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Wanda McDonald stands outside the White House, wearing a shirt listing the names of African-Americans who have been killed by police in recent years. Photo by Livia Hyams/Greenpeace.
HELEN PANKHURST: born 1964, is an international development and women’s rights activist and writer. Helen is the great-granddaughter of Moss Side born Emmilene Pankhurst the British political activist and leader of the suffragette movement and granddaughter of Sylvia Pankhurst the campaigner for the suffragette movement in the UK.In 2018, to coincide with 100 years of women’s suffrage, she convened the Centenary Action Group a cross-party coalition of over 100 activists, politicians and women’s rights organisations campaigning to end barriers to women’s political participation. Helen is a patron of The Pankhurst Centre at Nelson St in Manchester – Emmilene Pankhurst’s family home and the birthplace of the suffragette movement – which Helen officially opened by in 1987. She is also busy as a visiting Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University
GREATER MANCUNIANS is a Manchester College student led landmark photography project (supported by Manchester City Council). It features those people born, bred, or who have made their home within the current Greater Manchester boundary and who have in some way culturally shaped the city and its surrounding boroughs.
The project will be published and exhibited in a major city centre exhibition in 2021/22.
Actress and activist Diane Lane is cheered during her arrest at the seventh Fire Drill Friday. Inspired by Greta Thunberg and the youth climate strikes as well as Reverend Barber’s Moral Mondays and Randall Robinson’s often daily anti-apartheid protests, Jane Fonda has moved to Washington, D.C. to be closer to the epicenter of the fight for our climate. Every Friday through January 2020, she leads weekly demonstrations on Capitol Hill to demand that action by our political leaders be taken to address the climate emergency we are in. Speakers for the seventh Fire Drill Friday included: Jane Fonda; Alice Brown Otter, 16-year-old activist and member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Counsil of Canadians and best-selling author; Piper Perabo, Actress and activist; Mary Grant, Public Water for All Campaign Director at Food and Water Watch; Sweet Honey In The Rock musical performance; Diane Lane, Actress and activist; Manny Jacinto, Actor and activist; Amber Valletta, Supermodel, actress and activist; Garett Reppenhagen, Executive Director for Veterans For Peace; and Jessica Loya, National Policy Director for GreenLatinos.
I’m a busy girl who is juggling a lot of tasks. Since our Democratic Party district and precinct conventions were planned months before the Parkland, Florida school mass shooting occurred; I could not participate in the March For Our Lives on March 24, 2018. There were 15,000 who attended the march and rally in Houston. I spent most of Saturday in a local high school with over a hundred fellow Democrats listening to candidates and approving resolutions. I was too tired to go shopping for Leslie Anne’s dinner, so I brought some masala from my neighborhood Indian restaurant.
Please read all 6 of this series about the convention. My 2014 and 2016 albums also show photos and have a narrative about those conventions.
Remembrance one year after the gruesome murders of LGBT activists Xulhaz Mannan and his friend Tonoy in front of National Museum, Dhaka.
The remembrance was organized by an LGBT activist at Shahbagh intersection. Xulhaz was a USAID official and also editor of Bangladeshs first LGBT magazine Roopbaan.
A gang of assailants, posing as delivery men, entered Xulhaz's apartment building in Dhaka's Kalabagan, killed him and his friend Tonoy with machetes on April 25 last year.
Why do protestors always have a miserable look about them. Protesting at the Melbourne Cup Carnival 2017.
This panel with Derek Jensen, Charles Derber and Stephanie McMillan was titled "Capitalism and Sociopathology". In which it was pointed out that though 95% of the population believe that the solution to climate change is more capitalism that simply isn't going to cut it because capitalism is the catastrophe that is leading us to ruin through competitive individualism and violence towards nature, war and class violence. Basically same thing Naomi Klein was telling us at Bioneers. This conference was surprisingly sparsely attended compared to Bioneers even though it cost very little and took place in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts.
Also on the program was Chris Hedges who gave a little history of the social justice and labor movements in the USA. He pointed out that on the eve of WWI labor had finally cornered American capitalism, but the propaganda of the war diverted people emotionally. After the war the propaganda machine led to the cult of the self (through advertising) which allowed corporate values to be imposed upon us. A psychosis of permanent war through manipulation of fear can destroy all the mechanisms for democracy, he told us. Then he quoted Howard Zinn's book about how all the populace movements in history came through platforms that were not formalized. In other words not legitimate organizations. Hedges told us that the question is how to make the power elite afraid of us. He also explained how FDR created the New Deal in order to save capitalism by acting as a safety valve for class discontent. And that Clinton created the rise of faux liberalism. And with corporate control of media there is now no ability for us to shine a light into the mechanisms of power which means we must go back to radicalized resistance.
Which is probably why this conference is not nearly as well attended as Bioneers. It fully admitted that the situation was just too dire for normal channels.
There was also a moving panel about toxic masculinity. The members of the panel spoke of the price they paid to become men and how they found their way out. Stan Goff gave an intriguing definition of female boundaries being permeable while men are called upon to defend male imposed boundaries and reject women because the threat of permeable boundaries would undermine men's power.
There was also an illuminating panel of women talking about confronting misogyny and an update by a British feminist professor on how neo-liberalism i.e. the cult of the individual took away the commonly held interest of the welfare of all women and made feminism about an individual thing with pro-porn academics claiming porn as a legitimate choice for women who choose it, forgetting that most women don't have the luxury of choice in the sex trade and related industries that exploit them.
I had also come to hear Vandana Shiva who spoke on her usual topics and reminding us that industrial agriculture was the most destructive to the environment. And not to overlook that 70% of our food comes from small farms world wide.
The final speaker was Alice Walker who acknowledge our despair by asking what do we do when we know that nothing will work. She then read from her poem Democratic Womanism and offered other anecdotes of female strength.
Also worth hearing was poet Dominique Christina who recited her moving poems about her mother and then her son having to learn at a tender age how black people are hunted down and beaten in this country.
The "No one is Illegal" organization held a vigil in Hamilton this evening in support of a move to increase the number of Syrian refugees being admitted to Canada. Local activist Ken Stone (carrying the envelope) who enjoys some notoriety and who is not, apparently, top of the popularity poll with CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service), joins the vigil.
A dozen young climate activists gathered at the Novato High School to prepare posters, songs and speeches for their Youth Climate Strike in Santa Rosa the next day, where they planned to demand action on climate change.
This North Bay strike was organized by young activists Lucy London and Kelley Tillman, along with their peers at the Novato High Earth Club. The next day, they gave speeches, sang together, made posters, marched on City Hall and created a beautiful mosaic to honor mother earth.
Over a million students around the world skipped school this Friday to protest government inaction on climate change, with thousands of rallies in 125 countries, making it the largest youth climate action in history.
Their peaceful demonstration was very moving: these young people are sweet, smart, articulate, dedicated and they share an amazing creative energy and love for the earth. I want to be like them when I grow up!
Our Green Change team supported their youth movement by providing a sound system, a large earth globe, and recording videos and photos of their uprising. Thanks to our crew members Sarah Acker and Marilyn Price for their invaluable support of this important cause. :)
In coming weeks, I will create a special video story featuring Lucy, Kelley and their friends for Climate Heroes, our new series on the new leaders of the green revolution.
Even though this was a youth-led event, they welcomed the help of adult allies like us. It was a pleasure to join forces with these young leaders to fight for climate action together, across generations!
View more photos in our ‘Youth Climate Strike - North Bay’ album:
www.flickr.com/photos/fabola/sets/72157690416032923
Learn about the North Bay Youth Climate Strike: www.facebook.com/events/613996295740500/?active_tab=discu...
Learn about other Youth Climate Strikes around the world:
www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2019/mar/15/climate-...
Learn about Fridays for Future, organizers of this worldwide strike:
Learn about Green Change, our climate action network:
Sign up for updates about our videos and events:
#climateaction #climatechange #ClimateStrike #FridaysForFuture #schoolstrike4climate #youth
Occupy London activists enter Panton House.
Occupy London activists targeted Panton House near Piccadilly Circus, headquarters of mining company Xstrata, in protest at "fat cat pay". After meeting at 3pm shortly after the main pensions protest by the Unions had finished, about 300 activists moved the short distance to Panton House. Several activists, despite a rapid police response, reached the roof of the building. Police quickly removed the majority of the protestors from the building, kettling activists in the streets outside the building. Over 20 activists were arrested.
Attended the International Women's Congress for Peace and Freedom in 1915 at the Hague, Holland. She represented the Woman's City Club of Chicago. She is number 8 in the group photo.
Alice Hamilton, the sister of Edith Hamilton, was born in New York on 27th February, 1869. Hamilton graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1893. She served internships at hospitals in Minneapolis and Boston before studying bacteriology at the University of Leipzig and at the Johns Hopkins Medical School.
In 1898 Hamilton was appointed professor of pathology at the Women's Medical College at Northwestern University in Chicago. After hearing a speech by Jane Addams she decided to join the Hull House settlement in the city. Other social reformers living at the settlement included Ellen Gates Starr, Alzina Stevens, Edith Abbott, Grace Abbott, Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop, and Sophonisba Breckinridge.
Hamilton increasing became interested in social issues. In 1910 Charles Deneen, the governor of Illinois, appointed her to a commission to investigate occupational diseases. She studied industrial poisoning in the lead, rubber and munitions industries and was able to prove that lead, nitrous fumes and viscose rayon were causing serious side effects including mental illness, loss of vision, paralysis and in some cases, death.
Hamilton used this evidence to pressurize politicians to pass workmen's compensation laws and factory owners to provide safer working conditions. Hamilton's research into the dangers of industrial pollution was also used in the campaign against child labour.
