Regarding the proposed Wall St. bailout, can I tell you how angry this makes me? Things are bad enough for working people, blue or white collar. Our real wages are less than they were in the '70's thanks to years of Republican rule. We need national health care but we're told there is no money for that. There are people working until they die because they can't afford to retire and people who have lost their homes and gone bankrupt due to heath care costs. This is a sad commentary on capitalist civilization and a tragedy for us all. If this bailout is approved we will be living with more crime, more homelessness, and more poverty. The deregulation of electricity and the high cost of home heating oil and gas will mean more deaths this coming winter. I am sick and tired of the private rip-off of public wealth.

Here’s my proposal:
Raise the taxes on unearned income, lower taxes for people who work for their money.
Suspend all pending deregulation (PPL) and reverse all past deregulation.
Fully fund a decent National Health Care Plan immediately.
Fund public transportation and build a bus shelter at every stop. (Did you ever stop to look around Allentown and see people standing in the rain and snow in the industrial parks or even on Hamilton Street because there are no bus shelters? This is ridiculous. How much can they cost?)
Stop the wars. I am sick of seeing young people die for nothing because there are no jobs for them at home.

The American people have always sacrificed for the greater good, but this is the straw that broke the camels back. For years we have been watching the rich get richer while we got poorer. Enough is enough. We should not have to pay because these people danced like madmen around the golden calf destroying the environment in the process. They are crazy-like King Midas they want everything to turn to gold, but you can't eat gold, you can't breathe gold, you can't drink gold. These people gambled and lost. They should wear the asses ears, not us. I don't even buy lottery tickets. Why should I or any other working American have to pay for their greed? The damage done to the people of this country during the Bush Jr., Bush Sr. and Reagan years should be reversed, not compounded and the only way to do it is to make the rich pay their full share.

Whatever happens with the bailout we must continue to protest against bearing the burden. We are ripped off first when we are not paid the full value of our labor. We the have to pay taxes on what we earn. We have no say in where our tax dollars go or who they benefit. We are forced to allow them to be used to kill people all over the world while Americans also die from cancer, starvation, homelessness and the diseases of despair-drug use and gang violence.

The world could be a beautiful place and our tax dollars could be use to repair the environmental and social damage that unregulated capitalism has caused while employing people in every community. The people who are running this country are sucking all life out of it for their own private profit. They have so much money their crisis is that they have nowhere to invest it. Meanwhile we live in the middle of the bank robberies and shootings working like dogs until we die wondering if we’ll have jobs tomorrow. This is wrong and has to stop.

I sent a shortened version of this post to all my elected representatives. We have to wake up, stay outraged and keep the pressure on to get our money back and turn this country around.

Endless War is not Human Nature

John Brinson in his Oct. 6, 2007 article in The Morning Call about why we must have endless war states, “some people are evil, and seek to take from others whatever they want. They will take the property of others, the land of others, the lives of others, the freedom of others.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement, but I totally disagree with his opinion of who these people are.

Growing up in the 60’s and ‘70’s I was taught that Hitler came to power because he was a charismatic person and a great speaker. The assassinations of the Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King very charismatic men and great speakers made me wonder how Hitler got so far toward his patriotic, nationalist goal while these good people were dead. I did some independent research and learned that Hitler had many powerful financial supporters like the notoriously anti-Semitic and anti-labor Henry Ford and the cartel I.G.Farben. I also learned that when people have no jobs and money the way to keep the heat off of the people who have it all whether in Germany in the 1930’s or the US in 2007 is to find a scapegoat. For Hitler it was the Jews and communists, for the US it’s immigrants and the anti-war and environmental movements.

When Franco overthrew the democratically elected government in Spain, in El Salvador in the ‘80’s and during the destruction of Yugoslavia it was necessary for good people to fight. Unfortunately the US was on the wrong side in all of those conflicts. Now it is necessary for good people to fight against those who are using our tax money to kill other people while corporate war profiteers make a fortune. The freedoms that we still have left after the “Patriot” Act were not fought for by men with guns on foreign soil. There were no headlines, “WWI Ends, Workers Win the 8 Hour Day, WWII Ends, Workers Gain the Right to Organize, Korean War Ends, No More Jim Crow.” These freedoms were fought for by ordinary people right here.

Brinson states, “War has always been with us, and as long as human nature gives us human evil, there will be war.” Anyone who is aware of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder will tell you that violence is not a part of human nature. The human evil he should be referring to is the psychopathic need to suck the monetary value out of everything that exists leaving behind nothing but chaos and death. Unfortunately for the evil people who want to own and control everything on the planet chaos and death are preferred.

One Possibility for a New World

Hiss, slither, rattle and bite.
I know what you are.
Hate and greed.
Bloody, viscous lover of death.
Burn it.
Poison it.
Turn it’s womb from sponge to puss.
Turn it’s penis from giver of life to weapon of death.
What life remains spills dead seed from a dispenser after the dollars are inserted into the appropriate slot.

Progress of the paper dollar kind.

What if tomorrow you woke up and there was no money?

No money for anyone. No money for the rich, no money for the poor.

No money for yachts, no money for mortgages.
No money for Beverly Hills mansions, no money for student loans.
No money for war, no money for food.

No food for money, just food for when you’re hungry.
You grow it, you eat it.

No housing for profit, just shelter where and when you need it.
Maybe picking oranges in Florida today, maybe camping in Maine tomorrow.
Maybe Museums in New York today, maybe teaching in Mississippi tomorrow.
Maybe camping at a tent in the woods today, maybe harvesting on a farm in the country tomorrow.
Maybe Pennsylvania today, maybe Mexico tomorrow.
You would live, teach, learn work, live a thousand lives among your fellow human beings.

No utopia - no pre-peeled grapes and bon-bons.
Working, reading, talking with people.

Still a world filled with sexism, racism, homo and redneck-phobia.
But those are contradictions among the people and maybe if money didn’t exist anymore
there would not be a battle in the ring
in any given country
on any given public street in any little town anywhere in the world.

