Anselm Hollo (12/4/34- 29/1/13) - Shed the Fear/ Godlike/ R.I.P

Sad to hear yesterday that the poetry community had lost another fine distinctive voice.Anshelm Hollo was born and raised in Helsinki, Finland, and worked as a poet, translator, editor, journalist and teacher in Sweden, Germany, Austria, England (for 8 years), and, since 1966, the United States. He was the authour of some forty plus books of poetry. Including Maya (1970), Souourner Micrcosm(1977) and Near Miss Haiku (1990).
He became widely known for his many translations of European poetry, including the work of Russian poet Andrei Voznesenksy and the Finnish poet Penti Sarrikoski. He also translated people as variant as Jean Genet and Rosa Luxemburg. I first became aware of him I guess through his 1965 appearance at the Underground International Poetry Incarnation.Here dressed  head to toe in black  he appeared alongside Alexander Trocchi and Allen Ginsberg.
His style was strongly influenced by the American beats, and he was also adept at capturing isolated moments of perception. Often whimsical and gently satirical in tone, his poems were open-ended, valuing an ongoing human attentiveness rather than rejecting closure on the basis of theory.
He did nort care to much about prizes, he wrote  because basically that is what he needed to do. He did manage to get the title of the United States Anti-Laureate, to which he was elected by the Buffalo Poetics list back at the turn of the century.
He lived in Boulder, Colorada with his wife visual artist Dalrymple Hollo, where since 1985 he was the Professor at the Bhuddist inspired  Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. On all accounts because of his gentle , unassuming manner he was loved by all who came across him., close friends of many other great American poets like Ted Berrigan and Robert Creeley.
He died on January 29th 2013 after post operative pneumonia aged 78. Anselm Hollo R.I.P. The lights may switch off but we carry on receiving

Shed the Fear

Who has a face sees
    the world,
but the world
    is not

to be borne-
   or only
when seen as
  another:

how did this
  come together? How
did I find you?
  so many turns

in the road
  so few of them
possible!
  How not to spin out

in hairpin turns
  of disbelief...
TheSufi martyrs
  insisted

"The world
  is a wedding"
Why not go with them,

in the face of
   present carnage
centuries
  later.

Godlike

when you suddenly
feel like talking

about the times
in your life when you were

a total idiot asshole you resist
the impulse

& just sit there
at the head of the table

beaming


Further Reading:
Notes  on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence
Selected Poems 1965 - 2000
(Coffe House Press 2001)

The Secret Government War against the most vulnerable.

Following Sundays  post a short film about the governments secret war on the most vulnerable. This however is just the tip of the iceburg. As seen on Panorama programme on Monday night, ' The Current Disability Sham'http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qgk9h  that exposed the governments work providers techniques in treating the above.Benefit claimants including disabled people were referred to as LTB - code for "Lying thieving Bastards" by staff at Triage, a firm responsible for delivering the Governments £5billion work programme. Well this acronyym now fits perfectly for the party that has sought to implement these programmes, LTB =Lying Tory Bastards.  Everyday we are being treated with contempt under the auspices of a government that simply do not care. Their war of attrition is based on depriving the most deserving of the means to live.
Blessed are the poor. This punishing ordeal has to stop. What kind of society are we living. This grim vile return,  by our Government to the  Dickensian era. This is growing everyday, that I  sincerely believe to be cruel ,unjust and immoral.
I used to think that only love could break our hearts, but that too is a lie. Why are not the police, taking statements, for what they are doing is surely hateful and a crime.Silver spoon fed Tories attacking our senses everyday. Instead of a war on poverty it is a war on the poor. The rich get richer and the poor sink further into the depths. I remember Thatcher she was heartless and cruel, but this lot are really taking the piss.Hunting us, seems to be the Tory Party's new bloodsport of choice.
Four years ago my voice was nearly lost, but then I discovered the power of the internet, a medium by which I gain a little bit of strength, nowadays we don't have to be completely alone.
We might merely be mere statistics, for them, but there is definitely something wrong with their machine. They are making prisoners of us all, we must stand up and tear down their walls. Thatchers policies  blighted generations, the scars that she created,are still running deep, and now their doing it all over again.
When April comes it will be one of the cruellest times of our lifes, when even further destructive policies will be implemented, like the bedroom tax, increases in council tax, nearly every single person on benefits will be affected, all limited to a 1% rise below inflation. Along with devatating cuts to essential services, the damage created by their wrecking hands will be clearly  felt.
Where is the oppposition in Parliament, a few raised but most in silence, the Liberals bleat but carry on regardless, Labours proving to be a feeble opposition.. All shackled to corporations and morally bankrupt.
Many turning outside of Parliament for comfort and protection, I salute those who are raising their voices in clear  opposition, in angry defiance.In the grips of the worst recession for years, members of parliament reward  themselves  a hefty £20,000 pay rise, a  clearly rotten system and somethings gotta change.
Nye Bevan was right when he said " No amount of cajolery and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin." I would add that we should show contempt to all who help them. All governments are vulnerable to mass opposition, the polltax in the 1980's was destroyed because of the anger that arose on the streets, it is sad that it has come to this ,but they should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. We must stop them before their damage causes to much irrevocable harm.Their punishing us, but just how many bankers have been made to suffer because of the consequences of their actions?

Nicanor Parra (b.5/9/14) - Anti-Poets of the World Unite.

Nicanor Parra is a Chilean poet, born in Chillan. He qualified as a teacher of mathematics and physics in 1938, in 1943 he studied physics in the U.S.A. and returned to Chile as a professor at the University of Chile.  He is one of the best known Chilean poets after Pablo Neruda. His sister Violeta was one of Chiles most renknowed folk singers. He himself has described himself as an anti-poet, due to to his distaste for standard poetic pomp and function. Influenced by the everyday,  as well as a potent mix of Marxist politics, now 97, his poems have power I believe, because he is accessible and understood by ordinary people. He utilised the speech patterns  of the Chilean lower classes in much of his poetry, combining provocativeness  with a gentle playfulness. His poetry speaks too of inner struggles as well as the struggles going on  in his own country.
Foremost his poems speak fom the heart, using humour and cynicism to convey his dissatisfaction with the world, allowing him to embrace the political as well as the human pulse. This allows his poetry to be accessible to all, reaching out to as wide an audience as possible, beyond the confines of literary convention and the corridors of academia.
He once said " Poetry is all around us" "It is in the graffito on the walls, I walk around and write down the graffiti, those are my poems." 
Still breaking through the  barriers,metamorposing  language with all it's possibilities.He has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. I personally am reminded of the American Beat poets, and the late Allen Ginsberg himself announced Parra as one of the most influential poets of our time, which is sweet enough for me.


