Fire on the Mountain

Veterans and the Future of the Peace Movement

2013-05-18T21:18:00.000-04:00

[Today, I attended a day-long Conference on the Veterans Peace Movement. Activist from vets groups, military families and other sections of the anti-war/peace movement gathered as part of an ongoing process of brainstorming directions for the movement in the coming period. The excellent short speech posted here concisely lays out the magnitude of the challenges facing that movement.]

Ben Chitty (left) with Dayl Wise

Veterans & the Politics of Peace

by Ben Chitty

What do you think "veterans against war" or "veterans for peace" really mean? Seems like it should be simple, but it’s not. When David Cline, Clarence Fitch, and Mike Gold revived the NYC metro area chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in the 1980s, people used to ask, "What war?" or "Why not just 'Vietnam Veterans Against War'?"

You can slice and dice the concepts "veteran against war" or "veteran for peace" in many ways. Here’s one approach. You start by asking where you want to go and what that will take – what would it take to stop this war, whatever war that happens to be; what would it take to stop our own wars, the wars our country fights; what would it take to stop all war, to make war obsolete. You can say it in positive terms: make peace with our enemy; make war our last national policy option; make over our society to eliminate the causes of war -- end oppression and exploitation, so that war can be abolished. That’s a tall order. But look around you -- you can spot someone at almost every point on this spectrum. And every one you see -- every one of us -- is against war and for peace.

I do not have to tell you how many ways you can become sick of war. Brutality, hypocrisy, impunity. Misogyny and homophobia. Bad medicine, environmental degradation. Killing poor people to protect the rich, or people of color to preserve white skin privilege. The military industrial complex, which must be the most wasteful economic engine ever built. Add up the cost of the military, calculate how many schools could be built, or bridges repaired, or superfund sites cleaned up, for the price of one aircraft carrier -- about $13.6 billion dollars for the USS Gerald Ford, now scheduled to float out of dry dock next November -- that’s almost a full year’s budget for the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation combined.

So, what about stopping one particular war? Actually, we have no idea.

To begin with, it's hard even to imagine stopping a war before it starts. Many, maybe even most, Americans opposed the Spanish-American War and the annexation of the Philippines, the first World War, the first Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq. All these wars started anyway. So much for democracy.

Some wars don’t stop until someone wins. As long as you believe you’re winning, you won’t be much interested in stopping the war. Stalemates are different. There are two key questions. Can one side

invest enough resources in the war to force a decisive result? Will the soldiers keep fighting?

Deploying resources sufficient for victory is mainly a political and economic question. The only time in the last century that the U.S. empire actually shrank was the Great Depression. Roosevelt ordered the Army out of Nicaragua in 1933 and pulled the Marines out of Haiti in 1934. That same year Congress approved a 12-year transition to independence for the Philippines.

What about soldiers? How long will they keep fighting? Most major wars see some disaffection in the ranks. The U.S. is no exception. One perennial issue is the integration of Black soldiers into the military. African Americans have served in every U.S. war, always within the context of a heritage of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. Religion has sometimes been an issue. Some German and Irish Catholic immigrant soldiers deserted rather than fight Mexican Catholics. Muslim American soldiers and sailors have refused to participate in a crusade against Islam.

Sailors and soldiers do sometimes mutiny, but mutiny rarely stops a war. Perhaps the Black Sea Mutiny in 1919 derailed French intervention in Soviet Russia, but 1918 and 1919 were extraordinary years. French and German soldiers stacked their arms as the end of the war approached. The Russian Army was infected by Lenin's "revolutionary defeatism." British sailors took over ships and refused to deploy, and two companies of Royal Marines sent to Murmansk refused to leave camp. German Bolshevik sailors took over the fleet in Kiel. Two companies of the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force mutinied in Victoria, British Columbia.

Protests by soldiers can influence policy, and change history. Widespread demobilization rallies by American soldiers in 1946, which began in Manila and spread throughout the west Pacific and Europe, going even so far as Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, probably frustrated the Truman administration’s preparations for war with the Soviet Union. Small and large acts of sabotage by sailors and airmen probably stopped Nixon from again escalating the war in Vietnam in a last desperate attempt to win peace with honor.

By then, of course, the White House and the Pentagon were not prepared to sustain their war in Indochina, any more than they turned out to be prepared to sustain their war in Iraq and now Afghanistan. The U.S. does not surrender; it just walks away.

If you can’t stop a war, maybe you can organize to prevent the next war.

Unlike its younger sibling the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars did not start out as a right-wing organization. Formed by the 1914 merger of groups of veterans of the wars against Spain and the Philippine Republic, the VFW agitated for fairer treatment by the Veterans Bureau and the Bureau of Pensions, then staffed mainly by aging members of the Grand Army of the Republic who were not especially impressed with the hardships of combat against demoralized Spaniards or poorly-armed insurrectionists. These Veterans of Foreign Wars advocated non-intervention. In 1932 General Smedley Butler led a VFW recruiting drive, criticizing the Legion as a tool of the banks, and he often spoke at VFW conventions during the '30s. It took Pearl Harbor to end VFW's isolationism.

The American Veterans Committee was started in 1943 to organize veterans as advocates for peace and justice -- its motto was "Citizens First, Veterans Second." By 1947, AVC membership had grown to over 100,000. The next year the Committee purged communists and membership fell to 20,000.

AVC campaigned against segregation and took up other liberal causes like fair housing and labor rights. In the '60s, the Committee refocused on military and veterans affairs, testifying before Congress about the draft, soldiers' civil and human rights, and the educational problems of veterans returning from Vietnam. In the '70s, the Committee worked on discharge upgrades and programs for women and minority veterans. In the '90s, the Committee shifted focus to Gulf War veterans, and equality for gays in the military. The AVC’s last two chapters -- in Washington and Chicago -- closed in 2007 and 2008.

The largest international veterans organization today is the World Veterans Federation, with 170 organizations from 93 countries representing some 25 to 30 million people worldwide. Started in 1946 by Belgian and French veterans of the first World War, at first most Federation members were European and American -- U.S. member organizations included the American Veterans Committee, American Veterans of World War II (AMVETS), Blinded Veterans Association, and Disabled American Veterans. Headquartered in Paris, the Federation has held consultative status with the United Nations since 1951. Over the years, the composition of the organization has changed: WVF member organizations include military veterans and ex-service members, victims of war, resistance fighters, former prisoners of war, former peace keepers and former peace builders. Its activities are mostly social or humanitarian, carried out through the UN, governments and member organizations.

One Federation event you may have noticed – or maybe not – is the global "Veterans Walk

for Peace" every September 21, the International Day of Peace.

For whatever reason, clearly none of these three organizations made it too hard to start another war. Of course none of them -- even the AVC in its earliest days -- ever promoted revolutionary social change, the kind of change which would end wars.

ARAC -- the Association républicaine des anciens combattants, or Republican Association of Ex-Combatants – was more ambitious. Created in 1917 to hasten the end of the war, by war's end ARAC was the largest veterans group in France, maybe the largest in the world. ARAC’s first post-war campaign was to investigate cases of soldiers summarily and unjustly executed during the war, and to win pensions for their widows.

ARAC had fraternal organizations in every European state which had taken part in the Great War except Russia. It seemed well on the way to accomplishing the vision of its founders:

to obtain, then defend and extend the rights to reparations for veterans and victims of war;
to organize men and women in actions against war, for peace, and for solidarity among peoples;
to cultivate the memory of history in a spirit of truth;
to promote the republican ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and to fight against colonialism and fascism.

ARAC spilt over the definition of pacifism. For some veterans of the Great War, like those who joined War Resisters International (founded in 1921), pacifism meant opposition to all wars. For others, pacifism meant opposition to capitalist wars, and support for wars of liberation and the class war, the real war to end all wars.

ARAC went on to participate with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, and was active in the French resistance in the second World War. By then ARAC had become the veterans organization of the French Communist Party, which aligned with Moscow. ARAC opposed the French wars in Indochina and North Africa, and supported liberation movements throughout the colonial world. More recently, ARAC added "Victimes de guerre" to its official name to reflect a renewed focus on work with victims of war. In 1999 ARAC helped build a Friendship Village for victims of Agent Orange in Van Canh near Hanoi in Vietnam.

So veterans have organized for peace and social justice in different forms with different agendas and gone in different ways.

The same divisions which have run through the broader progressive movement also affect veterans. Some go to the foundations of the movement.

Do we work for reform of revolution, and if for revolution, will it be violent or non-violent?

Reform is problematic. For a while after the fall of Saigon, our government seemed reluctant to start new wars. Appearances were deceiving. The U.S. staged covert interventions in Afghanistan and Latin America, invaded and pacified Grenada – a country twice the size of Staten Island with one fourth the population, and invaded Panama because… well, Just Because.

Within thirty years all three major anti-war reforms from the Vietnam era had been compromised.

The all-volunteer army was designed so that it could not be deployed for extended combat operations overseas without being reinforced by new conscription. Solution? Send out the National Guard, again and again and again.
The War Powers Act codified the constitutional clause that reserves to Congress the power to declare war; it has been superseded by an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which has no end date.
The Rockefeller Commission’s reforms of the Central Intelligence Agency have morphed into secret prisons and assassination by drone.

Some reforms!

Revolution is problematic too. Some political groups – on the right as well as the left – recruit veterans because some of us can shoot. But this is not 1918. As for non-violence, well, power concedes nothing without a fight, and veterans understand all too well that the state can waste you in a heartbeat. Not much space for non-violence there.

Do we work from a national or an international perspective? On the one hand, our military service to the state earns us the right to rebuke the scoundrels who use patriotism to cloak their misdeeds. On the other hand, for those of us living in the belly of the beast, in the heart of the empire, the most urgent calls on our solidarity come from enemies of our state.

Other kinds of divisions are not foundational, though they are very far from trivial.

Social injustice comes in many forms and causes much pain to ourselves, our families and friends. Racial discrimination, reproductive rights, gay rights – these are struggles which can’t be left until after the revolution. That may take too long.

Voting rights, immigration reform, health care, prison reform, environmental protection, labor rights – such struggles sometimes seem remote from veterans' immediate concerns, but their outcome will define the playing field for more social change.

One of the most important of these issues is the class war – not the conservative talking point class war, but the real class war waged on working people by the minions of the rich, the war on the 99%. Every other struggle takes place in the toxic context of this war: it prescribes limits to change, tells us there is no alternative, distracts us from our own concerns, smothers us with the busywork of trying to make a life, just staying alive.

And the granddaddy of them all, the grandmother of all issues, the elephant in the room – climate change.

How do veterans and veterans issues fit into this? I don’t know, but I will suggest a couple of principles.

First off, our government fails again and again to care properly for veterans and victims of war. It’s like some law of nature. Sometimes it’s bureaucratic incompetence. Sometimes it’s because the military conceals the causes and consequences of service-related injuries. Sometimes it’s because no matter how many politicians rush to pose next to veterans to show off how patriotic they are – they really don’t much care, and they aren’t patriots, just politicians trying to get ahead. Maybe they are thinking of better ways to spend our money. Wait long enough, after all, and every Agent Orange claim will be closed. Looking out for one another has to be the bedrock of our personal politics. It’s a step along to the way to becoming the change we want to see.

Second, however we may define our goal – whether it’s reform or revolution, stopping one war or making an end to war – we are not in the business of perfecting the military. We can hope the War Department gets past racial, sexual, or affectional discrimination. We can commend an ecologically sensitive, environmentally gentle, even cost-effective military. The empire is still the empire. Its military still patrols and pacifies the borders of the empire.

For us, that has to be the problem.

Here’s one more principle. Only a dope expects the future to look like the past.

We have a lot to think about.

Ben Chitty

USN 1965-9, VN 1966-7, 1968

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Black NJ: People's Organization for Progress on the FBI & NJ State Police attack on Assata Shakur

2013-05-11T06:24:00.000-04:00

FBI/NJ State police put up a new billboard advertising their call for an extrajudicial hit against our sister Assata Shakur

This past week, many movement activists were shocked when our sister, Assata Shakur, was suddenly placed atop an until then unknown FBI "terrorist" list. In response, at noon on Friday May 10 People's Organization For Progress, the New Black Panther Party and a host of allied organizations and individuals held a press conference in at the Rodino Federal Building in Newark, NJ. The statement that follows was read by Lawrence Hamm, NJ state chairman for POP:

Take Assata Shakur off the Terrorist List

The People's Organization For Progress (POP) calls upon the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to remove Assata Shakur (Joanne Chesimard) from its Most Wanted Terrorists List. She does not belong on the list because Ms. Shakur was never charged nor convicted of an act of domestic or international terrorism.

