Proud Leftist.

[ulysses]

Labor rights. Women's reproductive rights. Civil rights.

Who fought and died for those long before before they were codified? Who made them issues, then issues worthy of mainstream political consideration?

I'll leave it to someone else to put out the long list of leftist worthies, as long as you start with Joe Hill. :)

-->Lifelong Democrat, but a Leftist first<--

[mopinko]

1. mother jones

emma goldman
margaret sanger

btw, there is a plan here in chicago to name a park after lucy parsons, labor activist and widow of haymarket martyr albert parsons. the faternal order of police is outraged. ugh.

http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/38178/index.php

[David Zephyr]

15. Lucy & Albert Parsons!

Hi Mopinko!

I grew up in Galveston where Albert Parsons worked briefly before he met Lucy near Waco where he had his radical, but short-lived newspaper, The Spectator.

I had no idea that there was a movement there in Chicago to name a park after Lucy. Thanks so much for this news.

Please keep me posted as to how this progresses for Lucy.

Lucy and Mother Jones were both at the first inaugural meeting of the IWW there in Chicago at Brand Hall.

Damn, I like you, Mopinko!

--DZ

[mopinko]

26. wow, thanks

i'm glad someone around here does.
i can't believe the fop is makin a stink about this. it pisses me off. like they don't have a strong 40 hour a week contract. the shitheads.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Joe Hill

I'm sure he would have suggested a long line of his own forerunners, going back to Spartacus, or maybe even earlier.

Disobedience to tyrants has a history far older than the labels "left wing" and "right wing". We ought to claim our entire heritage, and stand on thousands of years of giants' shoulders.

I think that Joe would have liked that.

--bkl
So sez I, I sez.

[ulysses]

4. y'know

Disobedience to tyrants has a history far older than the labels "left wing" and "right wing". We ought to claim our entire heritage, and stand on thousands of years of giants' shoulders.

After having disagreed with you often enough, it's good to agree, and entirely. :thumbsup:

[sangh0]

3. Labor rights - Lincoln

.

[redqueen]

5. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Susan B. Anthony

Jane Addams

Mara Harris Jones (Mother Jones)


Leftist women rock! :D

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

6. Woody Guthrie

Tom Hayden

[ulysses]

7. Woody!

Oh yes. One of a handful of reasons to be proud of an Oklahoma heritage.

[G_j]

87. and of course, Pete Seeger

[genius]

8. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham LIncoln, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin

How about Harriet Tubman or Thomas Edison?

[wyldwolf]

14. I know you're not saying these people were "leftists,"

Well, maybe you are... :eyes:

[genius]

9. California former Republican Governor Earl Warren

Also William O.Douglas, John Marshall, Hugo Black, Eleanor Roosevelt.

[flaminbats]

92. Georgia Republican Governor Rufus Bullock...

in order to bring the Federal troops into Georgia necessary to enforce the law Bullock stated before Congress that Georgia had no "adequate protection for life and property, the maintenance of peace and good order, and the free expression of opinion" during reconstruction.

Another unappreciated liberal was Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson. Under his leadership Canada finally achieved universal healthcare, replaced the British Union Jack with the Maple Leaf flag, and liberalized that nation's immigration policy.

[ulysses]

10. .

:kick:

[corporatewhore]

11. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn eugene debs emma goldman Big Bill Haywood

Big Bill -Founder of IWW
Elizabeth Flynn -helped found ACLU "A model for Joe Hill's "The Rebel Girl." Flynn stirred countless thousands of workers in IWW free-speech fights, defense campaigns and, above all, in strikes, especially those at Lawrence (1912) and Paterson (1913)"
Eugene Debs and Emma Goldman need i say more

[David Zephyr]

13. Corporatewhore Has My List. Adding Frederick Douglas & Harriet Tubman

Corporatewhore, are you as big of a Wobblie fan as I am?

Your post just took you to a whole new level of respect in my eyes!

:loveya:

[corporatewhore]

12. Current lefty hero Medea Benjamin-code pink global exchange interrupting

rummy

[David Zephyr]

16. Great Thread Idea, Ulysses!

:hi:

[ulysses]

17. thanks, David!

:hi:

[Nazgul35]

18. I am listening to these names...

and some I have not heard of...

The shame fills my breast...

Are there any books about these individuals that could include a history of them and their lives...

Since we are adding fighters of tyrants, how's about:

Rosa Luxemburg and Petra Wilson

[corporatewhore]

20. Howard Zinn's : A Peoples History of the United States

[David Zephyr]

21. Nazgul35, Socrates Taught Us

that "the beginning of wisdom is the confession of ignorance".

No shame whatsoever! Your humility is refreshing and inspiring!

I doubt that all, but a precious few here, knew of many of these great people either since they are rarely, if ever, even mentioned in America's schools.

I have sent you a private message to your inbox with some recommendations, but Corporatewhore's "People's History of the United States" by the great Howard Zinn is a great place to start.

Prepared to be inspired.

[AbbeyRoad]

19. A couple more: Sojourner Truth and John L. Lewis

I grew up in coal mining country and my grandfather was a long time coal miner and member of the UMWA. My father also worked in the mines for several years. John L. Lewis was someone I knew as a champion of workers rights.

[JohnKleeb]

22. My grandparents admire the hell out of Lewis

Me too.

[kodi]

23. were not lenin & mao self-defined leftists as well?

before jumping into any ideological bed, i first check out my bunkmates....they can give you cooties.

[corporatewhore]

24. and Andrew Jackson was a democrat so does that make all dems genocidal

maniacs

[kodi]

25. your mixing of US political parties with world ideologies is pretty lame.

jackson did not massacre indians and cause the trail of tears because he was a democrat, lenin and mao did what they did because of the leftist ideology they espoused.

[no name no slogan]

27. Lenin and Mao were PROFESSED "leftists", but were not.

Both Lenin and Mao were believers in totalitarianism, i.e., anti-democratic, and anti-personal freedoms.

The majority of the others mentioned on this thread were NOT totalitarians: in the case of many of them like Emma Goldman, they were out-and-out anarchists, who believed in NO concentrated power, be it governmental or corporate.

Lenin and Mao had much more in common with Hitler, Franco and Mussolini than they did with Joe Hill or Emma Goldman.

[corporatewhore]

28. you are right !! or should i say left!!!!!

[no name no slogan]

29. works for me-- whichever way you go! (nt)

[kodi]

30. so, they were..........non-leftist leftists?

they just referred to their philosophies as what then?

and just what would one call the massive collectivization of the USSR & china under lenin and mao? that was not based upon leftist ideology?

i do wish people would actually read lenin and mao before saying that they weren't leftists.

they were, and no masking of it changes those facts.

of course one who professes to leftist thought doesn't want to mention either gentleman because it forces one to confront how leftist thought could mutate to deliver the horrors those men perpetrated.

and we can't have that now can we? it would undermine leftist ideology as the Shining Path to Utopia.

it would be funny were it not so sad, that ideologists of the left (and right, btw) share the same trait as religious fanatics, viz., neither type can stand attacks to their core beliefs based upon factual evidence.

when its done, they all throw up gorilla dust to hide the basic inconsistencies of their belief systems.

same as it ever was.

[Nazgul35]

32. OK...let me get this straight...

leftists suck cause of Mao and Lenin....

Rightwingers suck.....


And your answer is......nada, as far as I can make out. Your argument reminds me of what fellow Grad students would engage in....trained to be critical of others ideas and research without offering anything else to replace what they seek to tear down...

It is easy to snipe at theories and ideas offered by others while not offering any solution yourself....

I also don't believe that anyone here was suggesting that leftists havent made mistakes...what is interesting is that you dismiss Andrew Jackson's genocide as being personally endowed in him while deciding that the genocide of Lenin and Mao where somehow inherent in their philosophy...one could easily argue that Jackson's genocide did stem from a philosophical view of the world (Christianity perhaps)...

I think the problem here is that too many people enjoy the safety of a unidimensional ideological scale....

But the world is more complicated than that...just by approaching ideological philosophy from a two dimensional view would answer your own questions about the importance of Mao and Lenin to all the other individuals mentioned above....but somehow it makes people happy to simplify things enough that Lenin and Mao get lumped in with Ghandi and MLK....

Go figure!

:shrug:

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Zhade]

70. They were TOTALITARIAN leftists. The post is clear on that.

It appears you are willfully misreading the post. Why, I don't know. But clearly, Lenin and Mao are not representative of all leftists.

I do have to ask: what the heck is "gorilla dust"?

[ulysses]

37. no.

lenin and mao did what they did because of the leftist ideology they espoused.

They did what they did because they were totalitarians.

