All Out For The Fifth Annual Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade In South Boston Sunday March 15, 2015

 

 

Frank Jackman comment:

I am always happy to publicize the Veterans For Peace-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade to be held this year on March 15th. This year will mark the fifth time that organized peace activists, anti-militarists, anti-imperialist, pro-LGBTQ and other socially conscious groups, have been excluded from the main “private” parade sponsored by the Allied War Council (that name goes a long way toward explaining the exclusions of the above-mentioned groups although pro-war LGBTQ veterans from an organization called OutVets has allegedly received permission to march openly). This year will mark the fourth time I will proudly march with my fellow veterans. (I was down in front of the gates at the Marine base at Quantico in Virginia standing for freedom for heroic Wikileaks whistle -blower Chelsea Manning and so could not attend the first effort in 2011.)

This event is a highlight of the anti-war calendar along with Armistice Day and Remembrance Day each year and has become something of rallying point for all those, even some pro-military types who disagree with the politics of the peace parade, to express outrage that veterans have been excluded. The choice of a day which honors Saint Patrick, fabled in Irish/Keltic legend as a man of peace, seems a particularly appropriate day to show our “colors” against the backdrop of the “official” parade’s emphasis on displaying every piece of military equipment and personnel it can get its hands on within a hundred miles of South Boston. The choice of the luck of the Irish shamrock shown above as the symbol for the peace parade, and way to make some money to defray costs, also contributed to the spirit of the message at last year’s peace parade.     

Helping me to keep focused on publicizing this event is a statement attributed to one of the Allied War Council organizers a couple of years ago:             

 “We don’t want the word peace connected with the word veteran in our parade”

Of course that remark had me seeing red and I recall that I replied- “Oh yeah, well watch this, watch what we organize that day”- Don’t make a liar out of me this year. Plan to attend this important event if you are anywhere near Boston that day.

All Out For The Smedley Butler Brigade Veterans For Peace-Initiated Saint Patrick’s PEACE Parade on Sunday March 15th in South Boston

 

 

No Justice, No Peace- Black Lives Matter- You Have Got That Right Brothers and Sisters-Speaking Truth To Power-The Struggle Continues-Drop The Charges Against The Boston U.S. 93 Highway Protestors   

Activists Shut Down Interstate Highway 93 North and South During Morning Rush Hour Traffic into Boston
by Boston Black Lives Matter	15 Jan 2015
Somerville/Milton/Boston -- Activists have shut down Interstate 93 Southbound and Northbound during morning rush hour commute into Boston to “disrupt business as usual” and protest police and state violence against Black people. Two different groups of activists linked their bodies together across the highway in coordinated actions north and south of Boston. This action was in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. This diverse non-Black group of Pan-Asians, Latinos, and white people, some of whom are queer and transgender, took this action to confront white complacency in the systemic oppression of Black people in Boston.
Click on image for a larger version
Click on image for a larger version
“Today, our nonviolent direct action is meant to expose the reality that Boston is a city where white commuters and students use the city and leave, while Black and Brown communities are targeted by police, exploited, and displaced,” said Korean-American activist Katie Seitz. In the past 15 years, law enforcement officers in Boston have killed Remis M. Andrews, Darryl Dookhran, Denis Reynoso, Ross Baptista, Burrell “Bo” Ramsey-White, Mark Joseph McMullen, Manuel “Junior” DaVeiga, Marquis Barker, Stanley Seney, Luis Gonzalez, Bert W. Bowen, Eveline Barros-Cepeda, Daniel Furtado, LaVeta Jackson, Nelson Santiago, Willie L. Murray Jr., Rene Romain, Jose Pineda, Ricky Bodden, Carlos M. Garcia, and many more people of color. We mourn and honor all these lives. “We must remember, Ferguson is not a faraway Southern city. Black men, women, and gender-nonconforming people face disproportionately higher risk of profiling, unjust incarceration, and death. Police violence is everywhere in the United States,” said another protester Nguyen Thi Minh Thu. The two groups of activists organized these actions to use their collective voices to resist and disrupt the overarching system that oppresses Black people and to expressly accept the responsibility of white and non-Black people of color to organize and act to end racial profiling, unjust incarceration, and murder of Black people in the United States and beyond. Black lives matter, today and always. ***See below for more quotes from organizers and participants in the action.*** Quotes from Participants in the Action "As an Afro-Indigenous woman I feel the affects of white supremacy on my people. Being involved in this action has shown me where the participant's hearts are at in the movement. Without collaboration of all people, no one can be free." - Camille “As Pan-Asian people in the United States, we refuse to perpetuate anti-Black racism. We will not allow our communities to serve as a wedge to divide us and jeopardize our struggle to end racism and achieve our collective liberation,” said Nguyen Thi Minh Thu. “As non-Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer people in the United States, we refuse to allow increasing acceptance of our sexuality and several marriage equality victories to end our commitment to advancing social justice. We recognize that this movement has been spearheaded by Black queer women and gender-nonconforming people.” said Monica Majewski. “As white people in the United States, we refuse to align ourselves with a state that carries out violence against Black people. We are taking direct action to challenge white complicity and amplify the demands for an end to the war on Black communities,” said Katie Martin Selcraig. "As a white person, my only options are to act against white supremacy or to be complicit in it. I'm here today because I refuse to be complicit" said Emily O. "As a white man, I know I benefit and am protected by a racist society. I am participating today because it is necessary for those who are the least vulnerable to step up and put our bodies on the line if we ever want to build a just world," said Eli C. "As a white feminist, I take part in this action because anyone who claims commitment to equality must take action to dismantle intersectional oppression. Idling is a privilege afforded only to those who genuinely do not care," said Nelli. “As non-Black undocumented immigrants in the United States, we refuse to perpetuate the erroneous idea of earned citizenship. We honor the path set before us by Harriet Tubman by advancing civil and human rights for everyone regardless of legal status,” said a protester involved in the action. “As non-Black women, including transgender and gender-nonconforming folks in the United States, we refuse to allow our commitment to gender justice to distract us from racial justice. We understand that gender and racial justice are intertwined,” said one of the organizers of the action. Contact Megan Collins at (617) 942-1867 or email january15action (at) gmail.com for more information, interviews, and photographs.

