Portside

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech against the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York one of the most profound and important speeches in American history. Without question, King’s speech in April helped to energize the anti-war movement and, through his profound moral analysis, in defining the degenerate role of the US in that war. It also helped to topple a sitting U.S. president - a profound lesson for us today.

In the summer of 1967, the streets of Newark exploded in violence. Here is a first-hand account of the tragic events that changed the city, and the country forever. Newark’s population is still exceedingly low income. Crime, gang warfare, drugs, joblessness and failing schools are still facts of life in some Newark neighborhoods. But the cultures of many ethnic groups continue to lift the spirit of its many peoples. Increasingly, Newark is a good place to call home.

Reader Comments: MLK Vision Still Vital, Necessary; Trumpcare; End of US Empire; Activism-Learning from the Past; Resources: Jubilee Haggadah; Bill of Rights Briefing; Tips for Responding to Racist Attacks; Announcements: Solidarity Rally B&H Workers; Tax Marches April 15; Peoples Climate Movement-April 29; and more...

There’s no question that social and digital media are transforming the way movements are built and organized. But technology by itself has never overthrown a tyrant nor seized state power. Self-expression is a potent thing, but as a plan of action it’s just a start. Progress demands that the contemporary social media-based resistance overcome its fear and loathing of leadership, organization and ideology.

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.

Reader Comments: Standing Against Trump - Defending Immigrants and the Massive Women's March; How Big Were the Marches - links to local stories; March Size and City Population - Who Had the Best Turnout?; Marching in Pensacola, Florida After the Hurricane; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn-The Rebel Girl; Announcements: Fighting Fascism-Remembering the Abraham Lincoln Brigade; The '60s-The Years that Changed America Carnegie Hall Festival; and more...

On March 16, 1968 American soldiers murdered 407 unarmed men, women, and children in My Lai. The same day, in the nearby village of My Khe, another unit of the same division murdered an estimated 97 additional Vietnamese civilians. I and my fellow Marines routinely killed, maimed, and abused Vietnamese on a near-daily basis, destroying homes, fields, crops, and livestock with every weapon available to us, from rifles and grenades to heavy artillery and napalm.

They undertook secret missions against South Africa's apartheid regime. Sensational story hidden for over 40 years. In the 1960s, a group of leftists risked everything to revive the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. These international activists who embraced a working-class radicalism that was internationalist, cosmopolitan, anti-imperialist, and anticapitalist - and most important, steadfastly opposed to legalized racial oppression in South Africa.

It is 1968. Year of blood. Year of protest. Year of insurgency. Year of a pivotal election: Republican Richard Nixon versus Democrat Hubert Humphrey. I decide that Nixon and Humphrey are indistinguishable, and I refuse to vote. I encourage others to do the same. It's a mistake I regret to this day. At first, students on the left were full of hope about the 1968 election...The only way Donald Trump does not become president of the United States is if Hillary Clinton does