Greetings, freedom fighters! On August 1st I celebrated my 55th birthday; on that day I began my time on the City of Philadelphia's Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP), whereby I stay at my job for up to four years, and then I retire with a bonus along with my pension. These wonderful things have come forth through the work of the union, along with medical, optical, and dental insurance, so that I and so many other workers can live and retire with a decent lifestyle (hint, hint). This has been done by the work over decades-centuries-of dedicated activists, men and women who risked their lives-some even losing their lives-so that they, their coworkers, their families, and descendants could live a decent life. I am well read of the history of the labor movement, with such events as the Bread and Roses Strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, of mainly immigrant and female textile workers; the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911, where Jewish and Italian immigrant female workers died, either from the fire or from trying to jump away from it, because the owners of the company had the bright idea to lock the fire exits; the Haymarket massacre in 1886, where labor activists, campaigning for something so mundane as the eight-hour workday, were accused to killing police officers and were executed-murdered!-by the state of Illinois; the Pullman railroad car strike led by Eugene Debs; the campaigns of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); the organizing drive of Pullman porters in the 1920s and 30s, led by A. Philip Randolph; the organizing of farm workers by Cesar Chavez- the list goes on. All through these campaigns, corporations called upon their hirelings-"security" thugs, police, military, politicians, the ("Left liberal slanted") news media of the day, clergy- to put down the workers organizing. The slur "union thug" is not new, people have forever been told that unions are nests of criminals and/or Communists. Still, the goals of the unions, imperfect though they are, have been established: Social Security, Medicare, pensions, occupational health and safety standards, health benefits, and time just to be around the spouse and kids. But for the past thirty years, unions, and their achievements, have been attacked: I recall vividly the breaking of the air-traffic controllers union (which, by the way, supported Reagan), the weakening of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), companies moving their factories AND their jobs overseas. For that same era, we were barraged in the media by propaganda against the role of government in dealing with workers' issues and other social issues, such as Civil Rights for women and minorities, dealing with poverty, consumer protection, etc. "Get the government off our backs," was the Reagan war cry-what did that mean? If ever they got to specifics, it meant destroying Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, education funding, occupational safety and health, consumer protection-the list goes on. But, the idea was never to cut down or out spending on the military, which is where spending has always been tremendous, and the risk of corruption is greatest. Defense corporations have established their plants in certain congressional districts, to force members of Congress to keep voting for aircraft, armored vehicles, and other items that either don't work or are not necessary-not even the Pentagon brass asks for some of this stuff-or else workers in the plants lose their jobs, along with the paychecks that pay the bills, and no one wants to take peoples jobs away. Plus, we have the increase during the time of conservative-Republican hegemony of greater surveillance of citizens acting out their rights to protest their government's stupidity; during the Reagan administration's support of the psychopathic, loose-cannon military repressions in El Salvador, I have worked along with the Committee In Solidarity With The People of El Salvador (CISPES), and have met refugees from the homicidal repressions in El Salvador seeking support from churches in the Sanctuary movement; the FBI took a strong interest in such movements, just like it did the Civil Rights and anti-Viet Nam war movements. For spending on the military and secret-police functions-traditional functions of government-as far as the Republican rights-wing thinks, the sky's the limit. It was due to huge military spending, along with cuts in taxes for the wealthiest Americans, we had deficits surpassing all the previous presidential administrations combined; you can't blame them on Food Stamps, Pell Grants, the EPA or OSHA, non-traditional functions of government. The glorification of the business-corporate class has a long history in this country, with the belief that the American businessman can do anything, and that government ought to be "run like a business;" that myth grew in strength