|
 |
|
| |||||||||
Friday, November 27, 2015
A View From The Left- From Socialist Alternative -For Bernie Sanders
Defend The Democratic Right To Protest In Paris! Down With THe Ban!
Dear
friends
Various
French organisations have called for a demonstration against the ban on
demonstrations in Paris, as part of the state of emergency imposed by the
State.
We
circulated their call and have sent the following message of support to the
protestors.
Global
Women’s Strike
Women of
Colour in the Global Women’s Strike
Payday, men
working with the Global Women’s Strike
|
En
français ci-dessous
Message
in support of the protest against the ban on demonstrations in
Paris
Thursday
26 November 2015
Dear
friends,
We received
your call for support for the right to demonstrate in Paris this Thursday. We
are circulating an English translation to our networks in the UK and abroad.
Your resistance is part of an international movement, of which we are also part,
against the criminalisation of survival and protest.
Our
organisations have just held an international women’s conference: Caring,
Survival and Justice vs the Tyranny of the Market.
Because women are the primary carers, we are often the driving force in
movements for justice and human rights. Speakers from many countries highlighted
the work women do to ensure everyone’s well-being, including justice work
against rape, detention, austerity, destitution, ecological devastation, police
violence, sexism and racism.
States in
every country are using the tragedy of the Paris attacks (13 November) to stifle
dissent, justify and intensify military intervention, and close the borders
against the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and starvation. Every
life counts but for Western governments some count more than others. The
millions of women, children and men in Africa and the Middle East – from Congo
to Palestine, Afghanistan to Iraq, Egypt to Syria – killed, disappeared, maimed
and displaced by occupation, dictatorships, proxy-wars, and the arms trade that
fuels them, remain mostly uncounted, their names and faces unpublished.
Surveillance
and repression intensify, but little is done about the huge increase in racist
attacks: 115 in the UK in the week after the Paris killings, up by 300%, mostly
by white men attacking women and girls in Islamic dress. We don’t how many
Muslim women and girls have been attacked by racists in France, especially given
its ban of the veil in public places and of headscarves in schools – but attacks
reported include an eight-month pregnant woman and a schoolgirl.
And while
peaceful protest and the right of assembly have been banned, including in
defence of the planet during the World Climate Summit being held in Paris,
commercial activities have been allowed to carry on. The market prioritised,
once again.
We are with
you in demanding the right to demonstrate. We will be on the anti-war protest in
London this Saturday. We will circulate your demands and your petition.
Wherever we
are, we refuse to have our voices silenced and our movements for justice
suppressed and hidden.
Invest in
caring not killing.
Global
Women's Strike
Women of
Colour in the Global Women's Strike
Payday, men
working with the Global Women's Strike
More
information:
|
|
Message
en soutien à l’action de protestation contre l'interdiction de
manifester,
Paris,
jeudi 26 novembre 2015.
Chères amies et
amis,
Nous avons reçu
votre appel d'action pour la défense du droit de manifester qui se tiendra à
Paris ce jeudi. Nous le faisons circuler en anglais dans nos réseaux au
Royaume-Uni et à l'étranger. Votre résistance fait partie d'un mouvement
international, dont nous faisons aussi partie, contre la pénalisation de la
survie et de la contestation.
Nos
organisations ont récemment organisé une conférence internationale de femmes :
Bien-être, survie et justice contre la
tyrannie du marché. Parce que ce
sont les femmes qui sont les principales pourvoyeuses de soins, nous sommes
souvent la force motrice des mouvements pour la justice et les droits humains.
Des oratrices de nombreux pays y ont décrit le travail que font les femmes pour
assurer le bien-être de tout le monde, y compris le travail d'exiger justice
contre le viol, la détention, l'austérité, la destitution, les dévastations
écologiques, la violence de la police, le sexisme et le racisme.
Les États de
tous les pays utilisent la tragédie des attaques à Paris (13 novembre) pour
étouffer la contestation, justifier et
intensifier les interventions militaires et fermer les frontières aux centaines
de milliers qui ont fuit la guerre et la famine. Chaque vie compte, mais pour
les gouvernements de l'Occident certaines comptent plus que d'autres. Les
millions de femmes, d'enfants et d'hommes en Afrique et au Moyen-Orient (du
Congo à la Palestine, de l'Afghanistan à l'Irak, de l'Égypte à la Syrie) qui ont
été tués, kidnappés, blessés et déplacés par les occupations, les dictatures,
les guerres par procuration et le commerce des armes qui les alimentent,
demeurent largement ignorés, leurs noms et leurs visages non publiés.
