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
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Lynne Stewart Update- click on link to check out the latest medical news on former (not by her choosing) lawyer and political prisoner Lynne Stewart. Please contribute to Lynne's Immediate Medical Needs! As Valentine's Day approaches, show your continued love and support for Lynne Stewart and her tireless efforts to fight for justice. And if you donate now, your gift will be matched dollar for dollar by a generous friend of the fight for justice for Lynne Stewart.
We will always have fugitive memories emerging out of the
fog-horn Frisco town night in the late 1940s ready to take refugees, car-borne just
enough gas to get over the Bay Bridge refugees out of Route 101, Route 66,
Route 20, hell, even up and down the Pacific Coast Highway, hell, maybe
especially up and down that highway, coming in from the cold war red scare
Denver/Chi Town/Jersey Shore/Village/Lowell/Hullsville American monster dreaded
night. (Second-hand fugitive memories in some cases some of us having been just
a little too young to have been word-blasted directly at the time.) Later once
the horde gathered in the North Beach, Big Sur and other points south sweeps
listening, be-bop frantic listening, to some homoerotic scatological son of
Abraham howling forth the new dispensation, the new beat, the new blessed, the
new meek shall inherit the earth message if they would only heed the beat, we
would add that factor as well. That mad monk speaking deadpan of Negro streets,
hipster angels, tea, constant tea dreams, and Moloch dreads, spreading and spewing
out of their industrial-sized flames. Later still speaking of one million
Trotskyite revolutions (if only that were true, the one million part rather
than the one millionth part).
Of course unto the umpteenth generation of those who seek
their own open roads, and sweet Jesus there will always be a few who must
devour road miles, a few who dream of surviving outside the box, who take seriously
the open road expanses and movement, we will always have Jack Kerouac’s novel, On The Road. TheSal-Dean stream dream filled with stolen (borrowed?) broken down
standard- shift cars right on the steering wheel made when automobiles were
automobiles stirring every young blade with dreams of the open road and hidden
sex not some robotic inventions made to make commutes easier cars. Flashing out
in some desperate smoke-hazed (unnamed smokes) wine jug-swigged (get
Thunderbird it is cheaper and lasts longer under human thirst beatings), bed
jumped night novel that sent one, and maybe the next two, generations on the
road, on the road to some mystical discovery thing never quite explained, never
quite grasped.Some foreboding search
for language, for words, for the right words that never seemed to come, or if
they came came in million word torrent deluges for chrissakes to explain our
short existence, to make sense of things in the Moloch (beautiful word) modern
world that required explanation but that has no time for reflection on the big
cosmic questions.
Yes, we will always have Kerouac’s finely wrought be-bop
word plays jumping off the page out in the desolate 1950s a-chicken-in-every-
pot-and-two-cars-if-not-three-cars-in-every-garage, in every suburban ranch
house sub-division garage. Speaking out of the vastness of the fellaheen world like
some broken down drummer from Merrimack rivers (although, not strangely, not
strangely at all, for a guy trying to half break-out of that river world, not
to that world but the city literati make no mistake) about lost adventures,
about lost time (like bedded sniffling Proust not river-bend Wolfe was some ancient kin), about lost remembrances
but mostly about the desolate life for the dusty bedraggled fellahin left without
words down in the sinking sweated sun-bake field of the word. Not the million
Trotskyite words, not the Negro streets words, not the North Beach hipster angel
words (although he tried) but cool be-bop words refracting the total mass
anxieties of a long-gone daddy world, a world from which to run and hide with
or without a bottle or some tea.
Yes, we too will always have Sal (a.k.a Jeanbon Kerouac) the
errant river-borne son searching for that tea dream high world to make the
anguish stop and always have Dean, Dean Moriarty (a.k.a. Neal Cassady), the
father we did not know, could not know, while we were vicariously sitting on
those Jersey shores, be-bopping in the Paterson night, shooting “pools” in
Larimer Street Denver, looking for a long gone daddy fixer man in some Division
Street Chi town dark night, sweating out in those Ames cornfields like some busted
sod-buster, worse, doing stoop bracero labor in Fresno, hell, even sitting second-hand
on the seawall down in those old Hullsville beach fronts looking for the great
blue-pink great American West night.