[kodi]

105. they became totalitarians after they left the leftist camp?

one of my posts was pulled that tried to examine why successful ideological leftist movements become totalitarian. no one offered any reasoning except to call the leaders of these movements; Mao, Lenin, Pol Pot, and Castro totalitarian in nature and not leftists.

that is a cop out of historical proportions. whenever the doctrinaire left wins a revolution, they evolve to totalitarianism.

why is it so?

no one answered that question, instead i have been attacked as some sort of capitalist roader.

the question i asked was about the left, vis a vis Mao and Lenin, not merely that the ideology is fundamentally wrong, but why can it be so manipulated in the name of the people that successful leftist movements evolve to what we saw in USSR, china, north Korea, Cambodia, Cuba. and apparently is occurring in Zimbabwe.

it can not be merely that the capitalist west placed such pressure on these movements that their only survival mode was to go totalitarian.

there is a set of flaws in leftist ideologies that have not been examined critically by those on the left, because, as i stated in my deleted post, such followers of leftist ideology tend to consider their politics to be a secular religion to them and are, like fundamentalist religionists, unwilling to re-examine their basic premises when new facts are presented.

just as many on this board decry the ideological blindness of religious fundamentalists, i asked for an examination of leftist thought in the same manner that is called for towards fundamentalists and the basic tenents of their religions.....ie, to explain how the fundamental principles are true based upon real world evidence that such movements evolve to totalitarianist societies.

blaming a set of leaders for such happenings evades the issue of why did leftist movements become corrupted into totalitarian. and further, is there in the the basic set of principles of such movements something that allowed it to occur?

if what Lenin and Mao did were isolated incidents, one admittedly could dismiss them as merely "Men of History," but there is ample evidence that such movements are quite capable of being corrupted to yield a result that is antithetical to the original basis for the movement.

on this thread, illustratively it is apparently easy and quite soul-satisfying to proudly declare one is a spiritual ancestor of Sacco and Vanzetti, or Mother Jones, quite another exercise to explain how leftist ideology in practice has not yielded its promises when it wins revolutions.

a good place to start would be Orwell's "Homage from Catalonia" and especially Noam Chomsky's chapter "Objectivity and liberal scholarship" from The Chomsky Reader.

[ulysses]

118. I think it's fair to say

that *any* government will eventually tend toward the despotic given the chance. Leftists are, of course, no more immune to human nature than anyone else, thus Mao, Lenin and, perhaps even more pointedly, Stalin.

But were they despots *because* they were nominal leftists? (I say "nominal" because, much as they all espoused communism, I don't consider an authoritarian regime to be leftist in any way. But that's me.) I would say not. Given the contexts in which they came to power - countries in which a huge rural peasantry had been abused for centuries by an aristocracy and which, importantly, had no tradition of self-government whatsoever - I'd say that left rhetoric gave them a handy and populist-sounding tool with which to simply grab the reins of power...and continue to abuse the people.

whenever the doctrinaire left wins a revolution, they evolve to totalitarianism.

why is it so?

See my above point about context. Consider the nature of revolution itself as well. For my money, Western Europe offers plenty of examples in which the "doctrinaire left" has come to power without revolution and has not devolved to totalitarianism.

if what Lenin and Mao did were isolated incidents, one admittedly could dismiss them as merely "Men of History," but there is ample evidence that such movements are quite capable of being corrupted to yield a result that is antithetical to the original basis for the movement.

Of course. I don't see anyone on the thread claiming that the left is incorruptible.

on this thread, illustratively it is apparently easy and quite soul-satisfying to proudly declare one is a spiritual ancestor of Sacco and Vanzetti, or Mother Jones, quite another exercise to explain how leftist ideology in practice has not yielded its promises when it wins revolutions.

Again, you're cherry-picking revolutions out of the entire history of the left, Frank. There are other examples - whole governmental systems in W. Europe, certain battles in the US that the left has won or at least partially won - in which the promises *have* been realized. And there are still other examples - Allende in Chile comes to mind - where the promise was destroyed in its infancy by reactionary forces.

[kodi]

125. are we having fun or what?.....and dont call me stinky!

” But were they despots *because* they were nominal leftists? (I say "nominal" because, much as they all espoused communism, I don't consider an authoritarian regime to be leftist in any way. But that's me.) I would say not. Given the contexts in which they came to power - countries in which a huge rural peasantry had been abused for centuries by an aristocracy and which, importantly, had no tradition of self-government whatsoever - I'd say that left rhetoric gave them a handy and populist-sounding tool with which to simply grab the reins of power...and continue to abuse the people.”

and your last remarks might support why it is that socialism, soviet style has not taken in the west where there is a tradition of self government and a relatively “unabused” peasantry. Perhaps Marx was wrong, and Weber was right...

But, defining away the problem by denying that Lenin, Mao, Castro, and Pol Pot were from the left because they did not adhere to your definition of leftist ideologies is not answering the question. Even their similar personality traits are not absent in almost all successful Marxist revolutionary leaders.

It is the same as saying nothing bad comes from Jesus, all the while many of his followers cause all sorts of nasty shit in his name.

But not Jesus, thus not leftist thought…and we are getting closer to the nub.

There is a natural reason why a philosophy that arises from human respect mutates to either the Spanish Inquisition under the Pope or the soviets under Lenin. Clearly it is dogmatic faith, faith in the absolute correctness of one’s positions.

And I question anyone who deems they got the goods. The followers of Jesus or followers of any ideology.

For my money, Western Europe offers plenty of examples in which the "doctrinaire left" has come to power without revolution and has not devolved to totalitarianism.

Implying as you do seem to that modern European Marxist-socialists are equivalent to doctrinaire Bolsheviks is not valid.

Schroeder was not in the Baeder-Meinhoff gang, even so he would not be prime minister in Germany today if he had not evolved away from his earlier doctrinaire views on socialism.

And this is actually a point for the leftist, they can evolve. So, I guess we can agree to call Schroeder, “leftist light,” or not.

However, when you say:

I don't see anyone on the thread claiming that the left is incorruptible.

I think the issue is not that, as I presume you imply the person, but that the ideology is.

And that it leads to as much mindless reflexive actions and rhetoric as that found on the right.

Like Mr. Bob Marley, I don’t go in for ism schisms. And I certainly don’t hold that God (or Marx) is on my side; although I do hope that logic is.

But time after time, I have seen self-alleged leftists, and here on-site, ignore facts that don’t fit the ideology.

”Again, you're cherry-picking revolutions out of the entire history of the left, Frank. There are other examples - whole governmental systems in W. Europe, certain battles in the US that the left has won or at least partially won - in which the promises *have* been realized. And there are still other examples - Allende in Chile comes to mind - where the promise was destroyed in its infancy by reactionary forces.

Well, I mentioned the ones where they won and their policies held reigns (of terror, btw). USSR, China, Cuba, North Korea, and your remark about Allende might indicate that the left will never truly win but by arms….and that to do so, leaders like Lenin, Mao, Castro and Pol Pot are necessary for that ideology to win.

And maybe too Chavez in Venezuela, since the Americans are doing there what they did in Cuba in 1959-60

and since you can pick and choose who is a leftist, I too take up that tool and so do not consider the achievements of the working person in America necessarily to be leftist.

Your argument is that “true” leftists (as opposed to mutant leftists who are actually totalitarian) who play by the rules do not do harm, but, nor do they really win (except, of course here in Amerika 2004), and I would submit that to members of that notorious gang of German terrorists who are rotting in jail, both you and I are capitalist stooges.

John, my hair stands on end when I hear political allies boxing themselves in by applying labels to themselves, especially when, as I said before, some of their historical bunkmates who used the same terms to describe themselves are so vile.

The first things that come to mind when I hear the words “The United States of America” is the flag, what we did to the Indians, and what we did to Africans......in that order.

I am aware instantly of the sins done in the name of my country. It is a primary reason that I am a liberal person who wants to make it better, and I just wish others who call themselves leftist would do a similar thing when they hear the word “leftist.” Because a lot of very nasty shit was done in its name, and like we do when we recognize the warts on American history, we should fess up and recall what happens when some leftists take control and treat it as some sort of religion. That way, like true patriots who are not jingoists, those of us who espouse leftist views are not forgetful of the things allegedly done in its name.

And we always question, especially ourselves.

[ulysses]

127. it's just your curmudgeonly nature that makes me love you so.

:D

and your last remarks might support why it is that socialism, soviet style has not taken in the west where there is a tradition of self government and a relatively “unabused” peasantry.

That seems right to me. In fact, our whole psyche, at least in the US, probably predisposes many of us against progressive ideas. We're all taught to believe that we're cowboys.

It is the same as saying nothing bad comes from Jesus, all the while many of his followers cause all sorts of nasty shit in his name.

By the same token, though, to say that the aforesaid nasty shit *necessarily* follows from a belief in Jesus is simply untrue.

There is a natural reason why a philosophy that arises from human respect mutates to either the Spanish Inquisition under the Pope or the soviets under Lenin. Clearly it is dogmatic faith, faith in the absolute correctness of one’s positions.

Ah, the nub indeed. I'd deny that that mutation is necessary, or that it necessarily comes from dogmatic faith. Does it happen and when it does can it arise from that faith? Sure, but I don't see any reason to say that it does happen that way any more than a quarter of the time.

I can entertain that Lenin was a true believer, and perhaps that's what mutated in him, but my understanding of Stalin is that he was simply an opportunistic thug and much mistrusted by Lenin. Same deal with someone like Joe McCarthy, whose thuggery arose less from an overabundance of ideological zeal than from thirst for power. The turn-of-the-century mine boss who hires strike-breaking toughs - not an absolute faith in unreconstructed capitalism, just greed.

And I question anyone who deems they got the goods. The followers of Jesus or followers of any ideology.

