can come with an open hand
or at the tip of a sharp tongue
it covers up the salty taste of tears
you call me “sweetheart” afterward
I can’t think of anything to say during dinner
that won’t sound like a lie
later, in bed, you lace your fingers in mine
I hold my breath like a condemned prisoner
my hair is turning gray on this diet of ashes
my tongue lies heavy in my mouth
I’m betraying the fading light beneath my skin

/ / /

It’s been a while since I finished a poem. I wrote this one at the Museum of Modern Art in New York today after seeing the “Sweet Violence” exhibit for the second time. Please go see it if you can.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

My sister and I went to the Museum of Modern Art to see the new exhibition of murals by Diego Rivera. I wrote this poem based on one of them.

Rivera’s The Uprising

it’s her hand, not his
that stops the soldier’s blade
while with the other
she cradles her newborn child
who cries from the noise

the dead and wounded
cover the ground like fallen leaves
as a phalanx of armed men
in earthen brown
swing wooden rifle stocks
at the faces of the newly free

men in peasant caps and overalls
no weapons but their fists and hearts
stand shoulder to shoulder
under a sky red with waving flags
on ground red with spilled blood

she holds her crying child
with the hope of a new mother
and the desperation of the wall
against her back
she will not give in
she will not give in

From Stonewall Celebrates As Marriage Equality Passes – June 24, 2011

I support equal rights for all members of the LGBTQ community. And, as it turns out, I’m straight.

I say that because I’ve already been tagged as gay by many acquaintances and strangers who seem to think that only LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) people can support and advocate for LGBTQ issues. I’m certainly not worried about being mistaken for gay. In fact, emphasizing that I’m straight makes me a bit uncomfortable. But for the purposes of the point I’m about to make, it’s necessary.

Back in the early 90s, I had a good friend who came out as a lesbian. She was the first openly gay person I knew and, because she was (and still is) very important to me, I became very open about my support for LGBTQ issues. In addition to being vocal, I often wore a triangle necklace and had a bunch of LGBTQ stickers on my car … eventually leading to its windows being smashed in a Tucson parking lot on Christmas Eve in 1995.

Later on, I was a stay-at-home dad for a year and I took care of my son and also the daughter of a lesbian couple. I normally don’t think of them as a “lesbian couple,” but I’m identifying them that way for the purposes of this essay. In that same town, I befriended another Lesbian Couple (TM) both through our shared anti-war activism and a passion for cycling. All these folks are some of my favorite people in the world and I was thinking of all of them when I was dancing outside Stonewall on the night that the marriage equality bill passed here in New York State.

From Stonewall Celebrates As Marriage Equality Passes – June 24, 2011

Along with everyone else, I was live-tweeting from Stonewall during the big celebration, and several people on Twitter and Facebook congratulated me using language that made it clear they thought I was gay. As things quieted down a bit at Stonewall, I went to the Undead Jazz Festival wearing my “Legalize Gay” shirt. Several people again congratulated me in a way that made their perceptions clear. I didn’t correct anyone, nor did I use it as a moment to say, “I’m straight, but you’re right, it’s a great victory for everyone, straight or gay.”

The other night I was at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, wearing an “I heart NY” shirt (above, with my cousin Lynne) which I had altered by drawing an equal sign in the heart. During the evening a woman who self-identified as a lesbian saw my shirt and we had a lovely chat about the passage of the law and what it means for the future. At the end, she gave me a high-five and said “Yay for us!” Again, I didn’t say anything about being straight.

There are two reasons why I don’t mention my sexual orientation in such situations. One reason is just the social awkwardness of sharing a moment like that with someone and then saying something that would seem to make the moment a bit less shared.

The other reason is that I don’t want to be seen as afraid or ashamed of being identified as gay. I often think that if I said “I’m straight” in those situations it would make it seem like I was trying to distance myself from the LGBTQ community. “Hey, I support the issues, but I’m a heterosexual!”

A friend recently pointed out that it was sad that some people assume that only LGBTQ people support LGBTQ issues. I agree. These issues have been central to my life for more than two decades, and I’m proud to be a vocal supporter. (And by the way, I’m no hero. Many activists have done far more than me to bring these issues to the public arena.) And while I’m a bit hesitant to say that LGBTQ rights are the civil rights struggle of our era — because I think there are other civil rights struggles that need fighting, too — I certainly think the fight for LGBTQ rights is one of our major civil rights battlegrounds. I want to be able to tell my kids that I stood up to be counted on this issue.

So yes, I’m straight and I’m a supporter of LGBTQ rights. And I hope you’re a supporter, too.

I recently visited the excellent Museum of Chinese in America in New York. This poem was partly inspired by that experience.

warm bodies

we are happy to have warm bodies
to throw at their guns
Chinese, black, dynasty, diaspora
anyone but our own sons

what happened to thirty paces
the crack of the pistol
as the mist rose off the dawn ground

when did we start loading the chambers
with soft flesh
gunpowder burning the skin
as we launch the children of the poor
at the children of the poor

praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
and if he gives you any trouble
shoot the fucker

it’s a hard equation
but that’s how we do math these days
with mercenary sensibility and a lead-pipe cruelty
not even John Cusack can make charming

the baby in the bassinet
has dynamite in her mouth
the fuse trails off under a door marked
RESTRICTED

in the morning you find a card in your mailbox:
“Manzanar — Wish You Were Here!”
the accompanying cartoon
helps our boys track you down
by the way you walk and the slant of your eyes

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Image (c) BBC

This poem begins with a quote from Egyptian TV host Ahmad El Esseily. (via this article)

January 25, 2011

“The regime
has been
            convincing us
very well
that we cannot do it
            but Tunisians
gave us an idea
and it took us
only three days
            and we did it.”

and like that, the curtain
of sand came down

in Tahrir Square the people
tens of thousands of the people
chanted

Muslims!
            Christians!
We are all
            Egyptians!

and like that, another iron-
hearted scarecrow fled
to his hotel room

where only
his most trusted
            retainers remained
to tell him he was
right, he would return

for this was no longer his land
these people no longer his people

in this land of slaves and slave owners
there is a history of breaking shackles

sometimes      one      link      at      a      time

sometimes allatonce

Listen to this poem using the player above.

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave one of his most important speeches, “Beyond Vietnam.” (You can read or listen to the speech here.)

In 2010, I used the text of that speech to make an erasure poem called “I Cannot Threaten Death.” In other words, I printed out the complete text and then erased most of the words. I kept the remaining words in their original order.

You can hear me read this poem by clicking on the player above. The recording is from my January 5, 2011, reading at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY. You can also download a PDF of the poem.

Listen using the player above.

/ / /

Justice for all, service to others and a love that liberates people. — Tavis Smiley’s summary of Martin Luther King’s philosophy.

I have a dream, too
and on the cold days I fear
that a dream is all it will ever be

but when my boys are playing
laughing in the sun-warmed yard
I am hopeful for our future

/ / /

part of a river of stones

Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.

– From the essay “A Poem Of Difficult Hope” in Berry’s book What Are People For?

John M. Roll, 63
Gabriel Zimmerman, 30
Christina Green, 9
Dorothy Morris, 76
Dorwin Stoddard, 76
Phyllis Schneck, 79

it’s not a stone
it’s a country
and it’s sinking

/ / /

part of a river of stones

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Photo (C) New York Times/Associated Press

this changes nothing

you know that, don’t you?
in a few days we’ll go back to our coma
back to our flat-screen televisions
our high-definition getaways
six people? nowhere near enough
at this point, we’d need rivers of blood
flowing past the grocery store
submerging the church pews
to even catch our attention for more
than a 24-hour news cycle
for shock value I could start listing
the daily death tolls
of those without health care
or the number of children who go to bed
hungry or abused each night
right here, in the richest…
but you know the story
or choose not to know it
for less shock value
(because who really cares about them?)
I could tell you how many civilians
were killed today in Iraq or Afghanistan
or Gaza or Pakistan or Yemen
by us or by our allies or with our weapons
but what’s the use?
a new season of your favorite show
will start soon and you’ll plop down
on your couch with some popcorn
or a nice plate of nachos
and go back to sleep
in a few weeks you’ll have to
Google this date to figure out
what this poem is about
and in another few weeks after that
so will I

(via Sociological Images.)

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This is poem #28 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. Today’s prompt was to write a “what really happened” poem. This poem is about the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre near Sidney, Australia. What happens there is horrifying. I learned about it through the work of Dan Burke (twitter.com/proudreader) via his appearances on the indispensable Citizen Radio.

Villawood

We told them to come and it would be safe.
They were running away. Escaping.
We were a return trip, back across the Styx
toward the stairway that leads to the living.
By the thousands they came. Pleading.
It’s just over this way, we said, through this gate.
And we shut it behind them, locked them in.
Of all people to imprison refugees, doing it here
has a special irony. Here in a land born in prison.
On ground we stole from an ancient people.
Our blood baptism brought forth a new religion.
And now we sacrifice their children — refugee
children — on the altar of our merciless god.
In truth, we’re grateful when they sew
their mouths shut, because their screams
pierce the night and steal from us our dreams
of beer and song and beautiful women.
And when they hang themselves or jump
they spare us the expense of the slow death
we were always planning to give them.
There is a boat across the Styx, and a staircase.
And at the top of the stairs, a gate.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
And welcome to Villawood.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This is poem #27 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. It’s almost over. Today’s prompt was to write a “blame the (blank)” poem. It’s quite possible this poem was impacted by how I spent most of my afternoon.

blame the brown people

for standing under all those bombs we dropped
getting themselves killed
didn’t they know enough to get out of the way?

sure, the cluster munitions and the food packets
were the same basic color and shape
but Jesus-H-Christ-on-a-crutch
how goddamned stupid are those Afghan and Iraqi kids?

I think they mostly hate us ’cause we’re right about everything
that would annoy anyone
don’t you remember the brainiac in high school
who you just wanted to punch until he went down
and stayed down?

Anyway, I think the next thing we ought to drop over there
is a picture of a bomb that says DON’T STAND UNDER THIS

Fuckin’ A right. Praise Jesus. Amen.

From You're Welcome, Indians!

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This is poem #22 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. Today’s prompt was to write a poem that takes a stand. As is often the case, this poem takes a stand … and a left turn into weird territory.

