Harvey Milk (22/5/22/30 -27/11/78) - Give them hope.

' I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living ' - Harvey Milk

Former San Francisco  city supervisor and gay political icon Harvey Milk was assasinated 35 years ago today. Milk was the first openly gay man to hold political office in California. A popular mayor from 1977, until  he was shot dead by a former policeman and city supervisor Dan White.
After White was convicted of a much lesser  charge than murder, an enraged populace erupted in what is known as the 'White Night Riot'.
In his short time in office , Milk was able to erase some of the invisible boundaries of who could serve in office. Today I remember  him, and all others , who opened doors, that hopefully will never be closed again.
The following speech still resonates today, his dreams of a better tomorrow, with the hope for equality and a world without hate still resonates today. These were to be among  his final words, shortly after delivering it, Milk was assasinated.

Harvey Milk - Give them hope

Harvey Milk had feared  assasination, and these were the words that he released posthumously in anticipation of his tragic death.

 

 

 

 

 

SCRAP THE WCA

Another issue close to my heart.
7,000 more signatures are needed to make 100,000,
please sign and share

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154

Jehan Mayoux (25/11/04 - 14/7/75) - Question & Answer / Question reponse

 

Jehan Mayoux was a French Surrealist poet, teacher, pacifist, ant-militarist and libertarian. The son of anarchists, he joined theSurrealists at the end of the 1920's, and first came in contact  with Andre Breton and Paul Eluard in 1933, after sending them a surrealist game, which was published  in  Le Surrealisme au Service de la Revolution  ( Surrealism in the service of the revolution). He became a teacher and inspector of primary education. A Trade Unionist, he  engaged with the activities of the Popular Front, and was  the secretary of the Committe of the Popular Front in 1935. Called up at the start of the Second World War, he went AWOL,  refusing to heed the call of the mobilisation order, but was caught and imprisoned. He somehow managed to escape, but was recaptured again by the Germans and sent to  concentration campo in the Ukraine for 5 years. After his liberation in 1945, he returned to teaching, whilst continuing to engage in libertarian activity, and to be politically engaged, becoming involved with  the magazine  le Libertaire. After signing the Manifeste des 121 (The Manifesto of the 121) on September 21st 1921, which called on the French Government to recognise the Algerian War as a legitimate struggle for Independence, denouncing the use of torture by the French army, and for conscientious objectors to the conflict to be respected by the authorities, he was suspended from  being an Education Inspector from 1960 until 1965. He eventually retired in 1967, after which he participated in the May 1968 movement, but became dissapointed and dissillusioned  by the attitude of the unions. He was to become a friend of the Surrealist poet Benjamin Peret.
He died in 1975, leaving behind many beautiful poetical works.

Question & Answer:

When I am prison door
I offend with dynamite

When I am rabbit
I write with squid ink
When I am anvil
I will wash my clothes in the river

Or this series of images depicting the beloved:
more spiritual than the tide
wiser than hastily suicide
more naked than the foam
more discreet than the bark of thunder
quieter than Paris
gayer than a grain of salt
lighter than a knife.

Question-reponse:

Quand je serais porte de prison
je pecherai a la dynamite

Quand je serai lapin de garenne
j'ecrival avec de f'encre de seiche

Quand je senai enclume
je laveral mon linge a la riviere

ou cette suite d'images decrivant la femme aimee:
plus spirituelle que la maree
plus sage que la hate des sicides
plus  nue que le mousse
plus discrete que l'ecorce du tonnerre
plus silencieuse que Paris
plus gaie qu'un grain de sel
plus legere qu'un couteau.

Further Reading :-

Morning Star -Surrealism, Marxism, Anarchism, Situationism, Utopia;
-Michael Lowe , 2010

Nigel Kennedy and Mostafa Saad - Melody in the Wind

Proms in the Park 2013.....
absolutely beautiful, like an act of Love.

 

But Gaza still without Electricity, but have an abundance of hope, no fuel, gas, clean drinking water, medicines or exit to the outside world. We need to shout louder, we need to m big noise, the people of Gaza need us to tell yhe world.

Happy 60th Alan Moore (18/11/13) : Don't Let Me Die In Black and White

Today  Alan Moore, Magician and great British comic writing genius turns 60  a man who I find fascinatingly brilliant, who  gets my mind reeling every time I come across him. Because  the stuff that he untaps is really powrful stuff. Often he takes me to places and ideas that need further exploration. I also admire him because he is an intelligent propobent of radical alternative views, that help erode the staleness of false certainties and prevailing consensus.
Filmed in 1993, shortly before Alan's 40th birthday, the above film was made during the period in which Alan was conducting research into the history of Northampton for the book 'Voice of the Fire. Nothing was scripted, and there were no second takes. This edit of the film was made in 2000, and was shown to Sara Woodford at Id World, who commisioned the film 'Comic Tales with Alan Moore' for Channel 4. The title of the film comes from a line in Alan's song. 'Old Gangsters Never Die' (the Bside of 'Sinister Ducks') -If I die and god knows I might, don't let me die in black and white.'
At moment I'm sitting in my local library really wish I could pay a visit to Mr Moore's personal one, think I'd feel rather at home, with a nice cup of tea, and a spliff perhaps.. The following film 'The mindscape Of Alan Moore' I would strongly recommend to anyone who cares about Mr Moore's thoughts and ideas.
Happy 60th Mr Moore, thanks.

