Saint Patrick's Peace Parade 2014! Join us!

Smedley D. Butler Brigade of Veterans For Peace

 Saturday, January 25, 2014

Saint Patrick's Peace Parade 2014! Join us!

People's Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Environmental Stewardship, Social & Economic Justice

Unite, Participate, Celebrate

Assemble: 2pm. Parade start: 3pm

SIGN UP TO ATTEND - We Need to Know You will Be There! There are several DIVISIONS marching in the parade, as well as two marching bands, Duck Boats, bagpipers, and the Bread and Puppet Theater.. The DIVISIONS are: Veterans groups; Peace groups; LGBT groups; Faith groups; environmental groups; social and economic justice groups; labor groups; political groups. Please invite your group(s) to come!  
Contact: Veterans for Peace, Pat Scanlon, info@massvfp.org, 978-475-1776; Massachusetts Peace Action, Cole Harrison,info@masspeaceaction.org, 617-354-2169; faith groups contact Lara Hoke, minister@uuandover.org.  

See the Facebook event page by clicking here.

Please join us for our Fourth Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the Alternative People’s Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Environmental Stewardship, Social and Economic Justice. (Details follow after flyer image, below...)

Click on flyer to see it bigger, download and share!

DIRECTIONS & LOGISTICS
The parade route is 4.5 miles and ends at Andrew Station.

Rides along the parade route are available for those who need them, but please let us know ahead of time that you may need a ride.

Come by T if at all possible as the area will be very congested. Broadway is the closest MBTA subway station.

Parking is available for participants in the St. Patrick’s Peace Parade. Vehicles must enter from the north from Summer Street onto D Street; the parking lot is at 383 D Street. Look for the lot with 40 foot white truck trailers. Allow extra time for traffic.

From the North
Route I-93 to South Station exit (20 A). Merge onto Purchase Street to light (100 feet). Make a left onto Summer Street (will pass South Station on right). Go approx. 1 mile to Convention Center. Turn right onto D Street, parking lot .2 mile up on left, (look for VFP Flag)

From South

Route I-93 – Take exit 20 toward South Station. Follow signs for Chinatown, continue straight onto Lincoln Street, turn right onto Kneeland Street, turn left onto Atlantic, south Station will be up on your right. Take a right onto Summer Street. Go approx. 1 mile to Convention Center. Turn right onto D Street, parking lot .2 mile up on left, (look for VFP Flag)

BACKGROUND

Why are there two parades in South Boston on Saint Patrick’s Day?

For the past four years Veterans For Peace have been denied to walk in the historic Saint Patrick’s Parade in South Boston. This is the largest parade of its kind in the country with over 700,000 people viewing the parade. The parade has a dual purpose; the celebration of Saint Patrick and the Irish traditions and heritage and a celebration of Evacuation Day, the day the British were run out of Boston. Both days fall on March 17th, so the City of Boston thought it a good idea to have the Allied War Veterans Council (AWVC) organize the parade. The problem is that one side of the equation, St. Patrick, a man of peace, is second fiddle to a military parade. AWVC has the exclusive say in who gets to walk in this historical parade. The City of Boston, South Boston Community Groups, the Boston Police have absolutely no say in who walks the streets of South Boston in the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.

In 2011 Veterans For Peace’s application was denied, when asked why and were told, “They did not want to have the word Peace associated with the word Veteran”. Well they did not know the Smedleys very well. We pulled our own permit and with only three weeks to go before the parade pulled together 500 people and the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the Alternative People’s Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Environmental Stewardship, Economic and Social Justice was born.

Twenty years ago the LGBT community wanted to walk in the parade and were denied which resulted in a lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court resulting in the Hurley Decision. The Smedleys immediately reached out to the LGBT community, inviting them to “walk in our parade”

In 2013 we had close to 2,000 people, seven divisions (Veterans, Peace, LGBT, Labor, Political, Religious, Occupy Everywhere) two bands, bag pipers, drummers, a Duck Boat, two trollies etc. It was a grand success. We have an Environmental Stewardship Division this year. Our goal is to end this last vestige of institutionalized exclusion, prejudice, bigotry, and homophobia and make this parade inclusive and welcoming to all and bring the message of peace to South Boston on Saint Patrick’s Day.

Please join us in South Boston on March 16. Be sure to bring your Chapter’s or Organization’s banners, signs and costumes and join us in our fabulous Fourth Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade.

On behalf of the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Organizing Committee.

