And once again the comrades at PSL write articles about events that I post about on Paizo.com
Half of New Hampshire workers make less than $15/hour
On Saturday, we return the favor and muscle in on PSL's film showing in Portsmouth:
Portsmouth, NH Film Showing: Five Broken Cameras
But, first, tonight in Woosta:
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Article on the St. Patrick's Brigade in the Mexican-American War by a former WBAI radio host who died recently.
Article on the St. Patrick's Brigade in the Mexican-American War by a former WBAI radio host who died recently.
Have no idea how accurate this is, but given the earlier conversation about Friedrichs and recent events in other threads, oouldn't help but pass along...
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Albert Woodfox to be released from jail after 43 years in solitary confinement
And, from last spring, but making the rounds again in the "horror stories of Clintons past" department:
The Tragic End of the Woman Bill Clinton Exploited As Poster Child for Gutting Welfare
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Can't make it to Total Con 30 today, alas, so, instead I'm going to a lecture by a professor on Lowell's abolitionist history. We've already booked him to talk about the 1912 Bread and Roses strike for our International Woman's Day event.
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Missed you there bro. Sadly I didn't get to game, but I did dinner with Gruumsh. Next year!
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Well, I hope you had fun even without the gaming.
Speaking of gaming, I recently just oversaw a near-TPK running a group through The Crypt of the Everflame.
It was a seven-character party so I had to do some ad hoc adjustments and, on the night of the confrontation with the Big Bad, I FORGOT MY NOTES AT HOME!!! I did pretty well guesstimating, but I did give the skeletal champion 10 additional hit points that, had it not had them, would have meant the survival of one or two other PCs.
But they made some comments I didn't like about me being a softie DM, so I had the skeletons coup de grace each PC as they went down.
A word of congratulations to Shari, gnomish ninja and only survivor!!
I think Mr. Comrade's gonna run us through a free Conan adventure and then it looks like we're going to try out 5th edition.
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Proof (as if any were needed) that right wing entertainment is THE BEST!
UKIP's version of 'Three Lions'
Fi-i-i-ish.
I used to catch the Nigerian Princess singing that one back when it came out.
Had an all-day (nine f!~*ing hours!) CAJE affair today. I think there were about a hundred people that cycled through the church all day. Ended with a poetry slam hosted by the kids from the Party of Socialism and Liberation which was quite the hit with the other CAJE members. People who haven't been the least bit interested when I've been talking socialism for the past year were all of a sudden signing up for PSL reader's circle. F#$~ing hipsters. I should learn to rap.
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For Mr. Comrade's birthday, the Nigerian Princess and I took him to 3 Trolls Puzzles and Games, which I had never been to despite repeatedly lunching with Gruumash. down the street at the Indian buffet.
We played a very long and very complicated boardgame called Android. I got to be the crooked cop.
We all lost.
The NP also bought me, for a belated birthday present, a copy of the owner's (employee's?) debut novel, Monday and the Murdered Man.
No relation to Red Steve, as far as I know.
Giving credit where due:
The Bernie ad about the Immokalee workers is quality shiznit:
Last I heard, they (re-?)launched the boycott against Wendy's, where, oddly enough, I usually tell them to "hold the tomatoes."
The Erica Garner one was pretty good, too.
That being said, I'm still not voting for him.
That being said, I'm still not voting for him.
I don't think the super delegates of the democratic party have any intention of allowing anyone to vote for Bernie as anything but a write-in candidate.
Yay Democracy!On Wednesday evening, Mrs. Commonlaw Fergie and I attended the Richard Wolff lecture near Washington Square Park. In addition to the excellent lecture on history, economics, politics, and such, there is also big news in the organizing effort among Socialists. They are having a film screening to raise money for a new Democracy At Work-New York Center space in Brooklyn!
See a Python'esque film, for a good cause!
March 13, 2016 - 14:45 - 17:00
Location:
Village Cinema East (Second Ave and 12th Street) 189 2nd Ave New York, NY 10003
Terry Jones presents
Boom Bust Boom
This Time It’s Different?
Come join Democracy at Work (d@w) Chief Economist Prof. Richard Wolff; filmmaker Alan Minsky and D@WNY Program Coordinator Alan Schulman for the New York City Benefit premiere of BOOM BUST BOOM; an irreverent movie journey through the history of Capitalism, told by Monty Python's Terry Jones, a bunch of capitalist puppets, filmmaker Alan Minsky, his economist father Minsky the Leftist, and John Cusack. Boom Bust Boom will leave you laughing to the existential fatalism of a political economy that will always in the end go Boom and then bust if not on your head then close enough to make it scary.
This showing is a dedicated Fund raiser for the rent on a Democracy At Work-New York Center opening at The Commons on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn this April. See you on Sunday, March 13 at 2:45pm at the East Village Cinema!