The vices of the modern world

Modern delinquents
Are authorised to convene daily in parks and gardens.
Equipped with powerful binoculars and pocket watches
They break into kiosks favoured by death
And install their laboratories among the rosebshes in
   full flower.
From there they direct the photogrrapher and beggars
  that roam the neighbourhood
Trying to raise a small temple to misery
And, if they get a chance, having some woebgone
 shoeshine boy.
The cowed police run from these monsters
Making for the middle of town
Where the great year's end fires are breaking out
And a hooded hero is robbing two nuns at gun point.
The vices of the modern world:
The motor car and the movies,
Racial discrimination,
The extermination of the Indian,
The manipulation of high finance,
The catastrophe of the aged,
The clandenstine white-slave trade carried on by
  international sodomites,
Self-advertisement and gluttony,
Expensive funerals,
Personal friends of his Excellency,
The elevation of folklore to a spiritual category,
The abuse of soporifics and philosophy,
The softening upof men favoured by fortune,
Auto-eroticism and sexual cruelty,
The exaltation of the study of dreams and the sub-
  conscious to the detriment of common sense,
The exaggerated faith in serums and vacines,
The deification of the phallus,
The international spread-legs policy patronised by the
 reactionary press,
The unbounded lust for power and money,
The gold rush,
The fatal dollar dance,
Speculation and abortion,
The destruction of idols,
Overdevelopment of dietics and pedagogical psychology,
The vices of dancing, of the cigarette, of games of chance,
The drops of blood that are often found on the sheets of
 newlyweds,
The madness of the sea,
Agraphobia and claustrophobia,
The disintigration of the atom,
The gory humour of the theory of relativity,
The frenzy to return to the womb,
The cult of the exotic,
Aeroplane accidents,
Incinerations, mass purges, retention of passports,
All thisjust because,
To produce vertigo,
Dream-analysis,
And the spread of radiomania.

As  has been demonstrated
The modern world is composed of artificial flowers
Grown under bell jars like death,
It is made of movie stars
And bloo-smeared boxers fighting by moonlight
And nightingale-men controling the economic lives of
  the nations
With certain easily explained devices;
Usually they are dressed in black like precursors of
   autumn
And cat roots and wild herbs.
Meanwhile the wise, gnawed by rats,
Rot in the crypts of cathedrals
And souls with the slightest nobility are relentlessly
  persecuted by the police.

The modern world is an enormous sewer,
The chic restaurants are stuffed with disgusting corpses
And birds flying dangerously low.
That's not all; the hospitals are full of imposters,
To say nothing of those heirs of the spirit who found
  colonies in the anus of each new surgical case.

Modern industrialists occasionally suffer from the effects
  of the poisoned atmosphere.
They are stricken at their sewing machines by the
  terrifying sleeping sickness
Which eventually turn them into angels, of a sort.
They deny the existence of the physical world
And brag about being poor children of the grave.
And yet the world has always been like this.
Truth, like beauty, is neither created nor lost
And poetry is in things themselves or is merely a mirage
  of the spirit.
I admit that a well-planned earthquake
Can wipe out a city rich in traditions in a matter of
 seconds,
And that a meticulous aerial bombardment
Smashes trees, horses, thrones, music,
But what does it matter
If, while the world's greatest ballerina
Is dying, poor and abandoned, in a village in southern
 France,
Spring restores to man a few of the vanished flowers.

What I say is, let's try to be happy, sucking on the
  miserable human rib.
Let's extract from it the restorative liquid,
Each one following his personal inclinations.
Let's cling to this divine table-scrap!
Panting and trembling,
Let's suck those maddening lips.
The lot is cast.
Let's breathe in this enervating and destructive perfume
And for one more day live the life of the elect.
Out of his armpits man extracts the wax he needs to
 mould the face of hios idols
And out of woman's sex the straw and the mud for his
 temples.

Therefore
I grow a louse on my tie
And smile at the imbeciles descending from the trees.


Young Poets

Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.

In poetry everything is permitted.

With only this condition, of course:
You have to improve on the blank page.


Warnings

In case of fire
Do not use elevators
Use stairways
unless otherwise instructed

No smoking
No littering
No shitting
No radio playing
unless otherwise instructed
Please Flush Toilet
After Each Use
Except When Train
is Standing At Station
Be thoughtful
Of The Next Passenger
Onward Christian Soldiers
Workers of the World  unite
we have nothing to lose
but our life Glory to the Father
and  to the Son and the Holy Ghost
unless otherwise instructed
By the way
We also hold these truths to be
self evident
That all nan are created
That they have been endowed
by their creator
With certain inaliable rights
That among these are: Life
Liberty and the pursuit of happiness
and last but not least
that 2 and 2 makes 4
unless otherwise instructed.



Further reading

Nicanor Parra: Poems & Anti Poems
New Diections, 1985

Anti-Poems: how to look better  and feel good
-Nicanor Parra, New Directions, 2004

After Dinner Reservations - Nicacor Parra
Host Publications, 2007



Some useful links

The technique of Anti-Poetry
http://www.nicanorparra.uchile.cl/english/technique.html

Literature and Revolution - Fernando Alegria
http://www.webshells.com/jdoug/LitRev8.htm

Frederick Nietzsche (15/10/1844 -25/8/00) - Sleep at Noontide

Library computers playing up at the moment, made me realise how reliant I have become to the daily use of their portals. Has it all become another addiction, another distraction.
In the meantime I offer you this.

