Portside

Marin County’s “Game of Floods” teaches citizens how to make tough decisions for the future.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ arrogant dismissal of a federal district judge’s ruling against the Trump Administration’s ban on refugees and certain Muslim travelers, because he presides on an “island in the Pacific,” is a reminder of how islands in the Pacific have been colonized, commodified, and militarized. From Hawaii to Okinawa, Pacific islanders are demeaned and their islands relegated to vacation getaways and military outposts for the U.S. empire.

A new book urges activists to avoid insularity and purism--and to focus on winning.

“We should have the right to distribute information to our co-workers without intimidation,” said Michael Sanchez, who works on door panels at the factory and has joined the unionizing effort. “You can’t fix problems if you’re not allowed to talk about them.”

We have entered a period of deep political crisis in the US, and both dominant parties stand on treacherously shifting sand. They are confronted by the exhaustion of the campaign models that brought them success since 1948. Hints of Trump's victory can be found in Nixon's "silent majority" as well as the subsequent Reagan Revolution, the current circumstances represent a sharp break from "business as usual."

Billed as the Peoples Climate March, the demonstration here in Washington, and hundreds of smaller events like it across the country, had long been planned to mark the 100th day of the new president’s term. What organizers did not know, at least initially, was that that president would be Mr. Trump.

Our ship of state, writes Berkeley poet Susan Cohen, may be facing extinction, but there's no practical escape that will suffice; alternatively, we may resist.

“The Arctic that you will have by mid-century will be very different from the Arctic that we see today”

This is the moment for those who work on elections and those turning out in the streets to come together. Grass roots energy is not a force to be “channeled” by a political establishment that has often failed us — it may shape a different politics.

"It will help private equity managers and people like President Trump"