Join three rallies
this week, including one today, in response to the situation in
Gaza. 1. #Boston4Gaza: Rally and Candlelight Vigil in Solidarity with Palestine.
Stop the Israeli
assault on Gaza launched on July 8.
End the Israeli blockade on Gaza ongoing since 2007. End US support for Israel’s military & occupation forces. Demand a US Mideast policy based on international law.
Join together in
Copley Square:
Today, Thursday,
July 17 from 5:00-6:30pm
560 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
to speak out about
the injustice in Palestine!
Bring your own signs
for the rally and we will have candles for the vigil.
2. Stand
With Gaza! Rally and Die-In
As
the U.S.-made bombs fall on Gaza, indiscriminately killing Palestinians, many of
them children, we heed the
Urgent call from Gaza civil society: Act now! We Palestinians trapped inside the bloodied and besieged Gaza Strip call on conscientious people all over the world to act, protest and intensify the boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel until it ends this murderous attack on our people and is held to account. Join us on Saturday:
July
19 at 1:00pm
Park Street Station
as
we mourn the hundreds killed and protest the complicity of the U.S. government
that spends over three billion of our tax dollars and advanced military weapons
annually to Israel to maintain an illegal and immoral system of discrimination
and occupation and the calamitous siege of Gaza.
To RSVP, please go
to https://www.facebook.com/events/285514144962386/
3. Outrage
Against Israeli Massacre in Gaza: Boston Stands with
Palestine
As Israel's
relentless bombardment of Gaza enters its second week, join with thousands
across the world in demanding an end to Israel's collective punishment of
Palestinians.
Take to the streets
on Tuesday at Copley Square:
July 22 starting at
5:30pm560
Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
to stand in
solidarity with the Palestinian people and to demand an end to U.S. aid to
Israel, an end to the siege of Gaza, and an end to the
occupation.
To RSVP, please go
to https://www.facebook.com/events/256379791223750/
| |||
Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership today! Dues are $40/year for an individual, $65 for a family, or $10 for student/unemployed/low income. Members vote for leadership and endorsements, receive newsletters and discounts on event admissions. Donate now and you will be a member in good standing through December 2014! Your financial support makes this work possible! Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 617-354-2169 • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter Click here to unsubscribe |
This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Once Again On Writer David Foster Wallace
Podcast • June 26, 2014
Podcast • June 26, 2014
Revisiting David Foster Wallace’s Boston
The novelist David Foster Wallace has resurfaced on film and in our radio archive, so we’re revisiting one of our favorite shows of the year this week: “Infinite Boston,” a tribute to Wallace's magnum opus "Infinite Jest" and its roots in Cambridge and Brighton. We dug up the famous Connection interview with Wallace from the spring of 1996, in which Wallace spoke about the book, Boston AA meetings, the lonely and lost Generation X, and his place in U.S. literature.
Bluesman Johnny Winters Passes At 70
Blues Guitarist Johnny Winter Dies At 70
Texas blues legend Johnny Winter has died, ending a long and expansive career that included working alongside bluesman Muddy Waters and playing at the Woodstock festival. Winter, who was 70, had been set to release a new album this fall.
Winter's death was confirmed by his publicist, who issued a statement saying, "His wife, family and bandmates are all saddened by the loss of one of the world's finest guitarists."
Winter reportedly died in his hotel room in Zurich, Switzerland. A cause of death has not been provided. He had maintained a busy touring schedule, with dates in the U.S., Canada, South America and Europe scheduled for a four-month tour that was to begin this month.
As a guitarist, Winter was adept at both finger-picking blues grooves and rock-star pyrotechnics, building on the talents that had marked both him and his younger brother Edgar as musicians early in their lives — they formed their first band when Johnny was 15.
Both brothers were born with albinism, and as adults, they grew their white hair long, making them a striking presence on stage.
Winter emerged on the national scene in 1968 after being featured in a Rolling Stone article. That same year, he released his first album, The Progressive Blues Experiment. One year later, he released his self-titled album, and then a follow-up called Second Winter.
The songs on those albums were a mix of originals and standards — but they were all defined by the liquid speed Winter was able to pour out of his guitar.
