A letter from whistleblower Reality Winner's mother
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Thursday, October 24, 2019
A letter from whistleblower Reality Winner's mother RootsAction Team
Can you use our easy online tool to call voters for Bernie RIGHT NOW? (Or, if you’re not free now, sign up for a shift later.) This is our biggest advantage in this primary and we need to get to work. Thank you.
Can you use our easy online tool to call voters for Bernie RIGHT NOW? (Or, if you’re not free now, sign up for a shift later.) This is our biggest advantage in this primary and we need to get to work. Thank you.
Alfred -
In just a minute, I’m going to ask you to make calls to voters for Bernie. Please let me explain why this is so important.
Our biggest advantage in this primary is an army of volunteers that is unmatched by any other campaign. You know that — you’ve already signed up to make calls for Bernie.
This is important: the more contacts we can make to voters — and the earlier we can make them — the stronger our organization will be when people start to vote. We have an online call tool that will show you a script and automatically connect you to voters. It’s really fun and easy, and thousands of Bernie supporters are already doing it.
Every phone call we make, and voter we talk to, is one step closer to victory. So that is why we are asking if you can make calls for Bernie — right now if you can, or later too. Are you in?
Our goal is to make 2 million phone calls to voters before the end of the month. We already called 1.3 million voters to start the month… and if we can reach our bigger goal, there’s no stopping us.
Here’s our progress to our NEW 2 million call goal, which we need to hit in the next week:
We’re on track, and THOUSANDS of Bernie supporters are calling voters right from their computers. Can you join them?
Thanks for all you do to help Bernie win.
In solidarity,
Faiz Shakir
Campaign Manager
Campaign Manager
Paid for by Bernie 2020
PO BOX 391, Burlington, VT 05402
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I need your help, Alfred Stacey Abrams
I need your help, Alfred
Dear MoveOn member,
My name is Stacey Abrams. I'm writing to you to talk about one of the most critical issues facing our democracy today and to share my plan to fight back.
In 2018, I became the first Black woman in U.S. history to become a nominee for governor for a major party. I spent months traveling Georgia, meeting voters, hearing and learning from their experiences, and galvanizing communities around a progressive vision for our state. But, at the same time, my campaign had to fight a coordinated, blatant voter suppression campaign run by my Republican opponent, Brian Kemp, who was also Georgia’s secretary of state and in charge of our election.
It was like running against a cartoon villain. During the race, he purged 1.4 million voters from the rolls, allowed 214 precincts to close under his watch, and held up the registrations of 53,000 voters, 80% of whom were people of color.
After that race, I was determined to make sure that what happened in my election wouldn’t happen across the country and, most urgently, that the 2020 elections would not be decided by partisan, undemocratic power grabs.
That's why I launched Fair Fight 2020 to hire voter protection teams in 20 battleground states that will work with state Democratic parties and allies to ensure that every eligible voter can register, access a ballot, and cast a vote that will be accurately counted.
We need to hire these teams on the ground now so they can start building the infrastructure needed to protect the vote in 2020, and keep them there until every vote is counted.
Alfred, MoveOn members like you were with me from the beginning of my campaign, and I need you with me again now. Will you chip in $5 a month, split between Fair Fight 2020 and MoveOn's work to defeat Donald Trump and end Republican control of the Senate?
Let's be clear: Georgia may have been the epicenter of voter suppression in 2018, but Republicans are using the same playbook all across the country.
Over the past 20 years, we have seen a dramatic, insidious constriction of the right to vote. It's no longer the use of fire hoses and literacy tests to keep out voters. Now, it is widespread, complex suppression that hides behind the idea that it is “race-neutral,” when we know that voter suppression disproportionately impacts marginalized communities.
And since 2013, when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, bad actors have been given carte blanche to undermine the most foundational principle of our democracy and keep more and more people out of the voting booth.
Voter suppression not only erodes every aspect of our democracy, it also crushes voters’ sense of hope and reinforces the idea that one’s vote doesn't matter.
I refuse to let the idea that one’s vote doesn’t matter take hold of our nation.
And that is where Fair Fight 2020 comes in. We are funding, training, and supporting voter protection teams on the ground in 20 states to safeguard our nation’s sacred right to vote. We are also setting up hotlines in each of our target states so that anyone who witnesses any act of voter suppression can immediately report it and voter protection teams can take action.
We can’t allow elections to be unfair, and we can't expect someone else to do this work for us.
I need your help to get this done, and MoveOn needs your help to build the largest election program in their 21-year history. Will you chip in $5 a month?
