Portside

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.

Seventy-five non-union workers at a giant warehouse in Mira Loma, Calif. serving Wal-Mart won big pay and benefit increases, as well as potentially more stable employment.

To the extent public opinion can be gauged in China, Bo appears to have acquitted himself among the public at large, perhaps salvaging his political legacy, if not his future.

Twenty-nine years ago the Turkish government was burning Kurdish villages and scattering refugees throughout the region. Some 45,000 people—mostly Kurds— lost their lives in that long-running conflict. Today, Turkey is negotiating with its traditional nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and trying to cut a peace deal that would deliver Kurdish support to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s push to amend Turkey’s constitution and prolong his rule.

The Bay Area strike is one of a series of nationwide one-day strikes -- timed for Labor Day and the 50th anniversary of the historic civil rights-era March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The strikes are the culmination of months of fast-food walkouts that began on the East Coast, organized by New York-based grassroots movement Fast Food Forward, and have rippled across the country.

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Based upon the speeches during the main portion of today’s events there can be little doubt that the Dr. King who was murdered in Memphis in 1968 would not have been allowed to speak at this commemoration of his life. There was no discussion of the “evil triplets.” Instead, we had far too many speakers pay homage to the narrowest possible liberal agenda in broad abstractions with none of the searing material truths that make Dr. King’s speeches so bracing even today.

Everyone who marched has their own special memory. Although the event comes down to us mainly as the Rev Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech to the huge throng standing in the sweltering heat or sprawled cooling their toes in the Mall's reflecting pool, I remember it as one big picnic with everyone in their Sunday best and on their best manners firmly clasping hands in King's "beloved community". But it wasn't all kumbaya.