Portside

The big crowds at Madison Square Garden during wartime and a few years after, the excitement at union halls and summer camps for some of the most interesting musicians and lyricists of the time? Gone — gone, but not entirely forgotten.

President Cyril Ramaphosa expected to announce new restrictions in attempt to slow the surge

And what it lost in the process

The U.S. is one of the few wealthy countries in the world that does not have a robust public childcare program. But there’s no reason we can’t have one that’s wildly popular and provides high-quality care — in fact, during World War II, we did.

Waterloo was the site of a historic battle for labor rights and racial justice. But as the meatpacking industry changed, the workforce lost its power and was primed for an outbreak. This is how we got here.

The Right to Repair campaign is rooted in a strong conviction that we need urgent action to halt the growing overconsumption and the ever-shortening lifespans of our devices.

The marketisation of everything normalised the very real possibility that behind every communication, every representation, every action within any public sphere, was an undisclosed agenda of private gain.

The news is filled with “uplifting” human interest tales of workers walking six miles and nurses scrounging up sick leave. Injustice is so normalized that stories that should be enraging indictments of the system pass for heartwarming vignettes.

To undo the damage Trump has wrought at home and abroad, the US must move past outdated foreign policy ideas and resist traveling further down a failed course that divides the world into hostile camps, and prioritizes confrontation over cooperation.

Disasters, missed opportunities, and a few bright spots in 2020.