Journal of. Published under the auspices of the HiSky* Trust, founded 1957 to promote disorder. (*Hiss-Key)
Mother Jones used to march down the street to protest. Never looking back to see if anybody was following her. They called her the most dangerous woman in the world.
I almost put her in my novel, Lonesome Travelers. From before. Before she did those things. When her whole family died in a plague. And she sat in the house with their bodies. Mark on the door. Plague. Waiting.
Happy holidays, everybody!
An excerpt from the novel Lonesome Travelers
“I’ll take the shooting. I’m used to that. I’ve been shot a few times in the past, and I guess I can stand it again.”
—Joe Hill
I was born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund but more commonly I was also known as Joseph Hillström. But to my people I am known as Joe Hill. Always will be. Born in Sweden, 1879. Killed, some say, in the unholy state of Utah, by the Starvation Army, 1915. Still, here I am. Very revealing. My popularity? As it is, I attribute it to the value of my message. Do you know my friend Fred Hampton? He said, “You can kill a revolutionary but you can’t kill a revolution…you can jail a liberator but you can’t jail liberation.” I wish I’da said that. But I got a lot of good ones myself, and I begrudge nothing from my good comrades.
That is what I said, about getting shot, to the judge in Salt Lake who sentenced me to death because I was a revolutionary. That wasn’t the crime, it rarely is. Subterfuge is the greatest ally of the oppressors. Smoke and mirrors. Carrots and sticks. Illusions. Truth the greatest aim of the revolution. The truth of the Unity of all life. Forget that and risk the future. Betray the revolution. Those who control the narrative try to drown out the signal. Power is very corrosive. The replacement they offer is plentiful without being satisfying, profits out of balance. A comrade, regardless of the propaganda, is an individual dedicated to Unity and charged to work toward the elimination of all needless want.
You know what I have? A song in my heart. Each chorus built of individual voices, brought together for a higher purpose. A guitar has multiple strings which work together to strum. A ballad of love a lament of martyrdom. If one knows no words they can always hum. In time the words will reemerge to make manifest.
A song is repeated more than any speech. It gets stuck in the head. It trans-mutates. It triggers. Triggering is the full focus of the true artist, who is by necessity a subversive. A revolutionary. A true artist is so far along the trail they are as likely to be hated as lauded. Revolution requires time.
My friend Thomas Merton says, “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” Both important pastimes. Sometimes the most productive thing is to pass the time.
A lot of my songs are parodies of the songs of the Starvation Army. A counter-point. And which are remembered? Mine are. I made Casey Jones a union scab. I pointed out the irrelevancy of pie-in-the-sky on an empty stomach. A karmic I-owe-you dishonored.
But the act of creation allows one to change a thing into another, to trans-mutate. For all intents and relevant purposes. There is nothing but change. Stability is an illusion. There is the past, the future, the now, the then, and the ideal. Some look in the past to find the ideal, some to the future. And they will fight over it. Fight over something which isn’t there, which exists only in the boundaries of the mind. Fluid. Even the ideal of the past never really existed. We almost always remember better the good. Or envision it. But sometimes you have to look at the bad. There is no other way to address it. Ignoring it with your head in the sand, digging down to make a hole, a home, albeit temporary, is rarely the best option. It is best to have an ideal. A good one. Always a good one. The best. Something to live up to.
I always tried to make friends wherever I went. It was easy for me, in a way, because I brought the music. Still, I was poor, an itinerant worker. So were my people, my audience. Listeners, backup singers. I joined the IWW, the Wobblies, the One Big Union. I cartooned for their newspaper. Our newspaper. And I wrote songs printed in their Little Red Songbook. Our Little Red Songbook. A songbook for all the people. Many printings, still sought after today.
I was an immigrant. A Swedish speaker. But I learned English as I traveled the country and became an artist in a new culture. But we were hated. By some. Loved and aided by others, those disposed to Love.
When a town, controlled by the robber barons of the local industry (and were there ever a shortage of such!), declared the union illegal, when they pledged to jail all unionists, the call went out through the IWW and the Wobblies surged to town. We filled the jails. We overwhelmed the system. We broke them when they tried to break us. We stripped them of their only dear possession: money. And if they would not share it they would lose some by protecting it, watch it drain away. But they took solace they were still not sharing! And what is money but an imaginary marker of time, time transferred from the worker to the robber barons so they can stockpile other people’s time. Think of themselves as timekeepers. Regulators. Lords. Leave the time to their heirs. Build shrines to their own glory as many starve. We would not allow such oppression to stand unchallenged.
I could not be there, but in 1919 the city of Seattle stopped for five days in a general strike of fellow workers. Wages frozen by years of what they called a “Great” war, an innovation on the old, the authorities were content to starve the workers to feed the war. And the workers rose up. It was part of the larger struggle, same as the Diggers on Saint George’s Hill in 1649. Two years later, in 1921, the sailors joined the people in Kronstadt in a rebellion against the Soviet government because they also failed to feed the people, having established a new class structure to replace the old, as the revolution spun. Out of control.
