Notable Women of 2016: RIP #MattieSmithColin

Mattie Smith Colin, 1918-2016

I was embarrassed to find that a notable woman of the civil rights movement, journalist Mattie Smith Colin, had to die in order for me to learn about her. This despite my having studied the civil rights movement, both its famous and also its lesser known leaders. Black parents tell their children they have to be twice as good to get half as far. Maybe they half to live twice as long, too.

Mrs. Colin lived to be 98, but her claim to fame came in 1955 with her reporting on Emmett Till, a boy who lived to only 14 before being lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

Mrs. Colin wrote for the Chicago Defender, a prominent national Black newspaper:

"Oh, God, Oh God, my only boy," Mrs. Mamie (Till) Bradley wailed as five men lifted a soiled paper-wrapped bundle from a brown, wooden mid-Victorian box at the Illinois Central Station in Chicago Friday and put it into a waiting hearse.

Her reporting of Till's murder made Emmett Till internationally famous. She went on to an illustrious career as a reporter dedicated to bringing the truth, however ugly, into the open. RIP Mrs. Colin, this blog post is dedicated to you. 

Berta Cáceres, 1971-2016

Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores was assassinated by U.S.-trained special forces in her native Honduras on March 3, 2016. An environmental activist and indigenous leader, she helped found the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. Gunned down at age 45 for daring to organize effective defense of natural resources from the depredations of corporate greed, Cáceres was actively resisting the Agua Zarca dam project when she died.

Ben Norton reported in Salon: "Before her death, environmentalist Cáceres singled out Hillary Clinton for supporting the military coup in Honduras."

Ann Wright is a career diplomat and U.S. military veteran who resigned from her government post in 2003 in disgust over the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses. She has since devoted her time to challenging militarism in the U.S. and internationally, being arrested many times for acts of non-violent civil disobedience.

This year Ms. Wright achieved the dubious distinction of being the first (to my knowledge) political activist to have her Social Security checks withheld on the false charge of lengthy incarceration. 

She explained in Op-ed News:

On March 31, 2016, I, along with seven others, six Veterans for Peace and one Granny Peace Brigade members, was arrested at Creech drone base, Nevada as a part of the semi-annual protest against assassin drones. We spent five hours in the Clark County Jail as our arrests were processed and then were released. Our cases of being charged with "failure to disperse" were eventually dropped by the Clark County court. 

Yet, someone submitted my name and social security number to SSA as a person who has been confined in a jail since September 2016. Without any notification to me of this allegation that would disrupt for months my Social Security benefits, SSA ordered that for my "criminal conviction and confinement in a correctional institution for more than 30 days, we cannot pay your monthly Social Security payment."

The Obama administration also demanded $4,273.60 in repayment for pension payments she supposedly received in jail. I know Ann Wright and I know that she will not be deterred by this fraudulent tactic. But other seniors with a conscience may not be financially able to follow her example. Chilling, indeed.

Jan Chamberlin soared to temporary fame this year with her statement of resignation from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Reporting that she spent several sleepless nights struggling with her conscience, the Christian soprano said she could not perform at Trump's inauguration on moral grounds. 

Ms. Chamberlin's published statement said "I could never look myself in the mirror again with self-respect" and "I only know I could never 'throw roses to Hitler.' And I certainly could never sing for him."

An online petition calling on the choir to boycott the inaugural festivities had gathered 28,525 signatures as of this morning.

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard is one of many notable Native women leading the resistance to "the Black Snake" of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Standing Rock abounds with wisdom and strength displayed by the women and girls putting their safety on the line to protect North America's largest watershed. Believing Mni Waconi "water is life" and trained as a historian, she is an official Standing Rock Sioux Tribe storyteller who keeps oral traditions alive. 

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard helped establish the Sacred Rock camp on April 1 and later connected the September 3 attack on the camp by corporate goons plus state agents of violence with the Whitestone massacre of 300 Sioux people by the U.S. Army on the same date in 1863.