' And Zarathustra ran and ran, but he fond no one else, and was alone and ever found himself again; he enyoyed and quaffed his solitude, and thought of good things - for hours. About the hour of noontide, however, when the sun stood exactly over Zarathustra's head, he passed an old, bent and gnarled tree, which was encircled round by the ardent love of a vine, and hidden from itself; from this there hung yellow grapes in abundance, confronting the wanderer. Then he felt inclined to quench a little thirst, and to break off for himself a cluster of grapes. When, however, he had alreadsy his arm outstretched for that purpose, he felt still more inclined for something else - namely, to lie down beside the tree at the hour of perfect noontide and sleep.
This Zarathustra did; and no sooner had he laid himself on the ground in the stillness and secrecy of the variegated grass, than he had forgotten his little tirst, and fell asleep. For as the proverb of Zarathustra saith: "One thing is more necessary than the other". Only that his eyes remained open :- for they never grew weary of viewing and admiring the tree and the love of the vine. In falling asleep, however, Zarathustra spake thus to his heart:
"Hush! Hush! Hath not the world now become perfect? What hath happened unto me?
As a delicate wind danceth invisibly upon parqueted sea, light, feather-light, so- danceth sleep upon me.
No eye doth it close to me, it leaveth my soul awake. Light is it, verily, feather-light.
It persaudeth me, I know not how, it toucheth me inwardly with a caressing hand, it constraineth me. Yea, it constrainth me, so that my soul stretcheth itself out :-
- How long and weary it becometh, my strange soul! Hath a seventh-day evening come to it precisely at noontide? Hath it already wandered too long, blissfully, among good and ripe things?
It stretcheth itself out, long- longer! it lieth still, my strange soul. Too many good things hath it already tasted; this golden sadness oppresseth it, it distorteth its mouth.
- As a ship that putteth into the calmest cove:- it now drwaeth up to the land, waery of long voyages and uncertain seas. Is not the land more faithful?
As such aship huggeth the shore, tuggeth the shore:- then it sufficeth for a spider to spin its thread from the ship to the land. No stronger ropes are required there.
As such a weary ship in the calmest cove, so do I also now repose, nigh to the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest threads.
O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul? Thou liest in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd playeth his pipe.
Take care! Hot noontide sleepth on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! Thw world is perfect.
Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo-hush! The old noontide sleeeth, it moveth its mouth: doth it notjust now drink a drop of happiness -
- An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisked over it, its happiness laugeth!' Thus-laugheth a God. Hush!-
-'For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!' Thus I spake I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: that have I now learned. Wise fools speak better.
The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, awhisk, an eye-glance - little  maketh up the best happiness. Hush!
-What hath befallen me: Hark! Hath time flown away? Do I not fall? Have I not fallen- hark! into the well of eternity?
-What happened to me? Hush! It stingeth me-alas- to the heart? To the heart! Oh, break up, break up, my heart, after such happiness, after such a sting!
-What? Hath not the orld just now become perfect? Round and ripe? Oh, for the golden round ring - whither doth it fly? Let me run after it! Quick!
Hush-" (and here Zarathustra stretched himself, and felt that he was asleep.)
"Up!" said he tohimself, "thou sleeper! Thou noontide sleeper! Well tye, up, ye old legs! It is time and more than time; many a good stretch of road is still awaiting you-
Now you have slept your fill; for how long a time? A half-eternity! Well then, up now, mine old heart! For how long after such a sleep mayest thou- remain awake?"
(But then did he fall asleep anew, and his soul spake against him and defended itself,and lay down again) - "Leave me alone! Hush! Hath not the world just now become perfect? Oh, for the goldeen round ball!"
"Get up," said Zarathustra, " thou little thief, though sluggard! What! Still stretching thyself, yawning, sighing, falling into deep wells?
Who art thou then, O my soul?" (and here he became frightened, for a sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.)
"O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright, " thou gazest at me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?
When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly things, - when wilt thou drink this strange soul-
-When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when wilt tou drink my soul back into thee?"
Thus spake Zarathustra, and rose from his couch beside the tree, as if awakening from a srange drunkeness: and behold! there stood the sun still exactly above his head. One nigh, however, rightly infer therefrom that Zarathusttra had not then slept long.

REPRINTED FROM
Thus Spake Zarathustra

Join the Resistance to the war on welfare.

Join the Resistance to the war on welfare
sign and support
http://wowpetition.com

Now is the winter of our dicontent
but, we are DEFINITELY NOT in  this
all together.

Sodastream presents...How to profit from Occupation, Oppression and Apartheid

Sodastream's factory is an illegal Israeli settlement built on land stolen from the Palestinians. Each and everypackage contains human rights abuses and violations of international law. Boycott Sodasream.
For more infomation:
http://www.bdsmovement.net/tag/sodastream

http://www.whoprofits.org/content/production-settlements-case-sodastream

http://www.sodastream.com/

Lateral Navigations

These are supposed to be the days of our lives
but after many years shaking tears of branches,
we have become a perfect foil for tonques that bark
all of us have maddening faces now, causes to love,
lighting  up corners waiting to be fed
beyond the terminus of  governments stealth,
one of the most singular weaknesses of the human spirit.
is how those in powers persuade us to like what they choose.
A lot of us though who  have been forgotten,
still able to sting, beyond their schemes
with our cracked lips, we contain the storm
tomorrow, we will smother all their words. 

Bring Shaker home from Guantanamo

Yesterday marked eleven years since the first men were taken to Guantanamo Bay.This is 3 years since President Obama promised to bring this to an end. Many of the remaining detainess left languishing in this prison camp   have been cleared for release years ago, never in a court of law have  any been condemned  for committing any crime. The only lasting legacy I see at the moment is one of shame.
One such detainee is British resident Shaker Aamer who has  been held without charge or trial for nearly eleven years. He has been cleared for release by the U.S administration but remains in prison. He is now 44 years old, thousands of miles away from his family who have not seen him for over a decade. He is riddled with arthritis and other medical complaints, the result - he and his lawyers claim of brutal torture and solitary confinement, and the ongoing denial of adequate medical attention.Our Government has failed to honour promises to free him, denying him the justice that he deserves.
Hopefully this will be the year that Guantanemo finally closes, it is time to reunite Mr Aamer with his family too.
Please join thousands in signing amnesty internationals petition calling on his freedom, along with others held in Guantanamo, in order to show that they have not been forgotten

. http://action.amnesty.org.uk/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1194&ea.campaign.id=18208

Close Guantanamo

Herbert Huncke (9/1/15 -8/8/96) - Original Beat

Legendary Herbert Huncke was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts,on  January 9, 1915 and raised in Chicago .He  ran  away from home as a teenager after his parents divorced. As a teenager he was drawn to the underbelly of city life, and quickly began learning how to support himself as a small-time thief and began living as a hobo, jumping trains throughout the United States and bonding with other vagrants through shared destitution and common experience. Huncke hitchhiked to New York City in 1939. 