Fair enough, as long as "any ideology" includes centrism. :)

Implying as you do seem to that modern European Marxist-socialists are equivalent to doctrinaire Bolsheviks is not valid.

That's not my implication. By "leftist" I mean far more than just Bolsheviks.

Schroeder was not in the Baeder-Meinhoff gang, even so he would not be prime minister in Germany today if he had not evolved away from his earlier doctrinaire views on socialism.

Two things - one is that Schroeder is not the end-all of European socialism, and two is to re-emphasize the difference between establishment politics and activism. One expects (reasonable!) compromise in an elected official, whereas an activist is free, really needed, to pull further than may be realized in a representative chamber. That he's not a "doctrinaire" socialist makes Schroeder no less a leftist in my mind.

I think the issue is not that, as I presume you imply the person, but that the ideology is.

I don't see anyone saying that either. I'm not. Frankly, though, I'm willing to put off worrying about a corrupt leftist juggernaut until such time as there's a juggernaut there to corrupt.

and your remark about Allende might indicate that the left will never truly win but by arms….and that to do so, leaders like Lenin, Mao, Castro and Pol Pot are necessary for that ideology to win.

"Never" is an awfully strong word. But for outside meddling from the US, the popularly elected Allende might well have had and long and peaceful career and Chile's people might well have been much better off. I suppose, under your idea regarding true believers, that he might have devolved into a dictator, but in hindsight, I'd much prefer that Chile have been given that chance than 27 years of Pinochet.

Your argument is that “true” leftists (as opposed to mutant leftists who are actually totalitarian) who play by the rules do not do harm, but, nor do they really win (except, of course here in Amerika 2004), and I would submit that to members of that notorious gang of German terrorists who are rotting in jail, both you and I are capitalist stooges.

Ok, I thought you were talking about the ideology itself, not the believers. :)

If it makes you feel better, I still will claim Malcolm X for the left although I draw a line, personally, somewhere short of "any means". Is that an easy reconcilliation for me? Nah, but hell, it's politics. When was it supposed to be easy?

It is a primary reason that I am a liberal person who wants to make it better, and I just wish others who call themselves leftist would do a similar thing when they hear the word “leftist.” Because a lot of very nasty shit was done in its name, and like we do when we recognize the warts on American history, we should fess up and recall what happens when some leftists take control and treat it as some sort of religion.

That's a fair point, and I suspect that you'd hear more of that kind of self-examination in private and away from the DU battlefield. I'm not particularly inclined to reflect publically on the failings of certain dictators who claim(ed) something like my own beliefs when I'm faced with antagonists on the right who are not inclined at all to similarly recognize the shortcomings, failures and disasters in their own camp.

[IrateCitizen]

52. Wrong.

Lenin and Mao did what they did because they were authoritarians first and foremost, with little regard for people over their own consolidation of power.

Everything that Mao did following the success of the Communist revolution after 1950 was a betrayal of everything that the people who fought under him believed they were fighting for.

As for Lenin, read Emma Goldman's accounts of post-revolution Russia in her autobiography. You'll come to a full realization that he was little more than another case of absolute power corrupting absolutely.

[Zhade]

68. You're kidding, right?

...lenin and mao did what they did because of the leftist ideology they espoused.

Please show evidence that leftist ideology includes and approves of massacring people.

That's complete bullshit, and you know it.

[redqueen]

69. So?

It suits the anti-leftists currently dominating this board.

[kodi]

106. Tianaman Square

and in that situation, where thousands were massacred, if the central committee of the Peoples Republic of China was not working from their ideology from what basis were they working?

that evil can not be placed at the feet of the corpse of mao. he had been dead for nearly 2 decades.

[deutsey]

107. Ironically, the PRC leaders are the "conservative" power in China

They were trying to "conserve" their power and authority and the whole damn system. The pro-democracy students were, within the context of the PRC, coming from the Left, struggling to expand access to power to be more inclusive of the people's will, like authentic Leftists support. Which is one reason Brent Scowcroft representing the the Rightist Bush Administration was in Beijing toasting the dictators not more than two weeks after the massacre. If the PRC was truly Leftist, I don't think Scowcroft would have been there.

Mao, Stalin, and other "Leftist" leaders like them use Leftist principles to rally the people and then betray the people by installing another authoritarian regime.

Utah Phillips, a Leftist, writes as much in this poem (especially the last two stanzas):

"i will not obey"

the new ruling party is holding the aces
the rest of the cards are all missing faces
i'm sorry i can't know you today
what can one say?
i will not obey

give us your sons and give us your daughters
no one is safe or immune from the slaughter
how indifference makes then rage
what can one say?
i will not obey

national guard or freedom fighters
all houses belong to cigarette lighters
but who hides in the smoke?
what can one say?
i will not obey

better perhaps to perish outside
of the bunkers where our generals hide
i turn away and spit
what can one say?
i will not obey

give us the minds of your children to learn
the substance of books we have not yet burned
but can they read the sky for rain?
what can one say?
i will not obey

soon all tyrants will feel our impatience
we choose to create our own combinations
i was always willing to agree
what can one say?
i will not obey

the essence of contract is agreement
not coercion or obedience
and agreement is sacred
what can one say?
i will not obey

there're so few wars of people's liberation
for the people have so seldom risen; only the armed faction
listen, the armed faction lies
they recreate the state through their action
when the people rise
it is not they, but the state, which dies

i sing this song for the prisoners' release
most of all now for the new state police
you see, the guns have changed hands - again
what can one say?
i will not obey

[kodi]

116. so, by your analysis, once in power, the left becomes the conservatives

and their ideologies become the opposites of their initial ones.

according to that reasoning, they had to kill their revolution to save it.

[deutsey]

122. I'm not defending them

I'm saying the PRC (and the former Soviet Union) has, as American capitalism has, a ruling elite who seeks to conserve their power, regardless of their ideology. That makes them conservative and there are conservative Leftists just as there are conservative Rightists.

I think I remember in Political Science classes I took that it's accepted among poly sci types that every state, regardless of its ideological tilt, has a rightwing and a leftwing. There were conservative Communists in Russia as well as liberal Communists. Same in China, and that's why the pro-democracy movement there began in fact: The liberal end of the Communist political structure advocated for loosening the grip on power that the conservatives held. I don't remember his name, but there was a Communist member of the ruling circle who was on the liberal end who died and the students were inspired what he said to do what they did. The conservatives are the ones who cracked down on them. It was not in the name of Leftist ideology, it was to preserve the power structure.

Gorbachev in Russia was on the liberal end of the Soviet structure where Stalin was on the conservative, IMO.

So I agree that authoritarians like Stalin, Lenin, Mao, did kill their revolutions, much in the same way those like Bush throughout our history have hammered nails in the coffin of our revolution. And they "saved" the revolution to drag out every year during May Day or Fourth of July celebrations. Like Mark Twain said:

"The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them."

I define the Left in the sense of saying that people typically locked out of the power structure have the power to come together, form coalitions and their own powerblocks and can affect change in a society. Like Marx said, though, the best place for that to happen is in a place where democracy and capitalism already exist. That's what happened in the first part of the 20th century in America: workers and farmers came together to offset the power of the wealthy capitalist elites in America and had a lot of successes using democratic means that were built upon during the New Deal later.

As Utah Phillips relates in one of his stories:

"Thus proving, everlastingly, what a union is: a way to
get things done together that you can't get done alone. Armed only with our sense of degradation as human beings, we came together and organized, and changed the condition of our lives."

[kodi]

126. i didn't say you were, and you got my point.

its not ideology, its the Ins & Outs.

ideology is just used as a tune to get people marching in a direction.

[deutsey]

130. But as many have pointed out here

Leftist movements do not "end", per se. They just continue to morph and emerge spontaneously from the mass of people. Sometimes these movements are exploited by authoritarians, sometimes they are not.

[IrateCitizen]

151. Then perhaps you could explain the Kwangju massacre, kodi?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1132724.stm

1980 - Martial law declared after student demonstrations. In the city of Kwangju at least 200 killed by the army, causing resentment that has yet to fade. Fifth republic and new constitution.

This event, not widely known in the United States, was essentially an equivalent of the Tiannamen Square massacre committed by Chinese troops in 1989. It was also performed with the implicit approval of the US state and defense departments -- because of the fact that the US essentially controls all troops in South Korea with the exception of South Korean special forces.

The South Korean government at this time was an anti-Communist regime. Does this mean that all anti-communists are thereby predisposed to repressing their own citizens?

[kodi]

153. tit for tat mass murders amongst regimes excuses leftist massacres?

nice palor game, for adolescents.

but so besides the point vis a vis this discussion that it borders on the ridiculous as a response to explaining how a government allegedly leftist in nature allowed what occured in teinaman square to happen.

the south korean government fought back a riot, so did the chinese, and used the same means, viz., violence against its citizens.

so, there is nothing to compare, except that the left is just as capable of killing its citizens as non-leftist regimes.

gee, isn't that what i was saying? and that the sanctimonious attitude that the left espouses as to the brotherhood of man is bullshit for the masses, since they are just as bad as the right when threatened.

so according to your logic, the left, at teinaman square, once in power is as capable of murdering its citzens as the right at kwangju. so what is the point? that the left is as bad as the right?

thanks for agreeing to my arguments about the left. you made my case for me.

where is your logic in this? explain how mentioning an act of violence by a state considered an authorititarian regime under marshall law is supposed to counter the chinese communist government's massacre at tienaman square.

implying that the right does it relieves culpability of leftist regimes doing it? and that since the "other" side does it, well then it is okay?

if you want to play such silly games, go for it.

but reach for your calculator now.

more were killed by communists from the 1920's onward in the russias and china than were murdered by the fascists in europe.

is that the game you want to engage? because if you want to count bodies, hitler was a piker compared to stalin, lenin and mao.

the dead don't care who kill them, just that they were murdered, and there are more murderers who cloak themselves under the mantel of the left than the right.

