When H. W. Bush phrased his party as the party of “compassionate conservatism” in an attempt to change the perception of the Republican party as the party of Scrooge, the oxymoronic effort derived immediate derision from the more sensible corners of the country.
But that hasn’t stopped the Republicans effort to continuously lie to the public and hide the intentions of their cuts and denial of funding for programs and legislation that would help the citizenry.
Maggie has big shoulders.
The picture above shows Maggie Hassan, the democratic candidate for governor hugging a woman. We received this picture via a message from Facebook, which tells the story of a cold day in March on 2011 during the most dramatic anti-labor rally held that year. At the state house union members had camped out and staged a huge protest.
When the protest was over and the crowd was leaving, a woman came running out of the state house and down the stairs crying and holding a sign. The sender said that the woman had apparently had words with a Republican (possibly O’Brien?) unsympathetic to the plight of parents of children with Autism, the sign reads, “Support Connor’s Law” and has a picture of what everyone learned later was her son.
While most everyone present stood in stunned silence, Maggie had the courage and presence of mind to act and quickly approached the woman and held her while she cried. Our friend also sent along a picture of the woman showing her sign, you can see tears in her eyes.
Democrats have backed and been the source of some of the most major legislation in this country that protect the rights of workers, created the New Deal, advocated for the Civil Rights Act, pushed to get out of the past wars we’ve waged, advocated for full freedom of rights for women. We were the party that supported gay rights, that turned to listen when the streets exploded with riots in LA and some Democrats were even ready to talk about legalization of medical marijuana long before it became the cause du jour for the young libertarian.
The Republicans can make up every excuse they’d like to justify their inhumane practices in supporting corporations and the 1%, but they can never claim to have compassion. That is the realm of the Democratic party and despite its faults, it remains their core value. Not conservative compassion, not pre-qualified, approved, pre-packaged and market tested compassion, but the kind of compassion that comes from understanding and knowing what it is to suffer injustice.
While Democrats, Progressives and others on the left can argue compassion in degrees, we know its where we stand in solidarity at the core. We know its the kind of compassion that rises out of the heart, that realizes that government represents real people, not statistics. Its the kind of compassion that comes from a warm, breathing, flesh and blood person who has cried, who has loved. It is the compassion that burns like a fire inside the heart of every Democrat who is determined to get up, get in the game and do something. Just like Maggie did that day.
On Saturday, August 29th at Boston Common members of the Boston Industrial Workers of the World gathered to remember the tragedy of justice carried out by the State of Massachusetts against two men wrongly accused of committing of robbing a payroll clerk at gunpoint.
Marred by ethnic prejudice, perjured testimony, suspected collusion of the defense counsel with the prosecution, admittance of irrelevant testimony concerning the political activities of both men, conflicts of interest with the judge and other judicial errors, Nicola Sacco and Bartemelo Vanzetti were sentenced to death electrocuted at the Charleston State Prison on August 23, 1927 as innocent men.
The case garnered international attention as the public worldwide noted that the prosecution, for lack of real evidence, made use of the prejudice, racism and red-baiting in American society at the time to convict the two men. To this day the case still conjures up study and debate. No one who studies history can deny that the events leading up to the deaths of these two men, had more to do with their anti-war, anti-capitalist and pro-worker activities than with the crime they were accused of committing.
Most importantly, the case draws a hard lesson about the extreme tension between workers and the unfettered growth of industrial capitalism in America and Europe. Activists who fought for worker justice, who spoke out against World War 1 were actively pursued as what we’d today call “terrorists”, rounded up, beaten, abused and oppressed in an effort to stem the tide of resistance to the newly developing and growing capitalist state.
One would do well to recall that the abuse and corruption of the American judicial system continues to disempower, abuse and control those entities of society that serve the capitalist interest best when exploited.
Nicola Sacco’s statement to court after being sentenced to death (9th April, 1927)
I am no orator. It is not very familiar with me the English language, and as I know, as my friend has told me, my comrade Vanzetti will speak more long, so I thought to give him the chance. I never knew, never heard, even read in history anything so cruel as this Court. After seven years prosecuting they still consider us guilty. And these gentle people here are arrayed with us in this court today.