In the rankings of the all-time greatest guitarists, Winter was named No. 67 by a Guitar World reader poll, and No. 63 by Rolling Stone.
His website calls Winter "the clear link between British blues-rock and American Southern rock (a la the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd)."
Winter has said he benefited from being exposed to many styles of music as a kid, particularly the blues music he would hear in clubs in his native Beaumont, Texas. And it seems that even in the racially charged era of the 1950s and 60s, the albino kid was seen as just another person who loved the blues.
"Nothing ever happened to me," Winter said on his website. "I went to black clubs all the time, and nobody ever bothered me. I always felt welcome."
"Not many white people in Beaumont cared about the blues," he told NPR's Scott Simon in 2011. "I just liked the emotion and the feeling in the music. It was the most emotional music I'd ever heard."
A longtime fan of Muddy Waters, Winter produced and played guitar on Waters' Grammy-winning album Hard Again in 1977, along with three other Grammy-nominated records. The two met when Winter was around 17 — after the teenager bugged the bluesman to let him play with him on stage.
"He gave me his guitar and let me play," Winter said. "I got a standing ovation, and he took his guitar back."
Of Winter, Waters once said, "That guy up there onstage — I got to see him up close. He plays eight notes to my one!"
Winter's death was confirmed by his publicist, who issued a statement saying, "His wife, family and bandmates are all saddened by the loss of one of the world's finest guitarists."
Winter reportedly died in his hotel room in Zurich, Switzerland. A cause of death has not been provided. He had maintained a busy touring schedule, with dates in the U.S., Canada, South America and Europe scheduled for a four-month tour that was to begin this month.
As a guitarist, Winter was adept at both finger-picking blues grooves and rock-star pyrotechnics, building on the talents that had marked both him and his younger brother Edgar as musicians early in their lives — they formed their first band when Johnny was 15.
Both brothers were born with albinism, and as adults, they grew their white hair long, making them a striking presence on stage.
Winter emerged on the national scene in 1968 after being featured in a Rolling Stone article. That same year, he released his first album, The Progressive Blues Experiment. One year later, he released his self-titled album, and then a follow-up called Second Winter.
The songs on those albums were a mix of originals and standards — but they were all defined by the liquid speed Winter was able to pour out of his guitar.
His website calls Winter "the clear link between British blues-rock and American Southern rock (a la the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd)."
Winter has said he benefited from being exposed to many styles of music as a kid, particularly the blues music he would hear in clubs in his native Beaumont, Texas. And it seems that even in the racially charged era of the 1950s and 60s, the albino kid was seen as just another person who loved the blues.
"Nothing ever happened to me," Winter said on his website. "I went to black clubs all the time, and nobody ever bothered me. I always felt welcome."
"Not many white people in Beaumont cared about the blues," he told NPR's Scott Simon in 2011. "I just liked the emotion and the feeling in the music. It was the most emotional music I'd ever heard."
A longtime fan of Muddy Waters, Winter produced and played guitar on Waters' Grammy-winning album Hard Again in 1977, along with three other Grammy-nominated records. The two met when Winter was around 17 — after the teenager bugged the bluesman to let him play with him on stage.
"He gave me his guitar and let me play," Winter said. "I got a standing ovation, and he took his guitar back."
Of Winter, Waters once said, "That guy up there onstage — I got to see him up close. He plays eight notes to my one!"
South African Writer Nadine Gordimer Passes at 90
Nadine Gordimer, Nobel-Winning Chronicler Of Apartheid, Dies
by Alan Greenblatt
Nadine Gordimer, a Nobel Prize-winning author famed for her portrayals of South Africa under apartheid, died Sunday, her family said in a statement. She was 90.
Gordimer was considered a modern literary genius, an important chronicler of the injustices of racial segregation along with other white writers such as Athol Fugard and J.M. Coetzee.
"Her proudest days were not only when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991," her family said in the statement, "but also when she testified at the Delmas Trial in 1986, to contribute to saving the lives of 22 [African National Congress] members, all of them accused of treason."
Gordimer became active in the African National Congress — which was then banned but is now South Africa's ruling party — after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, in which dozens of people were killed. Three of Gordimer's books were banned during apartheid.
"They showed how people were living here," Gordimer said in an NPR interview last year. "They showed what influences were shaping our lives. And they showed the many different reactions to it among different people here."
