Thursday, June 21, 2018

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Alvaro Luna Hernández

  • *In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Alvaro Luna Hernández
     
     
    http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
     
    A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

    Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month 

    Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

    In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
    That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
    Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now! 
     
  • When Women An Men Played Rock And Roll For Keeps Like Their Lives Depended On It-Encore -In The Time Of Elvis' Time-One More Time Down 1950s Record Memory Lane

    An Encore -In The Time Of Elvis' Time-One More Time Down 1950s Record Memory Lane





     








    Sam Lowell, considered himself a corner boy from the time in the early 1960s when in the working-class neighborhoods of America were filled to the brim with such guys hanging out on the corners, in his case North Adamsville not far from urban Boston. Here is the progression not too atypical of corner boys with too little money and too much time on their hands which underscored the corner boy 1960s night plight (and which still plagues corner boys even though they no longer for the most part hang on corners but malls and other places where there are not any “No trespassing, police take notice” signs to harass young men still with not enough dough and too much time on their hands). If you grew up in the Acre, Sam’s growing up section of town you progressed from one place in elementary school, another in junior high school when corners and who was on what corner started to get sorted out in earnest, and high school where the corners were doled out hard as steel in high school.

    Places like South Boston (an all Irish enclave then where even those who like Sam’s maternal grandparents had moved out of the enclave to an Irish neighborhood in North Adamsville were considered suspect, were looked at with jaundiced eye even by the relatives left behind), Main Street in Nashua (at the time a dying city what with the mills heading south to cheaper labor and eventually overseas and so a tough place to dream in), New Hampshire, 125th Street in high Harlem< New York City  (with all the excitement of jazz and be-bop but with all the high segregation of the South except for the formality of Mister James Crow’s laws),  any of a million spots on Six Mile Road in Detroit (never a place of dreams but of steady work in the golden age of the American automobile for those from Delta Mister James Crow black refugees to the Okie/Arkie white rabble coming out of the hills and dustbowls), the same on Division Street in Chi town (the beat street divide of many of Nelson Algren’s tales of drugs, urban lost-ness, and sullen back streets disappointments), the lower end of North Beach beyond where the “beats” of a few years before did their beat thing (the places where the longshoremen and waterfront workers did their heavy drinking after work and where the sailors off their Pacific ocean ships fought all- comers from the Artic to the Japan seas).


    Jack Slack’s was the last port of call for the Acre crowd, for that motley collection of corner boys picked up and discarded along the way although the core of Frankie , Jack, Jimmy, Allan, Markin and Five-Fingers held throughout which had started at Doc’s Drugstore complete with sofa fountain and shiny glass penny candy-case to draw selections from after  school to energize up for the real world activities of kid-dom in elementary school, Miller’s Diner for the jukebox in junior high when they were just becoming aware of girls, maybe having to dance with them, and maybe trying to figure out, the eternal trying to figure out how to approach them without them giggling back and Salducci’s Pizza Parlor in early high school before the new owners decided that unlike Tonio, the previous owner who sold out to go back to Italy from when he came as a boy they did not want colorful rough-necked boys standing one knee against the wall in front of their family friendly establishment scaring the bejesus out of the important Friday and Saturday give Mom a break family trade.

    That time, those early 1960s times for some reason known only to them, was time that you had best have had corner boy comrades when you hung out on date-less, girl-less, dough-less Friday and Saturday nights to have your back if trouble brewed (that “comrade” not a word to be used then in the tail end of the height of the red scare Cold War night not if you wanted knuckle sandwiches from the unthinking patriotic guys but that does convey the sense of “having your back” critical to your place in those woe begotten streets).


    That corner boy business extended through the 1960s after high school for a couple of years when in addition to being a corner boy Sam became a “flower child” along with his long mourned and lamented friend the late Peter Paul Markin heading out west on the hitchhike roads when the world turned upside down later in the decade. (Markin who met a horrible end down in sunny Mexico after the fresh breeze of the 1960s turned in on itself and he got flat-footed by the backlash ebb tide riptide and could no longer hold back his “from hunger” wanting habits held in check through summers of love and a tight tour of Vietnam and made the fatal, very fatal, mistake of trying to broker an independent drug deal and got two slugs to the back of his head for the attempt.) Sam, now a sedate grandfatherly semi-retired lawyer filled with respectability and memories had to laugh about how much he of late had been thinking about the 1950s, about not just those corner boy days but about the music that drove every corner boy, including Markin, make that perhaps most of all Markin, to distraction as they tried to eke out a sound that they could call their own. A jailbreak sound that was not something their parents would approve of at a time when titanic generational battles were foaming at the mouth.

