First of the Month‘s correspondent Leslie Lopez has another outlet for her reportage from the Pueblo. Here’s a local labor story with national resonance that she published last month in La Cucaracha…
Nation
“The Dream of a Burning Child”
Click the link below to get closer to Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s epic painting of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, Don’t You See That I Am Burning.
https://www.miergallery.com/exhibitions/celeste-dupuy-spencer3/videos
The V Bottom of American Politics
It’s what we hoped for.
Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most
The author has been keeping up with the Old Right’s angles on our time…
Real Talk in ATL
Rev. Barber is one of the most vital spokesman for The Democracy (to borrow a 19th C. phrase). His down home voice, though, has been slightly diminished lately. His attempt to go big, turning from a politics rooted in his home-state of North Carolina to a national Poor People’s Campaign, hasn’t got much traction. (Though it’s possible that Campaign helped push provisions in the Covid Relief bill that “will cut child poverty in half.”) Barber’s orating and organizing have seemed out of balance. Messages to grassroots may be cheapened by an itineracy that undercuts on the ground prep work and follow-up with “local people” who are the key to serious politics. There’s a danger of becoming a show horse rather than a work horse, to evoke a contrast that once troubled Jesse Jackson. It’s been daunting, on that score, to see Barber sharing platforms with Cornel West. Not that Barber is about to join the blowhards’ club. Nor is he a goodie. His righteousness isn’t rote (yet). He’s still capable of wonder at the undeniable history of human solidarity. Watch (below) how he’s motivated by the fact of Frederick Douglass’s 1871 refusal of anti-Asian bigotry. Once the record speaks, his own tongue lifts the small crowd he’s addressing until he surprises them (and maybe himself) with a final felt gesture that goes beyond words. B.D.
Chinese Workers Turn to US Marijuana Industry as Service Jobs Dry Up
A Chinese immigrant is facing drug charges after two unrelated raids in New Mexico uncovered a marijuana processing operation, a network of purported hemp farms, and dozens of Chinese immigrants who had been laboring amid tons of marijuana.
Letter From Point, Texas
“Do they even know we exist?”
That was the question Sarah asked me as we spoke on her front porch in the small town of Point, Texas earlier this week.
Biden on the Union Drive at Amazon
Click here to hear President Biden speak on the organizing drive at Amazon’s Alabama facility.
The Canadian News Service Elmoudjahweb has provided a useful explainer spelling out why Biden avoided mentioning Amazon in his statement. Per Professor Joseph A. McCartin, the Executive Director of Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor…
True Vines (& a Secret History of Our Time)
Americans aren’t known for their sense of history, but Delegate Stacey Plaskett made the past present during the trial of Trump when she invoked UA Flight 93. Plaskett recalled how she’d been working as a staffer in the Capitol twenty years ago on 9/11 when passengers on UA 93 sacrificed themselves to stop a terrorist attack on the building. Her memory let her roll with those patriots’ “love of country, duty, honor, all the things that America means” as she linked Trump and MAGA mobsters at the Capitol with mass murderers who saw our country as the Great Satan.
Last Thoughts on Trump
In his last days in office, Donald Trump reportedly ordered his dwindling circle of attendants never to mention Richard Nixon’s name in his presence. We can guess the reason: Nixon means failure. Even people who know nothing about politics know that. But even if Trump and Nixon ended up in roughly the same place—political oblivion—the roads they took to that destination could not have been more different.
Insurrection to Inauguration: Reflections on Violence & Healing
By Thomas Beller, Kristi Coulter, Benj DeMott, Richard Goldstein, George Held, Bob Ingram, Vida Johnson, Charles Keil, Greil Marcus, Dennis Myers, Zuzu Myers, Nathan Osborne, David Quigley, Budd Shenkin, Laurie Stone, William Svelmoe, & Peter H. Wood.
The Caning of Charles Sumner in the U.S. Senate: White Supremacist Violence in Pen and Pixels
Peter H. Wood and Harlan J. Gradin place the attack on the Capitol in an American historical context…
Too Black, Too Strong: Henry Aaron R.I.P.
I am a third-generation baseball player. My grandfather, Robert McInnis, was an outfielder and catcher who barnstormed with Negro League players.
The Louisville Syndicate (Excerpts from William Klein’s Documentary on Muhammad Ali)
One Night in Miami sent your editor back to William Klein’s 1964 documentary, Cassius the Great (which Klein would go on to re-edit later with new footage as Muhammad Ali, The Greatest). The following bits from the movie are way less than a perfect compaction, but the opening scene, which limns the Louisville syndicate that once “owned” Ali, is for the Ages. B.D. (H/T Jeff Kreines)
Click Read More to see on a bigger screen.
Tweet Storm (& Whiskey Rebels): Terry Bouton’s Twitter Report on the D.C. Riot
History professor Terry Bouton’s eye-witness tweets on the storming of the Capitol—unrolled below—caught the essence of the event. (Bouton’s report reminded your editor of the indelible account of a Klan assault on a Civil Rights demonstration in St. Augustine, Florida written by Lawrence Goodwyn who was Bouton’s teacher.) Bouton’s twenty-two tweets have turned his own world upside down: “This has been one of the strangest times in my life. I went from 61 twitter followers to 28.6k in less than a week…” Yesterday he posted a letter (in five tweets) to the insurrectionists, comparing them to “Whiskey Rebels” of 1794. His history lesson for our traitors is attached as an addendum to his tweets from the capitol.