To place her on such a list is fundamentally unjust. It is a perversion of justice and involves the ex post facto application of terrorist laws and definitions of terrorism that were not in existence or applied to her case at the time of her arrest and conviction.

Furthermore, she did not commit the crime she was accused of. She was placed on the list because her conviction connected her to the murder of a police officer. However, evidence in her case shows that she could not have shot and killed that officer. She became a fugitive because given the circumstances of her case, the atmosphere of repression, and the racism of the criminal justice system she could not get justice in this country and to remain here may have cost her life.

The move to place her on the list and the doubling of her bounty to $2 million has little to do with justice and everything to do with politics. It is an opportunistic attempt to use the criminal justice system to score political points in this highly charged post Boston bombing environment.

Placing Assata Shakur on the terrorists list when she was not convicted of a "terrorist act" is in essence falsely accusing her of a crime that she did not commit. It is the abandonment of the law in the name of enforcing the law.

Like the war in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, preemptive strikes, and the abandonment of international law, it is the establishment of a false premise as a rationale for violent action, which has no legal basis but for which political support may be imagined or conjured up. Placing Assata Shakur on the terrorists list sets a dangerous precedent.

With the false premise established what will be next? Will Cuba be given the ultimatum to give up Shakur like the Afghanistan government was told to give up Osama Bin Laden before the US invasion of that country? Will there be a drone strike of Shakur's supposed residence in Cuba? Will Navy Seal Team "7" be sent on a covert mission to assassinate Assata Shakur who is an American citizen?

Zayid Muhammad of the New Black Panthers introduces Newark elder Amiri Baraka, who also spoke eloquently at the press conferenc

By identifying Shakur as a terrorist the FBI is taking the terrorists list and making it a "political enemies" list, which is an instrument of state terror. And why not? This fits in perfectly with unjust and illegal trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, extraordinary renditions, black site secret prisons in foreign lands, torture, assassination of US citizens, military courts, secret trials, Guantanamo, elimination of habeas corpus, indefinite detention, government domestic spying, arbitrary arrests, police brutality, racial profiling, stop and frisk, mass incarceration, school to prison pipeline, suppression of dissent, COINTELPRO type operations, ignoring the Constitution, trashing the Bill of rights, and trampling upon our civil liberties.

And let's look at her accusers. Who is calling her a terrorist? The FBI who spied on Dr. Martin Luther King. The FBI whose Director J. Edgar Hoover made it his mission to destroy Dr. King. The FBI who engaged in acts of state terror that included assassination against people and organizations in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.

And the New Jersey State Police who shot up Newark and killed innocent people during the rebellion. The New Jersey State Police who for years engaged in the worst forms of racial profiling. The New Jersey State Police, a department so rife with racism that the federal government had to put it under a "master" to force it to reform its racist ways.

With this precedent the rights of all Americans are placed in greater jeopardy. Now, anyone can be deemed a terrorist, not because this was proven in a court of law but by fiat, proclamation or declaration by the President, US Attorney General, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, or some other agency of the federal government.

And this can be done not just for transgressions of the present. It can be done retroactively for sins of the past, ten, twenty, thirty, and forty years ago. If the government doesn't like someone just put them on the terrorist list.

Of course, this exercise of twenty-first century US democracy would not be complete unless accompanied by the economic incentive that American capitalism can provide. In this age of robber billionaires a $1 million dollar bounty on the head of Assata Shakur was not enough. It has been doubled to $2 million.

Who are the $2 million pieces of silver for? Are they for enterprising US citizens? No. Assata Shakur has been given political asylum in Cuba. This pot of gold is to entice elements within Cuban Society to violate the laws and policies of the Cuban government.

The FBI and company hope that in Cuba there are corrupt persons within the police, or criminal elements, or people opposed to the government who will take the bait and do this bit of subcontracting work and keep some of the heat off the bosses in the US.

They hope that there are Hamid Kharzais in Cuba who would like to have bags of money delivered to them on a monthly basis. "Bring Assata Shakur to us and you to can be a millionaire." Dead or alive has not been specified.

The placing of Assata Shakur on the terrorist list while portrayed as a noble act in the attempt to get justice for a slain police officer is in fact a shameful act of revenge, opportunism, political manipulation, and authoritarianism. It is part and parcel of a corrosive trend eating away at the democratic processes and institutions in our country for half a century and which has accelerated since 9/11.

Assata Shakur should not be on the terrorist list. She should be removed from that list just as Nelson Mandela was removed from that list several years ago. When the threat of terrorism and the terrorist label is misused in this manner the victims of real acts of terror are dishonored.

(Fire on the Mountain thanks POP Corresponding-Secretary Ingrid Hill for her photographs from the press conference/picket at the Rodino Office Building)

"Free The Land!" Chokwe Lumumba addresses 30th annual Black Workers for Justice MLK Banquet

2013-04-13T18:47:00.000-04:00

Award recipients at BWFJ 30th Annual "MLK Support for Labor Banquet

This year, Black Workers for Justice held their 30th Annual Martin Luther King Support for Labor Banquet. This historic dinner actually represents more than three decades of activism. BWfJ began as the result of a battle initiated by Black women workers at a K-Mart in Rocky Mount, NC in 1981. Your correspondent has been to more than a few of BWfJ's MLK dinners over the years, but this is the first time I've attended two years in a row.

While last year's banquet was a serious "must attend" affair for a People's Organization for Progress member such as myself (POP's chairman, Lawrence Hamm was the 2012 keynote speaker), the event this year was even more exciting. The spirited response of the crowd to BWfJ's exhilarating Fruit of Labor singing ensemble was palpable.

Ajamu Dillahunt, founding member and elder of BWFJ, grooves to the Fruit of Labor's excellent performance

While last year's rousing keynote by POP's Larry Hamm certainly had the crowd on their feet, Jackson, Mississippi Mayoral Candidate and City Councilmember Chokwe Lumumba moved the attendees to "love offerings" in support of his candidacy. But the most impressive aspect of the 2013 BWfJ banquet was the level of youth participation. The Durham, NC based organization People's Durham (a new organization similar to POP in its campaigns and goals, click on the link People's Durham for more information), was represented by a very youthful contingent of members. People's Durham, along with Larsene Taylor and longtime activist Jim Campbell were recipients of BWfJ Self-Determination Awards (click the link Black Workers for Justice 2013 MLK Dinner to view three pages of additional photos by labor photographer, and friend of the Fire on the Mountain blog page, Jon Levine).

The thrilling spirit of this exciting event was evident in poetry and dance as well as the singing of the Fruit of Labor and others. Erin Byrd read an excellent poem and Laprince Smith led the gathering in singing the Black National Anthem (Lift Every Voice and Sing).

Jackson, MS City Councilman, and Mayoral Candidate, Chokwe Lumumba was the Keynote Speaker.

The truly moving presentation by brother Chokwe Lumumba was informed by his years of activism, both in Jackson, MS and throughout the Black Belt South, as well as the entire US.

Poem of the Month: Democratic Womanism

2013-04-10T12:27:00.000-04:00

DEMOCRATIC WOMANISM

Alice Walker

You ask me why I smile

when you tell me you intend

in the coming national elections

to hold your nose

and vote for the lesser of two evils.

There are more than two evils out there,

is one reason I smile.

Another is that our old buddy Nostradamus

comes to mind, with his fearful

400 year old prophecy: that our world

and theirs too

(our "enemies" – lots of kids included there)

will end (by nuclear nakba or holocaust)

in our lifetime. Which makes the idea of elections

and the billions of dollars wasted on them

somewhat fatuous.

A Southerner of Color,

my people held the vote

very dear

while others, for centuries,

merely appeared to play

with it.

One thing I can assure

you of is this:

I will never betray such pure hearts

by voting for evil

even if it were microscopic

which, as you can see in any newscast

no matter the slant,

it is not.

I want something else;

a different system

entirely.

One not seen

on this earth

for thousands of years. If ever.

Democratic Womanism.

Notice how this word has "man" right in the middle of it?

That’s one reason I like it. He is right there, front and center. But he is surrounded.

I want to vote and work for a way of life

that honors the feminine;

a way that acknowledges

the theft of the wisdom

female and dark Mother leadership

might have provided our spaceship

all along.

I am not thinking

of a talking head

kind of gal:

happy to be mixing

it up

with the baddest

bad boys

on the planet

her eyes a slit

her mouth a zipper.

No, I am speaking of true

regime change.

Where women rise

to take their place

en masse

at the helm

of earth’s frail and failing ship;

where each thousand years

of our silence

is examined

with regret,

and the cruel manner in which our values

of compassion and kindness

have been ridiculed

and suppressed

brought to bear on the disaster

of the present time.

The past must be examined closely, I believe, before we can leave

it there.

I am thinking of Democratic, and, perhaps

Socialist, Womanism.

For who else knows so deeply

how to share but Mothers

and Grandmothers? Big sisters

and Aunts?

To love

and adore

both female and male?

Not to mention those in between.

To work at keeping

the entire community

fed, educated

and safe?

Democratic womanism,

Democratic Socialist

Womanism,

would have as its icons

such fierce warriors

for good as

Vandana Shiva

Aung San Suu Kyi,

Wangari Maathai

Harriet Tubman

Yoko Ono

Frida Kahlo

Angela Davis

& Barbara Lee:

With new ones always rising, wherever you look.

[This pretty much speaks for itself. Thanks to Meizhu Lui for submitting it.]

Poem of the Week: jewels of thought (for gil scott-heron)

2013-04-04T13:59:00.003-04:00

jewels of thought (for gil scott-heron)

Ras Moshe

to all the times i saw you/floating/passing through the streets
all bones and clothes
eyes ablaze
a lightening rod for new york elements
but quite ready to put some disrespectful child in check with wisdom at any given time/we still laugh with you
i actually saw your pain when you realized that this revolution is televised after all/dashikis and pharaoh's records collecting dust in the closets of the defeated
i hope you can see that some of us took heed to your etchings in red/the point of it all/made very clear/these earthly battles fought

but, what if there's only a battle here on earth and not in the star trek hereafter? ah yes..that's what you were saying after all.
we rode the no. 2 train together and that was like a lifetime of school for me/class in session/the end of concession
we be your graduates/in jazz splendor

[Ras Moshe is a NYC-based jazz musician and composer. A good interview with him is here. If you are in the New York area his gigs at the Brecht Forum are well worth catching. This appreciation of Gil Scott-Heron is based on actual experience, and addresses in passing what the British Marxist historian Christopher Hill called "The Experience of Defeat." ]

UPDATED: “History had me glued to my seat…”

2013-03-29T23:30:00.000-04:00

Ms. Claudette Colvin speaks at Newark's Abyssinian Baptist Church

Ms. Claudette Colvin had more than 200 assembled activists stuck to their seats as she shared the story of her 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus. As a fifteen-year-old youngster who'd heard Black History Week presentations in her high school, she felt the spirit of Harriet Tubman "like a hand on my shoulder forcing me to remain seated," when the driver instructed her and three other students to move so a young white woman could have a seat alone on two benches.

After her arrest, Miss Colvin became active in the Montgomery NAACP Youth Council organized by Mrs. Rosa Parks, so she had multiple sources of inspiration, though she was taken off the bus and busted some nine months before Mrs. Parks herself was arrested.

MS. Colvin with POP members Aminifu Williams and Sharon Hand

"Mrs. Parks was our Esther," Miss Colvin suggested, explaining the difference between her own arrest that became part of a legal battle that reached the Supreme Court and ended segregation on public transit in the US and that of Rosa Parks, which became the basis of the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott. Esther, from the Bible, she explained had a variety of unique gifts that allowed her to fight in ways unavailable to other Hebrews in ancient Persia.

Lawrence Hamm, chairman of the People's Organization for Progress, also spoke about these two different direction in the people's struggle, though matter-of-factly.

"Inside and outside," Larry said. "Though legal, court battles are less exciting than taking to the streets and marching, they each complimented one another, and the struggle against segregation on Montgomery buses could not have been won without both components."

Larry Hamm, Newark City Councilman Ras Baraka, NJ Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka & Claudette Colvin before the evening program

Hamm expanded on this, speaking about POP's 381 days of struggle for Peace, Jobs & Justice this past year. We'd mounted daily picketlines, in the heat of summer and the snows of winter, under all weather conditions, demanding a National Jobs Program; the End to Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya; preservation of Workers' Rights and Collective Bargaining; a Moratorium on Foreclosures; the End to Privatization Schemes and other Attacks on Public Education; a National Healthcare Program; Affordable College Education.

