When Little Johnny S. Got “Religion”-With Edward G. Robinson’s Brother Orchid In Mind

Fritz Jasper couldn’t believe the news once it got to him up in the joint, up in Sing-Sing if you want to know. (Fritz was doing a nickel for armed robbery where the money was, a bank, having gotten caught for doing exactly what he never had been touched for when Johnny S. ran things, ran the show with style, ran it without rancor, and without enemies, live enemies anyway but time were tough lately and so the nickel.) Yeah, couldn’t believe that Johnny, Little Johnny S had gone off on a tangent, had gone underground from what he got of the story.  Fritz wasn’t alone, a lot of guys around New York City, a lot of guys on the island of Manhattan especially, guys just like Fritz Jasper from the old Five Points  hell-hole neighborhood where Johnny got his start stealing candy from Angelo’s candy store at about age six (stealing it with ease against the hawk-like Angelo who had nabbed Fritz more times than the liked to remember until he wised up about getting in trouble for two-bit stuff like penny ass candy and graduated to banks and short terms growing longer in Sing-Sing although never when he worked for Johnny, worked the best wheel in town before the “junk” got to him, got him short-nerved). Betting guys too, guys who bet on everything including the color of their mother’s underwear if the price was right, who liked to look at every proposition from every angle couldn’t figure it out, couldn’t figure out, couldn’t put the price on, the how and why when they heard Little Johnny S., Little Johnny without the “S” to guys in the know, walked away from his kingpin crime boss job. (Only “Sky” King put a price on a proposition, a proposition that Johnny was working some king-sized scam and money would come raining down on the old town, everybody would get well in a hurry and many guys, including Fritz through the “trustie” connection to the outside world put a cool  C-note on that one.)  

Fritz thought for a moment how jobs like the candy store childhood petty larcenies were so Johnny easy, that was just like minting dough after the hard times flaked away when the Great Depression hit and the, worse, worst of all, liquor became free and easy to get and that cut the tail out of that racket. Johnny moved on though, everything he touched then turned to gold after a few heists, a good dope market connection, and bliss (and no penny ante Al Capone stuff either Johnny “bought” himself a politician who stayed bought and no copper even sneezed on any Johnny operation.

Jesus, walked away, Johnny walked away on two upright legs not carried away by six pall-bearers paid for by some up and coming guy in the food chain like Jack Buck who was Johnny’s viper sidekick on the way up and had maybe figured his own figuring that slicing the pie one way, hell, not slicing it at all was just fine (Jack too had figured the candy store gaff early and never got caught by Ma Singleton, the candy store owner in his neighborhood up in the high number Bronx, walked away without “uncle” laying a hand on him, good old uncle trying to put the squeeze on him to get out from under some crummy rap since they never could get fact one him, couldn’t break that “connection”  and the East River ran red as proof of that assertion. Nada, none of that stuff that no guy from Five Points, certainly not Fritz who rode up with Johnny and had been in on that first heist of the Bank of New York which in turn got that first shipment of opium from Morocco and the rest was history, would shake his head about for two seconds. Walked away, get this, so he could “spread the good word,” spread it around Buffalo for God’s sake, could do good deeds without reward, and really pay attention to this one, to get by with no dough, no dough of his own anyway. Nada. Jesus, double Jesus (a term Fritz hadn’t used since he was a kid but it seemed right just then. What was the world coming to for crying out loud.) Yeah, Little Johnny S. sure got “religion,” sure bought that one-way ticket. And that, dear friends is how Johnny S., Little Johnny, the toughest hombre coming out of New York City in the 1920s and 1930s and that was saying something became Brother Orchid (the brother part is because he got all twisted up with that damn bunch of guys living poor, living real poor, by choice on the outskirts of the city and, at least this part makes sense, Little Johnny S. always loved orchids, always loved to give his lady friends that flower to let them know he cared, cared for that minute anyway).          

