Denise Sullivan

Author, Arts & Cultural Reporter and Worker

August 28, 2025 • 2:41 pm 0

Eyes on the Prize + Big Crime

Sixty two years ago today, when Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Len Chandler gathered onstage to sing “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, conditions world and nationwide were less than ideal and in many cases grim. And yet, the mass gathering of people of all ages, ethnicities, and beliefs, the speech by Dr. King, and all that singing of freedom songs, delivered a sense of hope that the world could mend and change.

Baez has continued to sing for liberation causes. Though she’s announced her retirement, she shows up to Bay Area protests and events to lend her voice, from the stage and from the crowd. Dylan isn’t so much a protest singer anymore as something more: A Nobel laureate. Chandler died an activist and freedom singer, on this day in 2023. He used his voice to raise money for progressive candidates and causes until the end.

In today’s top news in protest music, last night, Neil Young performed a new song, “Big Crime,” live for the first time with his band, the Chrome Hearts. Young has been very much on the front line of street protest this time around and uses his voice as a performer to fight fascism. He has particularly waged a fight against his music being used for commercial ventures and especially preventing it from being co-opted by the right.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gbK8uoqKhlACSeenUPkFQ

Fifty five years ago, following the massacre of four unarmed students by Ohio’s National Guard at Kent State University on May 4, Young famously wrote “Ohio,” recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Young has of course made some missteps in his political action though for the most part, he has been on the people’s side, in favor of environmental wellness, human rights and against wars.

On the heels of the life-changing events at Kent State, Devo — first a concept, then a band — formed. With a point of view, something to say, Devo attempted not to lose sight of what it meant to remind us: that humankind has been heading in the wrong direction for some time and the devolution we were warned about is upon us (A new documentary on the group tells that story very well). That members of Devo were also present on that day at Kent State and collaborators with Young was no coincidence: They are artists interested in bringing the news.

That both styles of music, the old guard and the new, reached me at the right time of life, as a young person seeking answers through songs, makes me a lucky listener. I’m always listening for messages in songs, as well as appreciating music for the sheer joy and beauty it brings into the mixed bag of life. Throughout the ’80s, ‘90s and ’00s, there was plenty to protest and music from which to choose, from Dylan, Young, Devo and countless others: Punk resisted right-wingism and racism and so did hip hop. Public Enemy’s Chuck D rightly nailed it when he noted rap and hip hop were broadcasting the news from Black America. The long history of resistance music spans the globe and will not be silenced. It’s just that sometimes, the noise of the news is so loud, it’s harder to hear the music. Once in awhile, a song or video cuts through (insert your favorite here).

From 2007-2011 I worked on a book about the different strands of resistance music and how the form was faring at the turn of the 21st Century. It seemed to me to be a latent period for American protest movement and music. But then, the revival: Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter put organizing and the music that goes with it, back into the public consciousness. You might even say the movements were a wake-up call after a long slumber that included the invasion of Iraq, the bail out of the banks and an increased awareness of police brutality because of phones and social media broadcasting the horrors. That’s a pretty offhand, incomplete characterization of those years, but if you’re reading this, you have a general idea of what I’m talking about, even if I don’t…

Yet this is to say: This is why we don’t stop. This is what is meant by keeping one’s eyes on the prize. This is why I am writing this today, on the anniversary of the March and on the day after Young debuted a new protest song. We are no longer on the precipice…we are immersed. The need for protest and the music that goes with it in this country has never gone away. There have been and always will be artists like Tom Morello and M.I.A. and Chris Pierce and Jesse Wells and Carsie Blanton, out there getting the job done. When a new song drops in the heat of a moment, by an artist old or young or in the middle, I’m always pleased to hear it, as a fan of music with a desire for change. It’s a chance to pause and say thanks to everyone who is unafraid to take a stand. Today, it’s thanks to Neil, for staying in the game. As a song, “Big Crime” is unlikely to change the world or become an anthem, but then, again, we don’t know what will. We simply have to believe in a more hopeful future and be willing to work toward it.

Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-war, video, , , , , , ,

August 17, 2025 • 10:54 am 2

What Would Jerry Do? Notes on Dead & Company, Inc.® © ™

Back in the Paleolithic era, I worked as front desk receptionist for concert promoter Bill Graham and had several encounters with members of the Grateful Dead family. Not that I knew who they were at the time: it was a big part of my identity as a modern music lover to not know, though I’ve come around to their sound and specifically to Jerry Garcia.