starting in the Age of Reagan and continued, up until the crash of 2008. The Rich and the Super Rich, the classic book by Ferdinand Lundberg dating back to 1968, chronicles the interplay between government/politics and the corporate class, with executives holing up in their exclusive clubs making deals, wealthy families establishing how to perpetuate their wealth, politicians doing everything they can for their campaign donors, etc. Contrary to the Reagan-rightist-corporate propaganda line, corporate executives and their stockholding masters have never been this oppressed minority group. From Reagan up to today, however, the attempt was to remove the last administrative restraints on corporate crime-stock manipulation (which could have prevented Enron and Bernie Madoff), environmental regulation (which could have prevented the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico), occupational safety and health (which could have prevented the deaths of miners in West Virginia), the wholesale closing of factories and exporting the work to low-wage countries (thus taking jobs away from workers, so they can't pay their mortgages and utilities; impoverishing communities; closing small businesses like mom-and-pop groceries; reducing the tax base to that municipalities can't pay for police, fire and garbage collection; and weakening the manufacturing capabilities of the nation). Lundberg pointed out in 1968 how short-sighted the corporate elite has been, with no breath of vision, thinking of nothing but the bottom line. This was evident to me during the Iraq war of 2003, a great moment of shame for this country; the buildings in Baghdad related to the oil industry were secured, but the museums and other cultural institutions were left alone to be vandalized and ransacked by hoodlums Saddam Hussein released from his prisons-thereby demolishing five millennia of human history! And what was the response of Donald Rumsfeld? "Stuff happens!" That is the mentality of the ruling political-economic elite-no knowledge of the world or its history, or of foreign cultures or peoples, just the drive to expand corporate profits-of whatever corporation-for the Bush II administration, it was Halliburton and Bechtel. Of course there has come up the whine about “big government” oppressing entrepreneurs trying to make a profit on their genius. That has proven to be a red herring the size of a school of whales. For as long as there has been capitalism, 1. governments and corporations have worked hand in glove with each other, 2. nations that were originally clusters of small duchies and principalities-Germany, France, and Italy-each unified into a single national state-entity, with one single standard to weights and measures, one single currency, one single tax system, and one single military apparatus-all important in the development of capitalism. The United States also followed this pattern. in its first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, the arrangement was more like a league of independent republics, like the original thirteen colonies were. Each state had its own currency, and each faced rebellions of farmers and Revolutionary war veterans, such as Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786-87; there, farmers and veterans, squeezed by the post-war depression and harsh governmental austerity measures, shut down courts engaged in tax and debt collection, and they raised a militia against the state government. Originally, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1797 considered merely tightening up the provisions of the Articles; but they gave up the Articles and formulated a new, centralized structure. Alexander Hamilton, the godfather of what was to become the Federalist party, advocated a semi-aristocratic system for the country, favoring the emerging industrial capitalists being dominant in government; one of his projects, the Bank of the United States, was part of this aristocratic system. Thus, “big government’ was there, to benefit the financial elite of this country. Only when formerly oppressed groups-workers, consumers, women, ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities-attempt to utilize the federal government as an ally to alleviate their repression do we hear the whine of “big government.” And the corporate news-entertainment media don’t tell us the back-story of why the government got involved in such things as urban improvement, occupational safety and health, civil rights enforcement, consumer protection, environmental protection; or the efforts to persuade the government officials of the need for such protections. The fight is on, brothers and sisters. The corporate masters and their deluded foot-soldiers in the “tea party” thing (I won’t call it a “movement”) will try to terrorize us out of asserting our rights; but we’ve proven adept in standing up to them, and we’ll continue to do so, and we WILL win. Bye!