Why 381 days? Because the People's Organization for Progress took our cue from the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, and our goal was to keep our Campaign for Peace, Jobs & Justice running at least that long. In the course of this campaign POP built a coalition of nearly two hundred labor, grassroots, community, and religious organizations, and, as Chairman Hamm noted, the campaign is still active with weekly demonstrations and other activities.

New Jersey State Assemblyman Thomas Giblin

As Assemblyman, and President of the Essex County Central Labor Council, Tommy Giblin noted, this "was one heck of an impressive achievement." Giblin, who spoke as a member of the NJ Assembly for Essex County, was by no means the only elected official present. Municipalities from all over northern New Jersey sent proclamations honoring Ms. Colvin. From Elizabeth to Paterson, from Montclair to Irvington; Essex County, Union County, Passaic County, nearly every elected official wanted to be part of this event. Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith included the Key to the City with the proclamation he presented to Ms. Colvin. Noteworthy, and somewhat perplexing, was the slim participation of Newark elected officials. South Ward council member (and mayoral candidate) Ras Baraka may have been the only local municipal elected official in attendance.

Approximately 200 community residents and other activists filled the pews of Newark's Abyssinian Baptist Church.

As we honor Ms. Colvin and share the lessons of her life, as well as this successful forum, it is important to remember that Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanette Reese were also plaintiffs in the case Attorney Fred Gray brought before the US Supreme Court, ending segregation on public transportation across the country. But perhaps more important in this era when Mrs. Parks' memory is applauded and lionized, when a statue of her likeness stands in the Capitol Rotunda, is that Rosa Parks herself was for many years the "forgotten woman of the Montgomery Boycott." In 1960, she was living in Detroit where she'd been forced to move after the successful struggle in Montgomery. Ill, unemployed, poverty-stricken and ignored by the Montgomery Improvement Association and NAACP alike, it was only through the efforts of the militant United Autoworkers NAACP branch at the Ford River Rouge plant that she received support, and eventually a staff job with the newly-elected Congressman John Conyers.

[UPDATE: Click on the link Claudette Colvin to view over two hours of video of the entire event, including Ms. Colvin's presentation, Thursday evening, March 28 at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Out thanks to WBAI videographer Fred Nguyen]

Poem of the Week: Pangaea

2013-03-27T14:47:00.001-04:00

Pangaea

Sendolo Diamanah

a queer black man is not
like asia
with lungs the size of the old union of soviets
and india lodged like a heart under ribs

despite Bahia’s longing to settle once more inside an African pelvis
(i am) not like south america
forced westward by magma

a queer black man is
from a time when the word continent could find no body on
which to be born and pronounced
no one male or female was there to record
what may have occurred
and so
our geography is not of interest
in the signing of treaties about carbon or sanctions against iran,
nor in the managing of economies that consume the future

in the age of men, agriculture, domesticated dogs, private property,
condoms, televised religion,
water bills
queer black men burn like everything else prehistoric
our love, unwieldy like a mastodon
survives under the pressure of a trillion tons of sediment
as something called crude
extracted only to power the technologies of other genders

we groan, as any planet does
when we remember how our skin was burst apart in order
to transform the earth into a map laid flat—that is to say,
into men and women

[It is difficult to describe how thrilled I am to be posting this poem.
First, because it is a fine and subtle creation in its own right.
Second, because it is a sneak preview of a collection of the writer's poetry and other works due to be published soon, under the title Difficult Miracles.
Best of all, by me, is the fact that Sendolo Diamanah is the newly elected general secretary of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad, the group I have been a proud member of since its founding in 1985.]

The RCP's Anti-Gay Line: A Failed Effort At Rectification

2013-03-22T12:32:00.000-04:00

[Lately, interest in the history of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA (RCP) and its predecessor organization the Revolutionary Union (RU) seems to have had a slight bump up, for good reasons and bad. Good: efforts to reassess and reclaim some of the important organizing work and promotion of revolutionary line done by these groups, and by the New Communist Movement more broadly in the 1970s. Bad: the watching-a-train-wreck fascination as the sorry, tattered remnants of the RCP settle deeper into the swamp of a bizarre cult of personality around its glorious leader Bob Avakian.

One topic of discussion invariably triggered by such interest is the RCP's notorious longtime line condemning homosexuality as bourgeois decadence and LGBTQ people as incapable of being communists. I have therefore decided to post this paper, written over a decade ago, which contains some thoughts on that line and its history, drawing on personal experience.

It was written during a most unusual period in RCP history. In 2001, the group issued a draft for a new party programme, and accompanying programmatic documents on homosexuality and on the Chicana/o National Question (spoiler alert: there's no nation). Then they invited members and others to comment on it on a website called changetheworld.info. The ensuing discussion, though kept under close scrutiny by minders from the RCP leadership, was often lively and thoughtful, especially around gender issues. My contribution was posted there, and stirred some interest and discussion. In a little over a year, the website was
reined in and shut down by Avakian, along with the whole new programme project. Unfortunately, even the WayBack Machine has evidently not archived all of this material. I had to find my contribution on an abandoned hard drive.

However, the emergence of the Kasama Project from a core of folks who broke with the RCP in the second half of the last decade has provided a deeper look into this history than anything that has come before. Since its recent redesign, the Kasama website no longer responds to searches for Red Closet, the heading under which they used to group these articles. However, using the site's search engine with the terms "homosexuality, Avakian" will bring up more than a dozen articles, and scores of comments, many incisive, many heart-rending.

On the whole, I think they tend to confirm and deepen the comments in this earlier contribution.

Dennis O'Neil]

Sisters and Brothers of the Revolutionary Communist Party—

Despite some misgivings, I am writing this comment on the RCP’s recent document, On the Position on Homosexuality in the New Draft Program, at the urging of several RCP cadre. My misgivings are based on the concern that my particular history might lead folks to ignore my comments or to assume that I am bringing them forward with bad intentions. I was a founding member of the party and helped draft the RCP’s first programme, adopted in 1975. I left in the 1978 split that formed the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters. I am still a Maoist and remain active in a revolutionary socialist group, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

I trust that those RCP members with whom I have had discussions of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) question and other issues since then, especially in recent years, will speak up for my good faith.

I am writing because of my respect for the contributions to the revolutionary struggle RCP cadre have made, and my optimism that the self-criticism begun in this new document can move forward to rectify a very bad line.

That said, my comment is not even going to address the substance of the line on “homosexuality” in the new draft programme. I feel certain that others more qualified than myself will weigh in on that.

I want instead to address what I see as a serious flaw in the paper’s methodology, its failure to adhere to Marxist-Leninist standards of self-criticism. (As I wrote this I found myself slipping back into the polemical style I used to use in the 1970s. I’ve gone back and tried to clean that up, but if I haven’t completely succeeded, I apologize.)

THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-CRITICISM

As we all know, Mao Zedong placed a very high importance on the practice of criticism-self criticism in his writings, going so far in some ”non-canonical” works as to call it the best guarantee of the continuation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Leaving that aside, I direct interested readers to “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work,” “On Coalition Government,” and “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas In the Party,” to name a few.

In particular, I will quote briefly from the first of these articles:

The mistakes of the past must be exposed without sparing anyone's sensibilities; it is necessary to analyze and criticize what was bad in the past with a scientific attitude so that work in the future will be done more carefully and done better. This is what is meant by “learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones.”

Chairman Mao also called for fearlessness in dealing with criticism and cited it as essential in inner-party struggle.

SOME POINTS ON THE NEW DOCUMENT

The closing section of the document has a promising title:

Our Past Analysis of the Question of Homosexuality--what was right, what was wrong, how we came to recognize our significant errors, and what we can all learn from this.

However, it does not deliver.

First, consider the overall tone of the thing. Does it forthrightly say, “We were wrong”? No. It sort of weasels around. You have proposed to change the line (which is a good thing), so clearly the line must have been more wrong than right. That should be your starting point. The part that was right was the secondary aspect of the contradiction between right and wrong on this question. The main attention in a self-criticism should be devoted to the principal aspect, in this case what was wrong.

Second, a good self-criticism, an unsparing one, should consider the damage done in practice as a result of the wrong line. While such an evaluation is a task which falls primarily to RCP members, your errors affected the broader movement as well. Therefore, I will cite three points from outside observation.

One is the longtime RCP line that LGBT revolutionaries could not be real communists, and thus not join the RCP because of their anti-working class ideology. If, and this is speculative, there continued to be LGBT members in your ranks (as there were in the RU where an early version of the same line ruled after 1972, and the early RCP), what was the effect on these dedicated fighters of forcing them for years not only to deny their identity, to stay in the closet, but also to compare themselves to prostitutes and drug addicts?

Another is the disgust and distrust that other honest revolutionaries felt at seeing the RCP cling, as years passed, and decades, to a line that was so clearly wrong and in denial of advances in struggle and understanding won by the lesbian, gay, bi and trans movement and its numerous allies. (This is different from other questions of line disagreement. RCP members and I differ in our evaluation of the Gang of Four. This is serious, to be sure. But it is not the same as telling me that, no matter what their line, my comrades who are queer are incapable of being communists because their gender identity marks them as hopelessly bourgeois.) Without respect, unity-struggle-unity is a hard policy to implement.

Last is the nearly insurmountable barrier this line raised to the recruitment of young activists from the often very good work done in such party-led organizations as No Business As Usual and Refuse & Resist.

The fact that no mention is made of the harm that the wrong line did to the RCP and the revolutionary movement as a whole implies that the error was relatively trivial. Was it?

Third, a good self-criticism, a materialist one, will look at the roots of the error. Why did RCP fall into this error? There is a passing mention of bad lines in the history of the international communist movement, then the paper declares the RCP’s opposition to “the more degrading and abusive sexual practices engaged in by some homosexuals (which do exist), and to some misogyny towards women (including lesbians) on the part of some male homosexuals,” as if deep-seated concerns about these particular phenomena were the root cause that drove the adoption of the anti-lesbian and gay line. The bad experiences of the masses with prison rape are raised. Finally, authors cite distress over the mid-’70s turn of some activists to “identity politics,” evidently to help explain why the line was adopted. This is pretty thin gruel.

There is no mention in the whole paper of homophobia, save in one footnote where there is no choice, because a book so entitled is cited there. There is no mention of heterosexism. Do these ugly and deeply rooted currents in U.S. capitalist society really not exist? Do they have no reflection in the RCP?

Also, there is only limited mention of patriarchy or exploration of the close links between male supremacy and heterosexism, between oppression based on gender and on gender identity. Is that because the paper’s authors think no such links exist?

Fourth, the section’s subtitle promises that it will explain “how we came to recognize our significant errors.” There is only a brief mention of criticism, including from “activists and revolutionary-minded youth.” Well, activist youth have been raising these criticisms since the ’70s. The first to do so are now middle-aged. What criticisms were raised that got heard and why? What was their content? Going back to my second point, how did the wrong line manifest itself in practice and how did that help RCP members come to understand that the line was wrong?

Fifth, a thorough self-criticism would require reviewing the line struggle inside the RCP. I know this sounds heavy. This is not a call for naming names or revealing the internal workings of the party. Look how the Chinese Communist Party issued summations of its internal line struggles and rectification campaigns, even in the midst of the anti-Japanese war. There had to be line struggle in the RCP over this change--truth arises in the minority. What kind of struggle took place, what lines were defeated? To portray it simply as a process of study abstracted from line struggle is surely not a fearless summation.

ANOTHER VERSION

I would offer a different picture of what has happened in the RCP around this line. I am pretty confident it is accurate in its general approach, though I am prepared to be corrected in part or whole. I offer this both to deepen my own understanding and in the hope it can help serve you as a basis for some deeper self-criticism.

The roots of the RCP’s incorrect line go way back before its founding. The Revolutionary Union had an essentially homophobic line. This was primarily a reflection of societal homophobia, which was deeply rooted in its leadership and rank and file. We struggled against other backward and poisonous ideological currents in the general society which had, which had to have, manifestations inside even revolutionary organizations in this society--white chauvinism and male chauvinism to name two. We accepted homophobia and embraced it. This was compounded and justified by two secondary factors.

