Rustbelt Radical
The Rustbelt Radical
The Rustbelt Radical is a personal blog. It is revolutionary, socialist and internationalist. It comes straight from the ravaged middle of the post-industrial American Midwest and yearns for the refounding of the Marxist project. The landscapes of radical history are my main interest, but other topics might include politics, economy, work, culture, war, theory, travel, music and frequent tubthumping for the free association of producers. Let me know of needed or broken links. email: rustbeltradical@hotmail.com-
Posts
- James Baldwin Speaks!
- Farrell Dobbs recounts the rise of the Teamsters
- James P. Cannon Speaks
- AJ Muste Speaks: My Experience in the Labor and Radical Struggles of the Thirties
- Black Lives Matter: Detroit Marches for Terrence Kellum
- James Baldwin on John Brown and Historical Memory
- Some days it’s only Curtis Mayfield
- Interview with veteran Irish republican George Harrison
- A century’s early midnight?
- A Middle East Gallery of Revolt
- After Six Years and a Quarter Million Hits: The Rustbelt’s Top Twenty Posts
- From Pamphlets to Power – Collecting the History of the Revolutionary Left: An Interview with Radical Archivist Brad Duncan. Part One
- Bernadette McAliskey says ‘Yes’ to Scotland ending the ‘United Kingdom’
- James Baldwin at 90
- Looking For Tecumseh’s Footprints
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Tweets by RustbeltRadical- "The realm of freedom...can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind force of Nature, and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature..." Karl Marx, Capital, Volume III, p. 820.
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Rustbelt Radical 
Today’s Radio Free Eireann http://wbai.org/ starts with Odetta doing an unbelievable version of The Foggy Dew and then goes on to talk to Larry Kirwan of Black 47 about her.
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I was fortunate enough to see Odetta perform at the Arab American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan about four years ago. She played a song my ears recognized but one I couldn’t place at first. As the lyrics unfolded it dawned on my the song was “Something Inside So Strong”.
This tune was written by Bik McFarland.
Bik was a member of the Irish Republican Army and a leader of the prison protests of the 70’s and 80’s. In addition he helped organize a massive jail break in 1983.
Today, amongst other things, Bik writes and performs music.
It was just striking that Odetta would choose his material, making it her own. It is hardly suprising, really, considering the song is about maintaining dignity in the face of oppression… a sentiment at the center of so much of her work.
Photos online tell me she was having a fun time playing for tens of thousands at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco just last month.
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