Statement of the Starbucks Workers Union on its Fifth Anniversary

May 17, 2009 marks five years since baristas at a Starbucks in New York City announced their membership in the Industrial Workers of the World and launched a campaign open to employees throughout the company. A worker-led organizing effort with the legendary IWW at the world’s largest coffee chain could have been a flash in the pan– brilliant and inspiring, but brief. But a fire was lit and a movement began. The idea that Starbucks workers could organize themselves and speak in their own voice, independent of company executives and union bureaucrats, could not be restrained.

The bosses did their best to defeat us, to bury any indication of our existence under a heap of lies and retaliatory firings. They tried to stamp us out, even as the campaign for secure jobs and a living wage burst from New York into Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota and beyond.

While Starbucks used the economic crisis as a pretext for an all-out assault on our already meager standard of living, our struggle gained momentum this year amidst a stark decline of the company’s brand and widespread store closures. Baristas around the country and around the world made the decision to organize and fight back against severe cuts in work hours, chronic under staffing, and a new “Optimal Scheduling” program which forces many workers to be available to Starbucks for over 80 hours a week without being guaranteed a single work hour.

This journey has been full of set-backs and tests of will. Progress has been made yet much remains to be done. But one thing is certain: our voice for dignity is firmly planted and our union’s future is bright.

The biggest battles remain ahead, but every day our ranks deepen. We are confident in our solidarity and could not be more proud to be associated with our fellow workers across the IWW and like-minded unionists around the world. This year, courageous baristas in Chile became the first Starbucks workers in Latin America to raise a union banner.

The corporate-controlled economic, social, and political model has been exposed everywhere as a failure for working families. And everyday workers are bolder and more assertive in the fight against injustice and exploitation. The notion that democracy has no place at work has been exposed as a lie.

To every worker who loves liberty: this is our time!

Together we organize. Together we struggle. Together we win!

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Put People First Pics – Militant Workers Bloc

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The Wobblies

Watch The Wobblies on :

http://www.anarchotv2point0.org/drupal5

Founded in 1905, The IWW, whose supporters were called “the Wobblies,” was a remarkable organization and this documentary captures the struggles, the spirit, the songs and satires of the movement. The production features the most astonishing interviews with elderly workers who participated in various IWW campaigns from the timber fields of the northwest to the Lawrence strike (1912) and the Patterson strike (1913) in which the IWW brought industrial unionism to fragmented and craft-conscious industries. None of them has lost their fervor, their belief in the revolution or their marvelous sense of humor. What other documentary offers a “talking head” who can both describe the debates in the lumber camps over the Russian Revolution and play—to concert level—a musical saw?
Beyond the powerful narratives, this documentary retrieved a terrific selection of old and archival footage, including cartoons and graphics, giving a narrative structure that provides a context for the interviews. The only intermittent narrator is Roger Baldwin, the founder of The American Civil Liberties Union, who at age 95 wrote his own script based on his brief membership in the IWW in 1919.
Bird and Shaffer describe both the making of this particular video and, in a retrospective after almost 30 years, its place in documentary movie history. For any student of documentaries as a specialty, this addendum is almost as fascinating as the main production. Inspired by The Sorrow and the Pity, the 1969 documentary about Vichy France, Bird and Shaffer claim that The Wobblies is the first of the “new wave” of documentaries that brought both new topics and new techniques to the field.
All of the “leaders–and how the Wobblies despised this term—were dead since this documentary was produced 73 years after the IWW was first organized. The producers, of necessity and of choice, had to interview normal IWW workers who became the “talking heads” for the production. Responding to a shift in labor history in the 1970s which emphasized the narratives of “ordinary workers”—in contrast to featuring union officials or institutions–Bird and Shaffer were determined to reach the grass roots. They relate with affection the interviews they conducted and the difficulties tracking down potential interviews. Shaffer describes the difficulties, for example, of interviewing workers in Bisbee, AZ, where 1,100 Wobblies were dragged into the desert in 1917, a moment in the town’s history that the residents wanted to bury.
Bill Barry
Community College of Baltimore County

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Interview with 80 Year Old IWW Member and Jesuit Fr. Bill Bischel

Fr. Bill Bischel SJ has dropped by Ireland to accompany both the Pitstop Ploughshares to court in Dublin and the Raytheon 9 to court in Derry. Bill was ordained in Berlin before the wall went up, carries some of Joe Hill’s ashes and has spent a number of years in jail for nonviolent resistance. One jail was in view of one of the seminaries he attended!

