The Only Good to Come of the U.S. Wars Against Iraq and Afghanistan

above image from: mindbloglerrrr.blogspot.com circa 2006

On September 11, 2001, then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Peru on his way to Bogota, Colombia, on a tour "to show the Bush administration’s commitment to the U.S.-financed war on drugs." Obviously Powell returned to Washington quickly. And with him may have gone the active implementation of a significant part of U.S. foreign policy against Latin America. In the absence of the United States' State Department's historic shower of goodwill in the years since, democratically elected leftist governments have managed to remain intact in Brazil, Venezuela (despite a nice try), Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Uruguay. During the 1980s and the decades running up to them, the United States waged semi-covert wars against leftists in Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, to name some of the more blatant efforts. Symbolic of the shift of positive neglect, 1980s human rights ogre and U.S. Ambassador to Honduras John Negroponte resurfaced as Ambassador to Iraq during 2004-2005. The U.S. influence vacuum is now significant enough that the Latin American regional Mercosur trade organization has even been able to justify its leanings away from its Free Trade origins as the U.S trade agenda becomes so evidently hollow.

Surely if the U.S. was not bogged down securing Iraq's oil supply and facilitating no-bid contracts in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we would have managed to arrange for some stifling of the popular will ala 1983 Grenada, 1973 Chile, 1980s Nicaragua, etc. Having lived during those times, taking in the old U.S. propaganda is interesting in hindsight: The Soviet menace no longer exists to produce undue influence in the Americas, yet in country after country, democratic elections put leftists into power. If there's any upside at all to President-elect Obama's plan to raise troop numbers in Afghanistan to 1980s Soviet invasion levels, and perhaps step up attacks on Pakistan, it could be that democracy will have a chance to flourish in our own backyard in our benificent absence.

Abraham Rodriguez, Jr.

Just to illustrate how our collective backgrounds in punk rock/hardcore do not have to live on only as nostalgia, I wanted to bring up Abraham Rodriguez, Jr.'s full circle of influence in my life.

First, as a teen in the mid-80s, I sometimes picked up his State of Fury two pager newsletter-rant around the East Village. In it he frequently indicted the shallowness of the New York scene, and a few years later, around 1987, State of Fury would inspire my own, much less rational one-off publications attacking fellow underground music fans. Evidence of this mutation can be seen in the MTV Press published retrospective book Radio Silence/ A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore Music on the page that reproduces one of my fliers taking an arbitrary stance against fans attending shows at the old Ritz in NYC.

At the same time as State of Fury, Rodriguez's band Urgent Fury put out a couple of great demos that Pat Duncan played incessantly on his Thursday nights WFMU hardcore show. The group took its name from the military codename for the ridiculous U.S. invasion of the small Caribbean island nation of Grenada to 'save' some American flunky medical students from the high profile Cuban good deeds being done down there. Now I live a few doors down from a Grenadian family that has recounted to me on numerous occasions the absurdity of the U.S. 'liberation' of the island. Urgent Fury was great musically, lyrically, and for its long term relevance.

In the early 1990s, Rodriguez wrote The Boy without a Flag: Tales of the South Bronx to much critical acclaim, referring more or less autobiographically to his upbringing there. I felt vicarious validation that someone who's writing I considered influential years before that was being acknowledged in the mainstream. To top it all off, flash forward to when I began teaching GED for adults part-time in the beginning of 2003. The administrative assistant gave me a copy of the Steck-Vaughn GED textbook to use a few minutes before class. I cracked it open for the first time with adult students waiting for me to get started. There on one of the first pages, highlighted as a successful GED graduate and author, was a photo of Rodriguez in cap and gown, at a podium, reading a graduation speech at CUNY or CCNY (I can't remember which, and I don't have the book at home with me). Another hint that I was right where I needed to be. I immersed myself in adult literacy, taking grad classes, and finally landing a full time job in the field, as well as several more part-time gigs.

This post certainly is not meant to be a creepy, gushing fan letter, nor do I intend it as nostalgia. To the contrary, I don't even know Rodriguez, and meeting him is not high on my list. The point is, his work, which he intended to be seen in the moment, has had a lasting and RELEVANT positive impact on my life. More than the t-shirt designs and the fights and the 40 year old men reminiscing, that's the very best of what the subculture offered us as we continued on with our lives.

