Portside

Many of the folks I know are getting ready to play serious defense in 2017, and they’re not wrong. Before we take up our three-point stance on the national line of scrimmage, however, maybe we should ask ourselves not only what we’re fighting against, but what we’re fighting for. What kind of United States of America do we actually want? Maybe, in fact, we could start by asking: What is a country for? What should a country do?

The Syrian tragedy is a key moral and political question today. Yet it has not been easy for leftists around the world to decide where they stand on Syria.To illuminate the history and nature of the Syrian conflict, Yusef Khalil for Jacobin conducted an extensive interview with Yasser Munif, a Syrian scholar who studies grassroots movements in the country.

“We don’t win anymore. As a country, we don’t win.” “We don’t want to use our military, honestly. We don’t want to use our military. But we’re being scoffed at right now and we never fight to win.” “It will change. We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning. Believe me.” Donald Trump on the state of America

New paper makes the case that a global billionaire tax is ethical, good for growth, and could solve a lot of the world’s problems. Oh and politically viable.

DOJ lawyers look to adjourn a hearing next week, and some expect them to wind up abandoning their argument that the Texas voter ID law discriminates against minorities.

What our communities need so intensely right now are real examples of a vision for a new culture and society, right in their own neighborhoods. They need to be able to touch and feel and experience them and also experience building them as participants in our democracy.

As we build a movement to thwart Trump and win genuine social change, the activist life of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is instructive.

Angela Davis: ""We recognize that we are collective agents of history and that history cannot be deleted like web pages."

As inequality and its consequences mount, even more struggles and progressive formations will emerge. They are likely to be imperfect and messy, but from them useful ideas as to the future of collective worker action will become clearer. One thing is sure, though: Such a vision will not come from Andy Stern.

In its first episode of the new administration, the NBC sketch show skewered Vladimir Putin, Kellyanne Conway, and the “lower-case KKK.”