Portside

Oskar Eustis, director of a mesmerizing Public Theater staging of Shakespeare’s play about taking down an incipient dictator, says that “Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.” This Delacorte Central Park enactment may be one of the best of the plays inspired (or provoked) by the election and presidency of Donald Trump.

It’s no secret that the American Health Care Act is unpopular. In recent national polls, only about 29 percent of Americans support the bill. It is the most unpopular piece of major legislation Congress has considered in decades — even more unloved than TARP (“the bailout”), and much more unpopular than the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

A federal judge rules that the Dakota Access pipeline did not receive an adequate environmental vetting. The rulling in favor of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on Wednesday, handing the tribe its first legal victory in its year-long battle against the Dakota Access pipeline.

In his perverse fixation on overturning all things Barack Obama, President Donald Trump now turns his attention to Cuba, the island located 90 miles off our shore. Reports are that the president plans to travel to Florida to announce that he will reverse Obama’s opening to Cuba, reinstate restrictions on the right of U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba and curtail business opportunities that Obama had opened up by executive order.

Presiding over last month’s honorary Gramsci conference in Buenos Aires was a sense of urgency: a need redress certain aspects of Gramsci’s thinking in light of a reactionary uptick throughout the continent. The ability of right-wing movements—in Venezuela, Brazil, and elsewhere—to mobilize mass demonstrations against progressive governments has led several commentators to orient themselves through a rereading of Gramsci’s writings on fascism.

"The Wednesday after the election I woke up in Jackson, Mississippi, and what that means is, no matter whether our country has experienced great boons or busts, in Mississippi, we've always been at the bottom," Mayor-elect Chokwe Antar Lumumba said. "We have to decide that we're going to rescue ourselves. That in places like Jackson, we won't allow it to be havens of oppression which endangers all of us."

Black women consistently work for a better country, but our country is not working for them. By placing Black women’s experiences and interests in the forefront of policy changes and social movements, we can address these barriers. A new report on the Status of Black Women written and co-produced by Institute for Women's Policy Research and National Domestic Workers Alliance that paints a picture of the lived experiences of millions of Black women across the US.

Black women consistently work for a better country, but our country is not working for them. By placing Black women’s experiences and interests in the forefront of policy changes and social movements, we can address these barriers. A new report on the Status of Black Women written and co-produced by Institute for Women's Policy Research and National Domestic Workers Alliance that paints a picture of the lived experiences of millions of Black women across the US.

Black women consistently work for a better country, but our country is not working for them. By placing Black women’s experiences and interests in the forefront of policy changes and social movements, we can address these barriers. A new report on the Status of Black Women written and co-produced by Institute for Women's Policy Research and National Domestic Workers Alliance that paints a picture of the lived experiences of millions of Black women across the US.

The Chicago Police Department is the target of a new lawsuit filed by Black Lives Matter.