Reverend Bill Bichsel, or “Bix” as he’s known to friends and admirers, has lived an extraordinary life. Born in Tacoma in 1928, he has dedicated his life to education, and peace. An ordained Jesuit Priest, Bill was the dean of students at Gonzaga University from 1963 to 1966, he helped start the Martin Luther King Center of Tacoma for the homeless in 1969, he co-founded the Tacoma Catholic Worker, which houses and provides amenities for the homeless Tacoma. He has also been arrested over 45 times and spent nearly two years of his life in prison for protesting US military force on numerous occasions.

After reading a News Tribune article about Rev. Bichsel http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/457549.html , we at The Melon felt compelled to talk to such a brave and caring individual. After calling Bill, he invited us into his home where we talked about everything from his politics and personal accomplishments to the fall of the Soviet Union and his memories of the great depression.

We’ve turned the resulting discussion into a two-part interview with Bill that we’re very pleased to share with you.

Peacebringer: Interview with Rev. Bill Bichsel – Pt. 1
In part one, we discuss Bill’s influences, some of his protests, the fall of the Soviet Union, US interventionism, and more: Part 1: http://themelononline.com/2008/10/peace-bringer-intervi…rt-1/

Peacebringer: Interview with Rev. Bill Bichsel – Pt. 2
In part 2 of our conversation with Reverend Bill Bichsel continues where we left off. We discuss the upcoming election, the future of American warfare, abortion, activism and the Tacoma Catholic Worker Part 2: http://themelononline.com/2008/10/peacebringer-intervie…pt-2/

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Together We Win: The Fight to Organize Starbucks

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Sindicalismo Sin Fronteras

Sindicalismo Sin Fronteras
by Mike Alewitz
Assistance by Daniel Manrique and numerous volunteers
Approx. 8′ x 30′
Frente Autentico Trabajadores Auditorium
Mexico City 1997

On April 5, 1997, a public inauguration of two new murals was held at the auditorium of the Frente Autentico Trabajadoras (FAT) in Mexico City. The event was part of a cross-border organizing project of the FAT and the United Electrical (UE) union. The following is based on a dedication speech given by artist Mike Alewitz of the Labor Art and Mural Project (LAMP).

Sisters and Brothers:

It is a humbling experience to come to Mexico to paint, for this country is the home of the modern mural movement, and gave birth to some of the greatest public art of this century. Here is where the Rivera, Orozco and Siqueras were inspired by millions of peasants and workers to illustrate the historic conquests of the Revolution. On a smaller scale, we are attempting to illustrate the UE-FAT efforts to build international solidarity and cross-border organizing.

It was Emiliano Zapata who gave the greatest political expression to the Mexican revolution, and it is under his watchful eyes that our mural unfolds. We have also included the figures of Albert and Lucy Parsons. Albert was one of the Haymarket martyrs, framed up and executed for his leadership in the Chicago labor movement’s fight for the eight hour day. Lucy was also a leader in that movement, and she continued her labor and anarchist activities until she died at an old age. She was of African-American and Mexican ancestry, was an early leader of the feminist movement, and a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Parsons hold in their hands some bread and a rose. “Bread and Roses” was a slogan of the Lawrence textile strikers; women who demanded not only the bread of the union contract, but the rose to symbolize that workers deserve a rich spiritual and cultural life.

The quotation in the painting is from August Spies, also executed on November 11, 1887. “If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement…the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil in want and misery expect salvation-if that is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there and there, behind you-and in front of you, and everywhere, flames blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.”

How fitting a quote for this land of volcanos. This is precisely what is happening today, as first a Los Angeles, and then a Chiapas explode, here and there, precursors of a generalized conflagration. Our class is like the core of the earth, being compressed under ever greater pressure, until forced to explode.

We are using this cultural project to illustrate our collective union vision. Unions are the first line of defense for workers. They keep us from getting killed or poisoned. They allow us some basic human dignity.

