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Intersectional Black Power: CLR James on Capitalism and Race

Lawrence Ware and Paul Buhle Portside
To ignore race, C.L.R. James often said, in many contexts and many ways, was a disaster in any social understanding; only the ignoring of class would be worse. Or to put it in his own words: The race question is subsidiary to the class question, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental, is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.

What the Trump Phenomenon Says About America

Adele M. Stan The American Prospect
To ask if the rogue Republican’s surge is good for Democrats is the wrong question. The most important question that should be asked about the Trump candidacy is: What is wrong with America that this racist, misogynist, money-cheating clown should be the frontrunner for the presidential nomination of one of its two major parties?

Tidbits - September 10, 2015 - GOP, Trump and Appeal to Reaction; No Union Mines in Kentucky; Black Panther Party film; Alabama's Black Communists and #BLM; New Resource: Black Lives Matter Syllabus; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: The GOP, Trump and the Appeal to Reaction; No Union Mines in Kentucky; Black Panther Party film; Lessons from Alabama's Black Communists and the #BLM; Indigenous People's History of the United States; Serena Williams; Climate Change and Workers; New Resource: Black Lives Matter Syllabus; Livestream Sept. 18: Unions, Workers, and the Democratic Party

Labor Disaster: Remembering America’s Worst Industrial Accident

Mark Hand CounterPunch
The number of deaths is probably greater than the number who perished with the sinking of the Titanic, The passengers on the Titanic included scions of wealthy families — people whose passing was deemed important enough to memorialize in books and movies. By contrast, the five thousand workers at Hawk’s Nest were poor, predominantly Black, and considered expendable in the early years of the Great Depression.

The Fearful and the Frustrated

Evan Osnos The New Yorker
Trump’s candidacy has already left a durable mark, expanding the discourse of hate such that we barely even registered that Senator Ted Cruz had called the sitting President “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” or that Senator Marco Rubio had redoubled his opposition to abortion in cases of rape, incest, or a mortal threat to the mother. Trump has bequeathed a concoction of celebrity, wealth, and alienation that is more potent than any we’ve seen

Refugee Crisis - Czech Police Ink Numbers on Skin, Icelanders Welcome Tens of Thousands

Rob Cameron, Jeva Lange
Images of Czech police inking the skin of newly arriving Syrian migrants, and the government says they were unaware that this brought back memories of the Holocaust, when prisoners at Auschwitz were systematically tattooed. While in the north of Europe, in 24 hours, responding to a Facebook campaign, 10,000 Icelanders opened their doors to their Syrian brothers and sisters.

books

An Indigenous People's History of the United States

Andrew Epstein; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz New Books in American Studies
The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples. Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. 2015 Recipient of the American Book Award.

Friday Nite Videos -- August 28, 2015

Portside
Videos: John Oliver: Washington DC Statehood. We Need Truth and Reconciliation. Bob Dylan -- Desolation Row at 50. Affordable Housing Crisis. Pastor Dewey Smith: Homosexuality.

We Need Truth and Reconciliation

When the then 28-year-old Bryan Stevenson was threatened with a gun by a police officer, he knew better than to run away. But, he argues, young black men are still presumed guilty and dangerous by many Americans. Now executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and part of President Barack Obama’s policing task force, he says only transitional justice can begin to heal America’s racial wounds.

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