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June 12, 2002
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
June 7, 2002
Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now
Tanweer Akram
Howard
Zinn's "Terrorism
and War": a review
David Krieger
New Security Challenges
Sam Bahour
The Palestinian
Intifada:
A Very American Struggle
Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
in US Leadership
June 6, 2002
Michael Colby
White House
vs. EPA:
Political Hot Air and
Global Warming
Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away
Francis Boyle
Take Sharon
to The Hague:
Prosecute Israeli War Crimes
at Jenin
CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's
Censored F-Word
Mark Weisbrot
Spying
and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
Plants and Terrorism
Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
June 2, 2002
Fidel Castro
From FDR to Mister "W.":
Cuba, the US and Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Under the
Nuclear Shadow
Bernard Weiner
Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
June 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
The
Strange Math of Roberto Carlos: Brazil v. Turkey
Gavin Keeney
Bush and Mies van der Rohe:
Architecture and Ideology
Jeff Halper
Sharon's
Post-Incursion Plan:
Incarceration or Transfer?
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
June 12,
2002
Shelley Stewart
and
the Birmingham Civil Rights Mvt.
Our Day Will Come....
and Then We'll Have Everything
by Dave Marsh
Shelley Stewart retired with fanfare from WATV-AM
last week. The wire service story focused on his long tenure
as a Birmingham disc jockey (originally known as Shelley the
Playboy) and talk show host, his membership in the Black Radio
Hall of Fame, his ability to attract a white teenage audience
at the height of the civil rights movement in the most violently
racist city in America, and the Ku Klux Klan describing the records
he played as "jungle music." It mentioned that Stewart
co-owned WATV and that he is working on a memoir.
It told less than half the story. A quotation
from what looks like the proposal for The Road South, the memoir,
begins by recounting Stewart's father murdering his mother with
an ax, he and his siblings eating fried rat for Sunday dinner,
and winds up with him owning the station and a $40 million company.
The Road South material mentions Stewart
"scorching the airwaves with incendiary social commentary
and information vital to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the rising
civil rights movement." Now we're getting somewhere.
Diane McWhorter's Pulitzer-winning Carry
Me Home: Birmingham Alabama and the Climatic Battle of the Civil
Rights Movement the most detailed report on the Birmingham
civil rights movement, establishes Stewart and fellow WENN AM
DJ "Tall Paul" Dudley White as indispensable to the
Birmingham movement attracting activist students. Between playing
James Brown records and making fun of racist cop Bull Connor
getting busted on morals charges, Stewart and White provided
the crucial information that led kids into the movement. They
"were happy to go on the radio and announce 'hot luncheon'
at the [Gaston motel, movement headquarters] for some of their
friends--beauty queens and football stars they had gotten to
know at school dances. Twenty or thirty high school big shots
and church youth leaders showed up for a strategy meeting...Their
assignment was to start a 'whisper campaign' on upcoming workshops
and youth rallies."
The Klan had seen it coming: they cut
down the WENN radio tower in 1958 in an attempt to get Stewart
off the air. That didn't work. The more effective corporate methods
of choking off radio's power hadn't been invented yet.
On May 2, 1963, black kids all over Birmingham
heard Stewart announce, "Kids, there's going to be a party
at the park. Bring your toothbrushes because lunch will be served."
As McWhorter notes, this was a coded call for a mass demonstration;
you need your toothbrush when you go to jail. Eight hundred kids,
some as young as six, skipped school and the principal of the
black high school locked the gates. More kids swarmed over the
fence. "It's really coooold," said the WENN announcer
at one o'clock. (The temperature was above 80.) That signal set
more than thousand kid set out to march and be arrested. As a
result, the movement, which had withered, found new life.
Another day, Stewart and White told the
kids to bring their raincoats. The weather didn't call for it
but trenchcoats provided perfect cover for banners and picket
signs.
This reveals not only the inspirational
world of the civil rights movement, which galvanized communities
like black Birmingham for righteous action. It also shows what
was possible when radio could still be used for human purposes,
not just to make money.
McWhorter reports that on May 2, the
white station manager, who'd heard the code words on the air
and guessed what they meant, just gave Stewart "an indulgent
smile." I don't know what the white kids thought. Maybe
they were just waiting for the next record to spin. It could
have been Ruby and the Romantics, singing one of the biggest
hits that spring, "Our Day Will Come."
Our job, it seems to me, is to try to
make it come again. Remembering what Shelley the Playboy and
the kids of Birmingham set in motion, and how they did it, is
a place to begin.
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office)
[Last week's comment about people imitating
this list was not meant as discouragement. Let a hundred Deskscans
bloom!]
1. The
Eminem Show, Eminem (Universal)
[Not just Detroit chauvinism; the boy
does get it about bass lines, he's smart and funny and
who says you have to hate everyone he hates, such as himself.]
2. Human
Being Lawnmower: The Baddest & Maddest of the MC5
(Total Energy)
[I keep thinking there must be some exaggeration
here, but these live tracks, outtakes, exhortations, etc. add
up to as great a document of this great band as any I've ever
heard. Not to be missed: John Sinclair's liner notes in which
he declares that Rob Tyner had more political influence on him
than he did on Rob and that this stuff has nothing to do with
punk.]
3. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin (ATO)
4. "This
Land is Nobody's Land," John Lee Hooker
5. The
Roots of Van Morrison (Catfish)
[The obvious (Leadbelly, Hank Williams),
the obtuse (Fisk Jubilee Singers), and best of all Barbecue Bob
explaining the real meaning of "He ain't give you none."]
6. Sleepless, Peter Wolf (Artemis/Sony
advance)
7. You're
Gonna Need That Pure Religion, Rev. Pearly Brown (Arhoolie)
8. By
the Hand of the Father, Alejandro Escovedo (Texas Music
Group)
9. Tonight
at Johnny's Speakeasy, Jo Serrapere & the Willie
Dunns (Detroit Radio Co.)
10. All
Over Creation,, Jason Ringenberg (Yep Roc)
11. Return
of a Legend, Jody Williams (Evidence)
12. Try
Again, Mike Ireland and Holler (Ashmont)
13. Milky
White Way: The Legendary Recordings 1947-1952, The Trumpeteers
(P-Vine)
14. Veni, Vidi, Vicious, The Hives (Sire/Burning
Heart/Epitaph)
15. 2
Johnsons are Better Than One, Syl & Jimmy Johnson
(Evidence)
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Dave Marsh's
Previous DeskScan Top 10 Lists:
June 4, 2002
May 27, 2002
May 20, 2002
May 14, 2002
May 6, 2002
April 30, 2002
April 22, 2002
April 15, 2002
April 9, 2002
April 2, 2002
March 25, 2002
March 18,
2002
March 11,
2002
Today's
Features
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
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