Unfortunately, too often our unions resemble exclusive clubs, or worse, criminal gangs. Even unions that pride themselves on being progressive are often beaurocratic and autocratic. Without the full and active participation of the membership, all the weaknesses of our organizations emerge. As workers, we often must not only battle the employers, but our own conservative leaderships as well.

This is a particular problem in the United States, where employers keep us stratified and divided. They attempt to pit low-wage workers against the more privileged. They use divide-and-conquer tactics to convince us to be for “labor peace.” But labor peace is the peace of slavery, wether in the U.S. or in Mexico.

The Frente Autentico Trabajadoras is helping to lead the struggle for genuine union democracy. There have been, and will continue to be casualties in this historic fight. And today we dedicate this mural to those who have been victimized in the struggle for union democracy. This mural is the product of not only artists, but the thousands of workers who built our unions. This is their mural.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to denounce the criminal policies of the United States government. In particular I denounce the economic sabotage of Mexico and the criminal embargo of Cuba. The gang in Washington does not speak for me or millions of other American workers. They are waging war upon our class. They are my enemy and your enemy. They represent the past, we are the future. If we continue to forge these links of solidarity, they can never prevail.

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Judi Bari’s Spirit Lives On

Judi Bari a was a feminist Earth First! activist and dues paying member of the IWW from 1988-94 who even served on it’s General Executive Board in 1991.

“On May 24, 1990, a car bomb exploded beneath environmental and labor activist Judi Bari’s car seat as she drove through Oakland, California with fellow activist Darryl Cherney. Judi and Darryl were prominent organizers for Earth first! Redwood Summer, a campaign of nonviolent logging protests.http://www.judibari.org/
Interview With Judi About The Bombing: http://www.monitor.net/monitor/bari/interview.html
Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judi_Bari

For several years before the bombing, Earth First! had spearheaded a growing movement of public protest and direct action against the big timber corporations’ strip-logging in the redwood region of Norther California. Judi in particular was instrumental in building a coalition of loggers and environmentalists opposed to cut-and-run logging, and in broadening the scope and appeal of the movement. During the month before the bombing, Judi had received a series of written death threats relating her to timber organizing, the worst featuring a photo of her with a rifle scope and crosshairs superimposed on her face. Shortly afterwards, the bomb exploded in her car.

The bomb nearly killed Judi, and left her permanently disabled and in severe pain for the rest of her life. Darryl escaped with minor injuries. But the terror of the attack did not end there. Within minutes of the blast, the FBI appeared on the scene. In defiance of all the evidence, they had Judi and Darryl arrested for possession of explosives, claiming two were knowingly transporting the bomb that had meant to kill them.

These incredible charges were then trumpeted in the national press, with the FBI and Oakland Police (OPD) falsely portraying Judi and Darryl as violent terrorists rather than the targets of a terrorist attack. After eight weeks of public statements from the FBI and OPD vilifying the activists, the district attorney declined to press charges for lack of evidence. To this day the FBI and police have conducted no serious investigation of the bombing and the bombers remain at large.

In 1991, Judi and Darryl filled a federal lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland Police, charging them with false arrest and conspiracy to violate the activists’ civil rights. The lawsuit charges that the FBI and police knew perfectly well that Judi and Darryl were innocent, and that they were in fact victims of a brutal assassination attempt. Their false arrest was part of an FBI-driven COINTELPRO-style operation to discredit Earth First! and to “neutralize” Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney as organizers.

The most striking evidence in the case is the police’s own photos of the bombed-out car. These photos show that the FBI and police knowingly lied when they rushed to arrest Judi and Darryl for the bombing.

The arrest was based on the FBI’s false claim that the bomb was located on the back seat floorboard when it exploded, and therefore that Judi and Darryl must have seen it and known they were carrying it. But the photos, along with the physical evidence and the findings of the FBI’s own bomb expert, clearly show that the bomb was actually located directly beneath the driver’s seat, and that this was obvious from the damage to the car.

The FBI also claimed that nails taped to the bomb for shrapnel effect were “identical” to nails found in a bag in the back of Judi’s car. In fact, the nails in the bomb were finishing nails while the nails in the car were roofing nails — two types of nails so different in appearance that no honest observer could have mistakenly called them “identical.”

Through the lawsuit’s discovery process, we’ve also learned that the bomb was triggered by a motion device consisting of a large ball bearing that had to roll into place to connect two contact points. In other words, this was a motion-triggered booby trap bomb, set to explode when the car was driven, and wrapped in shrapnel to insure maximum injury to the car’s occupants.

