Tidbits – Mar.21 2024 – Reader Comments: Most Committed Are the Uncommitted; Schumer Clears Path for Democrats; Jonathan Glazer’s Brave Oscar Speech; Folk Music and the New Deal; Women’s History Month in Song, Spoken Word; Block & Build-Left Strategy

Reader Comments: Most Committed Are the Uncommitted; Schumer Clears Path for Democrats To Disavow Netanyahu; Jonathan Glazer’s Brave Oscar Speech; Folk Music and the New Deal; Women's History Month in Song, Spoken Word; Block & Build: Left Strategy;

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Tidbits - Reader Comments, Announcements AND cartoons - Mar. 21, 2024,Portside

Announcements:

 

..

 

Re: The Most Committed Are the Uncommitted
 

excerpt:

The president is in effect playing a game of chicken with his own voters, doing what he wants in defiance of their pleas and daring them to vote for Trump if they don’t like it. The underlying premise of this dangerous game is that voters will put the issue aside come Election Day because it will have become less important to them than domestic politics. This premise, of course, ignores the reality that for many voters Israel’s war on Gaza is not a foreign policy issue but a civil rights issue, as well as a matter of survival for those with loved ones in Gaza and other occupied territories.

The complacency of the Biden reelection campaign is one of the biggest factors that could put Trump back in the White House.

Lorraine Suzuki
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Getting So Tired of Waiting  --  Meme

 

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Re: Schumer Clears Path for Democrats To Disavow Netanyahu. Will Biden Follow?
 

So much waffling and shifting responsibility. Biden says the solution is for Israelis to have new elections. We have no control over that and it would take months, at least. And there is no evidence that anyone electable in Israel would change their practices. Meanwhile every day starvation and death for Palestinians. We do have immediate control over our contribution to funding, and we keep funding genocide. We do have control over whether we block UN ceasefire resolutions and we keep blocking them. But we are going to donate some food.

Sonia Cobbins
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: New Coalition Aims To Defend ‘Squad’ and Other Progressives Targeted by AIPAC
 

It’s about time AIPAC, what a pernicious horrid entity with a horrifying mission. . 

Karin Pritikin
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Famine in Gaza  --  Cartoon by Nick Anderson

 


 

Nick Anderson
March 18, 2024
Pen Strokes

 

Re: Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation
 

Your acceptance of an article “Claims of Mass Rape” is despicable and misogynous.  It negates all suffering by one side of the conflict, which is both dishonest reporting and part of a larger narrative.  How could you?

Jeffrey Borkan

      =====

Do you actually believe that Hams members did not do rapes???

Bill Barclay

 

Re: Jonathan Glazer’s Brave Oscar Speech Represents the Best of Judaism
 

The tepid -- at best -- response to his brief speech was a reminder that courage is often in short supply in Hollywood.

Geoff Mirelowitz
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Obfuscation at its finest. It is obvious to any who cared to hear that he was rejecting the weaponization of his Jewishness to be used in the service of genocide.

Liz Zoob
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Glazer and others disagree about the very complex Israel-Palestinian crisis. At this time freedom of speech still exists in some places in the world, although it is at great risk in the USA. Any loss of lives in the process of resolution of the Israel-Palestinian standoff is abhorrent. Will the current crisis move the parties to a resolution that will result in peaceful coexistence? It does not seem that Glazer’s statements were focused on that objective.

Gina Klein
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

      =====

think how angry this made the big shots.

Paul Buhle
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Are you afraid of Britt?  --  Cartoon by Christopher Weyant

 


 

Christopher Weyant
March 13, 2024
Boston Globe

 

Re: How Does Paris Stay Paris? By Pouring Billions Into Public Housing
 

What do socialists in office do in Paris? Create public transportation and cycling infrastructure and as reported here by Thomas Fuller and recirculated by Portside, they build lots of public housing. We can do the same if we elect socialists and tax the rich.

Daniel Millstone
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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While I applaud all efforts at economic integration in housing, I still have questions about inclusion of people from other communities, such as immigrants and people with disabilities, who may not contribute to the promotion of the tourist friendly vibe

Rachelle Kivanoski
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Lots of Arab and African people live in public housing within Paris, as well as in the suburbs. In the Goutte d'Or neighborhood, which has lots of nice medium rise public housing, whole streets are filled with men on prayer rugs several times a day. If some tourists do not like it, I believe that would be their problem.

Sonia Cobbins
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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How un-American of them!

Alan Hart
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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The French policy of “social housing” is remarkable, and especially in contrast to the nightmare of the “free market” in housing rates that are continuously “gentrifying” so many US cities….

