Tidbits - February 12, 2015 - Black Future Month, Selma, LBJ, Vietnam War, Labor, Greece, Science and more......
Portside
The composition "Alabama" was released in 1963 shortly after the horrific murder of four little girls in a church in Birmingham, AL. Some jazz writers claim that the tune is not about these four girls. Steve Rowland disagrees and thinks that Coltrane might have based his composition on Martin Luther King's moving eulogy. See what you think!
In the address, Dr. King implored the necessity for the nation to undergo a “radical revolution of values,” explaining, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
Should intelligence agencies be able to sweep email, read texts, track calls, locate us by GPS? Much of the conversation swirls around the possibility that agencies like the N.S.A. or the F.B.I. will use such information not to serve national security but to carry out personal and political vendettas. King’s experience reminds us that these are far from idle fears, conjured in the fevered minds of civil libertarians. They are based in the hard facts of history.
Spread the word