Portside

The fact that Walter Scott was killed on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination makes stark the distinction between the reality of the post-civil rights era and pretensions to a post-racial era. The slogan of the day, born from a Twitter hashtag, is Blacklivesmatter. That says a lot. the issue of the sanctity of black life has still not been settled.

Angelina Jolie’s public message about her medical decisions related to cancer is about knowing your risks for disease, not hers.

America’s billionaires minimize their tax burdens, making the rest of us pick up their tab.

Netanyahu should accept the American offer of dialogue on the draft agreement reached in Lausanne, instead of signalling his intent to scupper it out of hand.

As union elections near, elected officials can generally say things that employers cannot communicate without risking labor law violations. Neither companies nor unions, for instance, can create an “atmosphere of confusion or fear of reprisals” under election procedures. So long as politicians are not conspiring with either party to do that--a difficult fact to prove in itself--no such standard applies to elected leaders like Mayor Summey.

This poem references the violence of enforced disappearance and forced displacement that is rampant in Colombia. Colombia has over 50,000 reported disappearances, and about 5 million internally displaced.

The grass-roots progressive movement that defeated Rahm Emanuel on Feb. 24 and made him struggle to keep his seat on April 7 is not going away. Just next week, thousands of us will take the streets to demand a $15-per-hour minimum wage. This summer and fall, we will be fighting for a state and city budget that adequately funds the public services we need to build strong, healthy communities. Here, Portside shares three early election analysis articles.

What is at stake in Greece goes very far beyond merely financial questions. It goes beyond the question of the fate of a small and historically very badly governed country with weak institutions that has suffered abominably in the wake of the crisis over the last five years...It goes even beyond that very grave situation...It goes beyond that to the future of Europe and beyond that, to the meaning of the word democracy in our time.

Two weeks ago Portside published an essay by Michael Brie, The Tragedy of Party Communism. Here Kurt Stand, David Cohen and Jack Radey reflect on their participation in the socialist movement, what lessons there may be to draw on, as well as which to forget. For today's and tomorrow's socialists, they see socialism as a system that could be reformed, capitalism a system that needs to be abolished.