Portside

Millions are threatened by famine, as Riyadh prepares an assault on the country’s key port.

Reading her life story will change the way you view the world. This is not simply a story about a formerly incarcerated woman dedicated to working for justice and freedom in the era of mass incarceration. It is a story of a black woman who, as she often tells me, is “nothing special” and yet has somehow managed to transform her own life as well as hundreds of lives around her. She has emerged as a leading figure in the movement to end mass incarceration.

Quebec's broad party of the left, Québec solidaire (QS), congress opens May 19 in Montréal – the 12th congress in its 11-year history. The delegates face a challenging agenda: the final stage of adoption of the party's detailed program, a process begun eight years ago; discussion of possible alliances with other parties and some social movements including a proposed fusion with another pro-independence party, Option nationale; and renewal of the party's top leadership.

Larry Krasner's victory for Philadelphia District Attorney is huge! Krasner has been the main defense attorney for #BlackLivesMatter and Occupy and has freed 80 prisoners on wrongful conviction charges. He ran to end stop-and-frisk, end cash bail, and treat drug law violators via the public health rather than criminal justice system. A huge victory for the movements against police brutality and mass incarceration - for progressive and racial justice movements nationwide.

That millions of workers worldwide become "losers" in the process of globalization, should not surprise anyone. Nor that many react with mistrust and blind rebellion. That part of the working class – lacking left political parties with strategies to address this crisis -- are attracted by the extreme right’s verbal anti-establishment rhetoric, is against this background understandable. To understand, however, is not the same as to accept, let alone support.

The working class constitutes roughly 63 percent of the U.S. labor force. Crucially, it consists of both men and women and is multiracial and multiethnic.2 White people are, of course, a big part of the working class, but if we settle on “the white working class” as a class in itself, and with the force of white supremacy, even a class for itself, we lose track of the role blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and other non-whites play in the working class.

The establishment complains I don’t play the rules: by which they mean their rules. We can’t win, they say, because we don’t play their game. We don’t accept that it is natural for Britain to be governed by a ruling elite, that the people just have to take what they’re given. And in a sense, the establishment is right. I don’t play by their rules. And if a Labour Government is elected on 8 June, we still then we won’t play by their rules either.

This new collection of essays offers an interesting glimpse into the work of this consistently interesting Marxist thinker and cultural critic.

Constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe and Robert Reich weigh in. A majority of the public agrees. To rescue democracy, we need to make it happen.

The confrontation came after President Trump welcomed Mr. Erdogan to the White House on Tuesday and praised him as a stalwart ally in the battle against Islamic extremism. Mr. Trump did not speak of Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarian crackdown on his own people.