No nukes.
No cluster bombs.
No tanks (or whatever they call them these days.)
No 18 year olds with weapons abroad or in Newark, NJ. (My home town.)

No capitalism.

Just us.
Up for it?

Democracy

Dear Congressman Dent,
The word ‘Democracy” is thrown around a lot these days. The more we hear it spoken, the more the reality of democracy disappears. We need cameras in the street to “preserve democracy.” We need wiretaps to “preserve democracy.” We need wars in Iraq, Columbia and all over Africa to “preserve democracy.”
Right under our noses the wealth that our parents and grandparents created is being stolen to enrich the few. Taxes are lowered for the wealthy and the poor starve while they work at minimum wage jobs with no healthcare benefits. The factories where our grandparents and parents fought for the 8 hour day and decent benefits and working conditions are becoming museums or condominiums, just as farms, orchards and wetlands are destroyed for housing developments named Pheasant Run or Orchard View.
We are told that Social Security is in danger of running out but the military budget is gushing full force with our tax dollars mixing with the blood of young men and women fighting each other all over the world. There are no decent paying jobs for young Americans, but there are plenty for young people in third world countries with no health, safety or environmental protections. American corporations are free to make a profit anywhere in the world. American are free to starve, work until they drop to keep their medical benefits, send their children to under funded, crumbling schools, join the military where they will gamble with their lives and the lives of other human beings or go to jail.
I constantly hear tell of how the military fought for our right to freedom of speech and assembly. Is that the truth? Was our right to free speech and assembly, our right to protest and participate in this democracy fought for on some far off shore? No. It was fought for right here in the USA by working men, women and children not by soldiers or the National Guard (who were usually shooting AT them.) Our freedom was fought for by the people who participated in the Union movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, the Anti-War Movement.
We have not reverted to Fascism yet. As much as many might welcome it, we still do not all follow the leader. We don’t all march in lockstep, hands over our hearts, blinders firmly fixed, yellow ribbons flapping in the breeze while young people are burned to death, torn to pieces or mentally scarred for life. Some of us exercise our rights in our own neighborhoods to stand up for what we know is right. Nine of these people were arrested in your office on January 17, 2006. Your actions in having these people arrested show much more than words what you think of actually existing democracy when it is standing in front of your face. I am asking you to examine your feelings on this issue and drop the charges against these practicing democrats (with a small d.) Focus you efforts on rooting out and jailing the people responsible for ripping off the public trust of its money and its hope for a better future.

Merry Christmas

I know I'm not being politically correct but Christmas is a pagan holiday and since I'm a pagan by way of catholicism and communism I guess Merry Christmas is ok. I. don't like X mas. I know there's a christ in christmas but ... enough on that subject.

I've been really busy between the candy and the beading but I got everything done. We were supposed to have 8 people here for dinner tonight, but someone was shot last night. Three of our invited guests knew the victim and they were up all night.

It was ok though. I was so tired. I still haven't caught up on my sleep from the 2 and 3 in the morning nights doing the candy and then the wrapping of the presents. Then yesterday one of Barry's co-worker's had an open house so I had to finish shopping, cleaning and make a candy tray.

So it was just Barry, Katy, Danny, Berto and me and it was fine. (Berto has 2 teeth!)I couldn't wait to go through my beads and bead books and we are eating again-Barry just made us plates-ham sandwiches and potato salad that I made at 6 this morning-I was the first one up-watching FSTV and peeling potatoes. There were a few good shows on-a documentary about Yip Harburg the blacklisted lyricist who wrote Brother Can You Spare a Dime ( apparantly the Rockefeller Dad was going around handing out dimes to people dring the depression )and of course Somewhere Over the Rainbow. There was one about the mess coal companies are making in the south and another one about the anti-war movement in Amherst, MA at the Republican National Convention (we were there.) We should have been at the Democratic Nationl Convention too the pigs-Leiberman and Madelaine Albright yuch!

Anyway so it's just us now-Katy and Berto are out and Danny's watching TV so we are surfing and blogging and listening to the Four Tops and Stevie Wonder-I love Bernadette-no whores and bitches in those lyrics-
Bernadette,
people are searching for the kind of love that we possess,
some go on searching their whole lives through and never find someone like you...

Ribbon in the sky
This is not a coincidence
And far more than a lucky chance But what is that was always meant Is our ribbon in the sky for our love.

So it's just us-Me and Barry, Barry and me, Barry and Diana.
I am so grateful to have him here still. I think he's gonna be OK.
A few more months-April and the oncologist says he's home free.

I have my Barry and my kids are here and I have 2 grandchildren that I never thought I'd have-they're both boys but you can't have everything...

I'm pretty happy.
Merry Chrstmas everyone.
Love,
Diana

today

My kids are back home. Katy with a baby. Danny without his baby. I like having them home. I don't have to worry about them too along with global warming and the economy and the invasions.
I've been very nervous lately though. I'm not particularly happy with my job. I am working too many hours and I don't have time to think abou anything.
I'm tired, can't do any home improvements and that is making me nervous.

Deja Vu

Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury comic is following the formerly fooball helmeted BD through therapy for whatever they call shell shock these days.
He is home minus a leg from Iraq. He's angry and weak at the same time.

In her Vampire Chronicles Ann Rice says that because vampires live forever, they sometimes have to bury themselves in the ground to regenerate and some of them never come back. I am only 51 but I already see the consequences of not teaching the true history of the world. These boys and girls now too who join the army for whatever reason and go to war and do what they do coming back wounded, missing limbs, burned faces, crimes against other human beings indelibly etched in their minds when will they ever learn? There's only so much you can blame on the society at large when all you really need is 1/2 a brain and a library card to figure it out for yourself.

Don't try to tell them before they go. 10-12 years ago when we did the first local antiwar march during the welcome home the troops parade in bethlehem soeone asked one of the skinny young boys driving a tank what he thought of the antiwar marchers. He pointe dto a squirrel that had been crushed beneath the wheels of one of the military vehicles and said that's what I thik of them. Idiot. He doesn't know that he is that squirrel. Cannon fodder.

