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Category: Politics & Activism

POEM: “we have the permission of the hunger of the people”

Published 1 February 2018 by Jason Crane

“we have the permission of the hunger of the people”

we began to prepare food in this neglected building
the work of our hands in service of the people we love

the wind had left us little, carried away so much
its violence only the latest example of the lash on our backs

we don’t believe in waiting for The Great White Father to come
we are not subjects or vassals or servants or serfs; we are el pueblo

soon after we started, the police came to visit our kitchen
they told us we had no right to ease the pain of the community

we said: “we have the permission of the hunger of the people”
nobody is coming to save us but ourselves

a little while later the air-conditioned woman arrived with her charm
she negotiated as if we were two equal parties

but we are not two equal parties; one of us is everyone, the other is a fiction
an idea propped up by the belief of those who’ve yet to break their chains

the hot food leaves the stoves, the ovens, and travels to the hearts of our people
we bend with the wind, then rise up again

/ / /

Jason Crane
1 February 2018
State College PA

This poem was inspired by an interview on The Final Straw Radio with organizers from the Centro de Apoyo Mutuo (Mutual Aid Center) in Caguas, Puerto Rico.

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God I miss Bill Hicks

Published 12 October 2017 by Jason Crane

An essay written by Hicks shortly before he died. Published after his death by his parents.

I was born William Melvin Hicks on December 16, 1961 in Valdosta, Georgia. Ugh. Melvin Hicks from Georgia. Yee Har! I already had gotten off to life on the wrong foot. I was always “awake,” I guess you’d say. Some part of me clamoring for new insights and new ways to make the world a better place. All of this came out years down the line, in my multitude of creative interests that are the tools I now bring to the Party. Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who’ve helped me. I’d read these words and off I went – dreaming my own imaginative dreams. Exercising them at will, eventually to form bands, comedy, more bands, movies, anything creative. This is the coin of the realm I use in my words – Vision. On June 16, 1993 I was diagnosed with having “liver cancer that had spread from the pancreas.” One of life’s weirdest and worst jokes imaginable. I’d been making such progress recently in my attitude, my career and realizing my dreams that it just stood me on my head for a while. “Why me!?” I would cry out, and “Why now!?” Well, I know now there may never be any answers to those particular questions, but maybe in telling a little about myself, we can find some other answers to other questions. That might help our way down our own particular paths, towards realizing my dream of New Hope and New Happiness. Amen. I left in love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.

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POEM: this changes nothing

Published 2 October 2017 by Jason Crane

NOTE: I post this every time there’s a mass shooting. It hasn’t been wrong yet.

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

///

Written in January 2011 after the shooting of …

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Defending The Dreamers In DC

Published 27 September 2017 by Jason Crane

Yesterday I took the day off from work and joined a group from CASA for a trip to DC to visit the offices of 55 members of Congress. We were there to ask them to support the Dream Act, and to keep the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program intact.

The folks I traveled with were largely people who’d be directly impacted by the cancellation of these protections. These are hard-working people who either came here as kids, or whose own kids were born here, and are now at risk of losing their ability to work, go to school, or even remain in this country.

continued below

We visited the office of Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania’s 8th congressional district. We asked to speak with him and were told he wasn’t available. We then asked to speak to his legislative director and were told he wasn’t there either. So we said we’d wait in the office until one of them showed up. Wouldn’t you know it, a few minutes later Joseph Knowles, the legislative director, appeared as if by magic from a back room. He of course “had a meeting to get to at 12:30,” but he took us into a side office so the CASA members could tell him their stories.

Knowles was clearly uncomfortable with being confronted, and he also seemed completely disconnected from the plight of the real human beings standing in front of him. “The congressman is aware of the situation and wants to seek a legislative solution,” he kept saying, sounding more like an answering machine message than someone who was face to face with people whose lives would be irrevocably harmed by the dissolution of DACA and TPS.

This, for me, was the most disconcerting part of the conversation. To be able to sit in front of your fellow human beings and display not an iota of compassion is beyond me. And that folks like Knowles are populating the offices of our elected representatives is an excellent indication of the failure of our system to produce compassionate results for the people who need them most.

