Portside

Black women consistently work for a better country, but our country is not working for them. By placing Black women’s experiences and interests in the forefront of policy changes and social movements, we can address these barriers. A new report on the Status of Black Women written and co-produced by Institute for Women's Policy Research and National Domestic Workers Alliance that paints a picture of the lived experiences of millions of Black women across the US.

The Chicago Police Department is the target of a new lawsuit filed by Black Lives Matter.

This week the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, named Tracy K. Smith as the U.S. Poet Laureate for 2017-2018. Smith is the fifth African American poet and the fourth black woman to hold the honor. She is the author of three books of poems, the most recent of which, Life on Mars, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. A link to the Library of Congress citation, and a review, from 2012, of Life on Mars, are posed below.

"Workers complain of verbal abuse, impossible targets and ‘poverty pay’ so bad they have to live away from their children."

Naomi Klein offers five steps on how to recognize—and fight back against—the president's "wildly pro-corporate policies"

Pogrom on Sharia; Religious left hook; Hell on Earth; Southern Baptism schism; The Lee myth

"Trump is not the crisis. He is a symptom of the crisis." Interviews for Resistance, Sarah Jaffe with Naomi Klein.

Trump, she suggests in her new book, No Is Not Enough, exploited that phenomenon (personal branding) to become the first incarnation of president as a brand, doing to the US nation and to the planet what he had first practised on his big gold towers: plastering his name and everything it stands for all over them.

Even as the Dakota Access Pipeline inches toward completion, multiple cities including Seattle, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Raleigh, and Philadelphia have spoken with their wallets, severing ties with the oil pipeline-funding banks—in particular, Wells Fargo.