| ||
Happy
Birthday!
CHELSEA
MANNING
Free
her now!
|
| |
Wed
17 December 2014,
2.30-4pm
VIGIL on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields
Trafalgar
Square,
London WC2N 4JJ Charing
Cross (St
Martin’s requests that vigils on the steps are silent)
Chelsea
Manning
is 27 years old on this day. Formerly
known as Bradley, she is the transgender whistleblower, US soldier, Grand
Marshal
at San Francisco Pride 2014, who revealed US, UK and other governments’ war
crimes and corruption. She leaked
hundred of thousands of documents to Wikileaks
exposing the truth and therefore saving many lives. Imprisoned in 2010 and held for months under
torturous conditions, she was sentenced to 35 years in August 2013.
Thanks
to Chelsea's whistleblowing, we the public now know about:
The
“collateral
murder”
video
of a US helicopter crew killing Iraqi civilians ● the cover-up of rape
in
Iraq & Afghanistan ● the secret use of drones for extra-judicial
killing ● US dirty tricks in Haiti, Venezuela,
Peru
& elsewhere ● Egyptian and Palestinian Authority collusion with Israel’s
bombing
of Gaza . . .
If
the sentence stands, she’ll be out in 2045.
We
cannot let this happen – we have to get her out!
Sign
Amnesty International’s
petition
for
her immediate release.
For more info: Chelsea
Manning Support Network
US:
001 215 848 1120 UK: 020 7267
8698
|
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
Friday, December 19, 2014
***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation
Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night
Peter
Paul Markin comment on this series:
I recently completed the first leg of this series which is
intended to go through different stages of the American songbook as it has
evolved since the 19th century, especially music that could be
listened to by the general population through radio, later television, and more
recently the fantastic number of ways to listen to it all from computers to iPods.
That first leg dealt with the music of my parents’ generation, that being the
parents of the generation of ’68, those who struggled through the Great
Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s. This leg, centered on
the music of my generation growing up in the Cold War 1950s, is a natural
progression from that first leg since a lot of what we were striving for was to
make a big musical break-out from the music that was wafting through many of
our houses in the early 1950s.
The pitter-patter sound of stuff from Tin Pan Alley and sometimes
from Broadway if they were not one in the same once they hit our muffled ears.
You know Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree,
Rum and Coca Cola, Tangerine, I’ll Get By, If I Didn’t Care, tear the
goalposts down, grab a Tennessee waltz, and swing and sway with Big Buddha and
some guy chomping on the chop sticks. The music of our “square” parents which
was driving us to desperation for a new sound just in case those threatened
bombs that we kept being warned about actually were detonated. At least that
musical jail-break is the way we will tell the story now, although I, for one,
have a little more tolerance for some of their music, those square parents
still square but maybe there was hope if the listened to the Ink Spots crooning
away at about seven million different songs with that great harmony, or the
Duke taking that A train or better, much better sweet junkie Billie swaying a
dark fruit, day and night, all of me, and whatever else Cole Porter could
button up the night with. Some, I said, since I am unabashedly a child of rock
and roll, now denominated classic rock. Jesus.
Whether we liked it or not, whether we even knew what it
meant, or frankly, during that hellish growing up absurd teenager time in the
1950s trying to figure out our places, if any, in the cold war red scare world,
if there was to be a world, and that was a close thing at times, or whether we
cared, our tribal music was as dear a thing to us, we who were in the throes of
finding our own very different musical identities. Whether we knew it or not in
the big world- historic picture scheme of things, knew what sacred place the music
of the 1950s, rhythm and blues, scat be-bop, rockabilly, doo wop, flat out pure
rock and roll those tunes held a primordial place in our youthful hearts. That
was our music, our getting through the tough times music of post-World War II
teen alienation and angst, that went wafting through the house on the living
room radio (when the parents were out), on the family record player (ditto on
the parents), or, for some, the television (double ditto the parents out,
especially when American Bandstand
hit us like a hurricane and we breathlessly rushed home very afternoon after
school to make sure we were hip to the latest songs, the latest dances, the
latest hair styles, boys and girls, and whether that brunette with the boffo
hair-do and showing an edge of cleavage was ‘going steady” or whether we has a
dream chance at her, or her “sister,” same boffo hair-do sitting across from you
in seventh grade English class), and best of all on that blessed transistor
radio, compact enough to hide in shirt pockets but loud enough when placed next
to your ear to block out that mother-father-brothers buzz that only disturbed
you more, rear a that allowed us to
while away the time up in our rooms away from snooping parental ears. Yes, that
was the pastime of many of those of us who constitute the now graying fading
generation of ‘68.
