A way down south in Dixie

At left: Alexander Gardner's famous historical photo of the hanging of co-conspirators Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold and George Atzerodt, 1865.



Locally, the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War has brought them all out of the woodwork to dress up like rebel soldiers. (As I've said here before, I think a crucial aspect of this is the long-suppressed desire of grown men to play dress-up.) Before any of the rebels yell at me [1], let me present my credentials: I have an ancestor who risked his life to run away, and I qualify for this discussion. (And in my genealogy, there are a few more where he came from, on both the Union and CSA side. But great-great-great-granddaddy Hatcher is my pacifist DNA and my favorite confederate ancestor.)

I have never bought into the whole southern glamour of the Civil War, although I like Vivien Leigh as much as the next person. But getting starry-eyed and romantic over lost causes is not something I was raised to do. However, I have been paying attention, and I have figured out that much of this Civil War Nostalgia is bluntly nationalist in origin. White southerners still feel dissed by the mass culture, and this is a way of honoring those who feel continuously insulted. Just as there is a secessionist vibe all over Texas that has never quite abated, there is a similar tone running through discussions of the vanquished Confederate States of America. This is why so many of them protest that "It isn't about slavery!"--since for them, it isn't. It's about where they live NOW. It's about southern pride, about place, about the mass culture employing actors with bad southern accents to be the butt of sitcom jokes and commercials. It's about people making fun of rednecks for being uneducated. It's about global capitalism colonizing old neighborhoods, old folkways and rearranging everything so that it is unrecognizable to the people who grew up here. It's about yankees not understanding WHO DIED in the Civil War and/or who decided to swim across the river like Thomas Hatcher: poor white people. Not Stonewall Jackson.

We were used as cannon fodder, as always. [2] That is something to MOURN, not celebrate, and that is where I get off the bus. WE WAS HAD, WE WAS USED, a buncha rich planters USED us to jab at Abraham Lincoln. That should make you angry, not make you want to organize a charity costume ball.

I'm glad the Civil War anniversary has at least produced an interesting film; I do want to see the new movie The Conspirator. Lots of people do not know who Mary Suratt was, and that she was the first woman executed in the USA. Nice to see some of this history brought out in movie-form, where people will actually see it... those of you who think all southern white women were Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, you should have a look. I don't know if the movie takes the position that Suratt was guilty or innocent, but she was likely guilty. Death by hanging, of course, is rather harsh.

But you know, you kill Abraham Lincoln, people are going to be pissed.

~*~

How SHOULD we commemorate this awful, violent period of American history? Is there a way to honor the dead (including dead slaves) in a respectful way that includes everyone? Or is this simply impossible?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

~*~


1) I knew if I tried hard enough, I could work "rebel yell" into the post, so congratulate me. That's as close as I could get.

2) We are being used as cannon fodder right now too, but they don't seem too worried about that. (((Daisy scowls in disapproval)))

Women go crazy bout a sharp dressed man

Women don't fare so well in Terminator Salvation.



SPOILERS AHEAD!!!




First, we have lying, dying mad-scientist-doc Helena Bonham Carter, who talks poor Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), death row inmate, into leaving his body to science. (The scene in which he dies by lethal injection is barbarous, and I wish someone had warned me that this sequence begins the movie; I found it much more jarring than regular cartoon sci-fi violence.) He wakes up in 2018, obviously "resurrected" from the dead. (Yeah, something weird is happening.) He is now in the middle of the Man-vs-Machine war, the plot-center of all of the Terminator movies.

Sexy Woman-of-Color warrior Blair (Moon Bloodgood) is later saved from gang-rape by Marcus, and thereby cuddles up with him announcing he has a "strong heart." She then proceeds to smuggle him into Resistance HQ, wherein we find John Connor (Christian Bale) and the rest of the righteous. Marcus is discovered to be a cyborg, a new type of infiltrator-terminator, made of real skin, nerves and blood ("blood" is the insignia of the resistance fighters). What happened to the ever-barking watchdogs from Terminator I and II that could always sniff out the Terminators? (Hmm, I guess that would have interfered with the whole Terminator-infiltrator plot.) Helena Bonham Carter made him into some new weird thing. Great scene where he looks down and sees his half-robot self, opened up and all a-blinking with lights: AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! And once Blair sees this, well, it's all over, people. She is greatly overcome with emotion, calls him "he" instead of "it" (cyborgs are "its" of course) so you know she is already far-gone over (admittedly fabulous-looking) Marcus. Despite the fact that she is a kick-ass resistance fighter and pilot, she risks all to defy her Leader-Prophet John Connor, to aid Marcus in his escape.

