Portside

Twenty-one members of Congress last week called for lifting US sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, including most of the Squad. The pushback is needed: sanctions are a cruel economic weapon that hurts average people — and has spurred a surge of economic refugees.

President Wilson unleashes repression of peace advocates. Republican Party denounces slave trade as a ‘crime against humanity.’ First compulsory public education. Camden draft protestors acquitted. Wiretapping gets the nod. Amnesty for Confederates.

Remember: The US Treasury is obligated to make payments. The rest is optics.

Free Black Mamas DMV in 2017 is a self-described Black women and femme-run abolitionist campaign seeking to end the country’s current carceral system. The effort is part of the National Bail Out, a collective of local and national Black-led organizations that plan Mama’s Day Bail Out events around the country. 

Elites who tar their critics in the U.S. with the sly pejorative of “populist” count on our collective amnesia. They’d rather the real Populists remained forgotten, along with the potential they represented.

South Africa has 12 official languages. The two most dominant are isiZulu and isiXhosa. While the Zulu and Xhosa people share a rich common history, they have also found themselves engaged in ethnic conflict and division, notably during urban wars between 1990 and 1994. A new book, Divided by the Word, examines this history – and how colonisers and African interpreters created the two distinct languages, entrenched by apartheid education.

The Supreme Court justice switched sides on a landmark legal doctrine, satisfying his benefactors’ conservative advocacy machine.

The new decennial Religion Census offers cause for hope — and alarm — for both parties.

The far right’s victory in elections for the Constitutional Council may be the death knell for a progressive constitution in Chile. It’s also a needed wake-up call for the Chilean left.

A new procedure for donating hearts and other organs is saving lives. But for some it challenges the definition of death.