These wars, the rich taking everything, the destruction of the planet-these things make so little sense to me that I don't know how to talk to people anymore. I feel like an alien in my own country.

I am getting kind of annoyed by ANSWER too. I mean I'm glad they're organizing these demonstrations but we only have one life and not that much time to live it. They really need to hit the culture issue. The left does not have a cultural wing. We need one that will hit peoples hearts, their emotions. Something to make their stomachs hurt and their hearts reel.

It's hard out there for a pimp!!! Give me a break

I cannot believe this song won an Oscar; and yes I saw the movie.
Here's my parody. I'm not a fan of rap music but it's the best I can do.

It’s hard out there for a pimp? (You must be kidding!)

A man who lives off women is a wimp! (I’m not kidding.)

Get a job at McDonalds for your rent. (I’m not kidding.)

Work a double shift for the gas. (I’m not kidding.)

Because at least it’s your back that working. (Not a woman’s)

Because at least it’s you soul that’s breaking (Not a woman’s)

In my life I’ve seen and read a lot of history

And I know that life for working people is never easy

But that doesn’t mean any man has the right

To use women and children so he can take his next bite.

I’ve seen people beaten down by sickness and death

I’ve seen people lose hope when they’ve done their best

I’ve seen people deal with the hand they were dealt

By working hard and not using anyone else

A lot of blood, sweat and tears built this country’s wealth

And the few want to keep it all for themselves

But using other people to get “your fare share” of the crumbs

Is stupid, mean and just plain dumb!

If you were at work and not on the street

If you sweated your own body instead of using women like pieces of meat

Maybe you would get a taste of what life is really like
Instead of moaning, groaning and glorifying lumpen life

Newark NJ’s where I’m from, in my heart I’m still there

But it’s OK because I am aware

That its people like us who can build a better place.

Without being millionaires and spitting in peoples face.

I hate the words chick, whore, babe and bitch
I don’t want to be famous, flashy or rich

Our time will come. Maybe tomorrow’s not the date

But we’ve got a lot of patience so we can watch and wait

We’ll keep on pushing one step at a time

and if you get in our way you are way out of line.

A long Goodbye

I can’t stop thinking about my grandmother. My neighbor’s husband died suddenly. He knew he had cancer, he went back to work to wait for chemotherapy and he collapsed at work and died 4 days later. Joan Did ion’s husband died while she was making dinner.

My husband who is in remission from small cell lung cancer since May 2005 after a year long diagnosis/treatment nightmare has been sick for 3 days. Only one with a fever, but the noise in his lungs is like aluminum on a washboard. His fever reached 103 at one point. He wasn’t delirious so we are letting it ride since it’s a three day weekend. Last time this happened in August/September he was talking about how juicy bats are and totally out of it. I took him to the emergency room but it turned out to be a nightmare after the semi-deliriousness went away. When we were at the oncologist last month I mentioned the sound in his chest. The medical assistant had the stethoscope on Barry’s chest and had to take it out of her ears to hear me say, “That sound.” She said it sounded like a dry cough, but I sounded like a very wet cough to me. She sent him for an X-ray and gave him 2 meds. That was about a month ago and the sound has gotten to this. The infection that he has in his lungs has nothing to do with cancer except for his increased susceptibility so it’s not their function to take care of it.

When he was first feeling wrong I was very angry at both him and the doctors. Him because he was not enough in touch with himself to know that he was being fed a line. Sleep apnea was the best they could come up with. If you understand the current medical system there is no Dr Grueben who knew you since you were born. Who came to your house with 4 sick kids to give them the measles vaccine. I had to send him back again and again to make them find the cancer.

That’s what saved his life.

And this is our life now. I was so, so, angry at first for all the years I told him to stop smoking, but I don’t know if that would have made any difference because of hs family history. I was so, so angry that finally we were going to be able to enjoy the results of all our work and have some fun and as Ferlinghetti wrote, “right in the middle of it comes the smiling mortician.”

I was mad at the therapists available at the local hospital. The one available to me was an acceptor of my situation. I should go out with friends. I should find other interests. What kind of crap is that? I have never accepted anything in my life that I did not like. Why do I have to accept this? Barry does accept. He’s too conventional. He makes fun of me because I don’t walk on the grass or go up the down staircase or in the out door, but this …this conventional crap medical advice he accepts just like he accepted Sam’s pronouncement that “comrades don’t buy houses.”

Why would I call attention to myself by walking on the grass or walking in the out door?

That kind of stuff only makes your life harder than it already is. If you’re a white middle class man or woman may be you can get away with it. It makes you feel like Jesus to have yourself arrested and put in jail and have people have potluck fundraisers to pay your fines while you await the results of your sentence. All I can think of is that movie, “Romero,” and the beautiful young girl raped countless times, her tongue cut out, trucked out to a dumpsite and then shot. Democracy is not a moral principal. It’s a human right. American democracy only exists for the people who accept capitalism and see the brutality of its reach at home and abroad as an exception rather than the rule. They forget that Jesus was not arrested and let out so the community could have a pot luck dinner to raise his bail. He was crucified as a criminal.

So anyway, my grandmother died after having had Alzheimer’s for years. She was not herself for a long time. She didn’t remember her Danny O’Day which is what she used to call me because I loved the Irish songs so much. She wasn’t Irish as far as I know. Her dad was French; her mom was adopted and didn’t know what she was. My great grandfather Pierre Lambe was a housepainter and a painter of landscapes. My grandmother Pearl was the youngest of their children and the sickliest. She was 13 years younger than my grandfather. She taught me how to bake. She taught me to love potato pancakes and German potato salad and sugar cookies and Hungarian squares and bundt cake. She loved me in the way that someone who had been coddled and loved herself can love someone-with no fear and no reservation. I don’t love that way. I can’t love that way. When I was older I used to go and visit her. We would talk. When I was living with Barry she came to our apartment in Avenel and we went to lunch and shopping in Perth Amboy. That was before she walked over to the UPS terminal at Newark Airport and got lost, before she got lost at the Christmas tree farm, before she hit Danny when he was just a baby. Before the illness took over her life.

