My google alerts on “Hungry Blues” sometimes turn up interesting things. Steven Taylor of the Fugs has written a song that is also called Hungry Blues. It’s very much in the spirit of the original song that my blog is named after. It’s not quite as good, but it’s a tall order to be asked to measure up to Langston Hughes and James P. Johnson. May the visions of both songs come to pass.
If you’re new to this blog or just have never checked out the song on my About page, here’s the Hughes/Johnson composition. More info about it is available on the About page (scroll to the end).
We are PEOPLE. We are not an alien race. We are not a cult. We are people, with lives, jobs, families, and feelings. We are constructive members of society and to deny us of rights that all PEOPLE should have is just WRONG.
Voting against us is not going to make us or the issues disappear. We’re not giving up. We’re fighting back. We aren’t going anywhere.
We didn’t vote away racism and we didn’t vote away other bigotry and inequality, and these votes against GLBT people were one of this Election Day’s ugliest demonstrations of what we have not yet overcome.
My friend Adina pointed out that whether you’re talking about the possible inappropriate participation of the Mormon Church in political organizing for Prop 8 or the possible votes of some Black voters for Prop 8, the fight really lies elsewhere.
But let’s be real here—there was 49% turnout in San Francisco County and 55% turnout in Alameda which voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8. There was 59% turnout in San Mateo county. If we the supporters of marriage rights for all had done a better job of helping our neighbors and friends to vote, the result would have gone the other way. The result was in many respects a failure of execution. I care much less about yelling at Mormons and much more about turning out allies and persuading people on the fence about justice for all.
This is precisely how Obama won out over the fearfulness that could have prevented many more people from voting for him. We need to help the people who want to support us to follow through and we need to reach out to the people we can influence. That kind of reaching out is infectious and is what will win the day. It will win elections—but more importantly it will win us the community we need to move forward as a society.
Dollars & Sense co-editor Amy Gluckman appeared on Your Call, a show on radio station KALW. Appearing with Amy was Lawrence Pintak of Arab Media and Society and Glenn Ford from Black Agenda Report. Amy discussed what is being left out of economic news coverage and was great (as were Pintak, discussing the fall of the Gaza blockade and Ford discussing how race was being covered in the SC primary). This is a shameless promotion. I am on the Dollars & Sense Editorial Collective. If you like the way Amy is able to discuss complex economic issues in plain English and from a progressive perspective, you can get can much more of that, from a diverse range of economists, activists and investigative journalists and others, by subscribing to the magazine.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on January 27, 2008 at 12:37 am
The Constitution was
A noble piece of paper
With free society
Struggled but it died in vain
And now Democracy is ragtime on the corner—unemployed
And I’m hopin’ that it rains
Been a hopin’ for some rain
But it just don’t look like rain
I’ve seen the robins
Perched in barren treetops
They’re watchin’ last-ditch racists marching across the floor
Just like peace signs that melted in our dreams
Never had a chance to grow
Never had a chance to grow
When I was reading Daisy’s post about Pfc. LaVena Johnson, I got stuck on one of the details. The indications of possible rape and other physical violence and murder all were troubling enough. But then there was this one detail (originally posted by Anne):
Indications that someone attempted to set LaVena’s body on fire
I immediately hear Billy Holiday:
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
I wouldn’t necessarily think I should share this association as something for public consideration, except that I am also remembering something I first learned about on David Neiwert’s blog: the military has become infested with Neo-Nazis.
According to a devastating Southern Poverty Law Center report (echoed in the New York Times), it’s happening at an alarming rate. And it’s happening because of the way the military is being handled at the very top:
Ten years after Pentagon leaders toughened policies on extremist activities by active duty personnel — a move that came in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing by decorated Gulf War combat veteran Timothy McVeigh and the murder of a black couple by members of a skinhead gang in the elite 82nd Airborne Division — large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the world’s best-trained, best-equipped fighting force. Military recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure from the war in Iraq to fill the ranks, often look the other way.Neo-Nazis “stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they’re inside, and they are hard-core,” Department of Defense gang detective Scott Barfield told the Intelligence Report. “We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad,” he added. “That’s a problem.”The armed forces are supposed to be a model of racial equality. American soldiers are supposed to be defenders of democracy. Neo-Nazis represent the opposite of these ideals. They dream of race war and revolution, and their motivations for enlisting are often quite different than serving their country.”Join only for the training, and to better defend yourself, our people, and our culture,” Fain said. “We must have people to open doors from the inside when the time comes.”
