The Reason for the Season

I am thoroughly annoyed by those historically ignorant Christians that try to remind us heathens every December that the immaculate birth of Jesus Christ “the reason for the season”. There is always a Letter to the Editor in my local paper that berates the community for “forgetting” this or one that complains about some folks in customer service using the phrase “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas”, as if America is some Christian theocracy & it is our patriotic duty to publically praise Jesus or some shit. The thing that bothers me the most about Christian’s claim on the X-Mas holiday is, here in the States, we celebrate Christmas in a consumer-oriented fashion, with a big emphasis on buying, giving, & receiving gifts. Christ was the original anti-consumer, urging his followers to forgo earthly pleasures in their quest for eternal salvation. Seems to me that J.C. was booted from the American X-Mas scene quite a long time ago; whenever Santa Claus & his sack full of earthly pleasures hit the scene. Anyhow, before the religious blowhards start to test my nerves with their “reason”-ing, I suggest we recall the actual origins of our beloved X-Mas. That way I can prepare shitty, yet truthful, responses to those that complain about my supposed ignorance, just in time for the holiday!

Pre-Christian Era in Europe: Celebrating Solstice Styl-ee

                                               

In the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Europe, the Winter season has always been kinda’ sucky. Depending on where you’re at, it could be snowy, rainy, or just fucking cold. The days are shorter, food supplies run low, and before the invention of electric blankets, the weather really made shit unpleasant. To keep people from losing their God damned minds during the cold months, most civilizations would have a balls-to-the-wall celebration in mid- to late December that would give folks something to look forward to. Celebratory feasting during mid-winter was popular because agriculturally based communities weren’t doing much planting or harvesting (compared to the rest of the year) & these parties marked the last Big Ass meal folks were going to see for awhile, plus lots of livestock was slaughtered to avoid having to feed the mother fuckers during the winter months, so unlike the rest of year plenty of perishable meat was ready for consumption. Party beverages, like beer & wine, spent most of the year fermenting and conveniently would reach their peak alcoholic content levels just in time for these winter get-togethers. The Winter Solstice, a popular focus of these winter festivities, marked the cold season’s turning point & from that day forward the days would get longer & more hospitable temperatures were on the way. The solstice, according to the old school Julian calendar, occurs on December 25th, which explains the date of modern X-Mas celebrations. Check this out: The solstice shin-digs celebrated the Rebirth of the Sun, since from then on the days got longer right? The Christians later transplanted the holiday to celebrate the Birth of the Son. Hmm…

Before the Christian community called dibs on the season, there were slews of regional versions of the winter holiday. Traditional rituals & symbols of these celebrations were adopted by Christian missionaries & linked to Christmas, so as to make conversion as easy as possible. After all, most folks aren’t about to forgo the year’s tightest party just because some new fangled theology ain’t feelin’ it.

MEAN GEIMHRIDH (Irish translation “midwinter”): A generic label used to describe the various celebrations of Ireland’s Celtic tribes and the Druids, dating as far back as 3,200 b.c.e. The early occupants of Ireland were definitely serious about their solstices, as illustrated by the pre-historic sites found in Newgrange (pictured below) and Maes Howe that exhibit their perfect solar alignment on the day of the winter solstice. Ancient Welsh celebrations were associated with the birth of the divine character, Pryderi. Druid festivals are still commemorated on December 26th; Wren Day to the Irish & Welsh and Mummer’s Day (or Darkie Day) to Cornish folk. Festivities used to include the slaughter of a wren, followed by groups of revealers going door to door, singing songs in exchange for food & a good time.

                      

MIDVINTERBLOT (or mid-winter sacrifice): The Swedish polytheistic tribes honored the season with animal and human sacrifice until Christian missionaries finally ended the practice around 1200. Priests would perform the ritual sacrifices at cult sites, sometimes blessing the attendees with the blood of the sacrificed. In group prayers, people asked for fertility, good health, a good life and peace and harmony between the people and the powers in the year to come. One such sacrifice is pictured below.

                               

LENAEA, BRUMALIA: Ancient Athenians, Greeks, and Romans honored the god Dionysis in this all-girl mid-winter ritual, called the “Festival of the Wild Women”. Early in it’s existence, a ritualized killing & eating of a man in a secluded wood area was followed by the “magical” wine miracle, during which priests would present a concoction that was once grapes & water but had become intoxicating wine drink. Eventually, the male sacrifice was replaced with a goat & celebrations expanded to include drunken theatrical competitions. I can emphasize with the wild women of the Dionysis celebrations, because sometimes when I get drunk with a bunch of my home-girls, I want to tear men to shreds too.

                                          

ZAGMUK (or SACAEA): In Ancient Mesopotamia, the Sumerians & Babalonians celebrated the sun-god, Marduk, & his battle against the darkness for 12 days with parades on land and through rivers. The festival was marked by a subversion of the regular social order; masters and slaves interchanged, a mock king was crowned, and masquerades clogged the city streets.  

                                                                      

ZIEMASSVETKI (“winter festival”): Ancient Latvian & Baltic people celebrated the birth of their highest god, Dievs, on December 24th. Feasts always contained bread, beans, peas, pork, pig snout & feet. Carolers (Budeļi) went door to door singing songs and eating from many different houses. In the Middle Ages, Christians in the region adopted the celebration and it is now held on December 24th, 25th, and 26th. 

