Portside

"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.

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.

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.

"The Wednesday after the election I woke up in Jackson, Mississippi, and what that means is, no matter whether our country has experienced great boons or busts, in Mississippi, we've always been at the bottom," Mayor-elect Chokwe Antar Lumumba said. "We have to decide that we're going to rescue ourselves. That in places like Jackson, we won't allow it to be havens of oppression which endangers all of us."

Presiding over last month’s honorary Gramsci conference in Buenos Aires was a sense of urgency: a need redress certain aspects of Gramsci’s thinking in light of a reactionary uptick throughout the continent. The ability of right-wing movements—in Venezuela, Brazil, and elsewhere—to mobilize mass demonstrations against progressive governments has led several commentators to orient themselves through a rereading of Gramsci’s writings on fascism.

Wonder Woman doesn't just subvert superhero movie gender tropes, it does it in clever ways.