This clearly discredits the FBI’s story that Judi and Darryl were knowingly transporting the bomb to use in some kind of sabotage action. Yet even though the FBI and police retrieved pieces of the motion device within hours of the explosion, they never told the press and they ignored this critical evidence when they arrested Judi and Darryl on charges of transporting explosives.

Even more serious question about the FBI’s conduct have been raised by revelations of an FBI “bomb school” held shortly before the attempt on Judi’s life. According to FBI files and the sworn testimony of Oakland Police and FBI agents, the FBI held a training course for bomb investigator in Eureka, California, in the heart of the redwood region, just four weeks before the bomb exploded in Judi’s car. During the week-long course the FBI blew up cars with pipe bombs and practiced responding.

The teacher at bomb school was Special Agent Frank Doyle, the same FBI bomb expert who showed up at the scene in Oakland and supervised the collection of evidence. It is Frank Doyle who is quoted in the search warrant falsely stating that the bomb was in the back seat and that nails in the car matched nails in the bomb. In the FBI’s own crime scene video, Doyle can be heard joking with his cohorts in an apparent reference to bomb school, “This is it! This is the final exam.”

At the very least, bomb school set up a line of authority that caused the responding officers (many of whom attended the Eureka bomb school) to go along with Frank Doyle when he made false statements about the location of the bomb and the “matching” nails, even though these statements directly contradicted what they saw in their own eyes. At worst, FBI bomb school raises serious questions about the extent of FBI participation in the lead-up to the bombing of Judi Bari, and the possibility of FBI prior knowledge of the attack. ”

Judi Bari died of breast cancer in 1997.

While I’m sure not the only case, this tragic story clearly demonstrates FBI corruption and anti-activism in the U.S. government.

For more Judi Bari recourses:
Official Website:

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NIGHT HIGHWAY 99

Another poem from an ex IWW member. Lew Welch was a Beat poet who you might have come across as Dave Wain in Jack Kerouac’s novel Big Sur.  This is the longest poem from Mountains and Rivers Without End.  This is a road song and a portrait of the West Coast in the late 50s and early 60s, which mentions the Everett Massacre in 1916, in which a number of Wobblies and others were killed. An account of the Massacre may be found at:

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~n9517146/bloodysunday.html.

 

 

Night Highway 99

 

 

Only the very poor, or eccentric, can surround themselves with shapes of elegance (soon to be demolished) in which they are forced by poverty to move with leisurely grace. We remain alert so as not to get run down, but it turns out you only have to hop a few feet to one side and the whole huge machinery rolls by, not seeing you at all.

 

Lew Welch

 

We’re on our way

man

out of town

go hitching down

that highway 99

 

Too cold and rainy to go out on the Sound

Sitting in Ferndale drinking coffee

Baxter in Black, been to a funeral

Raymond in Bellingham–Helena Hotel–

Can’t go to Mexico with that weak heart

Well you boys can go south. I stay heare.

Fix up a shack–get a part-time job

(he disappeared later

maybe found in the river)

In Ferndale & Bellingham

Went out on trail crews

Glacier and Marblemount

There we part.

 

Tiny men with mustaches

driving ox teams

deep in the cedar groves

wet brush, tin pants, snoose—

 

Split-shake roof barns

over berry fields

white birch chicken coop

 

Put up in Dick Meigs cabin

out behind the house–

Coffeecan, PA tin, rags, dirty cups,

Kindling fell behind the stove, miceshit,

old magazines,

 

winter’s coming in the mountains

shut down the show

the punks go back to school

and the rest hit the road–

 

strawberries picked, shakeblanks split

fires all out and the packstrings brought

down to the valleys:

wet loose to graze.

