Portside

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Book Review: Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory. Author Penny Lewis demolishes the mythology, and shows that working-class people were at least as opposed to the war as the middle and upper classes and that they played an indispensable role in the movement to end it, and that the black and Chicano movements were among the most militant antiwar voices.

Public sector workers have been scapegoated as a cause of our poor economy, and neoliberal reforms have targeted public sector unions. But public sector workers are fighting back. Teachers in Lee, Massachusetts rejected merit pay as a protest against education reforms; other unions have begun to flip the script, putting the blame on the 1% and calling for taxing the rich.

If current trends hold, all Southern states will be transformed in some way by the changing blend of Southerners, new and old.

A quick point on whether the minimum wage “costs jobs.” Here is the reality: The minimum wage is now the lowest it has been in decades. In fact, 40% Of Americans Now Make Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage, if that wage had kept pace with productivity increases.

The Boy Scouts of America has adopted a new policy, which kicks in January 1, that makes it so that member troops can no longer discriminate against gay youth. But anyone who is gay and over 18 years old still won't be allowed to be a Scout leader or volunteer.

We used to buy music at independent record shops downtown. We shopped the chain mega-stores that took their place. When these moved online, in the form of iTunes or Amazon, we were there, wallets out. For fifty years, the path to purchase has essentially been the same. Go to the physical/digital record store, buy an album. But what if the record store was inside the album instead? Bittorrent Bundle lets people connect directly with their audience, on their terms.