Hmph.

Yes, we know even a badass warrior-woman's silly little head can be turned by the first pretty face she sees with a "strong heart"... so she abandons everything she believes in to aid someone who could be an enemy, who is shown to be a member of the other side. I realize this whole segment of derring-do exists primarily to move the plot along and provide more thrills-and-spills, but it made me indignant and interfered with my enjoyment of the movie. Couldn't some guy have done this instead?

Why ruin the only positive, strong female character in the movie by making her a lovesick turncoat? Infatuated with a cyborg, forgodsake.

Ohhhh yes, we find out later that Marcus (surprise!) does actually have a "strong heart" but not before they tie beautiful and disobedient Blair to a chair so there can be a few scant seconds of titillation (this is a PG-13 movie, after all) before getting back to the explosions.

John Connor's lovely redheaded wife (Bryce Dallas Howard) has nothing to do but be pregnant and poignant throughout. Jane Alexander is on hand to be a victim.

The wonderful ass-kicking Sarah Connor of past Terminator movies seems to have been an anomaly; don't look for any women you can be proud of in this movie.

Dumb ending. (Translation: More sequels to come!)

My priest advises penance for Obama vote

Father Jay Scott Newman

~*~


Possible secondary subtitle: What should Daisy do?

Italics in article below is mine.

Priest advises penance for Obama vote

Parishioners shouldn't take Communion until they do because of president-elect's abortion view, he says

By Ben Szobody • STAFF WRITER • November 13, 2008

The priest at St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Greenville has told parishioners that those who voted for Barack Obama placed themselves under divine judgment because of his stance on abortion and shouldn't receive Holy Communion until they've done penance.

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman told The Greenville News on Wednesday that church teaching doesn't allow him to refuse Holy Communion to anyone based on political choices, but that he'll continue to deliver the church's strong teaching on the "intrinsic and grave evil of abortion" as a hidden form of murder.

Both Obama and Joe Biden, the vice president-elect, support legal abortions. Obama has called it a "divisive issue" with a "moral dimension," and has pledged to make women's rights under Roe v. Wade a "priority" as president. He opposes a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court decision.

At issue for the church locally and nationwide are exit polls showing 54 percent of self-described Catholics voted for Obama, as well as a growing rift in the lifestyle and voting patterns between practicing and non-practicing Catholics.

In a letter posted on St. Mary's Web site, Newman wrote that "voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

Catholics who did so should be reconciled to God through penance before receiving communion, "lest they eat and drink their own condemnation," Newman wrote, echoing a I Corinthians admonition for anyone who partakes "without recognizing the body of the Lord."

The response from parishioners has been supportive by a margin of 9 to 1, Newman said. He also cited Scripture in urging parishioners to pray for Obama and cooperate with him wherever conscience permits.

Bishops in Baltimore for their annual meeting this week are wrestling with how to explain church teaching on abortion in light of voters' choice of Obama, who is Protestant, and Biden, who is Catholic, according to The Associated Press.

Francis Cardinal George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told colleagues that "the common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed."

Bishops have more vocally spoken about abortion this election season, though the issue hasn't generated as much public debate as the decision in 2004 to deny then-presidential candidate John Kerry communion because of his abortion views.

Stephen Gajdosik, spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Charleston, told The News that calling parishioners who voted for a candidate who supports legalized abortions to penance is a question of how best to deepen a flock's relationship to God and a move left up to local priests. He said such a move is appropriate and in line with church teaching.