Last week, we lost one of the great fighters for justice, Representative Elijah Cummings, and I was reminded of an impassioned speech he gave in Congress earlier this year. He said:
"I don't give a damn how you look at it, there are efforts to stop people from voting. That's not right! This is not Russia, this is the United States of America! And I will fight until the death to make sure that every citizen—whether they are Green Party, whether they are Freedom Party, whether they are Democrat, whether they are Republican, whoever—has that right to vote, because it is the essence of our democracy."
It is on each and every one of us to heed Rep. Cummings' words and take up this fight.
Our voices have to be heard for our democracy to work. Will you join me and chip in $5 a month to Fair Fight 2020 and MoveOn now?
Thanks for all you do.
–Stacey Abrams
Want to support MoveOn's work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it MoveOn needs your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with MoveOn?
PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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From The Archives 2018-Still Necessary- As the Winter Olympics come to an end, Continue the Olympic Truce in Korea Continue talks between North and South Korea Do Not Resume U.S. military exercises in Korea Join the Rally for Peace in Korea: Thurs., March 15, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm South Station, Boston
As the
Winter Olympics come to an end,
Continue
the Olympic Truce in Korea
Continue
talks between North and South Korea
Do Not
Resume U.S. military exercises in Korea
Join the Rally for Peace in Korea:
Thurs., March 15, 4:30 pm -
5:30 pm
South Station, Boston
- The recent Olympics offered a
unique moment to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula and avoid a
cataclysmic war.
- We saw North Koreans and South
Koreans marching together in the opening ceremony
- During the Olympics we saw the
first high-level discussions between North and South Korea in many years
- The People of the world saw the United States suspend
joint military exercises and North Korea suspend nuclear weapons and
missile tests
The Olympic Truce (called by
the U.N. to last from Feb. 2 to March 25) opened up the opportunity for future
discussions that could eventually lead to peace.
We must give this small opening
toward peace the opportunity to grow and to prevent a catastrophic war
Say
YES to the ongoing efforts by South and North Korea to restore a peace process.
Say NO to war with
North Korea
We urge our government to end
the march toward war and to support the continuation of the talks between North
and South Korea.
Sponsored by Veterans for
Peace-Smedley Butler Brigade – Mass. Peace Action – American Friends Service
Committee – United for Justice with Peace – Women’s International League for
Peace and Freedom
For Information call 617-354-2169
From The Archives-JOIN US! Attention Veterans & Peace Activists – Please join Veterans For Peace and The Leftist Marching Band for Armistice / Veterans ! ! Day for Peace November 11, 2018 Armistice / Veterans Day Parade for Peace & Faneuil Hall Peace Event Veterans for Peace will proudly walk behind the first parade on Armistice / Veterans Day in Boston. We honor and celebrate the original intention for Armistice Day – a Day of Peace. We will gather between 12:00 pm (noon) and 12:30 pm on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets. 1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow the same route then we will continue to Faneuil Hall for our Armistice Day for Peace Event Veterans from different eras will recite original works of Poetry, Prose and Song Smedley D. Butler Brigade, Veterans For Peace Chap. 9, Boston, MA www.smedleyvfp.org
JOIN US! Attention Veterans & Peace Activists – Please join Veterans For Peace and The Leftist Marching Band for Armistice / Veterans
! ! Day for Peace November 11, 2018
Armistice / Veterans Day Parade for Peace & Faneuil Hall Peace Event Veterans for Peace will proudly walk behind the first parade on Armistice / Veterans Day in Boston. We honor and celebrate the original intention for Armistice Day – a Day of Peace. We will gather between 12:00 pm (noon) and 12:30 pm on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets. 1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow the same route then we will continue to Faneuil Hall for our Armistice Day for Peace Event Veterans from different eras will recite original works of Poetry, Prose and Song Smedley D. Butler Brigade, Veterans For Peace Chap. 9, Boston, MA www.smedleyvfp.org
! ! Day for Peace November 11, 2018
Armistice / Veterans Day Parade for Peace & Faneuil Hall Peace Event Veterans for Peace will proudly walk behind the first parade on Armistice / Veterans Day in Boston. We honor and celebrate the original intention for Armistice Day – a Day of Peace. We will gather between 12:00 pm (noon) and 12:30 pm on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets. 1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow the same route then we will continue to Faneuil Hall for our Armistice Day for Peace Event Veterans from different eras will recite original works of Poetry, Prose and Song Smedley D. Butler Brigade, Veterans For Peace Chap. 9, Boston, MA www.smedleyvfp.org
"Put Out The Fire In Your Head"-With The Line From Patti Griffin’s “You Are Not Alone” In Mind
"Put Out The Fire In Your Head"-With The Line From Patti Griffin’s “You Are Not Alone” In Mind
By Special Guest Writer Greg Gordon
Normally I don’t write for blog and on-line publications preferring still the hard copy route to have my work appreciated by any who would appreciate my efforts. The reason that I am writing this little comment is the editor here, my old friend Pete Markin, has asked me to comment on a line from Patti Griffin’s song You Are Not Alone where she asks her lover to “put on the fire in your head”-calm down, take it easy, be with her. I am not personally much into music so that I did not know the song, or the line from the song, nor did I know who Patti Griffin was. But the line intrigued me. Intrigued me more when Pete told me the reason that he wanted me to comment rather than take a stab at it himself since he loves the song is that he wanted my take on who among our still standing old-time from the neighborhood friends could rightfully be asked to do what the phrase asks. And he included himself in the mix so for all practical purposes he is recusing himself.