Herbert Huncke is little remembered these days, but he would become  a pivotal figure in the development of beat literature. A charismatic individual he  was considered a muse to other poets and writers of his group, including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs.A small and unthreatening lawbreaker, he embodied a certain honest-criminal ethic so purely that Burroughs and his friends came to love him for it. 

Huncke's use of the carny term beat in his stories of riding the rails in the thirties inspired Jack Kerouac to chronicle his own tale of rootless wandering in his 1957 classic, On the Road which Kerouac put him in  as Elmo Hassel. He  also shows up as "Junkey" in Kerouac's "The Town and the City" and as "Huck" in his "Visions of Cody" and "Book of Dreams."

He turned William Burroughs on to heroin, and appears as a character in Burroughs Junky, the first step in an immersion in addict culture that would produce Naked Lunch, and the image of Huncke's shoes filled with blood trailing 42nd Street gave Allen Ginsberg the very model of the angel-headed hipster in his seminal poem Howl. 

He worked with Alfred Kinsey in his research studies  and was also known for his roles as hustler, prostitute and drug peddler, who managed to  get to the ripe old age of 81, before dying  on August 8, 1996 of congestive heart failure at Beth Israel Hospital,in a New York City.

 "I always followed the road of least resistance," he said in a 1992 interview. "I just continued to do what I wanted. I didn't weigh or balance things. I started out this way and I never really changed."

I recommend any of his books, if you can get hold of them, seminal and in my opinion the work of genius.They include  'Huncke's Journal' (1965), 'The Evening Sun Turned Crimson' (1980), and a memoir 'Guilty of Everything' (1990)  A  collection of Huncke’s best writings, ‘The Herbert Huncke Reader,’ was published by William Morrow in September 1997,

MORE HERE

http://ginsbergblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/herbert-hunckes-birthday.html

Vote for G4S as worst company of the year!

G4s is up for the Public Eye People's Award 2013, the 'name and shame' award no company wants to win. G4S, the world's largest Private Military and Security Company, is complicit in Israel's occupation of Palestine and is profiting from conflict and insecurity across the world.
War on Want (with allies) has nominated G4S for the awards which help to "shine an international spotlight on corporate scandals." The company has been shortlisted and is now up for the public vote .They have  been up to now one of our governments favourites, with contracts of over £ 600 million being awarded to them. But  their record is far from spotless. The firm lost their previous 'forcible deportation' contract last September after recieving 773 complaints of abuse - both verbal and physical, it profits from imprisoning  refugees while it abuses families and children in their care. In October 2010, an Angolan asylum seeker died as a result of his forced deportation by G4S guards.A truly appalling record.
http://notog4s.blogspot.co.uk/


Please take a minute to vote for G4S at http://www.publiceye.ch/en/vote/g4s/

Online voting is underway. Their are 6 other villainous corporations that you could vote for too.

1. Alstom (FR)

2.Coal India (IN)

3. Goldman Sachs (USA)

4. Lonmin (ZA)

5. Repower (CH)

6.Shell (NL)

At the end of January, within sight of the World Economic Forum (WEF) the Berne Declaration and Greenpeace will then confer the Public Eye Awards for the worst cases of contempt for the environment and human rights.

Jayne Cortez (10/5/34 -28/12/12) Revolutionary Jazz Poet R.I.P

It is with sadness that I have discovered that poet and spoken word performer and civil rights activist Jayne Cortez has died aged 76.
An activist in the Civil Rights movement, she was an organiser of the Watts writing and dance workshop. She was also the founder of the Watts Repositary Theatre, Bola Press and co-founder of the Organisation of Women Writers of Africa.
In her poetry, she spoke of revolution, which she believed could be used to heal us all, using her voice in a powerful incantory way, using the rythyms of blues and jazz to deliver her messages of fierce, biting, social criticism to be used as imperatives of personal responsibility and change. A devotee of the artistic impulse that is jazz and blues, its impulses were to become a constant theme, using its rythyms as sparks and she became a close friend to many of the jazz greats and members of the avant garde fraternity.
I first discovered her through my own love of jazz, she was married to Ornette Coleman from 1954 until she divorced him in 1964 and I subsequently used to have some of her work on a compilation of freejazz, with her voice used as a bridge between tracks, wish I still had to it. She is best listened  to when heard, rather than directly from the page, a precursor to what is now known as hip hop.She and  Ornette had a son together, jazz drummer Denardo Coleman who she collaberated with on a number of occasions in his firespitters band. She later remarried in 1976 to sculptor Mel Edwards.
Her work has since been translated into many languages and I am widely used to seeing her name published in various anthologies over the years. Using her voice to challenge and the travesties and injustices of our world. Her voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic pulse and dynamic innovation, with her use of lyricism and visceral sound. Using her voice to represent to the world the perspectives of an African-American feminist, revolutionary in an oral tradition stretching back centuries. Remaining independent, determined, with her singular strong voice, her spirit and ideas savaged silence and the conformity of the masses, raging against the excessives of man and all his brutality.In all her rage she spoke of survival too.
Long may her voice sing with all its energy and passion and its force hit with vivid intention.
Jayne Cortez - Artist on the Cutting edge

Jayne Cortez as she appeared in the 1982 film 'Poetry in Motion'

Jazz Fan Looks back - Jayne Cortez

I crisscrossed with  Monk
Walked with Bud
Counted every star with Stitt
Sang "Don't Blame Me" with Sarah
Wore a flower like Billie
Screamed in the range of Dinah
& scatted "How High the Moon" with Ella Fitzgerald
as she blwe roof off the Shrine Auditorium
                             Jazz at the Philarmonic

I cut my hair into a permanrnt tam
Made my feet rebellious metronomes
Embedded record needles in paint on paper
Talked bopology talk
Laughed in high-pitched saxophone phrases
Became keeper of every Bird riff
every Lester lick
as Hawk melodicized my ear of infatuated tonques
& Blakey drummed militant messages in
soul of my applauding teeth
& Ray hit bass notes to the last love scene in my bones
I moved in triple time with Max
Grooved High with Diz
Perddoed with Pettiford
Flew home with Hamp
Shuffled in Dexter's Deck
Squatty-rooed with Peterson
Dreamed a "52nd Street Theme" with Fats
& scatted "Lady Be Good" with Ella Fitzgerald
as she blew roof off the Shrine Auditorium
                             Jazz at the Philarmonic