I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class and the rich class, and there will be always collision between one and the other. We fraternize the people with the books, with the literature. You persecute the people, tyrannize them and kill them. We try the education of people always. You try to put a path between us and some other nationality that hates each other. That is why I am here today on this bench, for having been of the oppressed class. Well, you are the oppressor.
You know it, Judge Thayer – you know all my life, you know why I have been here, and after seven years that you have been persecuting me and my poor wife, and you still today sentence us to death. I would like to tell all my life, but what is the use? You know all about what I say before, that is, my comrade, will be talking, because he is more familiar with the language, and I will give him a chance.
You forget all this population that has been with us for seven years, to sympathize and give us all their energy and all their kindness. You do not care for them. Among that peoples and the comrades and the working class there is a big legion of intellectual people which have been with us for seven years, to not commit the iniquitous sentence, but still the Court goes ahead. And I want to thank you all, you peoples, my comrades who have been with me for seven years, with the Sacco Vanzetti case, and I will give my friend a chance.
Statement of Bartolomeo Vanzetti after sentencing:
“If it had not been for this thing, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, justice, for man’s understanding of man, as now we do by accident. Our words – our lives – our pains – nothing! The taking of our lives – lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler – all! That last moment belong to us – that agony is our triumph.”
Below, 2007 documentary, lots of original film footage, detailed.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the future for working class and poor youth in the United States is bleak. Three years into the most severe economic and social crisis of the capitalist system since the Great Depression, the unemployment rate for teenagers 16-19 years old is 26 percent. A recent study by Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies points out that the employment-population ratio-the ratio of the number of people employed to the total working-age population- which is a broader measure of labor market health than the unemployment rate, has fallen by about 20 percentage points over the past decade to 25.6 percent for teenagers. This is a record low in the post World War II period.
The picture is even worse when looking at the situation for poor black and Latino youth. The employment-population ratio for African Americans ages 16 to 19 was 14.4 percent in July. Since middle class youth will still go to college and one way or another find their way into jobs, albeit perhaps jobs that pay less than the ones they would have expected to get in the past, the picture is not as grim for them. But a whole generation of poor youth now essentially has no experience of paid employment. This is truly a lost generation.
Why begin a discussion of the state of education with unemployment statistics? This is the right place to start because most people would agree that a key aim of education should be to prepare young people for a better life than their parents had. The corporate elite that dominates our society also looks at education in relation to the future, but from the more narrow perspective of training the next generation of workers.
Europe is awakening to resist the efforts of the German-led bankers to use the Euro to squash public services and safety nets in order to increase profits for the global elites. Mirroring in many ways the strategies imposed upon Americans here at home by capitalist elites, the global capitalists have started the slaughter of the people’s rights on European soil as well.
Here, the site Igualistarista puts out the call from Portuguese resistance activists to stand up and protest against the austerity measures pressuring Portugal, Greece, Italy and Spain in an effort to get them to succumb to secondary status to as laborer-serf countries for European capitalist interests. So without further delay:
Screw the Troika, We Want Our Lives!
This is a call to protest made in the last few days by Portuguese activists for a new day of protest against what is known as the Troika (the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank). You can find the protest and the original call in Portuguese here:
It is necessary to do something extraordinary. It is necessary to take to the streets and squares in both our cities and our countryside. To join voices and hands. This silence is killing us. The noise of the mainstream media fills the silence, reproduces the silence, spreads the network of lies that puts us to sleep and annihilates our desire. It is necessary to do something to reverse the submission and resignation, to do something against the filtering of ideas and against the death of the collective will. It is necessary to once again call upon our voices, arms and legs, of everyone who knows it is in the streets that the present and the future is decided. It is necessary to overcome the fear that is constantly spread and, once and for all, see that we no longer have much to lose, and that the day will come when everything has been lost because of our silence and our surrender.
Brothers told no-one they were scared.
Stood on a chair and told the world to f-off.
Baby sister cried and family learn to live without the laughter
of two strong boys.
Young girl told me she is useless.
Better off dead. She had did many bad things.
No forgiveness for woman who wasted everything she touched.
I told her. “Jesus can forgive. You must forgive yourself and become wiser
in choices. Stop and think. Re-set your journey. Can’t change the past. But you
can decide the future”
Old man sat alone.
Thinking of dead memories.
Missing voices gone and not forgotten.
He wondered could he had of changed people journeys?