Protest

I am holding a sign, it says:
DON’T KISS HIM!
in block letters.
I wrote it last night, overcome
by righteous indignation.
I stand before you,
brothers and sisters,
as a man without a country.
A wanderer in the pale lands.
I have an expired passport –
the picture is an x-ray of my chest
with an arrow pointing to the middle
and the words “You Are Here”
in friendly red letters.
I will chain myself
to the gate of her house
while the bulldozers approach,
bent on my removal.
Brothers and sisters,
I will not waver in this struggle,
though history and time and
a thousand sharp words
cut me to the quick.
I have a dream that is becoming a nightmare.
This sign and these words are my gift to all of you.
Remember me.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

This is poem #16 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. The prompt was to write a “stacking” or “unstacking” poem. I struggled with it until this evening when I was re-watching Unforgivable Blackness – The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a documentary about the first black heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson. Then this came to me.

Weight
(for Jack Johnson)

in this pile are:

nearly one million gallons of African blood

enough wood to put a COLORED sign on every water fountain

with enough trees left over to hang those three-quarter people from

ten thousand or ten times ten thousand children ripped from their mothers

blood snap of the leather whip on the backs of who knows how many

no one knows how many becaue no one bothered to count

and I ask you:

what does this pile weigh?

and who is strong enough to lift it?

Poem #11 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. The prompt was to write a “no one wants” poem. Today is Veteran’s Day in the United States, so I decided to write an anti-war poem.

No One Wants To Stare Down The Barrel Of The Gun

No Senator’s child wants to
No Congressmember’s child wants to
No Wall Street titan’s child wants to
No president’s child wants to
No chairman of the board’s child wants to
No governor’s child wants to
No investment banker’s child wants to
No hedge fund manager’s child wants to
No weapons manufacturer’s child wants to
No GE or Lockheed Martin or Boeing executive’s child wants to
No Blackwater mercenary leader’s child wants to
No Fox News commentator’s child wants to
No Glenn Beck disciple’s child wants to
No Tea Party patriot’s child wants to
No driver-with-a-yellow-ribbon’s child wants to
No PTSD sufferer’s child wants to
No homeless veteran’s child wants to
No psychiatrist’s child wants to
No VA doctor’s child wants to
No four-star general’s child wants to
No Chairman of the Joint Chief’s child wants to
No grieving mother’s child wants to
No despondent sister’s child wants to
No welfare recipient’s child wants to
No latchkey child wants to
No working-three-jobs-father’s child wants to
No out-of-work father’s child wants to
No single mother’s child wants to
No woman of color’s child wants to
No poor white person’s child wants to
No rich white person’s child wants to
No double-wide trailer child wants to
No Darien, Connecticut mansion child wants to
No ripped jeans child wants to
No designer jeans child wants to
No subsidized lunch child wants to
No sushi lunch child wants to
No Iraqi child wants to
No Iranian child wants to
No Pakistani child wants to
No Yemeni child wants to
No Afghan child wants to
No Palestinian child wants to
No Israeli child wants to
No American child wants to

Poem #8 for the November Poem-A-Day challenge. Today’s prompt was to write a “slow down” or “speed up” poem. I watched the documentary Crips And Bloods: Made In America today, which starts by talking about the 1965 urban rebellion in Watts, Los Angeles. This poem is attempt to slow down one moment of the so-called riots.

Avalon

the brick leaves

                the young man’s hand

arcs gracefully through
                the air

the spotlight from the police car
                catches it in flight

tumbling now

t u m b l i n g

there is all the

W t O i R m L e D

                now the cop
                rises from his crouch
                head just above the door
                of his patrol car

he sights down the barrel of his pistol

sees the black head of the enemy

draws in breath, pauses to steady
                his aim

moves his index finger to the trigger

starts    to    squeeze

                a corner of the brick hits him
                just above his left eye
                tears through skin, chips bone
                one down

Watts burns

I’ve been a vegan for 24 hours and have already started fielding questions from friends and acquaintances about why I made this decision. Many of my friends (in particular, Jenn Cornish) have offered words of support and resources for navigating this new world. Thanks, all.

The Chain Of Events

If you’re reading this blog, you probably know something about me and the various things I’ve done with my life thus far. I’ve been a fairly active progressive as a union organizer, Green candidate for local office, anti-war organizer and bicycling advocate. During all that time, I’ve also been eating beef and chicken and fish and dairy products, and lots of them. Given that 99% of that meat comes from creatures who are abused, caged and tortured to varying degrees, that practice is ethically inconsistent with how I try to live the rest of my life. Up until this weekend, I just compartmentalized that issue and chalked it up to “it’s a complex world and you have to pick your battles.” Plus, I really like sushi and tonkatsu and eel and karaage and chicken flautas and and and.

Over the past week, I’ve been overdosing on past episodes of the show Citizen Radio, hosted by comedian Jamie Kilstein and political writer Alison Kilkenny. They are both vegans and couch their veganism in terms of social justice. That’s a very compelling argument and one that, as I mentioned, I’ve been willfully ignoring. On a recent show, they interviewed the progressive punk band Rise Against. At the end of the interview, Alison and Jamie asked the band to recommend things they found inspiring, and one of the band members recommended the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I got it from the library on Thursday and became a vegan yesterday.

Why Not A Vegetarian?

I initially thought I’d become a vegetarian and then maybe move on to being a vegan. The more I read about the issues, though, the more vegetarianism seems to fall short of the mark from an ethical and social justice perspective. It’s nearly impossible in this country to get dairy products or eggs from a source other than factory farming. I’m slightly more ambivalent about folks who raise their own chickens in small numbers to collect their eggs. Some of my very closest friends do this and care deeply for their chickens. They treat them humanely and let them live natural lives. These people are certainly the exception, not the rule, however, so it’s easier for me to cut those things out completely. (There’s also the fact that even the most humane treatment involves caging animals, but I haven’t really reached an opinion on this yet.)

I also like the idea of limiting animal consumption in other ways than just food. Being a vegan can impact the clothes and chemicals I use and some of the social interactions I have, and it also fits well with my anti-corporate philosophy.

Now What?

Well, now I have a lot of learning to do. I bought a vegan cookbook and got quite a few other resource suggestions from Jenn Cornish. I also need to examine the other areas of my life and the other purchases I make to see what needs to be modified and what alternatives exist. Citizen Radio is sponsored by Vegan Essentials, which is one source of products (not just food) made to vegan standards.

I also need to find more vegetables that I like and more ways to prepare them. I’ve never been a huge veggie fan, so I’m looking forward to expanding my horizons. I already eat (and in some cases cook) a lot of Japanese food without meat or fish or chicken, and I’m also a big fan of Indian food. I hope to add some other cuisines to my diet as well.

Another book I’m reading, Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World (Tofu Hound Press), suggested going “cold tofu” — become a vegan and commit to it for three weeks, with the idea that at the end of that time it will be easy to keep going. So that’s what I’m doing. Wish me luck!

A few months back my first book of poetry was published. It includes a poem called “Charity,” which gives a snapshot of a nurse in New Orleans as Katrina approached that city five years ago. When my book came out, I read that poem at a gathering of poets who had work published by the same press.

Later in the day, I overheard a poet from New Orleans talking about the fact that several non-NOLA poets had read Katrina or New Orleans poems, and this poet wasn’t particularly happy about that. A couple weeks later, at another poetry event, this poet mentioned that many New Orleans writers had struggled mightily after Katrina while non-native writers were publishing books and poems and essays about Katrina and New Orleans. The poet suggested that this was a form of theft – the non-NOLA writers were taking money and opportunity away from New Orleans writers.

I said on that day that I thought all artists – and all people, for that matter – had a right to make art about the things they feel strongly about. In my case, although I’ve sold some of my books, the total number is so small that it’s very difficult for me to believe that my tiny book with one Katrina poem is taking food off the table of anyone from New Orleans.

I can’t think of any public event that has had as deep an impact on me as Katrina and the subsequent engineering failures that flooded New Orleans. (Please note that I although I use “Katrina” as shorthand for the disaster, I’m fully aware that it wasn’t the storm that caused the flooding – it was the failure of the man-made structures that were installed to protect the city.)

I did a lot of crying at the end of August and the beginning of September in 2005. Like many Americans, I spent hours in front of the TV trying to understand what was happening in New Orleans. I also spent a lot of time on the phone with my friend Satoru Ohashi, a trumpeter I’d known since I was an exchange student in Japan in 1991-92. Satoru lived in New Orleans and was scheduled to start a graduate program in jazz performance in the fall as part of the Louis Armstrong Quintet at the University of New Orleans. Now he was staying with a family member of the founder of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band several hours north of New Orleans and trying to figure out what to do next. UNO wasn’t going to be opening up anytime soon and he needed to be in school to stay in this country. I was living in Rochester, NY, at the time and was working with friends on the faculty at the Eastman School of Music there to see whether they could help him.

A few days after Katrina hit, Rochester held its annual Labor Day parade. I worked for a labor union at the time that had many members in the hotels and casinos of New Orleans. I printed up thousands of flyers with information about the union’s Katrina relief fund and passed those flyers out (with the help of a fellow employee) to everyone in the parade and to the crowds along the route. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

I was a political radical long before Katrina, but the government response to the disaster was still worse than I could have imagined. As I watched our leaders leave an entire city to die, I felt as though the final veil had been pulled from my eyes and I finally saw this country for what it had become. Yes, millions of people contributed money to the relief effort, and thousands traveled to New Orleans to assist in the relief and recovery efforts. But as the waters rose and dead bodies floated through the streets, our government seemed unable and unwilling to help its own people. Sure, we didn’t care much for the civilian casualties we were inflicting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but our own citizens? How could this be happening?

Where were you when MLK or JFK or RFK were assassinated? When Armstrong walked on the moon? When Pearl Harbor was attacked? Those are the questions that have defined generations of Americans. For some people, 9/11 is the contemporary moment that changed everything. Certainly our nation has never been the same, and our downward slide shows no signs of halting anytime soon.

For me, though, Katrina is the defining public moment in my life. It is the clear demarcation line before which I had some shreds of confidence in our government’s unwillingness to let its own people perish on their own soil. After Katrina, that confidence – tenuous as it had been – was gone. I felt as if the ground beneath my feet had shifted and I couldn’t quite catch my balance.