For the sake of a prequel and partial sequel to the business at hand, I accidentally experienced the Dead at a Day on the Green concert in 1976 when they co-headlined with The Who. At the time I didn’t know or care that the big events staged at Oakland’s stadium would became a kind of testing ground for the full scale festival tours we know today. It didn’t help I didn’t know “Scarlett Begonias” from “China Cat Sunflower” or to that to my unformed mind, experiencing the Dead was just a three hour endurance test before the Who hit the stage. I was not transformed, my consciousness was not altered by their music, as some members of the band and the people who love them claim, though today, I quite like most all of Garcia’s and lyricist Robert Hunter’s material. I like to think I have grown into it.

But even back when, I knew Jerry was Jerry, and later in my role as receptionist, I certainly knew enough about receiving office visitors that I was not to waylay people of his renown at the entrance with formalities like announcing their arrival. In the flash it took me to recognize a musician, he could walk past me, nod, and in Jerry’s case, with his cherubic smile, head bowed and hands jammed in his pockets, proceed without pause, into the open main office, then in the direction of Bill’s corner sanctum. Same went for Carlos. Santana. He and Jerry were of course legends by then, their reputations enshrined thanks to their inimitable, celestial guitar styles. I was less generous about their music then, but showed respect anyway: These were people born in the same decade as my parents. Then again, I can’t claim to have displayed anything resembling even courtesy the day an even older man dressed in a fur loin cloth and carrying a walking stick announced his arrival.

“Bear for Bill.”
“Excuse me?”
I couldn’t hide my contempt, buzzing over the line to Bill’s assistant.
“Someone named Bear is here for Bill?”
“Send him in.”
The shock registered on my face compelled a co-worker witnessing the scene to whisper my way.
“Bear is Owsley.”
“And?”
“He invented acid.”
I get it now.

On another day, Mountain Girl announced herself. My lack of exposure to hippie culture was pitiable and the name drew a complete blank. I said something like, “Say what now?”  I feel sorry for being just one more person to judge Carolyn Garcia based on her chosen name and hope she can forgive me. Perhaps we might even agree that Jerry would be “rolling in his grave” in connection with some of events of the last few weeks celebrating the 60th anniversary of the formation of the Grateful Dead. 

Thirty years ago, on August 9, 1995, Jerry Garcia died. His diabetes raged, his heart gave out and his body failed him while detoxing from a lifetime of drug dependence. A few days later, his life was celebrated with a public memorial concert in Golden Gate Park. By that time, the Dead had been doing big business for some time, thanks to constant touring and their first top 40 hit, “A Touch of Gray.” Never mind then that Garcia’s health was down and his addictions were up: The show must go on as the Dead’s touring, merch and ticket sales were doing the kind of big boring business the music industry represents today.

The bands formed in Jerry’s wake include The Other Ones, The Dead, Further, Ratdog, Phil Lesh & Friends and the Rhythm Devils (there are more). But the extreme monetization of all things rock ’n’ roll, psychedelic and Dead had been well under way for several decades. The Grateful Dead as corporation was just another aspect of its long strangely quirky and contradictory trip.

Beginning in 2015, Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart began billing themselves Dead & Company; by 2023, they played to bid goodbye to touring with their Fare Thee Well shows. Those dates, according to published accounts in music industry trade magazines and other media outlets, grossed $114.7 million over 28 shows, though they were hardly the end. In 2024, Weir, Hart and an amalgamation of musicians played a 30 show stand at the Sphere in Las Vegas and earned $130 million that year as Dead & Company. This year’s Dead & Company returned from the dead, again, for 18 shows at the Sphere and three in Golden Gate Park to mark the 60th anniversary of the formation of the Grateful Dead and 30 years since Jerry’s passing. The tour receipts for this year have not yet been published, though some fiscal facts are known.

Tickets for the Golden Gate Park weekend ranged from $600 for three days and went up to $7k for the VIP Package. The concerts brought $150 million to the city’s economy, $7 million into the Parks and Recreation Dept. according to local media, and some untold sum for promoter, Another Planet Entertainment, not to mention the band, its agents, managers and other profiteers. I don’t know much about the Grateful Dead but I’ve read the books and can tell you that profit was not a big motivator when the band was founded. Money and possessions were seemingly of little interest to Garcia.

To say it another way, Dead & Company do not embody the spirit of the Dead and its commitment to alternatives to commercialism and mainstream culture. That is if there is such a thing as a spirit of a band: In the Dead’s case, that bird has definitely flown. I can say more, much more, but won’t now except: In 1996 I spent six weeks on the road with the Further festival. It was unpleasant to say the least and I survived it by immersing myself in nightly sets by Los Lobos, a band I am certain has a spirit because I can feel it. 

