Portside

The Standing Rock activists have lit a fire on the prairie in the heart of America as a symbol of their resistance. In its ashes there is the potential for a more just future.

Journalists should not fear being on the wrong side of power. On the contrary, that is exactly where they belong.

The weather report is never good news, in Philip Fried's poem, about the atmospheric patterns of the nuclear age.

President Donald Trump wants to impose a police state on undocumented immigrants. Workplace raids - sometimes called 'silent raids' - have been a mainstay of immigration enforcement, will likely ramp up. Now - predawn raids, arrests and deportation of undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of the most minor criminal offenses, and stops of dark-complexioned motorists and pedestrians - will become the norm, in the new anti-immigrant policy to be soon rolled out.

The great American radical showed how ordinary people mattered more than stars - a lesson today's celebrities could do with learning. These are strange times for popular music and politics. On the one hand, the opposition to Donald Trump now extends so deeply into the entertainment industry that the president struggled to find any real talent willing to play his inauguration.

Portside readers have weighed in, as you often do, on the issue of Trump, Putin, Russia, the revival of a new-Cold War, and foreign interference in our electoral process. Here a number of readers, including some Portside moderators, express their individual views, on what they feel should be the position of the left, for democracy, and opposed to militarism, increases in the military budget, and re-vamped calls for a new-nuclear laden Cold War against Russia.

Along with efforts to guide readers to trustworthy information sources, many branches are working to make themselves `sanctuary spaces' for immigrants. 'Our nation's 120,000 public, academic, school and special libraries serve all community members, including people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities and the most vulnerable in our communities, offering services and...resources that transform communities, open minds, and promote inclusion and diversity,'

Bob White played an historic role in building working class understanding of key principles: the need for workers to control their own class institutions; the need to maintain an understanding of the conflict of interests between workers and employers, the need to maintain a capacity to collectively struggle and resist, a rejection of competitiveness as a goal or concessions as a strategy, and the need for unions to develop an independent political capacity.

Reader Comments: Iowa's Union-Busting Bill; Standing Rock; Peekskill Remembered; Trump Anti-Immigrant Policy and the Fightback; Healthcare Attacked - ACA, Medicare, Medicaid; Tom Hayden Remembered; Tidbits going on hiatus; Tell Sirius XM to Say No to White Supremacy; Humanité-in-English is looking for volunteer translators; and more...

Martin Luther King's last book was downplayed when it was first published in 1967; even radicals thought it passe. On the 50th anniversary of its first publication--it is still in print-- the reviewers find much of value here for contemporary readers.