Barry’s illness has taken over our lives. He will not finish the bathroom. He will not come back to the way he used to be. My grandfather George Sackmann used to take me for walks and apple picking. He got sick and he turned into his illness, he became his illness. Barry has become his illness. He’s not Barry anymore. So I guess I can accept that Barry is gone already in so many ways and that what I have to do is make sure he is loved until the end. The memories I have of my grandparents were those of a child. The memories I have of Barry are as an adult. I chose him. It wasn’t an accident. I love him more than anyone in the world.

These are some of my favorite books.

Testament of Youth

Vera Brittain

This is an autobiographical account of a woman coming of age during WWI. I believe it is the only memoir of WWI written by a woman. Also was a Masterpiece Theater series. Available at Alibris.com

The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina

Pioneers for Woman’s Rights and Abolition

Gerda Lerner

Really great account of 2 courageous sisters. Gives you an interesting picture of the pacifist Quakers too. “Reasonable” men can tolerate a lot of horror and violence if they are not personally affected by it. Available at Alibris.com

Black Women in White America

Gerda Lerner

Documentary history of black women in their own words from slavery times through 1971. Available at Alibris.com

America’s Working Women

A Documentary History 1600-present

Edited by Rosalyn Baxandall, Linda Gordon, Susan Reverby

My favorite part of this book is written by Meridel Le Sueur. It’s called “I Was Marching” and was first published in Proletarian Literature in the US in 1935.

It’s an account of a militant Teamsters Strike in Minneapolis in 1934 and how she-a middle class woman unused to being a part of a larger thing-joined the strike. Available at Alibris.com

Tell Me a Riddle

Tillie Olsen

First published in 1962 although written during the depression, this is a working class feminist classic. “I Stand Here Ironing,” is a heart wrenching memoir of the choices a young mother was forced to make when raising her children during the depression. She is ironing and thinking about how these choices affected her eldest daughter. Here’s the last line, “Only help her to know-help make it so there is cause for her to know-that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.” Available at Alibris.com

Yonnondio

Tillie Olsen

A novel about a poor white family during the depression set in Wyoming in a mining town. It was originally written in the 1920’s but lost for 40 years. Available at Alibris.com

Silences

Tillie Olsen

Nonfiction book on why women and the working class don’t write as much as they should. The silences she refers to are not natural welcome silences but, the silences imposed on people “century after century their beings consumed in the hard, everyday essential work of maintaining human life.” Available at Alibris.com

These are some of the books I remember from the class on American Ethnic Groups

The Rise of David Levinsky

Abraham Cahan

Russian Jewish immigrant in NYC. Successful, but not happy.

Available at Alibris.com

The Dollmaker

Harriet Arnow.

They made a TV movie of this with Jane Fonda.

A woman moves to the city from the hills to follow her husband to a factory job.

Big mistake, but the woman is heroic in the way she faces all the trials laid before her. The title comes from the carving she does for a hobby. Available at Alibris.com

The Fortunate Pilgrim

Mario Puzo

Italian immigrants in the US during the depression. Available at Alibris.com

Non Fiction books about Education of the Working Class in America

The Night is Dark and I am Far From Home

Jonathon Kozol

Great book that was blacklisted from Teacher Education classes for years.” School is the ether of our lives by now: the first emaciation along the surgical road that qualifies the young to be effective citizens, alert to need but tempered as to passion, cognizant of horror but well inoculated against vigorous response.”

And “Basic training does not begin in boot camp. It begins in kindergarten. It continues with a vengeance for the subsequent 12 years. Available at Alibris.com

Hidden Injuries of Class

Richard Sennet and Jonathon Cobb

I read this book in college and liked it a lot because it deals with some of the issues working class people have fitting into the middle class world. Two of the things I remember most are that working class fathers use their lives as a warning, not an example. Unlike the lawyers and doctors, they do not want their children to follow in their footsteps. The other thing is that being singled out is uncomfortable for a working class person. Middle class people see themselves as individuals whereas working class people to not like to be seen as better than their peers. So those of us who move into the middle class are “lone, lorn creatures.”

Available at Alibris.com

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Paola Friere

Philosophy of education and the poor. How the educational system is set up to oppress the poor and to maintain their silence and powerlessness. This is an extremely important book and helps us to understand the world we live in-like why do poor people, working people vote for Bush who is not “robbing us with a six-gun” but “with a fountain pen.”

“But almost always, during the initial stage of struggle, the oppressed instead of striving for liberation tend themselves to become oppressors or ‘sub-oppressors.” …Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors.” This book is something everyone in the country should read and one that we should have a national dialogue about. It is about becoming humanized as opposed to remaining alienated and how important that is to building a new world.

Available at Alibris.com

The Other Side of Western Civilization

I was lucky enough to have gone to college at a time when I could study my history-women and the working class. These are some books about that.

The War on labor and the Left

Patricia Cayo Sexton

The details of the enormous amount of legal and illegal violence used against working people as they have fought to organize and maintain a decent life-through the Reagan/Thatcher 1980’s. Written by the wife of one of my college professors, Brendan Sexton. The Working Class Experience was the name of the class I took with him. There were about 10 students and we had to write a paper on our family. I wrote one about my father’s family. My grandfather was Filipino and my grandmother was Irish, but before WWII my grandfather was deported to the Philippines rather than go to a camp. (It wasn’t just the Japanese who were interned.) They were caught there during the Japanese occupation including my father who was one of their 9 children, 7 born here, 2 in the Philippines one born blind, the other died in infancy. It was a great class. Available at Alibris.com

A Peoples History of the United States

1492 to the Present

Howard Zinn

American history from the point of view of the people, not the hero’s.

Refreshing and should be required reading for middle school/high school students.

