Mendocino County Today: Tuesday 8/20/2024

Seastacks | Sunny | Meth Bust | Burger Boothers | Bob Ayres | Wild Celery | Mize Confusion | Planning Commission | Busking | Growing Intoxicants | Need Echinacea | Chanting OM | Continuum Members | Craig Prayer | Ladies Out | Intimate Venues | Mendocino Magic | Ed Notes | Yesterday's Catch | Techno Suicide | Rollercoasters | Peaceseeking Warmonger | Better Looking | DNC Frolics | Young Lee | Summer 1969 | Autumn Cornfield | Chicago | We're Doomed | Chicago 1968 | Convention Astrology | Bennett Moonrise | Identity Theft | Broken Record | Migrant Activists | SS Rebel-Yell | Sweet Melissa | Niners Win | Phil Donahue | Hurt Hawks

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DRY WEATHER and slightly below normal interior temperatures are expected through mid week. Temperatures for coastal areas will remain near normal, with the usual night and morning low clouds. Breezy conditions with low humidity is expected for interior Mendocino and Lake counties today. An upper level trough will bring an increase chance of precipitation and much cooler temperatures late in the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 52F with clear skies this Tuesday morning on the coast. More of the same leading up to a chance of showers on Friday, now at 50%. Again, do these early systems portend anything for the winter, we'll see?

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FORT BRAGG METH DEALER BUSTED

Probation Search Leads to Narcotics Sales Arrest

On August 16, 2024 at approximately 10:25PM, Fort Bragg Police Officers observed a suspicious male who was on probation out of Mendocino County in the 100 block of Boatyard Drive. During a probation search of the subject and his vehicle, Officers located approximately ¼ pound of methamphetamine, packaging materials, a concealed dagger, and $600 in cash.

Three adults were detained during the probation search. Kenneth Partridge, 56 of Fort Bragg, was questioned, arrested, and booked into the Mendocino County Jail for the following charges: 11378 H&S – Possession of methamphetamine for sale (felony), 11379 H&S – Transportation of methamphetamine for sale (felony), 21310 PC – Possession of a concealed dirk and/or dagger (felony), and 1203.2(A) PC – Violation of Probation (misdemeanor). The other two adults were questioned and released with no charges.

A bail enhancement was obtained for Kenneth Partridge, setting his bail at $250,000.00.

The Fort Bragg Police Department can assist those with substance use disorders into treatment.

Please call the Care Response Unit at (707)961-2800 and choose option 6.

Anyone with information on this incident is encouraged to contact Officer Frank of the Fort Bragg Police Department at (707)961-2800 ext 223.

This information is being released by Fort Bragg PD Sergeant Welter. All media inquiries should contact him at awelter@fortbragg.com.

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KYLE CLARKE

The Boonville County Fair approaches and so does the need for volunteers for the AV Fire Department Burger Booth. We have shifts available for Sept 13th,14th,15th . We are offering 3 hour shifts (down from the previous years). Reach out to me with your contact information -phone, email and mailing- and I will send you the link to sign on to the shift)s) you desire. Kyphilo@pacific.net

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ROBERT ELMER ‘BOB’ AYRES

Robert Elmer Ayres, aka. Bob, Big Bob or Maestro was born on December 16,1939 and died peacefully in his sleep on August 14, 2024. He was born into a musical family, and he strongly carried on the families love and talent for music. His Grandfather Ayres was a Fiddler and Banjo player, who played for barn dances and events along with his father who played violin. Together they even built violins and banjos.

Bob had a long and varied life starting in Ashland, Oregon. He traveled through the South with his family during WWII, on trains, accompanying his father who was an Officer and Naval Flight Instructor.

At a very young age he helped maternal relatives who ran a livestock auction business, riding horses and loading cattle in Weed and Mt. Shasta.

Eventually he returned to Medford Oregon where his father taught music at the local high school. Bob skipped multiple grades graduating high school at 15. He attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland on a full scholarship. After a year he departed to California to attend San Francisco State College where he joined the vibrant jazz music scene in San Francisco in the sixties. Trumpet was his first love but it was at SF State where he met his wife Dorothy of 55 years in a cello class. After completing his B.A. he studied law at USF. Years later he would finish his law school via correspondence and pass the California State Bar, but never practiced law. He loved mental challenges, and most would agree he had an IQ of a polymath and was always ready to converse deeply on just about any topic.

After having many varied jobs from Merchant Seaman to Golden Gate Park gardener and always a professional musician he decided to become a music teacher. He found a job opening at Mendocino Unified School District and he was hired in 1968. Soon after he bought a beautiful homestead in the burgeoning Albion Nation. Always happiest on his small apple farm located on upper Albion Ridge, he lived out his entire life on this plot aptly named, Fiddle Farm.

From Fiddle Farm he embarked on his 28-year teaching career at Mendocino Unified teaching both Middle and High School Band and Chorus. He briefly taught World History, Debate and English challenging his students to open their minds. He also organized jazz groups and as his students interests were always most important to him, he led German bands, blue grass bands, country western bands, brass choirs, and even string quartets. He also led rousing pep bands that played for football games, regaling fans with a boisterous version of “Hail to the Fighting Cards” on every touchdown scored. A personal highlight as band instructor at Mendocino High was leading marching bands that won many blue ribbons at parades around the state, most famously having the band lay down and play Stars and Stripes in front of the judges stand at the Cloverdale Citrus Fair to win it all. His marching band was even included in an episode of “Murder She Wrote” with Angela Lansbury filmed in downtown Mendocino.

In 1977 Bob was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Being a fighter, he found the best doctors at Stanford who agreed to put him through an experimental regimen of radiation with the expectation that if successful he might live 20 more years. Thankfully he went through the novel treatment and radically changed his diet and was cured. One of the very first to fully recover with this breakthrough technique.

One of his lifetime highlights was starting the Bob Ayres Big Band (Bob Ayres on the left, 2002) which he originally taught as a course through the College of the Redwoods. The band competed in jazz festivals and played around the Mendocino community. The big band still exists to this day, with his namesake still intact. In addition, he formed many small jazz groups, blue grass groups and even a Dixieland band that played every Fourth of July in Mendocino in front of the historic Kelly House. He also started an orchestra that later became the Symphony of the Redwoods. He played in the Music Festival in Mendocino.

After Bob retired from Mendocino Unified School District he decided to take on another challenge, resurrecting the band program in neighboring Anderson Valley. Driving to the Valley each week he built another community, lovingly taught students and brought joy for another ten years before officially retiring for good to Fiddle Farm.