Gordimer was one of the first people Nelson Mandela wanted to see upon his release from prison in 1990. A copy of her 1979 novel Burger's Daughter, which explored the family life of the children of revolutionaries, had been smuggled into his hands while he was imprisoned.
When they first met in the 1960s, Gordimer recalled in a 2009 interview, "we talked politics, of course. What else would we talk about?"
But she wrote in a New Yorker essay published upon Mandela's death last year that when they met a few days after his release from prison, he wanted to talk not about politics, but about his discovery that his wife had cheated on him.
This reflected in a way Gordimer's fiction, in which politics were always present but the personal was never forgotten. In 1981's July's People, a white family flees an armed rebellion and ends up increasingly reliant on a boy who had been their servant, turning the power relationship between white and black on its head.
As reviewer Maureen Corrigan noted of Gordimer's 2012 novel No Time Like the Present on NPR's Fresh Air, Gordimer's characters continued to grapple with politics after the end of apartheid, but found the country had become "much more morally ambiguous."
"Human beings must live in the world of ideas," Gordimer said in an interview with The Paris Review 35 years ago. "This dimension in the human psyche is very important."
Gordimer was born in 1923 in South Africa to immigrant Jewish parents, her mother English and her father a Lithuanian who had fled the pogroms of his home country. She began writing early and published her first short story when she was 15.
Gordimer was considered a modern literary genius, an important chronicler of the injustices of racial segregation along with other white writers such as Athol Fugard and J.M. Coetzee.
"Her proudest days were not only when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991," her family said in the statement, "but also when she testified at the Delmas Trial in 1986, to contribute to saving the lives of 22 [African National Congress] members, all of them accused of treason."
Gordimer became active in the African National Congress — which was then banned but is now South Africa's ruling party — after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, in which dozens of people were killed. Three of Gordimer's books were banned during apartheid.
"They showed how people were living here," Gordimer said in an NPR interview last year. "They showed what influences were shaping our lives. And they showed the many different reactions to it among different people here."
Gordimer was one of the first people Nelson Mandela wanted to see upon his release from prison in 1990. A copy of her 1979 novel Burger's Daughter, which explored the family life of the children of revolutionaries, had been smuggled into his hands while he was imprisoned.
When they first met in the 1960s, Gordimer recalled in a 2009 interview, "we talked politics, of course. What else would we talk about?"
But she wrote in a New Yorker essay published upon Mandela's death last year that when they met a few days after his release from prison, he wanted to talk not about politics, but about his discovery that his wife had cheated on him.
This reflected in a way Gordimer's fiction, in which politics were always present but the personal was never forgotten. In 1981's July's People, a white family flees an armed rebellion and ends up increasingly reliant on a boy who had been their servant, turning the power relationship between white and black on its head.
As reviewer Maureen Corrigan noted of Gordimer's 2012 novel No Time Like the Present on NPR's Fresh Air, Gordimer's characters continued to grapple with politics after the end of apartheid, but found the country had become "much more morally ambiguous."
"Human beings must live in the world of ideas," Gordimer said in an interview with The Paris Review 35 years ago. "This dimension in the human psyche is very important."
Gordimer was born in 1923 in South Africa to immigrant Jewish parents, her mother English and her father a Lithuanian who had fled the pogroms of his home country. She began writing early and published her first short story when she was 15.
***Sports Is The American Pastime- George
V. Higgins’ The Agent
Book Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The Agent, George V. Higgins, Harcourt
Brace, New York, 1998
I came across the novels of the late George
V. Higgins in the 1970s when I read his first novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (later made into film starring Robert
Mitchum taking his beating as Eddie) and became an instant fan. Now part of
that draw of was because the scenes, as are the scenes of the book under review
The Agent, took place in and around
Boston where I am from and so the physical landscape was familiar. Part was
because the characters in that book “spoke” to me. Not so much the language and
mental set of those who have chosen crime as a career path which Higgins’ had a
masterful ear for but because they seemed very much like the corner boys I used
to hang around with as a kid. And would have followed into whatever was going
to happen if I didn’t fall in love with reading and chose a different path.