One was the main current in the history of the international communist movement, which was itself homophobic. There were, however, counter-traditions to be found, as summarized by the Proletarian Unity League, a Marxist-Leninist organization in the U.S. which published, in 1981, Lesbian and Gay Exclusion: The Policy That Dares Not Speak Its Name, a polemic against the line held by the RCP and other forces in the New Communist movement of the ’70s. (The Black Panther Party, a strong influence on several founders of the RU, used a lot of blatant homophobic rhetoric, but Huey Newton was also one of the first leaders from the ‘60s to embrace the newborn gay liberation movement and hail its revolutionary potential.)

The other was the tendency to tail backward views in the industrial working class, where the RU was seeking to base itself. When this manifested itself, to use an example from one unit I recall, as instructions to cadre to take their sandwiches to work only on untoasted white bread with the crusts on, it did no harm and became a humorous reminiscence later. When it took the form of “proletarian” fag-baiting, the damage was real.

From the beginning there was line struggle around the issue.

When the national leadership of the RU was trying to unify a broad range of local collectives into a single national organization, they decided not to standardize all lines from the top down, but rather to win folks over at the base. In 1972, if memory serves, I attended an East Coast regional meeting, at which the national leaders, including those from our region, were eager to for us adopt a position against lesbians and gays being admitted to the RU (and one against smoking marijuana, as well). Out of, say, 40 people present, I think eight of us voted against gay exclusion.

I am very proud of that vote. I am not so proud of what happened next.

The internal culture of the RU and the early RCP became increasingly homophobic. Fag jokes, implications of limp-wristedness and the whole nasty package were common currency in the group, and only rarely criticized or even commented on. The tone was set from the top levels of the organization. Not surprisingly, male leaders and cadre tended to behave worse that their female counterparts. I fell into this easily enough.

Politically, gay and lesbian groups and activists, part of a vibrant and challenging new social movement, were regarded with derision or as agents of bourgeois ideology in the workers’ movement. Communists and others who allied with them were considered weak and suspect.

When I was asked to help in the drafting of a programme to be debated and adopted at the founding congress of the RCP, I did so. I recall the drafting of the section of the programme on decadence, which the RCP enshrined at that congress, formally embracing the line it has carried like an albatross for a quarter of a century. (Since the very existence of this first programme is not mentioned in the new document, I have included the 1975 section on “homosexuality” in an appendix, along with the language from the 1981 programme.) The drafters, myself included, laughed about the comparison with drug addiction and prostitution and about the declaration that “homosexuals and others who are caught up in these things will be re-educated to be productive members of society.” We knew damn well that formulation implied reeducation camps--and we thought it was funny.

When a large section of the RCP split in 1978, there was an opportunity to do some rectification. Some of the more blatantly homophobic leaders split and helped form the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, which I was a part of. Those who remained in the RCP could have lost the line then. Instead, it was in the RWHq that the struggle took place which led to us abandon the line of homophobia and exclusion. I was won back to my original position by other comrades in the organization and outside of it, and with a great sense of relief. I knew the shit I had been running was raggedy, I had known all along, and I was glad to be able to start cleaning it out of my brain.

The RCP adopted its new programme in 1981. I don’t know if there was open struggle at that time or not--minor changes did appear between the draft and the final programme. At heart, the new programme adopted the incorrect line from the old programme wholesale, while modifying its language slightly. The comparison with prostitution and pornography was made over two paragraphs instead of in the same sentence. Instead of being re-educated under socialism, homosexuals would be reformed, and their homosexuality struggled against. And they would have a right to a job and housing while being subjected to all this.

And because this line was in the programme, RCP members were bound to defend the indefensible for the next 20 years.

The next major public step the RCP took was the 1988 Revolution article. The current summation speaks highly of it as a step forward on the line and as a model of theoretical investigation. This is a very bad evaluation. The paper did shift ground some, as the document points out: “homosexuality” is no longer likened to drug addiction but more to religion (a distinction Marx did not find so significant when he called religion the opiate of the masses). The main thing is that in the contradiction between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong, it is still solidly on the wrong side.

Methodologically, the problem is that the whole project represented the philosophical error of a priorism. The programme was correct, by definition, and was not at that time subject to redrafting. Thus, the task of the group who produced it was not to seek truth from facts, but to produce an elaborate rationalization for an incorrect line that was under fire from without and at least being questioned from within. The product reflects the un-Marxist method used. It is virtually unreadable, full of abstruse spacey speculation and the shallowest imaginable characterizations of gay culture, all negative. It is also pretty much devoid of discussion of the actual oppression suffered by, and the many fierce struggles waged by, LGBT people on a daily basis. (So, for that matter, is the current paper).

A priorism is not Marxism. It is an idealist deviation. It proceeds not from the concrete analysis of concrete conditions, but from a set of a priori assumptions about how things are. I hope you will not take the 1988 article as a model for how to do theoretical work.

The rest of the story is quickly told--partly because from the outside, it can only be seen through a glass darkly. The RCP tried to rectify its practice without changing its line, deepening a trend that goes back to the mid-’80s. The party spoke up on and sometimes took part in struggles around AIDS, anti-gay and lesbian violence and state sponsored homophobia. It would seem an internal struggle was underway, whether open or indirect. It may well have contributed to the long overdue decision to revise the RCP programme.

ON DOING THE RIGHT THING

Now, with the programme and its associated documents under discussion, you have the opportunity to deepen the self-criticism you have begun. I am not alone in hoping that you take the opportunity to do so. I am sure there will be many, “homosexual” and straight alike, making comments on the new line. Much of it will be critical.

Please don’t become all defensive about criticism of the new position, especially since it is still just a draft. The paper has a tendency to portray the new position as the result of a rigorous, methodical and women-centered Marxist evaluation that is superior to other thinking on the subject. Please consider that this might not be so, and look at various comments on it in a welcoming spirit.

The fact is, you’ve been out of the loop on this for almost 30 years. You have relatively little social practice to sum up in this area. It would be idealism to think that you could get everything right on the first try. But there are a lot of people who hope you continue in the effort, and hope you accept contributions like this one in the spirit in which they are offered.

In Struggle,

Dennis O’Neil

August 27, 2001

APPENDIX

From Programme And Constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA (1975)

Socialist society will wipe out the decadence of capitalism in all spheres. Prostitution, drug addiction, homosexuality and other practices which bourgeois society breeds and the bourgeoisie promotes to degrade and enslave the masses of people, will be abolished. The prostitutes, drug addicts and others who are caught in these things will be re-educated to become productive members of society, with working class consciousness. The shame connected with these practices will be taken from the shoulders of these victims and the guilt will be placed where it belongs—on the bourgeoisie.

(page 43)

From New Programme And New Constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (Draft for Discussion) (1980)

The twisted outgrowths of this society, such as pornography and prostitution, will be forcibly abolished right off the bat and their re-emergence will not be tolerated. As for the prostitutes and others victimized by this capitalist degeneracy, they will be given productive work, politically educated and freed from the immediate source of their oppression, while education will also be carried out broadly in society to expose capitalism as the source of this degradation and to remove the tendency to blame or look down on the victims.

As for homosexuality, this too, is a product of the decay of capitalism, especially of the increased ripping apart of the family, which is inevitably taking place under capitalist conditions, especially as it sinks into deeper crisis. In particular it stems from the distorted, oppressive man-woman relations capitalism produces. Once the proletariat is in power, no one will be discriminated against in jobs, housing and the like merely on the basis of being a homosexual. But at the same time education will be conducted throughout society on the ideology behind homosexuality and its material roots in capitalist society, and struggle will be waged to eliminate it and reform homosexuals.

(page 67)

From New Programme And New Constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (1981)

The twisted outgrowths of this society, such as pornography and prostitution, will be forcibly abolished right off the bat and their re-emergence not tolerated. As for the prostitutes and others victimized by this capitalist degeneracy, they will be given productive work, politically educated and freed from the immediate source of their oppression, while education will also be carried out broadly in society to expose capitalism as the source of this degradation and to remove the tendency to blame or look down on the victims.

As for homosexuality, this too, is perpetuated and fostered by the decay of capitalism, especially as it sinks into deeper crisis. This is particularly the case because of the distorted, oppressive man-woman relations capitalism promotes. Once the proletariat is in power, no one will be discriminated against in jobs, housing and the like merely on the basis of being a homosexual. But at the same time education will be conducted throughout society on the ideology behind homosexuality and its material roots in exploiting society, and struggle will be waged to eliminate it and reform homosexuals.

(page 77)

[A final note from 2013: The writing team referred to as drafting the 1975 "Programme" consisted of precisely two people, Bob Avakian and myself.]

Poem of the Week: Making America Strong

2013-03-20T15:13:00.001-04:00

MAKING AMERICA STRONG

Fred Voss

We worked nights as machine operators
at Goodstone Aircraft Company, where we made parts
for the Air Force's new bomber, the K-20.
In the parking lot, before work and during lunch break,
we drank and smoked dope and snorted chemicals.
At work we wore sunglasses
and danced in front of our machines.
We picked up bomber parts and blew through them
as if they were saxophones.
We stalked each other with squirt guns,
screaming and laughing and staggering.
We played with the overhead crane,
hoisting each other's tool boxes to the ceiling.
We unscrewed knobs from machine handles
and threw them around like baseballs.
Our foreman snuck drinks
from the bottle of vodka in his toolbox,
and paced about the shop in a daze.
We respected our foreman.
He'd given us some valuable advice.
"Whatever you do," he'd warned us over and over, "don't join
the Air Force and fly a K-20. It's gonna CRASH."

2002

[While the idea of shop-floor slackery as an essential component of revolutionary strategy has always been a little over the top, the fact remains that it does embody a spirit of resistance to wage slavery. That's probably why many working class poets, like Fred Voss, write about it. Plus which, it's fun--to do and to read about.]

Poem of the Week [UNTITLED]

2013-03-14T11:25:00.000-04:00

[UNTITLED]

Chuc

On March 16, at dawn
Birds twittered and hens called out to their chicks,
Homes were burned to the ground and turned to cinders,
The buffalo and the cow lay cold and twisted in their death,
The people were all killed.
Only the pig survived, all alone and helpless,
Who's left alive to care and feed you, poor pig?

1968

[Chuc is or was a Vietnamese peasant living in My Lai village in Quang Ngai Province. He wrote this lament directly after the 1968 massacre of 500 Vietnamese, mostly women, children and infants by troops from Charlie Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, Americal Division, US Army. I found it quoted in a study of the massacre entitled Four Hours In Mai Lai by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim (Viking, 1992). A title and Chuc's family name were not provided.]

The Best Lost Song Ever: Whitey

2013-03-09T19:33:00.000-05:00

There are always "lost" songs which have become legendary without ever having been heard. Sooner or later though, it seems, everything leaks onto the Internet, including political cuts like "Colonized Mind" by Prince or Nirvana's take on "Bad Moon Rising."

But there is one song I long to hear above any other. It is by the peerless songwriting team made up of Mike Stoller and the late Jerry Lieber. These are the two young guys who broke into the music biz in their teens in the early '50s writing rhythm & blues cuts like "Kansas City." Their longest association was with The Coasters, for whom they cut joke-y songs of teen rebellion like "Yakety Yak" and sly flip-the-script attacks on white supremacy like "Run, Red, Run."

I recently found my liner notes to a 2 cassette Very Best of the Coasters compilation I hadn't seen in years, and I'm writing this excerpt up before the set disappears again.

Inevitably, Leiber and Stoller’s lengthy career with The Coasters would wind down. By the late 1960s. times had changed. After all, Jerry points out, "There are only so many 'Charlie Browns' and 'Yakety Yaks' that you can do." Mike adds "The things that now seemed exciting for us were songs that were deemed by the record companies – and by The Coasters themselves to some degree – to be too inflammatory."

According to Leiber, there is still plenty of "material in the trunk" that the due wanted to do with the group. When asked for an example of what remains unrecorded, he quotes a few lines from a song called "Whitey":
Who dropped the bomb and started the war?
An’ when you’re over there fightin’, who you fightin’ for?
When you come back and you can’t get a job,
And the only way to make it is to hustle and rob,
Hey, who you gonna hustle?
And who you gonna rob?

Now tell me that doesn't sound purely awesome!

Bonus quote from rock critic and cultural theorist Greil Marcus (in a reflection on music and Walter Mosely's Easy Rawlins mysteries in Los Angeles magazine):

When Lieber & Stoller had their first number one R&B hit, with Willie Mae Thornton's "Hound Dog" in 1953, they were living against the law, part of a black-and-white, male-and-female communist commune, passing literature out on street corners.