Bob enjoyed playing music with everyone from beginners to professional musicians. He played all the wind and brass instruments and all string instruments including classical guitar and piano. He even had phases where he taught himself the accordion and even the bagpipes. For fun he built his own harpsichord. He loved all types of music and enjoyed sharing his vast knowledge of it with everyone. He had a witty sense of humor and was always quick with a joke, often at his own expense. But through it all he was a showman with his signature beret and the performance was always there waiting to illuminate the skills of his band members of all ages.

Robert was a wonderful husband and father to his two sons, Jedediah (Chelsea) and Joshua (Alanna) and a loving grandfather to Amanda, Adam, Josiah, Emma, Finley and Asher. He leaves his brother Walter Ayres (Rebecca), also a professional musician and sister, Loretta Ayres, plus loving nieces and nephews Billy, Melissa, Rachel, Justin, Warren, Brant, Jonna and Doug. He also had a very close relationship with his two loving brothers in laws, Jimmy and David (Dierke).

A memorial with lots of live music played by his students and friends will be held at the famous Oak Show in Albion CA (28510 Albion Ridge Road, Albion Nation CA) at noon on September 1, 2024. The Community is welcome to attend and celebrate this incredible life so well lived.

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KRIS MIZE, candidate for Ukiah City Council:

It was brought to my attention that my mother in law was mistaken as the person running for Ukiah City Council. I just want to clarify that I'm the one running.

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Mark Scaramella notes: Not mistaken by us. We got our info straight off the County Elections Clerk’s web page.

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IF YOU'RE WONDERING IF MENDO HAS A PLAN…..

The Staff Report(s) and Agenda for the September 5, 2024, Planning Commission meeting is now available on the department website at:

https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/planning-building-services/public-hearing-bodies#!

Please contact staff if there are any questions,

Thank you

James Feenan, feenanj@mendocinocounty.gov

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BOONVILLE AFTERNOON

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #1

Vineyards. Or alcohol grapes as I like to remind people about the non-food component of our county’s fully legal cash crop. The water use, the use of migrant labor, and the attachment to the pesticide industrial complex. The biggest oakwoodland destroyer of them all those vineyards. Let’s not forget the most prevalent addiction in our society of alcoholism, there’s the drunk driving which endangers us all and there’s the reminder that most people have their first sexual experience intoxicated on alcohol. Most addicts of hard drugs have an underlying and primary alcohol addiction. And it’s fully legal and accepted.

As a child of cannabis and alcohol grape addicts, I can tell you they are remarkably similar. The agriculture difference is that cannabis is an annual crop which relies on fresh (yet artifical, check out how potting soil is made) soil and fertilizers and new plastic every year versus grapes, which are planted to suit mechanised and diesel-based conventional farming methods along with constant pesticide and herbicide use. Both use impoverished Mexicans (legal, illegal and everything in between). Local alcohol ranches aren’t providing jobs for the local youth, they import their workers. Migrant men sleep in tents 30 a piece on cots with Porta Poties and right here. Right in our county, it’s just off a dirt road so the general public only sees the pretty winery fronts and labels on bottles.

Most wine is consumed by women. By stressed out, overwhelmed moms. We’ve all seen the “RosE all day” slogans.

I’m not anti farmer, I’m anti us not knowing what we’re growing with our local Ag land and water, and my people, we are growing intoxicants.

Does the money from alcohol farming trickle down to the local people who are affected by the pesticides, and water degradation? No.

Almost all cancers are from “environmental” (chemical) exposure. A quick Google search will remind you about the heightened cancer rate of industrial farm workers. And their families .

Next time you see a vibrant green vineyard standing out against the golden dry grass and more muted greens of the oaks behind remember, someone wants to get drunk on that. Hope that drunken night’s insights we’re worth all that natural and human resource down the drain.

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MARY PAT PALMER:

Winter Wellness needs Echinacea. This is Echinacea purpurea.

It's hard to start from seed for me. I've gotten mine from friend Sam. Even after starting they can be vulnerable. One drowned from an irrigation leak. It is native to central and eastern US and was highly regarded by many tribes. Lots of differing opinions about the use and efficacy. We'll talk about differing theories on September 21st at the Philo School of Herbal Energetics.

www.herbalenergetics.com

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CHANTING FOR HOME

Am spending the whole day Monday in the motel room chanting OM. Will go outside tomorrow. God is in charge of everything now. I feel great!

Craig Louis Stehr

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CONTINUUM OF CARE BOARD

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A PRAYER FOR CRAIG STEHR

The air is getting hotter
There’s a rumbling in the skies
I’ve been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes
Every day your memory grows dimmer
It doesn’t haunt me like it did before
I’ve been walking through the middle of nowhere
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door

When I was in Missouri
They would not let me be
I had to leave there in a hurry
I only saw what they let me see
You broke a heart that loved you
Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
I’ve been walking that lonesome valley
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door

People on the platforms
Waiting for the trains
I can hear their hearts a-beatin’
Like pendulums swinging on chains
I tried to give you everything
That your heart was longing for
I’m just going down the road feeling bad
Trying to get to heaven before they close the door

I’m going down the river
Down to New Orleans
They tell me everything is gonna be all right
But I don’t know what “all right” even means
I was riding in a buggy with Miss Mary-Jane
Miss Mary-Jane got a house in Baltimore
I been all around the world, boys
Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door

Gonna sleep down in the parlor
And relive my dreams
I’ll close my eyes and I wonder
If everything is as hollow as it seems
When you think that you’ve lost everything
You find out you can always lose a little more
I been to Sugar Town, I shook the sugar down
Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door

— Bob Dylan (via Bruce McEwen)

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THE LADIES ARE OUT IN MANCHESTER (photo by Kathy Shearn)

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LAURA WALKER:

Thanks for this account, Marilyn: ‘Knock, Knock, Knockin’ on Dylan’s Door,’ AVA 8/18/2024

I went to my share of shows in the ’70s and ’80s, then settled down and had kids. In the ’00s, my daughter started dragging me (or rather, having me drive her and her friend) to festivals. A world of difference. Not being able to bring your own food and water was the most un-hippie thing i’d ever heard of, except maybe not being able to go back to your vehicle or campsite to grab a sweater.

However, the old-style shows and festivals do still exist – they’re the little unknown ones in rural areas, or the small, long, narrow college-town bars still visited by many of my favorite artists.

How cool would Dylan actually be if he quit this BS and only played things like the Roll on the Mattole at our local Grange, or maybe a surprise showing at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass? The only foreseeable problems would be unruly hoards showing up for the bargain of a legend for next to nothing, but not leaking the news would prevent that. I know, only a fantasy. But seriously, how can these formerly cool people become such TOOLS of capitalistic (not to mention unpleasant and frustrating) bullshit?

PS. I don’t even have a smartphone so instead of figuring out how to use the phone as a ticket, i simply print out that square code thing and bring the paper. It works for everything else (train tickets, earlier shows– in the Aughts) so would probably still work, since it’s scannable.