Thank you,

Pat Scanlon (VN '69)
Coordinator, VFP Chapter 9, Smedley Butler Brigade

***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator – Leave It To The Professionals 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

Those who have been following this series about the exploits of the famous Ocean City (located just south of Los Angeles then now incorporated into the county) private detective Michael Philip Marlin (hereafter just Marlin the way everybody when he became famous after the Galton case out on the coast) and his contemporaries in the private detection business like Freddy Vance, Charles Nicolas (okay, okay Clara too), Sam Archer, Miles Spade, Johnny Spain, know that he related many of these stories to his son, Tyrone Fallon, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Tyrone later, in the 1970s, related these stories to the journalist who uncovered the relationship , Joshua Lawrence Breslin, a friend of my boyhood friend, Peter Paul Markin, who in turn related them to me over several weeks in the late 1980s. Despite that circuitous route I believe that I have been faithful to what Marlin presented to his son. In any case I take full responsibility for what follows.        

*******

Dick and Dora Francis were strictly amateurs, very strictly amateurs, if there is such a degree of such term, in hard-nosed, rough-edged, seen-it-all professional private investigator Michael Philip Marlin’s eyes. Yes, they were in way over their heads by the time Marlin stepped in to try to unravel what they had knotted up and tied six foul ways to Sunday and then trace the cold leads to figure out what the hell happened, and who did it. The “what the hell happened” being an unsolved murder, maybe. The jury, no, not the court-room kind, but those who knew what went down, and those civic-minded aficionados who follow such things is still out that one. The only thing for sure was that Dick and Dora didn’t do it, and of course Marlin, otherwise everybody else had reason, had the chance, and the desire to do the deed.

To keep you from suspense the suspected deed was the killing of Charles Wyatt. Yes, that Wyatt who invented half the stuff that goes into airplanes and make them passenger- friendly, and who made and lost fortunes in doing so. Lately the former and thus his calling card had once again become welcome in high society where such things mattered if he cared to present himself to such company. Certainly his society-clawing wife and man-hungry (man-hungry if the man came with three names or a “the fourth” after it) fetching but air-headed daughters cared too if he was indifferent to such status. Therefore entered the high- society Francis duo to muddy the waters so that even a highly regarded private operate, a true professional if rather gruff and steely-eyed on the job, cried “uncle” at the end.
 

Marlin and Dick Francis had gone back a long way, back to the time when he had been a Detective Sergeant on the robbery detail for the Los Angeles Police Department and Marlin was just getting kicked off , or left, the force depending on whose story you wanted to believe. Kicked off if you believe that story about him not being on the take to local hood Marty Breen back in the 1930s and thus a loose cannon for that man’s criminal operations such as illegal booze, dope, women and gambling which depended on plenty of police co-operation and so he put the squeeze on one of his “on the take” higher-ups to ditch the troublesome Marlin. Left if you believe, and you should, that Marlin had decided that if he was going to face fists, slugs, and every other hazard known to public police work that he was not going to do so on a cop’s pay.

Marlin had thereafter set himself up as a private- eye and every once in a while he would wind up working in tandem with Dick on some tough case that the department was ready to put in cold storage. Dick in his turn had left the force, walking away without a regret or with regard for that pension that every cop craved as his reward for the dirty work he had performed in his career. The reason for that “no regret” was that Dick had landed one Dora Sweeney, heiress to the Sweeney lumber fortune which had started up in Oregon a couple of generations before and wound up  in her  generation in California. Dick, after investigating a robbery at Dora’s home, her high- style home in Bel Air had become friendly with the available and willowy owner. The robbery had never been solved, the jewels and bonds stolen slipped down some chain out of the country and shut the case down but as Dora said to whoever in her set would listen “she liked the cut of his jibe” and that was that. He left the force to “suffer” the tough life of the rich. And that was how Dick and Dora lammed onto (and fouled up) the Wyatt case.     

Dora had been boarding school friends at the toney Miss Prescott’s Finishing School with Elizabeth Wyatt (no Betty or Liz stuff strictly Elizabeth here, one of those quirks of the dizzy heiresses of the rich, the unmarried, husband-seeking daughters), Charles Wyatt’s oldest daughter and had kept in touch over the years especially the years before Dora’s marriage. When Charles Wyatt went missing, or had fled the home scene, or had been murdered, or any number of other possibilities once he disappeared without leaving word, or a trance Elizabeth frantically called Dora to see if she and Dick could find some information out her father’s fate, find it out on the quiet. Especially that “on the quiet” part since the current Wyatt fortune was at stake, and Wyatt Industries was just then in a precarious position in the markets and such news made public might tip things the wrong way. (And tip the family lifestyle, especially being able to hang with the country club set with its horde of eligible young men).       