Dr. Jill Stein ran for president as the Green Party candidate, barred from the "debates" and largely ignored by the corporate press. 

Besides campaigning tirelessly for a platform that upheld the values I believe in -- people's needs over corporate greed -- Dr. Stein practiced what she preached by supporting the Standing Rock water protectors in person. 

As a result, a warrant was reportedly issued for her arrest for trespassing. This while other candidates for president were not indicted for war crimes, sexual assault or fraud.

Shay Stewart-Bouley is a blogger who has contributed to my education this year. Her posts at Black Girl in Maine illuminate both the ugly face of racism and its nasty underpinnings. She writes both as an anti-racist educator and as the mother of children whose skin color exposes them to danger and abuse at every turn. Ms. Stewart-Bouley shares her own experiences of random, casual racist pronouncements and the toll they take on her energies.

She writes of her day job:

I earn my daily bread by working as the Executive Director of Community Change Inc., a 47 year old civil rights organization in Boston, MA that has been educating and organizing for racial equality since 1968 with a specific focus on the white problem.

One of the many things I've learned from reading her blog is that a donation to support the work is always in order. While many of us donate to support organizations, I don't often think to donate to bloggers whose unpaid work as citizen journalists brings us news we need and often don't get elsewhere.

There, I just made my final 2016 donation to help Black Girl in Maine endure as a valuable resource for all of us. You can, too.

Notable women abound and I could go on all day expanding on this post. Suffice it to say that when all is said and done, the courage and understanding of many wise women gave me hope that will continue into a new year.

Radio City #Rockettes: Art In The Age Of The Demagogue

Art flourishes in dark times. A true artist listens mostly -- or entirely -- to her own inner song and is unaccommodating to the powers that be. Her spirit struggles when authoritarian government or the rich and powerful attempt to harness her light to shine for their own glory.

"The Skat Players" by Otto Dix (1920)

History shows this to be true. So I've been consoling myself with this silver lining to the dark cloud of ignorance and hate engulfing my culture.

First the cast of the Broadway show Hamilton delivered an unscripted message to the vice president elect, a notorious white supremacist.

This week the famous dancers of the Radio City Rockettes kicked up a fuss about being forced to perform at the demagogue with bad hair's inauguration. 

Whether motivated by aversion to his bragging about grabbing women's genitals or the sexual assault allegations (all of the Rockettes are women) or aversion to his racism (many of the Rockettes are women of color), they took to social media to complain.

Their union, like most unions in the age of neoliberal decay, caved to pressure from management and lectured the dancers thus:

"Everyone is entitled to her own political beliefs, but there is no room for this in the workplace." -- email from the American Guild of Variety Artists

Then, faced with enormous backlash from the public, the union backpedaled. Now they are saying it will be voluntary whether or not to perform. How many dancers does it take to cast a chorus kick line? Three Rockettes will look kind of pathetic out there, don't you think?

Wags are already posting lots of photos with captions like these:

Apparently the #Rockettes are already rehearsing for Trump's Inauguration pic.twitter.com/uj4gaV7miB

— Jon Berry (@jonberrydesign) December 23, 2016

The Trump version of the Rockettes courtesy of Kim Jung Un! pic.twitter.com/fUivDCRKzW

— philip harris (@pharris830) December 23, 2016

To say that there is no room for politics in the workplace is the epitome of American exceptionalism. The profound ignorance of the role that power plays in nearly every aspect of life -- especially in the places where wage slaves toil -- is incredibly naive. 

People in the U.S. are outgrowing this kind of juvenile analysis and will be doing so even more rapidly as the towers of empire crumble and fall upon them.

But are the Rockettes real artists? some will ask. You move to NYC and wait tables and let gross men like the demagogue grope you for tips to be able to afford overcrowded substandard housing plus dance and acting lessons. Let me know if you can still afford to eat. Explore how much you are willing to suffer to pursue a career in the performing arts before you trivialize dancers who perform as Rockettes.