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ED NOTES

Ghosted?

by Paul Modic, answers by Bruce Anderson

Do you have a friend who rarely answers your calls, never calls you back, and you’re starting to wonder if you’re even friends anymore? Well, maybe the problem is you, maybe you’re not interesting or stimulating enough and need to up your game? Here are some talking points and questions you can use the next time you get ahold of him/her…

Q: So tell me something new.

Why should I entertain you?

Q: Do you ever ponder the past and relive experiences you have had?

Yes, and lament some, enjoy others.

Q: What three words do you want on your tombstone?

Yer outta here!

Q: How are you feeling these days?

So-so.

Q: What is it about you that you think people don't get?

Why would I wonder what people get or don't get?

Q: Would you ever consider suicide?

Certainly, but only in great physical pain.

Q: How would you do it?

Backflip off the Noyo Bridge.

Q: Do you feel fulfilled on personal and creative levels or is there something you could do to realize your goals? What is that?

Satiated every which way. Sole remaining goal is to stay alive a few more years for my family.

Q: When are you happiest?

I'm not unhappy

Q: What do you worry about?

The Niners.

Q: When did you see your first naked woman?

National Geographic, 1948.

Q: When you first had sex did you know about foreplay?

Isn’t that a golf term?

Q: How did you know?

I didn’t. I don't play golf.

Q: Which past lover would you like to find and talk to?

I've only had one, and I'm married to her.

Q: What do you want to do before you die?

The Joe's Special at Original Joe's.

Q: What are you afraid of?

Being eternally trapped in a small room with the Press Democrat's editorial writers.

Q: What was your first job as a kid?

Newspaper route.

Q: Would you say you had a happy childhood? Why or why not?

Happy. Three squares a day and a safe place to sleep.

Q: Do you have a memorable birthday when a kid?

No. My birthdays were all the same because I only had one friend, the late Rich Johnson.

Q: Do you sit around thinking about the past? Do you like that? Why?

No, it's frightening, but not as frightening as the future. My god, the Democrats! If this is the leadership we're doubly doomed.

Q: Do you think you're an interesting person? Why or why not?

Not particularly but I wouldn't be the judge, would I?

Q: Do you think I'm an interesting person? Why or why not?

Not especially, but some of your prose holds my interest.

Q: Did you have someone you would call “the love of your life”? Who? Was the feeling mutual?

My wife. Presumably mutual since she’s still with me.

Q: Have you ever been in jail? When was the first time? Why?

Many times since, but Pismo Beach, 1962, bar fight was the first, which I did not start but the cops were friends with the yobbos who attacked me and my friends.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, August 19, 2024

DUNCAN CHARLES, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation.

LUIS ORTIZ, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, county parole violation.

LUIS LOPEZ-SARCENO, Hayfork/Willits. DUI with priors, felon-addict with firearm, controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm, loaded firearm in public, felon with firearm, loaded handgun-not registered owner, concealed firearm in vehicle with prior, probation violation, failure to appear.

GUILMAR SILVA-OLOZAGASTE, Ukiah. DUI, failure to appear.

ROY TURNER, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

ARNOLD WILLIAMS, Lakeport/Fort Bragg. Battery.

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SO ADVANCED IT’S INOPERABLE!

Editor,

Just the latest in humankind’s technophile suicide is Microsoft Johnny-Come-Lately / Chief Dullard Steve Ballmers’ (non) opening of his $2 billion Clippers Stadium. Ticketless, paperless, Facial recognition, ALL the end-time virtue signaling systems employed; you’d think w/ all that went into it one Idiot Savant would venture:

“What happens if the internet goes down, or heaven forbid the electricity fails?” But NO, their heads would explode!

Is Ballmer the same guy who “rescued” (my word) the laughingstock Clippers from their supposedly racist Jewish owner some years back? How does a techy say, “You got painted a picture”?

And is it just ME or does Ballmer bear a striking resemblance to the Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Suspect?

David Svehla

San Francisco

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WHAT GOT LOST IN THE DNC'S LOVE FEST FOR A LAME DUCK

Joe Biden's claims about Gaza are absurd

by Norman Solomon

An observation from George Orwell — “those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” — is acutely relevant to how President Biden talked about Gaza during his speech at the Democratic convention Monday night. His words fit into a messaging template now in its eleventh month, depicting the U.S. government as tirelessly seeking peace, while simultaneously supplying the weapons and bombs that have enabled Israel’s continual slaughter of civilians.

“We’ll keep working, to bring hostages home, and end the war in Gaza, and bring peace and security to the Middle East,” Biden told the cheering delegates. “As you know, I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza. A few days ago I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we’ve done since October 7.”

It was a journey into an alternative universe of political guile from a president who just six days earlier had approved sending $20 billion worth of more weapons to Israel. Yet the Biden delegates in the convention hall responded with a crescendo of roaring admiration.

Applause swelled as Biden continued.

“We’re working around the clock, my secretary of state, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families, and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war.”

In Chicago’s United Center, the president basked in adulation while claiming to be a peacemaker despite a record of literally making possible the methodical massacres of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Orwell would have understood. A political reflex has been in motion from top U.S. leaders, claiming to be peace seekers while aiding and abetting the slaughter. Normalizing deception about the past sets a pattern for perpetrating such deception in the future.

And so, working inside the paradigm that Orwell described, Biden exerts control over the present, strives to control narratives about the past, and seeks to make it all seem normal, prefiguring the future.

The eagerness of delegates to cheer for Biden’s mendaciously absurd narrative about his administration’s policies toward Gaza was in a broader context — the convention’s lovefest for the lame duck president.

Hours before the convention opened, Peter Beinart released a short video essay anticipating the fervent adulation. “I just don't think when you’re analyzing a presidency or a person, you sequester what’s happened in Gaza,” he said. “I mean, if you’re a liberal-minded person, you believe that genocide is just about the worst thing that a country can do, and it’s just about the worst thing that your country can do if your country is arming a genocide.”

Beinart continued: “And it’s really not that controversial anymore that this qualifies as a genocide. I read the academic writing on this. I don’t see any genuine scholars of human rights international law who are saying it's not indeed there. . . . If you’re gonna say something about Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, you have to factor in what Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, has done, vis-a-vis Gaza. It’s central to his legacy. It's central to his character. And if you don’t, then you’re saying that Palestinian lives just don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter this particular day, and I think that’s inhumane. I don’t think we can ever say that some group of people’s lives simply don't matter because it’s inconvenient for us to talk about them at a particular moment.”

Underscoring the grotesque moral obtuseness from the convention stage was the joyful display of generations as the president praised and embraced his offspring. Joe Biden walked off stage holding the hand of his cute little grandson, a precious child no more precious than any one of the many thousands of children the president has helped Israel to kill.