Rick Fantasia
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Why Not a Rent Deduction  --  Meme

 

 

Re: A Revolution in American Foreign Policy
 

It seems like every week I read from my own safe position abroad how Americans behave like stupidly vicious morons and yet, I know a lot of Americans including myself, my friends and plenty of fellow  Americans who are not stupidly vicious morons so I'd like to ask: '

What gives?" Is it the water, the food, the air or even perhaps some sort of artificially created virus designed by some dept. of the  USA designed to finish off its own  'deplorables'?  Honestly, I'm stumped,;does anyone else have a clue?

Mike Liston

      =====

Love Bernie, but all this does is display our hypocrisy. No one takes the US seriously when it talks about human rights. Practice before we preach.

Charles Patrick Lynch
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: The Era of Abundant Labor Reporting Is Coming to an End

(posting on Portside Labor)
 

Hamilton Nolan disrespects the many people who did labor reporting in the 80s, 90s, 00s, giving us no credit for the work we did "before Steven Greenhouse retired" and our work was in danger of being "permanently marginalized."  He does credit his own home publication, In These Times, with having carried stories on labor and workers, but no one else.

David Bacon

 

Teach In: Why Opposing Zionism Is Not Antisemitism  --  Chicago  --  March 25  (UIC Jewish Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine; the Social Justice Initiative; and the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy)

 


 

Join UIC Jewish Faculty for Justice in Palestine for an introductory conversation on the connections between antisemitism and critiques of Zionism

Monday, March 25 from 2:00PM to 3:30PM

Richard Daley Library, Room I-470
University of Illinois - Chicago Circle Campus

Speakers include:

Liat Ben-Moshe, Jennifer Brier, Rachel Havrelock, Pauline Lipman, and Rabbi Brant Rosen.

This event is co sponsored by Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine, the Social Justice Initiative, and the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy.

This is a student centered event, and masks are recommended!

 

Webinar  -  Folk Music and the New Deal: Collecting the Hidden Soundtracks of the Great Depression  --  March 26  (The Living New Deal)

 


 

Collecting the Hidden Soundtracks of the Great Depression With Sheryl Kaskowitz and Catherine Hiebert Kerst

Tuesday, March 26 · 8 - 9pm EDT

Get Tickets  --  FREE  --  RSVP Here

Most people are familiar with the New Deal's legacy in the visual arts, but the soundtracks left by its folk music collecting activities have remained largely unknown. Beginning with a Music Unit hidden within the Resettlement Administration in 1936 and continuing with the WPA California Folk Music Project in the late 1930s, the pioneering collector Sidney Robertson Cowell amassed hundreds of recordings that provide new insight into life during the Great Depression, as she followed her own interests in union protest songs and the folk music of ethnic immigrants.

  • Music scholar Sheryl Kaskowitz is author of the forthcoming A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR's Hidden Music Unit Sought to Save America from the Great Depression—One Song at a Time, (Pegasus Books, April 2024) the story of the Resettlement Administration's Music Unit, a little-known program that laid the groundwork for a folk music revival that had a lasting impact on American culture.

The Living New Deal documents the vast legacy the New Deal (1933-1942) left to America and the spirit of public service that inspired it.

The Living New Deal    
University of California, Berkeley
PO Box 2148
Berkeley, California 94702
info@livingnewdeal.org

 

Women's History Month in Spoken Word and Song on Zoom  --  March 27  (People's Music Network)

 


 

FREE LIVESTREAM:

Wednesday, March 27, 2024, 7:00 – 9:00 PM (ET)

on YouTube

*** Once event ends, livestream is archived at this same link.

Women’s History Month traces its origins back to the first Women’s Day March in 1909, organized by socialist women in New York City to amplify the call for women’s rights and to honor the memory of the city’s garment workers’ strikes.  Two years later, the International Conference of Socialist Women established International Women’s Day, now celebrated in over 80 countries worldwide.  It has become an annual day of radical activism for women’s rights and against war.  In the United States, the day has expanded into Women’s History Week (1980) and eventually into Women’s History Month (1987).

Come join us to hear a roster of PMN singer/songwriters and poets share their vision for peace, justice, and equality in 2024! 

By registering for the event on this page, you have a chance to make a donation to support PMN's work of sustaining a vibrant and diverse community space in which music is a catalyst for a just and peaceful world.  When you register, you also get access to the Zoom Meeting info, which is a somewhat different viewing experience than the free livestream.   

PERFORMERS:  Marcie Boyd, Elise Bryant, Joanie Calem, Lydia Adams Davis, Lucelia De Jesus, Lorna Gonsalves, Judy Gorman, Bev Grant, Colleen Kattau, Pat Lamanna, Bonnie Lockhart, Jendog Lonewolf, Luci Murphy, Sarah Pirtle, Rebel Voices (Janet Stecher and Susan Lewis), Jane Sapp, Nancy Schimmel, Angie Whitehurst, Lindsey Wilson, and Hana Zara.