[IrateCitizen]

154. No, it simply points out the misconception applied...

When equating totalitarianism with leftists.

Stalin, Mao and Lenin certainly espoused leftist ideals in their ascendancies to power. But they largely abandoned these ideals in pursuit of their own power. Perhaps this was a fatal flaw in the earlier attempts by leftists to institute a regime that was more about the "people" than others preceding them -- that they advocated an even more extreme centralization of power than existed under the regimes they were replacing, which in turn left those governments more subjectable to the tyrannical whims of one person or a small group at the expense of the very people they claimed to champion.

Given the actions of regimes like the military dictatorships of South Korea, Pinochet in Chile, Batista in Cuba, Somoza in Nicaragua, et. al. -- this seems more to be a question of authoritarian vs. democratic, rather than of leftists vs. rightists. In fact, I don't hear too many people rushing to defend these monsters on the left, because their actions run counter to what is perhaps the greatest ideal for many on the left: total democracy in all areas of life.

gee, isn't that what i was saying? and that the sanctimonious attitude that the left espouses as to the brotherhood of man is bullshit for the masses, since they are just as bad as the right when threatened.

Your attempt to blur the lines between these distinctions is the only parlor game taking place here, kodi. And in the spirit of having an honest debate, your demeaning and condescending rhetoric is really not required. You are quite capable of making your point without it.

Of course, if you're willing to engage in an honest debate about strategies to further the decentralization of power and diffusion of it throughout society to prevent totalitarian abuses, I'm all ears. I'm a big proponent of strategies that challenge popular orthodoxy and misconceptions, as I now see that you are from your other posts on this thread.

[kodi]

155. no one can point to where leftists become totalitiarian

it is not like there is some magical line residing across the ideological matrix like the Lord's satan stopping Balam's ass, where on one side all is good and whole and on the other is human devestation.

the original philosophical basis of leftist thought, viz., human dignity, for demanding the best for the most, and which declares all animals are created equal also is used to declare that some animals are more equal than others....."vanguard of the revolution" stuff.

and when that type of rationalization happens, it comes from the left as "party members" and the right as oligarchies and royalty.

and lenin and mao and castro and pol pot did not merely one day decide to stroll across that line that demarks the difference between leftist thought and totalitarian, it was a long slippery slope where they rationalized what was good for the masses required a lot of pain for the few.....but it was this porcine vanguard that made the choices, not all the animals.

i am looking at the results of successful leftist movements, ones which achieved their goals. they seem to be very suseptible to capture by ideological leadership, who when they consolidate power are worse than the original adversaries they fought.

it is entirely rational to observe how bad the results are of these leftist movements and begin to re-examine their ideologies, and how and why they went wrong...............or did they?

china and russia were two of the most miserable places on earth at the turn of the 19th century and it is hard to imagine they would have made the material leap each nation did to their industrialization circa. 2004 without soviet or maoist collectivization.


was the price of collectivization worth it for those nations? can we say that to all the ghosts of the gulags, "but, the world is a better place versus the alternative courses of history and your suffering under collectivism was the shit roses bloom from?"


i consider it blatant, mindless ideological poisoning not to re-examine these leftist ideologies as new data is obtained.

as was once said by j.m. keynes;

"I change my mind when the facts change. what, sir do you do?"

[IrateCitizen]

156. Thank you for the much more measured response

I can find much in it with which to agree, to be honest. I am also well aware of the Keynes quote, having heard it uttered most recently by Chalmers Johnson in response to his more "conservative" critics.

The line that leftist movement cross is not one borne out of time in the "revolution", as you seem to imply, but rather one borne out of method by which to achieve their aims. In this sense, I mean that these movement unerringly rely upon a massive centralization of power in order to not only win, but to hold on to power. Such centralization will ultimately lead to ruin, the only question being the time required to complete the slide.

In the case of China, I think it is important to look at the view of a person as well-versed in the development of Communist China as the above-mentioned Dr. Johnson. See, Johnson proposes that Mao, through his collectivist policies that starved millions and the later "cultural revolution", did quite a fine job of betraying just about every single ideal of the initial communist revolution. Such a slide could probably best be attributed to the fact that the end result of the revolution was a highly centralized power structure in which all authority flowed from one person.

Such a scenario is certainly not good for democracy, nor for warding off the temptations and problems of tyranny.

The questions you raise vis a vis the industrialization of these societies is also noted. While both industrialized faster than either the US or UK, they also did so at much higher human costs, despite the inequities of the industrial revolution in the West.

i consider it blatant, mindless ideological poisoning not to re-examine these leftist ideologies as new data is obtained.

I don't know if you're applying this statement to me or the thread in general, but if it is the former, I did not realize I was doing so.

[nomaco-10]

31. Roger Baldwin Founder of the ACLU in 1920

[WilliamPitt]

34. Not having as much luck, eh?

I agree with you. It helps, though, to be part of a Party. Shit gets done. Selah.

[ulysses]

36. not at all!

I think it's been a fine thread. As far as the number of posts goes - well, I'm not you. Maybe you could start a thread about it. :)

[deutsey]

45. Read "The Long Detour"

Talks about the early socialist movement in America and how the Soviet Revolution helped to derail the momentum of this movement. Basically says that American capitalist democracy set the stage for true socialism, unlike Russia's authoritarian feudalistic background.

www.thelongdetour.com

[no name no slogan]

78. Funny, that's the doctrinaire Marxist argument right there!

Granted, it's been 15 years since I had my last Political Philosophy class, but what you said about capitalist democracy setting the stage for true socialism sounds like it's right out of The Communist Manifesto.

Marx always argued that socialism would grow from the collapse of bourgeous capitalism. He emphatically stated that a country needed to undergo industrialization to become truly socialist.

Russia, OTOH, was largely backward and agrarian in the early 1900s, with industrialization just getting started and a very small middle/merchant class.

Russia would be the last place Uncle Charles would have seen fit for a communist revolution. Marx always said it would happen some place like Britain or Germany.

:D

[corporatewhore]

53. that is becuase these guys were dangerous to the system and dont make

it into the history books did you learn about emma goldman or the haymarket martyrs in grade school because we were to busy reading about glorified genocidal monsters like jackson and colombus

[redqueen]

67. Wow! Helpful!

Thanks, corporatewhore, for speaking up for those unknowns you never learned about in school. :hi:

[RichM]

144. What is this piece of mean-spirited snottiness? Unless I misunderstand,

you were trying here to gloat at the relative "lack of success" of uly's post. It turns out, amusingly, that his thread is much more "successful" than yours - even though you're a big DU celebrity and DU consists mostly of Democratic Party loyalists.

Even if you'd turned out to be right, the motivation behind your little dig here seems very nasty to me. I'm surprised you wouldn't self-censor these aspects of your personality.

[mouse7]

35. Edward Abbey... author, The Monkey Wrench Gang

Nothing wrong with a little bit of monkey-wrenching between friends ;-)

[ProudToBeLiberal]

38. William Lloyd Garrison

The editor of the The Liberator

[ProudToBeLiberal]

39. Malcolm X

no explanation required

[jeffrey_X]

72. By any means necessary. ;-)

...

[ProudToBeLiberal]

40. Dr. Seuss

Wrote the book called The Lorax (1971).

[buddhamama]

41. Proud Leftist

Joe Hill
Mother Jones
Helen Keller
Ema Goldman
we hear of the notables (and rightly so) but we cannot forget the countless unnamed heros.

[buddhamama]

42. in remembrance of the brave

The Ludlow Massacre

The date April 20, 1914 will forever be a day of infamy for American workers. On that day, 20 innocent men, women and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. The coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the UMWA for many years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

Upon striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The massacre occurred in a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strike breakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later investigations revealed that kerosene had intentionally been poured on the tents to set them ablaze. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs. The women and children were found huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun--the Death Special-- that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre, the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter were ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.


UN-Named Heroes often forgotten in our history books.

[ulysses]

65. I'd just read your previous post

about the forgotten heroes and was thinking of Ludlow. :thumbsup:

[buddhamama]

43. 'Aunt' Molly Jackson

JACKSON Aunt Molly
(b Mary Magdalene Garland, 1880, Clay Co KY, d 1 Sept. '60). Singer, songwriter, guitarist and political activist. Performer of traditional mountain songs, described by Woody Guthrie as a "female Leadbelly'. Mining in Kentucky took the lives of her brother, husband and son, while another brother and her father were blinded in mining accidents; she began to chronicle these hard times in songs, working for the miner's union and recording her only commercial disc "Kentucky Miner's Wife' for Columbia '31. Between 1935-39 she recorded more than 150 of her songs for the Library of Congress. Appeared with Leadbelly and Josh White in stage show Cavalcade of American Song. She was beginning to gain some recognition from folk revivalists when she died in relative obscurity. A selection of the LoC recordings was issued on Rounder.