In an e-mail interview, Newman cited a survey earlier this year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that showed fewer than 25 percent of the 65 million Americans who call themselves Catholic attend Mass each Sunday, a "disturbing fact of life" that he said shows the vast majority of those baptized into the church "do not live as disciples of Jesus Christ in any observable way."

Mass-attending Catholics, he said, "vote overwhelmingly" for candidates who oppose legalized abortion.

The Catholic dilemma coincides with a split in Protestant circles between those who consider abortion as a non-negotiable moral concern when voting, and emerging groups such as Sojourners who call for candidates to be evaluated on a "consistent ethic of life," abortion and the Iraq war included.

Newman calls abortion the "chief battleground" in the so-called culture wars, and different from "prudential" matters such as health care, education or the war on terror. A Catholic who gets an abortion, encourages one or assists in the procedure is automatically excommunicated from the church, Newman said, a penalty he said doesn't apply to other forms of killing.

"The reason is that abortion is usually murder in secret and it lays axe to human life at its root," he said. With nearly 50 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, Newman said Obama would seek to make "hidden murder" a legally protected right, and anyone who voted to give him such power "will be complicit in the legal holocaust which will follow."

Asked about the moral weight of abortion, Gajdosik said that if only three abortions per year took place in the United States, while an objectively immoral war took thousands of innocent lives, then the war might outweigh abortion as a moral concern.

As it is, he said, the weight of large numbers of innocents "slaughtered" should be the overwhelming issue of concern to Catholics.

Gajdosik said that for someone to be guilty of cooperating with evil, a person would have to know what's at stake and purposefully vote anyway for the candidate who supports legalized abortion.

Newman said, "An uninformed vote is an irresponsible vote," and that no informed voter this year could have mistaken the candidates' abortion positions.

No matter the intention of the voter, Newman said a vote for Obama is "material cooperation" with his goal of extending the use of lethal violence against unborn children.

Asked if he would actively deny the sacraments to Obama voters, Newman said he won't because the church teaches that no one is denied communion unless it would cause "grave scandal," such as in the case of a notorious public sinner.

However, he said he'll continue to teach the necessity of being in "full, visible communion" with the church before receiving the sacraments.

Yes, this directly affects me this time. This is my church, although my attendance is scattershot and I also go to Masses at various other parishes in the upstate. St Mary's is the oldest parish in the region and fairly stunning. (The beautiful stained glass art I have featured on my blog, is all from St Mary's.)

St Mary's members are pretty affluent and old-south. After years of attempting to fit in socially, I simply gave up and moved on, for the most part.

South Carolina is a death penalty state, as I have written before many times, and in the past, I organized prayer vigils for prisoners condemned to death. In fairness, Father Newman graciously allowed me use of the church and church facilities for these events, but notably did not himself attend.

I have to ask: Why doesn't this abortion-logic apply to other issues? Anyone who voted for 100 more years of war, as well as the continuance of capital punishment and the denial of universal health care (leads to DEATH, you know), should also confess and ask for penance, in my ever-humble opinion.

And failing that, why can't we simply call it a wash? Why is abortion the sole litmus test?

If I were as plucky as I once was, I'd make a point of attending daily Mass at St Mary's, but alas, Father Newman CANCELED daily Noon* Masses a couple of years ago. This made it impossible for many of us who work on weekends to attend at all. As it is now, my health issues have basically confined me to my home for a few more weeks anyway.

My last physically-demanding task was standing in line for an hour and a half to vote.

***

*EDITED TO ADD: As Anonymous pointed out to me, St Mary's offers very early (7am) daily Masses. I referred to the 12 Noon daily Mass being canceled, and was not specific. My deepest apologies. I am dimly aware of Masses at such ungodly hours, but mostly, have only heard of them by legend and yes, in the church bulletin. (((shame))) Sorry, I did not actually check the website before linking.

James Earl Reed executed by the state of South Carolina

Left: James Earl Reed, 49, executed late last night by electric chair in Columbia. Reed is the first person executed by electric chair in the US in nearly a year, and South Carolina's first since 2004.