The reason that Elizabeth beseeched Dick and Dora had also had been because in their little rarified Bel-Air circle Dick and Dora had developed a reputation for solving some society “crimes,” you know, which servant ran off with a set of the family china, or how did the chauffer, and with whom, crash the Smith’s automobile at two in the morning, or other little squabbles like that. Kid’s stuff really, even though Dick had once been a pro, playing detective stuff to do while they were waiting to have children to take up their spare time. Dick and Dora agreed, agreed too that the important thing was to keep the thing hushed up, and hushed up big time. No sense in letting the riffraff in on the family problems.

Of course while you are trying to hush things up, and not offend anybody by being so crass as to ask pointed questions of one’s social set, you are going wind up with dust. For example there had been a rumor well before Wyatt’s disappearance, a persistent rumor, that Wyatt was having an affair with his young comely blonde secretary, Gladys Pitts. They had been seen together at odd working hours hanging around Spider Greb’s Club Deluxe over in Malibu, and at other watering holes. Gladys had also not been seen for a couple of weeks since around the time of Wyatt’s vanishing act, although she had cashed a check at her bank drawn on Wyatt’s account a couple of days before Dick and Dora were handed the case by Elizabeth. Naturally nobody wanted to upset his long-suffering, unknowing wife, Liz (not Elizabeth, just Liz, in that more democratic although still social-climbing generation) and so no question was directed that way and none answered, period.         

So the weeks passed and Dick and Dora were spinning their wheels, trying with might and main to not get to Charles’ whereabouts, or what might have happened to him despite the mounting evidence that he had either fled the country for some purpose known only to himself, alone or in company, or somebody had done him harm. The evidence pointed a little toward the former since Wyatt had previously done such actions when he was either in financial distress, personal or corporate, had to be alone to work on some gizmo, or was just fed up with his family and their murderous social-climbing ways. That last part was not excluded however when another sizable check was drawn from Wyatt’s account the day after he was last seen. Drawn to “cash” at an outlining Bank of America branch in Ocean City. The Francis’ were at an impasse and that is when Dick cried “uncle” and called in his old pal Marlin.

Marlin, to his credit, agreed to work the case but with no promises and with the right to walk away if he got stonewalled by the society crowd. But even Marlin could not work miracles, except one. He found Gladys out in Fresno in about two days just by looking up her employment application information at Wyatt Industries, finding she had come from Fresno the year before and had given Fresno contact telephone number at that locale. Marlin laughed at that “error” by Dick who must have left all his sleuthing instincts back at the department. What he found out from a quick telephone call was that Gladys had quit Wyatt a few days before his disappearance and gone back to her husband the next day, all subsequently verified (also in about two days).

As for the idea of an affair with Wyatt when Marlin questioned her on that subject she mockingly laughed at the idea since Charles Wyatt was a drunk, crazy, and single-mindedly obsessive about his work. That drinking (by him she just sat and waited for instructions) was why they had spent time at the Club Deluxe and other watering holes. Overtime that Gladys bitterly complained he never paid her before she left. She was clueless as to his whereabouts and to any motive he might have for disappearing although she speculated on a bender. As for Charles Wyatt the family had put out  a reward out for information about his whereabouts and the Francis’ were pursuing whatever leads there were but Marlin has by then walked away from the now stone-cold case muttering under his breathe “leave this stuff to the professionals.” Yeah, that’s right.        