Higgins thereafter gave us a slew of books based on that same sharp ear and eye
to the language and mindset of mainly soldier-level criminals like Eddie. And I
read them as they came off the press, many of them anyway.
The Agent
written toward the end of Higgins’ life did not speak to me as much. Part of it
was because he was dealing with the intricacies of the modern world of professional
sports and its competitiveness so there were no corner boy characters for me root
for, only an insufferable king hell king
sport agent, Alec, who had the misfortune of not keeping up with the times. And
therefore becomes the A-one target of a murder. The details of that murder and
who had anything to gain from Alec’s demise are left to the reader. My reservations
about this book are based on the unfolding story-line. Far too many pages were
spent giving the reader the then current (1998) dope on what the world of big-time
professional sports and sports agency was about, from about six different
characters who basically said the same thing- for the athlete “take the money and
run”-for the agent “get the best contract possible and then ride the rails
until the end.” That might have meant something back in the day before players
were organized in the 1970s or so (and rightly so) but it seems less startling
these days. This one falls flat on that score. Higgins should have stuck to
those corner boys that knew so well and that drew my attention to his work in
the first place.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel
IMPORTANT - STAND WITH GAZA ACTIONS
Spread the word. Come and be visible.
at 5:00pm - 6:30pm in EDT
| |
Copley Sq, Boston, Massachusetts 02116
|
Stop the Israeli assault on Gaza launched on July 8.
End the Israeli blockade on Gaza ongoing since 2007.
End American support and assistance for Israeli crimes.
Join together in Copley Square to speak out about the injustice in Palestine!
Bring your own signs for the rally and we will have candles for the vigil.
End the Israeli blockade on Gaza ongoing since 2007.
End American support and assistance for Israeli crimes.
Join together in Copley Square to speak out about the injustice in Palestine!
Bring your own signs for the rally and we will have candles for the vigil.
at 5:30pm in EDT
| |
Copley Sq, Boston, Massachusetts 02116
|
As Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza enters its second week, join with thousands across the world in demanding an end to Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians.
Take to the streets to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel, an end to the siege of Gaza, and an end to the occupation.
#Boston4Gaza
Take to the streets to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel, an end to the siege of Gaza, and an end to the occupation.
#Boston4Gaza
Liza Behrendt
Organizer, Jewish Voice for Peace - Boston
603-397-2412, liza@jvp-boston.org
Saturday, July 19, 1 PM, Park St., Rally. More details to follow.
Marilyn Levin
United for Justice with Peace
781-316-2018
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Veterans For Peace-Cambridge
Midnight Voices
(the young dead soldiers do not speak, they have a silence that speaks for them at night when the clock counts)
Calling all poets, slammers, word smiths, lyricists, rappers, misfits, musicians and anyone who has the gift of gab! We are hosting Midnight Voices, a monthly collaborative coffeehouse, spoken word, and open mic series 3rd Thursdays at Cambridge Friends Meeting at 7pm. This third Thursday 17 July, we are featuring David Rothauser, he will be bringing an excerpt from his most recent play. Open mic performances will follow.
We are actively seeking co-sponsors and talent to be featured readers in upcoming months. If you have any ideas about this or want any other information please contact Eric Wasileski Ericwasileski@gmail.com
Warrior Writers Boston and the Smedley Butler Brigade, Veteran-Friends in conjunction with the FMC Peace and Social Concerns committee are hosting. These events are open to everyone; next month on August 21 @7pm we will be having Caleb Nelson as the featured reader.
We are actively seeking co-sponsors and talent to be featured readers in upcoming months. If you have any ideas about this or want any other information please contact Eric Wasileski Ericwasileski@gmail.com
Warrior Writers Boston and the Smedley Butler Brigade, Veteran-Friends in conjunction with the FMC Peace and Social Concerns committee are hosting. These events are open to everyone; next month on August 21 @7pm we will be having Caleb Nelson as the featured reader.
There are
only 5
days left for the U.S. and
Iran to either agree to a nuclear deal or extend the July
20th deadline. All of
our work to prevent war and support a brighter future for the U.S. and Iran
could come down to the next 100 hours. And, like clockwork, Senator Robert Menendez and Lindsey Graham have prepared a letter to President Obama issuing inflexible and unnecessary demands that could derail the talks and set the stage for sanctions and war. Menendez and Graham, with help from AIPAC, are working to convince Senators from key committees to sign the letter before they send it to the President tonight. Our Senators, Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, are among those being pressured to sign the letter. They need to hear from you. Will you call our Senators right away [Warren - (202)224-4543, Markey - (202)224-2742]?
