Remembering Joe Strummer legendary heart and political soul of punk ( August 21, 1952— December 22, 2002)

Today I remember again  Joe Strummer this legendary heart and political soul of punk, staunch anti-racist, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist whose rebel spirit and righteous anger has still not faded, his songs still resonate, with immediacy and warning after all, " the ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in, meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin."

John Graham Mellor was born August 21, 1952 in Ankara, Turkey where his father who worked in the  British diplomatic service was stationed., His family moved around from continent to continent, living in Cyprus, Cairo, East Germany, and Mexico City, all before he went to boarding school in England at age 8. While on break from boarding school, he spent time in Iran and parts of Africa visiting his parents.  As a result, his upbringing of living in and visiting different parts of the world helped him develop his diversity in music and shape his world perspective that would help influence his musical career.

He developed a love of music. listening to records by Little Richard, the Beach Boys and Woody Guthrie.He would even go by the nickname "Woody" for a few years

The  suicide of his brother affected Strummer, as did having to identify his body after it had lain undiscovered for three days. Strummer said, "David was a year older than me. Funnily enough, you know, he was a Nazi. He was a member of the National Front. He was into the occult and he used to have these deaths-heads and cross-bones all over everything. He didn't like to talk to anybody, and I think suicide was the only way out for him. What else could he have done[

 After finishing his time at City of London Freemen's School in 1970, Strummer moved on to the Central School of Art and Design in London, where he briefly considered becoming a professional cartoonist and completed a one-year foundation course. During this time, he shared a flat in Palmers Green with friends Clive Timperley and Tymon Dogg.

In 1973, Strummer moved to Newport, South Wales. his friend Richard Frame spoke with Wales Online about his experiences living in South Wales:  “He was in art college in London and he was going out with a girl there,” “They split up and she went to Cardiff art college. He followed her down and she told him she wasn’t interested.” 

Planning on hitchhiking back to London from Cardiff, his first thumbed lift took him to Newport. “He decided to call in to see a student that he had been in college within London called Forbes,” added Frame. “They went up to the Newport College of Art student union and there was a band playing. Liking what he saw, Joe decamped to Newport.”  

“He thought this was as good a place to stay for a while, so he brought his stuff down from London, which included the guitar which he had bought some months previously from a shop in Charing Cross Road in London.”  

“He’d come down from the leafy suburbs of the south of England and he suddenly found himself in this industrial South Wales town, which was completely alien to anything he’d experienced before, but he loved it.”

 He did not study at Newport College of Art, but met up with college musicians at the students' union in Stow Hill and became the vocalist for Flaming Youth, before renaming the band the Vultures. During this time, he also worked as a gravedigger in St Woolos Cemetery. 

In 1974, the band he was involved in  fell apart and Strummer moved back to London, where he met up again with Dogg. He was a street performer for a while and then decided to form another band with his roommates called the 101ers, named after the address of their squat at 101 Walterton Road in Maida Vale.The band played many gigs in London pubs, performing covers of popular American R&B and blues songs. 

In 1975, he stopped calling himself Woody Mellor and adopted the stage name Joe Strummer, subsequently insisting that his friends call him by that name. The surname "Strummer" apparently referred to his role as rhythm guitarist in a self-deprecating way. 

Strummer was the lead singer of the 101ers and began to write original songs for the group. One song he wrote was inspired by the Slits' drummer Palmolive, who was his girlfriend at the time. The group liked the song "Keys to Your Heart", which they picked as their first single. His first gigs.prior to The Clash, were for Chileans exiled in London by the military coup of General Pinochet.

On April 3, 1976, the then-unknown Sex Pistols opened for Joe’s band, the 101ers at a venue called the Nashville Rooms in London, and Strummer was impressed by them. Strummer agreed to leave the 101ers and join Jones, bassist Paul Simonon, drummer Terry Chimes and guitarist Keith Levene. The band was named The Clash by Simonon and made their debut on 4 July 1976, opening for The Sex Pistols at the Black Swan (also known as the Mucky Duck, now known as the Boardwalk..

The Clash  becoming one of the most memorable and influential bands in the original  British punk rock scene. On 25 January 1977, the band signed with CBS Records as a three-piece after Levene was fired from the band and Chimes quit. Topper Headon later became the band’s full-time drummer. 

They recorded their first self-titled album in just a matter weeks and released it afterward. The Clash’s first single “White Riot” garnered critical acclaim in the UK, but it was the third single “Complete Control” (that featured reggae artist Lee “Scratch” Perry) that climbed slightly higher on the UK chart (at #28). 

The Clash released “Complete Control” as a response to their label who released the second single “Remote Control” without the band’s permission, which infuriated them.  As The Clash was soaring in the UK punk scene, so was their reputation for several criminal misdemeanors. They committed petty crimes that ranged from stealing pillowcases from their hotel room to shooting racing pigeons. Despite these offenses, it even more bolstered the band’s “bad boy” image as many early punk rock bands had. However, The Clash was also actively tackling social and political matters as demonstrated by their 1978 single “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais.” which powerfully relates to the haves and the have-nots and asks listeners to get out of their comfort zones.

While they were recording their next album, CBS Records requested the band to modify their sound into a “cleaner” one in order to appeal to American audiences. For this, The Clash worked with former Blue Oyster Cult’s Sandy Pearlman to produce their second album Give ‘Em Enough Rope which The Clash released in 1978. While the expected American breakthrough didn’t happen (it only landed at #128 on the Billboard 200), Give ‘Em Enough Rope was another homeland success, almost topping the UK album charts (at #2). The album was supported mostly by the single “Tommy Gun,” which rose to #19 on the UK singles chart. The Clash toured extensively in their country, and also had their first American tour in early 1979, which was largely a success.

Breakthrough success in the US From their earlier influences and their American tour (whose supporting acts included R&B luminaries such as Bo Didley and and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins), they largely influenced The Clash’s shift of style when they recorded their third album London Calling in late 1979. The album exhibited several genres including ska, reggae and old school rock and roll to add to their already existing punk rock offering.  The result was a tremendous success not only in the UK (where the album reached #9) but also (and finally) in the United States. London Calling peaked at #27 on the Billboard 200, and its title track reached #11 on the UK singles chart and #30 on the US dance chart. 

The next single from London Calling “Train in Vain (Stand by Me)” fared even better when it peaked at #23 on the Hot 100, making it the Clash’s first entry into the US Hot 100.  Part of London Calling‘s success was its relative affordability. It was a double album, although The Clash insisted that copies should be sold for a single album price.

 The Clash did another US tour, which also became very successful. The band also toured much of the UK and Europe. It was also during that time that they filmed their documentary film Rude Boy, and the single “Bankrobber” which would appear on their compilation album Black Market Clash. It went to #12 on the UK album charts.

In 1980, The Clash released the triple album Sandinista! in late 1980; and as expected of the band, it was released at a lower price. It went gold in the in the UK and silver in the US. 

The Clash was a band unlike any other, fusing together a variety of musical genres like reggae, rockabilly, dub, and R&B without missing a beat.and their influence on the music industry is immeasurable. 

It was Strummer’s politically charged lyrics that helped bring punk to the masses. Calling out social injustices and giving a voice to the struggles of the working class, his lyrics struck a chord with legions of fans and the press alike, with Rolling Stone calling The Clash “the greatest rock & roll band in the world.”