Five years later I wrote “Charity” and included it in a book of poems that otherwise have nothing to do with Katrina. The poem was also published (under a different title) in Blue Collar Review, a journal of working-class literature. I’ve also interviewed musicians from New Orleans on The Jazz Session, my online jazz interview show. Sometimes those interviews were explicitly about the storm and its aftermath (such as my interviews with Terence Blanchard and Andrew Lamb). At other times, what happened in August 2005 was present in the interviews or mentioned, but not the main topic of conversation. For the first two years of The Jazz Session, I featured a “Cause of the Month” and encouraged listeners to donate. Several of those causes were charities in New Orleans such as Musicians Village or the Tipitina Foundation.

As we commemorate the fifth anniversary of the storm and the human failures that devastated a city I’ve never set foot in, I still grapple with my place in the story that is New Orleans. I worry about being a cultural tourist, as suggested by the poet I mentioned above. But deep inside I know that’s not true. I don’t feel the way I feel because I want to make a buck or because it’s trendy to like New Orleans. I feel this way because what happened there happened to all of us. Because of all of us. We’re all New Orleanians now. And it isn’t over yet.

Highly recommended political commentary, interviews and comedy from Jamie Kilstein and Allison Kilkenny.

The Deepwater Horizon oil platform ablaze on April 21, 2010. Credit: U.S. Coast Guard.

I’m pleased to announce that “The Last Piece Of Ice Under The Sky” and “deepwater horizon” are now featured at Poets For Living Waters, a poetic response to the oil crisis in the Gulf.

My poem “deepwater horizon” was published yesterday in State of Emergency: Chicago Poets Address The Gulf Crisis. You can read it here.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

BP chief Tony Hayward. (Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters)

deepwater horizon

ironic, choosing a name
implying distant vision
when the one thing you
can’t do is see

white belly bobs
pointing at the sun
like the face of a flower
or a tree seeking nourishment

but the sun has set
on this day of days
the long night has begun
under a blanket of oil

the Cayuhoga burned
at least thirteen times
oozing not flowing, said Time
magazine with its barrels of ink

the word “gulf” comes from
kolpos, a Greek word meaning
bosom, the chest, the repository
of emotion and intimacy

now we surround the heart
of the world with the heavy ooze
of consumption, the debilitating murk
of driving by yourself with the radio on

nineteen million barrels
each and every day
seven hundred ninety-eight million gallons
each and every day

and that’s just one country
one nation living the dream
the chosen people of a god
who created the dinosaurs

solely to power our factories
propel our cars, fuel our
wildest fantasies, a pornography
of petroleum delights

you can’t get it off unless
you scrape it off with a tool
something no bird can manage
no fish can finagle

it’s like napalm without the fire
smothering, covering
a deadly skin that can’t be shed
can’t be burned off

in Los Angeles, in New York,
in New Orleans, in Chicago,
in towns you’ve never visited
in towns I’ll never see

a man, a woman, a kid with
a new license
looks at his sneakers, her bike
the bus schedule

and grabs the keys instead
turns the engine over
hears the oil-fueled explosion
then turns up the radio

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I enjoy the visual work of Joanne Johns, whose blog I highly recommend. Today’s offering is in that spirit. As for the text: When you include multiple links in a Facebook status update, a window pops up asking you to type in two words to prove that you’re human and not a spambot. I’ve been saving those words for a while now, and this poem uses all of the words I’ve saved, plus some others thrown in for good measure. The title of the poem comes from a quotation from Melissa Harris-Lacewell, whose work I respect very much.

Click the image to see a larger version.

Listen to this poem using the player above. The music is “Down By The Salley Gardens,” performed on tin whistle by Jason Crane.

Another Song For Occupations

Walt didn’t mean invaders
he meant good work, done well
not camo-clad crusaders
turning Gaza into hell

not Kabul and not Baghdad
or next to Kandahar
a mother or a granddad
when is the bridge too far?

Walt thought of driving carts
of crossing on the ferry
hat doffed to gentler arts
eating, drinking, merry

not strafed by chuckling guns
the toys of discontent
not being forced to run
or tortured to repent

Walt never dreamt of walls
cutting parent off from child
obscuring blood relations
casting friends into the wild

although he’d been through war time
had soothed the soldiers’ pains
he’d thought that there’d be more time
to reap those hard-won gains

but now the jobs he spoke of
are gone, sailed overseas
Walt’s song for occupations
has faded on the breeze

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Oh Lord

Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me
When Charles wrote that,
the (magic) mushroom
seemed like a very real possibility.
Like there could be a day
when there were no more days,
when spring would jump
straight to winter
and the switch would get stuck.

Now his words sound quaint and old-timey,
like interring the Japanese
or smallpox blankets
or the city of gold that was exchanged
for dark flesh. Like bomber blackouts
on the West Coast and ships
in Davey Jones’ locker,
sent there by folks flapping their gums.

We don’t worry ’bout that no more.
We have seen the enemy and they are winning.
With friends like we’ve got, it’s just as well
Dastardly Dan leaves that girl tied to the tracks.
She’d better pray the train kills her,
because her insurance won’t cover just
losing a limb or two. That’s an act of God,
they’ll say. The Big Guy doesn’t like it
when you don’t pay your rent.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

My first stab at a visual poem. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Listen to this poem by pressing the play button above.

A Blackfoot woman

I am not an Indian

My great-great-great-great grandmother
was a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian.
People say full-blooded not because
they have any proof,
but because it sounds wild, native.
If you do the math, that makes me
1.5% Blackfoot, and not very wild at all.
Say what you will about Ward Churchill;
he was right that all our accomplishments
as a country, all our technology, all our freedom,
all our music and poetry and art and dance and theater,
is being created on land that we stole from people
whose names we don’t even remember.
In college, my roommate’s best friend
paid less for his tuition because he was
above some arbitrary threshold
of Native American ancestry.
Not full-blooded, but bloody enough.
He was generously allowed
to learn quote-history-unquote
in a government building on the very land
his ancestors occupied before they became
little more than discount coupons for the state.
Another branch of my family has lived
in New England since 1638.
We never owned slaves, you’ll hear them
attest proudly, and it appears to be true.
Less lauded is my some-number-of-greats
uncle John Flanders, who served
with distinction in the army of Gen. John Sullivan,
helping to rid upstate New York of the Iroquois.
Sullivan’s troops burned and shot and hung and scattered
the people of many nations, including the Cayuga.
The army destroyed their town of Coreorgonel, and in its place was
established Ithaca, now a haven for higher education and
an oasis for studiers of organic farming and
Native American spirituality.
Living at Coreorgonel were the remnants of the Tutelo people,
who’d been forced from their homes
on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky,
and who were taken in by the Cayugas. It has been
112 years since any human being spoke the Tutelo language.
Sitting on a stage at the Tokyo Film Festival, director Chris Eyre
(of the Cheyenne-Arapaho, remember them?)
was asked by a member of the audience whether he preferred
to be called “Indian” or “Native American.”
“We have so many other problems to deal with
that we don’t have much time to worry about
what we’re called,” he said.

Happy Presidents Day!

Citizenship 101

close the blinds
snuff the candle
fasten the shutters
douse the lamp
pull the shades
don’t ask questions
believe the lie
smile and nod
obey the law
cover your ears
shut your mouth
take your seat
toe the line
pull your weight
watch your language
step right up
place your bets
take your pick
know your place
keep the peace
respect your elders
follow the rules
take it easy
expect the worst
don’t ask why
clean your plate
eat your veggies
wipe your feet
find your name
get in line
sign right here
read the label
write this down
answer the question
raise your hand
recite the pledge
say your prayers
sit up straight
stop right there
do your chores
wash the dishes
do the laundry
empty the trash
mow the lawn
shovel the walk
walk the dog
mind your manners
stand your post
post no bills
salute an officer
straighten your tie
tie your shoes
bow your head
kiss the ring
don’t be late
tote that barge
lift that bail
pay your taxes
pay your bills
pay the fine
pay the piper
follow the crowd
tell the truth
name the names
reveal your sources
betray your friends
kill your enemies
respect the flag
swear your loyalty
sit back down
swear your loyalty
sit back down
swear your loyalty
sit back down
swear your loyalty
sit back down

From a Facebook exchange today. You need to read the initial link for the rest to make sense.

Sonya posted a link.
The Tornado, the Lutherans, and Homosexuality

“What do you all think?”

Will:
WOW! I’m sure they’ll miss the overtones of this.

Graham:
Proclaiming truth and extending grace. It made me think of the verse in Proverbs 24:26 that states “an honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.”

Jason Crane
Remarkably offensive.

Meli:
sound thinking. it is a very serious problem for the church to feel she has the right to decide whether or not something is sin when God’s Word very clearly states that it is sin.

Jason Crane:
A gay man is stranded in a sailboat, and a wind comes up and he reaches shore; does that mean God loves gays?

Sonya:
Jason, I think the question for me goes back to the probability issue – what the heck is the probability of this just happening. The meteorologists happened to be clueless. That is where this differs to me a bit from an event such as a tsunami which is the result of an earthquake that was predicted and noticed, or a hurricane that was tracked for days. This sort of came out of nowhere and left to go nowhere…

And, yes, the answer is God does love gays. He loves us all. He just cannot be with sin.

Thank you also, for reading my page. I am grateful for your friendship!

Jason Crane:
I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor. In this case, is it more likely that a meteorological event happened, or that an incorporeal invisible entity made a political statement by making the wind blow?

Plus, how do you know it wasn’t Zeus telling the world that he dislikes Lutherans? Or Vishnu declaring hatred for the Minnesota Twins? There is exactly as much evidence to support both those positions as there is to support a Christian reading.

And if logic isn’t enough: How does God loving everyone mesh with creating a potentially deadly tornado near a densely populated area?

The thing that I find hurtful is that it’s OK to demonize gay people, but not to criticize the frankly crazy notion that an invisible being decides where tornadoes go based on conversations about individual sexuality.

Your comment under the article is “What do you all think?” If by “you all” you meant “you all who think the same way I do,” then you should be more specific about inviting only certain types of comment.

Yesterday I posted this uncharacteristic message as my Facebook status:

“Hey, all you opponents of gay marriage: F*CK YOU! (What? That’s not helpful? Oh, sorry. But, uh, f*ck you bigots anyway, OK?)”

This, as you might imagined, generated quite a few comments:

Dean Bowman at 1:36pm April 23: What about opponents of marriage?

Heather Dingman-Glenn at 1:40pm April 23: The majority of students at my school feel that all rights should be equal and are open to all kinds of relationships. However, I would say the boys have it worse than the girls. This is a high school where the majority of the parents are military.

