Portside

John Steinbeck was one of the most prolific and, in my view, significant American novelists of the twentieth century. He was influenced by and synthesized his own politics and personal experience with the political culture and movements of the 1930s.

A novel set in the context of the historic Gastonia strike of textile workers in 1929 and featuring labor songwriter and indigenous strike leader Ella May Wiggins, the book, based as it is on an actual struggle uniting black and white workers, speaks to contemporary concerns through a vivid portrayal of struggle against historical injustice.

When joined by family and friends for Thanksgiving, ask guests to tell stories about their very first food memory, or to recall any family member who was a farmer or a jolly cook. Invite people of diverse backgrounds and all ages. Ask a farm family to join you, or a cheesemaker or others involved in producing food. Then eat, talk, enjoy!

In the lead up to “The Take Back the Workplace” march in Los Angeles on Nov. 12, Latina farmworkers have written a letter of solidarity to the brave women and men in Hollywood who have come forward with their experiences of sexual harassment and assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

The 12-page report, prepared by the F.B.I. Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit in August, and later made public by foreignpolicy.org, both announces the existence of the “Black Identity Extremist” movement and deems it a violent threat, asserting that black activists’ grievances about racialized police violence and inequities in the criminal justice system have spurred retaliatory violence against law enforcement officers.

There seems to be breaking news everyday on how the ACA is now “dead” but don’t let that confuse you! The enrollment period is STILL coming up this November 1st and many of our friends and family may not even know. Here are the basics you need to know.

Veteran Russian communist Dr. Slava Tetekin noted that Putin has been in power now for 18 years -- longer than Brezhnev had been. During that time he has presided over rising inequality and the destruction of Russia's industrial economy. This makes it all the more important to redevelop working-class mobilisation and to ensure that the current reawakening of enthusiasm for the October Revolution is converted into a wider political movement for socialism.

Kevin Young is a prolific and highly regarded poet, recently appointed the poetry editor of The New Yorker. He is the first African American to hold that post. His new book looks at such fakery as fake news.

The Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower ‘aligned’ Trump’s financial interests with those of crooks, according to Global Witness.

"Mudbound" is about how things change—slowly, unevenly, painfully. It is also, as the title suggests, about how things don’t change, about the stubborn forces of custom, prejudice and power that lock people in place and impede social progress. Set mainly in the Mississippi Delta in the years just after World War II, when Jim Crow was still enshrined in law and practice, the film tests and complicates Faulkner’s much-quoted claim about the not-even-pastness of the past.