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LET THE DNC FROLICS BEGIN

by James Kunstler

“We head to Chicago on a wave of euphoria, exuberance, exultation, excitement and even, you might say, ecstasy.” — Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

Looking a little insurrection-ish at Chicago’s United Center all of a sudden as Illinois Governor Jabba the Pritzker orders a wall built around the perimeter to protect the Democratic Party from its very own basket of deplorables — the pro-Hamas, Antifa / BLM nose-ring-for-lunch bunch — with the state’s National Guard “on standby.” The New York Post and other news sources report 100,000 anti-Israel protesters migrating there to liven-up a convention that also has the potential to go off-script inside the arena — since the script was written by a handful of party mandarins, with the gamed consent of the convened delegates, who might be a little ticked off about the deal.

What the party needs most this week is a plausible aura that it is firmly in control of events, having pulled off coup-after-coup on its own rank-and-file. Most recently, Pelosi & friends passed the black spot to “Joe Biden.” (The easy way or the hard way.) He took the hint and dropped out. But then, how exactly did Veep Kamala get plugged into his slot? Five minutes prior, they were, like, yccchhhh, her? And then, two seconds later, somebody arranged a pre-convention Zoom call “virtual vote” of the delegates — like a Las Vegas David Copperfield magic trick — followed by “certification!” (By whom? Answer: the certifiers.) Badda bing, badda bang! Their “democracy” got rolled.

So, you can imagine that things might fly out of control in exact proportion to the Mandarins’ desperate need to seem legitimately in control — when they are just a clique of scared-stiff tyrants running scams on their own people — and the result looks like the Democrats’ certified metamorphosis into the Party of Chaos.

Why scared-stiff? Because of a long list of serious crimes against the American people over the past decade, various treasons committed under color-of-law, for which they fear prosecution and punishment if the wrong person gets elected.

Just in the normal course of things in Chicago, local ABC-7 News reports, “At least 23 shot, 5 fatally, in weekend gun violence across city” over the pre-convention weekend. You have to wonder whether this ordinary background lawlessness will wash over into the political turmoil certain to roil the streets. Lootin’, anyone? Businesses in the downtown “Loop” district have boarded up their windows. As if a measly sheet of plywood can keep them out.

I happened to be at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, more in the role of a larval journalist than an activist, but right there in the action. I drove to Chicago from upstate New York with my college pal Bill Murphy in his beater Rambler — the car with reclining seats you could sleep on! (We did, in various parking lots.) Prior to the event, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, JFK’s brother, an avowed anti-war candidate, marched methodically through the primaries collecting delegates, giving hope to the vast Baby Boomer college demographic that he would end the stupid war in Vietnam and the military draft with it. When he got shot in the head at the Ambassador Hotel June 5, the night he won the California primary, everything changed.

The then-mandarins of the party looked to cram in the pro-war veep Hubert Humphrey to run against Richard Nixon. Left on the battlefield were two anti-war knights, Minnesota Senator Eugene (“Clean Gene”) McCarthy, a cranky poet without much fight in him, and George McGovern, a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time prairie socialist from the nowhere state of South Dakota. You might be amazed to hear that the mainstream media of the day was against the war, and pretty hostile to the political establishment that ran things from President Lyndon Johnson on down to Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago — with the CIA and FBI lurking darkly in their shadows, busy assassinating folks. Walter Cronkite had a shit-fit on-the-air watching Mayor Daley’s thugs push around network journalists (esp. Dan Rather) working the convention floor. The party emerged from the convention in a very bad odor. Humphrey lost in November.

Daley and his police were a rough bunch, and treated the hippie mobs in Grant Park and down on Michigan Avenue quite harshly, with tear gas and billy-clubs. The National Guard was poised visibly on the roof of the Art Institute with rifles trained down at the hippies below. Things got pretty yeasty. It’s a wonder nobody got killed. The party went ahead and nominated Humphrey with ruthless efficiency. In the end, the 1968 convention riots were an act of futility. The ’68 convention was the public debut of the organism that we call the blob today — the Deep State in action. And it was the twinkling-out of hippie idealism. The Vietnam War ran another seven years until it ended ignominiously under Gerald Ford, followed by disco, inflation, and the offshoring of US industry.

This time around, the news media has been fully absorbed into the blob, doing all its bidding, like the blob’s personal Chat GPT, while the blob itself has grown to be a larger and more potent governing entity than the flimsy scaffold of elected officials who front for it. But the Democratic Party has faltered badly in its years’ long efforts to cover for the blob, mainly by lying to the American people about everything. Running “Joe Biden” in 2020 was a dishonest act of desperation that only worked with a rigged election and then prosecuting anyone who attempted to complain. The party knew that “JB” was a mental phantom four years ago, and they had the effrontery to try running him again in ’24, until ol’ “Joe” made it impossible with his demented public behavior.

They also know that Kamala Harris is an empty vessel with a drinking problem, but they’ve desperately pulled out all the stops to make her appear legitimate. Her performance the past three weeks has not exactly been reassuring. Her running mate, Governor Walz, comes off straight-up insane. Why would they now not attempt to dump them with the same bad faith they installed them?

Gawd knows what mayhem might rock the streets outside the United Center. Recent years of degenerate USA life have produced a youth cohort with a staggering rate of mental illness. You’ve already seen plenty of how dark Antifa can get with its murderous trans cadres itching for action. But you’ve also got to wonder how the formal speeches by the party nabobs will go over? Might there be any booing of the elite? How will the crowd greet Mrs. Pelosi, the party’s consiglieri who arranged things as they are now? What on earth can Hillary Clinton say about the nominee she openly loathes? Will Bill Clinton, painted as a sexual predator by the Me-Too caucus, get a love-bath or a cold-shoulder? How false will the party’s unity seem? Will surprise motions arise from the floor to change-up the pre-scripted program? There are many more ways for things to go wrong this week than the simple dynamics that were in-play fifty-six years ago in Chicago.

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LEE EDMUNDSON

56 Years ago today. Lest we forget.

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CHICAGO: CITY OF A THOUSAND FACES

by Jonah Raskin

“Chicken in the car and the car can’t go, that’s how you spell Chicago.” I heard that jingle when I was a boy and have never forgotten it. I’m writing this on the cusp of the 2024 Democratic National Convention. By the time you read it the convention will probably be history. After all these years — more than 50 — I have never forgotten the brief time I worked in the Chicago office of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the summer of 1969, soon after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention and the riots in the streets. Chicago struck me as "cop city," more than New York where I had tangled with cops and was arrested and jailed. The Chicago cops looked meaner than New York cops.

I didn't want to tangle with them, nor did I want to tangle with the gang members who belonged to the Black P. Stone Nation who hung around the entrance to the SDS national office on West Madison Street, and taunted white guys like me. They called us names and referred to SDS as “Sdooey.” Or something like that. I’m unsure of the spelling or pronunciation.

