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unmatched and comprehensive online meeting
hall for Nevada workers since 1995
"Our
republic and its press will rise or fall together."
— Joseph Pulitzer
Je Suis Charlie
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to modern short attention spaniels: This front page is chronological,
the site map is categorical.
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(A
favorite John Hanks
aphorism I've been using for decades)
Updated
4-19-2018 GMT
Flying
machines in pieces on the ground, part deux
Barbwire
by Andres
Luis Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 4-18-2018 Sparks
Tribune
RED
ALERT: NEVADA LABOR MUST NOT SUPPORT
SHARRON ANGLE SHILL ANDREW CAUDILL
Poor
Denny's Almanac for a sad Sunday
[EDITOR'S
NOTE:
Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy
of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis
Myers' daily Poor Denny's Almanac [PDA]. Items
highlighted in blue are of
interest to civil rights and worker rights in particular
and to seekers of justice in general. Red
means war. Occasionally but not surprisingly,
magenta will mean both. Copyright © 2007-2018
Dennis Myers.]
On April
15, 1540, Jerome of Bohemia, a Wycliffe
follower, was arrested by the Catholic Council of Constance
(under duress he admitted heresy, then when ordered to
repeat the confession in public he recanted and demanded
a hearing, which was denied); on this date in 1913,
the Nevada State Journal reported that the University
of Nevada baseball team, to avoid breaking a campus
rule against playing on Sundays, played under the name
“Nevada Stars” when it had Sunday games; in
1936, President Roosevelt signed legislation for
a moratorium on debts owed by reclamation farmers and
Native American irrigation projects to the federal government;
in 1945, British and Canadian
forces liberated Bergen Belsen, then turned it
into a displaced persons camp, so Jewish refugees continued
living there as late as 1950, often overriding British
authority, electing their own leaders, achieving independent
power, and planning emigration to Israel over British
protests; in 1945, U.S. Army troops arrived at
the Buchenwald death camp to discover the prisoners
had liberated it four days earlier; in 1967,
one hundred seventy five men
burned their draft cards at a massive peace rally in Central
Park in New York City; in 1971, Ring
Lardner Jr., sent to
federal prison in 1950 for refusing to cooperate with
the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, received the
Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for his M*A*S*H
script—produced by 20th Century Fox, which
had fired him on the day he appeared before HUAC;
in 2001 in an Easter B.C.
comic strip, cartoonist Johnny Hart portrayed a
menorah’s candles burning out and the menorah breaking
apart until only the shape of a burning cross remained
(two years earlier, Hart had said publicly, “Jews
and Muslims who don’t accept Jesus will burn in Hell”).
Edward
R. Murrow at Buchenwald/April 15 1945: There surged around
me an evil-smelling stink. Men and boys reached out to touch
me. They were in rags and the remnants of uniforms. Death already
had marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes.
I looked out over the mass of men to the green fields beyond,
where well-fed Germans were ploughing...
[I] asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied
by Czechoslovaks. When I entered, men crowded around, tried
to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them
could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had
once stabled 80 horses. There were 1200 men in it, five to a
bunk. The stink was beyond all description.
They called the doctor. We inspected his records. There were
only names in the little black book—nothing more. Nothing
about who had been where, what he had done or hoped. Behind
the names of those who had died, there was a cross. I counted
them. They totaled 242—242 out of 1200, in one month.
As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others,
they must have been over 60, were crawling toward the latrine.
I saw it, but will not describe it.
In another part of the camp they showed me the children, hundreds
of them. Some were only six years old. One rolled up his sleeves,
showed me his number. It was tattooed on his arm. B-6030, it
was. The others showed me their numbers. They will carry them
‘til they die. An elderly man standing beside me said,
“The children—enemies of the state!” I could
see their ribs through their thin shirts...
We went to the hospital. It was full. The doctor told me that
200 had died the day before. I asked the cause of death. He
shrugged and said, “Tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue and
there are many who have no desire to live. It is very difficult.”
He pulled back the blanket from a man’s feet to show me
how swollen they were. The man was dead. Most of the patients
could not move.
I asked to see the kitchen. It was clean. The German in charge...showed
me the daily ration. One piece of brown bread about as thick
as your thumb. On top of it a piece of margarine as big as three
sticks of chewing gum. That, and a little stew, was what they
received every 24 hours. He had a chart on the wall. Very complicated
it was. There were little red tabs scattered through it. He
said that was to indicate each 10 men who died. He had to account
for the rations and he added: “We’re very efficient
here.”
We proceeded to the small courtyard. The wall adjoined what
had been a stable or garage. We entered. It was floored with
concrete. There were two rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood.
They were thin and very white. Some of the bodies were terribly
bruised, though there seemed to be little flesh to bruise. Some
had been shot through the head, but they bled but little.
