Tidbits – July 7, 2022 – Reader Comments: Trump Complicity; Supreme Court Coup; Four Facts To Remember on the 4th of July; Salt of the Earth – Only Film Blacklisted; Resources; Announcements;
Re: Cassidy Hutchinson Shows Trump’s Complicity in the Attack on the Capitol (Neil Alan Bufler)
Secret Service -- cartoon by Mike Luckovich
Jan 6 -- cartoon by Dave Granlund
50 Years After Watergate -- cartoon by Rob Rogers
Re: Instagram & Facebook Remove Posts Offering Abortion Pills (Charles)
Re: The Time Is Now for a People-Powered Backlash (Carole Travis; Daniel Millstone)
Re: U.S. Supreme Court’s ‘Miranda’ Decision Guts 150-Year-Old Civil Rights Law (Paul Eichhorn)
Forced Pregnancy -- cartoon by Adam Zyglis
Re: Science and Civil Liberties: The Lost ACLU Lecture of Carl Sagan (Seymour Joseph; Ida Montes; Fritz Neumann; AK)
Four facts to remember on the 4th of July (Bob Wing)
Re: US Drag Queens Stand Their Ground Amid Intimidation by the Far Right (Carol Hanisch)
Re: Supreme Court EPA Climate Ruling (John Spicer Blount)
Re: The Insane Saga of ‘Salt of the Earth,’ the Only Film To Be Blacklisted (Wanda Guthrie; Lisa Jordan; Kipp Dawson; Jamie Gibson; Cathi Schafer; Tess Ewing; Rolande D. Baker; Errol Brown; Catherine Russo; Theresa Squillacote; Paul Becker; Jan Bauman; Judith Mahoney Pasternak; Paul Buhle)
Re: Before Roe - Portside poetry (Donna)
Re: Why Superhero Satire the Boys Turned Off Its Rightwing Fanbase (Adam Azzalino; Manuel Castro)
Resources:
New Book -- A Grassroots Leadership & Arts for Social Change Primer for Educators, Organizers, Activists & Rabble-Rousers.
Announcements:
HotHouse 35th Anniversary "Pocket Festival" of Jazz and Art - Chicago - HotHouse will host a "pocket Jazz Festival" in the iconic spirit garden in Bronzeville - July 23
Re: Cassidy Hutchinson Shows Trump’s Complicity in the Attack on the Capitol
Anybody that says Cassidy Hutchinson is wrong must come to congress, to the 1/6 Panel, and state their claim .... ON THE RECORD..!!!
Neil Alan Bufler
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Secret Service -- cartoon by Mike Luckovich
Mike Luckovich
January 20, 2019
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jan 6 -- cartoon by Dave Granlund
June 30, 2022
Watergate at 50 -- cartoon by Rob Rogers
Rob Rogers
June 24, 2022
robrogers.com
Re: Instagram & Facebook Remove Posts Offering Abortion Pills
I'm 100% on board with women's right to choose, and having access to abortion pills.Given the current religious fanatical mindset, forbidding birth control pills may be next on the list.
That FB and IG would so fervently block any reference to "abortion pills", but seem to be completely OK with references to guns, is telling.
A Handmaid's Tale is not that far off . . . at least, that's what the delusional, far right fanatics are aiming at.
Charles,
Sebastopol
Re: The Time Is Now for a People-Powered Backlash
If the Fillubuster is ended and we lose the Midterm elections - it will be worse. And yes worse is possible.
Even if we have criticisms of Democratics for excellent reasons, it is time for a United and thorough going effort to elect Democrats from the top to the bottom of the ticket - including Governors, Secretaries of State, state reps. state senators, school boards - everything.
The long games of the ultra right have captured so many arms of government that they are positioned to keep on rolling over all of us. The effort must be to get everyone out to vote for every single office.
We all need to also give money - even small amounts- strain our budgets - the planet, people of color, everything depends on it.
I suggest money to the Democratic Messaging Project they do bill boards not TV. They do it in swing districts of swing states. With $180k they already covered Arizona and Wisconsin with bill boards. They are now moving to Pennsylvania and Michigan. If you have other recommendations- share them.