Could he had of been kinder?
Tears fall from his eyes.
Wars are alive and well.
Old Soldier sat at a grave stone of a good friend.
He drink his friend favorite Miller’s beer.
Told his friend. “Kids are strong and beautiful. You are a grandpa now twice.
The little boy looked like you. I miss you my friend. I wished I could hear your
laughter and I know what you would tell me. It will be alright Johnnie. I know you will
be there for my kids.” I leave four Miller’s beer on a lonely grave and pray my friend is watching his children from heaven.
Someone killed people in Wisconsin.
Just people going to worship.
I saw their faces of the family and friends after the shooting.
Exploding with tears and sadness.
Old world is going mad.
My good friends killed in Iraq in 2004 with my daughter and his two daughters.
Why would anyone kill another in a church of prayer or anywhere for no reason?
We need a billion prayers for love and kindness to be rebirth in our world.
“Too much death lord.
Please protect the children.
Please send wisdom and guidance to our leaders.
Lord of life and death.
Please help us. We are being led by Beserkers who want hate over love.
Want murder over conversation.
They desire blood of another because of religion.”
Today we stand on a dangerous edge.
Israel threatening war.
Middle East can send the world on the final journey.
Weapons and Soldiers cannot bring peace.
Destroying beautiful cities don’t create friendships.
Words of hate lead us to no-where.
We are all flesh and bones.
We know pleasure and pain.
If you stand for nothing.
One day you wished you scream out against war.
One day you will wished you told a love one you loved them.
One day we will be on a dead end road.
Too late for tears and forgiveness.
I pray and hope for logic and common sense. Need a miracle.
Common people everywhere must stop the berserkers of war and violence.
Stand together for peace and kindness.
Send food and medicine. Not weapons and Soldiers.
Tell someone you miss and love them. You need them near.
So I was at the Valley Street Stop and Shop in Manchester; the one that in the phone book is on Lincoln Street. Anyway, I’m there shopping with my little carpenter friend and suddenly, as I hunted around I heard African voices speaking, not uncommon in Manchester. Always curious about new sounds and languages I look up and see a mom and her two kids shopping. Nothing new, so I return my gaze and concentration to answer the burning question, steel cut oats or organic? quick cooking or old fashioned? I make my selection and move down the aisle.
Then suddenly I hear some talking from a loud man, as I move closer to the end of the aisle, I saw a plump white man moving along with a carriage and his mouth moving along with him. Then I hear quite clearly, “You like America uh?” My mind had to register for a minute if that this was not a friendly exchange. Bellowed at the top of the man’s voice, everyone in that part of the store had to have heard it. Other people I noticed moved along quietly and said nothing. I turned the corner of the aisle and passed the mom and her children to whom I was certain the shouting was directed.
You know communication is universal and one of the most fascinating elements of communication is how, without words we humans often can pick up the subtle nuances of emotion and state of mind. I passed the mom and noticed her son, probably a pre-teen talking quickly in his native tongue and his mother scolding him back. The exchange continued with mom interrupting son. I imagined the conversation as something the boy spouting off in frustration, answering the rude man’s racist jest and mother telling him to be quiet and move on.
The man’s voice echoed in my mind, the tone of mom and son’s speech and I had a hunch, I turned from my carriage and faced the mother and asked out loud, “Did that man just say what I thought he said?” The mother answered, “Yes!” with a look of disbelief and frustration. I told her I wish I had been there and spouted off about what a horrible thing and what an ass, she said he just started talking to her and yelling at her. We vented together, me allowing her, I hope, the permission to be angry; to know that not all ‘white’ people agree with the ignorance of that man.
But whatever I could do as a ‘white’ person far outnumbers the violence and offensiveness of the racists. Often I feel as if I am fighting a losing battle and I never have the opportunity enough times, nor enough support from my white peers to fight this problem.
More than likely I can’t find enough ‘white’ to stand up to this, because there are too many telling each other that racism doesn’t exist anymore. They say that conversations and verbal assaults like what I witnessed today are rare, if happening ever at all and certainly not in our community!
Well there it is, in your community and this isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed this or had to sit and listen to an endlessly ignorant and arrogant white person tell me how they know all about people of color. Come again?
