Keep On Pushing-- The 48th Anniversary Of The March On Washington

I knew my old pal Denise Sullivan has been working on a book about Black music as a part of political expression in America and I knew she's been working on it for at least 4 or 5 years. So when I got an invitation for a book signing in Santa Monica yesterday, I was really happy for her and decided to take the hour drive out there. On the way I was listening to public radio and they were interviewing Vincent Harding, historian, long time civil rights activist and Martin Luther King comrade-in-arms. What a coincidence, I thought! He even talked, eloquently, about the role of creativity, especially music-- and particularly Kumbaya-- in the push for equality. I got there early and told Denise, who explained why it wasn't a coincidence at all. Yetsreday was the 48th anniversary of the March of Washington. She planned her book release for that day. Later she read from it, Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music From Blues to Hip Hop:

More than half a century passed since the bus rides, the sit ins, and the marches for voting rights, desegregation, jobs, and peace. Perhaps the civil rights movement, Black Power, women’s liberation, and gay rights sound like causes from another dimension. They are not. People all over the world await deliverance from violations of their civil liberties and human rights, including right here in the land of liberty. War, poverty, and racism are still with us, and it’s expected they will be as long as the interests of a few trump the survival needs of the many. Today we must add environmental blight to the list of concerns confounding today’s truth speakers, justice seekers, and freedom singers. And yet, there exists no one effective, organized mass movement of people, marching and singing their way to solutions toward freedom and equality.



“There’s no clear thought being exercised right now in the American public,” says John Trudell, musician, poet, Voice of Alcatraz, and former leader of the American Indian Movement. “They’re allowing the insanity of the leaders to make decisions that really are not in the best interest of the public, they’re not in the best interest of the children of the public, they’re not in the best interest of the grandchildren of the public, they’re not in the best interest of the Earth, they’ve not in the best interest of anyone.”



The number of writers delivering unfiltered news in the form of a song are few compared to the explosion of bands and singers in the world today-- more than at any other time in history. For the musicians for whom art and progress are inseparable, there is always work to be done. Buffy Sainte-Marie, Yoko Ono, and Richie Havens are still singing for peace. Tom Morello and Wayne Kramer stand on the frontlines of a progressive alliance based on shared musical and political concerns. Chuck D and Archie Shepp forged a similar cross-generational alliance when they collaborated on a track for Shepp’s album. In 2007, Ornette Coleman won the Pulitzer Prize in music for his album Sound Grammar, a culmination of his work combining free expression of the mind, body, and spirit through music. “People don’t realize it, but there is a real folklore music in jazz. It’s neither black nor white, it’s the mixture of the races and folklore has come from it,” he writes in his Harmolodic Manifesto.



“Now that I am older I realize I can’t change the world, but I still believe that if anyone can, it is the artist,” said Nina Simone before her death in 2003. “It is always through art that society changes-- not politics or even education. Art, and music especially, speaks to people more than government and education. Why do you think great nations have patronage for their artists?”



In the course of writing this story, I had hoped I would find the exact time, place, and forces within the whirlpool of American history that drown out the voices of protest as time marched on. Instead I found songs, and more songs, waiting for another turn to be sung.

I'm so proud of Denise for writing such a wonderful book, for keeping hope alive... At that point Peter Case, Denise's husband, and Phranc, a longtime friend and folksinger, got up and sang some songs. They sounded so good! One was an adaptation of the great 1931 Florence Reece labor classic, "Which Side Are You On?" Peter had updated some of the lyrics for the occasion. I jotted down a couple of verses:

Ye centrist politicians

Whose reason shines a light

What will you do the center moved

Now you're voting on the right



...Obama in the White House

And Congress drinkin' tea

But I wonder who in Washington

Is representing you and me

"The hard turn for austerity will do damage for years to come. A decade is modestly optimistic" (Ian Welsh)

Modern-day social conditions and tools will naturally produce a more modern approach to ruthless state repression -- but the basic strategy is the same.



"[T]here will be a renewed, and successful push towards what might be called the biometric surveillance state. You will carry ID, your biometric data will be centrally located as well as stored on ID, and this data will be used to control what privileges you have access to. (You have no rights.)"



"What is clear is that the developed world has made a hard turn for austerity, one which will do damage for years to come. A decade is modestly optimistic."