Despite their fame and success, within the band things were not looking good. In fact, they were on the brink of disintegrating. Headon was fired because of his escalating drug addiction, and Crimes was reinstated as the band’s drummer. However, he was soon fired too, and was replaced by Pete Howard (ex-Cold Fish). Strummer and Simonon also sacked Jones for his diminishing interest in the band (Jones later would form his own band Big Audio Dynamite after his departure). The Clash hired two guitarists and together the newly-revamped group released what could be their last album Cut The Crap in 1985. It met with critical and commercial failure that even Strummer and Simonon decided to disown it. In early 1986, the two men decided to permanently severe the group.

Joe Strummer though despite this is often said to have changed people’s lives as a result of not only fronting The Clash but also writing most of their lyrics. He continued to write and perform progressive, politically-charged songs with his last band, The Mescaleros, from 1999 until his death.

A humanist and environmentalist. his  empathy for the plight of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in his last three albums,all with The Mescaleros was plain to see, as was his advocacy for multiculturalism and racial and ethnic tolerance. 

To this, he added green politics, raging against the corporate destruction of the environment. In "Johnny Appleseed" (2001), he wrote: "If you're after getting the honey, hey then you don't go killing all the bees… there ain't no berries on the trees." 

He inspired thousands to learn about power structures in society  Two Strummer songs stand out in particular to me.. One is "Spanish Bombs" (1979), which was primarily about the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939: "The freedom fighters died upon the hill. They sang the red flag. They wore the black one… The hillsides ring with ‘Free the people’."  

This helped educate many about the democratically elected Republican government’s struggle against Francisco Franco’s fascist military coup, recounting how socialists, communists, republicans and anarchists fought together for freedom, liberty and equality. 

The other is "Washington Bullets" about the anti-democratic effects of American imperialism in Central and South America, from the 1959 Cuban Revolution to Pinochet’s 1973 military coup in Chile and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas' overthrowing of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979.

In it, Strummer sings: "As every cell in Chile will tell. The cries of the tortured men. Remember Allende… When they had a revolution in Nicaragua. There was no interference from America. The people fought the leader. And up he flew. Without any Washington bullets, what else could he do?" 

In an age before the internet, ,me included many sought out information in their local libraries about these seismic world events.

Washington Bullets - The Clash

Strummer's lyrics still able to make us think, that help challenge our views of society. He also taught us, that punk is not a uniform, it's an idea, a passionate grassroots idea to create change, standing up for what you believe, about being open minded, at the end of the day we are all individuals. you've gotta do what's right for you,  follow your own heart, your own true spirit.

Strummer was a family man. His children, Jazz and Lola, both girls came from his long-term girlfriend Gaby Salter. After Strummer and Salter split up, Strummer began a relationship with Lucinda Tait in 1993 and were later married. Tait had a daughter from a past relationship named Eliza, and the four of them moved to a farmhouse in Somerset England 

Joe Strummer sadly died suddenly on December 22,2002 at his home in Somerset  after walking his dogs the victim of an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. He was only 50.

As a member of The Clash Strummer was a punk-rock pioneer with a fondness for reggae, who changed peoples lives forever.They were a force that would shape how politics and music fit together, transforming this new, angry punk sound into something with purpose. Through his songwriting Strummer consistently critiqued capitalism, advocated racial justice and opposed imperialism. He showed young people there are alternatives to the complacency, opportunism, and political ambivalence that dominate popular culture.

On top of this, The Clash always brought social issues to light, including support for the African, Jamaican and West Indian immigrant communities who struggled for unity and integration in London at the time.

As a musician, Strummer redefined music and reaffirmed the principles of committed and intelligent opposition. He seemed to be involved in so many different movements and supported so many causes before they were fashionable. The Clash were at the forefront of the Rock against Racism movement founded in the seventies to combat the rise of the far-right National Front.  The Clash always brought social issues to light, including support for the African, Jamaican and West Indian immigrant communities who struggled for unity and integration in London at the time. 

Never afraid of controversy, Strummer pushed the Clash to support publicly the H-Block protests in Northern Ireland, which began in 1976 when the British took away the political status of IRA “prisoners.” 

But co-founding one of the most important bands of the past 50 years has, understandably, overshadowed the full breadth of Strummer’s musical interests. His career outside the Clash included forays into rockabilly, folk-rock, African music and Spanish Civil War songs.

Released nearly 16 years after his death, Joe Strummer 001 a 32 track compilation of remastered rarities and previously unreleased tracks, stands as a testament to his vision for open borders and open hearts. This collection gives a sense of the scope of Strummer’s career, and the passion with which he pursued it. Over the years, and through various musical incarnations, he never sounded less than joyful about what he was doing. He’s ready to rumble on opener “Letsgetabitrockin,” from the 101ers, which barrels along on a tumult of guitars and a lean rhythm. Later, Strummer pushes the beat a little on a more subdued acoustic demo from 1975 of the same song, as if he’s imagining the churning full-band arrangement to come. He sings with exhilaration over a booming mix of drums and guitar on “Love Kills,” the title track from the 1986 biopic Sid and Nancy; takes on a tone of wonderment as he threads his voice through hand drums and African chanting on “Sandpaper Blues”; and lets loose with scruffy, melodic abandon on the taut “Coma Girl,” from Streetcore, his posthumous 2003 release with the Mescaleros. Even on an aching “Redemption Song” with Johnny Cash, from Cash’s 2003 Unearthed boxed set, Strummer strikes a balance between worldweary and triumphant.
Strummer and Jimmy Cliff, the ska and reggae legend, are a natural pairing on “Over the Border,” from Cliff’s 2003 album Fantastic Plastic People. And Strummer builds on the Clash’s “Spanish Bombs” with jittery banjo and a vaguely Iberian tint on “15th Brigade”—his take on “Viva la Quince Brigada,” sung by Spanish Republicans in their fight against the fascists during the Spanish Civil War.
The second half of 001 is given over to demos and previously unreleased tracks, many of which are illuminating. “Czechoslovak Song/Where Is England” from 1983 rides a slow, heavy dub rhythm that bears only a vague resemblance to the song it morphed into: the Clash’s synth-laced single “This Is England.” 

The boxed set version of 001 also includes a more fully formed demo of “This Is England” from 1984, with gruff vocals and without the synths. The grungy blues “Crying on 23rd” and the countrified “2 Bullets,” soaked in pedal steel guitar, are outtakes from Sid and Nancy, and both feature Strummer’s former Clash bandmate Mick Jones on bass. 
As fun as the older stuff is, one of the latter-day unreleased tracks is a standout. Strummer recorded “London Is Burning” in 2002 with the Mescaleros, then reworked it into “Burnin’ Streets” for Streetcore. The version here is faster, punchier and more evocative: “London is burning / Don’t tell the queen,” he sings to set the scene. It would have been one of the best songs on Streetcore; instead, it’s an unexpected gem tucked away toward the bottom of the tracklist .

It’s a reminder of just how good Strummer could be, and makes you wonder what more he would have done had a congenital heart defect not felled him at 50. The consolation is knowing how much more material remains to be heard, and hoping there are more songs in the archives that are as good as the ones here.
He performed for the last time on November 15, 2002 at a benefit for striking London firefighters. For someone who used his music to galvanize and promote progressive action, this final performance was most fitting.

Joe Strummer was an iconic musician whose music and lyrics continue to resonate with audiences today. His advocacy for political change and artistic collaborations helped shape the punk rock genre, and his influence is still felt today. Though he may be gone, Joe Strummer’s spirit lives on through his music and the many lives he touched.

Strummer's lasting legacy is that music is still used to oppose right-wing ideologies and political parties and to promote an agenda of social justice and equality. Strummer’s music remains an enduring legacy of radicalism, defiance, and resistance. 

Thank you Commandante Joe, gone but not forgotten. Still carrying the keys  to people's hearts and music that continues to inspire..Joe’s music still remains vital: thought-provoking, boundary-pushing, genre-fusing, in ways that most artists could only wish to match and  Joe’s work still sounds just as relevant today as when it was first released.