WHY “CHOICE” IS NOT ENOUGH! An Overview of Abortion in the US, Historically and Today

2013-03-01T20:36:00.000-05:00

[Fire on the Mountain is pleased to post this new article by Mirk. Like the last one of hers we ran, on the 2012 elections, this was originally written for Rødt!, the magazine of the Norwegian political party called Red.

The forces of sweetness and light have had cause for celebration lately as the homophobic right wing has taken a terrible beating on the legal front and in the opinion polls alike. But with International Women's Day only a week away, we had best not forget the damage they continue to do to women's reproductive freedom. This article lays out just how grim things really are.]

by Judith "Mirk" Mirkinson

When I was 21, I had my first abortion. It was 1972 and New York was one of the few states that had made it legal. I went to a lovely clinic and was surrounded by women from all over the East and Midwest of the country.

By the next year, the Supreme Court had passed the landmark decision Roe v Wade which made abortion legal everywhere. The decision was made on the basis of the right to privacy and due process--covered by the Fourteenth and Ninth Amendments to the Constitution. “Roe” (as it came to be known) was the culmination of centuries of struggle over who would control women’s reproduction in the US.

I was one of the lucky ones. I had grown up with a mother who had talked about abortion and I had marched and fought for abortion myself. It wasn’t a tragedy, it wasn’t great, it wasn’t the best form of birth control, but there it was. Abortion was essential to my ability to control my own body and decisions--and thus essential to women achieving their full equality.

Control has and will always be the issue when it comes to women’s reproduction. From the beginning of time, women have been constrained through their biology. It is only now that international law (most explicitly through the CEDAW--the Convention to End Discrimination Against Women) is addressing the necessity for guaranteeing reproductive health. But even in countries where women can have access to contraception and health care, regulation of abortion is one way to contain women.

The Case Of The US

The US is a case in point. Control of women in the US has always been intertwined with the issues of race and class. Thus, one can’t talk about the history of abortion and reproductive “rights” without also discussing the intersection of those rights with the history of slavery and racism.

As early as 1632, there were laws governing the reproductive rights of Black women. (UH – THERE WAS SLAVERY!) Enslaved women were considered breeders--a resource to increase the slave population and they had no maternal rights. African women were property and thus their children were also considered property. As a result a child could be taken away at any time. A slave owner could even determine where a woman’s future children would go. For instance one could "leave" a particular woman to one descendant in one’s will, but leave her future children to another! The threat and reality
of rape was omnipresent. The rape of Black women by white men was one way of terrorizing and controlling the African population just as it was with Indigenous women.

At that time both white women and women of color were encouraged to have children, but for very different reasons. Later this would change. If you were of the more privileged classes (read white and include middle class women), you were looked upon as "natural" mothers. Nurturing and motherhood were not only in your biology but were your destiny and raison d’etre. Anything that got in the way of this was to be put aside or outlawed. In the nineteenthcentury this included involvement in public life.

As the feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman was told after she complained of what we now know as post partum depression:

Live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time. Lie down an hour each meal. Have but two hours intellectual life a day. And never touch a pen, brush or pencil as long as you live.

One can only imagine the impact of these strictures on the consciousness of women. These more privileged women were considered the "backbone" of American life and thus were encouraged through pro-natalist policies to have more children.

For poor women and women of color, it has always been a different story. The stereotypes applied to these women are hypersexual, promiscuous, irresponsible and incompetent. This was one of the reasons that people used to justify the whole idea of birth control in the early 20th century. It was also the justification for mass sterilization of Native American and Puerto Rican women in the second half of the last century or the continuing cutting of welfare and healthcare to poor women. Even in this age of bitter struggle over abortion, poor women are encouraged to have permanent contraception though the implantation of such medicines as Norplant.

But let’s get back to 1973.

The Right Wing Went All Out

The minute Roe was decided, the right wing started organizing against legalization and they have been fighting and eroding women’s access to abortion ever since. They used several tactics simultaneously. First they went the legislative route--a tactic they have utilized to the present day - both federally and in the states: In 1976, the Congress passed what is known as the Hyde Amendment. This forbids federal spending on abortion. In other words, women had the right to have an abortion but the government didn’t have an obligation to pay for it. As always this ruling affected poor women and women of color disproportionally, a trend, which would continue in subsequent rulings for the next 40 years.

They also used the courts--again both on the federal and state level: The Webster decision was only the first of many that would weaken women’s ability to have control over their own bodies. Waiting periods, parental permission, ultrasounds both abdominal and vaginal are just a few of the impositions imposed.

Accompanying this strategy was a simultaneous push to make abortions truly inaccessible. Organizations like Operation Rescuesurrounded clinics and made it impossible for clients to get in. You had to walk through a gauntlet of people calling you a murderer and showing you pictures of dead babies. Although the courts eventually imposed restrictions on these anti-abortion forces they haven’t given up. For instance, patients in one clinic in Illinois will find their faces up on an anti-abortion website the day after they have an abortion.

It didn’t stop there. Right wing fanatics started targeting abortion providers--from bombing the clinics to murdering abortion providers. From 1977 to the present day, there have been hundreds of bomb threats, bombings and arsons. There have been thousands of incidents of trespassing, acts of vandalism and attacks with acid and stink bombs. Ten providers have been murdered since 1984, the most recent being Dr. George Tiller who was killed in 2009. Abortion providers are frequently under extreme threat--there are wanted posters put up in small towns--with their faces and the word MURDERER written underneath. Often, providers have to go to work in bulletproof vests. Naturally this has had an impact with fewer and fewer people being willing to even train to become abortion providers--let alone give them.

It’s now impossible to get an abortion in 87% of counties in the US--especially in places outside major metropolitan centers. More than 20% of those seeking abortion have to travel more than fifty miles from their homes to get one. This is true even in states like California – one of the few where you can still get an abortion paid for with state funds. Again this puts more pressure on poor women. Ironically, fake abortion clinics that are really anti abortion propaganda centers now outnumber real abortion clinics two to one!

The religious right--at its core a racist movement whose leaders were long-time opponents of the civil rights movement--cynically attempted to enlist black people in their movement. In 2010, 65 billboards went up in predominantly Black neighborhoods in Georgia proclaiming: Black Children Are An Endangered Species--Don't Support Abortion! At the same time they stigmatized poor women and cut welfare and childcare to the bare bone.

All this has been accompanied by a sophisticated propaganda campaign orchestrated by the religious right. Over and over, women have been told that fetuses have rights (even though the cerebral cortex --which defines conscious thought--doesn’t develop until the 24th – 27th week of pregnancy). An embryo has been redefined as a "person"--a person who has to be protected above all else. This campaign has had a deep effect on public opinion, including the way that women feel about the issue.

Here's Where The Liberals Come In

And this is where the liberals and the left come in. As is too often the case, many saw the particular interests and demands of women of color as marginal, not the main point. In the 70’s this meant that the mainstream abortion movement talked almost exclusively about birth control and abortion but ignored the fact that women of color were being sterilized in record numbers. Later, “pro-abortion” gave way to "pro-choice." succumbing to the demonization of abortion.

The leadership of organizations such as NOW and NARAL claimed they had to compromise –otherwise they wouldn’t get enough support to keep abortion legal. But by narrowing their work, they ignored total reproductive health. And by the time they began to correct this, it was too late. Though still considered a right, abortion had been redefined as a tragic choice. It became expected for women to mourn the loss of their babies and to feel terribly guilt-ridden about ending their pregnancies; this, even though more than half of the pregnancies in the US are unplanned.

In 2011 and 2012, more laws restricting women’s health were enacted than at any another time since Roe v. Wade. Thirty-five states mandate pre-abortion counseling, and thirteen of these states force providers to list alleged risks of abortion – such as increased rates of breast cancer and suicide –for which there is no evidence. Twenty-six states require waiting periods between 24 and 76 hours. As 2013 begins, the courts in Kansas have just forced the dismissal of a taw suit against a statute forbidding private insurance companies from covering abortion in their standard policies. The court maintained that residents having to buy supplemental insurance to cover abortion did not in any way restrict access.

The decisions of the Supreme Court over the last decades reflect these contradictions. Over and over again, as the Supreme Court has upheld laws to restrict federal money for abortion, they have justified their decisions by saying that if a woman is too poor to get an abortion, it is an economic not government problem and therefore not the burden of the government itself.

In backing a law where federally-funded physicians are forbidden to give abortion counseling, the court stated:

Its decision to fund childbirth but not abortion, places no governmental obstacle in the path of a woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy. Congress’ refusal to fund abortion counseling leaves a pregnant woman with the same choices as if the government had chosen not fund family-planning services at all.

Four states now require women to have fetal or transvaginal ultrasounds so that they can "understand who they are killing." This is true even in cases of rape--and even though a fetus at this early stage is about the size of a pea. The legislature in New Mexico is considering a new law that would not only outlaw abortion in cases of rape, but would make anyone who has an abortion or provides an abortion subject to criminal prosecution. When talking about rape, the governor of Pennsylvania told women: "Just close your eyes!"

The Republican Attack

Every Republican president and presidential candidate from Reagan to Romney has supported the notion that fetuses are people and must be protected as such. Reagan even supported a constitutional amendment to protect the “rights of the unborn.”

During the recent campaign, Republican candidates made a mockery of women’s rights. Two candidates declared that abortion is never justified--even after rape or incest. The Republican Party platform called for the ending of legal abortion even in the case of rape, incest or to save a woman's life (which was the basis of abortion even before Roe v Wade.) They also called for restrictions on access to contraception.

Todd Aiken, running for Senate in Missouri, and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, used the term “legitimate rape,” claiming that if a woman was "really" raped she could somehow prevent herself from getting pregnant--(thus ignoring both the English language and biology.) Congressional candidates Richard Mourdock of Indiana said that pregnancies resulting from rape are "God intended." while Stephen King from Iowa said he never heard of a woman getting pregnant from either rape or incest. Except for Paul Ryan who retained his House seat, the others were defeated, a sign that, despite all the misogynist propaganda, women will not tolerate this attack on our rights.

Conversely, the Democratic Party, which has been complicit in this march to the right, staying cautious and silent for so long, passed a platform during the 2012 election campaign that strongly affirmed the right to abortion, contraception and women's health. But it remains to be seen how hard they will now fight on these issues. Despite their support for abortion rights, Democratic women leaders from Hillary Clinton to Nancy Pelosi have not done nearly enough to actually guarantee that it remains legal. And although Obama won the election, his administration has just caved in again to the religious right, by stating that religious institutions do not have to provide free contraception as provided under the new health care law. Due to gerrymandering, Republicans still have control of many state legislatures and continue to pass anti-abortion and anti -women legislation. So, if the Democrats do not put up a major battle, anti-abortion legislation at the state level will continue to erode away women’s reproductive rights.

Even without these new attacks the current situation is grim. As stated earlier, the reality is that for most women - if you don’t have health insurance and often if you do --getting an abortion can be a very difficult undertaking. And the future does not look good. In Mississippi, for instance, there is one abortion clinic in the entire state!

Lack of access to abortion has, of course, a deep impact on every aspect of women’s health. The more access women have to "family planning" including contraception and of course sex education - the fewer abortions there actually are. The better access to health care, the lower the number of unplanned pregnancies; the lower the number, the fewer complications--especially among young and poor women. The countries with the lowest abortion rate are in Western Europe where abortion is legal and where access to contraception is readily available; the highest abortion rates are Latin America and Africa where abortion is illegal and where access to family planning is often not available.

The Bottom Line

Still, despite all this one third of all women in the US, will have an abortion in their lifetime, a figure that cuts across all races and classes. The majority of these will already have children. This figure has remained steady over decades and was even true when abortion was illegal.

The US spends almost 100 billion dollars a year in maternal and infant health care--twice as much as any other country in the "developed" world. Yet, according to UN data maternal mortality in the US has worsened falling from 41st to 50th in the world. The mortality rate of 12.7 deaths per 100,000 live births is 3 times as high as goals set by the US government itself for 2010. Of course women living in low income areas are twice as likely to die giving birth as richer women.

But maternal and child health is not just about health. Childcare is very expensive: for many, it’s more than one thousand dollars a month for one child. Unlike Norway, access to childcare has decreased not increased. Thirty years ago, only the very rich had private childcare. Today, women cobble together help, often from family members are retired. Many mothers have nannies--it’s actually can be more cost effective: especially when one is paying low wages with no sick leave or health care.