Jason Crane at 2:48pm April 23: @Dean: I’m with you, man. State recognition of unions for legal purposes, and then let folks follow religious practices if they choose, with no state sanction or recognition whatsoever. (Unless, of course, you were just being funny.)

Wendy Ramsay at 2:59pm April 23: Snaps to that!

Julie White at 3:23pm April 23: Ideally, I think that the majority of the rights that come with marriage should just be given to people as basic human rights–you know, like health care, adoption for anyone who’s a fit parent and wants to make a family with anyone else–but as long as we live in a state that thinks that monogamous committed relationships should be rewarded, then … Read Morelet’s at least be equal about that. But in Julie’s utopia, no one kind of human relationship (as long as it’s consensual and doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s rights)would be privileged over another (I know, dream on)… off my soapbox…but this is why I actually have a hard time with the gay marriage issue…a lot of ambivalence.

Jason Crane at 4:07pm April 23: @Julie: Right on! Although I don’t think any of those rights should be given. We’ve already got them. I think we need to stop letting the corporate state take them away. But that’s just me being a punk. And shamelessly stealing from Utah Phillips.

Brenda Yarger Abel at 4:27pm April 23: Wow! Way to promote tolerance.

Jennifer Cornish at 4:59pm April 23
I’m strongly opposed to asshole marriage. Letting assholes get legally married just sullies it for the rest of us. It’s just sick. I mean, there are all kinds of statistics showing that assholes are behind the majority of domestic violence attacks, robberies, burglaries, bombings, wars and crappy BSG season finales. And I’m pretty sure that being … Read Morean asshole is very strongly correlated with being a pedophile. I mean, how can we let these people get married and (GOD FORBID) have kids? It’s like they ruin marriage for us decent people who just want to raise our non-asshole kids to be non-assholes. I’m not saying they should be discriminated against for being assholes. I mean, people can be however they want to be in the privacy of their own homes, but when public schools teach that it’s ok to be an asshole, that’s where I draw the line. Once we let them get married, they’re going to turn the rest of us into assholes too.

Jason Crane at 5:14pm April 23: Amen!

Jason Crane at 5:59pm April 23: @Brenda: It’s always hard to tell if someone’s kidding or not on this here Facebook. But in any case, I’m kinda over being tolerant of intolerance.

Jennifer Cornish at 7:57pm April 23: Is tolerance of bigotry ‘tolerance’? Interesting question.

Brenda Yarger Abel at 10:12pm April 23: Is it not possible to oppose gay marriage, without being intolerant of those who support it? Since bigotry, by definition, is intolerance of anothers beliefs religion or opinion, it would appear that the one F-bombing those who disagree would be a better example of the bigot.

Jennifer Cornish at 2:30am April 24: I think that by saying ‘Fuck You’ to gay-marriage opponents, Jason is being less of a bigot than those people fighting to take away the right for responsible, consenting citizens to get married and live their own lives in peace. I wouldn’t try to actively take away a bigot’s right to be a bigot.

Jason Crane at 7:13am April 24: Thanks, Jenn. You’ve said it better than I could have. I’m just tired of having people’s religious views imposed on my supposedly secular government. Discrimination and bigotry in the name of religious opinion are still discrimination and bigotry. No excuses.

Many people who are smarter than I have made the following point more intelligently, but here goes: You don’t get to shout “intolerance” when people oppose your bigotry. If you try to deny people their civil rights based on your religious preferences, then you are a bigot, and no one — absolutely no one — is bound to respect your point of view or shy away from denigrating it.

Dan Wallach wrote an interesting piece today titled Open Source vs. Disclosed Source Voting Systems, in which he discusses the need for open source software to be used in our voting machines if we’re to have any hope of electoral transparency. Here’s an excerpt:

Sometimes, working on voting seems like running on a treadmill. Old disagreements need to be argued again and again. As long as I’ve been speaking in public about voting, I’ve discussed the need for voting systems’ source code to be published, as in a book, to create transparency into how the systems operate. Or, put another way, trade secrecy is anathema to election transparency. We, the people, have an expectation that our election policies and procedures are open to scrutiny, and that critical scrutiny is essential to the exercise of our Democracy. (Cue the waving flags.)

And one more excerpt:

Voting systems, in this regard, are just like Microsoft Windows. We have to assume, since voting machines are widely dispersed around the country, that attackers will have the opportunity to tear them apart and extract the machine code. Therefore, it’s fair to argue that source disclosure, or the lack thereof, has no meaningful impact on the operational security of our electronic voting machines. They’re broken. They need to be repaired.

The entire article is worth your time.

Software journalist Bruce Byfield has an interesting post today about free software evangelism and why he keeps his mouth shut at parties.

I tend to feel — and act — this way regarding most evangelism. It’s usually not fun to have political discussions at parties because people have so few facts at their command. Maybe it’s my personality, but I find it very hard to have “discussions” between entrenched positions where there is no hope of movement.

Look, I know the guy’s a centrist, OK? I know he’s not the Messiah. But I’m still quite disappointed:

In a stunning defense of President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, President Barack Obama has broadened the government’s legal argument for immunizing his Administration and government agencies from lawsuits surrounding the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping efforts.

In fact, a close read of a government filing last Friday reveals that the Obama Administration has gone beyond any previous legal claims put forth by former President Bush.

Responding to a lawsuit filed by a civil liberties group, the Justice Department argued that the government was protected by “sovereign immunity” from lawsuits because of a little-noticed clause in the Patriot Act. The government’s legal filing can be read here (PDF).

For the first time, the Obama Administration’s brief contends that government agencies cannot be sued for wiretapping American citizens even if there was intentional violation of U.S. law. They maintain that the government can only be sued if the wiretaps involve “willful disclosure” — a higher legal bar.

The text above is from an article by Raw Story’s John Byrne.

I didn’t expect Obama to do the right thing on the war(s), or to be some great progressive leader. But I did expect him to at least break with the Bush administration when it came to respecting the basic tenets of the Constituion and U.S. law. Apparently that faith was misplaced. Sad.

By the way, if you want to help the Electronic Frontier Foundation do its good work in this and other cases, visit their Web site and toss them some money.

Find out more at the Document Freedom Day site.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell and James Perry co-authored this piece for The Nation. Here’s an excerpt:

When New Orleans flooded in August 2005, the Democratic Party was a shambles, locked out of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. For nearly a decade the Democrats played defense against a Republican onslaught initiated by Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America. After September 11, Democrats had joined with Republicans in giving President Bush unprecedented executive authority, thereby helping to erode civil liberties at home and authorize ill-advised aggression overseas. In 2004 Democrats were keenly aware that a solid majority of Americans believed it was unpatriotic to protest the Iraq War. So instead of articulating a clear alternative to Bush’s militarism, they nominated John Kerry on the strength of his record as a solider. Even so, they found it impossible to outmaneuver the existing commander in chief.

In August 2005 the Democratic Party had no clear leader, no identifiable platform, no winning national coalition and little political courage.

Then the force of Hurricane Katrina devastated the inadequate levees surrounding New Orleans. Americans watched as the city flooded, the power went out, and food and water became scarce. They watched as emergency shelters became centers of disease, starvation, agony and death. The nation watched in horror, but no mass evacuation began and Air Force One did not land. As the crisis wore on, the public became increasingly confused by and angry about the lack of coordinated response to alleviate human suffering and evacuate trapped citizens. As the waters rose, President Bush’s approval sank.

Read the rest of the article.

A classic Burma-Shave sign poem

From today’s Albany Times-Union:

Greenfield residents use touch of humor to push town for road repairs

By DENNIS YUSKO, Staff writer
First published: Tuesday, March 10, 2009

GREENFIELD — Denton Road residents have adopted an old advertising technique to protest the street’s poor condition.

Upset that the nearly 2-mile corridor straddling Greenfield and Saratoga Springs hasn’t been repaved in years, neighbors plugged campaign-style signs with balloons into nine bales of hay and planted them along the road.

In an echo of the old rhyming roadside ads for Burma-Shave shaving cream, the green placards form a jingle for passing motorists: “Try to avoid, The hazards here, And say out loud, Elections are near! A safe road, Is just a mirage, But we do have, A new town garage, Thank you Greenfield!”

Read the rest of the article at the TU site.

Poet, teacher, author and Chicano activist Juan Felipe Herrera has collected some of his most provocative and autobiographical writing in this volume. These “undocuments” chronicle Herrera’s travels in the U.S. and Mexico, and his relentless search for the soul and story of a people.

Herrera’s poetry is shouted with an upraised fist at one moment, intoned with a somber brow the next. He has no illusions, but his best work is powered by a grand vision of the past and the future.

Some of the work is helped by a knowledge of Spanish, which I don’t possess. Even so, I had no trouble being caught up in the sound and spirit of Herrera’s writing.

We need more documentary poetry like this to capture the real history of this country, and of the peoples and cultures within it.

Highly recommended.

Luxury Hotel

Room after room after room with no stopping, no let-up.
How many in a year? Five thousand? Six thousand?
The human body can only take so much.
So many liftings of the mattress, so many bends of the knees.
Then there are the chemicals, the solvents, the cleaners.
Scrubbing with your face right down in the fumes,
breathing deeply from the exertion.
Cracked skin, aching muscles, arms like rubber.
You can’t even lift your baby girl for a kiss.
Other people’s pubic hair, other people’s vomit and blood.
One time there was a man hiding in the closet.
He put one finger to his lips and told you to be quiet,
but how could you be quiet when there was a man in the closet?
So you screamed and ran and they gave you half a day off.
Another time you begged and begged for shoes,
the kind with the special soles so you wouldn’t slip.
After days and weeks and months, they ordered them
on the very day your head hit the tile floor,
the same day they cornered you in the manager’s office
and nobody called for a doctor, the same day
you passed out waiting for the bus and a passerby
took you to the emergency room. A stranger had to do that.
There are seven Dominicans and three women from Jamaica
and five Senegalese and one Vietnamese lady in the laundry
with no English who keeps to herself in the mouth of the furnace.
Eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours if it’s busy.
Then it’s home to cook and do your own laundry and help
Javi and Lisa with their homework. Make the lunches
for the next day. Shrink into the bed and fall asleep
to the throbbing in your joints. The alarm at 4 a.m.
Then it’s room after room after room with no stopping, no let-up.
How many in a year? Five thousand? Six thousand?
The human body can only take so much.

