Portside

Rebuilding the democratic infrastructure is too important to leave up to the consultocracy. Mobilizers only turn out people with whom they agree. Organizers engage these people in reaching out to other people with whom they don’t agree.

Twenty years after the murders of students at Kent State (May 4) and Jackson State (May 15), in 1970, Holly Near wrote "And It Could Have Me." in 1990. "The song has grown over the years, new verses being added as violence continues to interrupt human potential." Today with Trump as President and a right-wing GOP-cabal in control, the song has new meaning - "it could have been me; But instead it was you; So I’ll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two."

2016 began with a bang: French telecommunications giant Orange announced in early January it was dumping its Israel affiliate. Meanwhile, churches, student unions and local activists continued to organize strong boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns that caused panic among Israeli leaders.

For generations, the Extreme Right in India has sought to erase the Left. What is it about the Left that the Extreme Right fears? It fears that the Left has an alternative narrative of India’s history and of its possible future -- one rooted not in social exclusion and economic inequality, but in the very opposite of that.

Reader Comments - Fast Food Strike, Low-Wage Workers Struggle for More than Wages; TPP - LAtest Leak; Hillary Clinton, Fracking and 2016; Eduardo Galeano; CIA Infiltration at Home; Anne Braden; Sundown Towns; 'Driving While White'; Cuba Coops; NYT and Russian Wages; Charter Schools; Walton Wealth; Announcements: Walden Bello in New York; Vietnam - The Power of Protest and In Defense of the Public Square - Washington

With the passage of half a century, it may be difficult to understand why so many political and cultural organizations, led by individuals with a generally liberal or leftist outlook, covertly collaborated with the CIA in the 1950s and first half of the 1960s, before exposés in Ramparts and other publications put an end to most such arrangements. This was also a period in which many other Americans with similar views collaborated with the FBI.

Reader Comments - Today's Student Protests; Vietnam War History, My Lai; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Israel - Right Wing Nation with Nukes; Unions Key to Fighting Inequality; Women Fighters; Venezuela Sanctions; Socialists, Socialist Movement and Socialism; Human Genome Tinkering; Hey, World! Let's create a nuclear-free future -- April 24-26, New York City Remembering Jean Hardisty, Geraldine Blankinship and Grace Paley

USSA announces Campaign Toolkits are ready for USSA’s big campaigns: Fund The Future and State of Emergency. Toolkits are ready-to-go manuals everything from sample petitions and student government resolutions to tips on planning rallies and meet with legislators. Fund The Future is part of USSA’s efforts to win FREE Higher Education by doubling Pell Grants and increasing student eligibility. State of Emergency seeks to end racial profiling and restore voting rights.

In the 1960s, the agency sought to fight Communism through the students rights movement. There's little reason to think its tactics have changed.

'We are determined,' said students organizers in a joint letter, 'to build a movement too big to ignore that puts free, accessible and public education back on the political agenda.' Thousands marched supporting those demands yesterday.