We’ve created a two or maybe three tier system - one set of women is going to work, the other set has basically been forced to emigrate and is taking care of the first set’s kids. Many of these women--from Latin America to Africa to Asia--have children of their own, left behind perhaps in the care of a father, or other relatives. So their children are not taken care of, while they help raise a whole other nation's offspring. And domestic workers do not have health care, they do not get social security, they have no job security and they don't even qualify for minimum wage.

This follows a long history in the United States of Black women taking care of white women's children, while their own children are left adrift. How ironic that historically (and even really today), it's only white and European and often non-poor women who have been regarded as "natural mothers" while women of color are looked at as hyper sexualized and incapable of raising children.

What does this all add up to? Feminists and other activists have been on the defensive for decades. Perhaps one of the clearest indications of this was the retreat from pro-abortion to pro-choice. To talk about pro-choice is to assume an equality among women that does not exist and is not going to exist for some time. The word "choice" is used all the time and is used to talk about the most mundane decisions--what shampoo one will buy to what career one will have. The decision to have a child is clearly in a different category. Real choice is dependent on so many factors, many of which are out of a woman’s personal control. What is her economic status? How old is she? Has she had access to sex education? Is she subject to violence? Does she have health care? Will her child have health care? Is she single? Does she have support? Does she have a job, housing or education?

Just talking about abortion is not enough nor is reproductive rights. Instead we have to talk about reproductive justice. We have to talk about our rights as women as part of a human rights agenda, a reproductive policy that encompasses not just contraception, birth and maternal and child health, but also makes the term choice a reality not just a phrase.

Some of this is beginning to be reflected in international law. The CEDAW--the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women--clearly states in Articles 12 and 16 that all women and girls should have equal access to health care including pregnancy and family planning. Article 16 guarantees women’s equal ability to make decisions concerning childbearing. Although 164 countries have ratified the CEDAW, the US has not, claiming it had no need to do so. Putting the CEDAW into practice will take many more years if not decades, but codifying is one first step.

Forty years after Roe v. Wade, the fight is still on. Women who fought for the right to abortion are not going to stand by quietly while it is made illegal for their daughters and granddaughters. And a new generation of young women have made it clear with their voices, their activism, and their votes (both in the US and internationally) that they consider abortion essential and worth fighting for. Control over reproduction is basic to women’s equality and liberation, and women are determined to fight until that right is theirs and universal.

The Climate Change Movement and Obama--Getting One Thing Very Right

2013-02-25T20:34:00.000-05:00

[Like the piece I did last week about crowd estimates on steroids, this is a response to the Climate Change rally I attended in Washington DC earlier this month. Like that one, it is from the vantage point of a movement veteran so aged that my first DC demo was in 1965.

This one is primarily aimed at folks who, like me, are members (or sympathizers or exes) of revolutionary socialist organizations in the US. These have not generally covered themselves in glory when it comes to taking part in or even acknowledging, let alone building, the current crucial and vibrant incarnation of the decades-old environmental movement. I hope others will find it of some use as well.]

One thing that several old school lefties have commented on since the February 17 Climate Change rally in DC is how much the event revolved around Barack Obama. Among the main speakers was Van Jones, who spoke of having had the "honor of working with this president" in his first administration and addressed his remarks to his former boss.

Many hand-made signs and banners in the crowd featured Obama's picture and/or anodyne pro-environment quotes from his speeches. And the most widely distributed preprinted sign featured one of those Big Blue Marble shots of Earth from space on a black background—and on the other side had a big graphic based on Obama's 2012 campaign logo.

This certainly wasn't what you'd see at a rally of the remnants of the anti-war movement or, say, civil liberties activists. Generally the old heads I have spoken to or whose reflections I have read have felt this was a real problem and indicative of the low level of political understanding among the participants. I plan to argue in a later article that this misreads to some extent the dynamics and the strategic thrust of the movement.

What I want to deal with here is the fact that the environmental movement, and especially the struggle to stop the Keystone XL pipeline which is presently at the core of that movement, is doing exactly what a lot of leftists and socialists said they were going to be doing right about now.

I refer to those groups and individuals who argued in early 2012 (if not before) that revolutionaries and socialists should work hard for Obama's re-election or at the very least get out and vote against his opponent. Generally, their argument was based on the dangers posed by a possible Republican victory in the aftermath of the 2010 mid-terms (an argument which developed real weight as the GOP's racism and voter suppression efforts escalated).

"Of course," they would insist, "on the day after the election, we have to get back into the streets and organize against him, or at least his worst policies."

Well, you know who did that? The anti-Keystone XL people, that's who.

As the strong current of Obamoptimism at the rally shows, these are not exactly folks who were voting Romney. A few Green Party locals were present and the party's 2012 presidential candidate Jill Stein (who centered her candidacy on environmental issues, unlike Obama and Romney, neither of whom said a mumbling word about them the whole time). That hardly meant that the majority at the rally went third party last year, though.

Let's look at how this movement carried itself around the election and since. On Monday, November 5, the day before the election, several dozen activists barged into the Washington DC office of McKenna Long & Aldridge, the main law firm lobbying for TransCanada's pipeline project. They knew that this brief occupation, in solidarity with the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade, was not going to get major media coverage on the eve of the election. They were making a point--that the movement was going ahead no matter what happened the next day.

On Thursday, November 8, two days after the election, Bill McKibben, the most prominent anti-Keystone XL leader, kicked off a four-week Do The Math tour, speaking at an indoor rally/teach-in of 2,000 in Seattle. By early December, the tour had made 20 more stops in cities around the country, drawing similar numbers each time. This helped lay the groundwork for further development of the movement, including last week's Climate Change rally.

News kept coming in the weeks after the election. In early December two protesters chained themselves to 600 pound concrete barrels inside a section of pipe slated to be added to the section of the pipeline under construction near Winona TX. This was the latest, and riskiest, of a long series of civil disobedience actions that have been bedeviling companies trying to finish pipeline segments to create "facts on the ground" arguing for its completion.

A week later a Texas judge granted a temporary injunction to a Texas landowner whose property had been seized by eminent domain to build the same pipeline section. On college and university campuses across the country, scores of powerful student campaigns ramped up their demands that their schools' endowments divest all stockholdings in fossil fuel corporations. All this before Inauguration Day. Then the DC rally.

Obviously this is a powerful movement, with impressive organization and equally impressive room for initiative and a variety of tactics. I would suggest that one reason the movement is so strong and vibrant is that it didn't dissolve itself into the Obama campaign, but fought right up to the election and was fully prepared to hit the ground running the minute it was over.

[As I mentioned above, I hope to write one more piece, with observations on several aspects of the rally, and the movement that held it. Among those topics will be the thinking behind and problems with the movement's overall soft approach to Obama and how revolutionary socialists should respond to it.]

Poem of the Week: Malcolm X, February 1965

2013-02-21T20:02:00.000-05:00

MALCOLM X, FEBRUARY 1965

E. Ethelbert Miller

i will die this month. how

i do not know. still there

is much work to be done. i

am afraid not for myself but

for betty and the girls. some

nights i stay awake looking

out the window, a gun in my

hand. i know how cruel people

can be. i have known hatred and

blindness. there are brothers

waiting to do me harm. i will

die for them. i will love them

as only i can. may allah be my

witness.

from

First Light: New and Selected Poems (1994)

[The last of this February's Poems of the Week, all memorials to Malcolm X. This one by E. Ethelbert Miller, puts the reader into Malcolm's head as his death looms, a different approach from that taken by the three previous poets.]

Let's Stop Inflating Crowd Counts, Eh?

2013-02-18T11:33:00.002-05:00

People, we have got to stop exaggerating the numbers who attend demonstrations. Yesterday's Climate Change rally in Washington, DC has finally got me off my ass to write about the subject. I regret this, because the demo itself was a splendid event, full of promise for a new stage in the movement to stop the trashing of the environment by rampant capitalism.

But, and this is a big but, when folks from the bus from the Bronx I came down on made our way to the Washington Monument, next to the rally site, someone on the excellent big screen was announcing that there were 40,000 people present. Looking down toward the actual stage from the elevation of the monument's knoll, I figured the crowd might have hit 10 thou. Might. A couple of other old Washington demo hands I spoke with also scoffed at the "official" count.

Half an hour later, after thousands more people had arrived, rally MC Rev. Lennox Yearwood was saying 35,000, strongly suggesting that folks were pulling these numbers out of their butts.

So I did what I tend to do at most demonstrations I attend, and have done for many years. I counted the house.

Obviously this is easier at a demo of a few hundred or even a few thousand, but the organizers made it fairly easy. With a lot of marshals at hand, the rally finally poured onto Constitution and headed west in an orderly way to start the long trek around the White House and back to the monument. I mounted the back of a bench just ahead of the front of the march giving me a slightly elevated view of the crowded avenue as the protesters arrived and passed by.

(A brief note on methodology: for a march of up to a thousand or so, I count by fives, making a line on a piece of paper every hundred and the traditional cross slash to mark 500. Five is an easy number for the eye to group. For a march of this size and density, I count by 20s, which obviously leaves room for a wider margin of error. As I hit 100, I pick out a couple obvious signs or protesters to serve as place holders, so I can look down and make my little slash, and pick up right where I left off. Even when people ask me, I don't try to total up the count to that point. I save that to the end.)

When the last marchers had passed by, I looked back at the rally site and found that it had been completely emptied by the march. Then I added up my numbers.

16,200

Okay, that's rough, I freely admit. Let's say I was off by 25%. That still means I am going to call bullshit on any figure under 12,000 or over 20,000. And by the time I got home from Washington, late evening, Facebook friends and Left websites were proclaiming "more than 50,000."

So What?

Why does it matter? The media lowballs our numbers as a matter of course, Why shouldn't we inflate them?

First, let's ask who we are fooling?

The enemy? They have helicopters and video cameras in the buildings along the line of march, and people, professionals, whose damn job it is to evaluate the size (and demographic composition and militancy and political stance) of marches.

Ourselves? Well, maybe, although cynical movement veterans know to discount unrealistic crowd estimates. There's something called the S.F. Constant used for numbers from one demonstration-prone left party—multiply their figure by .37 to get a realistic number (and I've found it works surprisingly well at demos I've counted.)

But to the extent that we do succeed in fooling ourselves, we are hurting ourselves. Mao Zedong, a guy who knew something about strategy, was fond of quoting military theorist Sun Tzu, who wrote circa 500 BCE:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Overestimating our accomplishments and the numbers we can mobilize today sets us up for defeat and disillusionment tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.

Maybe, though, we are trying to impress and encourage people who are new to the struggle, like many yesterday who were at their first large demonstration, maybe their first march ever, period, Even here, puffing up our numbers is a bad way to go. Having attended, for instance, a small protest numbering several dozen, people reading a subsequent web-posting or an article in a left newspaper claiming several hundred are going to expect they are in the presence of bullshitters.

Even in a larger crowd, like the Climate Change rally, some people will find inflated statistics suspicious. This is the US—many people have gone to games or shows in arenas which seat 50,000 people, and they might just notice the discrepancy between the numbers there and the numbers standing at the foot of the Washington Monument yesterday.

And fudging numbers can carry a bigger penalty. Our bus captain, Dan, made a very good point on the ride back to the Bronx, when we were discussing this. Global warming, climate change is a complex phenomenon, which can sometimes be confirmed by direct personal experience. Really understanding it, however, requires understanding some science, math-based science. If people think we lie about one set of numbers, why wouldn't they mistrust what we have to say about another?

I've used terms here like overestimate, fudge, inflate, but I will leave the last word, a blunt one, to African agronomist and revolutionary leader, the late Amilcar Cabral.

Tell no lies. Claim no easy victories.

Poem of the Week: X.

2013-02-15T09:11:00.000-05:00

X. Raphael Peterson

X,
The letter representing the unknown,
You made this your name,
You put this in place of the name the slave trader gave you,

Little, you are no more, you are much too large, too powerful,
And your soul too unconquerable, you frighten them,
The White man, bedevil for,
They never know what's coming,

Always on edge, always uncomfortable,
When the unknown is near, undeniable leader of the black man and woman,

Indomitable fighter of the white devil's oppression,
And, finally, everlasting spirit of true good,
You rose from under the ugly weight of hatred,
Your body is dead,
But your power is still vast, unmeasurable, unknown
X.

1999

[An unusual tribute to Malcolm, in that, unlike the two posted earlier this month it was not written in the immediate aftermath of his death. The author, a 16-year-old high school student when he wrote it, first learned of Malcolm X from Spike Lee's film! He got it, though.]

