Portside

Newly Published Photographs Share Rich Lives of Former Slaves After Emancipation; Web Series Tells "What Black Folks Don't Do"; Customs Destroys Rare Bamboo Flutes; NYT & NPR Maintain Latino Stereotypes; Native American Studies Association Supports BDS; Chart Illustrates You Vote What You Drink

The Machinists’ vote assures the 777x will be built here, but also affirms the company’s hard-nosed negotiating tactics with labor and elected officials.

The main reason for entering electoral or even government terrain and waging struggle there is not so much to `show' the power of our organizations. Rather it is mainly the matter of an earlier step: to build these organizations in the first place, or to take the miniscule ones we have now, and through these struggles, grow and multiply them.

Francis is calling for a wider struggle in the defense of the poor and working classes. He writes: “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”

There is a major retrospective of Art Spiegelman's Life that runs through March 23 at the the Jewish Museum in New York City. I caught up with the esteemed artist to talk about life after Maus, his rejected New Yorker covers, and how Mad magazine shattered Norman Rockwell's America.

Saying Israel is a Jewish state in the sense of observant believers would be like asserting that the United States is a Christian state even though about 22% of the population does not identify as Christian (roughly the same proportion as non-Jews in Israel). The point of the US first amendment is to forbid the state to to “establish” a religion.