Artists will do what they need to do to get by. I'll do what I can to spotlight their creative attempts to make sense of the mess we're in.

"Everybody gets a turkey" by Abby Shahn

Open Letter To Young Organizers: I'm Against Imperial Wars, How About You?

Forward Together rally and march in Waterville, Maine on December 10. Photo by Michael G. Seamens, Morning Sentinel

Dear young organizers,
Thanks for inviting me to your marches. Congratulations on waking up to the dangers of corporate government threatening human rights and planetary health. It was easy to be lulled by its handsome, articulate face especially when you were still quite young and had almost no access to authentic information about the practices of your empire. It's not your fault that you never saw the babies and grandmothers President Obama burnt up with his hellfire missiles, or the mothers who bore deformed infants after being exposed to his weapons made with depleted uranium. Or the innocent people who were tortured with the taxes your parents paid.

The six big conglomerates who control corporate media made sure that you never saw these things.

Source: tapnewswire.com

Instead, they made sure you saw lots and lots and lots of patriotic, nationalistic flag waving in conjunction with lots of fear mongering about Muslim terrorists. And bullshit movies where torture was effective at getting information out of people (it's not).

The propaganda of corporate government has become quite sophisticated, especially in its distribution strategies, employing platforms like televised sports and permeating your schools in forms such as classroom magazines and book fairs. 

You've all gotten the message loud and clear that opposing U.S. wars and militarism makes you look unpatriotic. 

And most of you understandably failed to notice that, even though the health of the environment is a big concern for your generation, the Pentagon's enormous carbon footprint and other pollution were being deliberately rendered invisible. 

Great State of Maine Air Show, Brunswick, Maine September, 2008 (U.S. Navy photo accessed on Wikimedia Commons)

Even though air shows like the Blue Angels were churning out exhaust and burning napalm (the jellied gasoline that was used to burn jungles and people in Vietnam when I was your age) for your entertainment right under your nose all along. The grownups were cheering, so you did, too.

Don't feel bad -- propaganda works on everybody. That's why our corporate overlords rely on it so heavily.

Now that the demagogue with bad hair has been elected and started filling his cabinet posts with executives from the worst corporations on the planet, you're up in arms. You're ready to march for a long list of human rights that you consider crucial to quality of life, and you're organizing people to march with you. I'm receiving hundreds of invites to join you in the streets, in signing petitions, sending letters to CEOs, and lobbying our alleged representatives in Washington DC. 

And I'm thrilled. I'll join you when and where I can, and I'll gladly follow your lead. Young people are waking up and I feel privileged to witness this and to support your fresh and passionate movements.

I'm waiting breathlessly for the day that you collectively realize that withdrawing your labor -- especially, I believe, women withdrawing their labor -- en masse would be an extremely effective and nonviolent way to bring a corrupt system to its knees.

I won't be organizing this. But you, I predict, will when the time comes.

Here's what I want to ask you to consider today: don't overlook the human rights abuses of the U.S. military killing machine at work beyond our borders. Black lives matter here, and they matter over there, too. Muslim lives matter. People whose countries are on top of big fossil fuel reserves lives matter. People who find themselves in places where the Pentagon thinks they have the right to build one of its thousands of military bases outside the U.S. lives matter.

When you're making the list of human rights abuses you'll be marching against, don't forget the wars waged in your name all around the planet. They are the ultimate human rights abuse. Just ask someone who's experienced air strikes on their village.

If you want to and have the time, find out more about these wars. Look beyond the corporate "news" feed of Google and Yahoo! or the sites your friends share on social media. If the source is looking to turn a profit, be skeptical about their hidden bias.

I understand if you don't have time to research the current wars and you prefer to focus on other issues. It's hard to get by these days, and once we've attended to our own basic survival needs we all get to decide what we want to spend our free time working toward.

Just please don't let yourself be intimidated into silencing your dissent around imperial militarism. Opposing wars is patriotic.