Available at Alibris.com

Rebel Voices an IWW Anthology

Joyce Kornbluth

This book tells the history of the Industrial Workers of the World organized in Eugene Debs words, “not to conciliate but to fight the capitalist class.” This book brings the labor movement to life. It is filled with cartoons, songs and stories written by workers-conscious workers. The song, “Solidarity Forever” was written by a Wobbly. Here are some of the lesser sung words, “All the world that’s owned by idel drones, is ours and ours alone. We have laid the wide foundations; buil it skyward stone by stone. It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own. While the union makes us strong.” On the masthead of the Solidarity newspaper the letters are formed from tools. Mr. Block, the unconscious worker provides political humor. The union the IWW wanted was one big union. Their demands included: A 4 hour day, Jobs for everyone. Security of income. Abolition of the wage system. Production for use and not for profit. A new social order based on the scientific administration of industry. Abundance for workers, nothing for parasites. On page 346 there is an illustration from the Industrial Pioneer, 1925. It is a plant whose roots are Profits. The plant is War and the fruits are skull. On each skull a word is written: want, disability, pain, death, ruin, debt, honor an glory, taxes, disease, despair, sorrow, insanity. On one side of the plant is a soldier/worker, on the other is a capitalist who is saying, “My good fellow, you will be well paid for your patriotic action in tending this glorious plant. You shall have all the fruit above the ground-I’ll take only the roots.” Pretty relevant today. The IWW was eventually squashed, but they left a legacy for us to study and use. The Allentown Public Library has this book. Mine was given to me by the ex-wob and catholic worker, Tim O’ Brien who I met when I was managing and instant print shop in NJ where he used to come in to copy his medical bills and talk. Available at Alibris.com

Atomic Soldiers

American Victims of Nuclear Experiments

Howard L. Rosenberg

This August in my Blog, From the Foot of Mount Olympus, http://tfomo.blogspot.com/ I wrote about dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “It is more than a war crime; it’s a crime against all life on the planet. We are living with the deadly legacy of those bombs. Our loved ones are dying from it; our planet is dying from it and still people wave the flag. Uncle Sam kicks them in the butt while like a reverse mechanical bank they open their mouths to dispense their hard earned cash so he can use the money to kill them, their loved ones and every good thing on this earth. What kind of a god would bless that kind of behavior? This book tells about how the government used American soldiers as guinea pigs. Another example of how we are just fodder-cannon or otherwise.

Available at Alibris.com

Working Class War

American Combat Soldiers in Vietnam

Christian G. Appy

80% of enlisted men in Vietnam came from poor and working class families. Just a little reminder that a lot of these guys did not want to be there folks.

Available at Alibris.com

Expendable Americans

Paul Brodeur

Tens of thousands of Americans die every year of preventable industrial diseases. Legal murder and no consequences to the industries that profit from it.

Available at Alibris.com

Factories in the Fields

Carey McWilliams

It’s hard to believe that this was published in 1935. Explains why “illegal” workers are needed to maintain the profits of agribusiness. Guess why? All the legal immigrants unionized. Not much has changed since then. Your tax dollars are hard at work maintaining horrible working and living conditions and shooting people coming across the border so we can eat factory food. Available at Alibris.com

The Fabulous ‘50’s

Books that reinforce my theory that our good old days haven’t come yet

Tender Comrades

A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist

Patrick Mc Gilligan and Paul Buhle

Interviews with people who were blacklisted during the 50’s. Not just the Hollywood 10. The reason why American movies are so lacking in beauty, skill and content. Available at Alibris.com

Thirty Years of Treason

Excerpts from Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities 1938-1968

Edited by Eric Bentley

In their own words, the testimony of Pete Seeger, Zero Mostel, Joe Papp, Arthur Miller, Jose Ferrer etc. before HUAC. Very limited gang of thugs intimidates creative, intelligent people. How was that allowed to happen? Available at Alibris.com

Naming Names

Victor Navasky

“The blacklist savaged private lives, but the informer’s particular contribution was to pollute the public well, to poison social life in general, to destroy every possibility of a community; for the informer operates on the principle of betrayal and a community survives on the principle of trust.” Available at Alibris.com

The Cold War and the University

Toward an intellectual history of the postwar years.

Contributors: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Immanuel Wallerstein

Destructiveness of Mc McCarthyism on higher education and despite the many letters to the editor in the Morning Call about leftist professors dominating academia, how its legacy continues to intimidate. Available at Alibris.com

The Cultural Cold War

The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters

Frances Stoner Saunders

Battle for hearts and minds after WWII. The staunchest anti-fascists were communists so after the war in many countries they democratically won political offices in many countries in Europe. Well we can’t have that now, can we? So the CIA created magazines and other cultural institutions and paid many writers and intellectuals who wrote for them. About 10 years ago or so there was an exhibit at the Zoellner called, “Shouts from the Wall” Posters and photographs brought home by veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. In the accompanying book there was a quote from John Sayles, the writer and director, “They fought when they didn’t have to fight, fought when it brought no public glory in their hometowns, fought to put a lie to the cynicism that keeps people in darkness. They won’t go away…And in a world run by cynics, in a time when caring about someone you’ve never met is seen as weakness or treachery, how much strength have we taken from the thought of them…” That is what was destroyed in the cultural cold war-humanity. Available at Alibris.com

And the Saga continues in the 60’s and ‘70’s

Agents of Repression the FBI’s Secret War against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement

Ward Churchill

In this and the Cointelpro Papers Ward Churchill documents the covert war against political activists during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s with great detail and controlled anger. The murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, the circumstances behind Leonard Peltiers imprisonment, the murder of the American Indian poet John Trudell’s family are among the many details in this book. Why? Here’s a quote from Dennis Banks reflecting on the second Wounded Knee, “We were prepared for beatings and arrests, time spent in jails and prisons to some degree or another. I guess…you’d have to say we expected death. But somehow, we still didn’t really understand the rules of the game; we weren’t prepared for the magnitude of what happened. Part of that was maybe because we still didn’t really comprehend what the stakes were.” It seems that in the Black Hills, leases for uranium mining were granted to Union Carbide, Chevron, Anaconda, and Kerr-McGee (remember Karen Silkwood) White/Westinghouse among others. This book also makes you realize what Mt. Rushmore is all about. Can you imagine-carving the heads of the conquerors into the sacred Black Hills of the conquered. Civilized?