Here is what Fritz was able to gather from a few guys who knew Little Johnny S. better than he did later on when Fritz tried one Johnny-less bank heist too many and wound up in the joint that time, guys who knew the ins and outs of the guy, and the ins and outs of what brought Johnny low (besides the obviously dame problem that has sent more than one guy to do screwy stuff, sent more than one guy screaming to high heaven although they usually didn’t take the big step fall down giving up dough and the works like Johnny). Most of the information came from Willie “The Knife” so Fritz knew it has to be pretty close to the truth because Little Johnny and he were tight at the end and because Willie was telling his tale before his own big step-off, his own nickel to a dime up to Sing-Sing and Flo, Flo Addams, you remember her right, Little Johnny’s old flame who wound up on easy street with a big time cattle rancher once Little Johnny saw her as spoiled goods, saw her as an impediment to his new “life.”   

Here is what they cobbled together between and it makes as much sense as the real story if it isn’t right as what the guy did who we are talking about. No question, Little Johnny Sarto (yeah, that’s his real name, or was, before that “Brother Orchid” moniker got laid on him), who would have been played by the old time classic shoot-‘em-up ask questions later gangster actor Edward G. Robinson in the movies if you had to describe his looks, the way every smart guy told him he looked which played on his vanity no  end) had grown up on some mean streets in the old city, no question either that like every guy (and gal for that matter) who grew up on “the wrong side of the tracks,” grew up “from hunger” poor, had serious wanting habits and was not particular about how he moved up the organized crime food chain during his younger days as a “torpedo” for “Red” Rizzo’s crowd in Flatbush. Illegal liquor, drugs, serious drugs like heroin that guys would go through hell to get (and get off of, some of them anyway), not that silly cocaine that you could buy at any drugstore and sniff your brains out, transporting women, pimping them off too, numbers, a few armed robberies and so on. And Johnny was smart, smart and tough, so he rose pretty swiftly up the chain until one day he was king of his own operation. All without spending day one in some cooped-up jailhouse. As he rose, and as the ways of criminal activity took different turns in the end he confined himself to the very lucrative and safe “protection” racket.                          

But see, and this Fritz (Willie too if you want to know, the name of the means streets might be different but the feelings were the same, almost universal) knew, knew from personal experience, poor boys, poor street urchins, getting to the top of the rackets only goes so far and so Johnny got to thinking about getting the pedigree to be a high-class guy, a high-class guy who guys (and gals) looked up to just because he was high-class. Without sticking a gun, or some fists in their face to prove the point. And that is what “The Knife,” ever-lovin’ Flo and Fritz thought was Little Johnny’s downfall. He moved out of his “safe zone” and tried to play straight up with society fake art and antiques, real estate, hell even royal titles guys and they having a few centuries of experience in the genes took him, like taking candy from a baby, no easier since Johnny didn’t have Jack Buck, Willie, or even Fritz to sniff out those cons while Johnny was in his high society heat.    

Funny one day Johnny checked his bank account, thought he saw that he had more dough than he could use in a lifetime and just walked away from his organization, gone fishing, done. Of course in the rackets, the food chain rackets, leaving doesn’t mean that is the end of the rackets but rather that Johnny was leaving his operation to his lizard right hand man Jack Buck, a guy who if you casting for types in some movie would hands down be played by Humphrey Bogart. Jack who came up the same way as Little Johnny except his was meaner, tougher and more likely to use a little gunplay to settle any problems. (He was also tough on his women, not afraid to throw a punch or two to keep them in line according to Flo.) So Johnny fled the city, leaving everything, and everybody, including his longtime girlfriend, Flo, who if you were casting her in the 1940s would be blonde, very blonde and Johnny would not have cared if it was real or from the bottle, a frilly   played by Ann Sothern type, but get this who was left in the lurch because, well, because she loved Johnny and expected him to marry her. Silly girl.      

Naturally a guy like Johnny from the mean streets figured he could buy class, buy that upscale thing with just enough money but here his instincts played him dirty. He did not know rule number one about how the rich and high class got that way, got there over a mountain of skulls, and so Johnny was an easy pick-off once it got around that he was in the “high-class” market. Poor sap many a guy had been put face down in the East River, put there by Johnny even, for doing less that those master thieves of Europe did to Little Johnny. So he busted out, went flat broke, and decided that he needed to get back to his own kind, get back to easy street, get back his old making money hand over fist operation. And so he headed home.   

