The Mason MIssile, September 30, 2012

Greetings, freedom fighters! I have been celebrating the High Holy Days, Rosh haShona and Yom Kippur; I bid everyone within the sound of my newsletter a happy, sweet, and prosperous new year, with all abundance in good things coming to you and your loved ones. The beauty of the High Holy Days is that we can reflect on the past, without being enslaved or trapped in what when on then. We’ve made mistakes, sure, but we can move beyond them. Good news to you I'll tell-I have been accepted for Masters' work in labor studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst-YAY! It will be a two-week-per-semester program aimed at union activists and officials. Labor education in very important; we have to know what our predecessors went through for future generations of workers to have decent wages, medical benefits, occupational safety and health, etc. It’s at the work site, the shop floor, where social justice issues become concrete, they go from the abstract to the practical. How can I not say anything about the presidential election? I have no other choice but to endorse for President of the United States-Barack Obama. I also worried whether he gave in to easily to the Republicans, such as the departure on his officials Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod, over lies concocted through the rightist media machine; also with his trying to reason with the Tea Party affiliated congress-idiots, hell bent on bringing him down, no matter what damage it does to the nation’s reputation and credit rating. But he has stood up, with his repeal of the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” rule concerning LGBT service members, his support of same-sex marriage, and of reproductive rights for women. Hopefully, he can overcome the idea, within the wall Street faction of the Democratic party (exemplified by Clinton-era Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin), on concentrating on making the banks happy and ignore everyone else. The fight to retain voting rights goes on. People have braved police assaults, fire hoses, and lynching for the right to peaceably change their government and affect policy. Republican state legislators have rammed through bills, signed by Republican governors-how convenient!-to have only certain forms of identification acceptable to show at voting stations. Certain demographic groups, such as students, the elderly, and minorities may not have the appropriate ID to show on election day-and, quite conveniently for SOME, these groups tend towards Democrats. Fortunately, there have been fights in the courts to legally invalidate these laws, along with efforts to see that the affected people do have appropriate ID; the labor movement, I’m proud to say, has taken a lead in this work. But beware! There is a group out, called True The Vote, affiliated with the Tea Party “Astroturf” thing-I won’t all it a movement-that would go to voting stations and, like some sort of self-appointed police, demand to see voters’ IDs, to intimidate them. Let’s be aware of this, and be ready to stand up to these types. I urge us to meet and set up a plan to fight this. The idea of a Mitt Romney presidency should chill everybody’s back. Here is a man who has spoken with scorn about the same people whose votes he would need, mocking them as moochers for government handouts (thank you, Mother Jones); whose whole career has been finding troubled companies, loading them with debts they could never pay off, bankrupting them, and laying off workers; and whose entire life has been one of ignorance of the lives of people not as well off as he has been, and who has caused suffering to people less powerful, like the supposedly Gay kid in his prep school. His running mate Paul Ryan, (still running for his Wisconsin House seat while running for Vice-President-huh?), proclaimed his adherence to the writing of Ayn Rand, even ordering his staff to read Atlas Shrugged, a terribly written fantasy of rich people going into hiding because the lower orders don’t like them-that is how Ryan gets his economic doctrine. Passivity and apathy, brothers and sisters, are not in order. We must get our minds together, get our IDs ready, and take the time out to VOTE. We CAN and WILL win this thing! Bye!

The Mason Missile, September 2, 2012

Greetings, freedom fighters! I will celebrate Labor Day, the day to honor American workers. I am also active in the campaign, led ably in Philadelphia by Jim Moran, to restore May Day as a workers' holiday in the United States, as it is in the rest of the world; we ARE part of the wider world. The Republican convention has come and gone; the Democratic convention, at this writing, is next. During the primary season, and all through the Obama administration, the Republicans and the organized right-wing movement have used race-baiting and threats as part of their collective message. Recently there was a plot, by Army soldiers, to assassinate the President; they killed a man who they thought would expose the plot. There have been pictures on placards of Obama as a witch doctor, with his head on a spike, and a sick parody of the famous "Hope" poster with his head in a noose. I could go on, but suffice it to say THIS is what our politics has gotten to. Racism in very real in this election. A Romney TV ad accused Obama of waiving work requirements for welfare; that wasn't true, but they'll continue with it anyway, bragging they won't be dictated to by "fact-checkers." Plus, Newt Gingrich referred to Obama as a "food stamp President" and a "fried chicken President"; how much more racially coded can you get? You don't need the CIA to break that code! Meanness and stupidity are utilized by the Republicans in this election, playing to racial bigotry and misinformation. Do the Republican leaders, from Romney on down, think this is how you appeal to the American people, how THEY envision America? Perhaps they get that vision from the Tea Parties and the people they attract. Many of them are afraid the government would take over their Social Security and Medicare- which ARE government programs! (Is THIS why republican governors want to make cuts in education- an educated electorate, thinking for itself rather than Fox "News" doing it for them, is such a threat to corporate-state power?) It's a puzzling conglomeration running the Republican party-corporate state advocates (calling themselves "libertarians"), who want the government out of their business except to support their businesses, in the same party with religious extremists who want to control what people learn in school, what they read and watch, what kinds of sex practices are acceptable-things that the corporate capitalist class could give two shits about. But just as a general staff in an army needs foot soldiers to get killed for their glory, the plutocrats running our politics and our politicians need foot soldiers to do the essential political grunt work- phone banking, handing out leaflets, stuffing envelopes, and going to the polls and pulling the leavers. For the religious fundamentalists, their vision is limited by their hatred toward the world and the changes that go on in it, such as the liberation of women and LGBT people, the honest discussion of sexuality, and scientific research. Social change has always been a long-haul affair, while the news media focuses too much on immediate horse-race displays of electoral campaigns. After the 1977 campaign led by Anita Bryant against gays and lesbians working as school teachers succeeded, right-wing pundits acted like that would be the final word on the matter-gays and lesbians should and would go back into the closet and shut up. Also with the failure of the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, it was expected that the Feminist movement would come to an end. Crusades against abortion became militant, with threats of terror or real terror, such as the assassination of Dr. George Tiller. BUT-several states AND our sitting President have come out for same-sex marriage; rules against LGBT military personnel serving openly have been repealed; birth control remains a strong issue among women. It's all about dedicated people, who have a vision of a just, fair nation, like we're are supposed to be about, doing the work needed to bring that about. Yet-it's been implied that, since the plutocrats and their political hacks-I'm thinking about the Koch brothers, among others-have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in TV ads to broadcast their lies, to try to make us forget the previous eight years of George W. Bush and the policies his crew pursued-tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, no regulation of ANY industry (including the stock market), cuts in every federal program that wasn't military or didn't go to a supporting religious group, and two unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to prop up corrupt regimes. (This is a pattern that has gone on since the start of the “Cold War,” the assumption that every foreign government that tried to use its power to benefit its people-such as Mohammad Moseddeq of Iran, and Jacobo Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala- were ipso facto communist and had to be brought down. The pattern continued through the war in Viet Nam, and on through the Contra war in Nicaragua and the support of Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran. The Romney foreign policy team has the same geniuses who organized and promoted the Iraq invasion in the Bush II administration; I see SOME people don’t learn from history.) This has lead to trillions of dollars of a federal deficit, a roaring crash in the aforesaid stock market, businesses closing while their CEOs get millions of dollars of bonuses, and the loss of respect for this country in the world. Do we want that again? Do we want to listen to the media say to us again, “You guy’s gonna lose, so don’t bother to vote”? Let us exercise our independence minds, as we look at the election-and beyond. Bye!

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!