If you ever get a chance to see the movie, “The Murder of Fred Hampton,” watch it. They were showing it on streaming video on the FSTV site, but I don’t know I they ever got permission to air it. When I was a student in the ‘70’s the group I was in showed this movie at different colleges. It gives you a totally different picture of the Black Panthers. You will conclude from both the book and the movie that “the movement” did not fall apart on its own but was destroyed covertly and overtly. Available at Alibris.com

Link to great article on Columbus originally published in indigenous Thought around the time of the Columbus Quincentenary.

http://www.uctp.org/ColumbusMyth.html

Intelligent Entertaining Fiction

My Year of Meats

Ruth Ozeki

A divorced unemployed documentary film maker gets an offer to make commercials for American beef for the Japanese market. Funny, enlightening political and everything works out in the end. Available at Alibris.com

He, She, It

Marge Piercy

A science fiction book that may very well predict our future if we don’t do something about it soon. The Glop-where the poor live; Feelies: Porn that stimulates the nerve endings in your brain, highly addictive; Secskin: what you wear to protect your body whenever you go outdoors-watch out for organ pirates. The writer is a feminist and the author of the novel Vida-a fictionalized account of a member of the Weather Underground among many other books. Working class background. Available at Alibris.com

Hard Time

Sara Paretsky

VI Warshowsky goes to prison to investigate the murder of a female prisoner.

Terrifying. I cried my eyes out. Available at Alibris.com

Howard Fasts Historical Novels

Working class writer still living but writing in a more popular style now.

These are early books. He is also the author of the book, Spartacus which the Kirk Douglas movie was based on. Dalton Trumbo, the blacklisted writer first worked again on this movie at Kirk Douglas’ insistence.

The Proud and the Free

The American Revolution though the eyes of the men who didn’t have horses or uniforms including the revolt of the Pennsylvania Line, the squashing of the revolt, the executions of the leaders. Available at Alibris.com

Freedom Road

The story of the beginning of a new society after the civil war told through the eyes of a freed slave who goes through a painful educational process and a major transformation until the betrayal of reconstruction when the Federal troops are pulled out of the south and the Klan is allowed to rise. They made a TV movie of this in the ‘80’s with Mohammad Ali and Kris Kristofferson, but the book is better. Available at Alibris.com

The American

The story of John Peter Altgelt the governor of Illinois who pardoned the Haymarket martyrs who were hung during the fight for the 8 hour day. Available at Alibris.com

Art and Culture

Decade of Protest

Political Posters from the US, Vietnam, Cuba 1965-1975

Smart Art Press

There are some really hard hitting posters here. From the US: A photograph of dead Vietnamese people in the middle of a dirt road with the words, Q. And babies? A. And babies. A drawing of a Vietnamese with the statue of liberty being rammed down his throat and the word EAT. 2 Photographs. One with a lighter and a whie child’s hand. Would you burn a child. Then a photograph of a woman holding a child burned by napalm, Vietnamese of course., and the words, When necessary. And many more.For those who are too young to remember Vietnam it will give you a different more serious picture of the ant-war movement. No hippies. It reminds me of the Brecht Poem “To Posterity” or “To Those Born Later, “…hatred even of meanness contorts the features. Anger, even against injustice makes the voice hoarse. Oh we who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness could not ourselves be friendly. But you, when the time comes at last and man is helper to man think of us with forbearance.” Available at Alibris.com

The Forgotten Ones

Milton Rogovin

Photographs of families in Buffalo by the optometrist who turned photographer after he was blacklisted by HUAC. Kind of a less alienated, more tender Diane Arbus. People like this are never photographed and never seen in this way. It’s kind of what Tillie Olsen says in “Silences” about writing. We never see ourselves in print, in art, in photographs. This is a beautiful book because Rogovin returns to his subjects year after year so you can see them age and grow. I just happened to be in Washington DC, picked up a newspaper and saw an article about this and that’s how I found it. Available at Alibris.com

Palante

Young Lords Party

The Young Lords Party and Michael Abramson

Originally published by MacGraw-Hill ISBN 07-000158-8

I confess that I “borrowed” this book years ago and “forgot” to return it. It’s got a tom of photographs including some of Felipe Luciano, Pablo Guzman and Juan Gonzalez-all respectable journalists now-as young Young Lords. Here are some quotes, “We believe that a man’s and a woman’s most precious possession is life. We should therefore live our lives so that we are no consumed by the anguish of long years of purposeless existence, or the shame of a trivial and cowardly past, so that we may say when we die: We give our energies to the most noble cause in the world-the struggle for the liberation of the human race.” “The reason why you study history is ‘cause your gonna make history. The reason you study the past is ‘cause you’re concerned about making a new life, not making the same mistakes that our people did before us.” Available at Alibris.com

Images of American Radicalism

Paul Buhle and Edmund B. Sullivan

Introduction: Howard Fast

Priceless images-like a valentine with a woman in a slinky white gown winking and the text is: “I’m a socialist. Will you be one? Free drinks, free money, free love.” There is so much in this book. Pictures of people you may have heard of but never seen like Louise Bryant and John Reed from Warren Beatty’s movie, “Red’s” A picture of Meridel Le Seuer who wrote the strike story in America’s Working Women that I mention above. Pictures of buttons-Mayday 1925, a Karl Marx Pin (an enamled red flag.) for .25. The Pyramid of Capitalism like a wedding cake. The bottom layer is the workers:We work for all, we feed all-Second layer the rich-We eat for you. Third layer the cops and army-We shoot at you. Fourth layer the church- we fool you Top layer Kings, Queens- we rule you. Too much to mention. Also shows the multinational character of American radicalism. Available at Alibris.com

