Portside

The problem over the last thirty or forty years is the declining bargaining power for workers. And the question is, how do we reconstruct bargaining power for workers?" That's what organizers of today's strike are out to do. Workers say they've already achieved some incremental store-specific victories - it's too soon to say if they'll succeed. But they're already drawing near-unparalleled attention from local and national media, and the rest of the labor movement.

Momentum builds against rush to war against Syria and further escalation in the Mideast. 162 members of Congress send letter to Obama demanding that Congress be called back into session, for full debate and congressional vote before any new war is launched. Western intervention will only spread the killing, which is gravest threat to the people of Iraq. New evidence that U.S. derailed UN probe.

This is a year for commemorations, and it is ironic it is also when the U.S. Supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act, a key component of the movement for human rights. The challenge facing any piece of major legislation goes beyond the movement necessary for passage. There must be recognition of the need for vigilance which requires dedicated education and expectation that guaranteed fairness for all is a human right that must permanently prevail.

What would Martin Luther King say if he could return to contemplate what his country has become since his death? What if he could see how the terror and slaughter brought to bear upon New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, had turned his people into a fearful, vengeful nation, ready to stop dreaming, ready to abridge their own freedoms in order to be secure?

If the march was important, it was because it represented an acceptance of the Negro revolt as part of the American myth, and so an acceptance of the revolutionaries into the American establishment. That acceptance, of course, carries the hope that the Negro revolt will stop where it is. Yet that acceptance is also the most powerful incentive and assurance that the revolt will continue.

In so many respects, progress in race relations has been eroded, and even reversed, by the growing economic divides afflicting the entire country.

Long overshadowed by Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, A. Philip Randolph's opening address to the March on Washington should be known by all.

Fast-food workers and labor groups are now calling for a $15/hour minimum wage and many are also asking for opportunities to unionize. Beginning with walk-outs in individual fast-food restaurants last year, the movement has progressed from the local to a national scale. A national strike by fast-food employees is set to take place on August 29.

The August 28, 1963, March on Washington helped build support for President Kennedy's civil rights bill.The protest was largely responsible for the addition of Title VII, which prohibited employers and unions from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, national origin and sex. It also helped lead to the passage of civil rights legislation under President Johnson. As some of these provisions have been weakened what will be needed to move forward?

The first step would be for Washington to put intense pressure on Saudi Arabia, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, and Turkey, to halt the flow of weapons to the Syrian rebels, while simultaneously getting Russia and Iran to do the same. A concerted, worldwide diplomatic effort along those lines could work, but there’s zero evidence that President Obama has even thought of that.