I lived in a small apartment in a white working class neighborhood bulging with immigrants from Europe and their off-spring who didn’t forget they were Slavs and who felt uncomfortable around Black people. I shared the apartment with Kathy Boudin, daughter of famed lefty lawyer, Leonard, and her boyfriend, David, who was a master printer who ran off SDS leaflets and pamphlets but didn’t consider himself a radical. Politics just weren’t his thing. He was attached to Kathy and probably would have followed her to the proverbial ends of the earth.

He and I followed Kathy every morning to the SDS office, where I spent an inordinate amount of time writing and rewriting a propaganda piece that Terry Robbins, a hot shot organizer from Kent State, called “a shotgun.” Terry was obsessed about guns and bombs. In March 1970, he and two other SDS members, who had helped to create Weatherman, accidentally blew themselves up in an apartment building in Manhattan. But perhaps if you’re an amateur terrorist and you’re making a bomb there are no accidents.

The blast so thoroughly blew Terry into bits and pieces that it took much more time to identify his remains than it took to identify the bodies of Teddy Gold and Diana Oughton. The apartment building was destroyed.

For a few weeks, I slept in the same Chicago apartment with Kathy and her boyfriend David, but like them I spent 14 to 15 hours a day in the SDS office which came to feel like a bunker. We were isolated, and we were prisoners of a sort lodged in enemy territory. Perhaps that situation was emblematic of SDS, once a large, vibrant student anti-war organization that dissolved into a left-wing faction. A footnote to history.

I departed from Chicago after the start of the Chicago Conspiracy trial and after the Weathermen launched their Days of Rage, which Black Panther firebrand, Fred Hampton, called “Custeristic.”

He meant doomed. Hampton was dangerous, too dangerous for Chicago. Local, state and federal law enforcement agents banded together and assassinated him while he slept, along with Mark Clark and several other Panthers.

I was surprised but not shocked. I knew that Chicago cops, Illinois cops and FBI agents didn’t fool around in 1969, when it seemed, even to sane individuals, that the whole nation might explode and blood might run down every street in our apocalyptic nation.

I did return to Chicago in the fall that followed the summer I worked in the SDS office. I went to Chicago to find my wife who might or might not have been underground plotting some kind of conspiracy with fellow conspirators. I did find her with help from Bill Kunstler, the lead lawyer for the defendants in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial which was held in Judge Julius Hoffman federal courtroom. Kunstler always knew where and how to find everyone on the left.

I asked my wife to come back to New York, to our apartment and try to rebuild our marriage. She didn’t say she would. In fact, she called me a “sex addict,” whatever that meant. I certainly didn’t see myself that way. I think she just wanted to hurt me and push me away. I didn’t see her again until early 1970 when she was even deeper underground than she had been before.

I didn’t go back to Chicago until the late 1990s when I was researching my biography of Abbie Hoffman that would be published as For the Hell of It. I stayed with Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, their two sons and the son of Kathy Boudin and Dave Gilbert who were in prison after a botched robbery of a Brinks truck. Bill and Bernardine were living more or less quiet lives; they had each made their separate peace with law enforcement and never went to jail for anything they said or did when they were underground. “That’s America,” Bill quipped. I followed Bill around Chicago where he spoke to civic groups and defended everything the Weather Underground had done including the bombings which he felt forced the US to pull out of Vietnam.

Bernardine had a job in academia. She seemed like a model mother. When the boys wanted matzo ball soup she made it from scratch, and, when they played baseball she sat in the bleachers and cheered. I cheered with her.

Now, what I remember most about Chicago — aside from the cops and their fascistic uniforms, and my sad, sad meeting with my wife — what I remember most is Carl Sandburg’s working class poem, “Chicago” in which he calls the city “wicked,” “crooked,” “brutal,” “cunning,” and ends by describing it as “proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.”

Looking back, I'd say that Chicago is a mythic city with endless faces that keeps on reinventing itself. Maybe we'll rendezvous again.

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CHICAGO

by Carl Sandburg

Hog Butcher for the World,
        Tool maker, Stacker of Wheat,
        Player with Railroads and the Nation's
             Freight Handler;
        Stormy, husky, brawling,
        City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
            Bareheaded,
            Shoveling,
            Wrecking,
            Planning,
            Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
            Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

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CHICAGO '68

by Fred Gardner

In 1968 my stock in peace movement circles was very high, due to the “success” of the first GI coffeehouses. In late February or early March I got a call from Tom Hayden, who hadn't liked the coffeehouse idea in the first place. Now he had a three-part offer to make: 1) He would raise money and staff to set up ten more coffeehouses. It would be called “Summer of Support.” Judy Collins and Arlo Guthrie would do a benefit, William Kunstler would handle the legal side of things. I said, “Great, Tom.” 2) I was invited to go to North Vietnam and escort prisoners of war back to the U.S. I declined, thinking that it would put the POWs in an impossible bind. 3) He invited me to a meeting in April to plan the movement’s strategy with respect to the Democratic national convention. I accepted.

At that conference, held at a camp by a lake in Illinois, organizers from all over the country voted not to stop their various projects and come to Chicago for a summer “action” focusing on the Democrats. Hayden was bitterly disappointed. He managed, after the key vote was taken and people were leaving, to create a “continuations committee” empowered to call a summer action if the political situation changed significantly. Sure enough, King was assassinated, Bobby Kennedy entered the race, and Tom, through his continuations committee, declared that the situation had changed and everybody should come to Chicago in August.

That spring I moved back to San Francisco (trying to make it work with a feminist soon to come out as a lesbian; there were kids involved). One day in early summer Tom Hayden called and asked me to come to Chicago to put out an internal newsletter for the demonstrators. What he had in mind, as I recall, was a mimeographed map telling people where to go the next day. I had just gotten a job at ‘Ramparts’ magazine. I went to Warren Hinckle and asked for a week off to do the newsletter in Chicago. Without skipping a beat he said, “Do it for Ramparts! We'll call it The Ramparts Wallposter!” (Political wallposters were going up all over China at the time, part of the “cultural revolution.”) One side would be news for the demonstrators, the other would be news from inside the convention hall. Ramparts would pick up the tab.

Say what you want about Warren Hinckle, he had real creative vision as a publisher and, when he had money, he was generous and willing to take chances.