-- Ian Welsh, in the blogpost "Socially how

the next 20 odd years will play out"

by Ken



Since just last night I was noting, in connection with BART's shutting down of cell-phone service to stymy Bay Area demonstrators, that our powers-that-be have been strenuously cracking down on the notion that American citizens have any rights (except the made-up one to own guns), Bill of Rights or no Bill of Rights, so naturally the latest post from our friend Ian Welsh, "Socially how the next 20 odd years will play out," grabbed my attention. I noted that Ian has been doing some sensational writing on the uprising in the U.K. and also interpolating from it. In this latest post he offers his "baseline, loose model for the next generation" with a familiar proviso:

As with most of my predictions, folks will scoff at this one, think I’m hysterical, and doom-monger, and so on. But this is just social mechanics played out over time. This is the glide path; it can be stopped, but it is unlikely to be.

Ian too notes the connection between the BART cell-phone cutoff and the repressive response of the U.K.'s government to the rising wave of protests there, and also harks back to the course set by the powers-that-be in the matter of WikiLeaks.

The decision has been made by [British PM David] Cameron and society in general that the way to respond to the riots is to crack down, hard. They are sentencing people to long sentences for minor crimes (a year for stealing a bottle of water) and they are extending the punishment to families, kicking people out of housing if a member of their family was arrested. They are discussing cutting people off from social networks, and in California today the powers that be cut off cell phone service during an entirely non-violent protest.



The decision has been made to double down on repression. To extend repression to families, a logical extension of our socieity’s obsession with family as above all else, and a very aristocratic thing to do, which reeks of the 17th century. In terms of social media, Wikileaks was the bleeding edge of this, when Paypal, VISA and Mastercard cut off Wikileaks, despite them having been convicted of no crimes, it was clear that access to the modern economy would be held hostage for those who didn’t play the way the oligarchs wanted them to play.



Repression of this sort always spirals. Cut-offs from the internet, from cell phone use, from specific sites, will continue to spread. Sometimes they will be temporary and blanket. Sometimes they will hit individuals. Sometimes they will hit specific sites in specific areas. Access to the modern credit economy will continue to be used as a weapon. There will also be continued removal of the right to travel, with no-fly lists moving to trains, and later to bus stations and eventually there will be a ramp up of stops of automobiles.

"Meanwhile," he says, "the ranks of the permanently unemployed will swell."

At this point companies simply don’t want to hire anyone who has been unemployed for longer than about 3 months, and have a strong preference for the currently employed. If you don’t find a new job in 3 months, you are probably never going to have a good job again. The data is clear on this; what is also clear is that the developed world has made a hard turn for austerity, one which will do damage for years to come. A decade is modestly optimistic.



This will increase social disorder, of course, and our lords and masters and the remnants of the middle and working class who scream “they’re criminals, pure and simple”, will double down on repression, again and again.

ON THE OTHER HAND . . .



Nobody has accused the oligarchs now tightening the screws of being outstandingly smart. And Ian sees them making serious mistakes in their doubling down.



For one thing, he says, "throwing youngsters into prison for very minor crimes is a mistake."

It will harden them, and connect them. This is especially true in British prisons, because British prisoners are a hardened bunch of criminals. But it is a mistake no matter where, because in America and Britain, having ever be thrown in jail means your life is over. Every decent job does a criminal record check, and if you have a criminal record, you will never ever have a good job again. At that point you might as well become a criminal, and why not a revolutionary?

"Which leads to the crackdown on hackers."

Throwing young, bright, technically savvy young adults in with the criminal element is, again, a mistake. The rise of the surveillance state means that tech savvy is going to become very important to anyone who doesn’t want to live by what might be called “Society’s new rules”. And the young hackers have a revolutionary mindset. The combination of men with nothing to lose, with men who have tech skills and believe society is corrupt and needs to be brought down, will be explosive. And since the biometric security state will be done on the cheap, by the sort of incompetents who run the current wars and the current security apparatus, there will be plenty of cracks in the system to exploit.

"Likewise the increase in punitive sentences is a mistake, pure and simple,"

because it means people have less to lose. If a relatively minor crime gets you in for years, and destroys your life, many will make the calculation that they might as well fight, might as well use violent force, rather than be taken.

And in general, Ian says, the plan to deal with increasing social disorder by progressively doubling down on repression "is, of course, a big mistake."

It may turn into a relatively stable solution set in some countries, but they won’t be places you want to live unless you have the morals of totalitarian, and in others it will lead to revolutions, while in others it will lead to outright failed states. We can hope that a few will turn aside from this path. So far in Europe only one country has, Iceland. As with most of my predictions, folks will scoff at this one, think I’m hysterical, and doom-monger, and so on. But this is just social mechanics played out over time. This is the glide path; it can be stopped, but it is unlikely to be.