La surveillance
et la répression s'intensifie, mais on ne fait rien contre les attaques racistes
qui n'ont cessé d'augmenté : 115 au Royaume-Uni durant la semaine qui a suivi
les meurtres à Paris, une hausse de 300%, essentiellement des hommes blancs
s'attaquant à des femmes et des jeunes filles portant des vêtements musulmans.
Nous ne savons pas combien de femmes et de jeunes filles ont été attaquées par
des racistes en France, étant donné
l'interdiction du voile dans les lieux publics et du foulard dans les écoles,
mais les attaques qui ont été rendues publiques incluent une femme enceinte de
huit mois et une écolière.
Et alors que
les manifestations pacifiques et le droit de rassemblement sont interdits, y
compris pour défendre la planète lors du Sommet sur les changements climatiques
de Paris, les activités commerciales sont autorisées. Encore une fois, la
priorité est le marché.
Avec vous, nous
revendiquons le droit de manifester. Nous participerons à la manifestation
contre la guerre ce samedi à Londres. Nous y ferons connaître vos revendications
et votre appel.
Où que nous
soyons, nous refusons que nos voix soient bâillonnées et que nos mouvements pour
la justice sociale soit supprimés ou cachés.
Investissez
dans le bien-être et pas la mort !
Grève mondiale
des femmes
Femmes de
couleur dans la Grève mondiale de femmes
Payday, hommes
qui travaillent avec la Grève mondiale des femmes
|
Free Chelsea Manning Now! Free All The Class War Prisoner!
|
Happy
Birthday
CHELSEA
MANNING!
Free
her now!
Support
all whistleblowers!
|
 | |||||
|
Thursday
17 December 2015 Actions
planned so far in Bucharest, London, Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh, San Francisco . . . (watch
this space for more countries and more events). If
you organise an event, let us
know and we’ll publicise it. Please
circulate this mailing to your contacts.
Chelsea
Manning
will be 28 years old on this day.
Formerly known as Bradley, she is the whistleblower, US soldier,
Grand
Marshal
at San Francisco Pride 2014, who leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to
Wikileaks
exposing the truth about
US, UK and other governments’ war crimes and corruption in Afghanistan,
Haiti,
Iraq,
Israel
& the Palestinian Authority .
. . In doing so, she helped save many
lives. Chelsea was Imprisoned in
2010 and held for months under torturous conditions; in August 2013 she was
sentenced to 35 years.
From
prison Chelsea has written
against
the police killings of young people of colour in the US and in support of
immigrant people.
An
appeal to quash Chelsea Manning’s conviction is being put forward by her legal
team and will be announced in late 2015 or early 2016. We
must get her out!
Donations
to her legal fund are needed also.
As
pressure increases to extend the bombing of Syria, former US air force members
have blown the whistle on the killing of innocent civilians in drone air
strikes. We have a responsibility to defend whistleblowers who, like Chelsea,
are persecuted for telling the truth about murder and
war crimes, rape, torture, neglect, underfunding, starvation wages, corruption .
. . in the military,
prison, detention
centres, police, hospitals, care homes, and
every institution.
| ||||||
 |
 |
 | ||||
  |
  | |||||
|
UK:
+44 (0)20 7267 8698
US: 001 215 848 1120 | ||||||
In The Time Of Your Parents'(Ouch, Maybe Grandparents') Folk Moment, Circa 1955-“Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Harry Belafonte performing his version of the Banana Boat Song (ho, hum).
CD Review
Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three, various artists, Eric Records, 1999
Yes, Freddy had heard it wafting through the house, through the Jackson household as background music back in the early 1950s. He knew he had heard folk music before when June ("June Bug" when they were younger back in Clintondale Elementary days but that term no longer held sway now that they were high school juniors, and she had not been his June Bug for a while, now being Rick Roberts’ june bug) asked him whether he had heard much folk music before Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind had hit town and had bowled all the hip kids, or those who wanted to be hip (or beat, depending on your crowd) over.
Yes, now that thought of it, he remembered having more than one fight, well not really a fight, but an argument with either Frank Jackson, dad, or Maria Jackson (nee Riley), ma, whenever they turned over the local (and only local) radio station, WJDA, to listen to their latest, greatest hits of World War II, World War II, squareville cubed, even then when he was nothing but a music-hungry kid. You know that old time Frank Sinatra Stormy Weather, Harry James orchestra I’ll Be Home, Andrews Sisters doing some cutesy bugle boy thing, or the Ink Spots harmonizing on I’ll Get By (which was at least passable). Yes, squaresville, cubed, no doubt. And all Freddie, and every other kid, even non-hip, non-beat kids, in Clintondale was crazy for was a jail-break once in a while-Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Little Richard, Jerry Lee anybody under the age of a million who knew how to rock the house, how to be-bop, and if not that at least to bop-bop. He lost that fight, well, lost part of it. In the end, after hassling Frank and Maria endlessly for dough to go buy 45s, they finally, finally bought him a transistor radio with a year’s (they thought) supply of batteries down at the local (and only) Radio Shack.