[deutsey]

44. Proud Leftist, proud small "d" democrat

:thumbsup:

[deutsey]

46. This quote from Bill Mandel, from his HUAC testimony 1960

http://www.billmandel.net/h/HUAC.shtml

"If you think that I am going to cooperate with this collection of Judases, of men who sit there in violation of the United States Constitution, if you think I will cooperate with you in any way, you are insane! This body is improperly constituted. It is a kangaroo court. It does not have my respect, it has my utmost contempt."

And this from his appearance before McCarthy, 1953:

"This is a book-burning! You lack only the tinder to set fire to the books as Hitler did twenty years ago, and I am going to get that across to the American people!"

[LWolf]

47. Gandhi

MLK

Mother Jones

Granny D.

[deutsey]

48. Listen to the "forgotten" heroes Utah Phillips talks about

http://www.utahphillips.org/

" The long memory is the most radical idea in this country. It is the loss of that long memory which deprives our people of that connective flow of thoughts and events that clarifies our vision, not of where we are going, but where we want to go."

Check out especially "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" and "Fellow Workers", the CDs he did with Ani DiFranco.

[deutsey]

60. From an interview with Utah in The Progressive

http://www.progressive.org/sept03/intv0903.html

SNIP
Q: Who are some of your other heroes?

Phillips: Pete Seeger, because he invented my trade--what we do, going from town to town to perform. Pete Seeger's gift to my life is my life. And Daniel Berrigan saved my bacon. I had a very important question for him. Johnny Cash had called me and wanted to record an album of my songs. I said no, I eschew the entertainment industry. But friends urged me to take that money and give it to some cause that can use it. I asked Berrigan, and he said, "Yeah, they'll always tell you how much good you can do with dirty money." Dorothy Day once told me, "Fame corrupts the health of the soul." I found out, as I matured in the trade and was taken in by this enormous folk music family, that I don't need fame, I don't need power, I don't need money, I need friends. And that's what I found: deep, abiding friends, like Judi Bari , who was full of joy, full of life, and laughed incessantly in the direst of circumstances. She was a consummate organizer and understood that it was essential to bring the environmental movement and labor movement together.

Two other great organizers who were also heroes of mine: Fred Thompson, who edited Industrial Worker newspaper, and Miles Horton of the Highlander Center. And I always admire Joe Hill. In 1915, when he was about to be executed by the state of Utah, he wrote to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who was raising funds for a new trial, "They've got me, and they are going to kill me whether I'm in jail or out of jail, so stop spending money on me. Put that money into the work, into keeping the presses rolling or getting workers into a fighting union." He wrote himself off. We don't have leaders like that.


SNIP

[buddhamama]

64. hell yeah !

i was going to list Utah. I listen to his Loafer's Glory radio show every week. He's a treasure.

"The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" is excelent. I have the album poster of Utah and Ani. :thumbsup:

[corporatewhore]

74. Jim Hightower says that kids aint taught real american history cuz

it has along a radical history of common people questioning the establisment

[deutsey]

108. "I Will Not Obey"

by Utah Phillips

I think this is the Leftists' Anthem...

"i will not obey"

the new ruling party is holding the aces
the rest of the cards are all missing faces
i'm sorry i can't know you today
what can one say?
i will not obey

give us your sons and give us your daughters
no one is safe or immune from the slaughter
how indifference makes then rage
what can one say?
i will not obey

national guard or freedom fighters
all houses belong to cigarette lighters
but who hides in the smoke?
what can one say?
i will not obey

better perhaps to perish outside
of the bunkers where our generals hide
i turn away and spit
what can one say?
i will not obey

give us the minds of your children to learn
the substance of books we have not yet burned
but can they read the sky for rain?
what can one say?
i will not obey

soon all tyrants will feel our impatience
we choose to create our own combinations
i was always willing to agree
what can one say?
i will not obey

the essence of contract is agreement
not coercion or obedience
and agreement is sacred
what can one say?
i will not obey

there're so few wars of people's liberation
for the people have so seldom risen; only the armed faction
listen, the armed faction lies
they recreate the state through their action
when the people rise
it is not they, but the state, which dies

i sing this song for the prisoners' release
most of all now for the new state police
you see, the guns have changed hands - again
what can one say?
i will not obey

[deutsey]

49. Eddie Belchowski

(This transcription isn't always accurate in its spelling, but it gives the flavor of Utah's story. The transciption is on http://www.gweep.net/~leaf/music/lyrics/utah.txt)

I was in Chicago, several years ago. I was invited to play at a nightclub. At
a nightclub? Can you imagine that? Can you see me in a nightclub? It was the
old Quiet Knight upon Belmont Street, across from Cliff Raven's Tattoo Parlor.
Well, I went up there at three o'clock in the afternoon to The Quiet Knight
cause I was scared. Fought my way past the guard dogs, got up there.

The janitor had taken the garbage out - he was in the big hall by himself, just
sitting in the, just under the, just a nightlight up on the stage, an older man
- he was sitting there playing The Moonlight Sonata, beautifully, quietly. I
stood in the shadows; he didn't know I was there. Great shock of white hair
standing back on his head, deeply incised lines on his face. Looked closely
and saw he was just playing with the one hand - the other was a stump off to
about here.

Well he began to pound the piano with the one good hand and in a rumbling
baritone voice, started to sing "Fryheight." "Freedom." The song of the
Tioman Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. The war that if we'd gotten
involved in it there might not have been a second World War. He sang "Los
Quatros Generales," "The Horama Valley," "White Cliffs of Gandeza." Powerful
music of the Spanish Civil War.

Well that was Eddie Belchowski. Eddie Belchowski had been a concert pianist,
brilliant pianist, as a young man, but he went, joined the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade, and went to Spain to fight against Franco of the fascists. Crossing
the Ebro he got his arm blown off. Well they put him in the field hospital on
morphine, which turned him into a junkie for the next thirty years of his life.
He haunted the alleys of Chicago a mad poet, derelict, drug addict, alcoholic.

He began to put himself back together. Got the job at the Quiet Knight so he
could practice the piano; Richard Harding was good about that. And not just to
learn songs of the Civil War, but he learned Haydn's and Lizst's left-hand
variations, he could play the Bach Shacon with one hand, and beautifully.
His daughter Reina just sent me recordings, tapes that he made for her I'd
never heard; he could play, oh, a whole classical repertoire on the piano, with
one hand. Chopin, that was his favorite. Well, he taught me powerful things
about endurance, about holding on.

I left Chicago; week later I got a call - said Eddie Belchowski had died. So I
sat down and made him up a death song.

Week later I got a call from Eddie.

First thing I asked him was, "Hey Ed, where're you callin' from?"

Well, he said he was calling from Chicago! I said, "Hell, dead, or in Chicago,
it's all the same to me, fella." And a week after that I was at the Quiet
Knight sitting on a barstool with Eddie Belchowski himself sitting across from
me: had us a chance to sing him his death song. He was amused.

Well it was just a while ago that Ed Belchowski at the age of seventy-four was
found on the subway tracks in Chicago. They just had a museum show of his art
and poetry and music, and recollections from old comrades all over the country,
and there I sang his death song.

[ulysses]

66. I love that track

The Past Didn't Go Anywhere was my introduction to Utah, and I helped keep Rounder in business for a while after that buying his stuff. I actually interviewed him over the phone a couple of times, trying to work up a freelance article on the history of labor music a couple of years ago. Nice guy, and very open.

I know he was in poor health a while back, but I haven't heard anything for a couple of years...

[no name no slogan]

85. That reminds me of at least one other to add to the list

Speaking of the Spanish Civil War, how could we forget the courage and bravery of the Abraham Lincoln Battallion, many of whom gave up everything to go fight fascism in a foreign country.

I truly believe that if the free nations of the world had taken a stand in Spain in 1936 we very well may never have had WW2. If the Republicans had the support of the other democracies (and not the Soviets, their sole ally in the war), the world would be a very different place today.

[deutsey]

50. Jack Miller

(Another transcription of a Utah Phillips story. Transcription on this page: http://www.jeddy.org/moi/utah2.txt)

Jack Miller kept the senior citizens' center for a long time up there in
Seattle, Washington. Jack had spent most of his life in the forest, as a
logger or a "timberbeast," they called 'em in those days, cause you were
treated like an animal. There were no bunkhouses - he recalled sleeping on the
ground with his fellow workers, with their wet clothes in the rain forest
piled in a heap next to the fire, hoping that they would be dry by the time to
go to work the next day. They spoke many different languages in the forest,
and they could hardly talk to each other - it was just like Lawrence. He said
most of 'em had never been to school; most of 'em couldn't read or write.