There it Is - Jayne Cortez

And if we don't fight
if we don't resist
if we don't organise and unify and
get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
the exagerrated look of captivity
the stylized look of suicide
the dehumanised look of fear
and the decomposed look of repression
forever and ever and ever
And there it is


If the Drum is a Woman - Jayne Cortez

If the drum is a woman
why are you pounding your drum into an insane
babble
why are you pistol shooting through the head of your drum
and making a drum tragedy of drums
if the drum is a woman
don't abuse your drum don't abuse your drum
don't abuse your drum
I know the night is full of displaced persons
I see skins striped with flames
I know the ugly disposition of underpaid clerks they constantly menstruate through the eyes
I know bitterness embedded in flesh
the itching alone can drive you crazy
I know that this is America and chicken are coming home to roost
on the MX missile
But if the drum is a woman
why are you choking your drum
why are you raping your drum
why are you saying disrespectful things
to your mother drum your sister drum
your wife drum and your infant daughter drum
if the drum is a woman
then understand your drum
your drum is not docile
your drum is not invisible
your drum is not inferior to you
your drum is a woman
so don't reject your drum don't try to dominate your drum
don't become weak and cold and desert your drum
don't  be forced into the position
as an oppressor of drums and make a drum tragedy of drums
if the drum is a woman
don't abuse your drum don't abuse your drum
don't abuse our drum.....


 .

Emma Goldman (27/6/1869 -14/5/40) - Free Love

From

Marriage and love

Anarchism and other Essays

1911

perhaps 2013, will be the year of Love and unity

and staying free.                                                    

Renewal

As time  passes amongst us,the bridges are falling,
beyond the labyrinths,beyond the caves.
Take giant steps, sing your own requiem,
walk among rainbows pulse.
Echoes in distant waters,
crack the prism that contain us,
hope landscape of tomorrow is irresistable,
and our feet find safe routes.
Liberation is never a solo piece but an orchestra.
It is the encaspulating efforts of millions  of strands,
struggles large and small leading to a progressive sea change in society.
In our outposts  masts  fly high, as the winds of the people sustain,
let our voices be heard,  and together lets follow humanity's assured steps,
moving inch by inch, everything or nothing. All of us or none.*


Happy new year

Remember,  no borders are necessary

heddwch/peace

* Last line 'everything or nothing. All of us or none'
from Bertolt Brecht poem - All of us or none

Octavia Paz (31/4/14 - 19/4/98) January First/ Primero de enero

The year's doors open
like those of language
toward the unknown,
Last night you told me: 
                                  tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs,
sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow, we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.

I opened my eyes late.
For a second of a second
I felt what the Aztec felt,
on the crest of the promontory,
lying in wait
for time's uncertain return
through cracks in the horizon.

Butno, the year had returned
It filled all the room
and my look almost touched it.
Time, with no help from us,
had placed
in exactly the same order as yesterday
houses in the empty street,
snow on the houses,
silence on the snow.

You were beside me,
still asleep.
The day had invented you
but you hadn't yet accepted
being invented by the day.
- Nor possibly my being invented, either.
You were in another day.

You were beside me
and I saw you, like the snow,
asleep among appearances.
Time, with no help from us,
invents houses, streets, trees
and sleeping women.

When you open your eyes
we'll walk, once more,
among the hours and their inventions.
We'll walk among appearances
and bear witness to time and its conjugations.
Perhaps we'll open the day's doors.
And then we shall enter the unknown.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1 January 1975

Las puertas del ano se abren,
como las del lenguaje,
hacia lo desconocicido.
Anoche ne dijiste:
                           manana
habra que trazar unos signos,
dibujar un paisaje, tejer una trama
sobre la doble pagina
del papel y del dia.
Manana habra que inventar,
de neuvo,
la realidad de este mundo.

Yatarde abri los ojos.
Por el sgundo de un segundo
senti lo que el azteca,
acehando
desde el penon del promontorio
por las rendijas de los horizontes
el incierto regreso del tiempo.

No, el ano habia regresado.
Llenabo todo el cuarto
y casi lo palpaban mis miradas.
El tiempo, sin nuestra ayuda,
habia puesto,
en un orden identico al de ayer,
casas en la calle vacia,
nieve sobre las casas,
silencio sobre la nieve.

Tu estabas a mi lado,
aun dormida.
El dia te habia inventado
pero tu no aceptabas todavia
tu innencion en este dia.
Quiza tampoco la mia.
Tu estabas en otro dia.

Estabas a mi lado
y yo te veia, como la hieve,
dormida entre las apariencias.
El tiempo, sin nuestra ayuda,
inventa casa, calles, arboles,
mujeres dormidas.

Cuando abras los ojos
caminaremos, de neuvo,
entre las horas y sus invenciones.
Caminaremos entre las aparienciones,
daremos fe del tiempo y sus conjugaciones.
Abriremos acaso las puertas del dia.
Entraremos entonces en lo desconocido.

a l de enero de 1975.

Reprinted from

Vuelta ( 1976)


Happy new year, lets try for another world, don't let the bastards grind you down, we will need all the strength we can muster for 2019. Spread solidarity, heddwch/peace. Let freedom ring and truth and justice prevail. Its o.k to say no. We can shape a new reality

Patti Smith (b 30/12/46) - Happy Birthday Warrior Poet.

In this video, Patti Smith reads from Woolgathering and shares memories of growing up in Jersey and New York. The Los Angeles Times described this book as a " mix of the practical and the mythic, like the marriage of rock n' roll and poetry". A wonderful 80 minutes worth of her genius. So happy birthday to this warrior poet, 66 today, still fighting for beauty truth and  and justice. Long may she continue to inspire.

Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud
clip from Stephen Sebring's 2008 film documentary
"Patti Smith- Dream of Life.

