Muscle Shoals: The Movie and the Music

This movie  transports us to the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the unlikely breeding ground for some of America's most creative and defiant music. Muscle Shoals has inspired some of the most important and resonant songs of all time. At its heart is Rick Hall, who founded FAME Studios. Overcoming crushing poverty and staggering tragedies, Hall brought black and white together in Alabama's cauldron of racial hostility to create music for the generations. Greg Allman, Bono, Clarence Carter, Mick Jagger, Etta James, Alicia Keys, Keith Richards, Percy Sledge and others bear witness to Muscle Shoals' magnetism and mystery.

Friday Nite Videos -- May 16, 2014

Portside
Alabama Shakes - I Ain't the Same. Muscle Shoals: The Movie and the Music. Wealth Inequality In America. Movie: Chef. The Teen Brain: Under Construction.

Global Strike Hits Fast Food Industry as Turkish Workers Demand Justice

Fast food workers from around the world participated in a strike against McDonalds and other low-wage employers in an ongoing struggle to demand a living wage. Meanwhile, strikes erupted in Turkey in reaction to government inaction and possible complicity in a disastrous coal mine explosion that has left hundreds of miners dead.

Jackson Rising: An Electoral Battle Unleashes a Merger of Black Power, the Solidarity Economy and Wider Democracy

Carl Davidson Keep on Keepin' On
500 peopled attended the weekend Jackson Rising conference earlier this month, conceived of by Chokwe Lumumba. Making use of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to run as an independent in the Democratic primary, he defeated the incumbent and forced a runoff. Given that Jackson is an 80% Black city, he then won overwhelmingly. So when he died suddenly and his supporters in a state of shock, the opposition moved quickly to counterattack.

The Ukraine - Two Counterpoints

Roger Annis; Anatol Lieven
Yesterday Portside ran Timothy Snyder's "The Battle in Ukraine Means Everything." Many readers responded (see today's Tidbits post). Anatol Lieven in the New York Review of Books and Roger Annis in an original Op-Ed for Truthout here present very different views.

Tidbits - May 15, 2014

Portside
Reader Comments-Fast-food strikes; Cecily McMillan; Campus Unions; Vietnam War; Farley Mowat; Ukraine; Power of Imagination; Filipino Americans and Farm Labor Movement; BDS; Food; William Worthy - R.I.P Announcements - Strike! & New Forms of Worker Struggle -May 28; Bold New Era or Hard Times for Organized Labor? -June 4; Organizing 2.0 Conference -June 6-7; The Origins of Inequality: Grassroots Economics Training for Understanding & Power -June 14 (all New York)

Behind the Rise of Boko Haram

Nafeez Ahmed The Guardian
Islamist militancy in Nigeria is being strengthened by western and regional fossil fuel interests. The roots of the country's security and instability go back to its formation by the British during colonial times: the Muslims in the North, the Christians and animists in the South. The country's Civil War/Biafran War, from 1967 to 1970, was the first rupture because of ethnicity.

How Fast Food Worker Strikes Ignited Across the Country

Alan Pyke and Adam Peck ThinkProgress
Today is the biggest strike in fast food history and it's phenomenal. Actions in support of $15/hour wages and the right to form a union without retaliation have spread across the globe. Workers went on strike in 158 American cities, according to FastFoodGlobal.org, including in 56 U.S. cities where there had not been a strike previously, International worker solidarity actions are taking place in 93 international cities spread across 36 countries.