The Rag Blog | The Latest in News and Views from the Progressive Front

Time 2020-11-05 12:03:29

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Founder of the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance and our New Journalism Project colleague wins major national award.Sherwood Bishop, top, at Schulle Canyon in San Marcos Texas.By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | October 29, 2020SAN MARCOS, Texas Sherwood Bishop, ever humble, says it is a bit embarrassing to be elected a hero when so many real-life pandemic heroes are saving lives, keeping grocery lines stocked, and teaching children in classrooms.The president of The Rag Blog s own New Journalism Project, Sherwood Bishop did receive hero’s recognition for his 22-year stewardship of the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance. The alliance received the 2020 Cox Conserves Heroes national grand prize of $50,000 as well as an additional $10,000 as a regional winner.Although the election didn’t capture headlines the way the Trump-Biden election has, Sherwood and his compatriots won 1,495 of the 4,506 votes cast nationally. It was the first time that a Texan had been nominated. Each regional contestant put together a video about their work in the community. Continue reading Share:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) This article was first published at Judy Gumbo s site, yippiegirl.com, and was cross-posted to The Rag Blog by the author.I attended and worked at the Trial of the Chicago 7. I think Sorkin’s movie is terrific. Here’s why: It’s a blockbuster Hollywood movie in which the Yippies and the anti-war movement come off as heroes.Sorkin’s narrative focuses on conflict between those who protest for a righteous cause and cops, Attorney General John Mitchell, and the Nixon administration. Sorkin raises the racist treatment of my friend, the defendant Bobby Seale, so boldly his audience is forced to pay attention. I heard that Sorkin consulted with my late friend, the defendant Tom Hayden. Which explains Tom’s movie character and the movie’s focus on nonviolence vs. violence. As a Yippie I am especially delighted that Yippie characters and history are so prominent. It’s about time. Continue reading Share:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | October 22, 2020I would feel a whole lot better about Aaron Sorkin s movie if he had titled it The Trial of the Chicago 8. After all it started as the trial of eight young men, all of them radicals of one sort or another.Alhough Bobby Seale was severed from the other defendants and hardly had anything to do with the protests during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he served as the sole/soul representative of the Black Power movement. His demands to have his lawyer present in the courtroom, and Judge Julius Hoffman s order that he be bound and gagged, is still one of the most electrifying moments in American jurisprudence. Continue reading Share:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) The racist and sexist roots of the Electoral College.Founding Fathers at Mt. Rushmore. Creative Commons image.By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | October 1, 2020AUSTIN Perhaps it is obvious, but it bears repeating. The Founding Fathers were men. They envisioned a democracy run by “free, white men.” The first U.S. Census in 1790 spells it out by revealing how the categories were delineated and not delineated:Free white males of 16 years and upward (21%)Free white males under 16 (20%)Free white females (40%)All other free persons (2%)Slaves (18%)The original blueprint was this: 21% of the 3.9 million inhabitants could participate in democracy by voting. As we head for the polls, we must remember that democracy in the U.S. has always been defined by the struggle to expand (or suppress) participation in that democracy. Continue reading Share:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Peter Laufer has observed and written about borders and walls all around the world.By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | October 1, 2020[Up Against the Wall: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border by Peter Laufer, PhD; Foreword by Vicente Fox (Anthem; $38)]Build a wall and human beings will want to go under it, around it, over it, and aim to dismantle it. That’s one of the conclusions that journalist and teacher Peter Laufer has reached after a lifetime of observing what might be called “wall lives.” Another observation is this: make a law and human beings will violate it, be punished by it, and seek to reform it and abolish it.The wall between the USA and Mexico is one of the biggest boondoggles in contemporary America, with corruption extending all the way from mega construction companies in the West to the White House, and involving Donald Trump, Stephen Bannon, and others. In August 2020, the former White House chief of staff was charged with fraud in fundraising for the border wall. Continue reading Share:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Texans rally during memorable 90-minute webinar.Former Texas poet lauretate Carmen Tafolla.By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | September 24, 2020SONOMA COUNTY, California “Texas can be California,” author Laura Moser said during a 90-minute Zoom Webinar hosted by Writers Against Trump, a new, fast-growing organization which