~*~



James Earl Reed was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents 14 years ago in a joke of a trial in which he "defended himself." He was finally executed in the electric chair late last night, after a dramatic federal stay of execution at the last minute, lasting about five hours. Peace activists held a prayer vigil at St Thomas More Catholic Chapel, and a later protest vigil at the Governor's Mansion. The stay was vacated by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals and defense attorneys' attempt to get the Supreme Court to block the execution, subsequently denied.

James Earl Reed issued no final statement, and was pronounced dead at 11:27 pm, Friday, June 20, 2008.

From Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, here is a short article about Reed by Ray Martinez of the Charleston Post and Courier, from back in 2003.

Short version: It is morally reprehensible that this execution should have been permitted. The people who put this man to death should be ashamed of themselves:

James Earl Reed is a man used to having his way, but it's not the way most people would choose.

When his ex-girlfriend's parents [Joseph and Barbara Lafayette] refused to tell him her whereabouts, he methodically shot them dead, firing at the mother once in each leg, once in the lower body and once between the eyes at point- blank range.

When he insisted on defending himself in his double-murder trial, despite pleas from defense attorneys that he had an IQ of 77 and was not competent to stand trial, he became the first person under the state's current capital punishment law to represent himself.

After a jury deliberated just 30 minutes to convict him of those murders, Reed reversed himself and asked for a postponement in the sentencing phase and pleaded for a lawyer to help spare his life. He got the postponement.

Now, nine years after the slayings of Joseph and Barbara Ann Lafayette in their Adams Run home, Reed has resurfaced from Death Row at Lieber Correctional Institution with another odd demand: He wants to be executed rather than continue with further appeals.

"I am standing upon my word that this case be dismiss [sic] or I be killed," Reed, 44, wrote in a letter to The Associated Press last week. He added that he has also decided against asking the governor for clemency, eating a final meal or making a last statement.

All of this sounds familiar to former 9th Circuit Solicitor David Schwacke. In television interviews before his trial, Reed ventured that if Schwacke could convict him and get the death sentence, then Reed would let Schwacke tie him to a tree and shoot him dead.

"This is pretty consistent with what he did at the trial stage, making the case personal," Schwacke said Monday. "Might just be the last act of a desperate man."

No motions have been filed pertaining to his request, said Assistant Public Defender Fielding Pringle of Richland County. She said Reed's request comes after his latest appeal for post-conviction relief was denied in a Richland County court. Reed has at least four more courts in which he could appeal his death sentence, said Pringle, including the South Carolina Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Fourth Circuit and the Federal District Court. She said she talks with him regularly, but declined to say whether he has changed his mind.

"His competency has been hotly disputed since Day 1," Pringle said Monday. "It is in the court transcript that he has an IQ of 77 and suffers from neurological impairment."

An IQ of 75 is considered the low end of normal, Pringle said.

"It is a very sad story. He should never have been allowed to represent himself in the first place. It is very sad."

The Lafayette family could not be reached for comment Monday. At trial, prosecutors said Reed and the Lafayettes' daughter, Laurie Rego, briefly dated while they were both in the Army. Rego testified that when she tried to break off the relationship and fled her own apartment to get away from him, he rammed a car into an Army officer who was trying to help her. Reed was sentenced to 37 months in prison after pleading guilty to assault, but he continued to write Rego threatening letters from prison.

When Reed was released from prison on April 25, 1994, instead of going to a federal halfway house in Fayetteville, N.C., to complete his sentence, he went to Greenville and bought a 9 mm pistol and 10 bullets. On May 18, Reed showed up at the Lafayettes' house looking for Rego.

For Reed to be executed voluntarily, he must be found competent by a judge. Five years ago, the state Supreme Court upheld Reed's conviction after considering whether Circuit Judge William Howard had erred by finding Reed competent and capable of representing himself. The high court held that the judge had made clear to Reed the inherent dangers in self- representation.

Assistant Deputy Attorney General Don Zelenka was on vacation Monday and unavailable for comment, and his department's spokesmen, Trey Walker, said he was unaware of Reed's expressed intentions to volunteer for execution.

