The Rahm Smoothies - a little ginger, a little honey and maybe more than a little Hal Baskin, maybe?
Whole Food shoppers you are subsidizing Englewood
Eggs are $1.99 in Englewood vs $3.099 in Lincoln Park
Milk is $1.99 vs $4.19 in Lincoln Park
Gallon of vanilla ice cream $3.99 vs $5.99 in Lincoln Park
When you shop at Whole Foods ask for the Englewood prices. Comment from Chicago Tribune Editorial
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call - Bruce Dold Editor Chicago Tribune
When Bruce Dold is told to get excited about something by the powers that be in this Rube Berg of a Banana Republic* he fairly micturates until he pounds out a mirthful tittering of gleeful Alice in Engelwheel hop about . . . whatever.
Today's cheer leading exercises is an especially hoydenish delight!
It's been said of Deerfield, Sauganash and countless other communities: This must be a nice place since it's got a Whole Foods and a Starbucks.
So what happens when you plunk down two of the country's most culturally powerful brands in impoverished Englewood? Do these stores become just a sideshow to the violent crime, or can they change perceptions about the quality of life in one of Chicago's most beaten-down neighborhoods?
Yes!!!!!! Number 2, Bruce !!!!!!!!! Perceptions stop the trajectory of bullets!
I live in the 19th Ward, racially diverse but no Whole Foods. Would Dold et al opine a la Betty Davis from Beyond the Forest?
You bet! This is Urbs in Horto, Dude!
We got a Starbucks over by the 103rd Street Station and CVS, but more people go to Kareem's Dunkin Donuts on 104th & Western, even though it has not the culturally powerful brand-age cache of Starbucks, but then again at Double D's you don't need to pick Arabica coffee grounds out your gums after a few swallows.
Aside from my snide remarks, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Is a neighborhood only a fit place to live because two of the country's most culturally powerful brands plump their rumps within its confines?
Or, is neighborhood a place where most, if not all of the people look out for one another, respect one another and behave like citizens.
Well, Whole Foods and Starbucks are political players and 63rd Street has been a Development mess for Chicago's Planning & Development Department for more than twenty years. Elder Hal Baskin has his mitts wide open to all venture opportunists and get-out the vote - for a wad of cash surety at the Ward level of the 3, 6, 15, 16, 17 and 20 Wards. Six, count 'em six Wards for one Neigh. . . (sorry) Community - an impoverished, delapidated, dangerous and gang-infested Community.
Much like Hyde Park? Could be? Really,Bruce?
My 19th Ward encompasses Beverly, West Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood. Huge difference. Hal Baskin, a Democratic Party legitimized activist and Gangster Disciple Emeritus has 'reached out to touch' every community development project.
I have had the pleasure of waving bye-bye to a handcuffed Hal in the back of a 6th District Chicago Police squad car, when he and the Englewood Task Force tried to shake down Leo High School.
Lord knows the trouble I've seen!
Activist arrested at school protest
September 02, 2004
Community activist and former gang member Hal Baskin was arrested for allegedly shoving a police officer Wednesday during a protest outside Leo High School on the South Side, authorities said.
Baskin, who has run for alderman several times and was once an associate of convicted Gangster Disciples kingpin Larry Hoover, was charged with misdemeanor battery, mob action and obstruction in the incident shortly before noon near the Catholic school at 7901 S. Sangamon St., police said.
Two patrol officers confronted Baskin and several others after they saw a group of people with signs step off the sidewalk and obstruct traffic on 79th Street, Chicago police spokesman David Bayless said.
Baskin, released from custody at Gresham District police headquarters about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, said the protest was a peaceful appeal to the school to hire two neighborhood men for a construction project. He denied shoving the officer and said the group was on the sidewalk but was forced onto the street at times by police.
"Common sense would tell you that I've been doing this for 25 years. I know not to lay hands on a police officer," he said. "Why would I do something idiotic like that?"
Police alleged that when the officers asked the group to get out of the street, Baskin responded by shoving an officer. Three others also were arrested. Attempts to reach school officials were unsuccessful. Chicago Tribune
Not really, we said plenty and none of it printable, this a few years before Corporatist Mayor Daley and his boy Rahm pulled all of the teeth out CPD. Imagine cops putting the bracelets on Elder Hal today?
Well, just because Hal Baskin tried to pry open construction wallets universal in Englewood for more than thirty years, does not necessarily mean that he still has his huge mitts dug deeply into the britches of two of the country's most culturally powerful brands. We won't know that, because the newspapers will never tell.
Bruce Dold is now editor of Chicago Tribune and he takes orders from City Hall and the most culturally powerful brands (Disney, Starbucks, Whole Foods, Audi et al) and you, the consumer, pay the prices and the get to feel good in knowing that you have stopped the laws of physics (speeding bullets) and the thug impulses in Englewood - home to some great people and some really nasty thugs.
Our society buys into nonsense when nonsense is the only thing being offered.
Some do well in such a society ( an Oligarchy) and most try to survive.
Nice one, Bruce.
* Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is the sociopolitical organization of a society by major interest groups, or corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests.
So, I'm standing in the open entrance to New Beginning Church and a couple of Blue T-Shirt Bedecked-out Volunteers ask me, " You Corey Brooks?" Now, that was Spontaneous! I love spontaneity! Baby's laughter. A Great Smooch! Keeley Smith on WDCB!
Unamazzed though bemused, having listened to the Action Now "Volunteers" being warmed up for five minutes east of Martin Luther King Drive on 65th Place with chants themed to say that Pastor Corey Brooks betrayed Jesus, I replied, " No ladies, I am an aging white man. Corey Brools is a big, burly and handsome young Black man"
They smiled and moved back in line; herded by two young white people: a guy in a pink Cape Cod cap and a chain-smoking young woman with a clipboard. I have been off my Marlboro Reds for a couple of weeks and fought the temptation to bum a smoke from the young lady.
You see, I was at one of those community activist well-orchestrated SPONTANEOUS protests of some outrage.
The outrage du jour is Pastor Corey Brooks. Got that?
Pastor Brooks was on his way back from the hospital, where he had accompanied members of the family of a parishioner stricken with a heart attack and picking up tubs of iced down bottled water for the two dozen chanting volunteers following Action Now cheerleader with the bullhorn and herded by Comrade Cape Cod and Virginia Slim.