Greetings, freedom fighters! Happy Fourth of July! This is the day we commemorate the Declaration of Independence, the great document that contains the words, “All men are created equal,” and which expounds the ideas, based on the European Enlightenment, of the ability of humans to govern their political and personal lives. Alas, recently I passed by Independence Hall, the place where those great words were proclaimed-and I saw the foundations of the slave quarters where George Washington’s slaves lived. The “Founding Fathers” of this country, the white affluent men who signed the Declaration and the Constitution in 1787, were sensitive to this terrible reality, slavery in a nation which prides itself on liberty; but they did not, unfortunately, free any slaves. It is this that the Tea-Party "movement"- a collection of unconscious racists, gun junkies, religious fundamentalists, and self-centered "libertarians," subsidized by the Koch brothers and other corporations-refer to, the myth of the American Revolution overthrowing tyranny. It's as if the following 236 years did not take place, during which time we had the Civil war and the abolition of slavery; the movements for the liberation of workers, women, African-Americans, LGBT people, Hispanic-descended people, Asian-descended people, and the disabled; radical ideas as national health insurance, Social Security, pensions, day care centers-this is the start. The Tea Party-ites invoke the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who were indeed great and brave men; but they were also affluent white men, who lived in an era when social hierarchy, a society of superiors and inferiors, was the norm. Is that what we're headed to, something we're supposed to have rebelled against? I rejoice at the Supreme Court-under Chief Justice John Roberts, of ALL people!- has upheld the Obama health care plan-which is far short of what I hope for, a single-payer system like in Europe and Canada. It accommodates the private insurance companies, to make it palatable to corporations and their political lackeys. But it’s ONE step in the right direction. The Republicans are in such a state that nothing the President does works for them; they want to bring him down, the public welfare be damned. One thing bandied about by the Mitt Romney campaign is the phrase "American Exceptionalism," the idea, espoused both by liberals and conservatives, that the United States of America is special and unique among the nations of the earth, because of our supposed “democracy.” John Kennedy said, “More than any other people on Earth, we bear burdens and accept risks unprecedented in their size and their duration, not for ourselves alone but for all who wish to be free." Romney has used that phrase as if Obama, the current President of the United States, does not believe that about the nation he presides over. Kennedy’s statement sums up the worse traits of “American Exceptionalism” in a nutshell; it brings up images of Kipling’s ”White Man’s Burden,” as if the US of A is especially commissioned (by who? God) to bring democracy and civilization to the poor nations of the world, as if We know what’s best for them. Alas, it didn’t work out that way; during the Cold War after the Second World War, our government allied itself with the most reprehensible dictatorships-Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Batista in Cuba, Marcos in the Philippines, Somoza in Nicaragua, the murderous juntas in Guatemala and El Salvador, the Shah of Iran, and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Under the cover of “Exceptionalism,” our government, paid for with OUR taxes, supported these regimes, and our nation lost the respect of its people after the regimes were finally overthrown-not by any Soviet-Cuban conspiracy, but by the efforts of activists risking their lives for the betterment of their peoples. This self-centered, egotistical attitude is not good for America; it only benefits politicians who are embedded with corporations that want to break unions and their representation of workers and to cancel environmental laws, health and safety laws, and civil rights because they cut into the profit margin. It would also, if Romney (Lord, no!) got elected, put back into office the George W. Bush foreign policy team, the same geniuses that got us into war in Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist, but was a way to remake a portion of the world into an uncontrolled “free market” image, which damn sure isn’t working in this country, with plants closing and corporate CEOs, such as Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, who lost $2 billion of the company’s money, but kept his job and received a pay increase; he was rewarded for a two billion dollar blunder! THAT’S the model we’re exporting throughout the world? My fellow Americans, the true patriot wants the BEST for his/her country, to cause it to do the right thing, for its own people and for the rest of the world. Let us break out (like I did) our copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and actually read them, and cause our country to truly put them into practice. Let us discuss these things as we enjoy our beers and hot dogs. Bye!

