Deportees

We saw Arlo Guthrie on Sunday and he did this song. I love it so much.

Whenever there is a news story about immigrants/undocumented workers, and their names are omitted, I always think of this song.

I found this version of the song by Arlo and Emmylou Harris. So beautiful! (Unfortunately, the audio-synchronization seems a bit OFF in this video, and their mouths don't quite match up to the lyrics, but that's quibbling.)

Happy 100th birthday, Woody Guthrie.

Arlo's tour started two years ago, to celebrate his father's centennial celebration.

~*~

Deportees - Arlo Guthrie and Emmylou Harris



EDIT: And yes, this is "Tuesday Tunes" because I wrote it on Tuesday and did not post it until today. THANK YOU FOR NOTICING! :P

I have removed the "Tuesday Tunes" designation for those readers who are uncompromising sticklers for accuracy. Truthfully, I didn't even notice. I DID manage to say "Wednesday edition" on the radio today, so I am NOT a total loss.

Thanks yall! :) Its so nice to know you care.

12-12-12

... was yesterday! I attended the Feast Day Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe at St Mary Magdalene in Simpsonville. (photos at left) Liturgical dancing, mariachi music and singing, and they even gave us roses. It was a lovely celebration, which I have greatly missed attending.

The spiritual significance of 12-12-12 is purported to be that it is a 'preparation' day for the upcoming cosmic day of 12-21-12. I figured if the Mayans are indeed in charge of the end of the world (although this would appear to be a gross oversimplification of their astrological calendar), then I should go talk to Our Lady of Guadalupe, since that area of the world is her specific geographic purview and under her protection.

Like I always say, you can't be too careful.





More about the end of the world:

Doomsday Phobia Grows As World Awaits December 21, 2012 (Huffington Post)

Mayan End Age 12-21-2012 heralds a New Age of spiritual enlightenment (adishakti.org)

What Sources Say We’ll Ascend on Dec. 21, 2012? (The 2012 Scenario)

The Numerology of 2012 (2012 Spiritual Info)

2012 Predictions: Should You Be Worried? (About.com/Paganism/Wicca)

San Diegans prepare for Mayan doomsday: Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012 (10news.com)

Maya 2012 -Mayan Calendar, Mayan Prophecy and December 21 2012 (Maya 2012)

Top Destinations (or States of Mind) for December 21, 2012 (Reality Sandwich)

2012 in Bible Prophecy (EndTimes Ministries)

End of the world, December 21, 2012, NASA says there is nothing to worry about (WPTV.com)

Will the World end on 21 December? (PM News Nigeria)

What's going to happen on December 21st 2012? (Cornell Astronomy)

~*~

It's The End of the World as We Know It - R. E. M.

Color Fear

I watched an old interview of Jimmy Breslin on C-Span over the weekend, originally aired in 1991.

I just loved what he said, and decided to quote the last segment of the interview in its entirety.

It's as true now, as it was in 1991... as it was in the time he is describing, the 50s.

[C-Span CEO Brian] LAMB: You said earlier that you can't go a day without writing about and thinking about race in New York City.

[Jimmy] BRESLIN: Well, it hits you in the face in New York City. It's all there is.

LAMB: OK. Is the problem -- and I don't know whether you call it a problem or not -- but will the problem be solved?

BRESLIN: It's a very new problem, and we've got a long way to go with it.

LAMB: Why is it new?

BRESLIN: Well, it didn't start until -- when did it start in New York City? I told you a movie was made in 1950 that only had two blacks in it -- shoeshine people -- and now we're in 1991 and we're beginning to see how many are there. I found in doing the research for this book, the John Deere Company in Iowa gave me their company newspaper and a lot of old press releases from the largest train ever to carry farm equipment in the United States in whatever the year was then. It left Des Moines with 141 flatcars filled with the John Deere 99 cotton picker, and it went to the South, to Atlanta, where there was a huge civic celebration there, and it went all across the South depositing these 99 -- the first shipment, largest in the history of the nation. Each machine did the work of 90 field hands, and they went all across the South. Now, and here it came, into New York they came, these sad-faced women with their arms leaden from carrying babies and a long ride.