The problem, as the report explains, is the extreme pressure military recruiters are now under to fill their recruitment quotas:
Now, with the country at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military under increasingly intense pressure to maintain enlistment numbers, weeding out extremists is less of a priority. “Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don’t remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members,” said Department of Defense investigator Barfield.”Last year, for the first time, they didn’t make their recruiting goals. They don’t want to start making a big deal again about neo-Nazis in the military, because then parents who are already worried about their kids signing up and dying in Iraq are going to be even more reluctant about their kids enlisting if they feel they’ll be exposed to gangs and white supremacists.”Barfield, who is based at Fort Lewis, said he has identified and submitted evidence on 320 extremists there in the past year. “Only two have been discharged,” he said. Barfield and other Department of Defense investigators said they recently uncovered an online network of 57 neo-Nazis who are active duty Army and Marines personnel spread across five military installations in five states — Fort Lewis; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Camp Pendleton, Calif. “They’re communicating with each other about weapons, about recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within the military,” Barfield said. “Several of these individuals have since been deployed to combat missions in Iraq.”
Okay, now back to Billy Holiday.The “sudden smell of burning flesh” ought to be as evocative of lynching as the nooses in Jena, LA. Lynching, after all, is extra-judicial execution of an accused person, usually Black, and it often involved burning the victims and otherwise mutilating them. Lynching does not need to involve a noose at all. In some cases, the lynch rope was only a means of displaying an already dead body. A google images search on “lynching” will get you a number of infamous photos of burning or burnt Black bodies (I’m not linking them).I am not claiming that LaVena Johnson was lynched. But indications that someone attempted to set her body on fire should raise our suspicion levels about the nature of this crime, just as we would be further alarmed if there had been a noose involved.Should I be connecting the dots this way? I don’t know, but it is a possibility that will beg investigation until the military stops stonewalling LaVena Johnson’s father and makes a commitment to uncover the truth and seek justice.Back to David Neiwert:
To what extent, really, does the spread of white-supremacist attitudes in the military bring about atrocities like the recent murder of a 14-year-old girl and her family, or the Haditha massacre? It isn’t hard to see, after all, attitudes about the disposability of nonwhite races rearing their ugly head in those incidents.The larger political question, however, is a matter of accountability — the avoidance of which has proven to be the Bush administration’s most remarkable skill. Yet at some point, both the public and the military are going to have to ask: What is this administration doing to our armed forces?
Ben Chaney, younger brother of slain civil rights worker James Chaney, was one of my interview subjects for my recent article in The American Prospect, “Belated Justice for Civil Rights Era Crimes.” I spoke with Ben over the phone on June 4, 2007, two days after his mother Fannie Lee Chaney was buried next to her eldest son in Meridian, MS. Fannie Lee Chaney passed away on May 22, 2007. Unfortunately the quotes from our conversation were cut as the editor at The American Prospect helped me narrow the focus of the article. I am therefore posting this podcast of the full ten minute interview. In the interview, Ben Chaney discusses the importance of belated prosecutions of suspects in Civil Rights era crimes, the limitations of such prosecutions, how to hold government accountable for its role in crimes against Blacks and their allies and his mother’s disappointment over the incomplete justice for her murdered son.
The Beatles were my first musical obsession. When I became a fan of the Beatles in middle school, I collected every recording, poured over every liner note, read biographies, studied the lyrics, listened to the solo projects . . .
It was the first time I’d gotten into music like this. I think it was around my sophomore year in high school that I hit my saturation point with the Beatles. I never stopped liking them, but I moved on. In high school and college, I found Neil Young, Frank Zappa, King Crimson, Steely Dan, Greatful Dead, Talking Heads, Joni Mitchell, Jaco Pastorious, Parliament/Funkadelic, Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus—to name just some, at random . . .
After my dad passed away in 1997, I took it to a new level with Frankie Newton. I compensated for the fact that he only has about 50 recorded songs by collecting recordings by everyone he associated with. For several years, I immersed myself in Newton’s musical milieu, high art, pre-Bop Jazz of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the earlier stuff from the 1920s, the foundations.
After a while, the Jazz obsession mellowed. Maybe around 2000, I started actively listening again to music from the second half of the 20th century and to current 21st century stuff.
But, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s all come back around to the Beatles. With the help of YouTube, my 4-year-old has been doing with the Beatels what I did starting in around 5th grade. The favorite record for some time has been Let It Be. I am sure we have watched each song played on the rooftop of Apple Records at least 100 times. It’s a good thing the Beatles are so damn good, cause otherwise I’d be going out of mind.
Anyway, I’m telling you all of this to try to explain what it was like to hear this John Lennon outtake from 1968. I love the rooftop performance of “I’ve Got a Feeling.” And I’ve always thought that John makes the song with the song fragment he weaves into Paul’s bluesy love song. What I didn’t know until earlier tonight was that John had recorded “Everyone” separately. From what I could read online, there are a couple of versions out there. So far, I’ve just found this one. It’s rough around the edges, the Julia-like guitar part doesn’t seem totally worked out—and it is beautiful. John really gets me at the end. After the circular lyrics, delivered over repetitive guitar picking, he trails off with that “everybody got the wrong time, everybody got the wrong time . . .”