Link to Joe Strummer Foundation

http://joestrummerfoundation.org

" People can change anything they want to and that means everything in the world "

- Joe Strummer


Joe Strummer  and Johnny Cash- Redemption Song

The Clash - Clampdown

The Clash - Clash City Rockers

The Clash -  Tommy Gun

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Johnny Appleseed

Joe Strummer - White man in Hammersmith Palis ( Glastonbury 2009 )

Joe Strummer and the mescaleros - London is Burning

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros -  Bhindi Bagee

The Clash - I fought the law

The Clash - Police and Thieves

The Clash- White Riot

The Clash - Know your rights

Summer Storm

Deep the wind growled

As heavy rain fell,

Strong. free and gusty

Ferociously running wild,

Mother Natures breath

Soaring intensely,.

We heard her bellow

Releasing powerful energy,

While trees swayed.

And branches croaked,

Magic pouring down

Whirling and twisting,

Mercurial power roared on

Mischievously disturbing sleep,

Dancing through the night 

Not wishing to be tamed,

Shaking up the neighbourhood

With shimmering embrace,

Rvers became swollen

Clouds tossed across sky,

Then as morning arrived

Swiftly flowed on inexhaustibly,

After leaving her mark

Traces of elemental force,

Cyclic storm will  rage on

Consistent like time.

Happy Birthday to Republican and Socialist James Keir Hardie (15/8/1856 - 26/9/15)

 

Happy Birthday to Scottish Republican. Trade Unionist and Socialist James Keir Hardie who was born illegitimate today on 15 August 1856, near Newhouse in Lanarkshire, the son of Mary Keir, a domestic servant, and William Aitken, a miner who wanted nothing to do with him

Soon Mary Keir married David Hardie, a ship’s carpenter, and James Keir took his stepfather’s name and became James Keir Hardie. the  family had to move from place to place as his stepfather failed to find regular employment and their poverty forced young Hardie out to work at the age of eight – first as a message boy, then at a bakery, then heating rivets in a shipyard where the boy next to him fell off a scaffold and was killed. In desperation, his father returned to work at sea. His mother moved back to Lanarkshire and at the age of 10,

Although raised as an atheist, Hardie was converted to Christianity in 1897. A lay preacher for the Evangelical Union Church, Hardie was also active in the Temperance Society. Hardie considered himself to be a Christian Socialist: "I have said, both in writing and from the platform many times, that the impetus which drove me first into the Labour movement, and the inspiration which has carried me on in it, has been derived more from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth than from all other sources combined." 

Hardie remained friends with atheists such as Eleanor Marx and Frederich Engels, the dominant influence on his political ideas were his religious beliefs but Keir, was to become a giant in the socialist movement, rising from coalminer to become the first Labour Party Leader, and to become one of the greatest evangelists for the ideas of socialism.
He would derive from his mother  many of his good qualities. She was a woman of marked individuality and strength of character, nothing could daunt her, or dampen her convictions. At the age of ten, he went to work in a local mine,where he worked as a “trapper”, operating the ventilation doors deep underground. “I am of the unfortunate class who never knew what it was to be a child,” Hardie wrote. “For several years as a child I rarely saw daylight during the winter months. Down the pit by six in the morning and not leaving it again until half past five meant not seeing the sun.”

Through  self-education he would learn the lessons of solidarity and comradeship. This would help him as he used his voice to speak of a world where woman and man were born equal. Denouncing the rich, the politicians and the establishment, all exploiters, and would see him calling for the destruction of the capitalist system. He was one of the greatest agitators of his day. 

He  was to help found the Independent Labour Party in 1893, and was one of the first two Labour M.P's elected to the UK Parliament. He was to mark himself out as a radical both by his dress- he wore a tweed suit and cloth cap, whilst most other members of Parliament wore more formal dress- and the subjects that he advocated - the nationalisation of the coalmines, for the unemployed, womens rights, republicanism and free education. Stuff that still echoes strongly today.

His first constituency was in West Ham, London (1892) and later Merthyr Tydfil here in Wales.
In 1894 251 miners were killed after an explosion at a mine in Pontypridd and after his request for a message of condolence to be sent to the families of the bereaved was refused by parliament and a message of congratulation to Buckingham Palace on the birth of the future Edward VIII agreed, Hardie delivered a vitriolic attack on the monarchy, which resulted in him losing his seat at the next election in 1895.

In 1886, Hardie was elected secretary for the newly formed Ayreshire Miners’ Union, and largely because of his fellow miners’ confidence in him, he advanced quickly through the ranks to become secretary of the Scottish Miners’ Association within the year. In 1887, Hardie began publishing his own newspaper,The Miner  in which he attempted to educate the Scottish working classes, particularly his fellow miners, from a decidedly socialist perspective. 

It is important to note that Hardie’s early political career as a union leader spanned a time when British labor laws hardly existed. Conditions in the Scottish coal mines were miserable and dangerous, while relations between workers and management were often violent and sometimes deadly. Hardie’s local struggles for the rights of coal miners in Lanarkshire emphasized the need for a larger, united front working in opposition to the political and economic status quo—an empowered political party representing the needs of the working classes, on a national level, against the interests of their politically-entrenched capitalist employers.

 The education Hardie gained from these early struggles against the large iron corporations convinced the young labor leader of the importance of working class unity. With this slowly but steadily growing awareness, Hardie would expand his political consciousness beyond the concerns of the local Lanarkshire miners to include all British working classes and eventually all workers everywhere, regardless of occupation or nationality.

Despite losing every seat in the 1895 election, the Independent Labour Party was growing in popularity. During this period Hardie travelled across the world to learn from other labour movements, and visited the South Wales coalfields on numerous occasions, especially during the 1898 strike. As a result he was invited to stand in the Merthyr Tydfil constituency and won the seat on 10 October 1898. With only two Members of Parliament, it was not easy for the Independent Labour Party in Westminster, but success came in the January 1906 elections as a result of an entente with the Liberals. The Independent Labour Party won 29 seats and Keir Hardie kept his seat in Merthyr Tydfil.

Hardie passionately believed in, publicly defending calls for general strikes, syndicalism and militancy and  was also one of the first to call for equality between the races in South Africa, and  because he was a lifelong committed pacifist and humanist, this led him to  believe that the interests of the working classes were inseperable from peace, and when the First Wold War broke out in 1914, he was  to oppose it, and was to address anti-war demonstrations  up and down  the country and to support conscientious objectors.

For  years he tirelessly addressed meeting after meeting, nearly every day and night, travelling long distances to be known for his powerful oratory, often negating meals and continuing to spread ideas with comrades long into the night. Never to forget his working class roots, these people who he completely understood, he realised their plight, never deserting them, with his untarnished devotion and faith in their cause.
Sadly his dreams of peace were not to be, and after a series of strokes he died in Glasgow on the 26th September, 1915 at the tragically young age of 59. He is buried in Cunnock, Ayrshire.

A magnificent bronze bust of James Keir Hardie,now  stands on a pink granite plinth outside Cumnock Town Hall.  Since James Keir Hardie lived for the majority of his life in Cumnock, The National Keir Hardie Memorial Committee commissioned the sculptor Benno Schotz RSA, to create the bronze bust.  The memorial bust was presented by William Stewart and appropriately accepted by provost Nan Hardie Hughes, Keir Hardie's daughter, in August 1939, on the eve of World War 2.
Today I remember him,because he stood in  many respects unprecedented as a working class leader in our country. He was  the first man  from the midst of the working class who completely understood them, completely sympathised with them, completely realised their plight, and completely championed them. After entering Parliament he  never deserted them, never turned his back on a single principle, and retained his unbroken affection and respect for the working class, his untarnished loyalty to them, his championship of them, his enduring faith in their cause.

