The Christmas Bombings of Vietnam 1972

I was 17 years old in 1972 and I was pissed off.  It was getting near Christmas and every day that I turned the news on the radio I would hear about another flurry of bombing raids on northern Vietnamese cities by hundreds of US bombers.  Hospitals were being bombed.  Civilian neighborhoods were being destroyed and Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the rest of the war pigs were getting ready for their particular holidays.  I recall going to a protest in downtown Frankfurt against the bombings.  Particularly galling was the targeting of the hospitals.  Indeed, Bach Mai hospital was attacked more than once, killing more than 25 doctors and an unknown number of patients.  Here is a recollection from Vietnam Veteran Against the War Barry Romo, who was in Hanoi during the bombings.
http://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=2204

Elvis Costello on SNL in 1977

Elvis Costello played Saturday Night Live in place of the Sex Pistols, who were having trouble getting visas.  He was allowed to play on the condition he not play the song "Radio, Radio," which criticizes the industry.  So, he played "Radio Radio."

Altamont Rock Concert--December 6, 1969

I'll let Rolling Stone tell the story in one of their first (and best) pieces of reportage not written by Hunter S. Thompson...

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-rolling-stones-disaster-at-altamont-let-it-bleed-19700121

Let it Bleed

Let it Bleed was released in the US on December 5, 1969.  As I wrote in a piece that first appeared in the now-defunct Vermont Times (and later appeared in Counterpunch and other zines: "Musically, the Rolling Stones were touring the country promoting their new album Let It Bleed , another of their adventures in reworking North American blues and folk idioms into hard-driving rock and roll. The song of the summer had been Honky Tonk Women, which appeared on the album as a boozy country funk. Perhaps the most important song on the platter, however, was Gimme Shelter, a blistering indictment of the world of war and greed."

November 17, 1973--Richard Nixon is not a crook

As the Watergate and associated criminal acts were slowly being revealed, Richard Nixon held a press conference....click below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh163n1lJ4M

November 1973--The Athens Polytechnic Revolt

The Polytechnic uprising (Politechneio, Πολυτεχνείο in greek) symbolises not only the heroic struggle but also the unity of all democrats.

The November struggles are the highest expression of the seven-year fight against the dictatorship, and one of the most important moments in the fight for freedom of the Greek people and especially Greek youth.

The Events of the Polytechnic Uprising
Despite the harsh repressive measures of the military Junta during the seven-year dictatorship of 1967-1973 in Greece – the imprisonments, displacements, mass trials in emergency courts-martial, torture, mock executions and murders – popular demonstrations against the regime continued throughout the dictatorship, with young people always playing a leading part.

https://athenianvoice.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/the-greek-uprising-on-17-november-1973-against-the-junta-militar-2/

Remembering Another Shitty Election Night--November 7, 1972

After Trump won the election, I was asked if the 2016 results were the most distressing I had ever seen.  I told them that it was actually the 1972 election that held that honor.....with the 1980 Reagan victory over Carter the next.  I may have to rearrange those rankings, with the 2016 results somewhere in that top three....
Here's a remembrance of George McGovern and that horrible night...

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/mcgovern-anti-war-candidacy-us-cultural-landmark

Takeover of Bureau of Indian Affairs....Mutiny on the USS Constellation: November 1972

On November 2, 1972, members of the American Indian Movement occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington , DC.
https://washingtonspark.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/native-americans-take-over-bureau-of-indian-affairs-1972/

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, sailors were staging a mutiny on board the USS Constellation.  This was after a riot on board the Kitty Hawk a couple weeks earlier....
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B01dj5QyuLDeWXJvWXl4SE9KZEU/view?usp=sharing

October 21, 1977--Keith Moon's Last Show.....

This clip is not from Keith's last show, but it shows The Who at the peak of their power....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgubG-MOPT4

Anarchy in the UK

Recorded October 17, 1976.....Get off your ass!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TZ_9-rbslo

Sid Kills Nancy--October 1978

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/09/from-rocks-backpages-talk-talk-sid-vicious-nancy-spungen

The October 1973 War

It was this war that arguably made it clear to Israel that their actions would be backed by Washington, no matter what... It also precipitated an oil embargo and an increase in gas prices, among other changes that affect our current situation....

here is the NSA set of reports, etc.
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB98/

Deutscher Herbst/German Autumn--1977

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Autumn

http://www.kinoeye.org/02/20/goldsmith20.php

He wear no shoeshine, he got

On September 26, 1969 the album Abbey Road was released in the United States.  I remember waiting in line to buy my copy.  I took it home and after dinner my friends and I listened to it.  The song "Come Together" (originally written as a campaign song for Timothy Leary's run for California governor against Ronnie Raygun, among others) had been on the radio for a while.  I listened to that album over and over and over.  It is still on my playlist and it always makes me happy these days then when a song from the album plays in my ears on my walk to work.   Abbey Road and the Stones Let it Bleed made it clear that things were going to be a little different in the 1970s.