 

Gray wharves and hacksaw gothic homes

Shingle mills and stump farms

 

overgrown

 

Fifty weary Indians Mt. Vernon

Sleep in the bus station

Strawberry pickers speaking Kwaikiutl

turn at Burlington for Skagit & Ross Dam

under apple trees by the river

banks of junked cars

BC Riders give hitchhikers rides

 

 “The sheriff’’s posse stood in double rows           Everett

flogged the naked Wobblies down

with stalks of Devil’s Club

& run them out of town”

 

While shingle weavers lost their fingers

in the tricky feed and take

of double saws

 

Dried, shrimp

smoked, salmon

–before the war old Salish gentleman came

& sold us kids rich hard-smoked Chinook

from his flatbed model T

Lake City,

 

waste of trees & topsoil, beast, herb

edible roots, Indian field-farms & white men

dances washed, leached, burnt out

minds blunt, ug! talk twisted

a night of the long poem

and the mined guitar

“Forming a new society

within the shell of the old”

mess of tincan camps and littered roads.

 

The Highway passes straight through every town

at Matsons washing bluejeans

hills and saltwater

 

ack, the woodsmoke in my brain

 

(high Olympics—can’t go there again)

 

East Marginal Way the hitchhike zone

Boeing down across Duwamish slough

and angle out             &on.

 

Night rain wet concrete headlights blind Tacoma

 

salt air / bulk cargo / steam cycle / AIR REDUCTION

 

eating peanuts I don’t give a damn

if anybody ever stops I’ll walk

to San Francisco what the hell

 

“that’s where you going?

why you got that pack?”

 

“well man I just don’t feel right

without something on my back”

 

& and this character in milkman overalls

“I have to come out her

everyone in a while, there’s a guy

blows me here”

 

way out of town

 

Stayed in Olympia with Dick Meigs

–this was a different year & he had moved—

sleep on a cot in the back yard

half the night watch shooting stars

 

These guys got babies now

drink beer, come back from wars,

“I’d like to save up all my money

get a big new car, go down to Reno

 

& latch onto one of those rich girls—

I’d fix their little ass”—nineteen yr old

North Dakota boy fixing to get married next month.

 

To Centralia in a purple Ford.

 

Carstruck dead doe

by the Skookumchuck river

 

Fat man in a Chevrolet

Wants to go back to L.A.      “too damned poor now”

 

Airbrakes on the log trucks hiss and whine

stand in the dark by the stoplight

big fat cars tool by

drink coffee, drink more coffee

brush teeth back of Shell

 

hot shoes

stay on the righside of that

yellow line

 

Mary’s corner, turn for Mt. Rainer

–once caught a ride at night for Portland here.

 

Five Mexicans ask me “chip in on the gas.”

I never was more broke & down.

 

Got fired that day by the USA

(the District Ranger up at Packwood

thought the Wobblies had been dead for

forty years

but the FBI smelled treason

–my red beard

 

That Waco Texas boy

took A.G. and me through miles of snow

had a chest of logger gear

at the home of an Indian girl

in Kelso hadn’t seen since fifty-four

 

Toledo, Castle Rock, free way four lane

no stoplights and no crossings, only cars,

& people walking, old hitchhikers

break the laws. How do I know…

the state cop

told me so.

 

Come a dozen times into

Portland

on the bum or

hasty lover

late at night.

 

Dust kicking up behind the trucks—night rides— Who

waits in the coffee stop

 

night highway 99

Sokei-an met an old man on the banks of the

Columbia growing potatoes & living all alone,

Sokei-an asked him the reason why he lived there,

he said,

Boy, no one ever asked me the reason why,

I like to be alone.

I am an old man.

I have forgotten how to speak human words.

 

All night freezing in the back of a truck dawn

at Smith River battering on in

logger’s pickups

prunes for lunch

 

The next night, Siuslaw.

 

Portland sawdust down town Buttermilk

comer all you want for a nickel

(now a dime) —Sujata gave Guatama

buttermilk. (No doubt! says Sokei-an, that’s

all it was:

plain buttermilk)

 

rim of mountains,

pulp bark chewed snag papermill tugboom in the

river —use to lean on bridge rails dreaming up

eruptions and quakes-Slept under juniper in the

Siskiyou         Yreka a sleeping bag, a foot of snow

black rolled umbrella ice slick asphalt

 

Caught a ride the only car come by at seven

in the morning chewing froze

salami

riding with a passed-out L.A. whore

glove compartment full of booze, the

driver a rider,

 

nobody cowboy sometime hood,

Like me pick up to drive

& drive the blues away.

We drank to Portland

and we treated that girl good.

I split my last two bucks with

him in town

went out to Carol & Billy’s in the woods.

 

Foggy morning in Newport

housetrailers

under the fir.

