METRO | Melanie Scruggs reports that Houston environmentalists are trashing a regressive ‘One Bin for All’ plan.
Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
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BOOKS | Gordon Young’s ‘Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City’
‘Teardown’ has the kind of heart that once made Flint, Michigan, a center of trade union and labor activism.
Teardown is a grim portrait with heart.
[Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young (June 2013: University of California Press); Hardcover; 288 pp; $29.95]
Gordon Young’s book about Flint, Michigan, Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City, might have been a depressing read. After all, the facts and the figures about crime and about poverty are likely to keep any sensible family from moving there. They might also persuade longtime residents to get out when they still can and locate somewhere else. Like San Francisco, where Young himself now lives.
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Tagged Books, Flint, Gordon Young, Jonah Raskin, Michigan, Rag Bloggers, Rust Belt, Teardown
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People’s History of Egypt, Part 24, January-February 11, 2011
In early February 2011, massive street protests opposed Mubarak and called for democratization and economic justice.
Sunset on Tahrir Square, February 2011. Image from c-Blog.
[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman’s Rag Blog “people’s history” series, “The Movement to Democratize Egypt,” could not be more timely. Also see Feldman’s “Hidden History of Texas” series on The Rag Blog.]
According to James Gelvin’s 2012 book, The Arab Uprising: What Everyone Needs To Know, in Egypt “youths between 15 and 29 make up…30 percent” of the population and “youth unemployment in Egypt is 43 percent.” The same book also noted:
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Mother’s Day in prison
Many wonderful articles appeared about mothers in prison as we celebrated this Mother’s Day.
Photo by Lucy Nicholson / Reuters.
Nancy Mullane, on the blog she co-founded, The Life of the Law, interviewed Veronica Martinez at Folsom Women’s Prison in California. There you can listen to or read about Martinez, to learn how she was shackled during birth and had to give up her baby after three days — luckily to her family. In spite of that horrendous experience, Martinez also points out the amazing support of the other women in the jail where she was at the time:
My bunkie had a collage of babies pasted. She had pasted it with toothpaste, cause that’s what we used. In the county jail, you don’t have tape or glue or any of that so she took toothpaste and she pasted all these pictures of cutout magazines and baby feet and babies and stuff. And she made a little sign, ‘It’s a Girl’ on my bunk.
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Tagged Incarceration, Jean Trounstine, Mother's Day, Mothers in Prison, Prison Reform, Rag Bloggers, Women Behind Bars
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‘Hamish Macbeth’ is a very charming small-town Scottish comedy starring the incomparable Robert Carlyle
Suspense, comedy, drama, and delightful locations mix in this Caledonian TV gem.
Robert Carlyle stars in Hamish MacBeth.
[In his weekly 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, and Scotland. Most are available on DVD and/or Netflix, and some episodes are on YouTube.]
Hamish Macbeth is a Scottish comedy-drama TV series that ran for three seasons (1995-1997) and 20 episodes, 19 of them on Netflix, including this one. The series was nominated for a BAFTA Best Drama Series award, and star Robert Carlyle was nominated for four Best Actor Awards, winning those from the UK Royal Television Society and the Scottish BAFTAs.
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Tagged Alan Waldman, Criticism, Hamish MacBeth, Rag Bloggers, Robert Carlyle, Scottish Television, Shirley Henderson, Vintage Television
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The devil went down to Georgia
After Georgia’s new gun law, euphemistically called the ‘Safe Carry Protection Act,’ takes effect July 1, all bets are off.
Political cartoon by Mike Luckovich / Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Image from Sky Dancing.
“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire.” – Robert Frost 1920
“We have met the enemy and he is us.” – POGO Walt Kelly 1970
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” – Barack Obama 2008
Georgia’s new gun law goes into effect July 1, allowing firearms in bars, nightclubs, and government buildings without security checkpoints. Georgia churches can permit parishioners to come armed to services.
Euphemistically called the “Safe Carry Protection Act,” the new law lifts restrictions on individuals convicted of certain misdemeanors from obtaining a gun permit. Gun dealers are no longer required to keep sales records. A stand-your-ground law will expand and police will not have the right to ask armed citizens whether they have a license.
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Tagged American Society, Georgia Gun Law, Gun Culture, Gun Laws, James McEnteer, Rag Bloggers
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VIDEO | Dan Rather and Robin Rather in lively, far-ranging, and funny Rag Radio interview
Video captures the legendary newsman and the pioneering Austin environmentalist in their first father-daughter interview.
