Portside

The truth is ugly as sin. The NFL is denying Colin Kaepernick employment not because he isn’t “good enough” but because he is being shut out for the crime of using his platform to protest the killing of black kids by police. NFL owners don’t make pariahs out of players who beat women or face accusations of murder. Kaepernick’s pariah status is about sending a shot across the bow at every political athlete—particularly black athletes—that they better toe the line.

The ousting of President Dilma Rousseff has provided an opportunity for the proponents of neoliberalism and those who want to break union power. Most of Brazil's union centers fear that proposed government reforms will weaken unions and further the spread of subcontracting.

British artist, novelist, prodigious essayist and poet John Berger, best known for her magisterial and approachable Ways of Seeing and who died in January, is remembered here for his radical approach to Art, when it functions to make sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, when it becomes a meeting place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, what Berger called guts and honor.

Donald Trump announced in Miami the policy his government has decided to implement with regard to Cuba. These were announced in a Theater named after Manuel Artime, civilian leader of the mercenary brigade that invaded our country at Playa Girón or the Bay of Pigs. It was a grotesque Cold War-era spectacle, made before a small audience, composed of old henchmen and thieves of the Batista dictatorship, mercenaries from the Playa Girón brigade and terrorists...

Inauguration Day demonstrators potentially face decades in prison on charges they say are all ‘Trumped’ up. The arrests and subsequent indictments appear to correspond to the Trump Era pattern of a shock-and-awe gambit followed by a lot of confusion and disarray. Advocates are concerned President Trump’s ‘law and order’ message, combined with his contempt for dissent, could mean an intensified police and prosecutorial response to demonstrations.

Carter, known as Jay Z, is a lauded recording artist, philanthropist and father: "When black and brown people are over-policed and arrested and accused of crimes at higher rates than others, and then forced to pay for their freedom before they ever see trial, big bail companies prosper. This pre-incarceration conundrum is devastating to families."

As much as Sunday’s rally was a show of solidarity in Chicago for Castile’s family, organizers said, it also was a reminder that the work of activists was far from finished and that the fight must continue.

Today, the N.A.A.C.P. carries the weight of history and burden of bureaucracy. But it does not seem willing to shed blood, literally, or in terms of the uncomfortable work that characterizes effective activism.

Podemos has created a new form of struggle based in large part on the ideas of people working in the tradition of Gramsci. Iglesias argued that as the broad mass of people were not engaging in politics through the existing parties, the left had to go where the people were. This was a war of ideology and of position.

"Around 60 truck drivers and warehouse workers serving the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports began striking terminals across the region Monday morning. The strike was called by the Teamsters union Local 848 to protest what it alleges is illegal subcontracting, misclassification and wage theft by trucking companies."