I spent two weeks in Chicago making arrangements for a newsroom (second floor of a YMCA near Division St.), typesetting (Shorey), and printing. (Hinckle suggested Playboy’s printers, but they were about to go on strike.) I started doing speed, which increased my efficiency no end. David Cantor, a middle-aged businessman/peace activist from Chicago, told me where to go and what to do. A college student named Huntley Barad recruited a distribution staff. I bought an old Peugeot 403 with a sunroof for $250 (through a want ad) and as I drove it through the South Side Jackie DeShannon was singing “Pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin' bout half past dead…” Joe Russin, the producer of KQED's "Newsroom" show, and Elinor Langer, then with Science Magazine, came to town to edit the thing. All the movement-oriented writers found the Wallposter office and offered their services.

The Wallposter was a single full-folio sheet (36 inches x 24 inches). The first issue, dated Saturday, August 24, has a page-one story entitled “Busts Begin” describing how the police shot and killed 17-year-old Dean Johnson, a full-blooded Sioux Indian from Sioux Falls, South Dakota (after he pulled a gun on them and fired first). There is a story about Jerry Rubin, Phil Ochs and five others getting detained for disorderly conduct after they held a nominating convention for the Yippie candidate, a pig, under the Picasso statue in Civic Center Plaza. There is a map of Chicago and a key to the headquarters of various “movement” entities. On the back page is a column by Hayden entitled “The Reason Why.” It clearly states his tactical thinking: “Our victory lies in progressively de-mystifying a false democracy, showing the organized violence underneath reformism and manipulation.” There are other articles by Paul Krassner, Arthur Waskow (alternate delegate from the District of Columbia), an interview with Phil Ochs, and a gossip column called “The Caucus Reporter.”

Wallposter Two has a huge photo of the great basketball player, Cazzie Russell, in his National Guard uniform. PFC Russell's unit had been activated and Jeff Blankfort took a great photo of him, holding a Military Policeman’s helmet in his hand, looking not too happy at the whole situation. The caption said “Cazzie Russell Playing Guard.” The lead story (“Special to the Wallposter” via a phone call from the GI Coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas) described how more than 160 black soldiers from Fort Hood had refused to take part in riot-control operations in Chicago. Some 43 were being held in the Fort Hood stockade.

The map had three locations keyed: The Conrad Hilton Hotel, the Palmer House and the Sherman House. “There will be demonstrations in three key hotels in the Loop today to protest against the war, racism and the politics of manipulation. The demonstrations will begin at 2 p.m…” The back page had another column by Hayden (“The Machine can be stopped”), another lively Caucus Reporter, and stories by Waskow, Krassner, Peter Weiss (a lefty lawyer from New York who was a McCarthy delegate), Chris Hobson (about a wildcat strike by Chicago bus drivers), Lee Webb, Adam Hochschild (longtime publisher of Mother Jones), Paul Cowan and the great Marvin Garson (“Troops Smoke Pot, Yippies go without”).

As the protests outside the convention became the major news story of the moment (thanks to Mayor Daley's over-reaction), Warren Hinckle and Ramparts editor Bob Scheer jumped on a plane for Chicago. These young men, who had not been planning to attend, flew first-class. They rented a suite in the Ambassador Hotel, and proceeded to spend $10,000 partying over the course of the next few days. Hinckle phoned me at the Wallposter office when we were in production with Wallposter Three. “Stop the Presses!” he bellowed cheerfully. He had the biggest story of the year.

Lyndon Johnson had decided to run after all!

Warren had it from somebody he'd met at the bar in the Pump Room, the fancy restaurant at the Ambassador. He was writing it up and wanted to run it as our lead story. I said I'd come get it, thinking it sounded very far-fetched and that I could talk him out of it when the time came. I parked outside the hotel and was on my way in when a brown Rolls Royce pulled up and from it, wearing a chocolate-colored suit, with brown pumps and white spats on his feet, emerged Colonel Harlan Sanders. I didn't know that there really was such a person, I thought it was a corporate logo. I stopped and stared. I wondered if I was having my first-ever “bad trip.” Maybe the so-called speed people had given me contained some really strong hallucinogens.

On his way into the hotel, Colonel Sanders handed out dimes to the shoe-shine boys, just like they say John D. Rockefeller used to do.

That evening Hinckle got wind of the fact that we weren't planning to run his LBJ-to-run story. He came over to the Wallposter Office with a friend named Herb Williamson. “You're drunk, Warren. You'd be embarrassed if this thing ran. Go back to the hotel and get some sleep.”

“I'm the boss!” he reminded me. There were lots of people around.

It turned into a shoving match between me and Herb Williamson at the head of the stairs. I remember the glint of excitement in the eye of a young woman who was soon to become a Weatherman as she watched. I knew that violence in and of itself turned her on. I knew I was engaged in an absurd struggle in every respect.

The lead story of Wallposter Three was a toned-down version of the rumor Hinckle had heard, headlined “What's Marvin Watson doing for LBJ?” There was also an essay by Carl Oglesby evaluating Eugene McCarthy's candidacy, and some good Jeff Blankfort photos. The map had been put on page 2. My Ramparts career was history.

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Add Memories

“Isn't it fantastic?,” Hayden asked rhetorically Tuesday morning. “Kids fighting for a park they hadn't even heard of two days ago. It means we can stage confrontations anytime, anywhere, just by challenging them for a piece of land.” This strategic insight led to the creation of People's Park in Berkeley. For which people are still paying in blood.

In the Wallposter office Wednesday evening Tom made a tape urging people to cross the police line and confront the delegates in the Hilton. (He himself would not have been in the Hilton; the whole thing was “theater,” to put it politely.) A young McCarthy worker was going to broadcast Tom's misleading battle cry from a room in the Hilton to the demonstrators massed in the park across Michigan Avenue. At the last minute he decided not to do it. There is little doubt that people would have been killed.

Tom Hayden yelling “Remember Brother Rennie! Remember Brother Rennie!” to the crowd in Grant Park, as the police moved in. (Rennie, who had been clubbed in the head, was perfectly okay. Tom was freaked by the blood.)

After Chicago Hinckle went to New York, according to an editor named Sol Stern, where he visited Roy Cohn's yacht. His introduction to the sleazy right-wing lawyer had been made by Sidney Zion, who thought Cohn could devise a superior tax dodge for Ramparts, and might also help with fund-raising. Hinckle told Cohn how the magazine went after liberals and CPers. I don't think Cohn came through, however. By late ’68 circulation had flattened out and Ramparts was losing money (due mainly to lavish editorial and production costs). Hinckle had even given up the title of publisher to a nice guy from Kansas named Fred Mitchell, in exchange for an infusion of cash.

PS: In his biography of Hunter Thompson, Hinckle takes an aggrieved tone as he mis-remembers our falling out. He claims the Wallposter got no distribution because it was not actually whitewashed to the walls of downtown Chicago! In fact, everyone simply unfolded and read them. I was very glad to see this photo by Michael Cooper when I opened a book about the convention in ’68 with text by Terry Southern, Jean Genet, and William S. Burrows. The young man facing the line of cops has a Ramparts Wallposter in his back pocket.

