Portside

The Haitian Revolution sowed fear in the hearts of Cuba's slaveholding class. In Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, historian Ada Ferrer undertakes a comprehensive evaluation of the impact made by the Haitian Revolution on Cuba, then still a Spanish colony located only fifty miles from Haiti's western sea borders.

Were the mass 'We are Charlie' demonstrations in France in support of 'We are France,' in the best republican tradition or a shot against Muslim immigrants signifying that 'You are not?' Polymath Emmanuel Todd argues that the demonstrations, like much of Charlie Hebdo's satire, were not so much attacks on toxic religious ideology as broadly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab, indicating that the vaunted French secularism has lost its solidaristic component, 'equality.'

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Noting that conditions today are similar to those at the dawn of the Gilded Age characterized by disproportionate wealth and extreme corruption, retiring DC Metro Labor Council President Joslyn Williams added, "In that era, they were lobbing vicious attacks against workers with guns and batons. Today, they are armed with suits and maneuvers that undercut workers from Wall Street to the state house to U.S. Supreme Court."

Greek sailors plan a 48 hour strike to protest the government's planed attack on social security as well as their plan to eliminate the seaman's insurance fund.

A children's book showing happy slaves in the South was pulled off the market last weekend after a major controversy about its contents. This is just the latest flareup in an ongoing dispute about books aimed at children that show slavery and racist subordination in a positive light.

Du Bois’s general strike thesis continues to cast a long shadow over contemporary historiography and black intellectuals alike. Eighty years later lessons still abound in Black Reconstruction.

As the history of Puerto Rican migration to the US indicates, the seemingly distinct campaigns for immigrant rights and those for racial justice ought to be viewed as interdependent and complementary struggles. This may prove the key to creating a more just and sustainable approach to migration policy.

Donald Trump bears a striking resemblance to George Wallace and Ross Perot, two men who waged among the most successful and highest impact third party presidential candidacies in US history. Perot and Wallace waged their third party campaigns after failing to win the Republican (Perot) and Democratic (Wallace) nominations. What impact might Trump have on the Republican party and the political system if he wins -- or fails to win -- the Republican nomination?

Not until he was safely buried underground was a new, less threatening King birthed and branded. This state-sanctioned, sanitized version of King has since been manipulated to discredit, delegitimize and disinform subsequent organizers who wish to continue his legacy in the current work for Black liberation.