And yet, there are still some traces of Jerry’s spirit around if you are looking for it in the city that raised him. Whether its the makeshift shrines in the Haight, stenciled Jerry bears on sidewalks around town, or the annual Jerry Day free concert at McLaren Park, I could swear some days, especially in August which marks his birth and death, he hovers.

Jerry Day was established in 2003 to celebrate the Excelsior District’s most famous son; this year a street there was named for him. But the future of Jerry Day is imperiled due to “lack of funding” and city support. How could this be in a city of 80 billionaires? How could this be in a city whose mayor is worth millions made from the profits of Levi Strauss, the jeans favored by hippies and punks and everyone else, you may ask and I will answer: We are a city that creates and then commodifies everything: From rock ’n’ roll, psychedelics, and cannabis, to the Grateful Dead, to mention but a fraction of what comes from Northern California. We even have a Counterculture Museum to keep the idea of an underground in place. 

No, I don’t blame the latest generation who want to partake in their own rituals or a virtual tribal love rock musical: It’s the cost to play the game I can’t relate to. There’s also the carbon in/carbon out trucking and busing of staging and sound equipment on public park grounds, our much-needed oasis in a largely concrete residential neighborhood that’s hard to get your head around. 

Jerry loved Golden Gate Park. It’s east to west world map of flora and fauna literally inspired his guitar playing. But following the three dates of Dead & Company there, the three-day Outside Lands festival and last week’s straight vanilla “alt-country” event, the concerts have trampled the landscape and turned the largely working class, Democratic voting blocks of the outer Richmond and outer Sunset neighborhoods into a parking lot.  And we did nothing to prevent it. Oh sure, we voted to make the Great Highway a park, but we got very little in return for that either.

The highway, its nearby grid of avenues, and the park itself, were built on sand dunes. They were not designed with an in and out flow of 60,000 non-residents a day in mind. These neighborhoods of families, people with disabilities, seniors and people of all ages who speak more languages than in any other area of the city are boxed in. Many of us are in the work force and use the roads to travel to and from our jobs. There are hospitals and other services that bookend the park and people need access. And then there is the wildlife that has been displaced for a month by top volumes, distracting spotlights, and cyclone fencing not to mention the human footprints marring their paths home.

Jerry used the park himself to find peace and quiet: That’s where he was found one morning in his car in 1985 with a shit ton of drugs on him and in him (in 2025, concert goers in the park enjoy the brain freezing drug of nitrous oxide). Communing with nature takes many forms but the combination of numbing out in these times seems less like a tribute and more like a cop-out.

Granted, my distress is not about the disruption outside my window but is intertwined with the upheavals worldwide. If you’re reading this, you wake up screaming in some form or another, whether about detainment, displacement, about the genocides, dictatorships, rolled back rights and the current incompetence at most levels of leadership [release the files]. And yet these cries are signs of our human connection, our consciousness, the kind once encouraged by the Dead or psychedelics or a combination of the two. 

Even though now it seems like no one is listening, those of us who are awake and alive are the miracles we are seeking. The shakedown, whether in the park, at the Dead & Company HQ or on the national stage is just another version of life in all its stages: good, bad, ugly and beautiful.  So I keep doing what I do. Live my life accordingly. Sometimes I ask myself, what would Jerry do? And while I choose not to check out, I can’t deny we’re living in a blast furnace. Yet I see no choice but to play it through, and just keep truckin’ on.

Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, California, rock 'n' roll, Rock Birthdays, San Francisco News, , , , , ,

April 19, 2025 • 3:44 pm 0

Bob Kaufman in the 21st Century

April 18 marked the beginning of Beat poet Bob Kaufman’s centennial year, and San Francisco celebrated with three days of poetry, film and talks about the often overlooked but finally fully recognized artist. From about 1958-1986, he wrote poetry and made his home in the North Beach and Mission districts of San Francisco. He was a forceful presence on the scene, even as he had taken a vow of silence against the Vietnam War.

“He’s the quintessential representation of a San Francisco poet,” said San Francisco poet, Josiah Luis Alderete. In France, he was dubbed “The Black Rimbaud.”

For some time, it was hard to come by Kaufman’s slim volumes of poetry, but in 2019, City Lights Books published his first-ever collected works, with a forward by devorah major and edited by Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye, and Tate Swindell. I wrote a long piece about him and his influence on modern day poets for the San Francisco Chronicle with more detail on his background and his surrealist’s eye.

A hundred years since he came into this world and nearly 40 since he left it, Kaufman’s poems against racism, injustice and war are as powerful now as they were then. San Francisco poet Kim Shuck said, “Bob Kaufman was so far and away the best…”

Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, Books, Poetry, , , , ,

December 30, 2024 • 9:23 pm 2

The Complete Unknowns

Martin Luther King Jr., Joan Baez and Harry Belafonte

Joan Baez was a junior at Palo Alto High School when she first heard Martin Luther King, Jr. speak at a conference for young Quakers. She would go on to sing for the non-violent movements for civil rights, social, economic and racial justice and against the war in Vietnam.