Open Letter to the President

Iraq Veterans Against the War's open letter to Obama
On November 4th Americans came together across lines of race, gender, class, and religion to elect Barack Obama as President of the United States, marking an historic moment for our nation.
Over the course of President-elect Obama’s campaign, many were ignited with the hope that change is possible, and we share that hope. As we take a moment to reflect on the significance of this vote, it is important for us to remember that our struggles did not end on election night. Real change has never come because of the actions of any one person, but only through the combined efforts of grassroots organizing by people with the courage and conviction to see their struggle through to the end.

Over the last four and a half years, Iraq Veterans Against the War has brought our message of change to our fellow veterans and members of the military, the American public, and indeed the world. Our message remains the same: it is time to immediately withdraw all occupying forces from Iraq; it is time to end the death and destruction facing the people of Iraq and address the needs of the Iraqi people; and it is time to provide our veterans with the care and benefits that they need and have earned through their service to our country.

(end statement)

and I would add the following...

Roy C.'s song "Open Letter to the President" (1971)

People get ready, there's a new day a comin'

Everybody's gonna be free, a better day for you and me

Oh Lord have mercy

There'll be no more fightin' in Viet Nam

Everybody's gonna be free all over this land

Listen, Mr. President, yeah, this is an open letter to you

I wanna know, why don't you stop the fightin' an' bring all our boys home, that's right...

but Mr. President, oh can't you see all the protesters in the streets?

an' look at all the hungry people, the fatherless children with no shoes on their feet

Can't you hear them singin'? I can, they're sayin':

I wanna be free - (gonna be free)

Everybody wanna be free - (gonna be free)

Everywhere you go they wanna be free (gonna be free)

Way down in Georgia - (they wanna be free)

In South Africa - (they wanna be free)

New York ain't no better - (they wanna be free)

Up and down the streets of Harlem free!

click here to download or listen to the song

Cro Mags Remembered

Since no one ever comments on, or even reads for that matter, my political diatribes with links to the Christian Science Monitor and the LA Times, I thought I'd see if anyone checks out this post.

Much has been said and written about the greatness of the Cro Mags, and I want to add my own memory of them to the thousands of hits their name brings up.

As teenagers in the 1980s' NYHC scene, my friends and I held Mackie in highest regard as far musicianship. As compelling as the tales of street justice and insanity are, Mackie's drumming on the Age of Quarrel demo, and later the LP (especially the song We Gotta Know) defined the height of the genre. People would go check out his other non-NYHC band, Urban Blight, just to watch/hear him. When Mackie played in the short-lived Icemen, his drumming was the draw.

On the more overtold non-Mackie stories side, I remember standing in front of a poorly attended CBGBs show next to an overflowing dumpster in the beginning of 1988, by myself, my new Krishna vegetarian/karma tattoo poking out of my t-shirt, the same one John Joseph has on his forearm. So who comes strolling up to the show but the man himself. His eyes zoom in on my tattoo and he heads straight over, takes hold of my upper arm, pulls up my sleeve to expose the full design, and examines it in silence for maybe twenty seconds. I knew I had to just accept whatever would happen next. Then he remarks enthusiastically, "Wow, that's a really nice piece, I have the same one right here. Hey, let me show you some new work on my stomach."

An (unrelated) Cro Mags related memory: When I became vegetarian at 16, I was heavily under the influence of MDC's Millions of Dead Children 7" EP, and its explanation of animal cruelty and world hunger associated with meat-eating. Working after school and Saturdays at an appliance delivery job in New Jersey, I endured taunts and setups by the coke fiend/alcoholic/living in the woods when they fought with their wives/delivery drivers. They called me a pansy-ass vegetarian, a hippie and the like. They let me go down the loading ramps unassisted with thirty cubic foot refrigerators on my handtruck. Inevitably I'd lose control or slip, and need to be rescued from underneath the large appliances. To them, this was clear evidence of me being a vegetarian faggot. But my first frame of reference for knowing of real people who were vegetarians at the time was the Cro Mags, and that gave me a really self-righteous teenager feeling during those moments trapped under a five hundred pound refrigerator.