We will always have Charlie, Sonny, Slim, Big Red, the Duke,
blowing out brass, trying to reach and sometimes making it, that high white
note, after hours, after the paying customers, the carriage trade, went home to
bed and they blew to heaven, or tried to, with the boys, with the guys who knew
when that note floated out of some funky cellar bar door winding its way down
to the harbor, down to the turgid bay seeking passage to the Japan seas. With
more blows at that dark hour before the dawn to get the hemp squared, to be
right with that tangled mass of brethren who constituted the beat-down, beat
around world.
We will always have Sal, Carlos, Bull, Dean and an ever
changing assortment of , well, women, women, mainly, at their beck and call,
riding, car-riding, riding hard over the hill and dale of this continent
searching, well, just searching okay. We will always have the lost father and
son (odd combination since they could have been brothers), Sal and Dean,
playing off of each other’s strengths (and weaknesses) as they try to make
sense of their world, or if not sense then to keep high, keep moving, and keep
listening. And we will always have a great American novel to pass on to the
next wanderlust generation, if there is another wanderlust generation.
We will always have that beat down novel, praise be.
Join
the Boston International Socialist Organization for a discussion this Thursday on the ongoing
situation in Ukraine as we work to sift through the rubbish being put out by
mainstream media and develop a socialist analysis. As socialists we understand
any military intervention from the ruling class is directly against the
interests of the working class. So then why exactly has Russia seized military
control of the Crimean Peninsula? Why is John Kerry, Secretary of Defense of a
country that has an extensive
record of military intervention and undeclared wars from the Middle East to
Latin America, now coming out against the idea of a military intervention? We
will be discussing the imperial interests of Russia and the US/EU as well as
what the different forces look like within the ongoing struggle.
While
many have painted the protest movement to be completely dominated by the
far-right, the far-right is not the only social force fighting for their
politics within the movement. While the left is weak and small in Ukraine, they
also make up the struggle in the streets. What are the important lessons that we
can draw out from these challenges? What is the role of the left internationally
in standing in solidarity with workers in Ukraine? And how does the struggle in
Ukraine relate to the struggles we continue to see emerging internationally in
response to austerity and the global attack on the working class?
Join
the Boston International Socialist Organization for a discussion this Thursday on the ongoing
situation in Ukraine as we work to sift through the rubbish being put out by
mainstream media and develop a socialist analysis. As socialists we understand
any military intervention from the ruling class is directly against the
interests of the working class. So then why exactly has Russia seized military
control of the Crimean Peninsula? Why is John Kerry, Secretary of Defense of a
country that has an extensive
record of military intervention and undeclared wars from the Middle East to
Latin America, now coming out against the idea of a military intervention? We
will be discussing the imperial interests of Russia and the US/EU as well as
what the different forces look like within the ongoing struggle.
While
many have painted the protest movement to be completely dominated by the
far-right, the far-right is not the only social force fighting for their
politics within the movement. While the left is weak and small in Ukraine, they
also make up the struggle in the streets. What are the important lessons that we
can draw out from these challenges? What is the role of the left internationally
in standing in solidarity with workers in Ukraine? And how does the struggle in
Ukraine relate to the struggles we continue to see emerging internationally in
response to austerity and the global attack on the working class?
Join
the Boston International Socialist Organization for a discussion this Thursday on the ongoing
situation in Ukraine as we work to sift through the rubbish being put out by
mainstream media and develop a socialist analysis. As socialists we understand
any military intervention from the ruling class is directly against the
interests of the working class. So then why exactly has Russia seized military
control of the Crimean Peninsula? Why is John Kerry, Secretary of Defense of a
country that has an extensive
record of military intervention and undeclared wars from the Middle East to
Latin America, now coming out against the idea of a military intervention? We
will be discussing the imperial interests of Russia and the US/EU as well as
what the different forces look like within the ongoing struggle.