September 26, 1971--Christiana first occupied and free state established

In 1971, the freaks of Copenhagen occupied an empty military base and established the Free State of Christiana.  The cops and other authorities responded with clubs and arrests, yet eventually came to an agreement.  It survives, albeit in different form, with both police and gangs challenging the residents and the area's status.  Meanwhile, real estate interests encourage both.  Here are a couple links.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9MyVUXjuOA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0kcNUdsycE

Two Movies released the week of September 21, 1975

The first film is one of Al Pacino's best.  Based on the true story of a Deadhead who tried to rob a bank in the Village and, when it failed, turned it onto a hostage situation, director Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon remains a classic that truly captures a certain essence of the time....This clip is one of my favorite moments...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB6Gk5EtunI

The second film, Nashville, directed by Robert Altman and featuring a cast of mostly unknowns, is a point on look at US presidential elections, US culture and its absurdities and racism, among other things.  Film critic and Literature professor Bob Niemi has a great take on this film in his 2016 book

The Cinema of Robert Altman: Hollywood Maverick .  Here is a clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjnRX__xyMs

Welcome to Hollywood--Leon Russell Live 1970

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bwMqliLXZQ

Enjoy!!

Chilean Musician Victor Jara Killed by Chilean Military in 1973

On September 15, 1973, the Chilean musician Victor Jara was tortured and murdered by the Fascist military under the direction of dictator Augusto Pinochet.  Pinochet took power in a military coup against the popularly elected socialist government of Salvador Allende.  The White House, CIA, Anaconda Copper and ITT were intimately involved in the coup and the economic and political disruption leading up to the overthrow.  Jara's supposed killer was found guilty in a Florida courtroom in July 2016.  However, the major architects of the coup in the Chilean military, finance and political systems got away with Jara's murder and the murder and torture of thousands of others.  In addition, those in the US who were involved, including Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, have never answered for their crimes.  Nixon, of course, is dead.  Kissinger's death will draw few tears.

A tune from Victor Jara...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q2_zOfuGcA&list=PLjGY1Q5b_IbnNWuinaSrPNaKFTwyQPhwW

Letting it Bleed: Joel Selvin Takes on Altamont

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/09/letting-it-bleed-2/

Some nice words from a brother out west...

Somebody sent me this link the other day.  It's a post from a blog by a fellow traveler who lives in the American West....

http://scottrthequillayutecowboy.blogspot.com/2016/07/those-good-ole-days.html

Reclaiming the Dead--- A Modern US Socialist Looks at the Grateful Dead

One of the better analyses of the Dead's meaning that I've read in quite a while...
http://www.redwedgemagazine.com/online-issue/deadrec

Chicano Moratorium August 29, 1970

The protest against the war in Vietnam and La Raza in Los Angeles on August 29, 1970 was broken up by armed police who attacked the crowd and then just kinda' went crazy.  A popular liberal Chicano journalist named Ruben Salazar was murdered by police.  Hunter S. Thompson, who was hanging with his friend and attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta (later known as Dr. Gonzo), wrote a great piece about the protest that appeared in Rolling Stone in 1971....here is a link (there's a pdf you need to click on to read the piece)
http://www.eastofborneo.org/archives/strange-rumblings-in-aztlan

Oscar Zeta Acosta wrote an entire book about the protest and the movement.  That book is titled The Revolt of the Cockroach People.  
http://nationalbrownberets.com/files/PDF-Revolt_Cockroach_People.pdf

