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
Podcast: “The right not to fight an illegal war” – John Catalinotto
On organizing with the American Servicemen's Union, "I thought, what could I be doing that's more effective than helping the GIs organize to stay out of this war," shares John Catalinotto. "The first demand that we listed ... was the right not to fight an illegal war like the war in Vietnam. So it immediately was a confrontation with the entire Pentagon.” Listen to John's story.
Help us record & share the history of GI resistance!
This year marks 50 years since some of the most important GI resistance actions against the US war in Vietnam. To mark the occasion, we've been producing a podcast series in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure effort of Veterans For Peace. With your support, we'll soon be able to share with you the first-ever, first-person account of the mutiny aboard the SS Columbia Eagle as it carried napalm to Vietnam in March 1970.
Fort Sill reopens concentration camp
Minister James Branum, of our fiscal sponsor the Objector Church, joined the protest last weekend at the gates of Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to oppose the modern day immigrant concentration camp. Watch now.
We need to take a step back and rethink what we are doing, both in Iran and in the broader Middle East. In the nearly two decades since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States has made a series of costly blunders that have not only weakened our democracy but also undermined our leadership. We need a foreign policy that focuses on core U.S. interests, clarifies our commitment to democratic values both at home and abroad, and privileges diplomacy and working collectively with allies to address shared security concerns… Orienting U.S. national-security strategy around terrorism essentially allowed a few thousand violent extremists to dictate the foreign policy of the most powerful nation on earth… We need to rethink the militaristic approach that has undermined the United States’ moral authority, caused allies to question our ability to lead, drained our tax coffers, and corroded our own democracy. More
In case you missed this. . .
War with Iran will cost more than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
If Iraq and Afghanistan taught us anything, it is that war alone cannot bring regime change. Attempting it in Iran would require hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground, far more than in Afghanistan and Iraq — with a huge human toll in military lives and more injured and disabled veterans. Any attack will also harm Iranian civilians and start yet another massive flow of refugees. US action would strengthen the most virulently anti-American elements of Iranian society and suppress those who favor détente. War with Iran would entail vast economic, budgetary, and environmental costs. As former secretary of defense Robert Gates put it, “If you think the war in Iraq was hard, an attack on Iran would, in my opinion, be a catastrophe.” The American Federation of Scientists estimated that even limited US military action against Iran would cost $60 billion to $2 trillion — in the first three months alone. More
A robust local resistance, a former presidential candidate's visit, a display of hypocrisy by Gov. Mills and 'Maine's latest contribution' to climate change are all newsworthy.
Teachers unions are at the forefront of struggle for quality education and workers rights. Teachers strikes in recent years have reinvigorated the labor movement. We need to stand with teachers defending public education in Seattle and nationally.
Kshama Sawant’s re-election campaign is proud to now be endorsed by the Seattle Education Association! This joins the growing list of 14 unionswho have endorsed Kshama, representing over 80,000 workers in Washington state. The recent increase in labor struggles and the growth of the socialist movement are desperately needed in the face of corporate and right-wing attacks on our living standards.
Fully-funded quality public education is a central part of the wider struggle for equality. We need to tax big business and the rich to fully fund our schools while standing up against the corporate “reform,” union-busting and privatization agenda.
Teachers and students also need to be able to afford to live in the city where they work and learn. This is one reason why our fight for rent control and affordable housing is so urgent. A massive increase in quality social housing, like public education, should be paid for by taxes on the big corporations and the super rich.
Matt Maley, District 3 resident and educator at Nova High School, located in the heart of Seattle’s Central District represented by Sawant said: “When students walked out against staff cuts at NOVA high school at the start of this school year, Kshama opened the doors of City Hall for them and put resources into supporting them, while most politicians and School Board members simply gave lip service to our students. Even though the district forced through the cuts at that time, in the wake of this important struggle Kshama’s office helped win $100,000 for an LGBTQ+ health center at NOVA through the People’s Budget. This is just one of countless examples of the crucial role Kshama has played in fighting for educators, students and public education.”
The struggle for equality in our public schools is necessary now more than ever. The Seattle Public School Board recently decided to end its partnership with the Urban Native Education Alliance, cutting a vital program for Indigenous students that has contributed to a major increase in graduation rates. This points in the wrong direction, and Kshama is proud to stand with indigenous leaders, community groups, teachers and students who are fighting against this injustice as part of a wider fight to make quality education truly accessible, providing for all students.
Jesse Hagopian, the Seattle teacher who led the way in creating ethnic studies programs across the city said, “There are a lot of politicians who make empty platitudes about the youth being the future. There are very few who actually fight to defend public education so that the future of our youth can be bright. We live in a city with unimaginable wealth at time of unprecedented growth and a booming economy. And yet we have hundreds of homeless students in the Seattle Public Schools and a $40 million dollar budget shortfall leading to hundreds of teachers being displaced from their schools. Kshama Sawant has been one of the few politicians who has been a consistent champion for our schools and our educators. Most importantly, she knows that her job is to support educators, students, and parents to rise up to create the fundamental change we need in public education.”
When we stand together and fight, we can win! Still, we are up against powerful forces who want “anybody but Kshama” elected in District 3. Corporate PACs have already amassed over one million dollars to try to buy this election. Stand with teachers and union activists and help us cancel out the PAC by donating today!
Re: 22 Arrested at BIW: Climate crisis the biggest threat to security; Use defense funds for climate solutions
We are now talking about extinction — scientists talk about 20-50 years — human, as well as the million species already documented as extinct in our lifetime. It is already beyond time to face the climate crisis and ignoring all the bleakness of this truth won't help. Our kids will not be able to ignore it.