Help Spread the Word!

on Facebook

on Instagram

People's Music Network for Songs of Freedom and Struggle is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

 

Virtual Event  -  Block & Build: Left Strategy in the MAGA Era  --  April 2  (Convergence Magazine)

 

Join Convergence Magazine and Seed the Vote for a special online event introducing the concepts, content, and applications of the Block and Build Syllabus: Left Strategy in the MAGA Era. The event will preview the syllabus content, as well as present case studies about its use and development. Plus, you’ll learn how you can get support to bring this study and insight into organizations of every size.

The syllabus is a political education tool developed by Convergence, originally for our own internal study, that best articulates our position and strategy for the road ahead. While the organized Left moved beyond abstentionism as a central strategy in 2016, making a critical difference in 2018, 2020, and 2022, many are questioning whether electoral work is worth it, given the options on the menu in 2024. The crisis in Gaza and US policy failures provide an immediate example of how hard, and necessary, the work of Block and Build is at this moment; the need for broad-front politics that are rooted in our principles and vision is urgent.

Written with organizers in mind, we’re pleased to offer this seven-part self-paced course that examines the current moment in the arc of US democracy: where we are, how we got here, and our best assessment about how we might block a total capture of the federal government while also building the capacity of our movements to shape the trajectory of the “small-d” democratic alternative.

Host: Cayden Mak, Publisher, Convergence Magazine

Panelists:

  • Whitney Maxey, Editorial Board, Convergence Magazine
  • Sandra Hinson, Editorial Board, Convergence Magazine
  • Josh Elstro, Audio Producer, Convergence Magazine
  • Emily Ja-Ming Lee, Executive Director, Seed the Vote

 

Unionizing the Ivory Tower - A Special Book Event with the author  --  New York City  --  April 2  (ILR Worker Institute)

 

Unionizing the Ivory Tower: Cornell Workers’ 15-Year Fight for Justice and a Living Wage

April 2 | 8:30 - 10:30 a.m.

570 Lexington Ave
New York, NY 10022

Register Here https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/worker-institute/events/unionizing-ivory-to…

Please join us for a breakfast book event with Al Davidoff, author of Unionizing the Ivory Tower: Cornell Workers’ Fifteen-Year Fight for Justice and a Living Wage. 

This in-person event will include a brief reading and spirited discussion about Unionizing the Ivory Tower with the book’s author, Al Davidoff.

Davidoff is the Director of Organizational and Leadership Development at The Solidarity Center, the AFL-CIO’s global labor institute. He served as the president of Cornell’s UAW local union, the president of the Tompkins County Labor Council, NYS director of the AFL-CIO, a Vice President of SEIU Local 1199, AFT chief of staff, and Director of the national AFL-CIO GOLD team.  Davidoff is co-founder of the Cornell-NYS AFL-CIO Union Leadership Institute (ULI) and co-founder of the Cornell-AFL-CIO National Labor Leadership Initiative (NLLI).  He has been a labor leader and organizer for over 30 years.

Al is an ILR graduate and was a student leader who became a custodian, labor organizer, and leader of the Cornell union. With passion, sensitivity, and wit, he tells the extraordinary story of how these Cornell workers unionized the university.

His memoir reveals how they took on Cornell – the dominant power in Ithaca – and built a strong organization that waged multiple strikes and campaigns for livable wages and worker dignity. Their strategies and tactics were creative and feisty, founded on worker participation and ownership.

The union's commitment to fairness, equity, and economic justice also engaged these workers – primarily rural, white, and conservative – at the intersections of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Davidoff's story demonstrates how a fighting union can activate today's working class to oppose anti-democratic and white supremacist forces.

Breakfast available at 8:30 a.m.
Program begins promptly at 9 a.m.

Speakers

  • Al Davidoff - Director of Organizational and Leadership Development at the Solidarity Center
  • Elaine Kim - Senior Cornell Extension Associate
  • Kathleen Mulligan - Interim Executive Director, The Worker Institute; Director of the National Labor Leadership Initiative
  • Vincent Alvarez - President, New York City Central Labor Council (NYCCLC)
  • Milly SIlva - Secretary Treasurer, SEIU 1199

 

Book Launch and Discussion - Jackson Rising Redux  --  New York City  --  April 5  (1199 SEIU & PM Press)

 

 

Virtual Event  -  Countering AIPAC Forum - Fighting Back  --  April 10  (New York Progressive Action Network)

 


 

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 at 7:00 PM ET

AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has committed tens of millions of dollars to demolishing progressive candidates.  And we can't let them do that.

Just ask Nina Turner, who lost a very winnable election when AIPAC dumped big bucks into it against her.

So come join Nina Turner, Beth Miller (Jewish Voices for Peace), Rep. Jamaal Bowman and other honored guests at our Countering AIPAC Forum on April 10th from 7:00-9:00pm to find out how we fight back to protect our friends - Nina, AOC, Jamaal, Rashida and others - from the onslaught of dark money. Co-Sponsored by: NY Working Families Party, Progressive East End Reformers. (List in formation)

RSVP