But Johnny had a problem, well, really two problems, kind of inter-related. First was one Jack Buck who had built up his operation far beyond the seemingly cheapjack operation Johnny ran and so he was not inclined, very not inclined, to give it up just because some old-time hood was making some noises, and second, Johnny with his soft living had lost a step or two and did not have the current capacity to strong-arm Jack out of his place in the food chain. Christ in the end all Johnny had was “The Knife” and while he was a good guy to have in a fight he was not enough to take on Jack’s wrecking crew, including a couple of new age “torpedoes” who shot first and asked questions later. No, just shot first. One way or the other the heat from Jack’s hired help on was on and Johnny was on the lam.

That “on the lam” part is where things were hazy for Willie and Flo, the part about Johnny getting all shot up by Jack’s goons, being able to escape the worst of it, and finding sanctuary in that brotherhood monastery where he got his new moniker. Fritz could understand where Willie and Flo would have trouble with figuring out Johnny’s new thing it was so off base. See too it is hard to get inside a guy’s mind and see what he is up to, especially when he is on the lam and he stumbles into some guys, good guys who fix him up without question, feed and shelter him, but are naïve to the ways of the world is what Johnny probably thought for a long time until they showed him a different way of looking at life. It was not like Johnny went looking for something, he was just hiding out at the beginning, planning his Jack revenge and getting back on top. Well, he did get his Jack revenge in a funny way, funny since he got help from Flo’s rancher friend whom she wound up marrying and wound up on easy street as a result. Jack’s is now doing from one to ninety-nine at Sing Sing a few cellblocks away from Fritz, Flo is married to her Big Sky rancher and raking in whatever she wants, Willie is doing the best he can. And Johnny, oops, Brother Orchid is up there in the woods working for nada, or maybe his soul. Poor sap. Fritz just hoped that his luck would change and that the ten to one odds Sky King had given him on his C-note would pan out when Johnny crashed out of that old monastery out in freaking Buffalo and everybody would get well again.         

Bob Neuwirth & Eliza Carthy - Mole In The Ground

He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind

 

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

 

Jack Dawson was not sure when he had heard that the old long-bearded son of a bitch anarchist hell of a songwriter, hell of a story-teller Bruce “Utah” Phillips caught the westbound freight, caught that freight around 2007 he found out. That “Utah” moniker not taken by happenstance since Phillips struggled through the wilds of Utah on his long journey, played with a group called the Utah Valley boys, put up with, got through a million pound of Mormon craziness and, frankly, wrote an extraordinary number of songs in his career by etching through the lore as he found it from all kinds of Mormon sources, including some of those latter day saints. For those who do not know the language of the road, not the young and carefree road taken for a couple of months and then back to the grind but the serious hobo “jungle” road like Jack had been on for several years before he sobered up after he came back from ‘Nam, came back all twisted and turned when he got discharged from the Army back in 1971 and could not adjust to the “real world” of his Carver upbringing in the East and had wound up drifting, drifting out to the West, hitting California and when that didn’t work out sort of ambled back east on the slow freight route through Utah taking the westbound freight meant passing to the great beyond, passing to a better place, passing to hard rock candy mountain in some versions.

Of course everybody thinks that if you wind up in Utah the whole thing is Mormon, and a lot of it is, no question, but when Jack hit Salt Lake City he had run into a guy singing in a park. A guy singing  folk music stuff like that he had remembered that Sam Lowell had been crazy for back in the days when he would take his date and  Jack and his date over to Harvard Square and they would listen to guys like that guy in the park singing in coffeehouses. Jack had not been crazy about the music then and some of the stuff the guy was singing seemed odd too but back then it either amounted to a cheap date, or the girl actually like the stuff and so he went along with it. So Jack, nothing better to do, sat in front of guy and listened. Listened more intently when the guy, who turned out to be Utah (who was using the moniker Pirate Angel then, as Jack was using Daddy Carver, monikers a good thing on the road just in case the law, bill-collectors or ex-wives were trying to reach you and you do not want to reached), told the few bums, tramps and hoboes who were the natural residents of the park that if they wanted to get sober, if they wanted to turn things around a little that they were welcome, no questions asked, at the Joe Hill House. (No questions asked was right but everybody was expected to at least not tear the place up, which some nevertheless tried to do.)                   