On the outbreak of the First World War, Hamilton and a group of women pacifists in the United States, began talking about the need to form an organization to help bring it to an end. On the 10th January, 1915, over 3,000 women attended a meeting in the ballroom of the New Willard Hotel in Washington and formed the Woman's Peace Party. Other women involved in the organization included Jane Addams, Mary McDowell, Florence Kelley, Anna Howard Shaw, Belle La Follette, Fanny Garrison Villard, Emily Balch, Jeanette Rankin, Lillian Wald, Edith Abbott, Grace Abbott, Crystal Eastman, Carrie Chapman Catt, Emily Bach, and Sophonisba Breckinridge.
In April 1915, Arletta Jacobs, a suffragist in Holland, invited members of the Woman's Peace Party to an International Congress of Women in the Hague. Hamilton, Jane Addams, Grace Abbott and Emily Bach were chosen to represent the United States. Others who went to the Hague included Lida Gustava Heymann (Germany); Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Emily Hobhouse, (England); Chrystal Macmillan (Scotland) and Rosika Schwimmer (Hungary).
The women were attacked in the press by Theodore Roosevelt who described them as "hysterical pacifists" and called their proposals "both silly and base".
Hamilton, along with Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton, Emily Balch, Mary Church Terrell, Jeanette Rankin and Lillian Wald. she attended the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom conference in Zurich in April, 1919. After the conference Hamilton and Addams made a tour of the Western Front.
Hamilton lived in Hull House for twenty-two years and thereafter returned for several months every year while Jane Addams was alive.
In 1919 Hamilton became the first woman to be appointed to the staff at the Harvard Medical School. She also did studies on industrial pollution for the federal government and the United Nations. She also wrote several books including Industrial Poisons in the United States (1925), Industrial Toxicology (1934) and Exploring the Dangerous Trades (1943).
Hamilton was a member of the League of Women Voters, the Women's Trade Union League, the National Consumer's League, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1927 Hamilton joined with John Dos Passos, Paul Kellogg, Jane Addams, Upton Sinclair, Dorothy Parker, Ben Shahn, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Floyd Dell, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells in an effort to prevent the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bertolomeo Vanzetti.
Even after Hamilton retired she continued to be active in politics and campaigned against McCarthyism, the execution of Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, and the Vietnam War. At the age of eighty-eight Hamilton remarked that: "For me the satisfaction is that things are better now, and I had some part in it." Alice Hamilton died on 22nd September, 1970, aged 101.
There is shit in meat. Go Vegan!
An activist with a LCD screen and DVD player strapped to his torso, a sign mounted on cardboard, and a variety of pamphlets just below his chin. Pretty good marketing job overall.
A dozen young climate activists gathered at the Novato High School to prepare posters, songs and speeches for their Youth Climate Strike in Santa Rosa the next day, where they planned to demand action on climate change.
This North Bay strike was organized by young activists Lucy London and Kelley Tillman, along with their peers at the Novato High Earth Club. The next day, they gave speeches, sang together, made posters, marched on City Hall and created a beautiful mosaic to honor mother earth.
Over a million students around the world skipped school this Friday to protest government inaction on climate change, with thousands of rallies in 125 countries, making it the largest youth climate action in history.
Their peaceful demonstration was very moving: these young people are sweet, smart, articulate, dedicated and they share an amazing creative energy and love for the earth. I want to be like them when I grow up!
Our Green Change team supported their youth movement by providing a sound system, a large earth globe, and recording videos and photos of their uprising. Thanks to our crew members Sarah Acker and Marilyn Price for their invaluable support of this important cause. :)
In coming weeks, I will create a special video story featuring Lucy, Kelley and their friends for Climate Heroes, our new series on the new leaders of the green revolution.
Even though this was a youth-led event, they welcomed the help of adult allies like us. It was a pleasure to join forces with these young leaders to fight for climate action together, across generations!
View more photos in our ‘Youth Climate Strike - North Bay’ album:
www.flickr.com/photos/fabola/sets/72157690416032923
Learn about the North Bay Youth Climate Strike: www.facebook.com/events/613996295740500/?active_tab=discu...
Learn about other Youth Climate Strikes around the world:
www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2019/mar/15/climate-...
Learn about Fridays for Future, organizers of this worldwide strike:
Learn about Green Change, our climate action network:
Sign up for updates about our videos and events:
#climateaction #climatechange #ClimateStrike #FridaysForFuture #schoolstrike4climate #youth
Rev. Walter Fauntroy is shown May 3, 1971 outside a makeshift detention camp for Mayday protesters near RFK Stadium.
Reverend Walter E. Fauntroy, pastor, Congressional representative, and civil rights activist, was born in Washington, D.C., on February, 6, 1933.
In 1959, Fauntroy became pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.,
The following year Martin Luther King and Wyatt Tee Walker asked him to become the District of Columbia (DC) branch director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Fauntroy accepted and became the civil rights organization’s lobbyist in Congress until 1970.
In this capacity, Fauntroy lobbied for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Also during this time, Fauntroy coordinated several historic marches for civil rights, including the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March in 1965, and the Meredith Mississippi Freedom March in 1966.
During this same year, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Fauntroy Vice Chairman of the “White House Conference to Fulfill These Rights,” an organization that explained civil rights goals to Congress and the public.
In 1967 Fauntroy was appointed to his first political office when President Johnson named him Vice-Chairman of the D.C. City Council. Fauntroy held that post until 1969.
In 1971, Fauntroy was elected to serve as delegate of the District of Columbia and a member of the United States House of Representatives. Upon assuming this position, he became the first person in one hundred years to represent the District in Congress.
In this position, Fauntroy proposed two pieces of legislation important to his constituents: the Washington D.C. Home Rule Act of 1975, and the Washington D.C. Voting Rights Amendment of 1978. The amendment did not become law because too few states ratified it in the seven year time frame required by the U.S. Constitution.
While in Congress, Fauntroy served as chairman of the Subcommittee on International Development, Finance, Trade, and Monetary Policy, which was a part of the House Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs Committee.
He was also a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971 and served as its chair from 1981 to 1983.
As an activist Fauntroy steered a middle course, but often supported efforts of the more radical elements within the black community.
When the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in the District of Columbia led its “Free D.C.” campaign in 1966, Fauntroy supported it when other mainstream black leaders shunned it.
When Stokely Carmichael organized the D.C. Black United Front in 1968, Fauntroy stuck with it when Carl Moultrie of the NAACP and Sterling Tucker of the Urban League dropped out.
Congressman Fauntroy resigned his seat in 1990 in an unsuccessful bid to become Mayor of Washington, D.C.
After losing the race to Sharon Pratt Dixon Kelly, he created Walter E. Fauntroy & Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in investments in Africa and within African American business communities. He continued to serve as pastor at New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.
--Largely excerpted from The Black Past
For other random radicals, see www.flickr.com/gp/washington_area_spark/CU5Np1
Photo by Walter Oates. This image has been cropped from a larger photograph. Courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.
Protest against doublethink - a peace dove is a paraglider while genocide is self defence
On Sunday 5 May, activists campaigning for a Gaza ceasefire, including several students, demonstrated outside London's police headquarters at New Scotland Yard following the arrest of four protesters the previous day. They had been at a protest outside University College London where they had been holding a large banner with a picture of a dove of peace grasping a key (symbolising the famous key of return) flying through a breach in the infamous separation wall.
The separation wall doesn't stand anywhere near Gaza, and 80% of it doesn't even run along Israel's 1967 internationally recognised border or green line, running instead deep within the occupied West Bank separating Palestinian farmers from their land and Palestinian villagers from the water supplies. For some reason, which is difficult to comprehend, the police presumably believed that the artwork expressed support for the 7 October attack. That might be understandable if there had been a paraglider depicted or any part of the Gaza boundary, but instead it featured the separation wall which has been frequently an object of political art ever since it was constructed.
Those detained were released, according to what I heard, on bail and, I understand, in at least some instances, without their phones.
According to a tweet by Vijay Prashad quoted in the Canary - "The police said that this image at UCL was illegal because the blue sky was in reference to the weather on October 7, 2023." He added "I would like to have a conversation about art criticism with the inspector in charge from Holborn police."
www.thecanary.co/trending/2024/05/07/ucl-arrests-student-...
Hopefully someone can explain that a blue sky above the Separation Wall is nothing unusual let alone some secretive message in support of terror as can be seen in the following linked photographs of the Separation Wall - I can't see a single cloud in any of them - and most were presumably taken before 7 October 2023.
www.mediastorehouse.co.uk/discover-images-by-awl/lookout-...
www.alamy.com/the-separation-wall-in-bethlehem-palestine-...
www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/290200769713725569/
www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-israeli-separation-w...
www.istockphoto.com/photo/idf-tower-and-barrier-rachels-t...
www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-palestinian-...
www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-israeli-separation-wall-im...
www.istockphoto.com/photo/palestinian-children-at-playgro...
www.istockphoto.com/photo/foreign-visitors-touring-separa...
www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/an-eight-meter-hi...
Photo licence
Although this image is being posted on an attribution noncommercial share alike basis CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED, the following organisations and publications listed on the link below are also welcome to reproduce it even if it is for commercial purposes or to raise money. However please publish the image on the same attribution noncommercial share alike basis. For more info or if any other organisation or other publication wishes to publish this photo on a commercial basis please email me at alisdare@gmail.com.
Stephen William Bragg (born 20 December 1957) is an English singer-songwriter and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that mostly span political or romantic themes. His music is heavily centred on bringing about change and involving the younger generation in activist causes.