St. Patrick’s Peace Parade! People's Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Environmental Stewardship, Social & Economic Justice Unite, Participate, Celebrate   Sunday, March 16, 2014, 2:00 pm D Street & West Broadway, South Boston Look for white "Vets for Peace" Flags  Assemble: 2pm.  Parade start: 3pm    Sign Up to Attend - We Need to Know You will Be There!   There are several DIVISIONS marching in the parade, as well as two marching bands, Duck Boats, bagpipers, and the Bread and Puppet Theater.. The DIVISIONS are: Veterans groups; Peace groups; LGBT groups; Faith groups; environmental groups; social and economic justice groups; labor groups; political groups. Please invite your group(s) to come! Contact: Veterans for Peace, Pat Scanlon, info@massvfp.org, 978-475-1776; Massachusetts Peace Action, Cole Harrison,info@masspeaceaction.org, 617-354-2169; faith groups contact Lara Hoke, minister@uuandover.org. Web: smedleyfvp.org Twitter: @SmedleyVFP   Facebook:  www.facebook.com/smedleyvfp Please join us for our Fourth Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the Alternative People’s Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Environmental Stewardship, Social and Economic Justice. DIRECTIONS & LOGISTICS Sign Up to Attend - We Need to Know You will Be There!   The parade route is 4.5 miles and ends at Andrew Station. Rides along the parade route are available for those who need them, but please let us know ahead of time that you may need a ride. Come by T if at all possible as the area will be very congested. Broadway is the closest MBTA subway station. Parking is available for participants in the St. Patrick’s Peace Parade.  Vehicles must enter from the north from Summer Street onto D Street; the parking lot is at 383 D Street. Look for the lot with 40 foot white truck trailers.   Allow extra time for traffic. From the North Route I-93 to South Station exit (20 A). Merge onto Purchase Street to light (100 feet). Make a left onto Summer Street (will pass South Station on right). Go approx. 1 mile to Convention Center. Turn right onto D Street, parking lot .2 mile up on left, (look for VFP Flag) From South Route I-93 – Take exit 20 toward South Station. Follow signs for Chinatown, continue straight onto Lincoln Street, turn right onto Kneeland Street, turn left onto Atlantic, south Station will be up on your right. Take a right onto Summer Street. Go approx. 1 mile to Convention Center. Turn right onto D Street, parking lot .2 mile up on left, (look for VFP Flag) Map of the Parade Route Why are there two parades in South Boston on Saint Patrick’s Day? For the past four  years Veterans For Peace have been denied to walk in the historic Saint Patrick’s Parade in South Boston. This is the largest parade of its kind in the country with over 700,000 people viewing the parade. The parade has a dual purpose; the celebration of Saint Patrick and the Irish traditions and heritage and a celebration of Evacuation Day, the day the British were run out of Boston. Both days fall on March 17th, so the City of Boston thought it a good idea to have the Allied War Veterans Council (AWVC) organize the parade. The problem is that one side of the equation, St. Patrick, a man of peace, is second fiddle to a military parade. AWVC has the exclusive say in who gets to walk in this historical parade. The City of Boston, South Boston Community Groups, the Boston Police have absolutely no say in who walks the streets of South Boston in the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.  In 2011 Veterans For Peace’s application was denied, when asked why and were told, “They did not want to have the word Peace associated with the word Veteran”. Well they did not know the Smedleys very well. We pulled our own permit and with only three weeks to go before the parade pulled together 500 people and the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the Alternative People’s Parade for Peace, Equality, Jobs, Environmental Stewardship, Economic and Social Justice was born.  Twenty years ago the LGBT community wanted to walk in the parade and were denied which resulted in a lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court resulting in the Hurley Decision. The Smedleys immediately reached out to the LGBT community, inviting them to “walk in our parade” In 2013 we had close to 2,000 people, seven divisions (Veterans, Peace, LGBT, Labor, Political, Religious, Occupy Everywhere) two bands, bag pipers, drummers, a Duck Boat, two trollies etc. It was a grand success. We have an Environmental Stewardship Division this year. Our goal is to end this last vestige of institutionalized exclusion, prejudice, bigotry, and homophobia and make this parade inclusive and welcoming to all and bring the message of peace to South Boston on Saint Patrick’s Day. Please join us in South Boston on March 16. Be sure to bring your Chapter’s or Organization’s banners, signs and costumes and join us in our fabulous Fourth Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade.  On behalf of the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Organizing Committee. Thank you, Pat Scanlon (VN '69) Coordinator, VFP Chapter 9, Smedley Butler Brigade Vets4PeaceChapter9@gmail.com     Phone: 978-475-1776 Sign Up to Attend - We Need to Know You will Be There!

High Power", Film on Nuclear Power in India, with Filmmaker

When: Thursday, February 6, 2014, 6:45 pm to 9:00 pm

Where: Cambridge Main Library • 449 Broadway • Harvard T • Cambridge

 

 

First Thursday Film Series

Filmmaker Pradeep Indulkar will join us for discussion

Sponsored by Women's International League for Peace & Freedom

and the Cambridge Peace Commission

 

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

Dear MAPA (and other) Activists, The 6 month interim peace deal with Iran went into effect Monday, January 20th. This is a very positive step, but there are members of the senate who are still trying to push legislation to kill this deal! Your letters and calls to the senators are effective. Letters to the editor take our message to a wider audience. Letters to the editor are important!   --Studies show that they are among the most widely-read pieces in the press. --They are followed closely by elected officials and their staffs. --They are relatively easy to get accepted, especially in local or community papers.   Letter Drop Postponed We won't be doing our letter drop at the JFK Federal Building on Wednesday, Jan 22, after all. We will reschedule it in the future. Sorry for the confusion! DO. . .   --Always mention the elected officials you are targeting (In this case Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey) – this will ensure your letter will be noticed in their offices. --Respond to articles in the paper to which you are writing. --Try to connect with issues or views that are widely shared (i.e. No new War, Money for our communities not foreign adventures) --Be concise. --Have a community/personal angle if at all possible. --Keep trying!  If your first one isn’t accepted, further submissions may break through.  Get your friends and neighbors to write too. Here is a sample letter. Please write your own letter using one of these samples. Let us know if it is printed and in what issue. I’m concerned that we may be heading for a new war in the Middle East.  The current round of negotiations with Iran, finalized on January 20th, are the best hope of avoiding that disastrous outcome.  But some members of Congress are doing everything they can to undermine a diplomatic solution.  Senate bill 1881, which has a number of Democratic co-sponsors along with almost all the 43 Republicans, would undo much of the progress we made with Iran in 2013 by threatening more sanctions and put in place impossible conditions that would make a war much more likely.  Thankfully, neither Senator Warren nor Senator Markey have lent their support to this bill, but neither have they spoken out against it... (Click here for completed letter plus two more sample letters) You can follow the status and progress of S.1881 here: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1881 Sincerely, Jeff Klein Iran/Mideast Task Force