The Mason Missile, June 24, 2012

Greetings, freedom fighters! Yes, I am disappointed that we lost in Wisconsin, with the effort to recall Scott Walker failing; but so what? It HAS happened in the history of social movements in this country, losses and setbacks. And there is the media telling tell the freedom fighters “You lost! You’ll never win! Give it up! Surrender, Dorothy!” Conservatives have for the longest time refused to take seriously the grievances of the oppressed group, treating them like punch lines in comedy routines, or some adolescent temper tantrum, or else agents of the Communist conspiracy; and they hoped it would all go away, and with it the threat to whatever illusions of privilege they might have. I saw this in the past in the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment and after the Anita Bryant campaign against gay rights in Dade County, Florida in 11977; our side was expected to swallow the losses and shut up. But we didn’t; the LGBT movement continues, winning such victories as the repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell” in the military, and gaining more public acceptance of same-sex marriage, including from the President. Plus, women’s issues have emerged once more in the public consciousness (not that they’ve ever gone away). An all-male congressional committee headed by that genius Darryl Issa of California held hearings about women’s reproductive rights; Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown University, testified at the hearing about the expense of contraception for women, citing a friend's having a cyst in her ovary which could have prevented her from having children altogether. Thus the issue was not necessarily being able to have sex without pregnancy, but women's health in general-Fluke's friend's cyst could have led to poisoning of her system and it could have been fatal. Then, that gallant chivalrous gentleman Rush Limbaugh called Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute”, and he demanded Fluke, in exchange for contraception, post her sex acts on the internet-the Kraken was released! A movement arose to demand companies stop sponsoring Limbaugh’s on-air flatulence, and they deserted him by the dozens. (They might sneak back in later on; if they do, let's be ready.) throughout the country, there were protests against these efforts to limit women's reproductive rights, including bills in state legislatures parodying these laws: laws demanding rectal examinations before a man can have Viagra (Virginia), bills proposed granting personhood to semen (Delaware and Oklahoma), and bills that would limit vasectomies (Georgia). It galls me-the Michigan legislature banning a female member from speaking on the floor of the House just because she used the word (gasp!) VAGINA! The fallout was enormous, as people demonstrated in Lansing against this nonsense, accompanied by a performance of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. This shows progressives won't be kicked around, that we WILL come out in force to stand up for what we believe, in the best American tradition. There have always been attempts to limit the rights of a minority group trying to assert itself; not trying to take away their gains or destroy their organized movements, but to control them, to harass them, in a passive-aggressive way. You see this in the scare stories in the 'seventies about the alleged rise in crime (something TO be scared of) and the cries for "law and order," while the real target is the African-American community asserting itself and the protest movements of the 'sixties, Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war. It's also true with the anti-abortion movement (much of it, not all of it), trying to control SOME parts of women's lives while they advance in fields traditionally barred to them; and in the LGBT movement, where reluctance to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples and to repeal anti-sodomy laws against consensual same-sex sex. The political and social movements are in place, their legal rights are advancing, but the traditionally powerful forces want to maintain SOME control over them. Still, issues of class and the economy remain far too real to ignore. It’s definitely coming down to democracy versus plutocracy, in the person of Willard Mitt Romney-a man who protested protests against the Vietnam war, but who evaded the draft; who has a record to terrorizing creatures who were less powerful, be it his own dog or a kid in school which he thought was Gay, and he didn’t need any evidence; whose company, Bain Capital, made its investors rich not by building anything tangible, but by buying companies cheap, loading them with debts they can’t pay, sending them into bankruptcy, selling them piece by piece-in the meantime unemploying workers and thus impoverishing communities. I’m pleased that bullying of school kids, particularly ones perceived as “different” (however you define it) is taken seriously as a social issue; I myself, from first grade (which I took twice) through the start of college had to endure teasing and insult and hitting-and I was expected to put up with it; the teachers and other adult “authority figures” either acted like I MYSELF was the cause for just being there, or else they joined in the “fun”. To this day it infuriates me! I wholeheartedly endorse Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” program, to reassure LGBT kids that they DON’T have to commit suicide because of those bullies and thugs (they’re not worth it), but they CAN and WILL get out of that town and that situation, find people like themselves, and live positive lives; THAT will be the revenge on the bullies, who are really emotionally and intellectually deficient things who can’t handle their own sexual or other issues. It’s particularly important since one of the major candidates of President (our next President? God forbid!) has been exposed as a bully in his prep school; obviously he hasn't changed since then. This is the fight we're in, brothers and sisters, and I know we're up to it! We can and will win this thing. Bye!

