Portside

This weekend, thousands of people -- including one-fifth of the U.S. Congress and President Obama -- are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the famous Selma to Montgomery march. The irony is rich: The 1965 Selma march -- and the violent "Bloody Sunday" caused by Alabama troopers -- is credited with speeding passage of the Voting Rights Act, Yet voting rights in the South and the Voting Rights Act itself are in their most precarious position in half a century.

Seniors at Albuquerque's Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School voted online to hold a Communist-themed prom they quickly dubbed “prom-munism.” Meanwhile, caught between a rock and a Marxist place, school officials seem for now to be hedging their bourgeois bets.

In January 2015, the International Campaign for Responsible Technology (ICRT), the GoodElectronics Network plus more than 60 expert allies from 15 countries met, discussed and drafted a CALL concerning the hazards of chemicals used in the global electronics supply chain. "A Challenge to the Global Electronics Industry to Adopt Safer and More Sustainable Products and Practices, and Eliminate Hazardous Chemicals, Exposures and Discharges" is organizing for endorsements.

“It’s ugly, it’s vicious, it’s brutal” describes Israel in Palestine — and why Gaza is “the hood on steroids” says Cornel West speaking with Stanford Professor David Palumbo-Liu about the divestment effort and Palestinian activism. The interview ranges from how the issue of Israel-Palestine is registering not only with young people, but also with older progressives and intellectuals, and about the linkages between civil rights struggles in the US and abroad.

LeftRoots, an organization of Leftists engaged in mass organizing in the USA, is committed to developing individual and collective skills necessary to formulate, evaluate and carry out strategy to build 21st century socialism. Points of unity, organizing and study are integrated to strengthen efforts to challenge capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy hetero-patriarchy and create strategies for cultivating democratic, protagonist-lead and transform social movements.

The evidence is overwhelming, the rich and powerful of Venezuela have followed a continuous, constantly morphing plan to de-stabilize the country and take over the government by any means necessary and the United States government knows about that plan, supports it and, as much as it can, is assisting in it. Is there a coup planned in Venezuela? All the time. Venezuela has lived under relentless political and physical sabotage as a result of its successes.

In a historic vote Algeria's parliament passed a law on Thursday criminalizing violence against women. But without amendment, observers say the new law is fatally flawed, because it fails to take into account the reality of the power relations and inequality between men and women. The law makes inflicting injury on one's spouse punishable with up to 20 years in prison. But, it also allows a survivor of domestic violence to pardon the perpetrator.

For 50 years, 83 year-old ‘Mathabiso Mosala has been a leader of the Lesotho National Council of Women, a coalition of women’s organizations that has tirelessly advocated for women’s rights in Lesotho, including winning Lesotho’s 1995 ratification of the Convention of the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the Lesotho government’s 2006 passage of the Legal Capacity of Married Person’s Act, which gave women the right to own and manage property.

For 50 years, 83 year-old ‘Mathabiso Mosala has been a leader of the Lesotho National Council of Women, a coalition of women’s organizations that has tirelessly advocated for women’s rights in Lesotho, including winning Lesotho’s 1995 ratification of the Convention of the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the Lesotho government’s 2006 passage of the Legal Capacity of Married Person’s Act, which gave women the right to own and manage property.

Dissent contributor Timothy Shenk interviews noted historian Jill Lepore about her new book The Secret History of Wonder Woman. The book reveals that Wonder Woman, which launched in 1941, was actually inspired by the suffragist feminists and birth control activists of the 1910s and was later an inspiration for women who were involved in women’s liberation movement in the 1960s and the early ’70s. According to Lepore, Wonder Woman is a missing link.