Portside

Portside anticipated that the DSA convention would be a watershed event for the left. Just before it was called to order, membership surpassed 25,000. The group was making a leap from minor to major, and we welcomed that. We contacted some DSAers we know who were present, to bring you their views on what the meeting meant for DSA and the left.

DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, just held their largest convention - ever - with 700 delegates, representing 25,000 members. Nearly a thousand socialists - young and old, over-whelmingly young, came together to startegize building DSA, the largest socialist organization in the United States in decades. Here is a Portside exclusive report by Heidi Chua.

Much commentary on the late Chuck Berry will focus on how his songs expressed fun and teenage angst. This is the right thing to do. Yet there’s more. For example, Berry’s obsession with the comparative qualities of fast cars — most brilliantly displayed in his song “Maybellene” — did not just reflect the rise of post-WW II consumerist culture....He preferred V-8 Fords over Cadillacs because he spent several years in the late 1940s and early 1950s helping make Ford cars.

Young voters were the only age bracket that Clinton actually won. We need to stop blaming them. Far from sitting on their hands, today's young voters are actively engaged. If the Clinton campaign is dissatisfied with their level of millennial support, they should take a hard look at where their young voter strategy failed.

Capitalism has only itself to blame, forcing millennials to look for an alternative.

Change comes precisely when you do change hearts -- and once that change has come, then the laws and the "allocation of resources," and the "way systems operate" follow pretty easily. Large majorities of Americans are, like Sanders, "democratic socialists." Sanders favors private ownership and markets, but with rules that protect little people from abuses and uncertainties. Even substantial majorities of Republicans support much of the Sanders economic plan.

Growing numbers of ‘millennials’ who are unaffiliated or atheists are causing vast changes in the American religious landscape, report says

Fifty years ago, young people inspired and moved our whole country away from Jim Crow, war and McCarthyism in the 60s. Today a new generation of young activists are inspiring and moving our country. Today's youth are active for justice, jobs, immigrant rights, against police murder and racism, peace, and are revitalizing the labor movement. Just this week, from Missouri to the Fight for $15 actions, young people are again inspiring a generation and the whole country.

Despite decades of attention, the proportion of girls in the juvenile justice system has increased and their challenges have remained remarkably consistent, resulting in deeply rooted systemic gender injustice. The literature is clear that girls in the justice system have experienced abuse, violence, adversity, and deprivation across many of the domains of their lives—family, peers, intimate partners, and community.

The resolution, which passed unanimously, endorses the goal of having no kids in detention in Seattle. It’s a move that chips away at the school-to-prison pipeline.