Portside

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama, and several governors push back against the rising tide of anti-refugee sentiment. Governors Tom Wolf (PA), Kate Brown (OR), Jay Inslee (WA), Jerry Brown (CA), and John Hickenlooper (CO) have voiced their support for refugees from war, economic poverty and religious and political persecution.

Today in America we not only have massive wealth and income inequality, but a power structure which protects that inequality. A handful of super-wealthy campaign contributors have enormous influence over the political process. In his 1944 State of the Union speech, President Roosevelt outlined what he called a second Bill of Rights. This is one of the most important speeches ever made by a president but, unfortunately, it has not gotten the attention that it deserves.

1938-five years after Hitler came to power, after the beginning of the "Final Solution", Jewish refugees were denied entry into the United States. Then it was anti-Semitism and fear of European radicals and communists; today it is anti-Muslim hysteria. Then the U.S. closed its' eyes to the Holocaust; today GOP governors and congressmen are closing the borders while over 250,000 have died in Syria, there are over 3 million refugees and 6.5 million are internally displaced

The security services set out to ensnare Lessing. But they weren't sure where she lived, why she went to Communist party meetings or even whether her nickname was Tigger or Trigger. M15 spied on Doris Lessing for 20 years, declassified documents reveal. Lara Feigel interrogates the secret archives.

Thirteen women came forward to accuse former police officer Daniel Holtzclaw of misconduct. Why aren't more people outraged?

After Paris, macho language about “pitiless war” defines the contours of leadership. Little else is on offer. It is red meat to our emotions.

The chaos in the Middle-east which has led to hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing ISIL’s barbarous rule is the result of fifteen years of Western interventionism. How can France ever take a convincing stand against ISIL while claiming to be the main ally, and provider of fighter planes, to the Gulf monarchies. The real question, to which French diplomacy has so far given no convincing answer, is not how to win the war but how to put an end to it.

Is contemporary altruism the new activism? Or is it what writer Teju Cole once called an iteration of a "White Savior Industrial Complex"? Ashley Karlin takes up these complicated questions in this review of Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World, by scientist-turned-Buddhist philosopher Matthieu Ricard. The answers, she suggests, may have as much to do with questions of power as with the desire to do good.

On Wednesday, the Chicago City Council voted on a resolution to reaffirm the City's "status as a sanctuary city, and its commitment to remain a place of sanctuary and refuge for refugees from all around the world."

Equity, Growth and Community, a new book by Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor