Kate Braun :
Welcome in the new during third quarter moon

Posted on November 23, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

The closer we come to the end to 2015, the more rapidly change will happen.

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Third Quarter Moon. Image from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Flickr / Creative Commons.

By Kate Braun | The Rag Blog | November 23, 2015

Third quarter moons are times to release the old in order to welcome the new. This aspect of moon-energy work offers a good focus to take in November as 2015 is a year to resolve and conclude things so that changes will engage us more easily, whether we anticipate them or not. It makes sense, therefore, to put our time and energies in the remainder of 2015 toward making room for the New that is sure to come.

With this in mind, recognize what you have been keeping that no longer needs to be kept. This can be an attitude, a habit, friendships, jobs, furniture, anything that has outgrown or outlived its usefulness in your life. This can also apply to home repairs that have been on your to-do list for many months.
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Miranda Mason :
METRO | Women’s hygiene heartache in local homeless shelters

Posted on November 21, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Underfunded and undersupplied feminine hygiene products cause serious health risk.

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Homeless in downtown Austin. Photo by Miranda Mason / The Rag Blog.

By Miranda Mason | The Rag Blog | November 21, 2015

AUSTIN — While life on the streets is far from easy, most people in need know where to go to find their next meal or a place to sleep. Shelters frequent most cities and many organizations reach out to help those who have no place to call their own.

But when it comes to the taboo issue of feminine hygiene, so many women are left without a place to turn for supplies or support.

The struggles around menstruation are tough for many women to deal with — regardless of their walk of life — but they undoubtedly add much more heartache for those who do not have access to supplies or places to help them maintain good hygiene during that time of the month.
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Elaine J. Cohen :
METRO EVENT | Women, fair trade… and tamales

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Alice Embree
Carlos Lowry - Refugiados sm

Refugiados. Acrylic on canvas by Carlos Lowry.

By Elaine J. Cohen | The Rag Blog | November 20, 2015

Event: Women and Fair Trade Festival
Date: Saturday-Sunday, Nov. 21-22, 2015
Time: Saturday, 10-6 p.m.; Sunday, 1-6 p.m.
Where: Howsen Hall, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin
Address: 4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78741
Admission: Free, and everyone is welcome!

AUSTIN — The twelfth annual Women and Fair Trade Festival, hosted by Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera, takes place Saturday and Sunday, November 21-22, 2015, at the First Unitarian Universalist Church, 4700 Grover Avenue in Austin. The festival is an annual Austin marketplace that hosts artisan producers from women’s cooperatives around the world.

The event will also include live music and on Saturday from 3-4:15 p.m., Austin poets Sarah Rafael Garcia, Chloe Chon, Loyce Gayo, and Kimberly Alidio will read from their work.
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Lamar W. Hankins :
Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s unpatriotic view of Syrian refugees

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

The governor wants to bar the ‘golden door’ to freedom, rather than light the pathway for those who most need to find it.

statue of liberty sky

“The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World.” Photo by Brian Auer / Flickr / Creative Commons.

By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | Nov. 19, 2015

I have always considered the stirring words of Emma Lazarus to be the most patriotic ideal for which America stands:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

If ever there were people who are tired, poor, homeless, wretched, and tempest-tost, it is the Syrian refugees who have made their tortuous way into Europe trying to escape the barbaric Muslim-extremist violence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The religious nihilism of ISIS followers has made civilians powerless against the capacity for violence ISIS has demonstrated countless times, as deadly in Paris as in Iraq and Syria.
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Kerstin Johansson :
METRO EVENT | Thousands expected for Global Climate March in Austin

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Alice Embree
peoples climate march

Image from Global Climate March Austin / Facebook.

By Kerstin Johansson | The Rag Blog | November 18, 2015

Event: Global Climate March
What: Austin Rally and March
Date: Sunday, November 29, 2015
Time: 1:00 p.m.
Where: Texas State Capitol
Address: 1100 Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78701
Admission: Free, and everyone is welcome!

AUSTIN — On Sunday, November 29, the day before the Paris Climate Conference, thousands of people will gather in Austin on the State Capitol grounds to join the Global Climate Movement.

The event organized by Global Climate March will bring people together for a rally and a march to build awareness and demand that our global and local leaders take serious action on climate change and climate justice. There will be speakers highlighting the challenge of climate change for different communities, organizational tables to talk about different issues and give out information, kids’ activities, music, and a march down Congress that will loop around back to the capitol.
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Jonah Raskin :
Vietnam postscript: Activists remember the cause that shook an empire

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

For baby boomers who watched the Vietnam War on the nightly news, the war has never really ended.

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Chicago 8 defendant Rennie Davis became a follower of the Guru Maharaj Ji. Rag Blog photo.

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | November 17, 2015

BERKELEY — Remember the War in Vietnam? Indeed, how could anyone who lived through that era forget napalm, tiger cages, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail? How could anyone forget the rag-tail army of pacifists, GIs, hippies, self-styled revolutionaries, Catholics, Buddhists, rock bands, and just plain crazies who took on the Pentagon, the White House, and the “War Machine”?

