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
And stay tuned for more exciting announcements in
the days to come.
Tickets
Now on Sale -- Palestinians Live!
An
evening of true stories told live by local Palestinian storytellers about their
own experiences. Stories will explore themes of love, adventure, identity, and
struggle.
A
unique and memorable night you don't want to miss.
Musical
interlude by Sarouna Mushasha (qanun) and Faris Btoush
(oud).
**PLEASE
NOTE: New time and venue**
Warehouse XI(located behind the
Independent Restaurant, next to Back Bar & Bronwyn's).
Check out all the other nifty downloadable graphics we've made available on
our Collateral Page. Share with friends or
fly our colors on your own Facebook or Twitter banner.
Like our Facebook Page and turn on
notifications so you never miss an announcement.
Invite all your Facebook friends to check out
the BPFF FB page too.
Global snack and beverage giant PepsiCo is
violating the rights of a courageous group of workers in West Bengal, India who
formed a trade union and were fired as a result.CLICK HERE TO SEND A MESSAGE TO PEPSICO!
In 2013,
workers at 3 warehouses handling only PepsiCo products registered their new
union with the authorities. They were harassed, assaulted by company goons and
then 162 workers out of 170 employed in three warehouses were brutally fired. In
May 2013, in response to national and international protests, they were offered
their jobs back, but under conditions that strip them of their human rights.
They were told they could return to work if they declared they would never again
join a union, made to sign false statements which they were told were legally
binding, and told to cut up their union cards and step on them as they walked
into the warehouses. Twenty-eight of these workers who refused to surrender
their rights were told at the time they could not return to work and would be
blacklisted.
PepsiCo arrogantly rejected an offer by the government of
the United States to provide mediation of the dispute. Despite this, the IUF was
eventually to engage PepsiCo in long but ultimately fruitless talks. PepsiCo has
now said the workers can apply for warehouse jobs or jobs at the company's
bottling plant but offers no timetable, no remedy for earlier human rights
abuses and no guarantees that their human rights will be respected in the
future.
Stop PepsiSqueeze -CLICK HEREto send a
message to the company demanding the workers be reinstated or offered new jobs
with full compensation and guarantees that their rights will be
respected!
E-mail:iuf@iuf.org Rampe du Pont-Rouge,
8, CH-1213, Petit-Lancy (Switzerland) www.iuf.org
"once a nation is habituated to liars, it takes
generations to bring the truth back." ~Gore Vidal "Now
you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all.
They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian
oil." ~ Gore Vidal
The People Speak is a feature film that uses dramatic and
musical performances, as well as film footage, to bring to life the letters,
diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans--acclaimed and anonymous--who, by
insisting on equality and justice, spoke up for social change throughout US
history.
The film is narrated by historian Howard Zinn and is based on his books A
People's History of the United States and, with Anthony Arnove, Voices of
a People's History of the United States.
Produced by Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Chris Moore, Anthony Arnove, and Howard
Zinn. "We must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not
communities and never have been. The history of any country... conceals the
fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, often repressed) between
conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers,
dominators and dominated... And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims
and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested,
not to be on the side of the executioners." ~Howard Zinn
"This is the perfect format for a history lesson. You're getting the
actual historical text verbatim, so there's no spin. History is intimidating.
There's so much to know." ~Matt Damon
"So, I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where. Wherever they's a
fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up
a guy, I'll be there." ~Matt Damon, as Tom Joad from John Steinbeck, The
Grapes of Wrath
"A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and
he'll never crow. I have seen the light and I'm crowing." ~Muhammad Ali
"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men
who want crops without plowing, rain without thunder and lightning. ...This
struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one ... but it must be a
struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never
will." ~Frederick Douglass "We didn't want to hear the words of
the White House. We wanted to hear the words of those picketing the White House.
