Portside

Saying Marxism is a science is preface. Add organized sarcasm and we come closer to mocking not so much intimate feelings associated with worldly illusions but their form in a particular perishable world. It aims to give new form to certain aspirations, the better to regenerate them. Yet if Marxist movements are to be effective, they must create new tastes and a new language for struggles to be born. Sarcasm then is about what outrages our sense of what should be.

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was one of the most significant U.S. writers of the last quarter of the 20th Century. She described herself as "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet." This new collection of her poetry and prose allows readers to remind themselves of her thought and its significance.

In California, labor has long protected its immigrant members—and now, it’s defending non-members as well.

Black Panther is a story we haven't seen told before in popular cinema — a story about black people completely untouched by colonialism, who exist entirely outside the global systems of institutionalized racism.

Jerry Wurf, the national president of the public workers union American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, considered the Memphis sanitation workers’ protest more than a strike; it became a social struggle, a battle for dignity. Wurf called the strike a “race conflict and a rights conflict.”

Jerry Wurf, the national president of the public workers union American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, considered the Memphis sanitation workers’ protest more than a strike; it became a social struggle, a battle for dignity. Wurf called the strike a “race conflict and a rights conflict.”

For her book, America: The Cookbook, Gabrielle Langholtz looked at cookbooks as well as narrative and anthropological books to fully explore America’s culinary history—Little House on the Prairie and the Sterns’ many varied books among them.

"Women's Work? Voices of Vermont Educators" details the reality of work for teachers and paraeducators in Vermont. These workers are putting in long hours to meet growing student needs, as the opioid epidemic is on the rise, and child poverty grows. They are spending their own money to buy food and clothes for students. They are supporting their families as the primary breadwinner, and paying off high levels of loan debt. And they feel disrespected because they work in a female-dominated profession.

On February 26, with a pro-corporate majority Supreme Court, a single case threatens to unravel the protections public sector nurses have fought so hard to secure for their patients over the years. “Janus v. AFSCME” is intended to weaken public sector unions by encouraging employees in unionized public sector workplaces to refuse to pay dues — while they enjoy the rights and benefits of a union contract and representation.

Aside from the sheer entertainment of the series, Babylon Berlin offers its new American audience the warning it needs in 2018. As the plot progresses, Rath must choose between his morals and nationalism—something Americans struggle with often in the 21st century. But Babylon Berlin shows us how a progressive nation can crumble when it allows bigotry and intolerance to fester.