Jack Miller could remember The Verona. There was a shingle-weavers' strike up
in Everett, Washington - it was called The Everett Massacre; it's another one
of those that didn't make it into the history books. The Wobblies the Industrial Workers of the World, an international workers' union], they
chartered a steamlaunch called The Verona, and they had it sailed up there to
Everett bringing strike relief; and as the boat sailed into the pier, Sheriff
McGray had ringed the whole pier with armed deputies. He just deputized every
drunk and every bar in town and put a rifle in their hand. Well, they
surrounded the boat, and when they lowered the gangplank, Sheriff McGray walked
to the end of it and said, "Who are your leaders here?" And they shouted back
with one voice: "We are all leaders here."

Well that scared the tar out of the law, you know, and they began shooting;
those deputies began shooting. A lot of those Wobblies were killed. Some of
the deputies were killed in the crossfire, though, so when the Wobblies - those
that survived - made it back to Seattle, they were arrested, and they were
thrown in the County Jail on the charge of murder. Whole bunch of 'em.

Well, that jail was an all-steel jail - it was the newest affair, all made out
of steel. It had just barely opened, so the heat wasn't on and there was no
blankets and you couldn't get any smokes. So, those Wobblies, they passed a
note from one cell block to the other, and then by common consent, the next
day, they were all gathered in the middle of each cell block. And when the
noon whistle blew, they began to jump up and down simultaneously; up and down,
up and down, singing all the time, and finally they hit the resonating
frequency of that jail and cracked the south wall. They broke the jail.

And Jack Miller said, "Thus proving, everlastingly, what a union is: a way to
get things done together that you can't get done alone."

"Armed only with our sense of degradation as human beings, we came together and
organized, and changed the condition of our lives."

[deutsey]

51. And how could I forget Amy Goodman?

I've been listening to her as posted the previous names...she certainly belongs among them.

[messiah]

54. Pround Leftist here

and to add to list of leftist people: Fernand Pelloutier.

[buddhamama]

55. William Haywood-- The Wobblies

William D. "Big Bill" Haywood ranks as one of the foremost and perhaps most feared of America's labor radicals. Physically imposing with a thunderous voice and almost total disrespect for law, Haywood mobilized unionists, intimidated company bosses, and repeatedly found himself facing prosecution.

Haywood was born in Salt Lake City in 1869, the son of a Pony Express rider who died of pneumonia when Bill was just three. At age nine Bill punctured his right eye with a knife while whittling a slingshot, blinding it for life. (Haywood always turned his head to offer his left profile when photographed, but never replaced his milky, dead eye with a glass one.) Bill was also nine when he first began work in the mines. The 1886 Haymarket riots, trials, and executions made a deep impression on Haywood inspiring, he would later say, his life of radicalism. The Pullman railroad strikes of 1893 further strengthened Haywood's interest in the labor movement. Then in 1896, while working a silver mine in Idaho, Haywood listened to a speech by Ed Boyce, President of the Western Federation of Miners. Haywood immediately signed up as a WFM member and by 1900 became a member of the organization's executive board.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/haywood/HAY_BHAY.HTM

[Ficus]

56. Robert Lafollette

and he was a Republican.

William Jenning Bryan - Henry Wallace - Eugene V. Debs - Bill Haywood - Joe Hill - anyone in the IWW -

[deutsey]

57. MLK

This snippet from a speech he gave expresses the kind of Leftist critique I embrace:

from "Where do we go from here?" King's last, and most radical,
Southern Chrisitian Leadership Conference (SCLC) presidential address

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about "Where do we go from here," that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?" You begin to ask the question, "Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?" These are questions that must be asked.

Now, don't think that you have me in a "bind" today. I'm not talking about communism.

What I'm saying to you this morning is that communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problems of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together.

[buddhamama]

58. Clarence Darrow- Labor Lawyer

excerpt of Darrow's remarks from the trial of William Haywood and George Pettibone

Clarence Darrow, comments on Trade Unions during the trial of Charles Moyer, William Hayward and George Pettibone in 1907.

Let me tell you, gentlemen, if you destroy the labor unions in this country, you destroy liberty when you strike the blow, and you would leave the poor bound and shackled and helpless to do the bidding of the rich. It would take this country back to the time when there were masters and slaves.

I don't mean to tell this jury that labor organizations do no wrong. I know them too well for that. They do wrong often, and sometimes brutally; they are sometimes cruel; they are often unjust; they are frequently corrupt. But I am here to say that in a great cause these labor organizations, despised and weak and outlawed as they generally are, have stood for the poor, they have stood for the weak, they have stood for every human law that was ever placed upon the statute books. They stood for human life, they stood for the father who was bound down by his task, they stood for the wife, threatened to be taken from the home to work by his side, and they have stood for the little child who was also taken to work in their places - that the rich could grow richer still, and they have fought for the right of the little one, to give him a little of life, a little comfort while he is young. I don't care how many wrongs they committed, I don't care how many crimes these weak, rough, rugged, unlettered men who often know no other power but the brute force of their strong right arm, who find themselves bound and confined and impaired whichever way they turn, who look up and worship the god of might as the only god that they know - I don't care how often they fail, how many brutalities they are guilty of. I know their cause is just.

I hope that the trouble and the strife and the contention has been endured. Through brutality and bloodshed and crime has come the progress of the human race. I know they may be wrong in this battle or that, but in the great, long struggle they are right and they are eternally right, and that they are working for the poor and the weak. They are working to give more liberty to the man, and I want to say to you, gentlemen of the jury, you Idaho farmers removed from the trade unions, removed from the men who work in industrial affairs, I want to say that if it had not been for the trade unions of the world, for the trade unions of England, for the trade unions of Europe, the trade unions of America, you today would be serfs of Europe, instead of free men sitting upon a jury to try one of your peers. The cause of these men is right.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAdarrow.htm


Biography of Darrow
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/DARROW.HTM

[deutsey]

59. Dorothy Day

.

[deutsey]

61. Mario Savio

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, it makes you so sick at heart, that...you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon wheels...and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

[corporatewhore]

62. SACCO and VANZETTI !!!

[DerekG]

63. Huey Long...

Truly the biggest pain in the ass for FDR during his early presidency. You can thank leftists like the Kingfish for the more radical (ie: useful) legislation that was passed during the New Deal.

[WillyT]

71. John Lennon

[ulysses]

73. all y'all rock!

:thumbsup:

Keep it up!

[VOX]

75. Cesar Chavez, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bobby Kennedy...

Eugene McCarthy, Rosa Parks, and yes, Jesus Christ.

:kick:

[corporatewhore]

77. jesus was one of the first commies imo

[buddhamama]

76. Lucretia Coffin Mott

LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT (1793-1880) Lucretia Mott was a Quaker minister, abolitionist, and pioneer in the women's rights movement. In 1840 she traveled to London with her husband James Mott as a delegate to the World's Anti- Slavery Convention. At the convention the women delegates were refused recognition and not allowed to participate in the proceedings. Grieved by this treatment, Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was also attending the anti-slavery convention, determined to hold a meeting to discuss the rights of women. Mott, Stanton, and Mott's sister, Martha Coffin Wright, organized and called together the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York in July of 1848. Throughout her long life Mott continued to work for the rights of women and of freed blacks after the Civil War.

[deutsey]

79. Albert Einstein: "Why Socialism?"

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Einstein.htm

[deutsey]

80. Cornell West

Member of Democratic Socialists of America, as am I.

www.dsausa.org

http://www.dsausa.org/dl/Winter_2003.pdf (may take a while to load)

[WillyT]

81. James Baldwin, Paul Robeson...

:kick:

[corporatewhore]

82. Arundhati Roy and all the cool cats at the World Social Forum!!!

[corporatewhore]

83. Gen Vaughn -read The Gift Economy

[TreasonousBastard]

84. Mary Norton...

betcha don't know what she did without looking it up.

But, just to keep the record straight, the first major Social Security plan was Otto von Bismarck's.

(Took us a while to catch up)

[G_j]

86. Starhawk

www.starhawk.org

[corporatewhore]

88. D'oh was going to post her!!!

[G_j]

90. Lenny Bruce, Berrigan brothers, David Dillenger....

[corporatewhore]

89. Edward Said

[G_j]

91. yes,

[ulysses]

93. Fr. Roy Bourgeois

of SOA Watch.

[buddhamama]

94. Vandana Shiva

my admiration for Ms. Shiva cannot be measured. Present day warrior.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books. In India she has established Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy.
http://www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=90


RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR SCIENCE,
TECHNOLOGY AND ECOLOGY (RFSTE)

RFSTE was founded in Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh (INDIA) in 1982 by Dr. Vandana Shiva. It works on biodiversity conservation and protecting people's rights from threats to their livelihoods and environment by centralised systems of monoculture in forestry, agriculture and fisheries.
http://www.vshiva.net/

[buddhamama]

95. WI Senator Robert La Follette

founder of "The Progressive" in 1909 (formerly named La Follette's Weekly)

On January 9, 1909, Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette founded La Follette’s Weekly to be "a magazine of progress, social, intellectual, institutional."

In 1929, La Follette’s Weekly changed its name to The Progressive, and the views of the magazine have remained remarkably consistent over the years.

For nine decades, The Progressive has been a courageous voice for democracy, peace, social justice, civil rights, civil liberties, and environmental awareness.

For nine decades, The Progressive has denounced corporate power and decried U.S. support for brutal regimes abroad.