Alternative Media

Z

http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm

Monthy Review

http://www.monthlyreview.org/

Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/

Adbusters

http://www.adbusters.org/home/

Bring them Home Now

http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

FAIR-Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

http://www.fair.org/index.php

Free Speech TV Dishnet channel 9415

http://www.freespeech.org/fscm2/genx.php?name=home

Democracy Now

http://www.democracynow.org/

Independent Media Center

Indymedia

Organized by area. There is a Philly Indymedia and anyone can post articles, pictures etc. I posted an article on Nader here that The Morning Call chose not to publish as a letter to the editor that was picked up by another Pro-Nader site who also linked to my Blog.

http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml

More Novels

Anything by Roger L. Simon (Moses Wine, ex-Berkely radical turned private detective. The Big Fix was made into a movie with Richard Dreyfus and Susan Anspach.) Walter Mosely-Easy Rawlins ex-factory worker turned private detective in post war LA-Devil in a Blue Dress was made into a movie with Denzel Washington; Anything by Joan Didion especially Democracy and Miami.

Great Source for out of print and sometimes inexpensive used books.

Alibris

http://www.alibris.com/

Diana Balot Frank

dianabalotfrank@yahoo.com

History

I was walking to the march site, for what turned out to be one of the biggest anti-war demonstrations to date. She was sitting on the grass on the mall in Washington with a hand lettered sign that said, “My husband is fighting for your right to protest.” How did she come to that conclusion I wondered? Doesn’t having a loved one in the path of such danger make a person go beyond the political rhetoric and try to find the real reason for things?

Whatever freedom we have and our right to protest was not fought for by a military force halfway across the world. Those rights were fought for right here on our soil by people who were not wearing a military uniform, but were still shot at and sometimes killed by people in uniform while they were fighting for the right to organize, the right to vote, the right to be treated like human beings, the right to try and stop illegal and immoral wars that our government was waging in our name.

There are few monuments to people like us. They don’t stand in every public park or in center city squares. A holiday like Labor Day doesn’t quite memorialize the sacrifices made to win decent working conditions and the 8 hour day. Mayday doesn’t exist in the country in which it originated. International Woman’s Day is not celebrated here although the event that it commemorates, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire where over 140 women died many by being forced to jump from the building where the exits were locked to keep them in occurred in NYC.

The celebration of the history of resistance of the multinational American working class would bring to light not only our strength, resilience and creativity but would also expose the illegal and violent tactics of the capitalist class that continues to grow wealthy on the sweat of workers here and all over the world.

We need a cultural revolution in America; a revolution during which we rediscover our past and ourselves. Individually, we need to come to the conclusion that we have a right and responsibility to be aware and to participate as much as possible in this democracy. As a class, we need to fight for the right to have time to participate, for a right is not a right if you cannot use it because you are working 2 jobs just to make ends meet.

The words of Eugene V. Debs are as relevant today as they were when he first uttered them, “I don't want you to follow me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out."

And From the preamble to the constitution of the United Mineworkers of America, “Step by step the longest march can be won, can be won. Many stones can form an arch, singly none, singly none. And by union what we will can be accomplished still. Drops of water turn a mill, singly none, singly none.

Only when we organize and fight for our rights to healthcare, education, housing, the rights of the planet on which we depend for our survival will we become human beings and not just superfluous objects of capitalism. The technology that increased productivity was paid for with our labor. We deserve a share of the profit including leisure time without worrying how we will pay the bills.

Unfinished thoughts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

It has been 60 years since the government of the United States dropped not one but 2 Atomic bombs on Japanese civilians. It has been 35 years since I was a 16 year old catholic school girl reading John Hersey’s Hiroshima as a history class assignment. Even before I read the book, I did not think for one second that the bombings were justified. Why should civilians pay for the mistakes of their leaders? It was 1970 and Richard Nixon was president. I certainly did not want to have to pay for his.

What mystifies me today is not that pundits are still wailing that the bombing saved lives, “both Japanese and American,” but that anyone still publishes this nonsense and even more mystifying that anyone believes it.

Nuclear power knows no boundaries. The air, oceans and earth contain it deadly legacy. Our bones, our blood our genes carry it as well.

The atomic bomb did not appear and disappear over the days of August 6-8 1945. During its development American soldiers were sacrificed, not by an enemy outside our borders but to the craving for power and domination within. In his book,’ Atomic Soldiers American Victims of Nuclear Experiments,” published by Beacon Press in 1980, Howard L. Rosenberg writes about the American soldiers who were used as physical and psychological guinea pigs for the promoters of nuclear power. The legacy of human devastation these madmen left behind is the same as the one for the soldiers exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam and the vaccines, depleted uranium and other toxins during the first and current Gulf Wars: Sounds like a personal problem to me soldier. Evidence, what evidence? At times the men who were victims of these experiments were not even believed by their own families. It wasn’t until after their deaths when some enterprising young journalist or lawyer came knocking at the families door that they realized the crazy man was telling the truth.

This is not to deny the fact that dropping this type of weapon on anyone-even people who are considered “the enemy” is anything less than a war crime. It is more than a war crime; it’s a crime against all life on the planet. We are living with the deadly legacy of those bombs. Our loved ones are dying from it; our planet is dying from it and still people wave the flag. Uncle Sam kicks them in the butt while like a reverse mechanical bank they open their mouths to dispense their hard earned cash so he can use the money to kill them, their loved ones and every good thing on this earth. What kind of a god would bless that kind of behavior?

Abandoned

In a cage with

Walls too slick and high to scale.

Nothing to do but run head on into them.

Run arms outstretched pounding my body into them.

Run sideways into them bruising my body black.

Run backwards into them hoping I will break my spine

Into a million shards so it will crash to the floor

With what used to be my heart.

The sun invisible in the blue summer sky.

The smell of the warm earth,

The water rushing over rocks,

The beaded mermaid arms outstretched,

The fractured brilliance of a cosmic egg,

The memory of crickets fleeing my step in high grass,

The sweat of babies,

The sheen of a Japanese beetle,

The taste of honey

Flicker across my senses.

