Toadies

Sitting in JFK, about to go on vacation, feeling good about that.

Minutemen - Toadies
Common - Love Is
Ida - Shotgun

Thirty-two years ago today, Richard Milhouse Nixon was getting charged with his first three articles of impeachment by the House of Representatives. I'm just saying.

Mercury Rev - Everlasting Arm
De La Soul f. Mos Def - Big Brother Beat

Maybe Partying Will Help

Today marks the anniversary of what many consider the first day of the Detroit Rebellion of 1967 (or "riot," depending on which side you're on). It was on the morning of July 23rd that Detroit police raided a party for two newly-returned GIs, where family, friends and neighbors were celebrating their safe return from Vietnam. The party just happened to be in the headquarters of the United Community League for Civic Action, which also just coincidentally was situated at Twelfth Street and Clairmount Avenue, the site chosen just three days earlier for the "riot simulation" of Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh's Summer Task Force. Interesting.

The UCLCA office was raided by the vice squad at 3:30am, and it took over an hour for enough paddy wagons to come out to Twelfth Street to haul away all eighty five partiers. By that time, a crowd estimated at over 200 people gathered, and as bottles started crashing into cop cars, the police fled. Within hours over a thousand people were on the streets, and by mid-day the state police, unable to contain the outburst, had asked Governor George Romney to call in the National Guard. Over one thousand arrests were made that day, but it took the combined force of the National Guard along with the 82nd Airborne to restored "order."

The trouble burst on Detroit like a firestorm and turned the nation's fifth biggest city into a theater of war. Whole streets lay ravaged by looters, whole blocks immolated by flames. Federal troops--the first sent into racial battle outside the South in a quarter of a century--occupied American streets at bayonet point. Patton tanks--machine guns ablaze--and Huey helicopters patrolled a cityscape of blackened brick chimneys poking out of gutted basements. And suddenly Harlem 1964 and Watts 1965 and Newark only three weeks ago fell into the shadows of memory. Detroit was the new benchmark, its rubble a monument to the most devastating race riot in U.S. history--and a symbol of domestic crisis grown graver than any since the Civil War.

Events ended with 43 dead, 1189 injured. Almost 80% of the dead were black, and almost all were shot by police or Guardsmen, not hurt by civilians. Detroit, my hometown, was never the same.

--

Music today. Minutemen, about Detroit, then two from Detroit.

Minutemen - Maybe Partying Will Help
Gil Scott-Heron - We Almost Lost Detroit
Bettye Lavette - Down To Zero
His Name Is Alive - Write My Name In The Groove

Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing

We all have problems, some of us bigger problems than others. Once I was having a bronchitis episode, but I was trying to impress a girl, and so I dragged my ass to the bar after driving around hacking all day. I had a few whiskeys, and then a few cigarettes, and I was feeling good. Much better, anyway. And I turned to talk to, you know, the girl, very suave-like. You may not be able to imagine it, but please, play along. Then what? My throat closed up, I couldn't breathe, and I fell off the barstool. Laid on the ground, finally got a breath, walked to my car, and drove home.

I tell you this story why? I'm not sure. And I'm not sure what my problem was, but I know there are several problems laid out, right there.

And it's hard for me to think straight, and the Middle East is exploding, and Iraq is still on fire, and that's about that. Happy weekend.

Minutemen - Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing
Pharoahe Monche - Agent Orange
Amos Milburn - Let Me Go Home, Whiskey

One Reporter's Opinion

I am, have always been, and will always be a sucker for the "back story" in sports. Curt Schilling's bloody sock, with the staples holding his ankle together? He may be an asshole, but I ate that up. Jerome Bettis, coming back home again to win the Super Bowl, in Detroit, in his last pro game? The whole damn league may be fixed, but I kept watching. That's why I can't watch the Olympics, because I have other things to do, and I don't need to be emotionally devastated by some skier who's lost three fingers, her mom and two uncles to hand cancer or something ridiculous, then falls just short of the medal stand and ends up breaking her spine in two. You know? I like it, but there's tasteful, there's untasteful, and then there's just plain stupid. The only back story I can think of that I can't stand is Lance "What, me worry about blood doping" Armstrong and his stupid testicles, or prostate, or whatever.

But back again. Last week's Sports Illustrated featured Cleveland native son Joe Jurevicius, in his triumphant return home to be the elder statesman of the Browns' receiving corps. Or something like that. If you remember back to Tampa Bay's Super Bowl win a couple of years back, you may remember hearing a whole lot about Joe, and his family, or more specifically his prematurely born son, who was struggling for life in an ICU in Florida while Joe was helping his team dismantle the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC Championship game. Joe went on to catch four passes for 78 yards in a Super Bowl victory over the Oakland Raiders, and his son kept fighting for another month and a half before succumbing to a rare neurodegenerative disease on March 24th.

