Portside

The nation is now divided between people who want a multiracial democracy in which every American is allowed and encouraged to vote, and those who yearn for an anti-democratic system in which an extreme white minority has unchecked control over everyone else.

The classes I attended trained students to believe that their lives are in constant danger. They prepared us to shoot without hesitation and avoid legal consequences. They instilled the kind of fear that has a corrosive effect on all interactions — and beyond that, on the fabric of our democracy.

Activists who took over Barcelona’s City Hall have made lasting progressive gains, while also confronting the limits of being in power.

Electric vehicle manufacturing in the US is overwhelming nonunion, but 1,400 workers for an electric bus manufacturer in Georgia have just unionized. It’s one of the labor movement’s biggest victories in the South this century.

Henry Threadgill’s memoir unfolds from his maddening wartime experience to his boundary-pushing musical career.

Is tech taking us over a cliff, or giving us wings?

Chie Hayakawa's raw and sobering debut imagines a near-future Japan in which the elderly are encouraged to volunteer for euthanization. The scariest thing about Hayakawa’s film isn’t its familiar depiction of a society that privileges human output over human dignity, but rather its soft dystopian sketch of a society that’s able to soft-shoe around dehumanization and/or sell it as an act of grace.

The Covenants Homeownership Account Act provides compensation in the form of substantial mortgage assistance to victims and their descendants. It was written with a view to overcoming legal challenges that might derail programs that are overtly race based. Instead, this law is “harm based.”

Half of Americans, namely homeowners, already have rent control. It’s time to expand it to everyone.

Last week brought the alarming news that three Kentucky-based McDonald’s franchises had kids as young as 10 working at 62 stores in four different states. Some of these under-working age children were working as late as 2 a.m.