Now Pete Markin, Seth Garth, Frankie Riley, Fritz Taylor, Bart Webber, Si Lannon, Jack Callahan, Josh Breslin and about fifty other guys, from what Pete calls the Generation of ’68, whom Pete and I have come to know over the years whatever neighborhood they grew up in, mostly poor white guys like me and him, whatever achievements they have accumulated over a lifetime, whatever heartaches they have suffered as well they, we all have one thing in common. We all have since youth, maybe since, hell, maybe from the womb, had outsized wanting habits, have had the hunger. So each and every one of us one way or another could fall under the sign of “put out the fire in your head.”
For me it has always been an outsized and maybe overblown sense that I have been under-appreciated as a writer now that Gothic detective novels, the niche I had made for myself started way back in maybe middle school when my English teacher Miss Winot encouraged me to flush out my private detective Galen Fiske, are a dime a dozen, maybe cheaper. So maybe I should chill out about it, throw water on that last dream and not to worry. That said I do not intend to go chapter and verse over every guy whom I have mentioned above but give a few words and here and there. I might as well start with Pete who has always had this thing about this woman, let’s call her Josie to give her a name whom he treated like dirt when he was young and was crazy to go to bed with every dame who gave him a second look. Leaving Josie holding the bag.
He had not seen her in about forty years, didn’t know what had become of her (although he belatedly wished her well) but nevertheless on whiskey-sodden barstool nights in some dank barroom he will inevitably bring up her name, his sins against her, and that wistful what might have been had he had the sense God gave geese. I know I have been on the stool beside him. This despite the intervening three marriages and assorted well-behaved kids who came with them. So that fire in his head has been smoldering for a long time, caused him some sweaty, dreamless nights. At this point I don’t think it will ever go out. Some things are like that.
Fritz Taylor’s fire is maybe really fire, really fire that he brought down on the heads of people in Vietnam with whom he had no quarrel, never had except his friends and neighbors at his local draft board in the days when that was the way non-enlistees got called up to military service called his ticket, gave him the ride. He spent years hiding from the “real” world with a bunch of brothers under the bridge out in Southern California trying to drink/drug/cut himself to some place of peace but that vagabond stuff never did the trick. Nor did his three marriages with a mixed bag of good and bad kids. Will still drink himself to a coma, or maybe sleep is better and yell out of nowhere An Loc (a small town/ village/hamlet which he and his men burned to the ground one awful August 1968 night). That fire too seems like an endless sleep.
Now that the reader is getting my drift, getting that maybe that Patty Griffin song, those lyrics might not be susceptible to dousing I will like I said not go through the whole litany of the fire nights among the guys. But one last case should sum things up a bit. Josh Breslin is a guy we met, those of us from the old North Adamsville neighborhood, out in the San Francisco Summer of Love, 1967 night. Josh, a little younger than us but a kindred working class guy from up in Olde Saco, Maine, was a real good-looking guy whose moniker was the Prince of Love in those moniker-filled days. Had half the girls around Golden Gate Park in something like his harem. For a while anyway. Then he got caught into the grasp of a woman we called (and will still call her here) Mustang Sally and can draw your own conclusions about why she took that name. The long and short of it was that before too long she got pregnant. Josh was set to marry her or something like that. One night she split we think with a guy named Pirate Johnny and we/he never heard from her again. So Josh, the love them and leave them Prince of Love, too would on moonless ill-begotten nights wonder out loud what had happened to his child. That after two marriages and a parcel of I am not sure what kind of kids. So maybe Patti and her song are wrong. Maybe you can’t put out the fire in your head.