We owe an awful lot to his example and the legacy which he left. Today as the country faces new crises. Hardie's vision of a powerful labour movement. fighting for change is as vital as ever. Hardie's vision couldn't be further away from his namesake  Keir Starmer. Hardie pushed for socialism, democracy and fair rents, Starmer removes socialists, boycotts picket-lines and scrapped rent control pledges.

Successors have abandoned the cause, but Hardies  message remains clear.  "Socialism will abolish the landlord class, the capitalist class, and the working-class. That is revolution; that the working class by its action will one day abolish class distinctions." Let Socialists today continue Keir Hardie's struggle for a better and more equal world.

Remembering Nagasaki

Nagasaki Day, observed annually on August 9th, holds a somber significance in global history. It marks the day when the Japanese city of Nagasaki was devastated by an atomic bomb during World War II. This day serves as a reminder of the immense destructive power of nuclear weapons and the need for lasting peace.

Hiroshima, another Japanese city, became the first target of an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 when ' Little Boy was dropped  on Hiroshima, where 100,000 to 180,000 people out of a population of 350,000 were estimated to have been killed. The destruction caused by the bomb prompted global shock and horror, 

Then on this day August 9, 1945,at 11.02 a.m. a second atomic bomb, was dropped on the Japanese  port city of Nagasaki.The bomb which used plutonium 239, was dropped by parachute by an American B29 bomber. called the Fat Man.

Unlike Hiroshima, Nagasaki lied in a series of narrow valleys bordered  by mountains in the east and the west. The bomb exploded above the ground and directly beneath it was a suburb of schools, factories and private houses. The bomb detonated above the city, causing widespread devastation and loss of life.  The explosion obliterated large parts of Nagasaki, instantly killing tens of thousands of people. The intense heat and radiation unleashed by the bomb inflicted severe burns and injuries on survivors.  

Among the 270,000 people present  when this criminal act occurred were 2,500 labour conscripts from Korea and 350 prisoners-of-war. Nagasaki was completely destroyed. About 73,884 people were killed and 74,909 injured, with the affected survivors suffering the same long-term catastrophic results of radiation and mental trauma as at Hiroshima.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely civilian towns, meaning there wasn't a strong military reason to drop the atomic bombs over those particular cities. No one was excluded from the horrors of the atomic bomb, a "destroyer of worlds" burnt hotter than the sun. Some people were vaporised upon impact, while others suffered burns and radiation poisoning that would kill them days, weeks or even months later. Others were crushed by debris, burned by unimaginable heat or suffocated by the lack of oxygen. Many survivors suffered from leukemia and other cancers like thyroid and lung cancer at higher rates than those not exposed to the bombs. Mothers were more likely to  lose their children during pregnancy or shortly after birth. Children exposed to radiation were more likely to have learning disabilities and impaired growth.

The day after the attack on Nagasaki, the emperor of Japan overruled the military leaders of Japan and forced them to offer to surrender (almost) unconditionally. On the same dayYosuke Yamahata a Japanese army photographer  began photographing the devastation and hibakusha survivors. Over a period of about twelve hours he took around a hundred exposures; by late afternoon, he had taken his final photographs near a first aid station north of the city. In a single day, he had completed the only extensive photographic record of the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. 

Yamahata’s photographs were published in the Mainichi Shinbun issue of August 21 and in 1952, his photographs of Nagasaki appeared in the September 29 issue of Life. The same year, they appeared in the book Kiroku-shashin: Genbaku no Nagasaki.

Yamahata became a casualty himself in 1965 and on his 49th birthday  and the twentieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima  he died of terminal cancer, probably caused  by the effects of radiation, received at Nagasaki.

Today his images, still resonate with the truth, and the  shocking tragedy of this atrocity.

Hibakusha is a term widely used in Japan, that refers to the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it translates as 'explosion effected  Survivor of Light.'. These survivors speak of the deep, unabating grief they felt in the days, months and decades since the attack  They have described the shame of being a survivor , many were unable to marry, find jobs, or live any sort of normal life. 

They have said that many Hibakusha never speak of the day, instead choosing to suffer in silence. They told what it was like to be suddenly alone in middle age, to lose their parents, spouses, children, and livelihoods in a single instant. In memory of them, we should make sure that the  misery and devastation caused by nuclear weapons is never forgotten.

Even if Japan was not fully innocent, the people of Japan did not deserve to pay the price for their nations wrongdoing, and there was absolutely no moral justification in obliterating these two cities and killing its inhabitants in what was clearly a crime against humanity and murder on an epic scale. Hiroshima and Nagasaki held no strategic importance. Japan were an enemy on the brink of failure an members of the country's top leadership were involved in peace negotiations.

Many believe that these two atrocities were a result of  geopolitical posturing at its most barbaric, announcing  in a catastrophic  display of military capability, of inhumane intention showing America's willingness to use doomsday weapons on civilian populations.The bombings serving as warnings and the first act of the Cold War against its imperialist rival Russia. A message to the Russians of the power of destruction and technological military capability that the US had managed to develop.

The bombs dropped were  of a indiscriminate and cruel character beyond comparison with weapons and projectiles of the past.But the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima played a significant role in shaping the post-war world order. Efforts to prevent further nuclear devastation culminated in the establishment of organizations such as the United Nations and initiatives to promote disarmament and non-proliferation.

Lets not forget that in our our current dangerous  times, many world leaders remain recklessly committed to their nuclear  arsenals. There are an estimated 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world at the present time with over 90% held by USA and Russia, but also by the UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and lately North Korea. This is more than enough to wipe out most of the human race and most other life. 

Nagasaki Day is significant because it serves as a solemn remembrance of the lives lost and the suffering endured by the people of Nagasaki and to honour their memory.. Memorial ceremonies, peace rallies, and artistic expressions pay tribute to the resilience and spirit of the survivors.  

In the face of global tensions and the persistent threat of nuclear conflict, Nagasaki Day underscores the importance of pursuing diplomatic solutions, dialogue, and disarmament. As the world reflects on the tragic events of August 9, 1945, it is a time to recommit to the pursuit of peace, unity, and the preservation of human lives.

By learning from the past and advocating for a world without nuclear weapons, we honor the memory of the victims and work towards a brighter, safer future for all. 

For Nagasaki Day let us echo the call of the Hibakusha, and  press our leaders to take the actions necessary to ensure  these immoral, illegal weapons are never used again.  

Robert Oppenheimer -

Now I become death , the destroyer of worlds

Further reading:-

Nagasaki Journey; The Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn : “The Rebel Girl”

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Socialist agitator and organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and an official of the Communist Party was born on 7 Aug 1890  to a working-class, Irish-American family in Concord, New Hampshire.. Flynn, using her freedom of assembly, was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women’s rights, birth control, and women’s suffrage

Her mother, Annie Gurley, who was related to George Bernard Shaw, emigrated from Ireland.

She supported the family through tailoring, and resented her work being referred to as “sewing.” She advocated equal rights for women and endowed her children with a keen knowledge of Irish history, English classic literature, Greek mythology, and working-class solidarity.

Thomas Flynn, her father, earned a living sporadically; his contributions to the family were political rather than economic. He made an unsuccessful run for the New York Assembly in 1920 on the Socialist Party ticket, though he did get more votes than the Republican candidate. 