Jack, not knowing anybody, not being sober much, and maybe just a tad nostalgic for the old days when hearing bits of folk music was the least of his worries, went up to Utah and said he would appreciate the stay. And that was that. Although not quite “that was that” since Jack knew nothing about the guys who ran the place, didn’t know who Joe Hill was until later (although he suspected after he found out that Joe Hill had been a IWW organizer [Wobblie, Industrial Worker of the World] framed and executed in that very state of Utah that his old friend the later Peter Paul Markin who lived to have that kind of information in his head would have known). See this Joe Hill House unlike the Sallies (Salvation Army) where he would hustle a few days of peace was run by this Catholic Worker guy, Ammon Hennessey, who Utah told him had both sobered him up and made him some kind of anarchist although Jack was fuzzy on what that was all about. So Jack for about the tenth time tried to sober up, liquor sober up this time out in the great desert (later it would be drugs, mainly cocaine which almost ripped his nose off he was so into it that he needed sobering up from). And it took, took for a while.        

Whatever had been eating at Jack kept fighting a battle inside of him and after a few months he was back on the bottle. But during that time at the Joe Hill House he got close to Utah, as close as he had gotten to anybody since ‘Nam, since his friendship with Jeff Crawford from up in Podunk Maine who saved his ass, and that of a couple of other guys in a nasty fire-fight when Charley (G.I. slang for the Viet Cong originally said in contempt but as the war dragged on in half-hearted admiration) decided he did indeed own the night in his own country. Got as close as he had to his corner boys like Sam Lowell from hometown Carver. Learned a lot about the lure of the road, of drink and drugs, of tough times (Utah had been in Korea) and he had felt bad after he fell off the wagon. But that was the way it was. 

Several years later after getting washed clean from liquor and drugs, at a time when Jack started to see that he needed to get back into the real world if he did not want to wind up like his last travelling companion, Denver Shorty, whom he found face down one morning on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge and had abandoned his body fast in order not to face the police report, he noticed that Utah was playing in a coffeehouse in Cambridge, a place called Passim’s which he found out taken over from the Club 47 where Sam had taken Jack a few times. So Jack and his new wife (his and her second marriages) stepped down into the cellar coffeehouse to listen up. As Jack waited in the rest room area a door opened from the other side across the narrow passageway and who came out but Utah. As Jack started to grab his attention Utah blurred out “Daddy Carver, how the hell are you?” and talked for a few minutes. Later that night after the show they talked some more in the empty club before Utah said he had to leave to head back to Saratoga Springs in New York where he was to play at the Café Lena the next night.         

That was the last time that Jack saw Utah in person although he would keep up with his career as it moved along. Bought some records, later tapes, still later CDs just to help the brother out. In the age of the Internet he would sent occasional messages and Utah would reply. Then he heard Utah had taken very ill, heart trouble like he said would get the best of him. And then somewhat belatedly Jack found that Utah had passed on. The guy of all the guys he knew on the troubled hobo “jungle” road who knew what starlight on the rails meant to the wanderers he sang for had cashed his ticket. RIP, brother.

Free Chelsea Manning - President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Amnesty renews call on US govt to free Manning
                                                       
Join us in urging President Obama to Pardon Chelsea Manning!

July 30, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network

One year after Chelsea Manning’s conviction, Amnesty International is still calling on the US government to grant her clemency.  Amnesty demands that Chelsea be freed immediately, and for the US government to, “implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”  Read the full statement from Amnesty International below or click here to view it on amnesty.org:

Exactly one year after Chelsea Manning was convicted of leaking classified government material, Amnesty International is renewing its call on the US authorities to grant her clemency, release her immediately, and to urgently investigate the potential human rights violations exposed by the leaks.

Chelsea Manning has spent the last year as a convicted criminal after exposing information which included evidence of potential human rights violations and breaches of international law. By disseminating classified information via Wikileaks she revealed to the world abuses perpetrated by the US army, military contractors and Iraqi and Afghan troops operating alongside US forces.

“It is an absolute outrage that Chelsea Manning is currently languishing behind bars whilst those she helped to expose, who are potentially guilty of human rights violations, enjoy impunity,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director Amnesty International.

“The US government must grant Chelsea Manning clemency, order her immediate release, and implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”

After being convicted of 20 separate charges Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, much longer than other members of the military convicted of charges such as murder, rape and war crimes.