    Thinking about the 1950s the times when he came of age, came of musical age, an age very mixed up with that corner boy comradery, that hanging at Doc’s and Miller’s Diner when he started noticing girls and their charms (amid the first blush of giggles which he soon figured out was their rational response to whatever was going on inside their bodies just like guys like Sam were going through in their bodies). Those first noticings started his life-long journey of trying to figure out what made them tick, what they wanted, wanted of him, from a girl-less family making everything that much harder. Noticing that they too hung around Miller’s in order to play that fantastic jukebox which had all the latest tunes and plenty of oldies too (oldies being let’s say we are talking about 1958 then maybe 1955 hits like Eddie, My Love, Rock Around The Clock, and Bo Diddley showing that teen time, youth time anyway is measured differently from old man lawyerly time, measured in days, weeks, months at the most-years were beyond the pale) drawing away from the music on his parents’ family living room radio and their cranky old record player music.

    Music in the teen households emphatically not on Miller’s jukebox or there would have been a civil war no question, a civil war avoided in his own home after his parents had bought, to insure domestic peace and tranquility if he remembered correctly, his first transistor radio down at the now long gone Radio Shack store and he could sit up in his room and dream of whatever coming of age boys dreamed about, mainly how those last year’s bothersome girls became this year’s interesting objects of discussion (by the way in that small crowded upstairs bedroom, shared with his two brothers, he found out he could discover the beauty of the “hold up to your ear”  transistor radio and drown out the world of brotherly scuffings). 


    More than that though, more than just thinking about the old days like every old guy probably does, even guys who had not been lawyers as a professional career, guys who you see sitting on park benches, a little disheveled, maybe some crumbs in their unkempt beards, feeding the birds and half-muttering to themselves about how when FDR was around everybody stood tall, every country bent it knees in homage to America, or else, or old bag ladies rummaging through trash barrels looking for long lost lovers or their faded beauty Sam had been purchasing compilations of what are commercially called “oldies but goodies” CDs. Doing so via the user-friendly confines of the Internet, at Amazon if you need a name like today anybody, except maybe three people up in heathen Alaska or the Artic,  doesn’t know that is the site to get such material these days instead of traipsing over half the East Coast trying to cadge a few examples from the dwindling oldies and used records emporia, and  purchasing several record compilations of the “best of” that period from a commercial distributor (and also keeping up to date on various versions of the songs on YouTube) and through his friend and old corner boy Frankie Riley been spilling plenty of cyber-ink on Frankie’s blog, In The Be-Bop ‘50s Night, going back to the now classic age of rock and roll.


    Sam had to laugh about that situation back in the day as well since he had been well known back on the corner, back holding up the wall in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, on many of those date-less, date-less because although he might have been an all “hail fellow, well met” hard-assed corner boy full of bluster and blah he was sister-less and hence baffled by girls and their ways and very shy around the question of asking for dates although he was quite willing to tell each and every girl who would listen to him about ten thousand fact on any of sixteen subjects, not excluding science, philosophy, and the poor fate of the Red Sox then. Although those ten thousand facts would come in handy when he got to college a couple of years later and he had girls hanging off the walls in debate class waiting for him to ask them out then those precious facts did not add up to a date by osmosis but rather incomprehension even by girls like Patty Lewis and Mary Shea who liked him and would have be glad if he asked them for a date without the ten thousand facts, thank you.

    Here though is something about the mores of the time that young people today might not comprehend girls just waited for guys to make a move, or moved on to the next guy who would, especially if he had a boss ’55 Chevy, like Patty and Mary did. Also girl-less (already explained but here the question is having a serious girl and the just mentioned facts will hold here as well), and dough-less (self-explanatory in working-class North Adamsville, the sorry fate of the working poor, the marginally employed like his father, no money when the rent was due and Ma had not money for the damn rent collector much less discretionary money for dates with girls) on Friday and Saturday nights when he  proclaimed to all who would listen (mainly Frankie, Markin, Jimmy Jenkins, Jack Callahan, Kenny Hogan and Johnny “Thunder” Thornton and an occasional girl who all wondered what he was talking about) that “rock and roll will never die.”


