Portside

Republicans spent decades paving the way and priming the party base for a candidate just like Donald Trump. They were never going to stop him. That job falls to progressive movements.

Will the eight years of America's first black president lead to more political voice for black citizens—or less?

The critics of Bernie Sanders' economic plan fail to reckon with the long-term benefits of a single-payer health care system.

In the same weeks that astronomers sighted the brightest supernova and the sound of a radiation wave confirmed Einstein's gravitational theory, the poet Maggie Clark turned her eye to the human dimension and noted the death of a great poet C.D. Wright.

American democracy has been failing for decades, so a disturbing number of us are turning to authoritarianism. Is Trump our Juan Perón? Trump's Atlantic City empire has crumbled. But Trump himself has somehow emerged stronger than ever. The man who sought to lure all aspiring monarchs to A.C. ('welcome to a kingdom where everybody's treated like a king') has whipped up a heady mix of xenophobia, political bromides, and so-light-it-floats policy proposals into a movement

For Sanders, and to build a more multi-racial left, progressive whites must prioritize work as loyal allies in struggles for racial justice led by activists of color. Jessie Jackson in his 1984 and 1988 campaigns boldly ventured into lily-white states, speaking at farm foreclosures and picket lines from Maine to Iowa. Ultimately, Sanders' "political revolution" must be as diverse as those who constitute the 99 percent.

The Bernie Sanders campaign is primarily a political movement with social overtones - in particular, its embrace by students and young people, mainly white, who are responding to an anti-austerity message presented clearly, forcefully and repeatedly. Social movements have also appeared (or re-appeared) in response to social issues stimulated by neoliberalism, and the rise of the nativist, religious, and armed far Right - #BLM; Fight for $15; DREAMers - and many more.