Patti Smith - Howl, Florence 10/9/09

Wilderness - Patti Smith

Do animals make a human cry
when their loved one staggers
fowled dragged down
the blue veined river

Does the female wail
miming the wolf of sufering
do lilies trumpet the pup
plucked for skin and skein

Do animals cry like humans
as I having lost you
yowled  flagged
curled in a ball

This is how
we beat the icy field
shoeless and empty handed
hardly human at all

Negotiating a wilderness
we have yet to know
this is where time stops
and we have none

Reprinted from
Auguries of Innocence
 2006

Charles Baudelaire ( 9/4/1821 -31/8/1867) - CROWDS

 ' It is not given to everyone to take a  bath in the multitude; to enjoy the crowd is an art; and only that many can gorge himself  with vitality, at the expense of the human race,whom, in his cradle, a fairy has inspired with love of disguise and of the mask, with hatred of the home and a passion for voyaging. Multitude, solitude: terms that, to the active and fruitful poet, are synonomous and interchangeable. A man who cannot people his solitude is no less incapable of being alone in a busy crowd.
The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege that he can, at will, be either himself or another. Like those wandering spirits that seek a body, he enters, when he likes, into the person of any man. For him alone all is vacant, to his eyes, they are not worth the trouble of being visited.
 The solitary and pensive pedestrian derives a singular exhiliration from this universal communion. That man who can easily wed the crowd knows a feverish enjoyment which will be eternally denied to the egoist, shut up like a trunk, and to the lazy man, imprisoned like a mollusk. The poet adopts as his own all the professions, all the joys and all the miseries with which circumstance confronts him. What men call love is very meager, very restricted and very feeble, compared to this ineffable orgy, to this holy prostitution of the soul that abandons itself entirely, poetry and charity included, to the unexpectant arrival, to the passing stranger.
It is good occasionally to bring home to the happy people of the world, were it only in order to humiliate for a moment their inane pride, that there is a happiness superior to theirs, vaster and more refined. The founder of colonies, the pastors of peoples, missionary priests exiled to the ends of the earth, doubtless know something of this mysterious drunkeness; and in the heart of the vast family which their genius has created for itself, they must laugh sometimes at those who pity them for their destiny that is so unquiet and for their life that is so chaste.'

Reprinted from Petits Poemes en Prose
Translated as Twenty Prose Poems by Michael Hamburger (22/3/24-6/07)

HAPPY CRASSMESS | There Is No Authority But Yourself

The above  'There is No Authority But Yourself' is a Dutch film directed by Alexander Oey documenting the history of anarchist punk band Crass. The film features archive footage of the band and interviews with former members Steve Ignorant, Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher. As well as reflecting on the band's past the film focusses on their current activities, and includes footage of Rimbaud performing with Last Amendment at the Vortex jazz club in Hackney, a compost toilet building workshop and a permaculture course held at Dial House in the spring of 2006.

The tile of the film is derived from the final lines of the Crass album Yes Sir, I Will; "You must learn to live with your own conscience, your own morality, your own decision, your own self. You alone can do it. There is no authority but yourself."
There is No Authority But yourself premiered at the Raindance Film Festival at the Picadilly Circus, London Trocadero in October 2006 and was part of the Official Selection film programme at the Flipside film festival in May 2008.
I remember when I first  heard Crass many moons ago, their lyrics taught me to question and took me on  a journey of discovery.Led by radical free thinkers   Penny Rimbaud, a ex-art teaching, middle class situationist and Steve Ignorant who was a working class street punk.Their songs offerered meaningful angry thoughts on societies many ills, and led many people to question injustice. Their angry defiant polemics and messages at the time chiming with the underclass that was emerging from the wreckage of Thatcher's Britain. They based themselves at their Essex communal house called Dial House, and from 1977 until their demise in 1984 released a succession of powerful provocative albums and singles. With words they articulately explained the ideas by which they were living, and with deeds , promoted a fierce critical viewpoint, financially supporting the peace movement and a whole myriad of radical causes.Many people taking their ideas further in a series of anti-capitalist Stop the City demonstations, held in the financial centre of London, between 1883-84, and the emerging New Age Traveller movement. They came to be seen as central to the opposition of  the cruel redundant social and economic policies that were being pushed at the time, which have direct parallels to what is being pushed by our current incumbents..
Their refusal to compromise was inspiring then, and  continues to be today, to all who dream of  peace, freedom, love and justice. Cental to their core was a a  D.I.Y Punk ethic which they used to preach subversion,whilst  living by their ideals and words, advocating a form of  individualism, hence the title 'there is no authority but yourself.'
I have never personally  been a purist, but there are some  people around today that say that Crass sold out. Crass were accused  of lifestylism, back in the day, not engaging with wider struggles.Currently there are  arguments raging about copyright law, with Crass apparently not allowing people to share their music on file sharing sites,  like Media Fire, but their original message for me still worth savouring, still worth sharing, which will  hopefully continue to inspire, and perhaps tomorrow  there will emerge people with even deeper truths. Perhaps the higher we set our ideals the deeper we fall, but the overall result is the fact that none of us are perfect. Crass only offered us suggestions, they served as a pulse, absorbing and spreading ideas, and it was directly because of Crass's ideas that many people engaged in the battlefield of radical ideas, some taking up the ideology of anarchism, some taking their own path, but inspiring many to start creating another world, and challenging the system, and all its failures,  it is I guess, up to us, in which direction we take it.
At a time of socio-economic decline, we should not get sidetracked, distracted. Division does not make the world a better place, Crass promoted  solidarity,by action as well as words. That for me is something we should be grateful for. Am also eternally grateful to them, because they inspired the artist and musician Jeffrey Lewis, who released one of my favourite albums in recent years, with his own homage to Crass.
The message still rings out, another world is not only possible, it is inevitable. We must not give up on our dreams. Become your own spark.
Almost 30 years later Crass's legacy still ripples with much symbolic potency.

Not sure when I'll be back, probably when the libraries reopen.
Next year sometime...... in the meantime Happy Crassmess.
All the best.....heddwch/peace

Crassmess

You must learn to live with your own conscience

your own morality,

your own decision,

your own self.

You alone can do it.

There is no authority but yourself

                                                     Crass - Yes, Sir , I will, 1983

"It was meant to be great but it's horrible- - Santa Claus 1968

Poster done by King Mob

The late British Revolutionary Situationist Group

based in London from  the late 60s onwards.

An old message for today......

Albert Einstein (14/3/1879 - 18/4/1955) - A human being is part of a whole, called by us 'the Universe' - a part limited in time and space.

'A human being is a part of the whole called by us 'the Universe', a part  limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something seperated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricts us to our personal desires and  to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely for such achievement is itself a part of the liberation and a foundation  for inner security.'
               

Breadline Britain by Luciana Berger

.