But he had lost in the big event because if they weren’t listening to that old time pirate music they were swinging and swaying to stuff like Lonnie Donegan trebling on Rock Island Line making a fool of what Lead Belly was trying to do with that song, Vince Martin and friends, harmonizing on Cindy, Oh Cindy in the martini cocktail hour breezes, The Tarriers try to be-bop the Banana Boat Song at the ball, Terry Gilkyson and friends making a pitch, a no-hit pitch, to Marianne, and Russ Hamilton blasting the girlfriend world to the first floor rafters with Rainbow. Squaresville, cubed. And you wonder why when rusty-throated Bob Dylan came like a hurricane onto the scene with Blowin’ In The Wind and The Times They Are A Changin’, angel-voiced Joan Baez covering his With God On Our Side, or even gravelly-throated Dave Van Ronk covering House Of The Rising Sun or Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies we finally go that pardon we were fighting for all along. Enough of folk musak.
CD Review
Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three, various artists, Eric Records, 1999
Yes, Freddy had heard it wafting through the house, through the Jackson household as background music back in the early 1950s. He knew he had heard folk music before when June ("June Bug" when they were younger back in Clintondale Elementary days but that term no longer held sway now that they were high school juniors, and she had not been his June Bug for a while, now being Rick Roberts’ june bug) asked him whether he had heard much folk music before Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind had hit town and had bowled all the hip kids, or those who wanted to be hip (or beat, depending on your crowd) over.
Yes, now that thought of it, he remembered having more than one fight, well not really a fight, but an argument with either Frank Jackson, dad, or Maria Jackson (nee Riley), ma, whenever they turned over the local (and only local) radio station, WJDA, to listen to their latest, greatest hits of World War II, World War II, squareville cubed, even then when he was nothing but a music-hungry kid. You know that old time Frank Sinatra Stormy Weather, Harry James orchestra I’ll Be Home, Andrews Sisters doing some cutesy bugle boy thing, or the Ink Spots harmonizing on I’ll Get By (which was at least passable). Yes, squaresville, cubed, no doubt. And all Freddie, and every other kid, even non-hip, non-beat kids, in Clintondale was crazy for was a jail-break once in a while-Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Little Richard, Jerry Lee anybody under the age of a million who knew how to rock the house, how to be-bop, and if not that at least to bop-bop. He lost that fight, well, lost part of it. In the end, after hassling Frank and Maria endlessly for dough to go buy 45s, they finally, finally bought him a transistor radio with a year’s (they thought) supply of batteries down at the local (and only) Radio Shack.
But he had lost in the big event because if they weren’t listening to that old time pirate music they were swinging and swaying to stuff like Lonnie Donegan trebling on Rock Island Line making a fool of what Lead Belly was trying to do with that song, Vince Martin and friends, harmonizing on Cindy, Oh Cindy in the martini cocktail hour breezes, The Tarriers try to be-bop the Banana Boat Song at the ball, Terry Gilkyson and friends making a pitch, a no-hit pitch, to Marianne, and Russ Hamilton blasting the girlfriend world to the first floor rafters with Rainbow. Squaresville, cubed. And you wonder why when rusty-throated Bob Dylan came like a hurricane onto the scene with Blowin’ In The Wind and The Times They Are A Changin’, angel-voiced Joan Baez covering his With God On Our Side, or even gravelly-throated Dave Van Ronk covering House Of The Rising Sun or Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies we finally go that pardon we were fighting for all along. Enough of folk musak.
