Sunday, September 03, 2017

As The Burns-Novick Vietnam Documentary Airs- From Veterans For Peace-Full Disclosure HomeTake ActionThe Vietnam War & Full Disclosure

As The Burns-Novick Vietnam Documentary Airs- From Veterans For Peace-Full Disclosure

The Vietnam War & Full Disclosure

In September 2017, PBS will air a documentary about the Vietnam War, directed by respected documentarians Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The goal of this 10-episode, 18-hour project is, according to the directors, to “create a film everyone could embrace” and to provide the viewer with information and insights that are “new and revelatory.” Just as importantly, they intend the film to provide the impetus and parameters for a much needed national conversation about this controversial and divisive period in American history.
The film will be accompanied by an unprecedented outreach and public engagement program, providing opportunities for communities to participate in a national conversation about what happened during the Vietnam War, what went wrong and what lessons are to be learned. In addition, there will be a robust interactive website and an educational initiative designed to engage teachers and students in multiple platforms.
The release of this documentary is an opportunity to seize the moment about telling the full story of the U.S war on Viet Nam.

What Can You Do?




Want to Continue to Be Part of the Conversation?

 
Sign up to be on the "Full Disclosure" email list if you want to communicate with VFP activists around the country who are working on this.
 
To join the Vietnam Full Disclosure "google group" you must have a Google login. Once logged onto Google, go to: http://groups.google.com/group/vnfd and submit a request to join the group. 
Alternatively, send a request to group manager Becky Luening at becky.pdx@gmail.com and she will directly add you to the group. After being subscribed, anyone can post to the group via the email address vnfd@googlegroups.com 
 
Get involved in this rare opportunity to get America talking about what really went down in Viet Nam!
  
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*Labor's Untold Story In Song- Remember The Heroic Lawrence Textile Strike Of 1912-"Bread And Roses"-Yes, Indeed




A YouTube's film clip of Joan Baez and her late sister Mimi Farina performing "Bread and Roses" about the famous textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912.

Poem and Song lyrics-"Bread And Roses"

Poem

 As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!
As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses! Song Lyrics

 Song

 As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!
As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.
As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.
As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses
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*Labor's Untold Story In Song- Remember The Heroic Lawrence Textile Strike Of 1912-"Bread And Roses"-Yes, Indeed

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Joan Baez and her late sister Mimi Farina performing "Bread and Roses" about the famous textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912.

Poem and Song lyrics-"Bread And Roses"

Poem

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!
As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses! Song Lyrics

Song

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!
As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.
As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.
As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses
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Call for women to write to female prisoners-Free All Class War Prisoners!

Mehmet Atak
To  Js
2 attachments
Dear All,
 
It was said in the last official announcement  made by the Ministery of Justice in November 2016 that there were 179.000 prisoners in 370 jails in Turkey, 7894 and 4704 of whom being women and foreigners, respectively (the number of foreign prisoners were 23 in various jails in Turkey in 2009).
 
This number has increased incrementally during the period of OHAL (state of emergency) which was taken as an opportunity to silence opponents from all fractions beyond judging actors of the coup, following the coup attemp in July 2016. Jurisdiction’s getting under Erdoğan’s control almost entirely and acting politically in jurisdiction without minding law have pulled the number of arrests up to unbelievable levels. 
 
Today 21 people are staying in rooms for eight; three are sharing the same bunk in jails.
 
Erdoğan who imprisoned all political opponents though there were no rational evidence, accorded the right of being transferred to open prisons and parole to offenders of hate murder, women murder, etc. by way of statutory decree no. 671 that he issued to make room at the prisons (initially 38000, in total 100000 prisoners are going to benefit from this statutory decree).
 
Erdoğan’s last statutory decree no. 693 has given the government the right to build prisons in public forestry lands. Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdağ announced that 175 new prisons are going to be built in 2017.
 
Number of women like writers, journalists, painters, academicians, lawyers, non-governmental organization representatives, human rights defenders, union members, students, mps, etc. in prisons have almost doubled. Most of these women who are or taken as opponents are being tried with aggravated life imprisonment; are kept as prisoners without their bills  of indictment were prepared. They are forced to live a scary uncertainty.
 
A group of woman activists in Turkey have made a world-wide call to all women to write letters to impr,soned women in Turkey.
 