“One Johnny Rocco More Or Less Is Not Worth Dying For ” –With Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart’s “Key Largo” In Mind
“One Johnny Rocco More Or Less Is Not Worth Dying For ” –With Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart’s “Key Largo” In Mind
By Special Guest Commentator Lance Lawrence
Here is the genesis for this commentary. I don’t normally as much as I love the old time 1940s and 1950s black and white movies do film reviews here or in other hard copy and on-line publications I write for. That was usually handled by my old friend, old neighborhood North Adamsville growing up friend, and colleague at this site Sam Lowell. The “was” part is because Sam has recently retired from the day to day fuss of film editor handing it over to our common colleague Sandy Salmon. He has taken the outlandish and over-the-top title of film editor emeritus. That has allowed him to do occasional commentary without the hassle of every impending deadline and having to watch film he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about (his, our, old-time neighborhood expression which I think is self-explanatory.)
Sam recently had a problem having to do with the film Key Largo I am keeping in mind as I do this piece. Sandy who does not like doing old-time black and white movie reviews as a rule had asked Sam to review this film. He agreed figuring this would be an easy punt since he had always been crazy for Humphrey Bogart films and had always been half in love with foxy Lauren Bacall ever since she and Bogart steamed up the theater in the very loose film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have And Have Not. Also many years ago he had already reviewed the film and could use that as a basis for a current review. (Sam never throws anything out and of course now the computer doesn’t have to so he probably has his first grade papers stored somewhere.) Once he had watched, no, re-watched the film though he had another idea. His angle was looking at the Humphrey Bogart character, ex-World War II soldier Frank McCloud, from the perspective of a guy who had had a hard time coming back the “real” world after the war like many guys probably did (and do so now in Iraq-Afghanistan time as well).
That is when he thought of me, although really it is the late Peter Paul Markin always and forever known as Scribe, another North Adamsville corner boy of ours that he was really thinking about when he had that grand idea (his expression). (The late Scribe not to be confused with the administrator of this site another North Adamsville guy speaking of nepotism who took the Scribe’s name as his on-line moniker in honor of our fallen comrade.) See the Scribe after he got back from Vietnam where he had been an infantryman and had seen some pretty horrible stuff which he seldom talked about had had serious problems coming back the “real” war after his war. Had been up and down emotionally for a while out in California where he lived after he got back from Vietnam. Had once he settled down a bit (for a while) taken up the journalist’s life which he had gone to college for before he made fateful decision to drop out his sophomore year to get tangled up in the Summer of Love experience out in San Francisco in 1967 (and since he had no student deferment was subject to draft and induction into the military and therefore “fateful” is the right word).
While working for the now long gone but then influential alternative newspaper East Bay Other the Scribe was handed a plum assignment from the editor Sally Jacobs. Handed it because he was the only Vietnam veteran, the only one with enough street “cred” to do the assignment. It seems that a whole bunch of guys were in the Scribe’s boat, had had a tough time coming back to the “real” world and had formed a “community” or better communities down in Southern California along the riverbanks, railroad tracks and under the multifarious bridges. He was assigned to tell their stories, those that wanted to talk and some did and some didn’t. Those who did formed the basis for what was called the Brothers Under The Bridge series which ran for a while in the newspaper and won the Scribe some awards and stuff.
So what does the Scribe’s work back then have to do with Sam Lowell asking me to give my take on a guy like ex-soldier Frank McCloud. The Scribe, the logical choice, is no longer with us having succumbed to those Vietnam demons, demons which led to his addiction to cocaine as relief and another fateful and fatal decision to do drug dealing which eventually got him two slugs in the head down in Mexico when a deal went bad. Most of us who knew him count him as an uncounted casualty of the war and maybe his name should be etched in that black granite down in Washington with the 58, 000 others. But we haven’t spoken about it much of late although maybe before we pass on we should make an effort even if we have to get a black granite slab and do it up ourselves in North Adamsville Square. Since the Scribe can’t do the job Sam asked me because I too unlike him, who felt it needed a soldier to soldier touch, was a Vietnam veteran as well. Although I didn’t have as many problems as the Scribe I had my fair share in the immediate aftermath of my military discharge. I have written about those experiences extensively elsewhere so I need not repeat them here after all this is Frank McCloud’s story not mine. More importantly I have taken up the Scribe’s cudgels and written plenty about my fellow Vietnam veterans who are still haunted by that fucking war. Still haven’t come back to the “real” world even though the hobo camps are long vanished and they have been left to their own inadequate devises.
