Portside

One of the reasons why we need to recall Luthuli's life in this time of shameful and shameless greed is that he consciously emphasised what he called the "gospel of service". Even if the ANC chooses to neglect the memory and legacies of Luthuli we, the citizens of South Africa need to draw on these. Luthuli was the first non-racial leader in South Africa, the first African to have a following amongst whites.

"Several American labor unions reacted angrily to the Senate’s vote July 25 to take yet another crack at dismantling Obamacare. AFSCME President Lee Saunders called the vote “morally indefensible,” while Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers said it was “cruel and heartless.”

For the credibility of the left, we have to mark out our own turf in this upheaval. We have to independently offer our own priorities on what’s wrong with Trump.

This new book highlights the technology at the heart of what reviewer Jill Leovy calls "surveillance-driven policing," and the heightened dangers this new set of law enforcement tools pose to democracy.

The powerful image of Bree Newsome climbing the 30-foot flagpole in front of the South Carolina State House in the aftermath of the the Charleston Massacre to remove the Confederate flag is now ingrained in my memory and the collective memory of America. To see city and state governments following suit has brought about a bitter feeling of approval for me. It shouldn’t have taken a massacre to get to this point.

Doubling down on the drug war is likely to result in increased violence, not increased public safety. The damage these policies have done to black communities has been well documented. But less attention has been paid to the ways that women of color specifically are targeted in drug cases and are subject to abuse or assault by police officers.

Mumia Abu-Jamal speaks about some of the issues he engages with in his new book Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?, including police violence and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

Although advances for the South African people have been made under ANC leadership, continuing poverty and unemployment made worse by the recession and decline in the value of the Rand. The solution to our frustrations with the ANC will not be solved if the reasons that have led to the failure to assert working class hegemony within the tripartite alliance of ANC, COSATU and SACP is not accurately diagnosed. This was the question before the SACP Convention.

Nyack Library workers voted Monday night to unionize, making it among the small handful of Rockland County, New York libraries where employees are covered by unions. They will be joining the New York State United Teachers.

At Highlander, the Charleston workers were joined by 30 other workers — African-American fast-food workers mainly — from Birmingham; Atlanta; Richmond, Virginia; and several cities in North Carolina. Over the course of the two-day workshop, the workers, with a few organizers and guests, practiced talking union to fearful coworkers. They analyzed poems by Langston Hughes and verses from the New Testament, and learned of the history of Highlander.