SATURNALIA (Roman) or KRONIA (Greek): The Greeks had the festival of Chronos & the Romans celebrated the commemoration of Saturn’s temple from December 17th to the 23rd in their biggest annual shin-dig, during which revealers would let loose & party hardy. Gambling was allowed, sacrifices were made, and merriment ensued. Slaves were exempt from punishment during Saturnalia & were even allowed to diss their masters, since the holiday was also celebrated with a temporary role reversal between servants & served at formal dinner parties. In 274, the Roman emperor Aurelian adopted the sun god called Sol Invictus (“the unconquered sun”) & made him the primary deity of the empire. Sol Invictus wasn’t exactly a single god; he was more like a generic representation of many solar deities found throughout the empire. It is believed that Aurelian also set the date for the honorary festival on December 25th, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (“the birthday of the unconquered sun”), & it eventually took the place of Saturnalia. Aside from the similarity of the dates, these Roman celebrations lent the practice of gift giving to the modern X-Mas holiday.

                                                        

YULE (or Jul, Joulu, joul, etc.): This one was celebrated by pagan Germanic peoples from late December to early January, based on the lunar Germanic calendar until the introduction of the Julian calendar, when the holiday was firmly planted on December 25th to coincide with Christmas. Celebrations throughout Northern Europe involved feasting & ceremonial slaughter, as documented in the Icelandic sagas and Medieval historical accounts. Yule was, and is, primarily celebrated in the cold-as-fuck region that covers Scandinavia (Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland) & Northern Germany. Understandably, fire and it’s associated pagan deities were central to Yule events. Plenty of modern Christian symbols & themes originated with this Scandinavian celebration. It is believed that Scandinavian Yule symbolism is so strong in Christmas tradition because Northern Europe was the last region to convert to Christianity and so it’s pagan culture has had less time to be diluted or redefined by the Church. Some of these surviving Yule symbols include (obviously) the Yule Log (honoring the life-saving warmth of fire during those freezing Scandinavian winters & pictured below), The Twelve Days of Christmas (The Yule feasting party lasted… wait for it…12 days!), and the Christmas Ham (The ritual of slaughtering a boar during Yule was meant to honor the pagan god Freyr on his feast day, December 26th).

                                                                                

Christmas Cometh: Happy Birthday, J.C.!

We’ve established that all over Europe people were celebrating life & commemorating the solstice in various ways before Christianity held sway over the continent. But then what happened? By the 4th Century, Christianity became a major force in the Western world & The Church, centered in Rome, pretty much started to run shit. From it’s beginning, the immaculate conception & the nativity were central to the theology of the Church, but no where in the New Testament does it give a date for the birth of Christ. The first time commemoration of the nativity on December 25th is mentioned is in the Roman manuscript Chorography of 354 & the holiday had minimal popularity throughout the rest of the century, with various pope’s condemning it & embracing it as they saw fit. It wasn’t until Charlemagne was crowned Emperor on Christmas Day in 800 c.e. that the celebration finally got some notoriety.

                                                         

It is pretty obvious that the actual birthday of the man that would become known as The Savior is not found in late December. First off, the shepherds that were said to be tending their flocks when Christ was born would not be doing that sort of thing in the ass-chilling December weather. The sheep, or whatever livestock the shepherds oversaw, would have needed to be sheltered from the wind, rain, and cold during the winter season. Secondly, Mary & Joseph were in Bethlehem because a Roman law required them to travel there in order to register for a census. These census’ were not done in mid-winter because roads were difficult to travel & it wouldn’t make sense to send census takers on a mission they could not complete. The bible does indicate that when Jesus was conceived, the mother of John the Baptist was six months into her pregnancy. Biblical accounts indicate that while serving at a distant temple as a priest, John’s daddy got a divine heads-up he would be a father & when he returned home in mid-June (according to historical records), he & his wife got down to business. Nine months later, in March, John was born & if you add six months to that, J.C. was likely born at the end of September.

                                                      

Haters Diss the Holiday & Try, Once Again, To Fuck Shit Up For Everybody

Puritans, as their name suggests, were up-tight fuddy-duddies and whenever possible, they tried to force their un-fun habits on others. Christmas was one of their main targets in the 17th century, both in England and the New World colonies. In1697, when King Charles I was overthrown in the English Civil War, the new Puritan rulers of Britain banned the holiday and inspired angry rioting throughout Canterbury and other English cities. They locked up the churches to prevent Christmas festivities & caroling was considered an illegal, lewd, and profane practice. It wasn’t until King Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 that the Christmas season was brought back to England, but after years of hearing how evil and corrupt the old ways were, Christmas was brought back with a more somber & religious tone to it. In the colonies, these same Puritan party-poopers banned X-Mas in their New England settlements, but colonists in other regions celebrated the holiday as they saw fit. Protestants disliked Christmas because they saw it as a tradition of the Roman Catholic Church that should be done away with, just like the sale of indulgences and the Pope’s religious leadership. They were annoyed by Christian celebration that included so many elements of pagan holidays. Never the less, people like to party so the pro-Christmas masses eventually won the battle.

                                                      

X-Mas survived another assassination attempt after the American Revolution, when former colonists saw the holiday as an English thing & along with tea, cricket, and The Queen, America dropped it because it wasn’t down with their British bullshit. During the war, in fact, General George Washington and his forces intentionally attacked the opposition on Christmas Day without regard for a holiday we now consider holy. Fuck ‘um with a yule log, I suppose was approach.

