Photo by Jim Capaldi
Pete Seeger’s HUAC Testimony
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
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.
New World Murder
Five years ago, on January 23 2009, a CIA drone flattened a house in Pakistan’s tribal regions. It was the third day of Barack Obama’s presidency, and this was the new commander-in-chief’s first covert drone strike.
Across Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the Obama administration has launched more than 390 drone strikes in the five years since the first attack – eight times as many as were launched in the entire Bush presidency. These strikes have killed more than 2,400 people, at least 273 of them reportedly civilians.
Read More: More than 2,400 dead as Obama’s drone campaign marks five years | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
The Charter Scam in Chicago
Kevin Moore and Rachel Cohen hack through the lies being used to promote charter schools in Chicago.
One of the biggest misconceptions about charters is that the funds to run them come from private sources. While charters do receive donations and some private grants, 75 percent of their total funding comes from public resources.
Another lie that charter school opponents are unmasking is the claim that charters perform better than neighborhood schools. In reality, according to researchers on the forum panel, 80 percent of charter students showed no improvement or a worse performance in reading, compared to students in traditional public schools. For math, the figure was 63 percent.
Read More: Unmasking the Chicago charter scam | SocialistWorker.org.
Reich on Brooks
When I first read David Brooks’ opinion piece on inequality, I thought “I can’t wait for Professor Reich to weigh in.”
I didn’t have to wait very long.
Occasionally David Brooks, who personifies the oxymoron “conservative thinker” better than anyone I know, displays such profound ignorance that a rejoinder is necessary lest his illogic permanently pollute public debate. Such is the case with his New York Times column last Friday, arguing that we should be focusing on the “interrelated social problems of the poor” rather than on inequality, and that the two are fundamentally distinct.
Baloney.
Read his full response: Robert Reich (David Brooks’ Utter Ignorance About Inequality).
Here’s the Brooks column.
America for Americans
This letter is from the archives of the Seattle municipality. Dated November 16th, 1937, it’s addressed to the city council and written by the Chief of Staff of the Ku Klux Klan. Complete with a depiction of a burning cross and hooded night riders at the top, the letterhead features the motto “Communism Will Not Be Tolerated” emblazoned in the footer.
It is easy to forget, in our day and age, that the Klan was once a fairly mainstream organization in the United States. Their chilling self-characterization as “All Americans” who salute only “the Stars and Stripes” prefigures the American Right of today.
What MLK Actually Did
Here’s something every White person in America ought to read today.
I was kind of sarcastic and asked something like, so what did Martin Luther King accomplish other than giving his “I have a dream speech.”
My father told me with a sort of cold fury, “Dr. King ended the terror of living in the south.”
Read the full essay: Daily Kos: Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did.
From a Young MLK
This is from a letter to Coretta Scott, written in 1952.
“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
10 NSA Myths Debunked
Peter Van Buren unpacks ten myths about NSA surveillance that need debunking.
Read here: You Can’t Opt Out: 10 NSA Myths Debunked | The Dissenter.