Time to start blogging again...

Hello pilsenprole readers - if any of you still exist. Yes, it has been a long damn time since I have been maintaining this blog. It has been increasingly difficult, first with my intensified job search in the final months of my nearly two years of unemployment, and than as I started my new job as the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization's (PERRO) organizer to spend anytime composing new material. The really shame is that so much has happened in the past year locally and globally, that should have received more of my attention. So today I am making an extremely tardy new years pledge of sorts and committing myself to make at least a couple posts every month, from now on. Hopefully you may find my posts worthy of a few minutes of your time, and hopefully I can start my self back on the track of my original mission, to inform those who do find their way to my blog about important issues affecting my community, my city and my world.

I will start with posting a piece I wrote a little over a year ago for a special publication by Area Chicago. The publication, entitled Haymarket: 1886-2011 was meant to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the events of Haymarket and the first May Day. The publication included reflections on Haymarket, May Day and the struggle for the 8 hour day from a variety of perspectives. I was asked to write on Pilsen's connections to the events of Haymarket. What I wrote in the end, was an attempt to encapsulate Pilsen's century and a half at the forefront of social struggle.

Unfortunately the publication was released too late to really be featured at any of the many Haymarket commemorations held last year and as a result did not receive much circulation. The published version of my essay was a substantially shortened version with the understanding that the longer version would eventually be published on the web. To my knowledge, this never did happen. So my very next post will be the final unveiling of "1877-2011: 134 Years of Social Struggle in Pilsen", in its entirety, roughly a year from its planned initial release date.

Comments

Best Films of 2023...

Best Films of 2023 Well, it's already early February somehow and award season for the 2023 film year is well underway. 2023 was the first year post-pandemic I was able to see the volume of new films to warrant a top 10 list - a practice I started in 2017 but abandoned after 2020 when like the rest of the world I was mostly forced to watch releases from years past on streaming services. Last year, despite my ongoing poverty, through a host of tricks, streaming services, tight budgets, and the generosity of friends, I was able to see around 40 new releases. For most of 2023, I considered it the YEAR OF DISAPPIONTMENTS . That's still my primary description of the year in film. Long anticipated and ballyhooed new films by Nolan, Scorsese, Fincher, and Wes Anderson to name a few all left me dissatisfied. Not because I am an adoring fan of these directors, but given the high regard with which they are held and given the rich subject matter on which ...

In memory of Rafael Gomez Nieto, the anti-fascist COVID victim two wars could not kill, on the first anniversary of his passing…

When I was an up and coming young socialist high-school, then college student, moving gradually away from Liberation Theology, towards some form of democratic socialist-humanism, the example of the Spanish Revolution of 1936-1939 made a major impact on my thinking. I knew instinctively and without question Stalinism and Maoism had nothing to offer. How could two of the century's most brutal dictators have anything to say about creating a future free of oppression. What I was looking for was historical examples of a new stage in the movement toward full human freedom, one in which working class people were in control of their lives and their future. No bosses, no party bureaucrats, no cults of personality and increasingly, in a departure from my past, no gods. Probably the first and certainly one of the most influential works of revolutionary literature that I encountered was Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia , hence my Orwell attachment to this day. Soon following were the equall...

Financial Crisis Brings Historic Opportunity…

www.whatnowtoons.com Wow, what a difference a few weeks can make. Less than a month ago, every mainstream mass media outlet, U.S. politician, economic analyst, and probably the majority of average citizens would still have been singing the praises of the unfettered free market. Regulation was still a dirty word and privatization was still equated with efficiency and prosperity. Granted, the sand had already begun to shift under this ideological edifice of 30+ years. The sub-prime mortgage crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble had seriously shaken the confidence of some in the system. I had mentioned repeatedly on Labor Express Radio over the Summer the glaring contrast between the soaring gas prices we experienced here in the laissez-faire fuel market of the U.S. as compared to the low and stable prices maintained by the state oil company of our neighbor to the south. But none of that seemed to really change the mainstream belief in this country that free markets solve all prob...

Search This Blog