Portside

Did we do enough in 2016? And how can we build a broader electoral movement? I don't believe the Left bears the brunt of the blame for Hillary Clinton's defeat, and I reject arguments that try to score political points through guilt-tripping. Both long-term and short-term factors worked against a Clinton victory. Trump is not Reagan; 2016 is not 1980. But both elections were lost by tone-deaf Democratic elites who dismissed the economic anxieties of the working class.

According to the back of Meredith Tax's A Road Unforeseen: Women Fight the Islamic State, a 'democratic society' with 'women on the front lines as fierce warriors and leaders' is growing in the midst of Syria's destruction. This new society - Rojava - was founded by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian-Kurdish offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). How does the PKK function internally, how will it deal with class divisions or regional differences?

In search of answers, many of us ask our kids to "Google" something. These so-called digital natives, who've never known a world without screens, are the household's resident fact-checkers. If anyone can find the truth, we assume, they can...Don't be so sure.

Reader Comments: Standing Rock - Tremendous Victory to Start Trump Presidency; Trump Changed Everything; What Next for the Left; Remembering Fidel Castro and his Impact Worldwide and in the U.S.; Jobs, Shorter Work Week; Chelsea Manning; Tondalo Hall imprisonment; We Need Each Other - Why People Should Support Portside; Announcements: UMASS Labor Scholarships; Make $15 Real Under Trump; New York March for Immigrants

John Rees, author of The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organization in England 1640-1650, (Verso, 2016; reviewed in Portside Culture, November 30, 2016) weighs in with his recommendations about some of the best fiction in English dealing with radical movements and the revolutionary experience.

The author says Hillary Clinton talked about the working class constantly. She had plans to help coal miners and steelworkers. She had plans to help those getting out of prison get jobs. She promoted clean energy jobs and spoke of the dignity of manufacturing jobs. The author argues that white Trump voters might just have been more interested in his attacks against Muslims and Hispanics.

Acclaimed Native American novelist Erdrich's fifteenth novel is a "multigenerational tale," writes reviewer Round, that "stretches across two centuries of life on the Northern Plains."

Somebody's got to be the first state to free the weed through the legislature. Here are the most likely prospects.

A call for solidarity for justice for Walter Scott from Black Lives Matter-Charleston, South Carolina in response to the trial of former South Carolina police officer, Michael Slager, who shot and killed Scott ended in a mistrial this week.

How can we understand the 2016 presidential election in a broad context of American history? This is a question that many Americans, pundits, and historians have been thinking through for the past month. To address it, we assembled a panel of experts.