Some of us will pass to the beyond clueless as to why we
were attuned to this music when we came of age in a world, a very darkly-etched
world, which we too like most of our parents had not created, and had no say in
creating. That includes a guy, me, a coalminer’s son who got as caught up in
the music of his time as any New York City Jack or Jill or Chi town frat or frail
whose father busted out of the tumbled down tarpaper shacks down in some
Appalachia hills and hollows, headed north, followed the northern star, his own
version, and never looked back and neither did his son.
Yes we were crazy for the swing and sway of Big Joe Turner
snapping those big fingers like some angel- herald letting the world know, if
it did not know already, that it did not mean a thing, could not possibly
matter in the universe, if you did not whether your young febrile brain caught
any or all of the not so subtle to experienced ears sexual innuendoes that
drove Shake, Rattle, and Roll, if you
did not rock with or without Miss La Vern Baker, better with, better with, her
hips swaying slightly, lips moistened, swirling every guy in the place on Jim Dandy vowing be her man just for
that smile and a chance at those slightly swaying hips. Mr. Elvis Presley,
with or without the back-up boys, better with because they held the key to the
backbeat that drove Elvis just a little bit hardy, rockier, and for the girls
from about ten to one hundred sexier, belting out songs, knocking down walls,
maybe Jericho, maybe just some teen-struck Starlight Ballroom in Kansas City
blasting the joint with his Jailhouse
Rock to the top of the charts. Elegant Bill Haley, with or without that guy
blowing that sexy sax out into the ocean air night in some Frisco club, blowing
out to the Japan seas on Rock Around The
Clock. Bo Diddley, all banded up if there is such a word, making eyes wild
with that Afro-Carib beat on Who Do You
Love. A young Ike Tina-less Turner too with his own aggregation wailing Rocket 88 that had every high school
girl throwing dreamy nickels and dimes into the jukebox, with or without
fanfare. Buddy Holly, with or without those damn glasses, talking up Peggy Sue before his too soon last
journey. Miss Wanda Jackson, the female Elvis, with or without the blues, personal
blues, strung out blues too, singing everybody else’s blues away with that
throaty thing she had (and that long black hair and ruby red lips to make a
schoolboy dream funny dreams), that meaningful pause, on yeah, Let’s Have A Party. Miss (Ms.) Patsy
Cline, with or without the bad moments, making grown men cry (women too) when
she reached that high note fretting about her long gone man on She’s Got You, Jesus. (And you not caring
for all the strung-out emotion, or hubris, still wanting Patsy for a last
chance last dance close up song to take a whirl at that she you had been eying until
your eyes got sore all night.)
Miss (Ms.) Brenda Lee too chiming in with I’m Sorry. Mr. Jerry Lee Lewis doing a
million songs fronting that wild piano off the back of a flat-bed truck in High School Confidential calling out, no
preaching out the new dispensation to anybody who wanted to rise in that
rocking world, with or without a horde of cashmere sweater girls breaking down
his doors, putting everybody else to shame. The Everly Brothers, always with
that soft -spoken refrain catch that nobody seemed to tire of, getting everybody
nervous, everybody who had gone past curfew looking for a little, well, looking
okay, and not reflecting enough on damn reputations except in the school
pecking order determined first week of ninth grade in the girls’ lounge and boys’ “lav,”
doing teary Wake Up Little Susie. The
Drifters with or without those boardwalks. The Sherilles with or without the
leader of the pack, the Dixie Cups with or without whatever they were doing at
that chapel. Miss Carole King, with or without the boys, writing the bejesus
out of last gasp Tin Pan Alley. Yeah, our survival music.
