In Celebration of St David's Day/ Dydd Gŵyl Dewi

It's become a bit of a tradition to mark the very special occasion of St David's Day/ Dydd Gŵyl Dewi, which celebrates my nations patron saint.Today we, as a country. come together to celebrate our culture. history and everything that makes us proud to be Welsh.

As with St. Patrick’s Day, the Welsh have parades in their major cities, where you’ll see the traditional dress and the red dragon proudly on display on the Welsh flag, or the flag of St. David himself, a yellow cross on a black background,alongside the wearing of one or both of Wales’s national emblems, the daffodil and leek.

This is because the daffodil begins to bloom early in the year around this time, and the ancient tradition of eating and wearing leeks on St David’s Day supposedly goes back to the 6th century. It is said that St David told Welsh warriors to wear leeks in their helmets in battle against the despised Saxons to differentiate themselves from their enemies,  and that the leeks won them victory. This is pure legend of course, but soon the association between leeks and war was firmly cemented in the Welsh mind. In the 14th century Welsh archers adopted green and white for their uniform in honour of the leek. And to this day the Royal Welch Fusiliers uphold the tradition of eating raw leeks on 1 March.

Welsh women will often dress in their national finery. The Welsh dress was a traditional farming dress with an apron topped with a distinctive tall Welsh hat. It was worn on special occasions such as going to church, and today it is kept for celebrations such as St. David’s Day parades.

 Schools across Wales hold celebrations, with a number of children dressing in traditional costume – a black hat with white trim; long skirts and shawls. Many boys, meanwhile, will wear a Welsh rugby or football shirt. Schools across the country will also hold an Eisteddfod (a traditional festival of Welsh poetry and music) on this day.

St David’s status as a modern national icon is a good example of how easily myth can trump historical evidence (or rather the lack of it). He lived and died fifteen hundred years ago, during a period of Welsh history often referred to as ‘the Age of the Saints’. The fifth and sixth centuries saw an intense bout of religious activity in Wales as holy men like David preached the word of God, founded churches and, if the monkish historians of the Middle Ages are to be believed, performed all manner of miracles.

Yet we have very little reliable information about who St David was, what he did, or even when exactly he lived. It seems likely that his fame stemmed from the establishment of a monastery in modern-day Pembrokeshire in the late sixth century – a settlement which we know today as the cathedral-city of St Davids. However the earliest direct references to him are found in manuscripts dating from the eighth century, almost 200 years after his death, so it is difficult to be sure about much else.

Luckily the Welsh have never been inclined to let a lack of evidence get in the way of a good story. While little is known  about his life, much of the traditional tales about St David are based on Buchedd Dewi (Life of David), which was written by the scholar Rhigyfarch at the end of the 11th Century.

Rhygyfarch's life of St David is regarded by many scholars as suspect because it contains many implausible events and because he had a stake in enhancing St David's history so as to support the prestige of the Welsh church and its independence from Canterbury, the center of the English church (still Catholic at the time). According to David Hugh Farmer in The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Rhygyfarch's history of St David "should be treated as propaganda, which may, however, contain some elements of true tradition." So most of what we know about Saint David is really legend; and none the less inspiring for it.

St David's existence at least does not seem to be in doubt; it is attested to in written records from earlier dates. He was born in the 6th century in or around South Cardigan and North Pembrokeshire in what is now southwest Wales, the exact year of his birth is unknown, with estimates ranging from 462 to 515 AD.  Born into local royalty, his mother was Saint Non, daughter of a Celtic chieftain, a  woman of great beauty and virtue.St David's father was a prince called Sant, son of the King of Cardigan But David wasn't the child of a love-filled marriage. He was concieved after his father either seduced or raped Non, who went on to become a nun.

St David's greatness was prophesied, both in the Christian and pagan worlds. Merlin, the great mage at the court of King Arthur, foretold his coming. St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, who at that time lived near St Davids, or Mynyw as it was then known, is said to have wanted to found a monastery nearby, but was told by an angel that the place was reserved for another who would appear in due course. St Patrick’s disappointment was soothed by a vision which showed him that his true vocation lay in Ireland. St Davids father, was also warned by an angel that he would find three treasures by the River Teifi in Cardiganshire, which should be set aside for his son; a stag, a salmon and a swarm of bees. These seemingly strange gifts each had a great significance. The stag, said to eat snakes, represents Christianity's conquering Satan (the serpent); the fish represents Saint David's abstinence from liquor; and the bees represent his wisdom and spirituality.

Even from his birth strange things have been said about St David. It is said he was born in a wild thunderstorm, the birthing process was said to have been so intense and fraught that his mothers fingers left marks as she grasped a rock. As St David was born a bolt of lightning from heaven is said to have struck the rock, splitting it in two and at the moment of birth a spring of pure water gushed out of the ground. A blind old man who held St David at the baptism had his sight restored by applying this remarkable water to his eyes. This is one of the colourful stories about the childhood of Dewi Sant.

Non named her son Dewidd, though local Dyfed pronunciation meant he was commonly called Dewi. David is an Anglicised variation of the name derived from the Latin Davidus.

Brought up by his mother in Henfeynyw near Aberaeron, David is said to have been baptised at nearby Porthclais by St Elvis of Munster. It is said that a blind monk, Movi, was cured after drops of water splashed into his eyes as he held David.

St David was educated at a monastery, usually taken to be Whitland in Carmarthenshire, under St Paulinus of Wales. He is said to have cured his tutor of blindness by making the sign of the cross. Seeing him as blessed, Paulinus sent him off as a missionary to convert the pagan people of Britain. Having chosen life as a missionary monk,he travelled to France, Ireland, and the Middle East to learn and to proselytize and went from place to place helping the poor, and teaching men to live as he did and is known for converting his countrymen to Christianity.

It is said  that once when St David  was preaching at a large outdoor gathering, in Llanddewi Brefi people complained they couldn’t hear or see him  until a white dove landed on St David’s shoulder, and as it did, the ground on which he stood rose up to form a hill, making it possible for everyone to see and hear him , both near and far off, where a church now stands. The dove became his emblem often appearing in his portraits and on stained-glass windows depicting him. Doves are considered pure due to their typical role as a messenger or a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

There are many other stories about the man, no one can actually tell if any of them are actually true or not but create a nice tale to tell nevertheless. It is also said that he once rose a youth from death, and milestones during his life were marked by the appearance of springs of water.

In 550 AD, St David was named the Archbishop of Wales at the Synod of Brefi church council and stayed in the settlement of Mynyw and set up a large monastery. David was a bit of a disciplinarian and hard task masker, but the monks in this monastery  obeyed him and lived a simple life, drinking water and eating only herbs and bread. He became known as Dewi Dyrfwr (David the water drinker) as meat and beer were forbidden. Although the monks farmed the surrounding land, St David insisted that they did not use animals to carry their tools,and they were to carry them. Also none of the monks were allowed any personal possessions and they spent evenings praying, reading and writing.

Eventually became so unpopular with his monks for the life of austerity he made them live, that they tried to poison him. St David was informed about this by St Scuthyn, who as legend says, presumably in the absence of a ferry or a Ryanair flight, travelled from Ireland on the back of a sea-monster for the purpose.

He frequently visited other places in South Wales, and churches were afterwards built in  many of these villages in memory of him.  A legend says that he once went to Jerusalem with two companions, St Teilo https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/02/st-teilos-day-dydd-sadwrn-teilo.html?m=1 and St Padarn. The three left Wales together "with one mind, one joy, and one sorrow." When after a hard journey they arrived at Jerusalem they were received with joy and hospitality, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem gave St David, before he returned to Wakes, a remarkable bell which " shone with miracles," a staff, and a coat woven with gold. 