Agitators. The anti-war protesters. The socialists and anarchists. In other
words, the people who gave us whatever liberty and democracy we have in this
country. What's common to all of them is the spirit of resistance to
illegitimate authority." ~Howard Zinn
When/where doors open 6:40; film starts promptly 7pm 243
Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor, entrance on
Windsor rule19.org/videos
Please join us for a stimulating
night out; bring your friends! free film & free door
prizes[donations are encouraged]feel free to bring your own snacks and soft drinks - no alcohol
allowed
"You can't legislate good will - that comes through education." ~
Malcolm X
Why
should YOU care? It's YOUR money that pays for US/Israeli wars - on Iraq,
Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Libya. Syria, Iran, So America, etc etc - for
billionaire bailouts, for ever more ubiquitous US prisons, for the loss of
liberty and civil rights...
Introducing our 2015-16 Music
for PeaceConcert Series, internationally renowned
violinist James Buswell joins three Boston-based luminaries
for Schumann’s romantic and nostalgic outpourings, as well as a trio by one of
Schumann’s heroes. Schumann Fantasy Pieces for Cello and Piano, Opus 73 Schumann Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano Beethoven Trio in E flat major, Opus 70 No 2 James Buswell, violin Carol Ou, cello Mana Tokuno, piano Victor Rosenbaum, piano.
All concerts are Saturdays at 7:30 pm at the Harvard-Epworth
Methodist Church, 1555 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge.
Reserve Seats Now Single concert: $25 for members, $35 for non-members, $10
for students. Series of 3 concerts: $60 for Massachusetts
Peace Action members, $85 for non-members, $25 for students. Reserve
seats for the series. Join Massachusetts Peace Action now! Tax-deductible Donations in any amount support our work for
peace. Supporters donate $250 or more to Massachusetts Peace
Action Education Fund; they receive two reserved seats with preferred seating in
the first 3 rows of each concert, and recognition in the
programs. Sponsors donate $500 and receive four reserved seats;
Benefactors donate $1,000 and receive eight reserved seats. To reserve, mail a check to Massachusetts Peace Action
Education Fund, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, telephone 617-354-2169.
Download and print the Concert Series Order Blank 2015-2016. To purchase
online, click here to reserve for the entire series, or reserve
individual seats for the Schumann and
Beethoven, Schubert, or Brahms
concerts.
Violinist James Buswell is one of the most versatile
musicians of the 21st century. As a solo violinist, he has performed more than
one hundred concerti with orchestras on five continents. In 2014 he expanded
this list of solo repertoire with debut recordings of one Turkish and one
American Concerto from the 20th century for release on the Naxos label. He was a
Grammy nominee for his recording of the Barber Violin Concerto with the Royal
Scottish National Orchestra. Distinguished conductors with whom he has
collaborated include Leonard Bernstein, George Szell, Seiji Ozawa, Zubin Mehta,
Andre Previn, Pierre Boulez, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Ever since appearing at
the Spoleto Festival in Italy prior to enrolling in college, Buswell has also
been an enthusiastic chamber musician. For more than a decade he was a member of
the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York.
Pianist Victor Rosenbaum, former chair of the New
England Conservatory piano and chamber music departments for more than ten
years, has performed widely as soloist and chamber music performer
in the United States, Europe, Asia, Israel, and Russia, in such prestigious
halls as Alice Tully Hall in New York and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg,
Russia. He has collaborated with such artists as Leonard Rose, Arnold
Steinhardt, Robert Mann, and the Cleveland and Brentano String Quartets, among
others. Festival appearances have included Tanglewood, Rockport, Yellow Barn,
Kneisel Hall (Blue Hill), Kfar Blum and Tel Hai (Israel), Masters de Pontlevoy
(France), the Heifetz Institute, and more. He has been a soloist with the
Indianapolis and Atlanta symphonies and the Boston Pops.
