Month: June 2005

Lawnguyland

Long Island is full of surprises. I’ve been doing house visits for a certain union on Long Island. I’ve been working in Lindenhurst, a town that is mostly known to me from those hypnotic station announcements on the Long Island Railroad (“Making station stops at…Wantaugh, Seaford, Massapequa, Massapequa Park, Amityville, Copiague, Lindenhurst and Babylon; Change at Babylon for the train to Montauk…”), which are stored in the same place in my brain as parts of the Nicene Creed and the pledge of allegiance. I’m not in the habit of spending time in Suffolk county, and it’s easy to forget that we live on an actual island that’s surrounded by water and docks. Lindenhurst feels like one of Maine’s lobster towns, but without all that pesky tourism. When you get far enough south, these modest, working class houses have dock slips for backyards. When I don’t get an answer at the […]

He Ain’t Never Caught a Rabbit.

I think I’m over the dog thing. My parents are away this weekend, at a family reunion that I am boycotting, so I volunteered to dog-sit Alfred. I drove by my folks’ place in the late afternoon to pay the neurotic pup a visit and then take him to my apartment. I took him for a quick run around the backyard in order in order to expend some of his pent up energy from being cooped up in the house alone for the previous ten hours, and then for a nice long walk around the neighborhood in order to answer the call of nature. Now, Alfred can be rather clever when it comes to sneaking food or prying open doors, but he can be a bit of a dummy when it comes to basic doggies duties. Still, it was a new one on me when I caught Alfie absent-mindedly peeing […]

Jackie Robinson Park vs. Snapple Apple Stadium

The recent, long-awaited announcement of plans for a successor to the Mets’ Shea Stadium opens the chilling possibility that New York City will be stuck with one of those stupid corporate-sponsorship name venues. From the Staples Center in Los Angeles to the MCI Arena in Washington, DC and, in between, those poor bastards in Houston who were stuck with Enron Field, corporate-sponsored naming rights have blighted our nation’s sporting venues. This frustrating trend has reached as close as New Jersey where the naming rights to the Brendan Byrne Arena were sold to Continental Airlines (while the poor old man was still alive to see it), and…well, what the hell was the PNC Bank Center before it became a corporate ho? (How the hell is one supposed to find the stadium if the name keeps changing?) With the impending demise of Shea Stadium – which is owned by the city – […]

Ghosts of Mississippi Demand Action for Today

The wheels of civil rights justice sure do turn slowly in America. With a curious vigor, authorities are seeking convictions for two of the most famous lynchings of the mid-twentieth century, while the U.S. Senate has recently apologized for not reacting to all those lynchings in a timely matter. Better late than never? “You’re still doing what you did in 1964,” protests Rita Schwerner Bender. Back in that Freedom Summer, Schwerner Bender and her then-husband, Michael Schwerner moved to Mississippi in order to register blacks to vote. They worked with a Queens College student named Andrew Goodman, and a local black activist named James Earl Chaney. These nosy Jews from New York and their uppity Negro friend drew the ire of the local Ku Klux Klan, whose support went all the way up to the local sheriff, who, on June 21, arrested the three men for speeding and allowed them […]

Change to Win

I just got an e-mail from Joe Hansen, International President of the United Food and Commercial Workers. Okay, it was a mass e-mail sent out over the union’s “Union Voice” list. The meat of it is significant, but not surprising. UFCW’s Executive Board has authorized Hansen to withdraw from the AFL-CIO. This makes UFCW the second union, after SEIU, to authorize its president to pull out of the AFL-CIO if the July convention proves dissatisfactory. The five international unions that make up the Change to Win Coalition – SEIU and UFCW, Unite Here, the Teamsters and the Laborers – held a coming out party today in Washington. They voted on a constitution, by-laws and guiding principles, and then held a press conference. That sounds like a rival labor federation to me. It’s tempting to make comparisons to the old CIO. Of course, the political climate and times are very different […]

What Campaign Finance Reform?