His last words to his followers before his death are thought to have been: "Be joyful, keep the faith and do the little things that you have heard and seen me do." The phrase gwenwch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd - 'Do the little things in life' - is still a well-known phrase in Wales. 

Here I offer you this beautiful song from Bob Delyn a'r Ebillion called Pethau Bychain Dewi Sant ( St David's Little Things) from the album Dore.

 

Geriau/ Words

Pethau bychain Dewi Sant
nid swn tan ond swn tant.
Nid derw mawr ond adar mân,
nid haul a lleuad ond gwreichion tân.

Ond o, dyna chi strach, trio cael hyd i sach
 i gadw'r holl bethau bach.

 Pethau bychain Dewi Sant,
 y ll'godan ond nid yr eliffant.
 A darnau'r gwlith nid dwr y moroedd,
 ond yn y briga', stwr y mae.

 Ond o, dyna chi strach, trio cael hyd i sach
 i gadw'r holl bethau bach.

 Pethau bychain Dewi Sant,
swn 'yn traed ni yn y nant.
Yr hada' yn disgyn yma a thraw,
a'r tamad, y tamad ola' o wenith yn dy law.

Ond o, dyna chi strach,
trio cael hyd i sach i gadw'r holl bethau bach.

Map y byd yn llyfr y plant,
pethau bychain Dewi Sant.

Y pellter sydd rhwng dant a dant ar ol nawdeg naw a chant
 pethau bychain Dewi Sant.

Ond o, dyna chi strach,
 trio cael hyd i sach i gadw'r holl bethau bach.

English Translation Lyrics:

St David's little things,
not the sound of fire
but the sound of chords.
Not a large oak but small birds,
not the sun and moon but the sparks of fire.

But oh, what a hassle it is to try and find a sack
to keep all of the little things.

St David's little things,

the mouse but not the eliphant.

And the dew drops, not the water of the seas,
but in the branches, uproar is found

But oh, what a hassle it is to try and find
a sack to keep all of the little things.

St David's little things,
the sound of our footsteps in the stream.
The seeds fall here and there,
and the scrap, the last scrap of wheat in your palm.

But oh, what a hassle it is to try and find a sack
to keep all of the little things.

The world's atlas in a children's book,
St David's little things.

The distance between a tooth and a tooth between ninety nine and a hundred - St David's little things. But oh, what a hassle it is to try and find
a sack to keep all of the little things.

 St David is also said to have lived for over 100 years, and some say, hold your breathe, to the age of 142 or 147 (his clean living ways, sure must have helped him) and died on Tuesday 1 March 589, in the week after his final sermon. He was buried in the grounds of his monastery, which was said to have been "filled with angels as Christ received his soul". 

 Mynyw is now known as St David’s, the UK’s smallest city (,near the southwestern tip of Pembrokeshire.) in his honour. The monastery has since become the magnificent St David’s Cathedral and was a prestigious site of pilgrimage in the middle ages and is still a site of immense interest to this day. It is said by some that two pilgrimages to St Davids are equal to one pilgrimage to the Vatican in Rome. His shrine  became so famous that three English monarchs - William 1, Henry 11 and Edward 1 are said to have made pilgramages to it.  

 

 

St David’s Day has been celebrated in Wales on 1st March since the 12th Century when David was made a saint by Pope Callixtus II, at the height of the Welsh resistance to the Normans. You will find churches and chapels dedicated to him in south-west England and Brittany, as well as Wales. His influence also reached Ireland, where the Irish embrace his beliefs about caring for the natural world.

The nickname ‘Taffy’ for a Welshman links back to St David as the original and ultimate Welshman – the term dates to the 17th century and derives from ‘Dafydd’, the Welsh for David.William Shakespeare name-dropped St David in Henry V. When Fluellen’s English colleague, Pistol, insults the humble leek on St David’s Day, Fluellen insists he eat the national emblem as punishment: “If you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek” (Act V, Scene I).

Whatever the true story of Dewi Sant is , there is no doubt that he was indeed a figure of much historical and spiritual significance that still carries with him much importance to the people of Wales today,  a cheerful and celebratory day as my country comes together in honour of their patron saint to celebrate Welsh history, culture, and identity with pride.

In 2000 the National Assembly for Wales voted unanimously to make St David’s Day on the 1st March a bank holiday.to celebrate out patron saint just like they do in the Republic of Ireland and Scotland, but sadly the idea was rejected by Westminster, surprise, surprise. Nevertheless, St David’s position as the patron saint of Wales has only grown stronger since then, with parades and concerts now a staple part of the festivities each year.

To conclude this post and mark Saint David’s Day this year, I share the following moving poem Rhyfel (War) in both English and Welsh by the Welsh language poet/ pacifist Ellis Humphrey Evans, better known by his bardic pen name Hedd Wyn. (Blessed Peace).https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2017/07/remembering-pacifist-poet-hedd-wynn_42.html It is one of his best known and most frequently quoted works in which he interweaves ideas about faith, music, class and conflict in a lament for the brutality and devastation caused by the First World War. This time of the year also serves to remind me that the miracle of spring is just around the corner.Dydd Gŵyl Dewi hapus i bawb /Happy Saint David’s Day to you all. Heddwch/ Peace.

 War (Rhyfel) by Hedd Wyn

English translation by Gillian Clarke

Bitter to live in times like these.
While God declines beyond the seas;
Instead, man, king or peasantry,
Raises his gross authority.

When he thinks God has gone away
Man takes up his sword to slay
His brother; we can hear death’s roar.
It shadows the hovels of the poor.

Like the old songs they left behind,
We hung our harps in the willows again.
Ballads of boys blow on the wind,
Their blood is mingled with the rain.

Original Welsh poem by Hedd Wyn

Gwae fi fy myw mewn oes mor ddreng,
A Duw ar drai ar orwel pell;
O’i ôl mae dyn, yn deyrn a gwreng,
Yn codi ei awdurdod hell.

Pan deimlodd fyned ymaith Dduw
Cyfododd gledd i ladd ei frawd;
Mae sŵn yr ymladd ar ein clyw,
A’i gysgod ar fythynnod tlawd.

Mae’r hen delynau genid gynt,
Ynghrog ar gangau’r helyg draw,
A gwaedd y bechgyn lond y gwynt,
A’u gwaed yn gymysg efo’r glaw.

Links to a few earlier St David's Day/  Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Posts

Gillian Clarke - Miracle on St David's David's Day 

 https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2013/03/gillian-clarke-8637-miracle-on-st.html

The Praise of St David's Day Showing the reason why the Welch -men Honour the Leeke on this Day 

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-praise-of-st-davids-day-showing.html

Evan James (Ieuan ap Iago) An Ivorite song to be sung to the tune of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2014/03/evan-james-ieuan-ap-iago-1809-2091878.html

Harri Webb -  The Red , White and Green

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2017/03/harri-webb-7920-311294-red-white-and.html

The Welsh Language - Alan Llwyd

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-welsh-language-alan-llwyd-b1948.html

 

Remembering occupation of Wounded Knee and continuing injustice of Leonard Peltier

On 27 Feb 1973 armed Native American activists occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in protest at corruption and US treaty breaches with Native Americans. Despite state  violence and killings they held out for 71 days and galvanising huge support which saw.within days, hundreds of activists joining them for what became a 71-day standoff with the U.S. government and  law enforcement. agencies.