We, the generation of ’68, baby-boomers, decidedly not what
Tom Brokaw dubbed rightly or wrongly “the greatest generation,” decidedly not
our parents’ generation, finally could not bear to hear their music, could not
bear to think anybody in the whole universe would think that stuff was cool.
Those of us who came of age, biological, political, and social age kicking,
screaming and full of the post-war new age teenage angst and alienation in the
time of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot were ready for a jail-break, a jail-break on all
fronts and that included from “their song” stuff. Their staid Eisenhower red
scare cold war stuff (he their organizer of victory, their gentile father Ike),
hell, we knew that the world was scary, knew it every time we were forced to go
down into some dank school basement and squat down, heads down too, hoping to
high heaven that the Russkies had not decided to go crazy and set off “the
bomb,” many bombs. And every righteous teenager had a nightmare that, he or
she, was trapped in some fashionable family bunker and those loving parents had
thoughtfully brought their records down into the abyss to soothe their savage
beasts for the duration. Yelling in that troubled sleep please, please, please
if we must die then at least let’s go out to Jerry Lee’s High School Confidential.
We were moreover, some of us anyway, and I like to think the
best of us, driven by some makeshift dreams, ready to cross our own swords with
the night-takers of our time, and who, in the words of Camelot brother Bobby,
sweet ruthless Bobby of more than one shed tear in this quarter, quoting from
Alfred Lord Tennyson, were “seeking a new world.” Those who took up the call to
action heralded by the new dispensation and slogged through the 60s decade
whether it was in the civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam
War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture
swirl before the hammer came down were kindred. To the disapproval, anger, and
fury of more than one parent who had gladly slept through the Eisenhower times.
And that hammer came down quickly as the decade ended and the high white note
that we searched for, desperately searched for, drifted out into the ebbing tide.
Gone. But enough of that for this series is about our uphill struggles to make
our vision of the our newer world, our struggles to satisfy our hunger a little, to stop that
gnawing want, and the music that in our youth
we dreamed by on cold winter nights and hot summer days.
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee Website- And A Personal Appeal From The American Left History Blog - Remembering The Class-War Prisoners During The Holiday Appeal
Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
http://www.partisandefense.org/
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010, updated December 2014.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a long-time fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. Cases from early on in the 1970s when the organization was founded and the committee defended the Black Panthers who were being targeted by every police agency that had an say in the matter, the almost abandoned by the left Weather Underground (in its various incantations) and Chilean miners in the wake of the Pinochet coup there in 1973 up to more recent times with the Mumia death penalty case, defense of the Occupy movement and the NATO three, and defense of the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley).
Moreover the PDC is an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers like Lynne Stewart, articulate death-row prisoners like Mumia and the late Tookie Williams, anti-fascist street fighters like the Tingsley Five to black liberation fighters like the Assata Shakur, the Omaha Three and the Angola Three and who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters like the working-class based Ohio Seven and student-based Weather Underground who took Che Guevara’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Others, other militant labor and social liberation fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.
Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year tough I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson’s present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers in their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven, as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their younger days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today (also Black Panther-connected); the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. Many, too many for most of that time. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. The class-war prisoners must not stand alone.
James P. Cannon (center)-Founding leader of The International Labor Defense- a model for labor defense work in the 1920s and 1930s.
Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
http://www.partisandefense.org/
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010, updated December 2014.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a long-time fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. Cases from early on in the 1970s when the organization was founded and the committee defended the Black Panthers who were being targeted by every police agency that had an say in the matter, the almost abandoned by the left Weather Underground (in its various incantations) and Chilean miners in the wake of the Pinochet coup there in 1973 up to more recent times with the Mumia death penalty case, defense of the Occupy movement and the NATO three, and defense of the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley).
Moreover the PDC is an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers like Lynne Stewart, articulate death-row prisoners like Mumia and the late Tookie Williams, anti-fascist street fighters like the Tingsley Five to black liberation fighters like the Assata Shakur, the Omaha Three and the Angola Three and who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters like the working-class based Ohio Seven and student-based Weather Underground who took Che Guevara’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Others, other militant labor and social liberation fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.
Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year tough I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson’s present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers in their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven, as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their younger days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today (also Black Panther-connected); the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. Many, too many for most of that time. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. The class-war prisoners must not stand alone.
CUBA-End The Bockade
Republicans are
hyperventilating over Pres. Obama’s move to normalize relations with Cuba –
along with a dwindling generation of Cuban exiles and counter-revolutionaries in
Florida. Opinions may differ on the nature of the Cuban political and economic
system, but concern for “democracy” had nothing to do with US hostility. Our
government had cordial relations with the pre-Castro Batista/Mafia dictatorship;
it continued to remain supportive of anti-democratic regimes throughout Latin
America – in Haiti, Nicaragua, Brazil, Chile and Argentina -- while it pursued
its war against Cuba. And if it is commonly noted how “impoverished” Cuba
remains, the question may well be asked, “in comparison with what?” Cuban life expectancy and literacy levels put it on par with the world’s most developed
nations and far above nearly all of Latin America, including much “richer”
countries. The Cuban infant mortality rate is equal to that of Canada, and lower
than the US.
US Was
at Odds With World Over Cuba Policy
President
Barack Obama's decision to pursue new relations with Cuba was driven in part by
a stinging realization: Longstanding U.S. policies aimed at isolating Cuba had
instead put Washington at odds with the rest of the world. The American economic
embargo on Cuba drove a wedge between the U.S. and Latin American nations. In an
annual diplomatic embarrassment, the United Nations General Assembly votes overwhelmingly to
condemn the U.S. policy. And while the U.S. was clinging to its economic
restrictions against the small communist nation just 90 miles off its shores,
leaders of China, Russia and Brazil flocked to Havana, promising millions in
investment… The latest vote on Oct. 29 was 188-2, with only the U.S. and Israel
voting "no." General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding and unenforceable but
they do reflect world opinion, and the vote has given Cuba an annual stage to
demonstrate the isolation of the U.S. on the embargo. The number of Americans
who see Cuba as a serious threat has declined. A 1983 CNN/Time poll found 29
percent considered Cuba a very serious threat. That dipped to 13 percent in 1994
and 12 percent in 1997. More
US-Cuba
relations: Global praise for normalisation of ties
World
leaders have welcomed a historic move by the US to end more than 50 years of
hostility towards Cuba and restore diplomatic relations. Pope Francis joined
leaders from Latin America and Europe in praising the "historic" deal which saw
the release of prisoners from both countries… The announcement followed more
than a year of secret talks in Canada and at the Vatican, directly involving the
pontiff. The European Union, which is in the process of normalising ties with
Cuba, described the move as a "historical turning point", while leaders meeting
at a Latin America summit in Argentina broke into applause at the news.
More
Holiday
Greetings to All Friends
of
Dorchester People for Peace!
Best Wishes from
DPP to those observing the holidays – or simply enjoying the spirit of the
season. . .
And
a PEACEFUL NEW YEAR!
We have posted
these videos many times before during the Holidays. Watch them for the first
time if you haven’t seen them before; watch them again and you won’t be
disappointed.
CHRISTMAS IN THE
TRENCHES -- 1914
In December,
1914, after months of slaughter during the First World War (it was supposed to
be “The War to End all Wars”!), British and German soldiers declared an informal
and spontaneous truce. The story of their fraternization and holiday
celebration is told in detail here and here.
