Danish Exceptionalism
We spend our lives swimming in a sea of propaganda about American exceptionalism, bullshit that gets in the way of our demanding benefits of citizenship that are rightfully ours.
Papa and Me
Came to my attention this morning that Ernest Hemingway and I both worked for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Just sayin'.
A little history never hurt anybody
[Striking families at Ludlow before the massacre, April 20, 1914]
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre, described by Howard Zinn as “the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history. This was the Colorado coal strike that began in September 1913 and culminated in the ‘Ludlow Massacre’ of April 1914.” Zinn first learned of the Ludlow Massacre from a song by Woody Guthrie. The song inspired Zinn to learn more about the massacre that “nobody had ever mentioned in any of my history courses [and] which no textbook of mine had ever mentioned.”
For the centennial of this major event in labor history, the Zinn Education Project is offering resources to teach outside the textbook about the Ludlow Massacre here.
Resource: The Zinn Education Project
Our political theater
Fred Dalton Thompson, who never quite filled the role of Senator and failed to be convincing even as a candidate for President, was "type cast" as avuncular senators, presidents and district attorneys on video and celluloid? Well, in his post-Senate career, Randal Howard "Rand" Paul looks to be a natural to play weasels, gunsels and con men.
Parthenon of Books
In December 1983 artist Marta Minujin and several helpers spent 17 days building a full-scale model of the Parthenon in a public park in Buenos Aires. It was made almost entirely of books which had been banned by the country’s former dictatorship. “The Parthenon of Books/Homage to Democracy,” as it was titled, stood for about three weeks, after which the public was permitted to disassemble the piece and keep the books.
Movement politics may be the only route to social and economic justice.
Both parties having become irrelevant and unresponsive to the majority's political needs, and with neither seemingly capable of learning from experience, the time seems ripe for a new politics. Or, more likely, a new politics is inevitable. The Greens are still active and the Working Families Party is demonstrating growing strength and relevance. The question for the Big Two is whether they will adopt the demands of a growing popular resistance -- the GOP by becoming more rightwing, the Democrats more progressive -- or, like the Whigs, to resist change and wither away.
How much better we would be served as voters, if there were -- at least -- three parties: a reactionary Republican Party (to absorb the anger and frustration of the tea party and provide a vehicle for the fantasies of libertarian fundamentalists and the brotherhood of Ayn Rand); the centrist Democrats as currently configured (to represent the interests of militarists and security staters, neoliberals and the free markets cohort, and conservatives-formerly-known-as-Republicans); and on the left a Progressive People's Party (for the middle class and working poor, New Dealers, traditional liberals, progressives, social democrats and the rest of the 90% or so of the people presently unrepresented by the two establishment parties).
It has been more than 40 years since the U.S. began its long, slow decline into militarism, corporatism and the cult of laissez-faire, and it's unlikely that the Republicans and Democrats can fix problems they made. Decades of austerity for the poor and socialism for the rich have left them compromised and bloated by self-interest. It is now up to an angry citizenry to compel change.
The rest of the story:
-> "Today, the labor movement has been largely subdued, and social activists have made their peace with neoliberalism and adjusted their horizons accordingly. Within the women’s movement, goals have shifted from practical objectives such as comparable worth and universal child care in the 1980s to celebrating appointments of individual women to public office and challenging the corporate glass ceiling. Dominant figures in the antiwar movement have long since accepted the framework of American military interventionism. The movement for racial justice has shifted its focus from inequality to 'disparity,' while neatly evading any critique of the structures that produce inequality. The sources of this narrowing of social vision are complex. But its most conspicuous expression is subordination to the agenda of a Democratic Party whose center has moved steadily rightward since Ronald Reagan’s presidency." -- Nothing Left: The long, slow surrender of American liberals by Adolph Reed Jr. (Harper's).
-> "[I]f f there’s one thing the left needs, it’s a serious talk about its future. The alternative is the continued fragmentation of an inchoate movement, accompanied by a never-ending rightward shift in American politics and the continued ascendancy of corporate economic power." -- Has the Left Surrendered? The Overdue Conversation We Need by Richard Eskow (OurFuture).
"We need to talk about transformation – social, economic, and political." Enough Recrimination. Let’s Build a Populist Movement. by Richard Eskow (OurFuture).
Jazzcats Crossing the Hudson
Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Herbie Hancock, Charles Mingus, Sun Ra, Eric Dolphy, Steve Kuhn, Phil Ranelin, Emuir Deodato and John Coltrane crossing the Hudson in a painting by Emanuel Leitze.
April is Jazz Appreciation Month.
April is Jazz Appreciation Month.
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