It was the fourth protest in as many years for AIM the American Indian Movement. The organization formed in the late 1960s and drew international attention with the occupation of Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay from 1969-1971. In 1972, the Trail of Broken Treaties brought a cross-country caravan of hundreds of Indigenous activists to Washington, D.C., where they occupied the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters for six days.

Then, on Feb. 6, 1973, AIM members and others gathered at the courthouse in Custer County, South Dakota, to protest the killing of Wesley Bad Heart Bull, who was Oglala Lakota, and the lenient sentences given to some perpetrators of violence against Native Americans. When they were denied access into the courthouse, the protest turned violent, with the burning of the local chamber of commerce and other buildings. Three weeks later, AIM leaders took over Wounded Knee.

Initially provoked by the corruption of the Government's approved tribal governance , their goal too was to protest injustices against their tribes, and the many violations of various treaty's with the United States  government and current abuses and repression against their people. In the 2 years prior to the confrontation more than 60 Indians at the Pine Ridge reservation had been killed, without anyone having been bought to justice for their crimes.

Within days, hundreds of activists had joined them for what became a 71-day standoff with the U.S. government and other law enforcement agencies.

The occupation  was symbolically located at  Wounded Knee because it  was the site of a US government massacre of 300 Lakota in 1880. In addition to its historical significance, Wounded  Knee was one of the poorest communities in the United States and shared with the other Pine Ridge settlements some of the country's lowest rates of life expectancy.

The actions of AIM was acclaimed  by many Native Americans, but the 200 activists from AIM soon faced a federal government force including Marshalls, the FBI  and the Nebraska National Guard who responded to the occupation with a full scale military style assault. In the resulting melee two federal agents were shot along with two brave warriors - Buddy Lamont and Frank Clearwater - died during the siege, where over 200,000 rounds of ammunition were fired at the protestors. Also 2 federal agents had been shot during the standoff. This use of military force by the federal government was later ruled to be unlawful.

 

 

After AIM's eventual surrender Leonard Peltier, a member of the Lakota Ogkla Sioux was arrested and charged  with the murder of the two FBI agents on the  flimsiest off evidence who had been asked by the traditional people at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to come and help protect these people from violence and to protect the peoples land  from mining operators,for uranium. In the two years prior  to the confrontation more than 60 native Americans at the Pine Ridge Reservation had been killed, without anyone being brought to justice for their crimes.

Leonard Peltier is now one of American society's  longest serving political prisoners and is considered to be the Native American peoples  own Nelson Mandela, who though admitting to being there at the time, to help protect his community from continuing violence, has always proclaimed his innocence of actually shooting anyone.

Though out the world this man 'dubbed' the Nelson Mandela of North America is considered a political prisoner. With the support of AIM (The American Indian Movement), Amnesty International, global religious and political leaders, as well as over 20 million individuals, Peltier continues to fight not only for personal freedom but for justice for all Native Americans.

 

He was never given a fair trial, faced with an all white jury,federal authorities quashed or destroyed thousands of pages of evidence which would have led to his freedom.The ballistic evidence was deeply flawed, and no real links  to identify  Mr Peltier with the murder.
.He has continued to be a victim of the racism and corruption embedded in the US criminal justice system. But Leonard Peltier is not simply a victim, he is also a fighter, writer, activist, grandfather, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and was the Presidential candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party in 2004 whose spirit refuses to be beaten. Leonard his friends family and comrades have fought over the years for real justice to be done. In the years since his conviction, millions upon millions of people around the world have come  to learn of his case, agree that he is innocent and demand his freedom. His  most recent petition for release on parole was denied in 2009, and I understand that  he is not eligible for consideration for parole again until 2024.

 Over the years he has become a model prisoner, still proclaiming his innocence,  his commitment to his fellow  Native American rights undimmed, he spends his time concentrating on art and writing ..Peltier, who is currently detained in Coleman, Florida, has spent  over 40 years in maximum security, despite multiple recommendations to lower his prisoner classification, so that he can be transferred to a less restrictive prison closer to his family, have all been rejected.It is time to free him now. 

http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info 

 

 

                                       
                                           Leonard Peltier

One who goes his own way

 

Poem loosely inspired by painting above which is called 'One who goes his own way' by German artist Hans Dieter 1861- 1968

I am who I am

Who else could I be,

I won't conform

To consensus reality,

These are my thoughts

Releases of self identity.

I will never lie

Falter from my ideals,

I have flaws

Some are my fault,

Many are not

Got capacity to change.

Sometimes mad

Can seem crazy,

A bender of rules

Following own path,

Drinking. smoking

Mind bending, shifting.

With consciousness rising

Emotions, feelings woken,

Mind really free and open

Often will be very unspoken,

Having been beaten and broken

Can't allow pride to be stolen.

Being blunt hate bullies

Voices of Fascists and Tories,

Cries of injustice of any genders

Pain caused by their tormenters, 

Prejudice and discrimination

Passivity devoid of reason.

Misconceptions felt in the dark

Labels that have left heavy mark,

Perceived to be half-baked, lazy

Lacking moral credibility.

Don't try to judge or misconstrue

Please accept my human nature.

Containing light that shines

Wanting to brighten days,

I can be a decent friend

Offer kindness, compassion,

Unless pushed too far

Driven close to the edge.

We are all different

With our own realities, 

Uniqueness of perception

Routes of variable direction,

So follow your own blazing star

I will carry on chasing mine.

Remembering the life of Revolutionary Black Panther Huey P Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989)

Huey Percy Newton was an American revolutionary and political activist who was born on February 17, 1942 in Monroe, Louisiana the youngest of Walter Newton and Armelia Johnson’s seven children. Walter Newton was a Baptist preacher, sharecropper, and, at one time or another, worker in the local sawmills and sugarcane mills. He co-founded the Black Panther Party, a Marxist-Leninist political organisation, that played a pivotal role in the 1960'-70's  in defending Black communities against discrimination and the harsh economic and social conditions these communities faced in the US.

Long an iconic figure for radicals, Huey Newton is now being discovered by those interested in the history of America's social movements and since its Black History month I figured it be a good  idea to give some insight on who Huey was and who the Panthers were.

Newton and his  family moved to Oakland, California, in his childhood because of the racial discrimination against Black communities in the Southern states.As Newton later recalled in his autobiography, Oakland was subdivided into two worlds where radically different class realities seemed to be sculpted into the local topography. The hills and the affluent area known as Piedmont were the exclusive enclaves of the white middle classes and the wealthy. “The other Oakland—the flatlands,” Newton wrote, “consists of substandard income families that make up about 50 per cent of the population of nearly 450,000. They live in either rundown, crowded West Oakland or dilapidated East Oakland, hemmed in block after block, in ancient, decaying structures, now cut up into multiple dwellings.” 

Newton had a difficult childhood and was arrested many times as a teenager for minor crimes, such as vandalism or gun possession. In school Newton struggled with disciplinary problems, reading, and his teachers’ racist low expectations, and when he graduated from high school he was functionally illiterate. With the help of his older brother Melvin, he taught himself to read. His path to literacy and intellectual life was similar to Malcolm X’s: a combination of crude methods, self-discipline, the solitude of the prison cell, and ultimately the camaraderie and lively debates of the various political study groups he encountered after enrolling at Oakland City College in 1959.

Newton was a voracious reader, and during his tenure at the  college, he read the works of Marx, Lenin, Malcolm X, and other communist thinkers and civil rights leaders and he became involved in politics, joining a handful of Black organisations and partnerships.He developed a Marxist/Leninist view of the Black community. He saw Black people as a community controlled by the police, white business people, and local authorities. Following his Marxist-Leninist approach, he believed that the Black community should empower themselves and seize control of the oppressing institutions.