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

View this message in your browser. 5 years ago yesterday Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo. But the Obama administration is still making arguments in US federal court, and to the public that indefinite detention is necessary in Bagram, Afghanistan, as well as other places. From Guantanamo and beyond: indefinite detention and other forms of torture are wrong and must be stopped! Andy Worthington's back in London now. But for 12 days, the Close Guantanamo NOW Tour, featuring Andy, visited New York City, Washington DC, the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles area, meeting with groups of people and speaking to students who wanted to learn more and do something to shut down the prison at Guantanamo. View videos, read reports and press coverage. Almost 1,000 people in groups smaller and larger at these gatherings had the opportunity to hear first-hand from the world's foremost expert on the infamous prison and the human beings who have been held and tortured there for so long. He and other participants in the tour appeared on nationally syndicated progressive and mainstream radio shows. Students at Stanford University, Hastings College of Law, and Cal Poly Pomona (in an assembly of approximately 240) learned from Andy and other experts about the illegal prison their government opened when many of them were only 7 years old. The Close Guantanamo NOW Tour also participated in dramatic and powerful protest actions in DC on the anniversary of the prison's opening. The documentary Doctors of the Darkside was shown four times, provoking intense discussion about the how medical professionals could have colluded with torture, including forced feeding and water-boarding. These doctors have remained unaccountable - just yesterday the American Psychological Association announced it was declining to rebuke psychologist John Leso, who participated in the brutal "interrogations" of a prisoner in 2002. This tour was exactly the kind outreach we need to step up, challenging people to act on their belief that "America lives are not more important than other lives." Monday morning, public radio KALW host Rose Aguilar devoted an entire hour broadcast on Your Call, the excellent news feature show. The panel was Andy Worthington, joined via phone interview by CCR Guantanamo attorney Ramzi Kassem, and Sharon Adams, chair of the Committee Against Torture of the San Francisco National Lawyers Guild (and now its Vice-President). Listen to the show here. A prime example of who Guantanamo has victimized: Shaker Aamer is the last remaining British resident at Guantanamo. He was been cleared for release in 2007. He has long been an advocate for his rights and the rights of other prisoners at Guantanamo, and is reported to be back on hunger strike after striking off and on for almost all of 2013. He was featured in the full-page ad World Can't Wait placed in the New York Times last May. One of the comments made by Ramzi is worth quoting at length. He was asked about the total “cost” of Guantanamo, and answered this way: “My preference is to focus on the costs borne by the main victims of US policy at Guantanamo, and that's the prisoners, their families, and their communities. I think it's important to mention their families and communities because they also suffer from the single unchanged fact which has defined GTMO since 2002, which is not knowing whether they will ever be reunited with their loved ones...They are in the situation of not knowing when or if they will ever get out. That actually constitutes torture. Torture as understood by international law experts and… recognized medical experts is psychological torture... One of the most important forms of psychological torture is these prisoners have to deal with that reality of not knowing whether or not they will ever get out... “Looking beyond Guantanamo, we know for a fact that torture is not only still taking place, but that it is openly embraced by the Obama administration as a valid policy option. We know that because when President Obama signed that executive order making it illegal for US government agencies to rely on enhanced interrogation techniques [from 1/22/09], what he said in that order…  was that US government agencies can conduct interrogations consistent with the US Army Field Manual, which defines permissible interrogation techniques to be used in military interrogations. The devil is in the details, and it was amended in 2006. There's something called Appendix M which allows for sleep deprivation, stress positions, and a number of other techniques taken in isolation or taken together amount to torture under international law and according to multiple recognized medical experts... “…[T]he US govt has been picking up people, sometimes at sea, sometimes from other places like Libya, holding them on US military ships for a while, that period of time has stretched from weeks to months, interrogating them there, presumably using techniques from Appendix M, and only then bringing them over to the to the United States for trial. So torture is very much a part of our reality today, and it’s still ‘on the books’ so to speak.” Read reports and watch video from the Close Guantanamo NOW Tour From our friends at StopPatriarchy.org: Stand up AGAINST the March for "LIfe" and FOR Abortion On Demand & Without Apology! Sat. Jan. 25—1pm--Powell & Market, San Francisco On Saturday, January 25 in San Francisco, the anti's stage their Walk for "Life." In both SF and DC, they will fill the streets with their dehumanizing portrayals of women as murderers, and all the messages of shame and condemnation that typifies this front of the war on women. They are puffed up over their vicious progress in dismantling women's reproductive rights.All this at a time when women are being slammed back in every realm: from the mainstreaming of violent and degrading pornography to a global epidemic of rape, from a culture that celebrates pimping to the shaming of women who choose to have sex, and from the sexual enslavement of millions of women and girls in the sex industry to the widespread celebration of Pope Francis while he has changed nothing of church doctrine that enslaves and humiliates women and LGBT people. This must be opposed! Fetuses are NOT babies. Women are NOT incubators. Abortion is NOT murder. Continue reading... Share this message: HOLD the Date: Thursday January 30 World Can't Wait community conversation 10 pm EST - 7 pm PST for conversation to further the mission of closing Guantanamo NOW.  Thank you!!from the Close Guantanamo NOW Tour Thanks to everyone who donated to make this tour possible, and spread the word to your friends, family and online. With the help of 34 donors on the Indiegogo campaign and an even larger number of donors who pitched in at events, we were able to surpass the $2500 goal and make this tour possible. Thank you also to all the participants and hosts for the panels, protests, media appearances, and more: Andy Worthington, Todd Pierce, Steven Reisner, Ray McGovern, Jeff Kaye, Michael Kearns, Jason Leopold, Ramzi Kassem, Martha Davis, Sharon Adams, Eric Sapp, Adam Hudson. Dennis Bernstein, Michael Slate, Rose Aguilar, Margaret Prescod, Hadar Aviram, Hastings chapters of the National Lawyers Guild and the American Constitution Society, the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal, Stanford Says No To War, Progressive Christians at Stanford,  Jolie DePauw, Catherine Watters, All Souls Church, Festival Center, Stanford University, Revolution Books Berkeley, Holman United Methodist Church, Revolution Books Los Angeles, Anaheim Unitarian Church, Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Cal Poly Pomona, Hastings College of Law, ICUJP in Los Angeles, and many more. Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait If you were forwarded this message and would like to subscribe directly, sign up here. World Can't Wait | (866) 973-4463 | 305 West Broadway #185 NY, NY 10013 Make a donation online | Make a tax-deductible donation online Send checks or money orders, payable to "World Can't Wait": World Can't Wait 305 W. Broadway #185 New York, NY 10013 To make a tax-deductible donation of $100 or more in support of World Can't Wait's educational activities, please make checks out to "World Can't Wait/Alliance for Global Justice," a 501(3)(c) organization.