Comrade Cape Cod
Virginia Slim
Popeye's Pappy
There was also an aging activist citizen journalist who looked like Popeye's Pappy, White Progressive Privilege. Love it. These three white folks acted like border collies for the two dozen "Volunteers."
I have the feeling that a community pantry, or shelter was the place to find activists. One lady in blue Action Now T-Shirt agreed with me.
You see, Corey Brooks is not liked by the artificial turfed Grassroots activists allied with National, State, County and City Democrats. He supported Bruce Rauner for Governor over Pat "JRW!!!!" Quinn. Shortly after Pastor Brooks endorsed Rauner, his church was violated. Talk about action now! Now, Action Now demands that Pastor Brooks STEP DOWN! Or, so the chanters chanted. man, you'd think Pastor Brooks asked to defund Planned Parenthood, or shot Cecil the Lion. Brooks hate abortion, like a man; howver I do not believe that he had taken up Big Game hunting. No, he has committed thought crime.
It was this public endorsement of Rauner that caused the Goldsteining of Pastor Brooks yesterday and I first caught the mighty wind of Action Now's protest on Beachwood Reporter. I like Pastor Brooks and called to give his church members a heads-up and stand in solidarity, as the slogan goes, with a neighbor. I park at New Beginnings Church every morning of the school year, when I pick up Leo Students from Grand Crossing and have come to know Pastor Brooks.
Pastor Brooks, unlike too many priests, preachers and prophets in Englewood, Gresham, Grand Crossing and other desperate and blood soaked neighborhoods, is no race hustler, or grifter. He questions support of Democrats who like to play the role of plantation boss. He even endorsed a Republican and Rauner, like all politicians rewarded a solid with a solid. Pastor Brooks was appointed to the Illinois Tollway Commission, which is open to African Americans as well as DuPage County Dowagers. I believe the litmus test for such an honorific appointment is spelling Tollway. Nah, it's probably a little tougher.
Quite seriously, Action Now would demand that the African American Community deserves NO representation, because Rauner plans to destroy the African American Community. Thus the Goldsteining of Corey Brooks.
It takes mob Action Now to properly Goldstein a citizen. Slogans, chants and T-shirts targeting the target for the day is how so-called "Grassroots" Activists assassinate a person's character. Located at 820 West Jackson in the heart of Chicago's . . .Greektown. Two dozen activist volunteers made their way from Chicago's massive south side ( The Lake to Pulaski) Black communities, at their own expense, to board bus to bring them to a Church in the heart of the community they just spent precious Ventra Credits to get to the bus in Greektown. Or so Virginia Slim explained, they are all volunteers and came on their own.
But arrived on a bus? Together with Action Now Alinsky Border Collies, Comrade Cape Cod, Virginia Slim and Popeye's Dad? "One never knows, do one?" to quote Fats Waller.
I guess my tone betrays my sentiments. Pastor Corey Brooks was targeted by some Democrat, or a rival activist priest, pastor or prophet, or maybe he is all three rolled in one. Corey Brooks was targeted for political punishment.
Pastor Corey Brooks handed out water and Dunkin Donuts and Comrade Cape Cod and Virginia Slim immediately ginned up the hate.
Pastor Brooks smiled and forgave. They know not what they do.
Comrade Cape Cod, Virginia Slim and Popeye's Dad do.
Coincidence. (noun) 1. A remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.
2015 has not been a good year for Chicago sports. In less than 60 days, we lost Ernie Banks; the Jackie Robinson West Little League scandal broke, stripping a title from the most beloved team the city has had in years; and the bright light of the hiring of John Fox as the Bears' new head coach was dimmed as serious hints continue to emerge that both Matt Forte and Brandon Marshall may not be back. Then came Tuesday night.
And Cleveland fans feel they are jinxed.
Racism, Class-ism, Iceism, Rountinization and Systemic knee water? No it must have been all the afore mentioned and Chicago Police.
CHICAGO: Rose and Kane 'Disappear' from Chicago Sport Scene Punters seeking to manage the over and under when dropping a few Bob on sport, we sorely disappointed when NFL leading scorer and the Bulls' Lourdes Frequent Flyer took places in the Public Health queue.
The Guardian has reported that Chicago Police Department's Homa Square facility is being used to disappear home brewers. Three NATO protestors and home brewers were charged as domestic terrorists in 2013, even though none of the trio belong to the Tea Party. Lamprey Lawyers for Peoples Law Offices cite CPD with "routinization of a notorious practice ."
The Homan Square black site is located on Chicago's occupied West Side, where oppression comes up like the thundering dawn on the Raod to Mandalay. Both sport teams play oin the West Side, dangerously close to Homan Square House of Hoo-doo.
Says, G. Flint Taylor, Gator Wrassler and Abulance Chasing Pettiogger, “This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years, . . . of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”
All roads lead somewhere. The Guardian notes that facts often bowl wickets stuck.
Chicago punters wonder. Were Kane and Rose disappeared to cover CPD betting at the highest levels? OR, was Kane mistaken for an African American?
Let me expand on my thoughts a little bit . . .First of all . . .President Obama is as genuine as as an Illinois Pension and the current cover of Rolling Stone. That is why he has been so successful in our culture that honors 'the unexamined life.'
Deftly avoiding any contact with authenticity is the American Gold Standard for political and cultural apotheosis. Barack Obama managed to do just that with a great deal of help along the way. What passes for political reform is merely the elimination of common sense, accountability, genuine empathy and competence for group ascent and mulish antagonism to any and all dissent from accepted doctrines and practices. To chants of " Ain't He/she Great? X (infinity and not a side-ways 8 -the old lemniscate) any selected carbon foot-print becomes as a god - no questions asked or allowed.
Yesterday, deftly mincing by the many political and ethical land-mines( IRS, Holder, Benghazi, Cairo, Syria, Snowden, Detroit*) laid by Team Obama themselves, the President weighed in, yet again, with his narcissistic POV on matters racial
He could have been shot while atop of George Zimmerman in a gated community in Florida having purchased Skittles and Arizona Ice Tea thirty five years ago. That would be in 1978; however, Barack H. Obama was in Hawaii with Choom Gang smoking Maui jig-weed, shooting hoops and dating blondies. There was, then, racism. There is, now, racism and it is a mighty two-way street with a big-assed cul de sca at each end.
