David Rovics

In the early hours of July 13, Will Van Spronsen was shot to death by police outside of an ICE-contracted private detention facility holding migrants in Tacoma, Wash. He was confronted by police in a parking lot full of buses; buses that were to be used to deport large numbers of migrants in a coordinated, nationwide action launched by the Trump administration. Will was trying to destroy as many buses as possible.

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There are certain things that jump out at you as soon as you arrive in Denmark. One thing you’ll notice, especially if you come from a place within that large mass of the world that is a bit closer to the equator, is that there is rarely anything you’d call direct sunlight.

It’s twilight most of the time. In the summer, it’s only really dark for an hour or so, but never completely light, either. In the winter, it’s dark most of the time, often accompanied by a cold, light rain.

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a review of

Luigi Galleani: the Most Dangerous Anarchist In America by Antonio Senta. AK Press, 2019 akpress.org

Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian-American anarchists executed in Massachusetts in 1927 for a robbery and murder they probably had nothing to do with, had a favorite newspaper. They regularly visited its editor and his family on their farm outside of Boston.

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i can’t help it.

i don’t care how far you think the analogy extends itself.

when i see you making that bus driver climb up and down

on and off the roof of his bus

for your amusement

for hours in the hot sun

i think of how we once had to dance and sing for them

while they shot our parents.

when i see you keep that woman

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a review of

“A Reasonable History of Impossible Demands: The Damage to Date 1986–2013.” Robb Johnson, 92 songs on 5 CDs with 64-page booklet. PM Press, 2015, pmpress.org

At a time when independent publishers and record labels are going out of business at a rapid rate, PM Press keeps on putting out books, pamphlets, videos, and various other things—including CDs.

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Civil disobedience

Has many permutations

You can block the streets in front of

The United Nations

You can lay down on the tracks

Keep the nuke trains out of town

Or you can pour gas on the condo

And you can burn it down

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Chorus:

So here’s a toast to the night

Three cheers and a grunt

To the Earth Liberation Front

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In so many ways, the fault lines in the U.S. and other countries are being violently exposed by the pandemic, and especially by the economic fallout in the many parts of the world where life was precarious for most people before Covid-19 struck. This includes a large and growing swath of the population of the U.S.

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During my live shows, I often do a song I wrote about the San Patricios, a band of mostly Irishmen who deserted from the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American war and fought on the Mexican side.

I start by doing a call-and-response with the audience. “Give me a ‘T’,” “give me an ‘R.,’” cheerleader-style, until we spell out, “Treason,” to introduce the story of the “Saint Patrick’s Battalion.”

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It was mid-August, and after singing at various events, mainly ones commemorating the bombing of Hiroshima, I was supposed to be switching planes, en route from Fukuoka to Christchurch, New Zealand, via Tokyo and Auckland. When I got paged over the intercom to the All Nippon Airways desk I was nervous, but figured it was something about a seat assignment on the flight from Narita to Auckland that I was about to board. When the woman from ANA handed me a cell phone and said that someone from New Zealand Immigration in Auckland wanted to talk to me, I was suddenly feeling fatalistic.

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