Hello  You are invited to the following event: The 1st Annual Activist Ball of Boston Event to be held at the following time, date, and location: Saturday, January 25, 2014 from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM (EST) Spontaneous Celebrations 45 Danforth Street Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 View Map   Attend Event Share this event: encuentro5 and OBR.fm/CAMP would like to invite you, your friends & co-workers to experience an evening of   A C T I O N ! Get up on your feet & D-A-N-C-E  ACTION!   MC Chris Faraone will guide us through a dance fantastic night of mixes by  DJ Univers-AL, passed hors d'oeuvres, surprise guest entertainment, $100 door prize, a $100 best costume award, silent auction and cash bar. Put away the... Share this event on Facebook and Twitter We hope you can make it! Cheers, Encuentro 5 & OBR.fm/CAMP

Please distribute widely

 

 

Film Showing

Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars

Learn what our government is doing in our name!

We will have a discussion after the movie.

Thursday, January 30 at 7:00 at the Robbins Library, in the Community Room
700 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington (on the 77 and 79 bus lines)

       

      

In Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars, director Robert Greenwald investigates the impact of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. The film highlights the stories of 16 year old Tariq Aziz, killed by a drone in 2011; and school teacher, Rafiq ur Rehamn, whose mother was killed and children hospitalized due to a drone strike in 2012. Unmanned includes more than 70 interviews. Prominent among these are a former American drone operator; Pakistani families of drone victims who are seeking legal redress; high ranking politicians and some of the military’s top brass, warning against blowback from the loss of innocent life.

 

For information about drones, see the website: nodronesnetwork.blogspot.com

 

Sponsored by Eastern Massachusetts Anti-Drones Network, justicewithpeace.org, (617) 776-6524.

Co-sponsored by Arlington United for Justice with Peace, WILPF Boston and Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade.

