Portside

California appears to be ready to stand up against the Trump agenda. This builds off much of the organizing already taking place in the state, including some strong victories for workers in 2016. (It is worth noting that even white voters vote differently than whites elsewhere - see http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article119870398.html).

A good starting point would be to stop making the Nazis and Japanese imperialists the most compelling characters in the series.

Newly armed with the right to collective bargaining, teaching assistants, graduate assistants, and research assistants at private universities are organizing to join the ranks of the unionized.

For now, it will be up to states and cities to protect workers.

New Year's coming, a moment for memories, and a gift seldom appreciated until a person has lost the ability. Poet Jennifer L. Knox's Auld Lang Syne points to a sad irony.

At first glance, modern art and contemporary imperialism make strange bedfellows. The book under review both charts the history of the CIA's work in promoting US corporate interests through its manipulation of culture--what was then called cultural diplomacy-- while also working to define modernism. The reviewer congratulates the author on his first task, but criticizes him on the second.

Well over 150,000 miners lost their lives in the late 19th and early 20th century, more than in most wars in US history. Mother Jones would have argued that the problem was that the needs of the industry are prevailing above the needs of the earth and its people. For her and radicals of her generation, thinking of natural resources as belonging to the public was the great collective objection to the plunder for private gain.

Not only are Trump's cabinet appointments redolent with some of the worst elements in corporate America, but several have backgrounds that suggest they would move to decimate more than a century of legal protections for federal civil service employees, starting with instituting what would be in effect loyalty tests to gauge worker attitudes in light of proposed slavish pro-business accommodations by agency heads of the incoming administration.

For those of us who need a reminder of the notorious record of the CIA over the last sixty-plus years, here is a useful up-to-date history. Reviewer Paul Buhle shows some of this new book's high points.

The friend who urged me to see Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea told me it was the only film she’d been able to watch since the election, the only work of art that had, even briefly, distracted her from her worry about the future of our democracy. It might seem odd to describe a film about unendurable grief and sadness as a distraction—a word we more often associate with entertainment and escape. But after watching Lonergan’s astonishing film, I understood.