And now here's Joe, three years and two teams later, signing with the Browns and moving back home. I'm definitely a sucker for the "pro athlete going back home to momma" line (see Jerome Bettis, above), and I doubly appreciate it in the good old heartland of America. I also have to say that I appreciate Joe wearing a Teamsters Local 507 sweatshirt (Jackie Presser's old local!) in one of the magazine pictures, because, if I'm not mistaken, in addition to representing workers at the Cleveland Zoo, that's the local that represents workers at Cleveland Browns Stadium. Nice touch, Joe. And good luck.

--

By the by, July 22nd, 1796 was the day that the city of Cleveland was founded. In case you were wondering. Also, Albert, Frederick and Charles Fisher founded the (in)famous Fisher Body company on this day in 1908, which in 1926 became the Fisher Body Division of the workers' friend, General Motors. December 28th, 1936 was the day that workers at Cleveland Fisher Body launched their strike, followed the next day by Flint's Fisher Body workers, and forty-three days later the modern UAW was born. Cleveland Fisher Body closed its doors in 1983, taking with it 1,700 jobs, down from a peak of 14,000 during WWII.

Minutemen - One Reporter's Opinion
Billy Bragg - It Says Here (Live, 1984)
Public Enemy - Don't Believe the Hype

Nature Without Man

July 21st, 1877 was the day that Pittsburgh railroad workers launched a sympathy strike, in solidarity with unionists on the Baltimore and Ohio line who were stuck in a bloody battle with the Maryland militia. Pennsylvania's militia was just as quick to attack as their compatriots to the south, but the strikers of Pittsburgh were prepared.

The workers on the Pennsylvania Line, armed with rocks and even the support of their local police and Pittsburgh's militia men, met the troops from Philadelphia, who had been shipped in to restore order, at the train station. A volley of rocks from the strikers was met with waves of gunfire, resulting in the deaths of at least twenty men, women and children, along with thirty serious injuries. On hearing of the massacre,

Miners and steel workers came pouring in from the outskirts of the city and as night fell the immense crowd proved so menacing to the soldiers that they retreated into the roundhouse.

The strike soon spread as far west as the Michigan Central in Chicago, and the Missouri and Pacific in St. Louis, but by August, the rail companies in collusion with the government had gained the upper hand, with a show of force resulting in over one hundred deaths and one thousand injuries. 100,000 striking railroad men were effectively "shot back to work."

From the Great Strike came some of the first large-scale, national organizing of labor in the Industrial Age. The Knights of Labor, founded in Philadelphia in 1869, rose to prominence and at its peak represented over 700,000 workers around the country. Its decline was hastened in 1886 by the founding of the American Federation of Labor, and the rest is history.

--

It was also July 21st of 2005 that Flip Saunders was named head coach of the Detroit Pistons. Not as important as the Great Strike, you might say. I say, that remains to be seen.


Minutemen - Nature Without Man
Dock Boggs - Oh Death

Shit From An Old Notebook

On May 11th, 1894, workers walked off the job at the Pullman Palace Car Company, of Chicago, Illinois. Having faced pay cuts on top of pay cuts for the past five years, with no end in sight, along with the rising cost of housing and feeding families in company scrip in a company town, these newly minted members of the American Railway Union struck, and asked their brothers in the ARU around the country to join them.

Within days, wildcats had closed down most of the Chicago trainyards, creating a ripple effect that spread across the country. Eugene V. Debs, president of the ARU, counseled caution at a special convention called to discuss a general strike, but ARU local leader and Pullman worker Jennie Curtis sounded the alarm:

Pullman, both the man and the town, is an ulcer on the body politic. He owns the houses, the schoolhouse, and the churches of God in the town he gave his once humble name.

And, thus, the merry war — the dance of skeletons bathed in human tears — goes on; and it will go on, brothers, forever unless you, the American Railway Union, stop it; end it; crush it out.

Debs was overruled, and the strike was on.

On July 5th of that year, over Governor Peter Altgeld's strenuous objections, President Grover Cleveland called out the National Guard. On July 7th, Debs was one of eight ARU leaders arrested by Chicago police for conspiring to halt the free flow of mail. By July 20th, 13 strikers were dead, 57 seriously injured, and the National Guard finally left the city. Eugene Debs spent six months in Woodstock Jail once convicted of conspiracy charges, maybe you should read the rest.

Minutemen - Shit From An Old Notebook
Billy Bragg - There is Power in a Union (Live at Glastonbury, 1992)
Eugene V. Debs speech

Don't Look Now

Have we been here before? We've been here before. And it's always been hard for me, whether it's at work, or with anything else, to make sure that I know when I'm doing everything I can. Do you know what I mean? To know when you've pushed to the point where you're going to drop, or your brain is going to explode, or if you're just being dramatic, or whiny, or lazy. And I think I've gotten better at it, but who knows. Vague? Yes.