If Bernie makes it to the convention ahead in pledged delegates, Hillary will concede
Or, if she follows her past example, Hillary will concede condescendingly offer to make Bernie her running-mate.
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Obama and Clinton are hardcore 1%'ers, as are almost all the DNC loyalists. If Sanders is honest about his positions, he represents more of a threat to the Democrats then Cruz, Rubio, etc. If Sanders is just another shill in populist clothing (possible, but hopefully not) then he and Clinton are basically interchangeable anyway, and it won't really matter.
I personally think Trump would beat Clinton in a general election. If the Democrats ran Sanders, he would stomp trump, but I think that could upset the 1% too much for them to allow.
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On Wednesday evening, Mrs. Commonlaw Fergie and I attended the Richard Wolff lecture near Washington Square Park. In addition to the excellent lecture on history, economics, politics, and such, there is also big news in the organizing effort among Socialists. They are having a film screening to raise money for a new Democracy At Work-New York Center space in Brooklyn!
See a Python'esque film, for a good cause!
March 13, 2016 - 14:45 - 17:00
Location:
Village Cinema East (Second Ave and 12th Street) 189 2nd Ave New York, NY 10003
Terry Jones presents
Boom Bust Boom
This Time It’s Different?
Come join Democracy at Work (d@w) Chief Economist Prof. Richard Wolff; filmmaker Alan Minsky and D@WNY Program Coordinator Alan Schulman for the New York City Benefit premiere of BOOM BUST BOOM; an irreverent movie journey through the history of Capitalism, told by Monty Python's Terry Jones, a bunch of capitalist puppets, filmmaker Alan Minsky, his economist father Minsky the Leftist, and John Cusack. Boom Bust Boom will leave you laughing to the existential fatalism of a political economy that will always in the end go Boom and then bust if not on your head then close enough to make it scary.
This showing is a dedicated Fund raiser for the rent on a Democracy At Work-New York Center opening at The Commons on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn this April. See you on Sunday, March 13 at 2:45pm at the East Village Cinema!
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Sorry to water down this thread with all this talk of Evolutionary Socialism.
The Revolution has come!
Off pinkskins!
It's time to pick up a gun!
Off pinkskins!
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Was peeking over in the Gender Neutral thread and saw the exchange about trigger warnings and slaves and someone saying there weren't any living former slaves and I thought "Actually, Kirth..." (yes, I peeked over in that thread, too.)
Was peeking over in the Gender Neutral thread and saw the exchange about trigger warnings and slaves and someone saying there weren't any living former slaves and I thought "Actually, Kirth..." (yes, I peeked over in that thread, too.)
I'm definitely ready to concede that "slavery" as a general term extends far beyond the specific sense in which I was using it.
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Hee hee! Just razzin' ya.
Anyway, got to go write up my intro to the Nigerian Princess and the UMass Professor we got speaking for a belated International Woman's Day (although, apparently, they went ahead when I wasn't looking and named March "Woman's History Month", so, maybe not so belated after all) and then look over the rules to this Conan game we're gonna play afterwards.
See ya on the barricades, 'rades!
(although, apparently, they went ahead when I wasn't looking and named March "Woman's History Month", so, maybe not so belated after all)
Which apparently was 1988 and is nowhere near as cool as IWD, so, back to belated it is.
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Thank you for the heads up, CC.
Jeez, the series is done? Where does all the time go?
Gaming wise:
Went back to 3 Trolls on Friday and played a board game based on the Mayans.
I won. Huzzah!
Last night, played through the first half of the free Conan adventure. I was Petrus, Curious Noble (Bi-Curious, the other players taunted) and we took down a bunch of blue-faced Pict savages and a sigil-covered jaguar while trying to save some Aquilonian settlers.
The game took three times as long as it should because none of us actually read the rules.
Politics wise:
Our International Woman's Day event was quite a success, surprisingly. Had panic attacks the night before, but, in the end, we had about 25 attendees. I talked about the assassination of Berta Caceres and the contemptible Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Nigerian Princess talked about Clara Zetkin and the racist suffragettes and Professor "Call me Bob" Forrant talked about the Industrial Workers of the World and the Bread and Roses strike.
And then we went and played Conan.
Pretty alright weekend.
Thank you for the heads up, CC.
Jeez, the series is done? Where does all the time go?
I kno, rite?
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Black Panther Dies In Prison After 45 Years Behind Bars
We were going to show that new Panthers doc to raise money for him and Ed Poindexter.
[Clenched fist salute]
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Now with links!
Politics wise:
Our International Woman's Day event was quite a success, surprisingly. Had panic attacks the night before, but, in the end, we had about 25 attendees. I talked about the assassination of Berta Caceres and the contemptible Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Nigerian Princess talked about Clara Zetkin and the racist suffragettes and Professor "Call me Bob" Forrant talked about the Industrial Workers of the World and the Bread and Roses strike.
