Monday, August 30, 2010

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Where is the SAP going? (German 1930s Left Party)

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-German Trotskyism in the 1930s

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The German Left and the Russian Opposition (1926-28)

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The Decline, Disorientation and Decomposition of a Leadership: The German CP

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Alan Wald's "The New York Intellectuals"

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Grandizo Munis (1912-1989)

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-With Trotsky in Norway

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The History of Argentine Trotskyism

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

*From The Blogosphere-40TH ANIVERSARY, CHICANO MORATORIUM - AGAINST THE WAR IN VIETNAM,- AUGUST 29TH, 1970

Click on the headline to link to a Boston Indy Media entry on this archival entry from the Vietnam War era highlighting Chicano opposition to that war (and the current ones).

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The 1934 Minneapolis Strike

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The strike at the Renault Plant, AprilMay 1947

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The Renault Strike of April and May 1947

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The Stalinist Apparatus end the Renault Strike of May 1947

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

*For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The Bob Feldman Music Blog On "My Space"-Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 1

Click on the headline to link to the Bob Feldman Music Blog( for lack of a better name) on My Space.

Markin comment:

This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.

*********

Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 1
Current mood: thoughtful


Category: Music

In her speech to the GI Movement of the Vietnam War Era (whose text can be found in the booklet that's included in Paredon Records' FTA! Songs of the GI Resistance vinyl album of 1970), Barbara Dane said the following:

"When I was a kid, I loved to sing for teenagers, and made a big hit with marvy songs like "Blue Moon." I tried to get jobs doing that, and quickly found out how insultingly easy it is to get ahead in show business if you were "a smart girl with a little looks" who was willing to play by the rules: Look like and act like a Barbie doll, be for sale at a price, and complain about as much as Barbie if the male society sees you only as a cute commodity without ideas or feelings. I decided that the price was too high...

"I sang for the youth movements, the labor struggles which spread after WW II to most of the auto plants, and in the election campaigns of progressive and left candidates, as well as black candidates, in which case even a liberal was considered a threat to the status quo. I worked in factories and offices so I wouldn't have to mix singing with money making, but some times the organizations and unions could afford a few bucks in the name of building and supporting our own culture. Then I was able to spend full time organizing and singing. Now and then I was offered some "Golden Opportunity" but the more I saw of how little the system respected its artists, particularly when they were women, the less I was interested in buying the deal.

"Then the fifties came. Repression of political ideas spread with the coming of the "cold war" and the Korean war...

"I decided the best thing to do was to keep on singing, as publicly and loudly as possible. And I always used my own name, in spite of the frequent visits from the "boy scouts" as we used to call the tall men in suits who flashed FBI badges and asked a lot of questions. We understood they were mainly trying to intimidate us, so we just told them to get out and don't bother coming back. Most of the organizations either fell apart or sank underground, and soon there was no place to sing or talk about what was on our minds, so some of the artists who wanted to find an audience to influence went into the nightclubs..."


Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=4#ixzz0xwlVXNMZ

*For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The Bob Feldman Music Blog On "My Space"-Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 2

Markin comment:

This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.

**********

Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 2
Current mood: contemplative


Category: Music
In her speech to the GI Movement of the Vietnam War Era (whose text can be found in the booklet that's included in Paredon Records' FTA! Songs of the GI Resistance vinyl album of 1970), Barbara Dane said the following:

"I became very interested in other forms of people's expression, like the blues and traditional jazz. I worked with incredible musicians like Jack Teagarden, Louis Armstrong, and Turk Murphy. Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon (who wrote most of Muddy Waters' stuff) were my group for a year, and I worked with Muddy himself. Brownie McGhee, Lightning Hopkins, Kenny Whitson, Wellman Braud, and Sonny Terry were some others. They showed the creativity of brotherhood and love amidst the very exploitive, racist atmosphere we worked in. Their music affirmed life, while the nation waged war in Korea, and the CIA ran massacres in South America and Indochina. I worked with social analysts and satirists like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, who exhausted themselves trying to penetrate the curtain of apathy and helplessness that had fallen over the country."


Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=4#ixzz0xwkyBYHX

*For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The Bob Feldman Music Blog On "My Space"-Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 3

Markin comment:

This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.

*******

Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 3
Current mood: contemplative

Category: Music
In her speech to the GI Movement of the Vietnam War Era (whose text can be found in the booklet that's included in Paredon Records' FTA! Songs of the GI Resistance vinyl album of 1970), Barbara Dane said the following:

"I worked in many groovy and some lousy nightclubs and coffeehouses; I made a lot of records, did TV and radio work, and communicated in any way possible. The message was mostly through the blues: Life in the USA is a crying shame but we, the people, are real. We are as deep as the seas and as loving as the sunshine, strong as the mountains and determined as the wind. And we will prevail!

"Instant overnight, Hollywood wetdream success kept flashing in my face, but it was creepy. And I never met a super star who was really able to enjoy what the stardom brought. Most of the well-known cultural workers I knew were so damned lonely from being on the road month in and month out, getting bored with repeating their greatest hits, and out of touch with ordinary pleasures like friends and family, had no idea what was going on from the political point of view and therefore didn't understand the effect of their work, and weren't really bringing home enough money to make it worth all that trouble..."


Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=4#ixzz0xwkUY4ar

*For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The Bob Feldman Music Blog On "My Space"-Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 4

Markin comment:

This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.

************

Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 4
Current mood: thoughtful


Category: Music
In her speech to the GI Movement of the Vietnam War Era (whose text can be found in the booklet that's included in Paredon Records' FTA! Songs of the GI Resistance vinyl album of 1970), Barbara Dane said the following:

"I was too stubborn to hire one of the greed-head managers, probably because I'm a woman who likes to speak for herself. I always made my own deals and contracts, and after figuring out the economics of it, I was free to choose when and where I worked, able to spend lots more time with my three children and doing political work, and even brought home more money in the end, by not going for the "bigtime." I did make some really nice records, because I was able to choose and work with wonderfully gifted musicians. Some of them are: TROUBLE IN MIND--with Don Ewell, Pops Foster and others on San Francisco Records. LIVING WITH THE BLUES--with Earl "Fatha" Hines, Benny Carter, etc. on Dot. WHEN I WAS A YOUNG GIRL--solo, folk songs...on Tradition/Everett...I'M ON MY WAY--with Kenny Whitson, Wellman Braud, etc. on Capitol. BARBARA DANE AND THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS--on Folkwyas (Freedom Songs), BARBARA DANE SINGS BLUES with 6 and 12 string guitar, solo on Folkways..."


Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=4#ixzz0xwjylpIx

*For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The Bob Feldman Music Blog On "My Space"-Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 5

Markin comment:

This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.

*********

Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 5
Current mood: thoughtful


Category: Music
In her speech to the GI Movement of the Vietnam War Era (whose text can be found in the booklet that's included in Paredon Records' FTA! Songs of the GI Resistance vinyl album of 1970), Barbara Dane said the following:

"I started my own nightclub in San Francisco, so I'd have more freedom to sing when I wanted to and under conditions I could control. SUGAR HILL was an immediate success. I brought in Mose Allison, Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Lightnin' Hoopkins, Jimmy Rushing, Mama Yancey, T-Bone Walker, Jesse Fuller, Mance Lipscomb, and others and together we built the "home of the blues." But the sixties had come, and a whole new deal. JFK was in the White House, Joe McCarthy was dead, the Cubans had won their revolution, and a group of black students had decided it was time to stop being humiliated in silence. They staged the first sit-ins at a Woolworth store lunch counter. Support movements sprang up around the country, and I started singing on the streets again, and at benefits. From their inspiration, other student movements began, like the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, where I lived.

"One of the most thrilling things I did in Berkeley was one of the last before I moved away. I led songs from the top of a police car which was swamped in the middle of thousands of students sitting down to demonstrate and using the car itself as a Free-Speech platform! That was the University of California campus where only a few years before hundreds of teachers signed "loyalty oaths" rather than be thrown out of their jobs, and where a handful of others had conducted a fight for their right to teach as they saw fit, with their loyalty to be defined by their own conscience alone...and where thousands of students had kept their mouths shut to avoid trouble."


Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=4#ixzz0xwjPz1wu

*For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The Bob Feldman Music Blog On "My Space"-On GI Coffeehouses by Irwin Silber--Part 1

Markin comment:

This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.

********

On GI Coffeehouses by Irwin Silber--Part 1
Current mood: thoughtful


Category: Music
In a 1970 article, titled "About The GI Movement," former Sing Out! magazine editor Irwin Silber wrote the following about the GI Coffeehouses of the Vietnam War Era:

"One of the most effective devices for helping the growth of organized protest in the Army has been the "GI coffeehouse." This idea was launched early in 1968 by a young anti-war activist, Fred Gardner, who together with a group of friends opened a small coffee house in Columbia, South Carolina, homeof Fort Jackson. The UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) as it was called, was first of all an alternate-culture center for off-duty GIs who were fed up with the bars, drug stores, magazine stands and other traditional Army town enterprises designed to separate a young soldier from his monthly paycheck as quickly and deftly as possible.

"By contrast with the B-girl infested joints openly encouraged and supported by both the military and civilian authorities, the UFO (and other coffee houses which have grown up since) offered simple, wholesome food and a decent cup of coffee at low prices. More important, they combined an atmosphere of relaxation--escape from the brass harass--with a hi-fi record player and the kind of recordings young people like, plus people willing to listen and to talk about real things. And all of this takes place in an atmosphere more in keeping with the mood of young people than anything else in town."


Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=4#ixzz0xwiuOYWa

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

*From "The Rag Blog"-Nancy Miller Saunders' "Combat by Trial"- A Guest Book Review

Click on the headline to link to a The Rag Blog entry-Combat by Trial: An Odyssey with 20th Century Winter Soldiers by Nancy Miller Saunders. (iUniverse, Inc., 2008.) 591 pp, $34.95. Available at www.iuniverse.com.

Turning the Guns Around: Notes on the GI Movement by Larry G. Waterhouse and Mariann G. Wizard (Praeger, 1971). 221 pp., published at $6.95.


Markin comment:

This material is required reading, especially for younger leftist militants unfamiliar with the hard road, but necessary, work of organizing soldiers. That road is, after all, the short way home out of the quagmire of Afghanistan. Kudos.