For baby boomers and their parents who watched the Vietnam War on the nightly news year after year, the war has never really ended. Images of burning villages, napalmed children, and B-52s dropping bombs were seared into the consciousness of a nation. They’re still there, though the U.S. has gone to war in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the 21st century and new images of carnage, death, and destruction have spewed from the media.
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Alan Waldman :
TELEVISION | ‘Lilyhammer’ is a quirky gangster-out-of-water dramedy set in
small-town Norway

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Springsteen sideman Steven Van Zandt produces and stars as a tough Mafioso hiding out with weird locals among the snowy fjords.

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Steven Van Zandt is Frank “The Fixer” Tagliano.

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | November 17, 2015

[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.]

In several dozen columns over the past two years I have always reviewed excellent TV series and films from English-speaking lands (except for the exciting French cop series Spiral). Today is another wonderful exception to that rule: Lilyhammer, a Norwegian/American comedy/gangster series that’s 60% in English and 40% in subtitled Norwegian.
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The Rag Blog :
METRO EVENT | Walking the walk for immigrant families

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Alice Embree
Action: Three-Day Pilgrimage for Immigrant Families
Event: Rally for Immigrant Rights
Date: Saturday, November 21, 2015
Time: Noon
Where: Across the street from the Governor’s Mansion
Address: 1106 Lavaca Street, Austin, Texas 78701
Admission: Public welcome

AUSTIN — A three-day Pilgrimage for Immigrant Families will culminate in a Rally for Immigrant Rights at noon, Saturday, November 21, 2015, across the street from the Texas Governor’s Mansion, 1106 Lavaca Street, in Austin. The rally will be joined by marchers coming from Taylor and Pflugerville, with a request that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott meet with immigrant families.

Speakers at the Saturday rally will include State Sen. Sylvia Garcia, union leaders from Education Austin and the Service Employees International Union, and members of the faith community. Kiko Villamizar and Cecilia and the Broken Hearts will provide music.
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Carl Davidson :
My two cents on the Democratic forum hosted by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Maddow did a good job of posing open questions and trying to get decent answers.

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Rachel meets Bernie. Photo by Chuck Burton / AP.

By Carl Davidson | The Rag Blog | November 10, 2015

carl davidson rag radio crop4Listen to Thorne Dreyer’s Nov. 6, 2015 Rag Radio interview with Carl Davidson, who helps us make some sense out of all the political madness, here:

As advertised, it was a forum not a debate. I’m talking about MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s November 6 interviews in a South Carolina auditorium with Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, in that order.

The event lasted two hours, with some 3,000 people in the room.
Unlike the GOP spectacle-debates, few sparks flew, no “gotcha” questions were posed, and no personal insults were hurled. And Maddow did a good job of posing open questions and trying to get decent answers. Only with Hillary did she seem to lose some control and allow herself to be put in a passive situation.
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Elaine J. Cohen :
METRO | Halloween at Hutto

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Alice Embree

It’s more trick than treat for the hunger strikers at this Texas immigrant family detention center.

Hutto sigh

Trick or treat: Immigrant women languish in this for-profit prison.

By Elaine J. Cohen | The Rag Blog | November 5, 2015

As we sat in the waiting area of the Hutto “Residential” Center, an unexpected spectacle unfolded before the three of us who had come to visit. It was Halloween in Hutto.

Originally Peggy Morton and I had planned to take Maria Luisa, Field Organizer for the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), to Karnes, another family detention center in Texas, that morning. It was October 30, when thunder and torrents of rain poured down on the hill country.
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Ken Wachsberger :
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ’60s underground press. Part I: The ‘Barb’ reunion

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Alice Embree

That independent, noncorporate, grassroots outburst of countercultural participatory journalism is finally beginning to generate modern-day notice.

Barb - Dr Hip and Diana

Eugene Schoenfeld aka “Dr. HIPpocrates,” author of the infamous sexuality and health column, “Dr. Hip,” with Barb 50th anniversary organizer Diana Stephens. Photo by John Jekabson, former Barb managing editor.

By Ken Wachsberger | The Rag Blog | November 5, 2015

[This is the first of a three-part series written for The Rag Blog by underground press historian Ken Wachsberger.]

It’s fiftieth anniversary season for the countercultural underground press class of 1965 — time to celebrate because that was the year the East Village Other, the Berkeley Barb, The Paper, and the Fifth Estate appeared for the first time.

The next year, those four papers and the Los Angeles Free Press — founded in 1964 by Art Kunkin with inspiration from the recently invented offset printing process — together formed the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), the first nationwide network of countercultural underground papers from this country, along with two British pacifist publications, Peace News and Sanity.
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Mike Davis :
Billionaires and super-storms

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Thorne Dreyer

Hurricane Patricia come ashore at Cuixmala where English robber-baron Sir James Goldsmith built his Xanadu, La Loma, as a refuge from the apocalypse.

la loma

Sir James Goldsmith’s La Loma on Mexico’s Pacific Coast.

By Mike Davis | The Rag Blog | October 26, 2015

Mike Davis wrote this as Hurricane Patricia, then a Category 5 storm of epic proportions, approached Mexico’s Pacific Coast bringing threat of massive destruction — before it petered out in anti-climax over the coastal mountains. The extent of damage to “eco-resort” Cuixmala remains undetermined.

While waiting, with trepidation, for the first reports of damage and mortality from Mexico, I can’t help but note the irony that the eye of the super-hurricane was reported to have come ashore at Cuixmala 60 miles north of Mazanillo where English robber-baron Sir James Goldsmith built his Xanadu, La Loma, in the 1980s as a refuge from the apocalypse that he believed was inevitable.
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