trump stomps puny Fox; Cops take to the net

The case for a new, open-source party of unified progressive movements. From Black Lives Matter to Occupy Wall Street, from the DREAMer movement to that for divestment from fossil fuels, young people and people of color have been at the forefront of a new generation of popular movements rising to fill the democracy deficit left by an unresponsive political system.