Portside

A new party of the Left in Spain has surprised pundits by winning big in last Sunday's elections by running on an an-austerity program. Mark Weisbrot offers some background and an analysis of how these developments fit within the overall "post-recession" Eurozone crisis.

Conservative arguments make it seem like poverty is a puzzle. But, according to Philip N. Cohen, we've already figured out ways of reducing poverty among large sections of the population. We should just use what works to reduce poverty.

This year's annual report from the US Conference of Mayors details just how prevalent hunger and homelessness are in our cities.

Changes are happening and the Cubans are trying to figure out how to accommodate them within a socialist framework.

This essays calls attention to two crucial developments. First, the far right has taken dangerous steps further to the right, legitimizing the public expression of blatant racism and authoritarian policies toward Muslims and immigrants. And second, not for the first time, how crucial it is for a social justice strategy with intimate interconnections of war, terrorism, racism and inequality, and between peace and justice at home and abroad.

U.S. schools provide a great deal of useful information, but also leave out a great deal. Please see whether you can answer the following questions before scrolling down and clicking a link at the bottom for the answers. How many can your kids answer? Can your kids' teachers answer them? Can your parents answer them? Can your uncle who tells you whom to vote for and what to think answer them?

Seven years ago local officials in Marin County, California organized to form a nonprofit electricity company with the noblest intentions. Buying and selling electricity allowed the group, Marin Clean Energy (MCE), to route around the local utility giant, Pacific Gas & Electric, which for years had resisted its customers’ pleas for cleaner, more reliable power, all the while “greenwashing” its image with marketing campaigns.

I wrote this paper originally in 1996—for a magazine called Sojourner: The Women’s Forum. As a clinic defender, I witnessed people yelling violently and acting aggressively towards women going into clinics in Boston and Brookline, Mass. to get abortions. I wanted people to know what it was like at the clinics on Saturday mornings. And I also wanted to honor the two women who were killed at a Massachusetts clinic in 1994 and others murdered over abortion rights.

The effects of the gas on the people of Bhopal have been nothing short of catastrophic. Birth defects continue to occur among families affected by the gas leak and contamination of water at a higher-than-average rate even now -- 30 years after the explosion at the Union Carbide plant.

The Voyage of the Sable Venus, the highly regarded debut poetry collection by Robin Coste Lewis, won the national book award this year for poetry. The title poem unites art history with the history of slavery and racism. Here, Dan Chiasson introduces this book, which has become a must-read across the literary spectrum.