Cuba: People's Victory, US Policy, Impact on Socialism

with Lisa Brock and Cliff Durand

 

CCDS (Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism) is hosting a webex/teleconference on US/Cuban relations on Monday, January 12, 9-10:30 pm, Eastern Standard Time.  All friends of peace and Cuba are urged to attend.  Webex and call-in information is below.

US recognition of Cuba is a foreign policy victory for the people as is the release of the remaining Cuban 5.  The speakers have traveled and studied about Cuba for many years and have much to say about the positive features and possible negative consequences of the new United States policy towards Cuba.

Lisa Brock, Academic Director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, Kalamazoo College, and co-editor (with Professor Digna Castaneda, University of Havana) of Between Race and Empire: African-Americans and Cubans Before the Revolution

Cliff Durand, Center for Global Justice, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, has organized numerous international conferences in Cuba cosponsored by the Radical Philosophers Association and the University of Havana.  See attached article by Cliff DuRand.

 

Participants are encouraged to share their experiences with Cuba solidarity during the discussion.

Harry Targ : Revisiting the Cuban Revolution​

Join WebEx meeting

Meeting number:	807 242 449
Meeting password:	jan123

Join by phone

1-650-479-3208 Call-in toll number (US/Canada)

Access code: 807 242 449

Free Chelsea Manning-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Now! 

	Photos of actions celebrating CHELSEA MANNING’s birthday 17 December 2014
	Chelsea Manning, one of the world’s best-known whistleblowers, was sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years’ imprisonment.  If the sentence stands, she won’t be out until 2045.  We cannot allow this; we have to get her out. On her 27th birthday, Chelsea’s supporters from lgbtq, women’s, anti-war, anti-racist, anti-zionist, whistleblowers’ and other movements for change from 14 cities in seven countries called for her release. Berlin – 19 December, FreeChelseaManningNet, Brandenburg Gate and SchuwZ Club. Berlin - 17 December, Coop Anti War cafe, (video). Boston – 20 December, Boston Chelsea Manning Support Committee, Veterans for Peace, Committee for Peace and Human Rights. Crescent, Oklahoma – Home town of Chelsea Manning, 17 December, Center for Conscience in Action (video). Dublin – 17 December Action for Ireland (AFRI) (video).   Istanbul, 17 December, Kurdish conscientious objector Ali Fikri Işık drinks to Chelsea Manning. London, 17 December, called by Payday men’s network and Queer Strike.  Chelsea Manning banner produced by Wise Up Action. London, 17 December- called by Solidarity Collective (video). Philadelphia, 18 December, Action for Chelsea Manning and other whistleblowers, called by Global Women’s Strike and Payday men’s network. Rome – 16 December, US Citizens for Peace and Justice. San Francisco, 17 December, called by Queer Strike.  Although it rained, 35 to 40 people came and stayed regardless, including famous Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and his wife Patricia Marx Ellsberg.   Thailand – (video).   Vancouver – 13 December, Mobilization Against War & Occupation (MAWO). Venice, 15 December, called by Associazione E’ solo l’inizio (It’s Just the Beginning). Chicago – 20 December, Gay Liberation Network organized a card signing meeting and raised $100 towards Chelsea’s legal fund. Washington, DC - 16 December, Amnesty International, Black and Pink, and Casa Ruby organized a card signing meeting. ------------------ Sign Amnesty International’s petition for her immediate release. For more info: Chelsea Manning Support Network
	Power to the whistleblowers in 2015!
	Collated and circulated by: Payday men's network  www.refusingtokill.net US: 001 215 848 1120 UK: +44 (0)20 7267 8698 Queer Strike US: 001 415-626 4114  UK: +44 (0)20 7482 2496

