If the “left” is to remain a serviceable category of analysis and struggle, it needs lots of updating. The composition, politics, organizational forms, breadth and depth, and challenges of the contemporary left are quite different from its forebear in the last half of the 20th century.

Sitting in Rough Draft in Kingston NY with a cold Pilsner sitting in front of me. Every year on this day I come here in the early am and lift my glass to my two fallen friends who died in Vietnam fighting a war that was the doing of the war makers in Washington and the money bags in corporate suites. Past time to turn swords into ploughshares.

Westkill Brewing, tucked comfortably in the Catskill Mountains, makes a pilsner that sits at the top of my beer world. It’s so good that it brings to mind the folk wisdom of my unforgettable old friend, Timmy Plummer, who told me, “Living at the bottom of a beer barrel now and then has its merits.”