Portside

Everything we have struggled to move forward in the United States is in peril. Our loved ones feel under siege, and those in power in Washington are advancing a dark and dangerous vision of America that we know is untrue. To change everything, we need everyone. First we resist. Then we build. Together, we rise.

The US missile attack on Syria took place on the anniversary, one hundred years ago, of the United States’ entry into World War I. Writing in The Progressive in June 1917, Senator La Follette said that the war party, "justifies entrance into the conflict on the ground that it is in the interest of democracy. If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another, possibly more effective, pretext after war is on."

The response required at this late, desperate stage is neither anti-Assad nor anti-ISIS nor even anti-imperialist — it is antiwar.

Fences was not alone among Oscar nominees this year in representing working-class life in uncharacteristically sympathetic and insightful ways. Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight, and even Hell or High Water all have extraordinary moments of insightful observation like this. Though each falls under more common rubrics, each is alive to the complexities and bravery of living life within insuperable limits.

Caveats aside, the evidence thus far cautions against making too much of Trump’s success at wooing union households. What these results do suggest is the need for Democrats going forward to craft a message and groom candidates that might reverse waning enthusiasm among this core constituency.

It takes more than one clown to make a circus.

Olio, by Tyehimba Jess, has just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. It is an outstanding book that visits, and reimagines, a deeply influential yet far too little examined African American cultural moment. This is a powerful, innovative work of verse created by one of this country's best contemporary poets. Here is a review.

The building trade unions are basically pro-Trump. They like his positions on infrastructure including his position on building the Keystone Pipeline. His withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership is viewed favorably. Many of the public service unions are very much opposed to what they they perceive as his anti-worker agenda.

Director Larraín has stated that the way Latin Americans think is shaped by poetry, by metaphor, and that his film is partly concerned with the power of poetry to move and influence. We are shown Neruda’s huge influence, as a communist poet, over his natural constituency: the ordinary working man... But what we do not see in the film is the immensely moving capacity of poetry to break down barriers between people of diametrically opposed political beliefs.

War whoops; Killing O’Reilly; Neutering net neutrality; Hacker power; Chipped; Net on the bubble