 In October 1966, he founded, along with Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party of Self-Defense.Seale and Newton had become  friends  with at college. They started working with the Afro-American Association to organise students and demand representation on Pioneer Day.The duo later joined more radical organisations, such as the Maoist Revolutionary Movement. Both wanted to create a new way of doing Black politics.

Together Seale and Newton wrote the doctrines that formed the Black Panther's Ten-Point Program which encompassed  the founders' calls for Black self-determination, a decent education, for Black children free of racist and historical bias, as well as "land, bread, housing… justice and peace." (Huey P. Newton, War Against the Panthers, 1966) It also called for an end to economic exploitation of Black communities, along with military exemption.

The organization itself was not afraid to punctuate its message with dramatic appearances. For example, to protest a gun bill in 1967, members of the Panthers entered the California Legislature armed. (Newton actually wasn't present at the demonstration.) The action was a shocking one that made news across the country, and Newton emerged as a leading figure in the Black militant movement.

Seale was one of the “Chicago Eight” (later the Chicago Seven), a group of activists who protested against the Vietnam War at the 1968 Democratic Convention and were accused of conspiracy and inciting a riot in the Convention.

The movie “Chicago 7” recalls the trial of these activists and received an Oscar Nomination in 2021.

Newton's role in the Black Panther Party was the Minister of Defense and ideologist. The slogan of the movement was “freedom by any means necessary”.

The Black Panthers arose out of the radicalizing Black freedom movement, inspired by the surging anti-imperialist and socialist movements around the world. The party's original purpose was to protect African American communities from police brutality, arming patrols who would oversee black neighbourhoods, but eventually called for arms to every member of the black community and called on the government to exclude black people from the Army's draft.and upholding the right of armed self-defense. They burst onto the scene and inspired a generation of young people to move toward revolution and socialism.

Newton would frequent pool halls, campuses, bars and other locations deep in the black community where people gathered in order to organize and recruit for the Panthers. While recruiting, Newton sought to educate those around him about the legality of self-defense. One of the reasons, he argued, why black people continued to be persecuted was their lack of knowledge of the social institutions that could be made to work in their favor. In Newton's autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, he writes, "Before I took Criminal Evidence in school, I had no idea what my rights were." Newton also wrote in his autobiography, "I tried to transform many of the so-called criminal activities going on in the street into something political, although this had to be done gradually." He attempted to channel these "daily activities for survival" into significant community actions.

Newton led the Black Panther Party to found more than 60 social programs for Black communities, such as medical clinics, legal advice seminars and even an ambulance service.The Black Panthers quickly expanded to many cities in the US, such as Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit. In 1967, the organisation had over 10,000 members in 68 chapters across the United States. 

The Black Panthers wanted to improve life in Black communities and took a stance against police brutality in urban neighborhoods by mostly white cops. Members of the group would go to arrests in progress and watch for abuse. Panther members ultimately clashed with police several times and faced severe repression from the FBI's insidious COINTELPRO program, which sought to break apart many of the powerful civil rights and Black activist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly caused dissent and unrest between the Black Panthers and other Black nationalist groups. Revolutionary ideas and socialist movements were seen as a significant national security threat in the United States. Dozens of activists were arrested and beaten in the protests at that time.Hoover described the Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and in November 1968 ordered the FBI to employ “hard-hitting counter-intelligence measures to cripple the Black Panthers” Also, many leftist organisations were infiltrated by the FBI to be undermined. The Black Panther party's treasurer, Bobby Hutton, was killed while still a teenager during one of these conflicts in 1968.

Newton himself was arrested the previous year for allegedly killing an Oakland police officer during a traffic stop. He was later convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. But public pressure — "Free Huey" became a popular slogan of the day — helped Newton's cause. He was freed in 1970 after an appeals process deemed that incorrect deliberation procedures had been implemented during the trial.

The global success of the Black Panther resulted in many opportunities for Newton. For example, Newton visited China in 1970. He was welcomed by large crowds of Chinese people who supported the Black Power movement and criticised American imperialism.

After being released from prison Newton renounced political violence. Over a six year period 24 Black Panthers had been killed in gun fights with the police. Another member, George Jackson, was killed while in San Quentin prison in August, 1971.

In the 1970s, Newton aimed to take the Panthers in a new direction that emphasized democratic socialism, community interconnectedness and services for the poor, including items like free lunch programs and urban clinics but by the mid-1970s, factionalism began to tear the Black Panthers apart. Newton wanted an approach favouring gradual social change, while other members wanted to build relationships with foreign revolutionary movements.By 1980, the Panthers were a former shadow of themselves. Much of what the group stood for had been rendered unrecognizable by bouts of infighting and a general shift in public perception of the group. There were also some Panthers who were allegedly involved in criminal activity, using the group to mask their intentions.

While Newton is primarily known for his activism, some controversies surrounded him. In 1974, Newton was accused of killing a sex worker. That led him to exile to Cuba in 1973 to avoid prosecution. Though he stood trial for the murder in 1977 and was acquitted in 1978, other accusations of violence persisted. 

Huey Newton returned to college and earned a PhD in Social Philosophy at the University of California in 1980. In his final years, however, he suffered from major drug/alcohol problems and faced more prison time for weapons possession, financial misappropriations and parole violations.In 1982, Newton was charged with stealing $600,000 of state funds that was supposed to go to the Oakland Community School. As the case went on, Newton disbanded the Black Panther Party. The charges were dropped six years later, and Newton took a plea deal.

The once popular revolutionary died on August 22, 1989, in Oakland, California, after being shot on the street by  a member of the Black Guerrilla Family that had clashed with the Panthers over the decades.

His rhetoric and political courage had inspired thousands to stand against war, racism, and imperialism, and yet at other moments he succumbed to personal acts of brutality and self-destruction. Newton's funeral was held at Allen Temple Baptist Church. Some 1,300 mourners were accommodated inside, and another 500 to 600 listened to the service from outside. Newton's achievements in civil rights and work on behalf of Black children and families with the Black Panther Party were celebrated. Newton's body was cremated, and his ashes were interred at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland.

Whatever mistakes he made during his time as leader of the Black Panther Party do not outweigh his great achievements and contributions to the historic struggle for social liberation. for this I remember him. Newton and the Panthers deserve to be studied and debated because so much of their analysis and political practice addressed ghettoization, racist policing and incarceration, mass unemployment, and failing schools, problems that defined the urban crisis of the 1960s and have grown more intense and graver in our own times.

Few organizations from the Black Power era are as venerated as the Black Panther Party. Their courageous words and deeds have grown more radical as American life has become more conservative, and as the very social contradictions they attempted to address have expanded in scale and consequences. Their survival programs, armed patrols, popular education campaigns, and revolutionary aspirations continue to resonate in a context where urban poverty, police brutality, crime, and neoliberalism produce heartache within black working-class life and across U.S. society.

Newton had published a memoir/manifesto Revolutionary Suicide in 1973, with Hugh Pearson later writing the 1994 biography The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America. Newton's story was later depicted in the 1996 one-man play Huey P. Newton, starring Roger Guenveur Smith. A 2002 filmed presentation of the project was created by Spike Lee, and documentarian Stanley Nelson looked at the history of the Panthers in the 2015 film The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.

The following poem was written was written for Huey P. Newton by  the late Tupac Shakur whose mother was in the black panthers.

