Pennsylvania Politics Continues to Override Humane Actions

by Walter Brasch

        

                         The deal was worked out with Sean Corr, attorney for the PGC. Corr, says Steve Hindi of SHARK, “was one of the biggest individual donors to the Bucks County Republican Committee [which had] heavily funded Heckler’s election campaign.” Heckler had been a state representative and senator and then a judge of the Bucks County Common Pleas Court. Corr, who was shooting pigeons at the PGC in December 2009, was convicted of harassment for shoving a camera into Hindi’s face; Hindi was not on PGC property at the time of the incident, according to the Doylestown Intelligencer. Corr is currently a part-time solicitor for the county.

Memorial Day 2012: A Lesson Not Yet Learned

by Walter Brasch

        

             Today is Memorial Day, the last day of the three-day weekend. Veterans and community groups will remember those who died in battle and, as they have done for more than a century, will place small flags on graves.

But, for most of America, Memorial Day is a three-day picnic-filled weekend that heralds the start of Summer, just as Labor Day has become a three-day picnic-filled weekend that laments the end of Summer. 

            There will be memorial concerts and parades. The media, shoving aside political and celebrity news, will all have stories. Among those who will be the first to patriotically salute those who died in battle are those who enthusiastically pushed for them to go to war.

            Each of the extended weekends also provides forums for politicians to stand in front of red-white-and-blue bunting to deliver political speeches they hope will make the voters think they care about veterans and the working class—and if it helps their election or re-election campaigns, so much the better.

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 8

I once wanted to be a protest folksinger, going throughout the country to rally the people for social justice, but two things kept me from that. I couldn’t sing and there wasn’t much call for a protest clarinetist.

But there was journalism—which, I sometimes point out, became my profession because I wasn’t good at anything else. Nevertheless, many of the people at the forefront of social change have been journalists; the revolution of the 1960s, with journalists of an alternative media at the forefront, was built upon the base of a revolution two centuries earlier. Sam Adams, Ben Franklin, Tom Paine, and dozens of newspaper editors and writers helped unify a minority of colonists to rise up and create a new nation, founded in liberty and justice. Journalism seemed like a good place to learn more about people, government, and different cultures, while also fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. After all, wasn’t Superman a journalist?

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 7

It was a Saturday afternoon in November. My wife, Rosemary, and I were with a four or five dozen other people in front of a county courthouse to protest what all of us knew would be the upcoming war in Iraq.

It wasn’t the first time we were protesting; it certainly wouldn’t be the last. But this time, our bodies were a lot colder than comfortable; our tempers were a bit shorter than civil.

Many persons driving past honked their car horns in support. But, in this rural county in Pennsylvania there were also dozens who drove past and gave us the finger or shouted obscenities.

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 6

“They had this amateur stage [at Woodstock] away from everything else, and anyone could perform. Bands and poets and jugglers and people who just wanted to have their say. Well, Joan Baez—can you believe it, Joan Baez!—well, she sees that there are people kinda just hangin’, so she does an hour! A whole hour on an amateur stage! Know what else? She didn’t just go up on that stage. She waited her turn. Must have waited an hour, two hours. No one knew she was waiting, I guess, but she waited her turn, just like everyone else. Was almost late for the main stage.”

—Joyce Katzman, Before the First Snow, by Walter M. Brasch

Today, the sixth day of Memorial Day Week, we honor two more of the important voices of the Movement—Joan Baez and Phil Ochs.

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 5

A couple of months ago, a San Francisco newspaper asked my opinion about the differences between the protests during the 1960s and the protests of Occupy Wall Street.

I discussed many difference and similarities, but noted that there are two major differences. First, the protestors of the ’60s seemed to be more joyous, more sprite-like. Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krasner, and others knew the power of humor and satire, and how to use it to make the media and the people actually believe that the Yuppies might lace the Chicago fountains with LSD or, through mental willpower of thousands, levitate the Pentagon.

The other major difference was protest music, something that is missing from much of the current protests. At one time, music was an integral part of the Movement. At one time, writers and journalists, blocked by the walls of the mainstream media, could turn to an alternative press, one that sometimes was published on ditto masters, and to music as a powerful medium to help unite the people.

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 4

On this, the fourth day of Memorial Day Week, we pay tribute to Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Peter, Paul and Mary—as well as to every person killed in war and to their families.

On April 24, 1971, more than 500,000 people marched onto the Capitol Mall to unite in opposition to the Viet Nam war. There had been several Peace Marches in the years prior to 1971; there would be dozens more in the next four decades, as the U.S. continued to enter into wars. But this one would be the most remembered.

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 3

“Best of them all, the very best, that was Country Joe [McDonald]. Now, that’s one heavy dude, and that ain’t no shit. Y’know, man, like on Friday, they was havin’ trouble getting their shit together. Afraid there might be dead air on stage. But they find out Country Joe was there, and they asked him to do a set. Now, he ain’t on their program, and he was just hangin’. But, y’know Country, he just played just about every gig anyone asked him for. Lot of them were for nothing, just to help the Cause. Even wrote some good shit, too. Powerful political shit. That ‘Fixin’ to Die Rag’ gave America a conscience. At least some of America. Last couple of years, hardly anyone seen him. He’d been lying low, and he didn’t want to do this gig. Well, they told him they needed him. I mean they really needed him. So he gets out there and follows Richie Havens. Can you believe that?! Anyhow, there’s a whole mess of us out there. More’n Country’s seen in his whole freakin’ life! And he’s scared shitless. And we don’t know ’bout Country, him bein’ out of circulation so long. But he gave us the Fish Cheer, and everyone went wild, just a-yellin’ and a-hollerin’. And Country, he was just a whoppin’ up there, doin’ his thing. I mean, like he couldn’t do no wrong. He made it happen, man. But, wait, that’s not all of it! When the big rains came [Sunday], and there were electrical lines all over the place, and all of us were scared shitless ’cause we thought we might fry ’cause we didn’t think they’d ever turn off all that electricity fast enough, Country [and the Fish] gets up on the stage and they sang to us. Got our minds off things. None of us could hear him. But he was singing for all he was worth! Calmed us down. Sucker sure do know his shit!”

 — Aggie Silver in Before the First Snow, by Walter M. Brasch

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 2

Today, the second day of the Memorial Day series, let’s take a look at Pete Seeger (1919- ), and then watch one of his lesser known, but more important songs. In addition to literally hundreds of songs, Pete wrote and first performed the anti-war/social justice songs “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and If I Had a Hammer” (with Lee Hayes).

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 1

(Day 1 of Memorial Day Week 2012)

For many, Memorial Day means a three-day picnic-filled weekend that heralds the start of Summer, just as Labor Day has become a three-day picnic-filled weekend that laments the end of Summer.

Memorial Day is celebrated Monday, May 28, this year. The first Memorial Day was May 1, 1865, when hundreds of freed slaves, missionaries, and teacher held a solemn ceremony to honor the Union soldiers who died in a Confederate prison camp in Charleston. That memorial evolved into Decoration Day and then in 1882 to Memorial Day. The last Monday in May now honors all soldiers killed in all wars.