The Progressive was in the forefront of the battle for women’s suffrage and for the abolition of child labor.

The Progressive led the fight to stay out of World War I.

The Progressive railed against the Palmer Raids in the early 1920s.

The Progressive championed the unemployed during the Depression.

The Progressive has opposed nuclear weapons from August 1945 to the present.

The Progressive, more than any other publication, helped to expose McCarthyism in the 50s.

Early on, The Progressive warned against U.S. involvement in Indochina.

The Progressive was a leading voice in the civil rights era, publishing the words of Martin Luther King Jr. five times in the 1960s.

In the 70s, The Progressive devoted attention to the environmental movement, kicking it off with a special Earth Day issue in 1970 entitled "The Crisis of Survival."

Then, in 1979, The Progressive won national attention for its article "The H-Bomb Secret: How we got it and why we’re telling it," which the U.S. government suppressed for six months. But The Progressive prevailed on this landmark First Amendment case.

In the 1980s, The Progressive published pathbreaking stories about U.S. support for death squads in Central America.

In the 1990s, The Progressive stood up for the rights of immigrants, women on welfare, gays and lesbians, prisoners, and other scapegoats.

The Progressive also campaigned tirelessly to end the economic sanctions on Iraq, prevent U.S. involvement in the Colombian civil war, adopt a sane policy toward drugs, and institute public funding of political campaigns.

During the George W. Bush Administration, The Progressive focused on his messianic militarism, his mendacious war against Iraq, the assault that he and John Ashcroft have leveled against our civil liberties, the ruinous dismantling of our regulatory system, and an economic policy shamelessly skewed toward the very wealthiest Americans at the expense of the rest of us.

Throughout the years, The Progressive has published leading social critics such as Jane Addams, Helen Keller, Jack London, Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Carl Sandburg, George Orwell, A.J. Muste, James Baldwin, I.F. Stone, June Jordan, Noam Chomsky, and Edward W. Said.

And The Progressive has opened its pages to liberal politicians such as Adlai Stevenson, J.W. Fulbright, George McGovern, Russ Feingold, Tammy Baldwin, Paul Wellstone, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders.

These days our contributors include David Barsamian, Kate Clinton, Susan Douglas, Will Durst, Barbara Ehrenreich, Eduardo Galeano, Nat Hentoff, Molly Ivins, Andrea Lewis, Fred McKissack, John Nichols, Adolph L. Reed, Jr., and Howard Zinn.

The Progressive is also known for its investigative reporting. Managing Editor Anne-Marie Cusac has won several national awards for her exposés of brutality behind bars, including the prestigious George Polk Award.

Since 1993, The Progressive, Inc., has been directing the Progressive Media Project, which distributes commentaries to newspapers around the country in an effort to diversify and democratize the debate.

In all of its activities, The Progressive, as it has since 1909, strives to put forward ideas that will help bring about a more just society and a more peaceful, humane world.

http://www.progressive.org/default.htm

[no name no slogan]

121. Fantastic magazine & organization

I've been a subscriber for many years, and it's never let me down (unlike, say, The Nation has lately). Molly Ivins' columns are worth the cover price alone.

[ulysses]

96. poets - Carolyn Forche, Jimmy Santiago Baca

[buddhamama]

99. poets continued- Langston Hughes

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!


Mr. Hughes was a prolific writer who spoke to the struggle and challenges of modern day America.

BIO http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html

[ulysses]

100. excellent call.

:)

[deutsey]

110. Poet Chase Twichell, Novelist Russell Banks

Here's an interview I did with Chase (her husband Russell Banks, who helped start Not In Our Name, also contributed):

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/02/27_twichell.html

[buddhamama]

97. Norman Lear

among his numerous contributions in TV and Film
Mr. Lear is a former President of the ACLU and Founder of the Organization "People for the American Way".

[ulysses]

98. James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman

Medgar Evers.

[ulysses]

101. poor little unsuccessful thread...

:D

[buddhamama]

103. yeah, it is a sad sight

:-) :loveya: :hi:

[wyldwolf]

111. well, with the two of you each chalking up over 10% of the posts...

...along with another poster who has more than 10% of the posts... that's over 30% of the total... I would say you've made it successful.

Could make any thread successful that way...

Not that is isn't a worthy topic but I'm just saying...

[ulysses]

114. mmm hmm.

This is the first 100+ thread on DU in which some posters have posted more than once. Yup.

[wyldwolf]

115. no, not my point at all...

I've just never seen a thread where the thread starter is acting like it is some competition or accomplishment to have a long thread when he/she and two others of the same mindset are responsible for a great percentage of the posts.

Kinda like freeping your own thread...

[ulysses]

119. the competitive aspect

began with Will's post upthread. To wit:

"Not having as much luck, eh?"

Of course, I started the thread in response to Will's "Proud Democrat" thread, to which I didn't post. If social change is a two-pronged thing in which activists first fight for something and legislators then codify it, it's a complementary thing. My only point now is that, given the informative nature of a lot of the posts (buddhamama's posts on the forgotten folks who've played a part in particular) and a couple of interesting exchanges going on now, I think it's a very successful thread. :)

[buddhamama]

123. informative and encouraging

one small point to address on the competitive angle.
Mr.Pitt did in come and make, what was in my opinion a swipe at the thread. Now, if we'd like to take this competitiveness to extremes,
his thread has 81 posts, however the majority are also repeat posters to the thread, and Mr.Pitt himself posted more than once.

I chose to participate to account for events and persons who have not only helped shape this country but myself as well.

i have nothing to be ashamed.
the persons noted in this thread, along with the forgotten, were the catalyst for the social and economic change we have benefited from and enjoyed, and sadly yes, taken for granted.

to remember their struggle, how they persevered, gives testimony to
to The People's strength and determination against all odds.
I am optimistic and filled with hope; regardless of the challenges ahead, there will always be people of a strong heart who'll stand up and fight for what is right and true.

[ulysses]

132. well said.

I chose to participate to account for events and persons who have not only helped shape this country but myself as well.

Most well-received participation, too. :loveya:

[deutsey]

120. I think of it as the vangaurd raising awareness among the masses

That's putting it in Left-ese...

:evilgrin:

[buddhamama]

102. Ruby Doris Smith

SMITH-ROBINSON, RUBY DORIS (1942-1967)

Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from its earliest days in 1960 until her death in October 1967. She served the organization as an activist in the field and as an administrator in the Atlanta central office. She eventually succeeded Jim Forman as SNCC's executive secretary; Ruby Smith-Robinson was the only woman ever to serve in this capacity. Her SNCC colleagues realized how important she was. SNCC freedom singer Matthew Jones recalled, "You could feel her power in SNCC on a daily basis" (Jones 1989).

Smith-Robinson demanded hard work and dedication from everyone around her. Jack Minnis, a member of SNCC's research staff, insisted that people could not fool her. Minnis was convinced that she had a "100 percent effective shit detector" (Minnis 1990).

This hard-nosed administrator and legendary activist was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 25, 1942, and she spent her childhood in Atlanta's Black Summerhill neighborhood. She was the second oldest of seven children born to Alice and J. T. Smith. The Smith children lived a comfortable existence in their separate Black world. They had strong adult support, and they had their own churches, schools, and social activities. No matter how insulated they were, however, the reality of American racism and segregation intruded from time to time. Smith-Robinson recalled her feelings about segregation in those early years. "I was conscious of my Blackness. Every young Negro growing up in the South has thoughts about the racial situation." She also remembered her reaction to the white people she came in contact with when she was a youngster. "I didn't recognize their existence, and they didn't recognize mine . . . . My only involvement was in throwing rocks at them" (Garland 1966).

In this atmosphere, young Ruby, like many young Black Americans of her generation, became convinced that change was possible. A few years later, when Ruby Smith entered Spelman College, she quickly became involved in the Atlanta student movement. She regularly picketed and protested with her colleagues who were trying to integrate Atlanta, arid she soon moved from the local scene to the national arena. As early as February 1961 she became involved in activities sponsored by the fledgling SNCC. She was a bold and daring colleague, the creator of SNCC's jail no bail policy and one of the original Freedom Riders.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/chronology/details/660616.htm

[buddhamama]

104. November 20, 1969

(Alcatraz Island)

In April, the U.S. Attorney expressed the opinion that the claims made by the Indians were without foundation; thus, the General Services Administration (GSA) assumed custody and accountability for the island in July 1964. In September 1965, Richard McKenzie filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court of Northern California asking for an injunction against the sale of Alcatraz until a court adjudicated their right to it. As an alternative, they demanded a money judgment of $2,500,000. The court dismissed McKenzie's complaint in July 1968.

During the time the complaint was in court, the City of San Francisco advised GSA of its interest in Alcatraz as a park and recreational site, and in October 1969, GSA agreed to give the Department of the Interior until December 1, 1969 to explore the potential use of Alcatraz as a federal recreational site. Bay Area Indians decided to take action.