Christmas nearly died out in the States until it was revived by literary authors in the 1820’s. Clement Clarke Moore’s poem A Visit From St. Nicholas (“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house..”) was published in 1822 and popular author Washington Irving wrote many short stories about X-Mas family celebrations that American’s would mimic in their own homes. The final notification of Christmas’ comeback was the instant success of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, published in 1843. These written interpretations of the holiday lacked the crazy, balls-to-the-wall, public hedonism of prior years and emphasized the family aspects, the compassion, and the goodwill towards man stuff. American celebrations did not include the drunken door-to-door sing-a-longs of Old Europe, instead focusing on the nation’s children and their blasted happiness. Those authors also popularized the gift giving so central to today’s revelry. By the time Harriet Beecher Stowe published her book The First Christmas in New England  in 1850, Christmas shopping was a mighty economic force. Stowe’s tale included a character that lamented the loss of Christmas’ true meaning at the hands of a shopping spree. X-mas became a federal holiday in 1870 and since then America has pretty much embraced Christmas- shopping spree, pagan elements, biblical inaccuracy and all. Modern hold-outs to joining in on the fun, include Jehovah’s Witnesses and hard-core Christian fundamentalists, that continue the Puritan tradition of rejecting pagan symbolism associated with the holiday.

  

WTF? Who’s the Fat Guy?

Christians like to cite Jesus as the “reason”. American non-theists like to point to the family & generosity as their “reason”. Kids say it’s the presents. Slackers see it as a paid-holiday from work. I say it’s the booze-induced mayhem that draws me into the celebrating. But where the fuck does Santa & his eight tiny reindeer play into it? That fat fuck has been dropping down chimneys with swollen sacks and using elves as slave labor since popular German-American political cartoonist Thomas Nast drew St. Nick for Harper’s Weekly in 1863 (pictured below). Nast was also responsible for the donkey & elephant that represent the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. He was loosely based on the gift-givers of pagan tradition and Odin, a top god-figure of Germanic mythology. St. Nick’s old school tales introduced the Christmas stocking, the creepy catologue of children’s behavior, and the threat of coal being gifted to bratty youngsters.

                                                                              

“Speaking of St. Nick, since when was Santa a fucking saint?”, you might ask. Christian historians look to Saint Nicholas of Myra to answer that question. This holy man is remembered for his charity to the poor. In one notable tale, Nicholas saved the three daughters of a pious Christian man from a life of prostitution by kicking them down dowries so they could marry instead of selling their asses on the street. How kind. Fun Fact: Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of pawnbrokers.

                                                                  

Mrs. Claus, the wife of the legendary interloper, wasn’t introduced until 1889, when Katherine Lee Bates made her the main character in the poem "Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh-Ride". She has no real counterpart in pagan or Christian mythology, so I suppose us non-theists can claim her as our contribution to Christmas customs. As for the Christmas elves that run Santa’s whole operation, they come from Scandinavia’s house gnome folklore. Nordic authors & illustrators drew upon regional beliefs in these mischievous little people to birth the modern-day helpers of Father Christmas. The reindeer ride that Santa rolls through the ‘hood in originates with Moore’s poem, A Visit From St Nicholas, where we learn all their fucking names: Dasher, Donner, Prancer, Blitzen, Comet, Ajax, Tito and Vixen. In 1939, Rudolph the Reject Reindeer was invented by Robert L. May for Montgomery Ward’s advertising department. It is my personal opinion that Rudolph’s nasal problems stem from his methanphetine addition, rather than some weird unexplained glow-bug phenomenon, and that Santa recognized his potential as an excellent front man on the sleigh's team, since he’s spun the fuck out & ready to roll without complaint (unlike that lazy-ass pansy, Cupid). 

                            

Wrapping It Up: Get it? Wrapping it up!

In conclusion, the Christmas holiday is not owned by the religious types and has, in fact, been a human tradition for as long as we’ve documented that type of thing. Winter has always sucked & people like to avoid sucky-ness, so we party at the end of the year to forget our troubles, give thanks for the shit that keeps us alive, and maintain a sense of sanity that we hope lasts until the thaw. It’s cool to acknowledge the birth of Christ, if that’s your kind of thing, and if you consider the guy your savior, I think it’s the least you can do to celebrate his birthday. But, if your going to bash the way the rest of us commemorate the season, you best check yo’ self in my company. And if anyone suggests I remember the “reason for the season” and celebrate the holiday as it was meant to be celebrated, I’m going to suggest a drunken orgy in town square followed by the ritualistic slaughter of livestock.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have stockings to hang & booze to purchase. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Felix Navidad. Joyeux Noel. Bah Humbug, Bitches.

                                                                                

Celebrate Irish Independence!

                                                                        

 

On an ethnic-pride note, today marks the 87th anniversary of the establishment of the Irish Free State, known today as the Republic of Ireland & composed of 4/5 of the Emerald Isle, excluding the British-held territory of Northern Ireland. The British had ruled Ireland, in one way or another, since the 12th Century through harsh opposition. In 1603, the British Empire gained complete control of the island & under the sadistic leadership of Oliver Cromwell, who slaughtered nearly half of the island’s native population, England smashed all signs of Irish political leadership by the end of the 17th Century. Irishmen were banned from attending or serving in the Irish Parliament, dissenters were shipped off to the West Indies as slaves, and Catholicism was outright banned in an effort to suppress the population under the weight of the British monarchy. After an unsuccessful attempt at freedom in the Rebellion of 1798, Ireland was absorbed by the United Kingdom & directly controlled by the British Parliament.