The three famous writers had been assigned by Esquire Magazine to cover the scene. They focused almost entirely on the Abbie-and-Jerry Yippee side of the story (as opposed to the Tim-and-Rennie “Mobilization” side).

PPS: It’s obvious that Bob Scheer has changed for the better over the years. Way, way better!

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #2

And the astrologers tell me that the FULL Super-Blue Moon tonight and once in a lifetime planetary conjunctions b/w Mars and Uranus, the two most violent planets, does not bode well for the DNC — or did they plan the convention to happen now because of that in their demonic insanity. Can’t wait to see how this horror movie turns out.

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IF EVERY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER IS (PROBABLY) COMPROMISED, WHY DO WE STILL USE THEM?

by Jessica Roy

Your Social Security number has probably been compromised.

According to a class-action lawsuit filed this month by Fremont resident Christopher Hofmann, hackers from cybercriminal group USDoD obtained billions of pieces of personal identifying information, including Social Security numbers, from background-check company National Public Data.

The suit alleges that information for 2.9 billion people obtained in that breach, including Hofmann, is now for sale on the dark web for $3.5 million.

So your Social Security number is almost certainly out there, according to the lawsuit, which means you’re at risk of identity theft.

But that was already true.

Social Security numbers weren’t designed to be a secure method of authenticating someone’s identity. They were created by the U.S. government for one purpose: to track how much money you earned in your working lifetime, in order to calculate how much you would receive from the U.S. government after you ceased working.

And Social Security numbers are great for that. What they’re not so great at is confirming that you are who you say you are.

In recent years, countless data breaches have almost certainly left your personal identifying information exposed. At this point, people are beginning to suffer from “data breach fatigue,” which is when you get a letter in the mail saying “Your data may have been compromised,” and you go, “OK, whatever.”

“It is probably more truthful to say that your Social Security number has been breached multiple times than not,” said Eva Velasquez, the president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center. “Not in one massive breach but in all of the breaches of Social Security numbers that we have had.”

The reality is that we’re all at some risk of identity theft, no matter what we do to protect ourselves. There are steps you can take to mitigate your odds, and I’ll tell you what they are. But you can take all or most of them — I did — and still become a victim of identity theft. I did.

In 2018, my wallet was snatched out of my purse at a bar in San Francisco. I didn’t keep anything sensitive in there. No Social Security card. I did have my driver’s license, of course, because I needed it to get into the bar.

With just that card, thieves were able to open multiple bank accounts, steal a car, get a new iPhone, go on a bad-check-writing spree, and put countless hard and soft inquiries on my credit reports. It took years to untangle myself from the mess, which I documented in the Los Angeles Times. I did everything right: I had unique passwords on my email and bank accounts, I had two-factor authentication set up, and once I realized what was happening, I froze my credit right away.

And in defense of those measures, the thieves were never able to access my email or bank accounts, despite repeated attempts. But they were still able to commit an awful lot of crimes with just a driver’s license and access to the internet.

You can buy reams of personal data on the dark web — Velasquez told me Social Security numbers are so easy to come by that they’re available “essentially for free” — and also software that automates using that data to apply for credit cards and loans. The thieves were able to get everything they needed online to credibly impersonate me to banks and stores.

If Social Security numbers are so ubiquitous as to be functionally worthless for authentication, and the risk of exposure are so high, why do we still use them at all?

“It’s the infrastructure that exists,” Velasquez said. “We have our systems built on using this. Right or wrong, that’s how it exists.”

In her industry, she said, the next frontier in authentication technology is biometrics. But for a lot of people, the idea of scanning your face or eyeball or fingerprint to open a bank account or get a car loan evokes an ick factor.

But biometric technology is already being implemented by some businesses and government agencies.

California was hammered by fraud during the COVID pandemic. There were people who couldn’t access their COVID stimulus payments or enhanced unemployment benefits because thieves got to them first. Today, the state’s employment development department uses an identity verification service called ID.me to authenticate people.

I encountered this system firsthand in 2022 when I was on parental leave: At three weeks postpartum, I was informed I had to use my phone to take a short video of my face. Even after everything I’d been through with getting my identity stolen, my first instinct was, “This is too invasive, absolutely not.” I had to look up ID.me and read about its data safety practices before I felt comfortable taking that video — a lot to put on a new mom.

I’m not the only one who’s experienced that hesitation. Cliff Steinhauer told me he felt the same way when the Transportation Security Administration was testing out doing facial scans in lieu of checking ID a few years ago. Like me, Steinhauer understands the stakes of identity verification: He’s the director of information security and engagement at the National Cybersecurity Alliance.

“I was like, ‘Can I opt out of this? ’” he asked. The TSA agent said yes. He opted out.

He said we’ve all been conditioned to hand over our data online, but it’s going to take education and trust-building to get people comfortable with handing over our faces.

While conducting interviews for a working paper on biometric identity verification, Velasqeuz said she spoke to lots of people who had reservations.

Technically, she said, “we have been using biometrics for decades. Just not leveraging the technology behind it.”

She said when people tell her they don’t want the government to have that information, she asks them if they have a driver’s license. If the answer is yes, the government already has one piece of your biometric data: your photo. And you’ve been using that to authenticate yourself any time you give it to a bouncer at a bar or a checker at a store.

The big change is we’re on the cusp of transitioning from having a human check our biometrics — in other words, a person looking at your ID — to having a machine do it. In my case, many humans looked at a photo on a stolen driver’s license, looked at a human being roughly the same age with the same hair and eye color and skin tone, and said, “Sure, close enough.” A computer might not have been so easily fooled.

While we await the great computer biometric-scanning future, there are things you can do right now to protect yourself. Steinhauer outlined what he called the “core four”:

1. Use unique passwords

Don’t use the same password for everything, especially not your primary email or bank accounts. And don’t use any of the 10,000 most frequently used passwords.

2. Use two-factor authentication wherever you can

Yes, it’s annoying to wait 15 seconds for a text message when you want to check your bank balance. But it’s worth that momentary friction to protect your accounts.

3. Keep your phone and computer software up to date

If your phone or computer prompts you to update your software, you should do it. (If you’re not sure the update is legitimate, search online to see whether there’s been a recent update.)

4. Be aware of phishing scams and how to avoid them

There’s too much to say about that for a bullet point, but basically, don’t ever tell someone your password in an email or over the phone. And when you get that two-factor authentication code text message, don’t tell it to anyone under any circumstances.

Velasquez added another important tool: freezing your credit. You can and should do it proactively. It’s free to do (don’t accept any “enhanced” upsells or alerts from the credit bureaus). And in my experience, it only took 15 minutes total to set up with all three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) and takes less than five minutes to unfreeze when you do want to apply for credit.