While
many have painted the protest movement to be completely dominated by the
far-right, the far-right is not the only social force fighting for their
politics within the movement. While the left is weak and small in Ukraine, they
also make up the struggle in the streets. What are the important lessons that we
can draw out from these challenges? What is the role of the left internationally
in standing in solidarity with workers in Ukraine? And how does the struggle in
Ukraine relate to the struggles we continue to see emerging internationally in
response to austerity and the global attack on the working class?
In Honor Of Women’s History Month- “Big Bill” Haywood’s Nevada Jane
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Nevada Jane-Utah Phillips Are the linens turned down in folds of glowing white? Are you lying there alone again tonight? He’s marching with the men through the cold November rain, But you know he’ll come back home, Nevada Jane.
(Chorus) Have you seen the way he holds her as thought she was a bride, Children riding on shoulders strong & wide? She never thought to scold him or even to com-plain, & Big Bill always loved Nevada Jane.
And when he stumbles in with blood upon his shirt, Washing up alone, just to hide the hurt, He will lie down by your side and wake you with your name, You’ll hold him in your arms, Nevada Jane. (Chorus)
Nevada Jane went riding, her pony took a fall, The doctor said she never would walk again at all; But Big Bill could lift her lightly, the big hands rough and plain Would gently carry home Nevada Jane.
The storms of Colorado rained for ten long years, The mines of old Montana were filled with blood and tears, Utah, Arizona, California hear the name Of the man who always loved Nevada Jane. (Chorus)
Although the ranks are scattered like leaves upon the breeze, And with them go the memory of harder times than these, Some things never change, but always stay the same, Just like the way Bill loved Nevada Jane. (Chorus)
*******
Nevada Jane
I've been told that I'm wrong about this song. I don't know whether I am or not, since Bill Haywood, who was with the Western Federation of Miners and was the first Secretary-Treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World, never mentioned his wife in his autobiography except very briefly, so I can't tell whether he really loved his wife or not.
I do have stories from old-timers who tell me about when Bill Haywood was working in a mine camp, basically doing a job of de-horning. His wife, Nevada Jane, had been crippled by a fall from her pony, so she couldn't walk. Bill had a house on the edge of town, and he would carry his wife down to the railroad station every morning. She would sit there and talk to the women of the town about what they could do to help organize the town, while Bill was brawling at the bars. He'd come back at the end of the day, pick Nevada Jane up, hang one of their kids off of each shoulder, and every night you'd see him carrying the wife and kids up to the house.
Most of the songs about labor struggles are full of loud shouting and arm-waving and thunder and rhetoric. It's good for me, every now and then, to try to take a look at the human side of it, right or wrong.
The tune is by one of my favorite songwriters, Stephen Foster. I first heard "Gentle Annie" from Kate McGarrigle of Canada. The tune has too many wide-apart changes in it for me to sing the way Stephen Foster wrote it, so I changed it some –Utah Phillips
… and I will follow Utah’s lead
She knew she wanted him, knew she wanted “Big Bill” Haywood (nobody ever called him just Bill, not even his drinking companions, and certainly not his legion of lady friends who had a different take of that Big Bill notion, so Big Bill it was) from the first time she set eyes on him. First set eyes on him in front of those Virginia City miners all hungry, sweaty, and dirty from the thankless work-a-day toil, listening intently at that meeting where he boomed out his message-his message that working men had to stick together against the damn (he used less elegant language but that conveyed the idea) bosses and their agents in and out of the government, that all working men were brothersand that a better system, a system where the working man had a say in what the hell (again he used more salty language) was going on and how to keep from starving for starters to boot. He had more to say, spent the better part of an hour saying it with all those sweaty bodies filled with haggard eyes still following him, but she, Nevada Jane (although just Jane then, he gave her the Nevada part later, later after he had “conquered” her or that was the way he told the story) was more, uh, interested in the look of him, that big rugged man look, that take no prisoners look, that man of the West look, that had her entranced from that first moment. She had to have him, have him come hell or high water.
And she did, she did snare that man of the West by being a woman of the West, and just aiming straight for him. Oh, she used her feminine wiles for part of it, no question, but what Big Bill found interesting in her was that pioneer stock woman who asked for no more than he could give, and gave no less than she could give. Now everybody heard, hell, everybody knew, that Big Bill liked the ladies, had to have them, but even before her accident, her damn accident on that favored mare which crippled her up, she knew that when the deal went down he would always come back to her if he could. And after the accident he did, did more often than not come back, pleased to be with her back, back to his Nevada Jane.
