Portside

The popularity of The Investigator in the United States is a gratifying sign that the American people are no more complacent about witch hunting than their ancestors were three hundred years ago in Salem, Massachusetts. Until now fear has temporarily immobilized them, as it did their forbears in New England. But one of the best antidotes to the paralyzing poison of fear is laughter. -- from the liner notes of The Investigator.

This is the moment for those who work on elections and those turning out in the streets to come together. Grass roots energy is not a force to be “channeled” by a political establishment that has often failed us — it may shape a different politics.

There seems to be a growing audience for poetry that speaks to the anxieties of our era. Traffic to the academy’s online poetry archive has surged in recent months. Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise,” has been viewed nearly 470,000 times since Nov. 8, compared to about 280,000 times in that period the previous year, while Langston Hughes’s poem, “Let America Be America Again,” has been viewed some 280,000 times, up from about 88,000 times.

Everything we have struggled to move forward in the United States is in peril. Our loved ones feel under siege, and those in power in Washington are advancing a dark and dangerous vision of America that we know is untrue. To change everything, we need everyone. First we resist. Then we build. Together, we rise.

Reader Comments: MLK Vision Still Vital, Necessary; Trumpcare; End of US Empire; Activism-Learning from the Past; Resources: Jubilee Haggadah; Bill of Rights Briefing; Tips for Responding to Racist Attacks; Announcements: Solidarity Rally B&H Workers; Tax Marches April 15; Peoples Climate Movement-April 29; and more...

America’s mega-state is now clearly its leftmost, too—and on social insurance, climate change, and immigrant rights, it has more capacity and desire to defeat Republican reaction than any other institution.

It may only take 3.5% of the population to topple a dictator – with civil resistance

"I left India more convinced than ever before that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom." - "The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.," edited by Clayborne Carson. In this decade - in which more people are using nonviolent resistance than ever before - scholars and practitioners alike would do well to consult the pragmatic and principled wisdom of Gandhi and King in building a way forward.