Portside

The choice confronting the Biden administration is whether to expand an immigration program prioritizing grower profits over workers’ and immigrants’ rights, or to reinforce an immigration system based on family reunification and community stability.

Every part of this country, north south east and west, owes its origin and wealth to our “peculiar institution” as well as other less notorious programs of government sanctioned/ignored exploitation and murder of the poor, immigrants, women.

Between COVID-19, structural racism, police brutality, climate change, plutocratic politics, and threats to democratic governance, it is time—past time—to say ENOUGH. The future is not a fact foretold: it is what people shape by our actions...

Only in the U.S.A. does a large section of the population think owning an assault weapon is a sacred right, but wearing a mask in a pandemic is a restriction on liberty.

Recent Black Lives Matter protests have sparked conversations about how to act in better solidarity with the Black struggle. How to move beyond rhetorical statements? How to address anti-Blackness among non-Black Arab communities?

Plantation owners were determined to extract every last bit of labor they could get from enslaved workers, meticulously tracking, documenting, and analyzing their every move in order to maximize productivity and profit.

The Democrats are the through-line in U.S. political history, which is the first reason we need to understand them. A second reason is that figuring out the left’s relationship to the Democratic Party is crucial for left strategy today.

Charting the ironies of freedom won and lost during and after the Civil War, Eric Foner, the American historian, has also helped us better understand the ambiguous consequences of what were almost always only partial victories.