This Is Not a Drill
Chicago Public School Principal Troy A. LaRaviere spoke last night on WTTW about the important OpEd he published last week, regarding the Rahm Emanuel administration’s bullying of public school principals, lest they speak out against privatization and other policies that have been detrimental to teachers and students.
So when people ask me, “Aren’t you afraid of losing your job if you speak out?” this is my answer: I did not travel across an ocean and risk my life to defend American freedoms only to return and relinquish those freedoms to an elected official and his appointed board of education.
The world’s highest-performing school systems are built on the ideas of American education professionals ranging from John Dewey to Linda Darling-Hammond, ideas that recognize school improvement is not an individual race, but a team sport. Yet, our own elected officials have been ignoring those ideas in favor of teacher-bashing, privatized choice, fly-by-night fast-track teacher licensing and over-reliance on testing — ideas that have not improved schooling in any nation that has tried them.
Those of us who know better must lift our voices to persuade the residents of Illinois to reject these backward ideas and to oust the politicians who peddle them. We must work together to build our own system-wide improvement effort. The future of public education is at stake, and the future of Chicago’s children is at risk. We must lift our voices and be heard.
This is not a drill.
Funeral Singers
This post was meant to be a few weeks ago, after I had the special pleasure of seeing Califone play a house concert in Allston. Last Friday, I finally turned in the article which had been keeping me from blogging, so now I’m playing catch up.
At the house concert, Califone was just Tim Rutili, his keyboard, guitars, effects pedals, iPhone and glasses—a solo show, without the usual supporting band members.
I first heard Califone in 2003, when I saw them open for Wilco at the State Theatre in Portland, Maine. I was there to see Wilco, but I loved, loved, loved the Califone set. I bought Roomsound at the merch table after the show and have followed the band’s work ever since.
After a failed attempt to see them play again in 2009 (I was doored off of my bike on my way to the show and was too banged up to continue there), I finally saw another Califone show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts this past September, when they were touring to support the release of their latest album, Stitches. And then I saw the intimate living room show, last month.
One of the great things about seeing Califone live, both last September with the full band and in April in the solo format, was the words.
A lot times it’s easier to pick out lyrics from studio recordings than it is to hear them during live performances. But on Califone records Rutili’s voice is low in the mix and I find it hard to follow the abstract and dense poetry of his songs.
But in the live shows, the lyrics were out front. On the records, the lyrics are like beautiful, under the breath secrets. Live, they were emphatic incantations. Songs I’d known and loved differently for years bowled me over with emotional content I hadn’t heard.
The song that affected me most was this one, “Funeral Singers.” The video is from the living room show in Brooklyn, the next night after the one I saw in Allston. I hope some of what was in the room comes through.
A little narcotic warm on me
What will I do without the weight of you?
Funeral singers wail
Charity fails whose child are you now
The lighthouse keeper grazed the lip
Spread like a fog
Stood in the weather and prayed for a push
But doesn’t take the jump again tonight
The book is aching for the tree
Return return return to me
All my friends, all my friends
All my friends are weeds and rain
All my friends are half-gone birds
Are magnets, all my friends are words
All my friends are funeral singers
Funeral singers, funeral singers wailing
A spark is aching for the light
Return return return tonight
All my friends, all my friends
All my friends are keeping time
All my friends have just quit trying
All my friends are funeral singers
Funeral singers, funeral singers wailing
Clifton Walker Family Marks Bitter 50th Anniversary
Catherine Walker Jones and Shirley Walker Wright hold a picture of their father, Clifton Walker, and stand on Poor House Road, where he was killed. (Photo by Ben Greenberg)
On February 28, 1964, near midnight, Clifton Walker’s ride home from work was cut short. On the twisty unpaved road he took as a shortcut on the final leg of the drive from the International Paper plant in Natchez, Klansmen stopped his car and shot him multiple times in the face at point blank range.
Fifty years later, Clifton Walker’s children still wait for justice and search for answers about who was responsible for what happened that night on Poor House Road. In 1964, state and federal authorities conducted an unsuccessful investigation. Numerous suspects were considered but the documented evidence was thin, motives unclear and the case was dropped after nine months.