Before her conviction, Chelsea Manning had already been held for three years in pre-trial detention, including 11 months in conditions which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described as cruel and inhumane.

Chelsea Manning has always maintained that her motivation for releasing the documents to Wikileaks was out of concern for the public and to foster a meaningful debate on the costs of war and the conduct of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Notable amongst the information revealed by Private Manning was previously unseen footage of journalists and other civilians being killed in US helicopter attacks.

Chelsea Manning is now actively engaged with her lawyers in fighting her conviction.

 "The US government appears to have its priorities warped. It is sending a worrying message through its harsh punishment of Chelsea Manning that whistleblowers will not be tolerated. On the other hand, its failure to investigate allegations that arose from Chelsea Manning’s disclosures means that those potentially responsible for crimes under international law, including torture and enforced disappearances, may get away scot-free,” said Erika Guevara.

“One year after the conviction of Chelsea Manning we are still calling on the US government to grant her clemency in recognition of her motives for acting as she did, and the time she has already served in prison.” 

Amnesty International has previously expressed concern that a sentence of 35 years in jail was excessive and should have been commuted to time served. The organization believes that Chelsea Manning was overcharged using antiquated legislation aimed at dealing with treason, and denied the opportunity to use a public interest defense at her trial.

In addition, there is little protection in US law for genuine whistleblowers, and this case underlines the need for the US to strengthen protections for those who reveal information that the public has the right to know.

It is crucial that the US government stops using the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning.

Markin comments (Winter 2014):   

There is no question now that Chelsea Manning’s trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that her case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity, including in the New York Times, a newspaper which while recoiling at the severity of the sentence in the immediate reaction did not question the justice of the conviction, and has several legal moves going from action to get the necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity (which the Army has stonewalled on and which even the New York Times has called for implementing) to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to Google Amnesty International and sign on to the online petition to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.                   

I attended some of the sessions of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial in the summer of 2013 and am often asked these days in speaking for her release about what she could expect from the various procedures going forward to try to “spring” her from the clutches of the American government, or as I say whenever I get the chance to “not leave our buddy behind” in the time-honored military parlance. I have usually answered depending on what stage her post-conviction case is in that her sentence was draconian by all standards for someone who did not, although they tried to pin this on her, “aid the enemy.” Certainly Judge Lind though she was being lenient with thirty-five years when the government wanted sixty (and originally much more before some of the counts were consolidated). The next step was to appeal, really now that I think about it, a pro forma appeal to the commanding general of the Washington, D.C. military district where the trial was held. There were plenty of grounds to reduce the sentence but General Buchanan backed up his trial judge in the winter of 2014. Leaving Chelsea supporters right now with only the prospect of a presidential pardon to fight for as the court appeals are put together which will take some time. This is how I put the matter at one meeting:

“No question since her trial, conviction, and draconian sentence of thirty-five years imposed by a vindictive American government heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning’s has fallen off the radar. The incessant news cycle which has a short life cycle covered her case sporadically, covered the verdict, covered the sentencing and with some snickers cover her announcement directly after the sentencing that she wanted to live as her true self, a woman. (A fact that her supporters were aware of prior to the announcement but agreed that the issue of her sexual identity should not get mixed up with her heroic actions during the pre-trial and trial periods.) Since then despite occasional public rallies and actions her case had tended, as most political prisoner cases do, to get caught up in the appeals process and that keeps it out of the limelight.”            

Over the past year or so Chelsea Manning has been honored and remembered by the Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade in Boston in such events as the VFP-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, the Memorial Day anti-war observance, the yearly Gay Pride Parade, the Rockport July 4^th parade, the VFP-led Veterans Day Peace Parade, and on December 17^th her birthday. We have marched with a banner calling for her freedom, distribute literature about her case and call on one and all to sign the pardon petitions. The banner has drawn applause and return shouts of “Free Chelsea.” The Smedley Butler Brigade continues to stand behind our sister. We will not leave her behind. We also urge everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to pardon Chelsea Manning

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30  

Additional Markin comment on his reasons for supporting Chelsea Manning:

I got my start in working with anti-war GIs back in the early 1970s after my own military service was over. After my own service I had felt a compelling need to fight the monster from the outside after basically fruitless and difficult efforts inside once I got “religion” on the war issue first-hand. That work included helping create a couple of GI coffeehouses near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down at Fort Dix in New Jersey in order for GIs to have a “friendly” space in which to think through what they wanted to do in relationship to the military.

