JONAH RASKIN :
OBITUARY | Rennie Davis (1940-2021): Not the boy next door

Posted on February 9, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

He was a man with a deep moral consciousness who followed the dictates of his heart and his head no matter where they took him.

Rennie Davis in 1973. Washington Area Spark / Flickr / Creative Commons.

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | February 9, 2021

SONOMA COUNTY, Calif. — Rennie Davis sometimes seemed like the all-American boy who lived in the house next door that came with a lawn and a picket fence. In some ways he fit the stereotype.

Unlike Abbie, Jerry, and Tom, Rennie’s roots were patrician. Born in Michigan and raised in Virginia, he belonged to a 4-H Club as a boy. His father worked in President Truman’s administration as chief of staff for the Council of Economic Advisers.

I remember him as boyish, with a certain naivete.

Still, the more one looked, the less all-American he appeared to be. Something was going on beneath the surface that even he didn’t recognize. The Vietnamese did.
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JONAH RASKIN :
FILM | ‘The War at Home’

Posted on January 28, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

A review of Glenn Silber’s and Barry Brown’s timeless documentary.

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | January 27, 2021

SONOMA COUNTY, California — As Austinites and their friends and comrades all across Texas know, the coasts, east and west, often get more media coverage than the heartland, and that part of the U.S. often described, unfortunately, as “fly over country.” Fly over it and much is missed. Dozens of books and films tell the story of Berkeley in the Sixties. Also, a great deal has been written about the many demonstrations that shook the nation’s capital to protest against segregation and the War in Vietnam.

Not to explore and recount the movements that roiled towns and cities from Madison, Wisconsin to Austin, Texas, is to omit a crucial part of the story. The War at Home, a documentary directed by Glenn Silber, a veteran of CBS and ABC, and Barry Alexander Brown — and narrated by veteran journalist Blake Kellogg — lovingly follows the demonstrators who marched, leafleted, and sat down in Madison, Wisconsin.

At the end of the decade, there was a big bombing at the Army Math Research Center on the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, which resulted in the accidental death of physics researcher, Robert Fassnacht. Was the explosion a fitting end to the decade or unfitting? Viewers can decide for themselves.
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Roger Baker :
TRANSPORTATION | Is widening I-35 Austin’s biggest
boondoggle ever?

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

It costs too much and does too little.

Will it come to this?

By Roger Baker | The Rag Blog | January 14, 2021

AUSTIN — I think I can make the case that widening I-35 through Central Austin is the biggest boondoggle ever, because I’ve had practice. I wrote about it four and five years ago in The Rag Blog and also more recently. With time, the reasons to rebuild it as a much wider road have only gotten weaker, and the money needed to widen it has become harder and harder to get.

The I-35 widening proposal through Central Austin is now called I-35 Capital Express Central. This project is shown on page 62 in TxDOTs 2021 annual Unified Transportation Program as costing $4.9 billion, but it still lacks the $3.6 billion in Category 12 funding, which is about 73% of the total money needed to widen the road in this 12-mile part of I-35. “To date, funding has not been identified for most of the Mobility35 projects.”
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JONAH RASKIN :
FILM | Watch this movie: Dorothy Dickie’s LNS

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

‘Under the Ground: The Story of Liberation News Service’ is definitely worth seeing.

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | January 12, 2021

SONOMA COUNTY, California — Let’s cut to the chase. Under the Ground, the new 80-minute documentary about the radical alternative to the UPI and the AP, is definitely worth seeing. It’s worth seeing for people who lived through the upheavals of the Sixties and Seventies, and also for those who have come of age with #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, the Proud Boys, and the insurrection in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021.

Dorothy Dickie’s fast-paced movie — which can be seen free on demand  — is haunted by memories of the 1960s. It’s also as timely as today’s newspaper headlines. Armed with archival footage and buttressed by in-depth interviews with the likes of Ray Mungo, Allen Young, James Retherford, Alice Embree, Harvey Wasserman, and Thorne Dreyer, Under the Ground explores both the counterculture and the movement which overlapped one another and also went their separate ways.
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THORNE DREYER :
FILM | Exciting documentary about Liberation News Service premieres January 11

Posted on January 9, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

‘Under the Ground: The Story of Liberation News Service’ includes interviews with Austin-based underground veterans.

By Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | January 9, 2021

NOTE: This article was updated at 10:20 a.m. (CT), January 12. We had originally included a link to stream the premiere of the film at Rhode Island PBS, but it turned out the access was geographically limited. However, the show can now be seen anytime through video-on-demand here.

AUSTIN — Under the Ground: The Story of Liberation News Service, an 80-minute documentary film produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker Dorothy Dickie for Rhode Island public television, will premiere Monday, January 11, 2021. It will be livestreamed and then can be viewed through video on demand (see links below).

The film includes interviews with Austin’s Alice Embree, Jim Retherford, and Thorne Dreyer (Dreyer was an editor at LNS in the late ‘60s) and populist commentator Jim Hightower is also featured in clips from a Rag Radio interview.

LNS was an alternative news operation that flourished between 1967 and 1981 in the United States, playing a major – and underrecognized — role in those tumultuous times. LNS distributed packets of news stories, features, and graphics to underground, alternative, and college newspapers and radio stations — content otherwise not available to these feisty but often-shoestring alternative publications that sprung up around the anti-war and student power movement and the ‘60s counterculture.
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Steve Russell :
POLITICAL HISTORY | Ranking Donald Trump
among the one and done

Posted on January 5, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

Donald John Trump had his papers graded and the voters failed him as decisively as he failed them.

