Portside

“Demonizing the homeless is not new. There is no more manifest example of the failure of the system than bullying the vulnerable and criminalizing mental illness.”

For one season, American capitalism lies to us about what it values. The American Christmas Movie promises us that love matters more than money, that cruel bosses are bad but also lonely, that family togetherness is more important than the perfect dinner. The Christmas Movie business exploits our desire to believe this, but we do – and we should.

The recent coup attempt may have seemed farcical, but the growing Nazi threat in Germany is very real,

My CounterPunch focused on the radioactivity involved in fusion—that it is not “clean” despite what the press release of the Department of Energy asserted.

Free transit or fixing the system?

Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone chronicled the growing loneliness and isolation of wealthy societies. Twenty years later, the problem is far worse than he could have imagined.

For poet Joseph Zaccardi, the Vietnam war lingers in memory for the fear it wrought among soldiers, but also the loss of camaraderie “after all these/years scattered across American towns and cities…”

Each state appears here in alphabetical order. With a poem for the District of Columbia, and a poem serving as Preface, 52 poems. But This Land invites (and even demands) that its organization and its meanings be constructed by each reader.

A baby born in the U.S. in 2021 has a life expectancy at the lowest level since 1996. Native Americans, Black people and Hispanics are hardest hit. “Our increasingly potent and deadly drug supply is a result of the war on drugs.”

Charlene Mitchell led a long and multi-faceted political career, including first Black woman to run for President, leader of the movement against racial and political repression, advocate for democracy, socialism and internationalism.