Will leave you today with some words from Mr Moore himself.

'I don't think people realise how vital libraries are or what a colossal danger it would be if we were to lose anymore. Having had a trunctuated school life myself, all of my education from the age of 17 has been self-taught. I wouldn't be the person I am today if it wasn't for the opportunity the library gave me - Alan Moore

'The central question is is this guy right? Or is he real? What do you the reader think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn't want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recurr, fairly regularly throughout human history.' -Alan Moore

'Everybody is special, everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody has their story to tell' - Alan Moore

There you are, if you find you've lost your own truth, go out, take a look and rediscover, remember too the tides of history forever turning.

Joe Hill ( 7/19/1879 -19/11/15) Joe Hill's Last Will

Joe  Hill the workers martyr was executed by firing squad, today on November 19th , 1915, framed for a murder that many believe he did not commit.An innocent man condemned to death for his passion. Many historians have come to recognise it as one of the worst travesties of Justice in American history. After a trial that was riddled with biased rulings and suppression of important defence evidence and other violations of judicial procedure, which was characteristic of many cases involving labour radicals. A guard reported that at about 10.pm, Joe Hill handed him a poem, through the bars of his cell. It was his last will, which has since become a prized piece of poetry in the heritage of the American Labour Movement.
Born Joel  Emmanuel Hagglund in  Sweden, he emigrated to the United States in 1902, where he changed his name to Joseph Hillstrom. After several years as an itinerant worker - a 'hobo' he joined the IWW (The International Workers of the World) .  A wobbly organiser, balladeer, he was also a man of pride, the flag that he proudly followed was was one of international solidarity.
On the same day that he was executed he sent a telegram to fellow International Worker of the World (IWW), Bill Hayword, telling him "Don't waste time mourning , Organise!" An estimated 30,000 people attended his funeral in an impressive 'singing demonstration' under the banner ' In Memorium - Joe Hill - Murdered by the Capitalist Class.  A rebel to the core, his voice still rings out loud and clear, venerated and celebrated.

Joe Hill's Last Will

My will is easy to decide
For there is nothing to divide
My kin don't need to fuss and moan
Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.

My body - Oh - If I could choose
I would to ashes it reduce
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow

Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again
This is my last and Final Will
Good luck to all of you,

- Joe Hill

Joe Hill's Last Will - Utah Phillips

Paul Robeson - Joe Hill

( one of the most stirring, emotional versions of this song I know.)

Doris Lessing (22/10/19 - 17/11/13) - Uncompromising Spirit R.I.P

Nobel Prize winning novelist, short-story writer,poet, playwright, biographer has sadly passed away at the grand old age of 94. She was the author of over 55 published works of fiction, and non-fiction, a figure as iconic and inspiring as she was polarising in some quarters.
Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War , was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia, her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promiose of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like many other women from southern Africa she did not graduate from high school, but she was to make herself into a self-educated intellectual.
After moving to Britain in the 1930's, she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, and she joined the Communist Party. However, during the postwar years, she became increasingly diillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, she had moved and settled in London with her young son. Her first published novel, The Grass is Singing was published in the same year, the start of a a very prolific output.
Many of her brilliant literary works take in themes in defence of freedom, third world causes and the developing world, and  often from a biographical slant, her prose  marked by its vividness and effectiveness. Her range was vast, not afraid to experiment with form, even turning her hand at science fiction,  engaging between idealism and reality. Alternative ways of seeing and living were also  themes that ran through her work, (she herlself explore sufi mysticism in the 1960's), and the exploration of human nature  being central to her words, investigating its curses in an attempt to find cures..
Her life was marked with a reputation for being a maverik and outspoken, with a refusal to compromise. Her subversive spirit meant that she pusued truth whilst maintaining her individual tongue.
In recognition of her achievement she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, at the age of 88, becomming the oldest woman to do so, and only the 11th woman ever to recieve the prize.
This great writer was also a reluctant feminist, who was first and foremost a storyteller, loyal to the power of the written word, and her belief in it never wavered.
She "saw the Soviet Empire, Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, the British Empire, the White Supremacy of South Afica and the Southern Rhodesia." her words capturing the spirit of her time, and now as they shimmer, the spirit of ours.
Doris Lessing R.I.P

' But for a while the dance went on-
That is how it seems to me now
Slow forms moving calm through
Pools of light like  gold net on the floor.
It might have gone on, dream-like, forever.

Doris Lessing
- from Fable, 1959

' Very  few people care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few.
Very few people have guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies, or cannot be born'
-Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook


' Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.'

Doris Lessing - The reluctant heroine