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Holidays

On National Greatness

Brian K. Noe · November 11, 2020 ·

Perhaps it is just my own perception, but I’ve noticed that Veterans Day 2020 seems, at least for some, to be more an occasion to celebrate military might than anything else.

To the extent that America is, or ever has been, great, that greatness has derived from the strength of our ideals, not from our nation’s ability to destroy more things or kill more people more efficiently than other nations.

Among ideologies, nationalism seems to me to be among the most childish and ignorant of all. I am sad to witness so much of it.

Preface notwithstanding, here is a post from nine years ago that still expresses the gist of my own personal observance today.

I wish you peace,

Filed Under: Notes From The Field Tagged With: America, Holidays, Militarism, Nationalism

There Is Power In A Union

Brian K. Noe · September 2, 2016 ·

Apropos of Labor Day, from Billy Bragg.

Filed Under: Music, Video Tagged With: Billy Bragg, Holidays, Joe Hill, Labor, Labor Day, Union

The Good Revolution

Brian K. Noe · July 4, 2016 ·

4th-of-july

Did you ever read in your school textbooks that there were times during our Revolution when there were more Americans enrolled in the British forces than under George Washington?

In 1962, for KPFA radio, Hal Draper revealed the facts behind the story of our nation’s founding.

Read the speech: Hal Draper: A Fourth Of July Oration (1962)

P.S.: “There has been only one revolution in the history of the world which took place after a registration of revolutionary sentiment by vote.” It wasn’t in 1776. It was in November of 1917.

Happy Independence Day!

Filed Under: Curated Links Tagged With: America, Hal Draper, History, Holidays, Patriotism, Revolution

The Bivouac of The Dead

Brian K. Noe · May 27, 2016 ·

For Memorial Day 2016

Decoration Day Civil War

Filed Under: Other Content Tagged With: Civil War, History, Holidays

May Day: Green Tradition, Red Tradition

Brian K. Noe · April 30, 2016 ·

I enjoyed this video from Democracy Now with historian Peter Linebaugh, author of “The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day.”

Our family will be in the Haymarket on Sunday for this year’s celebration.

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: Anarchists, Haymarket Tragedy, Holidays, International Workers Day, Labor, Labor Day, Martyrs, May Day

Chicago May Day 2015

Brian K. Noe · April 23, 2015 ·

joe-hill-roadshow

May Day Celebration – Noon to 1: 30 PM Haymarket Memorial, Corner of DesPlaines & Randolph

May Day 2015 March, Rally, and Noise Demonstration – 2:30 PM Union Park

Illinois Labor History Society Annual Membership Meeting – 5 to 7 PM Chicago Federation of Musicians, 656 Randolph Street, Haymarket Square

The Joe Hill Roadshow – 9 PM Hideout, 1354 West Wabansia Avenue, Chicago

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Chicago, Folk Music, Haymarket Tragedy, Holidays, ILHS, Joe Hill, May Day, Union

Peace On Earth

Brian K. Noe · December 18, 2014 ·

Rory Fanning, a former U.S. Army Ranger and author of the new book Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of the Military and Across America, tells the remarkable story of hope amid the horror of the First World War: the Christmas Truce of 1914.

Read it here: When soldiers declared peace on earth | SocialistWorker.org.

Filed Under: Curated Links Tagged With: Christmas, Holidays, Peace, Socialist Worker, War, World War I

The Spirit of Resistance

Brian K. Noe · October 13, 2014 ·

Each year as Columbus Day is observed in the United States, I struggle with how to approach the commemoration. Though I consider myself a dissident and a person who cares about justice, even I am sometimes put off by comments about the holiday which offer little but iconoclasm, hostility and snark.

It seems to me that Columbus Day is an opportunity to do more than that. First, we can take at least a moment to affirm the truth about Christopher Columbus. More exploiter than explorer, more gore monger than governor, his main achievement was to institute an orgy of theft and butchery which would continue through four centuries of genocide. This needs to be acknowledged and proclaimed as fact, simply and directly.

Beyond that, we can honor the spirit of resistance which is still alive today in groups such as Idle No More, and we can support them and join them in their efforts.