 

Fallen Star: Dedicated to Huey P.Newton - Tupac Shakur

 

They could never understand
what u set out 2 do
instead they chose 2
ridicule u

when u got weak
they loved the sight
of your dimming
and flickering starlight

How could they understand what was so intricate
2 be loved by so many, so intimate
they wanted 2 c your lifeless corpse
this way u could not alter the course
of ignorance that they have set
2 make my people forget

what they have done
for much 2 long 2 just forget and carry on
I had loved u forever because of who u r
and now I mourn our fallen star.

 

Huey Newton Interview on his book  Revolutionary Suicide (1972)

 

 

Keep Dancing Without Chains

( For Dimlo)

Last weekend we celebrated a brother

Forgot  differences  of  opinion,

As we swayed in dance rhythm 

To dub techno psychedelic vibration

Acoustic magical notation

Trance drumming of deep devotion

On dancefloor all equal

In ocean of  glorious sound

Leaving  behind  inhibition

There is something amazing about this

The resonance off holy music

That continues to keep spinning

Allows us to  carry on smiling

Love  that will always sustain us

Take us  to another dimension

On a trail of time and  truth

Ecstatic healing inclination

Of deep stimulating elevation.

Love Conquers Hate

Valentine's Day is a time to celebrate romance and love  But the origins of this festival are actually  rather dark. From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them.. They believed this would make them fertile.

The ancient Romans may also be responsible for the name of our modern day of love. Emperor Claudius II executed two men , both named Valentine. on Feb. 14 of different years in the 3rd century A.D. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine's Day. The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be coupled up for the duration of the festival, or longer, if the match was right. 

Later, Pope Gelasius I muddled things in the 5th century by combining St. Valentine's Day with Lupercalia to expel the pagan rituals. But the festival was more of a theatrical interpretation of what it had once been. Around the same time, the Normans celebrated Galatin's Day. Galatin meant "lover of women." That was likely confused with St. Valentine's Day at some point, in part because they sound alike.  

As the years went on, the holiday grew sweeter. Chaucer and Shakespeare romanticized it in their work, and it gained popularity throughout Britain and the rest of Europe. Handmade paper cards became the tokens-du-jour in the Middle Ages. Eventually, the tradition made its way to the New World. The industrial revolution ushered in factory-made cards in the 19th century. And in 1913, Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Mo., began mass producing valentines. February has not been the same since and today, this commercialization has spoiled the day for many.

Despite all this I am  reminded by Martin Luther King Jr that .“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that” Hate can fog visions, making people do unforgettable things, killing people for example. 

The events in Knowsley last Friday night were horrific and inevitable.  A large group of far-right rioters gathered outside a hotel where people who are going through the asylum system are living. The group was extremely hostile and violent, setting a police van on fire. The residents of the hotel, looking on to these scenes, were of course terrified, especially after many of them had already fled unimaginable violence.  For years, people in positions of power have been warned that the words they use will increase the number and severity of racist attacks against refugees.

The dehumanising language of hate, racism and hostility used by the Government, its ministers, and its departments against refugees is fuelling far-right violence against people who have asked us for safety.  What happened in Knowsley is a direct result of the dehumanising language used by the government and in particular by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons.

This language is used daily by MPs and Ministers to target migrants and people seeking asylum. They are all too happy to whip up hate and then identify the hotels where people, including men, women and children, are living. This recklessness is putting lives at risk. The Government must stop empowering the far right with its language and policies. If they do not, the consequences could be fatal.  The Nationality and Borders Bill has further bolstered this hostile agenda and it is  anticipated that the new legislation announced by Rishi Sunak before Christmas will only make this hostility worse.

The crisis in the asylum system was entirely designed by the Government prioritising deterrence and cruelty rather than a workable system grounded in compassion.  We know that neither these attacks nor the governments overwhelmingly hostile narrative reflect what most people in the UK believe.

So  let us not let the forces of darkness, fear and hate overcome, remember that Love Conquers hate. Racism breeds hate and separation in the world  and  leads to much anger and people being killed. Love is the answer because  it conquers all fear. Lets live like brothers and sisters. Roses are red, violets are blue  refugees are welcome here. .

'30p Lee' Anderson becomes Tory deputy chairman

'30p Lee'' Anderson, the 56 year old  ex miner and Tory MP for Ashfield  has become the Deputy Chairman of the party, five years after defecting from Labour who he represented as a councillor before he went on to serve as a Tory councillor in Mansfield and just over three years after his election to the seat. despite being known for a number of unsavoury things he has said and done.. 

He defected after he was suspended by his local group for placing concrete blocks to stop travellers illegally camping in a car park.  Discussing his change of party, he has blamed a ‘takeover’ of Labour by the ‘hard-left’ under former leader Jeremy Corbyn. 

In 2019, while on the campaign trail, he posted a video on social media where he criticised “nuisance tenants” in a council estate for “making people’s lives a complete misery”. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he went on to argue they should be be evicted and forced to live in tents in a field where they would pick vegetables. 

Around the same time, he and two other Conservative candidates became the subject of a party investigation after it was alleged that he was an active member of a Facebook group where members expressed support for far-right figure Tommy Robinson.

He will take his new position alongside new Tory chairman Greg Hands, who was given the job following the sacking of Nadhim Zahawi over his tax affairs.  Mr Anderson retweeted the announcement from the official Conservative Twitter account, saying: ‘Yes it’s true. From the pits to Parliament. Feeling very proud.’ 

Anderson is known as ' 30p Lee' because he claimed, to much shaking of heads, that people could feed themselves on 30p a day if they could budget and cook properly. Anderson revived the riff in January by posting a picture – two, in fact – that highlighted Tesco own brand “wheat biscuits”. “Just been asked for proof of a 30p breakfast. There you go,” he wrote, as others pointed out issues to do with nutrition (among others). 

Anderson is no stranger to controversy, who staged a door knock during the 2019 general election campaign.Journalist Michael Crick caught him getting one of his friends to pose as an anti-Labour swing voter. Anderson forgot he was wearing a live mic while he phoned his friend to set up the encounter to impress the reporter.  “Make out you know who I am... you know I’m the candidate, but not a friend, alright?,” Anderson was recorded saying as he spelled out instructions to his friend minutes before bringing the journalist to his door. 

After Anderson was elected, the controversies kept racking up. In 2021, he refused to watch the England team’s matches at the Euro 2020 tournament because players were taking the knee, an anti-racist gesture. He described Black Lives Matter as a “political movement whose core principles aim to undermine our very way of life”. 

Shortly afterwards, he hit out at the Traveller community in Ashfield, accusing them of stealing people’s lawnmowers and tools. 

Anderson has also spoken out against refugees. Speaking in the House of Commons, he suggested most who arrive in the UK via routes deemed “illegal” by the government are “economic migrants” rather than “genuine asylum seekers”

When told that the Home Office had concluded that the significant majority of those who arrive to the UK in boats are refugees, he said: “I think that is a fault of the old failing asylum system. When they get in they know how to fill the forms out.”  

In May  2022 he was slammed  after claiming there was no “massive use” for foodbanks in Britain and that people who relied on the service “cannot cook or budget properly.”Anderson then, invited the opposition benches in the Commons to visit a foodbank in his constituency to “see the brilliant scheme we have got in place: when people come for a food parcel, they have to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course.”

Labour’s shadow work and pensions minister Karen Buck said at the time that “out of touch” doesn’t even come close to describing his comments.

She said: “The idea that the problem is cooking skills and not 12 years of government decisions that are pushing people into extreme poverty is beyond belief.”

Anderson's comments came as economists warned that about 1.3 million households in Britain will struggle to pay their food and energy bills amid a deepening cost-of-living crisis.