was founded on August 3, 2020, and that already has 1,700 members in the U.S. and beyond.Moser wasn’t thinking of California fires and California earthquakes when she made her memorable remark on August 19, 2020. She was thinking of the fact that California is a so-called “red state” and that in recent elections its citizens have voted for Democratic Party candidates like Hillary Clinton.At the end of the session, Writers Against Trump co-founder Carolyn Forché said, “We can take Texas.” The six guests on the Zoom Webinar Carmen Tafolla, David Modigliani, Daniel Peña, Marcel McClinton, Robin Davidson, plus Moser are Texans. They echoed Forché s sentiments, albeit with their own words and in their own ways. Continue reading Share:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Socialists versus the Klan in South Texas.Texas Socialist firebrand Thomas Aloysius Hickey. From the Hickey Papers.By Steve Rossignol | The Rag Blog | September 23, 2020The political atmosphere in Texas after World War I was markedly different. The several years of patriotic fervor that had stemmed from U. S. involvement in the European war had created a very uncomfortable climate for those who had chosen to oppose the American intervention.Before the World War, the Socialist Party of Texas had grown to a political force which had elected dozens of local office holders in the state as it championed the cause of tenant farmers and industrial workers, but its opposition to the War had resulted in its leaders being jailed, its newspapers being shut down, and its members subject to physical and political attacks.Thomas A. Hickey, the Texas socialist firebrand who himself had been detained without a warrant in the early months of the War and who had seen his newspaper, The Rebel, the first in the nation to be shut down by the federal Espionage Act in 1917, was determined to revitalize the Socialist movement in Texas, but his efforts to reestablish a couple of new newspapers simply fizzled. The Socialist Party of Texas itself had almost evaporated; its state secretary had been among the arrested, its state chair had resigned, many of its speakers and organizers were imprisoned, and, faced with ongoing government pressure, the bulk of the membership had simply faded away. At its convention in Dallas in October 1919, the Socialist Party of Texas declared itself officially dead. Continue reading Share:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Police brutalized protesters, then and now.Austin Lesian/Gay Political Caucus at July 1983 march against the KKK. Photo by Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog.By María Limón | The Rag Blog | September 23, 2020This article was first posted at La Voz de Esperanza and was cross-posted to The Rag Blog by the author.AUSTIN A body as strong as it can be is supremely delicate. The skin covering the skull splits easily; a police baton swung at the right angle, with the right force, parts the flesh precisely.In February of 1983, the KKK decided to take back Texas. They held one event per month including a cross burning on land adjacent to a Black family. They rallied against Black History Month at the state capitol; the historical society displays photos of its construction by Black prisoners that docents consider a must-see for thousands of children on field trips. The capitol crowns Congress Avenue which also happened to be the gentry s preferred location for holding a lynching back in the day. Continue reading Share:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) I toured facilities related to this multi-million dollar industry.Buds close to harvest time at the MassGrow facility.By Allen Young | The Rag Blog | September 10, 2020ATHOL, Massachusetts “It’s legal now! Finally!”That’s what people in many parts of the United States, as well as Canada and other nations, are saying, myself included.To celebrate the legalization of marijuana in my state, Massachusetts, I recently used my journalist’s credentials to obtain guided tours of two facilities related to this rapidly expanding and multi-million dollar industry. Both are located just a few miles from my home. One is MassGrow, a large cultivation enterprise, and the other is Silver Therapeutics, a small retail store, properly called a dispensary. Continue reading Share:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) We weren’t in a revolutionary moment in 1969 and we aren’t in a revolutionary moment now.The author, on the far right, takes a knee outside the police station in the town of Cotati, California, where he lives, earlier this year. Photo by Karen Preuss.By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | September 8, 2020Watching the TV news from Kenosha has given me the opportunity to look back at my own life as a kind of antifa activist in the late 1960s.On December 9, 1969, a month or so before my 28th birthday, I went into the streets of Manhattan with other members of ”the Mad Dogs,” a small group of New York radicals, to protest the murders, five days earlier, of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, two Black Panthers who were shot and killed during a predawn raid at their Chicago apartment that was carried out by a tactical unit of the Cook County State s Attorney s Office in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department and the FBI. 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