    Mainly, through the archival marvels of modern technology, pay-per-song, look on YouTube, check out Amazon Sam had been right, rock and roll had not died although it clearly no longer provided the same fuel for later generations more into hip-hop-ish, techno music, or edge city rock. But Sam always though it funny when kids, his grandkids, for example, heard (and saw) Elvis, all steamy, smoldering and swiveling in some film clip to make the older almost teenage girls among them almost react like the girls in his time did when they saw him on the Ed Sullivan Show and had half-formed girlish dreams about personally erasing that snarl from his face. Especially that flip clip of the prison number in Jailhouse Rock. Bo Diddley proclaiming to the whole wide world that he in fact had put the rock in rock and roll and who could dispute that claim when he went bonkers in some Afro-Carib number with that rectangular guitar. Say too Chuck Berry telling a candid world, a candid teenage world which after all was all that counted then, now too from what Sam had heard from his grandchildren, that Mister Beethoven from the old fogy music museum had better take himself and his cronies and move over because a new be-bop daddy, a new high sheriff was in town, was taking the reins, making the kids jump on jump street. Ditto curl-in-hair Buddy Holly pining away for his Peggy Sue.

    Better, mad monk swamp rat Jerry Lee Lewis sitting, maybe standing for all Sam knew telling that same candid world that Chuck was putting on fire everybody had to do the high school hop bop, confidentially. And how about Wanda Jackson proclaiming that it was party time and an endless host of one hit wonders and wanna-bes they went crazy over. Yeah, those kids, those for example grandkids jumping around just like the young Sam who could not believe his ears when he had come of age and, yeah, jumping around for those same guys who formed his musical tastes back in the 1950s when he had come of age, musical age anyway. Jesus, Jesus too when he came of teenage age and all that meant of angst and alienation something no generation seems to be able to escape since the world had no less dangerous, no less incomprehensible today.


    Sam had thought recently about going back to those various commercially-produced compilations put out by demographically savvy media companies that he had purchased on Amazon to cull out the better songs, some which he had on the tip of his tongue almost continuously since the 1950s (the Dubs Could This Be Magic the great last chance dance song that bailed him out of being shut out of more than one dance night although his partner’s feet borne the brunt of the battle, and the Teen Queens Eddie My Love, where Eddie took advantage of the girl and she was wondering, maybe still is, when he is coming back, a great love ‘em and leave ‘em song and the answer is still he’s never coming back, are two examples that quickly came to his mind). Others like Johnny Ace’s Pledging My Love or The Crows Oh-Gee though needed some coaxing by listening to the compilations to be remembered.


    But Sam, old lawyerly Sam, had finally found a sure-fire method to aid in that memory coaxing. Just go back in memory’s mind and picture scenes from teenage days and figure the songs that went with such scenes (this is not confined to 1950s aficionados anybody can imagine their youth times and play). But even using that method Sam believed that he was cheating a little, harmlessly cheating but still cheating. When he (or anybody familiar with the times) looked at the artwork on most of the better 1950s CD compilations one could not help but notice the excellent artwork that highlights various institutions illustrated back then. The infamous drive-in movies where you gathered about six people (hopefully three couples but six anyway) and paid for two the other four either on the back seat floor or in the trunk. They always played music at intermission when that “youth nation” cohort gathered at the refreshment stand to grab inedible hot dogs, stale popcorn, or fizzled out sodas, although who cared, especially if that three couples thing was in play, and that scene had always been associated in Sam’s mind with Frankie Lyman and the Teenager’s Why Do Fools Fall In Love.


