All posts by Joseph

Take over the Democratic Party right effing Now

July 8, 2022 Joseph

I’ve probably told this story before, but let me repeat it for some of the young people out there. I have never been a sustained political activist, but I’ve been activist-adjacent all of my adult life. During that time, I have attended political meetings (mostly around foreign policy issues), participated in protests, and interacted with more committed activists at various levels. I bloviate – that’s most of what I’ve done. I’ve also worked phone banks for specific candidates a handful of times from 2006 on.

Since the mid to late 1990s, I have also taken part in online organizing at a very low level. At the beginning, this involved subscribing to listservs, message boards, that sort of thing. As I mentioned above, I started working on Democratic party campaigns about sixteen years ago, but I never contributed money to a campaign until relatively recently. Nevertheless, around the time of the 2004 election, I started getting fundraising emails from the Democratic party. One of my colleagues on one of the listservs probably shared list data with the party at some point. (I suspect I know who this might have been, but it hardly matters.)

The money machine

I’m providing this background to illustrate one of the central problems with the Democratic party today. In this instance, they treated a group of activists, some very committed to social change, as a market for fundraising. The groups I was involved in fell away after that period, partly as a function of the rise of social media. So now, instead of receiving messages from activists and participating in conversations, I get an inbox full of fundraising messages every day, and I’m bombarded by similar pleas every time I go on FB or Instagram.

There are complex reasons for this, and I won’t delve into all that right now, but suffice to say that this isn’t how change happens. Yes, Democratic party candidates need money to compete. But a party cannot just be about extracting money from its base in $5 or $10 increments. ($22 seems to be the favorite this season.) A party needs to be connected to political and social movements. It needs to be present in people’s lives and making a tangible difference in their communities. Right now, the only time people hear from the Democratic party is when they need money or votes. That’s why we need to take its sorry ass over.

Where it’s working

There are some good efforts underway to accomplish this. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are a good example. Yes, they endorse candidates and support fundraising efforts, but principally they work within local communities to build change from the ground up. The New York City chapter is doing some great work, combining actual organizing and activism with an electoral strategy. It’s encouraging that they recognize the centrality of community-based efforts while putting some energy into electoral politics.

Let’s face it – you can do great things in your community, build strong, radical institutions, foster positive change from the ground up …. only to have it all taken apart by some right wing legislature, governor, Congress, president, or supreme court. The recent supreme court decisions illustrate how important it is for the left to keep its hand in elections. And since we are now working against time with respect to the climate crisis, the only way to facilitate radical change is by commandeering the ossified Democratic party, filling its ranks with activists, and replacing its leadership with people willing to do what needs doing.

No time to lose

There’s a lot going on in this country at the community level, particularly on the labor front. Policies largely associated with the left are popular, but the leadership of the Democratic party has had its head up its ass since the 1990s. The only way we can move crucial issues forward is by combining committed activism with a national electoral strategy, built on the bones of the Democratic party.

Not easy, but it’s easier than starting from scratch. And we just wasted a day.

luv u,

*Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.*

Usual Rubbish

Scratching out a whole new way of itching

July 1, 2022 Joseph

Okay, that club on Route 5 … was that the Garden Cafe or Looney Tunes? It feels more like the latter than the former, frankly. Jesus, what the hell am I asking YOU for? The only thing YOU remember is random facts about some log cabin and the battle of Gettysburg. And even THAT you get backwards. (Though to you it seems forwards.)

In case you’re worried, no, we’re not writing a memoir of Big Green. Who the fuck would buy that? If nothing else, I can practically guarantee that there will never be a (1) tell-all retrospective, (2) drippy bio-pic, or (3) lost journal having to do with this, the world’s most obscure indie rock group that ever recorded more than 100 of their own songs. That said, we will milk it for a blog post or two. The first one was last week; the second, this week. The third will have to wait its turn.

Back to the Early ’90s

So anyway, in the early nineties we made the questionable decision of basing ourselves in the Utica, NY area, our home town, which at the time was not on a particular upswing culturally. We started by working with guitarist Armand Catalano, playing clubs and campuses around the region, serving up our own songs plus an assortment of covers. As I mentioned last week, the guitar seat in Big Green was governed by the rules of musical chairs, pretty much. Armand played with us, then friend of the band Steve Bennett, and later, other friend of the band Jeremy Shaw.

This was fine, except when we got confused and called guitarists by the wrong first name. There were occasional gaps as well, unsurprisingly. But the gigs we played then represented the least of what was going on in our tiny little world. None of them were in the least high-profile events. We opened for Mere Mortals at MVCC sometime in 1991 , I think. We opened once for Joe Bonamassa’s Bloodline at what is now known as SUNY Poly in Utica, probably in 1993. We played Middlebury College one New Year’s, if I recall correctly. And then there were a bunch of dead end bars.

