Portside

The question of where Chile’s true identity lies becomes ever more pressing as the fiftieth anniversary of Pinochet’s coup approaches.

The discipline emerged from Black struggle. Now the College Board wants it to be taught with barely any mention of Black Lives Matter.

The massive protests in Iran, fueled by the audacity of young women and children, are rooted in over a century of struggle.

A conversation with the historian about the 20th-anniversary of his seminal book Freedom Dreams, how the meaning of freedom has changed in the intervening years, the reparations debate, and more.

Veteran labor organizer Fernando Gapasin is interviewed by Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Bill Gallegos. "I dedicated myself to ending racism and building worker power by building democratic working-class organizations from the bottom up."

This is more than a book. It is a life. L.A. Kauffman is a battle-scarred veteran of the Movement, early 1980s to the present, and in particular one sector, for want of a better term, the "direct actionists."

Hope belongs to the left. Social hope entails searching collectively for public solutions to our public problems rather than pretending that everything is up to the solitary individual. Hope creates action, but it is equally true that action creates hope. It is the action of movements, rooted in people's needs and longings, attempting to change the world in small ways and large.

If the state says you go to bed by 10 o'clock, then you should make sure that by 11, the streets of our cities are filled with human protest and bodies! The fact that some might have a restless night with the noise downstairs or find it inconvenient because people blocked traffic, well that's the point - to snap you out of your indifference! So those who are turned off by radical thinking, or radical behavior, well, as a matter of fact, in many ways, you are our target.

The left isn't important because of its numbers. It's important because its members are the canaries in the coalmine for an unresponsive political process. The left shares something else with that majority: it's heard a lot of empty promises. Many (though not all) progressives will vote for the Democrats once again in 2016, even if they're dissatisfied. But it will take more than rhetoric to win millions of other alienated voters. It will take commitment - and action.

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