Here is visual evidence of Obama Agonistes 1978
"We go play hoop." - the Demosthenes of DC, circa 1978.
A constant diet of bullshit (hot/cold/wet/dry) should be avoided. Examine, challenge, remember, learn and do as a healthy alternative.
* I heard a Chicago cop paraphrase Obama - "If Obama had a city, it would look like Detroit." Now, that is authentic.
All of you men, and yes, you fine women, on this team know all about the sex-abuse scandal in the American Catholic Church - priests, like boy scout leaders, doctors, rabbis, school teachers and TV anchors, are human beings blessed and plagued by impulses and the strongest just might be our sexual appetites. Most people reign-in those inclinations with what we call ethics ( what 'ought' to be) or morals ( what you can and can not do). Some people have no off button.
Now, as an example, I have an impulse to knock the living shit out of Carmody, here, every time his snot running mug comes into my peripheral vision. I fight that impulse with the knowledge that all of you are children of loving parents, except Carmody, here, and are being influenced by my total behavior.
I am like a lawyer working for a client, I must do all in my power to meet your needs and Carmody, like all of you does not need me knocking the living shit out of him. That said, let's get down to cases.
Today, all of the newspapers and TV haircuts will be tossing shots at Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York and President of Conference of Catholic Bishops. He's the top bishop in America. Before he was Archbishop of New York, Dolan was Archbishop of Milwaukee. The beef du jour . . .Carmody! Pay attention, for once, will you . . .the beef du jour is that while Dolan was bishop of Milwaukee, he put some dough for the Church aside, in order to keep Church looter Jeff Anderson's mitts off of it. Anderson is ambulance chaser.
Dolan took over that bankrupted and looted archdiocese from Rembert Weakland - the first openly homosexual bishop in America.
Weakland was loved by the media, because he went counter to the teachings of the church on hot button issues - he was accommodating. Here, I got this old clipping from the New York Times 2009 article in my windbreaker here - Get a load of this -
On the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the archbishop watched a man he had fallen in love with 23 years earlier say in an interview that the Milwaukee archdiocese had paid him $450,000 years before to keep quiet about his affair with the archbishop — an affair the man was now calling date rape.
The next day, the Vatican accepted Archbishop Weakland’s retirement.
Archbishop Weakland, who had been the intellectual touchstone for church reformers, has said little publicly since then. But now, in an interview and in a memoir scheduled for release next month, he is speaking out about how internal church politics affected his response to the fallout from his affair; how bishops and the Vatican cared more about the rights of abusive priests than about their victims; and why Catholic teaching on homosexuality is wrong.
“If we say our God is an all-loving god,” he said, “how do you explain that at any given time probably 400 million living on the planet at one time would be gay? Are the religions of the world, as does Catholicism, saying to those hundreds of millions of people, you have to pass your whole life without any physical, genital expression of that love?”
He said he had been aware of his homosexual orientation since he was a teenager and suppressed it until he became archbishop, when he had relationships with several men because of “loneliness that became very strong.”
Archbishop Weakland, 82, said he was probably the first bishop to come out of the closet voluntarily. He said he was doing so not to excuse his actions but to give an honest account of why it happened and to raise questions about the church’s teaching that homosexuality is “objectively disordered.”
“Those are bad words because they are pejorative,” he said.
Carmody, 'pejorative' means bad. Okay, Weakland resigned as archbishop of Milwaukee, because it was learned that he had paid out almost a half million buckeens to former Marquette University student who accused Weakland of raping him.
Weakland was OK with homosexuality which he did feel God cared about and as archbishop of Milwaukee Weakland felt that it was OK to use church money to keep the kid quiet. The American press was OK with Weakland and it still is OK with Weakland. Weakland is a reformer.
While Weakland was the reformer Archbishop of Milwaukee ( 1977-2002) priests with identical impulses of Weakland felt that it was OK to act on homosexual impulses - no different that a Cole Porter Mass, or liturgical dance.
Along comes Jeffery Anderson.
Jeffery Anderson owns SNAP - SNAP is the Survivor's Network Against Priests.
SNAP receives most of its funding from lawyers who target the the Catholic Church
Jeffery Anderson is one-time alky-bust-out ambulance chaser, who sobered up and discovered that suing the Catholic Church in America is a gold mine.
Jeffery Anderson is the George Hearst of this Catholic specific mother lode. SNAP is data mining operation dedicated to gathering persons who were, or have come to believe that they were abused by Catholic clergy.
Now, listen up! You will not read or hear about Rembert Weakland in any of the news about the recent revelations of Jeffery Anderson and SNAP about Cardinal Dolan as Archbishop of Milwaukee.
Rembert Weakland was to the media a church reformer and an accomodating cleric who just happened to be as Gay as The Mikado, raped his student and hushed it up with half a million buckeens.
Carmody - pay attention!
The Catholic Church is and will always be opposed to killing unborn babies and will always recognize marriage as a sacred union between a man and woman to make a family.
Because Our Church is against abortion and the redefinition of marriage, as well as providing Trojans to Sandra Fluke, our enemies use the term 'shielding predators.' as a pejorative, to quote Rembert Weakland and dismiss the fact that homosexuals were doing the abusing and most of shielding of abuse - like Rembert Weakland.
Weakland gets a pass and crap gets tossed at Dolan. That's the 4th Amendment in the hands of hacks and litigator - activists.
Cardinal Dolan is facing lawyers, SNAP activists, journalist hacks and easy opinion.
He'll be fine.
Alright! Drink plenty of water and hit the sleds! Oh, Ms. Carmody, here is that $ 20 I owe you. Thanks Sweetie.
BGA Andy Shaw and the his usual cast of numbers-numbing deep thinkers (Fox-32 Dane Placko and University of Chicago professor of race-baiting Craig Futterman) always take a short-cut to Bullshit Boulevard. In this particular case, that would be a stretch of US Route 20 commonly known on the southwest side of Chicago, Evergreen Park & Oak Law as 95th Street. This week Andy Shaw's BGA/FOX/University of Chicago's Bullshit Boulevard mapped Evergreen Park as ground zero for race-hate while driving.
