Various Authors
Bless SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers…
Here is the statement issued by the Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s union after the Supreme’s Court’s ruling on April 11th.
This man is in charge of the US military…
(H/t Matthew Cushman)
Double or Nothing
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (“proud American, native Gazan”) and Dahlia Scheindlin get real about Gaza, Hamas and history of social movements in their commentaries below. Their positions aren’t perfectly aligned, but I’m with him and her…B.D.
Shame on all who failed the protesters in Gaza and ignored their pleas and cries for freedom, dignity, and a future free of Hamas, terrorism, violence, and conflict. Shame on all the “journalists,” “human rights” fraudsters, “pro-Palestine” and “solidarity” activists, college… pic.twitter.com/JelTw974Mn
— Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (@afalkhatib) March 30, 2025
Why Don’t Gazans Rise Up and Oust Hamas? Dismantling a Deeply Dishonest Claim
By Dahlia Scheindlin
Originally published on March 20 in Haaretz…
Railroad Earth
Norah Jones’ duets with Alynda Segarra on YouTube prompted this comment…
Alynda played a major role in changing my entire life for the better. I was an overworked railroader driving freight trains up and down California when I met her and her band “The Dead Man Street Orchestra” at the time. I had just brought my train into Roseville from Oakland, summer of 2005 I believe. I saw her and 5 bandmates playing their instruments under an old oak tree in a dusty field adjacent to the tracks. Once I got off the train I drove my car back to that field and introduced myself. They were a lovely bunch of folks. We ate together and drank “fancy beers” as they called them. The following morning they were aiming to hop a boxcar heading north and they invited me to ride with them.
Hurray for the Riff Raff!!!
I’ve lost my feeling for rock ‘n’ roll plenty of times since, say, Love You Live or The River or Combat Rock — albums by beloveds that seemed like stiffs in the moment. But rock-is-over raps have never deflated me for long. I’ve learned to trust there’s always something coming in the American night. Mathew Borushko steered me to The Past is Still Alive late last year. It’s my favorite CD from 2024. The opener, “Alibi,” got me open but it’s “Hawkmoon” that made me look up and lock in. There’s the melody as well as a signature line: “I’m becoming the kind of girl they warned me about.” Anyone can tell Alynda Segarra is tuned to what it means to do Americana when the country, which you’ve always been ambivalent about, is headed for a fall. But I had no clue about Alive‘s depths until Matthew B. read me into the songs’ back pages. (Bless him and Alynda for hinting sweet Will was the o-riginal rock and roller…
No motion has she now, no force;
…She neither hears nor sees;
…Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course,
…With rocks, and stones, and trees.)
Segarra — that Nuyorican devil in a red dress below — has mucho charm. They’re worthy of their home borough (“New York’s most heterogeneous and alive”), the Bronx. Segarra’s range seems pretty astounding (until I recall how many renaissance cats named Richie Torres roam my city). Segarra has rambled from Rican beach to NOLA and all the good aural country in and around. (They like “Heroes” too.) FWIW, the Motherland guitar at the top of the following pre-The Past is Alive Tiny Desk concert is nice as are Van-the-Man strings that kick in in the middle (where this clip starts)…
American Shame: Brooks & Auden (& Elon)
(ICYMI), Brooks confesses to feeling “moral shame” as he watched the beatdown in the oval office. His revulsion seemed up to the moment…
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Atlantic Alliance
David Aaronovitch ended his Saturday post — an elegant miscellany that took in audience tittering at a London performance of Richard III, MAGA world’s pro-fascist cosplay, the Trumpite Christers’ takeover of the Kennedy Center — with a note on the latest coup by the Center’s new director and a dive into the depths of the Friday afternoon massacre…
Grenell & The Tates
The Kennedy Center’s new director Ric Grenell wears many hats, none of them remotely artistic. Several involve being a fixer for Donald Trump’s exotic sidelines. So it was that Grenell went to the Munich security Conference alongside J.D. Vance, and while he was there took the opportunity to pressure the Romanian Foreign Minister into releasing the Tate brothers. The Tates were awaiting trial on charges of sex with a minor, rape and sex trafficking, but even if they hadn’t been are two of the most notorious and immoral misogynists in the Western world.
