Portside

Socialism can mean what we citizens wish for it to mean, by exercising our People Power! Hooray for Bernie Sanders! His vision and his rousing passion for the plight of the people is the greatest remedy for the painful ills of humankind that fear and greed have brought us. I warily approve of Hillary Clinton and would want for her "negotiating experience" to prevail. I've been joking for some time now about him teaching her, and teaming up. This would be powerful.

Some 85% of African American eighth graders cannot read at grade level, yet only seven percent of teachers are black and less than two percent of all teachers in our country's schools are black men. Former teacher Alvin Irby started Barbershop Books, a nonprofit, in response to this crisis. It brings books to barbershops in black communities, in a fight to raise literacy levels among black boys. The information below comes from the group's website.

In 1989 five young black men were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman jogging in New York City. Leading the charge against them was a real estate mogul whose divisive rhetoric can be found in his presidential campaign today.

We must resist those voices who urge us to settle for the world as it is.

The uproar over #OscarsSoWhite made me curious. What does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences value in black performance? Black artists have been nominated for best actress or actor on 30 occasions, for work spanning 28 films. Over the last few weeks, I watched all of them.

From Haiti to Michigan and across the world, millions - especially poor and marginalized populations - are being denied the human right to clean water and sanitation. These water crises, though distinct in important ways, can both be traced back to longstanding human-made systems that have simultaneously neglected and exploited low-income communities of color.

On February 22, Capital & Main launched a week-long series on California’s increasingly severe affordable housing crisis. “No Direction Home” explores how escalating housing prices are undermining the state’s already embattled middle class and exerting intense economic pressure on millions of poor and working-class residents.

After completing a 3-month, 5 nights a week, Metalworkers’ Union Education Program—the “Integrated Program”—Ana received an elementary school certification, vocational training, along with critical thinking. Ana told me after graduation, “Now I am somebody. Now my son talks to me.“ Pride and self-confidence lit up her eyes.

Spike Lee endorsed the Vermont senator on Tuesday. He is the latest in a series of black intellectual heavy-weights to have come out in support of him.

Governor Cuomo" has yet to reach a contract agreement with CUNY’s faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress, whose more than 25,000 members have been without one since 2010, or District Council 37, which represents over 10,000 non-professional workers at CUNY and hasn’t had a contract since 2009." He’s denied CUNY staff a $15 minimum wage, even as he insisted upon it at the State University of New York.