Portside

To ask if the rogue Republican’s surge is good for Democrats is the wrong question. The most important question that should be asked about the Trump candidacy is: What is wrong with America that this racist, misogynist, money-cheating clown should be the frontrunner for the presidential nomination of one of its two major parties?

Scientists have discovered a new human-like species in a burial chamber deep in a cave system in South Africa.

On Wednesday night 26,000 union members participated in a phone call with Bernie Sanders.

Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko, a Korean-born Los Angeles poet, reveals the complications of immigration to the US from the point of view of a child, now an adult, who must sort out fiction from fact.

There's a difference between 'right-to-work', which limits agreements between workers' unions and employers, and First Amendment restrictions on government in matters of religion, speech, expression, association and so on. For conservatives, though, rights are rolled up into one, giant "freedom" ball aimed at imposing individual beliefs at the expense of democracy right down to the duties of a job. Who then are the prisoners of conscience?

Washington helped create the conditions with its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers keep on growing. The authorities are overwhelmed, as are the solidarity networks. The refugee crisis has revealed a different rift: between thousands of ordinary citizens, from Greece to Germany to Britain, ready to share their bread their homes, and governments determined to fortify their borders and protect their power, backed by both the anxious and the frankly xenophobic.

After nearly a year of deliberation, the state Supreme Court ruled late Friday afternoon that charter schools are not constitutional. Chief Justice Barbara Madsen wrote that charter schools aren't "common schools" because they're governed by appointed rather than elected boards. Therefore, "money that is dedicated to common schools is unconstitutionally diverted to charter schools,

In upcoming votes for the European Union's most indebted countries, the left will have to battle both the forces of austerity and a resurgent xenophobic right. The backdrop for elections in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland is one of deep economic crisis originally ignited by the American financial collapse of 2007-08. The response of the EU is massive cutbacks in government spending, widespread layoffs, and double-digit tax hikes on consumers.

I celebrate Radical Reconstruction, a brief moment of glory, no matter how blindly and halfheartedly we, as a nation, did it. Did Reconstruction end racism? No. Does that make it a failure? No again. Considering it a failure is like considering the civil rights movement a failure because it only abolished segregation and not racism.

Reader Comments: The GOP, Trump and the Appeal to Reaction; No Union Mines in Kentucky; Black Panther Party film; Lessons from Alabama's Black Communists and the #BLM; Indigenous People's History of the United States; Serena Williams; Climate Change and Workers; New Resource: Black Lives Matter Syllabus; Livestream Sept. 18: Unions, Workers, and the Democratic Party