The Flynn household was the center for Irish freedom fighters like James Larkin and James Connolly, who were impressed by Elizabeth’s intelligence and encouraged her rebellious nature.  The young Elizabeth Gurley Flynn attended Socialist meetings with her parents and read The Worker and other left-wing publications, as well as the works of Edward Bellamy, Upton Sinclair, Karl Marx, and Frederick Engels. Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women and August Bebel’s Women and Socialism finally propelled her into socialist activism.  

At fifteen, Flynn mounted her first soapbox to inaugurate her career as a “jawsmith,” as professional agitators were then called. Her experiences, along with her youthful beauty, her radiance, and her passion to remake the world, made Flynn a moving spokesperson.  By the end of 1906, Flynn had been arrested (for the first of many times) and was speaking regularly, using a style that appealed to the emotions and provoked arguments.

The poverty and exploitation Gurley Flynn saw all around her reinforced her inherited politics, engendering in her a hatred of capitalism. The revolutionary philosophy of Marx and Engels, and the socialist orators she heard in her youth, steeled her determination to change the world. 

Working-class audiences loved her. Middle-class intellectuals and bohemians were fascinated by her. Even her critics acknowledged the intellect, eloquence, and spirit of the orator that novelist and journalist Theodore Dreiser christened the East Side Joan of Arc. 

In public squares and union halls around the country, she inspired countless women and men to join and play an active role in the labor movement with ironclad logic cloaked in effervescent wit.. In an era when street life and mass strikes had a direct impact on ordinary people, Flynn’s notoriety was akin to that accorded to media stars today. The Rebel Girl, as she was called, led immigrant workers in major strikes in Lawrence, Massachusetts and Paterson and Passaic, New Jersey.

A great orator, Flynn saw court trials on labor issues as important extensions of organizing; she participated in fights for free speech in Missoula, Montana (1908), and Spokane, Washington (from 1909 to 1910). As part of her defense work, Flynn created the Workers’ Defense League, an organization that fought for the victims of the post-World War I Red Scare. She also helped establish the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 

She left a permanent record of her protest campaigns through her writing; she produced leaflets, pamphlets, and articles, as well as a regular newspaper column that ran for twenty-six years. Gurley, as friends and family referred to her, and om 1906 joined the IWW as an organizer. 

As “One Big Union,”contending that all workers should be united as a social class to replace capitalism and wage labor with industrial democracy.  the IWW stood in direct opposition to the staid American Federation of Labor (AFL), which primarily organized skilled white men. Founded in 1905, the IWW was a new and irreverent labor union and social movement that sought to organize all workers--unskilled, immigrant, and migrant--regardless of race, sex, or creed.

From 1906 to 1918, Flynn was one of the few female organizers among the Wobblies, as IWW members were called, and certainly the youngest, working alongside other flamboyant agitators, like Big Bill Haywood https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2023/02/remembering-william-big-bill-dudley.html and Eugene V. Debs https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2022/11/eugene-victor-debs-5-111855-2010-26.html.

Flynn used her energy, commitment, and oratorical talent in strikes and free-speech battles throughout the country.  In Minnesota’s Mesabi Range in 1908, she spoke to miners about the IWW. She fell in love with the West, and with IWW member Jack Jones. Flynn, who was naïve, romantic, and by her own account, lusty, married Jones in January 1908; she departed almost immediately to fulfill her speaking engagements. 

After two years of marriage, with her baby due, Flynn decided that she had fallen out of love and did not want to settle down. She left Jones and returned home to the Bronx to live with her supportive mother and sisters. Fred Flynn was born on 19 May 1910. Flynn’s family looked after him so that she could continue her life as an organizer. Flynn later regretted that she had missed being an attentive, present mother. 

Flynn organized iron miners in Minnesota, copper miners and timber workers in Montana, textile workers in the renowned strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, silk workers in Paterson, New Jersey, and hotel cooks and waiters in New York City. The IWW met strong resistance, which sometimes turned violent. Towns tried to discourage labor organizers by enacting legal restrictions on free speech. Fueled by zealous commitment, the IWW generally regained the right to speak in public.

Flynn led the organizing operations in major strikes of the century. Lawrence, Massachusetts was a major textile-producing center in 1912. Flynn estimated that 30,000 workers were employed there in woollen mills. They were paid starvation wages to labor in dirty, noisy, unventilated, and unsafe mills. The IWW became the organizing core of the woollen workers’strike. Flynn gave speeches and took care of the logistics: arranging for outside speakers and entertainment, setting up schools and dances, organizing the food distribution, arranging to send the children away from the violence, and sustaining long parades and pickets that formed many blocks of human chains.

The violence of the strike--one woman was killed and many people were beaten and injured--brought news reporters and humanitarians to Lawrence, fueling a nationwide protest that helped force the employers to negotiate.

On March 14, 1912, the strike was settled; worker demands for wage increases and increased overtime pay were met. Another outcome of the Lawrence strike was Flynn’s encounter with the don of Italian anarchists, Carlos Tresca, who became her lover for fourteen years (from 1912 to 1926) and remained the love of her life until he was murdered in 1943. He edited an Italian-language anarcho-syndicalist newspaper, was a master of propaganda and agitation, and often aroused uncontrollable emotions, which frequently landed him in jail. 

With the victory of the Russian Revolution, the American government grew alarmed about bolshevism and immigrant radicals. Repressive legislation was passed, culminating in the Palmer Raids. In 1919, IWW headquarters in many cities and towns were raided, IWW leaders were arrested, tens of thousands of immigrants were beaten and jailed, and some were even deported. These indictments decimated the IWW and other leftist organizations.

Flynn’s response was to mobilize a broad coalition called the Workers Defense Union (WDU) to represent these political prisoners, who numbered more than fifteen hundred. Over 170 labor, socialist, and radical organizations participated in this truly united front organization, which consisted of unions, cooperative apartments, vegetarians, consumers, and progressive women.

Over the next five years, Flynn worked tirelessly to raise money, provide lawyers and bail, publicize the cases, visit prisoners, provide relief for prisoners’ families, and appeal to government agencies to secure pardons. Most of the people she represented were poor and remained unknown, but a few, like Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were the focus of Flynn’s energy from 1919 to 1926, became a worldwide cause célèbre.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2014/08/remembering-sacco-and-vanzetti-executed_23.html

 Along with defense work, Flynn labored tirelessly on the Passaic strike of 16,000 woollen workers in 1926. The longest textile strike in history, it lasted over a year and was a dismal failure, partly due to sectarian battles between the Communist Party and the union. Flynn’s hectic life, with its constant organizing and traveling, began to take a toll. 

In 1923, Flynn experienced betrayal and emotional devastation when Tresca - always a ladies’ man - had a child with Elizabeth’s younger sister, Bina. In 1926, Flynn finally suffered a physical and mental collapse. Flynn spent most of the next ten years recuperating in Portland, Oregon, at the home of Dr. Marie Equi, an out lesbian who was involved in prison reform. Equi also provided abortions and dispensed birth control, which was then illegal. The hundreds of letters in the collection include one Flynn wrote to her sister Kathie in which she describes this period as one of the most difficult times in her life, but acknowledges that it gave her a chance to reflect, rest, and plan for the future

Prompted by the suicide of her brother, Tom, and a need to be with her son and her mother, who were both ill, Flynn returned east in 1937.  Shortly after her return to New York, Flynn became a member and a paid officer in the Communist Party of the United States. During the New Deal, the Communist Party was the nation’s largest, most important left-wing organization. Having doubled its membership between 1936 and 1938 to just over 80,000, the Party was the largest it had been in its American history. Party leaders had long wooed Flynn because she had a devoted following. She saw joining the Party as a way to continue her IWW commitment to labor organizing and defense work.