During the night of November 9-10, four Indians attempted to jump from a chartered vessel onto the island. Their first attempt was unsuccessful, but later that same night, the original four and ten others returned to Alcatraz and successfully landed. The next day, GSA asked them to leave. Richard Oakes, a young Mohawk man and spokesperson for the group, agreed to go to the GSA office to discuss the Indians' plans. On November 20, 1969, the "Indians of All Tribes" returned to Alcatraz, determined to remain. Approximately 90 Indians constituted the original occupation group. The president of the United Bay Area Council of Indians explained the rationale behind the Indians' actions as an attack on the whole system of broken treaties, poverty, and neglect. Alcatraz became a symbol for Indians because it represented fear and oppression, conditions which governed Indian lives. The occupation of the island was an attempt to awaken a nation asleep to Indian human rights.

During the Indian occupation of the island, Alcatraz was the site for the First Indians of All Tribes National Conference, held before Christmas in 1969. By then, approximately 200 Indians were on the island, with Richard Oakes as their spokesperson. After many months of struggle and unfortunate mishaps, including the death of Oakes's young daughter, who fell over a railing from the third floor of an apartment building, the occupation came to an end. GSA turned Alcatraz over to the Department of the Interior to use as a park, and the U.S. Government deeded several hundred acres of federal land near Davis, California to American Indians and Mexican Americans to establish an educational institution known as Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University.

On June 11, 1971, 20 federal marshals landed on the island to remove the occupiers. They found only six men, four women, and five children remaining from the occupation. Today, the "Red Eagle" over the main entrance to the prison is evidence of the Indians' one and a half years on Alcatraz.

http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/5views/5views1h2.htm


edited to add link

[deutsey]

109. Mark Twain

He coined the phrase "new deal":

. . . here I was, in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. . . I was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court


Twain also was an outspoken anti-imperialist, worked for reparations for former slaves, among other lefty kinds of causes.

[deutsey]

112. Kurt Vonnegut

Frequently contributes to In These Times, a Leftist publication:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/

[deutsey]

113. Allen Ginsburg, of course...

:thumbsup:

[G_j]

117. Bob Marley , Paul Wellstone, The Dali Lama,...

[indigobusiness]

124. Condi gets even...Decks Janet Jackson

Condi Denied Cell Next To Martha


Get your honest news here:
http://sludgereport.blogspot.com

[nomaco-10]

128. Abby "Steal this Book" Hoffman and the rest of the Chicago 7.

[nomaco-10]

129. From what I've been reading in here lately....

I suspect there are quite a few that think Mahatma Ghandi was a leftist. sigh........

[deutsey]

131. Will Greer (Granpa on The Waltons)

He was buds with Woody Guthrie and performed Shakespeare for workers.

[RichM]

133. Scott & Helen Nearing

http://www.jeanhay.com/OTHER/SCOTT.HTM

[ulysses]

134. hadn't thought about them in a while.

I read Living the Good Life years ago but your link has a lot more info. Thanks.

[RichM]

135. Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Helen Keller

[WillyT]

136. How Would You Classify Harriet Tubman ???

Definitelya a brave hero, but would you say Abolitionist, Civil Rights Worker, or Leftist???

Or does she pre-date those labels???

:shrug:

One of my heroes, either way!!!

[greatauntoftriplets]

137. Great thread.

Nothing I can add to this, and I have followed it since yesterday. Jeez, I am awed.

[ulysses]

138. all kudos

go to the posters, who truly rock the fucking house. :thumbsup:

[buddhamama]

139. Studs Terkel !!!

Doh, i am embarrassed, no ashamed, that up till now i have failed to mention Mr.Terkel. Studs' book "Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times" sums up the Man and this thread beautifully.

BIO: Studs Terkel, prize-winning author and radio broadcast personality was born Louis Terkel in New York on May 16, 1912. His father, Samuel, was a tailor and his mother, Anna (Finkel) was a seamstress. He had three brothers. The family moved to Chicago in 1922 and opened a rooming house at Ashland and Flournoy on the near West side {LISTEN}. From 1926 to 1936 they ran another rooming house, the Wells-Grand Hotel at Wells Street and Grand Avenue {LISTEN}. Terkel credits his knowledge of the world to the tenants who gathered in the lobby of the hotel and the people who congregated in nearby Bughouse Square {LISTEN}, a meeting place for workers, labor organizers, dissidents, the unemployed, and religious fanatics of many persuasions. In 1939 he married Ida Goldberg and had one son.

Terkel attended University of Chicago and received a law degree in 1934. He chose not to pursue a career in law. After a brief stint with the civil service in Washington D.C., he returned to Chicago and worked with the WPA Writers Project in the radio division. One day he was asked to read a script and soon found himself in radio soap operas, in other stage performances, and on a WAIT news show. After a year in the Air Force, he returned to writing radio shows and ads. He was on a sports show on WBBM and then, in 1944, he landed his own show on WENR. This was called the Wax Museum show that allowed him to express his own personality and play recordings he liked from folk music, opera, jazz, or blues. A year later he had his own television show called Stud's Place and started asking people the kind of questions that marked his later work as an interviewer {LISTEN}.

In 1952 Terkel began working for WFMT, first with the "Studs Terkel Almanac" and the "Studs Terkel Show," primarily to play music. The interviewing came along by accident {LISTEN}. This later became the award-winning, "The Studs Terkel Program." His first book, Giants of Jazz, was published in 1956. Ten years later his first book of oral history interviews, Division Street : America, came out. It was followed by a succession of oral history books on the 1930s Depression, World War Two, race relations, working, the American dream, and aging. His latest book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken : Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, was published in 2001. Terkel continues to interview people, work on his books, and make public appearances. He is Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Chicago Historical Society.

http://www.studsterkel.org/

[no name no slogan]

140. Abraham Lincoln Battallion, Paul Robeson

The Lincolns, of all backgrounds and ideologies, because they stood with the Spanish Republic when the other democracies (other than Mexico) abandoned them in 1936.



Paul Robeson, who was a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist/Leninist, but who later saw the error of his ways after living in Stalin's USSR. He was also a civil rights activist in the early 20th century, before they even coined the term. He also had a magnificent, operatic baritone voice, which he put to good use espousing the cause of working people throughout the world.

[RichM]

149. I rented 'Showboat' last week to hear Robeson sing 'Old Man River.'

It was great (the song, that is. The movie itself is somewhat primitive.)

Re: The Lincoln Brigade - those who were brave enough to go, were rudely called "premature anti-fascists" when they returned. Many were blackballed for years, for acting on anti-fascist sentiment before it became fashionable to do so!

[Dr Fate]

141. Pretty much anyone with talent.. n/t

n/t

[deutsey]

142. John Steinbeck

How could I forget Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men?

[ulysses]

143. I forgot Cynthia McKinney!

Rematch in the GA 4th! :D

[corporatewhore]

159. i think i might just send her some flowers

[KG]

145. Steve Earle

What's A Simple Man To Do?
(Steve Earle)

Dear Graciela, I'm writin' this letter
Deep in the night and I'm all alone
It's nearly breakin' my heart to tell you
I'm so far away from home
I know I said I'd never cross the border
I know I promised to return to you
But I lost my job in the maquiladora
What's a simple man to do?

I met a man in Tijuana
Said he had a job for me to do
Standin' on a corner in San Diego
With a pocketful of red balloons
All I wanted was a little money
All I needed was a week or two
I never even saw the police comin'
What's a simple man to do?

Tell my mamma that I said I'm sorry
I know she didn't bring me up this way
Ask if she could light a candle for me
Pray that I'll come home someday
Oh Graciela, won't you please forgive me
I never meant to bring this shame to you
I lost my job in the maquiladora
What's a simple man to do?

http://www.steveearle.net/lyrics/ly-jerusalem.php

[jason_au]

146. Henry David Thoreau

(though it's perhaps a little unfair to pidgeon-hole Thoreau as a "leftist" - a word which has so many different meanings it has little meaning at all).

Oh, and Noam Chomsky, too,

Cheers from Down Under,

Jason

[newyawker99]

161. Hi jason_au!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[dpbrown]

147. "Well Behaved (Activists) Rarely Make History"

Coopted from the bumper sticker I read that said,

"Well behaved women rarely make history."

When the Democratic Party is concerned more with "conserving" its gains than it is in forging progress, then it is up to the progressives to remind the Democratic Party of its heritage, legacy, and future.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Leftist Democrat

[vanzetti77]

148. Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, John Brown

n/t

[ulysses]

150. I've had a request

that we not neglect a certain (universally loved) consumer activist in the list. :)

My correspondent notes Nader's efforts toward citizen participation and safety. I agree.

[redqueen]

152. What a fantastic, educational, and SUCCESSFUL thread!

Thanks, uly!

:yourock:

[ulysses]

158. thanks, but I'm serious

when I say that it's the other folks what done it. I'd have never come near this kind of comprehensiveness in reminding us on whose shoulders we stand.

[redqueen]

160. You started the ball rolling

Some of these people I haven't thought about since flunking out of college history. It's been wonderful (and important!) to be reminded, truly.

Thanks again.

[G_j]

157. Granny D, Patch Adams, Ed Asner

[eridani]

162. Harry Hay

http://www.counterpunch.org/timmons1025.html

Communist gay activist from the 50s, ferchrissakes. Kicked out of the Mattachine Society (which he helped found) for being too red, and out of the Communist party for being too lavender. Kept on keeping on anyway. Lived to be 90.

The righties lost on slavery, child labor and women's suffrage--they'll lose on gay rights eventually, too.