“King was giving voice to my passionate and ill-articulated beliefs,” wrote Baez in her memoir. Her “exhilarating sense of ‘going somewhere’ with my pacifism” in the aftermath of that speech would lead her to join King on marches in the Jim Crow south and at the historic March on Washington.

If you don’t already know about Baez’s history as a lifelong activist, you certainly would not get it from a viewing of the ahistorical Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, released in US theaters this Christmas.

Loosely based on Dylan’s arrival in New York City in 1961, the film covers the songwriter’s introduction to the Greenwich Village scene, his meetings with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and his intimate relationships with Baez and the fictional Sylvie Russo, a stand-in for his real life steady, Suze Rotolo.

“During the height of the civil rights era Bob wrote, among other songs, ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,’ ‘The Death of Emmett Till,’ [‘Only A Pawn In Their Game’] and of course, ‘Blowing in the Wind,’ which became a kind of anthem,” Rotolo wrote in her own memoir of the Village in the ‘60s. In the film, “Blowing in the Wind” is framed in his repertoire to be more like an annoyance or an albatross.

There’s a scene recreating Dylan and Rotolo’s meeting at a 1961 folk-a-thon at the Riverside Church, the historic hub of progressive gathering in New York City. And there is a brief moment when the Russo character explains to a befuddled Dylan that she works at the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), organizing the Freedom Rides from North to South — in fact one of Rotolo’s jobs in the era.

Facts are also, that in 1963, Dylan walked off the all-important nationally broadcast The Ed Sullivan Show when he was asked not to play his song, “Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues.” For those unacquainted, the John Birch Society is a radical far right group and the song is a satire.

That not much is made of the realities of the causes and concerns that moved both Baez and Rotolo to become immersed in movement work and the folk scene is perhaps understandable: A Complete Unknown is after all, a version of a story of Dylan becoming Dylan. But the gaps in the story of Dylan’s own connections to civil rights and the songs he wrote in their favor are woefully understated in the film, as are his friendships with the people in his circle (where, for example, were the nods to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott? Phil Ochs? Odetta? Lead Belly, at least, appears in an 8×10 photograph). There are also no poets, comedians or jazz musicians in the film’s version of the Village, though they are among those who also contributed to it being America’s bohemian center of its time.

Nor are there any three dimensional Black artists or musicians depicted in the film. The one scene in which a Black musician has a speaking role was made out of whole cloth and is particularly egregious: The fictional bluesman, Jesse Moffette (portrayed by Big Bill Morganfield whose father in real life was blues legend Muddy Waters) is played as a drunken mess when he appears with Dylan on Seeger’s public television show, Rainbow Quest. That Rainbow Quest really existed and featured musicians Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee is undeniable. The inclusion of any one of those artists would’ve made an interesting, albeit fictional meeting between Black and white, established and next generation musicians. But the creation of a fictionalized and stereotypical bluesman is not only in poor taste, it was a missed opportunity to introduce new listeners to the musicians who influenced Dylan and generations of future folk, blues and rock musicians.

One full episode of Rainbow Quest was devoted to Dylan’s friend and contemporary, Len Chandler, another figure on the Village scene who was eliminated from the story told in A Complete Unknown. It was Chandler who drove Dylan on the back of his motorbike to deliver his first album to Guthrie in the hospital.

“We took out our guitars and played Woody songs,” said Chandler.

Len Chandler and Bob Dylan at Newport Folk Festival, 1964, photo by Jim Marshall

Chandler and Dylan hung out, traded songs, learned their trade and celebrated their song publications in folk journals, Broadside and Sing Out! And while Chandler spent considerably more time in the South fighting for the rights of Black Americans (like Baez, it was his calling), it’s significant that Dylan appeared shoulder to shoulder with both of them at the March on Washington (though the film makes a bungle of computer generated imagery to recreate his appearance there).

Considering what could’ve been is a fool’s game but I’ll play it anyway: Dylan’s first recording session was as a harmonica player on another one of his heroes records: Harry Belafonte’s “Midnight Special.” The often told story of Dylan throwing his harps in the trashcan afterward would’ve made a great cinematic moment. The inclusion of a civil rights giant would’ve again been a nice prompt for a young viewer to dig deeper into Belafonte’s role in American civil rights, music and Dylan’s own history.

