Hurricane - Bob Dylan

 In 1975 Racism was roaring in an era without live video and social medial  We had to count on movements and fund raisers.  The news papers focused on Dylan and his his band and less on the tragic  black man falsely accused.    His fundraiser raised a mere $100,000 for Hurricane's defense.   He never played it again at concerts because it was too long  for his majority white audiences and NOT ENTERTAINING at concerts.  White people were not interested then.  

This year of 2020 saw the George Floyd, not a boxing prize fighter but a common criminal with a dubious past raises over $6M.  He was surely a victim of police brutality.  There is a lot to the story, Today white people cringe to be accused of white privilege.  To all those with lp albums, pull out your Dylan vinyl, dust it off and set down the needle.  Its a great beat in classic Dylan style.  Below are the words, in case they never set in on you then;   what's different?  As yourself a few questions:

1. What is white privilege?

2.  Is it a matter of timing, measured by events not ticks on a clock?

3,  Have we evolved?

4.  Is BLM making a difference?

5.  Are black people at large making a difference?  

6.  Is there a collection of other social injustice movements coming to a peak?

7.  Are black people at large behaving like the citizens they want to be treated like (Rebecca Solnit), Whose Story is This)?

8.  In Solint's book Hope in the Dark about activism, is BLM now on center stage and in the light working for the greater good?

9.  Visit On Being  On Being with Krista Tippett - The On Being Project  Listen to Krista Tippetts' recent interviews ask yourself: is your thinking from the heart changing?

10.  Anything else?

Hurricane

[Verse 1]

Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees the bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out, “My God, they killed them all!”

[Hook]
Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

[Verse 2]
Three bodies lyin' there
Does Patty see
And another man named Bello
Moving around mysteriously
“I didn’t do it,” he says
And he throws up his hands
“I was only robbin' the register
I hope you understand

[Verse 3]
I saw them leaving,” he says, and he stops
“One of us had better call up the cops”
And so Patty calls the cops
And they arrive on the scene
With their red lights flashin'
In the hot New Jersey night

[Verse 4]
Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are drivin' around
Number one contender for the middleweight crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down

[Verse 5]
When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that
In Paterson that’s just the way things go
If you’re black
You might as well not show up on the street
Unless you want to draw the heat

[Verse 6]
Alfred Bello had a partner and he had a rap for the cops
Him and Arthur Dexter Bradley were just out prowling around
He said, “I saw two men running out
They looked like middleweights
They jumped into a white car with out-of-state plates”

[Verse 7]
And Miss Patty Valentine just nodded her head
Cop said, “Wait a minute, boys, this one’s not dead”
So they took him to the infirmary
And though this man could hardly see
They told him that he could identify the guilty men

[Verse 8]
Four in the morning and they haul Rubin in
They take him to the hospital and they brought him upstairs
The wounded man looks up through his one dying eye
Says, “Why did you bring him in here for?
He ain't the guy!”

[Hook]
Here’s the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

[Verse 9]
Four months later, the ghettos are in flame
Rubin’s in South America, fighting for his name
While Arthur Dexter Bradley’s still in the robbery game
And the cops are putting the screws to him
Lookin' for somebody to blame

[Verse 10]
“Remember that murder that happened in a bar?”
“Remember you said you saw the getaway car?”
“You think you’d like to play ball with the law?”
“Think it might-a been that fighter that you saw
Running that night?”
“Don’t forget that you are white”

[Verse 11]
Arthur Dexter Bradley said, “I’m really not sure”
The cops said, “A poor boy like you could use a break
We got you for the motel job
And we’re talking to your friend Bello
Now you don’t want to have to go back to jail
Be a nice fellow

[Verse 12]
You’ll be doing society a favor
That sonofabitch is brave and gettin' braver
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple murder
On him
He ain’t no Gentleman Jim”

[Verse 13]
Rubin could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much
"It’s my work", he’d say, "and I do it for pay
And when it’s over I’d just as soon go on my way"