Poem of the Week: It Was a Funky Deal

2013-02-08T14:03:00.002-05:00

IT WAS A FUNKY DEAL

Etheridge Knight

It was a funky deal.
The only thing real was red,
Red blood around his red, red beard.

It was a funky deal.

In the beginning was the word,
And in the end the deed.
Judas did it to Jesus
For the same Herd. Same reason.
You made them mad, Malcolm. Same reason.

It was a funky deal.

You rocked too many boats, man.
Pulled too many coats, man.
Saw through the jive.
You reached the wild guys
Like me. You and Bird. (And that
Lil LeRoi cat.)

It was a funky deal.

1965

[This is the second PotW about Malcolm X this month, and there are two more slotted for the last two weeks of February. The late Etheridge Knight, acclaimed today as a great poet, wrote this in the days he discovered his poetic vocation, while doing a 10-25 year bid in the Indiana State Prison for a mugging. (He wound up serving eight.)]

AFL-CIO Honors SNCC Women

2013-02-06T12:34:00.002-05:00

At the end of last month, I was finally able attend the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department's annual Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday conference. I have wanted to participate for nearly 20 years. and all the pieces fell into place for this year's event. Besides the conference itself, a book I was introduced to there, Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, became the highlight of the weekend, and not just for me.

The US labor movement's true role in Dr. King's birthday becoming a national holiday is almost as forgotten as brother Martin's actual legacy. From the time of King's assassination in 1968, industrial unions, particularly the United Auto Workers, made the fight for the Reverend's birthday a major contract issue. For years, the Civil Rights Department's conference took place in Atlanta near the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change. As the King family, and the King Center itself, became more interested in corporate sponsorships than actually serving the people, the annual conference moved to various other locations around the country where the community and the labor movement were engaged in struggle.

This year's conference took place in Philadelphia, where attendees stepped up to support municipal workers' ongoing battle with Mayor Michael Anthony Nutter. Nutter is one more politician who got elected with union support, and, once in office, promptly began to engage in anti-labor "crony capitalism," Early in his first term, he commenced giving sweetheart privatization deals to corporations, slashing
city services, and demanding that public services such as education run on a for profit model. Our street activism in support of Philadelphia's firefighters, teachers, librarians, waste disposal workers and other municipal employees was very much in the tradition of Dr. King's support of the Memphis sanitation workers strike.

Municipal union members rallied against Nutter's "austerity" at the National Constitution Independence Visitors Center Mall

Even more inspiring was the program introducing Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. Four of the 52 women who contributed essays about helping build the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and contributed essays were present. Ms. Rutha Harris, Ms. Martha Noonan, Ms. Diane Nash, and Ms. Debbie Amis Bell, spoke about their experiences in SNCC, reading from the book while Ms. Harris sung freedom songs of the civil rights era.

While Rutha Harris' renditions of freedom standards were truly glorious --everyone should hear this sister's voice-- it was the recollections of all participants that moved the evening to the highest levels of political education. The spirit of this testimony, from women who at the time were very, very young is perhaps best represented by Martha Noonan's reflection:

When I was [canvassing and] asking people, “Do you want to try to vote?” I knew I was really asking: are you ready to lose your job and go to jail? Oh and your house may be bombed and you may lose your life. And actually, some people said yes – some people earning $12 or less. Even some people living in homes covered with newspapers to keep out the cold. I think people were so used to living with fear and being aware that being black in America is so dangerous that it makes sense to risk everything and to move into an even more fearful place if there is even a small chance that freedom may be won.

Particularly interesting were the impressions shared by retired Philadelphia school teacher Ms. Bell, whose contribution, entitled "A Young Communist Joins SNCC," comprised the bulk of her presentation. As a young activist in the 1950s, her relationship with both SNCC and the Communist Party's YCL were defined by the linked struggles around racism, jobs, peace, and healthcare.

What made Debbie Amis Bell's inclusion in the program especially significant was her status as an open communist for more than 50 years. Since communist labor leaders were expelled from the CIO board during the McCarthy Era after WW2, the national labor movement has been very chary of acknowledging Reds in our ranks. This certainly wouldn't have kept her chapter out of a book published the University of Illinois Press, but her appearance on an official AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department panel reading about the influence of her CP membership in her organizing activities came as a breath of fresh air.

Poem of the Week: in memory of malcolm x

2013-02-01T22:42:00.001-05:00

in memory of malcolm x

William F. Mack

we are listening
dead malcolm to
your lingering music

damnit they killed
you/by not listening /

so we burned making
flames as a
sacrifice to you/
dead malcolm/

your words are true
so we paint this
country black with
smoke/

brothers and sisters
brothers and sisters/
listen to your black
malcolm who calls
from another place
with black music
from black voices

oh my God Malcolm
rescue us . . . .
must we die to
listen

brothers and sisters
brothers and sisters/
spread his music
through the streets
we are listening
dead malcolm

damnit they
killed you.

winter 67

from Arts In Society, Vol 5, No 3,, 1968

[What with February being Black History Month and the 21st marking the anniversary of the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, or Malcolm X, as he is best known, all the Poems of the Week this month will be be related to Malcolm. In searching for and selecting them, I was reflecting on how massive an outpouring of poetry his murder provoked. Much had to do with the rising Black Arts movement which grew up as part of the overall Black Liberation Movement. But the same thing didn't happen when MLK was gunned down, on a guess because he came out of a movement marked above all else by singing. Not so Malcolm X. That in turn reminded me of this poem, bluntly speaking of "dead malcolm" and insisting on "his music" from start to finish.

I have been unable to track down anything about the author, William F. Mack, described as "a young black poet with interests in acting, writing and film-making. If you know anything further, please write something in the comments section.]

Poem of the Week: Landlord

2013-01-25T13:39:00.000-05:00

LANDLORD

Langston Hughes

Landlord, landlord,
My roof has sprung a leak.
Don't you 'member I told you about it
Way last week?

Landlord, landlord,
These steps is broken down.
When you come up yourself
It's a wonder you don't fall down.

Ten Bucks you say I owe you?
Ten Bucks you say is due?
Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'll pay you
Till you fix this house up new.

What? You gonna get eviction orders?
You gonna cut off my heat?
You gonna take my furniture and
Throw it in the street?

Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.
Talk on-till you get through.
You ain't gonna be able to say a word
If I land my fist on you.

Police! Police!
Come and get this man!
He's trying to ruin the government
And overturn the land!

Copper's whistle!
Patrol bell!
Arrest.
Precinct Station.
Iron cell.
Headlines in press:
Man Threatens landlord
Tenant Held Bail
Judge Gives Negro 90 Days In County Jail!

[Poem of the Week is back. I fell off toward the end of 2012. I'll try to come correct this year. So much of Langston Hughes is well known that I was steered to this one by the fact that three people I know have been without heat recently. And it's cold out.]

Welcome "Idle No More"!

2013-01-04T11:06:00.002-05:00

by Michael Leonardi

In just a few short months a grassroots movement has grown in North America that is inspiring people across the planet. Idle No More has been the rallying cry of the indigenous people in Canada that have now been joined in solidarity by people all over the world. Its blogspot can be found here and its manifestations can be seen and heard internationally. The Occupy Wall Street! movement has joined in solidarity with the Idle No More insurgency across North America. With Occupy Canada and the recent victories of the student uprising in Quebec, including the shuttering of the only nuclear plant in Quebec just last week, visions of a North American Spring seem a more distinct possibility with strong hopes that the powerful forces stirring across Canada can push their way south across the border and inspire the sleeping and drugged US populace to finally be shaken awake, as Occupy has already managed to raise the consciousnesses of the 99%.

Canada is usually snowy this time of year and the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013 have been no exception. Snow covers at least 90 percent of the ground in Canada today. As uprisings go, Spring has tended been the season for the multitudes to take to the streets to demand a better existence. But in Canada, the indigenous people and their allies have been pushed by draconian new anti-environmental legislation and violations of native sovereignty by the Conservative Party government headed by Stephen Harper. They have decided that this winter is the season for the dawn of a Canadian uprising that could help to internationalize the world's Spring revolts into a cohesive force that puts the planet and its ecosystems at the forefront for the survival of future generations. Idle No More is expanding fast as it targets the criminal chemical and energy cartels and their governmental sponsors which collude to bring us more nukes, more tar sands, more poison, continued ecological devastation and more cancer. In Canada the cry of Enough! is sounding across the snowy landscape.

Over the New Year's weekend my family and I visited one of the powerful blockades set up in recent days throughout Canada. This blockade was constructed on the Winter Solstice to block a CN rail line that crosses Aamjiwnaang land outside of Sarnia, Ontario and is known as the Aamjiwnaang Blockade. It was set up over a rail line that is central to delivering toxic chemical stews to be processed, refined and manufactured in what is known as Canada’s chemical valley in Sarnia. This area is considered one of the most polluted
areas of Canada where the air is poisoned around the clock by refineries and chemical plants that stretch for miles along the St. Clair river.

We arrived at the blockade on Sunday, December 30 after a trek over from Grand Bend, Ontario on the shores of Lake Huron. I was given directions to the site from Ron Plain, an Aamjiwnaang environmental justice activist and local leader. Plain has been helping his people confront the chemical pollution and expansion of tar sands drilling and oil pipelines that desecrate the landscape around Sarnia and bring in the poisons extracted from the devastated wilderness areas of more western and northern parts of the continent. The blockade was just on the outskirts of Sarnia and we knew we had arrived when we saw the colorful flags and signs marking the area.

The main spark to the Idle No More uprising was created when the conservative-dominated Canadian parliament, led by its Texas-trained, Bush dynasty, energy frontman Stephen Harper, passed a new law called C-45. This law opens up vast parts of Canadian land and many areas protected by native sovereignty rights to unadulterated exploitation, devastation and desecration as has already been experienced with Tar Sands and Uranium mining for decades. The passage of this law eliminates environmental protections for over two and half million previously protected rivers, lakes and streams and is viewed as not only as a frontal assault on the environment of all Canadians but also the beginning of an attack on Indigenous People’s sovereignty and treaties.

We were filled with anticipation as we pulled up our car past the no trespassing signs and barricades closer to the makeshift structures in the distance. We were greeted by a group of wonderful people and witnessed a powerful display of solidarity. There was a shipping container that acted as a kitchen and was full of food, as a constant stream of visitors -- mostly from surrounding native tribes -- came through to drop off food and other supplies. Tarps and tents made a circle over the single line of railroad tracks that traversed the land through a small snowy woods at the point of the blockade. Two fire barrels burned in the center of the camp. We stayed for about an hour, discussing the situation in Sarnia and its similarities to Toledo, where we too are surrounded by nukes, coal plants and refineries.

Chiefs from the surrounding First Nations were stopping in to voice their solidarity with the movement and announce that plans were a foot for more direct actions in the coming days. That afternoon the ferry crossing to the United States on the Walpole Island First Nation reserve had been shut down by a circle dance and the demonstrators took the Ferry across to Michigan and marched down the main street of Algonac for a time, too. There was an Idle No More Christmas tree at the camp and many wonderful flags symbolizing native resistance and the respect for future generations that is held so dearly as the underpinning of native belief systems. We watched as three purple flags were hoisted on a log pole, some of the symbols of this growing movement. It was inspiring to witness the profound ecological understanding of these comrades and to see that this movement was truly focused on saving the planet, our children and future generations from the continuous industrial onslaught that we are experiencing. We headed home at dusk and decided to come back through with firewood when we would be making our way back to Toledo.

Idle No More is a truly grassroots phenomenon and began when four native and non native women began holding teach-ins’ in Saskatoon. Regina and Prince Albert to start bringing awareness of Bill C 45 back in October. When C-45 came up for a vote on December 4th, the leaders of the First Nations from across Canada made it clear that they were hearing the voices of concern that were spreading like wildfire about this legislation and attempted to enter Parliament to voice their concerns. They were barred entry and a physical scuffle ensued that led to intensified national outrage and a unified support for the Idle No More movement coming from the tribal leadership and Indian chiefs that have often been criticized for their ineffectiveness and weakness in addressing these issues.

On the 10th of December, there was a national day of action called for by the Idle No More movement and circle dances, rallies and marches took place across the country. On the 11th, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence began a hunger strike that has now stretched into its 24th day, further galvanizing the movement. Spence has promised to starve herself to death if the Prime Minister himself does not meet with her to discuss the greed-driven direction of the country. On the December 21, winter solstice, protests and blockades were launched in numerous places around Canada with solidarity actions held in the United States and around the world.

