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Where the Fraser River Flows
(Tune: “Where the River Shannon Flows”)
Fellow workers pay attention to what I’m going to mention,
For it is the fixed intention of the Workers of the World.
And I hope you’ll all be ready, true-hearted, brave and steady,
To gather ’round our standard when the Red Flag is unfurled.
CHORUS
Where the Fraser river flows, each fellow worker knows,
They have bullied and oppressed us, but still our Union grows.
And we’re going to find a way, boys, for shorter hours and better pay, boys;
And we’re going to win the day, boys; where the river Fraser flows.
For the gunny-sack contractors have all been dirty actors,
And they’re not our benefactors, each fellow worker knows.
So we’ve got to stick together in fine or dirty weather,
And we will show no white feather, where the Fraser river flows.
New the boss the law is stretching, bulls and pimps he’s fetching,
And they are a fine collection, as Jesus only knows.
But why their mothers reared them, and why the devil spared them,
Are questions we can’t answer, where the Fraser river flows.
Why should any worker be without the necessities of life when ten men can produce enough for a hundred?
Joe Hill
(1879-1915)
Where the Fraser River Flows
(song)
Songs of the Workers (15th edition) (1919)
Industrial Workers of the World
Where the Fraser River Flows by Joe Hill (uncredited). Onward, “One Big Union!”
The tune to this song, “Where the River Shannon Flows” (1906) written by James J. Russell.
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Workers of the World,
Awaken
Workers of the world, awaken!
Break your chains. demand your rights.
AII the wealth you make is taken
By exploiting parasites.
Shall you kneel in deep submission
From your cradles to your graves?
ls the height of your ambition
To be good and willing slaves?
CHORUS:
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
Fight for your own emancipation;
Arise, ye slaves of every nation.
In One Union grand.
Our little ones for bread are crying,
And millions are from hunger dying;
The end the means is justifying,
‘Tis the final stand.
If the workers take a notion,
They can stop all speeding trains;
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains.
Every wheel in the creation,
Every mine and every mill ,
Fleets and armies of the nation,
Will at their command stand still.
Join the union, fellow workers,
Men and women, side by side;
We will crush the greedy shirkers
Like a sweeping, surging tide;
For united we are standing,
But divided we will fall;
Let this be our understanding —
“All for one and one for all.”
Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might;
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying,
We’ll have freedom, love and health.
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers’ Commonwealth.
Joe Hill
(1879-1915)
Workers of the World, Awaken
(song)
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The Rebel Girl
There are women of many descriptions
In this queer world, as everyone knows.
Some are living in beautiful mansions,
And are wearing the finest of clothes.
There are blue blooded queens and princesses,
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl;
But the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
CHORUS:
That’s the Rebel Girl, that’s the Rebel Girl!
To the working class she’s a precious pearl.
She brings courage, pride and joy
To the fighting Rebel Boy.
We’ve had girls before, but we need some more
In the Industrial Workers of the World.
For it’s great to fight for freedom
With a Rebel Girl.
Yes, her hands may be hardened from labor,
And her dress may not be very fine;
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind.
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance she’ll hurl;
For the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
Joe Hill
(1879-1915)
The Rebel Girl
Song
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UN should demand release of jailed
journalists amid COVID-19 pandemic
CPJ is calling on several UN special mandate holders to join its effort to secure the release of all jailed journalists globally in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. At least 250 journalists are behind bars for their work, according to CPJ’s most recent prison census.
• Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) – 11 April 2020
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Committee to Protect Journalists calls on governments to release all journalists from their prisons. On behalf of more than 250 journalists behind bars, we call on authorities to free these political prisoners immediately and unconditionally.
For journalists jailed in countries affected by the virus, freedom is now a matter of life and death. Imprisoned journalists have no control over their surroundings, cannot choose to isolate, and are often denied necessary medical care.
The World Health Organization states that “People deprived of their liberty, and those living or working in enclosed environments in their close proximity, are likely to be more vulnerable to the COVID-19 disease than the general population.”
Global press freedom and human rights organizations are calling on world leaders to immediately release all imprisoned journalists. Add your voice to the call and sign our petition today!
The Committee to Protect Journalists submitted a call to several U.N. special mandate holders yesterday encouraging them to join CPJ’s effort to secure the release of all jailed journalists globally in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
# See here website CPJ’s petition
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Ta-Ra-Ra Boom De-Ay
I had a job once threshing wheat, worked sixteen hours with hands and feet.
And when the moon was shining bright, they kept me working all the night.
