AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

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

Thursday, September 21, 2017

As The Burns-Novick Vietnam Documentary Airs- From Veterans For Peace-Full Disclosure

The Vietnam War & Full Disclosure

In September 2017, PBS will air a documentary about the Vietnam War, directed by respected documentarians Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The goal of this 10-episode, 18-hour project is, according to the directors, to “create a film everyone could embrace” and to provide the viewer with information and insights that are “new and revelatory.” Just as importantly, they intend the film to provide the impetus and parameters for a much needed national conversation about this controversial and divisive period in American history.

The film will be accompanied by an unprecedented outreach and public engagement program, providing opportunities for communities to participate in a national conversation about what happened during the Vietnam War, what went wrong and what lessons are to be learned. In addition, there will be a robust interactive website and an educational initiative designed to engage teachers and students in multiple platforms.

The release of this documentary is an opportunity to seize the moment about telling the full story of the U.S war on Viet Nam.

What Can You Do?

Want to Continue to Be Part of the Conversation?

Sign up to be on the "Full Disclosure" email list if you want to communicate with VFP activists around the country who are working on this.

To join the Vietnam Full Disclosure "google group" you must have a Google login. Once logged onto Google, go to: http://groups.google.com/group/vnfd and submit a request to join the group.

Alternatively, send a request to group manager Becky Luening at becky.pdx@gmail.com and she will directly add you to the group. After being subscribed, anyone can post to the group via the email address vnfd@googlegroups.com

Get involved in this rare opportunity to get America talking about what really went down in Viet Nam!

*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal- The Spanish Left (1930s version)in its Own Words-The Spanish revolution in practice:

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-HAIL, HAIL CHUCK BERRY

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-HAIL, HAIL CHUCK BERRY

DVD REVIEW

HAIL, HAIL ROCK AND ROCK, TAYLOR HACKFORD, 1987, DVD RELEASE 2006

Long ago, in the mists of time, I was listening to my radio when Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode came thundering across the airways. I have been a fan ever since and never looked back. As portrayed in Hail, Hail Rock and Roll neither did Chuck Berry. There may be continuing controversy about the roots of rock and rock-whether it derived from rhythm and blues, rock-a-billy, jazzed up country or all of them- but as the tributes by later performers across the musician and racial spectrum that are dotted throughout this documentary testify to- Chuck Berry was at the center of the storm.

This film is focused on preparations by the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, an ardent admirer, to put together a celebration for Berry’s 60th birthday in his hometown of St. Louis. It also offers as background a glimpse into Chuck’s work ethic, his engaging, if prickly, personality and his very individualistic slant on life. The concert itself is highlighted by the work of Berry and Richards along with guest spots by the likes of Linda Rhonstadt who blows away the house on Back in the U.S.A., Etta James, Julian Lennon and many others who in the past had covered his work. An additional 3 discs give more detailed background on the making of the the original film and provide extra musical treats cut out of the film.

One does not unusually associate the old time black rock and rollers like Berry, Little Richard and Bo Didderly with politics, civil rights or black consciousness, as such. Thus, it was interesting to hear in some of the ‘talking head’ sections interspersed throughout the documentary their take on what it was like to be black, talented, and many times poor and struggling in a white world that had the discretionary income to listen to their music. Nevertheless, due to the hard segregation of the times they faced insult, scorn and slick dealings from the white-dominated musical world that counted. The most poignant moment of the whole film is when Berry notes that the theater where his celebration was to occur had been off-limits to him as a youth and that just a short distance away from that site his forbears were sold into slavery. Now that is testimony to a very simple but elegant sense of political consciousness.

Once Again-The Summer Of Love, 1967-Postcards From A Lost Planet

By Jeffrey Thorne

The Scribe said it best one night, one Summer of Love, 1967 night, one cold San Francisco night, a summer night when the Japan currents went awry and reminded one of old Mark Twain’s witty sayings about the coldest winter he had ever spent-August in the city of sweet brethren Saint Francis, when he declared (so like that mad man to use the seventh person imperative, to declare in his world-historic way, for such small letter asterisk events), that the breeze coming through the land would shake society to its foundations. Would make nine to five work-a-day world a bore (and give his poor brethren a chance to partake of the golden age that he, his parents, his Acre neighborhood, and most of the known world had been short-changed of for millennia), make that long suburban tract complete with dishwasher and sanitary garbage disposal obsolete before the last mortgage payment hit the dirt (get people to think differently about space, about community, and give that same and give that poor brethren a chance to partake of the golden age of living space that he, his parents, his Acre neighborhood, and most of the known world had been short-changed of for millennia), would make those three point two kids and that one dog a victim of old-fashioned thinking (well, okay).