The event has
been immortalized in a song by folksinger John McCutcheon, which
you can hear and watch along with contemporary illustrations and a moving
introduction by the performer.
The song ends
with this stanza:
My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I
dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.
*
* * *
Celebrating War Over
and Over and Peace Once
From Bavaria to
New Zealand, town squares across the world are adorned with memorials to local
men “fallen” in 1914-1918, and statues and plaques honoring the war’s leading
generals can be found from Edinburgh Castle to Pershing Square in Los Angeles.
But virtually nothing similar celebrates those who served the cause of peace.
The Polish-German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, who argued against the
suppression of free speech both in the Kaiser’s Germany and in Soviet Russia,
spent more than two years in a German prison for her opposition to the war. The
eloquent British philosopher Bertrand Russell did six months’ time in a London
jail for the same reason. The American labor leader Eugene V. Debs, imprisoned
for urging resistance to the draft, was still in a federal penitentiary in
Atlanta in 1920, two years after the war ended, when he received nearly a
million votes as the Socialist Party candidate for president… Perhaps when the
next anniversary of the Iraq War comes around, it’s time to break with a
tradition that makes ever less sense in our world. Next time, why not have
parades to celebrate those who tried to prevent that grim, still ongoing
conflict from starting? Of course, there’s an even better way to honor and thank
veterans of the struggle for peace: don’t start more wars. More
* * *
*
VIDEO: John Lennon –
HAPPY CHRISTMAS (The War is Over)
John Lennon
(killed on December 8, 1980)
VIDEO: “All we
are saying is give peace a chance.”
***************************
Yusuf Ibrahim (aka
Cat Stevens)
VIDEO: “Peace
Train”
*
* * *
U.S. Nuclear Missiles on Instant
Alert
— A Catastrophe Waiting to Happen
The threat of
accidental nuclear war is terrifyingly real, which can be seen
by Googling that phrase (try it!). You will see how often we came so very close.
And those entries do not even include the mishaps and near-disasters of the
less-maintained Russian weapons, nor those of the other nuclear states. The
current highly computerized launch-on-warning response policy on our 450
nuclear missiles allows very little time to check whether the perceived threat
of an incoming strike is real, or merely reflections off some clouds. This
confusion has happened before, and the world came close to
catastrophe.
In addition, studies have shown that to actually use our 450 nuclear missiles, even in response to a real attack, would probably be enough to cause a "nuclear winter.” The rising dust produced by these nuclear detonations would block sunlight from reaching the Earth, likely causing world-wide agricultural collapse, and possibly human extinction. Fortunately, President Obama can take U.S. nuclear missiles off hair-trigger alert, with his signature alone. No Congressional involvement is required. Just like George H.W. Bush did in 1991, when he unilaterally took all U.S. nuclear bombers circling around the globe 24/7 off hair-trigger alert. This eased the Russians' fears, and made them less jumpy on the trigger, so to speak.
Urge the President to use this
post-election opportunity to de-alert all of our nuclear
missiles, just like George H.W. Bush de-alerted our nuclear-armed
bombers. Remind him of the terrifying threat of accidental, unintended,
nuclear war, and that the nuclear winter set off by the use of our 450 missiles
would likely kill us all. He needs a little push to do what he called for in
2007.
CONTACT:
PRESIDENT OBAMA
Web: www.whitehouse.gov/contact Tel: 202 456-1111 (9:00 am to 5:00 pm) Fax: 202 456-2461 Mail: President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500 Photo: Mimi in Maine, Lois Barber 2014 | |
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Free Chelsea Manning - President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!