The Great Famine began in the 1840’s and the British proved themselves to be incompetent and selfish landlords. The Famine would cause the deaths of one million Irish people & the immigration of two million, so decimating the Irish population that it has yet to return to pre-Famine numbers. The Great Famine changed Irish history & created a nationalist movement that rose up to bitch slap the Queen out of her London throne. The agricultural cause of the Famine was, of course, the potato blight that killed tubers all over Europe. The blight hit Ireland especially hard because the poor depended on the crop & since the Brits had implemented a feudal agricultural system, many Irishmen were poor. Literally working for “potato wages”. Additionally, the Irish Catholics that made up 80% of Ireland’s population were kept in poverty by the crappy landlord-tenant laws that allowed slumlord-tyrants to evict at will and exploit their tenants as they saw fit. When the blight decimated potato crops & the profit-minded British & Protestant investors raised the costs of other foodstuffs, landlords jumped on board with rent increases that forced Irishmen to choose between food or shelter. As if that weren’t enough, during The Great Famine, Ireland continued to export food to England! They exported more cattle & livestock during the Famine than they had before! Between 1845 and 1850, the UK government instigated the mass starvation across Ireland and, in my opinion, committed genocide against the Irish people, having killed anywhere from 20-25% of the population. In 1848, the Young Irelander Rebellion took another crack at independence but was unsuccessful against the well-fed Brits.

Nationalist pride among the often crapped-upon Irish Catholics spread like wildfire in the late 19th & early 20th Centuries, an obvious reaction to shitty British governing tactics, & the call for “Home Rule” by the Irish population grew loud. Opposition to Home Rule came from Protestants in the North, who considered themselves both Irish and English. The Home Rule Act of 1914 gave the Irish nominal autonomy until the outbreak of World War I, when it was suspended. Not wiling to go down without a fight, this period ushered in armed rebellions against the British. The Easter Rising of 1916 was six days of intense fighting led by the Irish Republican Brotherhood out of Dublin & it kicked off the battle for Irish Independence. It was followed by the Irish War of Independence in 1919, fought by the notorious Irish Republican Army (IRA). The end result was the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which split Ireland into The Irish Free State and the British colony of Northern Ireland on December 6th, 1921. Even though independence sparked the Irish Civil War between those in the Free State that accepted partial control of the island and the IRA that refused to allow the British to retain Northern Ireland, the date should be recognized as a victory over British colonialism. This is something us Americans can historically empathize with & us Irish-Americans can be proud of.

Go celebrate with a Guinness & a good old fashioned street brawl.

Go Get Wasted for America!

Did you know that yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of prohibition’s repeal? Alcoholics & social drinkers rejoiced nationwide on December 5th, 1933 when the 21st Amendment was ratified & it repealed the highly unpopular 18th Amendment, which banned the sale & distribution of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. It all began innocently enough back in the early 1900’s, when temperance groups gained popularity preaching about the evils of booze. They had a few good points. Drunks were sometimes violent asses, beating wives & children, and saloons were hot beds of seedy activity involving gambling, prostitution, and violence.

Unfortunately, legislating morality rarely works & prohibition of alcohol was no different. Organized crime blossomed in the era of the bootlegger (as did NASCAR) and the people were not happy trading drunks for gangsters. Also, where there is a will there is a way & boozehounds found means of getting fucking up regardless of the constitutional amendment. Stronger liquors & narcotics gained popularity, making those that drank really annoying to deal with since they were Fucked up (rather than fucked up, in the lower case). Bootleggers stilled their alcohol with lead-based chemicals or embalming fluid, leading to poisoning deaths and disabilities all over the country.

This nation built on the profits of colonial Rum was not about to go “dry” & the big cities held speakeasies, where binge drinking was all the rage. When the problems of prohibition became clear, everyone was on board to bring back legal booze. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would later refer to it as "The damnable affliction of Prohibition." The Rockefellers, the Democrats, the Republicans, and slews of former temperance advocates loudly supported the repeal, along with an estimated 3/4 of American voters and 46 state legislatures. After the passage of the 21st Amendment, some states continued to prohibit boozing within their boarders, but in 1966 the last dry state, Mississippi, fell to the power of the buzz.

In conclusion, it is your patriotic duty get your drink on. Have a brew in celebration or at least in appreciation. People literally died for your right to get piss-ass wasted, Damn it! They died for your freedoms! Salut!

