Category Archives: protest

One Hundred Year Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

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TriangleTradeParade One Hundred Year Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
When we think of desperate people holding hands on a flaming building and leaping to their death, Americans are not generally thinking of the history of labor unions. But on March 24th, 1911, one couple held hands and lept to their death, to be followed by some 140 others, in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. Bystanders watched helplessly:

Down below on the street, people started to notice the smoke billowing from the 8th floor. One of the bystanders observed a bolt of cloth come flying out the window and hit the pavement. Instinctively, he remarked that Harris was trying to save his best material. As the people on the street moved closer, out flew another bolt. It was then that the realization hit them that it wasn’t bolts of cloth at all but bodies plummeting to the pavement below.

The thousands who watched as the workers jumped flaming to their deaths were instrumental in changing support in favor of labor unions and building codes in New York City. Years before the fire, the women who worked their went on strike to fight for better working conditions, little things like a 52-hour work week and unlocked doors on the factory floor. At the time, the concern about locked doors was that the foreman did so to prevent women from using the bathroom. After a month of striking, the women at the Triangle factory were not able to agree with the bosses on the important sticking points of having a closed shop and collective bargaining. They returned to work, still locked in the building from 7am to 8pm every day.
A bit more about the fire, so that we can appreciate the tragedy that occurred a hundred years ago today:

Within three minutes, the Greene Street stairway became unusable in both directions.Terrified employees crowded onto the single exterior fire escape, a flimsy and poorly-anchored iron structure which may have been broken before the fire. It soon twisted and collapsed from the heat and overload, spilling victims nearly 100 feet (30 m) to their deaths on the concrete pavement below.

Some Thoughts On Why The People Down the Street Are Rioting

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I wasn’t surprised that officer Mehserle wasn’t convicted of murder despite all the video footage and witnesses of him shooting an unarmed teenager. I first had my suspicions when Forum reported there wasn’t a single black person on the jury. But then I took heart in thinking that the prosecution would want a whiter jury so it would be harder for the defense to appeal. Besides, the victim, Oscar Grant, was hand-cuffed face down with another police officer’s foot on his neck. So for weeks I held out some hope for a verdict of second-degree murder.
Mehserle claims that he accidentally grabbed his gun when he meant to grab his taser. I asked an ex-cop about this and he doesn’t think such a thing is possible. For one thing, a gun is much heaver than a taser and tasers are designed to have mechanisms that don’t work like firearms to prevent exactly this kind of situation. Moreover, officers’ training drills into their heads over and over the exact location of such things. The location of a cop’s firearm should be second nature.

Song Lyrics and TV on the Radio

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SeeqPod – Playable Search provided the songlist for the tunes mentioned in this blog

I have a long running argument with several people that love music but ignore song lyrics. Their thinking tends to be that they listen to music for the music, any poetry is incidental. I reply that by paying no attention to lyrics they are missing out on a huge facet of the experience, like watching a ballet without any music. True, not every great song has great lyrics. But finding out that a song you already love has an interesting story woven throughout adds a new layer of excitement to it. It allows a fresh discovery. I imagine this is one reason I am able to listen to some bands without tiring of them for months—because after getting to like the melody there is another whole layer to discover.

All art is simply communication—more stylized, beautiful, and complex but communication nonetheless. If one ignores the lyrics, that is like saying that you are interested only in the pleasure the sounds produce in your ears and not the idea the artist is using that music to impart. Thus, listening to music and ignoring the lyrics is a bit like kissing without affection. Most artists don’t sit down and just string together a melody. They usually have some idea of what the song is going to be about, at least a vague concept—love, politics, revenge. Just listening to an instrumental song, this is the most you can generally get out of it, an abstract feeling. Most artists have a more specific concept: “I’m going to write about how this person made me feel when they rejected me” or “I’m going to write a song about right now, lazing about on a Sunday afternoon.” All artists set out to express something, music is just their chosen medium. If they have taken the time to put words to the song, they’re giving you a message about what that song is about. As the music rises and falls, the lyrics correspond to that swell in emotion. You can speculate as to why the music crescendos and wanders as it does but if the artist has taken the time to write you a roadmap in the form of the lyrics, why not take a look at it?

How can one listen to “Both Hands” and not be drawn into the story about the woman on the third floor that listens to she and her partner’s “swansong”? Just the line, “I am writing graffitti on your body I am drawing the story of how hard we tried,” gives so much power and meaning to the song I am incredulous to imagine that you listen to the melody and aren’t moved by it.

