On Bradley Manning's 24th Birthday

On 17 December 2011, Bradley Manning's 24th birthday, we marched and rallied for Bradley.  Where we paused for speeches, Scott Olson was recovered enough to be able to speak a few words, and I show two photos of him here.  Although I feel I am being intrusive, it seems I should share his look -- worn but surviving -- with the many people who feel concern for him...and for Bradley Manning, the first day of the military's hearings having been the day before, Friday, 16 December 2011.

Peter Martyniak passed along the news that the Welsh are presenting a play about Bradley Manning's years in Wales:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/bradley-manning-play-wales-wikileaks

I am sure I should not be surprised that there are still some people who don't know who Bradley Manning is, or that there are gay men who did not know he was gay until they read it on the placard I carried on my back:

Part TWO of MAKE DRAG NOT WAR

CLICK ON THE TITLE ABOVE for a continuation of photos of this great show -- as described in "Part ONE of MAKE DRAG NOT WAR" -- sponsored by Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War, and directed by Stephen Funk, the first man to refuse to serve in the U.S. Occupation of Iraq.   More of the program will appear later.  Also, after viewing the slide show, check out their website:  http://veteranartists.org/

Part THREE of MAKE DRAG, NOT WAR

Click on title above for slide show.

Part FOUR of MAKE DRAG, NOT WAR

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Outside "Make Drag, Not War"

Click on title above for photos of some friends outside the production of "Make Drag, Not Love"

Occupy Tree, Occupy Raft

Click on title above to see a slide show about:
The man who has constructed a tree house as part of Occupy Oakland has had his tree house pulled down a second time.  But, in the meantime, there is an Occupy Raft now in Lake Merritt!  Will they sink it?

Part One of MAKE DRAG, NOT WAR

CLICK ON THE TITLE ABOVE so that you won't miss the first part of this great show, sponsored by Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War, and directed by Stephen Funk, the first man to refuse to serve in the U.S. Occupation of Iraq.   More of the program will appear later.  Also, after viewing the slide show, check out their website:  http://veteranartists.org/

Stacking Rocks

For a slide show, hit the title, "Stacking Rocks," above.  But here are seven of the photos (with black and white versions of two of them) of what an Oakland poet is creating in his yard.

The New Doxology

Did you belong to a church where they sang the Common Doxology?  For Catholics, it always came at the end, a good-bye song after the Mass -- a tune that, to my ear, sounds like the turning of a key in a lock, a ritual tune for passing from "sacred space" into everyday life.  Do you remember the brief tune to the traditional words?  "Praise God from whom all blessings flow;/Praise God, all creatures here below;/Praise God for all that love has done;/Creator, Christ, and Spirit, One."  [In the Catholic church, the last line was "Father and Son and Holy Ghost."]  A final "Amen" won't hurt.  You might try singing the following words to that old tune (rewritten because I dream of the age when all churches or temples are temples to humanism and the health of the earth).  

As I wandered on warm summer nights in my old Indiana small town, I would hear, from its many, plain Christian churches, the old church tunes.  Singing them, with the rhythm of a lullaby, or hammock slowly rocking, surely must have brought a peaceful mood to their congregations. Some may want to rewrite the words of their favorite hymns.  Others have written variants of the traditional wording for the Doxology tune.  Curtis W. Reese’s version also avoids Deism, using an 18^th century paraphrase by Isaac Watts of Psalm 117:

                  From all that dwell below the skies

                  Let songs of hope and faith arise;

                  Let peace, goodwill on earth be sung

                  Through every land, by every tongue.

 

Latest Marquee, Oakland's Grand Lake Theatre

The Phantom Knitters

Around Oakland Museum, and showing up at various other spots in Oakland and San Francisco, someone is knitting sleeves over pipes:

Welcome to My Place

High School Students Protest Education Cuts

Click on the title above to see slide show.

I came upon this demonstration after it had been in progress for a while.  It was in front of the State of California building that it is across from the old Federal Building.  (After so many demonstrations during the 1960s on the wide flat space in front of the building, they turned the area into dunes of cement as if they were expect attacks by tanks:  Government is paranoid, and their police only follow orders -- the orders of paranoids.)
Perhaps teachers had spoken earlier in this demonstration objecting to cuts in education, etc., but at this point it was only high school students or beginning college students who spoke.

FACES: After latest Expulsion of Occupy Oakland, 14 November 2011

(Click on the title above to see other participants, besides the little boy to the right, in a slide show concentrating on FACES.)


As with the previous and very bloody expulsion of Occupy Oakland, those Occupiers who were not in jail, and their supporters, met outside the Oakland Main Library, and after a few speeches, all marched down 14th Street and back to Oscar Grant Plaza by City Hall.
In the stone amphitheater, they held that day's General Assembly as the helicoptors overhead sometimes swept a floodlight over the crowd.
Take a photo of the woman below, I could keep from blurting out, "You're gorgeous!"

At the Beginning of the Day of the Oakland General Strike, 11 November 2011

Click on title above if you want to see a slide show.

Angela Davis at Oakland General Strike, 11 November 2011

Click on the title above if you want to see a slide show of other photos of Angela Davis.  The last time I saw Angela Davis was when we picketed outside Fort Ord against the American War in Vietnam, me looking in at the soldiers looking out, where I had once been a soldier myself.  Then we drove into the dunes along the Monterey Bay where Angela gave one of her rousing speeches.  Right wing thugs had driven up in their pickups, but atop all the dunes were men who were guarding Angela.

A holiday card

Too Close to Death

I am not sure I know how I feel yet about ending the day near where someone was being shot.  I wrote this account for the Oakland police, intending to take it over to one of the multitude of policemen who descended on the scene, but my printer doesn’t function just now so I emailed it to a police email address and called and told them there where they could find it.