What will help is joining the campaign to convert Bath Iron Works to building products to help solve the climate crisis, not contribute to it. BIW has both the industrial capacity and the skilled workforce to show leadership to the nation by this conversion. Maine can take on the challenge to build products that will save our future, rather than more multi-billion-dollar warships we do not need, and that only contribute to climate collapse.
On June 22, another 22 environmental and peace activists were arrested in civil resistance to the "christening" of the USS Daniel Inouye Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. Nine of the protestors spent three days in jail, as they refused to pay bail in solidarity with all those who are unable to pay.
Given the accelerating speed of the climate crisis and the current administration's frightening level of denial as they push for a bloated and dangerous $750 billion Pentagon budget as well as planning to spend $1.7 trillion on new nuclear weapons, we all must follow the example of these activists. Demand conversion! Redirect funds to build sustainable energy systems.
Listen to the activists from #convertBIW campaign. Listen to the young climate activists worldwide. They know this is a matter of life and death. It is time to join them. Conversion will create more skilled jobs, not less. Contact our representatives. There are no jobs on a dead planet.
For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Starlight On The Rails, Indeed-In Honor Of The Hobo King 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, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, 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. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.
(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 out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/RockportSunday, and aboutaffairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -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.)
Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned 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 the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). 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, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is 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. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too 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 and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people 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 than lost loves and longings.
Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)
Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion 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 banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of 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 and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels
DVD REVIEW
American Experience: Riding The Rails, PBS Productions, 1998
Growing up in the 1950’s I had a somewhat tenuous connection with trains. My grandparents lived close to a commuter rail that before my teenage years went out of service, due to the decline of ridership as the goal of two (or three) car garages gripped the American imagination in an age when gas was cheap and plentiful. In my teens though, many a time I walked those above-mentioned abandoned tracks to take the short route to the center of town. As an adult I have frequently ridden the rails, including a cross-continental trip that actually converted me to the virtues of air travel. Of course, my ‘adventures’ riding the rails is quite different than that being looked at in this American Experience documentary about a very, very common way for the youth of America to travel in the Depression-ridden 1930’s, the youth of my parents’ generation. My own experiences were merely as a paying passenger. Theirs was anything but. The only common thread between them and me is the desire expressed by many interviewees to not be HERE but to be THERE.
This tale of a significant number of youth in the 1930’s is held together by film footage of the time, some nice background music from the likes of Jimmy Rodgers and Doc Watson that evokes the ‘romance of the rails’ and ‘talking head’ interviews with the itinerant travelers, male and female. Despite various motives, from the desire to leave the parents’ house to being thrown out during those tough times, the stories they tell are of cold nights in open box cars, overcrowded jails, beatings by the ever present railroad "bulls" and the struggle to find a little work in order to be able to move on to the next locale and maybe some ‘peace’. Mainly this was the eternal heading West of the famous Professor Frederick Turner Jackson thesis- with this proviso- by then the land had run out and maybe the possibility of the dreams. A few interviewed are still driven by the lore of the rails, many had no regrets but mainly this is a very interesting trip down memory lane in a time before the automobile became readily accessible to teenagers.
No review of the life of the rails can omit the special jargon developed by those on the road, the ‘class distinctions' (hobo, bum, and tramp) between them and the rough and ready ‘code of honor’ of the rails (honored more in the breach than in the practice from what I can gather). This tradition has survived best in song by the likes of Woody Guthrie in any number of his songs written in the 1930’s, the classic Elizabeth Cotton song "Freight Train" and the work, including a song with the same title as the headline to this piece, of the recently deceased old Wobblie, folksinger, writer and rail rat extraordinaire Utah Phillips. Starlight On The Rails, indeed!
Daddy What's A Train? Utah Phillips
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride? Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside? Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
When I was just a boy and living by the track Us kids would gather up the coal in big 'ole gunnysacks Then we heard the warning sound as the train pulled into view The engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through
She blew so loud and clear, we had to cover up our ears And we counted cars just as high as we could go I can almost hear the steam those big old drivers scream A sound my little kids will never know
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride? Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside? Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
I guess the times have changed, kids are different now 'Cause some don't even seem to know the milk comes from a cow My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars
The Wabash and the TP, Lackawanna, the IC The Nickel-Plate and the good old Santa Fe Just names out of the past, I guess they're fading fast Every time I hear my little boy say
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride? Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside? Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
We climbed into the car, drove down into town Right out the depot house, but no one was around We searched the yard togheter for something I could show But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so
All the things I did when I was just a kid How far away those memories appear I guess it's plain to see they still mean a lot to me 'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride? Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside? Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
Starlight On The Rails
This comes from reading Thomas Wolfe. He had a very deep understanding of the music in language. Every now and then he wrote something that stuck in my ear and would practically demand to be made into a song. I think that if you talk to railroad bums, or any kind of bum, you'll see that what affects them the most is homelessness, not necessarily rootlessness. Traveling is all right if you have a place to go from and a place to go to. It's when you don't have any place that it becomes more difficult. There's nothing you can count on in the world, except yourself. And if you're an old blown bum, you can't even do that very well. I guess this is a home song as much as anything else. We walked along a road in Cumberland and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned - the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.
Oh, I will go up and down the country and back and forth across the country. I will go out West where the states are square. I will go to Boise and Helena, Albuquerque and the two Dakotas and all the unknown places. Say brother, have you heard the roar of the fast express? Have you seen starlight on the rails?
I think about a wife and family, My home and all the things it means; The black smoke trailing out behind me Is like a string of broken dreams.
A man who lives out on the highway Is like a clock that can't tell time; A man who spends his life just ramblin' Is like a song without a rhyme.
Podcast: “The right not to fight an illegal war” – John Catalinotto