Birthday Vigil for Chelsea Manning In Boston
In honor of Chelsea Manning’s 27th birthday, this December 20th 2014, responding to a call from the Chelsea Manning Support Network and Payday Men’s Network and Queer Strike long-time supporters of freedom for Chelsea Manning from the Boston Chelsea Manning Support Committee, Veterans For Peace and other activists in Boston will celebrate Chelsea’s birthday. Currently, Payday Men’s Network and Queer Strike actions are planned for London, San Francisco, Berlin, and Philadelphia.
Supporters are encouraged to also organize an event in their area, and Payday Men’s Network and Queer Strike will publicize it. Write to payday@paydaynet.org for more information and to share details of your event.
Boston vigil details:
1:00-2:00 PM Saturday, December 20
Park Street Station Entrance on the Boston Common
Imprisoned in 2010 and held for months under torturous conditions, Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in August 2013. If this stands, she’ll be out in 2045. We cannot let this happen- – we have to get her out! We will not leave our sister behind. Bring yourself and encourage others to attend and sign the petition for a presidential pardon from Barack Obama in this important show of support to Chelsea Manning
No Justice, No Peace- Black Lives Matter- You Have Got That
Right Brothers and Sisters-Speaking Truth To Power
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The New Kids On The Block
The protests chanting “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” in the wake of the police killings in Missouri, New York, and elsewhere, will draw comparisons. They’re less pious than the Civil Rights Movement and they have the same problem as Occupy: a loose organization with no clear demands. But there are demands, and leaders, too, who are a big part of the story here. Young people of color, more women than men, and lots of them gay and lesbian, with a new common culture and , here and there, a critical analysis: of a society that they say has been resegregated, defunded, and overpoliced for too long.A generation is on the march in the nation’s poorest places and on college campuses everywhere. Where do they want to take us? If you’ve led or joined the protests in Ferguson or anywhere in the past on the subject of police brutality, justice or inequality, please leave us a message by clicking here or on the microphone icon above. If you prefer, you can use your phone and call (617) 353-0692.
We’d like to know why you’re protesting, what you’re hoping for, and the details of your experience. (Onlookers, feel free to leave us a message, too!) Is there something building here, something new and maybe vital? We’ll include the best ones on the air and on our site.
Guest List
Tef Poe
rapper, activist, and co-founder of Hands Up United.
rapper, activist, and co-founder of Hands Up United.
Robin D. G. Kelley
distinguished professor of history, Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in United States History, and author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.
distinguished professor of history, Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in United States History, and author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.
Glenn C. Loury
Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and author of The Anatomy of Racial Inequality.
Bukky Gbadegesin
assistant professor of art history at St. Louis University and a coordinator at the Organization for Black Struggle.
assistant professor of art history at St. Louis University and a coordinator at the Organization for Black Struggle.
Reading List
"Dear Mr. President: A Letter from Tef Poe"
Tef Poe, The Riverfront Times
One version of the new protest ethos, sent in an open letter to a black president preaching calm:
Tef Poe, The Riverfront Times
One version of the new protest ethos, sent in an open letter to a black president preaching calm:
I have never looted or violently struck a police officer. We do lift our voices to yell, and yes, we often use profanity. We are more aggressive than protesters in the past, primarily because we are in a state of emotional disbelief. Mike Brown spent four and a half hours in the street, baking and bleeding on the hot summer pavement. We know you know this is wrong, so the disconnect between your words and your personal convictions has raised many questions in the black community.
"The Disruption This Time"
L. A. Kauffman, "The Baffler"
Kauffman, a veteran organizer, notices something different in the latest protests in New York:
L. A. Kauffman, "The Baffler"
Kauffman, a veteran organizer, notices something different in the latest protests in New York:
I’ve been attending and observing protests for thirty years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like what I’ve experienced in New York City over the last week...The protests have been mobile and deft, steered by tactically savvy organizers for maximal disruption and minimal arrests. Crowds blockade intersections until the police get antsy, then quickly march off to a new target; they swarm high-profile sites like Grand Central Station and Macy’s Herald Square, disrupt with loud chants, shift to a silent die-in, and then move on.