TO THE POLICE:

10 November 2011

I dropped by Occupy Oakland to see how it was going, but did not get near it.  I noticed the City Hall clock was at 5 o’clock.  I was standing next to the BART elevator entrance where a Asian-American man was standing.  I could see along the line of shops opposite Occupy Oakland in that plaza, and very soon heard what sounded like several firecrackers but I feared they were gunshots.  The Asian-American man felt convinced that they were gunshots, and that was obvious as people were scattered away from a spot about 30 feet from me.  

I did not witness the shooting, but two men rushed right by me, and it seemed obvious that they were running from a crime.  They were African-American, wearing dark clothes, but there is very little light there so I would not be able to identify them, except that I think they were about 5’8” or 5’9”.  One or both of them seemed to shoving something into their pockets as if to conceal them.  The two seemed very pleased with whatever they had done, had an air of triumph.  They ran away from 14^th Street in the direction of 13^th Street, but I lost sight of them immediately with so many people in that intersection.  Soon a man rushed up whom I supposed was a merchant.  (The Asian-American man, for some reason, felt the shooter had something to do with a store along there.)  The merchant was pointing and shouting in the direction the men had run.  The Asian-American shouted that one of the men could be identified by some white garment – I think it was white trousers. 

Many people surrounded the gunshot victim,and it was obvious that he was receiving artifical respiration.   

Meanwhile masses of police cars and emergency vehicles were arriving, sirens blaring.  

The police arrived, and a policeman continued the artificial respiration.  The police asked the people there to disperse so I went home. 

The streets around there were being blocked off by police cars, evidently imagining it was some mass violent incident.

At home I heard on the news that they mentioned just one man, but there was that second man with him as he ran away, perhaps a friend, and both pleased by what they had done.

The shooting clearly had nothing to do with Occupy Oakland, an empty and unoccupied space existed between the shooting incident and Occupy Oakland.  That intersection was rough before Occupy Oakland arrived so that late at night I never get out at the 12^th Street BART station as it often seems that some tough is chasing another tough.  


Later it was revealed on the news that it was a young African-American man who had been killed.  It is sad that I still don't know his name or why he was killed as it seemed, so casually.  Reminds me of yesterday when I was at the V.A. Hospital.  So many veterans have "turned hippy" in their dress, but I sat next to a man thoroughly identified by cap and jacket as a Vietnam War veteran.  I said, "Looks as if Israel and the U.S. are going to start a war with Iran."  He replied, "Might as well."  The casual habit of killing.   

15 October 2011 Rally and March to "Occupy Oakland"

Click on Title line above to watch slide show.

From CHARLIE CHAPLIN MEETS THE WAR IN VIETNAM (November 1970)

XIV:  Coda

Were you damaged in the Fall?

Weren’t we all?  Weren’t we all?

Do I feel as good as new?

Yes, I do.  Yes, I do.

And who would think to look at a violet’s face

that it had seen, some other place, all the bones

of hell.  And what a great change in the leprous

carcass of one man’s dog to come back laughing

and wagging its tail as another man’s cat.

And to pull free of the earth of sorrow, hatred,

and the hungry dead – and, beginning Now,

any you of you and me of me, to pull ourselves

inside out, and then to step out completely

from what has been, and invite everyone you meet

by whatever means they will understand to walk

through the archways of their dear departed selves.

The final conspiracy is Open to All.  That the Way

is straitened and a thousand voices wail along

the Way, unweaving our hearts, we shall endure. 

That a shadow always falls across the Gate

makes the Gate less difficult to find.

And there is only one true lover for the heart –

the mind.  It leads us ever out through hell

to whatever heaven falls like the grace of morning rain

on the blue beaches of the morning mind.

Everybody, come through here!

The Great “Who, me?” carefully trips

on its stumblingblocks and falls, glad to be caught.

And all the Who‑Done‑Its and the Let‑Me‑Be‑Its

are gathered in the tomb where there has been laid

to rest one late God, alias Jaweh, alias Allahu/Allah,

alias Odin, alias The One.  And a great mechanical

gear raises up the stiff old corpse, and it says,

“You are all  my children!

  You are all  my chosen people!”

And then wheels fly, a scaffolding sinks to its knees,

and a whole contraption dances itself to death,

And all the grimey shrouds fall from the crystal clearings

of Byzantium.  The old way excuses itself for the burp

     of its long grey ghost

          drifting now like a scarf

               down the

                    winding stairwell

                         of time.

XV:  Envoi

This coin I have minted here from my dying

is but to buy bread for the living and not

to be swallowed but exchanged in the language

of fingertips and words, art, work, books, tools;

the language of finding still another reason to touch

and be new‑minted from the hand of the Human.


(November 1970)

copyright 2011

7 October 2011 (Ten Years of Afghan War) and 9 October 2011 ("OccupySF")

 [For a slide show click on title above.]

Starting at the Federal Bulding on 7th Street, San
 Francisco, we rallied and marched on the 10th
    anniversary of the start of the Afghan War.

Susan Witka showed us the newspaper her son gave her that he had picked up at OccupyWallStreet, and here had traveled to participate on a march toward OccupySF.

On 9 October 2011, I stopped by OccupySF, an encampment in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.  An instructor was teaching a class in Economics.  It is good to see the return of a very apt word, often used in the early part of the 20th Century when our problems were just the same -- politicians who are married to money:  Plutocrats.

 

One of the marvels of their encampment -- a stationery bicycle peddled to generate electricity.

With Leslie and Martha at Bakers Beach, San Francisco, 29 September 2011

Click on title above for brief slide show.