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Jason Crane Posts

Tim Wise on the “barbiturate left”

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.

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UNITE HERE prez on GritTV

I work for the labor union UNITE HERE. This is from their Web site:

“Watch GritTV for UNITE HERE President Bruce Raynor’s thoughts on the election, the auto industry crisis and the Employee Free Choice Act. Defending auto industry workers’ right to earn a middle class living and pointing out the concessions that the United Auto Workers have already made, Raynor goes on to explain how the U.S.’s lack of national health care has disadvantaged the auto industry. He calls today’s political environment ‘a storm of need, and possibility.'”

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The Jazz Session #51: Kate McGarry

Jason Crane interviews vocalist Kate McGarry. Her new album, If Less Is More … Nothing Is Everything (Palmetto, 2008), explores everything from spirituality to The Cars in McGarry’s typically atypical style. McGarry is joined on the record by guitarist Keith Ganz, organist Gary Versace, bassist Reuben Rogers, drummer Clarence Penn, saxophonist Donny McCaslin, percussionist James Shipp, and vocalists Peter Eldrige and Jo Lawry.

Listen to the show.

CONTEST: Win Kate McGarry’s new CD! To enter, send an e-mail to contest@thejazzsession.com with “KATE” in the subject line. And remember — if you’ve won in the past 30 days, sit this one out, OK? Good luck!

BONUS TRACK: Listen to Kate sing Joni Mitchell’s “Chelsea Morning” at the 2008 Tanglewood Jazz Festival.

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FDR Library & Museum in desperate straits

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.

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Franklin Delano Obama?

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.

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“Racial conservatism”

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.

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Kurt

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.

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Support the Employee Free Choice Act

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!

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All my jobs

Douglas Adams has always been one of my favorite authors. Coincidentally, he also shared a birthday with my younger son.

I like that Douglas always listed his bizarre collection of previous jobs on his book jackets. So here, for the record, and in approximate chronological order, are my previous jobs:

Grocery stock clerk, cashier, bank teller, waiter, professional musician, radio announcer, television/radio script writer, Web site editor, newspaper and wire-service copy editor, radio reporter, newspaper page designer, union organizer, nonprofit development director, radio station manager, talk show host, stay-at-home dad, union organizing director and union representative.

Some of these jobs happened more than once, but I just listed each title one time.

Yoikes!

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