"Moving Pictures"
Jay Caspian Kang, The New York Times Magazine
An interesting meditation on how protests work in our social-media age:
Jay Caspian Kang, The New York Times Magazine
An interesting meditation on how protests work in our social-media age:
Over the past few years, the distance between online protest and physical protest has shrunk considerably. There is a tendency to deride the hollowness of Twitter activism and ask why the activists have confined themselves to what seems like a meaningless and ultimately unactionable space. But the second part of that critique — where the critic tells the activist to go out and do something — has always been vague, an appeal to a form of protest that might no longer exist. In Ferguson and now in New York, the marchers and their personal, online broadcasts fed off one another. Carrying a sign and chanting helps, but it exists in only one sphere, unless you take a picture of it.
Related Content
Ferguson is Everywhere
We’re all caught in the floodlights of Ferguson, Missouri, still reeling from the death of Michael Brown and the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, the man who shot him. We seem to be seeing American society down...
Cornel West’s View From Ferguson
“To be on fire is to have a deep love that ignites a holy anger and a righteous indignation and moral outrage at unemployment, decrepit schools, wealth inequality and callousness toward poor and working people.” ...
Dec. 19, 2014
Reprinted from ACN
HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 19 (acn) The Cuban National Assembly of People's Power (ANPP by its Spanish acronym) thanked today in plenary, all parliamentarians and legislators of the world for their support to the cause of the Cuban Five.
In the presence of Raul Castro, President of the Councils of State and Ministers of Cuba, a proposal from the International Relations Committee of the Parliament of the Caribbean nation, the 546 deputies present unanimously approved the statement read by the legislator Yolanda Ferrer Gómez.
We fully support the recent speech of President Raul Castro said Ferrer Gomez at the Havana Conventions Palace, while stressing the joy of Cubans at the news of the return to the Homeland of Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labañino, after a long battle for justice.
She also noted that they had fulfilled the words of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro when in June 2001 said, "They will return", a term that guided so many years of struggle.
The declaration adopted also thanked the governments and solidarity groups who have taken as their own the cause of The Five, who are symbol of dignity of the Cuban people.
This battle has been won by dint of principles, steadfastness, perseverance and international solidarity, the deputy said.
Last December 14th the XIII ALBA-TCP was held in Havana, in which the tenth anniversary of the integration mechanism was commemorated.
In that sense the ANPP, welcomes the important date and pays tribute to the twentieth anniversary of the historic meeting between leaders Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
The deputies also pledged to defend the founding principles of the Alliance, promoter of cooperation and integration of the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean in search of a prosperous and sustainable development of the region.
National Assembly of People's Power of the Republic of Cuba
Havana, December 19, 2014 “Year 56 of the Revolution” |
19 de diciembre de 2014
Tomado de ACN
La Habana, 19 dic (AIN) Reproducimos la declaración aprobada este viernes por la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular, para ser enviada a todos los parlamentos y legisladores que apoyaron por 16 años la causa de los Cinco antiterroristas cubanos, que ya están en su patria.
Los diputados y diputadas del Parlamento cubano:
Respaldamos Ãntegramente y hacemos nuestra, en nombre del pueblo de Cuba, la alocución del Presidente de los Consejos de Estado y de Ministros, General de Ejército Raúl Castro Ruz, del pasado 17 de diciembre.
Tras una larga e intensa batalla de muchos años clamando justicia, recibimos con gran alegrÃa la noticia del regreso a la Patria de Gerardo, Ramón y Antonio, quienes junto a René y Fernando, nuestros Cinco Héroes, constituyen sÃmbolos de la dignidad de nuestro pueblo.
Ahora que ellos vuelven al seno de su familia y de su paÃs, los diputados a la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular de la República de Cuba agradecemos a los Parlamentos, legisladoras y legisladores que en el mundo han sido solidarios con esta causa.