Yesterday, January 2, on our way back through Sarnia to Toledo we stopped at the blockade to drop off some firewood and show our solidarity. The Canadian authorities planned to crack down this day and Ron Plain was in court to face contempt charges along with the chief of Sarnia’s police forces. The police in Sarnia had refused to follow a court injunction to remove the blockade just after it started. Yesterday, a judge acting on behalf of Canada’s criminal government and corporate sponsors ordered that the blockade be removed by the Ontario Provincial Police. The mood at the blockade was festive nonetheless. We met a member of Occupy Toronto busy cutting wood. The blockade was dismantled around midnight last night after a celebration of its successes in bringing broader international attention to this movement. The Idle No More Christmas tree was burned, a feast was eaten and drums were played around the fire. Now the movement in Southern Ontario will move forward with other plans. Border crossings may be targeted in coming days.

Instead of seeing December 21, 2012 as the end of the world, the Indigenous people of Canada and their international allies recognized it as a new beginning where the health of our environment and the protection of Mother Earth would be the new priority for human kind. Clearly, this shift in priorities is not going to happen without a serious struggle. Images from the Idle No More movement are multiplying around the social networks as we begin this new year, coupled with images of a massive march of the Zapatistas in Mexico that took place on the 21st as well. Both to the North and South of the U.S. borders an Earth-centered movement is a foot that is looking to kick the anthropocentrism of industrial capitalism to the curb.

There are sparks of resistance here in the U.S. as well. In the coming days a new blockade will be set up in Texas as the resistance to Tar Sands grows. Plans are afoot across the country and the world for solidarity actions with Idle No More movement and direct actions targeting these industries and governments that continue to push our health, the environment and the existence of future generations aside for the profits of the transnational corporations defining the global political regime. Let’s hope that 2013 brings a needed awakening in the United States and that the Obama liberals and progressives shake off their shackles to a system that is plodding along in the wrong direction and decide to be Idle No More!!!

Michael Leonardi is an activist and writer living in Toledo, Ohio. He works with the Coalition Against Nukes and Occupy Toledo. He has also submitted this article to CounterPunch. He can be reached at mikeleonardi@hotmail.com.

Poem of the Week: A Whole Wheat Poem [For Peggy]

2012-12-20T19:18:00.000-05:00

A WHOLE WHEAT POEM [FOR PEGGY]

Gary Allan Kizer

When a friend bakes you bread,
You eat their labor, which requires respect and teeth.
Eating the bread is your own labor, exchanged fairly
And no longer a commodity.

I cannot bake bread in return, I cook cans
On a lightbulb and they would be cold in the mail.
But I can write poems for bread bakers
And give them away free.

The bread you buy in the store is sour,
Too many hands have passed it toward the market.
You can no longer taste the bread bakers love,
All you can taste are sadness, routine.

Next time you go shopping, ask the man for
Bread with love in it, the free bread.
Free bread? With love in it? We're fresh out,
He'll answer, if he answers at all.

If our work tastes bad, think of those
Who own it, who buy it for enough to eat
Stale bread with. Think of those who stamp
A price on things we should do for each other.

When a friend bakes you bread, it in no way helps
Build your body strong in twelve different ways,
Or keep phony monks in business. It quietly asks you
To eat the revolution without rat shit mixed in.

from Let A Single Flower Blossom
(the greenfield review press, 1977)

[This poem touches several issues, especially the question of labor done for love as opposed to labor done for hire, one also addressed by Morris Rosenfeld in an earlier PotW, "For Hire."

Gary Allan Kizer wrote several superb poems. This chapbook is out of print, unfortunately. To give you a better idea of where he's coming from, here's part of his introduction to the chapbook, as it has more information than is readily findable on the Internet:

I was born on a farm outside of Salamanca, New York. Soon after, my parents moved to Buffalo and went to work in the munitions industry toward the end of WWII. My dad split when I was five and I was raised in Buffalo by my mother and two older sisters. Following that came public school, young romance, juvenile delinquency and my first experience as a ward of the State. After 13 months of that, I cam home at 16, forged a birth certificate for 18 and went into the merchant marine. I also met a good woman. We lived common-law for 6 years and raised 5 children. I worked in the steel plants and as a roofer during the last 3 years I spent with my family. Then a man died and i went to Attica State Prison with a life sentence on my back. That was 9 years and 5 different prisons ago. I began reading Karl Marx during my third year in prison. About the same time, the State judged me as being incapable of rehabilitation. I hold the same opinion of the State. Read the book and see who's right.]

I Have a 4-Year-Old Daughter. In the U.S. Today.

2012-12-16T09:06:00.000-05:00

By Michael Leonardi

My daughter is 4 and she goes to school in this country of the United States. My wife and I are seriously contemplating leaving for her safety, not only from the sporadic violence but from the toxicity of poisoned air and water and land and the incredible emotional burden it is putting on us. Is there anywhere left to go on this Earth, to escape the bloody grip of the militarization, violence and contamination of our global economy coupled with the broadening societal psychosis? These United States have a policy of killing children around the world. At least in many other parts of the world life is held to be far more sacred, while here it too often seems that we are reduced to numbers of dead and collateral damage.

Today I was dealing with the county welfare office where there are a good number of young people who entered the field of social work in hopes of helping people. Each caseworker is responsible for 700 families and these young people whot are trying their best to help people are reduced to dealing with damage control in a system that is an overburdened, underfunded nightmare. I have learned that to receive assistance in the state of Ohio you must work at least 35 hours a week and that this work is paid barely minimum wage that does not allow people enough to survive in one of the poorest cities in America -- Toledo, Ohio. Here in Toledo about 60 people have been killed by guns this year -- mostly young people.

In this city and its surrounding suburbs there are many that claim we are blessed by the likes of British Petroleum Corporation, First Energy Corporation, Chrysler Corporation, Detroit Edison Corporation, which provide under 3 percent of the regional population good paying jobs to poison our air and water. It is said by our politicians that nuclear power, refining oil, burning coal, and making cars are what makes our city strong.

When I was dealing with the welfare office today, I finally spoke to a young woman who was very helpful after waiting on hold for over half an hour -- the average wait time when calling Jobs and Family Services. When I asked her name she explained that for security reasons they were not allowed to give out names on the phone because people have been tracked down on Facebook and threatened. She was number 63. I don't want my daughter to grow up to be a number in a society that does not value life--human life, or the rest of the natural world to which we should be so integrally linked.

In Italy recently there has been a major movement developing around this concept of respect for life. This movement is also happening in Japan and India and Egypt and Gaza and Canada and Pakistan and many other places where people have had enough. I know Italy because my daughter was born there. Workers have walked out the largest steel plant in Europe because they do not want to choose between a good paying job and the risk of their child developing early childhood leukemia and dying a miserable death as many children in the town surrounding this plant have been. The United States has a major military base nearby as they do in many areas of Italy. The bankers at the helm of the country are attempting to overrule the judges, the citizens and the workers that want this plant shut down. The United States military has been dumping radioactive waste around Italy, most recently near the northern city of Trieste.

In the United States of America there is such a movement but it is tiny as the society suffers from a myopic and sickly depression. Many are drugged into oblivion on antidepressants fed to them by criminal Pharmaceutical companies that part own our government along with the military and energy companies that keep everyone thinking that all is gonna be just fine again soon. In this country many children are drugged from a very early age, and the rest of the world thinks this is a sickening madness. Those that aren't clinging to sick care seem content to pretend that nothing is seriously wrong, while still others feel powerless in the face of it all and do nothing. In this country many children are drugged from a very early age. The rest of the world thinks this is a sickening madness. You would be hard pressed to find any child on Ritalin in most countries. It is as if America has been zombified.

Shortly after the Columbine shootings president Clinton said that "we need to teach our children to resolve conflicts without violence." Today, Obama cried as many of us have. These presidents uphold a system of killing around the world. Bombs drop in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, from our unmanned drones killing children regularly. Here are some excerpts ofrom Michael Moore's film Bowling For Columbine that still today hold many truths,

At the U.S. Air Force Academy, south of Littleton, we see a shell of a B-52 bomber as a memorial to the North Vietnamese people it killed on Christmas Eve, 1972. Then Michael Moore’s voice-over continues, as we see images of Rocky Flats, where weapons-grade plutonium was manufactured—now a vast toxic waste dump. A few miles away is NORAD, buried in Cheyenne Mt., the center of all nuclear weapons control in case of a World War. Then Moore notes that once a month Lockheed transports one of its completed missiles on the highways of Littleton—late in the night. Moore’s voice-over: “…passing nearby Columbine High School. The rockets are transported in the middle of the night, while the children of Columbine are asleep.”

And

Graphic on the screen: “April 20, 1999.” Shots of the bombing of Kosovo, conducted under the aegis of NATO. Graphic on screen: “Largest one day bombing by U.S. in Kosovo War”—a title that’s more than a little misleading. Then file footage of dead villagers killed when bombs were accidentally dropped on their village. Cut to Pres. Clinton, who says, “We are striking hard at Serbia’s machinery of repression.” Then we hear a foreign correspondent’s voice saying “on the hit list were a hospital and a local primary school.” Graphic on the screen: “One Hour Later.” We see President Clinton again. “We all know there has been a terrible shooting in a high school in Littleton, Colorado. I hope the American people will be praying for the students, and the parents, and the teachers."

This country has a long way to go to healing and until the chains of slavery to a neoliberal police state are shaken, the process will not have even begun.

Michael Leonardi is a Toledo resident, an activist currently working to end nuclear power and a frequent contributor to Counterpunch.

Poem of the Week: Working on Wall Street

2012-12-11T21:43:00.000-05:00

WORKING ON WALL STREET

May Swenson

What's left of the sun's watered blood
settles between the slabs of Wall Street.
Winter rubs the sky bruise-blue as flesh.
We head down into the subway, glad
the cars are padded with bodies so we
keep warm. Emptied from tall closets
where we work, on the days' shelves
reached by elevators, the heap of us,
pressed by iron sides, dives forward under
the city--parcels shipped out in a trunk.

The train climbs from its cut to the trestle.
Sunset's gone. Those slabs across the murky
river have shrunk to figurines, reflectiing
the blush of neon, a dainty tableau, all
pink, on the dresser top of Manhattan--
eclipsed as we sink into the tunnel.
The train drops and flattens for the long
bore under Brooklyn.

Night, a hiatus hardly real, tomorrow
this double rut of steel will racket us back
to the city, We, packages in the trade
made day after day, will tumble out of
hatches on The Street, to be met by swags
of wind that scupper off those roofs
(their upper windows blood-filled by the sun,)
Delivered into lobbies, clapped into upgoing
cages, sorted to our compartments, we'll be
stamped once more for our wages.

1956

[I was a bit surprised that this brilliantly written work by one of the 20th century's great poets didn't get any play during the heyday of Occupy Wall Street! last year. Though I've never seen any indication May Swenson was a Red, or even hung around with them, her poem recasts the daily labors of office workers in the financial district as literal commodities.
And it presents a vision of the daily commute to and from Brooklyn that could have been written this evening. Reading it, I am forcibly reminded of my comrades who struggled to build Office Workers United and unionize clerical workers in the towers of Manhattan in the '70s.]

PotW: Pome for Dionne Warwick aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise

2012-11-30T11:32:00.000-05:00

POME FOR DIONNE WARWICK ABOARD THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER U.S.S. ENTERPRISE

Askia Muhammed Touré

"ENTERTAINING TROOPS"

Damn! . . . Baby, when I saw all that warmth,
that joy, that life
sucked in by the savage eyes of Beasts
raining "democratic' death upon the yellow world
of Vietnam, I almost cried.
YOU!--decked out in gaudy mod colors
mini-skirt riding high above regal honey thighs,
raped by the Dollar Juggernaut--"ENTERTAINING TROOPS!"
Soulsister,
Black Princess chained upon the Modern Auction Block,
listen while the Auctioneer shouts above my rage:
          "BID
                   "EM
                           IN! ! !"

from Natural Process, An Anthology of New Black Poetry, 1970

[This week's poem was chosen to honor Stevie Wonder for coming correct last week after a storm of protest greeted the announcement he would be performing at a benefit for the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces. Askia Muhammed Touré, activist and leading figure in the Black Arts Movement of the '60s, wrote his Pome toward the end of that decade, during the U.S. war on Vietnam. This latest victory for the nternational BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign targeting the apartheid state of Israel shows again that not all the lessons of the '60s have been lost.]