Portside

Oskar Eustis, director of a mesmerizing Public Theater staging of Shakespeare’s play about taking down an incipient dictator, says that “Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.” This Delacorte Central Park enactment may be one of the best of the plays inspired (or provoked) by the election and presidency of Donald Trump.

Reader Comments: Impeachment, Not McCarthyism - Differing Reader Views; Who Were Trump Voters; Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution and the Working Families Party; United Front, Popular Front Lessons; Why Corbyn Won; Healthcare for All God's Children; California Single-Payer; A Message to Our Community on 50 Years of Occupation; Resources: When Black Women Succeed, All Women Succeed; Iran 1953: State Department Finally Releases Updated Official History of Mosaddeq Coup; more..

In the past 11 months, 151 workers and trade unionists have been arrested in Egypt and at least 2,691 have been fired taking legal strike actions. Repression of conflicts in the workplace has increased dramatically within the last few months, together with the worsening economic crisis. Recent economic and monetary policies have caused a dramatic deterioration in the living conditions of workers and the middle classes.

With all the toxicity coming out of the White House and the GOP-dominated Congress, it's important to remember how insufferable were the politics of the neoliberal Democrats in power under Bill Clinton. The book under review (an article derived from the book is below) should help us remember how malignant were the Clinton years when it came to economic and social justice.

Naomi Klein offers five steps on how to recognize—and fight back against—the president's "wildly pro-corporate policies"

"Workers complain of verbal abuse, impossible targets and ‘poverty pay’ so bad they have to live away from their children."

This week the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, named Tracy K. Smith as the U.S. Poet Laureate for 2017-2018. Smith is the fifth African American poet and the fourth black woman to hold the honor. She is the author of three books of poems, the most recent of which, Life on Mars, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. A link to the Library of Congress citation, and a review, from 2012, of Life on Mars, are posed below.

The Chicago Police Department is the target of a new lawsuit filed by Black Lives Matter.

Black women consistently work for a better country, but our country is not working for them. By placing Black women’s experiences and interests in the forefront of policy changes and social movements, we can address these barriers. A new report on the Status of Black Women written and co-produced by Institute for Women's Policy Research and National Domestic Workers Alliance that paints a picture of the lived experiences of millions of Black women across the US.