Video by Alan Pogue and William Michael Hanks.
Alan Pogue and Mike Hanks have just posted this excellent video filmed during my Rag Radio interview with legendary newsman Dan Rather and Austin environmental activist Robin Rather. The show — their first-ever father-daughter interview — is one of my all-time favorites from the six-year history of Rag Radio.
The incisive, far-ranging, and frequently very funny session was originally broadcast on September 27, 2013, on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas. The video was shot by internationally-known documentary photographer Alan Pogue, who was staff photographer for the original Rag, Austin’s pioneering underground newspaper, and was edited by award-winning filmmaker and writer William Michael Hanks. The video can also be found on YouTube.
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Tagged Alan Pogue, Austin History, Broadcast Journalists, CBS News, Corporate Journalism, Dan Rather, Environmental Activists, Houston History, Interview, Rag Bloggers, Rag Radio, Robin Rather, Save Our Springs, Television News, Thorne Dreyer, Video, William Michael Hanks
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On becoming a living fossil
David may have been ahead of his time, but he was late to pick up Muriel Lester.
Radical pacifist Muriel Lester.
NEW YORK — This past Friday I went up to a Unitarian Church here in Manhattan to take part in a series of interviews for a film project of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary. Virginia Baron had been there just before me, and Leslie Cagan was arriving as I left. The chances are good I may have been, at 84, the oldest of those interviewed.
On the way up I had thought of a story involving the late Muriel Lester, but as I got to the church her name had escaped my mind. I realized, as I sat waiting while the lights were adjusted, that none of those working the cameras would have the slightest idea of whom I might be thinking. They were all young, and Muriel was long dead. (She has an all-too-brief entry in Wikipedia and Richard Deats, whose health has recently not been good, edited a book about Muriel several years ago).
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Rape, rape culture, and the problem of patriarchy
I don’t believe feminists are unfair or crazy. In fact, I believe the only sensible way to understand these issues is through a feminist critique of patriarchy.
Image from Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER).
By the end of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, two key questions were on the table for those who not only are aware of rape but would like to end men’s violence against women.
First, do we live in a rape culture, or is rape perpetrated by a relatively small number of predatory men?
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Posted in RagBlog
Tagged American Society, Feminism, Male Dominance, Patriarchy, Rag Bloggers, Rape, Rape Culture, Robert Jensen, Sexual Violence
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PODCASTS | Gregg Barrios, Bruce Dancis, and Betsy Leondar-Wright on Rag Radio
A noted poet-playwright and critic, a Vietnam draft resister and pop culture journalist, and an economic justice advocate join us in three lively podcasts.
Poet-playwright Gregg Barrios in the KOOP studios in Austin, Texas, April 25, 2014. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.
Gregg Barrios, the noted San Antonio-based writer, filmmaker, and critic; Bruce Dancis, author of Resister: A Story of Protest and Prison during the Vietnam War; and economic justice advocate Betsy Leondar-Wright were our recent guests on Rag Radio.
Rag Radio is a weekly hour-long syndicated radio program produced and hosted by long-time alternative journalist and Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer. The show is produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas. It is broadcast live on KOOP every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) and streamed live on the web.
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METRO UPDATE | More from Roger Baker on the continuing Texas drought crisis, the latest science and, of course, Texas politics!
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BOOKS | C.L.R. James: Back in style, black in style
‘C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain’ opens up the issue of the Third World struggle in an elegant and memorable way.
Author’s note: This marks the first appearance of excerpts from C.L.R. James, a Graphic History, a comic art book in process, drawn by distinguished African-American artist Milton Knight, edited by Paul Buhle. The excerpts — young Trinidadian James grows to self-consciousness and emigrates to London, writes a play about Toussaint Louverture, with Paul Robeson starring — are easily understood.
[C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain by Christian Hogsbjerg (2014: Duke University Press): Paperback; 312 pp.; $24.95.]
This year marks a quarter-century since the death of Cyril Lionel Robert James (1901-89). His obituary in The New York Times, putting aside many other interests and qualities of a long and productive life, mainly described him as the last giant of Pan-Africanism.
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Tagged African-American, Black Intelectuals, Books, C.L.R. James, Comics, Cricket, Graphic History, Historians, Marxism, Milton Knight, Pan-Africanism, Paul Buhle, Rag Bloggers
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