Day coaches from Jacksonville, buses from Spartanburg; they came from Durham, in the tidewater area of Virginia. Into New York they came and they changed the city. We were unprepared for them, the city was unprepared. The city didn't even know what was happening. Congressional people on agriculture committees didn't know what was happening. Nobody knew what was happening. It was a huge movement, and it happened without any public notice. Into New York they came.

Where else would you go if you were chased off a farm? Where else would you go -- to Knoxville or to Atlanta or to Boise, Idaho, or Casper, Wyoming? You'd go to New York! Where else would you come? And they came.

This was a city that had a reputation of feeding and clothing anybody who couldn't make his own way, but it never was prepared for this. Then at the same time you had into New York from San Juan, they came on the so-called chicory lights. It came in late night flights from San Juan, loaded to the gunwales. They landed -- the airport then was called Idlewild, not even Kennedy. The cold wind would blow across the tarmac from the Atlantic Ocean across Jamaica Bay, whip across them as they came out of these planes dressed in short-sleeved sport shirts and flowered summer dresses, the women. Somebody from the Bronx would run up and throw a coat around them. I remember there was the fellow mentioned here -- Jimmy Cannon, wrote that they were 'summer people in winter clothes,' coming into New York.

These two from San Juan and from the South together formed the greatest number of people to enter the city of New York that we ever had at one time -- greater than anything from Ireland or Eastern Europe or Southern Italy, much greater. All here, and we didn't know what to do with them because they weren't white. You could take a whole load of Jewish people from Eastern Europe who couldn't speak the language and dressed strangely with their beards and hats, and you could take them and put a statue and have songs and poems and pictures -- dramatic things. Extol them forever. You could take the Italians from Calabria and from Naples -- great. Couldn't speak English -- who cared? They were great. Any Polish that came in, great.

Here came Americans but they weren't white -- wow, here we go.

Now, that isn't that long ago that the real numbers started coming in. They were coming up in the late '40s and into the '50s, but when those trains with this farm equipment really started to come, now it was a crush and we got hit with it. Now we're in something that nobody has ever done before. We're trying to somehow survive and have economic and share economic and political power. We're not asking people to love each other. I don't think you're ever going to get anyone to love anybody anyway. Forget that. Let's just live together and see what happens. That's 100 years. When you say that's 50, 75 years easy, nothing can be done. It's going to be a long, long, long thing.

LAMB: Why do the whites and the blacks, when they don't get along, why don't they get along? What is the reason?

BRESLIN: Color fear on the part of the whites.

LAMB: Color fear?

BRESLIN: That's where it starts. Also stubborn refusal on that word "color fear" to realize it's one other thing to admit it and to do something about it.

You can tell a guy if he has a job just by looking at him. The guy walking up the street, if he's working, forget it. You can tell by a look. A glance tells you a working man, and a working man doesn't do anything but go home from his job. There's no crime if people are working. Unheard of. Nobody working at a job with any chance in life goes out and does anything wrong. They don't do it. It just doesn't happen. If they would have this color fear, if they would begin to put it in their minds that hey, you don't have to be afraid if the guy is working. The whole word is jobs. You know that. What am I telling you? You sit here every night and know it. What, am I telling you something new? That's the only political word worth discussing is jobs.

LAMB: We've only got a minute or so. If Damon Runyon were living today, would he have trouble writing?

BRESLIN: No, not at all. How could you have trouble with what's going on today? And also his style of writing going right down to the street, you'd come up with the same one word.

If the guy ain't got a job, he's not going to behave. If the guy doesn't have bread, he's going to steal it. Now, let's face it. He was writing about people who came in from Texas. Miss Temple Texas gets off a bus on a Friday, meets a guy and comes around on Monday morning with a brand-new mink coat and says, "Look what I found in the subway." Well, they were coming in from out of town and making it. Now, all you need is somebody coming in from the south end of Brooklyn, or his family that followed him, who gets ahead -- gets some bread and gets ahead in the world. There's no trouble. Jobs. He would understand that. If the guy is working, everything's all right.

I'm confident in that.

They call it Stormy Monday...

...but Tuesday's just as bad.

Wednesday's worse, and Thursday's oh so sad.