More than 93,000 minority drivers, mostly blacks, were stopped in Evergreen Park from 2004 to 2011, compared to 41,331 whites during the same period, according to Illinois Department of Transportation data analyzed by FOX 32 News and the BGA. What’s more, as the total number of traffic stops in Evergreen Park increased over that eight-year span, the number of whites who were pulled over remained flat at about 5,000 a year, while the number of minorities rose sharply to 14,656 in 2011 from 9,600 in 2004, according to IDOT.“The data shows some real red flags,” said University of Chicago law professor Craig Futterman, an expert on civil rights and police accountability. “Unlike the rest of Illinois, racial disparity (in stops) is going up in Evergreen Park.”FOX 32 News reported last month that Evergreen Park police were engaging in a controversial and possibly dangerous practice — offering drivers a break on traffic tickets if they helped cops find illegal handguns. The motorists who were interviewed believed they were singled out because of race.
That would and will be compelling to simple folks who like their high dudgeon served up smoking hot and tasty and lawsuit spicy. The hard question neglected in this latest dodge goes unasked, " Why are there no Chuck E Cheese outlets in under served communities?" Chuck E Cheese is a handy haven for busy families with legions of young ones who might become a bit uneasy while waiting for mom and pop to make purchases ( Aunt Gert can take the wee bairns in to Chuck E Cheese for fun and fast food, while Mom and Dad get the shopping done) , as well as a festive place for wholesome family fare and fun. It is the venue for choice for many struggling families seeking a birthday, anniversary, graduation or family reunion . In these hard economic times, families must be as accountable for budget as our government. Chuck E. Cheese means value. The company mission statement Promise states just that.
OUR PROMISE KID CHECK® Every member of a party – adult and kid; family or group – who enters Chuck E. Cheese’s gets a unique hand stamp that is verified upon their exit to assist in our objective that families who come together leave together. CLEAN, OPEN ENVIRONMENT We clean and sanitize the bathrooms, showroom, gameroom and other areas of the store throughout the day. If you see a table or bathroom that needs attention, let one of our managers know. We’ll get right to it. WHOLESOME FAMILY FUN We are very choosy about which games are allowed into Chuck E. Cheese’s. Whether it’s a video game or a game that encourages physical activity, like our Skytubes®, we believe all our games should be fun to play and fun to watch. FOOD MADE FRESH When it comes to food, our priorities are freshness and high-quality ingredients. Every pizza is made to order, fresh (never frozen), and we use only 100% real mozzarella cheese. Our salad bar is always full of fresh items prepared by hand daily. WE BELIEVE IN FUN – FOR ALL AGES We have different games for different ages. But if a grownup wants to have a turn, we promise not to make fun of you.
95th Street is a commercial zone linked to traffic exits for 1-57, I-94/90 and Interstate 294. Running east/west, 95th provides goods and services to a number of communities: auto dealers, medical hugs, pharmacies, eateries, Mega-stores, malls, insurance and two hospitals. One hospital is a major trauma -center, Christ Advocate, home to treatment serious automobile and gunshot injuries, as well cut and abrasions from a visit to Chuck E Cheese at 95th & Cicero.
Chuck E Cheese is located at Cicero Ave. & 95th St.; in order to go and return from Chuck E. Cheese, as well as patronize the hundreds of other fine commercial venues on this thoroughfare, requires passage through Evergreen Park, Illinois. Is is possible? Is it plausible, that many motorists making this east/west 95th street odyssey just might be distracted by the joyful noise of youngsters within the SUV, sedans and coupes en-route to this mecca of wholesome family fun? I would venture to say, most definitely. The sober exercise of good-motoring and attention to the traffic signage is an Augean task on a solo trip, but in vehicle packed with happy campers a soul- crushing crucible. Taking Prof. Craig Futterman's time-line of 2004-2012, I have Googled reports, tales, stories, yarns investigative series related to Chuck E Cheese, Oak Lawn. This poor man's Disney World and Lou Malnati's is the only game in town. There is a vast Chicagoland Chuck E Cheese Desert! Chuck E Cheese is not located in Englewood, Robbins, Hazel Crest, Gresham, Deering, Grand Crossing, Canaryvile, Bridgeport, Chatham or South Shore. There is no Chuck E Cheese in Hegewisch! It is located in Oak Lawn on 95th Street and it has a flourishing revenue stream seven days a week. Andy Shaw, Dane Placko and Craig Futterman, ask the hard question - Would more Chuck E Cheese venues in under served communities help us all avoid charges of racial insensitivity, provide more wholesome fun and food close to home and ease the flow of traffic on this busy commercial thoroughfare?
OR, are you more content with driving your BGA clown car along Bullshit Boulevard?? Hmmm? Find that Microphone, Andy!
NEW READERS DIGEST CONDENSED VERSION - Available here for the 1st time!
Foreword by Bill Ayers, Weather Underground (ret.) & Distinguished Professor of Education Not Granted Emeritus Status -University of Illinois at Chicago.
Introduction and Foreword -All Hail El Jefes Hugo and Barack of Whom I am Well Pleased and Our The Glorious Soviet Peoples Choice Award Winning Victory!!!!!