I arrived at the conclusion that all that was mortal of more
than 500 men and boys lay there in two neat piles. There was
a German trailer, which must have contained another 50, but
it wasn’t possible to count them. The clothing was piled
in a heap against the wall. It appeared that most of the men
and boys had died of starvation. They had not been executed.
But the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been
done at Buchenwald. God alone knows how many men and boys have
died there during the last 12 years. Thursday, I was told that
there were more than 20,000 in the camp. There had been as many
as 60,000. Where are they now?
I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I reported
what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I
have no words. If I have offended you by this rather mild account
of Buchenwald, I’m not in the least sorry....
____________________
Mother
of God, what have we done? What have we allowed? And still
do — to this very day 73 years later.
|
We
Don't Need No Education
Part LXXXVIII—>
Flying
machines in pieces on the ground
Barbwire
by Andres
Luis Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 4-11-2018 Sparks
Tribune
 |
[Text at right courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis
Myers' daily Poor Denny's Almanac, Copyright
© 2007-2018 Dennis Myers.]
|
|
|
|
Last
words of Martin Luther King, Jr., to Ben Branch/April
4, 1968:
"Ben, make sure you play 'Precious Lord,
Take My Hand' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."
On April 4, 1507,
Martin Luther was ordained a Catholic priest in Erfurt, Germany;
also on this date in 1915, McKinley Morganfield aka Muddy
Waters was born in Rolling Fork in the Mississippi Delta;
in 1934, a year after churches in Germany were (mostly
willingly) brought under state control, a group of Christian leaders
led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer openly formed a Pastor’s
Emergency League to oppose the Nazis and the state
church, prompting many ministers to resign from the state church
(Bonhoffer was hanged in 1945 at Flossenburg concentration
camp); in 1934, the Reichbishop of the state church
issued an order forbidding ministers from discussing the religious
dispute in their sermons; in 1942, after his publication
The Galilean claimed that the damage to U.S. forces at
Pearl Harbor was greater than the Roosevelt administration
had reported, FDR critic and presidential candidate William
Dudley Pelley was arrested and charged by the Roosevelt administration
with treason and sedition, later being convicted on 11 counts
and sentenced to 15 years in prison; in 1967, Martin
Luther King, Jr.,
spoke against the Vietnam war at Riverside Church
in New York City; in 1968, Martin
Luther King, Jr., was assassinated at age 39 while campaigning
in support of striking (union) trash collectors.
Robert Kennedy
on the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.:
Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily
- whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of
the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an
attack of violence or in response to violence—whenever we tear
at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily
woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded...Too
often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often
we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the
shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence
abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others
of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them. Some look
for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear:
violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only
a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our
soul. For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as
deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is
the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow
decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons
relations between men because their skin has different colors. This
is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without
books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking
of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father
and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. |
¡Viva
Chávez!
César
Chávez Celebration XVI
/ Celebración
de César Chávez XVI
Saturday
31 March 2018
/ Sabado
31 de Marzo 2018
Circus Circus Reno / Doors opened 5:30, Dinner 7:00
p.m.
Post-event
news coverage and photos
Advance lineup, sponsor info
and event history
Watch
this website for a complete event report starting here:
We
Don't Need No Education
Part LXXXVII—>
Marked for life for making a phone call
Barbwire
by Andres
Luis Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 4-4-2018 Sparks Tribune
Poor
Denny's Almanac
March
31: A birthday for giants — Jack
Johnson and César Chávez
March
31 — On this date in 1870, Thomas Peterson Mundy of Perth Amboy
became the first African American to vote under the 15th amendment to
the U.S. Constitution, which had been ratified the previous
day (he also served as a school principal and was later elected to the
Middlesex County Commission); in 1878,
boxer (and future world heavyweight champion)
Jack Johnson was born in Galveston; in 1911, after three
years of prosecutions by the (Theodore) Roosevelt and Taft
administrations of newspapers that reported on tawdry government
conduct in the construction of the Panama Canal, the cases—which
were thrown out by the courts—formally came to an end when a U.S.
attorney in New York requested permission to enter a filing called a
nolle prosse dropping all criminal libel charges; in 1927, César
Chávez was born near Yuma, Arizona; in 1949, attorney
Madison Graves filed charges against Las Vegas police officers after
a teenager was beaten in the city jail and then given no medical attention
to head injuries for four hours; in 1961, what was reported to
be Reno’s first sit-in was staged by African Americans at the Overland
Hotel’s café while elsewhere in the downtown a picket line
was thrown up at the Nevada Bank of Commerce; in 2008 (and 2018),
César Chávez Day
will be celebrated with a large gathering at the Circus Circus Hotel
in Reno. [Courtesy
of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis
Myers' daily Poor Denny's Almanac, Copyright
© 2007-2018 Dennis Myers.]
From
the den of iniquity to the holy of holies
Barbwire
by Andres
Luis Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 3-28-2018 Sparks
Tribune
What's
harder: Finding a doctor or Stormy Daniels?