It's storming, and these are my favorite stormy songs.

First, Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan in Hamilton, Ontario, recorded on December 6, 1983. (The song was originally written by T-Bone Walker.) Some of the video isn't quite synchronized to the action, but honestly, does anyone care?

Awesomeness.

~*~

Albert King & Stevie Ray Vaughan - Stormy Monday



I first heard this version of STORMY when I was down and out on the West Coast...and it got me through a whole month, in which I played it virtually non-stop, even as I got evicted from my commune.

Yes, someday I will tell the whole story, but I don't fare so well in the telling. ;)

This will probably get pulled by the evilllll powers-that-be (yes, I'm lookin at you, Warner Music Group!) --so have a listen now. The vocals were swapped out constantly on old Santana records, so I am sorry to say I have no idea which singer this is, but he's fabulous.

But it's Carlos who really cooks, and takes us into some special, safe place where the storms can't touch us.

Santana - Stormy

We love Sonia!--and other ruminations on a young presidency

After all the fervid Obama-blogging I did during election season, I deliberately laid off after Inauguration Day. I wanted to give him a 100-day break, like (haha!) everybody else was. Or was supposed to. Or something.

Like I said, haha. Nobody else did. I felt like he got maybe a 48-hour honeymoon period with the press, if that long.

Primarily for this reason, I extended my hands-off policy even longer, pausing only to criticize the president's rather uncharitable attitude towards freeing the weed. I was floored that Obama wasn't getting the "honeymoon" that other presidents have enjoyed (which they have historically used to "coast" for their first year or so). And then I realized, this is different; times are currently quite disastrous and all bets are off.

And then there is the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is habitually examined microscopically in a manner I can recall no other modern president perpetually and constantly inspected...with the exception of the post-Watergate Richard Nixon (who approved a criminal break-in and thus deserved to be closely-inspected). But Obama? Why is everyone so panicked and seemingly afraid he is going to screw the pooch?

Certainly, it seems obvious that the pooch was already royally screwed by Dubya, who seemed utterly free of any similar close inspection. But much of the microscopic-inspection that should have been directed at Dubya, is now directed at the successor who is attempting to clean up his considerable mess.

And so, I have now decided to jump in and reassert my support for the prez, which is not to say he can't do some serious pooch-screwing of his own, and I suppose he will at some point. All politicians do, after all. (Old bumper sticker: To err is human, to really screw things up takes a politician.) But so far, I am not teeth-gnashingly livid over anything he has done. Bill Clinton used to make me livid with his very predictable Bubba-routine, which I found just too close for comfort. (I had a Bubba-boss for part of that time, which made it significantly worse... familiarity breeds contempt!) As a feminist, I also greatly resented the fact that Slick Willie could not keep his hands to himself. (After hearing the story of Kathleen Willey, whom I found very credible, I would not defend Bill Clinton AT ALL.) By contrast, Obama shows no signs of Clintonian excesses, and in fact, comes off as downright ascetic in comparison--with his frequent sports and healthy diet--tobacco appears to be his only vice, which is a relief. (There is some argument about whether he is still smoking; I say, let the man have a vice, people!)

I am pissed off about Obama's whole Afghanistan adventure, however. The left, as a rule, has been far too easy on him about this, as Tom Hayden writes in AlterNet today. Peter Rothberg in THE NATION states that only 0.6% of military-oriented media coverage is about Afghanistan in particular (!) and most of the American public is pro-intervention in the region. (But if there was more detailed media coverage, would that change?) There was a "national day of action on Afghanistan" last Thursday, but MoveOn did not participate, and most people I know were not even aware of it.

Regarding Afghanistan, we need to keep the heat on.

~*~

One thing our new prez has done is... NOMINATE A WOMAN TO THE SUPREME COURT!!!! (((happy dance)))) Yes, this carries serious weight with me, folks. You bet it does!

And Sonia Sotomayor is making the GOP-baddies go crazy... tee hee! Politico reports:

President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court was the latest and most powerful blow in the president’s relentless courtship of Hispanic Americans, whose flight to the Democratic Party was central to his election.