You can learn about this call, text of which is below and detailed information about this campaign by contacting these activists and Ms. Melek Özman (melekufuk@gmail.com) who is the director of FilmMor which is one of the two Women’s film festivals in Turkey.
 
Please share this call with all women in your contact lists.
 
Best regards
 
 
ps. In May 30, 2017, Bergül Varan who is the sister of Betül Varan, one of the vocalists of Grup Yorum which is one of the leftist music groups, members of which are frequently arrested and concerts of which are cancelled, and was taken into custody during a police raid at Idil Cultural Center in Istanbul, was tortured by her hair being torn out from their roots as it is seen in the photograph, in the action force vehicle where she was kept for two hours.
-- 
---
Mehmet Atak
+ 90 212 225 54 41
+ 90 212 343 50 04
 
 
Write Letters to our Friends in Prison!
 
We, the women activists in Turkey, make a call to the international society to stand in solidarity with our friends in prison. Support us in our joint action by writing open letters to them.
 
In our letters, we are sharing our memories, stories, thoughts, and wishes about our friends who are detained or arrested, or convicted… They are women rights activists, politicians, journalists, authors, and lawyers… We marched together at every protest with our friends in prison. We organized conferences, panel discussions, festivals. We were side by side when we went to the funerals of femicide victims, when we paid our condolences to their families.
 
We went together to the court hearings of abused and raped women, of women who defended themselves from the aggressors. Our friends wrote our petitions against violence and discrimination and took them to Parliament. They represented us. They demanded the municipalities to open day-care centres for children, to build safe houses for domestic abuse victims, to create equal job opportunities.
 
Together, we made a vow to fight for women’s freedom!
 
Together, we defended our rights!
 
The efforts of those who put our friends behind iron bars are in vain… There is no wall to separate us from each other. There is no turning back, now that we have come this far. And we will write our memories, stories, thoughts, and wishes so that they will forever be remembered. We will meet again and laugh together. We will share a better future.
 
Let’s write about our friends, let’s write to our friends, in any medium, printed or digital, on our social media accounts. Only a few sentences or full of pages. And please send your letters to arkadasimayaziyorum@gmail.com so that we can collect them
 
The Fight of Women Can Not Be Judged Initiative
 
 
aylogosb

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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From Socialist Alternative- Drasft Bernie Sanders Conference

Socialist Alternative
To   

Join Cornel West, Kshama Sawant and others on September 8-10 in Washington D.C. for the Draft Bernie Town Hall and People’s Convergence Conference to discuss what it'll take to defeat Trump’s right wing agenda and to win the progressive policies that Bernie Sanders campaigned for in 2016.

“This event is the important next step in bringing together working people, youth, people of color, activists and progressive leaders to discuss the key questions facing our movement. How we can we continue the political revolution into the 2018 elections, as we go into battle against the right wing? How do we prepare the ground to launch a People’s Party, to represent the millions not the Billionaire Class?” said Kshama Sawant, Socialist Alternative Seattle City Councilmember.

Draft Bernie for a People’s Party will also use the event to deliver over 45,000 petition signatures to Sanders’ Senate office! The petition calls on Sen. Sanders to continue the political revolution he started during his 2016 presidential run by launching a major new party that can fight to win policies like Medicare for All, a federal $15 minimum wage, and free college education.

This three-day event will cost over $20,000 to organize.  Movement for the 99% and the other endorsing organizations do not have the deep pockets of the billionaires, but we have a more potent weapon: the collective power of supporters like you. 

Please contribute $25 today.

The conference will bring together a mix of voices from the worlds of activism, labor, academia, independent political parties and independent media.  Check out convergence2017.org and register to attend today!

The event is being hosted by a group of grassroots organizations: Draft Bernie for a People’s Party, the Progressive Independent Party, Socialist Alternative, and Movement for the 99%.
 