I asked Steinhauer and Velasquez the same question: If our systems aren’t secure enough to protect our Social Security numbers, are they really safe enough to protect our biometric data? Are we just setting ourselves up for a future where you get a letter in the mail informing you that your face and fingerprint have been hacked and leaked?

Steinhauer was quiet for a moment.

“We kind of already know the answer to that question,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what the data is. It’s almost never 100% secure.”

So even if we move to more secure identification methods, there is no way to completely protect yourself from identity theft. But it’s not worthless to try. You still wear a seat belt even though it doesn’t 100% prevent the chance of an injury. Locking your front door won’t deter every burglar, but you take a moment to do it anyway.

In my case, if I’d had my credit frozen before the thieves got my wallet, they might have never been able to do as much damage as they did. You have the chance to foil a cybercriminal right now. Take it.

(SF Chronicle)

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TREATING MIGRANTS AS THE ENEMY PROVIDES NO VISION FOR THE FUTURE

The alternative: a new bill that would allow anyone in the country for seven years to apply for legal status.

by David Bacon

On August 17, a group of committed migrant activists set forth on a three-day march from Silicon Valley to San Francisco, highlighting the choices for progressive candidates in the coming November election. Should their campaigns amplify the hysteria about an immigration “crisis,” or should they speak the truth to the American people about the border and the roots of migration? Even more important, these marchers are providing a practical way for activists and political leaders to advocate for rights as they work to defeat the threat of MAGA racism.

The question at hand is whether to support the compromise immigration enforcement bill negotiated between centrist Democrats and Republicans last year, and to campaign against Donald Trump from the right, attacking him for undermining Republican support for the enforcement measures it contained.

In that bill, President Joe Biden agreed that he would close the border to asylum applicants if their number rose beyond 5,000 per day, while making it much harder to gain legal status for those even allowed to apply. Biden said he would cut short the time for screening asylum applicants by asylum officers, which would make winning permission to stay much more difficult.…

https://fpif.org/treating-migrants-as-the-enemy-provides-no-vision-for-the-future/

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MELISSA

Crossroads, seem to come and go, yeah
The gypsy flies from coast to coast
Knowing many, loving none
Bearing sorrow, having fun
But, back home he'll always run
To sweet Melissa
Mmm, hmm

Freight train, each car looks the same, all the same
And no one knows the gypsy's name
And no one hears his lonely sighs
There are no blankets where he lies
Lord, in his deepest dreams the gypsy flies
With sweet Melissa
Mm, hmm

Again, the mornin's come
Again, he's on the run
A sunbeam's shinin' through his hair
Fear not to have a care
Well, pick up your gear and gypsy roll on
Roll on

Crossroads, will you ever let him go?
Lord, Lord
Or will you hide the dead man's ghost?
Or will he lie, beneath the clay?
Or will his spirit float away?
But, I know that he won't stay
Without Melissa
Yes, I know that he won't stay, yeah
Without Melissa
Lord, Lord, it's all the same

— Steve Alaimo, Gregg L. Allman (Allman Bros)

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PHIL DONAHUE CHANGED BY LIFE & MILLIONS OF OTHERS

by Jeff Cohen

Phil Donahue passed away Sunday night, after a long illness. He was beloved by those who knew him and by many who didn’t.

He started as a local reporter in Ohio, was a trailblazer in bringing social issues to a national audience as a daytime broadcast TV host, and then he was pretty much banished from TV by MSNBC because he – accurately, correctly and morally – questioned the horrific U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In the 1970s, Phil took progressive issues and mainstreamed them to millions through his syndicated daytime show. He was a pioneer in syndication. He also pioneered on the issues; his most frequent guests on his daytime show were Ralph Nader, Gloria Steinem and Rev. Jesse Jackson. They appeared dozens of times as Phil boosted civil rights, women’s rights, and consumer rights. He regularly hosted Dr. Sidney Wolfe warning of the greedy pharmaceutical industry and unsafe drugs. Raised a Catholic, he also featured advocates for atheism.

Mainstream media obits will likely focus on his daytime TV episodes that included male strippers or other titillation, but Phil was serious about the issues – and did far more than most mainstream TV journalists to address the biggest issues.

I was a senior producer on Phil’s short-lived MSNBC primetime show in 2002 and 2003. It was frustrating for us to have to deal with the men Phil called “the suits” – NBC and MSNBC executives who were intimidated by the Bush administration and resisted any efforts by NBC/MSNBC to practice journalism and ask tough questions of Washington before our young people were sent to Iraq to kill or be killed. Ultimately, Phil was fired because – as the leaked internal memo said – Donahue represented “a difficult public face for NBC at a time of war.”

But before we were terminated, we put guests on the screen who were not commonly on mainstream TV. We offered a full hour with Barbara Ehrenreich on Labor Day, 2002, a full hour with Studs Terkel, Congress members Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich, columnist Molly Ivins, experts like Phyllis Bennis and Laura Flanders, Palestinian advocates including Hanan Ashrawi.

No one on U.S. TV cross-examined Israeli leaders like Phil did when he interviewed then-Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and later, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. They seemed stunned – never having faced such questioning from a U.S. journalist.

But “the suits” ruined our show when they took control and actually mandated a quota system favoring the right wing: If we had booked one guest who was anti-war, we needed to book two that were pro-war. If we had one guest on the left, we needed two on the right. When a producer suggested booking Michael Moore – known to oppose the pending Iraq war – she was told she’d need to book three rightwingers for political balance.

Three weeks before the Iraq war started, and after some of the biggest antiwar mobilizations the world had ever seen (which were barely covered on mainstream TV), the suits at NBC/MSNBC terminated our show.

Phil was a giant. A huge celebrity who supported uncelebrated indy media outlets. He loved and supported the progressive media watch group FAIR (which I founded in the mid-1980s.)

Phil put Noam Chomsky on mainstream TV. He fought for Ralph Nader to be included in the 2000 presidential debates. He went on any TV show right after 9/11 that would have him to urge caution and to resist the calls for vengeful, endless warfare that would pointlessly kill large numbers of civilians in other countries. He opposed active wars and the Cold War with the Soviet Union. He supported war veterans and produced an important documentary on the topic: “Body of War.”

Phil Donahue made his mark on our society. He fought for the underdog. He did it with style and grace and a wonderful sense of humor. He changed my life. And others’ lives.

He was inspired by the consciousness-raising groups he saw in the feminist movement and he sought to do consciousness-raising on a mass scale… using mainstream corporate TV. He did an amazing job of it.

(Jeff Cohen was director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College and cofounder of the online activism group RootsAction.org. CounterPunch,.org)

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I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk;
but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.

We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance.

I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.
What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.

— Robinson Jeffers, from the poem “Hurt Hawks”