Lessee...best bits from Bob's presentation...on the ferocity with which the female pickets fought:
He quoted one law enforcement official as writing (paraphrase) "Usually one cop can control ten men, but in this case it takes ten cops to control one woman!"
You sometimes see pictures of the women on the picket line wearing elaborate hats. The benefits of these hats, other than fashion, is that, apparently, they had large hat pins. These hat pins could be used to poke horses in the tush which would then make the horses rear back and deposit their rider (police, National Guardsmen, Harvard students who were given course credit for trying to help bust the strike) on the ground where they would then be mauled by the female strikers.
Vive le Galt!
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If Bernie makes it to the convention ahead in pledged delegates, Hillary will concedeOr, if she follows her past example, Hillary willconcedecondescendingly offer to make Bernie her running-mate.IIRC, that was well before the convention and well before she'd actually lost.
She officially conceded in early June. A month and a half before the convention. I'm not sure when that offer was made.She may well make a similar offer, condescendingly or not. If she's losing, she won't make a convention fight of it and rely on superdelegates to win.
Mind you, most likely she won't have to. She's well on track to win, even without superdelegates. Bernie's doing better than expected and anything is still possible, but it's a massive uphill climb for him.
Those offers were never made. Offering someone the Vice Presidency is not an honor but about the highest insult you can afford to a defeated nomination opponent. (Aaron Burr would repay that insult to Alexander Hamilton much later after Hamilton brokered his defeat to Thomas Jefferson. A quickly abandoned custom was to make the second placer the Vice President of the winner.)
The Vice President's sole legislated function, is to fill in when the President's ticker stop, or make that truly once in a blue moon tie-breaker vote in the Senate. If the Vice-President gets to do more than this, it is only by the whim of the President. Clinton was noted as unusual in giving Gore more involvement in the White House than usual for the job.
Cabinet positions are where the power is at. Which is why a Sanders or a Clinton might accept one of those but not the chair-warmer position the VP job usually is.
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Five minutes of Irish Rebelion Music
"It all started with the great potato famine of 1916..."
Beyond that, I only understood about a dozen, non-consecutive, words of the song.
I learned everything I know about Ireland from Rubber Bandits songs!
(Former) Comrades of Mine in the News
I met Rachel Wolkenstein back in the mid-'90s when she was on Mumia Abu-Jamal's legal team. Hosted her when she spoke at the Harvard Film Archive before a screening of a documentary on his case and then, later, had a nice lobster dinner up at a retired comrade's house in Maine.
Her father was a founding member of the Progressive Labor Party, back when they were a left-split out of the Communist Party USA, working in the Buffalo steel mills. Later, when he broke with PL, he formed the State and Revolution Club at the local university. If you read Lenin's The State and Revolution and agreed with it, you were in. If you didn't, so the legend goes, you were out. Always been an inspiration to me.
Anyway, read that she and her brother had formed a faction and then split in the early oughties. Glad to see she's still stirring the pot.
The Frame-Up of Corey Walker--The State of Pennsylvania Seeks to Bar His Lawyer
Had a nice time eating for free and listening to Bob Forrant lecture about Massachusetts labor history at the Northeast MA AFL-CIO Labor CAN! shindig, even if the rest of the event was all about lobbying your (Democratic) state senator.
While I was there somebody went and set up a protest in Nashua about a young black man who recently died in a NH jail.
Justice for Jeffrey Pendleton!
As detailed in the link below, he had recently won thousands of dollars from two local townships when he and the ACLU challenged anti-homeless people laws. I've also read, but haven't corroborated, that he was one of the recent fast food strikers.
Man who sued Hudson in panhandling case found dead in cell at Valley Street jail
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I met Rachel Wolkenstein back in the mid-'90s when she was on Mumia Abu-Jamal's legal team.
I learned about Mumia in 2000 from my eye-opening history teacher - you know, that one "Magic Marxist" teacher who most students don't get until their first year of, or maybe a couple years into, college? I got mine in my freshman year of high school. I had a privileged K-12 education (up until the last two years when my parents were dumb enough to take me out of Silicon valley and trap us all in rural New Mexico - and at the height of the Bush Terror, no less)!
But I digress - I've heard of Mumia, but not in a long time. What's happened to him?
Anyway, read that she and her brother had formed a faction and then split in the early oughties. Glad to see she's still stirring the pot.
People are still fumbling with what to call that decade. Me? I knew what to call it before it even started: THE '000S (pronounced "OOZE!") !!!
Mind you, when I coined that in 1999, I was sorta thinking "'000s-as-in-goofy-sci-fi-Weird-Al-Toxic-Crusader-Ghostbusters-Devo-Green-S pacemen-world," not "'000s-as-in-having-been-through-that-I-now-feel-so-very-DIRTY."