President Hugo Chavez, Vice-President Vicente Rangel, Ministers Moncada and Isturiz, invited guests,comrades. I’m honored and humbled to be here with you this morning. I bring greetings and support from your brothers and sisters throughout Northamerica. Welcome to the World Education Forum! Amamos la revolucion Bolivariana!This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I’ve come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle—I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane. Thank you, Luis, for everything you’ve done.I also thank my youngest son, Chesa Boudin, who is interpreting my talk this morning and whose book on the Bolivarian revolution has played an important part in countering the barrage of lies spread by the U.S. State Department and the corrupted Northamerican media.On my last trip to Caracas I spoke of traveling to a literacy class—Mission Robinson— in the hills above the city along a long and winding road. As we made our way higher and higher, the talk turned to politics as it inevitably does here, and someone noted that the wealthy—here and everywhere, here and in the US surely—have certain received opinions, a kind of absolute judgment about poor and working people, and yet they have never traveled this road, nor any road like it. They have never boarded this bus up into these hills, and not just the oligarchy or the wealthy—this lack of first-hand knowledge, of open investigation, of generous regard is also a condition of the everyday liberals, and even many of the radicals and armchair intellectuals whose formulations sit lifeless and stifling in a crypt of mythology about poor people. Everyone should come and travel these roads into the hills, we agreed then—and not just once, but again and again and again – if they will ever learn anything of the real conditions of life here, surely, but more important than that, if they will ever encounter the wisdom and experience and insight that lives here as well.We arrived at eight o’clock to a literacy circle already underway being conducted in a small, poorly-lit classroom. And here in an odd and dark space, a sun was shining: ten people had pulled their chairs close together—a young woman maybe 19, a grandmother maybe 65, two men in their 40s—each struggling to read. And I thought of a poem called A Poor Woman Learns to Write by Margaret Atwood about a woman working laboriously to print her name in the dirt. She never thought she could do it, the poet notes, not her– this writing business was for others. But she does it, prints her name, her first word so far, and she looks up and smiles— for she did it right.The woman in the poem—just like the students in Mission Robinson—is living out a universal dialectic that embodies education at its very best: she wrote her name, she changed herself, and she altered the conditions of her life. As she wrote the word, she changed the world, and another world became—suddenly and surprisingly—possible.I began teaching when I was 20 years old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I’d been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: “We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position—and from that day until this I’ve thought of myself as a teacher, but I’ve also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: you can change your life—whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!I taught at first in something like a Simoncito—called Head Start—and eventually taught at every level in barrios and prisons and insurgent projects across the United States. I learned then that education is never neutral. It always has a value, a position, a politics. Education either reinforces or challenges the existing social order, and school is always a contested space – what should be taught? In what way? Toward what end? By and for whom? At bottom, it involves a struggle over the essential questions: what does it mean to be a human being living in a human society?Totalitarianism demands obedience and conformity, hierarchy, command and control. Royalty requires allegiance. Capitalism promotes racism and militarism – turning people into consumers, not citizens. Participatory democracy, by contrast, requires free people coming together voluntarily as equals who are capable of both self-realization and, at the same time, full participation in a shared political and economic life.Education contributes to human liberation to the extent that people reflect on their lives, and, becoming more conscious, insert themselves as subjects in history. To be a good teacher means above all to have faith in the people, to believe in the possibility that people can create and change things. Education is not preparation for life, but rather education is life itself ,an active process in which everyone— students and teachers– participates as co-learners.Despite being under constant attack from within and from abroad, the Bolivarian revolution has made astonishing strides in a brief period: from the Mission Simoncito to the Mission Robinson to the Mission Ribas to the Mission Sucre, to the Bolivarian schools and the UBV, Venezuelans have shown the world that with full participation, full inclusion, and popular empowerment, the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome. Venezuela is a beacon to the world in its accomplishment of eliminating illiteracy in record time, and engaging virtually the entire population in the ongoing project of education.The great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote a poem to his fellow writers called “The Poet’s Obligation” in which he instructed them in their core responsibility: you must, he said, become aware of your sisters and brothers who are trapped in subjugation and meaninglessness, imprisoned in ignorance and despair. You must move in and out of windows carrying a vision of the vast oceans just beyond the bars of the prison– a message of hope and possibility. Neruda ends with this: it is through me that freedom and the sea will call in answer to the shrouded heart.Let those of us who are gathered here today read this poem as “The Teacher’s Obligation.” We, too, must move in and out of windows, we, too, must build a project of radical imagination and fundamental change. Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education– a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation. This World Education Forum provides us a unique opportunity to develop and share the lessons and challenges of this profound educational project that is the Bolivarian Revolution.Viva Mission Sucre!Viva Presidente Chavez!Viva La Revolucion Bolivariana!Hasta La Victoria Siempre!
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
by Barack Obama?* -Originally published: New York : Times Books, c1995 around the time BHO was working at the Woods Fund/Anneberg Foundation with his old Chicago Political Chinaman Billy Ayers
My pappy was a pistol and I'm a Sonofa gun!
THE END Barack H. Obama, 1995. Hyde Park- Chicago. IL Footnotes: http://billayers.wordpress.com/2006/1
* Source: NewsCore WASHINGTON -- A new biography of Barack Obama disputes the US president's understanding that his grandfather was tortured at the hands of British troops in a fight for Kenyan independence.
David Maraniss' book "Barack Obama: The Story" includes the accounts of five associates of Hussein Onyango Obama who all doubt he was jailed or brutalized, The (London) Daily Telegraph reported.
Obama's memoir "Dreams From My Father" included his understanding that his grandfather was detained by British troops for being subversive "to the white man." The third wife of Onyango told stories of how he bore scars from the torture he endured in the late 1940s.
"Five people who had close connections to Hussein Onyango said they doubted the story or were certain it did not happen," Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, said.
Dick Opar, a former senior Kenyan police official, was quoted in Maraniss' biography saying he "would have known" if Onyango had been detained and adding, "People make up stories."
"If you get arrested, you say it was the fight for independence, but they are arrested for another thing," Opar told Maraniss.
It is understood that Onyango was a Muslim convert who worked for the British army in Burma during World War II and was accused of sympathizing with the Kenyan pro-independence movement that became the Mau Mau rebellion of 1952. He died in 1979.
Obama's family tale of torture is said to underpin his coolness towards Britain, according to the Telegraph, and has been used to explain why the president decided to return a statue of Winston Churchill's bust that was previously put on display by George W. Bush in the White House.
The new biography delves into the discrepancies between Obama's memoir accounts and the author's own research -- however Maraniss has also defended the president, by disputing widespread "mythologies" about the US leader used by detractors.
"The other mythology of the right-wing birthers is equally preposterous," Maraniss told Piers Morgan on his CNN show Monday.
"The fact that he was born in Honolulu on August 4th 1961 is indisputable by the facts that any historian would look at."
America continues to subsist on a diet of Progressive bullshit - Big Labor is SEIU, Woman should be recognized with a stamp for the six lesbians who might have raised the flag on Iwo Jima and Americans should not use toilet paper. Mayor Bloomberg and other damp-brained types worry about sugar, trans fatties, salt and thick ply toilet paper, yet never once blink or squeak when the steam table of bullshit piles higher despite the ladling out by academics, ink-slingers, activists, mail-order preachers and political hacks in heaping helpings to ever more historically and rhetorically sated generations of citizens. Our President fell victim to this steady diet of deadly of nonsense, when his speech writers allowed him to read "Polish Death Camps" without a stuttered, or head shake.
The American intellectual gag reflex needs to be restored.