I look forward to the day when you remember to include opposition to militarism on the lists of things you're marching for. I have faith in you and your ongoing education. Let's keep learning together.

With love, appreciation and respect,
Lisa

Source: Quotesgram.com

Shouting Into The Void: A Letter To My Senator About Education

Old people such as myself that were raised to believe in the Constitution and the promise of equality under the law tend to cling to old beliefs, reluctant to shed them in the face of evidence of their uselessness. Taught by our parents and our teachers that we could rightly expect our government to represent us, we were also urged to act as if this were true, and to exercise the rights of free speech and petition to secure representation of our views.

White privilege has a big role to play here as most of our elected representatives looked like us and we had access to most of the perks of being the majority group in our society. The civil rights movement pointed out how unequal the U.S. really was, but those of us in the urban fringes (or in Maine, the whitest state in the nation) could pretend that those problems happened elsewhere. 

Except that the Watts riots happened right where my dad commuted to his job working for the Los Angeles school district.

My dad loved thumbing his nose at convention, and he was the one who taught me very early in life that white privilege was a thing and that I had it. It doesn't make you better than anyone, he would say, just luckier. He found the many PhDs in public education who insisted on being addressed as "Dr. __" hilarious and responded by calling all employees including janitors Dr., too.

This is a long way of introducing my recent reply from the odious Republican Senator Susan Collins who ostensibly "represents" me in Maine. I wrote to her voicing my concerns about the presumed nominee for Secretary of Education, a 1% big donor to the demagogue with bad hair's campaign who reportedly never sent her own children to public schools. Her prerogative, but it hardly qualifies her to lead the national public education effort. The nominee has also said that she supports public funding for religious schools like the right wing Christian ones that "educated" her own brood. 

This is a silver lining I have been glimpsing in the ominous cloud of nominees -- if we can get federal $$ for religious schools, I know a bunch of wise people I'd invite to teach at a Pagan religious school that taught children how to live with reverence for Mother Nature.

Here is my senator's craven reply, which erased any doubts I had about whether she would cozy up to the incoming regime of know-nothings:

Typical response from my elected "representative" in that it makes no effort to address my substantive issues, delivers a condescending lecture on how government supposedly works, and does not miss a chance to take a dig at the current officeholder on the (mistaken) presumption that I am a fan of Democrats. 

In reality my response to the nominee has been that the incoming administration would have to go far to select a Secretary of Education worse than former Democratic secretary Arne Duncan, but it appears that they have succeeded.

No Child Left Behind gutted public education as we had known it and lined the pockets of George W. Bush's cronies in the standardized testing sector. Charter school operators and other for-profit education corporations similarly flourished during the Obama administration. 

Meanwhile, poor kids still receive a poorly funded education while rich kids parents cough up the property taxes that make for what Jonathon Kozol described as "savage inequality"  in our public schools 25 YEARS AGO.

So why do I keep writing to my elected officials in the vain hope that they will hear me rather than the sweet sounds of cash falling into their coffers from the army of lobbyists that roam the halls of Congress?

Same reason I write this blog: to keep my head from exploding.

What To Do In Dark Times? Read, Read, Read

Photo: The Nation "Clair Sheehan...on November 9, 2016, in downtown Seattle" Ted S. Warren / AP

In these dark times of crony capitalism destroying life support on the planet, many of us who have been actively resisting for some time wonder what to do. Keep marching? Go underground? Seek out more beloved communities and link arms amid the gloom? 

It may be fitting that in the dark days before the winter solstice many of us turn to reading to inform our sorrow and help us cogitate on actions that may or may not suit the times. 

In this spirit I created a recent post with recommended sources for news and analysis. Today I share a recommended reading list compiled by my sister peace activist Dixie Searway :

At the end of a recent rant I mentioned sharing a reading list to anyone interested. I just got back to doing that so here goes, a list of readings that were transforming for me and perhaps would be interesting for others. 