The Palestinian Friend
You must call out to the world in our voice.
Willie B. Wazir Peacock (We Will Remember You)
There’s one poem credited to Bob Moses in the grand online archive of Civil Rights Movement poetry here. Moses put his own spin on an Odetta spiritual as he bowed to one of the Mississippians, Willie B. Wazir Peacock (1937-2016), at the core of the Movement in the early 60s. Moses’s song calls out in all CAPS to his Brother Willie who went under the hill with scarcely anyone outside Black ‘Sippi knowing what he gave them and this fuct country…
IT WAS WILLIE
WHAT GOT FREEDOM
IN THE DEEP BLACK ‘SIPPI
Doing Our High School Teachers Proud?
A surprise turn into rooms at MoMA PS1 presenting Sohrab Hura’s oeuvre—far from art-wank—electrified our old friends’ winter break reunion trip to the museum.
The day was too good: arepas in Jackson Heights, Central Park night walk, a warm, free crib at the apartment where Dash was dog-sitting.
Now, we’ve come back together to mull over how Sohrab Hura’s work affected us that day and how he might get you going too…
Voices from the Diaspora (Haaretz Podcast)
Click on the Haaretz podcast below and you’ll find that all the speakers are worth a listen. If your time is tight, though, cut directly to Masha Gessen (at 14:20) who upholds a primary truth that’s often evaded by those who rightly condemn soft-headed, hard-hearted Israel-is-Over triumphalism (especially in the wake of October 7th). Gessen puts the cruelty of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on the West Bank first.
Cross the River, Close the Gap
Did anyone in 2024 make a work of art as wide or deep as Lynsey Addario’s photo from The Darien Gap (“the most perilous crossing for migrants in the world”)?
Table Music (Charlie Rich, Bob Dylan, Vincent Neil Emerson, Townes Van Zandt, Drive-By Truckers, Fuerza Regido x Grupo Frontera, Larkin Poe, Rolling Stones, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters)
A few songs for omni-Americans hanging on in there this holiday…
“It All Started at the Border”
Back in May, Radley Balko spelled out the details of Stephen Miller et al.’s monstrous plans for a deportation army, (cholera) camps and “efficient” airlifts. (Per Miller: “So you build these facilities where then you’re able to say, you know, hypothetically, three times a day are the flights back to Mexico. Two times a day are the flights back to the Northern Triangle, right. On Monday and Friday are the flights back to different African countries, right.”)
A swatch from the opening of Balko’s piece:
Donald Trump wants to deport 15 million people. He has now made that promise on multiple occasions. He made similar promises during his first term, when he said he’d deport 8 million people. Back then, he was thwarted by institutional resistance, other priorities, incompetence, and his general tendency to get distracted.
But this time there’s a plan. It is not a smart plan, nor is it an achievable one. But it is an unapologetically autocratic plan.
“You don’t even try something like this unless you aspire to have an authoritarian government behind you,” Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition told me. “You’re talking about soldiers marching through neighborhoods across the country, pulling families out of their homes.”
Rojava is in Danger
With Donald Trump set to return to the White House, the future of Rojava is in serious danger. The last Trump administration green-lit Turkey’s 2019 invasion, resulting in mass displacement, ethnic cleansing of Kurds, and a brutal occupation that continues to this day. Since then, Turkish President Erdogan has threatened to launch another such invasion but repeatedly failed to secure approval from the Biden administration. Reports of Erdogan’s conversation this week with his “friend” Donald Trump suggest that the tides could soon turn in his favor yet again, and another major invasion could be on the horizon.