The Mason Missile, May 13, 2012

Greetings, freedom fighters!Happy Mother's Day to the sisters! My friend Fran Metzman has a new book collection out, The Hungry Heart Stories, available now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please look Fran up at www.franmetzman.com, and in the online journal Wild River Review (www.wildriverreview.com). I have been celebrating Workers Memorial Day, a day to honor workers killed on the job, due to the negligence and stinginess of their employers; and to advocate for greater occupational safety and health rules. Workers have died in the most horrific ways, and the corporations howl in pain when they have to install safety equipment, whining about “excessive government regulation,” etc. The penalties for workers’ deaths, such as OSHA fines, are treated as a loss and they factor it into their budgets; lives are meaningless to these plutocrats, when it comes to the bottom line. For information about Workers Memorial Day, I recommend the Philadelphia Project for Occupational Safety and Health (PHILAPOSH) (I’m on the Board) at www.philaposh.org I have also been celebrating May Day, i.e. International Workers’ Day, celebrated throughout the world by All workers-except, alas, in the US of A. The corporate-media-political complex took the cruel reality of the Stalinist system ruling the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites, and turned every challenge to the corporate status quo into a tentacle of the “international Communist conspiracy,” as a way to bring social protest movements under some form of control. Let us continue liberating our minds. For information about May Day, contact www.maydayusa.org. I often worry about “What if Mitt Romney becomes President?” Here is a man who said “Corporations are people, my friend” –showing he’s NO friend of workers; and whose idea for students struggling with financial aid is to borrow from their parents, who have their OWN financial problems-here is a man disassociated from the concerns of working people, and whose economic program is a rehash of Reagan “supply-side” economics-cut taxes on corporations, while raising spending on the military beyond what is necessary for defending the nation. Ronald Reagan started this program, George W. Bush followed it, and Romney is also. It is through this program that the gap between the richest and the poorest Americans has grown, and the middle class, to which the poorest at least could hope to get into, has shrunk; that such social services as school, hospitals, parks, police, fire, etc., are understaffed and are allowed to fall apart; and workers are powerless against faulty construction, mine cave-ins, chemical fumes and spills, fire hazards, sexual harassment and abuse, underpayment, and the closing of plants and moving the business to another country, causing entire nations to be pools of scab labor. Workers are either unemployed or underemployed; they have no money to pay for the necessities as food, utilities, mortgage, etc. Are we expected to accept this forever? Should we believe something won’t burst open? Romney has talked about his time at his company, Bain Capital, as proof that he can grow the economy better than Obama can. His company bought up failing businesses, let go of workers, sold their assets, and reaped huge profits; THIS is the future of capitalism? Romney talks about creating jobs, but his business model is one of taking jobs away. Change continues in this country. The Pew Research Center's surveys show that the most positively-thought-of political label is-Progressive. Plus, young people of high-school and college age are move lively to favor Socialism over capitalism. (I capitalized "Socialism" deliberately.) It's a combination of the events in the world, combined with the decades of dedicated work by conscious people working to make a difference-the activists conservatives talk about with hate. One example of this is in LGBT rights. I remember Gay rights was such a radical idea; it’s a little over forty years after the Stonewall riots, which jump-started the LGBT civil-rights movement. Historically that’s not a long time ago. After the Stonewall riots, coming along with the Feminist resurgence, the anti-Vietnam war and Civil Rights movements, Gays of every demographic group organized along many fronts-political action, academic research, religious acceptance, and legal protection, among others. Alas, there was the inevitable backlash, the attempt to reverse LGBT civil rights gains. Now, President Obama has come out in favor of same-sex marriage, even after the passing of the anti-same-sex-marriage amendment in North Carolina-a pretty gutsy move on his part. The repeal of the ridiculous military “Don’t-ask-don’t-tell” rule went off well; the military has adapted well to the new reality. The public mind has shifted in favor of full LGBT rights, and that’s great; but I don’t think it should require public permission, or a Gallup poll, to attain your civil and human rights. “No, you may not be permitted to hold a job in spite of your sexual preference/gender/race/religion/whatever.” It was through persistent work by dedicated activists over a period of time that the public perception of LGBT rights has shifted, as well as perceptions of Gays themselves; we all know someone who’s Gay, whether we know their orientation or not, and we might not care; and many of us live in a municipality with a lively Gay scene and an established “gayborhood,” like in Philadelphia. In the long run, the homophobic war on Gay rights, like the Anita Bryant campaign in Florida in 1977, has failed; LGBT people are NOT going back into the closet, the genie is out of the bottle. President Obama says he has "evolved" on LGBT issues; so has the rest of the nation, including myself. Such evolution is not something that just "happens," it's the outcome of conscious people causing things to happen, along with the historical situation in the world, and we give shape to the evolution by our work. Let us continue to do so. Bye!