We can also spend some time learning about the peoples who were indigenous to North America, and take time to remember and honor those who fought for their own freedom and dignity.

Today, I am reading The Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk written by the great warrior who perhaps best exemplifies the spirit of Native resistance in the region where I live.

I won’t wait for the government to change the name of the holiday to “Indigenous Peoples Day.” I certainly won’t refer to the holiday as “Black Hawk Day” since, sadly, most of my friends and neighbors would only think it has something to do with the ice hockey team.

But today I will celebrate Black Hawk – and Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull – and others who had the courage to fight back. I will mourn those who died on the Trail of Tears, at Wounded Knee, and elsewhere at the hands of my European forebears. I will pray for the will and the way to join the resistance against imperialism, occupation and genocide wherever it exists in our world today.

Such is a fine and fitting commemoration.

Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: Black Hawk, Dissent, First Nations, Holidays, Idle No More, Indigenous Peoples, Resistance

Marx and America

Brian K. Noe · July 4, 2014 ·

Here are some words of wisdom from James Patrick Cannon’s essay, written for July 4th, 1951. He says that if you go to Marx, you find America.

It is wrong to confuse internationalism with anti-Americanism; to relinquish the revolutionary traditions of our country to the reactionaries; to let the modern workers’ revolutionary movement, the legitimate heir of the men of 1776, appear as something foreign to our country.

Read it at the Northern Worker: James Cannon on the 4th of July.

Happy Independence Day!

Filed Under: Curated Links Tagged With: America, Holidays, James Patrick Cannon, Trotskyism

The First Decoration Day

Brian K. Noe · May 24, 2014 ·

Here’s an account of one of the earliest known commemorations of Memorial Day, from professor David Blight’s book The Civil War in American Memory. I may try to learn “Rally ‘Round The Flag” on banjo this weekend in tribute.

African Americans founded Decoration Day at the graveyard of 257 Union soldiers labeled “Martyrs of the Race Course,” May 1, 1865, Charleston, South Carolina.

The “First Decoration Day,” as this event came to be recognized in some circles in the North, involved an estimated ten thousand people, most of them black former slaves. During April, twenty-eight black men from one of the local churches built a suitable enclosure for the burial ground at the Race Course. In some ten days, they constructed a fence ten feet high, enclosing the burial ground, and landscaped the graves into neat rows. The wooden fence was whitewashed and an archway was built over the gate to the enclosure. On the arch, painted in black letters, the workmen inscribed “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

At nine o’clock in the morning on May 1, the procession to this special cemetery began as three thousand black schoolchildren (newly enrolled in freedmen’s schools) marched around the Race Course, each with an armload of roses and singing “John Brown’s Body.” The children were followed by three hundred black women representing the Patriotic Association, a group organized to distribute clothing and other goods among the freedpeople. The women carried baskets of flowers, wreaths, and crosses to the burial ground. The Mutual Aid Society, a benevolent association of black men, next marched in cadence around the track and into the cemetery, followed by large crowds of white and black citizens.

All dropped their spring blossoms on the graves in a scene recorded by a newspaper correspondent: “when all had left, the holy mounds — the tops, the sides, and the spaces between them — were one mass of flowers, not a speck of earth could be seen; and as the breeze wafted the sweet perfumes from them, outside and beyond … there were few eyes among those who knew the meaning of the ceremony that were not dim with tears of joy.” While the adults marched around the graves, the children were gathered in a nearby grove, where they sang “America,” “We’ll Rally Around the Flag,” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The official dedication ceremony was conducted by the ministers of all the black churches in Charleston. With prayer, the reading of biblical passages, and the singing of spirituals, black Charlestonians gave birth to an American tradition. In so doing, they declared the meaning of the war in the most public way possible — by their labor, their words, their songs, and their solemn parade of roses, lilacs, and marching feet on the old planters’ Race Course.

After the dedication, the crowds gathered at the Race Course grandstand to hear some thirty speeches by Union officers, local black ministers, and abolitionist missionaries. Picnics ensued around the grounds, and in the afternoon, a full brigade of Union infantry, including Colored Troops, marched in double column around the martyrs’ graves and held a drill on the infield of the Race Course. The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration.

Filed Under: Other Content Tagged With: America, Holidays

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