Portside

Biographer Chernow "gives us a military genius who understood the full scope of the war and pursued a winning strategy," writes reviewer Richard Moe, "and a sometimes inept president who, though unschooled in politics, made his highest priority the protection of the lives and rights of freed slaves."

The left’s role is to move opposition in the direction of politics — enabling working people to apply pressure when it can change the situation in their favor, building their (small-d) democratic strength. This is our mission inside and outside the Democratic Party, in social movements, in unions and in intellectual settings.

The election of Donald Trump produced a rash of commentaries heralding the death of organized labor, or at minimum an existential crisis. Although these epitaphs are not new and are very overblown, it is true that organized labor prematurely backed the corporate Democrat, failed to elect the candidate it did back, and is left divided over how to deal with the presidency of Donald Trump.

"As the winds of war are blowing in our world," Pope makes appeal for an end to conflicts that impact the world's children."

With so many good people feeling depressed, let’s point to the positive things that happened, even in this really, really bad year.

For my part, I see value in putting Coates’s and West’s perspectives in dialogue. To be clear, I am not interested in repeating or endorsing West’s critique here, and Coates needs no one to defend him, certainly not me. I believe that the reconciliation of their respective insights might open new directions.

Year end casualty count; Where the bodies are buried; Another press martyr; Wormy Apple; Bloodshot eye on sexism; NPR sausage recipe; Hazen out

On September 3, 1991, the Imperial Food Products plant in Hamlet, North Carolina burst into flames. Twenty-five people died, trapped behind the locked doors of the red-brick factory. Most of the victims were women; many were women of color, most were single moms. Another sixty people were injured, and the blast left more than fifty children orphaned. Local officials called the fire an accident, but the women and men who worked at Imperial had been made vulnerable by the factory’s owners as well as public policy.

A new Johns Hopkins University study finds that junk food images are almost twice as distracting as healthy food images.

“We’re at a crucial historical juncture, where literally the fate of the planet hangs by a thread,” says rocker Tom Morello. “We are musicians, so our message is in the mosh pit.”