Portside

The political revolution will continue after Election Day – if you stay involved.

Astrobiologists debate which chemical signatures would hint at life on other worlds.

The choice between the racism and nativism of Donald Trump, a man clearly unfit to be president, and Hillary Clinton could not be more clear. Bernie Sanders has it right: The first task of his continuing political revolution is to make certain that Trump loses, and loses badly.

An open letter to the voters of the United States...We believe it is our responsibility to use our platforms to bring attention to the dangers of a Trump presidency, and to the real and present threats of his candidacy. Initiated by 100 artists, actors, musicians, DJs, writers, directors, performers...

Victor Grossman reports from Berlin on causes of the spate of violence striking Germany and across Europe. We need not look too far to find possible causes of such hatred or, frequently, of distorted despair. I think of what so many have gone through. War-torn home towns, shootings, explosions and bombings in their native Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, a terrifying flight to get away, to find some haven, where they can escape and perhaps even realize their hopes and wishes.

After the murders, poet Anita Barrows addresses this elegy to a survivor, Diamond Lavish Reynolds, asking "how can we make your tears not/another deleted narrative?"

Throughout the twentieth century, liberal wisdom held that "socialism" or a social-democratic political formation could not be viable in America. Future historians may look back at the 2016 Sanders campaign as a great wave that swept away this old wisdom. But that new history will be written only if activists seize the opportunity before us to build, from the enthusiasm and activism of the Sanders campaign, enduring organizations.

Elected officials operate within the parameters of possibility. Movement politics is about redefining those parameters. Whoever is elected in November - even Trump - takes office in a country percolating with organized discontent at inequality, climate change, Citizens United, police violence. That's movement politics.

AFL-CIO leaders have reached out to union members in support of actions that can be taken to stop and prevent police killings of people of color. Racism plays an insidious role in the daily lives of all working people of color. This is a labor issue because it is a workplace issue; it is a community issue, and unions are the community. Philando Castile was a union member, and so his family is our family. Ideas of what you can do from labor activists.