I provided anthems of resistance which reverberate through time.
I observe, report, pass it on. Pass it on.
The world is divided between the haves and the have-nots. Their numbers are not equitable. The larger class serves the smaller. The larger class makes possible the luxury of the smaller. The system functions to serve the smaller class. They control it. It is sold as the natural order.
Many are employed as servants, but over time things do change. While today there are still many servants employed by the leisure class, more and more workers toil on factory floors. Construction. Building the future worker’s state under the nose of the taskmasters.
Times change. The hermit is on the wane. Hermitages. Men (men only for it is a sexist trade, as men are not employed in whore-houses, to each opposite work) employed by the manor born to live in a shack (a hermitage) on the outskirts of the estate. Near the road in. To be seen, but not heard. Split from the herd. Kept isolated. Alienated from his fellow workers as well as his product. What is the product? Possession. Alienated even from human touch. That is one way to impede the spread of the resistance, One Big Union.
But no more – they won’t even let a man alone!
Now one must be cramped alone together, closed in, alone in the crowd, still alienated from the fruits of their own labor. Revolution. Revolution. Revolution.
I was arrested.
I was not charged as a revolutionary, though, as I say, that was the true charge. It was a matter of the honor of a good woman.
So when they asked, and they asked, “Did you kill that man? Did not he shoot you and wound you?” In various formulations I said, “I am innocent of this charge. I have robbed no store and shot no shopkeep. My injury is honest; as am I.” For this was a different matter which were none of their concern and risked the reputation of a fine lady. And I had earned this gunshot wound piercing my lung in order to protect her honor, as I would face the next.
I would not tell them the truth. The story of the triangle. The woman. The other man. Which was nowhere near the shopkeep’s end.
The boy eyewitness, after brought to look at me, said, “That’s not him at all!” But he changed his song when they reasoned with him. Though I had no motive. And there had been no robbery. And I was not there.
I will tell you, brothers and sisters, to not waste time mourning my body but to busy yourselves organizing the greater resistance.
I told my friend Big Bill Haywood, “Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t wish to be caught dead in Utah.” He told me he would arrange to have my ashes divided up into 600 small packets to be mailed to union locals around the world.
I walked with them to the yard.
When the man shouted, “Ready… Aim…”
I shouted, “Fire! Go on and Fire!”
Last Will of Joe Hill
My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kind don’t need to fuss and moan —
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”
My body? Ah, If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will.
Good luck to all of you.
—Joe Hill, 1915
6/4/89 is the Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. As this is being posted the whole of the USA is engulfed in violence as police have been called out and they have acted to brutally suppress peaceful protests against endemic police violence.
They just piss away their revolutionary history. Blank stares. Red Haikou. Hope of the world. Revolutionaries came from all over the world to the bustling streets. But if you ask about it today they look at you with blank eyes. They don’t understand it anymore. Their own history. Gone. In the wind.
Or it’s become so garbled as a memory it is now meaningless. “Foreign advisers on matters industrial.”
I came here only because they are evacuating foreigners from Beijing. It was by chance I was where I was, in a hotel across from Tiananmen Square, with the window looking straight down. A western journalist specializing in the history and economics of the communist systems. My name is Harrison E. Salisbury.
When I left for China, I said that the People’s Army was different than any other in the world. They were of the people. And would not strike out at the people. But I later learned that the army had been forbidden to read or listen to news broadcasts from months before. For pain of court-martial. I said they would not but they did. I saw it from the window. I heard the shots, repeating. Excessive. Terror shooting. They will obey orders to kill their own children. Gun them down in the street. Roll tanks over them. Officially they’re saying a few soldiers have been hurt. Some equipment damaged.
An announcer on the radio shouted thousands had died and was then immediately yanked off the air.
They refer to the students as “bandits,” what Chiang Kaishek used to call Mao’s forces. But what is there to steal in the public square? What is there that is not open to all? A common treasury. Fought over.
The students were supporters, like the sailors of Kronstadt, of a democratic communism. The Square encampments were festooned with red flags waving in the breeze.
But they are gone now. I saw the last I shall ever see, walk dignified toward some men in fine attire, speak to them in a dignified manner to no response, as if he were invisible, and then he turned and walked away with his head high. I do not know what became of him. He slid between cars and was gone in the heat.
I talked to some locals. They saw the military coming, guns, tanks. They shouted at them not to go to the Square. Not to harm their own people. These were the residents, out in the night, smoking, talking. Bullets rain down on them. The Emergency services came quickly to get the wounded. They did not have room for the dead. They had been told to give no aid, to let the protesters die, but they came anyway. But they had no room for the dead. And the Hospitals were overflowing. The dead must care for their own.
The students had held a vote the night before, to stay or go. A minority voted to stay. So everyone stayed. Many were weak from hunger, and it is easy to imagine they did not move as the tanks came in the night, bodies wrapped in sleeping bags, they knew death was coming. Defeat. They were on a train with no more stops, on a crash-course with no possible exit. Their only hope is that their remembrance will one day…
There can be no peaceful transition. Of Power.