I'm looking for reasons to find Today interesting

On this day in 1925, the Scopes Monkey Trial ended with John Thomas Scopes’ conviction on charges of teaching evolution in violation of Tennessee state law. It was the original Trial of the Century & the case was played up on both sides for maximum publicity value. According to the law of the land, it was illegal to "teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals" since the state legislature had passed it’s anti-evolution legislation in March 1925. Scopes and his cohort, a local business owner named George Rappalyea, plotted to intentionally violate the law and enlisted themselves in the efforts of the ACLU to bring it’s constitutionality to question in a court. The well known super-attorney Clarence Darrow was added to their defense team after charges were successfully brought against Scopes. The defense’s intention was to argue that anti-evolution regulations were in violation of the First Amendment’s protections. The prosecution’s star player was a popular Christian fundamentalist and former cabinet member under President Woodrow Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, who had been at the forefront of the creationist movement that designed the Tennessee law Scopes’ had violated. The judge was unsympathetic to the ACLU’s constitutional arguments & required every court session to begin with a prayer despite objections. During the trial, the ever-clever Darrow called Bryan as his sole witness and proceeded to make a mockery of the man in front of hordes of spectators. Darrow humiliated Bryan by coercing him to discredit his own literal interpretation of the Bible and admit that such a view was foolish. In his closing statement, Darrow asked the jury to return with a guilty verdict, so that the case maybe continued in an appeals court and after an eight minute deliberation they did just that. Scopes was found guilty on July 21, 1925 and fined $100, but the intense media coverage of the trial had clearly shifted public opinion against the creationist ideology of the prosecution, so you can say that he lost the battle & won the war. His verdict would be overturned two years later on a technicality, but the issue of church & state bumping heads in the classroom would go unresolved until a similar law in Arkansas was shot down by the Supreme Court in 1968. Some would say the conflict has yet to be resolved (and I’ll bet they’re the same assholes that say boring shit like “lost the battle, won the war”). The movement to include Creationism in classroom instruction is alive, but it seems to me that it might be on it’s last legs here in the U.S. In February 2007, the Kansas Board of Education voted to remove it’s Intelligent Design teachings from it’s state-wide science curriculum, Pennsylvania officially terminated it’s Intelligent Design curricula in 2005, and earlier this year Florida changed it’s educational standards to include, for the first time, mandatory instruction in evolution & related concepts. On the other hand, since 1999, Kentucky has banned the term “evolution” from it’s textbooks (preferring “change over time” instead), Virginia reaffirmed it’s commitment to include creationist instruction in science courses as of 2007, and the state of Ohio has permitted (but not  required) Intelligent Design instruction since 2002. I guess some places are a lot more “liberal” about the use of fantastical mythology masquerading as fact in scholastic instruction. Personally, I hate tax dollars to be wasted on Christian propaganda, while our students are receiving sub-standard educations that should shame any self-respecting Western nation. If you don’t believe the shit your kid learns at school, do a little parenting & talk to them yourself. You’d be surprised how much pull parents actually have when it comes to the ideological beliefs of their offspring. After all, it’s Moms and Dads that propagate all that other mythology that American childhood is littered with; The Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, The Chupacabra…

 

Another important historical event that happened on July 21st and is worth mentioning here is an incident during The Great Railroad Strike of 1877. A bloody battle between striking railway workers and state militia members broke out in Pittsburgh on July 21, 1877. The United States of 1877 was a divided nation. It’s latest Presidential election had left many voters feeling disenfranchised, since Samuel J. Tilden had clearly won the popular vote but the election went to Rutherford B. Hayes, who won the majority of electoral votes. The Presidential Election of 1876 had been the most contentious election in American history (before the current Administration pulled a couple fast ones, that is) and allegations of underhanded backdoor dealings only fanned the flames of public outrage at the election’s results. Thomas Alexander Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, allegedly brokered a deal that awarded disputed electoral votes to Hayes, winning him the election, in exchange for a federal bailout of failing investments in the Texas and Pacific railroads. As a result, the public distrusted the presidential administration, as well as the capitalist investors like Scott that got Hayes into office. The economic situation in the States was none to good at the time either & the railroad industry was no exception to the rule. Workers had suffered a 10% decrease in wages in only four years, so when the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) attempted to cut wages for the second time in that year, workers refused to put up with the bullshit any longer. They had little faith in the legislative or judicial avenues available to settle disputes & took to the streets in protest, stopping rail deliveries across the east coast. Initially the unrest started in Martinsburg, West Virginia on July 14th, but it quickly spread to Cumberland, Maryland, where street riots broke out. The President sent federal troops and marines into Baltimore to quash the labor uprising on July 21st. On the same day, the railroad workers striking in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania experienced the worst violence of the strike. When local law enforcement refused to fire on the striking workers, militiamen attacked them with bayonets and rifle rounds, killing twenty and wounding another twenty-nine protesters. Infuriated strikers chased the militiamen into a railroad building, where they lit the structure on fire and started a blaze that would eventually destroy 39 other buildings, 104 locomotives, and 1245 freight and passenger cars. The next morning, the cornered militiamen shot their way out of the burning railway building, killing another twenty strikers on their way out of Pittsburgh. The Great Railroad Strike would spread to Chicago, Saint Louis, and the American west before it was halted with force 45 days later by President Hayes’ federal troops traveling city to city, smashing strike momentum as they went. The railroad workers eventually agreed to a labor contract that did little to improve their situation, but The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 (the first large scale rail strike) taught union organizers and future labor activists lessons that helped improve their tactics.

Nelson Mandela is a bonafide Bad Ass

The man that brought down South Africa's apartheid turned 90 years old yesterday. In commemoration, I figured I might as well give y’all a primer on Mandela’s OG status, just in case you weren’t up on game.