In 2009, following passage by civil rights hero and US Representative John Lewis of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, the Department of Justice re-opened the Walker murder along with 109 other unsolved cases.
Today, at Colorlines, I report on how the initial hopes of the Walker family for belated government action were ultimately dashed.
“At last somebody was going to talk to surviving old folks that could be witnesses,” Catherine at first had hoped, “and they could find the name of people who actually pulled the trigger. If they’re dead or alive, maybe we’ll know who did this.”
Since then, however, there has been a series disappointments from the Justice Department, culminating this past November. One week before Thanksgiving and on the birthday of Catherine’s late mother, Ruby Walker, an FBI agent appeared unannounced at Catherine’s New Orleans home to hand deliver a letter from the Justice Department, informing her that the case was closed.
“[A]fter determining that many of the individuals mentioned in the 1964 reports, including all the individuals alleged to have had any motive to harm your father, are now deceased,” the Department of Justice wrote to Catherine, “it became apparent that continued investigation would not lead to a viable prosecution of a living suspect. Accordingly, we have no choice but to close this investigation.”
“They only repeated things already written, things that came from the files,” in the letter’s summary of investigative results, Catherine says. “They did no work themselves at all. They never met with any of the family members. Their interest was not there.”
Read the full report at Colorlines.com.
We’re also marking the 50th anniversary of the murder of Clifton Walker at Jerry Mitchell’s blog, Journey to Justice. There, I write about the family life that was shattered by the senseless and cowardly actions of a white mob in 1964, the family’s struggle to cope with the murder, and their determination to find the truth with or without the help of the government.
In the days following the funeral, Walker’s widow, Ruby, had a breakdown that frightened her children. “When Mama didn’t recognize her children, I knew we were in trouble,” said Catherine.
Ruby recovered from the breakdown, but she had to take medication to sleep each night until her death in 1992 at the age of 65.
Walker’s son, Cliff Jr., was 10 at the time of the slaying.
“He didn’t realize or know Daddy,” Catherine recalled. “He was the kind of man a son really should have known.”
Read the whole post at Journey to Justice.
Today’s reports are not the end of the story. I will be reporting on avenues of investigation unexplored by the FBI—so stay tuned.
February 28, 2014 cold case mississippi clifton walker shirley walker wright catherine walker jones poor house road woodville racism fbi doj till bill video ruby phipps walker colorlines journey to justice clarion ledger jerry mitchell
A Southerner for the Freedom to Marry
Rep. John Lewis is a Southerner for the Freedom to Marry (by FreedomToMarry)
February 24, 2014 john lewis freedom to marry civil rights movement gay rights glbt southerner
Spies of Mississippi
Independent Lens | Spies of Mississippi | Trailer | PBS (by IndependentLens)
Airing tonight on PBS, Spies of Mississippi is a documentary about the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission—a state funded spy agency formed in 1956 to
“do and perform any and all acts deemed necessary and proper to protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi, and her sister states …” from perceived “encroachment thereon by the Federal Government or any branch, department or agency thereof.”
In practice this meant extensive, state-sponsored spying on and counterintelligence against countless citizens of Mississippi who were suspected of taking part in civil rights activity. The Commission also aided other states in forming similar anti-Civil Rights Movement agencies.
The history of the Sovereignty Commission, from 1956–1977, is essential to understanding Civil Rights Movement history and is full of cautionary tales that should be kept in mind in current debates regarding the surveillance state.
Further reading on hungryblues.net
February 10, 2014 mississippi sovereignty commission film documentary pbs independent lens civil rights movement hungryblues.net surveillance privacy civil liberties
This Machine
Cover of Pete Seeger, Childrens Concert at Town Hall
This post is excerpted and adapted from a longer post from ten years ago, on my other blog, hungryblues.net, about loving music that my father loved. In pulling out this part about Pete Seeger, I realize it’s also about how, in a very personal way, I’ve come to see Pete’s rendition of Abiyoyo as an allegory for the famous message written on his banjo, “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”
All through my childhood my father tried to excite me with music that was important to him. As a little boy, I danced around our living room to Woody Guthrie’s children’s songs. Dad also got me listening to Pete Seeger’s Children’s Concert at Town Hall—with those renditions of work songs and of old ballads like “Henry My Son” (aka “Lord Randall”):
What did you eat in the woods all day,
Henry my son?