Hispanic leaders across the country, many of whom attended the White House announcement, praised the appointment swiftly and in the strongest terms, and Republican leaders signaled an awareness of the political sensitivities by avoiding any suggestion of disrespect for the first Latina nominee to the nation’s highest court.

“The picture of an African-American president standing next to a Hispanic woman as his first choice for the Supreme Court — that picture is the worst nightmare for the Republican Party,” said Fernand Amandi, a Florida pollster whose firm, Bendixen Associates, surveyed Hispanic voters for Obama’s presidential campaign.

“The numbers, the symbolism and now the acts of the Democratic Party and this Democratic president underline and underscore the very bleak outlook for Republicans, where the…fastest growing demographics in the county are leaving them,” he said, noting that surveys earlier this decade suggested broad hunger among Hispanic voters for a court pick.

Jeanne Cummings reports that the right-wing is mobilizing, but confused and disoriented:

Conservative groups know they want to oppose Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor — but exactly how that campaign will be conducted is a major unanswered question that is splitting the Republican right.

The early fissure among opponents to Sotomayor, the New York federal appeals judge nominated by President Barack Obama on Tuesday, is over whether to push for a filibuster.

“The Republicans have got to take a stand on this one,” said Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition and a proponent of a filibuster. “If they don’t, they can kiss their chances of ever getting back into power away,” he added.

Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, an anti-abortion rights activist, is urging members to block a Senate vote on Sotomayor.

“Do GOP leaders have the courage and integrity to filibuster an activist, pro-Roe[v. Wade] judge?” asked Terry, who argued that Democrats — including then-Sen. Obama — opened the door to such action after threatening to filibuster Justice Samuel Alito’s nomination in 2005.

And Holly gets right to the point over at Feministe:

Sotomayor grew up in the housing projects of the South Bronx, was raised by a single mother after the death of her father, is a diabetic, a Catholic, and is divorced with no children. Obama described her life as an “extraordinary journey,” talking about how she graduated at the top of her class from Princeton and then Yale Law School.

You might be wondering why I rattled off a laundry list of her life experiences, or what you might call identity categories. Two reasons: first, her career has been batted around for years by feuding Democrats and Republicans because she’s a woman of color. Once she made the short list for an Obama nomination, the rumors and sniping started up again. What, she doesn’t have any kids? Not only that, but some people think she’s fat. Or are even spuriously linking her weight to her diabetes.

Get ready for a whole season of this kind of thing as her nomination is challenged.

Also check out Jill's post at Feministe, as well as nojojojo's and Ampersand's posts at Alas, a Blog.

I am just so proud of Obama right now. And wonderful Sonia too, of course!

Dead Air Church: Cortez the Killer

He came dancing across the water, Cortez, Cortez...

This week for Dead Air Church, I wanted to recognize the Feast of the Assumption (which was the 15th) by commemorating the victims of one Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca. The Aztec Empire fell on August 13, 1521.

One account of the massacre in the Main Temple of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (May 1520):

Here it is told how the Spaniards killed, they murdered the Mexicas who were celebrating the Fiesta of Huitzilopochtli in the place they called The Patio of the Gods

At this time, when everyone was enjoying the fiesta, when everyone was already dancing, when everyone was already singing, when song was linked to song and the songs roared like waves, in that precise moment the Spaniards determined to kill people. They came into the patio, armed for battle.

They came to close the exits, the steps, the entrances [to the patio]: The Gate of the Eagle in the smallest palace, The Gate of the Canestalk and the Gate of the Snake of Mirrors. And when they had closed them, no one could get out anywhere.

Once they had done this, they entered the Sacred Patio to kill people. They came on foot, carrying swords and wooden and metal shields. Immediately, they surrounded those who danced, then rushed to the place where the drums were played. They attacked the man who was drumming and cut off both his arms. Then they cut off his head [with such a force] that it flew off, falling far away.

At that moment, they then attacked all the people, stabbing them, spearing them, wounding them with their swords. They struck some from behind, who fell instantly to the ground with their entrails hanging out [of their bodies]. They cut off the heads of some and smashed the heads of others into little pieces.