Yesterday, I jammed a feather down the gullet with a posting about Mary Harris "Mother" Jones*.
This was in reaction to a series of articles spewed out by Mother Jones Magazine -named in honor of the tiny, fearless Catholic woman who dedicated her life to fighting injustice. I chose one Woman's ( Feminist) Website: Women in History, as an example of how leftists have hijacked the truth about a heroic woman's life and spirit. From the get-go the presentation is nonsense and mythopoeic larceny -"She ( Mother Jones) came from a long line of social agitators. It was common in Ireland then to see British soldiers marching through the streets with the heads of Irish freedom fighters stuck on their bayonets." and it continues with more such leftist legerdemain . . .Several sources ( Chris Matthews? Pete Seeger? Albert Speer?) say her father also was one and, shortly after his father was hanged, was forced to flee Ireland with his family. Another source ( Rip Taylor? Susan Sarandon?) says he left to work on railway construction crews in the U.S. and Canada. At any rate, they did leave Ireland, eventually settling in Toronto, Ontario, in 1841." ( emphases and ridicule my own)
Mother Jones is presented as a fiery, secularist, bomb-the- NATO Bastards! Rachel Maddow. Nowhere is the word Catholic mentioned in the long offering, though a school identified as well as a eulogist for the Catholic widow's funeral in Mount Olive, IL where she is buried. Her Faith is Stalanized and her spirit is diluted with nonsense.
Mother Jones lived a long life that reads like the Book of Job her husband and children died of yellow fever and her business was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire - natural causes. Mary Harris Jones took refuge following that last test of faith and character in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church on South Wabash, in Chicago. From there she met another Irish Catholic Terence Powderly, founder of the Knights of Labor and immersed herself in the fight for others - workers, victims of injustice and especially children.
Mother Jones and Labor itself are and continue to be misrepresented in America. The diet of bullshit is far more dangerous than the outlawed fois gras, fats, sugars, and facts.
*"Mother" Mary Harris Jones
NAME: Mary Harris Jones
DATE OF BIRTH: August 1, 1837 (She later claimed it was May 1, 1830)
PLACE OF BIRTH: Cork, Ireland
FAMILY BACKGROUND: Mary Harris was born to Richard and Mary Harris. She came from a long line of social agitators. It was common in Ireland then to see British soldiers marching through the streets with the heads of Irish freedom fighters stuck on their bayonets. Her paternal grandfather was hanged by the British for being a freedom fighter. Several sources say her father also was one and, shortly after his father was hanged, was forced to flee Ireland with his family. Another source says he left to work on railway construction crews in the U.S. and Canada. At any rate, they did leave Ireland, eventually settling in Toronoto, Ontario, in 1841.
EDUCATION: Mary attended public schools in Toronto, and graduated from the normal school in 1854 at the age of 17. The next year, she began working as a private tutor in Maine. She received a teaching certificate in Michigan in 1857, at age 20, and taught at St. Mary's Convent school in Monroe, Michigan.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Mary only taught in Michigan for about eight months, moving to Chicago to work as a dressmaker. From there, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1860 to teach school again. It was here, in 1861, that she met and married George E. Jones, a staunch and prominent member of the Iron Molders' Union. At times, Mary traveled with George in his union organizing. Through him, Mary learned about unions and the psychology of working men. Later, she would advise women that "the wife must care for what the husband cares for, if he is to remain resolute."
Life was good for a while, as Mary and George bore four children in quick succession. But tragedy first struck in 1867, when her husband and all the children died in a yellow fever epidemic, within a week of each other. She stayed in Memphis nursing other victims until the epidemic waned, then moved back to Chicago, working as a dressmaker again. But tragedy soon followed. In 1871, she lost everything she owned in her home and seamstress shop in the great Chicago fire. It was then that Mary embarked upon the path that made her name synonymous with social justice. Probably the seeds were sown earlier, while sewing in the homes of wealthy Chicago families. She later said:
"Often while sewing for lords and barons who lived in magnificent houses on the Lake Shore Drive, I would look out of the plate glass windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry, walking alongside the frozen lake front.... The contrast of their condition with that of the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful to me. My employers seemed neither to notice nor to care."
After the great fire, Mary began to attend meetings of the newly formed Knights of Labor, held in a ragged, fire-scorched building. The fraternity and its ideals must have struck a chord in Mary, bringing forth her compassion and passion. And although she continued to work in Chicago as a seamstress, she had no fixed home. She began volunteering with the Knights of Labor as an organizer -- traveling back and forth across the country, from one industrial area to another, living with the workers in tent colonies and shantytowns near the mills. She in essence adopted the hard workers of America, and they called her 'Mother.' (One source says during a strike, a mine detective bashed the skull of a miner. While Mary cradled his head, the delirious, dying miner thought she was his mother and called her such; the name stuck.) When asked about where she lived, she said:
"My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong."
The Industrial Revolution was in full swing. America was changing from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Immigrants and displaced farmers made up the vast array of workers, digging out coal and forging steel. But they were subjected to nightmarish conditions and paid starvation wages. Mary would travel to wherever there was a strike, organizing and helping the workers. She would hold educational meetings, and bolster the men's spirits to keep up the fight. Often she was at odds with union leaders. In 1877, Mary helped in the Baltimore and Ohio railroad workers' strike in Pittsburg. In the 1880s, she organized and ran educational meetings, saying:
"Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts."
On May 1, 1886, labor unions in Chicago organized a strike for an eight-hour work day. (Two years earlier, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions had called for the eight-hour work day to begin on that day.) Two days into the strike, a fight broke out and two strikers were killed by police; others were wounded. On May 4, spurred by incendiary fliers saying the police had murdered the strikers on behalf of the business owners, thousands of workers gathered in Chicago's Haymarket Square for a rally. Although the people remained calm throughout, when the police ordered everyone to disperse and began marching in formation through the crowd, a bomb was thrown and exploded near them, killing one policeman. (Seven more policemen died later from their injuries.) The police began firing into the crowd, ultimately killing 11 people. Many of the wounded were afraid to seek treatment, for fear of being arrested.
It was because of this event that Mary "changed" her birth date to May 1, 1830 -- May 1 in honor of the strike for an eight-hour work day. This date has become celebrated worldwide as International Workers' Day (except in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand), commemorating the social and economic achievements of the labor movement and remembering the Haymarket Riot. Mary probably moved her birth seven years earlier to embellish the grandmotherly image of 'Mother' Jones.