 

An old book on Japan at the Goodwill

unfurled umbrella in the sailing snow

sat back in black wood

barber college chair, a

shave

 

On Second Street in Portland.

What elegence. What a life

Bust my belly with a quart of

buttermilk

& five dry heels of French bread

from the market cheap

clean shaved, dry feet

 

We’re on our way

man

out of town

Go hitching down that

highway 99.

 

Oil pump broken, motor burning out                                    Salem

Ex logger selling skidder cable

wants to get to San Francisco,

fed and drunk                                                             Eugene

Skidder cable: cable used for dragging (skidding) logs.

Guy just back from Alaska—don’t like

the States now — too much law                              Sutherlin

A woman with a kid & two bakes of hay                             Roseburg

Sawmill worker, young guy thinking of

going to Eureka for redwood logging later in the year      Dillard

Two Assembly of God Pentacostal boys from a

holy-roller high school. One had

spoke in tongues Canyonville

(LASME Lost Angeles-Seattle Motor Express

 

place on highway 20

LITTLE ELK badger &

badger

South of Yoncalla bum the engine

run out of oil (a different car) (Six

great highways; so far only one)

 

Jumpoff Joe Creek &

a man carrying nothing, walking sort of stifflegged

along, blue jeans & denim jacket wrinkled

face, just north of Louse Creek

 

—Abandon really means it the network womb

stretched loose all things slip through

 

Dreaming on a bench under newspapers I woke up

covered with rhododendron blooms alone in a

State Park in Oregon.

“I had a girl in Oakland who worked

for a doctor, she was a nurse, she let him

eat her. She died of tuberculosis

& I drove back that night to Portland

nonstop, crying all the way” Grants Pass

“I picked up a young mother with two children once,

their house had just burned down”

“I picked up an Italian tree-surgeon in

Port Angeles once, he had all his saws

and tools all screwed & bolted on a beatup

bike.”

Oxyoke, Wolf Creek, a guy Coming off a five-day binge to

Phoenix

 

An ex-bartender from Lebanon to   Redding

Man & wife on a drinking spree, to             Anderson

 

Here we enter California again.

Snow on the pines & firs around Lake Shasta

—Chinese scene of winter hills and trees us “little

travelers” in the bitter cold six-lane highway slash

& D-9 Cats — bridge building squat earthmovers

—yellow bugs

I speak for hawks. Creating “Shasta as I go—”

 

The road that’s followed goes forever;

in half a minute crossed and left behind.

  Out of the snow and into red-dirt plains

blossoming plums

  Each time you go that road it gets more straight

curves across the mountain lost in fill

Improvements to 99 were underway…

towns you had to slow down all four lane

Azalea, Myrtle Creek

 

watch out for deer.

At Project City Indian hitcher Standing

under single tarpole lamp

nobody stopped

we walked for miles to an oak fire left

by the road crew, shivered the night

away

 

Going to San Francisco

Yeah San Francisco

Yeah we came from Seattle

Even farther north

Yeah we been working in the mountains

in the spring

in the autumn

I always go this highway 99-

“I was working in a mill three weeks there then it

burned down & the guy didn’t even pay us off—

but I can do anything— I’ll go to San Francisco—

tend bar—”

Sixteen speeds forward windows open Stopped at

the edge of Willows for a bite

 

grass shoots on the edge of drained

rice plains

—where are the Sierras—

 

standing in the night in the world-end winds by

the overpass bridge

junction US 40 and highway 99

trucks, trucks roll by kicking up

dust dead flowers

level, dry.

Highway turns west.

Miles gone, speed still pass

through lower hills heat

drying

toward Vallejo gray on the

salt baywater

brown grass ridges

buckbrush blue.

Herons in the tideflats

have no thought for State of Cars

-I’m sick of car exhaust

 

City gleaming far away we make it

  into town tonight get clean and

    drink some wine—

 

SAN FRANCISCO

 

NO body

gives a shit

man who you are or

what’s your car

   there IS no   99

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POEMS, POLITICS, NATURE

The Politics of Ethnopoetics – Gary Snyder, poet and winner of the Pullitzer Prize and Lannan Award, ecologist and one-time Wobbly.