I want to describe Frank McCloud, ex-Major in the European Theater of World War II under the sign of ‘one Johnny Rocco more or less in the world isn’t worth dying for ” a classic line uttered a few times throughout the film. That refers to the villain of the piece bastard gangster Johnny Rocco, played by gangster film fixture Edward G. Robinson, deported by the federal authorities as a no account blight alien residing in Cuba but late of Chicago and the gang wars that dominated that town back in the day and how good men let guys like Johnny breathe and breed.
As the background to why soldier Frank McCloud had taken the Greyhound bus down to the Keys, down to Key Largo at the beginning one of America land’s end. Why he was to wind up at that very spot locking horns with one Johnny Rocco probably the last thing he had expected to deal with in sunny tropical Florida. Why he had been drifting along in the post-war period after that war had taken the starch out of him, made him cynical. Why he had, sound familiar, a tough time coming back to the “real” world after slogging through the Italian campaign. See he had gone back to the old job he held before the war but just couldn’t make it make sense. Became a drifter, day worker, low rung work, a man of no fixed abode. Not quite down in the under the bridge jungle like out in post-Vietnam California but still restless and moving aimlessly.
So one day Frank decided to take that fateful bus ride down to the Keys to make sense of the life, and death, of one of the guys under his command whose grieving father, played by Lionel Barrymore, and a young done on the run wife, played by Lauren Bacall running the Largo Hotel. Supposedly this was just a courtesy call at least that was what he told one of Johnny’s boys, guys like Johnny always travelled with a “don’t give a fuck” entourage when he was told by that guy there was no room for him in the inn. Then the damn hurricane winds started picking up and that tidy metaphor-filled event would blow the lid off Frank’s duel with the real world.
Enter Johnny, no, enter a snoopy cop who was looking for a couple of wild-eyed Seminoles who fled the coop on him and sought safe harbor at the hotel. That copper after taking a beating took a couple to the heart by dear Johnny just to prove he had not lost the old touch. Along the way Frank had chances to show some of the bravery he had shown in war but he was no longer the knight-errant going after bad guys for other guys who would not give him a fair shake. That when he said it all, made it clear the, his post-war world would be every man and woman for his or herself. That shocked that dead G.I.s people, that broken down old man and that fetching wife who had heard better things about Frank from that son-husband’s letters but that was that.
Now is the time to tell why undesirable alien Johnny Rocco was in some stinking off-season deadbeat hotel facing down hurricane winds and playing with fire-power. He was trying to pass paper, trying to unload counterfeit money for dimes on the dollar to a rival gangster and his confederates. This hole-in-the-wall hotel was the meeting place for the exchange which actually happened despite the hurricane coming to blow all the people all away. Problem (beside the sheriff showing up and finding his copper deputy washed up by hurricane) was the big yacht he arrived on had been taken to a safe harbor by the skipper. No boat. No boat to flee back that ninety or so miles to friendly Havana.
Well almost no boat. See among his skills our man Frank had been an expert sailor, had been so since he was a kid. He made the mistake of telling one of Johnny’s boys that fact when he was helping to secure the hotel’s boat against the hurricane blow. So naturally Johnny latched onto the Frank-boat idea as the way to get him, his boys, and that ill-gotten dough back to Cuba. Johnny had taken the measure of the man, had seen that Frank had that beaten down look a lot of returning soldiers had after finding all the patriotic stuff, all the making the world safe against the night-takers from guys like Hitler and Mussolini down to punk gangster Johnny Rocco was a lot of hooey. Johnny’s entreaty picking up on what Frank had said previously that after all what was it to small guy Frank McCloud whether a putting a guy like Johnny out of commission was worth breaking a sweat for played its part. After a couple of threats to put Frank on the rack and to the disappointment of that disillusioned old man and that comely daughter-in-law he consented.
You never know what will push a man’s buttons, and what won’t. Given a handy pistol filched from Johnny by the gangster’s moll, Gaye, seemed to have put life back into Frank, got him thinking maybe another small fight against the night-takers was in order. In the end there would now be no brothers under the bridge fate for our boy. It was a thing of beauty to watch as Frank totally outmaneuvered Johnny and his four confederates, one overboard with a nice turning maneuver, another bang-bang, a third bang-bang, ditto the fourth. Then the inevitable mano a mano with evil Johnny. Johnny Too Bad. Johnny gone to push up the daisies. Yeah, you never know what will push a man’s buttons. Bring him back to the “real” world. I wished the Scribe could have figured that one out.
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