Journalist and comic book artist Joe Sacco has been rightly praised for this intense account of his time in the Palestinian territories during the first Intifada. Sacco decided from the start to tell the Palestinian side of the story — not to aim for the false balance of much of modern journalism. His graphic novel is primarily a series of interviews with Palestinians, some arranged in advance and some on the spur of the moment.

If you enjoyed Art Spiegelman’s MAUS books, you’ll probably like Sacco’s work.

Highly recommended.

This brilliant graphic novel tells the unvarnished story of the development and amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The book is no hagiography of the document or its authors. Hennessey and McConnell point out the flaws in the Constitution and its unfortunate application to restrict the rights of many Americans.

In total, though, this book, like the best history books, inspires both an appreciation for past events and a desire to improve conditions going forward. Hennessy and McConnell are to be commended for furthering the cause of Constitutional literacy. Get this for every middle- and high-school student you know, and get a copy for yourself, too.

Highly recommended.

In 2005, I interviewed biologist and noted atheist Richard Dawkins for my talk show, The Jason Crane Show. Here’s an mp3 of the interview from my subsequent 2006 podcast of The Jason Crane Show:

Interview with Richard Dawkins (mp3 – 31:26, 2 April 2005)

This message — except the “probably” — has been approved by Richard Dawkins, scientist and author of “The God Delusion.”
(Akira Suemori/Associated Press)

New York Times: Atheists Decide to Send a Message, on 800 Buses

This is an excerpt from a documentary called “Playing For Change: Peace Through Music”. Thanks to Doug Ramsey for the link.

The current issue of The Nation has a very disturbing report on white vigilantism in New Orleans after Katrina. Here’s a description along with a link to pressure the NoLa authorities to investigate these crimes:

A new report in The Nation[1] documents what many have claimed for years — for some Black New Orleanians the threat of being killed by White vigilantes in Katrina’s aftermath became a bigger threat than the storm itself.

After the storm, White vigilantes roamed Algiers Point shooting and, according to their own accounts, killing Black men at will — with no threat of a police response. For the last three years, the shootings and the police force’s role in them have been an open secret to many New Orleanians. To date, no one has been charged with a crime and law enforcement officials have refused to investigate.

The report is helpful, but given Lousiana’s horrible record on protecting its Black citizens, justice will only come if we demand it.

I’ve joined ColorOfChange in calling on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, and the U.S. Department of Justice–to conduct a full investigation of these crimes and any police cover-up. Will you join me? It takes only a moment:

ColorOfChange.org

In the two weeks after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, the media created a climate of fear with trumped-up stories of Black lawlessness. Meanwhile, an armed group of White vigilantes took over the Algiers Point neighborhood in New Orleans and mercilessly hunted down Black people. “It was great!” said one vigilante. “It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it.”

“The Nation’s” article tells the story of Donnell Herrington, Marcel Alexander, and Chris Collins–a group of friends who were attacked by shotgun-wielding White men as they entered Algiers Point on September
1, 2005. As they tried to escape, Herrington recalls, their attackers shouted, “Get him! Get that nigger!” He managed to get away. Alexander and Collins were told that they would be allowed to live on the condition
that they told other Black folks not to come to Algiers Point. Herrington, shot in the neck, barely survived.

And there’s the story of Henry Glover, who didn’t survive after being shot by an unknown assailant.[2] Glover’s brother flagged down a stranger for help, and the two men brought Glover to a police station. But instead of receiving aid, they were beaten by officers while Henry Glover bled to death in the back seat of the stranger’s car. A police officer drove off in the car soon afterward. Both Glover’s body and the car were found burnt to cinders a week later. It took DNA analysis to identify the body.

These are only a few of the stories of Black folks who were accosted in Algiers Point, and you can read more in The Nation. But unless you speak out, we may never learn the full extent of the violence. Journalists have encountered a wall of silence on the part of the authorities. The coroner had to be sued to turn over autopsy records. When he finally complied, the records were incomplete, with files on several suspicious deaths suddenly empty. The New Orleans police and the District Attorney repeatedly refused to talk to journalists about Algiers Point. And according to “The Nation” journalist A.C. Thompson, “the city has in nearly every case refused to investigate or prosecute people for assaults and murders committed in the wake of the storm.”

The Nation article is important, but it’s just a start. For more than three years now, these racist criminals have by their own admission gotten away with murder while officials in New Orleans have systematically evaded any kind of accountability. We have to demand it.

Please join us in calling on state and federal officials to investigate these brutal attacks and the conduct of Orleans Parish law enforcement agencies, and please ask your friends and family to do the same.

ColorOfChange.org

Thanks.

—-

1. “Katrina’s Hidden Race War,” The Nation, 12-18-2008

2. “Body of Evidence,” The Nation, 12-18-2008

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/12/21/responding-to-the-post-katrina-race-war-in-new-orleans/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/12/17/tasini-to-paterson-are-you-insane-dave/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/12/17/tasini-to-paterson-are-you-insane-dave/#comments Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:07:03 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=716

Labor writer and activist Jonathan Tasini

Jonathan Tasini has written a simple and compelling piece about NY Gov. David Paterson’s call for pension givebacks for state employees. Here’s the core of Tasini’s argument:

We could wipe out the budget deficit–or, certainly trim it down to something trivial–by raising taxes on the very wealthy and going back to a more progressive taxation system that we had in the 1970s. You know this: if the state replaced the existing rate structure (consisting of 5 brackets with rates ranging from 4.0 to 6.85%) with one consisting of 14 brackets with rates ranging from 2.0 to 15.0%, we could bring in $6-7 billion more, and perhaps as high as $11 billion.

Under this plan, 95 percent of the state’s taxpayers—95 percent of the people—would receive a tax cut. Like the proposals championed by President-elect Barack Obama, a more progressive taxation system would be easing the burden on the people who are the most at risk in our economically troubled times. The top one percent of taxpayers—whose average income is $2.685 million—would see their taxes go up about 5.4 percent. The four percent below that top one percent—those people whose average income is $326,000—would have their taxes rise 1.4 percent.In fact, the top five percent would have their dues burden slightly reduced because higher state taxes would lower their federal obligations.

Everyone else would realize a reduction in their taxes.

I highly recommend the rest of the article, too.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/12/17/tasini-to-paterson-are-you-insane-dave/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/12/15/if-the-shoe-fits/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/12/15/if-the-shoe-fits/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:09:46 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=705

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/12/15/if-the-shoe-fits/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/12/06/action-and-action-now/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/12/06/action-and-action-now/#comments Sat, 06 Dec 2008 14:36:41 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=701

This week, Obama takes another cue from FDR as he calls for “action and action now” in his weekly address.

There’s a great exhibit at the FDR Library & Museum called “Action And Action Now” that I highly recommend.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/12/06/action-and-action-now/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/26/larry-summers-on-spreading-the-wealth/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/26/larry-summers-on-spreading-the-wealth/#comments Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:15:19 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=695 From today’s New York Times:

Mr. Summers has spent much of his career tweaking fellow liberals with arguments he considers unpleasant truths — on the dangers of budget deficits, the benefits of capitalism and other subjects. But he seems to have decided that conservative orthodoxies have become a vastly bigger threat to good economic policy than liberal ones. His favorite argument today is one that instead drives some conservatives nuts.

It goes like this: To undo the rise in income inequality since the late ’70s, every household in the top 1 percent of the distribution, which makes $1.7 million on average, would need to write a check for $800,000. This money could then be pooled and used to send out a $10,000 check to every household in the bottom 80 percent of the distribution, those making less than $120,000. Only then would the country be as economically equal as it was three decades ago.

Read the rest of the story.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/26/larry-summers-on-spreading-the-wealth/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/26/tim-wise-on-the-barbiturate-left/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/26/tim-wise-on-the-barbiturate-left/#comments Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:40:11 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=691

The brilliant Tim Wise is back with an inspiring piece on how and why to avoid the usual cynicism of the left. Here’s an excerpt:

The humorlessness of the far left — to which I remain connected ideologically if not organizationally — has always struck me as one of its greatest weaknesses. People like to laugh, they like to smile, they like to be joyful, and an awful lot of hardened leftists seem almost utterly incapable of doing any of these things. It’s as if they have all taken a pledge that there should be no laughter until the revolution, or some such shit. No positivity, no hope, no happiness so long as people are still poor and exploited and being murdered by cops, and victimized by United States militarism, or performing as wage slaves for global capital, or eating meat, or driving cars. And they wonder why the left is so weak?

Now, in the wake of Barack Obama’s victory these barbiturate leftists are back in full effect, lecturing the rest of us about how naive we are for having any confidence whatsoever in him, or for voting at all, since “the Democrats and Republicans are all the same,” and he supports FISA and the war with Afghanistan, and all kinds of other messed up policies just like many on the right. Those of us who find any significance in the election of a man of color in a nation founded on white supremacy are fools who “drank the kool-aid,” unlike they, whose clear-headed radical consciousness leads them to recognize the superior morality of Ralph Nader, or the pure “scientific wisdom of chairman Bob Avakian,” or the intellectual profundity of their favorite graffiti bomb: “If voting changed anything it would be illegal.” Yeah, and if body piercings and anarchy tats changed anything, they would be too, and then what would some folks do to be “different?” (Note: there is nothing wrong with either type of adornment, but getting either or both doesn’t make you a revolutionary, any more than voting, that’s all I’m saying).

These are people who think being agitators is about pissing people off more than reaching out to them. So they pull out their “Buck Fush” signs at their repetitively irrelevant antiwar demonstrations, or their posters with W sporting a Hitler mustache, because that tends to work so well at convincing folks to oppose the slaughter in Iraq. But effectiveness isn’t what matters to them. What matters to them is raging against the machine for the sake of rage itself. Their message is simple: everything sucks, the earth is doomed, all cops are brutal, all soldiers are baby-killers, all people who work for corporations are evil, blah, blah, blah, right on down the line. It’s as if much of the left has become co-dependent with despondency, addicted to its own isolation, and enamored of its moral purity and unwillingness to work with mere liberals. In the name of ideological asceticism, they spurn the hard work of movement building and inspiring others to join the struggle, snicker at those foolish enough to not understand or appreciate their superior philosophical constructs, and then act shocked when their movements and groups accomplish exactly nothing. But honestly, who wants to join a movement filled with people who look down on you as a sucker?

