Portside

Afrofuturism posits a future that disrupts the present and calls out its injustices. Krista Franklin produces poetry and visual art in the Afrofuturist tradition. Her poems and art works have been published in Black Camera, Copper Nickel, and Encyclopedia, Vol. F-K. Franklin’s work has been exhibited nationally in the U.S., and was featured on 20th Century Fox’s ‘Empire’ (Season Two). She is interviewed on Berlin Art Talk about her artistic interpretations of the future.

My wish as I mourn the lives lost in Orlando? Let all families hold their loved ones dear; and let our LGBT American Muslims live their lives with dignity, openly and freely.

In this new book, Jerry Harris traces the links between the current stage of the development of transnational capitalism and the decline of democratic norms throughout society. Harry Targ guides us through this terrain, and, along the way, raises some critical questions about the significance of Harris's findings for today's social movements.

The Mexican government followed through on its threat to use force against striking dissident teachers.

 Despite hyped-up media accounts, Bernie-or-Bust was just one of many directions explored in Chicago.

Birmingham, Alabama, 74% African-American, with 47 % of its children living in poverty passed a minimun wage bill to take effect this March. Republican in the State House passed legislation to undue the measure, taking away the right of local juristiction to enact labor ordinances that impact workers. As a result, 42,000 low-wage workers in Birmingham lost wages increases. Now workers are fighting back with a state-wide Living Wage campaign.

It is no coincidence that CEO pay has reached astronomical levels at the same time that income inequality has widened to a level not seen since the eve of the Great Depression or even the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. A wide body of scholarship has linked the two. CEOs, who earn 335 times the pay of their average employee, make up a big chunk of the 1 percent. Some ideas to change that are kicking around.

Five thousand members of the Minnesota Nurses (MNA) walked out June 19, kicking off a weeklong strike at five Allina hospitals in the Twin Cities. The immediate sticking point is health insurance, but this is also a showdown over nurses’ power on the job, as Allina pushes to hand over staffing decisions to a robot.

As these and other thoughtful observers acknowledge, the question is not an easy one. On the one hand, in the U.K., the movement to leave is led by the right — with a generous sprinkling of racist elements — and a Brexit victory would likely strengthen their hand. On the other hand, the EU has increasingly become a neoliberal project and — partly because neoliberalism generally requires it — an anti-democratic one.

A historian debunks liberal myths about racism, the New Deal, and why the Democrats moved right.