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
I didn't know the power of petitions until I started creating them. They have helped me build real-world people power that helped save a few local families from being broken apart by Trump's deportation machine.
We had 2 1/2 days. On a cold Saturday in November, 2017, we were asked to help a member of our community, Miriam Martinez-Lemus, avoid deportation before she was to board a plane for Guatemala and leave her daughter—who has diabetes and is a citizen of the United States—to fend for herself. Miriam's daughter's doctors said the medical system in Guatemala was not equipped to care for a child with complicated juvenile diabetes.
We immediately launched a MoveOn petition—signed by more than 10,000 MoveOn members like you—that lifted up Miriam's story, attracted media attention, and helped us mobilize dozens of people to a local demonstration and a vigil, which were also covered by local media.
And we won. The MoveOn petition effectively helped build the people power we needed to keep Miriam where she belonged—with her family.
By using MoveOn's user-friendly petition tools, you can create your very own petition.
I know from personal experience that the MoveOn team will be there to support you, from helping build support for your petition by connecting you to other MoveOn members to reimbursing you for printing costs to deliver your petition in person—one of the best ways to get your message heard and make an impact.
Want to support our 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 we need your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with us?
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Paul Street holds a doctorate in U.S. history from Binghamton University. He is former vice president for research and planning of the Chicago Urban League. Street is also the author of numerous books,…
Excerpt:
“Why, oh why, do they hate us?” So runs the plaintive American cry, as if Washington hasn’t directly and indirectly (through blood-soaked proxies like the Indonesia dictator Suharto and the death-squad regimes of Central America during the 1970s and 1980s) killed untold millions and overthrown dozens of governments the world over since 1945. As if the U.S. doesn’t account for nearly 40 percent of the world’s military spending to maintain at least 800 military bases spread across more than 80 “sovereign” nations.
Maybe it has to do with a U.S. media that wrings its hands for months over the deaths of four U.S. soldiers trapped on an imperial mission in Niger but can’t muster so much as a tear for the thousands of innocents regularly killed (victims of what Chomsky has called “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”) by U.S. drone attacks across the Middle East, Southwest Asia and North Africa. Imagine what it is like to live in constant dread of annihilation launched from invisible and unmanned aerial killing machines. The tens of thousands of Yemenis killed and maimed by U.S-backed and U.S.-equipped Saudi Arabian airs raids get no sympathy from most American media. Nor do the more than 1 million Iraqis who died prematurely thanks to Washington’s arch-criminal 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was sold on thoroughly and openly false pretexts and provided essential context for the rise of the Islamic State.
When we said this was going to be big, we weren’t kidding.
By now, you should know all about our Mass Rally to Stand Against Poverty. As of tonight, over 4,000 people have said on Facebook that they want to be at our rally in Washington, D.C. on June 23.
But we’re just getting started. We want to shake policymakers to their core by bringing tens of thousands of people to D.C. next week. That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’re having a coast-to-coast phone banking party tomorrow, Saturday June 16 to spread the word about the mass rally to every. single. member.
People all across the country are getting together in living rooms, community centers, even a tent on the National Mall, all to spread the word using the best ambassadors we have: you.
Don’t worry if you’ve never phone banked before. We’ll provide you with a call script and even dial all the numbers for you.
Your calls will mean the difference between holding ‘just another rally’ and a movement by and for the people that even the most out of touch policymaker can’t ignore.
The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of
’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Where
Have The Girls Gone- When Young Women’s Voices Ruled the Airwaves Before The
British Rock Invasion, Circa 1964- With Ruby And The Romantics Our Day Will Come In Mind
A YouTube film clip of Ruby & The Romantics
performing the classic, Our Day Will Come.
Our day will come
And we'll have everything.
We'll share the joy
Falling in love can bring.
No one can tell me
That I'm too young to know (young to know)
I love you so (love you so)
And you love me.
Our day will come
If we just wait a while.
No tears for us -
Think love and wear a smile.
Our dreams have magic
Because we'll always stay
In love this way
Our day will come.
(Our day will come; our day will come.)
[Break]
Our dreams have magic
Because we'll always stay
In love this way.
Our day will come.
