Patti Smith

"People Have The Power"

By Geordie Pleathur
(SugarBuzz Nation)

SugarBuzz Magazine

PATTI SMITH "PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER" (-by Geordie Pleathur)

"The goal of corporate billionaires like the Koch Brothers is no less than to break unions, and silence the voice of all working people, who fight for better working conditions, and improved standards, for all working people." (–Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United)

"What’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side." (-Paul Krugman)

"The Wisconsin protests -- with tens of thousands of working people occupying State Capitol for nearly a week -- are truly unprecedented in American history. Clearly a new protest movement is being formed here, one that may breath hope into a democracy that so many people have lost faith in. But the corporate media doesn't want to hear about it." (-Mike Elk, reporting for MichaelMoore.com)

"And understand this: if American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner." (–Phony baloney Barack Obama, November 3, 2007)

"The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class - pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don't believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class..." (-Robert Reich)

"You're damned right I deadly force." – Indiana Assistant Attorney General Jeff Cox, advocating killing Wisconsin protestors.

"We have a White House now that is extremely dangerous. They don't believe in democracy. Now is the time for people to show more courage. I would like to see more people whistle-blowing." (-Daniel Ellsberg on Bush/Cheney)

"Living here in the Midwest I can tell you this: People HAVE HAD IT. They've been pushed to the limit and they've got nothing to lose at this point. This movement -- we'll call it the 'Madison Movement' (after both the town where it was born and the president who wrote our Bill of Rights) is exploding across the Midwest. It will be unlike anything you've seen in recent U.S. history." (-Michael Moore)

KILLIN' CIVILIANS BY THE MILLIONS....

Extremely bored, government officials are, reportedly, becoming interested in the traditional assortment of bleeding hearts, pacifists, nuns and rabble-rousers, punks, and peaceniks, a-high-jacking all the rebellious rock'n'roll pages, to promote peace and liberty, to their fellow rebellious rock'n'roll constituents. The spirit of peace and liberty did not die with any of our forebears. They can kill the dreamers, but not the dream. Dig: Most everyone, I've ever known, strongly opposes the immoral, "pre-emptive" invasions, and inhumane occupations of other countries, but they all live in a chronic, tragic, state of government-induced, fear and paranoia. Too terrified to even put a simple peace sign on their car, because they don't want to be pulled over, and hassled by the police, or have their privacy "legally" invaded, by Big Brother. Many of my associates are afraid to even sign a petition, because they don't want to be singled-out by the authorities. Government agents, under-cover "provocateurs", are constantly being dispatched, to disrupt and cause trouble, at peaceful rallies. They infiltrate and spy on peace groups. Ordinairy, everyday, hard-working, law-abiding, tax-payer's phone calls are all monitored. Everyone is being wire-tapped and under total, warrantless-surveillance. Searched and fondled, guilty until proven innocent. Is this the "freedom" that people are killing and dying for? The freedom that the "Ay-rabs" are, supposedly, so jealous of? To be groped and violated, and spied-on? To cower, too ashamed to speak-out, or verbally oppose the steady, extremist erosion of human rights, and all our most basic civil liberties? The right to collective-bargaining, organizing for peace, the right to privacy, and peaceful assembly? The rights to free speech, and a free press?