Some wanted help to apply for the then tough to get discharge for conscientious objection. Tough because once inside the military, at least this was the way things went then, the military argued against the depth of the applying soldier’s convictions and tended to dismiss such applications out of hand. Only after a few civil court cases opened up the application process later when the courts ruled that the military was acting arbitrarily and capriciously in rejecting such applications out of hand did things open up a little in that channel. Others wanted to know their rights against what they were told by their officers and NCOs. But most, the great majority, many who had already served in hell-hole Vietnam, wanted a place, a non-military place, a non-GI club, where they could get away from the smell, taste, and macho talk of war.

Although there are still a few places where the remnants of coffeehouses exist like the classic Oleo Strut down at Fort Hood in Texas the wars of the past decade or so has produced no great GI resistance like against the Vietnam War when half the Army in America and Vietnam seemed to be in mutiny against their officers, against their ugly tasks of killing every “gook” who crossed their path for no known reason except hubris, and against the stifling of their rights as citizens. At one point no anti-war march was worthy of the name if it did not have a contingent of soldiers in uniform leading the thing. There are many reasons for this difference in attitude, mainly the kind of volunteer the military accepts but probably a greater factor is that back then was the dominance of the citizen-soldier, the draftee, in stirring things up, stirring things up inside as a reflection of what was going on out on the streets and on the campuses. I still firmly believe that in the final analysis you have to get to the “cannon fodder,” the grunts, the private soldier if you want to stop the incessant war machine. Since we are commemorating, if that is the right word the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I check out what happened, for example, on the Russian front when the desperate soldiers left the trenches during 1917 after they got fed up with the Czar, with the trenches, with the landlords, and the whole senseless mess.

Everyone who has the least bit of sympathy for the anti-war struggles of the past decade should admire what Chelsea Manning has done by her actions releasing that treasure trove of information about American atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. She has certainly paid the price for her convictions with a draconian sentence. It is hard to judge how history will record any particular heroic action like hers but if the last real case with which her action can be compared with is a guide, Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, she should find an honored spot. Moreover Chelsea took her actions while in the military which has its own peculiar justice system. Her action, unlike back in Vietnam War times, when the Army was half in mutiny was one of precious few this time out. Now that I think about she does not have to worry about her honored place in history. It is already assured. But just to be on the safe side let’s fight like hell for her freedom. We will not leave our sister Chelsea behind.              

 
     





    

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joan Baez & Roger McGuinn sing Wagoner's Lad with Eliza Carthy on fiddle

Roger McGuinn with Richard Thompson

Roger McGuinn - "Ballad of Easy Rider"

Josh White Jr.- Delia's Gone

Dink's Song

From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free Albert Woodfork-Free All The Class War Prisoners

 

The Ink Spots - To Each His Own 1946

From The Partisan Defense Committee- Free The Ailing Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!

A Word- In Honor Of The Irish Poet William Butler Yeats On The 150^th Anniversary Of His Birth-Poems

 

Stop The Killer/Spy Drones In Pennsylvania   

 

Meanwhile In Boston  

No Killer/No Spy Drones...

Ever since the early days of humankind's existence an argument has always been made by someone and not always by the gung-ho warriors, many times rather by some safely-ensconced desk-bound soul who was too busy to become a warrior but was more than glad to let some other mother's son do the bitch work, that with some new technology, some new strategic gee-gad, warfare, the killing on one of our own species, would become less deadly, would be more morally justified, would bring the long hoped for peace that lots of people have yacked about in the abstract until they get their war blood up. Don't believe that false bill of goods, don't believe the insane war lies from warriors, arm-chair warriors, or the merely fearful, its the same old killing machine that has gone on for eons. Killing from far way places like Nevada to the Middle East in war game rooms set up like video games except tell that to the "sorry, collateral damage, no foul because not intended" victims who got in the way. Enough said and enough of killer drones killing and spy drones spying too.