One moonlight night, I hate to tell, I “accidentally” slipped and fell.
My pitchfork went right in between some cog wheels of that thresh-machine.
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!
It made a noise that way.
And wheels and bolts and hay,
Went flying every way.
That stingy rube said, “Well!
A thousand gone to hell.”
But I did sleep that night,
I needed it all right.
Next day that stingy rube did say, “I’ll bring my eggs to town today;
You grease my wagon up, you mutt, and don’t forget to screw the nut.”
I greased his wagon all right, but I plumb forgot to screw the nut,
And when he started on that trip, the wheel slipped off and broke his hip.
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!
It made a noise that way,
That rube was sure a sight,
And mad enough to fight;
His whiskers and his legs
Were full of scrambled eggs;
I told him, “That’s too bad —
I’m feeling very sad.”
And then that farmer said, “You turk! I bet you are an I-Won’t Work.”
He paid me off right there, By Gum! So I went home and told my chum.
Next day when threshing did commence, my chum was Johnny on the fence;
And ‘pon my word, that awkward kid, he dropped his pitchfork, like I did.
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!
It made a noise that way,
And part of that machine
Hit Reuben on the bean.
He cried, “Oh me, oh my;
I nearly lost my eye.”
My partner said, “You’re right —
It’s bedtime now, good night.”
But still that rube was pretty wise, these things did open up his eyes.
He said, “There must be something wrong; I think I work my men too long.”
He cut the hours and raised the pay, gave ham and eggs for every day,
Now gets his men from union hall, and has no “accidents” at all.
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!
That rube is feeling gay;
He learned his lesson quick,
Just through a simple trick.
For fixing rotten jobs
And fixing greedy slobs,
This is the only way,
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!
Joe Hill
(1879-1915)
Ta-Ra-Ra Boom De-Ay
Song
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Russian activist and artist, Yulia Tsvetkova, is facing prosecution and harassment for defending women’s and LGBTI rights.
She has been under house arrest since 22 November, under absurd charges of “production and dissemination of pornography” for her drawings of the female body. She is facing up to six years in prison if convicted. Yulia Tsvetkova is a prisoner of conscience and must be immediately and unconditionally released.
Yulia Tsvetkova is an LGBTI and women’s rights activist, artist and stage director, from Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the Russian Far East.
She was detained on 20 November 2019 and put on house arrest two days later, after being charged with the “production and dissemination of pornographic materials”, for making body positive drawings of the female body and sharing them on social media.
Her drawings included pictures of female reproductive organs, and she shared them online as part of her women’s empowerment campaign.
On the day of her arrest, police searched Yulia’s apartment and the children’s educational club where she worked previously. The police seized her electronic devices, documents, and brochures on gender issues. Yulia later said that during the search police officers referred to her as a “lesbian, sex trainer and propagandist leader”.
Yulia has been the target of an overtly homophobic campaign since March 2019, when she was forced to leave Merak, the amateur youth theatre company she worked at, after police launched an investigation into alleged “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors”.
The investigation was launched in reaction to Yulia’s anti-bullying, anti-discrimination play, Blue and Pink.
On 11 December 2019 Yulia was found guilty of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors”, and fined 50,000 rubles (approximately 600 GBP), for serving as the administrator of two LGBTI online communities on the popular Russian social media site, VKontakte.
Both of the online communities were properly marked as “18+”, as required by Russian law. Even under the confines of the homophobic Russian “gay propaganda” legislation, the “offence” should only be valid if the “propaganda” material is targeted at people under the age of 18.
On 17 January, Yulia informed the media that new proceedings had been opened against her, under the same Article of the Code of Administrative Offences that she had previously been charged under. This time she was being prosecuted for posting a drawing she made depicting two same-sex couples with child on social media, alongside the statement, “Family is where love is. Support LGBT+ families”.
She published the drawing in support of a same-sex couple who were forced to flee Russia with their adopted children after authorities threatened to remove their children from their custody.
# visit Website Amnesty International UK for more information and urgent actions
# support amnesty international
# take urgent action now
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Originally handcrafted in 1971 as a gift for friends, this edition of Joni Mitchell’s best-loved poems, illustrations, watercolours and hand-lettered song lyrics is now publicly available for the first time. The perfect present for any Joni Mitchell fan.
Joni Mitchell is a Canadian singer-songwriter whose songs have helped define an era and a generation. She has received many accolades, including nine Grammy Awards, and has released 19 studio albums, including Blue in 1971. Mitchell, with roots in visual art, has designed most of her own album covers. Among her numerous honours, she was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002 and was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007.