Sunday, 2. March 2008

Ethnopoetics is a poetic movement and subfield in linguistics, and anthropology. Coined as a term by Rothenberg in 1968. The idea of ethnopoetics is based on two interrelated concepts.

This “politics” is fundamentally the question of what occidental and industrial technological civilization is doing to the earth. The earth: (I’m just going to remind us of a few facts), is 57 million square miles, 3.7 billion human beings, evolved over the last 4 million years; plus, 2 million species of insects, 1 million species of plants, 20 thousand species of fish, and 8,700 species of birds; constructed out of 97 naturally occurring surface elements with the power of the annual solar income of the sun. That is a lot of diversity.

Yesterday, (who was it), David Antin, I believe, told how the Tragedians asked Plato to let them put on some tragedies. Plato said, “Very interesting, gentlemen, but I must tell you something. We have prepared here the greatest tragedy of all. It is called – The State.”

From a very early age I found myself standing in an undefinable awe before the natural world. An attitude of gratitude, wonder, and a sense of protection especially as I began to see the hills being bulldozed down for roads, and the forests of the Pacific Nothwest magically oat away on logging trucks. I grew up in a rural family in the state of Washington. My grandfather was a homesteader in the Pacific Northwest. The economic base of the whole region was logging. In trying to grasp the dynamics of what was happening, rural state of Washington, 1930’s, depression, white boy out in the country, German on one side, Scotch- Irish on the other side, radical, that is to say, sort of grass roots Union, I.W.W., and socialist-radical parents, I found nothing in their orientation, (critical as it was of American politics and economics), that could give me an access to understanding what was happening. I had to find that through reading and imagination, which lead me into a variety of politics: Marxist, Anarchist, and onwards.

Mu Ch’i’s Persimmons

There is no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice cake.

—Dōgen, November, 1242.

 

On a back wall down the hall

 

lit by a side glass door

 

is the scroll of Mu Ch’i’s great

sumi painting, “Persimmons”

 

The wind-weights hanging from the

axles hold it still.

 

The best in the world, I say,

of persimmons.

 

Perfect statement of emptiness

no other than form

 

the twig and the stalk still on,

the way they sell them in the

market even now.

 

The original’s in Kyoto at a

lovely Rinzai temple where they

show it once a year

 

this one’s a perfect copy from Benrido

I chose the mounting elements myself

with the advice of the mounter

 

I hang it every fall.

 

And now, to these overripe persimmons

from Mike and Barbara’s orchard.

Napkin in hand,

I bend over the sink

suck the sweet orange goop

that’s how I like it

gripping a little twig

 

those painted persimmons

 

sure cure hunger

 

Civilization
 
Those are the people who do complicated things.
 
     they'll grab us by the thousands
     and put us to work.
 
World's going to hell, with all these
     villages and trails.
Wild duck flocks aren't
     what they used to be.
Aurochs grow rare.
 
Fetch me my feathers and amber
 
         *
 
A small cricket
on the typescript page of
"Kyoto born in spring song"
grooms himself
in time with The Well-Tempered Clavier.
I quit typing and watch him through a glass.
How well articulated! How neat!
 
Nobody understands the ANIMAL KINGDOM.
 
         *
 
When creeks are full
The poems flow
When creeks are down
We heap stones.
 
                      from  Logging
 
"Lodgepole Pine: the wonderful reproductive
power of this species on areas over which its
stand has been killed by fire is dependent upon
the ability of the closed cones to endure a fire
which kills the tree without injuring its seed.
After fire, the cones open and shed their seeds
on the bared ground and a new growth springs up."
 
Stood straight
                     holding the choker high
As the Cat swung back the arch
                     piss-firs falling,
Limbs snapping on the tin hat
                     bright D caught on
Swinging butt-hooks
                     ringing against cold steel.
 
Hsu Fang lived on leeks and pumpkins.
Goosefoot,
          wild herbs,
                     fields lying fallow!
 
But it's hard to farm
Between the stumps:
The cows get thin, the milk tastes funny,
The kids grow up and go to college
They don't come back
                     the little fir trees do
 
                     Rocks the same blue as sky
Only icefields, a mile up,
                          are the mountain
Hovering over ten thousand acres
Of young fir.
 
                             Gary Snyder

 

If Ginsberg is the Beat movement’s Walt Whitman, Gary Snyder is the Henry David Thoreau. — Bruce Cook

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