    That is how Sam played the game. Two (or more) can play so he said he would just set the scenes and others could fill in their own musical selections. Here goes: the first stirrings of interest in the opposite sex at Doc’s Drugstore with his soda fountain AND jukebox; the drive-in restaurant with you and yours in the car, yours’ or father-borrowed for an end of the night bout with cardboard hamburgers, ultra-greasy french fries and diluted soda; the Spring Frolic Dance (or name your seasonal dance) your hands all sweaty, trying to disappear into the wall, waiting, waiting to perdition for that last dance so that you could ask that he or she that you had been eyeing all evening to dance that slow one  all dreamy; down at the beach on day one of out of school for the summer checking out the scene between the two boat clubs where all the guys and gals who counted hung out; the night before Thanksgiving football rally where he or she said they would be there, how about you; on poverty nights sitting up in your bedroom listening to edgy WMEX on your transistor radio away from prying adult eyes; another poverty night you and your boys, girls, boys and girls sitting in the family room spinning platters; that first sixth grade “petting” party (no more explanation needed, right); cruising Main Street with your boys or girls looking for, well, you figure it out listening to the radio in that “boss” Chevy, hopefully; and, sitting in the balcony “watching” the double feature at the Strand Theater on Saturday afternoon when you were younger and at night when older. Okay, Sam has given enough cues. Fill in the dots, oops, songs and add scenes too.                      


    *For The Late Rosalie Sorrels- Don’t Mourn- Organize (And Maybe Sing A Song Or Two) - In Honor Of Labor Agitator/Songwriter Joe Hill-"The Preacher And The Slave" Sung By Her Dear Friend Utah Phillips

    *For The Late Rosalie Sorrels- Don’t Mourn- Organize (And Maybe Sing A Song Or Two) - In Honor Of Labor Agitator/Songwriter Joe Hill-"The Preacher And The Slave" Sung By Her Dear Friend Utah Phillips 


    If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83

    By Music Critic Bart Webber

    Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. That is where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers who sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.  (I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing his Army uniform right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday strictly aficionado stuff if you go anywhere within ten miles of the subject-I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important)

    But there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some other colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s where some of those names played but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

    Yeah, out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is different, where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. Tough for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully aware. Tough too when you landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes.  


    The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. She was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 


    Joe Hill’s Last Will

    My will is easy to decide,
    For there is nothing to divide,
    My kin don’t need to fuss and moan-
    “Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”
    My body? Ah, If I could choose,
    I would to ashes it reduce,
    And let the merry breezes blow
    My dust to where some flowers grow.
    Perhaps some fading flower then
    Would come to life and bloom again.
    This is my last and final will,
    Good luck to all of you, Joe Hill

    Joe Hill was an IWW man. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was, and is a radical union dedicated to abolishing the wage system and replacing it with a democratic system of workplace organization.

    Joe Hill was a migrant laborer to the US from Sweden, a poet, musician and union radical. The term “pie in the sky” is believed to come from his satirical song, “The Preacher and the Slave”.

    Hill was framed for murder and executed by firing squad in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 19, 1915. His last words were, “Fire!”

    Just before his death he wrote to fellow IWW organizer Big Bill Haywood a letter which included the famous words, “Don’t mourn, Organize”.

    The poem above was his will. It was set to music and became the basis of a song by Ethel Raim called “Joe Hill’s Last Will”.

    A praise poem by Alfred Hayes became the lyrics of the best-known song about Joe Hill, written in 1936 by Earl Robinson. This was sung so beautifully by Joan Baez at Woodstock in 1969:

    Joe Hill

    words by Alfred Hayes
    music by Earl Robinson

    I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
    Alive as you and me.
    Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
    “I never died” said he,
    “I never died” said he.

    “In Salt Lake, Joe,” says I to him,
    him standing by my bed,
    “They framed you on a murder charge,”
    Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead,”
    Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”

    “The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
    they shot you Joe” says I.
    “Takes more than guns to kill a man”
    Says Joe “I didn’t die”
    Says Joe “I didn’t die”

    And standing there as big as life
    and smiling with his eyes.
    Says Joe “What they can never kill
    went on to organize,
    went on to organize”

    From San Diego up to Maine,
    in every mine and mill,
    where working-men defend their rights,
    it’s there you find Joe Hill,
    it’s there you find Joe Hill!

    I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
    alive as you and me.
    Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
    “I never died” said he,
    “I never died” said he.