Donald Trump. Caricature by DonkeyHotey / Creative Commons.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | January 5, 2021

Those of us who consider history to be recreational reading started in on Donald John Trump before he had resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a year. Without the deep dive of a PhD dissertation, we seem to have a bias toward post WWII presidencies — or so it would appear from the conversations that have sadly become less frequent with the pandemic raging.

Even history buffs find it easier to know the wrinkles of administrations through which we lived or, at least, about which we heard our elders complain. Bush 41 and the Iran-Contra scandal. The price of gasoline under Jimmy Carter. I like to complain about when my second wife and I bought a home on a credit card — or so it seemed, when the interest rate was 15%!

When I say we “started in” on Trump, I mean on trying to compare him to other presidents. I cannot name another POTUS less qualified by education and experience. Trump adds to that an unwillingness to take advice or recognize expertise in others. One presidential term — four years — is very different from the eight years, two terms, that has become customary. Donald John Trump had his papers graded by the electorate at half time, and the voters failed him as decisively as he failed them.
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Steve Russell :
BOOKS | Martha Ture’s ‘Joe Walker’ should be a screenplay

Posted on January 3, 2021 by Thorne Dreyer

Her prose is too visual to rest quietly on library shelves.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | January 3, 2021

[Joe Walker, by Martha Ture. (Lulu Press 2007); paperback; 370 pages; $23.95 on Amazon.com.]

SUN CITY, Texas — Author’s Note: This note comes to you from the author of the review rather than the author of the book. It’s only fair to admit that I have begged Martha Ture — with whom I’ve collaborated on social science rather than literature — to recast this story as a screenplay. An ulterior motive in publishing this review on The Rag Blog is the chance of catching the eye of one of the filmmakers hiding behind every tree in Austin not already taken by a poet or a picker.

She captured my love of a common sight here in the Texas Hill Country — a hawk riding the thermals, something that in our time can be presented on film from the hawk’s point of view — on the first pages.

The hawk “veered aslant the wind to scout a new position, her tail glowed orange in the sun.” Joe Walker would have made eye contact with the proud bird had she not been showing him her parts that Indians understand to have ceremonial uses.
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Joshua Brown :
POLITICAL CARTOON | A Covid Christmas

Posted on December 20, 2020 by Thorne Dreyer
Previous installments are archived at
http://www.joshbrownnyc.com/ldw.htm
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Allen Young :
ENVIRONMENT | Appreciating nature as a political act

Posted on December 14, 2020 by Thorne Dreyer
Allen Young on a recent hike with Celtz, a friend’s collie
Photo by Bobby Curley for North Quabbin Trails Assn.

By Allen Young | The Rag Blog | December 14, 2020

ATHOL, Massachusetts — Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? Dictionary.com has this definition: “A person who is concerned with or advocates the protection of the environment.” That definition suits me, and I assume it’s valid for all or most Rag Blog readers.

I belong to some local and national environmental groups, and I’ve attended demonstrations over many years related to the dangers of nuclear power and the fossil fuel industry’s expansion of pipelines. I’ve become informed about the danger of climate change and the need to respond to it. I also choose candidates with strong commitment to environmental protection.

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Joshua Brown :
POLITICAL CARTOON | Treason special

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Thorne Dreyer
Previous installments are archived at
http://www.joshbrownnyc.com/ldw.htm

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JONAH RASKIN :
OPINION | Top 12 heroes of 2020

Posted on December 9, 2020 by Thorne Dreyer

In alphabetical order for your convenience.

Stacey Abrams. Caricature by DonkeyHotey. Creative Commons image.

Compiled by Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog |December 9, 2020

[Also see Jonah Raskin’s “Top 11 criminals of 2020” on The Rag Blog.]

2020 has been the year of the collective, often unheralded, hero. Still, some individuals have stood out. This list reflects the anonymous, the famous, and the infamous.

Stacey Abrams, lawyer and more, who has aimed to expand the electorate and prevent the reintroduction of Jim Crow. Supports abolition of cash bail, abolition of the death penalty, widening Medicaid, and decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.

José Ramón Andrés, born in Spain in ’69, founded World Central Kitchen in 2010. Since then he has provided tens of thousands of healthy meals to people affected by disasters, from Haiti to Peru and Cuba to Cambodia. An outspoken critic of Trump, Andrés starred in his own cooking show, Vamos a Cocinar, which debuted in 2005.
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Alice Embree :
MIXED MEDIA | The not so funny comics of indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

Posted on December 5, 2020 by Thorne Dreyer

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | December 5, 2020

The Great Pen Caper: In 2013 Ken Paxton picked up a $1,000 Montblanc pen from a Collin County metal detector tray. Fifteen months later, after being identified by a sheriff reviewing video surveillance, incoming Attorney General Ken Paxton returned the pen to its rightful owner.

The Securities Caper: In August 2015, a Collin County grand jury charged Paxton with two first-degree felony counts of securities fraud and a third-degree count of failing to register with the Texas State Securities Board. The prosecution alleged that Paxton urged investors to put $600,000 into tech firm Servergy without disclosing he would earn a commission and that he owned stock in the McKinney company. Paxton was advising clients without a license for Mowery Capital Management. The Texas Securities Board was seeking to revoke the company’s investment advisor registration when the unlicensed activity came to light.

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