I did ride a bicycle once, and I really don't hate people who ride bicycles. I hate the feeling of moral superiority some of them give off, which I guess is probably not that much different from the unfounded reek of moral superiority that I give off for a million different meaningless non-reasons. But, my mom did get hit by a bicyclist, who was running a red light, and she hit her head on the sidewalk. That hurts! Good thing she's only five feet tall, and it wasn't, like Dikembe Mutombo or something. And she was OK, so we can laugh about it, but if I saw that guy on the street I would run him over with my car. Well, I probably wouldn't do that, but you know.... Back to the point, I loaned one of my bikes to someone and it got stolen, then the landlord capriciously and egregiously violated my inviolable property rights when he evicted us while my other two bikes were in the basement. And I was out of town, so goodbye bikes, goodbye books, goodbye extra pair of shoes. Where was I? I bought a bike from an old friend for $12, hadn't seen him in two years, he bought me dinner then sold me his bike (kind of weird, yeah) and then I locked it up on Fullerton Avenue and promptly forgot that it existed. I bought a bike from the junk guy on South Halsted (who, now that I think of it, has probably been replaced by a two bedroom condo, or at least an art studio) who quote me a price, then a lower price, then a higher price, then cut the lower one in half and told me it was the "colored folks discount." And I'll take it, but I left that bike in the basement because it's hard to move across the country with bikes, in a compact car. All that said:

Blackstone Bicycle Works Chicago
Recycle-A-Bicycle New York
Working Bikes Chicago

See, I'm not a hater.

First team to 60 wins? Guess who.

Minutemen - Don't Look Now
Mahalia Jackson - Lord, Don't Let Me Fail
Huggy Bear - Herjazz

Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Truth?

Hey, they said they would do it. Not a lie.

Not much to say today. Ate some tabouleh, did some work. Feel very tired. Drank a lot of peach apple nectar, it's good stuff.

Minutemen - Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Truth?
Yvonne Hunter - Have You Ever Been Mistreated?
Otis Redding - Direct Me

Two Beads At The End

Instead of reading obscure baseball stats, or back issues of the Nation, or watching Geraldo, I decided to buy some DVDs. Yesterday, I got copies of the third season of the West Wing, and finally got a copy of Roger & Me. I'm not sure what's more embarassing, that I bought an entire season of the West Wing, or that I've actually watched the entire first two seasons. But it's good! Really, I swear. I was tempted to buy Will & Grace too, but we can only go so far down that road, all at one time. Also, it was fifty bucks.

You should go download the Chocolate Swim EP, from the Cartoon Network. I don't understand it, but it's free music, and who doesn't like free music? There's also Danger Doom's Occult Hymn EP, also free.

I think that, since poker apparently counts as a sport, and you can see it on more networks than an actual sport, like the WNBA (which is a real sport, that is good and sometimes fun to watch), next should be computer Solitaire. Spider Solitaire. And, um, spelling bees. Oh wait, they already did that. No, seriously, ten nerds at computers, racing to finish Spider Solitaire, and trash talking. And being fat and wearing sunglasses, so they'll be respected as athletes just like the poker players. Any venture capitalist takers? Call me.

Notes:

• California appeals court upholds farmworker arbitration law. The law allows either union or company to request binding arbitration after 6 months of negotiations, and affects only agricultural workers. When can the rest of us get some of that?
  
• PBS airing American Masters: Woody Guthrie starting 7/12.
  

Minutemen - Two Beads At The End
Astrid Oto - Goodbye Elston Avenue
O.V. Wright - I'd Rather Be Blind, Crippled and Crazy

#1 Hit Song

Internet's been out at the place I'm staying. Well, I can't steal a wireless signal, anyway. Hopefully this doesn't last forever, but at least I'll get to do more reading.

Oh, who am I kidding. I just watch Geraldo at Large instead. Did you know there are hordes of killer gangs walking the streets who've just been released from New Orleans, or the army, and they're also satan-worshipping child molesters carrying swarms of deadly-with-one-sting Africanized killer bees and actually they're not in cities anymore but only in Bel Air and Grosse Pointe? So actually you don't have to worry about them if you live in a non-gated community. And by the way, did you know Geraldo was good friends with Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison, and it's just too bad that they're all too dead to come on his show to confirm it? It's like a televised re-enactment of the worst issue of Reader's Digest ever, with celebrity sightings. Wow. But it comes on right before Will & Grace, so I will deal.

