Readers' Contributions August 16, 2010

1. The Loss of a Jazz Warrior -- Abbey Lincoln, 1930-2010
2. Subject: economic woes (unemployment, war)

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1.
The Loss of a Jazz Warrior -- Abbey Lincoln, 1930-2010
Obituary by John Pietaro
August 16, 2010 
submitted to portside

The struggle against racial injustice has lost a most
stirring cultural worker; another artist of conscience
is gone with passage of time. But wasn't that a time?

Vocalist, actress and activist Abbey Lincoln captured
the energy and drive of an era in the media of
recording and film as few others could, staring down
the camera's probing eye and shouting back into the
microphone with the sure-footedness of a warrior-woman.
She refuted the oppression of Hollywood's type-cast as
boldly she rebelled against song's harmonic structure,
over and beyond the accepted norms. Lincoln's art was
indeed her most telling weapon and she brandished this
with a certain fearlessness that would rock the
white-dominated entertainment industry during years of
social upheaval. Her most recalled work, 'We Insist!:
Freedom Now Suite' angrily challenged those singing of
overcoming some day; brimming with restlessness, her's
was not a protest art of patience.

Anna Marie Wooldridge was born in Chicago on August 6,
1930, when streams of unemployed workers roamed the
streets and the African American population, already
struggling against the heavy boot of apartheid America,
knew burdens of untold proportions. For those already
poor the Great Depression was a furtherance of the
deprivation they'd experienced in the so-called boom
years, but now with a new urgency, a new desperation.
The entertainment industry was one means to economic
salvation in the working class Black community and
Chicago--the site of Jazz' momentous development over
the decade prior--was a hotbed of activity. Though
largely raised in a rural suburb, Lincoln absorbed
through osmosis the fierceness of transplanted New
Orleans. Her singing speaks of the ages, smoky-throated
hipness informed by Billie Holiday, cool urban blues
and raw field hollers by way of sumptuous ballads and
sizzling swing.

The newly christened 'Abbey Lincoln', relocated on the
west coast, became an in-demand performer on the
nightclub circuit. A double threat, Lincoln recorded
her debut album the same year she was cast in the Jayne
Mansfield movie, 'The Girl Can't Help It' (1956) which
also featured Little Richard and a bevy of popular
musicians. With the hope of a glitzy film career
waiting in the wings, the beautiful young actress
instead refocused her efforts on collaborations with
drummer-composer Max Roach, whom she would be married
to from 1962 through '70. Starting with 1957, their
projects together were revolutionary on several levels:
woven not from the simple packaging of songs but with
the serious intent of a singular, unified message, they
recorded several concept albums, most powerfully the
'Freedom Now Suite' (1960), a hallmark of protest
music. Air-borne melodies descend into guttural moans,
interspersed with burning post-bop phrases and
expansive harmonies. But Lincoln stretched the scope
still further; her speech-song vocal on "Driva Man" is
a chilling lesson in the power of song as a force of
social protest, a "Strange Fruit" for the Civil Rights
era.

During the '60s Lincoln continued working with Roach
but also took to the stage or studio with other Jazz
legends including Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy.
However by 1964 she had successfully brought the
message back to the film genre, co-starring with the
grossly underrated actor Ivan Dixon in 'Nothing But a
Man', a bold depiction of the racism so rampant in the
deep south. Shortly thereafter she was paired with
Sidney Poitier in the moving 'For Love of Ivy' (1968),
where Lincoln was cast in the titular role.

By 1970 Abbey Lincoln became a common sight on
television and film, offering scant examples of her
power as a vocalist, but in 1980 she had something of a
musical resurgence. In the past three decades, Lincoln
performed widely and recorded numerous collections of
relevant Jazz works, often featuring her own
compositions. Though her lyrics had been a part of
several earlier collaborations, Lincoln's focus on her
own material began in earnest in 1972 while traveling
through Africa. She came to see her calling as that of
a story-teller and upon re-entering music performance
full-time, encompassed a large catalog of original
material. Over the course of a series of albums
exploring her career's expanse, she received
much-deserved critical acclaim in recent years. To most
in the crowded venues she played, Lincoln was at the
zenith of her art. Abbey Lincoln remained a thriving,
independent performer into her final years, never again
allowing the gauntlet to slip away, never once
refraining from speaking truth to the power that might
otherwise have sought her silence.

No, Driva Man. No.

--John Pietaro is a cultural worker from New York City-
www.flamesofdiscontent.org 

===
2.
From: David Ecklein
August 16, 2010
Subject: economic woes (unemployment, war) 

A Carville snowclone of the Clinton
campaign against the elder Bush was "It's The Economy,
Stupid".  All other issues bear a relation to this. 
The most immediately apparent, especially to the tens
of millions it touches directly, is unemployment.  The
course pursued by the current administration shows that
one can recognize this fact and still be stupid.  Not
the administration itself of course, but many of those
who still believe in and support what it has been doing
about the economy.  Instead of social investment and
public enterprise as in the FDR days, the
administration has invested the people's money in those
areas of the private sector showing the biggest
failure.  No wonder so many have lost confidence in
government.

Quoting Martin Weiss PhD in his 15AUG10 investment
newsletter "Money and Markets":

"According to the Special Inspector General for TARP,
Washington has spent a total of $3.7 trillion on
bailouts and Fed money-printing - NOT including
trillions in other government guarantees - to fight
this recession so far.

"Meanwhile, since the labor market began recovering a
bit this year, a total of 654,000 jobs have been
created.

"So let's do the math: Just divide $3.7 trillion spent
by the 654,000 jobs that were created, and you'll see
that...

"Every one of those new jobs cost a staggering
$5,657,492 to create!"

Whether Dr. Weiss' inferences are sound here, the
situation may be actually more alarming than he
indicates.  What employment has been created by the
revived Reagan trickle-down approach?  Primary labor
market sector jobs directly producing value (i.e.
manufacturing), or the secondary labor market
essentially merely serving those in the primary sector
(i.e. fast foods).

Usually, we see statistics about net total jobs
created, without any differentiation.  It would be more
meaningful to track, in addition to mere numbers of
jobs, their quality and the total payroll for a
particular period being studied.  It would also be
necessary to know how many jobs are part-time or
temporary.  An in-depth study might also reveal the
degree of mismatch of available skills to job
requirements.  Judged by the quality of its output in
recent years, the once excellent US educational system
on average has deteriorated to mediocre in comparison
with world standards. How are the more demanding
primary market jobs to be created here, even if wages
are suddenly made available to pay for them?

Without this information, we can't know how bleak the
real picture is.

Bleak as it might be now, the news may get worse
betfore it gets better. Much worse.  Here is why.

By far, the greatest surge in employment the Obama
administration has produced is in the military. 
Expanding the apparently perpetual state of war may
seem a more certain consumer than the civilian market,
already glutted with unsold goods - why produce more? 
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is already beating
war drums against Iran, against the DPRK (North Korea).
 This high level official does not speak without
authorization, so the danger that the administration
will take the twisted and bloody pseudo-Keynesian trail
out of this quagmire is very real.

Will WikiLeaks convict the Bush and Obama
administrations of war crimes? The phrase "war crime"
is a redundancy.  War itself is the ultimate crime.

What are we to do?  It is clear that we cannot trust
those of either party who got us into this mess, nor
those who were empowered to act on our behalf but do
little.  We must seek independent political action of
all sorts, both within the existing parties and outside
of them.  We might even look to the Mount Everest of a
viable new progressive party; nearby neighbors have
already conquered some local foothills in the Green
Mountains of Vermont.

Dave Ecklein Rumney NH 

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