Some ground games are good. Some will fail. People are tired of being contacted only about politics every 2 years. Inflation is hurting people who have already been hurt by job loss, pandemic issues, opioid addiction thanks to Sachlers.
Don’t get rid of the filibuster now, too late. First win the midterms.
Carole Travis
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Can we resist the rise of the right? I think we can. Here Bill McKibben http://www.billmckibben.com/explains how. Thanks to Portside for the link.
Daniel Millstone
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: U.S. Supreme Court’s ‘Miranda’ Decision Guts 150-Year-Old Civil Rights Law
First off, "Fuck You" to all those people that having been telling us over the last 50 years that there was no difference between Republicans and Democrats.
The Republicans have spent the last 50 years building this stacked 6-3 fascist Supreme Court at every opportunity with young, fascist judges that can wreck the next 50 years of decisions.
Paul Eichhorn
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Forced Pregnancy -- cartoon by Adam Zyglis
Adam Zyglis
Forced Pregnancy
Buffalo News
Re: Science and Civil Liberties: The Lost ACLU Lecture of Carl Sagan
The lecture by Carl Sagan was clearly on the side of freedom of expression, whether in a capitalist or socialist society. But because those systems are worlds apart a qualification is in order. One system is based on private exploitation, and the other is based on ending such exploitation. Therefore, that those holding power ‹ legislatively or factually ‹ fear unfettered discourse by the people about the opposing socio-economic system is understandable.
But, because, as Sagan says repeatedly, we are fallible human beings, such things as freedom of expression and theoretical concepts of one system or another, are not cut-and-dried, black-and-white matters. There have been modifications in both systems, sometimes based on the shortcomings of how the system is functioning, and sometimes as a result of protest.
Finally, however, as history clearly demonstrates, change is inevitable. Despite interminable wars and devastating cruelty, such as the Holocaust, societies have slowly advanced toward greater democracy. I believe the socialism, however, altered in its practice, will emerge as the next stage in socioeconomic change worldwide.
Seymour Joseph
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We are fallible. We’re only human. We make mistakes. We have a set of new technologies that, in many cases, we barely know how to control. Those in charge pretend otherwise.
Ida Montes
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Portside quoting Quillette quoting Sagan addressing the ACLU... not just the content but the history of this piece is fascinating! And admirable.
Fritz Neumann
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Why write the falsehood that the Contras were "anti-Communist
insurgents"? The Sandinistas were not Communists. Please correct and
explain.
AK (taught at the UCA in Managua 1986-88)
Four facts to remember on the 4th of July
- At the time of the American Revolution, there were about 500,000 enslaved Black people in the U.S. By 1860, there were 4.5 million people held in bondage, a 900% increase!
- By contrast, in 1832 British parliament passed the Slave Emancipation Act abolishing slavery in most of the Caribbean, South Africa and Canada.
- More Blacks supported the British than the colonists in the American Revolution.
- Upon the victory of the Revolution, the new U.S. controlled the eastern part of the North American continent. By 1860, the U.S. had massacred and displaced Native peoples "from sea to shining sea," seizing their land and resources and destroying their way of life
In short, the American Revolution set off an expansionist orgy of slavery, Native extermination, and white settler colonialism.
Bob Wing
Re: US Drag Queens Stand Their Ground Amid Intimidation by the Far Right
Why is the Left so enamored with drag queens? Don’t you know that “womanface" is humiliating to women just as blackface is to Black people? You would be outraged (I hope) at a storytime being read by someone in blackface. You should raise your consciousness and be helping feminists put an end to this degrading male chauvinist entertainment fad instead of contributing to popularizing it! I hate to say it, but the Right is right on this (if for wrong reasons).
Carol Hanisch
Re: Supreme Court EPA Climate Ruling
I recall "the good ole day's" pre- EPA . 50 miles of Orange Grove wiped out in a single week from acid rain from a Phosphate plant in Fla. Got to see the River Burn in Ohio. And watched the Condors die. Now all future Children can (briefly) see these things also.
John Spicer Blount
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Insane Saga of ‘Salt of the Earth,’ the Only Film To Be Blacklisted
Wanda Guthrie
I saw this when I was (I think) 19. What a time! Could it happen again? You bet.