Or the way Buffalo Springfield plings the guitar on the lines “Paranoia strikes deep/ Into your life it will creep…” That song is indelibly linked not just to the turbulant sixties but specifically to the clashes between cops and protestors. That song never had meaning for me until I listened to the lyrics. Now I can understand why it was a rallying call for a generation. The same goes with “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.

All this I’m talking about I experienced again today with TV on the Radio. I’ve been absorbing their sound for more than two years now and I never gave much thought to the lyrics. Electronic bands tend to be weak on songwriting anyway. But I happened upon a fantastic live acoustic version (which you can enjoy here) wherein the lyrics are more clear and I was able to appreciate them for the first time.

First I listened to “Young Liars.” The wordplay is intriguing and makes me want to listen to the song over and over to grasp how the interplay of these lyrics ties to the larger work. It starts off: “My mast ain’t so sturdy, my head is at half. I’m searching the clouds for the storm,” putting a dark sailing image in my head. This is followed by a huntress, her “bullets bearing the name of each tigress who’s left to a tooth. Save the skins for a pelt and the rest for a belt.” Later he says, “my heart’s still a marble in an empty jelly jar.” That’s a fantastic metaphor—it captures how he is feeling physically, intellectually and emotionally. He goes on to say that his nervousness will become prescience and “I’m Making maps out of your dreams.” The song ends with “Young liars, (Oh I said) Thank you for taking my hands/And burying them deep in the world’s wet womb/Where no one can heed their commands.” TV on the Radio has a sound that is dark and ominous, the music has already given us that abstraction. But more specifically the lyrics suggest the writer’s fear of the future and what he is capable of. And he does this using images (the ship in the storm, the ruthless huntress, the heart-jelly jar metaphor) that create a picture in the listener’s mind. The lyrics, though still vague, take the song from a pleasant abstraction and transform it into a dark journey. It adds such a visual layer to the song that a music video is the only way to supplement it (and videos never seem to be the artist’s vision, but the director’s, so it wouldn’t be the same at all). Reading the lyrics, how do you not visualize them? I picture the huntress on a B-52 bomber, loading a revolver, her legs crossed, a stack of rifles at her side, dressed in the 1940′s splendor of the Safari. And all this, visually, is just a metaphor for how he is feeling. You may visualize it differently, but undoubtably the image as you experience it brings something new to the song.

Now that I had discovered their lyrics, I was excited to move on to “Dry Drunk Emporer”. I was in for a surprise. I had no idea that TV on the Radio even wrote vaguely political songs but this one is clearly about our commander in chief.

The lyrics, in full:

baby boy
dieing under hot desert sun,
watch your colours run.

did you believe the lie they told you,
that christ would lead the way
and in a matter of days
hand us victory?

did you buy the bull they sold you,
that the bullets and the bombs
and all the strong arms
would bring home security?

all eyes upon
dry drunk emperor
gold cross cross jock skull and bones
mocking smile,
he’s been
standing naked for a while!
get him gone, get him gone, get him gone!!
and bring all the thieves to trial.

end their promise
end their dream
watch it turn to steam
rising to the nose of some cross legged god
gog of magog
end times sort of thing.
oh unmentionable disgrace
shield the childrens faces
as all the monied apes
display unimaginably poor taste
in a scramble for mastery.

atta’ boy get em with your gun
till mr. mega ton
tells us when we’ve won
or
what we’re gonna leave undone.

all eyes upon
dry drunk emperor
gold cross jock skull and bones
mocking smile,
he’s been
naked for a while.
get him gone, get him gone, get him gone!!!
and bring all his thieves to trial.

what if all the fathers and the sons
went marching with their guns
drawn on washington.
that would seal the deal,
show if it was real,
this supposed freedom.

what if all the bleeding hearts
took it on themselves
to make a brand new start.
organs pumpin on their sleeves,
paint murals on the white house
feed the leaders L.S.D
grab your fife and drum,
grab yor gold baton
and let’s meet on the lawn,
shut down this hypocrisy.

Wow. That’s a statement as bold as any rage against the machine like “Killing In the Name Of.” Here all along the phrase “Dry Drunk Emperor” was meaningless to me.  I was liking the sound of the words strung together and nothing more. But it is so concise and apt. Bush is a “dry drunk” and those two words express so much—a history of irresponsibility, weakness and mistakes, the fact that he is dry implies that he is stifled, unhappy and looking for some other outlet, like war. “Emperor” is a better choice than president (which he isn’t) or even king—as the latter is related to kingdom while an emperor leads an empire, something liberals do associate with our government. More importantly, “emperor” reminds us of “the Emperor Wears No Clothes” which he alludes to with “he’s been standing naked for a while!”

