By Cyndi Suarez, Nonprofit Quarterly — Last week, Boston enacted its own version of what may be a national trend—black progressive candidates, many of them women, beating centrist incumbents and challenging traditional ideas about viability, strategy, and some would even say the soul of the Democratic Party. Before I go on, we should acknowledge that we are seeing a challenge to the disproportionally high rate of white leadership in many aspects…
By Garry Wills, NYR Daily — When former president Barack Obama called on the nation to oppose Donald Trump at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign last week, he said there was only one way to do it, by voting. This was a criticism of the internal resistance supported by the anonymous op-ed writer in The New York Times. Obama said that people who “secretly aren’t following the president’s orders” are not defending democracy: “These…
By Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker — One hazard of the trolling that the United States has been subjected to from the White House for the past twenty months is that even the most alarming patterns can be hard to discern, and the most prominent dots impossible to connect. Yet a seemingly different pattern preceded the speech that Barack Obama delivered on Friday, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in which he…
By John Whitesides, PoliticusUSA — (Reuters) – Former U.S. President Barack Obama waded into the political fray on Friday, launching a blistering critique of President Donald Trump and Republicans and…
By Chris Steele, Truthout — “What is euphemistically referred to as ‘modernity’ is marked with the indelible stain of what might be termed the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Slavery,…
Andrew Gillum wants to fix his state’s broken carceral system. He’s not alone among Democratic nominees for governor. By Matt Ford, The New Republic — Andrew Gillum wasn’t expected to win Tuesday night’s Democratic primary for the Florida governor’s race, even after he won Senator Bernie Sanders’s endorsement weeks ago. The 39-year-old Tallahassee mayor was outspent five-to-one by the frontrunner, and even more so by the two billionaires in the race, but…
The recent DNC vote over superdelegates revealed longstanding divisions within the party. By Seth Masket, Vox — What do Democrats fight about when they’re just fighting among themselves? The same thing the country fights about: race. I’m just back from attending the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Chicago, where I observed as the party passed a number of reform measures, including a controversial proposal to reduce the power of…
For the empowered Venezuelans, their socialist ideology is part of their identity. It is what and who they are, writes Les Blough. By Les Blough, teleSur — In his article, ‘Venezuela’s Monetary Revolution Vis-a-Vis Economic Sanctions,’ Nino Pagliccia reports on the new economic model based upon the petroleum-backed cryptocurrency, the Petro, introduced in March of this year. The new initiative brings a series of economic measures to begin on August…
The “Queen of Soul” died Thursday. By Alex Henderson, AlterNet — The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, has died at the age of 76. Franklin, who had suffered from pancreatic…
Topics: Garvey’s Vision of Economic Development • The Green Party’s Candidate for Governor of NY • Victory in Ferguson. Guests: Rev. Dennis Dillon (Senior Pastor, the Rise Church, Brooklyn, NY), Howie Hawkins (Green Party Candidate for Governor, Syracuse, NY) and Melanie Randels (Community Organizer, Ferguson, MO (Invited))
Ayanna Pressley says the Democratic Party needs new blood. She’ll have to take down a popular incumbent to make her case. By Joanna Weiss, Politico Magazine — A few weeks before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her New York congressional primary, Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley spoke to a roomful of young Democrats at the Bell-in-Hand, a Boston tavern that dates back to 1795. She was explaining why she should unseat a…
The far right movement may seem all but dead, but a crop of political candidates are introducing ideas into the mainstream. Vegas Tenold, The Guardian — No one would argue that the last year hasn’t been a rough one for the white nationalist movement in America. In fact, a not insignificant number of column inches has been written about how the movement is all but dead. The leader of the…