Draft Bernie Town Hall 
& People’s Convergence Conference
September 8-10 in Washington D.C.
www.convergence2017.org
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“You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” – Julie Roberts’ Mona Lisa Smile” (2003)- A Film Review


“You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” – Julie Roberts’ Mona Lisa Smile” (2003)- A Film Review



DVD Review

By Film Editor Emeritus Sam Lowell

Mona Lisa Smile, starring Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, 2003   

I usually don’t like to start a film review by going off on a somewhat unrelated tangent but since I am now a well-established former film editor I will take that privilege here. Although the film under review, Julia Roberts’ Mona Lisa Smile, has little to do with Leonardo De Vinci’s famed portrait now uncomfortably housed in the Louvre in Paris it does have much to do as will be explained below about art history and so I may not be as tangentially off the mark as one might expect. To get to the point I have held the view that the reticent Ms. Lisa is not smiling at all but is rather perhaps the first pictorial sign in the modern age of ironic detachment. Fire away but that is what has always impressed me about milady (and maybe reflecting too an unsuspecting bit of wit and charade of the part of the famed Type A personality Leonardo).      

Now back to business. Back to the art history part that forms the backdrop for the storyline here. Katharine Watson, Julia Roberts’ role, is a West Coast come East free spirit as an art instructor at Seven Sisters Wellesley College ready to do battle with old-fashioned views of women and of the traditional art syllabus. The time, the 1950s, seems to be out of another world to an early 2000s viewer brought up on the 1960s idea of the Seven Sisters schools and their Ivy League cohorts as elite bastions of privilege which kept the old elites stocked but also allowed the increasing number of arrivistes to gain the brass ring. Instead the 1950s version of Wellesley is far from the Hillary Clinton (Class of ’69) model of young women ready, willing and able to be President of the United States or to break any other glass ceilings out there.              

Art instructor Watson finds plenty of smart girls at the school, book smart as my old friend Pete Markin would say, as to be expected but they are wasting their talents preparing to be the perfect housemate (meaning well-mannered stay at home wives not significant others) for those up the road Ivy League guys who will form the next core of the men in the grey flannel suits come graduation. She also finds a clear class bias among those students taking her course in art history since while the place may or may not have been an upscale “finishing school” in the 1950s they knew she was not a brethren. Did not have the pedigree. The main concern then reflected in a good housekeeping course provided by the school was marriage, suitable upscale marriage, but marriage nevertheless which seems to be all they wanted to discuss including why Miss (now Ms.) Watson was not at the advanced age of 30 married herself.    

The battle is on as Ms. Watson tries might and main to get these fact heavy but by the numbers thinking young products of good schools and good families to think outside the box, to appreciate for example post-Impressionist art. As the school year grinds on she make some headway after butting heads with the most conservative girl, Betty, played by Kirsten Dunst, in the little coterie who are featured in the film who if you can believe this actually got married during the school year unsuccessfully as it turned out since she was filing for divorce before the school year was out. (Having gone to college in the 1960s I was astonished that anybody, any undergraduate, would get married during the school year. I do not remember any such person in any of my classes and have asked around and found the same thing. Now of course that is a common sight on college campuses.)


The fight between Ms. Watson and Betty got resolved in Ms. Watson’s favor at least formally. When the question of renewing her contract came up the administration was ready to heave her unless she agreed to several non-negotiable demands which she rejected out of hand and headed to Europe after having made serious inroads with those uppity students. Ms. Watson almost as an afterthought by the scriptwriters had an affair with a philandering male fellow teacher but that is just so much fluff since this is drop dead Julia Roberts after all and not some closet old maid. The heart of the story line here though is a slice of elite women’s college life in the red scare Cold War 1950s when thinking outside the box was more perilous than you might have thought. Maybe even thinking Mona Lisa was not smiling might have been suspect.            
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An Encore-Yes, You Had Better Shake, Rattle And Roll That Thing-With Big Joe Turner In Mind

An Encore-Yes, You Had Better Shake, Rattle And Roll That Thing-With Big Joe Turner In Mind
















From The Pen Of Bart Webber
In the old days, the old days when the songs were just starting to be weaned off of the old time religion gospel high heaven savior thing you know to testify, to consider yourself "saved" and had come down in the mud of speaking of hard, hard drinking, hard lovin’ maybe with your best gal's friend if it came right down to the core, maybe flipping the bird on you and running around all flouncy with your best friend, maybe some hard-hearted "do this do that" woman on your mind, yeah, the old birth of  the blues days, the blue being nothing but a good woman or man on your mind anyway, around the turn of the 20th century and you can check this out if you want to and not take my word for it a black guy, a rascally black guy of no known home, a drifter, maybe a hobo for all I know, and who knows what else named Joe Turner held forth among the folk. Old Joe would come around the share-cropper down South neighborhoods and steal whatever was not nailed down, including your woman, which depending on how you were feeling might be a blessing and if you in a spooning mod might be a curse on that bastard's head. Then Joe Turner would leave and move on to the next settlement and go about his plundering ways. Oh sure like lots of blues and old country music as it got passed on in the oral traditions there were as many versions of the saga as there were singers everybody adding their own touch. But it was always old Joe Turner doing the sinning and scratching for whatever he could scratch for. 