The same sinister six Supremes who brought you the upside-down, "Citizens United" decision, that proclaims that corporations should have no cap on election spending; the same judges who "selected" Bush-in spite of significantly more actual, popular votes going to both Al "P.M.R.C." Gore, and John "If you ask me about Skull N Bones, you're gonna get tasered" Kerry, have now, ruled that vaccine makers can't be held libel for children's Autism, or other ugly side effects. They simply can never be sued for defective vaccines. Nice, huh? The decision was 6-2, with Justice Elena Kagan sitting out. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented. Whistle-blowers are incarcerated, under Obama. Peace activists, union organizers, TSA dissenters, environmentalists, organic farmers, and solidarity activists have all been falsely classified as "terrorists" and "domestic extremists", and are routinely, spied upon, yes, even under Obama. I guess they figure consciousness raising, civil disobedience, and peace organizing are bad for the business of endless war on the middle-East, and endless Class-War, here in the quote unquote, sieg heil, homeland. Meanwhile, all the torturers, pro torture-lawyers, and white collar, Wall Street, criminal enterprises, go unpunished, and are even bailed-out, at tax-payer expense. The real criminals and drug-dealers and terrorists and stock-broker mafia, and Gulf-destroying oil companies, are all "too big to jail". As the under-rated songwriting genius, Nick Lowe, once sang, "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love, And Understanding?"

The nefarious Patriot Act has rendered the Fourth Amendment a thing of the past. The cops taser people, indiscriminately, and are never held accountable for taser-related deaths. Obama never closed down the torture camps, like he vowed he would, in the last election. He never withdrew the occupying troops from Iraq. He spread the wars into Pakistan and Yemen, killin' civilians, by the millions. He continues to appoint Bush era neo-cons, and Monsanto execs to our regulatory agencies. He ordered the Justice Department not to investigate Halliburton, Blackwater, B.P., or the Bush administration. He never pardoned Leonard Peltier. He surrounds himself with Wall Street hustlers and darlings of the Military Industrial Complex, like, "Vast Rightwing" Hillary Clinton, who never saw a war she didn't like. The billionaires and CIA kingpins, corporate whores, and military industrial complex are conspiring to destroy unions, and divide the working people. In spite of twenty-four hour a day cable news misinformation, some folks are still awakening, uniting, and rising in solidarity...in Wisconsin...in Ohio, the common people MUST unite against these elitist oppressors, and their pro-war, big-media, propaganda machine, and Kafka-esque Police State apparatus. Every one of us has to do our part to encourage, empower, educate, and uplift our own people. The media-class are NOT our friends. They're complicit, by distorting the truth, ignoring the truth, and/or by distracting us from the truth. That's cool that Ellen and Portia love the cute and furry pets of the land...and uniting to stand up against homophobic schoolyard bullies is, indeed, the first step, to standing up to these oil barons, crime families, and endless war mongers, who've taken over our media, and our government, but few millionaires you see on television have ever said ANYTHING to expose the psy-ops, false flags, and manufactured dog wagging fabrications, that were used to usher the radical, right-wing, neo-cons into office, who have since, lied us into wars, took away our freedoms, sent our manufacturing jobs to slave-states overseas, to benefit U.S. slave-owning, share-holders. We've seen many well-loved public figures who spoke-out against the wars, and/or cop-state, slandered and fired...from Donahue to Olbemann. Sean Penn and Oliver Stone. The Dixie Chicks and Helen Thomas. Noam Chomsky and the dearly departed, Howard Zinn. Even mainstream dudes like, Charlie Sheen and Dan Rather. When will the everyday people tire of iron-fisted tyranny? The true leaders of the progressive movement, and the unions, are banished from the corporate Sunday round-table shows. All those panel programs are always composed of one conservative, pretending to be "centrist", playing the liberal, and three far-out, far-right whack-jobs, from the pro-killing lobby. You don't hear Chris Hedges, Arundhati Roy, Glen Ford, Cynthia Peters, Barbara Ehrenreich, or John Pilger on corporate television. You have to visit the Dandelion Salad blogspot, on-line, or Common Dreams, or the Black Agenda Report, or subscribe to Z Magazine. Or watch "The War And Peace Report", on Democracy Now! www.democracynow.org Now Go Tell Yo Mama.

WORKERS UNITE...PEACE NOW!