I've been noting in my series on the atmosphere of "seething revolutionary rage" captured by Umberto Giordano in Andrea Chénier (the third and final part of the series is penciled in for next weekend) that it's beginning to feel familiar. Just think of the exchange in Act I when the mention of Louis XVI's finance minister, Jacques Necker, who was urging political reforms on the king, by the aristocratic swells at the Countess of Coigny's party produces the response that the king "was badly advised" -- as if Necker's desperate attempt to forestall the looming cataclysm was the problem rather than the last hope of preventing it. The king paid dearly for that mistake, but then, so did the country.

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BART's cell-service shutdown raises the question: Is this legal? Which raises the question: Do we have ANY rights left?

BART's shutting off of cell service to clamp down on demonstrations raises the question of whether this is legal.



"This may be the first time a government agency in the United States has ever deliberately disrupted cellphone service to defang planned protests, criminologist Casey Jordan told CNN. 'I haven’t been able to find another incident in which this has happened,' she told CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux Friday."

-- from Patrik Jonsson's Christian Science Monitor report, "To defuse 'flash' protest, BART cuts riders' cell service. Is that legal?"

by Ken



I don't know why people jumped on Willard Romney the other day for saying that corporations are people, when we know that while it oughtn't to be true, in the present-day climate of extreme right-wing dominion, and with the Roberts Court empowered to tell us what the law of the land is, it's patently the case. In fact, it's becoming increasingly clear that, legally speaking, corporation have far more of the rights of people than people do.



Willard, by the way, isn't backing down.

Romney defends corporation comment in NH



By STEVE PEOPLES, Associated Press



POSTED: 08/12/2011 05:44:41 PM MDT

UPDATED: 08/12/2011 05:45:14 PM MDT



MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Mitt Romney says his recent comment in Iowa that "corporations are people" was not a mistake.

Speaking to reporters after a New Hampshire reception Friday night, the former Massachusetts governor said it was astonishing that President Barack Obama doesn't feel the same way.



Romney repeated several times that "businesses are people." He asked whether Democrats believed they were perhaps little men from Mars. . . .

(In my mind this raises the question of what celestial outpost Willard hails from. Have we seen his birth certificate? Are we sure it's gen-u-wine?)



Just remember that when we listen to Willard -- as President Obama and his team strive so mightily to make him unreelectable -- we may be hearing the next president of the United States. At least he should have solid backing from the right-wing cabal on the Supreme Court, in case the election should happen to come to that.



It seems to me increasingly that when it comes to the rights of people, if they aren't spelled out explicitly somewhere in legally binding form, we ain't got 'em. And if they are spelled out explicitly somewhere in legally binding form, it may be just a matter of time before they rise to the top of Jivin' John Roberts's hit list. (Always excluding the right to own guns, of course, which exists nowhere in the Constitution except in the demented minds of people who either don't know how to read simple English or just don't care what the Second Amendment says as long as they can get away with lying about it.)



This speculation is prompted by the intriguing legal question raised by the above-referenced report by Patrik Jonsson in the Christian Science Monitor:

The decision by Bay Area Rapid Transit officials to cut off cellphone service Thursday evening – to forestall a planned protest – raises a fundamental question: Do Americans have a basic right to digital free speech or to digitally organized assembly?



Because July protests against BART police shootings had turned violent, BART officials took the unusual step to protect public safety, they said. The tactic may have worked: No protests took place Thursday night at BART stations.



Temporarily shutting down cell service and beefing up police patrols were "great tool[s] to utilize for this specific purpose," BART police Lt. Andy Alkire told Bay City News Friday. The protests, planned for sometime between 4 and 8 p.m. in transit stations, would likely have disrupted service for many of the 341,000 daily BART passengers.



This may be the first time a government agency in the United States has ever deliberately disrupted cellphone service to defang planned protests, criminologist Casey Jordan told CNN. “I haven’t been able to find another incident in which this has happened,” she told CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux Friday.



Iran used cell-phone-jamming technology to hobble protests in 2009, and Britain has considered doing so to thwart the social-media-driven riots that dogged London and other locales this week.



The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) forbids jamming cellphones, but BART's move had a different legal context. Because the transit system contracts with five large telecommunications firms to provide underground and station service, BART did not use jamming technology, it simply turned off a service. . . .

Ah, so now we're being compared with Iran? Noted.

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