What did you eat in the woods all day
my pretty one?Eels, dear mother. Eels, dear mother.
Mother be quick I got to be sick and lay me down to die.What color were those eels,
Henry my boy?
What color were those eels,
my pride and joy
Green and yeller. Green and yeller.
Mother be quick I got to be sick and lay me down to die.
For the longest time, those lines “Green and yeller. Green and yeller. / Mother be quick I got to be sick and / lay me down to die” were about the funniest things I’d ever heard.
The other song Dad taught me to love from that children’s concert was Seeger’s adaptation of Abiyoyo, the South African lullaby. In Seeger’s version there’s a father and son pair who both are always getting into trouble. The father, a magician, can make things disappear with his magic wand. He goes around playing practical jokes, making chairs disappear as folks were about to sit down, zapping a log out of existence right while a worker was sawing it in half. In the meantime, the magician’s son went around with a ukulele, playing it wherever he could and disrupting whatever might be going on. The townspeople got frustrated with these two troublemakers and made them live on the outskirts of town.
Then one day a huge, scary monster called Abiyoyo came marching along, swallowing sheep and cows and people in one bite. Everyone was running for their lives. The magician said to his son, “Oh, son. It’s Abiyoyo. Oh, if only I could get him to lie down. I could get him to disappear.”
The boy said, “Come with me father.” He grabbed his father by one hand. The father grabbed the magic wand, and the boy grabbed his ukulele. Over the fields they went, right up to where Abiyoyo was.
People screamed “Don’t go near him! He’ll eat you alive!”
There was Abiyoyo. He had long fingernails, ’cause he never cut ’em. He had slobbery teeth ’cause he never brushed them. Matted hair, ’cause he never combed it. Stinking feet, ’cause he never washed them. He was just about to come down with his claws, when the boy whipped out his ukulele.
Abiyoyo, Abiyoyo Abiyoyo, Abiyoyo Abiyoyo, yo yoyo yo yoyo Abiyoyo, yo yoyo yo yoyo Abi…
Well, the monster had never heard a song about himself before, and a foolish grin spread across his face. And started to dance.
ABIYOYO, ABIYOYO, The boy went faster.
ABIYOYO, YO YOYO, YO YOYO ABIYOYO, YO YOYO…
The giant got out of breath. He staggered. He fell down flat on the ground.
Zoop, zoop! went the father with his magic want, and Abiyoyo disappeared.
People streamed out of their houses, and ran across the fields. They said: “Why, he’s gone, he’s disappeared!”
They said: “Come on back to town. Bring your damn ukulele; we don’t care.”
A little while back I discovered that the “Children’s Concert at Town Hall” had been reissued on cd. I went out and bought a copy and started listening again. Seems to me now that in 1962, when the record came out, Abiyoyo must have been to my dad—and maybe to Pete Seeger, too—an apparition of all the violent social and political forces he was fighting against—segregation, nuclear proliferation, economic injustice, anti-communist witch hunters.
Pete Seeger. (Photo credit: WireImage, via WBUR)
Dad’s activism was driven by great idealism but also by profound feelings of loneliness and a deep need for attention, not for fame but for a kind of recognition that comes only in the moment. In my childhood, as Dad’s intense involvement in political movements was moving into the past, I think he had this romantic feeling that I’d be his ukulele playing sidekick who’d finally make his own strivings come right.
Before I really knew what they were all about, I was also hearing the songs of the Civil Rights Movement. There were the versions Pete Seeger had brought up from the South at his 1963 Carnegie Hall Concert. Even more important was a record that you can’t get anymore, though I have the original from Dad’s collection, the SNCC Freedom Singers’ We Shall Overcome, with those amazing renditions of “Woke Up,” “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” “We Shall Not Be Moved” and, of course, the title track, the freedom song so famously adapted from church and labor songs, by Zilphia Horton and Pete Seeger.