We are in an abusive relationship with the Democratic party-we keep staying with him, hoping he'll "change". We got to admit that they are now just, one big, "bipartisan", union-busting, corporate-whore, war-party, in the service of the war-mongering elites. The war manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and General Electric. The fat generals who've gone to work for all these shadowy "security" firms, and privately owned mercenary groups, and all those who profit from the tasers, the scanners, the drones, the jails, the mercenaries, the corporate propaganda-factories. My hat's off to Tom Morello and Wayne Kramer, and all those noble and righteous pop/punk, and emo guys, who are rallying the nurses and teachers and firemen and post-men, and other unions and government workers, in Wisconsin. We need to see lots more of that. I'm talkin' to YOU, brothers and sisters. Maybe you can't travel to Wisconsin, I know many of us refuse to fly, while Chertoff/Kerry hold our airports hostage, with their molestation goons, and porno-imaging machines, but we can ALL make a flyer and pin it to a community bulletin board, phone tree our peers, organize, sticker, make fliers, make t-shirts, create underground newspapers, write letters to sold-out media-whores and fraud politicians, demanding freedom from this "Patriot-Act" occupation, as well as the inhumane, and ferociously UNdemocratic, rule of the Kochs and Waltons and Murdochs and Bush and Cheneys and Clintons and Palins and all the other rightwing, think-tank, spy dynasties, over the poor and working poor, and the evaporating middle-class, of this country. We have GOT to get it together, with the viable third party candidates, and new media streams. Fox news just manufactures fake stories, like when they recently over-dubbed fake "boo, hisses" on top of footage of a Ron Paul speech. Information is still heavily segregated in the midwest. They've got full control of the airwaves, they're steadily killing the print media, and millions of low income, blue collar families don't have the internet. Republicans like this Wisconsin governor, that Koch Slut, admire dead puppet-prez Reagan, for firing air-traffic controllers, ordering the National Guard and California secret police to violently break up protests on college campuses, when he was the puppet-governor, outsourcing/off-shoring all the jobs, and conducting clandestine operations and secret wars. The puppets they've got in the so-called Democratic party, nowadays, share this admiration of evil puppet-prez, Reagan. SOMEHOW, we, the people need to evict all representatives, from either wing, of the permanent War-Party. www.bradblog.com

Like I keep lamenting, in the fly-over states, everyone is painfully aware of all that hate and venom, classist, racist, chicken-hawk nationalist rhetoric, spewed forth, twenty-four seven, around the clock, by Beck and Limbaugh, and all the police state Fox fraudcasters, but like, hardly anyone is hip, at all, to Naomi Klein, Matt Taiibi, Glen Greenwald, Democracy Now, the Nation magazine, Z Magazine, or any of those sane, egalitarian voices of reason. Bill Moyers has retired, and PBS and NPR are being attacked, by right-wing think-tank operatives, much like our teacher's unions, public schools, Acorn, and all other liberal and progressive institutions. Alan Grayson, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Cornel West, Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader are all subject to constant attacks in the far-right press, and cable-media, but particularly, by the two-faced establishment-tools of the progressive-loathing, faux-Democratic party: Emmanuel, Gibbs, Obama, etc. As the often maligned, liberal radio-personality, Randi Rhoades, has said, "The Republicans will take someone and tear them to shreds. They will question their patriotism. They call me Osama Bin Randi. Randi Hussein. Tokyo Rhodes." She was one of the only people, in the mass-media, to speak out against the government thugs tasering that honor student, for questioning John Kerry, about the abruptly cancelled election recounts, and his ties to the Bush family. Jackson Browne's potent anthem, "Lives In The Balance" has been banned from the Fear Channel air-waves. This is a bleak time we live in. Most Americans are sleep-walking through this radical transitioning into absolute fascism. It's very, very "Twilight Zone". Rachel Maddow's just about the last "leftie" on TV, but even she's not allowed to really go after the George Orwell TSA/NSA goons, or really assertively critisize Obama, or ever condemn the actions of either the American, or Israeli militaries. Bradley Manning's still in jail...but apparently, NOT the mercenaries, who killed the Reuteurs journalists, and civilians, for sport, in that Wiki-Leaked "Collateral Murder" video.