His highly praised recordings of Schubert and Beethoven are on Bridge Records
and his recordings of Schubert and Mozart are on Fleur de Son. He serves on the
faculty of the Mannes College of Music in New York, was Director and President
of the Longy School of Music from 1985-2001, and is Music Director of the Music
for Peace series.
Looking For Beulah Land- With Mississippi John Hurt In Mind
One night Josie Davis “discovered” a little old man in a soft felt hat, a well-worn brown suit, a little shinny from plenty of wear, maybe his Sunday best down wherever he came from which she heard was Mississippi, Mississippi that was all in the news since it was place where Negroes, blacks, she was not sure what they called themselves in public since she would see about six different words, a couple nasty in reference to their racial identity were being denied everything under the son by Mister James Crow,his skin black as coal sitting on a small ill-lit makeshift stage at Murry’s Coffeehouse across from the Gaslight. Sitting on that stage getting ready to tune up a gnarly ratty-ass old guitar that looked to Josie’s eyes like one she saw one time in a Sears& Roebuck catalogue when she was thinking about taking up an instrument in elementary school and her mother told her look in the catalogue since she did not know what a lot of the instruments the music teacher mentioned looked like. Or maybe better, a better description of what the guitar looked like, was that it had that beat up look that you would see when looking in pawnshop windows at the walls where about ten guitars were hung waiting to be redeemed by the junkies and alkies who owned them which would never happen in ten thousand years once they got on their “wanting habits” on (that junkie stuff learned later from a guy, Brad, she met at Wisconsin where she went to college so no she was not some high school whizz about the world, far from it).
Yeah, that little black man, and he was little, wizened with age and dried like a prune by the daily sun from a life of working in Mister’s cotton plantations as she would learn in a few minutes when Murry, the owner of the coffeehouse and as he termed himself a folk aficionado, filled the crowd in as to who the heck the guy was, was just sitting there fretting over the tuning of that guitar and would look up every once in a while with a great big smile from his very white teeth, except the couple that were missing which accentuated that whiteness.
But maybe it is best to go back a few hours, a couple of days even to find out how Josie and that little old black man wound up in the heart of the Village, McDougall Street, in the heart of the great folk revival of the early 1960s which would bring a bright Jewish high school student and an ancient Mister James Crow cotton-picker to the depths of New York night life. Josie, a junior at Hunter College High, was besides being a very good student (a drudge as the Jewish-American Princesses, JAPs, who also went to school there but only to build their resumes in the rich husband search and transit to Long Island out of the smelly, smoky city called her and her kind who sought, well, something not Long Island) was also restless as most sixteen year olds, bright or not, were in those times maybe now too. Her best friend Frida, who skirted the world between the JAPs and the drudges with some dexterity, got her interested one afternoon in going to Washington Square down by New York University where all kinds of performers would do their thing and maybe grab a few dollars from appreciative passers-by to keep the rent-collector at arms-length. (They all had their buckets out from ex-cardboard coffee cups to some sand pail restored from some parents’ garage to do duty as a collection agent along with their vagrant smiles with the look of the unfed whether true or not, usually not down at the Square.) At that time the overwhelming majority of performers were singers, and not pop singers like Frank Sinatra or rock singers like Elvis but folk singers who with guitar in hand would play what they called traditional ballads and stuff like that (a few but not many that day would sing protest songs against nuclear weapons, Mister James Crow, the whole ticky-tack vanilla experience that most kids from suburbia faced in those days).