At the moment almost seven million working age adults are living in extreme financial stress. 3.6 million households have little or no savings, nor equity in their homes, and struggle at the end of each month to feed themselves and their children adequately. People are increasingly unable to cope on their current incomes and have no assets to fall back on, many people across Britain are now using food banks to get their daily sustenance.In 2008/9, 26,000 people in the U.K relied on emergency food aid, now as 2015 draws to a close   this figure is set to reach the truly shocking level of a million people and counting. The sad fact  is in 21st century Britain a significant number of people are going hungry.Welfare cuts are a significant cause. I know of many people who at the moment are probably skipping a meal or two in order to ensure their food supplies stretch out a bit.
This is a savage indicment of Tory Party policies which are increasingly taken us back to the dark old days of Thatchers Britain, a direct result of their savage economic/political austerity programme.. Food prices are rocketing, bills are getting higher. It's going to get even worse.
This scandal of British food poverty should shame us all.

Breadline Britain - The Communards

Ravi Shankar( 7/4/20 - 11/12/12) Legendary Indian Sitarist R.I.P

It was with great sadness, that this morning I heard of the death of the  legendary Indian Sitar maestro, who collaberated with such greats as the Beatles and John Coltrane, taking the instrument to the world, inspiring the 60s psychedelic sound.
It was uncanny because only last night I had been listening  to a work of his Chants of India which was produced by George Harrison, a wonderful soothing collection, like balms for the soul, in these tepid times that we are living in.
He had been ill for several years but still his passing came as unexpected, he seemed timeless like his beautiful music.
He was still performing up to November of this year, playing with his daughter Anoushka. He was I guess one of my first introductions to what  is now known as World Music, introducing me to a melting pot of sounds, his mastery of his chosen instrument long inspiring me, eventually getting drawn to music that was even more out their, but that is another story.
He was born Robindra Shankar in 1930, in the city of Varanas, spending his earlier days in poverty. Initially he was a dancer performing with his brothers Indian and classical folk dance troup, but by the 1930s he had become a master of the Sitar, along with other classical indian instruments. I first became aware of him through watching old performances of him plaing at the Woodstock and Monterey Pop Festivals and later at the 1972 Concert for Bangladesh. Every time I heard his complicated music, it was like their was some kind of magic in the air.
Over the years I was still drawn to his playing, and I regarded him as an almost visionary figure, who became a legend as his life traversed nearly a century, his music transcending trends and cultural barriers becomming one of Indias most effective ambassadors.
His influence soon spread, maintaining a purity of vision, but  was not afraid to collaberate.His the work with Phillip Glass and  with Yeudi Menuhin, in the 1960s and 1970s are now regarded classics, where east truly did meet west.
And now he has gone, aged 92, but his sounds still rythmically breathing so to speak, beyond the melancholy of this world, still stirring hearts, lingering in moments of peace, and satori's twinkling stars.
R.I.P Ravi Shankar.

Dub Syndicate - Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar at Monterey 1967

Ravi Shankar & Phillip Glass - Ragas in a Minor Scale

Yeudi Menhuin & Ravi Shankar - Jungalbandi

Arthur Rimbaud (20/10/1854 -10/11/1891) - extract from A Season in Hell: Ravings II

' I became  a fabulous opera. I saw that all beings have a 
fatality of happiness. Action is not life, but a way of dissi-
pating some force - an enervation. Morality is the weak-
ness of the brain.
    Each being seemed to me to have several other lives due
to him. This gentleman does not know what he is doing he is
an angel. This family is a pack of dogs. In the presence of
several men I have conversed aloud with a moment of one
of their other lives. Thus, I have loved a pig.
    Not one of the sophistries of madness - the kind of madness
that is locked up - have I omitted. I could recite them all, I have
the system.
   My health was threatened. Terror would come upon
me. I would fall into sleeps lasting several days, and on
rising would continue the saddest dreams. I was ripe for
death, and by a road of dangers my weakness led me to the
confines of the world and of Cimmeria, country of darkness
and whirlwinds.
  To divert the enchantment assemmbled in my brain, I had 
to travel. On the sea, which I loved as though it would cleanse
me of a defilement, I saw the comforting Cross erect itself. 
I had been damned by the rainbow. Happiness was my fatality,
my remorse, my worm. My life would always be too huge to be
devoted to strength and beauty.
 Happiness! Its deathly-sweet tooth warned me at cock-crow -
ad matutinum, at the Christus venit - in the darkest cities.

Reprinted from:
Norman Cameron's translation of 
'Ravings II' from Arthur Rimbaud,
A Season in Hell
( Anvil Press, London,1994)

See also

after Rimbaud: The kidnap and murder of David Cameron
http://abandonedbuildings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/after-rimbaud-kidnap-and-murder-of.html

I support Palestinian Human Rights!

Sixty four years ago today, humanity took an inspirational step forward when the United Nations General Assembly, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml.
Article 1 of which states:

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."

                                Photo credit: United Nations

To mark this occasion, we celebrate today International Human Rights Day, but with a heavy heart because Palestinians are systematically denied their human rights by Israel's apartheid policies, which are funded and protected by our government.

Former anti-apartheid icon and South African President Nelson Mandela said it best: "Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

In the spirit of the beautiful clarity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I ask you to take one simple action today: declare your support for Palestinian human rights.

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/641/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=12081

The Smell of Welsh Cakes

Well the silly season is well and truly upon us, as those in power are determined to make or lives a little more hard, thought it time for a joke, the original one I had of Patrick Moore's demise, felt a little to sour, even though he was a great astronomer, I knew him primarily as a racist, homophobic, sexist so and so, who despite playing the xylophone credibly, I will remember mainly for his ultra right wing views, he liked animals too, but so did Hitler, anyway back to the joke.

Gwyn and Betty lived in a little cottage  in the village of St Dogmaels, down the road from me here in Cardigan. Their cottage was immaculate, for Betty was a fierce and tidy woman who liked to see everything in its place. She worked to a strict daily schedule, and was considerably inconvenienced when her husband fell ill and looked as if he might die.

One day, after a visit from thedoctor confirmed that he had not long to live, Betty had to go shopping. "Gwyn," she said. "I won't be gone long. I has to get some flour and raisins. But if you feels like dying afore I comes back, mind to blow out the candle first."

Gwyn was still alive when his wife came back, and indeed it appeared that he might recover, for there was a bit of colour in his cheeks. Betty tucked him up nice and cosy in his bed, wiped his nose, staightened his night-cap, and then went into the back kitchen to get on with her daily tasks. Soon the unmistakable smell of Welsh cakes on the griddle wafted into the bedroom, and Gwyn was greatly moved. "Betty bach," he cried "I smell fresh Welsh cakes on the stove! I think I could manage one or two!"