Prominent strikes Mary participated in include the Pullman railroad strike in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1894; the Pennsylvania anthracite coal miners' strike in 1902; the Ludlow miners' strike in Colorado in 1913; and the nationwide steel workers' strike in 1919. She also helped other workers as well. In 1901, she helped form a union of domestic servants and helped silk weavers (often daughters of miners) fight for better work conditions. In 1909, she helped striking shirtwaist workers; the next year she helped organize women bottlers in Milwaukee breweries. In 1916, she helped streetcar workers in Texas and New York.
At only five feet tall and dressed in black with just a touch of lace at her throat and wrists, Mary was a perfect picture of a grandmother. Yet when she spoke, she was dynamic, energetic and enthusiastic -- bringing her audiences to tears, applause and laughter. She was a gifted storyteller with a brilliant sense of humor. Her intensity was almost explosive when she began to speak; her listeners (mostly men) sat up, fully alert, and believed that together they could do anything. She'd smile and scan the people gathered with her bright blue eyes, then say:
"I'm not a humanitarian. I'm a hell-raiser!" Another well-known quote is: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living."
Starting in 1890, she joined the coal miners' fight, becoming an organizer for the newly formed United Mine Workers of America. First she was a volunteer, then she became a union employee. She traveled to West Virginia, Alabama and Colorado, the hardest to organize areas. The miners and their families lived in towns where everything -- the houses, stores and even churches -- was owned by the mining company. She knew the gruesome conditions and hazards of their work, and even went into the mines during strikes to convince scabs (men who worked while others were striking) to quit and support their fellow workers. She warned miners to not trust the churches because they were financially supported by the mine owners. One preacher chastised Mary for holding a union meeting in "a house of God." She said:
"Oh, that isn't God's house. That is the coal company's house. ... God almighty never comes around to a place like this."
Although Mary was raised Catholic, she never claimed allegiance, feeling the organized church had abandoned the revolutionary nature Jesus had espoused. She also felt organized religion was used as a way to keep people from asking questions about their condition. When she spoke to groups, she portrayed Jesus as an organizer of the poor, saying he chose to die rather than betray the poor. On June 20, 1902, at a rally near Clarksburg, West Virginia, Mary was arrested after her speech. When she found out she would be detained in a hotel, she demanded to be put in jail with the other miners who had been arrested. During her career, she was arrested or escorted out of town many times -- only to return again and again.
Remembering lessons she learned from George, Mary often involved the wives and children of miners to dramatize the situation, as well as keep up the men's resolve. In 1902, she told striking miners in Arnot, Pennsylvania, to "stay home with the children for a change and let the women attend to the scabs." Then she led a march of the miners' wives from mine to mine, driving away strikebreakers with brooms and mops. She used this strategy many times at other strikes. In 1907 in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, she urged strikers' wives to stand at the picket line, with their children. If arrested and imprisoned, she told them to sing as loudly as they could so the townspeople would be happy to have them released.
As for children, Mary traveled to several Southern cotton mills, assessing the working conditions -- although cotton mills were not exclusive to the South. She hired on at some, telling the managers she had children who would be working with her. She described the typical conditions at the mills:
"Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching their little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads. They crawled under machinery to oil it. They replaced spindles all day long, all day long; all night through. Tiny babies six years old with faces of sixty, did an eight hour shift for ten cents a day."
In 1903, to dramatize the need to abolish child labor, she led a caravan of striking children from the textile mills of Kensington, Pennsylvania, to President Theodore Roosevelt's home in Long Island, New York. They carried banners saying "We want time to play!" and "We want to go to school!" The president refused to meet with them, but the "Children's Crusade" caught the public's attention. She is quoted as saying:
"The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society."
In 1898, Mary helped found the Social Democratic Party. In 1904, she resigned from the UMWA and began lecturing for the Socialist Party of America, traveling throughout the southwest. She became an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners (who mined metal rather than coal), who were much more radical than the UMWA. In 1905, Mary was a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World union -- the only woman amond 27 people signing the manifesto calling for the organization. The predecessor of this union was the Knights of Labor.
While still participating in strikes and organized drives for unions, Mary became concerned as well about the conditions of Mexicans working in the U.S. She also focused energy on raising funds to defend Mexican revolutionaries who had been arrested or deported. She supported the overthrow of the dictatorial Mexican President Porfirio Diaz, and visited his successor, Francisco Madero, until he was assassinated.
In 1911, Mary left the Socialist Party to again work for the United Mine Workers union as an organizer. It was during this time that 'Mother' Jones came to national attention through the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in West Virginia. On September 21, 1912, she led a march of miners' children through Charleston, West Virginia. On February 12, 1913, she led a protest about mining conditions and was arrested.
At the age of 76, Mary was convicted by a military court of conspiring to commit murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. This whole ordeal created such a fervor nationally that the U.S. Senate ordered a committee to investigate conditions in the coalfields. Before the investigations began, newly elected governor Hatfield set 'Mother' Jones free. (Because of her adding seven years to her age, everyone believed she was 83 years old.) She didn't waste any time -- traveling to Colorado to help miners in a yearlong strike. She arrived in Trinidad, Colorado, and spoke at the West Theatre:
"Rise up and strike ... strike until the last one of you drop into your graves. We are going to stand together and never surrender. Boys, always remember you ain't got a damn thing if you ain't got a union!"
Mary was evicted from mine company property several times, but returned again and again. She was arrested and imprisoned twice: first for about two months at Mt. San Rafael Hospital, and later for 23 days in a squalid semi-basement cell at Huerfano County Jail in Walsenburg. This second time was in Ludlow, Colorado, after she'd been told to leave town or be arrested. After her prison term, she was escorted out of town, but she slipped back in with the help of railroad workers.
On April 20, 1914, miners and their families, 20 people in all, were killed in a machine-gun massacre at a tent colony in Ludlow. Mary traveled the country telling the story. She caught the attention of the nation, and its leaders. President Wilson and members of the House Mines and Mining Committee responded by proposing that the union and each mine's owners agree to a truce and create grievance committees.