    "The Preacher And The Slave"

    Long-haired preachers come out every night,
    Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
    But when asked how ’bout something to eat
    They will answer in voices so sweet

    You will eat, bye and bye,
    In that glorious land above the sky;
    Work and pray, live on hay,
    You’ll get pie in the sky when you die

    And the Starvation Army they play,
    And they sing and they clap and they pray,
    Till they get all your coin on the drum,
    Then they tell you when you’re on the bum

    Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out
    And they holler, they jump and they shout
    Give your money to Jesus, they say,
    He will cure all diseases today

    If you fight hard for children and wife-
    Try to get something good in this life-
    You’re a sinner and bad man, they tell,
    When you die you will sure go to hell.

    Workingmen of all countries, unite
    Side by side we for freedom will fight
    When the world and its wealth we have gained
    To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain

    You will eat, bye and bye,
    When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry;
    Chop some wood, ’twill do you good
    Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye

    The chorus is sung in a call and response pattern.

    You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
    In that glorious land above the sky [Way up high]
    Work and pray [Work and pray] live on hay [live on hay]
    You’ll get pie in the sky when you die [That's a lie!]

    You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
    When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry [How to fry]
    Chop some wood [Chop some wood], ’twill do you good [do you good]
    Then you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye [That's no lie]

    THE REBEL GIRL

    by Joe Hill /words updated/


    There are women of many descriptions
    In this cruel world as everyone knows
    Some are living in beautiful mansions
    And wearing the finest of clothes

    There's the blue blooded queen and the princess
    Who have charms made of diamonds and pearls
    But the only and true kind of lady
    Is the Rebel Girl

    chorus:
    She's a rebel girl, a rebel girl
    To the working class she's the strength of this world
    From Newfoundland to B.C.
    She's fighting for you and for me

    Yes she's there by our side
    With her courage and pride
    She's unequalled anywhere

    And I'm proud to fight for freedom
    With the rebel girl!


    Pete Seeger Lyrics

    Joe Hill Lyrics


    I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
    Alive as you or me.
    Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead."
    "I never died," says he,
    "I never died," says he

    "In Salt Lake, Joe," says I to him,
    Him standing by my bed.
    "They framed you on a murder charge."
    Says Joe, "But I ain't dead,
    Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."

    "The copper bosses killed you, Joe,
    They shot you, Joe," says I.
    "Takes more than guns to kill a man."
    Says Joe, "I didn't die,"
    Says Joe, "I didn't die."

    And standing there as big as life,
    And smiling with his eyes,
    Joe says, "What they forgot to kill
    Went on to organize,
    Went on to organize."

    "Joe Hill ain't dead," he says to me,
    "Joe Hill ain't never died.
    Where working men are out on strike,
    Joe Hill is at their side,
    Joe Hill is at their side."

    "From San Diego up to Maine
    In every mine and mill,
    Where workers strike and organize,"
    Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill."
    Says he, "You'll find Joe Hill."

    I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
    Alive as you or me.
    Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead."
    "I never died," says he,
    "I never died," says he.

    Pete Seeger Lyrics

    Talking Union Lyrics


    If you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do;
    You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you;
    You got to build you a union, got to make it strong,
    But if you all stick together, now, 'twont he long.
    You'll get shorter hours,
    Better working conditions.
    Vacations with pay,
    Take your kids to the seashore.

    It ain't quite this simple, so I better explain
    Just why you got to ride on the union train;
    'Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay,
    We'll all be waiting till Judgment Day;
    We'll all he buried - gone to Heaven -
    Saint Peter'll be the straw boss then.

    Now, you know you're underpaid, hut the boss says you ain't;
    He speeds up the work till you're 'bout to faint,
    You may he down and out, but you ain't beaten,
    Pass out a leaflet and call a meetin'
    Talk it over - speak your mind -
    Decide to do something about it.

    'Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool
    To go to your meeting and act like a stool;
    But you can always tell a stool, though - that's a fact;
    He's got a yellow streak running down his back;
    He doesn't have to stool - he'll always make a good living
    On what he takes out of blind men's cups.

    You got a union now; you're sitting pretty;
    Put some of the boys on the steering committee.
    The boss won't listen when one man squawks.
    But he's got to listen when the union talks.
    He better -
    He'll be mighty lonely one of these days.

    Suppose they're working you so hard it's just outrageous,
    They're paying you all starvation wages;
    You go to the boss, and the boss would yell,
    "Before I'd raise your pay I'd see you all in Hell."
    Well, he's puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick,
    He thinks he's got your union licked.
    He looks out the window, and what does he see
    But a thousand pickets, and they all agree
    He's a bastard - unfair - slave driver -
    Bet he beats his own wife.