Memories of the world that was.

Don’t touch me my rage will engulf you.

Don’t come near me my rage will hurl you across the room.

Don’t listen to me my rage will fuse your ears shut.

Don’t look at me my rage will turn you to stone.

Spinning at the speed of sound until I ignite

Leaving nothing behind but the stench of defeat and a pile of slimy ash.

Life

"What is life? Did you read about it in a magazine? Silent lies, never giving you what you need," wrote Laura Nyro in "To a Child."

Due to my husband's illness I've been thinking a lot about life lately. Actually we were both thinking about it for a at least a year before we knew he was sick. We were talking about what to do with the rest of our lives now that things were relatively settled and the kids were grown up.

One of the things we were thinking about was "living up to your potential." I didn't have a burning desire to be a buyer that's for sure, but there aren't too many classified ads for "Angry Female Poet. Sharp tongue, endless pool of rage from which to draw. Great pay and benefits."

When I think of wasted potential I don't think of someone standing on the corner with a sign that say's, "will work for food. " I think of Marlon Brando or Orson Welles. I guess it's not really wasted potential it's more like the seed get's planted and as it's growing someone puts an invisible box over it so instead of growing straight and true and strong the limbs are constricted and distorted. What should be reaching for the sky turns and twists and strangles itself. Besides before Barry's illness, we didn't have it so bad. My job is not terrible. Sometimes it's even fun. But in the back of my mind and in the front of my mind too, there's always this nagging feeling that I should be doing more.

Yesterday a coworker told me about an internet news article about the soldiers who were caught tring to smuggle cocaine in from Columbia. I said, "So what's new. They've been doing that for years." Here's a quote from Alfred W. McCoy's book, "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia" which I read when I was in college in the 1970's: "After a decade of American military intervention Southeast Asia has become the source of 70% of the world's illicit opium and the major supplier of raw materials for America's booming heroin market." What he was objecting to was not so much the smuggling but a bit of information in the article that said that the US government has given 3 billion dollars in military aid to the government of Columbia. "We" were "helping" other countries while Social Security is going down the tubes. My response was that "we" don't help anyone. Our tax dollars are at work around the world and at home screwing us and people just like us. I sent him the link to Columbia Solidarity Campaign http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/cocacolacampaign.html where you can see whose freedom your tax dollars are maintaining and expanding by paying for killing union organizers at Coke plants.

I have an image in my mind of the American Working Man as an old fashioned iron mechanical bank. The smiling worker with an American Flag in his hand is bending over. Behind him stands Uncle Sam. Everytime Uncle Sam kicks the worker in the butt, he waves the flag and opens his mouth to DISPENSE a coin.

Jonathon Kozol in his book, "The Night is Dark and I Am far From Home," writes, "It is our lot to live within a world of pain. Much of that pain is now the economic bedrock of our own material advantage. It is essential...that we do not recognize the evil that we live by...if we do..we might grow up to understand we do not need to race and run forever...We might grow up instead to feel enraged about sick people, dead black infants, napalm, war machines...to wonder what kind of government it is to which we hold allegience...We might grow up to be brave and subversive human beings."

What if you did grow up subversive and even a lttle brave? Then what?

There's that Lao Tze quote, "To know and not to act is not to know." Although I know a lot of things about "our" government and I do participate in small ways in democratic resistance verbally, in writing and by going to demonstrations, I have always felt that I don't know enough to go further. I don't mean that I'm not a college professor. I didn't want to be that or a labor lawyer which is why I was a Labor Studies major at Livingston College in Piscataway, NJ for only one semester. They are both legitimate and necessary occupations, but not for me. I mean that I can't get to the next step until I pick up the right concept. The key to the next door. What is it?

The phrase, "living up to your potential" has the hollow clang of individualism attached to it. One of the passages in Kozol's book that I really don't like is, "The New Left will to have 'no leaders' is often, in my judgement, less an evidence of faith in democratic process than a disguised form of the fear to be one." This is totally opposite to what Eugene Debs said, "I am not a... leader. I don't want you to follow me or anything else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the... wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out." This is pretty important. Maybe this is at the heart of the cultural revolution that is really needed in this country.

Friends that I have spoken to in recent months have mentioned how much humbler they've become as they've gotten older. I'm not sure that humble is the right word to use. The emphasis that our society places on the importance of the individual is a major problem.

First:capitalist society cares nothing for the individual, it's all just words.
Second: human beings need each other. No one person can live by his own labor alone.
Third: it's not individuals who move the world forward, it's groups of people.
Fourth: We are as individual as snowflakes. So what? That and 5 cents won't get you anywhere.

In the movie about the Flint sit down strike, "With Babies and Banners," I remember one of the women saying, "We weren't individuals anymore. We had the union." In Stan Goff's book, "Full Spectrum Disorder," he talks about reading Marx, "Society does not consist of individuals," and being blown away by that concept, "You can't burrow down into your little niche and look down on anyyone, because we are all in this system together." That's not becoming more humble, that's becoming more conscious.

I have grown attached to the ant as a symbol. I have 2 ant pins that I wear when I'm feeling powerful. I like Laura Nyro and Diane Arbus and Joan Didion. I like shellfish and summer tomatoes even though I'm slightly allergic to both. I like shoes-I LOVE shoes!-and pins and the color green. I sing Barbra Streisand songs in the car when I'm driving in bad weather because you have to concentrate to hit the high notes and it makes me less frightened. I like to cook. I like the city better than the country. I love Brie. None of these things will help me change the world, but they might make things more fun for the other ants.

Life will never "give you what you need." You have to demand what you need whether it's pushing for more visibility for awareness of cancer and it's causes; the lack of coordination of patient care in the for-profit health care industry; industry and war as cancer promoting entities, war, the destruction of the human spirit-whatever. You have a lot more leverage when you're standing with a hundred or a thousand or a million people than when you standing there all smily and cute and pretty and smelling nice and wearing your cute new shoes all by yourself.