Said, get this for a guy who became a non-believer, a non-believer in risen Christ if you can believe that very early in his teens (and went to church, sliding side door church just to sit a few rows behind some lovely he was pining over just to watch her ass so yes a non-believer) that the new dispensation was at hand-if we could keep it, keep the bastards, and you know who the bastards were then-the night-takers and guys who conned you into nine to five dreams, suburban flats and, what was it three point two kids (we will pass on the not mandatory dog) from barking at the door.

Sure the Scribe talked the talk and walked the walk, oh boy did he, spouting forth about one love, about the new garden of eden (small case is right remember he was a non-believer, maybe had always been something of an outlaw even when he cruised the books for a sign), about that turning the world upside down and making it stick (hell, he was always a closet Digger check that out sometime if you delve back into the 17^th century English revolution).

That was the rub, that was the factor that got away from the Scribe as much as he knew that we were on tender mercies ground, knew that that little counter attack from out of the blue would come when we thought the world had stopped turning on itself and had gone upside down that eventually would do in even the Scribe. Would turn his mouth to ashes, would turn a sainted brethren (not many out in Frisco in those days knew his given name was Francis at a time when everybody was “reinventing” themselves including clustering up new monikers to get washed clean, also a Scribe expression and so only knew the moniker) down the gutter road, float him out to the Japan seas long before he ever heard the Duke blast that high white note. Yeah, blast the times, blast the whole fucking world for taking down a brethren as pure as snow.

Latest proposed VA cuts-Stop Privatization Now!

9/19/2017 4:17 PM

VFP Smedley via smedleyvfp

To smedleyvfp@googlegroups.com, VFP Smedley and 3 others

1 attachment

VHA Budget Cuts Threaten Veteran Safety

By Suzanne Gordon | Sep 15, 2017

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is considering budget cuts that could jeopardize patient safety in the nation’s largest health care system. On the chopping block are 10 VA Patient Safety Centers of Inquiry (PSCIs), facilities that have long pioneered innovations to reduce injury, addiction, and suicide that have impacted patients far beyond the VA system. While the administration claims such goals are high priorities, these facilities could be shut down by September 30.

The potential closure of these patient safety centers is part of a broader attempt to cut costs within the nation’s largest healthcare system. Surging demand for services at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and the high cost of paying for expensive, outsourced care in the private sector through the Veterans Choice and other Community Medical Care programs has caused a significant budget shortfall in VHA facilities across the country.

Despite this shortfall, Trump refuses to go to Congress for more money than currently budgeted for the VHA. Now VA leadership is focused on shifting pots of money from what are known as specific purpose (which includes the PSCI’s small $2.5 million budget) to general gurpose budgets. In the case of these patient safety centers, this robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul approach will hurt veterans rather than help them. Since the VHA’s leadership in patient safety extends way beyond VHA facilities and the patients served by them, this move may also impact millions of non-veterans who also benefit from VHA research and safety practices.

In a country where more than 250,000 patients die each year due to preventable medical errors (which are America’s third leading cause of death) and more than 1.5 million are seriously injured, the VHA has become a beacon of progress in patient safety. Since the mid-1990s, the VHA has been “a bright star in the constellation of safety practice, with system-wide implementation of safe practices, training programs,” according to physicians and patient safety leaders Donald Berwick and Lucian Leape.

As patient safety leaders have long documented, turning theory into safe practice involves way more than passing around scientific journal articles, or writing patient safety policies and protocols. Motivating front-line caregivers to do everything from cleaning their hands to prescribing opioids safely involves putting what is known as evidence-based medicine and best practices into actual daily use.

Today, at the veterans hospital in White River Junction, Vermont, the Patient Safety Center of Inquiry has developed tools aimed at sharing critical information about the early warning signs of suicidal behavior among veterans. Their counterparts in Durham, North Carolina, are trying to target extremely painful surgical procedures, like the knee replacement operations so common in the aging veteran, and help surgeons manage patients’ pain without overreliance on addictive opioids. One goal of this program is to keep former members of the armed forces from adding to the grim national death toll of the opioid epidemic.

At the PSCI in Tampa, Florida, VHA researchers are designing new tools to reduce the risk that older veterans will fall and break a hip, either in their own homes or an in-patient setting. Meanwhile, the PSCI in Boston is developing ways to reduce exposure to potentially fatal hospital-acquired infections like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

VHA safety leaders say they are stunned by the proposed closure of their PSCIs. “VA leadership is looking for easy answers and quick solutions and are not taking the time to fully understand the consequences of their actions,” a long-time VA patient safety researcher told The AmericanProspect. “They are so focused on issues of access that they don’t ask questions about what kind of system patients have access to.”

Doctors like Lucian Leape share these fears. In a letter to VA leadership, Leape protested the potential closure of PSCIs, Leape praised the centers’ “important contributions,” and said he echoed the “concern of other patient safety leaders nationwide that losing the PSCI program would terminate one of the most efficient and productive translational safety programs in the VA.” Hopefully, the Trump Administration will not decide to pinch pennies at the expense of

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