Portside

In America’s ‘hottest housing market’, one woman’s fight to keep her home has become a rallying cry against the displacement of communities of color.

In an echo of national worker's rights movements such as Fight for $15 and OUR Walmart, New Orleans hospitality workers are coming together in an attempt to rearrange the building blocks of their industry. Both on their own and with the support of a union, workers are becoming their own advocates, in an effort to — as Marlene Patrick-Cooper, the local organizing director for the UNITE HERE union, often says — "turn poverty jobs into middle-class jobs."

Yes, we do need a vision of future possibilities, but right now we live in a moment where the other side has so much power, we must apply ourselves to effective defense. I am growing weary of the deprecation of "just playing defense". Every sports fan knows that championship teams are built on sound defense.

“This is a real tragedy, and it’s one that’s backed up by sound statistics and sound science that lays out how important of a calamity it is."

The 2017 elections to Cuba’s National Assembly was the first without Fidel Castro.

It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump has declared that the US is recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. For seasoned US-Israel watchers, it merely confirms what we have been saying for decades: Washington is no honest broker in negotiations to end the Palestine-Israel conflict.

China's communist party held its nineteenth congress which adopted Xi Jinping Thought and inspirational plans to build a modern socialist country by mid-century. Western capitalist press accounts were generally negative and focused on Xi's consolidation of power. However successful implementation of the program despite difficulties will have great bearing and positive impact on the global balance of forces between socialism and capitalism and prospects for world peace.

Jollof rice is a dish hugely popular in countries such as Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cameroon. Somehow, Mark Zuckerberg got into the fray about which country's recipe is best.

The left often falls victim to the myth that globalization and migration pose big threats to jobs and wages. This is a mistake. International migration is high, but not significantly so. And the idea that labor market competition can be overcome by raising borders, defending the “nation,” and excluding immigrants is a Sozialismus der dummen Kerle [a socialism of chumps, of numpties]. New movements must challenge the left's stubborn embrace of the "national."

The moral of the story is “don’t tell stories about these big topics if you can’t do it well.” And by “well,” I don’t mean create a post-racial utopia. I mean have the ability to give that story its own weight and importance beyond what it does for your two white leads. I mean the very least you can do is not make Jamie and Claire white saviors. At the very least. But that isn’t possible because they are the people this story is about.