Bonnie Raitt and Friends Record her first Album

In August 1971, Bonnie Raitt, Freebo and a bunch of other musicians, including Junior Wells, gathered at an empty summer camp on Enchanted Island, about 30 miles west of Minneapolis on Lake Minnetonka. They pulled out their four-track deck and recorded one of the ultimate albums of Raitt's career and of the 1970s.  Titled simply Bonnie Raitt, The music ran from straight out blues to the Buffalo Springfield song "Bluebird."  Along with her 1972 release titled Give It Up, Raitt brought a new authenticity to rock music...and helped bring in an era of rock that included many women who didn't play the pop songstress game...I attended more than a dozen of her shows over the decade.  She often was accompanied by older blues artists like Sippie Wallace, Roosevelt Sykes, and Mississippi Fred McDowell.  Intensely political, her in between song banter featured sarcastic remarks about political figures and the war in Vietnam.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGTyNA0nI90&list=PLuy3A6rgaEgn2cjuJbrGruB8ys6_wQYIU

August 23, 1972: Last Official US Combat Troops Leave Vietnam

Although the combat troops had left, there were still several tens of thousands of troops in country, not to mention CIA mercenaries, Special Forces, and others.  In addition, the bombing would go on for years, including the Christmas bombings at the end of 1972--some of the heaviest bombing raids in the history of bombing raids.  I thought I would link to this pamphlet written by Overseas Weekly writer Richard Boyle describing GI resistance to the war....Overseas Weekly was an unofficial newspaper written for GIs and sold in the PX alongside the official Stars & Stripes.....The resistance Boyle writes about is part of the reason the war was Vietnamized and US troops were slowly removed from in country....while the killing dragged on....

https://libcom.org/history/gi-revolts-breakdown-us-army-vietnam

Elvis and Panama Red

Remember the death of Elvis.....

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/17/panama-red-and-elvis/

Elvis is Everywhere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7NWXJ8iPQw

Pronounced 'Lĕh 'nérd 'Skin 'nérd

Lynyrd Skynyrd's first album was released in August 1973.  This album represented the beginning of the rock genre that would become known as redneck rock.  Its successor today would be what is now called "bro-country."  The song "Free Bird" from this album would go on to become a rock classic.

Here's a link to the album...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRrzymFRUec

The Day Nixon Resigned

Nowadays, high school history books tell students that the Watergate episode and Nixon’s resignation prove that the US way of government works. Personally, I think that the real indicator of how (and for whom) the system works is Gerald Ford’s pardon of the man the following month.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/08/09/in-memory-of-deep-throat/

here is the speech itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEOGJJ7UKFM

Feats Don't Fail Me Now--released August 1974

This album, from the Van Dyke Parks cover to its last track, is a masterwork.  Recorded in early 1974 at a studio in Hunt Valley, MD.  Little Feat were quite popular in the Baltimore-DC region, thanks in part to the fact WHFS-FM in Bethesda played their music a lot.  I saw them for what would be the first of many times at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium in June of 1974.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3LNhZ7msI4&list=PL8v2U0Ce53KD1tHAxxL2qMO40Ejf_EbD9

Innervisions...August 1973

Stevie Wonder at his peak.....still on my playlist

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-juice/5638082/stevie-wonder-innervisions-classic-track-by-track-review

ZAP Comix Redux

http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/03/12/zap-comics-redux/

Rahsaan Roland Kirk Prepares Us to Deal With a Miracle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17JgEYTmE-o

High Drama--The House of Representatives Votes to Impeach Richard Nixon....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxOhBa5IO9Y

Hunter S. Thompson 1972

As I noted in the post prior to this, Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer are my go-to writers when it comes to topnotch US presidential campaign coverage.  I linked to an excerpt from Mailer's book on 1972, St. George and the Godfather yesterday.  Today, I am providing a link to a collection of random excerpts from Hunter S. Thompson's classic Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972...
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/timewarp-campaign-72-19730705

enjoy it and weep

Norman Mailer and the 1972 Political Conventions

Two people come to my mind when the subject of writing about US major party political conventions--Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer.  As the 2016 convention season closes down (thankfully), I thought I would post this 1972 piece from the New York Review of Books (when it was a radical liberal broadsheet instead of the neoliberal rag it has become) on Nixon at the 1972 GOP convention in Miami.  It is excerpted from his book on that year's conventions titled St. George and the Godfather.  
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1972/11/02/the-genius/

Midsummer Rock

On July 28, 1973, The Band, Allman Brothers, and the Grateful Dead played a mammoth show at Watkins Glen, NY.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqlADKgCS_Y

In late July 1970, a rock fest was supposed to happen, but the authorities cancelled it. People showed up anyway...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xeK-k9BRtQ

then there was this--I made it to one day....

