Reposted from my blog
Recently, I saw Respect: A Musical Journey of Women where excerpts of 60 songs, from “I Will Follow Him” to "These Boots are Made for Walking" were sung by a cast of four women accompanied by a live band. The show chronicles the progress of women through the 20th century, against the backdrop of songs of each era.
While it is easy to celebrate women’s milestones-- “We’ve come a long way baby”, we cannot ignore that in many ways progress has been stymied. Promoting women as sex objects continues today -- witness Britney Spears, the modern day Betty Boop / Marilyn Monroe. Today’s laws are a rollback on women’s protection -- from the numerous anti-choice regulations designed to prevent women from getting birth control pills or abortions to budget cuts for programs assisting domestic violence / rape survivors.
That musical journey & Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol inspired the essay below:
Looking back over the past 50 years, The Ghost of Christmas past jars awake our memories with:
1960s’ assassinations and expansion of The Vietnam War (My Lai Massacre); triumphs such as: the ‘war on poverty’ led to signing of Medicare /Medicaid legislation. Civil Rights, the moon landing, the Beatles, and Star Trek are among the gains of that decade.
Theme Song for the sixties? Les Miserables: "Do You Hear The People Sing?"
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
The 1970s were filled with: Kent State Shootings, Watergate, Nixon resigning and the Iranian Hostage Crisis. On the positive side, we had the: creation of EPA, end of The Vietnam War, Roe v Wade decision, the launching of SkyLab, and the theatrical release of Star Wars.
Theme Song for the seventies? Bridge Over Troubled Water.
When you're down and out,
When you're on the street,
I'm on your side.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind.
The 1980s (or the Reagan catastrophe) are best remembered for: “Greed is Good” - insider trading / junk bonds, Conspicuous Consumption, War Against the Poor - Welfare Queens, etc., AIDS, Chernobyl, Exxon-Valdez, Huge Poison Gas Leak in Bhopal, India, the Challenger explosion and the murder of John Lennon. Personally, I was happily unaware in my blue pill stupor. Anything positive about the decade? The movie ET came out.
Theme Song for the eighties? Madonna’s Material Girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl...
As the Ghost of Christmas present entered, the nineties went by in a blur of “sensationalism” -- Monicagate, Travelgate, etc. etc…, while real issues - Profit over Human Rights, ie. the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) , repealing Glass-Steagall, etc. - were ignored. Today we’re dealing with Climate Change, Drone Warfare and debating what constitutes a “Living Wage.” Progress in constitutional rights, voting rights and workers’ rights have been derailed in recent years. A more fair and inclusive America seems to be a distant dream today. One of my favorite t-shirts states: "We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is "legal" we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal." -- W.E.B. Du Bois. The Nation. In my lifetime alone we’ve seen the statement above bear fruit over and over again. From the 1960s ‘war on poverty’ to the Reagan years ‘war against the poor’, we are now facing the largest income gap in mankind’s history.
Bush’s Reign of Error can be described with lyrics from the musical Chicago:
Give 'em the old razzle dazzle
How can they hear the truth above the roar?
They'll let you get away with murder
Razzle dazzle 'em
And they'll beg you for more!
Obama Years can be summarized with the following poem:
IF ONLY
If you only had a heart,
full of courage,
we may have a future
filled with hope
and rainbow dreams
Instead we are
confronted with:
NSA spying,
protecting the banksters,
persecuting the whistleblowers
fracking our future
where corporations
have more rights than people
Debtors prisons are back
Ebenezer Scrooge would be elated...
Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the land
Everybody was busy
Buying, buying, buying all they can…
The presents under the tree
Laid there three feet deep
The bows and the wrapping paper
All used to cover
Amazon gifts galore
Forty presents later,
“What else is there?”
“What do you mean no more?”
“But I want more…”
The crying, the whining…
Christmas tears are falling
Sadness, disappointment
Frustration
There must be more to it than this
The Scrooge in me
insists: “Bah humbug”
The timeless gift of teaching
No consequences
Kill a few people?
With enough money,
You too can buy the ‘affluenza defense’
Of kids who are too rich to jail
Presents under the tree
Wrapping paper made out of trees
Gifts shipped from China
Plastic, plastic everywhere
Drowning our planet
Consider what might have been
If we only had the will
to elect leaders
with the courage to stop the madness of greed.
The Pathology of the Rich - Chris Hedges on Reality Asserts Itself -- Dec 5, 2013.
The Ghost of Christmas Future steps in to point out that we cannot depend on leaders to solve our problems. A People’s Movement (ie.One Struggle) is the only way we can be free -- Free from wars, Free from corporate masters, if and here is the big if, we the people organize / demand change -- social justice for all.
The Timeless Gift
‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the land
Shoppers are scurrying, hurrying, and buying
Tempers are flaring,
The malls are overcrowded,
Shoppers in search of that One Perfect Gift
Eyes glazed over with “shoppers’ fatigue”
Shoppers checking their lists for:
Bows & Wrapping paper,
Cards & Presents, Presents, Presents
Shoppers in search of that One Perfect Gift
On the other side of the counter
The cashier looks over
The line of items to ring up
Wow, her mom would surely like that alluring perfume
Wage slave chasing the Almighty Dollar in a quest for survival
Eighty dollars for “perfect gift”
She sighs, she only has ten dollars to spare
And five was marked for One Struggle’s Open Mic Night
Well what’s a girl to do, maybe she could sell her hair...
Wage slave chasing the Almighty Dollar in a quest for survival
Ring the bells that still can ring
‘Starvation Army’ urging people to donate their coins
A flash of inspiration
Why not use the ten dollars
And treat her mom to a night at One Struggle’s Open Mic