“Dry Drunk Emperor” is more than a pretty song, it is a call to action. Like the Buffalo Springfield song, the lyrics mark it to this moment in history that so many of us feel connected to. Prior to knowing the words, I enjoyed the song but did not identify with it. Now that the lyrics have provided a key to understanding what TV on the Radio sought to express I feel a personal connection to the song and thus the band itself. This is so much more meaningful. It can only add to my experience of the music. And to all those music-lovers that like the pretty songs, and they like to sing along, but they don’t know what it means—well I say you’re only hearing half the music.

We Are Not At the Center

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This blog is in response to Joysette’s beautiful blog “On the Passivity of a Generation” summarized briefly:
Have we become so comfortable, with our “on demand” society, that we’ve failed to struggle for the things that are truly important? Too distracted by the 47 ways to manipulate something as simple as coffee to understand the complexity of human nature?..I believe there was a time that people cared. I’m beginning to think that it’s not en vogue anymore. It’s not plastered on the cover of a magazine, nor can I sense that any periodical is telling the true story of our generation.

But what about the Zapatistas in Mexico, holding back the state with pitchforks and emails? What about the activists in India staging a worldwide boycott of Coca-cola for what they have done to their water supply? What about the 150,000 Australians that marched against climate changeon November 11th? Or the Cananea miners who have been striking for half a year? What about the tens of thousands mobilizing against free trade in Columbia? Or the 100,000 Burmese on the streets of Rangoon, demanding freedom from military rule as soldiers shoot people in the street. Or the undocumented immigrants on hunger strike in France?

We are the powdered ladies that play kroquet. We live like children and only know the world (death, struggle) from books. We are the ones who throw ourselves into activism like a timid child dipping it’s toe into the water. We cannot help ourselves. Our lives are comfortable. The desperation that we face to improve the world is no greater than the desperation to be beautiful or buy a house or pass the test or live out whatever dreams we realized before we knew the cruelty of the world is a call to action.

This is what it means to be middle class. Because if your water supply is privatized there is nothing more important to you than getting it back. If there are soldiers on every corner and tension and gun smoke in the air, what else do you think about but tension and gun smoke?

Maslow would explain it best: in the hierarchy of needs, people who are in fear for their own survival make that their fist priority. And those of us who have food, shelter, clothes, income — we worry about making sense of the world. So for different reasons, the peasant and the scholar may lay there body on the line. But when the scholars’ need for approval, when their job is threatened, when their life is uncomfortable, they are the ones to leave the movement.

You are right that many are blind, distracted, led-astray, unaware. As were the Yankees that didn’t lift a finger to help the slaves. As were the Americans that went along with the murder of the native population or didn’t blink at the phrase “manifest destiny.” So were the Germans as millions of their citizens were slaughtered by the Nazis.

There have always been people that fought back, just as there has always been a privileged class that didn’t have to.

Many thought that the appointment of a right-wing president would be the kick in the tush the country needed to wake it up to the problems of the world. And for some, it has been. But what do we expect from a country that still mocks the serious left-wing movements, has little clue how to organize, is afraid of the power of labor unions and thinks their only empowerment comes once a year at the ballot box? We are soft, like the late Romans. Perhaps it will be our downfall. Perhaps it is time for our downfall. But this–the struggle, the solution–is not about us. It is only about us in that we are the problem.

Your confusion is due to a lack of perspective. The struggle around us is carried out by armchair revolutionaries when it is convenient to do so. They are dedicated. They care deeply. But their lives do not depend upon it. The glaciers may be melting, but it is hard to feel that while we still have broadband and surround sound. But I do not think for a second that there are not people right now whose whole lives are wrapped up in altering the course of history.

The history of the world is struggle and it is not slowing now. If anything, it is accelerating at a deafening pace to what will possibly be the ultimate (anti)climax. It is not that less people care. All over the world, people are knee-deep in the thick of life or death altercations. Perhaps the great tragedy is that there are not enough of them.

And what are we doing? There are so many things I want to do. I want to start a website to measure the hope of the world. At the top of Maslow’s hierarchy, I am privileged to hunger for truth. I want to paint it and poeticize it and blog it. I want to stand on a soapbox and shout speeches to the stunned masses. I want to start a radio station and prop my soapbox there. I want to wheatpaste and spray paint and sticker it all over the city. And there is time only for a fraction of these things. And yet even these things are not *real* in the same way destroying dams and tearing down cell phone towers is real. Partly I feel that my gift is one of truth and lies are what are poisoning this country so these are my remedies. But the truth is, I am too comfortable to take those kinds of risks. If I have shown a few people the seeds of truth then I will sleep well at night. Fortunately, I am not at the center of the fighting, the famine and thirst, the cacophonous brutality that keeps many, many, restless.