Portside

The Haitian Revolution sowed fear in the hearts of Cuba's slaveholding class. In Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, historian Ada Ferrer undertakes a comprehensive evaluation of the impact made by the Haitian Revolution on Cuba, then still a Spanish colony located only fifty miles from Haiti's western sea borders.

The Portside moderators send our heartfelt thanks to our readers, for coming through in response to our annual appeal! We don't do a lot of fundraising -- just this annual appeal. We are grateful, and gratified, that the response allows us to keep to this bare minimum. Again, many thanks from the left side of the ship - the portside. Full speed ahead in the new year.

Last year was the second-warmest on record in the continental United States. December was a U.S. record-breaker for heat and also precipitation. 2015 will prove to be the hottest year on record globally. Give Earth a few million years and it'll do fine. If climate change does its worst, life, in some fashion, will undoubtedly survive and someday once again flourish, but the environment will cease to exist in any time span that is meaningful to us.

From Gaza's colorful neighborhood to its underground theater, resistance is an art. More than anyone else, artists must have hope and must create hope for the people. The aim of art is to deliver a message about societal improvement and evaluation. Music provides an escape from the pain of war, the injustice of occupation, and the isolation from living under the siege imposed by Israel, after Hamas wrested control of the coastal enclave. It's also how they fight back.

The Bernie Sanders campaign has reached millions of people for whom it was easier to engage politics through the prism of a presidential campaign. The underlying issue of our time, is how to remake the U.S. political and economic system into something that works for everybody in our country and does more to help than to harm the rest of the world. Bernie is doing everything he can to keep us focused on this big issue, always clear that it cannot be solved by him alone.

This inability or unwillingness to hear black and other marginalized students is pervasive. The fact that 82 student-led remonstrations occurred in a month points to a system-wide crisis especially at Historically White Colleges and Universities (HWCUs), also called Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs).

Not until he was safely buried underground was a new, less threatening King birthed and branded. This state-sanctioned, sanitized version of King has since been manipulated to discredit, delegitimize and disinform subsequent organizers who wish to continue his legacy in the current work for Black liberation.

Donald Trump bears a striking resemblance to George Wallace and Ross Perot, two men who waged among the most successful and highest impact third party presidential candidacies in US history. Perot and Wallace waged their third party campaigns after failing to win the Republican (Perot) and Democratic (Wallace) nominations. What impact might Trump have on the Republican party and the political system if he wins -- or fails to win -- the Republican nomination?

As the history of Puerto Rican migration to the US indicates, the seemingly distinct campaigns for immigrant rights and those for racial justice ought to be viewed as interdependent and complementary struggles. This may prove the key to creating a more just and sustainable approach to migration policy.

Du Bois’s general strike thesis continues to cast a long shadow over contemporary historiography and black intellectuals alike. Eighty years later lessons still abound in Black Reconstruction.