200 years ago Haiti made a pact with freedom, giving the world a shining example in history’s most successful slave rebellion…and has been forced to pay for it by imperialism ever since. The recent earthquake has exposed the unnatural fault line of wealth in the world as surely as it has exposed those ones natural to the earth. Throughout centuries of imperial blockade, intervention and occupation, oligarchic misrule and a police state to protect the poverty that helped to build empires, the Haitian people have continued to struggle for their dignity and for their freedom. This Valentine’s Day we propose to express our anger and our empathy, our solidarity with the people of Haiti who have given so much inspiration to the world. This Valentine’s Day we will say: Haiti, We Love You!
In what is becoming a Detroit leftist tradition 1812 Church Street will once again open its doors for a benefit party. This time donations will be taken for the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund which works through Haitian trade unions and social movements rather than through the parasitical Assistance Industrial Complex which would perpetuate Haitian dependence. This will be the fourth live music fundraiser party to happen at 1812 Church St. and we thank Brad and Tiffany for opening their home on a cold winter night. If past benefits are any indication, and they are, you’ll not want to miss this one.
The previous benefits’ musical offerings have spanned Avant-Jazz to the varieties of Folk. The May Day party promoting the upcoming US Social Forum in Detroit turned into a super-session of Michigan’s great experimental jazz players including Skeeter Shelton, Mike Carey, and Kenn Thomas. Also supported were Iraq Veterans Against the War and a benefit for the Palestine Office of Dearborn in response to last year’s Israeli assault on Gaza.
These events have included people from nearly every social justice group; from the anti-war movement to the labor movement, from the anarchist and socialist left, form Palestinian activists to urban farmers. But make no mistake, just because it’s a benefit doesn’t mean it’s not a party. Included in the fun will be music lovers and friends from the Detroit area, friends of friends, fellow travelers, and, again, music lovers. Like any left-wing social gathering worth its salt a real mix of generations and backgrounds show up. The guarantee is that you will hear great music (the stellar line-up below), meet new friends, and get to listen in on conversations that might reference Gamelan music ensembles, Hegel’s Logic and George Habash all in one sentence. And we will be raising money and raising awareness.
Mark your calendars for Saturday, February 13th. The open house begins at eight and goes late. Music will probably start around 8:30ish and will go ’til the wee hours. There will be a keg of beer, but friends should consider bringing drinks and/or a dish to share or bread to break. The line up:
A very special reunion of The Immigrant Suns! Formed in Detroit in the early 1990’s, The Immigrant Suns took their inventive and infectious mix of Eastern European folk styles and adventurous musical sensibilities on the road and across the country for over a decade before retiring. Trailblazers of unconventional folk and a riotous live act; we’re as excited as you are to see The Immigrant Suns play again. The real deal, folks!
Lac La Belle lend their gifted hands again. With stunning début CD out now this band knows 1812 Church St. well. They have said that the space has some of the best acoustics for their performances, but we say they are the ones giving the space the best sounds.
Behind The Times are a brand new Bluegrass band from Down River, but with members you might recognize from other bands such as Catfish Mafia and The Cass Avenue Ramblers.
Here’s the vitals: “We ♥ Haiti” Saturday February 13th, 8pm at Brad and Tiffany’s: 1812 Church #2, Upstairs in Detroit’s Corktown, just east of Rosa Parks. For more info call Brad (734) 748 6350 or email: palestinelives@hotmail.com. facebook page. See you there!

Flame on the Snow (1920/1921) by
Crosses of rifles stand in front of closed doors. Our steps sound in the mildness of unknown homes. Faces of anxiety, lamps suddenly lit among the grey half-light. Papers which you decipher badly in front of the window, the frightened eyes that you explore in an acute and sad glance, “Are you lying?”
The poor tattered people, many teenagers, some children all bearing rifles, with the straps often replaced by string. The hands numb with cold of these poor people. Their grey wretched crossing of the Liteyni prospect, in a determined step. At the end of a bayonet a red flag: Workers’ battalion from Narva district.
This crowd in snow, under the midday sun, following coffins covered with branches of fir trees. Red ribbons, flags. A gold ray is posed on the arrow of the Admiralty. Songs – the song which soars. There are prayers and sobs in this farewell from a living crowd to a crowd of the dead. Here they sleep, behind a granite rampart, those hung, shot, whose throats were cut, those that died of typhus, who all, gave freely and with their souls. Died for the revolution. So often these funerals on the Field of Mars …
How they have great faces, those of us that are dead!

Contempt for words – for the old words. Contempt for the ideas which mislead. Contempt for the hypocritical and cruel West which invented Parliaments, the public press, the asphyxiating gases, the prison system, after-dinner literature. Contempt for all that vegetates in satisfaction with these things.
Consciousness that all of us are nothing if we are not with our class, its humanity rising. Consciousness that work ahead does not have limits, that it requires a million arms and brains, that it is the only justification of our lives. Consciousness that a world collapses and that you can live only while giving yourself to the world which waits to be born.
I’ve never been an Ernestophile; not that I dismissed Che or didn’t find him intriguing in his way, but he never caught my imagination the way some other revolutionaries, including Cuban revolutionaries, have. I didn’t come to Che by Stephen Soderbergh as eagerly as others. After a non-release theatrically in the United States and a question mark over its release on disc, the film was picked up by the venerable folks at Criterion for DVD distribution and is now available. I watched the whole thing in a single sitting this week, a worthy film experience.
Glen Ford: Black Delusion in the Age of Obama
Posted in Guest Commentary with tags black america, glen ford, age of obama on February 5, 2010 by Rustbelt RadicalLeave A Comment »