January 29, 2014 pete seeger paul greenberg civil rights movement music childhood hungryblues.net
With the Children that Moses Led
Who are those children they’re dressed in red?
There’s twelve gates to the city, Hallelujah
It must be the children that Moses led
There’s twelve gates to the city, HallelujahOh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
Twelve gates to the city, HallelujahOh, when I get to Heaven, gonna sing and shout
There’s twelve gates to the city, Hallelujah
Ain’t nobody there gonna put me out
There’s twelve gates to the city, Hallelujah
To borrow from one of my favorite songs that he sang, Pete Seeger is now with the children that Moses led. Pete must be having a blast leading them all in song up there.
Another favorite Pete Seeger song that I think belongs in his homegoing is “Little Birdie.” When I was googling for the wonderful version he did around 1966 on his Rainbow Quest TV show, with June Carter and Johnny Cash looking on, I found this more recent version from 1990, at about age 70.
Love the song so much let’s hear it again, this time the 1966 version:
I have nothing succinct to say about Pete Seeger’s influence on my life. It begins with his presence in my parents’ lives and continues on through mine and into my son’s.
Songs are for certain the right way to send Pete off but also with a final word about what he fought for his whole long and beautiful life. An anecdote about Pete in 2004, told to Alec Wilkinson by John Cronin:
About two winters ago, here on Route 9 outside Beacon, one winter day it was freezing—rainy and slush, a miserable winter day—the war in Iraq is heating up, and on the other side of the road I see from the back a tall, slim figure in a hood and coat. I can tell it’s Pete. He’s standing there all by himself, and he’s holding up a big piece of cardboard that clearly has something written on it. Cars and trucks are going by him. He’s getting wet. He’s holding the homemade sign over his head—he’s very tall, and his chin is raised the way he does when he sings—and he’s turning the sign in a semicircle, so the drivers can see it as they pass, and some people are honking and waving at him, and some people are giving him the finger. He’s eight-four years old….
He’s just standing out there in the cold and the sleet like a scarecrow getting drenched. I go a little bit down the road, so that I can turn around and come back, and when I get him in view again, this solitary and elderly figure, I see that what he’s written on the sign is ‘Peace.’
Natchez
On the International Paper grounds, Natchez, MS, December 2013
January 12, 2014 natchez #ms #international paper plant #clifton walker
Most Listened to Artists of 2013
According to my last.fm scrobbling of tracks played on my iPhone, iTunes, and Rdio and Google music accounts, below are the 50 artists I’ve listened to most in 2013. According to the rules that I made up for this, all of Jason Molina’s monikers are combined under a single entry (Magnolia Electric Co. had the number 1 spot, Songs: Ohia had number 2, and Jason Molina had number 36) and ties share a single entry (how’s that for Cat Power and Bill Callahan who were once lovers getting to share number 5?). I find it interesting where certain one album artistic collaborations by loved artists have gotten nearly as many or more plays than those individual artists have gotten in aggregate, across the rest of their oeuvres. For example, I am a big fan of Will Oldham, but I’ve listened to What the Brothers Sang, the amazing collection of Everly Brothers covers that he recorded with Dawn McCarthy, almost as much as I’ve listened to the rest of his recordings as Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Palace Music. Similarly, I’ve listened to Billy Brag & Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue more than I’ve listened to either artist separately, though I’m a fan of both. Same for Mark Kozelek and Jimmy Lavalle’s Perils from the Sea, which I’ve listened to more than I have their individual works.[1] For other nuances, like number of actual plays per artist, or to see the list past number 50, you can check out my last.fm profile.[2]
- Jason Molina / Magnolia Electri Co / Songs: Ohia
- Elliott Smith
- Low
- Mark Mulcahy
- TIE: Cat Power and Bill Callahan
- Francis and the Lights
- The Klezmatics
- Woody Guthrie
- Unknown Mortal Orchestra
- TIE: Howe Gelb and Janelle Monáe
- Warren Zevon
- Valerie June
- Billy Bragg & Wilco[3]
- Duke Ellington
- Silver Jews
- TIE: TV on the Radio and Bonnie “Prince” Billy / Palace Music
- Bonnie “Prince” Billy & Dawn McCarthy[4]
- Mavis Staples
- Tuscadero
- Feist
- Frankie Newton
- Gil Scott-Heron
- M. Ward
- Blood Orange
- Aloe Blacc
- Arcade Fire
- The Blank Tapes
- Mark Kozelek & Jimmy Lavalle[5]
- R.E.M.