Down the hall, meanwhile, the staff of Rep. Lloyd Smucker, “representing” PA’s 16th district, took one look at another group of CASA members and locked the door to their office. The members immediately began chanting and singing in the hallway, and we joined them when our visit with Knowles was finished. We marched in the hall until the Capitol Police showed up. We had already agreed not to risk arrest, so we left with them and headed outside to rally on the Capitol lawn.

Please contact your representative and urge her or him to support the DREAM Act and TPS with no strings attached. But do more than just call or email. Take several hours or a day and go visit a local office. Or head to DC and visit them there. And get your friends to go with you. If the promises of this country are to mean anything, we must stand in solidarity with the most vulnerable members of our society.

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Violence

Published 23 January 2017 by Jason Crane

Your iPhone exists because people work in degraded conditions to make it. Same for all the clothes I’m wearing. Same for a lot of the food I eat. I have gas for the car I drive because of violence perpetrated by armies and rulers (including those of my own country) to secure the necessary oil, no matter where it’s found or under whose land. The cheap products we’re all able to buy in the big box stores that litter our landscape are the result of dangerous working conditions and poor pay and lack of health care and long hours that directly harm workers and their families. Generally speaking, most of us choose to ignore most of this violence, despite our direct or indirect involvement in it and the ease with which it is possible to discover the facts. Moreover, the idea that violence is never the correct path belies a history filled with instances when it was the only sane path. It’s true that smarter decisions in history might have prevented the rise of Hitler or the rise of nations or whatever, but once World War II was happening and the Holocaust was being perpetrated, there was no moral choice but to use force to stop those crimes from happening. Similarly, would we suggest to a domestic abuse victim that she not, if the opportunity presents itself, use force to save herself or her children from an abuser? Of course not. The idea that everyone can be engaged with is, in my recent experience, primarily put forth by people upon whom violence is not visited. The same people who are, like me, complicit in the system I outlined at the beginning. We need to be more careful about our language, and about an uninformed commitment to “nonviolence” at the cost of liberation. Finally, as I mentioned over the weekend, “nonviolence,” in the way MLK or Gandhi used it, generally meant provoking an overwhelming show of violence by the other side in the hope that the sickened populace would force the state to act. To call this the absence of violence is dangerous. There is a real world out there, and we can’t change it without first being honest about what’s happening.

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Civil Discourse, or, “Why, Jimmy Dore, Why?”

Published 8 January 2017 by Jason Crane

jimmyI’m a big fan of the comedian Jimmy Dore. I first learned about him from The Young Turks, a progressive internet news show. I like Jimmy’s take-no-prisoners honesty, and his unwillingness to overlook crimes committed by Democrats just because they’re Democrats.

I’m also a big fan of The Jimmy Dore Show, his podcast of news and comedy. There aren’t many podcasts that make me laugh out loud, but Jimmy’s regularly does. And it does more than that, too. Jimmy’s interviews are insightful and pointed, such as the interview on the most recent episode (Jan. 6, 2017) with reporter Glenn Greenwald.

For me, among the highlights of every episode are the phone calls. A very talented impressionist leaves voicemails or does live conversations as Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and many others. On the Jan. 6 episode, one of the calls was “Harrison Ford,” talking about Carrie Fisher. You can listen to the call for yourself at the top of this post. Please note that the audio is the property of The Jimmy Dore Show. I’m posting it here because I don’t want you to have to take my word for the content.

I was really surprised by the call. I thought it was tone deaf and misogynist and made light of mental illness, all things I find very uncharacteristic of Jimmy’s show. I think when public people make missteps, we can and should speak up. So I tweeted at Jimmy:

I got this in reply:

This is condescending and much more representative of what I’d expect from a less progressive person than Jimmy. I said as much:

And Jimmy replied again:

I sent one last comment:

Is this a big deal? No. It’s just disappointing. Jimmy’s not a hero of mine, but I respect his work both as a comedian and as a truth-teller. I expected better. But I guess this is where our culture is at these days.

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The Morning Mixtape: Direct Action

Published 19 December 2016 by Jason Crane

This morning on my show I talked about the importance of direct action, and gave both local and national examples. We don’t need to wait for anyone to save us. We can do it ourselves.

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A song for Mumia Abu-Jamal

Published 14 October 2016 by Jason Crane

17 years ago, my friend David and I made a hip-hop track to support political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. We called our band Buddha Mind. This, our only single, is “Freedom of Speech.”

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