When I began my personal reading binge I was focused on 9/11 so I began with the Commission Report and books by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott. Today I would recommend starting with subjects, authors listed below. 

On Federal Reserve and its history: 

1. A Study Of The Federal Reserve And Its Secrets by Eustace Clarence Mullins: describes, names participants who traveled to Jekyl Island to write legislation that would eventually be passed by President Wilson establishing the Federal Reserve Act of December 23, 1913. 

2. The Creature from Jekyl Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G.Edward Griffin is a good resource book on the subject. 

3. Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System And How We Can Break Free by Ellen Hodgson Brown was the best book for helping me to understand economics, effects of banking systems in US history. She uses quotes throughout her book from the fairytale The Wizard of Oz published by L.Frank Baum, 1900 which really was an allegory describing the issues of that time. Her quotes, examples from the wizard of Oz story helped me, a novice, to understand the concepts and events of our economic history with its ups and downs of trying to get out from under the influence of the banks, only to be captured again. It is an amazing read! Changed my perspective, life. 

On the IMF and World Bank, what they are, what they do, and the effects all over the world:

1. The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order by Michel Chossudovsky is an amazing thorough world overview. Chossudovsky was a young professor of economics in Chile when the military coup began and later saw similar happenings while teaching in Argentina, both affecting him greatly and thus began his life's work and this book. One understands the world differently and the role of IMF and the World Bank after reading and seeing how oppressive policies have been enacted all over the world through banking systems purported to help struggling countries. 

2. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man; The Secret History of the American Empire, The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, And How To Change The World by John Perkins are two books that take Chossudovsky's intellectual work and show us the nitty gritty, down to earth oppressive activities that take place on the ground. If a leader can be bought with monies the corporations come in followed by the debt which can not be repaid. If the leader can't be bought, they are assassinated, die in a plane crash or are displaced by a coup. It is not a pretty picture, but incredibly important to understand. Perkins' books are a must first read, and he has a new edition out now. 

On wars, the effects on veterans, and observations, documentations of atrocities in third world countries made by veterans during the Reagan years: 

1. Blood On The Tracks: The Life And Times Of S. Brian Willson by S. Brian Willson is a soul changing book, again like John Perkins, making clear what happens on the ground in this case The Vietnam War, but very important for me, because I didn't have the picture of the overt and covert wars the US was conducting in the 80's in Central America. This book is distressing reading, creating dissonance no matter one's knowledge before, and yet one of the most important readings for me personally influencing how I view the world. One is left really feeling at one's core that we are in truth brothers and sisters with everyone in the world. 

On people, presidents, government agencies critical to understanding how our country has developed since WWI, WWII:

I would start with just four authors. I know there are more. 

1. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died And Why It Matters by James. W. Douglas. 

2. The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, The CIA, The Rise of America's Secret Government by David Talbot. 

3. The American Deep State by Peter Dale Scott. If you are like me you will end up purchasing, reading every book of his you can, including his poetry! As a Canadian who has lived, worked in the US, he is an American treasure! 

4. Family of Secrets, The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the History of the Last Fifty Years by Russ Baker fills in a great deal. 

On social, cultural commentary:

I have found Chris Hedges, especially his Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Illusion to be very thought provoking.

The Corporate Government War On Life Itself: Mni Woconi (Water Is Life)

Collage by James Fangboner

A new Facebook friend, Danica Niketic, shared this gem yesterday with the comment "Think about where you can apply this definition..."

Anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes has observed that Genocide is a continuum that runs for years, decades or centuries. It begins with marginalization and dehumanization of an identifiable minority, the theft of their lands and property, their slaughter and decimation, and the gradual squeezing of remnant populations. The central organizing principle of the continuum is a narrative that turns "others into non-persons or monsters," that normalizes atrocities and rationalizes the "every day practice of violence."

Who could read this without thinking of Standing Rock? The extreme violence against Native water protectors and their supporters has normalized atrocities reminiscent of Nazi atrocities against Jews, especially spraying them with sustained blasts of water at freezing temperatures. The irony of turning water into a weapon against water protectors is apparent.