Oh but there’s more: Dylan famously had a crush of the wanting to marry her kind on Mavis Staples. Here again, was another missed opportunity to demonstrate how the singer’s dreams listening to and playing music with his inspirers became his reality. Instead, there is a Black woman of intrigue in the film who Dylan dumps in short order after her appearance. We have no idea who she is or is supposed to be standing in for, but a little like the nameless “mistress” played by Angela Bassett in Masked in Anonymous, she is there to let us know the main dude is an equal opportunity romancer.

The studio players on Dylan’s recordings, Paul Griffin, Sam Lay, Bruce Langhorne, as well as his producer Tom Wilson, could all have been elevated to characters with even one or two-line speaking roles, if only to let the audience know these cats were not just extras to add color to the cast: These were seasoned professionals hand-picked for the records that transitioned Dylan from solo folky to serious, original artist.

And then there is the short shrift given to Dr. King, whose “I Have A Dream” speech Dylan and Chandler listened to in real time, on the day it was delivered.

“That’s what I remember from the speech, being behind another monument with Dylan and silencing ourselves, and sitting in amazement as we heard that wonderful speech unfold,” Chandler remembered. But the take on historic Black preaching in A Complete Unknown, comes in the form of a man in a fedora and trench coast on a soap box. Listed in the credits as “civil rights speaker,” the character is but a token symbol for the movement that reached its very apex during the era depicted in the film. The scenes at the Newport Folk Festival would take me another viewing to de/reconstruct but they suffer from similar missed opportunities to display Black excellence and inspiration (Lightnin’ Hopkins, Willie Dixon, Fannie Lou Hamer, for God’s sake).

What could’ve been a simple and effective portrait of young Dylan and the ways folk musicians, women, and Black Americans intersected with the Civil Rights Movement and helped to shape the counterculture and ideals that came to define the ’60s, is in the end, just another piece of product, a part of the Dylan Industrial Complex: The books for days, the several documentaries, a museum and archive, a brand of liquor, a Christmas album, ornaments, and a line of bobbleheads…these are but a fraction of the branded, approved, licensed and unlicensed materials on offer in his name. Why should I have wished that a biopic be anything more than a distraction, an entertainment?

In the end, the contributions to the Civil Rights Movement made by women and Black Americans are the real hidden figures and unknowns obscured in the Hollywood retelling of Dylan’s own early ‘60s story. As impenetrable as the “real Dylan” may be or seem to be, I left the film not thinking about him, but wanting to ask the folks living and passed over, how does it feel?

Filed under: anti-capitalist, Arts and Culture, Blues, Bob Dylan, Civil Rights, film, Folk, Greenwich Village, Poetry, Protest Songs, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 3, 2024 • 8:32 am 0

“We’re Not Going Back”

Now that it’s September and the clouds here in San Francisco have cleared, I have some news to share: A new publication – the slim volume pictured above is on a new press – and it was made not only in memory of a movement hero, but in support of voting rights for all.

The story of Len Chandler is one of a path taken by chance. Among the  countless singers, students and teachers from coast to coast who sat in, stood up and rode freedom’s highway for the voting rights of their fellow Americans in the Jim Crow South, Chandler had an extraordinary knack for topical songwriting and an unwavering dedication to racial justice. From his home in Akron, to the heart of the Greenwich Village folk scene, Chandler was introduced in short order to humorist Hugh Romney  aka Wavy Gravy, poets Bob Kaufman and Langston Hughes, and folksingers Dave Van Ronk and Bob Dylan. Swiftly recruited by Pete Seeger to join the singing organizers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he was sent to Arkansas to register voters.

“You have to take the lead from somewhere and there were only a few performers around who wrote songs, and of them, my favorite was Len Chandler,” said Dylan. Compiled from rare interviews with Chandler by the author, Denise Sullivan’s concise tribute, Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows, pays homage to an unsung folk hero and provides instruction and inspiration for artists and activists pushing for change in perilous times.

This project has been long in the making: It started nearly 20 years ago when I embarked on the research for Keep on Pushing. It was resurrected when I was invited by the Bob Dylan Center to contribute an essay to a proposed catalog, and it was completed with the creation of a small press, Lyon Editions. Your purchase of Len Chandler: Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows will not only support its makers, it will contribute toward supporting voting rights and poll watching organizers, specifically in Georgia.

Rest assured Chandler is missed this election season, but let’s vote in his memory and in the memory of Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who lost their lives in the name of civil rights. A vote for Kamala Harris will see to it that the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is passed, ending voter suppression in all its forms, once and for all.

Thank you to our friends at Bird and Beckett Books and Records for the proper launch on August 28 as we commemorated 61 years since the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and one year to the day of the passing of Chandler. Full book talk and discussion here. Purchase books here. Thank you.

Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, Black Power,, Bob Dylan, Book news, Books, Civil Rights, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Folk, Georgia, Harry Belafonte, income disparity, Keep On Pushing, racism, , , ,

July 21, 2024 • 10:59 am 0

Some of us are prisoners, the rest of us are guards

Back when I wrote for the music press part time and worked at a small record label where it was also my job to answer the phone, I received a call from San Quentin. Immediately a recording played, stating the call was coming from a California correctional facility, though I was surprised to learn the call was for me. Though I did not know the person, he was seeking a member of the press to write about the sudden cessation of the prison’s writing program. He said it was imperative to get the word out so that some action could be taken to preserve the incarcerated population’s right to read. I listened to the plea, said I would do what little I could, and called a reporter, a friend of mine’s sister, who worked at the San Francisco Chronicle. I think the calls came a couple of more times, but there wasn’t much I could do. To my knowledge there was never a news story about conditions at the prison or its literacy programs. At the time, I didn’t realize there wasn’t any meaningful oversight of the state prison system and that “privileges” like food, exercise and activities were withheld at random, say, if a guard took a dislike to an incarcerated individual.

During the ’80s, the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs created the conditions that led to the over-incarceration we see today, particularly of Black and Latinx individuals. Scholars, like Michelle Alexander and Angela Davis among others, contend incarceration is a racist system of control that extends outside prison walls. There is plenty documented on the subject and I invite you to read more

Today there are over 2 million people living inside America’s prisons. According to the Sentencing Project, at the time I received the call from San Quentin, there were about 40,000 people in prison at the cost of approximately 6 billion dollars annually. Today the state spends over 60 billion on incarcerating its citizens. Two new books on the subject, mostly in the words of people who have done their time, suggest that prisons are a modern day form of slavery and that we abolish the prison nation.

I reviewed Reimagining The Revolution and Beneath The Mountain in this weekend’s San Francisco Chronicle Datebook.

 

When I received that phone call from San Quentin some years ago, I did not know that the prison population would increase by 500 percent over the next 40 years. Surely by now, most every American knows someone whose life or family has been impacted by the carceral system.

Writing and educational programs have been restored on and off in the California system, though mostly, they are off.

Over the years, I thought about that phone call, the lack of coverage of the prison system in the media, and lack of oversight behind prison walls. I became aware of the prison industrial complex — the relationship between businesses and institutions — as well as the basic human rights violations of incarcerated individuals, and corresponding mobilization efforts, inside and out, to raise awareness of the injustices and correct the abuses.

I am still learning about how we talk about the injustices of incarceration. Hearing stories from people who have lived the horror of America’s prisons seems to offer the most hope toward solutions. I recently viewed the documentary, The Strike, and learned more about the historic California State Prison hunger strike; I listen to Prison Radio, which broadcasts the voices of incarcerated, and look forward to the compact commentaries, often prophecies from Mumia Abu-Jamal. I read the San Francisco Bay View, one of the few publications that delivers firsthand coverage from incarcerated reporters; and I have spoken to San Franciscans who do what they can, using their time and talent to care for incarcerated loved ones and strangers.

Please take a moment today to consider the over 2 million Americans incarcerated. If interested, one action you can easily take is to support the Prison Literature Project: They send books to incarcerated individuals which is not as easy as it sounds — it’s a process and they are specialists. Thanks for reading today. Songs also contain information. Thanks for listening.

 

 

Filed under: Angela Davis, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, Black Power,, Bob Dylan, Book news, California, Malcolm X, Prison Justice, , , , ,

June 4, 2024 • 10:24 pm 1

On aging & the performing arts

Earlier this year in San Francisco, there was a live, all-star tribute to 92-year-old folksinger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Making his way around the world in the ‘50s, and a friend of Woody Guthrie’s during the pivotal modern era of American folk music, the contemporary celebration of Elliott was also a benefit for Sweet Relief, the 30-year-old organization founded by Victoria Williams to assist musicians in need. Oddly, the show was mostly void of political content save for a few remarks by musical director Joe Henry, 64, and Jackson Browne, 75, nodding to Guthrie and the roots of American folk and topical song.

Showing up in Elliott’s honor were Joan Baez and Bob Weir, both 83, and Steve Earle and Rickie Lee Jones aged 69. Of course there were younger performers on the bill, but my eyes and ears weren’t trained on them as much as they were on the older adults onstage and in the house: I gleefully whispered to my husband that unusually, I was among the youngest in the room.