Our National Malaise....

(from Daydream Sunset...)

“We arrived in Berkeley the day after the riots in San Francisco following the verdict for the ex-cop who killed Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone. The six of us spent a month or so looking for a place to live. Most landlords rejected any thought of renting to us as soon as they saw our scruffy lot. Eventually, we did find a place. After listening to the landlord, who happened to be the second largest slumlord in the Eastbay, tell us how hard it was to be rich, we got the keys and moved in. Six of us in three bedrooms. We weren't a collective so much as we were a collection of people. We celebrated our new abode with a case or two of malt liquor and a gallon of wine. Bob Dylan's live album from Budokan was the newest album on our playlist. Jimmy Carter made a speech about a national malaise related to Washington's defeat in Vietnam and the corruption and fascist tendencies that had been exposed by the Watergate bust and investigation. The Sandinistas were our latest heroes as they fought their way towards an eventual victory in Nicaragua. Nicaragua's malaise was being wiped away by revolution.”

From History.com:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jimmy-carter-speaks-about-a-national-crisis-in-confidence

Let There Be Rock

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/01/let-there-be-rock/

June 23, 1972--Title IX Becomes Law

https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/home/advocate/title-ix-and-issues/history-of-title-ix/history-of-title-ix

June 17, 1972 Watergate Burglars Arraigned

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a061772burglarsarraigned#a061772burglarsarraigned

Ron Jacobs presents: Revolution in the Air? The 1960s Become the 1970s a...

McGovern and the 1972 Democratic Campaign

Draw your own conclusions....

From Britannica.com :
"In the primaries that followed, McGovern continued to build up a lead in convention delegates. He was even more successful in the nonprimary states, where his devoted followers made certain that delegate-selection caucuses voted his way. But that success overrode the much more basic process that was taking place: the Democratic Party was tearing itself apart. One reason lay in the work of the commission that carried McGovern’s name. Founded in the wake of the disastrous and violent Democratic National Convention in 1968, the McGovern Commission put forth guidelines for the selection of delegates. They were designed to open the party’s deliberations to more young people, toAfrican Americans, and to women. The guidelines worked, but they also functioned to diminish the participation of many longtime Democratic Party workers. Prominent national Democrats found themselves in some cases unable to find a spot on their own states’ delegations.

McGovern’s rise made many Democrats nervous. Some were worried about his antiwar views, while others thought that he went against traditional Democratic principles. For many, unfairly or not, McGovern came to symbolize a candidacy of radical children, rioters, marijuana smokers, draft dodgers, and hippies. With the California primary approaching, Humphrey tried to bring all the objections to McGovern together in a last attempt to save the nomination for himself. He excoriated his old Senatefriend for his expensive ideas on welfare and his desire to cut the defense budget. It almost worked. Humphrey closed fast in May and early June, but the McGovern organization held on. McGovern won all of California’s giant delegation, and he beat Humphrey 44.3 to 39.1 percent in the popular vote. The margin was not as large as McGovern had hoped for, and the bitterness of the fight, together with the effectiveness of the Humphrey charges, had not been lost on the silent watchers at the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP).

here's the link to the page

http://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1972

Angela Davis Awaits Verdict--1972

This video was taken on June 3, 1972.  On June 4, 1972, Angela Davis was acquitted of all charges. This victory was the result of an international popular struggle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRmjX5cH5-A

America Eats Its Young

http://thequietus.com/articles/15903-george-clinton-cosmic-odyssey-p-funk-kris-needs-vietnam-extract

May 17, 1973: Televised Watergate Hearings Begin

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/may-17-1973-televised-watergate-hearings-begin-19171632

The Jackson State Murders May 14, 1970

http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/05/14/the-jackson-state-murders-may-14-1970/

Scanlan's Monthly

Scanlan's Monthly was a short-lived magazine in 1970-1971.  Edited by San Francisco's Warren Hinckle, it featured excellent writing, in depth and cutthroat journalism and the attention of the FBI. The January 1971 issue was titled Guerrilla War in the USA.

a link to that issue is below...
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/W%20Disk/War%20Guerrilla/Item%2001A.pdf

War is Over May 1975

On May 11, 1975 Phil Ochs and others hosted a celebration in Central Park of the final end of the US war on the Vietnamese.  Titled "War is Over," it featured Joan Baez, Lee Hays, Tom Paxton, Patti Smith and many others.  (see setlist below)

https://sites.google.com/site/philipdavidochs/philochslive-may11,1975

On May 12, 1975.  Saigon fell to the Vietnamese national liberation forces and US troops, CIA and others fled.

