Portside

The Oxfam charity says only higher wages, crackdown on tax dodging and higher investment in public services can stop divide widening

Levins showed it is possible to be a serious scientist and a radical — a revelation for a scientifically and mathematically inclined young adult growing up at the “end of history.” He leaves an extraordinary scientific legacy matched by his legacy as a radical and activist.

The Clinton campaign has aggressively sought campaign donations from the biggest financial interests and Clinton has personally taken millions of dollars in speaking fees from Wall Street and the health care industry. Meanwhile, Sanders has generated enough true popular excitement and small donations to be financially competitive at a presidential level.

Woody Guthrie lived in Fred Trump’s Beach Haven apartment complex for two years, and he was characteristically vocal and eloquent about the racist policies that governed there.

For the novelty fetishists, everything's new, new, new. Boston-based poet Jill McDonough shines a light on what's happening, what's coming. Only maybe not.

The Bernie Sanders campaign has reached millions of people for whom it was easier to engage politics through the prism of a presidential campaign. The underlying issue of our time, is how to remake the U.S. political and economic system into something that works for everybody in our country and does more to help than to harm the rest of the world. Bernie is doing everything he can to keep us focused on this big issue, always clear that it cannot be solved by him alone.

From Gaza's colorful neighborhood to its underground theater, resistance is an art. More than anyone else, artists must have hope and must create hope for the people. The aim of art is to deliver a message about societal improvement and evaluation. Music provides an escape from the pain of war, the injustice of occupation, and the isolation from living under the siege imposed by Israel, after Hamas wrested control of the coastal enclave. It's also how they fight back.

Last year was the second-warmest on record in the continental United States. December was a U.S. record-breaker for heat and also precipitation. 2015 will prove to be the hottest year on record globally. Give Earth a few million years and it'll do fine. If climate change does its worst, life, in some fashion, will undoubtedly survive and someday once again flourish, but the environment will cease to exist in any time span that is meaningful to us.

The Portside moderators send our heartfelt thanks to our readers, for coming through in response to our annual appeal! We don't do a lot of fundraising -- just this annual appeal. We are grateful, and gratified, that the response allows us to keep to this bare minimum. Again, many thanks from the left side of the ship - the portside. Full speed ahead in the new year.