Portside

Many Portside readers follow developments in the international socialist movement, including recent developments in South Africa. Here is the declaration from the recently concluded Congress of the South African Communist Party. Some readers may find it a hopeful sign of the SACP's returning to its role as a critical partner in the governing coalition with COSATU in the governing coalition. Others may feel that the SACP is not being critical enough. What do you think?

It was the left who diagnosed the ills of globalization. So why is the right eating our lunch? Today global capitalism is in a period of long-term stagnation following the global financial crisis. The newer protests represent a far broader disenchantment with capitalism than the protests of the 2000s. The building blocks of an alternative economic model are there - sustainable development, de-growth, and de-globalization.

Why should 20 million Americans working at full-time jobs (sometimes two or three jobs) receive such pitiful incomes that they are forced to rely on food stamps while their CEOs grow ever wealthier?

Democrats should be running on their own wedge issues and saying look, the Republicans want to take Medicaid away from your family, from your neighbors, from your friends. If you’re here in Appalachia and say you don’t know someone covered by Medicaid, that’s not true. Democrats should be using that issue like a damn cudgel and beating Republicans with it in 2018.

Here is yet another entry in the history of how the blacklist impacted Hollywood during the McCarthy era, and how artists resisted through their art.

Mark Rosenthal died July 15, 2017. He was a rank and file trade unionist who helped change the face of the New York City labor movement in the late 1990's and beyond. He was a founding member of the Committee for Real Change in DC 37, AFSCME and President of Local 983. Steven Greenhouse's article in The New York Times in 1998 is the best obituary Mark could have.

Mark Rosenthal died July 15, 2017. He was a rank and file trade unionist who helped change the face of the New York City labor movement in the late 1990's and beyond. He was a founding member of the Committee for real Change in DC 37, AFSCME and former Local 983 President. Steven Greenhouse's article in The New York Times September 30, 1998 is a fitting tribute to Mark Rosenthal

Sun-Times a great notion; FCC massacre; Protecting Junior; Harassing you; Angry men; Something fishy at Hawaii 5-0

People seem to think that a movie or a television show or a book is "diverse" when there are "one or two black people or brown people, or one girl or a couple of girls," DuVernay says. "Inclusion is really half—half of the cast, half of the directors, half of the writers are women or girls, half of the room, more than half of the room is of color," she says. "I think we get really satisfied with less.

Three Republican senators announced Tuesday afternoon they would not back GOP leadership's latest ploy to repeal Obamacare.