Once Again On The 1960s Folk Minute-The Cambridge Club 47 Scene
Once Again On The 1960s Folk Minute-The Cambridge Club 47 Scene
Joshua Breslin, Carver down in the wilds of Southeastern Massachusetts cranberry bog country born, had certainly not been the only one who had recently taken a nose-dive turn back in time to that unique moment from the very late 1950s, say 1958, 1959 when be-bop jazz (you know Dizzy, the late Bird, the mad man Monk the guys who bopped swing-a-ling for “cool” high white note searches on the instruments) “beatnik” complete with beret and bop-a-long banter and everybody from suburban land was clad in black, who knows maybe black underwear too something the corner boys in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner salaciously contemplated about the female side, was giving way to earnest “folkie” (and no alluring black but flannel shirts, unisex blue jeans and unisex sandals leaving nothing in particular to the fervent corner boy imagination) in the clubs that mattered around the Village (the Gaslight, Geddes Folk City, half the joints on Bleecker Street), Harvard Square (Club Blue, the place for serious cheap dates since for the price of coffees and pastries for two you could linger on, Café Blanc, the place for serious dates since they had a five dollar minimum, Club 47, the latter a place where serious folkies and serious folk musicians hung out) and North Beach (Club Ernie’s, The Hungry Eye, all a step behind the folk surge since you would still find a jazz-poetry mix longer than in the Eastern towns) to the mid-1960s when folk music had its minute as a popular genre. Even guys like Sam Eaton, Sam Lowell, Jack Callahan and Bart Webber, who only abided the music back in the day, now too, because the other guys droned on and on about it under the influence of Peter Markin a guy Josh had met in the summer of love, 1967 were diving in too. Diving into the music which beside first love rock and roll got them through the teenage night.
The best way to describe that turn from b-bop beat to earnest folkie, is by way of a short comment by the late folk historian Dave Von Ronk which summed up the turn nicely. Earlier in that period, especially the period after Allen Ginsburg’s Howl out in the Frisco poetry slam blew the roof off modernist poetry with his talk of melted modern minds, hipsters, negro streets, the fight against Moloch and Jack Kerouac’s On The Road in a fruitless search for the father he and Neal Cassady never knew had the Army-Navy surplus stores cleaning out their rucksack inventories, when “beat poets” held sway and folkies were hired to clear the room between readings he would have been thrown in the streets to beg for his supper if his graven voice and quirky folk songs did not empty the place, and he did (any serious look at some of his earliest compositions will tell in a moment why, and why the cross-over from beat to folkie by the former crowd never really happened. But then the sea-change happened, tastes changed and the search for roots was on, and Von Ronk would be doing three full sets a night and checking every folk anthology he could lay his hands on (including naturally Harry Smith’s legendary efforts and the Lomaxes and Seegers too) and misty musty record store recordings to get enough material.
People may dispute the end-point of that folk minute like they do about the question of when the turn the world upside down counter-cultural 1960s ended as a “youth nation” phenomenon but clearly with the advent of acid-etched rock (acid as in LSD, blotter, electric kool aid acid test not some battery stuff ) by 1967-68 the searching for and reviving of the folk roots that had driven many aficionados to the obscure archives like Harry Smith’s anthology, the recording of the Lomaxes, Seegers and that crowd had passed.
As an anecdote, one that Josh would use whenever the subject of his own sea-change back to rock and roll came up, in support of that acid-etched dateline that is the period when Josh stopped taking his “dates” to the formerly ubiquitous home away from home coffeehouses which had sustained him through many a dark home life night in high school and later when he escaped home in college, cheap poor boy college student dates to the Harvard Square coffeehouses where for the price of a couple of cups of coffee, expresso then a favorite since you could sip it slowly and make it last for the duration and rather exotic since it was percolated in a strange copper-plated coffee-maker, a shared pastry of unknown quality, and maybe a couple of dollars admission charge or for the “basket” that was the life-support of the performers you could hear up and coming talent working out their kinks, and took them instead to the open-air fashion statement rock concerts that were abounding around the town. The shift also entailed a certain change in fashion from those earnest flannel shirts, denims, lacy blouses and sandals to day-glo tie-dye shirts, bell-bottomed denims, granny dresses, and mountain boots or Chuck Taylor sneakers. Oh yeah, and the decibel level of the music got higher, much higher and the lyrics talked not of ancient mountain sorrows, thwarted triangle love, or down-hearted blues over something that was on your mind but to alice-in-wonderland and white rabbit dreams, carnal nightmares, yellow submarines, satanic majesties, and wooden ships on the water.
Some fifty years out others in Josh-like fits of nostalgia and maybe to sum up a life’s work there have been two recent documentaries concerning the most famous Harvard Square coffeehouse of them all, the Club 47 (which still exists under the name of the non-profit Club Passim which traces its genealogy to that legendary Mount Auburn Street spot in a similar small venue near the Harvard Co-Op Bookstore off of Church Street).