Yhe transition was not entirely smooth, however. Having come from a flexible anarchist movement, Flynn was unaccustomed to and uncomfortable with the discipline and doctrinal shifts often directed from Moscow. She preferred militant direct organizing to bureaucratic reform work, radio talks, and internal party politics. Her constituency remained the immigrant workers, and in the late 1950s and 1960s, the militant civil rights workers and students. Having come into the Party at the top, she never developed her own base, although she was one of its most popular speakers and columnists. Nonetheless, Flynn adjusted; she generally remained silent when she disapproved, carrying out back-and-forth Party policy in speeches and writings. However, in her personal writings, she jotted down her disagreements.  Flynn assumed the position of chair of the Women’s Commission, a largely honorific, powerless post, and in 1938, was elected to the Communist National Committee, but she was more of a figurehead than a powerbroker.

 In 1942, Flynn ran unsuccessfully for a Congressional seat in New York, receiving 50,000 votes. Flynn was also a regular and popular teacher at the Party’s Jefferson School and its national training school.  Flynn had barely settled into life with the Communist Party when she was ousted from the American Civil Liberties Union. She had helped found the ACLU and was on its National Board of Directors. In l940, the ACLU demanded that Communists resign from its official posts. Flynn alone refused and defended her position. Denied a hearing, she was expelled. Flynn’s expulsion for guilt by association haunted the ACLU; in l976, the organization repudiated the ouster on the grounds that it was inconsistent with its basic principles. 

During the 1940s, Flynn traveled to Paris where she attended the International Women’s conference, meeting with many other female activists who played significant roles in resistance movements of Nazi-occupied countries. In 1946, CPUSA started their Party Building Campaign, with the goal to recruit at least 20,000 new members to the party. The same year, they published Flynn’s propaganda pamphlet, Meet the Communists, which emphasized the party’s role in combating fascism and capitalism. Though membership was not exactly exclusive, the pamphlet specifically targeted veterans,  Black-Americans, women, workers, and youth. Flynn described the CPUSA as “a vanguard political party of the working class, to bring together those who are ready not only to fight for day by day immediate gains, both economic and political, but who are also ready to curb and control by nationalization, and eventual to abolish through Socialism, the octopus of monopoly capitalism.”

Long before most Americans understood the danger posed by Mussolini, she recognized his fascist regime as a threat to democracy around the world and spoke against it. She also opposed the Ku Klux Klan, which she saw as a uniquely American fascist organization.  Flynn’s commitment to the struggle for Black liberation was unsurpassed among white activists of her era. She campaigned alongside Black comrades against lynching, suppression of voting rights, housing discrimination, job discrimination, education discrimination, and police brutality. In the final years of her life, when she was appealing the denial of her passport under Section 6 of the McCarran Act, she wrote numerous articles in which she argued that freedom of movement was necessary for the exercise of one’s First Amendment rights. All Americans should be this un-American.

The Cold War period (from 1945 to 1955) was a difficult one, especially for Communist Party members and other leftists. During the New Deal and World War II, the Communist Party was tolerated because the Democratic Party needed its members to push liberal legislation and help organize the Congress of Industrial Organizations. As well, the Soviet Union was an American ally. 

After the war, the Soviet Union became the number one enemy, thus Communists in the United States were considered to be the enemies within. Communist Party members and sympathizers, suspected of being anti-American, were often shunned and even lost their jobs. Party membership declined almost fifty percent due to the repression and fear.

In 1948, several members of the Communist Party, along with other radical aliens, were arrested and held for eventual deportation. Later that year, twelve top Party leaders--the entire National Board, with the exception of Flynn--were arrested for having violated the Smith Act by conspiring to teach, advocate, and overthrow the American government by force and violence.

With her expertise in defense organization, Flynn became the chair of the Smith Act Defense Committee. She toured the country, raising money for publicity, legal fees, and support for families of the accused, and alerting Americans to the threat to their basic freedoms - the right of assembly and the right to free speech. Anti-Communist hysteria mounted with the Korean War and the Rosenberg trial. Loyalty oaths were enforced and books were burned. The McCarran Act was passed, mandating government registration of Communists and members of Communist front organizations. The FBI sent agents to disrupt the support committee meetings and sympathizers were considered guilty by association. States passed anti-subversion laws, and Communists were denied the right to unemployment and social security benefits and were evicted from their homes.

 In June 1951, a second group of Smith Act victims, referred to as “second-string CP leadership,” were arrested and prosecuted. The New York Times described Flynn as the most notorious and important of the accused. Flynn acted as her own counsel, bearing the brunt of the courtroom offensive for ten months. She was eloquent, courageous, and witty, calling up her long career and her personal reasons for joining and advancing the Party. Judge Dimock was so impressed with Flynn’s intelligence and her belief in the Bill of Rights that he offered her the option of spending the rest of her life in Russia as a substitute for prison. Flynn’s reply to this unprecedented offer was unequivocal: “I am an American; I want to live and work in the United States of America. I am not interested in going any place else and would reject any such proposition.” 

On 20 January 1953, all the defendants were found guilty.  From 1953 to 1955, Flynn waited while the case went through the appeals process; during this time, she wrote her autobiography, I Speak My Own Piece. First published in 1955 and republished in 1973 under the title Rebel Girl, it covered Flynn’s life up to the period before she joined the Communist Party. The autobiography, which is political rather than personal, minimizes her leading role in the IWW, probably in order to emphasize her Communist Party years; nevertheless, it is powerful, informative, and often exciting.

On 11 January 1955, Flynn went to Alderson Federal Reformatory for Women in West Virginia to serve her twenty-eight-month sentence.  Flynn tells the story of her incarceration in The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner, which she wrote after her release and published in 1963. Flynn was assigned to a maximum-security residence, although at the age of sixty-four, arthritic, overweight, and suffering from high blood pressure, she was clearly no threat. Flynn was much older than most of the prisoners and had a hard time with the noise and loud music, as well as the adolescent personalities of the other inmates. She used the time to read over two hundred books: poetry, plays, classics, philosophy, and psychology. She had intended to write the second half of her autobiography, but prison officials censored her writing and she even had difficulty obtaining paper.

In The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner, she detailed not only the physical brutalities of incarceration but also its psychological toll: “The heavy shadow of prison fell upon us in those three days — the locked door and the night patrol. The turning of a key on the outside of the door is a weird sensation to which one never became accustomed. One felt like a trapped animal in a cage.”  She also took the opportunity to expose the classist and racist nature of the US prison-industrial complex.  “No rich women were to be found in Alderson,” she wrote, highlighting how the prison system mostly consumed poor and working-class women, the majority black and Spanish-speaking with past lives defined often by abuse, mental illness or drug addiction. 

 Following her release from the penitentiary, Flynn didn’t hesitate to jump right back into leftist political work and communist activism. She also ran for office again, putting her name forward for New York City Council in 1957.  In 1961, her long years of work were recognised by comrades, who elected her to become chairperson of the Communist Party, the first woman to ever hold the position.  After winning back her passport from the government, Flynn traveled to the Soviet Union in 1964 to spend time working on her next book. While there, however, she became ill and passed away at the age of 74.  on 5 September 1964, of stomach and intestinal inflammation aggravated by a blood clot to her lungs. Flynn was given a full-scale state funeral in Red Square, attended by over twenty-five thousand people. In accordance with her wishes, her body was returned to the United States to be buried in Chicago’s Waldheim Cemetery close to the Haymarket martyrs. and other labour heroes.  The New York Times gave her a substantial front-page obituary.  . 

 Flynn described herself as a “professional revolutionary, an agitator” against the injustices of capitalism, racism, and misogyny. As Prof Mary Anne Trasciatti wrote: “It is no exaggeration to claim that Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was involved in almost every major campaign of the US left in the first two-thirds of the 20th century.”   