They just used bullets to prove they were nothing to be laughed at. In desperation.
In the morning a man danced in the street, one-on-one, his partner cold as steel. He led the tank, back-and-forth. A dance on the street with heavy arms. Confusion. He climbed onto his dance partner. To have a conversation. To whisper in an ear receptive. He left. I do not know what happened to him. He looked like anyone. Out of place. Like he did not belong here. And then he left.
Quickly news spread like a wildFire. Here is how:
In the end, no hope, runners split up in all directions. They walked far away. They went to places where they were not known. Better to not be traced. They appeared in front of strangers. Mysterious. They told their story. Like ghosts. To be believed or not. Then they disappeared. Repeat. In this way sparks branch out across the countryside, starting many brushFires, left wild to burn, unstoppable. It is as Mao wrote in his Little Red Book.
This was explained to me by a woman I met in a province who told me of the student’s gambit. A tactical move meant to keep their idea going as long as it was required, until they would raise the struggle from the ashes.
🔥
“That was a long time ago,” says the attendant.
“It depends on how you measure time,” says the Griot. “I take a long view, myself.”
“How long did this go on, these sparks?”
“Comrade! It is still happening now. Have you not heard? Have you not heard?”
Hark, dear friends, a terrible fate
America ran down the sewer grate
Beavers shouted “damn!” But it was too late
They were attending a party at 10,000 a plate
“What to do?” said the otter to its mate
“Why I otter…” was the reply-but it was too late
The Dragon said, “We’ll consolidate!”
“We can own this parched landscape if we concoctitrate!”
“If anyone tries to stop us we’ll denunciate!”
“Berate. Sublimate. Keep both eyes on Homeplate. Trust in me and I will make this land again great!”
“The first thing we’ll do is seal up those drains.
So we can keep all the water when it rains.”
And the creatures sang the dragon’s grand refrains
And they praised his renowned business brains
So they sealed up those drains
And muddied those plains
And reminded that only a traitor complains
About the mixture of clean water with sewer drains
And how drinking sewage causes stomach pains
But complaints, the dragon, he disdains
For it is his golden reign.
Let it rain golden showers.
Let it rain. Let it rain.
Since Bree Newsome took down the Confederate battle flag isn’t she a war hero? A living civil war veteran?
Only non-racists get to eat ice cream.
She, with the help of Jimmy Tyson scaled the flagpole at the capitol of South Carolina and removed the Confederate battle flag placed there because the state of South Carolina is unhappy that they are forced to live in a multicultural society. A group of supporters observed from the ground. But the state of South Carolina put the flag back up less than an hour later. In time for an important rally for white supremacy. They actually had a rally for white supremacy scheduled that morning. It was on the schedule. Someone called and said, “We’re coming for a rally for white power on the capitol grounds. Is the Confederate battle flag still waving proudly?” And the clerk in the South Carolina office of white supremacist coordination and battle flag raising said, “The Confederate battle flag is waving proudly every day here. This is South Carolina.” Then he (or she, they’ve come a long way in South Carolina) said “White Power!” And the rally organizer answered “White Power!” And they each hung up.
Taking down the confederate battle flag, on the other hand, was an unscheduled act. So the state of South Carolina have arrested Bree Newsome and Jimmy Tyson and charged them with “defacing monuments on state capitol grounds” regardless of the fact that someone already defaced the state capitol by flying the battle flag of the Confederacy, the historic enemy of the USA, like the Third Reich or ISIS. And until Bree Newsome and Jimmy Tyson came along, no one had the civic pride to do something about it.
Would it have made any difference if they called ahead and scheduled the clean up? I’m just confused about what it is that is really bothering South Carolina. I don’t think most states would mind if I went to their capitols and helped dispose of some trash, on my own time. Depending on the state I might even be awarded some sort of civic pride badge.
So, South Carolina is holding Bree Newsome and Jimmy Tyson, US civil war POWs, and threatening them with up to 3 years in prison as political prisoners and up to a $5,000 fine for non-littering.
But isn’t South Carolina insisting on flying the Confederate battle flag treason?
But the important thing is that the white supremacists had a nice rally at the capitol. The confederate battle flag was waving. There was some potato salad and other white foods, like white bread and mayonnaise. And everyone had a nice time and nobody got killed.
Supporters of the Confederate battle flag, claiming they are being misrepresented would now like to have a national discussion about that flag and what it really means. What it means is, if that is your flag, you are a loser.
The US already fought the civil war. If some southern states insist on fighting it again they will go down in history as two time losers.
This will not end well. Except for Bree Newsome and Jimmy Tyson. They are going to get veteran benefits dating back to May 09, 1865.
http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/DropTheFlagDropTheCharges/
* The comparison of some southern states to Germany is a flawed analogy, I admit. Germany is ashamed of its disreputable past.
David Raffin
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