Early life[edit]
Bragg was born in 1957 in Barking, Essex (which is now in Greater London)[2] to Dennis Frederick Austin Bragg, an assistant sales manager to a Barking cap maker and milliner, and his wife Marie Victoria D'Urso, who was of Italian descent.[3] Bragg's father died of lung cancer in 1976,[4] and his mother died in 2011.[5]
Bragg was educated at Northbury Junior School and Park Modern Secondary School (now part of Barking Abbey Secondary School[6]) in Barking. He failed his eleven-plus exam, effectively precluding him from going to university.[7] However he developed an interest in poetry at the age of twelve, when his English teacher chose him to read a poem he had written for a homework assignment on a local radio station.[8] He put his energies into learning and practising the guitar with his next-door neighbour, Philip Wigg (Wiggy); some of their influences were the Faces, Small Faces and the Rolling Stones. He was also exposed to folk and folk-rock music during his teenage years, citing Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan as early influences on his songwriting.[8]
During the rise of punk rock and new wave in the late 1970s, Elvis Costello also served as an inspiration for Bragg.[9] He was also particularly influenced by the Clash, whom he'd seen play live in London in May 1977 on their White Riot Tour, and again at a Rock Against Racism carnival in April 1978, which he admits was the first time he really stepped into the world of music as it is used for political activism.[10] The experience of the gig and preceding march helped shape Bragg's left-wing politics, having previously "turned a blind eye" to casual racism.[10]
Career[edit]
Early career[edit]
In 1977 Bragg formed the punk rock/pub rock band Riff Raff with Wiggy. The band decamped to rural Oundle in Northamptonshire in 1978 to record a series of singles (the first on independent Chiswick Records) which did not receive wide exposure. After a period of gigging in Northamptonshire and London, they returned to Barking and split in 1980.[11] Taking a series of odd jobs including working at Guy Norris' record shop in Barking high street, Bragg became disillusioned with his stalled music career and in May 1981 joined the British Army as a recruit destined for the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars of the Royal Armoured Corps. After completing three months' basic training, he bought himself out for £175 and returned home.[12]
Bragg peroxided his hair to mark a new phase in his life and began performing frequent concerts and busking around London, playing solo with an electric guitar under the name Spy vs Spy (after the strip in Mad magazine).[13]
His demo tape initially got no response from the record industry, but by pretending to be a television repair man, he got into the office of Charisma Records' A&R man Peter Jenner.[14] Jenner liked the tape, but the company was near bankruptcy and had no budget to sign new artists. Bragg got an offer to record more demos for music publisher Chappell & Co., so Jenner agreed to release them as a record. Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy (credited to Billy Bragg) was released in July 1983 by Charisma's new imprint, Utility. Hearing DJ John Peel mention on-air that he was hungry, Bragg rushed to the BBC with a mushroom biryani, so Peel played a song from Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy albeit at the wrong speed (since the 12" LP was, unconventionally, cut to play at 45rpm). Peel insisted he would have played the song even without the biryani and later played it at the correct speed.[14]
Within months Charisma had been taken over by Virgin Records and Jenner, who had been made redundant, became Bragg's manager. Stiff Records' press officer Andy Macdonald – who was setting up his own record label, Go! Discs – received a copy of Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy. He made Virgin an offer and the album was re-released on Go! Discs in November 1983, at the fixed low price of £2.99.[15] Around this time, Andy Kershaw, an early supporter at Radio Aire in Leeds, was employed by Jenner as Bragg's tour manager. (He later became a BBC DJ and TV presenter, and he and Bragg appeared in an episode of the BBC TV programme Great Journeys in 1989, in which they travelled the Silver Road from Potosí, Bolivia, to the Pacific coast at Arica, Chile.)[16]
Though never released as a Bragg single, album track and live favourite "A New England", with an additional verse, became a Top 10 hit in the UK for Kirsty MacColl in January 1985. Since MacColl's early death, Bragg always sings the extra verse live in her honour.[17]
In 1984, he released Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, a mixture of political songs (e.g. "It Says Here") and songs of unrequited love (e.g. "The Saturday Boy"). This was followed in 1985 by Between the Wars, an EP of political songs that included a cover version of Leon Rosselson's "The World Turned Upside Down". The EP made the Top 20 of the UK Singles Chart and earned Bragg an appearance on Top of the Pops, singing the title track. Bragg later collaborated with Rosselson on the song "Ballad of a Spycatcher".[18]
In the same year, he embarked on his first tour of North America, with Wiggy as tour manager, supporting Echo & the Bunnymen.[19] The tour began in Washington D.C. and ended in Los Angeles. On the same trip, in New York, Bragg unveiled his "Portastack",[20] a self-contained, mobile PA system weighing 35 lbs (designed for £500 by engineer Kenny Jones), the wearing of which became an archetypal image of the singer at that time. With it, he was able to busk outside the New Music Seminar, a record industry conference.[21]
Late 1980s and early 1990s[edit]
In 1986 Bragg released Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, which became his first Top 10 album. Its title is taken from a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky and a translated version of the poem was printed on the record's inner sleeve. Back to Basics is a 1987 collection of his first three releases: Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy, Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, and Between the Wars. He enjoyed his only Number 1 hit single in May 1988, a cover of the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home", a shared A-side with Wet Wet Wet's "With a Little Help from My Friends". Both were taken from a multi-artist re-recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band titled Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father coordinated by the NME in aid of the charity Childline. Wet Wet Wet's cover dominated radio airplay and its video was shown over three consecutive weeks on Top of the Pops; in week four, Bragg went on the programme to play his cover, with regular accompanist Cara Tivey on piano.[22]
Bragg released his fourth album, Workers Playtime, in September 1988. With this album, Bragg added a full backing band and accompaniment, including Tivey on piano, Danny Thompson on double bass and veteran Micky Waller on drums. Wiggy earned a co-production credit with Joe Boyd.[23]
In August 1989 Bragg took lead vocal on the ‘Levi Stubbs’ Tears’ sampling Norman Cook's UK top 40 hit "Won’t Talk About It", which was a double-A-side with "Blame It On the Bassline". The track was a bigger hit a year later with Lindy Layton replacing Bragg as lead vocal.[citation needed]
In May 1990 Bragg released the political mini-LP The Internationale on his and Jenner's own short-lived label Utility, which operated independently of Go! Discs, to which Bragg was still contracted. The songs were, in part, a return to his solo guitar style, but some featured more complicated arrangements and included a brass band. The album paid tribute to one of Bragg's influences with the song, "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night", which is an adapted version of Earl Robinson's song, "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", itself an adaptation of a poem by Alfred Hayes.[24] Though the album only reached Number 34 in the UK Charts, Bragg described it as "a reassertion of my rights as an individual ... and a childish two fingers [to Go! Discs boss Andy Macdonald, who'd recently signed a distribution deal with entertainment industry giant PolyGram]."[25]
His sixth studio album Don't Try This at Home was recorded in the shadow of the build-up to the Gulf War and subsequent ground war, inspiring the track "Rumours of War". Although there is social comment ("The Few", "North Sea Bubble"), it was intended as a more commercial pop album, released in September 1991. (Bragg called it "a very long-range attempt to convert the ball between the posts."[26]). The first single was the upbeat "Sexuality", which, despite an accessible video and a dance remix on the B-side, only reached Number 27 on the UK Singles Chart. Following overtures by rival label Chrysalis, Bragg and Jenner had been persuaded by Go! Discs' Andy and Juliet Macdonald to sign a four-album deal for a million pound advance; in return he would promote the album with singles and videos.[27] A more commercial sound and aggressive marketing had no appreciable effect on album sales, and after a grueling, 13-month world tour with a full band (the Red Stars, led by Wiggy), and a period of forced convalescence after appendicitis, Bragg left Go! Discs in summer 1992, paying back the remainder of his advance in return for all rights to his back catalogue.[28]
Late 1990s and 2000s[edit]
Bragg released the album William Bloke in 1996 after taking time off to help new partner Juliet Wills raise their son Jack. (There is a reference to him in the track "Brickbat": "Now you'll find me with the baby, in the bathroom.")[29] After the ambitious instrumentation of Don't Try This at Home, it was a simpler record, musically, more personal and even spiritual, lyrically (its title a pun on the name of 18th-century English poet William Blake, who is referenced in the song "Upfield").[30]
Around that time, Nora Guthrie (daughter of American folk artist Woody Guthrie) asked Bragg to set some of her father's unrecorded lyrics to music. The result was a collaboration with the band Wilco and Natalie Merchant (with whom Bragg had worked previously). They released the album Mermaid Avenue in 1998,[31] and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in 2000.[32] The first album was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category. A third batch, Mermaid Avenue Vol III, and The Complete Sessions followed in 2012 to mark Woody Guthrie's centennial.[33] A rift with Wilco over mixing and sequencing the first album led to Bragg recruiting his own band, The Blokes, to promote the album live. The Blokes included keyboardist Ian McLagan, who had been a member of Bragg's boyhood heroes The Faces. The documentary film Man in the Sand depicts the roles of Nora Guthrie, Bragg, and Wilco in the creation of the Mermaid Avenue albums.[34]
A developing interest in English national identity, driven by the rise of the BNP and his own move from London to rural Dorset in 1999, informed his 2002 album England, Half-English (whose single, "Take Down The Union Jack" put him back on Top of the Pops in the Queen's Golden Jubilee year[35]) and his 2006 book The Progressive Patriot. The book expressed his view that English socialists can reclaim patriotism from the right wing. He draws on Victorian poet Rudyard Kipling for an inclusive sense of Englishness.[36] In 2007 Bragg moved closer to his English folk music roots by joining the WOMAD-inspired collective The Imagined Village, who recorded an album of updated versions of traditional English songs and dances and toured through that autumn.[37]
In December Bragg previewed tracks from his forthcoming album Mr. Love & Justice at a one-off evening of music and conversation to mark his 50th birthday at London's South Bank.[38] The album was released in March 2008, the second Bragg album to be named after a book by Colin MacInnes after England, Half-English.[39][40] The same year, during the NME Awards ceremony, Bragg sang a duet with British solo act Kate Nash. They mixed up two of their greatest hits, Nash playing "Foundations", and Bragg redoing "A New England".[41] Also in 2008, Bragg played a small role in Stuart Bamforth's film A13: Road Movie.[42]
In 2009, Bragg was invited by London's South Bank to write new lyrics for "Ode to Joy", the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (original libretto by Friedrich Schiller), since adopted as an international anthem of unity. The London Philharmonic Orchestra performed it at the Royal Festival Hall in front of the Queen and Bragg met her afterwards to earn "brownie points" with his mother, also in attendance.[43]
2010s[edit]
He was involved in the play Pressure Drop at the Wellcome Collection in London in April and May 2010. The production, written by Mick Gorden, and billed as "part play, part gig, part installation", featured new songs by Bragg. He performed during the play with his band, and acted as compere.[44]
Bragg was invited by Michael Eavis to curate the Leftfield stage at Glastonbury Festival in 2010,[45] which he has continued to do in subsequent years.[46] He also took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books, where he wrote a piece based upon a book of the King James Bible.[47] Bragg performed a set of the Guthrie songs that he had set to music for Mermaid Avenue during the Hay Literary Festival in June 2012,[48] he also performed the same set on the Friday night of the 2012 Cambridge Folk Festival.[49]
On 18 March 2013, five years after Mr. Love & Justice, Bragg released the studio album Tooth & Nail. Recorded in five days at the home studio of musician/producer Joe Henry in South Pasadena it featured 11 original songs, including one written for the Bush Theatre and a Woody Guthrie cover. Stylistically, it continued to explore genres of Americana and Alternative country, a natural progression since Mermaid Avenue.[50][51] The album was a commercial success, becoming his best charting record since 1991's Don't Try This at Home.[52]
Bragg with Joe Henry at the Union Chapel, Islington.