Wanda Guthrie
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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This is an amazing story…so cool.
Lisa Jordan
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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A story for you. It is mine lived and thus mine to share, but I tell it with the awe and memory of a child of, perhaps, seven years of age.
It is the middle of the McCarthy witch-hunt years. I am sitting in the balcony of a movie somewhere near the West Berkeley projects where my family lives. My mom is next to me. She is sitting at the edge of her seat, and her quiet excitement sets my tone as well, though I am not sure why. She has whispered to me, as working-class Communists did to their children in those days, clueing to us that this was one of the things we did not talk about in school or on the playground — only when we were in the car or at home, and even there, out of hearing distance from the bugs we had to assume were part of our telephones. But I am confused, because we are in a public movie theater. Sitting in the balcony because that is where kids have to sit.
“This theater is being very brave,” my mom whispers. “This movie is blacklisted, you know!” (Kids like me have learned that term. We are living in the shadow of the Rosenberg case, with constant FBI harassment of our parents and homes. “We don’t know if we will be able really to see it, but I want you to, if it can happen today.” I can’t remember my mom being so happy/worried/happy and I am so proud to be with her.
The lights dim, and *Salt of the Earth* comes on the screen, and my mom is transfixed. People who look like her friends I see at her union meetings fill the screen. A woman who looks like my mom, though she speaks Spanish, emerges as a strong leader, and my mom is right there with her. All I know is what I feel: awe and respect and love for my mom.-
Now I can understand more, but still that awe and respect and love are what fill me, seventy or so years later.
Here is a link with which one can watch this movie, thanks to Portside.
Kipp Dawson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Thank you for this, Kipp. It touched me. Every year or so I watch the movie “The Front” to remind myself of that era. I watch until the end when the credits roll and you can see the name of each blacklisted person and the year they were anathematized. That’s when my tears fall.
Jamie Gibson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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And still? In every labor law class? We watch it. When someone doesn’t understand the meaning of the right to organize, or the concept of a “company store”, or thinks that paying dues is enough because the fight is over? It’s never over. There will always be the need for unions to help empower and protect the working class. I’d be on the streets without the pension and benefits I earned on the job. Billionaires would rather risk outer space travel than pay decent wages and enrich the communities they operate in! ??#UnionsForAll
Cathi Schafer
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Wow, that is cool. Salt of the Earth is one of my favorite movies, but not being a red diaper baby myself, I did not have this personal connection, or know about it, until the '70s
Tess Ewing
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Excellent article about the "Red Scare" and especially about "Salt of the Earth"! I showed that film every year in my classroom at Sunnyside High School when I taught the history of unions in this country.
And yes, those words of Michael Wilson in 1976 are profilic about what we are living today.
Rolande D. Baker
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Actually saw this movie about 40 years ago. I recommend it highly. A brave movie that deals with class struggle, racism and gender equality.
Errol Brown
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Such a great film
I did not know the history
Catherine Russo
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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First saw it in Barcelona in 1979. Thousands were there.
Theresa Squillacote
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Having lived through that time as a teacher who saw some off my colleagues in the teaching profession fired and blacklisted in the same way for the same reasons as the Hollywood blacklist victims, I was moved by the film when I saw it in the 50's at a small theatre in a New York City hotel. The teachers I knew were (in the very words of the head of the New York City Board of Education who, nevertheless, fired them) "the cream of the profession." The McCarthy period has had a lasting effect on our politics for a long time and we should keep that disgraceful time in mind today when we face the ongoing threat from a Republican party that has been captured by the most extreme right-wing elements in our country.
Paul Becker
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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You can find Salt of the Earth on YouTube.
Jan Bauman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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I always knew it was brave but only discovered recently how beautiful it is
Judith Mahoney Pasternak
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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the creators themselves had been blacklisted as former communists who refused to testify against friends; thus the film would be blacklisted.]
Paul Buhle
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Before Roe - Portside poetry
(posting on Portside Culture)
Thank you so much for this moving poem.
The Court has a lot to answer for, whether Roe, gun safety, climate change, etc. A huge setback for this country. I hate the thought of leaving this planet in far worse shape than when I arrived. Portside surely helps as a witness for truth.
