Bill Ayers

Heather Heyer, murdered on an American street by a white supremacist while she linked arms with others to resist the rising fascist tide. Rest in Peace, Heather Heyer, Rest in Power.  PRESENTE!

What can they do to you?
Whatever they want..

They can set you up, bust you,
they can break your fingers,
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember.
they can take away your children,
wall up your lover;
they can do anything you can’t stop them doing.

How can you stop them?
Alone you can fight, you can refuse.
You can take whatever revenge you can
But they roll right over you.
But two people fighting back to back
can cut through a mob
a snake-dancing fire
can break a cordon,
termites can bring down a mansion

Two people can keep each other sane
can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation
a cell, a wedge.
With four you can play games
and start a collective.
With six you can rent a whole house
have pie for dinner with no seconds
and make your own music.

Thirteen makes a circle,
a hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity
and your own newsletter;
ten thousand community
and your own papers;
a hundred thousand,
a network of communities;
a million our own world.

It goes one at a time.
It starts when you care to act.
It starts when you do it again
after they say no.
It starts when you say we
and know who you mean;
and each day you mean
one more.

– Marge Piercy

WE ARE HERE:

An article by Thomas Bass (America’s Amnesia in the journal Mekong Review) is the latest in a number of essays and opinion pieces prompted by the scheduled PBS showing in September of the new Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary series entitled, in sweeping breadth, The Vietnam War.

There are many good articles to be found at the Full Disclosure site, some new ones added recently.

Mekong Review

“All’s well,” says the town crier making rounds through the village and lighting lamps for the night. Perhaps it’s simply a reassuring thought for the townspeople, or perhaps there’s a more malevolent message, the toxic propaganda that the status quo is inevitable and that there is no alternative to the way things are. The dissident, the artist, the agitator, the dreamer, and the activist respond, “No, all is not well.” The current moment is neither immutable nor inescapable, and its imperfections are cause for general alarm—for the exploited and the oppressed the status quo is itself an ongoing act of violence.

Activists announce through their lives and their work that a new world is in the making. We can create a community of agitators and transform this corner of the world into a place that we want to inhabit. We can identify ourselves as citizens of a country that does not yet exist and has no map, and become that new nation’s pioneers and cartographers—and through our common actions bring a more assertive and vibrant public into being.

Each of us is immersed in what is, the world as such. In order to link arms and rise up we need a combination of somethings: seeds, surely; desire, perhaps; a vision of community and possibility; necessity and even, at times, desperation; willful enthusiasm and an acceptance that there are no guarantees whatsoever.

Imagination is indispensable in these efforts and pursuits be- cause it “ignites the slow fuse of possibility,” as Emily Dickinson wrote. More process than product, more stance than conclusion, engaging the imagination involves the dynamic work of igniting that fuse, mapping the world as it really is, and then purposely stepping outside and leaning toward a possible world.

Watch Ethel Rosenberg’s sons on 60 Minutes this Sunday!

This Sunday, July 23rd, at 7:00 pm, 60 Minutes is expected to air a story examining the case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. I think you’ll want to see this!

The Rosenbergs were young parents and left-wing activists who were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and executed by the U.S. government in 1953, at the height of the McCarthy Era. They were accused of giving “the secret of the Atomic Bomb” to the Soviet Union.

60 Minutes filmed the segment in the wake of the groundbreaking evidence showing Ethel was not a spy and her execution was wrongful, which launched the nationwide campaign asking President Obama to exonerate Ethel. The report features interviews with Rosenberg sons Robert and Michael Meeropol and others. It explores the Rosenbergs’ controversial trial and execution for the so-called “crime of the century.”

If you’re unable to watch live, the segment will be available on the 60 Minutes website for several weeks following the broadcast.

• 60 Minutes
• Sunday, July 23rd
• 7pm ET/PT on CBS
• http://www.cbsnews.com/60-minutes/

I hope you’ll tune in.