Portside

The American media needs to call this movement what it is, fascism, and demand accountability and answers from the thousands of Republican politicians nationwide who refuse to repudiate it.

You wouldn’t know it from the widespread glorification of America’s “founding fathers,” but the years around American independence were shot through with class conflict between elites and working people. And most of the founding fathers were on the wrong side.

In the mid-19th century, a pro-slavery minority — encouraged by lawmakers — used violence to stifle a growing anti-slavery majority. It wasn’t long before the other side embraced force as a necessary response.

There is no consensus for Court reform and there are not the votes for it in Congress. But circumstances do change, often unexpectedly. Should progressives gain the opportunity to make structural changes to the Supreme Court, they should take it.

Chan Davis, died last month at 96, faced down McCarthyite blacklists and imprisonment to pursue a brilliant academic career. Davis knew how to change and learn from political experience, but he always remained loyal to his socialist principles.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America is one of the greatest modern studies of revolution and counterrevolution. It’s also an extraordinary example of a materialist and class analysis of race under capitalism.

In a recently published brief, the Justice Department claimed that residents of U.S. territories do not have a right to U.S. citizenship under the Constitution.

Dubbed “the Negro Eugene Debs,” Frank Crosswaith was one of the great socialists of the early to mid-20th century. And his message was unwavering: only a vigorous labor movement and democratic socialist policies can deliver a better life for black workers.