The Mason Missile, March 29, 2012

Greetings, freedom fighters! My dear friend Fran Metzman now has a book of short stories out, The Hungry Heart, available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please look it up.
I am experimenting with a new web site through the web hosting service, webs.com; please look up jomason.webs.com and let me know what you think.
I, with my wonderful congregation Leyv Ha-Ir, celebrated Purim, the wild and crazy Jewish holiday celebrating the downfall of Haman (boo!), who as vizier to the Persian King tried to massacre all the Jews in the realm; but his plan was foiled by Mordechai (yay!) entering his beautiful cousin Esther (woo hoo!) into a beauty pageant to be the queen, and Haman’s plot was foiled.
It’s the celebration of the downfall of a tyrant; the world has been full of them, people who have become legends in their own minds, such as Mubarak in Egypt, Ghadaffi in Libya, and Assad in Syria. There are also mental Hamans as well, within our psyches, such as low self-esteem and self-doubts, which we daily must overthrow; I know, I deal with them as well.
Now coming up is the holiday of Passover, the liberating of the Jews from Pharaoh's slavery in Egypt. The traditional word for Egypt in Hebrew is Mitzrayim, “the narrow place,” the place of limitation. There are Pharaohs in the word today-political dictators for one thing, also abusive relationships-as well as internal Pharaohs, like the voice inside you that says, “I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I can’t do it.” Those dictators and tyrants, inside and around you, also need to be vanquished.
One issue I have dealt with is allowing myself downtime, time of rest and recreation and plain ol’ fun, however you define it; I have often felt guilty about not doing something “productive.” But when we went to school and studied, we twice daily had recess, so it’s not an either-or situation. Having fun and recreation can be a great revolt against the inner and outer Hamans and Pharaohs in the world, you can in effect say to them, “Screw you, I’m not your damn pack mule!”
We are living in a stuck-on-stupid era, where one large, organized, and wealthy political party, the Republican, is appeasing ignoramuses, haters, xenophobes, and religious fanatics, which has become their base and needs constantly to be catered to for votes. Total racists have appeared on the stage of the past Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and none of the Republican candidates called them out on it, nor do they disassociate from them. They act like the racist nut jobs truly represent the American people, that WE the people are entirely moved by racism, religious bigotry (like against our Muslim fellow Americans), and homophobia (with the crusades against same-sex marriage); it’s THEM that are the elitists, THEM who think we’re so stupid as to think we can’t see the real situation, with the economy.
At the CPAC conference, a couple of conservative activists put on a rap show, jumping around in track suits while wearing colonial-era wigs, reminding me of a pre-Civil War minstrel show; the duo let out what sounded like a certain nasty N word, and the Black man working the controls walked out, and the activists insisted they said "knickers." This is in line with Rick Santorum's statement that "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money." Oh, wait, he said he meant "blah" people! Make a racist statement and then deny you said it-What does he think we're smoking, or else what's HE smoking? Is that the mentality of the conservative movement-play up racist sentiments while denying racist feelings? A movement, like an individual, can be, and IS, in denial.
In earlier CPACs the John Birch Society, which accused every worthwhile social movement and Dwight Eisenhower of being “communist“, reemerged from its rock; now it's "white nationalists" like Peter Brimelow, who runs the racist web site VDARE, and Joseph Farah, who runs the web site WorldNetDaily, which STILL, no matter what facts you put before them, insists that Obama was born in Kenya, and is thus not qualified to be President. This is the movement that prided itself on being cold-bloodedly "realistic" about the world, as opposed to the "bleeding-heart, soft-headed" liberals; it has its own news media, and so apparently it has its own news and its own reality.
I hope Obama has given up trying to reason with conservatives; they don't want to compromise or meet half way or get equal time on TV-they want to control us, to smash us. Let's let them know that WON'T happen.
