Information is power. Our mission at Portside is to seek out and to provide information that empowers you -- that empowers the left. Every day we search hundreds of sources to connect you with the most interesting, striking and useful material. Just once a year we appeal to you to contribute to make it possible to continue this work. Please help.

 

Archives

For posts before June 2012, please follow these links to our archives.

The Great Socialist Bake Off

Josh Freedman Jacobin
The Great British Bake Off isn't just wonderful entertainment. By prizing cooperation over cutthroat competition and solidarity over selfishness, it's also quietly radical.

Sonnet for Desiree

Shane McCrae Love's Executive Order
It’s no joking matter, really. as poet Shane McCrae breaks the scam wherein certain members of the current administration deny the obvious.

Convergence On the Right

Cathy Nugent Workers' Liberty
As the far right grows world-wide through the confluence of traditional conservatives, authoritarian elements, white nationalists and previously marginal fascists, its sway makes struggles against capital problematic. A new book charts alternatives.

How To Think Freely

Jennifer Wilson The New Republic
In their encounters with Western art, Soviet audiences found ways to reimagine themselves.

Once Upon a Time in Tarantino’s Hollywood

J. Hoberman NY Review of Books
Tarantino succeeds in superimposing two meta-narratives: the end of the Western and the self-destruction of the counterculture. Both stories are symptomatic of the war in Vietnam, though here Vietnam is little more than background.

José Andrés Serving Free Meals In The Bahamas

Mikaela Lefrak WAMU American University Radio
Chef and restaurant owner José Andrés spoke at the National Book Festival in D.C. last month about his humanitarian work.
Celebrity chef José Andrés and his nonprofit humanitarian relief organization, World Central Kitchen, have served more than 200,000 free meals in the Bahamas and distributed food in the Carolinas and Florida since Dorian hit.

Vietnam: Terror Was Absolute

Chris Mullin London Review of Books
Decades after the US retreat from Vietnam, the causes of the war and the outcome are still controversial if not murky, its lessons still not understood by US foreign policy makers. A comprehensive new book aims to clear away much of the detritus.

“Sitting Around Singing Kumbaya”

Arielle Greenberg Poetry Northwest
"Come by here": Listen as the Maine-based poet Arielle Greenberg takes you to the radical roots , the heritage and legacy of the oft-maligned song, Kumbaya.

Insurgent universality

Samir Gandesha Radical Philosophy
The argument that's usually framed as "identity politics" versus "class politics" is one of the animating features of today's insurgent left. Both this book and reviewer Gandesha seek to unpack this argument's complexities.