 During her illustrious and stormy life, she was best known as a fiery orator, an adept organizer, and a remarkable publicist. As an indigenous Marxist of the heart, nurtured by class struggle and her parents’ working-class socialism, her strength was her ability to communicate with working people.

Her autobiographical writings, speeches, and articles,call attention to the crucial issues of the twentieth century--war, poverty, sexism, and civil liberties--and are written in a clear, simple style that generally avoids party rhetoric and political cliché.  

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn   inspired trade union troubadour Joe Hill https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2018/11/joe-hill-7191879-191115-last-will.html to write a song about her, The Rebel Girl  and first appeared in the Little Red Songbook — a collection of sheet music published by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1915.: 

"Yes, her hands may be hardened from labor, And her dress may not be very fine; But a heart in her bosom is beating That is true to her class and her kind. And the grafters in terror are trembling When her spite and defiance she'll hurl; For the only and thoroughbred lady Is the Rebel Girl.“

Hill was in frequent correspondence with Flynn in the months before his execution. They only met in person once, but became close through their letters, and Flynn launched a fierce campaign to save Hill. She even wrangled a meeting with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to plead for Hill’s pardon. President Wilson lobbied Utah governor William Spry to postpone Hill’s sentence, but Spry bristled at the suggestion that Utah’s courts would ever execute someone without a proper trial. Hill died by firing squad on November 19, 1915.

Hazel Dickens - The Rebel Girl

Although she’s been dead for almost six decades, it looks like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is still getting under the skin of right-wingers. Just two weeks after it was installed, a historical marker commemorating her birth in Concord, N.H., has been demolished on the order of Republican state officials.  The green and white cast iron plaque—the kind you see on the side of highways or in public places noting where significant events occurred or famous persons once lived—was erected on May Day in downtown Concord, where Flynn was born in 1890.

The sign was barely bolted into place before conservatives demanded its removal, embarrassed apparently that the state might recognize someone who devoted her life to fighting for workers’ rights, women’s right to vote, birth control, civil liberties, and economic equality. But it was Flynn’s leadership in the Communist Party USA that really boiled their blood.  

“This is a devout communist,” complained Joseph Kenney, a Republican member of the Executive Council, the five-person body that approves state contracts, judicial nominees, and other positions. “How can we possibly promote her propaganda, which still exists now through this sign in downtown Concord?”  

But in a state with the motto “Live Free or Die,” is there really any better figure to represent that rebellious spirit than “The Rebel Girl” herself.

 The removal of the recently installed memorial in Concord, N.H., commemorating the life and work of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is outrageous .Throughout her activist career, the Rebel Girl struggled against repressive laws at the local, state, and federal levels and tried to forge a movement of workers that cut across ethnic, racial, and gender barriers. Her efforts, while not always successful, are a wellspring of inspiration for socialists looking to build a movement for genuine social change 

The indomitable Flynn was/is a heroine of the labor movement and suffrage and  jer name and legacy deserve to be remembered and respected.  Overreacting to her Communist Party membership is pure Joseph McCarthy.We must ensure that “rebel girls” and “inconvenient people” remain in our memory as we build on the legacies they have so graciously bestowed.

The Life and Legacy of Lenny Bruce

 

Controversial  comedy legend social critic, satirist, and screenwriter, renowned for his open, freestyle form of comedy which integrated satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. Lenny Bruce tragically died on this day 1966. 

Born Leonard Alfred Schneider, on Oct. 13, 1925, in Mineola, N.Y.  As a child during the Great Depression,Lenny had a difficult childhood. His parents divorced when he was 5, and he spent his growing up years moving among his various relatives/ in a singularly Jewish environment. 

Bruce grew up neurotic, hungry for affection, bewildered by the rules and regulations of the adult world and the confusion of two separate worlds—his father’s and his mother’s. He leaned toward his mother’s world. She was Sally Marr, a sometime stand-up comic and entertainer/ 

He saw his father infrequency, and life with Bruce's mother, was erratic at best. Bruce attended six elementary schools, sold pop bottles for spending cash, and stole lunches from other students. 

Bruce's mother was completely uninhibited and supported herself in unconventional ways. For a time she operated a dance studio and furnished adult escorts. As Bruce grew to adulthood, his mother developed her own comedy act and performed in nightclubs. From his mother, Lenny learned to laugh at life's irregularities. 

Bruce left home at the age of 16 and went to live with a couple named Dengler on their Long Island farm. He stayed on the farm until shortly after the beginning of World War II. He joined the Navy at the age of 16 in 1942, and saw active duty during World War II. He fought in North Africa and Italy, and was discharged in 1945 after displeasing his commanding officer by performing a drag act,. He settled in New York City, hoping to establish himself as a comedian.

He met Joe Ancis,who had a profound influence on his approach to comedy. According to Bruce’s biographer, Albert Goldman, Ancis’ humor involved stream-of-consciousness sexual fantasies, references to jazz, and stories of Jewish domesticity.attending Mepham High School.

In 1947, he adopted the stage name of Lenny Bruce, and  began to pursue stand-up, a medium that he would revolutionize in a few years. Before coming to national attention, he performed at clubs and burlesque shows along the East Coast, opening for strippers and intoxicated crowds. It was during these years that he began to experiment with lewd language and controversial topics. 

He first achieved notoriety after winning Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, which was a popular television show at the time. As his career began to take off, he entered the 1950s with an act that helped fuel the social revolutions that were taking place. With the Beat Generation at its prime, Bruce offered a sobering voice to country on the verge of great change. By the mid-50s, he was performing a brand of comedy that assaulted the conventions of the medium. He sparked anger in religious groups and began to catch the eye of law enforcement. 

He managed  to release four albums of original material on Berkeley-based Fantasy Records, with rants, comic routines, and satirical interviews on the themes that made him famous: jazz, moral philosophy, politics, patriotism, religion, law, race, abortion, drugs, the Ku Klux Klan, and Jewishness. 

Branded a “sick comic” – though it was the sickness of modern society that he was railing about .The comedian toured the world and commented on everything from religion to racial epithets, with the intent of calling out hypocrisy.

Through the decade he gathered a following. In 1959, he made it on to Steve Allen's networked chat show.Allen introduced Bruce as "the most shocking comedian of our time, a young man who is skyrocketing to fame--Lenny Bruce!" He had a big following by then but Allen's support was enormously valuable, a great step up from the clubs he had been working.

As his fame grew, so did his detractors. Some people thought his social commentary was "a fad" while others wondered if he was a harbinger of new thought in the American people. His comedy frequently included "four-letter words". 

The more critics objected, the wilder Lenny got. Audiences encouraged Lenny toward more “free-form” comedy.form” comedy. He wanted to do less set “bits” and one-liners and more observational material drawn, like a jazz musician, from his feelings and emotions of the moment. When some of his sexual or religious material received negative criticism, it only goaded him into more furious assaults. He took on any topic that he felt discomfort in talking about, whether it was how to remove snot from suede or whether Jacqueline Kennedy was “going for help” or running for cover when the shots were fired in Dallas, a difference between supposed heroism and forgivable human nature. 

He was a comedian who talked about sex in a way nobody on a public stage had done before. No euphemism or innuendo - lots of four-letter and 12-letter words. He attacked injustice and hypocrisy full blast and lacerated the Catholic church: "Why are there Puerto Ricans starving in New York while Cardinal Spellman was wandering round wearing a $8000 ring?"   You didn't ask questions like that, certainly not on stage. 

Branded a “sick comic” – though it was the sickness of modern society that he was railing about – Lenny was essentially blacklisted from television, but he got booked at ever more prestigious venues.