The output was put out

The thing was, by the early nineties, Matt Perry was writing songs like a house afire. He was writing his Christmas numbers – a new album every holiday season. And he was cranking out a bunch in-between. (No, he didn’t write songs about Saint Swithin’s day – that’s just an ugly rumor about Big Green that some meteorologist started.) We were doing piles of demo recordings, and we managed to get into a studio a few times (the former AcqRok, thanks to friend of Big Green Bob Acquaviva of Mere Mortals.)

We had some live recordings as well. We’ve played a few of them on our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, and there are a few more we haven’t posted as of yet. Probably the best ones of these are the DAT recordings we made in Jeremy Shaw’s basement in 1993 (or ’94? I don’t freaking know.). Then there was the video demo done by some hipster dude named Angel who worked at a vegetarian restaurant and considered the VHS tape he recorded for us some kind of masterpiece (when it wasn’t).

Yesterday is not today

So, the upshot of all this is, we have a better audio record of the 1990s than we do of the 1980s, when the only technology we could afford was a bic lighter and a pack of Marlboros. Ever try to run sound through a pack of Marlboros? It ain’t pretty. Makes a kazoo sound like a brass freaking band.

Political Rants

Our remaining option: A Million Mutinies Now

July 1, 2022 Joseph

As you well know, the other shoe dropped last week regarding Roe v. Wade, which is now history. The joyless anti-abortion zealots up the street from me must be enjoying the closest thing they know to a celebration. Maybe they’ll take the baby-float mobile out for a ride. (No, seriously: they had a vehicle with a plastic baby on the roof and P.A. speakers through which they would read anti-abortion screeds, inaudible because of their cheap audio gear. We called it the “baby float”.)

I wrote a post on the impending abortion decision a couple of weeks ago entitled “The Right To Be Forced Into Childbirth“. What I didn’t get deeply into then was the degree of fraud Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court committed during their confirmation hearings. That was, of course, their way not only of protecting themselves but of offering their supporters cover by gaslighting everyone who had paid any attention to their careers up to that point.

Perjury and Prevarication

Let’s take Gorsuch, son of Anne Gorsuch Buford, Reagan’s EPA administrator who tried to dismantle the agency, partly through sheer incompetence. (Looks like her son is going to get another shot at it via their upcoming ruling.) During his confirmation hearings, Gorsuch acknowledged the power of precedence with regard to Roe, and affirmed that a “good judge” should take it as seriously as in any other case. Then came last Friday.

How about Kavanaugh, lover of beer, bro of Squee, best bud of P.J.? Kavanaugh referred to Roe as “settled law” and an “important precedent …. reaffirmed many times.” Sure, he suggested that he might be persuaded to overturn it, but who reads the fine print? He made comforting cooing sounds, and the senators nodded contentedly.

I’m not sure what Justice Barrett could possibly have said to counteract her part in publishing a full-page anti abortion ad in the New York Times. She bleated some gas about following the rules of stare decisis, and like her reactionary brethren, hid the ball in plain sight so that the politicians in the audience could pretend they did not see it.

The bastards Bush

It’s easy to blame Trump, of course, because he’s so damn blame-able. But the worst justice on the damn court is Clarence Thomas, and he was appointed by George H. W. Bush, or Bush the First as no one calls him. Bush is now roundly praised by centrists as a man of integrity, etc. Justice Thomas is convincing evidence to the contrary. No other recent Republican president has appointed a more reactionary judge to lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court.

And then there’s Sam Alito, the no- so-smart as Scalia clone of Scalia. George W. Bush appointed him, so to those of you whose hearts are warmed by the sight of W. and Michelle Obama goofing about, all I can say to you is …. Iraq. And Alito. And Afghanistan. And …. Suffice to say, if it weren’t for these two losers (W. and H.W.), Roe would still stand.

All is not lost

Fortunately, there are things we can do. One of them is what so many thousands of people did over this past weekend – make your voices heard. Another is to push our Congress members to support legislation by Elizabeth Warren and other progressives that would support the right to abortion services through the establishment of federal clinics in red states, expansion of access to medication, and so on.

The other thing is, well, a million mutinies now. Vote for the most progressive members of Congress you can find. Encourage everyone around you to do the same thing. We need a progressive tidal wave this fall, and it’s going to take everyone doing that simple thing – voting. With a strong majority in Congress, we can pass and expanded Roe in to law, build a better healthcare system, expand the Supreme Court, impeach Kavanaugh, amend the constitution. All we need is the votes.

Impossible? I think not. If people mobilize, we can take over the works within the confines of the current system. With the right numbers, nothing could stop us. We just have to commit to doing it.