The result was a handmade book, with only one hundred copies produced, filled with Joni’s hand-written lyrics and reproductions of many of her stunning drawings — portraits, abstracts, random concertgoers, and more.
Each was given to a friend and, until now, the edition has remained private. Today, with Morning Glory on the Vine, Joni’s long-ago personal Christmas present is a present to us all.
A gorgeous compendium of Joni Mitchell’s handwritten lyrics and watercolor paintings, originally handcrafted as a gift for a select group of friends in 1971 and now available to the public for the first time.
In 1971, as her album Blue topped charts around the world, Joni Mitchell crafted one hundred copies of Morning Glory on the Vine as a holiday gift for her closest friends. For this stunningly beautiful book, Joni hand-wrote an exquisite selection of her own lyrics and poems and illustrated them with more than thirty of her original paintings and watercolors. Hand-crafted, signed, and numbered in Los Angeles, the existing copies of this labor of love have rarely been seen in the past half-century.
Now, as Joni celebrates her seventy-fifth birthday, Morning Glory on the Vine: Early Songs and Drawings is available widely for the first time. In this faithfully reproduced facsimile edition, Joni’s best-loved lyrics and poems spill across the pages in her own elegant script. The lively, full-color watercolor paintings depict a superb array of landscapes, still-lifes, portraits of friends, self portraits, innovative abstractions, and more.
All the paintings from the original book are included, along with several additional works that Joni had intended to include for her friends in 1971. Finally, the refreshed volume features an original introduction written by Joni herself. Morning Glory on the Vine is a gorgeous and intimate keepsake and an invitation to explore anew the dazzling, visionary world of Joni Mitchell.
JONI MITCHELL is widely regarded as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of her generation. Her album Blue (1971) is often cited as one of the best albums of all time. Mitchell has won nine Grammys in various categories, including traditional pop, pop music and lifetime achievement. Born in Canada, she now lives in her longtime home of Los Angeles.
From the Publisher:
joni mitchell morning glory on the vine
“I sing my sorrow, and I paint my joy.” – Joni Mitchell
In the early 1970s I used to carry a sketchbook around with me everywhere I went. I drew with colored pens. Once when I was sketching my audience in Central Park, they had to drag me onto the stage. After a while I had quite a collection of drawings. The drawings were becoming more important to me than the music at that time.
I had put the drawings into a ring binder accompanied by hand-written lyrics. Elliot Roberts, my manager, and David Geffen, my agent, took my binder of drawings and lyrics and had a limited edition of books made up.
It’s been a long time coming in making this book public, but we’re publishing it now. Work is meant to be seen, or heard, as the case may be.
–Joni Mitchell, 2019
Morning Glory on the Vine
Early Songs and Drawings
by Joni Mitchell
Hardcover: 136 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
(October 22, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0358181720
ISBN-13: 978-0358181729
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 1.2 x 11 inches
£30.00
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Tujan al-Bukhaiti is a 17-year-old Yemeni refugee. She is being tried in Jordan on charges of ‘blasphemy’ and ‘insulting religious figures’ over her social media posts, including posts by her dad that she has shared. Stopped from going to school
On 11 December 2019 Tujan’s school threatened to expel her for sharing ‘beliefs that do not represent the school’ on her Facebook page. When she refused their ultimatum they banned her from attending classes.
A week later she was brought in by police for questioning and a statement was taken without her parents or lawyer there. This is illegal and violates her right to a fair trial.
When she was questioned she says that an officer went through her Facebook page insulting various members of her family.
Tujan has been made to go to court three times for her trial and each time the date has been postponed. She is facing potentially a month in prison and a lifetime criminal record just for expressing her views. If Jordan allows the trial to go ahead they will be breaking international law by violating her right to freedom of expression. This young woman should not be punished just for speaking her mind.
Tujan is just a teenager. As a refugee, she’s already been through so much. Jordan should drop this case immediately and let her get on with her studies.
Please send an email to Jordan’s Minister of Justice .
# More information on website of Amnesty International UK
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Susan Sontag
The definitive portrait
The definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private face
N
o writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
She was there when the Cuban Revolution began, and when the Berlin Wall came down; in Vietnam under American bombardment, in wartime Israel, in besieged Sarajevo. She was in New York when artists tried to resist the tug of money—and when many gave in. No writer negotiated as many worlds; no serious writer had as many glamorous lovers.