In 1915 and 1916, Mary helped in the strikes of garment workers and streecar workers in New York. In 1919, she helped steel workers striking in Pittsburg and was arrested again. In 1921, as a guest of the Mexican government, Mary attended the Pan-American Federation of Labor meeting in Mexico -- a highlight of recognition for her role in the labor movement. The next year, she resigned from the UMWA. (Both of her resignations from the UMWA were from disagreements with the presidents; the first time being John Mitchell. She felt Mitchell had been bought off by the mining companies and was serving their interests rather than the workers'. As for John L. Lewis, the later president, she thought he was a self-promoter and detested him until she died.)
In 1924, Mary was sued for libel, slander and sedition. The next year, the publisher of the Chicago Times, a fledgling newspaper at the time, won a shocking $350,000 judgment against her. Early in that year, Mary was attacked by a couple of thugs while staying at a friend's house. She fought them off, causing one to flee and seriously injuring the other, a 54-year-old man who later died from the wounds -- which included a blunt head injury from Mary's trademark black leather boots. Police arrested her, but she was released soon after when the attackers were identified as associates of a prominent local business man.
That same year, 1925, Mary published her autobiography, which she'd probably started writing in 1922 or 1923. She dictated her stories to Mary Field Parton, a reporter, friend and mistress of Clarence Darrow. (He wrote the introduction to the first edition.) Afterwards, she continued to lecture, as her health permitted. She was now 85 years old. Her last known public speaking engagement was in Alliance, Ohio, in 1926, as the guest of honor at a Labor Day celebration. Her last public appearance was at her 100th birthday party (although she was really only 92 years old) on May 1, 1930, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Mary lived in Silver Spring with a retired coal miner and his wife, Walter and Lillie May Burgess. Seven months after the birthday party, 'Mother' Jones died on November 30, 1930, at the age of 93. A requiem mass was held at St. Gabriel's in Washington, D.C., then her body was sent to Mount Olive, Illinois, to be buried in the Union Miners Cemetery, in the coalfields of southern Illinois -- near the graves of victims of the Virden, Illinois, mine riot of 1898. (See the website on the cemetery, below, for more on this event.) Mary had requested to be buried there, back in 1924.
Mourners paid tribute to Mother Jones there, both at the Odd Fellows Temple and the Ascension Church, where the memorial service was held. About 10,000 to 15,000 people attended. The Reverend John W.F. Maguire, president of St. Viator's College in Bourbonnais, Illinois, said in his address:
"Wealthy coal operators and capitalists throughout the United States are breathing sighs of relief while toil-worn men and women are weeping tears of bitter grief. The reason for this contrast of relief and sorrow is apparent. Mother Jones is dead."
Starting in 1934, the Progressive Miners of America, who owned the cemetery, raised over $16,000 to erect a monument to 'Mother' Jones. It stands 22 feet high, built of 80 tons of pink Minnesota granite. On October 11, 1936, the dedication ceremony included an estimated 50,000 people. Five special trains and 25 Greyhound buses brought people to Mt. Olive. Others came by car or hitch-hiked. West Virginia Senator Rush D. Holt spoke, as did North Dakota Congressman William Lemke and socialist leader Duncan McDonald. The final speaker was Lillie May Burgess, who said Mother Jones had wanted to live another 100 years to "fight to the end" so that "there would be no more machine guns and no more sobbing of little children."
For years, October 12 was Miner's Day, celebrated with a big gathering in Mt. Olive and a visit to the monument. Mary's work was honored throughout the 1930s, by labor activists and Gene Autry recording "The Death of Mother Jones," whose song origins are obscure. After that, her memory faded and the copyright on her autobiography lapsed. Finally, in 1972, the Charles Kerr Company published a second edition of her autobiography, folk singers revived "The Death of Mother Jones," and in 1976, Mother Jones Magazine was formed, promising journalistic muck-raking much like its namesake.
'Mother' Jones has been criticized as not being a feminist. Her focus, though, was on the rights of workers -- men, women and children. She strongly opposed the suffrage movement, feeling it supported a passive inactivity; whereas she was wholeheartedly about taking action. She pointed out that the women of Ludlow, Colorado, had voting rights in the state, but it did not stop the massacre from happening. She said:
"[Women need to realize that with] what they have in their hands there is no limit to what they could accomplish. The trouble is they let the capitalists make them believe they wouldn't be ladylike."
As a side note, the popular children's song "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" is believed to have been inspired by 'Mother' Jones. It first was sung in the late 1800s, spread throughout Appalachia (probably by coal miners), and was widely sung by railroad work gangs in the 1890s. In addition to being nicknamed 'Mother' Jones, Mary also was called 'The Miners' Angel' and 'The Grandmother of All Agitators' -- a title she was proud of, saying she hoped to live to be the great-grandmother of agitators.
DATE OF DEATH: November 30, 1930
PLACE OF DEATH: Silver Spring, Maryland
PORTRAYED BY: Ann McEvoy
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Commire, Anne, editor. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Waterford, CT: Yorkin Publications, 2000.
Fetherling, Dale. Mother Jones, the Miner's Angel. Southern Illinois University Press, 1974.
Foner, Phillip S., editor. Mother Jones Speaks: Collected Writings and Speeches. Pathfinder Press, 1983.
Gilbert, Ronnie. Ronnie Gilbert: Face to Face with the Most Dangerous Woman in America. Conari Press, 1993.
Gorn, Elliott. Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
Jones, Mary Harris and Edward M. Steele, editor. The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones: Pittsburg Series in Social and Labor History. University of Pittsburg, 1988.
Jones, Mary Harris. The Autobiography of Mother Jones. Dover Publications, 2004.
Josephson, Judith Pinkerton. Mother Jones: Fierce Fighter for Workers' Rights. Lerner Publications, 1996.
Coal Mining and Union Activities. Oral History Collection 1970-1975, 24 items. Sangaman State University, Oral History Office. Springfield, Illinois.
Dad always said that I couldn't find my butt with both hands. I can. Allow me to add this imperative -“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis to celebrate Pro-life Mass, Vatican
"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."
A peach of a guy with all the sweetness one could expect from a life well-spent and in good company: short on brains but a terrific dancer!
Author:
Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story
The Chorito Hog Leg, Book One: A Novel of Guam in Time of War
(infinity and not a side-ways 8 -the old lemniscate) any selected carbon foot-print becomes as a god - no questions asked or allowed.
NAME: Mary Harris Jones
