The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

May 5, 2010


Some recording from Jazz Lounge gig tonight -

Well for one thing the other group didn't show and for another, the
recording - which I did - turned out largely unusable except for the
following excerpts which give a fairly good idea of what went on, with the
exception of Azure's songs - these didn't come out at all. What I think
happened was that subsonic stage and other floor movements resonated with
the corner we played in - a kind of wolf-note effect below the range of
human hearing, but not below the range of recorder compression. The result
was literally impossible to listen to - lots of thumps and things unheard
but sensed, taking out the music. After using graphic equalization, hard
limiting, normalization, hiss reduction and editing, the following is what
resulted - on it you'll hear Myk Freedman, guitar, and myself, oud and
cura cumbus in some fairly weird combinations. Everything else had to be
scrapped. But this stuff's good -

http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/jl2.mp3

TWELVE SOLOISTS


Friday, May 7th, 8 P.M.
12 SOLOISTS
at
Launch Pad Gallery
721 Franklin Ave.
Brooklyn (Crown Heights)
FREE
BYOB

Please come!
The whole to last roughly until 10:15 or so -
Each solo ten minutes in length -
Playing in Alphabetic Order (approximate times):

1.  Alan Sondheim
2.  Avi Fox-Rosen
3.  Jacob wick
4.  Jason Vance
5.  Jay Foote
6.  Kenny warren

intermission

7.  Jesse Gold
8.  josh sinton
9.  JP Schlegelmilch
10. Mike Kammers
11. Myk Freedman
12. Owen Stewart-Robinson

Organized by Myk Freedman -

one eternity to another

a message from somewhere, and somewhere sounding the truth
a mask muffling the sounds
harmonics proclaimed from loudspeakers mounted on the tallest masts
in the mist, disembodied sounds, the atmosphere's subtle movements
masses of clouds and the distinct smell of musk, the warm air within
must muffling the sounds, as if chimes murmured the world's bleak end
the most of nothing as comparisons were fruitless, the soundings

the sonde reflecting invisibility, nothing without reception
the sound awaiting its turn on the turning vagaries of winds and clouds
sending and transporting waves, cargoes of particles, unmarked memories
in the sand, everything, inscribed from one eternity to another

they would have replied, sync among worlds, forming worldings
sync sent, the upheaval of universal space
universal spaces struggled, mumbling, unheard, and sank
the sink absorbing what had come before, nothing had come before
nothing was sunk, nothing mumbled, nothing had come before

(the synod
a bond among them
so fond of thinking, nothing ever unthought, unthinking of nothing
harbors and ponds, the tallest masts by the shores of endless seas
sod and barriers, no one presencing, expecting, no denouement

(the son, or sons, sold
the song, one might, upon reading these words

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 5 May 2010 23:07:34
From: moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Subject: Remembering the Murders at Kent State and Jackson State

Remembering the Murders at Kent State and Jackson State

1) Forty Years Ago: Murders at Kent State and Jackson State
    (Bill Koehnlein)
2) On the Kent/Jackson State Killings (Noam Chomsky)
3) Weeklong memorial on Kent campus; new film released
    (Marilyn Albert)

==========

On May 4, 1970 four students at Kent State University in
Ohio were murdered by members of the Ohio National Guard
during a protest against the war in Vietnam and the recent
US invasion of Cambodia. Nine students were injured.

Ten days later two students at Jackson State College in
Mississippi were murdered by officers of the Jackson City
Police and Mississippi Highway Patrol during a protest
against the war in Vietnam and the recent US invasion of
Cambodia. Twelve students were injured.

These are their names:

Kent State--

Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20: shot through the mouth; killed
instantly

Allison B. Krause, 19: fatal left chest wound; died later
that day

William Knox Schroeder, 19: fatal chest wound; died almost
an hour later in hospital while waiting for surgery

Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20: fatal neck wound; died a few minutes
later from loss of blood

Jackson State--

Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21: died from buckshot pellets that
punctured his head while a third pellet entered just beneath
his left eye and a fourth just under his left armpit

James Earl Green, 17: died from a shotgun blast to the right
side of his chest

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings
http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/jackson-state-and-kent-state-the-40th-anniversary/

Bill Koehnlein

==========


On the Kent/Jackson State Killings

http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20000504.htm

On the Kent/Jackson State Killings

by Noam Chomsky

Delivered at Kent State, May 4, 2000

Well, I've been given the privilege of closing this really
significant event and I'm not going to abuse the privilege
by dragging it out. Even if I...in a few words, or for that
matter, even in a lot of words, I would really dare to add
anything, to try to add anything to the powerful statements
and eloquent calls to action that you've heard and
participated in for the last several hours. I'll just say a
couple of...Actually, it's much more appropriate, I think,
for me simply to join in silent commemoration of the victims
of Kent State and Jackson State and many other martyrs, some
of whom have been mentioned, others not, for lack of time.
But also to suggest that we remind ourselves...that
something we all know...that their sacrifices and heir
struggle made enormous difference.