On the Frontlines of Peace: the Life of Daniel Berrigan

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/02/on-the-frontlines-of-peace-the-life-of-daniel-kerrigan/

The Spring Offensive Against the War in 1971--Noam Chomsky Checks In

From the New York Review of Books (when it was a leftish journal)

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1971/06/17/a-special-supplement-mayday-the-case-for-civil-dis/

Seasoned Veteran:Journey of a Winter Soldier

Discussed in Daydream Sunset....

The Late Mike Marqusee and the Politics of Bob Dylan

http://www.stateofnature.org/?p=5407

Call Me Zimmerman--Bob Dylan's Great White Wonder

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/15/call-me-zimmerman-bob-dylans-great-white-wonder/

Grateful Dead Live in 1971

In 1971, the Grateful Dead played a Catholic Youth Center in Scranton, PA...

https://archive.org/details/gd71-04-13.sbd.unknown.32015.sbeok.flacf

Kathleen Cleaver Speaks in Frankfurt am Main 1971

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/248401735669822868/

Blast From the Past--1969

This piece first appeared in the now defunct newspaper edited by Shay Totten--the Vermont Times....it was reprinted in Counterpunch a few years later...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/01/13/a-blast-from-the-past/

The Story of the Late and Great Washington Free Press

Authorities took the challenge represented by the underground media seriously.  This article from the Spark website composed and maintained by Craig Simpson tells the story of a campaign of police and judicial harassment in the Washington DC area.

https://washingtonspark.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/washington-free-press-battles-suppression-1969-70/#comment-1679

Greil Marcus and George Jackson

Most people know Greil Marcus as an observer, commentator and critic of US culture, especially of music, from rock and roll back into the American folk ether.  In the early, 1970s, when he wrote for a much less mainstream Rolling Stone magazine and the great rock mag CREEM (which also featured Lenny Kaye and Patti Smith), Marcus was also often quite political. One of the foundations of my book Daydream Sunset is that the New Left, the Black Liberation movement and the counterculture were closely bound in a common struggle against the US warmongering and racist establishment.  This piece, written for CREEM after Black Panther George Jackson was murdered at San Quentin prison in 1971, is proof of that.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B01dj5QyuLDeRkx4aGVsekQ2Tnc

The Banfield Proposals--Is This Our Reality?

In 1970, a Harvard professor named Edward Banfield published a book about how to deal with civil insurrection, rebellion and other activities in the urban Black ghetto...  The professor was an occasional advisor to President Nixon and are not only racist in context, but also in practice.  Critic Greil Marcus wrote a long article for Rolling Stone magazine (back in the days before it endorsed establishment politicians like Hillary Clinton) about Banfield's proposals, the Weatherman (who were quite new at the time and had yet to go underground, and the Isla Vista riots in Santa Barbara.....here is a link to the article...

And here are the proposals with Marcus's commentary...

The February 23rd, 1970 issue of New York magazine included excerpts from a new book on urban politics, called The UnHeavenly City, by Edward Banfield, a former Nixon adviser. Advance copies of the book are causing a lot of excitement, as they say, in Washington. It looks good out there. Banfield may have a way to solve city problems without resorting to the mammoth welfare state on which the Democrats have always relied. Very exciting. Banfield puts forth a series of twelve interrelated proposals which, if adapted, would bring most of the black urban population into a state of almost total subjection, and which at the same time would gut the Bill of Rights. It would necessitate an enormous enlargement of police forces around the country. Finally, it would fully bury whatever vague “American” goals the country has left in which it can take pride: freedom for all, just and equal laws, privacy, education for all, and even that old chestnut, equal.

Don’t get me wrong; we get to keep these; they don’t. The abandonment of those values for all reduces them, however, to the status of possessions. However wretched our reality, Banfield’s proposals might well make us a nation without values and without ideas—and without limits.

Banfield hedges his argument. He states that while his proposals are politically feasible (government ought to try them) virtually all of them are politically unacceptable (the government couldn’t get away with them). It seems to me that most of them are acceptable, to the Nixon administration, and to the country. For what Banfield has done is to construct a set of “poor laws” which define the poor as a class (urban black, it seems), and then confine and control that class to the point where it is destroyed, culturally, and imprisoned, concretely.

