[Peace-discuss] [OccupyCU] [sftalk] Re: Fwd: Democracy Now!'s Tribute to Bayard Rustin

Tue Aug 13 22:44:19 UTC 2013

Thank you, Mr. Brussel.
In a couple of days I'll be sending out an email to all about an small event I've been working on for over a year that has to do with 9/11 Truth, being close to that time of year again.
Close to 200,000 people around the world have been on the pages that includes the advertising for the event, whatever that is worth.
That's not that impressive in terms of internet statistics, but its more than 150.
I hope it gets a bit of participation.
Thanks

________________________________
 From: "Brussel, Morton K" <brussel at illinois.edu>
To: Stephen Francis <stephenf1113 at yahoo.com> 
Cc: "sftalk at yahoogroups.com" <sftalk at yahoogroups.com>; "Roediger, David R" <droedige at illinois.edu>; "<peace-discuss at anti-war.net>" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>; ocCUpy <occupyCU at lists.chambana.net> 
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 2:25 PM
Subject: Re: [OccupyCU] [sftalk] Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Democracy Now!'s Tribute to Bayard Rustin

Relative to academic talk, its prolix prose, its futility or its silence on crucial global and national issues, I most heartily recommend the small recent book by Robert Jensen, We Are All Apocalyptic Now. 
Jensen is a journalism professor at U. Texas, Austin. He speaks and writes clearly about the most important issues of the day. 

--mkb

On Aug 13, 2013, at 2:15 PM, Stephen Francis wrote:

Carl,
>You focused on the flippant portion of my response...and not the real meat of Mr. Roedinger's remarks.  Unfortunately. 
>What I'm saying is that the insanely complex sentence structure makes the content unintelligible and makes me want to believe professors are just massaging each other's egos in the papers they produce (sorry, too harsh), maybe because they are just expected to be unintelligible in the complex world of academia. What a waste of talent if nobody (well, not everybody) can understand what you're saying.  It was such an incredibly difficult process to get to your standing in the community.
>And there is also what I believe some sort of constraint to stay away from anything that smells of 'conspiracy' theories...again from peer or some other form of pressure?
>There is a coherent connection and procession of events starting in the early 1990's to the present of a sweeping change from the 'Cold War' to the Islamophobic centered war mentality that has led to 9/11, the Patriot Act, NSA, TSA, NDAA.  This to me is ground level stuff.  Academic people just don't want to go there for some reason or just want to dance around the edges in very eloquent ways?  Sure...you're all for "Jobs not War" "Free Bradley Manning"....etc...but why? What is your assessment of the reasons for these beliefs?  Racism is incredibly important, but to me it is just a symptom of an underlying disease.  Who, Why and How did the conversation over the last 25 years change from the Cold War to Islamophobia? This is the real 'conspiracy'.  Is there a 800 lb gorilla in the office of every professor constraining the mention of this?
>
>
>..... and below is a link to a related issue that I have absolutely no expertise in but think that it applies to the context of this email. 
>
>ERIC Medical Professors See Threat in Corporate Influence on Research.
>AAUP  When Billionaires Become Educational Experts
>That's all.
>
>Steve Francis
>NFU.
>
>
>
>________________________________
> From: C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
>To: sftalk at yahoogroups.com 
>Cc: "Roediger, David R" <droedige at illinois.edu>; "Brussel, Morton K" <brussel at illinois.edu>; "<peace-discuss at anti-war.net>" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>; ocCUpy <occupyCU at lists.chambana.net> 
>Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 11:00 AM
>Subject: Re: [OccupyCU] [sftalk] Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Democracy Now!'s Tribute to Bayard Rustin
>
>
>The signs that AWARE displays on street corners (monthly, for more than a decade) say things like
>
>"Free Bradley Manning"
>
>"Jobs, not War"
>
>"US out of the Mideast"
>
>"Obama: Stop Killing Kids"
>
>"Manning, Assange, Snowden are Heroes; Obama, Clinton, Holder are Criminals,"
>
>etc.
>
>They probably can be understood on a first reading.
>
>
>On Aug 13, 2013, at 12:04 PM, Stephen Francis <stephenf1113 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> 
>> CORRECTION
>> After re-reading my response to Mr. Roediger's comments, I discovered some typo errors of mine that I thought I would correct, especially after reading Mr. Roediger's entry in Wikipedia.  I need some grammar lessons.  Here's the correction:
>> 
>> "I had to read Mr. Roediger's response about six times to figure out what he was saying before I picked out a couple of clues the third time through that led me to believe that I think I agree with his premise. I may be just reading into it what I want it
 to say.  There're two things I came away with in his response: (1) If you divide the world up between the 1% and the 99%, you'll find that the 1% is capable of, willing to and continually engaged in influencing the message of those opposed to them.  Obama's
 election is the prime example of their craft and the best example of how good they are at deceiving people. I believe he is a creation of the 1%.  (2) There may be an identity class all by itself of highly intelligent academic people who are so unintelligible
 that they are completely ignored and rejected no matter how 'right' (whatever that means) they are. They should be on the street corners with protest signs that say: 'If you read this sign six times you'll understand it.'  As the cars go by they are grumbling
 under their beards that nobody cares about them....(no matter how 'right' they may be)."  I wish that I didn't have to work so hard to understand them, because they seem so intelligent.
>> 
>> Steve Francis, NFU
>> 
>> From: "Roediger, David R" <droedige at illinois.edu>
>> To: "sftalk at yahoogroups.com" <sftalk at yahoogroups.com>; "Brussel, Morton K" <brussel at illinois.edu> 
>> Cc: "<peace-discuss at anti-war.net>" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>; ocCUpy <occupyCU at lists.chambana.net> 
>> Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 11:38 PM
>> Subject: Re: [OccupyCU] [sftalk] Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Democracy Now!'s Tribute to Bayard Rustin
>> 
>> 40 years ago? So it was then the period right before 1973 that liberals gloriously supported class struggles? And then somebody (Who was that in this fantasy? Got to think in terms of timing that George McGovern looks to be a likely culprit) tricked them
 into instead pursuing the supposedly completely different, indeed opposing, ideas of being against white supremacy, male supremacy, and homophobia.
>> 
>> I'm old but I can't remember that inspiring stretch of pure-and-simple class agitation by liberals. What would be some of the most outstanding examples from those years, say from 1963-73? I keep coming up with struggles for jobs and freedom now, with the
 uncompromising stance taken by working-class queers at Stonewall, and with important opposition to a racist and imperialist war. But surely these were on your view just the thin, plotting  edge of the nefarious identity politics wedge, diverting us from real
 deal.
>> 
>> I'm also blanking on the important liberal working class leaders who were then resisting taking the identity politics bait and laying down a class line uninfected by "identity politics"--one that could have won against neoliberalism. Was that what Walter
 Reuther was doing in keeping the skilled trades in auto overwhelmingly white? Or maybe, as the increasingly misguided late-career Bayard Rustin whom you rightly join in denouncing had it, the class warriors were George Meany and Albert Shanker (those great
 practitioners of white identity politics), united in their opposition to considering race whether the issue was integrating the building trades, keeping Vietnam from being incinerated, or engaging other than hysterically with community control of schools in
 minority neighborhoods. 
>> Please fill in some details.
>> 
>> In championing Walter Benn Michaels' socialism of fools--the view that a narrow class politics can by itself transform a social order predicated on multiple intersecting axes of oppression and that hidden plotters keep that from happening--you are advocating
 not just a poorly defended position but one that operates increasingly as a soundbite article of faith not really subject to evidence. Or in the conspiratorially inclined rhetoric Benn Michaels favors, maybe the neoliberals invented Benn Michaels and Estabrook.
 They certainly did fund and forward the similar, and hegemonic, Clinton, Obama, and Democratic Leadership Council arguments along the same lines, holding that it is only permissible for "progressives" to talk about allegedly unifying and hopelessly tepid economic
 issues, and not about justice.
>> freedom now, dave roediger
>> ________________________________________
>> 
>> ________________________________________
>> From: sftalk at yahoogroups.com [sftalk at yahoogroups.com] on behalf of C. G. Estabrook [carl at newsfromneptune.com]
>> Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 9:09 PM
>> To: Brussel, Morton K
>> Cc: <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>; sftalk at yahoogroups.com; ocCUpy
>> Subject: [sftalk] Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Democracy Now!'s Tribute to Bayard Rustin
>> 
>> It's the bane of identity politics, which American liberalism substituted for class politics 40 years ago, in its timorous response to the assault of neoliberalism. ("OK, if we can't have socialism, and we have to have imperialism, let's just see what color
 the rich kids are...!")
>> 
>> --CGE
>> 
>> On Aug 12, 2013, at 8:52 PM, "Brussel, Morton K" <brussel at illinois.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> > Not infrequently Democracy Now! runs off the rails. I can remember well how disgusted I was with Bayard Rustin and his support of the Vietnam war by the U.S. .
>> > It is a disgrace that those actions of his are unmentioned in the Democracy Now! piece.
>> >
>> > --mkb
>> >
>> > On Aug 12, 2013, at 10:32 AM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:
>> >
>> >> Begin forwarded message:
>> >>
>> >>> From: <turbulo at aol.com>
>> >>> Subject: Democracy Now!'s Tribute to Bayard Rustin
>> >>> Date: August 12, 2013
>> >>>
>> >>> I sent the following e-mail to Democracy Now! in response to a tribute to Bayard Rustin they did this morning. The occasion was a posthumous award
>> >>> Rustin is about to receive at the White House.
>> >>>
>> >>>> While rightly lauding the courage and commitment of Bayard Rustin as a founder and organizer of the civil rights movement, this morning’s tribute left out a less stellar side of his political career. By the mid 1960s,Rustin had sold his soul to Lyndon
 Johnson and the Democratic Party, acting to keep the civil rights and anti-war movements within the political bounds prescribed by the administration, and to red bait and exclude all elements deemed too radical by the cold warriors. He used his considerable
 influence to undermine the first big march against the Vietnam War in 1965 because its organizers refused to bar the participation of communists and other left-wing radicals. He opposed MLK’s 1967 Riverside Church address condemning the war. In his view, silence
 in the face of the wholesale slaughter of a people fighting for its independence was not too high a price to pay for remaining within the good graces of the slaughter’s chief perpetrator, in hopes that Johnson might do more for civil rights. It was Rustin’s
 role as a policeman for the White House that sullied his name in the eyes of the radical activists of that era, of which I was one. His posthumous accolade from Barack Obama comes as no surprise. In his older years he was a shining example the kind of housebroken
 “radical”that the president would no doubt like to see followed today. Rustin’s early role as a fighter deserves to be remembered. So do his later accommodations to power.  --Jim Creegan
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Peace-discuss mailing list
>> >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>> >
>> 
>> 
>> 
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