 

 

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BostonUNAC" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bostonunac+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

---

image002.jpg 16 KB

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Warren Smith’s Rock and Roll Ruby  

 

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

I recently completed the first leg of this series which is intended to go through different stages of the American songbook as it has evolved since the 19^th century, especially music that could be listened to by the general population through radio, later television, and more recently the fantastic number of ways to listen to it all. That first leg dealt with the music of my parents’ generation, that being the parents of the generation of ’68, those who struggled through the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s. This leg, centered on the music of my generation growing up in the Cold War 1950s, is a natural progression from that first leg since a lot of what we were striving for was to make a big musical break from the music that was wafting through many of our houses in the early 1950s. The music of our “square” parents which was driving us to desperation for a new sound just in case those threatened bombs that we kept being warned about actually were detonated. At least that musical jail-break is the way we will tell the story now, although I, for one, have a little more tolerance for some of their music. Some, I said, since I am unabashedly a child of rock and roll.    

Whether we liked it or not, whether we even knew what it meant, or frankly, during that hellish growing up absurd teenager time in the 1950s trying to figure out our places, if any, in the cold war red scare world, if there was to be a world, and that was a close thing at times, or whether we cared, our tribal music was as dear a thing to us, who were in the throes of finding our own very different musical identities. Whether we knew it or not in the big world- historic picture scheme of things, knew what sacred place the music of the 1950s, rhythm and blues, scat be-bop, rockabilly, doo wop, flat out pure rock and roll, those tunes held a primordial place in our youthful hearts. That was our music, our getting through the tough times music of post-World War II teen alienation and angst, that went wafting through the house on the living room radio (when the parents were out), on the family record player (ditto on the parents), or, for some, the television (double ditto the parents out, especially when American Bandstand hit us like a hurricane), and best of all on that blessed transistor radio that allowed us to while away the time up in our rooms away from snooping parental ears. Yes, that was the pastime of many of those of us who constitute the now graying fading generation of ‘68.

Some of us will pass to the beyond clueless as to why we were attuned to this music when we came of age in a world, a very darkly-etched world, which we too like most of our parents had not created, and had no say in creating. That includes a guy, me, a coalminer’s son who got as caught up in the music of his time as any New York City Jack or Jill or Chi town frill whose father busted out of the tumbled down tarpaper shacks down in some Appalachia hills and hollows, headed north, followed the northern star and never looked back and neither did his son.

Yes we were crazy for the swing and sway of Big Joe Turner snapping those big fingers like some angel- herald letting the world know,  if it did not know already, that it did not mean a thing, could not possibly matter in the universe, if you did not Shake, Rattle, and Roll, if you did not rock with or without Miss LaVern Baker, better with, better with, her hips swaying slightly, lips moistened, swirling every guy in the place on Jim Dandy vowing be her man just for that for a smile and a chance at those slightly swaying hips. Mr. Elvis Presley, with or without the back- up boys, better with, belting out songs, knocking down walls, maybe Jericho, maybe just some teen-struck Starlight Ballroom in Kansas City blasting the joint with his Jailhouse Rock to the top of the charts. Elegant Bill Haley, with or without that guy blowing that sexy sax out into the ocean air night in some Frisco club, blowing out to the Japan seas on Rock Around The Clock. Bo Diddley, all banded up if there is such a word, making eyes wild with that Afro-Carib beat on Who Do You Love. A young Ike Tina-less Turner too with his own aggregation wailing Rocket 88 that had every high school girl throwing dreamy nickels and dimes into the jukebox, with or without fanfare. Buddy Holly, with or without those damn glasses, talking up Peggy Sue before his too soon last journey. Miss Wanda Jackson, the female Elvis, with or without the blues, personal blues, strung out blues too, singing everybody else’s blues away with that throaty thing she had, that meaningful pause, on yeah, Let’s Have A Party. Miss (Ms.) Patsy Cline, with or without bad moment, making grown men cry (women too) when she reached that high note fretting about her long gone man on She’s Got You, Jesus. 

Miss (Ms.) Brenda Lee too chiming in with I’m Sorry. Mr. Jerry Lee Lewis doing a million songs fronting that wild piano off the back of a truck in High School Confidential calling out to anybody who wanted to rise in that rocking world, with or without a horde of cashmere sweater girls breaking down his doors, putting everybody else to shame. The Everly Brothers, always with that soft -spoken refrain catch that nobody seemed to tire of, doing teary Wake Up Little Susie. The Drifters with or without those boardwalks. The Sherilles with or without the leader of the pack, the Dixie Cups with or without whatever they were doing at that chapel. Miss Carole King, with or without the boys, writing the bejesus out of Tin Pan Alley. Yeah, our survival music. 

