Weather Underground, Get Down, Get Dirty

bring the war home.png

I watched a documentary on the Weather Underground and it really hit home at how we're all just spinning our fucking wheels.

The Weather Underground grew out of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) movement that started in the mid sixties as a white conjunction of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam antiwar movement. After years of what some deemed futile protests against the Vietnam war and the capitalist establishment, the W.U. formed to take it to another level. Rage, violence. Stop the murdering military machine at all costs.

"Murdering military machine". Sound familiar?

Think Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street. Afghanistan war - 15 years. Iraq war - 13 years. War OF Terror - 15 years. Libya war - 6 years. Syria war - 5 years. Yemen war - 3 years.

Vietnam, SDS, Afghanistan, Martin Luther King Jr., Black Lives Matter.

Fascist Pigs. Fascist Pigs.

Hillary Clinton's emails. Worse than Watergate. Watergate, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Emailgate. And you think we're close to breaking these fuckers?

Forty to fifty years later and we're still fighting the same exact fights, still complaining about the same exact things and still not able to do anything about it. The killing goes on, the Rule goes on, the power still does not belong to the people.

Power to the People! We're hardly whispering that now. Can you hear it? Shit.

Maybe when we realize we can't allow this political system to rule our lives and that we need to rule our own lives, we can finally break free from our chains.

[video:https://youtu.be/PtT92kJKD9A]

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Pricknick's picture

Always in the way.
So proud.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Big Al's picture

in the early 90's? when long hair went out and crew cuts or shaved heads came in and I thought that was it, we lost. The re-emergence of the long hair in the last decade has given me hope and I think the hippies are out there but we need another happening.

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Wink's picture

hair look like holy hell. Case in point: Willie Nelson. Is why I cut my hair,
got myself a "modified mullet," crew cut in the front to the crown, longer in the back.
Wish I adopted it 40 years ago.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Pricknick's picture

Then came the mullet.
Now I'm back to just letting the shag grow.
Another happening is happening now. Many just don't see it.
Many of the long hairs of the sixties and early seventies refused to wash their hair so as to not pollute the waters. They called us dirty. Now clean water is getting scarce unless you buy it in a plastic bottle.
We brought forth the sex and drugs and thoughts of peace that so terrified the elders. We came in friendship and were vilified with laws that prohibited all but group think.
And now? They wish we would wash the deplorable off and accept that what they know is best?
I can hear the follicles going into overdrive. There will be no peace.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

WindDancer13's picture

A reminder of a time when there were many programs that were available in prime time that dealt with the issues of the day and journalists knew what news and ethics were. The backlash from the 60s has gone on too long.

[video:https://youtu.be/9Q6Z4OMjZ8E]

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

it was always burning since the world's been turning. Earworm. Whenever I hear Billy Joel I think "bubblegum", can't help it. This one goes on and on and on and on, singing the essay words now. Thanks.

Giant Meteor 2016
epidemicstupidity.png

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terriertribe's picture

No commentary needed, or sufficient. Thanks Big Al for the reminder that sometimes it takes grit.

[video:https://youtu.be/MGxjIBEZvx0]

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Now interviewing signature candidates. Apply within.

People had bumper stickers that said "The pump don't work 'cause a vandal took the handle" and this might be a good time to resurrect that slogan. This election is reminding me more and more of that time - the constant dirty tricks being revealed as well as the deeply entrenched denial.

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terriertribe's picture

god knows when, but you're doing it again

.. or you should be anyway...

[video: https://youtu.be/ocro10V0hUc]

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Now interviewing signature candidates. Apply within.

I think violence accomplished nothing and discredited the peace movement. I thought then, as I do now, that the terrorists who claimed to be for peace were agents provacatuers, CIA or other covert actors, acting to destroy public support for the peace movement.

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As I remember, the Days of Rage were counterproductive.
Nixon exploited the violence, and was able to hang it on Humphrey and dems.

As someone who had been around the movement a few years by then, I personally felt the violence was an admission that we were at a dead end. The civil rights aspect of new left had been splintered with Core and SNCC expulsion of whites a few years prior. The war went on. We were f**ked and knew it. I found the violence pointless. Yes, cops were often behind it. But many of us on the left were just frustrated, angry. kids by this time.

The surviving WU leadership will speak for themselves. Worth a little digging. imo. thx

edit. (typo,grammar)

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Christine.MI's picture

One of my favorite bands from the 80's-The The

Matt Johnson-prescient genius?
"It's war, she cried, it's war, she cried, this is war!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6wa-qOb8eI Another version from Royal Albert Hall show.

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riverlover's picture

Wheel-spinning is correct, what happened? I now feel shameful for not protesting more.

edit spello in subject line

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

"I can't believe I'm still protesting this shit!"

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Big Al's picture

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"All over this land."

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