Sontag tells these stories and examines the work upon which her reputation was based. It explores the agonizing insecurity behind the formidable public face: the broken relationships, the struggles with her sexuality, that animated—and undermined—her writing. And it shows her attempts to respond to the cruelties and absurdities of a country that had lost its way, and her conviction that fidelity to high culture was an activism of its own.
Utilizing hundreds of interviews conducted from Maui to Stockholm and from London to Sarajevo—and featuring nearly one hundred images—Sontag is the first book based on the writer’s restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. It is a definitive portrait—a great American novel in the form of a biography.
Benjamin Moser was born in Houston. He is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book. For his work bringing Clarice Lispector to international prominence, he received Brazil’s first State Prize for Cultural Diplomacy. He has published translations from French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch. A former books columnist for Harper’s Magazine and The New York Times Book Review, he has also written for The New Yorker, Conde Nast Traveler, and The New York Review of Books.
Sontag
Her Life and Work
By Benjamin Moser
Hardcover: 832 pages
Illustrated
Language: English
Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers
September 17, 2019
ISBN-10: 0062896393
ISBN-13: 978-0062896391
$39.99.
Benjamin Moser:
Sontag – Haar leven en werk.
Uit het Engels vertaald door
Koos Mebius en Lidwien Biekmann.
De Arbeiderspers;
816 pagina’s;
€ 49,99.
# more books
Susan Sontag
Biography
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Occupying the Stage: the Theater of May ’68 tells the story of student and worker uprisings in France through the lens of theater history, and the story of French theater through the lens of May ’68.
Based on detailed archival research and original translations, close readings of plays and historical documents, and a rigorous assessment of avant-garde theater history and theory, Occupying the Stage proposes that the French theater of 1959–71 forms a standalone paradigm called “The Theater of May ’68.”
The book shows how French theater artists during this period used a strategy of occupation-occupying buildings, streets, language, words, traditions, and artistic processes-as their central tactic of protest and transformation. It further proposes that the Theater of May ’68 has left imprints on contemporary artists and activists, and that this theater offers a scaffolding on which to build a meaningful analysis of contemporary protest and performance in France, North America, and beyond.
At the book’s heart is an inquiry into how artists of the period used theater as a way to engage in political work and, concurrently, questioned and overhauled traditional theater practices so their art would better reflect the way they wanted the world to be. Occupying the Stage embraces the utopic vision of May ’68 while probing the period’s many contradictions. It thus affirms the vital role theater can play in the ongoing work of social change.
Occupying the Stage
The Theater of May ’68
Kate Bredeson (Author)
Publication Date: November 2018
Pages 232
Trim Size 6 x 9
Paper Text – $34.95
Northwestern University Press
Drama & Performance Studies
ISBN 978-0-8101-3815-5
# new books
Occupying the Stage
The Theater of May ’68
Kate Bredeson
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DEATH TO THE FASCIST INSECT is a compilation of the writings and transcribed recordings of the Symbionese Liberation Army (1973–75), a radical left-wing group based in the Bay Area of California. This publication chronicles the militant, if half-baked, political theories that inspired the SLA, as well as the ways that the SLA used violence and manipulation of the media to further the group’s goal of provoking armed revolution from the underground.
Founded by escaped convict Donald DeFreeze, aka Field Marshal Cinque, the SLA was mostly composed of young, largely white and middle-class men and women, whose stated aim was to destroy all forms of racism, sexism, and capitalism. One of the SLA’s first acts was the murder of the Oakland superintendent of schools; SLA members went on to kidnap newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, demand millions of dollars from her wealthy family for free food for “people in need,” and rob a bank in San Francisco with Hearst. Most of the SLA, including DeFreeze, died in a fire after a gun battle with police in Los Angeles, while Hearst was later pardoned.
This publication features an introduction by editor John Brian King, a chronology of the SLA, the writings and transcribed recordings of the group presented in the context of events at the time, and a fifty-page appendix of notable articles, letters, and other texts related to the SLA.
John Brian King is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker. His works include the nonfiction book Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers (1997), the photography books LAX: Photographs of Los Angeles 1980-84 (2015) and Nude Reagan (2016), and the feature film Redlands (2014).
Death to the Fascist Insect
John Brian King, Editor
Publisher: Spurl Editions
Product Number: 9781943679089
ISBN 978-1-943679-08-9
SKU #: C17B
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 232
Literary Nonfiction
California Interest
African & African American Studies
Political Theory. Crime
Price: $ 18.50
Pub Date: 3/13/2019
# New books
SLA – Symbionese Liberation Army
Death to the Fascist Insect
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