From Lieber Correctional Institution, Reed said on his Web site at www.ccadp.org/jamesearlreed.htm: "The big issue within this death penalty case/trial was that I would be representing myself which I have come to find out this hasn't been done, until I became the first! ... I didn't become my own lawyer for no type of fame nor glory! Yet to save my life period!"

And as we see, that didn't work out so well. Check the link, he is barely literate. I'm sure he really understood the law.

I am ashamed of South Carolina right now.

October 16, 1859

The biographies either emphasize what a mild-mannered fellow he was, or how crazy he was; fire in the eyes. I would like to have met him, and seen for myself.

I assume his demeanor changed, depending on the subject at hand.

Radicals from Ohio swear he was from Ohio, as radicals from New York swear the same. In fact, he was born in Torrington, Connecticut:

During his first fifty years, John Brown moved about the country, settling in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts, taking along his ever-growing family. (He would father twenty children.) Working at various times as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculator, he never was financially successful -- he even filed for bankruptcy when in his forties. His lack of funds, however, did not keep him from supporting causes he believed in. He helped finance the publication of David Walker's Appeal and Henry Highland's "Call to Rebellion" speech. He gave land to fugitive slaves. He and his wife agreed to raise a black youth as one of their own. He also participated in the Underground Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadites, an organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.

In 1847 Frederick Douglass met Brown for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Of the meeting Douglass stated that, "though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery." It was at this meeting that Brown first outlined his plan to Douglass to lead a war to free slaves.

Brown moved to the black community of North Elba, New York, in 1849. The community had been established thanks to the philanthropy of Gerrit Smith, who donated tracts of at least 50 acres to black families willing to clear and farm the land. Brown, knowing that many of the families were finding life in this isolated area difficult, offered to establish his own farm there as well, in order to lead the blacks by his example and to act as a "kind father to them."

Despite his contributions to the antislavery cause, Brown did not emerge as a figure of major significance until 1855 after he followed five of his sons to the Kansas territory.

And in Kansas, it got ugly.

It's important to remember that he was a violent man. He fully believed that he who lived by the sword, died by the sword.

Literally, he used swords:

In Aug. 1855 he followed 5 of his sons to Kansas to help make the state a haven for anti-slavery settlers. The following year, his hostility toward slave-staters exploded after they burned and pillaged the free-state community of Lawrence. Having organized a militia unit within his Osawatomie River colony, Brown led it on a mission of revenge. On the evening of 23 May 1856, he and 6 followers, including 4 of his sons, visited the homes of pro-slavery men along Pottawatomie Creek, dragged their unarmed inhabitants into the night, and hacked them to death with long-edged swords. At once, "Old Brown of Osawatomie" became a feared and hated target of slave-staters.

Of course, I have been to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. I have seen the armory's engine house, which isn't even as big as a typical contemporary suburban house. I remember being startled at it's wee size: Did he really think he could hold them off from there? Good lord. A suicide mission!!! Or did he really believe a mass slave rebellion would ensue? Perhaps he had reason to be optimistic, but in retrospective, such an endeavor seems like madness:

...Brown had only 21 men (16 white and 5 black - three free blacks, one freed slave, and a fugitive slave). They ranged in age from 21 to 49. Twelve of them had been with Brown in Kansas raids.

On October 16, 1859, Brown (leaving three men behind as a rear guard) led 19 men in an attack on the Harpers Ferry Armory. He had received 200 breechloading .52 caliber Sharps carbines and pikes from northern abolitionist societies in preparation for the raid. The armory was a large complex of buildings that contained 100,000 muskets and rifles, which Brown planned to seize and use to arm local slaves. They would then head south, drawing off more and more slaves from plantations, and fighting only in self-defense. As Frederick Douglass and Brown's family testified, his strategy was essentially to deplete Virginia of its slaves, causing the institution to collapse in one county after another, until the movement spread into the South, essentially wreaking havoc on the economic viability of the pro-slavery states. Thus, while violence was essential to self-defense and advancement of the movement, Brown's hope was to limit and minimize bloodshed, not ignite a slave insurrection as many have charged. From the Southern point of view, of course, any effort to arm the enslaved was perceived as a definitive threat.

