The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Heroes

The Amazing Mister Boots

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Joseph Bien-Kahn interviews Boots Riley.

When I say, “We have hella people, they have helicopters,” I’m trying to point out that they can have this technology, but we’re the ones that have to operate it. They’ve got our eyes on the details of technology, but the truth is, this whole world is run through the power of the working class. We’re who creates the profit and we can reorganize it. Helicopters won’t matter.

Read the full interview: Boots Riley on the State of Oakland, the Power of the Working Class, and His New Screenplay | VICE | United States.

American Reds

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The folks at Red Wedge magazine have created a wonderful new series of posters called Inside Agitators.

The series “aims to reintroduce the notion that communism is an American tradition and a powerful, intersectional tradition at that. American communists have been women and men, black and white and red and brown, queer and straight, disabled and able-bodied. That the posters resemble wanted posters is no accident: communism has been and is a crime, for which our brave forebears were hunted, banished, jailed, and killed.”

Some of my personal heroes, including Helen Keller, Eugene Debs and Big Bill Haywood are among those depicted.

See the posters: Inside Agitators — Red Wedge.

Pete Seeger’s HUAC Testimony

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Pete Seeger was heroic in his testimony before the House Unamerican Activities Committee in 1955.

“I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known. I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American. I will tell you about my songs, but I am not interested in telling you who wrote them, and I will tell you about my songs, and I am not interested in who listened to them.”

Read Pete’s full testimony: House Un-American Activities Committee, August 18, 1955 – PeteSeeger.net.

Rest in Peace, Pete Seeger

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It is sad to learn of the passing of Pete Seeger, who has been a personal hero of mine most of my life.

I’d like to share this excellent retrospective that Sam Anderson wrote on the occasion of Seeger’s 90th birthday in April of 2009.

“Seeger is, quite literally, a folk hero—in the sense that he collected, wrote, and popularized many of America’s essential songs. But he is also a folk hero in the sense that Paul Bunyan is a folk hero.”

Read the full essay here: Pete Seeger Celebrates His 90th Birthday — New York Magazine.