Portside

Reader Comments: Chelsea Manning Sentencing; Egypt; Koch Bros.; Kerry and the Mideast Peace Process; Petition to Hold Kerry Accountable; False History; Labor Unions At Another Crossroad-Exchange (Martin Morand & Bill Fletcher); Dawkins Dresses Up Bigotry; Announcement: Encore-The Blacklisting of Hope Foye - Los Angeles-Aug 24 Resources: The Unfinished Dream - The March on Washington & the Radical Legacy of Martin Luther King

The `new majority' of youth, minority, gay and lesbian, women, labor, and immigrant voters is the foundation of a new March on Washington coalition. A contemporary civil rights movement that incorporates immigrant rights, climate justice, reproductive rights, & marriage equality may converge with a revitalized labor movement committed to organizing low-wage, youth, and immigrant workers - to once again bring pressure from below to usher in a new era of progressive reform

Reader comments: Prisons; Labor Unions; Banning Russia from the Olympics - a Very Bad Idea; Remembering Viola Liuzzo; Bayard Rustin & '63 March on Washington; American Jews & Israeli Racism; Student Debt; Announcements: FREEDOM '63 REMIXED - Legacies of the March on Washington - Aug 16 -New York; The Forgotten History of the March on Washington, Aug 22 -Washington, DC - two events; Walmart Workers are Standing Up!; CCDS 7th Convention; Useful graphic on Climate Change

Viola Liuzzo was the only white female protester to die in the civil rights movement.

David McReynolds, co-worker with March on Washington organizer Bayard Rustin, in the War Resisters League, remembers the march, the country and Washington, D.C. in 1963. The slogan was "Jobs and Freedom." The link was very deliberate - for what was freedom without a job? He is also critical of Rustin's rightward turn after the march and his support of the war in Vietnam.

Larger-than-expected crowds set to flock to Washington for 50th anniversary of King's 'I have a dream' speech in wake of recent court decisions that have fulled renewed debate on race

Reader Comments - March on Washington; Even McDonald's Thinks Its Workers Need $15; NLRB, Chris Hedges and the Pequod; Labor & Obamacare; Greens and Fracking; Saving Underwater Homes at the Local Level; Low-Wage Workers; R.I.P. - Fred Hicks (Louisville); Henri Alleg - Journalist who revealed French torture in Algeria; Announcements: Pastor's Message to Cuba; Celebrate Nelson Mandela's Life - Berkeley - July 21; Confronting the Climate Crisis - San Francisco - Aug 2

The March on Washington grew out of a clear understanding of the problems facing African Americans, and presented a discrete list of demands, including a comprehensive and effective civil rights law that would guarantee access to public accommodations, "decent housing, adequate and integrated education, and the right to vote." Also a "massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers - Negro and white - on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages"

These regressive trends can be turned around. But that will require the mobilization of an expansive political movement, sufficiently inclusive to attract Hispanics, low-income white southerners and African-Americans.