I met Rachel Wolkenstein back in the mid-'90s when she was on Mumia Abu-Jamal's legal team.
I learned about Mumia in 2000 from my eye-opening history teacher - you know, that one "Magical Marxist" teacher who most students don't get until their first year of, or maybe a couple years into, college? I got mine in my freshman year of high school. I had a privileged K-12 education (up until the last two years when my parents were dumb enough to take me out of Silicon valley and trap us all in rural New Mexico - and at the height of the Bush Terror, no less)!
But I digress - I've heard of Mumia, but not in a long time. What's happened to him?
I had mine in high school too. Social Studies, not history as such. Back somewhere in the 80s. Though he probably wasn't really a Marxist, just far enough from mainstream that we thought of him that way.
I really tried to help get the "naughties" to catch on. Still sad it didn't. I thought it both technically correct (which is the best kind of correct), clever and appropriate.
Anyway, read that she and her brother had formed a faction and then split in the early oughties. Glad to see she's still stirring the pot.
People are still fumbling with what to call that decade. Me? I knew what to call it before it even started: THE '000S (pronounced "OOZE!") !!!
Mind you, when I coined that in 1999, I was sorta thinking "'000s-as-in-goofy-sci-fi-Weird-Al-Toxic-Crusader-Ghostbusters-Devo-Green-S pacemen-world," not "'000s-as-in-having-been-through-that-I-now-feel-so-very-DIRTY."
That's what I've always called it...
Inspirational teachers-wise, it was the disabled ex-miner who had some very interesting tales about his time down the pits, although I think he was more traditional Labour than anything else.
In other news, Iain Duncan Smith, the man determined to force the disabled into work and make life as miserable as possible for anyone who has to stay on state benefits, finally resigns. Good bloody riddance.
Mumia is dying of hepatitis C but he's still broadcasting.
Sophomore year of high school, I had a humanities teacher who claimed he was in the Weather Underground, but by the time I met him I was already in transition from a brief flirtation with Maoism (Chairman Bob!) towards lifelong Trotskyism.
Yeah, so this Jeffrey Pendleton cases is pretty messed up. He was apparently a homeless fast food striker (he was at the strike/GOP debate protest I posted about above) with a known history of being a pain in the local police's ass (see the two lawsuits mentioned above) picked up for some weed who ends up dead in a cell for no apparent reason. Might have our own local Sandra Bland on our hands.
Shiznit be f$@+ed up.
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Local labor struggle that I don't believe I've posted about before. Looks like they've won for at least a year.
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Agitprop by Comrade Who Was Published in Jacobin on the Jeffrey Pendleton case:
Jeffrey Pendleton was killed for being broke
Thursday, I'm off to Lawrence, MA to attend a meeting on education by a friend of CAJE's:
Friday afternoon, Jeffrey Pendelton's friends and co-workers are planning a protest, but it's still tentative. I'll let you know when I know.
Friday evening, movie screenings are officially back on! We stopped doing them when the art gallery that hosted them changed ownership and the new owners made it clear that we were no longer welcome. Well, f$&# you, Nazi artists, cuz we've got our own office!
Movie showing: Incident at Oglala
To go with it: My 40 Years in Prison by LEONARD PELTIER
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Thursday, I'm off to Lawrence, MA to attend a meeting on education by a friend of CAJE's:
Dunno about Lawrence, Mass, but I could sure talk about why I quit teaching in Newport News, VA...
The title of the talk turned out to be a bit clickbait-y, but do tell. (Newport News, that's the shipyard town, right?)
As for Lawrence, I didn't know much about it going in and the presenters were speaking to people from Lawrence who were well familiar with the situation and didn't give much backstory, but apparently their school district was put under receivership, given a sharp shock of standardized testing and are being hailed in some circles (union-busting neoliberal privatizing circles) as some kind of model turn-around achievement. I'm sure charter schools were in there, too, but they were referring to schools by name, so I didn't really follow.
Anyway, the speaker, Amy Berard was featured in a Washington Post article (Teacher blasts popular classroom training program: It is turning us into robots.) that I haven't read yet, but, so Ms. Berard said, earned the journalist a nasty e-mail from Randi Weingarten.
Thanks to my, sadly ended (for now anyway), relationship with La Principessa, I had enough juicy anecdotes to turn into an amusing contribution to the discussion which made Ms. Berard laugh, which was gratifying, because she is pretty hawt . Mr. Comrade said she mentioned being married at one point, but I didn't see any ring when I went up and shook her hand.
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Synergistic weirdiosity:
Coming over my FB feed at this exact moment is an article about education reform and the despicable HRC by my rivals in the Party of Socialism and Liberation.
In 1983 Clinton teamed with Walmart to attack public education