    Now, boy, you've come to the hardest time;
    The boss will try to bust your picket line.
    He'll call out the police, the National Guard;
    They'll tell you it's a crime to have a union card.
    They'll raid your meeting, hit you on the head.
    Call every one of you a goddamn Red -
    Unpatriotic - Moscow agents -
    Bomb throwers, even the kids.

    But out in Detroit here's what they found,
    And out in Frisco here's what they found,
    And out in Pittsburgh here's what they found,
    And down in Bethlehem here's what they found,
    That if you don't let Red-baiting break you up,
    If you don't let stool pigeons break you up,
    If you don't let vigilantes break you up,
    And if you don't let race hatred break you up -
    You'll win. What I mean,
    Take it easy - but take it!

    “If I had stayed quiet, that man would still be doing this…”Coalition of Immokalee Workers

    “…If we stay quiet, change will not happen. If I had stayed quiet, that man would still be doing this… We need to speak out. There were many abuses in the past, but I have more confidence because now, there’s the Fair Food Program.”

    Those are the words of a young tomato harvester who, in the very first year of the Fair Food Program, summoned the courage to call the Fair Food Standards Council to report a supervisor who had sexually assaulted her.

    Before the Program existed, she could have been fired for speaking the truth. And so, far more likely than not, she would not have spoken up. She would have put her head down, endured whatever abuse might come, and hoped for the day when it would stop or she could find her way to a new job.

    Instead, under the Fair Food Program, the Fair Food Standards Council – the FFP’s independent monitor, known as “La Comida Justa” in the fields – immediately investigated and verified her report of assault, assisted her in making a police report, and successfully petitioned the grower to fire the offending supervisor. 

    She later told the Program’s human rights monitors: “I thought we were alone in what had happened to us… [but then] I saw it was not that way. There was an organization that was going to listen to our story and try to achieve justice.” 


    Through the Fair Food Program, farmworker women, together with their male co-workers, are building a new world for workers in the fields, one in which women no longer face a daily barrage of catcalls, groping, and sexual assault in the fields. A world without victims. 

    Yet, outside the protections of the Fair Food Program, hundreds of thousands of farmworker women still face unchecked abuse in the fields. In fact, one study reported that a staggering 4 out of 5 farmworker women experience harassment or assault on a regular basis at work. 

    Indeed, far too many women in the world – from all walks of life – know the pain of sexual harassment and assault. And, we know how few proven solutions to those crimes exist, and how few women have access to effective complaint mechanisms at work without fear of losing their jobs, or having to wait years for justice.

    The Fair Food Program is the only proven solution to sexual violence in the U.S. produce industry – one that not only brings justice to survivors of assault, but, through its prevention mechanisms, creates a world where people no longer have to endure abuse or suffer at the hands of their employers. PBS Frontline, creators of the haunting documentary “Rape in the Fields,” hailed the FFP as “unique” in the country in its ability to prevent sexual violence.

    Because you believe that sexual violence has no place in our food system,become a Fair Food Sustainer today Work alongside farmworker women building an industry that is free of sexual harassment and assault.


    Coalition of Immokalee Workers
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    In Cambridge-An An Extraordinary Month in China | Saturday, June 23, 3:00 – 5:00 PM

    *Saturday, June 23 | 3:00 – 5:00 PMAn Extraordinary Month in China*
    Wadi'h Halabi, CPUSA and CME

    May was truly an extraordinary month in China. It opened with a speech by
    Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China, reaffirming
    commitment to Marxism and its revolutionary message. This was followed by a
    massive World Congress on Marxism in Beijing on May 5-6, with over 2,000
    participants from around the world. A forum on May 7 at the Academy of
    Marxism reviewed Marx's significance for humanity today. The month closed
    with a May 28 forum in Shenzhen organized by the International Department
    of the Communist Party of China; over 70 Communist Parties from around the
    world participated. Wadi'h Halabi spoke at two of these forums and will
    report.

    Center for Marxist Education
    550 Massachusetts Avenue, 2nd Floor Cambridge, MA, 02139

    https://www.centerformarxisteducation.org/eventschedule.html
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