In February 2014, Bragg started a series of "radio shows" on Spotify, in which he talked listeners through self-curated playlists of "his favourite tracks and artists, and uncovering some little-known musical gems."[53] On 14 April 2014, Bragg put out Live at the Union Chapel, a souvenir album and DVD of a show he played on 5 June 2013 at the Union Chapel in London, featuring songs from Tooth & Nail as well as favourites from his back catalogue.[54]
In February 2016, Bragg was given the Trailblazer Award at the inaugural Americana Music Association UK Awards in London.[55] Following that, in September he was given the Spirit of Americana Free Speech Award at the Americana Music Association US Awards in Nashville.[56]
In August 2016, Bragg released his eleventh album, a collaboration with Joe Henry, Shine a Light: Field Recordings from the Great American Railroad, recorded at various points on a journey between Chicago and Los Angeles by train in March. It reached number 28 in the UK Album Charts[57] and number one in the UK Americana album chart.[58] The pair started a dual Shine a Light tour at the Americana Music Festival in Nashville in September 2016, and taking them across the States and Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland. In April 2017, they played in Australia.
Faber published Bragg's second nonfiction book (after 2006's The Progressive Patriot), Roots, Radicals and Rockers in June 2016, a history of the British skiffle movement, tracing the form from its 1950s boom back to ragtime, blues, jazz and American folk music. On BBC Music Day 2017, he helped unveil a blue plaque marking the studio (Trident) where the late David Bowie recorded two classic albums and the single Space Oddity, in Soho; he joined album sleeve designer George Underwood and BBC Radio London’s Robert Elms.[59] In November, he released all six tracks from the mini-album Bridges Not Walls as downloads through the Billy Bragg website,[60] followed by the single Full English Brexit through Cooking Vinyl.
In April 2018, Bragg was invited to deliver a Bank of England Flagship Seminar; his presentation was titled Accountability: the Antidote to Authoritarianism. The speech was made available on the Bank of England's website.[61] At the Ivor Novello Awards (the Ivors) in May, he accepted the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music award.[62] Also in May, his official biography Still Suitable for Miners was published in a new, 20th anniversary updated edition.[63]
He ended 2018 touring New Zealand and Australia. In Auckland, he road-tested a new live format for 2019 (first tried out in Toronto), One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. The idea was to play three consecutive shows over three nights at each venue: the first night a current, mixed Bragg set; the second from his first three albums; the third from his second three albums. "It’s a way of keeping things interesting," he said.[64] The tour would cover the United States and the UK and Ireland throughout 2019.
In May, Faber and Faber published The Three Dimensions of Freedom, a short polemic by Bragg intended, according to the publisher's blurb, to "protect ourselves from encroaching tyranny." The author urges readers to "look beyond [the] one-dimensional notion of what it means to be free" and "by reconnecting liberty to equality and accountability, restore ... the three dimensions of freedom."[65]
Politics and activism[edit]
For all of Bragg's 30-year-plus recording career he has been involved with grassroots, broadly leftist, political movements, and this is often reflected in his lyrics. He has also recorded and performed cover versions of famous socialist anthems such as "The Internationale" and "The Red Flag". Bragg said in an interview: "I don't mind being labelled a political songwriter. The thing that troubles me is being dismissed as a political songwriter."[66] Bragg has cited the Clash as a strong influence on his politically themed material and activism:
It wasn't so much their lyrics as what they stood for and the actions they took. That became really important to me. Phil Collins might write a song about the homeless, but if he doesn't have the action to go with it he's just exploiting that for a subject. I got that from the Clash, and I try to remain true to that tradition as best I can.[67]
From 1983 to 1997[edit]
Bragg's politics were focused by the Conservative Party's 144-seat majority landslide at the 1983 general election. He told his biographer, "By 1983, the scales had fallen from my eyes."[68] His record label boss Andy Macdonald observed that "his presence onstage took on more of the avenging angel."[69] Bragg was at the forefront of music's influence on the 1984 miners' strike, and played many benefit gigs in towns close to coalfields such as Newport and Sunderland.[70] He also released an EP during this year titled "Between the Wars", which connected struggles of class solidarity to the present issue. This single was his most successful up until this point, reaching number 15 on the charts.[71] The following year, after playing a short Labour Party-sponsored Jobs For Youth tour, he joined other like-minded activists in the public eye to form the musicians' alliance Red Wedge, which promoted Labour's cause – and in turn lobbied the party on youth issues – in the run-up to the 1987 general election,[72] with a national tour in 1986 alongside The Style Council, Jerry Dammers and The Communards.
Bragg travelled twice to the Soviet Union in 1986, the year Mikhail Gorbachev started to promote the policies of perestroika and glasnost. He played a gig in Leningrad, and the Festival of Song in the Struggle for Peace in Kyiv.[73]
On 12 June 1987, the night after Labour lost that year's general election, Bragg appeared on a notable edition of the Channel 4 discussion programme After Dark, alongside David Selbourne, Teresa Gorman and Hilary Hook among others. The Independent wrote "A show called Is Britain Working? brought together victorious Tory MP Teresa Gorman; ...Helen from the Stonehenge Convoy; old colonialist Colonel Hilary Hook... and Adrian, one of the jobless. It was a perfect example of the chemistry you can get. There were unlikely alliances (Bragg and Hook)".[74] Later Gorman "stormed off the set, claiming she had been misled about the nature of the programme"[75] "She told...Bragg: 'You and your kind are finished. We are the future now.'"[76] Bragg said "I sing in smokey rooms every night and I can keep talking for far longer than you can Teresa".[77] Bragg explained later: "She was so smug. And because she was Essex I took it personally. Then she accused me of being a fine example of Thatcherism."[78]
From 2010 to 2014[edit]
In the 2010 general election, Bragg supported the Liberal Democrats because "they've got the best manifesto".[88]
Bragg was also very active in his hometown of Barking as part of Searchlight magazine's Hope not Hate campaign, where the BNP's leader Nick Griffin was standing for election. At one point during the campaign Bragg squared up to BNP London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook, calling him a "Fascist racist" and saying "when you're gone from this borough, we will rebuild this community". The BNP came third on election day.[89]
In January 2011, news sources reported that 20 to 30 residents of Bragg's Dorset village, Burton Bradstock, had received anonymous letters viciously attacking him and his politics, and urging residents to oppose him in the village. He claimed that a BNP supporter was behind the letters, which argued that Bragg is a hypocrite for advocating socialism while living a wealthy lifestyle, and referred to him as anti-British and pro-immigration.[90]
In July 2011 Bragg joined the growing protests over the News of the World phone hacking affair with the release of his "Never Buy the Sun" single, which references many of the scandal's key points including the Milly Dowler case, police bribes and associated political fallout. It also draws on the 22-year Liverpool boycott of The Sun for their coverage of the Hillsborough disaster.[91]
In October 2011, Bragg joined the Occupy Movement protests in the City of London.[92]
In 2013, despite his scathing criticism of Margaret Thatcher, he urged people not to celebrate the death of the former Conservative Prime Minister:
The death of Margaret Thatcher is nothing more than a salient reminder of how Britain got into the mess that we are in today. Of why ordinary working people are no longer able to earn enough from one job to support a family; of why there is a shortage of decent affordable housing... of why cynicism and greed became the hallmarks of our society. Raising a glass to the death of an infirm old lady changes none of this. The only real antidote to cynicism is activism. Don't celebrate – organise![93]
In 2014, Bragg joined the March in March anti-government protests[94] in Sydney, Australia.