I know it exists, I know it happens. I don’t have to be the witness every minute to verify the experiences of people of color when they tell me stories they tell me in confidence. I don’t want to walk away and pretend I don’t notice when incidents like the above happen, in fact I wish I had caught on sooner and had been in closer proximity to what was going on today; I would have been happy to provide an example of a white person standing up to a racist.
I don’t have to have dark skin to know that racism is wrong. I don’t have to count on my fingers the number of dark skinned friends I have to figure out whether I’m qualified to speak out against racism. I don’t need someone to tell me that as a white person I have privilege when nearly once a week, maybe everyday depending on where I am, I hear a white person justify to me, why they think their white skin makes them better than and different than someone without white skin. I hear it, I hear their ignorant words and their ignorant ideas. I hear white people say to me about “that part of town”. I hear white people say to me, “Well he’s black.” I hear white people say to me, “I don’t rent to Mexicans.” I hear white people say to me, “Black people are lazy, spanish people are noisy.” Should I go on white folks or do you know what I am saying?
Yum, yum! Bite into some BT today! If there was ever a good reason to find your local grower’s market for some fresh sweet corn, this may be the year. Well, according to the article, grocers have been selling to product for awhile — without anyone noticing. You can thank the corporate controlled FDA for their non-action.
Once again, consumers will be left in the dark when it comes to what food they’re purchasing at the grocery store – in this case, thanks to Monsanto and Walmart. The largest retailer in the world, Walmart confirmed to the Chicago Tribune that it wouldn’t restrict sales of Monsanto’s new genetically engineered sweet corn.
Like other foods containing genetically engineered (GE) ingredients, the sweet corn does not require labeling to keep shoppers fully informed about what they’re eating (a different story in the European Union, China, Russia, Australia and Japan, where it’s required). Some food safety advocates say directly consuming GE foods necessitates more long-term, transparent health studies.
Told about this poem by Matthew Richards, a local poet who saw her perform it in person.
Antonia Lassar
In Our Pupils
My heart has started to stamp like the herds.
I breathe this air,
But my eyes open like passports.
The cover says America,
but has Africa stamped on every page.
My mother escaped South African Apartheid
before I was even an idea,
so in elementary school when pictures of Africa didn’t look like me,
I couldn’t understand
why African American and black had to mean the same thing.
So last year I moved back to my mother’s continent
and now my DNA is woven
in strings of African beads.
But I can’t escape the first-look-only comparisons
from kids and the adults who act like them
that I don’t look African.
And I have to ask what they mean by African.
If they mean my skin won’t burn,
then I’m wearing sunscreen, not African.
If they want to see a Masai warrior,
a child soldier,
an elephant
then I expect all Americans
should look like Rosie O’Donnell.
But if they mean black, they’re right.
Africa isn’t a skin color—it’s black.
Africa is our pupils,
the way they will always open to the world,
no matter how much dust the wind blows at them.
Being African is like sweat on a glass of water;
it doesn’t depend on the color of the cup
but on the temperature of what’s inside.
Too often newspapers spell the word Africa
and assume one culture, one language, one problem.
The biggest problem facing Africa
is people thinking it really is like our pupils,
just empty space.
I am Africa. You can see me.
And sometimes I will sound like drums,
and sometimes like Sebeqabele gpi thapha nguqo ngqothwane
but sometimes you can barely hear me over the rain,
and we both fear that I may be washed away.
I mold my hands
into the shape of my continent
not to keep you from my borders,
but to show you how much like clay we all are.
Don’t worry about the Africans,
love the humans.
When the first human was born,
it didn’t know enough to call itself African,
but it hasn’t stopped crying ever since.
And you can blame it on famine, or war, or the fallout of capitalism
but Africa isn’t suffering,
it’s reminding you what your birth sounded like.
– Antonia Lassar
Antonia Lassar hails from Boston, MA and South Africa, and has toured both the US and South Africa with her poetry. She is proud to be a recent graduate of the Boston University School of Theatre. This summer, Antonia traveled to North Carolina as a first time member of the Cantab Lounge National Poetry Slam Team. She is currently touring her one-woman show The God Box around the Northeast.
Once again, consumers will be left in the dark when it comes to what food they’re purchasing at the grocery store – in this case, thanks to Monsanto and Walmart. The largest retailer in the world, Walmart confirmed to the 
Progressive Action New Hampshire 