Portside

Tim Schermerhorn, a Black socialist and retired New York City transit worker. In these excerpts from a forthcoming memoir, he describes what shaped his activism & lessons for a new generation.

If a half-century of progress toward a more equal society, painstakingly achieved across many fronts by many actors, can be so easily jettisoned with the wave of a few judicial hands, the problem to worry about isn’t the court’s. It’s democracy’s. It’s ours.

"Brazil will have the opportunity to decide which country it will be for the next few years, and for generations to come," said Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. "The Brazil of democracy or authoritarianism?"

With unionization taking off at Starbucks, the company is quietly admitting that it’s in a bind: unionization threatens its low-wage model, but union busting hurts its public image as a supposedly progressive company.

Sure, their characters are privileged, but they’re also dealing with unsteady marriages, ambition, and family.

*Organize where you are* and please understand a simple truth. The widening assault on K-20 education, union rights, intellectual freedom and the First Amendment is soon coming to your back yard if it hasn't yet arrived.

The billions in taken funds directly contributed to America’s racial wealth gap.

At very high and very low temperatures, matter takes on properties that open up an entire Universe of remarkable new possibilities.

The so-called Zeitenwende is Germany’s biggest rearmament since World War II and makes its military budget the third largest in the world.

The Left and its allies must defeat the rats in the battle to preserve democracy and human rights.  Separately, we must prevent the Mouse and other corporate vermin from fattening themselves on the public’s cheese.