Sucking
up money: The ever-expanding tentacles of the voracious Renown medical
octopus
Barbwire
by Andrew Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 3-21-2018 Sparks
Tribune
March
21 (Barbwire/César
Chávez
XVI
Update) — On this date in 1806, Benito
Juárez was born. ¡Viva
Juárez!
Poor
Denny's Almanac
Remember:
St. Patrick was once a slave who returned to minister to the land which
shackled him
On
St. Patrick's Day: in 1934,
thirty African American students were ejected from the U.S. House of
Representatives dining room when they sought service as a protest against
the firing of a waiter who tried to serve blacks, with police shoving
the students out of the restaurant, down the hallway, and outdoors,
fists swinging and blows landing; in 1966,
farm workers led by César Chávez
began a march from Delano to Sacramento; in 1970,
U.S. postal workers struck.
 |
The
César
Chávez Long March, 3-17-1966
by Reno artist Erik Holland
The original
watercolor above was displayed for several years in the Nevada
Legislature offices of Sen. (now Congressman) Ruben Kihuen,
D-Las Vegas, prime sponsor of the 2009 César Chávez
Day bill. Mr. Holland is preparing a new painting to be unveiled
at César Chávez
Celebration XVI
on March 31, 2018, at Circus Circus-Reno. Click
here for event reservations and sponsorship opportunities.
Copyright
© 2009 Erik Holland. All rights reserved.
|
Buyer
beware the Ides of March
Full
house: Renters face a bleak future in the Truckee Meadows
Barbano:
Shoddy developers still call the shots
By
Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 3-8-2018
And we didn't
even get kissed afterward
Breaking
News, Bulletins & Almanac 2018
Breaking News, Bulletins
& Almanac 2017
A
world in fear: It's always 9/11 somewhere
Barbwire
by Andrew Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 3-14-2018 Sparks
Tribune
And
a little child shall lead them
Wednesday,
March 14: National student walkout
for gun control. Stand by for detention, you rambunctious
little protestors. The University of Nevada-Reno says OK.
The Washoe County School District says you're busted, you
truant juvenile delinquents.
DETENTION
JUNCTION: Reno-Sparks students risk reprisals for anti-gun walkout
By
Siobhan McAndrew / Reno Gazette-Journal 3-13-2018
Walkout
date is an opportunity for Washoe students
Washoe School District Trustee Scott Kelley Op-Ed / Reno Gazette-Journal
3-13-2018
Hope
for a nation more interested in butt control than gun control—Andrew
Barbano,
Sparks Tribune, 3-14-2018
March
for Our Lives — and against guns — Saturday, March 24,
gathering
in front of the Bruce Thompson Federal Building, W. Liberty
at S. Virginia, Reno, 11:30 a.m., concluding
at the Reno City Hall BELIEVE PLAZA at 1:30 p.m. PDT / Info:
Nnedi Stephens,
775-338-4561
Washoe
County Commissioner Kitty Jung wins poll position on candidate filing
day
West
Virginia teachers: Strike one, strike won
Barbwire
by Andrew Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 3-7-2018 Sparks
Tribune
LATEST
Barbwires
 |
| VETERANS
— Left to right, Maria
Zamora, Librado "Lee" Chávez
and Tony Mayorga. Lee Chávez
holds up a hand-crafted United Farm Workers of America flag signed
by his late brother. The flag is part of Ms. Zamora's collection
of
Chávez/UFWA
memorabilia which she displayed at the 2004 Chávez
Celebration. Ms. Zamora marched with César
Chávez
in the 1960's and cooked for the multitudes as they trekked across
California. She traveled from California to attend the 2014 event
and has been our guest several times since. She
weaved wonderful stories for the audience in her
Hall of Fame address. As
always,
the Chávez
family was well represented by
Reno resident Ramon Chávez
and his family. Tony
Mayorga served many years as director of training and President
of Laborers' Union Local 169, a founding sponsor of the celebration.
[Librado
Chávez
and a dozen family members attended the 2008-2011 events. Lee and
Tony are now gone. César Chávez
Nevada Labor Hall of Famer Maria will induct Tony into that exclusive
club on March 31, 2018.
Adios, hermano.] |
ToddBQ
'18
ROASTED
INTO RETIREMENT
On
a chilly night, a hot time was had by
all.
The Building
& Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada/AFL-CIO roasted
Brother Todd Koch into retirement on Saturday, 24 Feb. 2018 at Circus
Circus-Reno. Mandalay Ballroom dinner was primo as usual.
Labor
leader Todd Koch departs with praises sung and feathers singed
 |
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Forever
a Fox: Rosie in 1995
|
Naomi
Parker Fraley, aka Rosie the Riveter, dies at 96
Mrs. Fraley’s connection to Rosie was made public in 2016, ending
years of speculation over who was the model for the fictional 1940s
war worker.
By Margalit Fox / The New York Times front page 23 January
2018
 8
the hard way!
|