Of course Israel has long been guilty of using water as a weapon against its indigenous population, the Palestinian people it attempted to displace very much as European settlers attempted to displace North America's Native peoples. In an arid agricultural region withholding water from farmers is one way of driving people out, while spraying them with sewer water is a tactic for attacking those who aren't working the land. 


"Turning others into non-persons or monsters" is the weak link in the genocidal chain. 

In the case of Standing Rock, despite the corporate media's virtual news blackout, respect for Native leadership in protecting the watershed for millions is enormous.

"Police turn water cannons on Dakota Access Pipeline protesters." from Workers.org

Thousands of veterans are traveling to North Dakota to form a human shield between the Native water protector front lines and the heavily militarized police and National Guard troops attacking them. 
Millions have donated supplies, showed up ready to help, and shared the news of Standing Rock atrocities acting as citizen journalists. The whole world is watching to see what will happen on December 5 when state agents have announced the final eviction of the camp now surrounded by pipeline construction equipment. 

Veterans For Peace chapter 001 presenting a check to Chief Francis of the Penobscot Indian Nation
to support the DAPL resistance. Photo courtesy of Richard Clement, VFP.

The long international campaign to turn Muslims into monsters has been far more effective, thanks to the collusion of propaganda outlets and the regular, suspiciously convenient "terror" events alleged to have been orchestrated by Muslim extremists. The chief crime of Muslim people in the eyes of corporate government is that their faith predominates among the indigenous population in parts of Asia and Africa where fossil fuel reserves are found and/or transported. 

The war on Muslims has been underway since the Ottoman Empire began shedding colonies in the run up to WWI, as the history of Afghanistan's occupation by one super power after another demonstrates. (Not much oil there, but it is a key transport region due to geographical location.)

The attempted genocide against the Native people of the Americas has been going on even longer, essentially since 1492. Here in the 21st century, corporate greed for control of fossil fuels and control of water have crossed paths in the many pipeline projects being actively resisted in North America. Just yesterday the Prime Minister of Canada announced with a winsome smile that he had approved the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline over the objections of First Nations people. 

Corporate government has two faces which it alternates: the pretty ones like Trudeau and Obama who lull liberals to sleep while stealing the commons, and the baldly ugly ones like Trump who wake liberals up to demand narrowly defined civil rights for certain identity groups.

But it doesn't matter to the groups targeted for genocide whether the faces under the riot gear helmets are attractive or not. Black Lives Matter activists have repeatedly said that having a Black man in the White House has done nothing to stem the tide of state-sanctioned violence and prison enslavement of Black citizens. What it mostly appears to have done is piss off millions of racist voters whose economic prospects are dim and whose grasp of the reality behind the facade is even dimmer. 

The lumpen proletariat vote against their own interests because propaganda confuses them into thinking a billionaire kleptocracy will protect them and others with white privilege; it will do nothing of the kind. Instead it will continue using genocidal tactics to steal the commons upon which all life depends. For profit.

Our best defense is to refuse to marginalize or dehumanize any groups, and to always follow the money.

The handful of people still confused by why the U.S.-led coalition attacked and occupied (and continues to attack and occupy) Iraq may want to listen in to the ongoing Iraq War Tribunal as it examines the lies told about the monsters sitting on those oil fields. Of course today there is a new lie: ISIS makes them do it. Or in other words, the presence of ISIS "rationalizes the everyday practice of violence." But who made ISIS? Few in the U.S. care to pursue that question.

Just as few noticed that Obama spent his final few days in office this week adding Al Shabab in Somalia to the list of targets authorized for attack after 9/11, even though Al Shabab did not exist in 2001. And also authorized deployment of U.S. Special Forces anywhere on the planet to conduct secret assassinations outside of recognized war zones.

Under Trump even liberals are likely to wake up and realize what indigenous people have known for a long time: the whole planet is a war zone.