The entire article is worth reading. Check it out.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/26/tim-wise-on-the-barbiturate-left/feed/ 2 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/15/obamas-first-weekly-video-address/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/15/obamas-first-weekly-video-address/#comments Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:54:47 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=683

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/15/obamas-first-weekly-video-address/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/14/fdr-library-museum-in-desperate-straits/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/14/fdr-library-museum-in-desperate-straits/#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:36:41 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=678

The New York Times reported recently that the FDR Presidential Library and Museum is in serious disrepair. In fact, conditions are so bad that the irreplaceable collections of documents from FDR’s presidency are endangered.

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum at Hyde Park, N.Y., the nation’s first presidential library, is literally falling apart. The roof leaks, the basement floods, asbestos is flaking from old steam pipes, an ancient electrical system could send the whole place up in smoke. This sorry situation is an insult to the person the library and museum honor: the founder of the New Deal, the greatest investment in our nation’s modern development.

The FDR Library and Museum has quickly become one of my favorite places in the country. I’ve been there several times now, most recently last weekend when my cousin Lynne and I went to see FDR’s grandson, Curtis Roosevelt, speak about his years in the White House.

Even more than Curtis Roosevelt’s talk, though, my main reason for going was to be inspired. Every time I go there I get a fresh dose of fire in the belly. After Obama was elected, I had a strong desire to go and stoke the flames again.

It’s vitally important that we protect our national history and FDR’s legacy. Please contact your representatives and senators and urge them to fund the restoration of the FDR Presidential Library and Museum. Thank you.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/14/fdr-library-museum-in-desperate-straits/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/14/franklin-delano-obama/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/14/franklin-delano-obama/#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:16:25 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=675

NYT columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman thinks FDR can be an inspiration for the Obama administration — but he thinks Obama needs to go further than FDR did in spending to revitalize the economy:

The political lesson is that economic missteps can quickly undermine an electoral mandate. Democrats won big last week — but they won even bigger in 1936, only to see their gains evaporate after the recession of 1937-38. Americans don’t expect instant economic results from the incoming administration, but they do expect results, and Democrats’ euphoria will be short-lived if they don’t deliver an economic recovery.

The economic lesson is the importance of doing enough. F.D.R. thought he was being prudent by reining in his spending plans; in reality, he was taking big risks with the economy and with his legacy. My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little.

In short, Mr. Obama’s chances of leading a new New Deal depend largely on whether his short-run economic plans are sufficiently bold. Progressives can only hope that he has the necessary audacity.

Read the story.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/14/franklin-delano-obama/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/13/president-elect-obama-on-the-employee-free-choice-act/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/13/president-elect-obama-on-the-employee-free-choice-act/#comments Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:23:54 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=672

Please sign the petition. Thanks!

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/13/president-elect-obama-on-the-employee-free-choice-act/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/11/racial-conservatism/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/11/racial-conservatism/#comments Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:20:48 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=669

This quote came from a story in today’s New York Times:

In Arkansas, which had among the nation’s largest concentration of counties increasing their support for the Republican candidate over the 2004 vote, “there’s a clear indication that racial conservatism was a component of that shift away from the Democrat,” said Jay Barth, a political scientist in the state.

“Racial conservatism”? I think they call that … um … racism. The first step in fixing the problem is using real words to describe it.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/11/racial-conservatism/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/11/kurt/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/11/kurt/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:00:08 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=667

Kurt Vonnegut would have been 86 today. In honor of his birthday, raise a glass to Indiana, which went blue this year. I’m sure that would have made Kurt happy.

After you lower that glass, use your hands to pick up one of Vonnegut’s books and read it.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/11/kurt/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/10/support-the-employee-free-choice-act/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/10/support-the-employee-free-choice-act/#comments Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:18:53 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=664

I’m a union organizer. It’s not an easy job. One of the main reasons why it’s so hard is that elections under the National Labor Relations Board rules don’t in any way resemble elections in our democracy. Employers regularly intimidate workers in forced group meetings and one-on-meetings. Even though it’s illegal, employers fire workers who try to organize unions. Employers have constant access to workers — both through conversations in the workplace, posting on employee bulletin boards, and notices included with paychecks. Workers are afforded none of these means of communication. The votes are usually conducted at the workplace, with workers often walking through a gauntlet of managers on their way to the ballot box.

These elections are more like elections in a one-party dictatorship.

The Employee Free Choice Act is trying to improve conditions for workers by allowing them to unionize through the card check process. This means that when a majority of employees sign a union card, the employer recognizes their union. This method respects workers’ rights without giving up their right to self-determination.

Please watch this video from the AFL-CIO, and then sign this petition in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Thanks!

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/10/support-the-employee-free-choice-act/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/08/dr-kings-dream-realized/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/08/dr-kings-dream-realized/#comments Sat, 08 Nov 2008 13:44:42 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=662

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/08/dr-kings-dream-realized/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/08/harlem-celebrates/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/08/harlem-celebrates/#comments Sat, 08 Nov 2008 13:37:36 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=660

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/08/harlem-celebrates/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/06/visions-of-selma/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/06/visions-of-selma/#comments Thu, 06 Nov 2008 04:59:47 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=648

Left: During the Selma march / Right: Barack Obama in Selma (Photo: Linda Stelter/Associated Press)

The New York Times also has a video of election reactions in Selma.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/06/visions-of-selma/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/obama-japan/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/obama-japan/#comments Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:13:20 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=644

The Associated Press: Japan’s Obama town celebrates namesake’s victory

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/obama-japan/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/walt-whitman-on-elections/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/walt-whitman-on-elections/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:25:10 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=641

• A poem for Election Day – The Boston Globe

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/walt-whitman-on-elections/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/bruuuuuuce-obama/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/bruuuuuuce-obama/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:32:38 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=639

Thanks to Jeff Vrabel for the link!

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/bruuuuuuce-obama/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/david-corn-on-the-obama-victory/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/david-corn-on-the-obama-victory/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:13:09 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=637

David Corn of Mother Jones magazine wrote a great piece today dissecting the Obama and McCain campaigns. I particularly liked this excerpt:

But his barrier-breaking victory was indeed change in itself. Consider this: Obama ended his campaign at a rally on Monday night in Manassas, Virginia, the site of Battle of Bull Run, the opening land battle of the Civil War, in which Union troops were routed and forced to retreat back to Washington, DC There before a crowd of 90,000 — young, old, black, white, affluent, working-class — Obama summed up his case:

“Tomorrow, you can turn the page on policies that have put greed and irresponsibility before hard work and sacrifice. Tomorrow, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class and create new jobs, grow this economy so everybody has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO but the secretary and the janitor, not just the factory owner but the men and women who work the factory floors. And tomorrow, you can end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election, that pits region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat, that asks us to fear at a time when we need to hope.”

A black man on the verge of being elected president said that.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/david-corn-on-the-obama-victory/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/last-night-i-watched/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/last-night-i-watched/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:42:11 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=632

Last Night I Watched
by Jason Crane

Last night I watched an American president-elect on the television and cried. Next to me was my wife Jennifer, tears running down her cheeks.

Last night I watched the awakening of a nation that had all but given up on its principles and ideals.

Last night I watched Jesse Jackson hold one finger to his trembling lips as he wept, the marathon runner finally crossing the finish line.

Last night I watched John Lewis talk about the unbelievable road from “Whites Only” bathrooms to steel truncheons on the Edmund Pettis Bridge to the steps of the Capitol.

Last night I watched an actor from The Color Purple rest her chin on the shoulder of a friend as she watched an African-American man speak about his future presidency.

Last night I watched an ocean of joyful tears give a gentle lift to the ship that is America.

Last night I watched Walt Whitman as he knelt down and pulled a blade of grass from the rich earth, singing.

Last night I watched as Kenyans danced on dusty ground, arms raised toward the glorious sun.

Last night I watched as a crack opened in the wall, and looking through, I could see the glimmering field of stars.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/last-night-i-watched/feed/ 1 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/unite-here-prez-on-obamas-victory/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/unite-here-prez-on-obamas-victory/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:50:29 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=626
A UNITE HERE election volunteer

I work for the labor union UNITE HERE. Our president, Bruce Raynor, put out this statement on Barack Obama’s victory:

STATEMENT FROM UNITE HERE GENERAL PRESIDENT BRUCE RAYNOR ON OBAMA VICTORY
November 4, 2008

New York – Barack Obama’s victory is a victory for working people across this country. Regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, sexual orientation – all working people have taken a giant step forward today.

Barack has renewed our faith in what is possible for those who are trying to stay in the middle class and for those who are seeking to become a part of the middle class.

With great vision, he talked with us about what he wants to accomplish for the American people. And with great candor, he called for every person to become engaged in the effort.

As the first labor union to endorse Barack, UNITE HERE took that call seriously. From the strength of our nearly one million members and retirees, we mobilized thousands to get out the vote in more than a dozen states. We knocked on more than 350,000 doors; and during this past weekend alone, we had more than 3,000 volunteers talking with voters in battleground states.

Barack’s insight and leadership drive a policy agenda that supports those working people who have formed a union, as well as those who have not yet formed a union. He is committed to ensuring that working families have wages that enable them to put food on the table, cutting taxes for 95 percent of workers and their families, securing healthcare for all Americans, promoting fair trade and not “free trade” that sends good jobs overseas, defending the right of workers to freely join unions by passing the Employee Free Choice Act, establishing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, fighting the growth of income inequality, and guaranteeing retirement security for all workers so that growing old does not mean growing poor.

With Barack’s victory, as well as Democratic gains in both the House and the Senate, we can make real reforms to improve the lives of every union member in this country and every worker who wants a union.

To be sure, the current economic crisis will present great challenges. But we are inspired by the change that is possible. And we believe in Barack Obama – a man who understands the experiences of working people. A man who, more than twenty years ago, took a job as a community organizer in Chicago to fight for families devastated by steel plant closings – to fight for working people.

UNITE HERE is a labor union representing 465,000 workers in the apparel, textile, hotel, food service, gaming, and laundry industries.

John in his UNITE HERE hat

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/unite-here-prez-on-obamas-victory/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/november-5-2008/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/november-5-2008/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:35:51 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=622

Poet Gerald Schwartz sent me his thoughts this morning:

For times, then,
All through our lives
We delight in a unity,
The great union,
Of our ventured selves
With what sustains
All possibility. We ride
The swell and are
The surf and with
Changed belief
Inner and outer
We find our talk
Turned to hope:
Our hope into truth:
For a time, early,
We become at home
In you, World.

