If you’re at the Lowell Folk Festival today or tomorrow, I just want to alert you to the fact that there is a thriving “fringe” of performances that are not part of the official festival. These fringe performances are every bit as interesting and a whole lot more intimate, than the big-stage events. I want to particularly recommend visiting Second World, The Revolving Museum and Life Alive at the corner of Shattuck and Middle Streets. Yesterday, I saw a wonderful young group from Boston called La Tuza, who play Mexican roots music. This cluster of shops is affiliated with the Fair Trade movement, and so is La Tuza. Also noteworthy is the incredible Brazilian band playing in front of The Mambo Grill on Merrimack Street. La Tuza will be back at the stage in front of Second World, and should not be missed!
Archive for July, 2008
The Lowell Folk Festival Fringe!
Saturday, July 26th, 2008Impeachment On The Table
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich is bringing the impeachment of G.W. Bush to the floor of Congress this Friday as part of a long process of “putting it back on the table”. My grassroots radio colleagues at WINGS: Women’s International News Gathering Service, Vancouver BC, Canada (www.wings.org)
have put together a great half-hour documentary on why now is (or may not be) the time to impeach this criminal, and I may try to shoehorn it into my radio program this morning (wuml.org 91.5 fm Lowell MA 10:00 am), but in any case, you can download and listen to it at http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/28486
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You will be able to listen to/watch the Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings Friday on CSPAN.
The Green Miley Cyrus – a young female Al Gore?
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008My friend A Starry Mist pointed out in a recent blog that on ChaCha these days perhaps the majority of questions being asked concern a young (15-year-old) pop singer named Miley Cyrus. Why people are so curious about this one person I can’t tell, but today I read something incredibly good about Ms. Cyrus: She has just penned a song called “Wake Up America” (included on her new album Breakout. ), which talks in a way young people may relate strongly to about global warming and activism: “Oh, the earth is calling out: I wanna learn what it’s all about, but everything I read — global warming, going green…everything you do matters in some way. I know that you don’t want to hear it, especially coming from someone so young, but in the back seat, yeah, they want to hear it” For a summary with links to a video of the song try going to Grist.org . It’s not my style of music at all, but the lyrics please me greatly 
Cynthia McKinney
Monday, July 21st, 2008You know, if I weren’t convinced that a John McCain presidency would cause irreversible damage to the planet, I’d just love to vote for Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate for US President. Interviewed on Democracy Now today (http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/21/first_all_women_of_color_presidential), along with her running-mate hip-hop performer Rosa Clemente, she made a clear case that Obama would continue the militaristic, expansionist foreign policy that sucks the life out of social and environmental progress, only moving the focus of the military effort from Iraq to Afghanistan. McKinney would set up timetables for the orderly withdrawal of US troops and bases from all over the world and start right away to prioritize peace, human needs and the environment. This is what I’d like to be able to support.
The main reason for favoring a Democratic administration over a Republican one is that Democrats would appoint better judges and would be somewhat more receptive to pressure from actual people marching in the streets. The stated policies of the two “major” parties are essentially indistinguishable .. Under either party, large corporations would get their way just about all the time, warfare would be actively pursued in distant parts of the world, huge percentages of the population would continue to be subjected to death, sickness, long-term imprisonment and humiliating poverty, human and civil rights would continue to erode, the national religion would continue to be a mixture of Christian fundamentalism and “free trade” capitalism, and the catastrophic situation of global warming would get mere lip-service. Needless to say, labor unions and Native American tribal governments would continue to go the way of the proverbial dodo. (see for example:http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_9926139 and http://unionreview.com/think-it%2526%2523039%3Bs-easy-form-union%3F-better-think-again)
Since the Green Party ticket includes two vibrant young women of color, one of whom is a genuinely charismatic hip-hop artist, I feel justified in placing this posting in the category of Parties and night life, since under a Green administration, people of conscience would once again be able to take back the night and do some serious partying and night-living!
Anyway, if all we have to accomplish between now and November is to make sure an overwhelming majority knows to vote for the “blue” wing of the DemoPublican party, we’ll have plenty of time to stage a citizens’ arrest of the human-rights-violators who lead the current regime between now and then. If the “mainstream” candidates see that happen, they may feel compelled to adopt some of McKinney’s platform to save their own skins. And then there could be the bank-runs, (nonviolent) gas-riots, foreclosure sit-ins. The rest of this year could be quite a twenty-four-hour-a-day party after all!