I received a constituent mailing from my City Council representative Melinda Katz, or, rather, from “Speaker Gifford Miller and Council Member Melinda Katz…Working to Make Our City Cleaner and Safer.” Voters have long been accustomed to incumbents using taxpayer-financed constituent mailings to trumpet their dubious “accomplishments” during campaign season, but…using a constituent mailing as a blatant campaign advertisement for a totally different candidate and race? Shouldn’t this sort of thing be illegal? Come to think of it, shouldn’t Gifford Miller have dropped out of the race weeks ago? I mean, who’s clamoring for another pretty white liberal whose word can’t be trusted to be our next Mayor? Twelve percent of the voters, apparently. Well, keep at it, tiger! Don’t let ethics and campaign finance reform keep you stuck in last place. You can do it!

Music City’s Always Been Good To Him, But Irving Plaza’s a Bitch

I saw Bobby Bare Jr. and a sampling of the Young Criminals Starvation League open for the Old 97’s last Thursday. Bobby didn’t fare too well with the crowd (Who would have? That audience wanted the Old 97’s, and they wanted them right away). The way the songs were reworked for a trio – excising those wonderful Stax horns – made it sound, at times, like generic “hard country,” and Bobby’s vocals were too low in the mix, so the audience missed some good lines. He did win over a few with some funny jokes and that terrific cover of the Smiths’ “What Difference Does It Make?” Once again, I urge you to run out and buy BBJ’s latest record, “From The End of Your Leash,” from the good folks at Bloodshot Records. The Old 97’s barreled through a typically entertaining set that clocked in just under two hours. I […]

Requiem for a Communist

Yesterday was Si Gerson’s memorial at the Tamiment Institute. There were many wonderful stories, memories and tributes from friends, family and comrades. It was good to meet Si’s daughter, Deborah, who invited me to speak, and his two grand-daughters, Timi and Frieda. I was asked if I would post my comments on this website, which I shall in order to correct a few factual errors in my earlier post (which was written from memory, and didn’t benefit from the research I did last week at Tamiment) and to post a few scans I gleaned from Si’s archives. Thank you. I worked with Si in the Coalition for Free and Open Elections, which Si played a vary large role in, serving as the organization’s secretary for many years, until I took over from him. CoFOE is a coalition of third parties and other pro-democracy groups that Si helped form, along with […]

Mysterious Skin

Though I’ve long been intrigued by trailers and reviews, I’ve failed to see any of Gregg Araki’s movies until “Mysterious Skin.” What I’ve missed in the past is not likely to be as remarkable and utterly affecting as “Skin,” which is easily the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. Centered around troubled Kansas teens Brian and Neil, who shared a life-changing experience in the summer of 1981, the film leads inevitably towards their devastating reunion ten years later. As an eight-year-old Little Leaguer, Neil (boldly played by “Third Rock From the Sun’s” Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was lured into a sexual relationship with his coach when he was eight years old. His voiceover narration makes clear that he was always attracted to men and was happy and proud to be so liked by “Coach,” who, remembered purely in flashbacks (it seems the movie was set in the 1980’s purely to […]

Archives in the Digital Age

I’ve been asked to speak at Si Gerson’s memorial on Friday. In order to dig a little deeper into the Stanley Isaacs controversy and the Cacchione succession fight, I paid a visit to the Tamiment Library at NYU in order to look through Si’s personal files. The library has not yet had the opportunity to catalogue and file the 15 boxes of files that were donated this Spring, a few months after Si’s passing. Amazingly, I was able to find the files I was looking for quickly and easily. Like most lefties with a long view, Si kept files for his own reference and for posterity. It’s all filed away by content type (articles, photographs, correspondence) and by subject. He’s got incoming and outgoing correspondence, thanks to the modern miracle of carbon paper. I recall corresponding with Si over CoFOE matters and thinking his typewritten, carbon-copied letters were anachronistic in […]

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