Way back in the day (say…1948), the Afrikaner National Party gained control of South Africa & implemented a strict segregation policy known as apartheid. The black residents of the country were stripped of their citizenship & classified as citizens of their tribal homelands instead (similar to American Indian tribal governments). They were regulated to economically fucked regions & denied the benefits of South Africa’s thriving economy. They also were denied suffrage outside of their “homelands” & that made the apartheid system nearly set in stone. The only people screwed over by apartheid couldn’t even use the political process to do anything about it! Of course, this shit wasn’t accepted by the black majority of South Africa & immediately after apartheid’s creation, an opposition movement was born. Mandela was at the forefront of the opposition from it’s inception, playing a major part in the creation of the African National Congress (the Afrikaner National Party’s nemesis). Along with his partner Oliver Tambo, Mandela ran a law firm that catered to poor blacks that ordinarily had no access to legal representation. He initially touted the non-violent methods of Gandhi as a means of dismantling apartheid and was arrested in a mass demonstration in 1956 on treason charges with 150 other protesters. The ensuing trial, known as the Treason Trial, lasted for nearly five years & ended in the acquittal of all those involved. The fiasco of the Treason Trials left the ANC in bad shape. Non-violence had proved to be too slow & ineffective, so Mandela co-founded the militant wing of the ANC to force apartheid’s demise. In 1961, he became the leader of this ANC branch, Umkhonto we Sizwe (loosely translated as Spear of the Nation & abbreviated as MK), and he coordinated a sabotage campaign against military and government targets. He trained freedom fighters, established diplomatic ties to other African nations, and prepared for full-on guerilla warfare.

As is usually the case in these stories, the CIA fouled up big. In 1962, they notified S. African officials of Mandela’s whereabouts & the rebel leader was apprehended. He was charged with inciting worker’s to strike & leaving the country illegally, then sentenced to five years in prison. While he was imprisoned, the government arrested ANC members willy-nilly & started to prepare the case intended to dismantle the resistance. What came to be known as the Rivonia Trial was a judicial attack on the ANC that charged Mandela with sabotage & lesser treason. In 1964, all but one ANC leader was found guilty & sentenced to life in prison. Mandela then spent 27 years locked up. He was offered his freedom in exchange for renouncing the struggle against apartheid, but refused. When he finally was released after South Africa’s hard-line president P.W. Botha was replaced in 1989-90 & Mandela immediately returned to work at the ANC. He spearheaded the efforts to have S Africa’s first inter-racial elections between 1990-94 and, unsurprisingly, was elected South Africa’s first black president in 1994.

As if surviving 27 years of prison, a lifetime of apartheid, and countless assassination attempts weren’t enough to prove Mandela’s place in history, the man was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, the Order of Merit & the Order of St. John from Queen Elizabeth, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush, was made an honorary Canadian citizen, received the Bharat Ratna award in India, and the Ataturk Peace Award in Turkey. Musicians have immortalized Mandela in songs such as “Mandela Day” by Simple Minds, “Mandela” by Santana, “Freedom Now” by Tracy Chapman, and “If Everyone Cared” by Nickelback. Stevie Wonder even dedicated “I Just Called to Say I Love You” to Mandela. Fuck, even I have a Nelson Mandela T-shirt (Wiley always said it looked like Sly & The Family Stone, but fuck him)!

In 1999, Mandela retired from political life & took up the duties of being an internationally recognized freedom fighter. He’s supported & advocated for the Make Poverty History campaign, is a big sponsor of the SOS Children’s Villages (an organization for orphaned children), and established the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund that funds various charities dealing with youngsters. He’s served as a spokesperson at the UN & other international organizations for disenfranchised African nations suffering from poverty and the AIDS epidemic. He even used the event of his 90th birthday to call on the world’s wealthy to spread the economic love to po’ folks.

Here’s to a genuine bad ass, Mr Nelson Mandela, for being a die-hard rebel & showing all of us that one person can & does change shit for the better. Get down with your bad self, NM, get down.  

Goodbye, Jesse Helms, and Good Riddance

Former Senator Jesse Helms (R, North Carolina) died yesterday and the nation won't be worse off without him. Helms was as far-right as you get in American politics & his 21 years in the Senate (ending in 2001) were full of completely asinine bullshit that should embarrass anyone identifying as a Republican. Known as Senator No, because he was so fond of opposing Democratic legislation & presidential appointments, Helms wasn't exactly a progressive figure and was considered one of the last Old South politicians in Washington. News outlets are quick to remember the man as a "champion of Conservative values" and a "controversial political figure", but these phrases suggest the guy was a misunderstood political underdog instead of a homophobic, racist, sexist, cold-hearted prick that used his power to fuck over slews of people. The White House called him a "great public servant and a true patriot," but I think it's best if we take a second to recall the "high points" of his political career, before doling out such accolades:

* He was behind the move to stop paying dues to the United Nations in 1994, because the Senator thought the organization was too vocal about U.S. foreign policy. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was able to implement anti-UN policies with ease and cut funding to Third World nations by 30%. He refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty, the international land mine treaty, and several other international accords plus he opposed the international criminal court making him a prime example of American isolationism.

* He co-sponsored the Helms-Burton bill that tried to levy U.S. sanctions on non-American companies that did business with Fidel Castro's Cuba & successfully started the current embargo.

* He was the tobacco industry's biggest advocate in Congress (since N. Carolina's agricultural economy is heavily reliant on tobacco production & Big Tobacco kept Helms political coffers full of campaign donations). He chaired the Agriculture Committee & used the position to advance Big Tobacco agendas.

* He opposed the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. day in 1983, citing two associates of King's that had communist ties as a reason. He led the opposition to the bill in Congress & openly dissed the civil rights leader for his alleged infidelity.

