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Damn It All: A Meditation on Hell

Stephen Greenblatt The New York Review of Books
Charting the origins of the Christian idea of a vast underground realm where the souls of sinners were hauled to suffer eternal punishments by fiends, the author walks readers through a panoply of sadistic fantasies long considered revealed truths.

L.A. Teachers Prepare to Strike

Nelson Lichtenstein Dissent Magazine
Thirty-five thousand Los Angeles teachers may possibly strike. Their demands include a 6.5 percent pay increase, smaller class sizes, more funding for school counselors, nurses, and librarians, and a cap on the proliferation of charter schools.

Africa – Realising The Promise of the Demographic Dividend

Graça Machel Pressenza
Africa’s children are generally healthier, live longer, are better schooled, and can aspire to a better life than those before. However, this modest progress cannot hide the challenge that remains. Hunger and lack of schools is still too common.

For a Left Populism: A New Strategy for Democratic Socialism

Eoin Ó Broin The Irish Times
Despite its weaknesses, writes reviewer Ó Broin, this book "is an important contribution to the strategic debate for those of us committed to political and socio-economic alternatives based on principles of democracy, equality and social justice."

Your Last Opportunity: Let's Make Waves Together

Portside moderators Portside
If you've meant to contribute to support Portside but haven't yet done so, this is a last opportunity for the season. Every year, we ask our readers to support Portside - from Thanksgiving until the end of January. So please act now.

National Grid Union Workers OK Contract, Ending Lockout

Katie Johnston The Boston Globe
Labor experts see the contract as a win for workers, especially considering the hard line National Grid took — locking out employees and cutting off their health insurance in an attempt to reduce their benefits.

How Federal Workers Could Fight the Shutdown

Ben Beckett, Ryan Haney Jacobin
Federal workers have dealt with low pay, degraded working conditions, and repeated employer lockouts. If they want to improve their conditions, they’ll have to organize.

Statement on the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

Angela Davis Angela Davis
"The rescinding of this invitation and the cancellation of the event where I was scheduled to speak was thus not primarily an attack against me but rather against the very spirit of the indivisibility of justice." Angela Davis