Banfield does not like normal “solutions” to urban problems. That is fine; but he goes on to demonstrate what he means by this by noting that the McCone Commission, formed to investigate the causes of the Watts Riot, were incorrect in stating that a midday meal was necessary to a meaningful educational experience. Since in many cases that is all school children get, and since a child who has passed out or who is dizzy from hunger has a hard time learning, one gets a firm sense of the direction in which Banfield is moving. But let me list his proposals, with comment:

1. Avoid rhetoric tending to raise expectations to unreasonable and unrealizable levels, to exaggerate the seriousness of problems and the possibility of finding solutions, and to overemphasize “wrong motivation” (e.g., “white racism”) as a cause of social problems.

That is: Whatever the reality, the poor are the “problem.” White racism (Banfield continually puts quotes around it as if he doubts its existence) is not a politically useful term; it may contribute to the idea that the poor are not the cause of all their own problems, or worse, make the poor themselves think someone else or something else may hold much of the responsibility.

2. Repeal the minimum wage laws; cease to overpay for low-skilled public employment; cease to harass private employers who offer low wages and poor (but not unsafe) working conditions to workers whose alternative is unemployment.

That is: Create, by law, and encourage, by law, a degraded and immobile section of the population under conditions which they are legally helpless to change.

3. Revise school curricula so as to cover in nine grades what is covered in twelve. Reduce the school-leaving age to 14 (ninth grade), and encourage (or perhaps require) boys and girls unable or unwilling to go to college to take a full-time job or else enter military service or a civilian youth corps. Assure serious, on-the-job training for those who chose work rather than college.

That is: Perform an educational impossibility, which is to say, drastically reduce educational goals in the ghetto (the age of 14 in the ghetto does not correspond to the ninth grade). Force huge numbers of young people into jobs they do not want or service they do not want to have, a form of involuntary servitude, meted out by class and race, as a goal. Use the word “choose” when talking about force.

4. Define poverty in terms of “hardship” rather than in terms of “relative deprivation.” Distinguish between those of the poor who are competent to manage their affairs and those of them who are not, the latter category including the insane, the severely retarded, the senile, the inveterate “problem families” among the lower class, and unprotected children. Cash incentives by negative income tax to the competent, as incentive to work. Goods and services rather than cash to the incompetent; depending on the degree of incompetence, encourage (or require) them to live in an institution or semi-institution (for example, a closely supervised public housing project).

That is: Redefine poverty so as to lower expectations of what poor blacks can expect in America. Banfield earlier notes that someone is poor in Hollywood at $1000 a week since so many make $10,000 a week, thereby satirizing the “relative deprivation” standard. “Relative deprivation” matters partly because of the affluence of the general society with which the poor are confronted, and with which they are confronted by their children and their own aspiration, and because of the fact that men measure their needs relatively, regardless of the concrete demands of their stomachs. Men can live in shacks filled with rats; that is not justification for insuring that they do so.

Force those of the black urban population who have been in trouble with the law (an enormous proportion), who are in heavy debt, or who perhaps have too many children, to live in urban concentration camps; restrict their movements; destroy them psychologically. This will require a huge increase in local police and perhaps in the National Guard, with the possibility of general race war in the cities.

5. Give intensive birth control advice to the incompetent poor.

That is: Perhaps refuse to allow people to have more children than they can afford; set approximate sanctions, such as prison (children can be sent to institutions), or fines (?). In any case, limit the size of the black population of the country so that demographically it becomes less of a problem.

6. Pay “problem families” to send infants and children to day nurseries designed to bring them into normal culture.

That is: Destroy all that is good and vital in ghetto culture, and destroy black self-awareness, by removing children from their parents at an early age.

7. Regulate insurance and police practices so as to give potential victims of crime greater incentive to take reasonable precautions to prevent it. Why not, for example, require careless owners to pay the police cost of recovering their stolen cars?

That is: Deny ghetto residents, victims of most crime, the normal police protection enjoyed by the rest of the nation.

8. Intensify police patrol in high-crime areas; permit the police to “stop and frisk” and to make misdemeanor arrests on probable cause; institute a system of “negative bail” whereby a suspect who is held in jail and later found innocent is paid compensation for each day of confinement.

