STEAL THIS RADIO #73 will be broadcast FRIDAY, March 27 at 11 am (NY time), and will be re-broadcast next TUESDAY, April 1, at 7 pm (again, NY time). (However, you can hear it NOW, too! -- see the end of this message.)
You can hear it only over the internet by going to http://www.nytalkradio.net and click on LISTEN LIVE, to "Steal This Radio".
THIS WEEK:
Bettina Aptheker has a very long and fascinating history in the Left. Her father was the famed U.S. Communist Party historian Herbert Aptheker. Such historic figures as W.E.B. Dubois and Paul Robeson were regular guests in her house growing up in Brooklyn.
Bettina was a key leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964 and the movement to defend Angela Davis, who was the same age and a childhood buddy. She left the Communist Party in 1981, and remains active on the West Coast in the wider Left, Antiwar, Women's and Gay Rights movements.
Here, Bettina reads from her controversial book Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel. The reading took place on March 20, 2009 at Bluestockings bookstore on Manhattan's Lower East Side. This edition of Steal This Radio is built around that reading. (Thank you Jim Krivo for recording it, and to Bluestockings Books http://www.bluestockings.com for hosting it. Bluestockings hosts a wonderful lineup of authors and activists just about every night.) The book not only is a wonderful tour de force through recent U.S. social movements, but a very personal memoir about sexual abuse that the Left (and everyone) needs to address in our organizations as well as in our everyday lives.
EXTRA: Near the end of this week's show, we hear a song performed by Nalini Lasciewicz, words written by Mitchel Cohen, the host of Steal This Radio. That's followed by a song performed by Judy Collins, and then Mitchel reads his poem sans music. We are reposting the words here -- a poem called "Steffie's Song," for Steffie Brooks who died last month. We invite you to put it to your own music (as Nalini did) and send it in, to mitchelcohen at mindspring.com .
Songs in this show: - Mario Savio, at Berkeley, 1964 - Jefferson Airplane, Volunteers - Claudia Schmidt, Make It Across the Road - Nina Simone, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free - Nalini Lasciewicz, Steffie's Song (written by Mitchel Cohen) - Judy Collins, Pack Up Your Sorrows - Mitchel Cohen, Steffie's Song (poem)
Steffie's Song (for Steffie Brooks)
I dreamed that you were standing On a broken field of glass Rallying the daffodils To lead the working class And from this vantage shivering In a world that time forgot They rise anew to greet you In your communistic plot
I dreamed we were imprisoned In Eternal Now of youth Racing to the barricades So certain of the Truth And as we aged truth became Contextualized by fear Of life's insignificance As though we were never here
But here / we / stand The endgame of our days Take / my / hand And do not be afraid Truth still lives Beyond us and it will Always thrive In this roar of daffodils
- Mitchel Cohen
The show is ALREADY up on the podcast/archived schedule. It is available for listening any time 24/7 (but then you miss out on all the exciting comercials .... ). Just go to http://tribecaradio.net/wpradioblog/podcasts/stealthisradio/ and click on the triangle below Show #73. (While you're there, check out the other Steal This Radio shows, too!)
Thanx.