The story about seventy-one year old, anti-war activist, Ray McGovern, being savagely roughed up, by Hillary Clinton's goon squad, while she gave a phoney, utterly hypocritical, speech about the freedom to dissent, without so much as missing a beat...was completely whitewashed over, by the State-Media. Obama refuses to stand with the unions and the families of Wisconsin. Why? Because he's a Bush...a neo-con...a fake...a marketing-brand. Friends, do not ever be ashamed to stand up for peace and freedom, equality, and democracy,and the most sacred and precious value of human life, over the profits of the top one percent. We are many, and they are few. There are millions and millions who feel just like we do. For every frustrated, former benchwarming, highschool wrestling-team member, they can pay to read your e-mail, or bust skulls at the demonstration, sniff your Granny's under-drawers, or to feel your sister up, at the air-port, there are millions more of us, who still believe in human rights, peace, civil liberties, and social justice. Some of us may come from the Right, like Ron Paul, some of us come from the left, like Ralph Nader, but we are all born with a conscience, we all know something's wrong here, and we can all come together: to end these wars, stop the ceaseless, lawless, merciless fat-cat wars on the poor and middle-classes, and repeal the double-speak, Constitution-suspending, "Patriot Act". Have Courage, brothers and sisters!!! Okay, I'm gettin' down off my soap-box, here, and returning you to your regularly-scheduled programming, but as Patti Smith sang in her heroic anthem, "People Have The Power", "I commit my dream to you..."

"DRESS CODES ENFORCED IN THIS AREA! REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY!"

Patti Smith valiantly campaigned for Nader, but the fix was in. Perhaps, if the Beats and civil rights leaders of the sixties and seventies were still here-Burroughs, Ginsberg, Lennon, Thompson, Hoffman, they would be able to speak truth, not to the power mongers, but to the everyday people, especially, to the baffled and television programmed baby boomers, and stir their souls with messages of love and unity, and remind us of the better angels of our nature. It makes you wonder. All the good guys really DO seem to die young, don't they? Now, the punks and progressives are startin' to die off, too. Bators, Fred Sonic, Strummer, Ari Up, Bill Hicks, Howard Zinn. We could really use their voices in this dark hour. Send your good vibes out to Poly Styrene, who's reportedly, got cancer. R.E.M. have been performing in hoods and orange jumpsuits, to protest the state-torturers and the inhumane treatment of whistle-blowers. Tom Morrello from Rage Against The Machine, and his friends, are always on the frontlines, doing the hard work of democracy. The thing is, like Fred Sonic and Patti suggest, in their timeless anthem, "People Have The Power", at some point, YOU are supposed to step in, and carry on the work of the good folks, who came before us. The rebels and saints and writers and martyrs, heroes and poets from the past, are gonna be with you, in spirit, as you carry on the proud tradition of usurping the petty rules of tyrants and pharoahs, dictators and billionaires. Brother Wayne Kramer and Sister Sinead can't do it all by themselves, forever. Let us all endeavor to look out for each other, and set an example, for generations to come, by building a new underground, D.I.Y. rock'n'roll community, based on solidarity, not cut-throat one-upmanship and competition. A new rebel resistance, that favors life over gunning the engine of one's oversized truck at the drive-through window of Taco Bell, complaining about the service workers, and callously ignoring the people shivering on street corners, holding cardboard signs, begging for food, while these talent-free heiresses on cable unreality shows continue to dominate our thoughts and conversations. Billionaire's surgically-enhanced daughters should not be our "celebrities". Let us be our own heroes. Let's publish chapbooks, one-sheets, print fanzines. Let's put the proverbial band back together. "Get together one more time". We always gotta get back to love. People Have The Power. People Have The Power. People Have The Power. People Have The Power. "The power to dream...to rule/to wrestle the Earth from fools". Amen, sister!

COME ON, NOW:

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