In June 2014, Bragg joined other musicians (including Radiohead's Ed O'Brien) in backing a call for the EU to intervene in a dispute between YouTube and independent labels. According to a BBC News report, the video-streaming site was offering "non-negotiable contracts" to its planned, Spotify-like music-subscription service to labels such as XL Recordings, 4AD, Cooking Vinyl and Domino "accompanied by the threat that music videos they have posted to their YouTube channels will be blocked from site altogether if they do not agree to the terms."[95]
Bragg supports both Scottish and Welsh independence.[96] In 2014, after David Bowie spoke in favour of Scotland remaining part of the UK, Bragg said, "Bowie's intervention encourages people in England to discuss the issues of the independence referendum, and I think English people should be discussing it, so I welcome his intervention."[97] Bragg was a vocal supporter of Scottish independence during the campaign prior to the referendum on 18 September 2014. Bragg wrote an article for the Guardian publication on 16 September, in which he addressed the objections he had previously received from people who conflated Scottish nationalism with the far-right ethos of the BNP. He described the independence campaign as "civic nationalism" and his opinion piece concluded:
Support for Scottish self-determination might not fit neatly into any leftwing pigeonhole, but it does chime with an older progressive tradition that runs deep in English history – a dogged determination to hold the over-mighty to account. If, during the constitutional settlement that will follow the referendum, we in England can rediscover our Roundhead tradition, we might yet counter our historic weakness for ethnic nationalism with an outpouring of civic engagement that creates a fairer society for all.[98]
2015 to present[edit]
Bragg was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas at the 2015 general election.[99] In August 2015, Bragg endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. He said: "His [Corbyn's] success so far shows you how bland our politics have become, in the aim of winning those swing voters in middle England the Labour Party has lost touch with its roots. We live in a time of austerity and what you want from that is not more austerity, you want compassion."[100] On an edition of Question Time in October 2015, he said that Corbyn represents a political "urge for change" and that Ed Miliband had failed to win the 2015 general election because Miliband and the party followed "the old way of doing things".[101] In 2016, Bragg, along with numerous other celebrities, toured the UK to support Corbyn's bid to become Prime Minister.[102][103] He also voiced his support for Remain in the 2016 EU referendum.[104]
In August 2016, The Times reported that at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Bragg had said: "I worry about Jeremy that he's a kind of twentieth century Labour man", and that "we need to be reaching out to people". Described as a "previously loyal supporter", who has "lent his support to Mr Corbyn on numerous occasions since he became Labour leader", The Times quoted Bragg: "I don't have a simple answer. My hope is that the party does not split and that we resolve this stalemate". Corbyn at the time was campaigning in an enforced second leadership election in the summer of 2016.[105]
After The Times article appeared, the singer tweeted that he had "joined the long list of people stitched up by the Murdoch papers"[106] and accused the Times of "twisting my words to attack Corbyn", urging "don’t let Murdoch sow discord".[107] The Guardian reproduced a quote from a recording of the event absent from The Times article: "It's a challenge. Labour has fires to fight on different fronts. This would be happening even without Corbyn if any of the other candidates had won last year, these problems would still be there".[106] In August 2016, Bragg also endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.[108]
During the general election campaign in May 2017, Bragg added his signature to a letter published in The Guardian calling for Labour to withdraw its candidates in two constituencies; Brighton Pavilion and the Isle of Wight and potentially allowing the Green Party to defeat the Tories in both, where Labour were running second. The letter was also signed by Labour MP Clive Lewis, former policy chief Jon Cruddas, former shadow children's minister Tulip Siddiq and journalists Paul Mason and Owen Jones. The initiative was shut down by Jeremy Corbyn.[109]
In June 2019, Bragg publicly criticised fellow singer-songwriter Morrissey for his recent political comments and endorsement of a far-right political party, and accused him of dragging the legacy of Johnny Marr and the Smiths "through the dirt".[110]
In November 2019, Bragg endorsed the Labour Party in the 2019 general election.[111]
Stephen William Bragg (born 20 December 1957) is an English singer-songwriter and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that mostly span political or romantic themes. His music is heavily centred on bringing about change and involving the younger generation in activist causes.
Early life[edit]
Bragg was born in 1957 in Barking, Essex (which is now in Greater London)[2] to Dennis Frederick Austin Bragg, an assistant sales manager to a Barking cap maker and milliner, and his wife Marie Victoria D'Urso, who was of Italian descent.[3] Bragg's father died of lung cancer in 1976,[4] and his mother died in 2011.[5]
Bragg was educated at Northbury Junior School and Park Modern Secondary School (now part of Barking Abbey Secondary School[6]) in Barking. He failed his eleven-plus exam, effectively precluding him from going to university.[7] However he developed an interest in poetry at the age of twelve, when his English teacher chose him to read a poem he had written for a homework assignment on a local radio station.[8] He put his energies into learning and practising the guitar with his next-door neighbour, Philip Wigg (Wiggy); some of their influences were the Faces, Small Faces and the Rolling Stones. He was also exposed to folk and folk-rock music during his teenage years, citing Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan as early influences on his songwriting.[8]
During the rise of punk rock and new wave in the late 1970s, Elvis Costello also served as an inspiration for Bragg.[9] He was also particularly influenced by the Clash, whom he'd seen play live in London in May 1977 on their White Riot Tour, and again at a Rock Against Racism carnival in April 1978, which he admits was the first time he really stepped into the world of music as it is used for political activism.[10] The experience of the gig and preceding march helped shape Bragg's left-wing politics, having previously "turned a blind eye" to casual racism.[10]
Career[edit]
Early career[edit]
In 1977 Bragg formed the punk rock/pub rock band Riff Raff with Wiggy. The band decamped to rural Oundle in Northamptonshire in 1978 to record a series of singles (the first on independent Chiswick Records) which did not receive wide exposure. After a period of gigging in Northamptonshire and London, they returned to Barking and split in 1980.[11] Taking a series of odd jobs including working at Guy Norris' record shop in Barking high street, Bragg became disillusioned with his stalled music career and in May 1981 joined the British Army as a recruit destined for the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars of the Royal Armoured Corps. After completing three months' basic training, he bought himself out for £175 and returned home.[12]
Bragg peroxided his hair to mark a new phase in his life and began performing frequent concerts and busking around London, playing solo with an electric guitar under the name Spy vs Spy (after the strip in Mad magazine).[13]
His demo tape initially got no response from the record industry, but by pretending to be a television repair man, he got into the office of Charisma Records' A&R man Peter Jenner.[14] Jenner liked the tape, but the company was near bankruptcy and had no budget to sign new artists. Bragg got an offer to record more demos for music publisher Chappell & Co., so Jenner agreed to release them as a record. Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy (credited to Billy Bragg) was released in July 1983 by Charisma's new imprint, Utility. Hearing DJ John Peel mention on-air that he was hungry, Bragg rushed to the BBC with a mushroom biryani, so Peel played a song from Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy albeit at the wrong speed (since the 12" LP was, unconventionally, cut to play at 45rpm). Peel insisted he would have played the song even without the biryani and later played it at the correct speed.[14]
Within months Charisma had been taken over by Virgin Records and Jenner, who had been made redundant, became Bragg's manager. Stiff Records' press officer Andy Macdonald – who was setting up his own record label, Go! Discs – received a copy of Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy. He made Virgin an offer and the album was re-released on Go! Discs in November 1983, at the fixed low price of £2.99.[15] Around this time, Andy Kershaw, an early supporter at Radio Aire in Leeds, was employed by Jenner as Bragg's tour manager. (He later became a BBC DJ and TV presenter, and he and Bragg appeared in an episode of the BBC TV programme Great Journeys in 1989, in which they travelled the Silver Road from Potosí, Bolivia, to the Pacific coast at Arica, Chile.)[16]
Though never released as a Bragg single, album track and live favourite "A New England", with an additional verse, became a Top 10 hit in the UK for Kirsty MacColl in January 1985. Since MacColl's early death, Bragg always sings the extra verse live in her honour.[17]
In 1984, he released Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, a mixture of political songs (e.g. "It Says Here") and songs of unrequited love (e.g. "The Saturday Boy"). This was followed in 1985 by Between the Wars, an EP of political songs that included a cover version of Leon Rosselson's "The World Turned Upside Down". The EP made the Top 20 of the UK Singles Chart and earned Bragg an appearance on Top of the Pops, singing the title track. Bragg later collaborated with Rosselson on the song "Ballad of a Spycatcher".[18]
In the same year, he embarked on his first tour of North America, with Wiggy as tour manager, supporting Echo & the Bunnymen.[19] The tour began in Washington D.C. and ended in Los Angeles. On the same trip, in New York, Bragg unveiled his "Portastack",[20] a self-contained, mobile PA system weighing 35 lbs (designed for £500 by engineer Kenny Jones), the wearing of which became an archetypal image of the singer at that time. With it, he was able to busk outside the New Music Seminar, a record industry conference.[21]
Late 1980s and early 1990s[edit]
In 1986 Bragg released Talking with the Taxman About Poetry, which became his first Top 10 album. Its title is taken from a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky and a translated version of the poem was printed on the record's inner sleeve. Back to Basics is a 1987 collection of his first three releases: Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy, Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, and Between the Wars. He enjoyed his only Number 1 hit single in May 1988, a cover of the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home", a shared A-side with Wet Wet Wet's "With a Little Help from My Friends". Both were taken from a multi-artist re-recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band titled Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father coordinated by the NME in aid of the charity Childline. Wet Wet Wet's cover dominated radio airplay and its video was shown over three consecutive weeks on Top of the Pops; in week four, Bragg went on the programme to play his cover, with regular accompanist Cara Tivey on piano.[22]
Bragg released his fourth album, Workers Playtime, in September 1988. With this album, Bragg added a full backing band and accompaniment, including Tivey on piano, Danny Thompson on double bass and veteran Micky Waller on drums. Wiggy earned a co-production credit with Joe Boyd.[23]