No Justice, No Peace- The Cases Of Ferguson, Missouri’s Michael Brown And New York's Eric Garner - Stop The Police Murders Of Black And Brown Peoples-All Out In Boston On MLK Day-January 19th

Protest March in Boston on Martin Luther King Day

 

4 Mile March Against Police Violence and Racism 

1 pm on Monday, January 19 at Old State House (corner of State and Washington streets, downtown Boston) responding to a national call named after the time (4 1/2 hours) Michael Brown's body lay in the street in Ferguson, MO

 

www.4milemarch.org (national website -- Coalition Against Police Violence)

 

www.justicewithpeace.org (UJP website)

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.

info@justicewithpeace.org

"America, Where Are You Now...."- Steppenwolf’s The Monster-Take Three

 

 

 

A YouTube Film Clip Of Steppenwolf Performing Monster. Ah, Those Were The Days

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Steppenwolf: 16 Greatest Hits, Steppenwolf, Digital Sound, 1990

America where are you now?

Don't you care about your sons and daughters?

Don't you know we need you now

We can't fight alone against the monster

Chorus Line From The Monster

The heavy rock band Steppenwolf (maybe acid rock is better signifying that the band started in the American dream gone awry 1960s night when the likes of the Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, The Byrds and groups like the transformed Beatles and Stones held forth, rather than in the ebb-tide 1970s when the harder sounds of groups like Aerosmith and Black Sabbath were  needed to drown out the fact that  we were in decisive retreat),  one of many that was thrown up by the musical counter-culture of the mid to late 1960's was a cut above and apart from some of the others due to their scorching lyrics provided mainly, but not solely, by gravelly-voiced lead singer John Kay. That musical counter-culture not only put a premium on band-written materials, as against the old Tin Pan Alley somebody wrote the lyrics, somebody else sang the song division before Bob Dylan and the Beatles made singer-songwriters fashionable) but also was a serious reaction to the vanilla-ization of rock and popular music in the earlier part of the decade that drove many of us from the AM radio dials and into “exotic” stuff like electric blues (country too, come to think of it) and the various strands of folk music.    

Some bands played, consciously played, to the “drop out” notion popular at the times. “Drop out” of rat-race bourgeois society and it money imperative, its “white picket fence with little white house attached” visions. That the place where many of the young, the post-World War II baby-boomer young, now sadly older, had grown up and were in the process of repudiating for a grander vision of the world, the “world turned upside down” as an old time British folk tune had it. Drop out and create a niche somewhere (a commune maybe out away from the rat-race places which did spring up in the likes of Taos, Oregon, and the hills of old Vermont which if you care to see what happened to that old vision once the seers got older you can go to and witness first hand these days), so some physical somewhere perhaps but certainly some other mental somewhere and the music reflected that disenchantment. That mental somewhere involved liberal use of drugs to induce, well, who knows what it induced but it felt like a new state of consciousness so make of that what you. The drugs used, in retrospect, to make you less “uptight” not a bad thing then, or today. The whole underlying premise though whether well thought out or not was that music, the music of the shamans of the youth tribe, was the revolution. An idea that for a short while before all hell broke loose with the criminal antics of Lyndon Johnson and one Richard M. Nixon, all hell broke loose with Tet, with May 1968, with Chicago 1968, with the “days of rage,” with Altamont and with a hundred other lesser downers I subscribed to. Before those events and a draft notice made me get “religion” on the need for “in-their-face” political struggle.        

Musically much of that stuff was ephemeral, merely background music, and has not survived (except in lonely YouTube cyberspace). Yeah, Neal Young, the Airplane, the Doors, the Byrds still sound good but a lot of it is wha-wha music now you know Ten Years After, a lot of Rod Stewart, even the acid-etched albums by the Beatles and Stones, it is no wonder that they do not have any tunes from Their Satanic Majesties on their playlists). [CL1]  Others, flash pan “music is the revolution,” period exclamation point, end of conversation bands assumed a few pithy lyrics would carry the day and dirty old bourgeois society would run and hide in horror leaving the field open, open for, uh, us. That music too, except for gems like The Ballad Of Easy Rider, is safely ensconced in vast cyberspace.

