I recall what Paul Robeson said when some idiot asked him, if he felt that way, why he didn't go "back" to Russia; he got mad in his slow baritone way, and explained that just because black and working people were forced to make this country didn't mean that they didn't make it, and making it makes it ours.
Look, I understand that you feel alienated, so do I. You hate George Bush and John Ashcroft and the KKK and Shaker Heights and the 82d Airborne and Justices Scalia and Thomas and the Strategic Air Command and the federal prison at Terre Haute, Indiana, and ConAgra and AOL Time Warner and General Motors and union busting management side labor lawyers. And so do I.
Why give them our country? Why say to the working and poor people that Bush is right, and this land, the land that they, the workers and the poor love, is _their_ land -- the land of the Bushes and Scalias? I think that's dumb. And wrong. Woody would not approve.
jks
--- andie nachgeborenen
<andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Joanna asks:
>
> What are you patriotic about? Why is it specific to
> > the U.S.?
>
> These things are all specific to the US:
>
> I'm patriotic about the Bill of Rights and the 13th,
> 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments, about Tom Paine,
> and
> Frederick Douglass, and Susan B. Anthony, and
> Abraham
> Lincolna nd the Gettysburg Address, Eugene Debs and
> WEB DuBois and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; I'm patriotic
> about the miners and unionists who organized the
> coal
> fields in Harlan County and the Flint Sit-Down
> Strikers, I'm patriotic about Cesar Chavez and UFW
> and
> FLOC; I'm patriotic about Martin Luther King, Jr and
> Malcolm X and Rosa Parks; I'm patriotic about the
> SDS
> and the Vietnam Antiwar Movement and Daniel Ellsberg
> and Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis and; I'm patriotic
> about the Central AMerica Solidarioty movement, the
> Nuclear Freeze, and the mobilization against the
> Iraq
> War;
>
> I'm patriotic about WC Handy and Louis ARmstrong and
> Bessie Smith and Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday,
> about Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker and John
> Coltrane; I am patriotic about Cole Porter and
> Rogers
> & Hart and the Gerswins and Yip Harburg and Harold
> Arlen; I'm patriotic about Woody Guthrie and John
> Hammond and Alan Lomax and the Weavers' I'm
> patriotic
> about Elvis and Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan and Jimi
> Hendrix; I'm patriotic about Fred Astaire and Ginger
> Rodgers and John Ford and Howard Hawks and film
> noir;
> I'm patriotic about Charles Ives and Aaron Copeland
> and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra;
>
> I'm patriotic about Charles Saunders Pierce and
> William James and John Dewey and WVO Quine and John
> Rawls (I was a philosopher after all); I'm patriotic
> about Melville and Hawthorne and Twain; I'm
> patriotic
> about Zora Neal Hurston and James Weldon Johnson and
> Contee Cullen and Langston Hughes; I'm patriotic
> about
> William Faulker and Flanner O'Connor and Thomas
> Pynchon;
>
> I'm patriotic about Justices John Marshall and
> Joseph
> Story, and Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Mass. Supreme
> Judicial Court, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr
> and Judge Learned Hand, about Justice Black and
> Brennan and Warren; I'm patriotic about Clarence
> Darrow and Maurice Sugar (a great labor lawyer) and
> the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU, I'm
> patriotic
> about Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler and Leonard
> Boudin and Michael Tigar -- I'm a lawyer after all
>
> I'm patriotic about the damn Cubbies, wait till next
> year
>
> This land is my land
> This land is your land
> This land belongs to you and me
>
> Joanna asks:
>
> >
> > What happens to your "patriotism" when the U.S.
> acts
> > criminally in the world and its population
> supports
> > these criminal acts?
> >
> > Joanna
> >
>
> My country -- right its wrongs!
>
> jks
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site
> design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com