Cleveland Heights to be precise but Ian Hunter didn’t write a song about it. Ted Koppel doesn’t give a toss about the Mott the Hoople head honcho, but he does care about a group of Ohioans who are helping Haitian school teacher, Ansly Damus, in his effort to be granted political asylum. Here’s hoping that Ansly’s Army helps him realize his American dream. The last word goes to Ian Hunter: Continue reading Not Everything Sucks: Cleveland Rocks
One of my musical heroes, David Gilmour, is a generous man. He auctioned off many of the guitars that he played during Pink Floyd’s heyday raising over $21 million, which he promptly gave away: A day before the auction, Gilmour revealed that the money from the auction would benefit ClientEarth, which funds environmental lawyers and experts in the fight against climate change. “The global climate crisis is the greatest challenge that humanity will ever face, and we are within a few years of the effects of global warming being irreversible,” he said in a statement. “We need a civilized world that goes … Continue reading Not Everything Sucks: David Gilmour’s Guitars
Let’s just turn today over to JTO, from my Sunday post, reminding me to get off my ass, shall we? The hour is running late, that is true, but it is also just as true that it is still early. It is true that this is a frustrating, infuriating fight – but it is the fight that we have always had. It was the fight for the recognition of every working man’s humanity, of every woman’s suffrage and every POC’s equality. And those we fight are never defeated, they simply retreat, regroup and try again – just like we do. … Continue reading Our Commenters are AWESOME
Deadwood is still with us and so is David Milch, who I’d take a bullet for and laugh about it: Still, the studio’s faith in Milch never wavered. It just wanted him to focus on more potentially lucrative projects, and persuaded him to create a new series, “John from Cincinnati,” set in a California surfing community, a collaboration with Kem Nunn, a novelist whose books can be found in the surf-noir section. It lasted only one season, a consequence generally attributed to a plot-coherence deficit. In the years that followed, Milch remained fiercely industrious. He created “Luck,” set at the … Continue reading Not Everything Sucks
This man is out there making gorgeous music, that speaks to how hard and hopeless everything seems, and how you get up and do the damn job anyway. I had the good fortune to meet him at a show last fall, during a torrential downpour, like a 7-year rainstorm. He was playing a show in the upstairs of a small bar on the north side of the city and I got there like an hour early because I’m a huge dork so that gave me plenty of time to try not to look like a huge dork and think of … Continue reading Not Everything Sucks
Some people are making newspapers for people in prison: It was the publication of that essay that led to me walking through the office doors of The Marshall Project two months later—having finally won parole—to talk with their staff about my experiences. That conversation led to me joining their team and to the creation of News Inside—a collection of TMP’s award-winning journalism that relates directly to incarcerated lives. In the past month, we began distributing the pilot edition of this print publication to prisons and jails; to date it is circulating in 30 facilities in 19 states. I wanted to … Continue reading Not Everything Sucks
Every time I ask you guys I think this time it’s not gonna make a dent and oh boy did you ever make a dent: #Uglydogs OMG OMG 4 trips to the post office dragging a sled behind to pick up all our goodies. So far we have opened garden supplies, glue sticks, legos, clorox wipes, finger paint paper and more more more! I will post pics by Friday. Thank you to all you wonderful doggies! — Angela Dunton (@MissAngelaAK) March 26, 2019 You’re all just so great. A. Continue reading So We Mailed Some LEGOs to Alaska, Guys!
You ever get shown up thoroughly by someone twice your age? Tom Butler and his wife June did that to me in 2007 in NOLA. Longtime readers may remember we assembled a bunch of Internet people who’d never met (pictured above) to go to New Orleans to gut a house in the aftermath of Katrina. Tom, second from left up there, absolutely kicked my ass. He and June, beside him as always, hauled out barrow after barrow, bucket after bucket, of filth from this roach-ridden rotting hulk of a flooded home in 90-degree heat and 90 percent humidity, working dawn … Continue reading In Loving and Awed Memory of Tom Butler, First Draft Krewe
I dunno if anybody else is struggling right now but I AM. Holy balls, am I ever.
The world is a dark miserable shitass place and being on Twitter is losing its goddamn charm as all I ever see is people attacking each other over who’s really a Bernie bro and who humped their cat and who has the WORST ideas for revamping local news and who I used to love yesterday who now has to be cancelled because he has revenge or rape or race-war fantasies.
And I do not have a hot take on any of it. I’m just annoyed by everything. Once upon a time I would have enjoyed laughing at Cat Humper Twitter as much as I did David Cameron Dead Pig Humper Twitter, but lately my overarching reaction is just to be really, really tired by everyone’s antics. Which is not productive. Or helpful.
You know what is?