Alleged Financial Crisis

'Money is like manure. It should be spread around.'
-Brooke Astor, New York Philanthropist

"[T]he bailout is either incompetence or fraud, because the problem, according to the government, is the defaulting mortgages, so the money should be directed at refinancing the mortgages and paying off the foreclosed ones. And that would restore the value of the mortgage-backed securities that are threatening the financial institutions. If the value was restored, the crisis would be over. So there’s no connection between the government’s explanation of the crisis and its solution to the crisis."
-Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department in the Reagan administration and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal

Socialism for the rich
Capitalism for the rest of you
-MDC, "Selfish Shit" from the Multi Death Corporations 7" EP

But really since the "melt down," it has been business as usual, an abstract academic exercise, strictly a news story and nothing more. Washington Mutual, known for years to be one of the sleaziest predatory credit card companies, sent me a '0% for 12 months' offer just last week! And WAMU was supposed to be one of the most distressed institutions, just recently failed, and bought out by JP Morgan Chase at the end of September! I still regularly receive mortgage refinancing offers in the mail from outfits like Countrywide (who helped provoke the ongoing 'crisis') with options including "flexible terms" and 'access to cash' for people with "[l]ess than perfect credit." How could the system possibly be in such terrible turmoil if these institutions continue with the practices that precipitated the ostensible crisis?

Other indicators of non-financial-crisis include unabated United States funding of war against Afghanistan and Iraq. This takes place during a presidential campaign where both major candidates try to outdo each other with promises of tax-cuts. What? Check the Cost of War real time dollar counter in the right hand column of this blog. Where is the money coming from? The United States borrows it in order to avoid raising taxes. None of the talking heads on National Public Radio or conservative AM talk radio EVER mention the wars as impetus for economic troubles. A lot of things don't make sense here.

The whole thing reminds me of a phone conversation with my friend John who lives on Avenue D in downtown Manhattan, and raised his daughters there for awhile. After 9/11, I commented to him that everything must've changed so much, so close to ground zero.. He responded that nothing's changed, people still go about their business as before. I'd like to hear from people affected by the crisis (other than Realtors) on this blog to see if anything really has been unalterably up-ended by the terrifying news about the next Great Depression. I'll believe it when I see some contemporary apocalyptic evidence to compete with PBS' American Experience Surviving the Dust Bowl!

NOT an Age of Universal Deceit

"In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
-attributed to George Orwell

Reasons this quote does NOT apply to the current conditions include the following. The truth is widely known and accepted that:

1. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the Bush administration fabricated the stories that they existed.
2. Saddam Hussein and Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda before the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
3. The United States practices/has engaged in torture, indefinite detention, and extraordinary rendition at Guatanamo, Abu Ghraib and "black sites" around the world.

Telling the truth about these things already took place, and no longer represents a revolutionary act, especially since the terrible reality did not lead to any reaction from the U.S. population. I do not except myself from the collective indictment for inaction. What do you think should come next? How can we stop our government?

Slow Death Lingers on Broad Street

On Sunday, May 18, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published a front page article entitled "Broad St. is taking a right turn After decades of decline, Richmond's main drag has a better look and feel." Reasons cited included the renovation of City Hall, a new Federal Courthouse, and a new restaurant/lounge. Some in Richmond also attempt to make the case for 'revitalization' by pointing to a couple of condo projects and a handful of art galleries. None of these things rank as reasons to go downtown for me.

The conventional wisdom proclaims that Broad Street died by sometime in the 1970's. I moved here from New Jersey in 1993. At that time all of the following stores still existed on Broad between Henry and 9th Streets, and I patronized them often:

• An Army Navy men's clothing store
• G.C. Murphy department store
• Woolworth's department store
• A hardware store
• Willie's record store
• Carrington's Music store
• CVS Pharmacy
• People's Drug
• Community Pride grocery store
• Southern Barber Supply & Novelty
• An auto parts store
• Harper's children's clothing
• Apollo Pizza
• Subway
• Central Fidelity Bank
• Several African imports stores
• Up Against the Wall clothing store
• Popkin Furniture
• Pennies for Heaven thrift store
• Sound of Music studio (not really an everyday visit obviously, but still...)
• Schwarzchild Jewelers

The above practical, inclusive, everyday life businesses have folded or left since I arrived. Throngs of people shopped and socialized on Broad well into the '90s, they just happened to be black and of modest means, so they didn't count; a live, populated ghost town of non-entities in the eyes of the arts community and the old-fashioned Main Street interests. Sure it was dumpy and gritty, but those stores' disappearances and departures, and the scores of people who left with them, are the reasons I now consider Broad Street downtown desolate and alienating. What do you think?