But see Big Bill was a man of action and she knew, knew deep in her pioneer stock womanhood, that he had to do what he had to do. And so along with the joy at his sight when he showed up she had days and nights of anguish. Days and nights when he was on a miners’ organizing drive in some hellhole place like Bisbee, out in Arizona copper country, or over in the rapidly vanishing Nevada silver mines or up in Butte, up in Big Sky country where the mines stretched out over the high prairiesand hills. All places where the bosses’ had a bounty out on Big Bill’s hide.Days and nights of worry about his health, especially that big heart that might break at any time, or that dead eye that might flare up and cause some hell. Days and nights of worry that he might drink that river of liquor, hard liquor, hard old whiskey, that he kept saying he needed to keep him fit for the work (except when he wanted to call a meeting and would literally close down every bar in some town, forcibly if he had to, to insure a proper attendance).
Mostly though she worried about the women, about some young thing, maybe a pioneer woman who was not crippled up, or maybe one of those New York society women who were all agog over him when he went East to raise money and support for the miners and for the IWW (Wobblies, Industrial Workers Of The World), but she worried. She worried and she kept his home clean and nice, pioneer simple but clean and neat, for his return. And he did return for as long as he could…
And hence this Women’s History Month contribution
Boston March 16th Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade
Fundraising Appeal
Hi Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Supporters
The 4th Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the alternative people’s parade for Peace, Equality, Environmental Stewardship, Jobs, Social and Economic Justice is just around the corner. In a few days we will gather once again in South Boston for the only “Peace Parade” in the country. Our parade has been growing every year. We have wonderful bands, floats, vehicles, drummers and a couple thousand participants.
We do not charge anyone to be in our parade
We do not have big corporate sponsors giving us money for our parade
We don’t sell advertisements
We don’t have rich benefactors or underwriters
We do not have a trust fund supporting our parade
One thing we do have is YOU.
We also have a lot of expenses and would like to ask our friends to help us with a small donation. Our parade is not a high budget item but it still costs us several thousands of dollars.
We would like to ask our friends to help support us with parade expenses.
If you are able to contribute, please take a moment and consider writing us a check, to help defray some of our expenses.
Checks can be made out to: Veterans For Peace
Mail you check to:
Veterans For Peace
P.O. Box 1604
Andover, MA 01810
On behalf of the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Organizing Committee,
THANK YOU
Erin Go Bragh
Pat Scanlon (VN 69’)
Coordinator, Veterans For Peace, Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Note change: Form Up At 1:00 PM For A 2:00 PM Step-Off
Subject: Emergency Alert! Action for Venezuela Required Today.
Emergency
Alert!
Senate committee votes today on anti-Venezuela
resolution –
Call your Senators
The
Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled today, March 11, 2014, to mark
up S365, an anti-Venezuela resolution that includes the following language:“urges the President to immediately
impose targeted sanctions, including visa bans and asset freezes, against
individuals planning, facilitating, or perpetrating gross human rights
violations against peaceful demonstrators, journalists, and other members of
civil society in Venezuela”. The bill, which has six co-sponsors, four Democrats
and two Republicans is expected to pass in committee.
As a resolution it
does not carry the force of law, but if proponents combine it with the recently
passed House Resolution HR488 which passed the House on Mar. 5 by a vote of
393-1, and if both houses of Congress pass the subsequent bill, it would become
a law, possibly forcing the Obama administration to issue sanctions. This could
force Venezuela to retaliate by cutting oil shipments to the US, an action which
could cause the US to further escalate its tactics.
Our elected officials
and the US State Department are playing with fire and ignoring the interests of
the people of both nations. Please call your Senators today – right now – and
tell them it is extremely important to you that they oppose S365 and any other
efforts to impose sanctions or worsen relations with the democratically elected
government of Venezuela.
United States Capitol
switchboard at (202) 224-3121
This alert was
issued by the Alliance for Global Justicewww.AFGJ.org
