Portside

No ordinary cop show, The Shield starred the LAPD’s corrupt anti-gang unit, which itself functioned and behaved like a gang. The show vividly captured the failures of American policing that would animate the George Floyd protests 20 years later.

Our poet Cassandra Bousquet pleads for the shrinking opportunities before us, reminding us that “the edge is not the end”—yet!

When Communist writer Albert Maltz was blacklisted in the McCarthyist era, no commercial publisher in the U. S. would touch his novel A Tale of One January. A new edition slated for US distribution means his 70-year blacklist will finally end.

Maddow's new book surveys pre-WW II fascism in the United States, including the well-known figures in public life who sympathized with or were otherwise associated with the movement.

The history and thought of the artist Anselm Kiefer is threaded throughout this exceptional documentary from Wim Wenders.

The world’s first Ohlone restaurant closed after a one- year pilot. Now it’s coming back

Oops, they did it again (weaponized the desperation of the proletariat for fun).

Poet Philip Kolin depicts the plight of the homeless: “They give/American progress a bad name…”

Tim Alberta is a fine guide to the world of conservative US Christians, their dispiriting march to the right, and its ugly cost.

‘American Symphony’: The singer-musician-composer writes his magnum opus while his wife battles cancer in a moving ode to love, creativity, and the art of survival.