* He supported El Salvador's ruthless military leader, Major Roberto D'Aubuisson Arrieta, who's Death Squads killed thousands of Salvadorians between 1980 & 1985. After evidence that the Death Squads committed thousands of civilian murders became public, Helms said "[a]ll I know, is that D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious". Helms never revoked his support for D'Aubuisson or condemned his actions.

* He was an ardent supporter of Chile's former dictator, Augusto Pinochet. After visiting Chile in 1986, Helms returned to Washington and assured the American people that it was a "myth that human rights is a major problem in Chile," even though his visit corresponded with one of the grisliest milestones of Chile's struggle against dictatorship, an incident that came to be known as The Burned Ones. A Chilean army squadron had attacked two pro-democracy teens in Santiago with rifle butts, the female teen was sodomized by a soldier, then the pair was doused in gasoline & lit on fire with the help of a Molotov cocktail. One of the kids survived & plenty of witnesses backed up her version of events. Pinochet attempted to pin the fault for the burnings on the teens themselves and the day that he announced his accusations to the nation, he met with Jesse Helms for a two-hour pow-wow. Helms pushed Pinochet's version of what happened whenever possible & berated an American ambassador for attending the murdered teen's funeral. Read more HERE. 

* He supported Haiti's military dictator Raoul Cedras during his bloody reign between 1991 and 1994 & helped to pen the agreement that convinced Cedras to step down in exchange for $1 million in American tax dollars.

* He was a supporter of South Africa's apartheid government & was unsurprisingly one of the biggest segregationists in our own country. Originally a Democrat, Helms abandoned the party with other Dixie-crats over it's support for civil rights legislation. When Nelson Mandela addressed Congress in 1990, Helms stayed away in protest.

* Helms opposed funding AIDS research or treatment programs ever since the idea was first discussed in the Senate. He claimed "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy" (as if that meant that people deserved to die!). He failed to block the 1990 passage of the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Care (CARE) act, but tried to block it's refunding in 1995 by once again blaming AIDS patients for their condition. He said their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct" brought on the disease.

* Anti-gay rhetoric was a Jesse Helms specialty & he actually referred to homosexuality as "degenerate" and homosexuals as "weak, morally sick wretches". He opposed Clinton's nomination of Roberta Achtenberg to the Housing & Urban Development department "because she is a damn lesbian".

* Helm's had the balls to make the following comment about President Clinton in 1994 (on the anniversary of JFK's assassination, no less): "[he] better not show up around here [Fort Bragg] without a bodyguard". In his own defense, the Senator insisted that Clinton was too unpopular to inspire an assassination attempt, so the statement shouldn't be considered a threat.

* Introduced the bill that would have eliminated all affirmative action programs because he believed them to be "reverse discrimination at the hands of ruthless bureaucrats."

* He created the North Carolina Congressional Club, a political action committee that quickly became the nation's most successful moneymaking machine, and used the PAC to fund his campaigns. In 1986, the PAC was penalized $10,000 for illegally subsidizing his 1984 re-election campaign. In 1994, the Federal Election Commission levied a fine of $25,000 against Helms & his PAC for accepting $700,000 in illegal contributions. Even more jaw-dropping, in 1992, the Helms campaign and the Congressional Club settled a Justice Department complaint over a pre-election mailing of postcards falsely threatening 125,000 black voters with jail if they went to the polls. Eventually, Helms was forced to cut off ties with the Club after '94, because it endangered his chance at re-election.

* He got into hot water when he offended the shit out of Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman elected to the Senate, by whistling "Dixie" while standing next to her in an elevator in 1993. He then bragged his aides & staff: "I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries."

* Helms would win an election against black opponent Harvey Gantt with an ad playing to racist white fear-- the so-called "white hands" ad, in which a white man's hands crumple a rejected job application while a voiceover intones, "You needed that job…but they had to give it to a minority."

* Helms got away with saying some seriously offensive shit on the Senate floor. According to the late Senator, The University of North Carolina was "the University of Negroes and Communists" and black civil rights activists were "Communists and sex perverts". When 10 female members of the House of Representatives interrupted a Senate committee hearing to demand support for the UN's treaty against gender discrimination, Helms responded by telling them to "act like ladies" & had Capitol police remove them from the hearing. When talking about civil rights protests in 1963, Helms had this to say: "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights."

* In 1995, Helms was a guest on CNN's Larry King Show & a caller praised Helms for "everything you've done to help keep down the niggers," and the Senator responded with a salute to the camera and saying "Well, thank you, I think."

* He opposed abortion rights and school bussing, funding for art or historical preservation, feminism, communism, and just about any other -ism you'd expect a backwoods redneck to disagree with. Helms supported the flag burning amendment & was all gung-ho on the Terri Schaivo situation, was pro-gun and until public use of the N-word became completely unacceptable, Helms threw the term about willy-nilly.

"I've been portrayed as a caveman by some. That's not true. I'm a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men are equal, be they slants, beaners, or niggers."     -Quoted in the North Carolina Progressive on 2/6/1985

 

"I’m so old-fashioned I believe in horse whipping"    - quoted in The News & Observer from a debate in 1991 about AIDS funding

"To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing." — Helms responding in 1956 to criticism that a fictional black character in his newspaper column was offensive.