Our day will come.
********
Introduction by Allan Jackson
[Not every sketch in this series was predicated on some
incident which one of my growing up corner boys in the working poor Acre
neighborhood of North Adamsville about thirty miles south of Boston as the crow
flies. Some of the sketches that I commissioned or wrote myself under the pen
name of Peter Paul Markin, a moniker used in honor of a late corner boy who taught
us all a lot by who let it all slip away after his military service in Vietnam
who he (we who also went) never recovered from, were taken from other places
and other circumstances. The sketch below was, if I remember correctly, done
after Josh Breslin, noted that one of the pathologies of the working poor, or
some of the working poor, is a strong inclination to lie, lie seriously as well
as just for the sake of lying. Now Josh was not an Acre corner boy although he
came from working poor corner boy culture up in the old mill town of Olde Saco
up in Maine so he knew from where he spoke. We had met Josh through Markin out
in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 when he, they, we headed out there
to see what was happening. For the North Adamsville corner boys it was all
about Markin pulling us out kicking and screaming if you can believe that.
But all of that Summer of Love, 1967 business has been
endlessly written about here and that “overkill” was allegedly one of the
reason that I was fired as site manager from this publication and not germane
to Josh’s point about the chronic lying that went. He mentioned at the time
that this sketch was written by him that he was thinking of the situation with
Johnny Logan one of his hang around guys (corner boys really although Josh said
unlike us that they never called or thought of themselves by that term). Johnny
had come from an even poorer family than Josh’s which according to Josh was
saying something. Josh was not sure about Johnny early childhood but he knew
that Johnny was always behind the eight ball in school, in church, in sports
and so he assumed that Johnny had developed the lying habits in reaction to his
terrible home life from early on if he was that way in junior high school when
they met and became fast friends.
They never spoke about it much, still don’t on the
infrequent occasions when Josh heads back up to Olde Saco for a visit to the
old town. Josh knew this much though except for his name, and maybe under some
circumstances even then, Johnny would lie about almost anything. For example
from very early on Josh found out that Johnny would tell people he met that he
was from Kennebunkport (yes, the place where old man Bush, the first one, has
his summer place) a swanky place with some cache for people who knew about the
place. Would constantly lie about almost everything about himself from how well
he did in sports (not well) to attending church (not much) to saying how many
girlfriends he had and what he did with them (not many and not much respectively).
Now all of this may seem like kids’ stuff except what happened is that Johnny
would always get himself into trouble when he was called on stuff and as could
be expected had very few lasting friendships since his lying spilled over to
larceny and such most often than not. For example that Kennebunkport business
got him in trouble when somebody went to “visit” him at the address he had
given in order to collect some money he had lent Johnny. Somehow the guy traced
back and found Johnny and forced him to repay the loan.
Josh had a million examples like that but the one that
kind of stuck in my mind was when several years ago, maybe a decade now Johnny
who had a serious drinking problem decided to sober up and join Alcoholics
Anonymous. You would think that under those collective circumstances Johnny
would come clean in order to start fresh. Not so. Johnny made up lies about his
Army service (which is where he claimed he started drinking to excess), about
his marriages (two not three), about his children (none not two), about where
he lived as an adult (Massachusetts not California) and on and on. Now all of
this may not be attributable to growing up poor in America since you can always
use the old chestnut that others have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps
but you have to at least reckon that his reaction to the hostile world outside
was shaped by that experience. That is what I think anyway. Allan Jackson]
***********
As
I mentioned in a review of a two-volume set of, for lack of a better term, girl
doo wop some of the songs which overlapped in a six volume series, I have, of
late, been running back over some rock material that formed my coming of age
listening music (on that ubiquitous, and very personal, iPod, oops,
battery-driven transistor radio that kept those snooping parents out in the
dark, clueless, and that was just fine, agreed), and that of my generation, the
generation of ’68. Naturally one had to pay homage to the blues influences from
the likes of Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton, and Big Joe Turner. And, of
course, the rockabilly influences from Elvis, Carl Perkins, Wanda Jackson, and
Jerry Lee Lewis on. Additionally, I have spent some time on the male side of
the doo wop be-bop Saturday night led by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers on Why
Do Fools Fall In Love? (good question, right). I noted there that I had not
done much with the female side of the doo wop night, the great ‘girl’ groups
that had their heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s before the British
invasion, among other things, changed our tastes in popular music. I would
expand that observation here to include girls’ voices generally. As there, I
make some amends for that omission here. As
I also noted in that earlier review one problem with the girl groups, and now
with these generic girl vocals for a guy, me, a serious rock guy, me, was that
the lyrics for many of the girl group songs, frankly, did not “speak to me.”
