Skip to main content

Please contribute to help us to chart a path forward!

Can democracy in the United States survive naked dictatorial ambition and Christian nationalism in 2024? The biggest danger today: a vengeful would-be dictator and a cultist Christian nationalist movement that are reaching for absolute power in our country. Please help us to inform, to mobilize and to inspire the forces of multi-racial, radical, inclusive democracy to defeat this threat in 2024.

Friday Nite Videos | July 28, 2017

Portside
Detroit | Movie. What Is The Shape of Space? Russian Mob Money Helped Build Trump Business Empire. Bernie Sanders: GOP Is Now A Right-Wing Extremist Party. Why White Supremacists Love Tucker Carlson.

Detroit | Movie

Based on the true story if the Algiers Motel incident, starring John Krasinski, John Boyega, and Anthony Mackie. In theaters Aug 4.

books

Have Guns, Will Liberate

Chase Madar The Baffler
This ethnographic study of America's gun culture focuses on Detroit and Flint, Michigan, and it both confirms and challenges aspects of received wisdom about our country and our firearms.

books

Motor City, Rusting

Scott McLemee Inside Higher Ed
Perhaps in no U.S. city is the wreckage wrought by today's capitalism better seen than in Detroit, the once mighty auto metropolis now morphed into a showcase of post-industrial abandonment. New signs of rebirth and redevelopment there are fraught with contradictions, as artists and gentrifiers engage in what Dora Apel calls "ruin lust." Here, Scott McLemee reviews Apel's take on the (former?) Motor City and post-industrial tourism and aesthetics.

Why Chicago Won't Go Bankrupt - And Detroit Didn't Have To

Saqib Bhatti In These Times
Detroit's bankruptcy wasn't inevitable. Neither is Chicago's. But the austerity hawks don't want you to know that...When cities and states borrow money by issuing bonds, the lenders are typically high-wealth individuals, who purchase the bonds to get a tax break. It is a perverse system through which, rather than paying their fair share in taxes, the wealthy are instead able to lend that money to us, charge us interest for it, and then claim a further tax break on it.

Detroit's gentrification doesn't address poverty

Brian Doucet The Guardian
The new Detroit renaissance does not address why the city declined in the first place. It does little to address poverty, unemployment and access to resources for the vast majority of the city’s residents. What’s worse, the gentrification of downtown Detroit contributes to greater inequality and polarisation, which are growing challenges for cities around the world.

January 2, 1920: Anti-Radical Raids Across the Country, the First Red Scare

Richard Kreitner and The Almanac The Nation
Pre-1920 were tumultuous times: World War I, the Bolshevik revolution, Espionage and Sedition Acts; Race Riots in Chicago, returning African American veterans defending their communities against white mobs, mass deportations of foreign born, the Great Influenza Pandemic; UMW Coal Strike and the Great Steel Strike, mass economic inequality. The Palmer raids of 1920 capped an era. The Chicago Police and State's Attorney couldn't wait and began the raids a day early ...
Subscribe to Detroit