People are racing dogs across Alaska and other people are raising money for the schools along the way: Watch this, then help us finish funding 20 more @DonorsChoose projects for Alaska school kids before Bler gets to Nome! https://t.co/4P3jGnxBcM https://t.co/JZTP7j2EMS — Beth Mansfield (@BethMansfield) March 17, 2019 A. Continue reading Not Everything Sucks
The MERL had a bat in its library: First things first, we gave him rehydration fluid as he was very thirsty, having probably been trapped in the store for a few days at least. Fortunately, he was completely uninjured. We had a look round the outside of the building to try and see how he might have got in but with no windows, no doors to the outside, no louvres or obvious ventilation shafts we couldn’t spot anything. However, as a bat can get through a gap as small as a couple of centimetres and it’s a huge building, it … Continue reading Not Everything Sucks
There are people sending books to kids in prison: Liberation Library provides books to youth in prison to encourage imagination, self-determination and connection to the outside worlds of their choosing. We believe access to books is a right, not a privilege. We believe books and relationships empower young people to change the criminal justice system. Go, learn, and donate if that’s within your power. A. Continue reading Not Everything Sucks
Yep: Before lifelong activist Florence Reece took the stage to sing her now-iconic labor anthems, she sat at the kitchen table writing those songs from the perspective as a mother and wife—and as a union agitator. “Unofficial social worker” Edith Easterling leveraged her local knowledge, and the federal resources she gained access to as a staffer for the anti-poverty program known as Appalachian Volunteers, to launch her own personal war on poverty at home in Pike County, Kentucky, with the Marrowbone Folk School—and saw her daughter Sue Ella follow her footsteps straight into the civil rights movement via multiracial youth … Continue reading The Women Have Always Been Here
It’s almost like everything Fox says is wrong: “I think pretty much everything is overlooked except fighting and doxxing,” Spencer Sunshine, an activist who does counter-organizing against the far right, tells me. “There is a huge amount of other work that people can – and do – do! Some of these actions include removing fascist propaganda, making anti-racist flyers and stickers, doing educational work about white nationalist organizing, raising money and doing direct support for imprisoned anti-fascist activists, aiding the victims of far-right violence, holding memorial events for murder victims and genocides, and pressuring local businesses to refuse to allow … Continue reading Real Antifa
Thanks to your generosity, First Drafters, you paid for Christmas gifts for 85 KIDS. The money you raised for the St. Hyacinth Food Pantry bought gift cards, toys, games, mittens and other necessary stuff for the children whose parents shop there each month. I’m heading up tomorrow to help them sort through some more donated things, but this is the nicest part: They’ll all get something new and nice for the holidays, thanks to you! They’ll be able to go get a snack or a treat or something frivolous with their friends without having to worry about it for once. … Continue reading Lookit What You Did!
I’m not one for body language analysis when the shit that comes out of Trump’s mouth-anus is so horrific but honestly, the way he turns away from Nancy while she’s talking and looks at Chuck like, “women, amirite?” should be in some kind of Man-seum. President Trump argues with Nancy Pelosi over government funding and potential shutdown. Pelosi: “I think the American people recognize that we must keep government open … that we should not have a Trump shutdown.” Trump: “A what? Did you say Trump?” https://t.co/nTeGObvgKi pic.twitter.com/v8FbbPEyKR — ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) December 11, 2018 At this point not … Continue reading Big Gavel Energy
I thought of Sue and Kim this morning: They were standing by a lamp post, this middle-aged couple. They could have been my parents, in another life. They could have been yours. Sue and Kim. He retired after 33 years working for the state. She still worked for the state, on a temporary contract that kept getting extended. They’d had pay freezes for half a dozen years, when they didn’t have pay cuts. They weren’t getting wealthy on their pensions. They weren’t sporting $60 haircuts. They lived in a small town. They were trying to hold on to what they … Continue reading You Can Run On For a Long Time
I voted last week, voted early, to get it out of the way and not have to worry about getting up early or staying out late. I’m coming to the end of a serious hell-period at work and Mr. A is leaving tonight for a week overseas, and the time change is fucking with Kick’s sleep in a way it never has before, and it didn’t seem sensible to leave this to chance. I didn’t expect it to make me feel like a superhero or anything. I’ve been in the streets every other weekend, family beside me, against misogyny and … Continue reading Go Tell That Long Tongue Liar
Well, who DOESN’T feel helpless this morning? Friend of Blog Jude points us to this fundraiser being held in Madison, Wis. for the Trans Law Help Center, a volunteer legal aid clinic helping people dealing with the Trump administration’s ever-erupting volcano of bullshit. If you can’t attend, I’ll match the first $100 in donations to the center, run through Community Justice Inc, just link to a pic of your receipt in the comments. Fuck the fascists. A. Continue reading Do Something Right Now
In the worst times, people fought back: The Bund created youth groups, newspapers, illegal schools, and a courier service that transmitted news across occupied Poland; the latter’s operatives exchanged information at soup kitchens that the Bund set up as cover. Money came from New York-based organizations like the Jewish Labor Committee (founded by Vladeck), smuggled by Jewish girls pale enough to pass as Polish gentiles. Later, that money paid for hiding places and guns. After October 1940, when Nazis began herding Warsaw’s Jews into the Ghetto, the Bund organized the teeming tenements into committees dedicated to cultural, as well as … Continue reading People Have Always Fought Back
Whenever Black Lives Matter does anything in downtown Chicago, where, you know, people pay attention to stuff, the local newspaper’s highly paid scolds bitch that the young activists never “protest in their own communities” and ask where their attention is to the problems people in Chicago’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods. Right here, you smug jackwagons: The location of the food box was picked when members of Black Lives Matter Chicago, who at the time were volunteering at the Bronzeville Community Garden, learned people in the community were going hungry, Ethan said. So they decided to commit to stocking the box with … Continue reading Not Everything Sucks: Free Food Edition
This kind of thing spread across the Twitters during the hours when it looked certain, instead of just likely, that the GOP was going to put a rapist on the Supreme Court: Had Democrats stolen a supreme court seat, Republicans would have shut down he country. Had Democrats elected a traitor, and then tried to kill the investigation of his crime of aiding our enemy, Republicans would have shut down the country. We give speeches. — John Aravosis 🇺🇸 (@aravosis) September 28, 2018 And, I’m sorry, but no, they would not have shut down the country. They would have shut … Continue reading We’ve been showing up. Every damn day.