After all how much empathy could a young ragamuffin of boy brought up on the
wrong side of the tracks like this writer have for a girl who breaks a guy’s
heart after leading him on, yes, leading him on, just because her big bruiser
of a boyfriend is coming back and she needs some excuse to brush the
heartbroken lad off in the Angels' My Boyfriend’s Back. Or some lucky
guy, some lucky Sunday guy, maybe, who breathlessly catches the eye of the
singer in the Shirelles' I Met Him On Sunday from a guy who, dateless
Saturday night, was hunched over some misbegotten book, some study book, on
Sunday feeling all dejected. And how about this, some two, or maybe,
three-timing gal who berated her ever-loving boyfriend because she needs a good
talking to, or worst, a now socially incorrect, very incorrect and rightly so,
"beating" in Joanie Sommers’ Johnny Get Angry. And
reviewing the material in that volume gave me the same flash-back feeling I
felt listening to the girl doo wop sounds. I will give similar examples of that
teen boy alienation for this volume, and this approach drove the reviews of all
six of these volumes in the series. I won’t even go into such novelty silly
songs as the title self-explanatory My
Boy Lollipop by Barbie Gaye; the teen angst hidden behind the lyrics to Bobby's Girl by Marcie Blane; or, the
dreamy, wistful blandness of AThousand Stars by Kathy Young & The
Innocents that would have set any self-respecting boy’s, or girl’s, teeth on
edge. And prayed, prayed out loud and to heaven that the batteries in that
transcendent transistor would burn to hell before having to continue sustained
listening to such, well, such… and I will leave it at that. I will rather
concentrate on serious stuff like the admittedly great harmonics on OurDay
Will Come by Ruby & The Romantics that I actually, secretly, liked but
I had no one to relate it to, no our to worry about that day, or any day, or Tonight You Belong To Me by Patience
& Prudence that I didn’t like secretly or openly but gave me that same teen
angst feeling of having no one, no girl one, belonging to, me. And
while today it might be regarded as something of a pre-feminist feminist anthem
for younger women, You Don't Own Me
by Lesley Gore, was meaningless for a guy who didn’t have girl to own, or not
own, to fret over her independent streak, or not. Moreover, since I was never,
at least I never heard otherwise, that I was some damsel in distress’ pining
away boy next store The Boy Next Door
by The Secrets was wrapped with seven seals. And while I had many a silent,
lonely, midnight waiting by the phone night how could Cry Baby by The Bonnie Sisters, Lonely
Blue Nights by Rosie & The Originals, and Lonely Nights by The Hearts give me comfort when even Jerry Lee
Lewis and Chuck Berry hard-rockin’ the night away could not console me, and
take away that blue heart I carried like a badge, a badge of almost monastic
honor. Almost. So
you get the idea, this stuff could not “speak to me.” Now you understand,
right? Except, surprise, surprise foolish, behind the eight- ball, know-nothing
youthful guy had it all wrong and should have been listening, and listening like
crazy, to these lyrics because, brothers and sisters, they held the key to what
was what about what was on girls’ minds back in the day, and maybe now a little
too, and if I could have decoded this I would have had, well, the beginning of
knowledge, girl knowledge. Damn. But that is one of the virtues, and maybe the
only virtue of age. Yah, and also get this- you had better get your do-lang,
do-lang, your shoop, shoop, and your best be-bop, be-bop into that good night
voice out and sing along to the lyrics here. This, fellow baby-boomers, was our
teen angst, teen alienation, teen love youth and now this stuff sounds great. And
from girls even.