I close with this bit of shameless self-promotion: I, along with other poets in the Philadelphia area, will read my material at the 16th Annual Poetry Ink, to be held April 22 at noon at Robin’s Books/Moonstone Arts Center, 110A South 13th Street, in Philadelphia. I urge everyone within the sound of this newsletter to attend-the arts are for ALL of us. Bye!

The Mason Missile, January 29, 2012

Greetings, freedom fighters! I have joined my congregation, Leyv Ha-Ir, to celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King-the REAL Dr. King, the man who challenged the status quo, not the sanitized peacenik that is put out by commercial media. Towards the latter part of his life, King opposed the Viet Nam war, and not only challenged racial hierarchies but the economic inequalities that are both cause and effect of racism.
On January 10, 1967, at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, King preached, "I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal."
King, knowing he would be branded a traitor or unpatriotic for speaking out against the Viet Nam war, added, "Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It's a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition."
Then, at Riverside Church in New York in April of that year-one year to the day he was murdered- King added, "Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land." The government and other opinion-makers tried thus to confine King to Civil Rights, as if that can be separated from the Viet Nam issue. To King, Viet Nam was a further sign of a sick nation governed by sick people, willfully ignorant of the needs of the Vietnamese people.
Also, King and his group, the Southern Christian leadership Conference (SCLC) in November 1967 started organizing the Poor People's Campaign, dedicated to addressing issues of poverty, employment, and housing for people of all races, going beyond the issues of African-Americans. The Viet Nam war siphoned off money that could have been used for rebuilding cities, schools, transit systems, etc. - to pay for a war against a people that really wanted to engage us, and to prop up a gang of kleptomaniacs passing themselves off as a "government."
King saw that it's not either/or, either issues of class or race or war to work on. The upper classes traditionally tended to dominate the state, and still do to an extent; and they have twisted the work and emphasis of the state apparatus to its advantage, by repressing unions and other forms of lower-class organizing, and adjusting the tax code to favor the wealthy at the expense of the lower and working classes. The personnel to lead the state apparatus-cabinet ministers, military officers, etc. - has also traditionally come from the upper economic and social echelons-people who, in spite of their wealth and connections, are no more advanced that we working folks are.
Of course, the upper classes have been wise enough to create a hierarchy amongst the lower classes, due to race-to have the lower-class whites look down on the descendents of slaves stolen from Africa, sold as cattle, treated as livestock, as inferior to themselves, thus giving lower-class whites a false sense of superiority. Racism and plutocracy both have to be fought at the same time, it's not either-or. The Labor movement, that cause to which I have worked for, is eminently suited to deal with racism among white workers, which I have heard plenty; working-class whites must know their fellow workers, no matter their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, and their allies, not their enemies.
I take this time to point out the work of A. Philip Randolph, the great African-American trade unionist and democratic socialist. Randolph, like King recognized the intersection of race and class in this country, and believed in the trade union movement as a means of advancement for African-Americans. The A. Philip Randolph Institute carries on his work, encouraging Black participation in unions and encouraging electoral activity. You can find out more about it at apri.org.
2012 marks the fiftieth anniversary of The Other America, the classic study of poverty in this the richest nation on the planet, by the great American Socialist and patriot Michael Harrington. Alas, poverty is still very much with us, even more so, the gap between rich and poor widening, the "middle class" whittling away. I urge everyone within the sound of this newsletter to look up the Democratic socialist of America, the group Harrington founded, at www.dsausa.org.
SOME hope for sanity in our spending priorities: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has announced cuts in military spending, reducing ground forces, Army and Marine Corps, and focusing on Special Ops forces, focusing on quick deployment in case of emergency. Of course the Republicans act like tremendous military spending leads to greater military strength, and defense industries locate their plants in a variety of congressional districts, to make their constituents dependent on the plants for jobs; with cuts in military spending, the thinking goes, people in the plants lose their jobs, and the congress-members lose theirs as will, so the congress-members keep voting for MORE weapons systems that do NO good.