Tell them:
"I am a constituent from [your city] and I
support U.S.-Iran diplomacy, not war. I am calling to urge my Senator to NOT
sign the Menendez-Graham letter that could derail a nuclear agreement and start
a war."
If enough Senators sign this letter, they risk
unraveling the best chance we've ever had to prevent war between the U.S. and
Iran.
Please make the call and let us know if you do so we can keep track of our impact and focus attention as needed. And please share this message so that we can generate as many calls as possible.
| ||
Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership today! Dues are $40/year for an individual, $65 for a family, or $10 for student/unemployed/low income. Members vote for leadership and endorsements, receive newsletters and discounts on event admissions. Donate now and you will be a member in good standing through December 2014! Your financial support makes this work possible! Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 617-354-2169 • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter Click here to unsubscribe |
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First, as a brief refresher: Earlier this year, we got connected
with Catapult, the World Wide Web's premier crowdfunding site for women's
rights, curated by the likes of everyone from Beyónce Knowles to John Legend.
Big names aside -- at its core, this tool draws on the power of many people
coming together to affect change, much like the rest of the movement for Fair
Food. Earlier this summer, we launched the "Ensure dignity and respect for
farmworkers" project, an effort to raise $25,000 in 5 months to support a
new staff member at the Fair Food Standards Council, the essential third-party
monitoring body of the Fair Food Program.
Among the many changes taking place in Florida's fields under the
Fair Food Program, few are so transformative as the power women farmworkers now
have to end sexual violence -- to denounce harassmenet when it occurs, to have
their report be swiftly and thoroughly investigated, and to watch the offender
face losing his job. The Fair Food Standards Council plays a crucial role in
every step of that process, and as we look ahead to expanding the Program, we
will need all hands on deck to bring an end to sexual violence in Florida
tomatoes and beyond.
This month, we have a real opportunity to make the project take off:
it's being featured on Catapult's front page! If you haven't had a chance to
take a look at the project yet, make sure to head over to Catapult and join the dozens
of other members of the Fair Food Nation who have become supporters. There are
many ways to support the Catapult project. To name a few:
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Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S.
Aid To Israel
STAND WITH GAZA
RALLY AND DIE-IN
SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1:00 PM
PARK ST. STATION
As the U.S.-made bombs fall on Gaza, indiscriminately killing
Palestinians, many of them children, we heed the
Urgent call from Gaza civil society: Act
now!
We
Palestinians trapped inside the bloodied and besieged Gaza Strip call on
conscientious people all over the world to act, protest and intensify the
boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel until it ends this murderous
attack on our people and is held to account.
Join us as we mourn the hundreds killed and protest the
complicity of the U.S. government that spends over three billion of our tax
dollars and advanced military weapons annually to Israel to maintain an illegal
and immoral system of discrimination and occupation and the calamitous siege of
Gaza.
We call for:
An End to the Bombings and
Killings
An End to U.S. aid to
Israel
Support for the Palestinian call
for BDS
*In The Time Of The French Revolution- "La Marseillaise"-In Honor Of The 225th Anniversary Of The French Revolution
La Marseillaise
Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé
Entendez vous dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes!
Refrain
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! Marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!
Amour sacré de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!
Liberté, Liberté cherie,
Combats avec tes defenseurs!
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure à tes males accents!
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!
Refrain
Nous entrerons dans la carrière
Quand nos ainés n'y seront plus;
Nous y trouverons leur poussière
Et la trace de leurs vertus.
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre!
Refrain
La Marseillaise
Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé
Entendez vous dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes!
Refrain
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! Marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!
Amour sacré de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!
Liberté, Liberté cherie,
Combats avec tes defenseurs!
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure à tes males accents!
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!
Refrain
Nous entrerons dans la carrière
Quand nos ainés n'y seront plus;
Nous y trouverons leur poussière
Et la trace de leurs vertus.
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre!
Refrain
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