But for the most part the story line about old ne’er-do-well Joe Turner rang very similar over time. So Joe Turner got his grizzly self put into song out in the Saturday juke joints out in places like the Mississippi Delta where more legends were formed than you could shake a stick, got sanctified once old  Willie’s liquor, white lightning home-made liquor got to working, and some guy, maybe not the best singer if you asked around but a guy who could put words together to tell a story, a blues story, and that guy with a scratch guitar would put some verses together and the crowd would egg him on. Make the tale taller as the night went until everybody petered out and that song was left for the next guy to embellish.


By most accounts old Joe was bad man, a very bad man, bad mojo man, bad medicine as the folk call what ails but can't be fixed just short of as bad as Mister’s plantation foremen where those juke joint listeners worked sunup to sundown six days a week or just short as bad as the enforcers of Mister James Crow’s go here, not there, do this not that, move here not there laws seven days a week. Yeah, Joe was bad alright once he got his wanting habits on, although I have heard at least one recording from the Lomaxes who went all over the South in the 1930s and 1940s trying to record everything they could out in the back country where Joe Turner was something like a combination Santa Claus and Robin Hood. Hell, maybe he was and some guy who lost his woman to wily Joe just got sore and bad mouthed him. Passed that bad mouth on and the next guy who lost his woman to somebody pinned on Joe, Joe Turner, yeah it was that old rascal that did her in. Stranger things have happened.

In any case the Joe Turner, make that Big Joe, Turner I want to mention here as far as I know only stole the show when he got up on the bandstand and played the role of “godfather” of rock and roll. Yeah, that is what I want to talk about, about how one song, and specifically the place of Big Joe and one song, Shake Rattle and Roll in the rock pantheon. No question Big Joe and his snapping beat has a place in the history of rhythm and blues which is one of the musical forbear strands of rock and roll. The question is whether Shake is also the first serious effort to define rock and roll. If you look at the YouTube version of Big Joe be-bopping away with his guitar player doing some flinty stuff and that sax player searching for that high white note and Big Joe snapping away being  very suggestive about who should shake and what she should shake you can make a very strong case for that place. Add in that Bill Haley, Jerry Lee, and Elvis among others in the rock pantheon covered the song successfully and that would seem to clinch the matter.      


In 2004, the fiftieth anniversary of the debut of Shake by Big Joe, there had been considerable talk and writing again as there is on such occasions by some knowledgeable rock critics about whether Shake was the foundational song of rock. That controversy brought back to my mind the arguments that me and my corner boys who hung out in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver, a town about thirty miles south of Boston, had on some nothing better to do Friday nights during high school (meaning girl-less, dough-less or both nights). I was the primary guy who argued for Big Joe and Shake giving that be-bop guitar and that wailing sexy sax work as my reasoning while Jimmy Jenkins swore that Ike Turner’s frantic piano-driven and screeching sax Rocket 88 (done under an alias of the Delta Cats apparently for contract reasons a not uncommon practice when something good came up but you would not have been able to do it under the label you were contracted to) was the be-bop beginning and Sam Lowell, odd-ball Sam Lowell dug deep into his record collection, really his parents' record collection which was filled mainly with folk music and the blues edge played off that to find Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall. And the other corner boys like our leader Frankie Riley lined up accordingly (nobody else came up with any others so it was those three).


Funny thing Frankie and most everybody else except I think Fritz Taylor who sided with Jimmy Jenkins sided with me and Big Joe. The funny part being that several years ago with the advent of YouTube I started to listen to the old stuff as it became available on-line and now I firmly believe that Ike’s Rocket 88 beats out Shake for the honor of the be-bop daddy of rock and roll. As for the old time Joe Turner, done come and gone, well, he will have to wait in line like the rest of us. What do you think of that?
 
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