Donna
Re: Why Superhero Satire the Boys Turned Off Its Rightwing Fanbase
(posting on Portside Culture)
It had a right-wing fan segment? From the gate, the show engaged with like capitalism, fascism, and corporate ties to the Nazis.
Adam Azzalino
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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mostly conservatives are the villains or jokes in 99% of the shows
Manuel Castro
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
The volume highlights authors from around the globe, who have contributed to the ongoing effort to expand the field of leadership from a bottom-up, collective, collaborative, and horizontally-based perspective. The long-awaited book is now available. The anthology is huge, so it took some time to pull all of the pieces together.
You might recognize some of the singer-songwriters in the collection like Si Kahn, Holly Near, Carolyn Hester, Reggie Harris, Magpie, Joe Jencks, John Flynn, Candie Carawan, Kristin Lems, to name a few.
This effort was made possible, thanks to the International Leadership Association. Since January 2018, the organization has provided a monthly platform for a series of guest columns that showcase the intersection of the arts for social change with a more equitable, diverse and inclusive way of being.
Due to the success of this experiment, we have assembled enough material to fill a book! It is the first of what we hope will be many volumes as the publication of our monthly guest column is ongoing.
There are approximately twenty-eight contributors, who are featured in volume one of the primer. Their work is displayed in the following categories: Community Engaged Theatre as a Form of Grassroots Leadership; Interviews With Troubadours of Conscience; Exhibitions: Art, Politics & Resistance; Grassroots Leadership & Cultural Activists; Grassroots Leadership, Participatory Democracy & the Role of the Arts in Social Movements; and People Power, Community Building & the Arts for Social Change.
Their stories are accessible and engaging (as opposed to academic in nature). In the spirit of the topic, authors were encouraged to write for the masses. It is “Peoples’ Scholarship”.
Furthermore, the price is affordable. Proceeds from the sale of the book will allow us to continue this important project.
On Saturday July 23, 2022 The Center for International Performance and Exhibition dba HotHouse will host a “pocket festival” to celebrate their 35th anniversary. The multi-arts event features three award-winning Jazz ensembles and group art–making activities. The festival will take place in Bronzeville on the historic site of the Chicago Youth Center 3953 S. Michigan. The program will also be simultaneously live streamed at no charge via HotHouseGlobal channels (YouTube, Twitch and Facebook).
Against the backdrop of the iconic cultural treasures that are signature contributions to Bronzeville’s legacy as a destination for Afro-arts expression, HotHouse will stage this important gathering subtitled “unity in the community”. The event is free and open to all ages. Guests are invited to bring their own chairs and picnic. Details www.hothouse.net
Given the outdoor program, if canceled due to weather there will be no refunds for tickets/ donations
“This program is partially supported by a grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events".
Saturday, July 23, 2022
3:00 PM – 7:00 PM CDT
3947 S Michigan Ave
3947 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60653
The Featured Jazz Ensembles are:
- Trio W.A.Z.
- Edward Wilkerson
- Tatsu Aoki
- Micheal Zerang
- with special guest Ronnie Malley
- The Fred Jackson Quintet with
- Fred Jackson Jr - Alto / Soprano sax and percussion
- Mai Sugimoto - Alto Sax / Flute
- Coco Elysses - Percussion
- Josh Abrahams - Bass
- Avreeayl Ra - Drums
- And Burnt Sugar Arkestra Chamber from NYC
- BSAC Hollering Hoodoo Crew
- Shelley Nicole - Vocals/Conduction
- Bruce Mack - Vocals/Synthesizer/Conduction
- Leon Gruenbaum - Keyboards/Samchillian/Vocals
- Lewis “Flip” Barnes - Trumpet
- V. Jeffrey Smith - Tenor & Soprano Saxes
- Ben Tyree - Electric Guitar
- Marque Gilmore the Inna*Most - Trap Drums/Electronic Drums/Conduction
- Jared Michael Nickerson - Electric Bass/Conduction
- Emcee Tara Betts
The Center for International Performance and Exhibition
c/o 5555 N. Sheridan Road
Chicago, IL 60640