Trump is bad, we know that. But this should not blind us to the hopeful aspects of the meeting with Korea’s Kim Jung-un and its lessening of the immediate threat of war on the Korean peninsula. A lot of the mainstream commentary – especially from Democrats and the Liberal-leaning press – is expressing alarm. This is partisanship at its worse.
WHY AMERICANS (AND KOREANS) CAN SLEEP BETTER AFTER THE SUMMIT
Scads of analysts and pundits have weighed in on the Trump-Kim summit talks in Singapore, parsing the brief agreement and presidential tweets for signs of just how strongly it actually commits North Korea to total, verifiable “denuclearization.” Most of them are missing the point. The real threat to U.S., Korean, and Japanese security of late has come not from North Korean nukes, but from threats by President Donald Trump and his closest advisers to launch a regional war to preempt any further North Korean progress on warhead and missile technology. Some experts were giving even odds of a U.S.-initiated war as recently as a few months ago. So even if the spectacle in Singapore was more theater than substance, even if the president’s effusive praise for a totalitarian leader was hard to swallow, we should applaud Trump for belatedly making good on his 2016 campaign promise to sit down with Kim Jong-un over a hamburger in search of peace. More
Pundits Worry Threat of Nuclear War Is Being Reduced
Media outlets don’t want America to negotiate with North Korea; they want the US to hold North Korea for ransom… Undergirding the view that the United States should only negotiate with North Korea when “negotiation” means “forcing the DPRK under nuclear duress to do whatever America says” are entrenched notions of intrinsic US superiority… In this conception, America is the shining city on a hill that must free the people of the DPRK, though these analysts don’t ask who will liberate US citizens living under a regime with the highest incarceration rate in the world, rampant judicial and extrajudicial execution, widespread racism, obscenewealth inequality and an undemocratic political system. Calling for a US government crusade for change inside North Korea while overlooking all of these features of US society is another dimension of the imperial arrogance that insists it’s legitimate to subject the entire population of other nations to crushing sanctions and violent threats until their governments give Washington everything it wants. More
Dem senators move to halt potential US troop withdrawal from S. Korea
The amendment “would help prevent the President from making a rash decision about troop reductions on the Korean Peninsula that negatively impacts our national security,” Sens. Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) and Chris Murphy (Conn.) said in a joint statement.
Introduced for the Fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the provision would stop a withdraw “unless the U.S. Secretary of Defense certifies it is in our national security interest and would not significantly undermine the security of our allies in the region.” The amendment was introduced following Trump’s announcement Tuesday that the U.S. would cease its joint military drills with South Korea as long as talks with North Korea are ongoing. The halted exercises seem to be a concession to Pyongyang, which has repeatedly claimed that the drills are practice for a strike against North Korea. More
Defense Stocks Fall As Trump Makes Key Concession At North Korea Summit
Defense stocks fell Tuesday after President Donald Trump announced at his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore that he would end military drills with South Korea and eventually would like to withdraw U.S. troops from the South… After reporting Q1 earnings in April, Raytheon said it expects missile defense demand to remain strong, in the Asia region specifically, regardless of what happens in expected U.S.-North Korea talks. Still, Raytheon led defense stocks lower, tumbling 2.8% to 206.64 on the stock market today. Lockheed shares fell 1.3% to 315.13. Northrop Grumman (NOC) was down 1.5% to 339.36. Boeing (BA) edged 0.1% lower to 370.61, still in buy range after breaking out of a cup-with-handle-base with a 365.10 buy point. General Dynamics (GD) lost 1.6%. More
NEVER CALL KIM JONG UN CRAZY AGAIN
The most significant development in Singapore was to complete the transformation of Kim himself from a secretive, slightly comical, definitely murderous, and possibly irrational leader of a “Hermit Kingdom” into a serious and engaged world leader of some stature. The New York Times captured this notion perfectly in an article published days before the summit, headlined “Kim Jong-un’s Image Shift: From Nuclear Madman to Skillful Leader.” In fact, the Times’ story tells you less about Kim than it does about America’s self-defeating tendency to portray adversaries as irrational, crazy, deluded, risk-seeking, suicidal, or just plain nuts. Instead of seeing foreign-policy disputes as the product of straightforward conflicts of interest or clashing political values, even well- experienced U.S. officials