To top all this in an interview with The Spectator magazine a few days before his appointment,  Anderson said he would support the UK reintroducing the death penalty because “nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed. You know that, don’t you? 100% success rate.  “Now I’d be very careful on that one because you’ll get the certain groups saying: “You can never prove it.” Well, you can prove it if they have videoed it and are on camera – like the Lee Rigby killers. I mean: they should have gone, same week. I don’t want to pay for these people.”   Anderson’s comments drew condemnation online, with one social media user commenting: “I see tory knuckle dragger Lee Anderson is now supporting the resurrection of the death penalty. Coupled with his demonisation of benefit claimants/travellers/refugees its obvious why Sunak apptd him, the tories are going low, deeper into the sewer, Anderson is their sewer rat..” 

Others have pointed out that Anderson is calling for the state execution of innocent people, because no conviction is ever utterly certain.  Rishi Sunak at least  immediately said Anderson’s views were not those of the government, slapping him down and creating a distraction from the important real news at the same time.

If the government wanted to distract attention from something, such as a former prime minister trying to make a comeback, or a different former prime minister being increasingly incriminated in a ‘jobs for favours’ scandal – it was probably mission accomplished for a while.

I guess Anderson actually is perfect for the job (a role of no great significance) because as an individual who seems to rejoice in deliberately  making provoking aggressive statements that fail to recognise the complexities facing the country at this present time. In fact while being a divisive ludicrous  right wing reactionary, he is in  no different to any other Tory, I sincerely hope that  his party are totally decimated at the upcoming local elections in May, it would be a really good wake up call for them .ahead of a national parliamentary election expected in 2024, when we get the much deserved change that we all deserve..

Beyond Avariciousness

Which way to go? the streets full of briar  

The world dripping in muck and mire,

We ride the winds. navigate the treadmills

Racing ahead against the drowning waves.

In search of survival, keep on resisting

Rising and falling, shrieking and calling,

As the 1% keep on exploiting the poor

In sadistical game of unwinding power.

Devoid of empathy or kindness

In soundless abundant darkness, 

With self centred purpose

Plundering and stealing plenty.

 

Syphoning money from corruption

Without fear of retribution,

Daily they gluttony feast and feed

In the name of avarice and greed.

Like their masters in government 

Releasing no amorous intent,

Expecting us to submit to poverty 

While they swallow all the honey. 

 

With grubby hands accrue

Making the air turn sour, 

Smugly carry on grinning  

Finding new depths to gouge.   

Bloated and wretched, milk the land

Crawling in deceit, shameless breath, 

Ugly toxicity of grandiose matter

Do not care who they displeasure..

Duplictiousness in nature 

Indifferent  towards morality, 

No redeeming features at all  

Time to put their backs against a wall.

Remembering William “Big Bill” Dudley Haywood; Founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Socialist and Labor Radical

William Dudley Haywood , better known as “ Big Bill' Haywood was a co- founding member and leader of the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2012/06/wobblies-happy-birthday-their-legacy.html, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America. During the first two decades of the 20th century, he was involved in several important labor battles, including the Colorado Labor Wars, the  Lawrence textile strike, and other textile strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey.

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.

John Reed, the journalist author of Ten Days That Shook the World, described Haywood’s face as “scarred like a battlefield.” A fitting description considering that Haywood was a hard-nosed, take no prisoners, lieutenant who fought on the front lines of America’s labor movement for decades.

Haywood once remarked: "I've never read Marx's Capital, but I've got the marks of capital all over my body."

Haywood was born in Salt Lake City  on February 4, 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.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2019/11/commemorating-haymarket-martyrs.html 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 (WFM). Haywood immediately signed up as a WFM member and by 1900 became a member of the organization’s executive board.

When Boyce retired as WFM president in 1902, he recommended Haywood and Charles Moyer assume leadership of the rapidly growing organization. It was not an easy arrangement. Moyer was cautious by nature, favoring negotiations over strikes and violence. Haywood, on the other hand, was volatile, impulsive and inclined toward radical confrontation.  Haywood was a powerful speaker, and was a master at rallying working class audiences. The campaign for an eight-hour work day became one of Haywood’s principal causes. He would shout, “Eight hours of work, eight hours of play, eight hours of sleep– eight hours a day!”

By 1902 the WFM led a series of violent strikes known as the Colorado Labor Wars. “the closest the United States has ever approached outright class warfare.” In the end, the violence cost 33 lives. In one terrible incident at the town of Independence in 1904, 13 non-union miners (called scabs by the unionists) were killed by an explosion at a train station. When officials pointed the finger at Haywood the heat on the union rose to fever pitch. Fortunately for Haywood and the union the locals could never quite make anything stick against them so they lived to fight another day.

Haywood was a Socialist and an atheist, who once said “Socialism is so plain, so clear, so simple that when a person becomes an intellectual he doesn’t understand socialism.”and on Christianity, he remarked that  it  "was all nonsense, based on that profane compilation of fables called the Bible."  These things, along with union agitation and his reputation made him disliked (or worse) by those in the non-working classes.

On June 27th 1905, Haywood and other prominent labor figures, including Eugene Debs,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2020/10/eugene-v-debs-5-11-1855-2010-26-working.html Lucy Parsons https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/03/lucy-parsons-1853-731942-more-dangerous.html and “Mother” Mary Jones,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2012/11/mary-harris-jones-151830-30111930.html met in Chicago. Big Bill Haywood called the meeting to order. By the time it was all said and done they had founded a new international trade union, they called it the Industrial Workers of the World or the Wobblies.

It was “one big union,” for workers nationwide in all industries, crafts and trades. This was in sharp contrast to the AFL, which was a federation of exclusive, craft-based organizations of skilled workers.  Known as “Wobblies,” IWW members included workers from all walks of life, regardless of skill, sex or race – and Haywood was their most beloved leader.

They stated that:  

 

The aims and objects of this organization shall be to put the working-class in possession of the economic power, the means of life, in control of the machinery of production and distribution, without regard to the capitalist masters. (Zinn) 

 

Further example of the inherent radicalism of the union can be found in the preamble to its constitution that was drawn up that day:

 

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life....    

 

Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."   

 

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old. (www.iww.org) 

 

Strong stuff. And clearly the main reason why the owners of factories, mills, mines, and other places of employment feared and hated them. Ties to socialism and anarchism (even communism to some degree) didn't help. Nor the fact that many of the members were from that lower class of the recently immigrated that was already looked at with disdain by both corporate and middle class America. 

Like Haywood  the group were radicals who preferred action over negotiation and promoted what it called "direct action,"  meaning industrial action directly by, for, and of the workers themselves, without the treacherous aid of labor misleaders or scheming politicians. A strike that is initiated, controlled, and settled by the workers directly affected is direct action.... Direct action is industrial democracy. (Zinn) 

 And while violence was never to be initiated, the IWW had no problem fighting back with equal violence if (it deemed it) necessary.They were constantly on the go, moving from state to state, organizing with songs and stories. One thousand strong, Wobblies would pour off freight trains at strike sites, singing rebellious songs. The 150,000 Wobblies influenced millions.

Despite Haywood's involvement in the IWW, which was heavily influenced by anarcho-syndicalism, he was a longtime member of the Socialist Party of America, and often pleaded with workers to vote in elections. In January 1913, he was recalled as a member of the Socialist party National Executive Committee for purportedly advocating violence by a referendum which drew support mainly from New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. His expulsion from the party has been cited as a prime cause of the extremely steep decline in the membership of the Socialist party.