That is: Institutionalize and legalize current ghetto police procedure, while denying those arrested their basis for a Constitutional appeal. “Negative bail” simply means “preventative detention” for misdemeanors as well as felonies; the conviction rate is near 90% already, and detention insures that the suspect will have great difficulty securing a lawyer or witnesses or raising money for defense. “Compensation” is a fraud since in many cases the suspect will lose his job.

9. Reduce drastically the time elapsing between arrest, trial, and the imposition of punishment.

That is: Fine as far as it goes, though for Banfield it may go to such a point that the suspect has no idea of his situation and is unable to secure a lawyer. Note Banfield’s use of “punishment” and not “sentence” to get his meaning.

10. Abridge to an appropriate degree the freedom of those who in the opinion of the court are extremely likely to commit violent crimes. Confine and treat drug addicts.

That is: Limit the mobility of convicted ghetto felons (a proportion close to 50 percent among ghetto young males) drastically, perhaps within their city, area, or “housing project.” Refuse to allow certain radicals to cross state lines, instituting a system of “permanent probation.” Confine convicted felons (from car thieves to murderers) to the ghetto.

11. Make it clear in advance that those who incite to riot will be severely punished.

That is: Intimidate defense attorneys and round up radicals and militants after any disturbance; convict and imprison them.

12. Prohibit “live” television coverage of riots and of incidents likely to provoke them.

That is: Unconstitutionally restrict the freedom of the media, in a way that could lead to the prohibition of any sort of coverage of riots or other disturbances. Remove ghetto residents and student radicals from the view of the nation, thus easing the “problem.” Incidents likely to provoke riots could range from speeches to peaceful demonstrations. Define and regulate “the news.”

Thus Banfield’s set of proposals, to whom and to which I have probably been somewhat unfair. Perhaps so, perhaps not. My response comes not solely from Banfield’s specific proposals but from their obvious implications, and from the view that such proposals are not “politically unacceptable,” to the Nixon administration and to much of his constituency, though much of them appear to be unconstitutional, not a great stumbling block these days.

These proposals, from a highly respected political science professor, from Harvard at that, offer a sense of what America is willing to do to have her peace and quiet, her law and order. Cut the heart out of that which is good in the American political tradition; prohibit the development of social or political alternatives; enforce cultural and social genocide on blacks in the ghetto; greatly increase the size of the police, or perhaps simply merge them with the Army. Institutionalize the situation in the ghetto as it stands, while removing whatever freedoms remain for poor blacks, taking them out of the public view with an eye toward a “disappearance” of social problems.

Near the end of the excerpt Banfield satirizes the idea of justice, degrading it into the admittedly paltry impulse to “do good,” arguing that this idea/impulse is something the nation would be better off without. They’re very excited about it in Washington. Rights, dignity, and aspirations, it seems, are for those rich enough to enjoy them, not for those who, even more than we, need them.

The Long Road to Marijuana Legalization

In 1999 or so, after many years of not communicating, my friend Chip and I got back in touch.  One of the first things he said when we talked on the phone was in relation to the fact that marijuana was still illegal.  Since then, several states have legalized the weed for medical use and two have legalized it for recreational use.  Here in Vermont, an effort is underway to legalize marijuana.  The law that was drafted is less than ideal, but it is a step in the right direction.  This oped appeared in an online daily newspaper in Vermont known as the Vermont Digger.

Daydream Sunset and 1970s Radical Politics...

In some of the reviews of Daydream Sunset, there has been mention that I minimize some of the politics of the 1970s.

For those desiring a more complete understanding of the alternative perceptions and the people that held them in that period, let me recommend reading The Way the Wind Blew and/or Max Elbaum's Revolution in the Air and/or Aaron Leonard's Heavy Radicals.  I think the combination of these texts provide a fairly comprehensive look at the trends of the Sixties New Left and counterculture movements in the 1970s.

The Dead Show That Closes Out My Book

I went searching for a recording of the January 198o Kampuchean Refugees Benefit Show that I close out Daydream Sunset with.  While searching, I found this description of the show.  I have a few differences with the author, but it's a good read.  So is the rest of the site--Lost Live Dead....Check it out.
http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2014/12/january-13-1980-oakland-coliseum-arena.html

If you want to hear the Dead's portion of the show, here is a link to a fairly decent recording

https://archive.org/details/gd1980-01-13.sbd.miller.106517.flac16

Happy New Year!

From the Mayday Bookstore Blog

http://maydaybookstore.blogspot.com/2015/12/bombs-or-vermont.html