CATCH-UP PIECE ON VARIOUS ISSUES

This is a kind of catch-up piece. My personal world is not static and there are some positive things afoot in and around myself and our family. I won't be posting as much as I previously have but certainly will from time to time.   I should add that it's clear that -- again, contrary to the gloomy predictions of even my favorite medics -- the virulent version of systemic lupus [SLE] that attacked most of me nine years ago is now a dim, bad memory. Family members, including grandson/son Dr Thomas Gray Salter [MD], were not surprised. People -- minorities and women -- continue to suffer and often die of Lupus and I continue to personally see that a prime Cause.  I should add that, although the attack on me was pretty pervasive and deeply so, it did not at any point "get into my brain" and did not impair my memory which, so far in my life, has always been quite good.  Nor did I succumb at any juncture to the frequent and sometimes suicidal depression characteristic of a majority of Lupus victims.

There've been a few comments on RBB about Haymarket revisionism.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, the victims of that massive tragedy had, for years, the consistent and courageous advocacy of William Mackintire Salter, my adoptive grandfather who I never knew, but whose books with many of his notes are among the things that eventually wound up with me.  I was looking at those as a kid and then at a number of a points in my adult life.  I certainly see no reason to question the traditional view of most thoughtful people over decades -- the Haymarket victims were just that: victims of a colossal frame-up.

Same with Joe Hill.  One of the best writers on the American West, fiction and non-fiction, was the late Wallace Stegner, based for much of his life at Stanford.  He's a favorite of mine -- but, in 1948, published an interesting novel, The Preacher and the Slave.  Very friendly to the IWW and critical of its mercenary adversaries, and extremely sympathetic to Hill as a person, Stegner nevertheless concluded that Joe Hill was guilty of the murders for which he was executed in 1915 in Utah.  [Hill's most stalwart advocate in Utah was Ms Virginia Snow Stephens whose father was, at that point, (international) president of the LDS church.  The governor of Utah was a Republican and Presbyterian.)  Stegner's novel is beautifully written but he offers no real evidence of Hill's presumed guilt.  Its publication touched off a firestorm, Wobblies picketed the New Republic which had supported  the "guilt thesis", and former Wobbly Ralph Chaplin, exemplifying the practice of  IWWs to support each other [even despite deep disagreements], who had left the IWW in 1936 for more conventional union approaches, joined the fray, speaking out widely and engaging in a long fascinating correspondence with Stegner.  I have copies of that but youngest son, Peter, borrowed them a few years ago.  Again, in sum, there was nothing to alter the traditional view that  Joe Hill was a victim of an obviously vicious frame-up.  Wallace Steger's book is currently available in paperback, now with the primary title, Joe Hill.

Finally, on the "gun control" issue -- which has flared in the wake of  Aurora.  Rhetoric from some media and proponents of "gun control" are creating a scene, transitory in my opinion, superficially similar to the Clinton years.  An odd but well meaning post on Portside last evening exemplified this with a statement, "For starters, we can kick the NRA out of the way and enact strict gun control laws."  Well, that sounds bold and brave -- but it's downright silly.  The NRA now numbers well over four million members and is generally supported on gun rights by a vast number of this country's approximately 80 million gun owners and their families, many of whom are working-class people.  There are now two major USSC decisions which clearly support the 2nd Amendment as a full individual right in the array of rights encompassed by the Bill of Rights.  This isn't the Clinton era, not by a long shot [no pun intended.]  The writer of the Portside piece did suggest a few socio economic reforms in his primary attack on gun owners and guns.

I've been speaking and writing of those socio-economic causal matters and necessary reforms  since my first piece challenging gun control advocates in 1974 -- and discussing the primary causes of crime as racism  and cultural ethnocentrism, economic deprivation, urban congestion and, in that context, interpersonal and value alienation.  [A constructive answer to the growing problem of youth gang violence in today's inner cities would be reinstatement of the old Neighborhood Youth Corps -- with a strong public works employment dimension.]

And I again add this:
THOUGHTS FOLLOWING THE AURORA TRAGEDY  (WRITTEN JULY 20 2012) 



The morning has been filled with prayer talk -- fine. And there's also been the usual talk about guns -- and, too, the possibility of Warner Bros. withdrawing the Batman film.  I find those two responses superficial and meaningless.  On the gun thing, if the killer hadn't had those, he did have explosives at his home which he'd likely have used.

What we never hear is sensible  and depthy conjecture about the domestic psychiatric effects of this country's involvement in many years of wars -- proliferating and endless wars -- which have gone on ever expansively since 9/11.  The cost in lives has obviously been astronomical and the horrors of technology -- e.g., 120 people, or more, killed by a single explosion -- have been televised consistently to the four directions.  If developing psychotics, sometimes inflamed by personal economic vicissitudes,  see human life as "cheap," it shouldn't be surprising to see these mass tragedies sprouting and gushing blood across the U.S. (HUNTER BEAR)

For much more on guns and gun rights issues, see:  http://hunterbear.org/BLOODSTAINED%20TRAIL.htm

In Solidarity,

Hunter Bear [much on forest/brush fire alert here in Idaho]

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)
 
See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded and with more photos in June, 2012.)
 
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of
1962-63.
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
 
And see My Community Organizing Mini-Course -- with much 
down to earth how-to material and updated into 2012:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm