Portside

Reader Comments - Lots: James Baldwin: "I Am Not Your Negro"; Elizabeth Warren - Nevertheless, She Persisted; Know Your Rights guide from the ACLU; Readers debate role of Russia; Iowa's New Union Busting Law - what it means for the whole country; Lessons from the Japanese Internment for Today's Anti-Immigrant Hysteria; Exploiting Black Labor after the Abolition of Slavery; Resources; Announcements: and more...

Reader Comments: Contested Convention is Needed; and "#BernieorBust" Dead End; The Left in 2016; Stopping Israel's Occupation and BDS; Israel as the Last Remaining, Active Settler-Colonialist Project; Who's Afraid of Communism - Paul Buhle comments; Teamster and Other Multi-Employer Pension Plans; Teacher Challenges Low Evaluation in Court and Wins; Baldwin; Shakespeare; James Connolly - appreciated today; Just Released - Panama Papers Database...

Reader Comments - Baltimore, other cities as "Occupied Territory"; Drop the Charges against those arrested; Government-Sponsored Segregation; Bernie Sanders - a Long Tradition of American Socialism; Alberta NDP Victory; $15 per Hour or Bust; Israeli Soldiers Speak Out-Gaza Atrocities Were Orders; Labor Union Membership Now Just 11%; Feliks Tych - R.I.P.; Announcements - New York, Boston

As Baltimore is policed like occupied territory today, remembering James Baldwin's words about Harlem in 1966. This article originally appeared in the July 11, 1966 issue of The Nation.

His essays on police brutality still burn hot, but his understanding of sex, self-knowledge and power demand equal attention now. Baldwin does not say that systems of power are unimportant. He insists that liberation is also a mandate on individuality: how one separates oneself from the “habits of thought [that] reinforce and sustain the habits of power”—in essence, how one comes into his or her humanity.

[This is the first of a three-part series, Rage Against the Narrative, by Praxis Senior Editor Dr. Lisa Brock. The series is written in response to the uprising sparked by the killings of unarmed black people throughout the US. The three epigraphs below are gestures to each part.]

Reader Comments: Congress Plots to Undermine Retiree Pensions; Is It Bad Enough Yet?; Angela Davis: the unbroken line of police violence; James Baldwin on Racism; LAWCHA's Teacher/Public Sector Initiative; #BlackLivesMatter Takes the Field; They Fear and The Kill; Thousands March to Protest Police Brutality; Torture - Senate Report, Lessons from Latin America; Trade; Chanukah 2014; CELEBRATING CHARLIE HADEN memorial and celebration of his life - New York - Jan. 13

Baldwin’s legacy continues to live.