Read the rest of the column here:

Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, Bob Dylan, California, column, Editorial

October 26, 2023 • 1:10 pm 0

War is Over! If You Want It

Every day I look at a framed poster on my office wall, its message of love and peace beaming down, from John and Yoko. The poster was a gift from a beloved friend who I haven’t seen in quite some time – I wish the circumstances weren’t so. “War is over if you want it.”

There are plenty of us, people and countries and friends and relatives who long for peace. And while I do believe I have to want it, I may also have to work for peace – make it my job. And yet, I choose to believe everything is in alignment just as it is (excepting that is, man-made disasters like war crimes, genocide, climate emergency, inequality and other conditions “unhealthy for children and other living things”). Severed ties, no replies, disappointments and other communication breakdowns may also fall into the category of human failings. So this year of our lord, 2023, certainly didn’t turn out the way I planned it, but my gracious, that is likely for the best (!). With that in mind I make the choice to carry on and employ whatever abilities I have accordingly. What I mean to say is, artists and writers, maybe more so than others but maybe not, use the skills we have to strike back. I mean, doctors help sick people. Caregivers give care. Billionaires could be of help, but often, they go the other way. Just thinking out loud here, but it’s been said writers write, so there’s that.

Pandemics, economic downturns and waiting for the long arc of the moral universe to bend toward justice have historically been periods of great discovery and learning, that is for those who seek knowledge. Turbulent times are valuable to artists and writers and thinkers and doers; it gives us space to get down to the real work of visualizing and implementing change and exercising resistance. And yes, both work and resistance require resilience, and resilience requires care and attention to self. Big questions, like how to tend to our own needs without turning our backs on the wider world at war or away from the people who need us will arise. And yes…I agree, that’s a fine line to walk, and there are times I fail miserably.

Lucky, and I am oh so lucky, living in the Bay Area, I am surrounded by people who provide living examples of the balancing act. I’m thinking right now of artist and activist Megan Wilson. I’ve had the opportunity to interview her several times, most recently about her curatorial and creative role with the Clarion Alley Mural Project’s current installation, Manifest Differently. Successfully merging the political and personal, community organizing and creativity into a holistic vision of making art with a message, Wilson and CAMP point the way for future directions of arts communities to flourish in perilous times. You can link to my full profile of the artist at Bay City News.

Despite the unforeseen this and that, these and those throughout the globe, I struck gold this year when my reporter self found an outlet to tell the stories I want to tell, uncensored and unbothered by market-driven concerns or an editorial board whose political leanings or voting record does not match my own. Independent, non-profit media was not always on my radar. Growing up in capitalism, caught between survival and Aquarian idealism, most of the time I chose survival. That often meant working for people and places I found shall we say, less than savory. Minimum wage in America is not a living wage as anyone who has worked or still works at that rate of pay well knows. Low wage work is painful and it is essential for the world to run as we know it. But maybe, things are changing. I see people rising up, organizing, reasserting their right to unionize and crowding the streets in protest – that makes me hopeful.

In the early part of this century, I was dreaming of people-powered movements coming to life again, the kind the world saw in the Sixties. I began researching and writing a book calling for change – fueled by the power of music. Keep on Pushing published in 2011, a couple of months before the Occupy Wall Street Movement and before Black Lives Matter hit the streets. The book was a vision. The time arrived. The moment passed. We keep working.

My day job as a writing instructor is often a night job. My “students” (strange to call such competent adult writers students) do great work and teaching has become an unexpected source of joy and gratification — the perfect adjunct to the writing life that keeps me engaged with trends and topics writers are interested in exploring and developing. But if I may speak the truth, and you know I will, my own work often takes a back seat to the job. I have once again failed to achieve mastery of life’s balancing act. Some personal and longer term projects were side-burnered, not always of my own choice or making, but so be it. Projects will likely reach completion in the new year and I hope at that time to share them with you. A way will be made.

I hope 2024 brings us all more work and more jobs to do. For now, I’ll leave you with links to my most recent assignments for hire, a review of Sonic Life, by Thurston Moore for the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook, a profile of Nathalie Lermitte and the songs of Edith Piaf, and the aforementioned profile of Wilson. I’m grateful for the weeks when paycheck and passions intersect, and mindful of my privilege to pursue both — in peace.

Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-war, , , , , , ,

October 1, 2023 • 6:09 pm 0

Rest In Power, Len Chandler: Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows Died on August 28, 2023

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As anyone with their eyes on the prize knows, the 60th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was on August 28, 2023.  Among those assembled to help Dr. King push forward his dream of racial harmony and economic justice was Len Chandler (often overlooked in the history of civil rights work), one of the voices in a trio that day which included Bob Dylan and Joan Baez (Chandler appears at about 17 minutes into the following clip, though the whole 25 minutes is worth your time). Unfortunately, I come here today with a heavy heart to belatedly report that Chandler died at home in Los Angeles, on August 28, 60 years to the day of the march.