- Lou Reed
- Dana Kletter
- Ella Fitzgerald
- Beirut
- Sufjan Stevens
- Damon & Naomi
- Jim James
- Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
- Sparklehorse
- Pete Seeger
- First Aid Kit
- Electric Empire
- Paul Simon
- Little Wings
- Sara Isaksson & Rebecka Törnqvist[6]
- Bob Dylan
- The Flaming Lips
- Phosphorescent
- Ray LaMontagne
- Freedom Singers
- Alex Turner
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan are in a different category since they’ve recorded three records together, between 2006 and 2010. I haven’t listened to a lot of Campbell’s solo work, but I am a fan of Lanegan’s solo stuff. ↩︎
I haven’t figured out any way to generate reports within a specified 12 month period, so “Last 12 months” will show data 12 months from the day you click through, and the data will begin to deviate very soon from what I captured for this post. ↩︎
Billy Bragg & Wilco, Mermaid Avenue ↩︎
Bonnie “Prince” Billy & Dawn McCarthy, What the Brothers Sang ↩︎
Mark Kozelek & Jimmy Lavalle, Perils from the Sea ↩︎
Sara Isaksson & Rebecka Törnqvist, Fire in the Hole: sing Steely Dan ↩︎
January 2, 2014 music geekrery last.fm scrobbling end of year lists
We Will Never Stop
/public A week before Thanksgiving, on November 21, I received a text from Catherine Walker Jones from New Orleans. “Strange thing happened a hour ago,” she said, “FBI agent delivered a letter informing me Daddy’s case will be closed!!! I am lost for words and angry.”
This February it will be 50 years since Catherine’s father, Clifton Earl Walker, Sr., was ambushed and shot to death by a gang of whites about 7 miles north of Woodville, MS. He was driving home from the late shift at the International Paper plant, about 30 miles north in Natchez. In 1964, the Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol and the FBI investigated the racial murder from February until December, when the case was closed without making any arrests.
The FBI agent’s arrival on Catherine Walker’s doorstep last month was a disappointing culmination to a new murder investigation begun in 2009. Pursuant to a recent, groundbreaking bill sponsored by civil rights hero, Rep. John Lewis (GA-5), the FBI was directed by Congress to conduct a “timely and thorough” investigation of this and 109 other unsolved civil rights cold cases.
For the Walkers, the sense of Congress was not fulfilled. Instead of finding justice or answers to long unanswered questions, the Walkers have been privy to false starts by a succession of agents on the case; retracted promises of meetings with officials; slow, incomplete follow-through on known investigative leads; and a murky, unsatisfying summation of the Bureau’s efforts when the DOJ threw in the towel last month.
November 21, when the FBI agent showed up unannounced on Catherine’s doorstep to deliver the case closure letter, would have been her mother Ruby’s 87th birthday. Clifton Walker’s widow, Ruby Phipps Walker, died in 1992 at 65. “Mama went to her grave not knowing who killed her love,” Catherine told me when we first met in 2008. “She would have had a different life had he not been killed…. If the FBI had names, why didn’t they allow Mama to know who they were?”
Last week, I met up with Catherine and her sister Shirley Walker Wright in Woodville, MS. We returned to the terrible spot on Poor House Road where their father was ambushed and gunned down . We were brought there by Al Jazeera English to discuss the case closure and the approaching fifty year anniversary of the murder.
“We will never stop,” Catherine Walker Jones told Al Jazeera’s Andy Gallacher. “Justice has not been served.”
(This post is a teaser for a fuller article coming soon on the case closure.)
December 19, 2013 clifton walker shirley walker wright catherine walker jones al jazeera english andy gallacher poor house road wilkinson county mississippi thanksgiving ruby phipps walker new orleans cold case racism fbi doj john lews till bill video youtube teaser