A grand jury in Alabama handed up an indictment on Wednesday in an obscure killing that helped inspire the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. The case is the latest in a series of belated prosecutions of crimes from the civil rights era.In February 1965, a black farmer, Jimmie Lee Jackson, 26, was shot by Alabama state troopers who were suppressing a voting rights demonstration in Marion in the Black Belt. Historians have said the killing indirectly helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Everyone assumes the identity of the defendant is former Alabama State Trooper James Bonard Fowler.
The identity of the killer has long been known, James B. Fowler, a retired trooper, and on Wednesday Mr. Fowler’s lawyer, George Beck of Montgomery, said he could “only assume” that Mr. Fowler was the subject of the indictment.The district attorney would not release the name or the charge until the defendant had been notified.Mr. Beck said, “I think we can all assume that Mr. Fowler was indicted.”Mr. Fowler, 73, has admitted the killing in interviews but insisted that the shooting was in self-defense as Mr. Jackson tried to grab the trooper’s gun.Books on the civil rights movement have painted a different picture of that night. Multiple accounts say that Mr. Jackson was in a group of demonstrators pushed back by club-swinging troopers into Mack’s Cafe and that he watched his grandfather, Cager Lee, 82, being beaten and his mother, Viola Jackson, attacked.When Mr. Jackson lunged to protect her, the historians say, a trooper shot him twice in the stomach.He died eight days later. To protest, activists decided to march from Selma to the state’s Capitol in Montgomery. The confrontation on March 7, 1965, or Bloody Sunday, led to the Voting Rights Act.
As the DA proceeds with the prosecution, keep in mind that though Fowler may well be guilty of shooting Jimmie Lee Jackson, historical accounts suggest that there are others who should also be held accountable. As I’ve written previously:
Eyewitnesses, including civil rights leader Albert Turner and the owner of Mack’s Café where Fowler shot Jackson, say that after the shooting, troopers dragged Jackson outside and had a bona fide lynching, beating him to a pulp with clubs and fists….Jimmie Lee Jackson died at Good Samaritan hospital in Selma. But he was carried first to the local hospital in Marion. According to Albert Turner, Jackson waited there an hour without treatment and it was another hour or more before Jackson was admitted at the hospital in Selma, approximately thirty miles away.
This is not to minimize the importance of the indictment. Jimmie Lee Jackson’s family needs to have have some measure of justice in the case—as John Flemming has made clear in a moving article in the Anniston Star.
After 43 years, it’s about time, Cager Lee [Jr.] and his family say.”This is a chance for justice to finally be served,” said B.J. Johniken, Cager Lee’s grandson and a cousin to Jimmie Lee Jackson. “Back then people could get off for that kind of thing. But it’s a new century now,” said the 26-year-old City of Anniston employee.For Cager’s granddaughter Kristy Thomas, an Anniston resident who works at the incinerator, the convening of the grand jury is something she thought would never happen.”I used to listen to my pa-pa tell this story when I was a kid,” said Thomas motioning to Cager Lee. “It was clear to me that there was never any attempt to even find who was responsible for this, any effort to try to get to the bottom of it. They thought then, that’s the way things should be, that it was just justified because he was a black man. I certainly never thought we would get to the point of actually doing something about it.”Joy Lee of Gadsden, a 37-year-old granddaughter of Cager, believes she lives in a better, more inclusive world because of the sacrifices people made during the civil rights movement.”Jimmie Lee and others enabled me to have a life and friends I have now,” she said. “My best friend is white. Now that’s progress, although we still have a long way to go.”Her aunt, Kay Johniken, a 49-year-old who works for the Anniston Water Works, agrees, but at the moment has her eye squarely on the events in Selma.”This [grand jury] should have happened in 1965,” she said. “Alabama was like an island during the civil rights movement. Law enforcement did whatever they wanted and often they were protected by their superiors.”…During a lull in the family chatter of a far-away time, Cager Lee excused himself for a trip to the other end of the house for some rest. When he passed from the room, unsteadily, leaning heavily on a cane, daughter Janice Jackson of Gadsden steered the subject to justice.”This is what I think that grand jury means to me, to us,” she said. “We want Cager to feel that justice was done. For him that shooting was just like it was yesterday. He has to feel that justice was done. It means everything to us.”A few minutes later, when Cager Lee shuffled back into the room, he said in a loud whisper, “Well, if that trooper gets indicted, then I’ll just say that I feel like he will be getting what is coming to him.”
But as Rita Schwerner Bender, widow of slain civil rights worker Michael Schwerner reminds us in the attached podcast, “these trials are in no way the end; these trials are only the beginning.”UPDATES
Folks I've got them hungry blues
And nothin' in this to lose
People tellin' me to choose
Between dyin' and lyin' and
keep on cryin'
Tired of them hungry blues
Listen ain't you heard the news
There's another thing to choose
A brand new world
clean and fine
Where nobody's hungry
And there's no color line
A thing like that's worth
anybody dyin'
I ain't got a thing to lose
But them doggone hungry blues
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