It was a blessing to have interviewed Len on several occasions for the purpose of documenting his story. I was invited to the home he shared with his wife Olga James, to break bread with him, and to participate in several community functions and political gatherings where he was still singing for freedom in the 21st Century. My deepest condolences to all who loved him. I did not know him well, but his work has continued to move and motivate me, long after first making contact with him more than a decade ago.

It was hoped that Chandler and I would be visiting the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa this year, to deliver a panel on singing, songwriting, racial justice and voting rights, to coincide with the publication of my essay commissioned by the Center on Chandler. But none of that was to be. Timing, as it’s said, is everything. And racism is still very much alive, very much afoot in America, 2023.

The following is a repost from my previous posts on Chandler

Chandler would march with Dr. King and travel throughout the South in the name of voter registration, informing rural Southerners of their polling rights, often at great risk to his own life. His poems were recognized by Langston Hughes, he wrote the folk standard “Green, Green Rocky Road” with poet Bob Kaufman, and recorded two albums for Columbia Records, but little is known about him or his life.  I sought out Chandler when I wrote Keep on Pushing, my text that tracks the origins and evolution of freedom music, and its roots in African American resistance and liberation movement.

Originally from Akron, Ohio, and studying on scholarship at Columbia in the ’50s, Chandler made his way to Greenwich Village folk music by accident: Lured to the sounds of Washington Square Park by the downtown youths he was mentoring, he easily fell into the scene with his natural ear for songwriting and his familiarity with the songs of Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, and Woody Guthrie.  Following a performance at the popular Village coffeehouse, the Gaslight Cafe,  Chandler landed a contract to go to Detroit, writing and performing topical songs for local television. A few months later, when he returned to New York, the folk thing was in full swing:  Bob Dylan was the latest arrival to town and the pair started to trade ideas and songs.

“I hadn’t yet begun writing streams of songs like I would, but Len was, and everything around us looked absurd—there was a certain consciousness of madness at work,” wrote Dylan in his book Chronicles.  Chandler remembers it like this in Keep on Pushing:  “The first song I ever heard of Dylan’s was ‘Hey ho, Lead Belly, I just want to sing your name,’ stuff like that.”  Dylan used Chandler’s melody for his song, “The Death of Emmett Till.” “Len didn’t seem to mind,” Dylan wrote.

Chandler went on to record two albums for Columbia:  To Be a Man and The Loving People. He continued to work as a topical songwriter, a peace and civil rights advocate, and as a songwriting teacher; his tour of Pacific Rim bases with Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda, Holly Near and Paul Mooney was documented in the Francine Parker film, FTA, a must-see for anyone interested in US history and anti-war efforts within military ranks. Catch a glimpse of Chandler at the end of this trailer for the film:

It was an extreme privilege (and I have since found out a rare opportunity) to meet one of the true unsung heroes of singing activism (as well as his wife Olga James, a pioneering performer in her own right), and have him tell his story to me. Though largely retired from performing, he remains well- informed on human rights, politics, and the arts and will step up and step out for civil rights. You can read a portion of our talks in Keep on Pushing, and someday I will post the complete unedited transcripts, though for now, enjoy the voice of Chandler from back in the day, when singing was a huge part of moving the movement forward.

Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, Black Power,, California, Civil Rights, Folk, racism, ,

August 1, 2023 • 6:14 pm 2

Rest in Power: Sinéad O’Connor

When I heard the news that Sinéad O’Connor died last week, the news was not terribly surprising – people suffer, they take ill, they die. And yet, the depth of my feeling for the world’s loss of such a prophetic, powerful and perfect singer was startling. Though I’m well-familiar with her work and saw her perform live more than once (she was after all a part of the fabric of the ’80s and ’90s popular culture), I think what struck me hardest was how much of her good work for humankind and her general love of the world’s people had gone unnoticed. Here was a God-loving and spiritually devoted singer who had never turned away from her mission to help others, and yet, others had turned away from her time and again.

And then I remembered her turn as the Virgin Mary in Neil Jordan’s film, The Butcher Boy: There was something about her performance that stayed with me, all these years later. I guess what I mean to say is there is no doubt in my mind that someday, future generations will see Sinéad as the visionary, the prophet, the truthsayer and comforter she was; maybe she’ll even be venerated accordingly.

My full remembrance of O’Connor can be read at the link to Tourworthy.

Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, Bob Marley, film, Hip Hop, Immigration Reform, income disparity, Nina Simone, Protest Songs, racism, ,

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