Portside

In September 2017, artist and scholar Yevgeniy Fiks visited the Jewish Autonomous Region to see what it is, instead of what it was expected to have been. He shared two essays with us, “Before Birobidzhan” and “Diocese of Birobidzhan”, originally published on his website http://yevgeniyfiks.com.

White people keep calling the cops on black people for no reason. That’s dangerous. Calling 911 means different things to white and black people.

“A land without a people for a people without a land.” As seductive as that slogan was, it was willfully false, as amply documented in personal testimonies of Palestinians and Israelis, historical records, and scholarly research.

I’m nervously awaiting the Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, which would weaken public sector unions by letting workers receive the benefits of representation without contributing toward the cost. But I’ve got a unique vantage point: I work in the same building as the plaintiff.

When a loan officer turned down the poet’s request, she sent him this poem. He changed his mind. Happy Mother’s Day.

As Gore Vidal put it, “the only question really worth asking is: Why?” Why did the FBI begin a Treason file in 1921? Why 22,000 names? And why Einstein?

Everything else that Trump has or hasn’t done about Russia, any sanctions, any tariffs, any expelled diplomats, absolutely pales in comparison to the huge boost in oil revenues he provided to the Russian economy by backing away from the Iran nuclear deal.

Rewriting our economic rules requires putting the needs of America’s wage earners—black, brown, white, immigrant, male and female—at the center of our politics, not invisible in the margins. 

The people have won. They have supplanted a hooligan, bullying mentality with one of peaceful resistance, togetherness, and pride.