On February 3, 1961, in the midst of a severe blizzard, he gave a transcendent performance at Carnegie Hall, recorded and later released as a three-disc set, “The Carnegie Hall Concert.“ 

In the words of his biographer Albert Goldman: "he finally reached a point of clairvoyance where he was no longer a performer but rather a medium transmitting messages that came from him from out there - from recall, fantasy, prophecy. His tongue would outrun his mind and he would be saying things that surprised, delighted him, cracked him up."

It was staggering and it had tremendous impact on later comedians, most notably Robin Williams. The whole modern idiom known as stand-up proceeds down a path opened by Bruce.

 In the fall of 1961, however, Bruce's career would begin its downward spiral. Just a week after being arrested in Philadelphia on a narcotics charge, On October 4, 1961, Bruce was arrested for obscenity at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. Although the jury acquitted him, other law enforcement agencies began monitoring his appearances, resulting in frequent arrests under charges of obscenity, and also for drug possession.  

Bruce became a target for Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan, a staunch Roman Catholic close to the Archbishop of New York, Francis Cardinal Spellman. After being arrested in Philadelphia for drug possession and in Los Angeles for obscenity, he was arrested twice in New York's Greenwich Village.

At the time, Greenwich Village was a well-known location for artists and free thinkers to gather. During his six-month trial in 1964,Bruce received positive testimony and petitions of support from – among other artists, writers and educators – Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron, James Baldwin, Dorothy Kilgallen and Herbert Gans. Club owners and presenters were often charged as well, for sponsoring “obscene” performances, and gigs started drying up. 

Bruce was found guilty, and sentenced to four months in a workhouse, and he was released on bail during his appeal process (the conviction would be overturned in 1970).

In his television appearances he would include details of his encounters with the police, making them objects of ridicule, ranting against fascism and lack of freedom of speech; this would increase police pressure against him. Bruce was also banned from publicly performing in a number of cities, and due in part to his drug use, was banned from many nightclubs. All  his struggles wore hum down.

He became increasingly agitated and unbalanced. In August 1966 he made his final recording, which began as a microphone test and descended into mad gibberish punctuated by vulgarities. His last performance took place on June 25, 1966, at The Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, on a bill with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.

On August 3, 1966, Bruce was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home at 8825 W. Hollywood Blvd. He died of an acute overdose of morphine.In his last days he had experimented with LSD taken sleeping pills, and worried his friends with his heroin abuse. Nobody was in the house when Lenny died. He had been typing—the electric typewriter was on, and he had been in mid-sentence: “Conspiracy to interfere with the fourth amendment const.” 

He was found by his friends, in the bathroom, a needle in his arm. It seemed strange. Lenny would not have simply thrown a sash around his arm and jabbed the needle in. None of the paraphernalia he used to shoot up, including a spoon and matches, were around. When the police arrived, they arranged the body for some photographs and added a few touches—like a box of syringes found under the sink. There remain conflicts between the police reports and eyewitness testimony. Confusion over such basic facts as whether the drug was morphine or heroin, and whether the injection was administered by Lenny (accidentally or as a suicide attempt) or by someone else, have left the death of Lenny Bruce as controversial as his life. 

 His remains were interred in Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, Calif. Dick Schaap eulogized Bruce in Playboy with the memorable line: “One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That’s obscene.”

In a short time after Bruce’s death, he became a folk hero for free speech. Numerous books, articles, films and stage productions have focused on his short but eventful life. He is recognized as a prophetic truth-teller for what he revealed about the contradictions and hypocrisies in American society. 

Since his death, Bruce has been considered an icon of comic social commentary, and an inspiration to many other social commentators.Recognized for his impact on comedy, as well as on censorship and the contours of satire, Bruce was persecuted and prosecuted as he pushed against the limits of free speech and acceptability. Lenny Bruce remains an enigma, a complex character whose place in entertainment and First Amendment history is neither fully understood nor appreciated.

What makes Lenny Bruce’s legacy so unique is that he not only had a deep effect on stand-up, but also the first amendment. He made America re-evaluate what it means to be a truly free nation. For stand-up comedy, he was the first comedian to talk about the harsh realities of life in an open and free manner. This alone paved the way for modern stand-up, where so many comics talk about how they digest the world.

 After his death, he inspired songs by Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, and Simon and Garfunkel. He is also immortalized on the cover of The Beatles iconic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, joining the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein, and Oscar Wilde. Following pressures from fellow comedians, 

In 1971 the Broadway show “Lenny” sparked a Lenny Bruce revival, and in this radical half of the decade, students clamored for the re-issue of his albums, and previously unavailable works. Lenny was nominated for more Grammy awards posthumously than during his lifetime. The 1974 film version of “Lenny” starring Dustin Hoffman brought even more attention to Bruce, along with Albert Goldman’s biography.

The documentary film Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth (1998), directed by Robert B. Weide and narrated by Robert De Niro, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Lenny Bruce paved the way for future outspoken counterculture-era comedians, and his trial is seen as a landmark for freedom of speech in the United States. Obscenity laws loosened in the decades following Lenny’s death. While this wasn’t a direct result of his stage presence, increased discussion surrounding First Amendment rights were certainly triggered by people like Lenny. 

These free speech protections are important because they provide a necessary check against tyrannical state power. Lenny Bruce was a remarkable man who was not afraid  to speak  his mind.At a time when the powers that sought to limit the scope of acceptable discourse. Lenny fought until his last breath for the right to challenge orthodoxy. and the freedom to offend  and help shape and make comedy what it is today: An art form that prides itself on encouraging anyone to say anything. Without him, there would be no Richard Pryors or George Carlins, as the price to be funny would still be insuperably high.

 Unfortunately, Bruce had to pay the highest price for his comedic successors to enjoy the privilege of freely performing. This price, however, was not paid in vain. We now live in a world where the state (at least, in the United States) has no authority to put people in cages for telling jokes,

Lenny Bruce was a man of words. He tested the limits of free speech through his comedy, went to prison and finally died fighting for the freedom of speech that many are still struggling with today. He was a Martyr. His act was declared obscene and he was relentlessly pursued by authorities who sought to stop him. 

 He believed that people give words power and that the words themselves are meaningless. He wanted us to understand that it’s the intention that counts. He challenged us to think more deeply and more honestly. He wanted people to be shocked by corruption, repression, hypocrisy, racism and greed, not by four letter words, labels and sexual references.  In one set he used the N word along with other racist labels, saying the words over and over again to make the point that the words are meaningless unless you give them power. He said that the word that really offended him was ‘segregation’.

Comedians as well as making us laugh serve as  objective, independent, and uncensored reflectors  of society. Because comedians nowadays are willing to express bold opinions about important topics, they introduce us to new ideas and encourage discourse. That wasn’t always the case, If you’re a fan of stand-up comedy, you owe more than you think to Lenny Bruce, If he were around today, no doubt he'd still be telling his offensive, obscene, profanity-peppered truth.

In December 2003, New York Governor George Pataki granted Bruce a posthumous pardon for his obscenity conviction, the first such posthumous pardon in New York history. In granting Bruce the unprecedented pardon, Mr Pataki seemed to be in agreement with folk singer Bob Dylan, who wrote, "Lenny Bruce is dead but he didn't commit any crime; he just had the insight to rip off the lid before its time."

Lenny Bruce on the Steve Allen show  April 5 1959

Lenny Bruce - The Truth." 

Lenny Bruce, as shown in the documentary "Swear to Tell the Truth." 

The truth is, what is.  And what should be is a fantasy.  A terrible, terrible lie.  That someone gave the people long ago."  Lenny Bruce