Portside

Legendary rock star Patti Smith's look back expresses supremely well the tentativeness of every movement forward, the sense of following a path so risky, so sketchily perceptible, that at any moment one might go astray and never be heard from again, never perhaps even hear from the deepest part of oneself again. For a book that ends in success, it is acutely sensitive to that abyss of failure that haunts the attempt to become any kind of artist.

Dialogue is essential. It is the only way to put an end to situations of conflict. Otherwise there will be particular interests that will push conflict. There are governments, which claim that they want democracy but at the same time they encourage and assist terrorist bodies. To bring peace to the world is not an easy task because this depends on social justice.

Thanks to a sophisticated strategy and tenacious rank-and-file leadership from City College of San Francisco faculty, students and staff as well as their allies, the accreditation system is being challenged to protect public education, teachers, students and workers in California.

The United States keeps nuclear weapons in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey, in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which bans the transfer of nuclear weapons from a nuclear weapon state to a non-nuclear weapon state. Now, the U.S. wants to upgrade its nukes in Europe, to make them "precision" and "guided," and therefore more likely to be used, even as tensions build between the United States and Russia.

To this day, it remains difficult to take in the degree to which the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq destabilized the Greater Middle East from the Chinese border to Libya. Though you’ll seldom find it mentioned in one place, five countries in the region -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen -- have all disintegrated as nation states. Three were the focus of direct American interventions, the fourth (Yemen) was turned into a drone hunting ground.

In the last 10 days, five black churches have been set on fire in the St. Louis area. And unlike the last wave of black church fires this summer in which weather played a role in some of the fires, these all appear to be the work of arsonists. The lack of media coverage about these fires is highly-noticeable, given the media’s hyper-intensive coverage of rioters in Baltimore setting fire to a CVS earlier this year.

The discussion of democratic socialism should embrace our own American radical tradition. There’s nothing wrong with Denmark; we can learn a few things from them (and vice-versa). But we should talk first of all about our radical forebears here in the United States, for the most successful radicals have always spoken the language of American society and appealed to some of its deepest values.

In 2008 Republic Window and Doors closed down down their factory in Chicago. The workers then occupied the factory and after many twists and turns they have persevered.

Pro baseball player and coach Dusty Baker was a teenage rock and roller. His new memoir details those years, centered on the legendary Monterey Pop Festival, where Jimi Hendrix played his way to stardom. Charles Bethea profiles Baker in advance of his memoir of those year of hanging out with a host of legendary musicians and learning how rock and roll is like baseball.

Rick Perlstein noticed Republicans showing up at Bernie Sanders events. He set out to find out just how many of them there are. They don’t know they are not supposed to like Bernie Sanders. They hear what he is saying, and like what they hear. Something is happening here that reminds us that our models for predicting winners and losers in politics always need to be subject to revision.