In August 1989 Bragg took lead vocal on the ‘Levi Stubbs’ Tears’ sampling Norman Cook's UK top 40 hit "Won’t Talk About It", which was a double-A-side with "Blame It On the Bassline". The track was a bigger hit a year later with Lindy Layton replacing Bragg as lead vocal.[citation needed]
In May 1990 Bragg released the political mini-LP The Internationale on his and Jenner's own short-lived label Utility, which operated independently of Go! Discs, to which Bragg was still contracted. The songs were, in part, a return to his solo guitar style, but some featured more complicated arrangements and included a brass band. The album paid tribute to one of Bragg's influences with the song, "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night", which is an adapted version of Earl Robinson's song, "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", itself an adaptation of a poem by Alfred Hayes.[24] Though the album only reached Number 34 in the UK Charts, Bragg described it as "a reassertion of my rights as an individual ... and a childish two fingers [to Go! Discs boss Andy Macdonald, who'd recently signed a distribution deal with entertainment industry giant PolyGram]."[25]
His sixth studio album Don't Try This at Home was recorded in the shadow of the build-up to the Gulf War and subsequent ground war, inspiring the track "Rumours of War". Although there is social comment ("The Few", "North Sea Bubble"), it was intended as a more commercial pop album, released in September 1991. (Bragg called it "a very long-range attempt to convert the ball between the posts."[26]). The first single was the upbeat "Sexuality", which, despite an accessible video and a dance remix on the B-side, only reached Number 27 on the UK Singles Chart. Following overtures by rival label Chrysalis, Bragg and Jenner had been persuaded by Go! Discs' Andy and Juliet Macdonald to sign a four-album deal for a million pound advance; in return he would promote the album with singles and videos.[27] A more commercial sound and aggressive marketing had no appreciable effect on album sales, and after a grueling, 13-month world tour with a full band (the Red Stars, led by Wiggy), and a period of forced convalescence after appendicitis, Bragg left Go! Discs in summer 1992, paying back the remainder of his advance in return for all rights to his back catalogue.[28]
Late 1990s and 2000s[edit]
Bragg released the album William Bloke in 1996 after taking time off to help new partner Juliet Wills raise their son Jack. (There is a reference to him in the track "Brickbat": "Now you'll find me with the baby, in the bathroom.")[29] After the ambitious instrumentation of Don't Try This at Home, it was a simpler record, musically, more personal and even spiritual, lyrically (its title a pun on the name of 18th-century English poet William Blake, who is referenced in the song "Upfield").[30]
Around that time, Nora Guthrie (daughter of American folk artist Woody Guthrie) asked Bragg to set some of her father's unrecorded lyrics to music. The result was a collaboration with the band Wilco and Natalie Merchant (with whom Bragg had worked previously). They released the album Mermaid Avenue in 1998,[31] and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in 2000.[32] The first album was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category. A third batch, Mermaid Avenue Vol III, and The Complete Sessions followed in 2012 to mark Woody Guthrie's centennial.[33] A rift with Wilco over mixing and sequencing the first album led to Bragg recruiting his own band, The Blokes, to promote the album live. The Blokes included keyboardist Ian McLagan, who had been a member of Bragg's boyhood heroes The Faces. The documentary film Man in the Sand depicts the roles of Nora Guthrie, Bragg, and Wilco in the creation of the Mermaid Avenue albums.[34]
A developing interest in English national identity, driven by the rise of the BNP and his own move from London to rural Dorset in 1999, informed his 2002 album England, Half-English (whose single, "Take Down The Union Jack" put him back on Top of the Pops in the Queen's Golden Jubilee year[35]) and his 2006 book The Progressive Patriot. The book expressed his view that English socialists can reclaim patriotism from the right wing. He draws on Victorian poet Rudyard Kipling for an inclusive sense of Englishness.[36] In 2007 Bragg moved closer to his English folk music roots by joining the WOMAD-inspired collective The Imagined Village, who recorded an album of updated versions of traditional English songs and dances and toured through that autumn.[37]
In December Bragg previewed tracks from his forthcoming album Mr. Love & Justice at a one-off evening of music and conversation to mark his 50th birthday at London's South Bank.[38] The album was released in March 2008, the second Bragg album to be named after a book by Colin MacInnes after England, Half-English.[39][40] The same year, during the NME Awards ceremony, Bragg sang a duet with British solo act Kate Nash. They mixed up two of their greatest hits, Nash playing "Foundations", and Bragg redoing "A New England".[41] Also in 2008, Bragg played a small role in Stuart Bamforth's film A13: Road Movie.[42]
In 2009, Bragg was invited by London's South Bank to write new lyrics for "Ode to Joy", the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (original libretto by Friedrich Schiller), since adopted as an international anthem of unity. The London Philharmonic Orchestra performed it at the Royal Festival Hall in front of the Queen and Bragg met her afterwards to earn "brownie points" with his mother, also in attendance.[43]
2010s[edit]
He was involved in the play Pressure Drop at the Wellcome Collection in London in April and May 2010. The production, written by Mick Gorden, and billed as "part play, part gig, part installation", featured new songs by Bragg. He performed during the play with his band, and acted as compere.[44]
Bragg was invited by Michael Eavis to curate the Leftfield stage at Glastonbury Festival in 2010,[45] which he has continued to do in subsequent years.[46] He also took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books, where he wrote a piece based upon a book of the King James Bible.[47] Bragg performed a set of the Guthrie songs that he had set to music for Mermaid Avenue during the Hay Literary Festival in June 2012,[48] he also performed the same set on the Friday night of the 2012 Cambridge Folk Festival.[49]
On 18 March 2013, five years after Mr. Love & Justice, Bragg released the studio album Tooth & Nail. Recorded in five days at the home studio of musician/producer Joe Henry in South Pasadena it featured 11 original songs, including one written for the Bush Theatre and a Woody Guthrie cover. Stylistically, it continued to explore genres of Americana and Alternative country, a natural progression since Mermaid Avenue.[50][51] The album was a commercial success, becoming his best charting record since 1991's Don't Try This at Home.[52]
Bragg with Joe Henry at the Union Chapel, Islington.
In February 2014, Bragg started a series of "radio shows" on Spotify, in which he talked listeners through self-curated playlists of "his favourite tracks and artists, and uncovering some little-known musical gems."[53] On 14 April 2014, Bragg put out Live at the Union Chapel, a souvenir album and DVD of a show he played on 5 June 2013 at the Union Chapel in London, featuring songs from Tooth & Nail as well as favourites from his back catalogue.[54]
In February 2016, Bragg was given the Trailblazer Award at the inaugural Americana Music Association UK Awards in London.[55] Following that, in September he was given the Spirit of Americana Free Speech Award at the Americana Music Association US Awards in Nashville.[56]
In August 2016, Bragg released his eleventh album, a collaboration with Joe Henry, Shine a Light: Field Recordings from the Great American Railroad, recorded at various points on a journey between Chicago and Los Angeles by train in March. It reached number 28 in the UK Album Charts[57] and number one in the UK Americana album chart.[58] The pair started a dual Shine a Light tour at the Americana Music Festival in Nashville in September 2016, and taking them across the States and Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland. In April 2017, they played in Australia.
Faber published Bragg's second nonfiction book (after 2006's The Progressive Patriot), Roots, Radicals and Rockers in June 2016, a history of the British skiffle movement, tracing the form from its 1950s boom back to ragtime, blues, jazz and American folk music. On BBC Music Day 2017, he helped unveil a blue plaque marking the studio (Trident) where the late David Bowie recorded two classic albums and the single Space Oddity, in Soho; he joined album sleeve designer George Underwood and BBC Radio London’s Robert Elms.[59] In November, he released all six tracks from the mini-album Bridges Not Walls as downloads through the Billy Bragg website,[60] followed by the single Full English Brexit through Cooking Vinyl.
In April 2018, Bragg was invited to deliver a Bank of England Flagship Seminar; his presentation was titled Accountability: the Antidote to Authoritarianism. The speech was made available on the Bank of England's website.[61] At the Ivor Novello Awards (the Ivors) in May, he accepted the PRS Outstanding Contribution to British Music award.[62] Also in May, his official biography Still Suitable for Miners was published in a new, 20th anniversary updated edition.[63]
He ended 2018 touring New Zealand and Australia. In Auckland, he road-tested a new live format for 2019 (first tried out in Toronto), One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. The idea was to play three consecutive shows over three nights at each venue: the first night a current, mixed Bragg set; the second from his first three albums; the third from his second three albums. "It’s a way of keeping things interesting," he said.[64] The tour would cover the United States and the UK and Ireland throughout 2019.
In May, Faber and Faber published The Three Dimensions of Freedom, a short polemic by Bragg intended, according to the publisher's blurb, to "protect ourselves from encroaching tyranny." The author urges readers to "look beyond [the] one-dimensional notion of what it means to be free" and "by reconnecting liberty to equality and accountability, restore ... the three dimensions of freedom."[65]
Politics and activism[edit]
For all of Bragg's 30-year-plus recording career he has been involved with grassroots, broadly leftist, political movements, and this is often reflected in his lyrics. He has also recorded and performed cover versions of famous socialist anthems such as "The Internationale" and "The Red Flag". Bragg said in an interview: "I don't mind being labelled a political songwriter. The thing that troubles me is being dismissed as a political songwriter."[66] Bragg has cited the Clash as a strong influence on his politically themed material and activism:
It wasn't so much their lyrics as what they stood for and the actions they took. That became really important to me. Phil Collins might write a song about the homeless, but if he doesn't have the action to go with it he's just exploiting that for a subject. I got that from the Clash, and I try to remain true to that tradition as best I can.[67]
From 1983 to 1997[edit]
Bragg's politics were focused by the Conservative Party's 144-seat majority landslide at the 1983 general election. He told his biographer, "By 1983, the scales had fallen from my eyes."[68] His record label boss Andy Macdonald observed that "his presence onstage took on more of the avenging angel."[69] Bragg was at the forefront of music's influence on the 1984 miners' strike, and played many benefit gigs in towns close to coalfields such as Newport and Sunderland.[70] He also released an EP during this year titled "Between the Wars", which connected struggles of class solidarity to the present issue. This single was his most successful up until this point, reaching number 15 on the charts.[71] The following year, after playing a short Labour Party-sponsored Jobs For Youth tour, he joined other like-minded activists in the public eye to form the musicians' alliance Red Wedge, which promoted Labour's cause – and in turn lobbied the party on youth issues – in the run-up to the 1987 general election,[72] with a national tour in 1986 alongside The Style Council, Jerry Dammers and The Communards.