[Verse 14]
Up to some paradise
Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice
And ride a horse along a trail
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man
Into a mouse

[Verse 15]
All of Rubin’s cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus
He never had a chance
The judge made Rubin’s witnesses
Drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched
He was a revolutionary bum

[Verse 16]
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The D.A. said he was the one
Who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed

[Verse 17]
Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was murder “one,”
Guess who testified?
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride

[Verse 18]
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed
To live in a land
Where justice is a game

[Verse 19]
Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink Martinis
And watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha
In a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell

[Outro]
Yes that’s the story of the Hurricane
But it won’t be over till they clear his name
And give him back the time he’s done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

Hope in the Dark

 

Hope in the Dark

By Rebecca Solnit

 

Rebecca Solnit is first and foremost an Activist.  This book is a cross section of world issues where she has played the role of Activist and her philosophic approach to what it is to be an activist.  She would say it this way:  if there is something going on in your life, weather it is around the block or around the world, that does not fit your moral standards do something about it.  She goes on to say if the issues look hopeless, know there are likely thousands of people on the dark edges, looking at the same thing.  Speak out, eventually the voice from the edges will arrive on the center stage. 

Yin/Yang are my words.  Rebecca says it this way.  This 21st century is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen.  It has also been a nightmarish time.  Full engagement requires the ability to see both.  In my words, the phrase ‘strange bedfellows’ comes to mind.  I provide two examples. 

·       First are my words.   I cite Trump who has been called a Populist, appealing to an outsider’s voice [drain the swamp] in his political role as POTUS.  Many news agencies cry the dangers of a populist leader not just in the USA but around the world.  The implication is the “populist” being revolutionary may be a bit untamed.  Yet the mere word popular, suggests the people like him and his revolutionary ideas.  You could call him an activist, a term usually associated by the Left here in America.    

·       Second, Rebecca cites ‘Silicon Valley as a global power center that has eliminated and automated countless jobs enhancing economic inequality; it has produced new elites and monstrous corporations from Amazon with its attack on publishing, authors and working conditions, to Google which is attempting to build global information monopoly in myriad arenas and in the process amassing terrifying powers including the powers that comes with sophisticated profiles of most computer users.  The tech companies have created and deployed surveillance capacities that the Kremlin and FBI…. ” 

·       Rebecca: “Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.  When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able influence the outcome” 

Back to my words,  lets look at what we just witnessed in Facebook and Twitter regarding the New York Post on Hunter Biden.  Silicon Valley boldly showed their LEFT HAND and BLOCKED the NY Post of an alleged Biden crime.  Whereas we have heard for four years free flowing allegations and popular prosecution of Trump.  These tech companies are doing more than surveillance.  They are shaping popular opinion.  Ironically, this is exactly  what they despise in a Populist leader.   IS this not looking this from both sides.  Engage!!!! 

When you first open the book, read her forward.  Read it twice.  It is full of tightly packed allegory, metaphor-in-reality, poetry-in-prose that will inspire to move on to chapter one.  She closes each chapter with inspirational words that once you close the last page you will make your list of actionable movements you want to start or join.  She does not delve into philanthropy.  You will find with other book reviews on this site where Rebecca or you can pursue your activism. 

In reading this book I find most of Rebecca’s issues are not in alignment with mine.  So WHAT!!!  But the thread on the theme Hope in the Dark asks the reader to look at both sides of issues.  It is not the issue all by itself as it is how the issue sits with you and what action you take.  She defines hope in many ways.  She would say in hope when you personify your position on an issue, you are already successful. 

  I will capture just a couple here in this review.   Read the book and make you own list. 

• ·       After listing a few issues Rebecca says “Hope doesn’t mean denying these realities.  It means facing them and addressing them by remembering what else the twenty-first century has brought including the movements, heroes and shifts in consciousness that address these things now.”
• ·       “it’s important to say what hope is not:  it is not the belief that everything is, or will be fine …..  The hope I am interested is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act.