Portside

Even when sensible adults finally take back government, “back to normal” is not what we want.

Daniel Kammen decries Trump’s attitude and policies on human rights and sustainability

The circus--as in Bread & Circus--is coming to town but as Oregon poet Amy Miller explains with brilliant clarity, it will not set you free.

Following the horrific events precipitated by white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members on Saturday in Charlottesville, VA, where 32-year-old Heather Heyer was murdered, President Trump shockingly came out in favor of the alt-right. The response by our community was swift. Some illustrators and designers created work anew, others re-purposed existing political art, illustrations and posters, and these began appearing in online publications and social media.

This last week has been surreal for my family. We lost one of our own in one of the most public ways possible. A man in a car ran down my cousin, Heather Heyer, because she decided to join her fellow Charlottesville residents against the neo-Nazis and white supremacists on their streets.

Portside anticipated that the DSA convention would be a watershed event for the left. Just before it was called to order, membership surpassed 25,000. The group was making a leap from minor to major, and we welcomed that. We contacted some DSAers we know who were present, to bring you their views on what the meeting meant for DSA and the left.

Reader Comments: White Supremacy in the Age of Trump; Removing Confederate Monuments - They Lost - Get Over It; Free Speech Hypocrisy; Monopoly (the game) was Invented to Demonstrate the Evils of Capitalism; Right to Work - Racist Origins, Victory in Missouri; Radicals in Our History; Korea; Venezuela; Boycott the NFL; Jews Against Hate; and more....

What Gary Cohn, Steven Mnuchin and Jared Kushner did - or, rather, what they didn't do - is a shanda. They'll know what that means, but, for the uninitiated, shanda is Yiddish for shame, disgrace. All three let it be known through anonymous friends and colleagues that they are disturbed and distressed by what Trump said after the white terrorist demonstration and attack in Charlottesville. But not in public.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the US Chamber of Commerce that are at the centre of plans for an “investment shock” to create jobs for would-be Central American migrants. In a region beset by violence against workers and a legacy of economic exploitation without development, concern is growing that the Bank is inadequately prepared to ensure inclusive economic growth and basic rights

Building on her past work analyzing capitalism, Naomi Klein, in the book under review, does not stop with an analysis of the crises. She not only argues how to defeat the new shock politics of Trump (explicit in the subtitle), but outlines a resistance politics that not only rejects what she terms a domination/subordination dynamic but proceeds from saying "no" to the existing order to a "yes" to other values. Favoring the book, the reviewer wishes she had dug deeper.