It's clear that the US of A is getting out of the empire business, since the VAST network of bases all around the world is economically unfeasible; we simply CAN'T afford world domination through military means. Consciousness of this fact is seeping through to the public. Let the critique continue-THAT, mutually respectful discussion and debate, is the real patriotism. Bye!

The Mason Missile, January 29, 2012

Greetings, freedom fighters! I have joined my congregation, Leyv Ha-Ir, to celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King-the REAL Dr. King, the man who challenged the status quo, not the sanitized peacenik that is put out by commercial media. Towards the latter part of his life, King opposed the Viet Nam war, and not only challenged racial hierarchies but the economic inequalities that are both cause and effect of racism.
On January 10, 1967, at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, King preached, "I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal."
King, knowing he would be branded a traitor or unpatriotic for speaking out against the Viet Nam war, added, "Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It's a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition."
Then, at Riverside Church in New York in April of that year-one year to the day he was murdered- King added, "Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land." The government and other opinion-makers tried thus to confine King to Civil Rights, as if that can be separated from the Viet Nam issue. To King, Viet Nam was a further sign of a sick nation governed by sick people, willfully ignorant of the needs of the Vietnamese people.
Also, King and his group, the Southern Christian leadership Conference (SCLC) in November 1967 started organizing the Poor People's Campaign, dedicated to addressing issues of poverty, employment, and housing for people of all races, going beyond the issues of African-Americans. The Viet Nam war siphoned off money that could have been used for rebuilding cities, schools, transit systems, etc. - to pay for a war against a people that really wanted to engage us, and to prop up a gang of kleptomaniacs passing themselves off as a "government."
King saw that it's not either/or, either issues of class or race or war to work on. The upper classes traditionally tended to dominate the state, and still do to an extent; and they have twisted the work and emphasis of the state apparatus to its advantage, by repressing unions and other forms of lower-class organizing, and adjusting the tax code to favor the wealthy at the expense of the lower and working classes. The personnel to lead the state apparatus-cabinet ministers, military officers, etc. - has also traditionally come from the upper economic and social echelons-people who, in spite of their wealth and connections, are no more advanced that we working folks are.
Of course, the upper classes have been wise enough to create a hierarchy amongst the lower classes, due to race-to have the lower-class whites look down on the descendents of slaves stolen from Africa, sold as cattle, treated as livestock, as inferior to themselves, thus giving lower-class whites a false sense of superiority. Racism and plutocracy both have to be fought at the same time, it's not either-or. The Labor movement, that cause to which I have worked for, is eminently suited to deal with racism among white workers, which I have heard plenty; working-class whites must know their fellow workers, no matter their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, and their allies, not their enemies.
I take this time to point out the work of A. Philip Randolph, the great African-American trade unionist and democratic socialist. Randolph, like King recognized the intersection of race and class in this country, and believed in the trade union movement as a means of advancement for African-Americans. The A. Philip Randolph Institute carries on his work, encouraging Black participation in unions and encouraging electoral activity. You can find out more about it at apri.org.
2012 marks the fiftieth anniversary of The Other America, the classic study of poverty in this the richest nation on the planet, by the great American Socialist and patriot Michael Harrington. Alas, poverty is still very much with us, even more so, the gap between rich and poor widening, the "middle class" whittling away. I urge everyone within the sound of this newsletter to look up the Democratic socialist of America, the group Harrington founded, at www.dsausa.org.
SOME hope for sanity in our spending priorities: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has announced cuts in military spending, reducing ground forces, Army and Marine Corps, and focusing on Special Ops forces, focusing on quick deployment in case of emergency. Of course the Republicans act like tremendous military spending leads to greater military strength, and defense industries locate their plants in a variety of congressional districts, to make their constituents dependent on the plants for jobs; with cuts in military spending, the thinking goes, people in the plants lose their jobs, and the congress-members lose theirs as will, so the congress-members keep voting for MORE weapons systems that do NO good.
It's clear that the US of A is getting out of the empire business, since the VAST network of bases all around the world is economically unfeasible; we simply CAN'T afford world domination through military means. Consciousness of this fact is seeping through to the public. Let the critique continue-THAT, mutually respectful discussion and debate, is the real patriotism. Bye!