Minutemen - #1 Hit Song
Paul Wall - Internet Goin' Nutz
Chisel - Your Star Is Killing Me

It's Expected I'm Gone

JFK Airport, in New York, is not actually as bad as I always think it is. It's the airport I hear people complain about most. Too many terminals, too confusing, no one is helpful, Airtrain costs five bucks, whatever. I complain about all of those things too, but really the only thing that sucks about it is when you have to drive there. Otherwise, I'm going to give it three out of five stars. I walked out of Andy's door in North Brooklyn this morning, and I was walking into terminal 3 exactly one hour later. Not bad, considering you have no choice but to take either a bus or cab to Laguardia, and we all know how good the traffic always is on the BQE through Jackson Heights, right?

I spent the better part of a bitter cold January hanging out at JFK a few years back, and got to know it pretty well. I saw (but didn't purchase anything from) the creepy paperback novel vending machines in Terminal 4, which I guess didn't do that well, because I never see them anywhere else. I found out that for vegetarian food, there's a little indian food stand hidden right next to Sylvia's Soul Food in Terminal 1, and you can eat lunch for less than five bucks. Which is important, when you're at the airport for 12 hours a day. Of course, if you're a cheating vegan, the mac and cheese at Sylvia's will work just as well, if not better. I walked around the airport loop a lot, because the pre-AirTrain shuttle buses were not exactly always timely. But I do kind of miss those buses, and not having to pay to get on them, jumping on in that dirty, dirty Howard Beach parking lot and riding by the still "temporarily closed" TWA Terminal 5, the only attractive building ever built at any airport ever in history.

Today I got into the Terminal, and I was through security and sitting down with the Times without waiting at all. Not at the counter, not at the screening station, not even at the newsstand. Try doing that in Denver, or one of your other fancy new airports, with robotic trams and moving walkways and all that crap. Also, on a side note, I've never seen another airport that had flocks of birds living inside the terminal, co-existing peacefully with passengers and gate agents alike. Beautiful.

This was the first Minutemen song I ever heard. I think I was 13 years old. It may have changed my life.

Minutemen - It's Expected I'm Gone

Also:

The Detroit Experiment f. Invincible and Athletic Mic League - The Way We Make Music
Gospel Group - Thank You Lord

Notes:

• Say it ain't so, Big Ben. Does anyone really think Nazr Mohammed can replace him? I will try to reserve judgement until next year; Joe Dumars deserves the benefit of the doubt.
  
• Korean unions vow general strike when Korea and the US start talks on a free trade agreement.
  

Oh yeah, happy 4th? Sure.

Cohesion

It's hot, and I almost dropped the A/C out the window. That would have been bad form. My cat insists on sitting on my feet, which would have been fine if she'd chosen to do that during the winter, but when the thermometer goes past 85 degrees it seems a little ridiculous. I know it's hot, little buddy, but some personal space is going to probably help more than hurt.

So, where were we? I've been reading several books at once, which I tend to do, because I have a short attention span. Fire in the Hearth, edited by Mike Davis, which is kind of a late '80's overview of the state of "the left," The Many and the Few, by Henry Kraus, a former UAW organizer/editor's account of the GM sit-down, and Teamster Rebellion, by Farrell Dobbs, recounting the Minneapolis General Strike of 1934, led by Dobbs and Teamsters Local 574. I'm a nerd, sorry.

I have been paying no particular attention to the NBA Draft this year, because the Pistons had no first-round pick, and because, well, it's kind of a silly thing to get excited about. But I've always been curious why in the NBA and NHL, international players are draft-eligible, while MLB's draft covers only US, Canadian, and Puerto Rican players, leaving teams able to buy the services of 16 year old kids from Latin America for pennies on the dollar. The new rules in basketball's draft (you can't be drafted until a year after your high school class graduates), while stupid and unfair, don't bother me nearly as much as the fact that a top five pick in the MLB draft generally gets a signing bonus that is triple or quadruple what a kid from Venezuela can possibly hope to get. And while we're at it, why can a (usually white) college baseball player get drafted, hire an agent, negotiate, decide that instead of getting $1 million this year he could maybe get $3 million next year, yet keep his NCAA eligibility, but a (usually black) college basketball player surrenders his scholarship as soon as an agent buys him a cup of coffee?

Notes:

• Dave Zirin on the NBA Draft. Overblown, yes, but interesting.
  
• Labor leaders endorse marriage equality. And on a related note, LGBT groups support new initiative for fair treatment of hotel workers.
  

And, of course, the Detroit Tigers still have the best record in the league.

Minutemen - Cohesion
King Britt f. Bahamadia - Transcend
Mirah - Recommendation

Viet Nam

Notes:

• Bill Fletcher, Jr. has a good article on Curt Flood, who every overpaid baseball player should be paying commission to, on BlackCommentator.com


• NYT on ACORN. But they still refuse to capitalize the full name. Why?


• Jay Marriotti and Ozzie Guillen are both idiots.


• "Perpetuating the Yellow Peril," in In These Times.
  
  
  

Minutemen - Viet Nam