When we look around and we see the problems and the horrors
and the atrocities and injustice in this country and those
much worse ones elsewhere the privileged people here have a
great deal of responsibility for, it's easy to forget
something which is true and important, namely that it's a
much more civilized country than it was 40 years ago. And
the reason it's a much more civilized country is not because
of magic or taking pills. It's because of constant,
dedicated struggle and commitment on the part, most
dramatically of young people, some of whom have lost their
lives tragically in the course of that struggle. But, in
doing so, have also inspired others to go on, work harder,
do more and achieve quite a lot. If you look at policies and
attitudes and understanding among sectors of power and
privilege, it's true that they haven't changed because the
institutions haven't changed. But the circumstances have
changed and that means policies are executed differently and
with different constraints. And one of the most important
constraints is that the population is no longer passive,
apathetic and supportive as it was 40 years ago.

You have to remember that when John F. Kennedy launched the
attack against South Vietnam, sent the U.S. Air Force to
bomb South Vietnam, authorized crop destruction, chemical
warfare, massive, what we now call ethnic cleansing, driving
millions of people into concentration camps, there was no
protest. In fact, there were years before there was any
protest. People didn't particularly like it. But nothing
happened.

Twenty years later the Ronald Reagan administration faced a
very similar situation in Central America. In Central
America the U.S. had been running vicious terrorist states
which had been carrying our large scale atrocities against
their own populations but they were losing control. That's
what happened in South Vietnam in 1960 when John F. Kennedy
came in.

There was a Latin American style terror state that the U.S.
had established in violation of the international agreements
on Vietnam. By the time Kennedy came in it had killed maybe
60 or 70 thousand people, aroused resistance, couldn't
control that resistance, and the U.S. simply moved in, in
force, with consequences we don't have to discuss. Remember
that South Vietnam was always the main targeted U.S. attack,
always, right through to the end.

Reagan tried to do the same thing in Central America. They
made the same initial moves that Kennedy did. They were
following the script in fact. But they had to back off and
they had to had to back off because of a completely
unanticipated popular reaction all over the country, in the
Midwest, in churches, in all kind of places where they never
expected to see any reaction as well. The protest was
sufficient so they backed off. What happened in Central
America was bad enough, but 52s and large scale chemical
warfare and saturation bombing would have been a lot worse.

Well, that may not be something to be very proud about. We
made it less awful than. in fact, it was, but that means for
the people who suffered under it, it's a difference. And
they now it and here lies some of the background. In fact,
just take attitudes toward the Vietnam War. They're very
striking. Among elite sectors of power and privilege we know
what they are. Read the newspapers. There's been a huge
amount of commentary in the last couple of weeks on the 25th
anniversary [of the ending of the Vietnam War]. And it's
kind of striking. There's a spectrum of opinion. The
spectrum is between what I call doves and hawks. Hawks are
ones who say it was a noble cause and we should have won and
if we hadn't been stabbed in the back, and son on, we would
have won. Doves are the ones who say it was a noble cause
and we should have won but it was costing us too much and it
probably wasn't worth it. So, let's do better next time.
That's the doves. And that's not an exaggeration. I'll spare
you quotes.

It was the same in the late sixties and in the early sixties
The doves and the hawks were the same. Well, the doves and
the hawks don't include everyone. For example, they don't
include 70% of the population. And haven't for the last
thirty years. One of the real achievements, one of the
civilizing effects of the activism of the sixties, was it
created massive changes in attitudes. So, for 30 years now,
there are regular public opinion studies on international
affairs where people are asked, "What do you think about the
war in Vietnam?" and given a lot of choices. And a steady
70%, right up to the last one, last year, roughly 70%, says
that war was fundamentally wrong and immoral and not a
mistake. These striking numbers...Everyone who says that is
making it up for themselves. They didn't read it in the
newspapers and hear it on television. If they went to
college, they didn't read it in their text books. Because
that's not what the elites say. They say it was a mistake or
it was a misunderstanding or it was benign intentions that
went wrong and so on. But the population says something
else. They say, "No. It was fundamentally wrong, immoral and
not a mistake."