They struck others in the shoulders and tore their arms from their bodies. They struck some in the thighs and some in the calves. They slashed others in the abdomen and their entrails fell to the earth. There were some who even ran in vain, but their bowels spilled as they ran; they seemed to get their feet entangled with their own entrails. Eager to flee, they found nowhere to go.

~*~

He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
In that palace in the sun

On the shore lay Montezuma
With his cocoa leaves and pearls
In his halls he often wondered
With the secrets of the worlds

And his subjects gathered round him
Like the leaves around a tree
In their clothes of many colors
For the angry gods to see

And the women all were beautiful
And the men stood straight and strong
They offered life in sacrifice
So that others could go on

Hate was just a legend
And war was never known
The people worked together
And they lifted many stones

They carried them to the flatlands
And they died along the way
But they built up with their bare hands
What we still can't do today

And I know she's living there
And she loves me to this day
I still can't remember when
Or how I lost my way

He came dancing across the water
Cortez, Cortez

What a killer.

~*~

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Cortez the Killer

Local Democratic primary

...is today, at last.

I leafleted Walmart windshields on Ted's behalf (or should I say, on behalf of the good people of the 4th district!) in this searing, blistering heat. (There have been perpetual "heat advisories" the last couple of days, which caused me and Mr Daisy to cancel a hike we had planned on, phooey.) We are all running around like crazy people, but I'll keep you posted.

The Greenville News did not endorse Ted, which he put on his website: NOT endorsed by the Greenville News.

See? Too much of a Yippie to get elected, with a sense of humor like that.

~*~

In other news--South Carolina leads the nation in the number of Hispanic worker deaths on the job:

During the time studied, 51 Hispanic workers died on the job in South Carolina, a rate of 22.8 per 100,000 workers, the CDC reported using Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The number was twice that of Oklahoma, which had the second-highest rate.

Falls were the leading cause of injury and 63 percent of the deaths were in the construction industry.

The high rate in South Carolina most likely can be attributed to the state’s relatively new immigrant population where workers would be less likely to speak English and would be unfamiliar with employee safety laws, said Sherry Brown of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Occupational Health Disparities Program.

“A reasonable explanation is new immigrants are moving to work in construction, which has a higher risk,” Brown said.

The study found 88 percent of the Hispanics who died while at work in South Carolina were foreign-born.

Across the nation, on-the-job deaths of foreign-born workers have been increasing, and overall Hispanic deaths rates are consistently higher than those of white and black workers.

On-the-job deaths can include everything from car wrecks and murder to falls and explosions.

For the past five years, the state has recorded the fastest-growing Hispanic population in the nation.

Hispanics make up about 3 percent of the state’s labor force, according to the Census Bureau.

The most notorious work accident involving Hispanics in the Midlands happened in 2003, when teenage brothers, Moises and Rigoberto Xaca, died while digging a trench at the Blythewood High School construction site.

The brothers, ages 15 and 17, were illegal immigrants who showed fake documents to get hired. The company that hired them was fined for six safety violations.

Two years after the Xaca brothers were killed, the S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation created a Spanish job safety training program for the construction and landscaping industries, said Jim Knight, a department spokesman.

~*~

And Natalia reports on ArabComment that Leila Hussein, mother of honor-killing victim Rand Hussein, was shot and killed as she was walking with two women activists to meet a contact to take her to Amman, Jordan:

Leila Hussein drew her family’s ire when she refused to support her husband’s decision to murder their daughter for entertaining a crush on an American soldier. Leila Hussein’s sons had also participated in the brutal act, and did not support their mother in her escape.

Hussein’s husband had previously boasted to the media that the local police had fully supported him. And while Basra law enforcement officials have told the press that Leila Hussein’s defiance had nothing to do with her murder, that this was a routine spat of sectarian violence targeting the women activists, their own role in this story makes their statements suspect.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Leila Hussein was being made an example of. This wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last time, in today’s brutalized Iraq. The activists who were trying to help Hussein escape are receiving threats as well. Any woman who does not submit to her role as a passive piece of human garbage is a potential target in a patriarchal society scarred by years of violence.

What can we do? The good women at Jezebel are collecting money to help.

Another thing we could do is BRING THEM HOME NOW, and let Iraq heal from its many wounds.