Strikes in those days were not polite affairs: Company owners routinely hired thugs to violently encourage picketers to return to work, strikebreakers faced likely beatings at the hands of workers, police and Pinkerton's agents were often weapons of management, and it was not rare for strikers or policemen to be killed..

Mine owners were eager to silence the Wobblies, so they hatched a scheme to frame Haywood and his allies for allegedly assassinating the former governor of Idaho. In 1905, Frank R. Steunenberg, a former Governor of Idaho and a fervent opponent of union activity, was murdered, and over a thousand union leaders were rounded up and held without evidence while the killing was investigated. Eventually Haywood was charged, along with union President Charles Moyer and George Pettibone, a union member who had served as Moyer's bodyguard.While in prison,with time on his hands in the Boise jail, Haywood began to read. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Carlyle’s The French Revolution, were among his selections. While in jail, Haywood also ran for governor of Colorado on the Socialist ticket, designed new WFM posters, and took a correspondence course in law.

His trial began on May 9, 1907, with famed Chicago defense attorney Clarence Darrow defending him. The prosecution was unable to produce sufficient evidence to convict Haywood. He was acquitted and all charges were dropped after it became clear that the key witness against him had committed perjury. Moyer and Pettibone were acquitted in subsequent trials..After the announcement  Haywood jumped to his feet, crying and laughing at the same time. After hugging supporters, he ran to shake hands with each juror.

As the IWW gained strength, Haywood grew into a folk hero for working people and a demon to employers..

In 1910, Big Bill went to Europe, where he participated in helping to organize strikes in Ireland and South Wales. During the trip he stopped in Copenhagen to attend a conference of socialist parties from all over the world. There he met Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg and other leading European revolutionaries of the day.

In 1912 the Lawrence Textile in Lawrence, Massachusetts made national headlines. Textile mill workers, mainly immigrants (and many women), left their jobs in protest of sinking wages. Within a week, twenty thousand workers in Lawrence had joined the IWW led strike. Authorities responded violently to the strike. The local IWW leaders were jailed on false charges, and martial law was declared. A national outrage was sparked when authorities arrested women and children who were being evacuated from the town. As a result, the mill owners lost support and were finally pressured into caving on all strike demands. The strike outcome was a huge success for Big Bill Haywood.

Also in 1912, Big Bill encouraged the Brotherhood of Timber Workers in Louisiana to invite African American workers to their convention (though it was illegal) with the following speech:

“You work in the same mills together. Sometimes a black man and a white man chop down the same tree together. You are meeting in a convention now to discuss the conditions under which you labor. Why not be sensible about this and call the Negroes into the Convention? If it is against the law, this is one time when the law should be broken.”

When World War One broke out, both Haywood and the IWW were against the United States' entry (the IWW was the only union that was adamant against going to war). On the other hand, the received idea that the war was yet another example of American patriotic response is incorrect.  World War One actually was felt to require its own "marketing" division (propaganda, properly speaking) to get the spirit of patriotism whipped to the proper level so that the war would not only be supported but people would choose to fight (when the numbers of voluntary recruits were inadequate, conscription was used). 

President Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information in order to instill these "correct" feelings toward America's decision to go to war (now the media, itself, fulfills the role with today's "wars," giving them catchy names and slogans, special graphics, and their own theme music).  The most outspoken people against the war tended to be the sort of "radicals" that Haywood fell into: communists, socialists, anarchists, union types, and (of course) pacifists like Jeannette Rankin, the only member of Congress to vote against going to war in both in 1917 and 1941 (the latter time being the single dissenting vote). 

As could be expected, Haywood saw the war in labor/economic terms, as can be seen in this statement from the IWW in 1915

 

With the European war for conquest and exploitation raging and destroying the lives, class consciousness and unity of the workers, clouding the main issues, we openly declare ourselves the determined opponents of all nationalistic sectionalism, or patriotism, and the militarism preached and supported by our one enemy, the capitalist class. We condemn all wars, and for the prevention of such, we proclaim the anti-militarist propaganda in time of peace and, in time of war, the General Strike in all industries. (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk)  

 

Further evidence of an often unmentioned resistance to going to war is shown by the government feeling it necessary to pass two acts to counteract those sentiments (which it must have felt threatened by, otherwise there would be no need for the legislation).  The Espionage Act was passed in 1917. It was started out sounding like an act related to spying and giving information pertaining to national defense to the enemy in time of war ("information" defined very broadly). But it also made it illegal to cause "insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty...or shall willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the US" (qtd. in Zinn). 

 It essentially became a way to quiet the voices of dissent, whether in person or in print. There was a provision making "every letter, writing, circular, postal card, picture, print, engraving, photograph, newspaper, pamphlet, book, or other publication, matter or thing, of any kind, in violation of any of the provisions" considered "nonmailable matter" and barred from transport or delivery through the mail. The same went for anything (the same very broad scope of items) "advocating or urging treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to any law of the United States" (www.multied.com). 

The second piece of legislation was the Sedition Act. It expanded the parameters of the prior act to include anything that one could      willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States...or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully...urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production.... (www.lib.byu.edu)  Basically, free speech could be capriciously eliminated with imprisonment.

Citing the newly passed Espionage Act of 1917 as justification, the Department of Justice began raiding IWW meeting halls in September 1917. Many core IWW members among them Haywood were arrested; they faced a wide array of charges including conspiracy to hinder the draft and encourage desertion, and intimidation.

In April 1918, Haywood and 100 other IWW brothers began their trial, presided over by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The trial became  one of America’s longest criminal trials.Haywood testified for three full days. All 101 defendants were found guilty. Haywood was convicted of violating a federal espionage and sedition act by calling a strike during wartime. He served a year in Leavenworth, then jumped bond in 1921 while out on appeal. By then he was in bad shape and looking at 20 years in jail. Unable to face this fate he fled the country and eventually settled in Moscow where he joined a trade union. married a Russian woman. and he became a trusted advisor to the new Bolshevik government.

At the same time IWW morale was shattered. Although individuals remembered him affectionally and excused his action without justifying it, his influence on the American Left had all but vanished.

Haywood also became friendly with another journalist, Eugene Lyons.In his book, Assignment in Utopia (1937), he wrote: "Though stupidly regarded by so many as un-American, Haywood's every nerve and muscle was rooted in the American soil, and the movement which he started and led - a movement of hoboes, drifters, unskilled workers, lumberjacks and miners - was likewise authentically American in a sense that made it incomprehensible to foreign students. He had fled to Russia with other IWW men while out on bail and was therefore forever cut off from his native land. This robust, two-fisted American, essentially democratic and idealistic in his instincts, found the Bolshevik system of impersonal brutality hateful and fumed inwardly because he could say and do nothing about it. After a lifetime of fighting what he considered the delusions of political action, he could not swallow a super-state, whatever slogans it might profess. He was suddenly an impotent alien, dependent on the bounty of a dictatorial state, and unable to return home. Out of one prison he had escaped into another. He was a pathetic ruin. The solace of his last years was a Russian wife much younger than himself, who nursed him and coddled him with great devotion. It was her firm hand which kept him from drink and imposed absolute rest and thus prolonged his life."

William Haywood was in poor health and died in the Soviet Union on 18th May, 1928 after a stroke. Half of his ashes were buried in the Kremlin near his friend John Reed and not far from Lenin’s tomb, an urn containing the other half of his ashes was sent to Chicago and buried near a monument to the Haymarket anarchists who first inspired his life of radicalism.

But despite this sad ending, William “Big Bill” Haywood should be honored and remembered for all of his contributions to the struggles of the working class. He stood clearly on the workers’ side for his entire life, no matter what the consequences and will be long remembered..