We, the generation of ’68, baby-boomers, decidedly not what Tom Brokaw dubbed rightly or wrongly “the greatest generation,” decidedly not our parents’ generation, finally could not bear to hear their music, could not bear to think anybody in the whole universe would think that stuff was cool. Those of us who came of age, biological, political, and social age kicking, screaming and full of the post-war new age teenage angst and alienation in the time of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot were ready for a jail-break, a jail-break on all fronts and that included from “their song” stuff. Their staid Eisenhower red scare cold war stuff (he their organizer of victory, their gentile father Ike), hell, we knew that the world was scary, knew it every time we were forced to go down into some dank school basement and squat down, heads down too, hoping to high heaven that the Russkies had not decided to go crazy and set off “the bomb,” many bombs. And every righteous teenager had a nightmare that, he or she, was trapped in some fashionable family bunker and those loving parents had thoughtfully brought their records down into the abyss to soothe their savage beasts for the duration. Yelling in that troubled sleep please, please, please if we must die then at least let’s go out to Jerry Lee’s High School Confidential.  

We were moreover, some of us any way and I like to think the best of us, driven by some makeshift dreams, ready to cross our own swords with the night-takers of our time, and who, in the words of Camelot brother Bobby, sweet ruthless Bobby of more than one shed tear, quoting from Alfred Lord Tennyson, were “seeking a new world.” Those who took up the call to action heralded by the new dispensation and slogged through the 60s decade whether it was in the civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture swirl before the hammer came down were kindred. To the disapproval, anger, and fury of more than one parent who had gladly slept through the Eisenhower times. And that hammer came down quickly as the decade ended and the high white note that we searched for, desperately searched for, drifted out into the ebbing tide. Gone. But enough of that for this series is about our uphill struggles to make our vision of the our newer world, our struggles to  satisfy our hunger a little, to stop that gnawing want, and the music that in our youth  we dreamed by on cold winter nights and hot summer days.

*******
…he knew, knew deep in his bones, knew on the face of it too that he could not keep her, keep her to himself, keep her settled down and so he accepted that she would blow away like the wind on him sometime and it was just a matter of how long he could keep her. It hadn’t started out that way, at least he did not see it like that at the beginning, see that she was a wayward wind, see that she had deeply imbibed the new wave coming across the continent. They had met conventionally enough senior year at old North Adamsville High, had responded to each other’s furtive glances in Miss Williams’ study hall, had danced around each other at Doc’s Drugstore where all the kids hung out after school to listen the latest music, their music juke box and had finally gone out on a double date (he without car at the time) at the local drive-in theater where she, sitting in the back seat with him, surprised him with her sexual advances. Stuff that he wasn’t all that familiar with but which he liked and which she knew that he liked. When he asked her about it later, not that night but a couple of weeks later, she just said girls knew stuff like that and she had learned it from her first boyfriend who was older. He let it pass.  And so they were an “item” that last year of school.    

Then the music at Doc’s jukebox changed, got more charged, frankly, got more sassy and sexual far different from their parents’ sappy sentimental stuff that didn’t get anybody’s heart rate up. And she changed, well maybe not so much changed as got caught up in the new dispensation, the new moves. When they went on dates it wasn’t to the movies or to some restaurant but to Smiley’s Bar &Grille on the outskirts of town where old Smiley had a hot new cover band, the Rocking Rockets, playing all the latest big beat stuff from guys like Warren Smith with his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby that she flipped out on. Not that she, like Warren said, would dance on the tables and stuff like that but that she would dance with lots of guys, would be flirty, tease flirty right before his eyes. When he questioned her on it she just said “don’t be a square, daddy” and refuse to discuss it further. And some nights when he called her mother answered to say she was not home, had gone out with the girls, or something like that. Yeah, he knew deep in his bones …        

 "Rock And Roll Ruby"

Well I took my Ruby jukin'
On the out-skirts of town
She took her high heels off
And rolled her stockings down
She put a quarter in the jukebox
To get a little beat
Everybody started watchin'
All the rhythm in her feet

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

Now Ruby started rockin' 'bout one o'clock
And when she started rockin'
She just couldn't stop
She rocked on the tables
And rolled on the floor
And Everybody yelled: "Ruby rock some more!"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

It was 'round about four
I thought she would stop
She looked at me and then
She looked at the clock
She said: "Wait a minute Daddy
Now don't get sour
All I want to do
Is rock a little bit more"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

One night my Ruby left me all alone
I tried to contact her on the telephone
I finally found her about twelve o'clock
She said: "Leave me alone Daddy
'cause your Ruby wants to rock"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul

Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
Rock, rock, rock'n'roll
When Ruby starts a-rockin'
Boy it satisfies my soul