Mike Davis :
Reflections on the election

Posted on November 17, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Even the Cato Institute believes that the election was Clinton’s loss, not Trump’s win.

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Trumpus Electus. Art by DonkeyHotey / Flickr.

By Mike Davis | The Rag Blog | November 17, 2016

We should resist the temptation to over-interpret Trump’s election as an American Eighteenth Brumaire or 1933. Progressives who think they’ve woken up in another country should calm down, take a stiff draught, and reflect on the actual election results from the swing states.

National returns, of course are not yet complete, with millions of California votes remaining to be counted, the pre-election polls were flawed if not worthless, and authoritative statistics on the composition of the turnout must await the Current Population Survey’s reports over the next year or two. Nonetheless the Pew and Edison exit polls (the latter is the supplier of data to the AP and The New York Times) combine a more trustworthy array of survey techniques than the earlier polls and usually yield productive insights.
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Omar Rodriguez Ortiz :
METRO | Fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline reaches Austin

Posted on November 16, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Allies of the ‘water protectors’ collect provisions for the harsh winter.

Volunteers coordinate supplies to be delivered to Standing Rock Sioux and their allies. Photo by Omar Rodriguez Ortiz / The Rag Blog.

By Omar Rodriguez Ortiz | The Rag Blog | November 16, 2016

AUSTIN — People started arriving in the morning with non-perishable food, heavy winter clothing, boots, sleeping bags, tents, and medical supplies, as if preparing for war. An army of volunteers coordinated the arrival of cars, the delivery and sorting of provisions. As it started raining harder and harder, even more people turned up.

With only three days of planning, they met Saturday, November 5, at the Resistencia Bookstore in Austin to aid the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline that will enable the daily transportation of hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil from North Dakota to refineries in Illinois.
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Alan Waldman :
TELEVISION | ‘Endeavor’ is compelling Oxford-based prequel to ‘Inspector Morse’

Posted on November 15, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Ancient university town is the site of many murders and other shady goings-on for a bright, young policeman to solve.

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Shuan Evans stars in Endeavor.

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | November 16, 2016

[In his Rag Blog column, Alan Waldman reviews some of his favorite films and TV series that readers may have missed, including TV dramas, mysteries, and comedies from Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Scotland. Most are available on DVD, Netflix and/or Netflix Instant Streaming, and some episodes are on YouTube.]

For 49 years lovers of well-written and -performed mystery have adored Britain’s superb Inspector Morse TV series and its outstanding sequel Inspector Lewis. Since 2012, thanks to PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery, American viewers have also been able to enjoy the prequel series, Endeavor, featuring Shaun Evans as young police detective constable Morse.
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Mike Davis :
The undead

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Is Trump an improvised, rough-at-the-edges avatar of the Nixon coalition? Ask Pat Buchanan.

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Trump the undead? Nixon avatar? Photo by Gage Skidmore / Flickr.

By Mike Davis | The Rag Blog | November 10, 2016

I finally think I’ve understood why we’re so obsessed with zombies.

The discarded shroud, the rustling in the weeds, the vaporous apparitions seen from Pocatello to Lake Wobegone, the ghost army of admirers… we were forewarned that he was back but failed to pay attention.

On Halloween eve the “New” Nixon Library launched an expensive newspaper advertising campaign, inviting us to “discover how Richard Nixon’s legacy continues to shape our world.” He was the hero, the ads claim, who “protected the environment… desegregated schools, ended the Vietnam War.” “Buy tickets now,” the Library urges.
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Jack A. Smith :
The election is over and life goes on

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

The clouds may be gray, but today we begin the struggle to fight against regression into the past.

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Post-election grey clouds. Public domain image.

By Jack A. Smith | The Rag Blog | November 10, 2016

It is a gray overcast day in upstate New York. No sunshine. But the clouds continue to drift, the birds are flying, cars and a school bus pass on our road, the subdued remains of our fall garden are soothing.

Life does go on for all of us even in the midst of profound political/social disaster. The racists and haters of women, and those who are intolerant of immigrants and refugees and Muslims and Mexicans, the KKK and the neofascists and the nativists, the supporters of the ruling class and neoliberal capitalism — all have won the election.
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Marilyn Katz :
Trump won because Democrats have lost touch with the working class

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

We must go beyond the borders of our cities and beyond the easy coalitions we’ve relied on.

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Donald Trump in Reno, January 2016. Photo by Darron Birgenheier / Flickr.

By Marilyn Katz | The Rag Blog | November 10, 2016

Like all progressives, I take no joy in the rise to power of a man who traded on xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and fear to pave a path to the White House. But I was not surprised by his victory. Attacked by my friends for being a “nabob of negativity,” I have long believed that Donald Trump could win.

More than a year ago, I wrote about how Oreo cookie maker Mondolez International planned to ship jobs from Chicago to Mexico, ostensibly, to save money. I called for a boycott. I appealed to elected officials, friends, other Democrats, unions, and others. None responded.
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Rabbi Arthur Waskow :
The election: Heartbreak and beyond

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Here’s what we need to do: First, mourn.
Then organize.

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“Grief” by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington D.C., a memorial commissioned by Henry Adams to his wife Marian.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | The Rag Blog | November 9, 2016

First, heartbreak and mourning.

