Construction Maison

There’s been a lot happening this month.  I don’t have any great plans of action as to the way forward, but I have some knowledge of the background, in terms of how we got here, that seem worth sharing.  Basically I just need to process, and thought I’d do that out loud.  So here are a few reflections on the events of August, 2017, that may be intimately related to one another. Note:  any links that appear below will take you to songs on the subject, mostly written in the past few weeks… *     *     * The Spanish Civil War has been discussed in the media more in the past few weeks than I can remember in my lifetime.  The media has said more nice things about anarchists in the past few weeks than ever in my lifetime as well, and I’m pretty sure they have covered protests more lately than at any time since 1970 or so. At the beginning of the month I wrote a song, “Rojava,” after getting encrypted messages from the front lines of the war against Islamic State in Syria, sent by an anarchi...

Published time: 14 Aug, 2017 22: 47 Edited time : 15 Aug, 2017 11:58 Crowds have gathered inside and outside of Trump Tower in New York to take a stand against the president’s comments after a weekend of deadly violence in Virginia, where white supremacist groups and counter-demonstrators clashed. Hundreds of people gathered outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, chanting, “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Donald Trump has got to go!” “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA,” “Not my president” and “Love, not hate, will make America great .” Inside Trump Tower , “Hate has no home here” was seen on a pink board held up to the windows. Other protesters held aloft signs that read “Too little. Too Late!” in reference to president Trump ’s initial criticism of violence “on many sides” following a two-day gathering in Charlottesville, which ended in tragedy. On Saturday, a participant of the alt-right Unite the Right event killed Heather Heyer , 32, and injured 19 people after mowing through a group of ant...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — The man accused of plowing a car into a crowd protesting a white supremacist rally in Virginia had been photographed hours earlier carrying the emblem of one of the hate groups that participated in the event. Vanguard America on Sunday denied any association with the suspect, even as a separate hate group involved in Saturday’s rally pledged on social media to organize future events that would be “bigger than Charlottesville.” The mayor of Charlottesville and political leaders of all political stripes vowed to combat the hate groups and urged President Donald Trump to forcefully denounce the organizations that had promoted the protest against the removal of a Confederate statue. Some of those groups specifically cited Trump ’s election after a campaign of racially charged rhetoric as validation of their beliefs. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced late Saturday that federal authorities would pursue a civil rights investigation into the circums...

The same day it voted to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park — a move that white supremacists descended on the city to protest — the City Council did something that got much less publicity. It unanimously approved a $ 4 million spending plan to address racial disparities . Over the next five years, about $2.5 million is to be used to redevelop public housing ; $250,000 will go to expanding a park in a black neighborhood; and $20,000 a year will pay for G.E.D. classes for public housing residents . Photo K. Ian Grandison, a University of Virginia professor, with a map of what the rapidly gentrifying city looked like in the 1920s. Credit Matt Eich for The New York Times Activists call it reparations for the destruction of Vinegar Hill and other black neighborhoods here. “I’m hoping that other elected officials and policy makers from across the country can see it’s not enough to just move a damn statue,” said Wes Bellamy, the vice mayor, who proposed the plan. “I think symbol...

Florida is the nation's repository for scumbags, a weird little drain trap that snares the frauds and lunatics who rattle through the nation's plumbing before the United States jettisons them out to sea. So it makes sense the state would be filled with its fair share of neo-Nazis. What would Florida be without its own special breed of meth-using assholes hellbent on ethnic cleansing? In the wake of the terror attack in Charlottesville, where a neo-Nazi killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer when he rammed a car into a group of anti-racism counterprotesters, many politicians claimed the protesters didn't "represent" America or its values. But at its core, this country was founded by racist idiots reliant on a horrid system of subjugation in order to make a living. Those ideas never died — and there are plenty of recent Florida cases that show why it's important to keep fighting these cretins: For the past year, Brandon Russell has saluted the flag and worn the u...