Como señalara el General de Ejército Raúl Castro Ruz, se cumplieron las palabras de nuestro Comandante en Jefe, Fidel, cuando en junio del año 2001 afirmó: ¡Volverán!.
Tal expresión profética constituyó la guÃa para llevar adelante una ofensiva en Cuba y en todo el planeta a favor de la liberación y el regreso de nuestros Cinco hermanos.
Agradecemos también a los gobiernos, grupos y comités de solidaridad, organizaciones, instituciones y a todas las personas de bien, que de una u otra manera han tomado como propia esta lucha del pueblo cubano.
Admiramos la entereza con que cada dÃa de estos más de 16 años, de duro encierro e incierta espera, actuaron las madres, padres, esposas, hijas e hijos, hermanas y hermanos de estos luchadores antiterroristas.
La batalla ha sido ganada a fuerza de principios, firmeza, perseverancia, inteligencia y solidaridad internacional.
¡Por fin libres, la Patria orgullosa los abraza!
Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular de la República de Cuba.
La Habana, 19 de diciembre de 2014 “Año 56 de la Revolución” |
Cheering The Freedom of the Cuban Five
“Viva Cuba!” echoed around the 24th street BART plaza Thursday evening as a small gathering of those dedicated to securing the release of the Cuban Five celebrated the return Wednesday of three remaining Cuban intelligence agents held by the United States since 1998. It also underscored the Mission’s continued identity as the San Francisco neighborhood where victories in Latin America become a cause for celebrations here.
The release was part of a prisoner exchange announced on Wednesday when President Barack Obama ordered the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba, an island 90 miles from Miami that has been isolated by a trade embargo for 54 years.
“Cuba has been constantly under attack, but even under those conditions they managed to bring the U.S. to the negotiating table,” said Frank Lara, a teacher and activist in the Mission. Secret negotiations between the two countries had been going on for some 18 months, according to news reports.
Added Nathalie Hrizi, “It’s pretty amazing that the five are all in Cuba. This is a celebration of their sacrifice, and that of the people working to win their freedom.”
The ANSWER coalition and the National Coalition To Free The Five organized the rally and celebration to mark the release. It was part of an exchange that also included Cuba freeing Alan P Gross, a government contractor who has been in a Cuban jail since 2009 when he was arrested on espionage charges.
Joel Britton, who once ran for governor with the Socialist Workers Party, also attended the rally at the BART plaza.
He and the party have been “very much a part of this fight,” Britton said. “We’re going to savor this moment.”
He and the party have been “very much a part of this fight,” Britton said. “We’re going to savor this moment.”
Britton praised the devotion of the Five to their cause and to their ideals, citing their refusal to take a plea bargain as evidence of their conviction.
Gloria La Riva, director of the National Committee To Free The Cuban Five, was also a California gubernatorial candidate in 1998 with the Peace and Freedom party as well as a presidential candidate for the World Workers Party in 2008. She also praised the Five’s dedication to their principles and recalled the scene of their return to their families in Cuba.
“People in Havana were spontaneously in the streets,” La Riva said and added jokingly, “They will not leave those men alone for a long time.”
“This is a wonderful, wonderful evening,” said Tomás Moran, a Cuban native who grew up in Puerto Rico and lives in San Francisco. His two daughters, he said, have never been to Cuba and may still have to wait some time to do so, since travel restrictions have yet to be lifted and the Republicans in Congress are threatening to retain the embargo. But the President’s sweeping order for full diplomatic relations with Cuba and his intention to open an Embassy on the island, makes it all the more likely that many U.S. citizens will soon be visiting Cuba.
“We should invite Cuba to come help us with our healthcare,” Moran said. He himself works in healthcare and said Cuban practitioners might be able to help the U.S. improve its system for the disenfranchised.
La Riva, addressing the gathering, had to correct herself as she began to chant:
“Free the F…Wait no! We gotta start thinking differently now,” she said. Then she started a chant that her audience picked up: “The Five Are Free! The Five Are Free”
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