–Gerald Schwartz

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/november-5-2008/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/otto-on-the-election/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/otto-on-the-election/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:31:06 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=620

My good friend Otto Bruno, host of the Sunday Music Festa on Jazz90.1 in Rochester, NY, sent out this message on Obama’s win:

Dear Nation:

Two quick observations: 1.) The grace and class of John McCain’s Concession Speech. It’s interesting and sad that many of the commentators remarked that the speech we heard Sen. McCain give tonight was the real John McCain. The John McCain who puts his country, and his service to that country, first. I wrote in a few of my e-mails over the past few months that John McCain was definitely a man deserving of our respect. Unfortunately for his campaign, I believe he did himself in through his choice of running mate, his pandering to the conservative-religious right, and his desperation in the final weeks of the campaign to lower the level of discourse to outrageous attacks. I don’t blame him because usually negative campaigning works. Tonight it did not.

I believe John McCain is sincere in his desire to help President-Elect Obama move the country forward. I also believe President-Elect Obama is sincere in his desire to have Sen. McCain help him do that. These guys understand the game, they both know better than anyone else how hard the last 20 months have been on themselves and their families. If anything, I imagine the shared experience of a grueling, Presidential campaign may make them even closer.

2.) The grace and class of Barack Obama’s Victory Speech. I remember seeing Obama four years ago and thinking, “Wow, this guy is good!” I never, EVER, thought he could be President – certainly not by 2008. He is, without doubt, the greatest speaker we’ve had as a President since FDR. He is the greatest speaker we’ve had in America since Martin Luther King who I think is the greatest speaker in our history. He was unbelievably gracious tonight. He went out of his way to praise John McCain, to tell the people who voted against him that he cares about their ideas and concerns. . . that he’s their President too. He acknowledged that he knew he hadn’t yet “earned their support.”

For the people who expect everything to be all right by January 21, 2009 put that idea aside right now. As our new President-Elect said this evening, this is just our chance, our opportunity to make those changes. There’s lots of hard work ahead.

I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder to be an American than I am tonight. As always, I’m cautious. My Uncle Bob will feel somewhat vindicated to see me write that when you’re as pessimistic and cynical as I’ve been for so many years it’s hard to really let yourself be happy. Pessimism is a habit and habits are hard to break. I know that. But that’s OK because I’m not ready to become Ollie Optimism all of a sudden anyway. That would not only be unrealistic but disingenuous. I’m well aware of those 49 million Americans who voted today to keep our country on the same nightmarish ride we’ve been on for the last eight years. But there is hope tonight. There is hope.

The most emotional moments of the night for me we’re those moments when the media talked to people like Roger Wilkins, Andrew Young, and John Lewis – these were all men who walked with Martin Luther King throughout the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and ’60s. I can’t imagine how they must all feel tonight.

And yet, the most amazing thing is that when all is said and done, I think race played a smaller part in this than many of us expected. I will not lie – I was certain that the racism of America would win out in the end. I never thought Barack Obama could be elected President in these United States. However, thanks to George Bush, and what will go down as one of the most disastrous Presidencies in the history of our country, the country really did vote for change. We, as a nation, our desperate to move our country in a different direction. Let’s hope we can all go forward together to make our country a nation we can be proud of again.

Good night, Nation.

Peace & Love to you all,

Otto

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/otto-on-the-election/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/our-president/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/our-president/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:52:05 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=616

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/05/our-president/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/the-jazz-session-49-sonny-rollins/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/the-jazz-session-49-sonny-rollins/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:58:42 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=611

Jason Crane interviews saxophonist Sonny Rollins. He’s just released Road Shows Vol. 1 (Doxy Records, 2008), a compilation of live performances spanning 20 years. Gary Giddins calls it “one of the finest Sonny Rollins albums ever released.” In this interview, recorded on Election Day 2008, Sonny talks about everything from the prospect of an Obama presidency and the crisis of global warming to the mystery and beauty of jazz improvisation.

LISTEN

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/the-jazz-session-49-sonny-rollins/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/vote-calrissian/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/vote-calrissian/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:32:05 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=609

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/vote-calrissian/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/voter-fraud-in-south-carolina/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/voter-fraud-in-south-carolina/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:16:34 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=605 From The Island Packet in my former home of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina:

Jake Vrabel: I’ve got your voter registration card right here, buddy.

Latest voting wait stats:

About 45 minutes wait at Sun City’s Pinckney Hall this morning, which was fairly well-organized and smooth, reports Jeff Vrabel, intrepid Island Packet Guide editor and supporter of Democracy. (side note – have you seen the new Guide web site? It’s finally some change we can believe in).

Vrabel let his 4-year-old son push the important buttons. That means unregistered, unqualified voters have infiltrated Sun City in the worst case of voter fraud since Mickey Mouse voted four times for Sanjaya in 2006. Someone get ACORN on the phone immediately.

Jason says: Jeff Vrabel is the guru of jeffvrabel.com and the editor of the Guide at The Island Packet newspaper, for which I occasionally write. He also designed the logo for today’s Obama/Rollins show at The Jazz Session.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/voter-fraud-in-south-carolina/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/power/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/power/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:47:00 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=603

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/power/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/the-obamas-vote/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/the-obamas-vote/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:34:20 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=600

Senator Barack Obama voted with his wife, Michelle, on Tuesday morning in Chicago:

Doug Mills/The New York Times

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/the-obamas-vote/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/votin-with-the-cranes/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/votin-with-the-cranes/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:39:20 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=597
Our Election Day slideshow

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/votin-with-the-cranes/feed/ 1 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/otto-says-vote-obamabiden/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/otto-says-vote-obamabiden/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:10:32 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=593

My very good friend Otto Bruno hosts the Sunday Music Festa on Jazz90.1 in Rochester, NY. Here’s his take on tomorrow’s election:

Okay Nation:

We’ve got one more chance. We screwed this up royally the past two Presidential elections. Tomorrow may be, in more ways than one, our last, best chance to “right the ship” as they say.

I’ve said before that I think the nightmare we’re currently living through began on January 20, 1981, when Ronald Reagan took over as President. He was elected by ” a mandate” of the people. His administration ushered in an era of greed, deregulation, selfishness, and a perversion of corporate power unlike this country had ever seen. The following 27 years have been a spiraling ever deeper into this economically disparate abyss as the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and the “middle class” is now all but extinct.

Officially, and in theory, we’ve had three Republican Presidents in the last 28 years and one Democratic President. In reality, we’ve had 28 years of Republican Presidencies. I’ve always thought of Bill Clinton as much more of a Republican than Democrat. First of all, he was a huge hawk. While we were in no major wars during his Presidency, he nevertheless kept our military very busy all over the globe. Unlike Ronald Reagan who vowed to decrease the size of government and then did just the opposite, Clinton really did reduce the size of the government, cutting government jobs, closing military bases, and abolishing social programs for the needy. I will give him credit for one thing, he didn’t strip us of a myriad number of constitutional rights the way the Bush Administration has done.

So tomorrow the choice is a pretty simple one. If you’ve been happy with the direction our country has gone in the last 28 years than you should vote for the Republican ticket. If you make more than 250,000 dollars a year or you have a net worth of more than one or two million dollars, than you should, by all means, vote for the Republican ticket. And I say that with no sarcasm or disrespect intended. I truly believe if you fit into those categories, particularly the economic ones, than it’s probably in your best interests to vote Republican tomorrow.

However, if you are unhappy, distressed, concerned, or fearful of the direction our country’s gone in the last 28 years than I think your only choice is Obama/Biden. If you are sitting at the kitchen table on a weekly or monthly basis trying to figure out how you’re going to pay your bills and which you should pay first and who’ll be willing to wait a little longer for their money, I can’t imagine how or why you’d vote for anyone besides Obama/Biden. If you’re angry that we’re continuing to pour over one hundred billion dollars a year into Iraq while we have people here in our own country who can’t afford to pay for medicine or schooling or decent housing, than perhaps you need to think about voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden tomorrow.

I really don’t expect the Obama/Biden ticket to solve all our problems. I don’t, for a minute, think they’re the saviors who will bring the country right back to it’s place of prominence in the world but I do know a few things. In 2000, many people thought it would make little difference if George Bush was president or Al Gore was President. Without a doubt, one of the monumental mistakes in our nation’s history. I didn’t think it was possible for us to fall so far and so fast as a country as we’ve done under George Bush and Dick Cheney. So the choice tomorrow is really a simple one. With Obama and Biden we have a chance to begin the long climb out of the pit we’re currently in as a nation. They’re intelligent, articulate, dedicated public servants. Without them – I think we’re screwed.

Get out and vote!

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/04/otto-says-vote-obamabiden/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/03/obamarollins-08/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/03/obamarollins-08/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:43:32 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=589

I posted this today at The Jazz Session:

Hi friends,

One of the beautiful things about having an online show is that I’m not bound by the restrictions that accompanied the radio version of my show. And so, I’m going to use this forum just this once to ask you to help get out the vote for Barack Obama. THERE IS STILL TIME for you to make a difference.

The easiest thing to do is to make calls from your own home. To get started, visit the Obama training page.

You can watch some short training videos there, or just click the GET STARTED link to start making calls. You’ll get a simple script that’s very easy to use. I just made 40 calls to supporters in the Philadelphia area to give them their polling locations and to remind them to vote.

Most of you know my politics, and you know that I’m a progressive. I don’t think Barack Obama is the perfect candidate. But I DO think he’s the far better choice — not simply the lesser of two evils, but actually someone I can support with enthusiasm and a clear conscience. And given that the next president is likely to appoint as many as three Supreme Court justices, we can’t afford to be complacent.

So please, take 30 minutes or an hour TODAY and make some calls for the Obama campaign.

And then CELEBRATE ON ELECTION DAY by listening to my interview with saxophone legend SONNY ROLLINS. I’ll be talking with Sonny at 5 p.m. on Election Day, and I’ll post the show that same evening at The Jazz Session site.

That’s right: OBAMA/ROLLINS in ’08! (The Obama/Rollins logo is courtesy of my good friend Jeff Vrabel.)

Make some calls, enjoy some jazz, and take back our country!

Thank you very much.

Peace and love,

Jason

p.s. — If you need a little boost of inspiration, here it is:

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/11/03/obamarollins-08/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/31/studs-terkel-rip/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/31/studs-terkel-rip/#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:42:23 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=585

Studs Terkel died today at 96. Here’s the obit from the New York Times.