One guy, Ted Higgins, tall, blue-eyed, brownish blonde hair and so not from their brown everything Jewish enclave Manhattan world of tall apartment buildings and fears sang 500 Miles as she and Frida entered under the arch and they stood and listened for a while. He gave Josie a big smile, pointed to her and said he was dedicating his next song, Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies, to her. That introduction and some conversation after he finished that set and sat down on a bench with them to have a soda to quench their thirsts (really his since singing for him dried his mouth something awful he said) led to a few dates but the thing never worked out because Ted was a rolling stone like a lot of young people then and told Josie that while he liked being with her he had to “find himself,” find out whether he was cut out for the iterant folk life like his hero Woody Guthrie or go back to school at Ohio State and finish his engineering degree, and head west, west to California which was drawing young and old to the continental end of the line. It also did not, or would not have worked out, because Josie’s parents while professing secular beliefs were dead set against Josie dating anybody but Jewish boys, nice Jewish boys, from Stuyvesant Town or Long Island where they had friends with nice Jewish boy sons. After Ted left though, after she got over the usual drama of first serious love and pandering around the edges of sexual experience, at least that “pandering “ was how she expressed the matter to Frida who arched her big brown eyebrows on that one, with an older man (he nineteen almost twenty to her sixteen so older man in that very age conscious time) Josie was still caught up in the folk scene, liked the music and listened to a radio show on Sunday nights, WMAD, which featured three hours of straight folk music to meet a growing demand in the New York area (Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Old Town Chicago, Harvard Square and a bunch of other oases too).
That continued interest was how one Josie Davis from Manhattan wound up with nice Jewish boy date, Jeffrey Goldman, a son of a friend of Josie’s mother, Rebecca, sitting in Murry’s having the obligatory coffee and pastry for the under-aged patrons listening to the amateur performers who had signed up to perform that night in the weekly talent search Murry’s sponsored who filled up that make-shift stage before the little old wizened black man stepped on the stage after their fifteen minutes of fame was over. And the only reason they wound up at Murry’s a couple of hours before and wound up listening to guys and gals polish up their acts is that they had been shut out of the Gaslight which featured the better acts in town (the distinction being those at the Gaslight were paid and those at Murry’s worked for the “basket” or whatever object was sent around to collect dough so they could make a few bucks to keep that afore-mentioned rent collector away from their doors).
The wizened old man’s story was as different as night from day than that of Josie’s travels to Murry’s. See he had been a folksinger, made his living at it for a while as a young man down in the Delta, down in hard-boiled Mississippi, had made a few records, “race records” the record companies called them, pitched to a mostly Southern black audience that sold some but come the Great Depression nobody, or hardly anybody had money for the luxury of records when there were plenty of hungry mouths to feed and anyway you could heard the stuff for free on the radio as long as you could stand the commercials and so he went to work for Mister doing the best he could. Doing the best he could being picking that damn cotton out in Mister’s broiling sun. And that for better or worse was how he had planned to finish up his days.
But then as the dry rot 1950s turned into the flowering 1960s between a lot of white kids going down South from the North trying to register blacks to vote (and would hear Saturday night juke joint sing and Sunday high Jehovah hymns when they settled into the rural communities they were sent to) and students who were looking for what they called “roots music” (having made some cosmic connections with guys who had gone down there before in the 1930s and 1940s like the Seegers, the Lomaxes, and Harry Smith) who started rooting around the depths of Mississippi to see if any of the guys they heard were still around (as they would have on that wizened little black man who was on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music) or guys that they had never heard ofwho might know some blues. And lo and behold that little man was still around, still working Mister’s damn cotton. More importantly could still play some very good Delta blues on the ratty old guitar he had on the wall of his family’s cabin. So through the magic of money, of impressarios and booking agents and of air flight that little old man got some bookings up North. Made audiences clap in wonder at his playing and at that gentle foxy voice that beguiled everybody.
That little old black man who played so well, who played Creole Belle, Candy Man, Frankie and Albert, and went home to Beulah Land had been “found” down there in goddam Mississippi by among others, Murry Stein, owner ofMurry’s Coffeehouse and while that black man, Mississippi John Hurt by name, required more money than Murry could pay John said he would show his appreciation by playing a set for the crowd at his place that night in between sets at the Gaslight. And so that was how Josie “discovered” the legendary bluesman that night.
Global snack and beverage giant PepsiCo is
violating the rights of a courageous group of workers in West Bengal, India who
formed a trade union and were fired as a result.