"Hush now husband," came the reply. "You'll manage nothing of the kind, for those are for the funeral!"

Boom, Boom.

Money can't buy our Love

a spontaneous response

Impotent  in the face of death, impotent, perhaps, in the face of life
We substitute one for another, money can buy power, but not human rights,
Medicine but not health, decorations but no happiness
Impossible to love, is the root of all evil,  
A paradox then, something that we greed for
Has become an idol of the rich, destroys the joys of the poor,
iI it lasts, it lasts because of us, shines in dour emanation

Suffocating souls, creating wars, oozing with supperation,
Paper burns, gold melts at 1063 celsius, copper melts at 1583
Zinc at 419, silver at 961, you see it's all a matter of degree,  
In our pockets slides like a dark turning point of no return
Buys us illusion,  figments of crazy diamond imagination,
Turns us into machines, with its numbness and sham
Instead of God, idolators praise Gold instead,

Finding value at her needy dizzying alters

Polticians shamelessly stuff their pockets full,

We need leaders not in love with money. but in love with justice

Not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity,

Impotent  in the face of death, impotent in the face of life
Money can't buy our love, leaves us with nothitng  at all.


                

Bugger The Bankers

Song for our times
Bugger the Bankers, performed by the Austerity Allstars

and as for this tawdry lot

they can rot in bloody, bloody hell. hell, utter contemptuous bastards. They simply don't care, never have , never will, and if they think we're going to sit back for the next 3 years, they really must be taking the piss.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

                               Don Craven/Time Life/Getty images

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year old African American woman who worked as a seamstress, boarded a Montgomery City Bus year old  to go home from work. On that bus on that day, Herbrave, spontaneous act of defiance   sparked a flame of rebellion.that initiated a new era in the American quest for freedom, equality and justice.

                                          Rosa Parks  

She was arrested and convicted of violating the laws of segregation, known as 'Jim Crow Laws' Mrs Parks appealed her conviction and thus formally challenged the legality of segregation. In cities across the South, segregated bus companies were daily reminders of the inequalities of American society.
The next day Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., proposed a city wide boycott of public transportation at a church meeting. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) coordinated the boycott, and its president, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., became a prominent civil rights leader as international attention focused on Montgomery. The bus boycott demonstrated the potential for nonviolent mass protest to successfully challenge racial segregation and served as an example for other southern campaigns that followed.

The roots of the bus boycott began years before the arrest of Rosa Parks. The Women’s Political Council (WPC), a group of black professionals founded in 1946, had already turned their attention to Jim Crow practices on the Montgomery city buses. In a meeting with Mayor W. A. Gayle in March 1954, the council's members outlined the changes they sought for Montgomery’s bus system: no one standing over empty seats; a decree that black individuals not be made to pay at the front of the bus and enter from the rear; and a policy that would require buses to stop at every corner in black residential areas, as they did in white communities. When the meeting failed to produce any meaningful change, WPC president Jo Ann Robinson reiterated the council’s requests in a 21 May letter to Mayor Gayle, telling him, “There has been talk from twenty-five or more local organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of buses” (“A Letter from the Women’s Political Council”). 

A year after the WPC’s meeting with Mayor Gayle, a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging segregation on a Montgomery bus. Seven months later, 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger. Neither arrest, however, mobilized Montgomery’s black community like that of Rosa Parks later that year. 

King recalled in his memoir that “Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history,” and because “her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted” she was “one of the most respected people in the Negro community”

Robinson and the WPC responded to Parks’ arrest by calling for a one-day protest of the city’s buses on 5 December 1955. Robinson prepared a series of leaflets at Alabama State College and organized groups to distribute them throughout the black community. Meanwhile, after securing bail for Parks with Clifford and Virginia Durr, E. D. Nixon, past leader of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), began to call local black leaders, including Ralph Abernathy and King, to organize a planning meeting. On 2 December, black ministers and leaders met at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and agreed to publicize the 5 December boycott. The planned protest received unexpected publicity in the weekend newspapers and in radio and television reports.

On December 5th, 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began. organized by the local chapter of the NAACP led by Pullman porter E. D. Edgar Nixon.   “We’re going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong,” new minister Martin Luther King Jr. declared. “If we are wrong, the Supreme Court is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong.”  

Since African Americans made up about 75 percent of the riders in Montgomery, the boycott posed a serious economic threat to the company and a social threat to white rule in the city. Out of Montgomery's 50,000 African American residents, 30,000 to 40,000 participated. They walked or bicycled or car pooled, depriving the bus company of a substantial portion of its revenue.

The boycott lasted 381 days, and proved to be effective, causing the transit system to run a huge deficit.After all Montgomery's black residents were not only the principal boycotters, but also the bulk of the transit system's paying customers. The situation became very tense, with members of the White Citizens Council, a group that opposed racial integration firebombed  the homes of King and Nixon were bombed, and when that didn’t stop the boycott, authorities arrested King and ordered him to pay $500 and serve more than a year in jail. Despite this, the boycott continued. 
In June 1956, a federal court found that the laws in Alabama and Montgomery requiring segregated buses were unconstitutional. However an appeal kept segregation intact until Dec 20, 1956 when the US Supreme Court upheld the district court's rulings.ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional.. 

 “We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation,” King said. “We decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls and walk the streets of Montgomery.’’The boycott's official end signalled one of the civil rights movements first victories and made King one of its central figures.

                               Marin Luther King after Montgomery Bus Boycott
                               Time life/Getty images

With new self respect and a new sense of dignity , it was part of the beginning of a call for revolutionary change, the oppressed were determined to stand up and struggle until the walls of injustice had crumbled. It would be a long and hard journey, which would see them take on and triumph against the dominant  repressive forces of evil.

The bus boycott demonstrated the potential for nonviolent mass protest to successfully challenge racial segregation and served as an example for other southern campaigns that followed. In Stride Toward Freedom, King’s 1958 memoir of the boycott, he declared the real meaning of the Montgomery bus boycott to be the power of a growing self-respect to animate the struggle for civil rights.
This movement has echoes with the divestment movement  and the campaign of boycott against apartheid South Africa, and currently again against the policies of apartheid Israel.

                                          Montgomery Bus Protest

http://zinnedproject.org/posts/tag/montgomery-bus-boycott