For the America where we thought at least a majority was too menshlich, too compassionate, to turn its own real pain and fear into imposing nightmare on “the other”;

For Mother Earth, who now without a vigorous defense from the USA is more likely to fall irredeemably into climate disaster;

For the poor, for immigrants, for Muslims, for Blacks and Latinos and the Native Nations, for many women, for many of the sick who will lose their health insurance, for GLBTQ folks, and even for the white blue-collar workers who voted for Trump but will not in fact be redeemed by huge tax cuts for the hyper-wealthy and canceling broader health insurance;
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Thorne Dreyer :
RAG RADIO PODCASTS | Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Carl Davidson, Doug Rossinow and Julia Mickenberg, Alice Embree and Jim Franklin, Geronimo Son and Steve Russell, Harry Hurt III, Jesse Sublett, and Jim Hightower

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

We broadcast live from the Rag Reunion, pay tribute to Tom Hayden, visit with the armadillo man, learn about the Standing Rock protests, interview Trump’s most hated biographer, enjoy some live music, and talk us some populism.

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Historian Doug Rossinow, author of Politics of Authenticity, left; host Thorne Dreyer; and UT-Austin’s Julia Mickenberg, broadcasting live from the 2016 Rag Reunion.

Interviews by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | November 9, 2016

The following podcasts are from recent Rag Radio shows with host Thorne Dreyer. The syndicated Rag Radio program, produced in the studios of Austin’s cooperatively-run KOOP-FM, has an international audience and has become an influential platform for interviews with leading figures in politics, current events, literature, and cutting-edge culture.

♦ Rabbi Arthur Waskow & Carl Davidson on the Life & Legacy of Tom Hayden

waskow-and-davidson-twoshotRabbi Arthur Waskow and Carl Davidson discuss the life and legacy of the late Tom Hayden, founding spirit of SDS, principal author of the Port Huron Statement, and arguably the most influential figure in the Sixties New Left, who died on Oct. 23. Arthur and Carl, were both friends of Tom and worked with him since the Vietnam era.

Read the full show description and download the podcast of our Oct. 28, 2016 Rag Radio interview with Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Carl Davidson, here — or listen to it here:


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Joshua Brown :
POLITICAL CARTOON | The Colossus of Rogues

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

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Cartoon by Joshua Brown | The Rag Blog | November 7, 2014

[Joshua Brown is the executive director of the Center for Media and Learning/American Social History Project, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, and is a professor of history at CUNY. Find more of his work on The Rag Blog here and his archives here.]

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Ed Felien :
The night of the dead, the day of the living

Posted on November 6, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

The ancients marked this time to remember the dead and to celebrate life.

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Isis mourning Osiris. Shaped, painted, and polished terra cotta. Louvre Museum / public domain.

By Ed Felien | The Rag Blog | November 6, 2015

Saturday, November 5, marked the halfway point between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice.

The ancients marked this time to remember the dead and to celebrate life, the resurrection of the body and a new year.

The oldest of the rituals common at this time of year was probably the Egyptian ritual reenactment of the journey of Isis. She gathered the parts of her lover and brother Osiris who had been torn apart. She reconstructed and resurrected him, slept with him in death, and mated with him and gave birth to their son.
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Thomas Zigal :
‘Celebrating The Rag’ is a marvelous compendium that captures the paper’s
unique spirit

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

This book is a luving homage to quite possibly the best underground newspaper of its era.

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Cover, Celebrating The Rag, published by the New Journalism Project, 2116. Cover art by Gilbert Shelton.

By Thomas Zigal | The Rag Blog | November 5, 2016

I came to UT-Austin in the fall of 1969 as a transfer student in my junior year. I had spent the previous year studying at a Swiss university, putting an ocean between myself and the Galveston County draft board, which had mistakenly classified me as 1A and began pressing me to show up for army induction and the prospect of Vietnam. (The 1A was eventually changed to a student deferment while I was in Europe.)

By the time I arrived in Austin, I’d hitchhiked around the Continent (including into East Berlin), Great Britain, Scandinavia, and yes, to Morocco, where the hashish was exquisite. So on my first day of class as a UT English major, I left Brackenridge dorm dressed like a walking Bob Dylan song (shoulder-length hair, a natty black vest over my t-shirt, a Moroccan ring, and brown suede Spanish boots of Spanish leather I’d bought in Barcelona) and wandered down to the Drag, where I encountered Alan Pogue selling The Rag. I was hooked after the first issue, and that underground rag became my guide star for the next several years.
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Shelby Knowles :
METRO | Pulling the rug on the
Rundberg promise

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Funding has dried up for an ambitious community policing program that has been a huge success.

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Mohammed, cashier at a gas station on Rundberg Lane in Austin, welcomes Officer Taber White. Photo by Shelby Knowles / The Rag Blog

By Shelby Knowles | The Rag Blog | November 4, 2016

AUSTIN — Austin cop Taber White enters a gas station on the corner of Interstate 35 and Rundberg Lane and is welcomed with a joyful “Good Morning!” by the cashier, a man named Mohammed (who didn’t want his last name used).

White has been visiting this gas station, and walking the streets in this neighborhood, for more than three years as as part of an ambitious community policing program called Restore Rundberg. The project started three years ago as a way to have officers like White walk the beat, talk to residents, and be the “human face” of the police department.

It was meant to be, hopefully, a way for Austin to avoid the kinds of fiery, violent, eruptions that have plagued Ferguson, Missouri, and other places where relations between the cops and the community reached a breaking point.
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