Initially, the raid went well. They met no resistance entering the town. They cut the telegraph wires and easily captured the armory, which was being defended by a single watchman. They next rounded up hostages from nearby farms, including Colonel Lewis Washington, great-grand-nephew of George Washington. They also spread the news to the local slaves that their liberation was at hand. Things started to go wrong when an eastbound Baltimore & Ohio train approached the town. The train's baggage master tried to warn the passengers. Brown's men yelled for him to halt and then opened fire. The baggage master, Hayward Shepherd, became the first casualty of John Brown's war against slavery. Ironically, Shepherd was a free black man. For some reason, after the shooting of Shepherd, Brown allowed the train to continue on its way. News of the raid reached Washington by late morning.

In the meantime, local farmers, shopkeepers, and militia pinned down the raiders in the armory by firing from the heights behind the town. Some of the local men were shot by Brown's men. At noon, a company of militia seized the bridge, blocking the only escape route. Brown then moved his prisoners and remaining raiders into the engine house, a small brick building at the entrance to the armory. He had the doors and windows barred and loopholes were cut through the brick walls. The surrounding forces barraged the engine house, and the men inside fired back with occasional fury. Brown sent his son Watson and another supporter out under a white flag, but the angry crowd shot them. Intermittent shooting then broke out, and Brown's son Oliver was wounded. His son begged his father to kill him and end his suffering, but Brown said "If you must die, die like a man." A few minutes later he was dead. The exchanges lasted throughout the day.

By morning (October 18) the engine house, later known as John Brown's Fort, was surrounded by a company of U.S. Marines under the command of Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee of the United States Army. A young Army lieutenant, J.E.B. Stuart, approached under a white flag and told the raiders that their lives would be spared if they surrendered. Brown refused, saying, "No, I prefer to die here." Stuart then gave a signal. The Marines used sledge hammers and a make-shift battering-ram to break down the engine room door. Lieutenant Israel Greene cornered Brown and struck him several times, wounding his head. In three minutes Brown and the survivors were captives. Altogether Brown's men killed four people, and wounded nine. Ten of Brown's men were killed (including his sons Watson and Oliver). Five of Brown's men escaped (including his son Owen), and seven were captured along with Brown.

We need to go back to my post on Saturday morning, and play the James Brown refrain here: I'm a bad mother. Indeed, by all accounts, Brown dazzled all the soldiers and authorities he encountered, with his utter lack of fear and total righteous attitude.

And then, his trial, which for it's day, apparently made OJ's look like a tea party. His famous final words, upon his death sentence:

I have, may it please the Court, a few words to say.

In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted: of a design on my part to free slaves . . .

Had I interfered in the matter which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved . . . had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, or the so-called great . . . and suffered and sacrificed, what I have in this interference, it would have been all right. Every man in this Court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

I see a book kissed which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do unto me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say that I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong, but right.

Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked,cruel and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.

John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859, virtually the eve of the Civil War. Some people blamed him for the Civil War. And certainly, his unapologetic, incendiary abolitionist presence hovered over Union troops, and they even made up a marching song about him, which they sang with enthusiasm. The Battle Hymn of the Republic was taken from the Union marching song:

John Brown's body lies a moulderin in the grave
John Brown's body lies a moulderin in the grave
John Brown's body lies a moulderin in the grave
But his soul goes marching on

Yes, I do like Julia Ward Howe's Christian rewrite, but I have always preferred the original.

The discussion of vigilante/street justice and whether it is ever warranted continues today; on the right, regarding violence against abortion clinics, doctors and employees; on the left, regarding direct-action groups like Earth First and the Animal Liberation Front. In the 70s, the Weather Underground, as well as radicals such as Karl Armstrong and David Fine, rekindled a long-standing feud between those radicals who held to pacifism at all costs, and those who thought pacifism rendered one a sitting duck.

And in every such discussion, there is his name, waved about like a bloodied banner: What about John Brown? His name is invoked as an indictment, as well as a blessing.

His soul goes marching on.




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Listening to: Patti Smith Group - Till Victory
via FoxyTunes