Bragg travelled twice to the Soviet Union in 1986, the year Mikhail Gorbachev started to promote the policies of perestroika and glasnost. He played a gig in Leningrad, and the Festival of Song in the Struggle for Peace in Kyiv.[73]
On 12 June 1987, the night after Labour lost that year's general election, Bragg appeared on a notable edition of the Channel 4 discussion programme After Dark, alongside David Selbourne, Teresa Gorman and Hilary Hook among others. The Independent wrote "A show called Is Britain Working? brought together victorious Tory MP Teresa Gorman; ...Helen from the Stonehenge Convoy; old colonialist Colonel Hilary Hook... and Adrian, one of the jobless. It was a perfect example of the chemistry you can get. There were unlikely alliances (Bragg and Hook)".[74] Later Gorman "stormed off the set, claiming she had been misled about the nature of the programme"[75] "She told...Bragg: 'You and your kind are finished. We are the future now.'"[76] Bragg said "I sing in smokey rooms every night and I can keep talking for far longer than you can Teresa".[77] Bragg explained later: "She was so smug. And because she was Essex I took it personally. Then she accused me of being a fine example of Thatcherism."[78]
From 2010 to 2014[edit]
In the 2010 general election, Bragg supported the Liberal Democrats because "they've got the best manifesto".[88]
Bragg was also very active in his hometown of Barking as part of Searchlight magazine's Hope not Hate campaign, where the BNP's leader Nick Griffin was standing for election. At one point during the campaign Bragg squared up to BNP London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook, calling him a "Fascist racist" and saying "when you're gone from this borough, we will rebuild this community". The BNP came third on election day.[89]
In January 2011, news sources reported that 20 to 30 residents of Bragg's Dorset village, Burton Bradstock, had received anonymous letters viciously attacking him and his politics, and urging residents to oppose him in the village. He claimed that a BNP supporter was behind the letters, which argued that Bragg is a hypocrite for advocating socialism while living a wealthy lifestyle, and referred to him as anti-British and pro-immigration.[90]
In July 2011 Bragg joined the growing protests over the News of the World phone hacking affair with the release of his "Never Buy the Sun" single, which references many of the scandal's key points including the Milly Dowler case, police bribes and associated political fallout. It also draws on the 22-year Liverpool boycott of The Sun for their coverage of the Hillsborough disaster.[91]
In October 2011, Bragg joined the Occupy Movement protests in the City of London.[92]
In 2013, despite his scathing criticism of Margaret Thatcher, he urged people not to celebrate the death of the former Conservative Prime Minister:
The death of Margaret Thatcher is nothing more than a salient reminder of how Britain got into the mess that we are in today. Of why ordinary working people are no longer able to earn enough from one job to support a family; of why there is a shortage of decent affordable housing... of why cynicism and greed became the hallmarks of our society. Raising a glass to the death of an infirm old lady changes none of this. The only real antidote to cynicism is activism. Don't celebrate – organise![93]
In 2014, Bragg joined the March in March anti-government protests[94] in Sydney, Australia.
In June 2014, Bragg joined other musicians (including Radiohead's Ed O'Brien) in backing a call for the EU to intervene in a dispute between YouTube and independent labels. According to a BBC News report, the video-streaming site was offering "non-negotiable contracts" to its planned, Spotify-like music-subscription service to labels such as XL Recordings, 4AD, Cooking Vinyl and Domino "accompanied by the threat that music videos they have posted to their YouTube channels will be blocked from site altogether if they do not agree to the terms."[95]
Bragg supports both Scottish and Welsh independence.[96] In 2014, after David Bowie spoke in favour of Scotland remaining part of the UK, Bragg said, "Bowie's intervention encourages people in England to discuss the issues of the independence referendum, and I think English people should be discussing it, so I welcome his intervention."[97] Bragg was a vocal supporter of Scottish independence during the campaign prior to the referendum on 18 September 2014. Bragg wrote an article for the Guardian publication on 16 September, in which he addressed the objections he had previously received from people who conflated Scottish nationalism with the far-right ethos of the BNP. He described the independence campaign as "civic nationalism" and his opinion piece concluded:
Support for Scottish self-determination might not fit neatly into any leftwing pigeonhole, but it does chime with an older progressive tradition that runs deep in English history – a dogged determination to hold the over-mighty to account. If, during the constitutional settlement that will follow the referendum, we in England can rediscover our Roundhead tradition, we might yet counter our historic weakness for ethnic nationalism with an outpouring of civic engagement that creates a fairer society for all.[98]
2015 to present[edit]
Bragg was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas at the 2015 general election.[99] In August 2015, Bragg endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. He said: "His [Corbyn's] success so far shows you how bland our politics have become, in the aim of winning those swing voters in middle England the Labour Party has lost touch with its roots. We live in a time of austerity and what you want from that is not more austerity, you want compassion."[100] On an edition of Question Time in October 2015, he said that Corbyn represents a political "urge for change" and that Ed Miliband had failed to win the 2015 general election because Miliband and the party followed "the old way of doing things".[101] In 2016, Bragg, along with numerous other celebrities, toured the UK to support Corbyn's bid to become Prime Minister.[102][103] He also voiced his support for Remain in the 2016 EU referendum.[104]
In August 2016, The Times reported that at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Bragg had said: "I worry about Jeremy that he's a kind of twentieth century Labour man", and that "we need to be reaching out to people". Described as a "previously loyal supporter", who has "lent his support to Mr Corbyn on numerous occasions since he became Labour leader", The Times quoted Bragg: "I don't have a simple answer. My hope is that the party does not split and that we resolve this stalemate". Corbyn at the time was campaigning in an enforced second leadership election in the summer of 2016.[105]
After The Times article appeared, the singer tweeted that he had "joined the long list of people stitched up by the Murdoch papers"[106] and accused the Times of "twisting my words to attack Corbyn", urging "don’t let Murdoch sow discord".[107] The Guardian reproduced a quote from a recording of the event absent from The Times article: "It's a challenge. Labour has fires to fight on different fronts. This would be happening even without Corbyn if any of the other candidates had won last year, these problems would still be there".[106] In August 2016, Bragg also endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.[108]
During the general election campaign in May 2017, Bragg added his signature to a letter published in The Guardian calling for Labour to withdraw its candidates in two constituencies; Brighton Pavilion and the Isle of Wight and potentially allowing the Green Party to defeat the Tories in both, where Labour were running second. The letter was also signed by Labour MP Clive Lewis, former policy chief Jon Cruddas, former shadow children's minister Tulip Siddiq and journalists Paul Mason and Owen Jones. The initiative was shut down by Jeremy Corbyn.[109]
In June 2019, Bragg publicly criticised fellow singer-songwriter Morrissey for his recent political comments and endorsement of a far-right political party, and accused him of dragging the legacy of Johnny Marr and the Smiths "through the dirt".[110]
In November 2019, Bragg endorsed the Labour Party in the 2019 general election.[111]
A couple hundred activists and supporters converged in front of the White House Sunday, January 11, 2015, the 13th anniversary of the opening of the prison camp at Guantanamo, in a protest sponsored by; Amnesty International USA, the Blue Lantern Project, CCR, CloseGitmo.net, CodePink, Council on American-Islamic relations, NRCAT National Religious Coalition Against Torture, Witness Against Torture, World Can’t Wait and others.
Many activists were dressed in the orange jumpsuits and black hoods that the men at Guantanamo wear at Guantanamo and while being tortured. Some held signs saying: FORCED FEEDING, INDEFINITE DETENTION, while others carried a bouquet of carnations.
One group read the first letter from Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo in 2003. Shaker remains in prison even though he’s been cleared for release in 2007.
The PEACE POETS from the Bronx recited one of their poems with those dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods stood behind and in front; “We Want Justice!” “We are Powerful” “We are Together” then recited a poem called, “There is a Man under That Hood.”
Jeremy Varon from Witness Against Torture said, “The dream of closing Guantanamo may indeed become a reality. That hope is not based on some executive order or Presidential promise, or speech or vague confession that America drifted from it’s values.” “There’s nothing in the legal twisted machinery of Guantanamo that is responsible for these releases. No judge can compel the military to let men go, Congress has passed to no law saying, Set them Free, rather, every release has been in essence a political act meaning that at last the President is doing what we have long implored. Asserting his political will and exercising true leadership do what is right no matter how long over due.”
Debra Sweet emphasized that the opening of Guantanamo was not a mistake on the part of the Bush regime, but rather meant to send a message to the rest of the world - that while already illegitimately occupying Afghanistan, preparing to invade Iraq, and staging torture centers around the world, they could take anyone they wanted to, lock them up, and never release them.
After all the speakers were done the activists left the White House and marched over to the the Justice Dept. where 3 of the activists in orange jumpsuits and black hoods handed out the carnations to the crowd for them to offer it to the Dept. of Justice. Then the crowd made its way over to DC court central cell block where prisoners were below the ground of where the next set of speakers were standing. One of the Peace Poets led the crowd in a call & response, “We have the courage to see through the lies, ‘cause our hearts listen when the people cry.”
Ray McGovern, Andy Worthington (the British investigative journalist) and Debra Sweet of World Can’t Wait were all participants.