Globe. Twitter. Colbert, where he was just idiotically charming and inspiring as usual: He’s 18 feet tall and I love him so much. I love how boringly passionate he is about the actual, you know, COUNTRY, and his job, and all the ordinary stuff you’re supposed to care about when you work for us. I’m so glad he talked about trying to bring McCain onto the ticket in 2004, because I feel like that was a real chance to stop what’s happened since, and not enough people recognized it at the time. Fuck, I will never be over the 2004 election. … Continue reading My Boyfriend John Kerry Has a Book Out and is Thus Everywhere
We all have relatives whose politics we dislike. These family ties have become increasingly strained with the advent of the crude dictator wannabe, Trumpberius aka the Kaiser of Chaos. There seems to be something in the air today that led two men I’d never heard of go after two relatives that we know and loathe. First, Stephen Miller’s uncle Dr. David Glosser wrote a scathing article about his nephew for Politico. It may be the best thing I’ve ever read in that deservedly ridiculed online publication. After detailing their family history, Uncle David let his hypocritical nephew have it: I … Continue reading Family Smackdown Day
You all were amazing with the fundraiser this week, have some Slade toesies. Every year we try to raise what we need to pay our hosting fees, whatever wear and tear there is on our laptops, sometimes a project or two, and every year I think well, this is it, they’re all gonna tell me to fuck off and they don’t care anymore and it’s time to shut this pop stand down and go do whatever it is people do when they’re not glued to the news. And every year, every ask, every project, you all come right through. For … Continue reading Sunday Catblogging: And Thank You!
People will always try to save each other. Always: ‘My 15-year-old son, one of the best students in our province, decided to take up arms and go to battle without informing me or his father. It was a big shock for me. I thought that my son would go to battle and die. For around 20 days I searched for him.’ Fatima al-Bahandly was able to convince tens of other young men to disarm, along with her own son. She is the director of Al Firdaws Society, an NGO founded in 2003 in Basra, Iraq. She works to demobilise and … Continue reading Not Everything Sucks: Iraqi Edition
Those of you moaning that nothing will ever change? Read this before you tape your pieholes shut: Love is a lawyer tirelessly devoted to an immigrant sector most in need of legal aid: the rural one. In 2014, she launched the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, which serves immigrant families where there is traditionally no legal aid. Love and her team of three other lawyers go out to the people—via a roaming RV office, community center, and church pop-ups, and by organizing community leaders. The whole thing is amazing. We are saving one another every single day, and always will. Donate … Continue reading Not Everything Sucks
I’ve been seeing variations on this theme all week, like the party that isn’t in power right now should somehow magically gain power and stop family separation. Well, they’re sitting in. They’re marching. They’re giving speeches. They’re fighting with the only fight they have. If you want them to be able to mount real opposition, we need more of them. Could one of them filibuster? Sure. Stand on the floor all night telling refugee stories. Could one of them start a hunger strike, mount civil disobedience over and above what’s going on already, could they find a creative way to … Continue reading WHAT ARE THE DEMOCRATS DOING?!!?
Screw Rudy and George and the pile of burning metal they rode into myth on: For Rudy, 9/11 was like a Frank Capra flick in which he has a mid-life opportunity to become a good person. But the movie has a surprise ending. Because after 2 to 3 weeks of suspense he remains a bad person. — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 28, 2018 The problem with this movie isn’t so much that Rudy was shitty and then wasn’t. It’s that anyone on earth can show up in a crisis and we think that proves anything at all. Think about it. … Continue reading How to Rise
At my ‘hood’s Farmer’s Market recently Kick and I spent half an hour talking bees with this organization, which manages hives all over the West Side of Chicago and makes delicious honey. I thought of that when I read this story: Brown formed a partnership with Boe Luther and Wallace Kirby, two gardeners from Ward 7 who started Hustlaz 2 Harvesters to offer people released from incarceration ways out of poverty into urban agriculture careers and other social enterprises. Brown, a certified master composter for the city, helped Luther and Kirby transform an empty lot into the Dix Street community garden as … Continue reading Not Everything Sucks, Farming Edition