Steppenwolf was different, was political from the get-go taking on the deadliness of bourgeois culture, worse the chewing up of their young in unwinnable wars with no apologies or second thoughts, the pusher man, the draft resister and lots of other subjects (and a few traditional songs to about the love that got away, things like that).  Not all the lyrics worked, then or now. (See below for some that do). Not all the words are now some forty plus years later memorable. After all every song is written with some current audience in mind, and notions of immortality as the fate of most songs are displaced. Certainly some of the less political lyrics seem entirely forgettable. As does some of the heavy decibel rock sound that seems to wander at times like, as was the case more often than not, and more often that we, deep in some a then hermetic drug thrall, would have acknowledged, or worried about. But know this- when you think today about trying to escape from the rat-race of daily living then you have an enduring anthem Born To Be Wild that still stirs the young (and not so young). If Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone was one musical pillar of the youth revolt of the 1960's then Born To Be Wild was the other.

And if you needed (or need) a quick history lesson about the nature of American society in the 1960's, what it was doing to its young, where it had been and where it was heading (and seemingly still is as we finish up the Afghan wars and the war signals for deep intervention into the Syria civil war or another war in Iraq get louder, or both are beating the war drums fiercely) then the trilogy under the title "The Monster" (the chorus which I have posted above and lyrics below) said it all.

Then there were songs like The Pusher Man a song that could be usefully used as an argument in favor of decriminalization of drugs today and get our people the hell out of jail and moving on with their lives and others then more topical songs like Draft Resister to fill out their playlist. The group did not have the staying power of others like The Rolling Stones but if you want to know, approximately, what it was like for rock groups to seriously put rock and roll and a hard political edge together give a listen to the group sometime.

Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom

(Monster)

Once the religious, the hunted and weary

Chasing the promise of freedom and hope

Came to this country to build a new vision

Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope

Like good Christians, some would burn the witches

Later some got slaves to gather riches

But still from near and far to seek America

They came by thousands to court the wild

And she just patiently smiled and bore a child

To be their spirit and guiding light

And once the ties with the crown had been broken

Westward in saddle and wagon it went

And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean

Many the lives which had come to an end

While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland

We began the slaughter of the red man

But still from near and far to seek America

They came by thousands to court the wild

And she just patiently smiled and bore a child

To be their spirit and guiding light

The blue and grey they stomped it

They kicked it just like a dog

And when the war over

They stuffed it just like a hog

And though the past has it's share of injustice

Kind was the spirit in many a way

But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping

Now it's a monster and will not obey

(Suicide)

The spirit was freedom and justice

And it's keepers seem generous and kind

It's leaders were supposed to serve the country

But now they won't pay it no mind

'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy

And now their vote is a meaningless joke

They babble about law and order

But it's all just an echo of what they've been told

Yeah, there's a monster on the loose

It's got our heads into a noose

And it just sits there watchin'

Our cities have turned into jungles

And corruption is stranglin' the land

The police force is watching the people

And the people just can't understand

We don't know how to mind our own business

'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us

Now we are fighting a war over there

No matter who's the winner

We can't pay the cost

'Cause there's a monster on the loose

It's got our heads into a noose

And it just sits there watching

(America)

America where are you now?

Don't you care about your sons and daughters?

Don't you know we need you now

We can't fight alone against the monster

© Copyright MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC

--Used with permission--

Born To Be Wild

Words and music by Mars Bonfire

Get your motor runnin'

Head out on the highway

Lookin' for adventure

And whatever comes our way

Yeah Darlin' go make it happen

Take the world in a love embrace

Fire all of your guns at once

And explode into space

I like smoke and lightning

Heavy metal thunder

Racin' with the wind

And the feelin' that I'm under

Yeah Darlin' go make it happen

Take the world in a love embrace

Fire all of your guns at once

And explode into space

Like a true nature's child

We were born, born to be wild

We can climb so high

I never wanna die

Born to be wild

Born to be wild

© MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC

--Used with permission--

THE PUSHER

From the 1968 release "Steppenwolf"

Words and music by Hoyt Axton

You know I've smoked a lot of grass

O' Lord, I've popped a lot of pills

But I never touched nothin'

That my spirit could kill

You know, I've seen a lot of people walkin' 'round

With tombstones in their eyes

But the pusher don't care

Ah, if you live or if you die

God damn, The Pusher

God damn, I say The Pusher

I said God damn, God damn The Pusher man

You know the dealer, the dealer is a man

With the love grass in his hand

Oh but the pusher is a monster

Good God, he's not a natural man

The dealer for a nickel

Lord, will sell you lots of sweet dreams

Ah, but the pusher ruin your body

Lord, he'll leave your, he'll leave your mind to scream

God damn, The Pusher

God damn, God damn the Pusher

I said God damn, God, God damn The Pusher man

Well, now if I were the president of this land

You know, I'd declare total war on The Pusher man

I'd cut him if he stands, and I'd shoot him if he'd run

Yes I'd kill him with my Bible and my razor and my gun

God damn The Pusher

Gad damn The Pusher

I said God damn, God damn The Pusher man\

© Irving Music Inc. (BMI)

--Used with permission--