                                       

President Bush calls Helms a "great public servant and true patriot", but it seems pretty clear to me that he was a relic of the Cold War era mind set that believed the only "public" worth serving was the Christian, heterosexual, male, white, U.S. natives that agree with American colonialism and cultural hegemony. R.I.P., mother-fucker.

Title IX: The amendment that changed our world

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance”    -Start of the original Title IX law

The story of Title IX sounds like it was made up as a leftist-feminist conspiracy tale, intended to prove just how fucked up gender discrimination was (is) in America. But, I kid you not, this is how it happened:

In 1965, presidential Executive Order 11246 prohibited federal contractors from discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion, or national origin. President Johnson later amended the Executive Order to include discrimination based on sex in 1968. Soon there after, Bernice Sandler of the University of Maryland realized that, as federal contractors, most universities and colleges were subject to the Order and her efforts to bring this to light caught the attention of Rep. Martha Griffiths (D-Michigan), who then gave the first Congressional speech about discrimination against women in education on March 9, 1970. The conversation that the speech started inspired Rep. Edith Green (D-Ohio) to draft anti-discrimination legislation and hold the first congressional hearings on discrimination against women in education and employment during June and July of 1970. Senators Birch Bayh (D-Indiana) and George McGovern (D-South Dakota) managed the bill in the Senate and after several months of debate and compromise, the Education Amendments of 1972, including Title IX, were signed into law by President Nixon without much fanfare. Supporters of Title IX intentionally kept mum on it’s benefits & relied heavily on the ignorance of it’s would-be opponents. What they didn’t notice, wouldn’t piss them off until it’s too late! Sorta’ like the strategy used to pass the Patriot Act, except instead of circumventing the freedoms of Americans, Title IX expanded them. It is a common misperception that Title IX only applies to women’s participation in sports programs. It did open the Wide World of Sports to the fairer sex, but it also prohibited the common practice of steering girls away from science or math programs and into Home Economics courses against their will. It did forcibly open up the Debate Teams, the student government, and all those extra-curricular programs that colleges look for on student applications. Educational institutions receiving federal money were no longer allowed to keep women from receiving higher education, less they jeopardize their grant funding. It did de-gender scholastic subjects making it easier for American girls to become Mathematicians, Scientists, Engineers, and Intellectuals in traditionally male-dominated fields. It is difficult for me, a girl born into the post-Title IX era, to imagine what the educational system looked like prior to 1972. We certainly didn’t have to attend our Mamma’s high school! That maybe why I can’t hem a skirt, but that’s another story!

The wording of the Education Amendments was intentionally vague, since any specifications in the initial bill would jeopardize it’s passage, and it took three more years before the specific regulations of Title IX were signed into law by President Ford on May 27, 1975. These specific regulations/ protections required school districts (or other such systems) to appoint at least one Title IX coordinator, who’s name & contact information is available to all students / parents / staff members, to oversee compliance efforts and investigate any sex discrimination claims. Districts were also required to make grievance procedures and discrimination policies public. After these regulations were announced, districts (and the like) were allowed to undertake a one-time self evaluation of discriminatory policies and were given the opportunity to layout plans to rectify bias, this way the schools weren’t slammed by a wave of lawsuits they were unprepared to face. Title IX went largely ignored and under enforced during the politically conservative Reagan and Bush Sr. Administrations, but since the 1990’s it has become an indispensable piece of gender-equality legislation.

Title IX has since been renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, in honor of the late Rep. Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii), the co-author of the original bill. Thirty-six years after Rep. Mink and Rep. Edith Green watched their historic legislation signed into law, we are still reaping the benefits of their hard work. The drop-out rate for pregnant teens and young women with children has dropped 30% since the 1970’s, largely because Title IX prohibited the automatic expulsion of mothers or would be- mothers. In the 1970’s, only 18% of American women completed four or more years of higher education. But, for the first time in American history, women now outnumber men in undergraduate programs & women receive 55% of all Bachelor’s Degrees. Women went from earning only 7% of all law degrees (in 1972) to a whopping 43% (as of 1994); they formerly held only 9% of all medical and 1% of dental degrees, but as of the early nineties women have received 38% of the degrees in both fields. There has been a four-fold increase in women’s participation in athletics since 1971, undeniably a result of Title IX’s protections. Probably more important than any tangible statistical comparison is the change in social beliefs about women and education. Many modern American families want their sons AND daughters to participate in sports programs, successfully complete high school, and go on to an institution of higher learning to earn their degrees. Prior to the ‘70s, this was necessarily the case in households across America. There isn’t exactly a study or bar graph I can cite to prove the change in American attitude toward women & education, but the proof is unnecessary if your mother, your grandmother, your aunts, or other ladies educated in prior generations are available to talk about the subject. This month marks the 36th anniversary of Title IX’s passage and I suggest we take a moment to reflect on how we have benefited from it’s existence. Devote a minute, an hour, an afternoon to thinking about how education has impacted your life and consider the not-so-distant past when women, just like you, were denied the opportunity to learn. Threats to equality never cease to exist, so peep yourself up on game about the campaign to Save Title IX at the EXercise My Rights webpage.

 

Facts and information cited in the above post was gathered from the following sites: Historical info found in the WEEA Digest from August 1997 located HERE, progress statistics were found in an archived progress report from the U.S. Department of Education dated June 1997 located HERE. Sorry, I couldn’t find more recent information on the subject.

Howard Zinn makes my brain tingle in a good way