One of the documentaries put out a few years ago (see above) traces the general evolution of that club in its prime when the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Rush, Eric Von Schmidt, the members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (the forming of jug bands, a popular musical form including a seemingly infinite number of bands with the name Sheik in them, going back to the early 20th century itself a part of the roots revival guys like Josh were in thrall to), and many others sharpened up their acts there. The other documentary, No Regrets (title taken from one of his most famous songs) which Josh reviewed for one of the blogs, The American Folk Minute, to which he has contributed to over the years is a biopic centered on the fifty plus years in folk music of Tom Rush. Both those visual references got Josh thinking about how that folk scene, or better, the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene kept Josh from going off the rails, although that was a close thing.
Like about a billion kids before and after Josh in his coming of age in the early 1960s went through the usual bouts of teenage angst and alienation aided and abetted by growing up “from hunger” among the very lowest rung of the working poor with all the pathologies associated with survival down at the base of society where the bonds of human solidarity are often times very attenuated. All of this “wisdom” complete with appropriate “learned” jargon, of course figured out, told about, made many mistakes to gain, came later, much later because at the time Josh was just feeling rotten about his life and how the hell he got placed in a world which he had not created (re-enforced when questioned by one Delores Breslin with Prescott Breslin as a behind-the scenes back-up about his various doings) and no likely possibilities of having a say what with the world stacked against him, his place in the sun (and not that “safe” white collar civil service job that Delores saw as the epitome of upward mobility for her brood), and how he didn’t have a say in what was going on. Then through one source or another mainly by the accident of tuning in his life-saver transistor radio, which for once he successfully badgered to get from Delores and Prescott one Christmas by threatening murder and mayhem if he didn’t when all his corner boys at Jimmy Jack’s Diner had them, on one Sunday night to listen to a favorite rock and roll DJ that he could receive on that night from Chicago he found a folk music program that sounded interesting (it turned out to be the Dick Summer show on WBZ, a DJ who is featured in the Tom Rush documentary) and he was hooked by the different songs played, some mountain music, some jug, some country blues, some protest songs. Each week Dick Summer would announce who was playing where for the week and he kept mentioning various locations, including the Club 47, in Harvard Square. Josh was intrigued, wanted to go if only he could find a kindred for a date and if he could scratch up some dough. Neither easy tasks for a guy in high teen alienation mode.
One Saturday afternoon Josh made connections to get to a Red Line subway stop which was the quickest way for him to get to Harvard Square (and was also the last stop on that line then) and walked around the Square looking into the various clubs and coffeehouses that had been mentioned by Summer and a few more as well. You could hardly walk a block without running into one or the other. Of course during the day all people were doing was sitting around drinking coffee and reading, maybe playing chess, or as he found out later huddled in small group corners working on their music (or poetry which also still had some sway as a tail end of the “beat” scene) so he didn’t that day get the full sense of what was going on. A few weeks later, having been “hipped” to the way things worked, meaning that as long as you had coffee or something in front of you in most places you were cool Josh always chronically low on funds took a date, a cheap date naturally, to the Club Blue where you did not pay admission but where Eric Von Schmidt was to play. Josh had heard his Joshua Gone Barbados covered by Tom Rush on Dick Summer’s show and he had flipped out so he was eager to hear him. So for the price of, Josh thought, two coffees each, a stretched-out shared brownie and two subway fares they had a good time, an excellent time (although that particular young woman and Josh would not go on much beyond that first date since she was looking for a guy who had more dough to spend on her, and maybe a “boss” car too).
Josh would go over to Harvard Square many weekend nights in those days, including sneaking out of the house a few time late at night and heading over since in those days the Red Line subway ran all night. That was his home away from home not only for cheap date nights depending on the girl he was interested in but when the storms gathered at the house about his doing, or not doing, this or that, stuff like that when his mother pulled the hammer down. If Josh had a few dollars make by caddying for the Mayfair swells at the Carver Country Club, a private club a few miles from his house he would pony up the admission, or two admissions if he was lucky, to hear Joan Baez or her sister Mimi with her husband Richard Farina, maybe Eric Von Schmidt, Tom Paxton when he was in town at the 47. If he was broke he would do his alternative, take the subway but rather than go to a club he would hang out all night at the famous Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford just up the steps from the subway stop exit. That was a wild scene made up of winos, grifters, con men, guys and gals working off barroom drunks, crazies, and… almost every time out there would be folk-singers or poets, some known to him, others from cheap street who soon faded into the dust, in little clusters, coffee mugs filled, singing or speaking low, keeping the folk tradition alive, keeping the faith that a new wind was coming across the land and they, Josh, wanted to catch it. Wasn’t that a time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)