Thanks for everything, Studs!

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/31/studs-terkel-rip/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/31/birth-of-the-cool/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/31/birth-of-the-cool/#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:12:42 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=578
Thanks to the wonderful blog BAGNews Notes for the link

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/31/birth-of-the-cool/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/29/dj-z-trips-obama-mixtape/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/29/dj-z-trips-obama-mixtape/#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:34:11 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=576

Do yourself a favor and go download DJ Z-Trip’s Obama mixtape. Then turn the volume way up and groove your way to a better day!

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/29/dj-z-trips-obama-mixtape/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/28/takin-it-back-with-barack-jack/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/28/takin-it-back-with-barack-jack/#comments Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:01:38 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=566

(Thanks to poet and jazzer David Budbill for the links!)

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/28/takin-it-back-with-barack-jack/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/27/calculate-your-tax-savings-under-barack-obamas-plan/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/27/calculate-your-tax-savings-under-barack-obamas-plan/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:17:35 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=562

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/10/27/calculate-your-tax-savings-under-barack-obamas-plan/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/09/23/white-privilege/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/09/23/white-privilege/#comments Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:49:19 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=527 I used to read Tim Wise all the time, and then somehow lost touch with his work. I’m so glad this was forwarded to me by my mom and my friend Julie and others. It’s worth a read. Tim has also written a follow-up piece.

This Is Your Nation On White Privilege
By Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”


White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while if you’re black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), you’re a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn’t fit to safeguard American institutions.


White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.


White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto is “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.


White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives near Russia, you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.


White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”


White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.


White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose “next door neighbor” qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you’re a black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you’re irresponsibly exploiting them.

White privilege is being able to give a 36-minute speech in which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would do if elected.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.


White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.


White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and Harvard Business School (George W. Bush), and still be seen as an “average guy,” while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then Harvard Law, makes you “uppity” and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.), and that’s OK, and you’re still cut out to be president, but if you’re black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can’t be trusted to make good decisions in office.

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she’s disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you then go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you’re black and married for nearly 20 years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called “terrorist fist bumps.”

White privilege is when you can develop a pain-killer addiction, having obtained your drug of choice illegally like Cindy McCain, go on to beat that addiction, and everyone praises you for being so strong, while being a black guy who smoked pot a few times in college and never became an addict means people will wonder if perhaps you still get high, and even ask whether or not you may have sold drugs at some point.

White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you dangerously naive and immature.

White privilege is being able to say that you hate “gooks” and “will always hate them,” and yet, you aren’t a racist because, ya know, you were a POW, so you’re entitled to your hatred, while being black and noting that black anger about racism is understandable, given the history of your country, makes you a dangerous bigot.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the “lesser adversities” faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…


White privilege is, in short, the problem.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/09/23/white-privilege/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/09/13/urban-chickens/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/09/13/urban-chickens/#comments Sat, 13 Sep 2008 05:22:29 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=511

Quite a few of my Rochester friends are raising chickens in the city. You can find out more about the Rochester Chicken Club (which is not a sandwich) in this article. (Thanks to chicken rancher Julie for the link!)

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/09/13/urban-chickens/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/18/a-more-perfect-union/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/18/a-more-perfect-union/#comments Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:57:26 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/18/a-more-perfect-union/

Watch Barack’s speech on race in America and building a more perfect union.

Find out more at BarackObama.com.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/18/a-more-perfect-union/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/11/i-solemnly-swear/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/11/i-solemnly-swear/#comments Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:24:39 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/11/i-solemnly-swear/

In this article at AlterNet.org, Sean Gonsalves argues that the first responsibility of the president is not to defend the homeland, and that only one remaining candidate is up to the task of the actual first responsibility.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/11/i-solemnly-swear/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/07/the-obama-party/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/07/the-obama-party/#comments Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:15:41 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/07/the-obama-party/ David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University. In an article now appearing on AlterNet, he talks about the Clintons’ desperate need for power, and the potential for the right set of circumstances to lead to the birth of a real third party for the first time in 150 years. (And by real, I mean “with access to power and electoral validity on a national level.”) It’s a fascinating read.

Article: Could Hillary Bequeath Us Our Long-Awaited Third Party?

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/03/07/the-obama-party/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/27/one-of-the-million/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/27/one-of-the-million/#comments Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:43:46 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/27/one-of-the-million/

Today I donated $25 to the Obama campaign to help them meet their goal of 1 million donors by March 4. I’ve been lukewarm on Obama for most of this interminable election season, but recently my opinion has changed.

At first, I wanted to like him more. I wanted to be swept up in the frenzy. I wanted an RFK for my generation. I wanted to feel like people say they felt back in the late 60s when there were candidates with progressive agendas who spoke on behalf of real people. However rosy the glasses through which folks are looking backward, it still sounds far superior to any experience I’ve had as a voter, other than my own campaign for Rochester’s city council.

I cast my first presidential vote for Bill Clinton. I voted for him twice. I now think he was one of the worst presidents in recent memory. No, not for Monica, but for his ability to cover a conservative corporate agenda in the veneer of progressive Democratic respectability. From NAFTA and the WTO to welfare “reform” and the deregulation of the media, Clinton did an impressive amount of harm to regular folks.

Then, of course, there’s Bush. ‘Nuff said.

So this year, it has to be about putting a Democrat in office, if for no other reason than those Supreme Court justices who aren’t getting any younger. But there are other reasons, too. Getting rid of Bush and the Republican regime also means getting rid of all the cronies and sycophants and plotters who come with the package. That’s got to be a good thing.

Obama and Clinton aren’t that different on policy issues. They’re both much less progressive than I’d like. They speak a lot less truth to power. They’re still beholden to corporate interests, despite what Obama may say about not taking money from lobbyists.

But there’s one key aspect of Obama and his campaign that has finally convinced me to jump aboard the bandwagon:

Barack Obama inspires people.

I’ve never seen anything like it in my political lifetime. He brings people together from across the political spectrum. He makes people believe in their power to change our country. He gives them hope. Isn’t it time we had somebody like that? I think it is.

Obama is not a perfect candidate. Not even close. But he’s asking Americans to believe in our power — and duty — to rise above our past. Americans are responding. So is the rest of the world. I’m excited about the idea of waking up next January during the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama. The sound of it alone gives me hope.

So I’m recommending that progressive line up behind this campaign, and then work like hell to make it mean something when he wins.

If you want to get involved, the easiest place to start is BarackObama.com.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/27/one-of-the-million/feed/ 1 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/09/things-worth-your-time/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/09/things-worth-your-time/#comments Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:48:02 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/09/things-worth-your-time/

I switched to the Democratic party a couple years back, thinking it would provide a route to power via which I could help make change. I’m not sure it’s worked out that way. This article on how the Dems are committing “particide” helps explain some of the reasons why my strategy may fail.

I also recommend this video from the American Friends Service Committee on the financial cost of the Iraq war:

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/09/things-worth-your-time/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/05/yes-we-can/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/05/yes-we-can/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:55:57 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/05/yes-we-can/ When was the last time you saw a major party candidate who inspired a video like this?

(The video below this one in the next post is good, too.)

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/05/yes-we-can/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/05/lessig-on-obama/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/05/lessig-on-obama/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:40:30 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/05/lessig-on-obama/ This is both politically interesting and fairly compelling. The video is about 20 minutes, but worth watching.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/02/05/lessig-on-obama/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/21/sarah-vowell-on-the-radical-love-of-mlk/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/21/sarah-vowell-on-the-radical-love-of-mlk/#comments Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:13:17 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/21/sarah-vowell-on-the-radical-love-of-mlk/

Head over to the New York Times site and check out Sarah Vowell’s newest essay, “Radical Love Gets A Holiday.”

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/21/sarah-vowell-on-the-radical-love-of-mlk/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/20/jfk-robert-frost/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/20/jfk-robert-frost/#comments Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:55:10 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/20/jfk-robert-frost/

John F. Kennedy was inaugurated on this date in 1961. Robert Frost read a poem at the inauguration. He was planning to read a new piece called “Dedication,” but for one reason or another had trouble reading the printed poem. Instead, he recited “The Gift Outright” from memory. Here it is.

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

– Robert Frost

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/20/jfk-robert-frost/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/20/the-personal-is-still-political/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/20/the-personal-is-still-political/#comments Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:50:38 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/20/the-personal-is-still-political/

My friend Julie White has a great new essay on her blog, My 45th Year. Go read it!

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/20/the-personal-is-still-political/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/16/senator-franken/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/16/senator-franken/#comments Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:19:44 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/16/senator-franken/

As you probably know, Al Franken is running for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota. Here are two reasons to support Al:

1. He’s a good guy.
2. The incumbent, Norm Coleman, is not.

Al just launched two TV ads:

If you’d like to throw some cash his way, as I did, visit his site.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/16/senator-franken/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/07/david-morris-on-clintonism/ http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/07/david-morris-on-clintonism/#comments Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:01:01 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/07/david-morris-on-clintonism/ David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minn., and director of its New Rules project. He was also a guest on The Jason Crane Show back when it was on Rochester’s Air America affiliate.

Now he’s written a very useful article reminding us what Clinton-esque politics got us back in the 90s. It’s worth a read.

Read the article at AlterNet.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2008/01/07/david-morris-on-clintonism/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2007/11/02/common-place-talk-of-the-past/ http://jasoncrane.org/2007/11/02/common-place-talk-of-the-past/#comments Sat, 03 Nov 2007 03:17:36 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2007/11/02/common-place-talk-of-the-past/

Common-place is an online history magazine put out by the American Antiquarian Society and Florida State University. I find it consistently interesting and always worth reading. In this issue, I was struck by the article “Walking The Freedom Trail,” in which a historian and a group of American soldiers tour Boston with an eye toward improving counter-insurgency operations in Iraq by taking a lesson from the failed decisions made by the British during the Revolutionary War.

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2007/11/02/common-place-talk-of-the-past/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2007/07/24/impeach/ http://jasoncrane.org/2007/07/24/impeach/#comments Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:12:43 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2007/07/24/impeach/

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2007/07/24/impeach/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2007/05/19/mahr-on-falwell-so-to-speak/ http://jasoncrane.org/2007/05/19/mahr-on-falwell-so-to-speak/#comments Sat, 19 May 2007 13:39:36 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2007/05/19/mahr-on-falwell-so-to-speak/

Brilliant!

]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2007/05/19/mahr-on-falwell-so-to-speak/feed/ 0