and knowledgeable pundits are prone to seeing them as a reflection of personality defects, paranoia, or distorted views of reality. In truth, the Kim family has never been crazy or irrational; on the contrary, they’ve just managed to keep themselves in power in difficult circumstances for seven decades. This tendency to see opponents as crazy has a long history… In a certain sense, it is not surprising that even well-informed Americans are inclined to think this way. Convinced that their own country is uniquely virtuous, exceptional, wise, and selfless, and that U.S. foreign policy is good for nearly everyone, it is easy for them believe that those who disagree with U.S. policy and question America’s motives must be suffering from some sort of mental disorder.More
Iran is not North Korea: Trump's regional allies prefer civil war to peace
As US President Donald Trump returns from a successful photo-op in Singapore with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, his focus will soon return to Iran. Israel and Saudi Arabia have eagerly hoped that the Singapore summit would help neutralise the Korean issue so that Trump could turn all his energy towards Tehran. Yet no one seems to know what Trump's Iran policy actually is. Is he looking for another deal? Is he paving the way for war? Is regime change the real goal? If Saudi Arabia and the UAE decide, it will be none of the above – it'll be much worse… This is one of the main differences between the US-North Korea and US-Iran conflicts: while America's regional allies in the former conflict seek to avoid war and favour a diplomatic solution, US allies in the Middle East oppose negotiations in the latter conflict. In fact, they have played an important role in keeping the US-Iran enmity alive. More
ASSAULT ON YEMEN′S HODEIDA WILL BRING ′FAMINE′ AND ′DEVASTATION′
A Saudi-led coalition backed by Western countries, including the United States and France, has been launching airstrikes to take back the city of Hodeida from Houthi rebels. For civilians, the situation is dire, as the port of Hodeida brings in 70 percent of Yemen's food imports. Aid agencies have warned that a battle there could exacerbate Yemen's humanitarian crisis. One of those agencies, Save the Children, is still on the ground in Yemen providing relief and promoting children's rights in the country… There is a moral culpability, particularly for governments that sit on the UN Security Council who have the ability to influence the conflict. These governments include the United Kingdom, the United States and perhaps even France. These governments have had the ability to help Yemenis and bring actors both in and outside of the country in finding a sustainable peace. More
The PENTAGON alternatively claims, then denies involvement. . .
* * * *
WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
Immigrant Families In Mass. Shouldn't Have To Live In Fear Of The Police
In May, in a historic 25–13 vote, the Massachusetts Senate adopted a state budget amendment to protect immigrant families that shares much in common with proposed legislation, the Safe Communities Act. The amendment protects against ethnic profiling by barring police from questioning people about their immigration status unless required by law. It also ensures that people in custody are informed of their rights before any ICE interview, prohibits collaboration between Massachusetts sheriffs and ICE, and bars state participation in any registry based on ethnicity, religion, country of origin or other protected characteristics. The budget now goes to conference committee, which will issue the final version by the end of June. The challenge now is that House leaders do not seem to see protecting immigrants as a political priority. Gov. Charlie Baker has promised to veto this legislation -- should it reach his desk — so House Speaker Robert DeLeo feels little pressure to take a strong stand. Changing their minds will require mobilizing support all across Massachusetts. More
WHO BENEFITS FROM THE “BOOMING ECONOMY”?
Buoyed by soaring corporate profits and stock prices, the richest Americans have reached new and dazzling heights of prosperity… But a great many Americans are not doing nearly as well as the nation’s super-wealthy. That 40 percent of the wealth, in fact, constitutes twice the total wealth held by the bottom 90 percent of the American public (about 294,000,000 people). On May 17, 2018, the United Way released a study indicating that nearly half of American households could not afford basics like food, housing, and healthcare. Many of the wage earners in these households were child care workers, home health aides, office assistants, and store clerks―people who had low-paying jobs and minuscule (if any) savings. Furthermore, according to U.S. government statistics, some 41 million Americans live in poverty. Of these, over 5 million reportedly live on $4 a day or less―at least as long as they continue living. Life expectancy in some parts of the United States, for instance in Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, is lower than in Bangladesh. More