And that attitude stays resilient over a huge effort in the
last 30 years to drive the memories out of people's heads,
to reshape the history, to recast it, to put it in a
different way and so on. That's a striking and important
fact. And elite elements know it. We can go back to the
background that was probably the background of the
Kent/Jackson State killings. Right after the Tet offensive
in January, 1068, when it became clear that this war was
going to go on for a long time, and it would be costly to
the United States, Lyndon Johnson called on the Pentagon t
send 200,000 more troops to Vietnam. They didn't want to do
it. The refused. And their reasons are interesting and
important. Their reasons were...they said they would need
the troops for civil disorder control in the United States
because the population was out of control. And they said,
"Who?" Parts of the population that are expected to be
apathetic and passive, women. young people, minorities and
so on. They said., "They're just out of control. If we send
more troops and keep the war going we'll have a civil war on
our hands. So, we'll need them here." Well, it doesn't take
much to translate that into the mentality that led to
Jackson State and Kent State and plenty of other things like
them.

Through the 1970s activist movements expanded significantly.
The major popular movements that have really have had a
lasting effect on American society, in fact, on the world,
they're sort of children of the seventies, the human rights
movements, the feminist movements, the environmental
movements, later, the antiapartheid movements, the Central
American solidarity movements, the ...right now... the anti-
sweatshop movements, often young people at the head. And, in
fact, the very dramatic and large scale opposition to the
international economic arrangements, the corporate run
globalization... that was said before. That's extremely
significant. These movements that have won real victories.
They blocked the Multilateral Agreements on Investments.
They put the fear of god into the international financial
institutions and the World Trade Organization and have
actually changed their policies. And they draw from very
varied constituencies which have had nothing much to do with
each other in the past. They're international, global in
scale and very promising in their effects.

And people in power knew it. One of these victories was the
defeat of the fast-track legislation a couple of years ago.
When that happened, the Wall Street Journal had a report
tearing its hair out over this tragedy. And it said that,
obviously, this thing's great and it's a shame we can't get
it through. But they said opponents of the legislation have
what they call the ultimate weapon. The ultimate weapon is
the population's against it. And no matter how we've tried
to brainwash them and coerce them and whatever deceit we
use, and so on, they remain against it.

The Reagan administration understood exactly the same thing
in the eighties when they couldn't get the population to
back their intended war in Central America. They established
a thing called the Office of Public Diplomacy, a state
propaganda agency. It's illegal, of course, and was finally
exposed after, in the course of the Iran-Contra hearings.
After it was exposed, higher officials in the administration
explained what they were doing. They said, "We're carrying
out the kind of campaign that you would carry out in enemy
territory." Now, that's correct. They regard the population
as enemy territory. The population is the ultimate weapon
that we can't seem to put back in its holster, wherever you
put a weapon. And these things are really significant. They
{activist victories}make a change in the United States and,
given the power of the United States, they make a change in
the world..

So, yes, policies don't change, interests don't change,
institutional sources of them don't change, but conditions
do. And the most impotent condition is the domestic
population. And that changes...it changes because of
dedicated activism, sometimes inspired by terrible
tragedies. And I think that's the message that we ought to
be taking away with us from commemoration of these
atrocities and many others like them. Thank you.

Forty Years Ago: Murders at Kent State and Jackson State

On May 4, 1970 four students at Kent State University in
Ohio were murdered by members of the Ohio National Guard
during a protest against the war in Vietnam and the recent
US invasion of Cambodia. Nine students were injured.

Ten days later two students at Jackson State College in
Mississippi were murdered by officers of the Jackson City
Police and Mississippi Highway Patrol during a protest
against the war in Vietnam and the recent US invasion of
Cambodia. Twelve students were injured.

These are their names:

Kent State--

Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20: shot through the mouth; killed
instantly

Allison B. Krause, 19: fatal left chest wound; died later
that day

William Knox Schroeder, 19: fatal chest wound; died almost
an hour later in hospital while waiting for surgery

Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20: fatal neck wound; died a few minutes
later from loss of blood

Jackson State--

Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21: died from buckshot pellets that
punctured his head while a third pellet entered just beneath
his left eye and a fourth just under his left armpit

James Earl Green, 17: died from a shotgun blast to the right
side of his chest

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings
http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/jackson-state-
and-kent-state-the-40th-anniversary/

==========

* Weeklong memorial on Kent campus; new film released

Today is the 40th Anniversary of the shootings at Kent
State. A weeklong event is taking place marking the
anniversary with many of the former students and faculty
from 1970 participating.

A tremendous new film about Kent State is a must-see. "Fire
in the Heartland"  (www.fireintheheartland.org) shows what a
political campus Kent State was prior to May 4, 1970. It
shows the unity of the Black student group on campus, which
had led an unprecedented walkout of Black students, and the
mostly-white SDS group. The film also discusses extensively
the shooting of students at Jackson State, Mississippi
several days later, which got so little media attention
compared to the shootings of the white students at Kent.

This year, Kent State was named a National Historic Site and
you can take a walking tour and visit the May 4 Visitor
Center. Kent, Ohio is less than an hour from Cleveland.

Marilyn Albert, Cleveland, Ohio

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