And despite the IWW’s unbridled enthusiasm, the organization was beset by internal disputes and its membership declined dramatically after World War I to about 15,000 in 1922.The Wobblies believed in permanent rebellion – and although the IWW lost its power to a degree. they are still going strong and, the spirited culture of rebellion that Haywood created will never die.

In Celebration of Imbolc and St. Brigid’s Day

Imbolc or Imbolg, strongly intertwined with La Fhéile Bhríde (the festival of St Brigid or St. Brigid’s Day), is celebrated from February 1 through sundown February 2, marking the start of the end of winter, or precisely the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It dates back as far as, and possibly even further than, the 10th century..The holiday is celebrated by Wiccans and other practitioners of neopagan or pagan-influenced religions. It’s one of the four major Celtic festivals which also include Bealtaine, Lughnasa and Samhain.

In the ancient Celtic tradition, there is a celebration of the relationship between the dualistic forces of light and darkness, between what is seen and unseen. These principles move in cycles - day and night, life and death, and in every decrease and increase. Nature sleeps during winter and awakens during summer. The Celts saw the interplay between these two states as essential to the continuation of the cycle of life upon the land. The year is divided into two halves, Samos (summer) and Giamos (winter). For our pagan ancestors, the Giamos half of the year has its midpoint at Imbolc, this is the point at which ‘decrease’ turns to ‘increase’

The word Imbolc derives from the Irish, ‘i mbolg’, meaning ‘in the belly’, or "first milk" in the old Irish Neolithic language. It heralds the birthing season, as the soon-to-be-born lambs are growing in their mother’s bellies.

The Celts celebrated Imbolc to honor these first stirrings of life and is the time to honor the fertility goddess Brigid. Brigid (pronounced Breed or Breej). The many names used to refer to this important Celtic Goddess include Brigit, Brighid, Bride, Bridget, Bridgit, Brighde, and Bríd. Brigid is one of the most venerated deities in the Pagan Irish pantheon. She was a goddess of the Tuatha dé Danann  and a daughter of a slave mother and a noble father,. the chief of the gods, The Dagda. Her mother was sold to a Druid landowner, and therefore Brigid grew up alongside the Celts in Ireland. It was during this time as a very young child that she began to demonstrate her generosity, feeding the poorest of the poor and healing the sick. 

Her name means exalted one, while her earliest Gaelic name, Breo-Saighead, means fiery arrow. These ‘fiery arrows’ illuminate our minds, hearts, and spirits. As a solar goddess, she embodies the element of fire and is commonly depicted with rays of light or fire emanating from her head. In her human form, she was born at dawn between night and day on a threshold between winter and spring.

Worshippers sometimes call Brigid the ‘Triple Goddess’ for her fires of the hearth, inspiration, and the forge. She has an impressive portfolio including and not limited to Matron of babies; blacksmiths; boatmen; cattle; chicken farmers; children whose parents are not married; dairymaids; dairy workers; fugitives; infants; mariners; midwives; milkmaids; poultry raisers; printing presses; sailors; scholars; travelers; watermen; creativity scholars and poets. She  rules the fire of the hearth as well as the fire of imagination through poetry. My beloved daughter was named after her.

In Ireland, people would often make Brigid Crosses of rushes or straw and hang them on their front doors, this was to bring good luck, prosperity and fertility to the households. Bonfires were lit in honor of Brigid and girls carried small dolls made of straw or oats representing the goddess from house to house to bless them. Sometimes offerings were left tied to trees near small springs called clootie well.

Its shape possibly derives from the pagan sun wheel. It is also traditionally believed that the Saint Brigid’s Cross protected the house from fire and evil. 

As Christianity spread from Rome to northern Europe and the British Isles Imbolc was adopted as Candlemass, still celebrated on February 2. and when Christiainity came to Ireland, Brigid became Saint Brigid, complete with a human history beginning around 450 A.D. in Kildare, Ireland. As a saint, she was known for feeding the poor and healing the sick. A perpetual flame that was tended for centuries by pagan priestesses.

One of Ireland’s three patron saints, the Catholic Church claims St. Brigid was a historical person.There are several sources for her life, the most comprehensive of which is the Vita Sanctae Brigitae, written by a monk named Cogitosus around the year 650, about 125 years after her death.She reportedly died in her monastery in about 525 AD and the flame was maintained until it was ordered extinguished during the reign of King Henry VIII. Today, a new flame has been kindled at Kildare and it has been passed all around the world.

Whether or not she existed, these stories contain aspects in common with the details of the pagan goddess and illustrate the transition from pagan to Christian worship.

Perhaps one of the most quietly exciting festivals of the Celtic year, Imbolc is a celebration of the awakening natural world and a time of cleansing. On our forays outside, we begin to see new life poking through the soil and buds tightening on trees. Imbolc is a time for bringing new ideas and projects into the burgeoning light, for growing what we have been reflecting on over the winter months.

While too early for planting gardens, Imbolc can be a time to start thinking about what you want to plant and harvest in the coming year and in modern day living Imbolc and the quiet weeks post holiday season is also a great time to reflect and think about where you want to go in the coming months. 

Imbolc is a celebration that has been passed down from generation to generation in different parts of the world. Needless to say, it is one of the strong traditions that will continue to be carried forward even by those who don’t truly believe in the customs and holds great importance in the lives of many.

This celebration held great spiritual significance for the Celts. Some of the megalithic monuments and tombs they have left behind all around Ireland are perfectly aligned with the rising sun around the dates of Imbolc and Samhain.At the Mound of the Hostages found on the Hill of Tara in County Meath, the rising sun at Imbolc illuminates the inner chamber of the tomb.

The Mound of the Hostages at Tara is a Neolithic Period passage tomb. It was built around 5000 years ago around the same time that the ancient burial mound at Newgrange was built.

And while St. Brigid may be a woman who lived 1,500 years ago and the Celtic goddess Brigid pre-dates Christianity, Her story continues to inspire.

There are numerous legends about the woman,She performed numerous acts of kindness for the poor. The bulk of these involves providing food or healing as mentioned above. Notably, she is said to have restored sight to a fellow nun. Popularly, she is credited with having changed water into beer for a colony of lepers. This led to her sometimes, jokingly, being referred to as the patron saint of beer.

Brigid has been referred to as a bridge that occupies the space between the pagan goddess and the Christian saint. She is a bridge between the ancient and the new, the human and the more-than-human worlds. All can co-exist under her mantle. Imbolc is a liminal space and Brigid is a bridge between worlds. She is spirit, she is love, she lives. When we pay attention to all of this, we are offered potent medicine for these turbulent times. 

 "If the lark sings on St. Bridget’s Day it is a good omen, and a sign of fine weather. And whoever hears it the first thing in the morning will have good luck in all he does for that whole day." — Lady Wilde

February 1 is particularly special  today because  the Irish government has finally declared it a new public holiday to honor the country’s female matron thanks to a petition led by some powerful women in her honor.. May the life stirring underground stir new dreams in you. I offer you this old poem from my pen. 

 

Poem for Imbolc

The earth again prepares for spring,
Awakens after the coldness and dark of winter,
Life begins to grow in the wombs of the earth,
Bulbs planted begin to gently explode,
St Bridget's day, the gift of name,
Given to my mischievious daughter,
Fertility today returns unbound,
To stir our spirits, kiss our lips,
Deliver to us a poetic muse,
As the sun glistens in the sky,
We embrace the wheels of change,
We still cling on, still keep faith,
Blessed Imbolc, blessed be.