After a brief clash, an opposition activist is dragged from the mass of protesters into a detention bus. A few minutes before that, he was attempting to guide the protesters from riot police cordon and move towards the president's palace, but they were not successul against the numerous well-trained troops. President Lukashenko has upgraded and expanded the Soviet ancestry of repressive apparatus to maintain his position unchallenged in the country.
Activists from the Climate Reparations Bloc and Defund Climate Chaos painting large scale artworks (n Jubilee Gardens in front of the Shell building), as they demand: 1) stop insuring and financing fossil fuel projects 2) stop the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and stop Rosebank oilfield, 3) climate reparations for communities worldwide. i
Honoring Augusta Baseball Coach Jerry Hunter for caring about our inner city youth: W. K. Kellogg Foundation New Tools New Visions 2 (NTNV2) sponsored a youth baseball camp at Paine College with Jerry Hunter as coach
New Tools New Visions 2 (NTNV2) in Augusta, Georgia: Finding healthy outlets and activities for inner city youth and others facing social inequalities by addressing issues of environmental health, violence, health equity, and social justice.
NTNV2 is a Paine College/Community Partnership funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation
NTNV was the primary sponsor of a baseball camp for inner city youth in the summer of 2010 organized by amazing and outstanding Augusta Coach Jerry Hunter.
The Jerry Hunter Baseball camp for middle school and elementary school kids included "inner city youth from Augusta area housing projects," said Rev. Terence A. Dicks, an Augusta activist and the NTNV2 Community Liaison and Steering Committee chair and New Tools for Healthy People 2020.
"We need more projects like the Coach Jerry Hunter's baseball camp for our children - to give them something to do" during the long, hot summers in Augusta, said Rev. Dicks, who is hoping to help start more projects for Augusta area youth because they are targets for greedy drug dealers and have too much time on their hands if not involved in extracurricular activities.
Coach Hunter "is a very enterprising young educator and a Paine College Alumni," Dicks said.
Coach Hunter was the boy's baseball coach (2007-2010) at Lucy C. Laney High School in Augusta and then became the celebrated head coach of the high school boy's basketball team - leading the team to its first class AA state championship in 2012.
"It's a Mother's Day gift to Miss Laney, from us," said the modest Wildcats coach Jerry Hunter in an interview with an Augusta newspaper following the March 11, 2012 state championship victory.
Coach Hunter was honoring the school's famous and beloved namesake:
Post Civil War African American Educator, Reformer, and Social Activist Lucy Craft Laney - who established a school for African American children in Augusta and was a huge inspiration to many of her students including (Mary McLeod Bethune) a future advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR).
Coach Hunter stepped down as the school's basketball coach in 2013 to spend more time focusing on his family.
A 1997 Paine College graduate who lettered in basketball, Coach Hunter was a member of the 1994 basketball team that won the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference regular season title and advanced to the NCAA Division II Tournament.
In 2011, Coach Hunter's son LaTron (3rd base) became the first Wildcats baseball player to ever get a full athletic scholarship signing with Southern Union State Community College in Alabama.
Hoping his son's scholarship will encourage more youth to play baseball, Coach Hunter said LaTron showed Augusta athletes it's possible to earn a scholarship in sports other than basketball and football.
Hunter's three seasons as head basketball coach for Laney (77-15 record/84 percent success) included three Final Four appearances and the 2012 state championship.
Coach Jerry Hunter: Paine College Class of '97 is among those honored in June 2012 by Augusta Sports Council
www.paineathletics.com/news/2012/6/4/GEN_0604122721.aspx
paineathletics.com/mobile/index.aspx?story=261
Coach Jerry Hunter
laney.rcboe.org/user_profile_view.aspx?id=f02f561b-efd9-4...
www.maxpreps.com/high-schools/laney-wildcats-%28augusta,g...
augustaeagles.blogspot.com/2012/03/post-game-show-guests-...
Laney Coach Jerry Hunter has stepped down as basketball coach March 18, 2013
www.wrdw.com/sports/headlines/Laneys-Hunter-steps-down-as...
www.wrdw.com/sports/headlines/Long_road_led_to_Laneys_fir...
chronicle.augusta.com/sports/high-school/2013-03-18/laney...
Laney routs Manchester for its first state title
Laney 67, Manchester 53
Sunday, March 11, 2012
www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/State_Champion_Laney_Wildcats...
chronicle.augusta.com/sports/high-school/2012-03-11/laney...
Team and Coach Jerry Hunter honored by city of Augusta after 2012 state championship victory
chronicle.augusta.com/sports/2012-03-20/state-champion-la...
2012 stories in Augusta newspaper about student helped by coach Hunter
Problem child : Laney High star athlete overcomes odds to graduate - and gives praise to coach Jerry Hunter:
chronicle.augusta.com/news/education/2012-05-19/laney-hig...
Fostering success: Laney star made home on basketball court
chronicle.augusta.com/news/education/2012-04-29/laney-sta...
Jerry Hunter's students/players go on to acclaim:
www.tigernet.com/story/basketball/Rod-Hall-signs-letter-i...
www.orangeandwhite.com/news/2013/mar/20/brad-brownells-bu...
Educator, Reformer, Social Activist Lucy Craft Laney (April 13, 1854-October 24, 1933), an early African American educator who established a school for African American children in Augusta, Georgia:
www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_laney.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Craft_Laney
New Tools New Visions 2 (NTNV2) in Augusta, Georgia:
NTNV2 is a Paine College/Community Partnership
Funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation
NTNV2 is a community collaborative organization built on Community Based Participatory Research principles
NTNV includes the Project Harambee Kick-Off at Paine College in Augusta, GA on Jan. 26, 2013 that Promotes Help Seeking - and is a Substance Abuse Prevention and Suicide Prevention Initiative titled "Friends Don't Let Friends Fall Apart."
NTNV organizes Augusta churches in public, celebratory activities.
Pastors, Ministers and other Religious leaders can publicly commit their churches to the Annual Black Church Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS.
Encourage HIV/AIDS education, promoting HIV testing and organizing against stigma.
The group's intention to serve as a vehicle for increasing the level of public awareness in the Augusta Black church community.
NTNV 2 assessment by Dr. Kimberly M. Coleman, MPH - consultant and paid contractor for the Kellogg Foundation
11-8-10 in Denver, CO
138th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association
"Lessons learned as a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) technical assistance coordinator - partnered with four rural, African American Communities" in Albany, Augusta, Fort Valley, Savannah.
www.slideshare.net/kmcoleman1/new-tools-new-visions-2
kcolem16@nccu.edu
drkmcoleman@gmail.com
NTNV2 Purposes:
Connect four rural GA communities surrounding Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) with faculty resources to develop a community-based participatory research (CBPR) infrastructure to address issues of environmental health, violence, health equity, and social justice.
NTNV2 Project Goals:
Help community residents to resolve identified problems, and create change in public policy, and quality of life using several public health-based strategies to engage community residents and partners with researchers and/or HBCUs to develop solutions for each targeted community's health issue among local residents
Community Grantees:
Four Southern Georgia community organizations were selected after submitting proposals to the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Harambee House, Inc. and Citizens for Environmental Justice
United Methodist News Service story March 2008 by Linda Green
www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lwL4KnN1LtH&a...
Kellogg Foundation
www.facebook.com/pages/WK-Kellogg-Foundation/111812468884033
www.twitter.com/WK_Kellogg_Fdn
Participants define strategies to eliminate obstacles from and creating good policies for African Americans to develop healthy families.
Using the Healthy People 2020 objectives include dynamic interaction between building healthier family structures and eradicating obstacles to healthier Black families.
While myriad areas of health disparities will be addressed, special attention will be paid to four focus areas:
Violence as a public health issue
HIV/AIDS
Mental Health Disparities
Under-utilization of Preventative Care
Presenters take a proactive stance in addressing critical matters corresponding to the creation of stronger Black Families and improved health conditions.
Presenters include outside experts and the Augusta community, Paine College faculty/students plus reps of the Medical College of Georgia health system.
NTNV2 Augusta is a partner of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office of Minority Health's National Partnership for Action (NPA) to End Health Disparities, and a member of the national Healthy People 2020 Consortium.
More info:
Dr. Adeleri Onisegun
NTNV2 Project Director
Paine College Dept. of Psychology
706-821-8281
aonisegun@paine.edu
Rev. Terence A. Dicks
NTNV2 Community Liaison
Chair, Steering Committee
706-799-5598
No-gods-no-masters.com - Non-profit activist t-shirts and ethical clothing. Large catalog of political designs & punk bands merch. FREE WORLDWIDE SHIPPING ON ORDERS OF $50+ www.no-gods-no-masters.com
Title: [Wendell Phillips, Abolitionist and American Indian Activist]
Creator: Case & Getchell, Photographic Artists
Date: ca. 1863-1864
Part of: Collection of Civil War and military cartes de visite and portraits
Physical Description: 1 photographic print on carte de visite mount: albumen; 10 x 6 cm.
File: ag2007_0007_109c_phillips.jpg
Rights: Please cite DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University when using this file. A high-resolution version of this file may be obtained for a fee. For details see the sites.smu.edu/cul/degolyer/research/permissions/ web page. For other information, contact degolyer@smu.edu.
For more information and to view the image in high resolution, see: digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/civ/id/425
View the Civil War: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints Collection
Matt Whitting is a local enviromental campaigner. He is a fierce advocate for native grasslands and the flaura and forna that thrive within in them.
In this article (link below), it is Matt who inhabits the costume of the Canberra Earless Dragon as he campained against a road build at the Canberra International Ariport.
region.com.au/plans-to-move-lizard-habitat-to-make-way-fo...
on ya Matt! :)
Canberra
Australia