easter rising
48
Boston Latin – alma matter of cotton mather, sam adams, and others, and ben franklin was a dropout
73
referencing punk music scene
“I was amazed, though, that white people from place like Old Colony would be so preoccupied in their songs and interveiews with fight racism. And even though they made a whole new whit enoise on stae, most of them listendd to Jamaican music. After our busing riots five years earlier, when Southie’s borders were fortified against both the blacks and the liberals of the outside world, it was shocking to read in the music papers that these English kids wer talking about “class” and about what they had in common with the Jamaican immigrants in their housing estates. They said the “class system” instigated the racism in Britain. The English kids bragged about being from neighborhoods like mine, while I was only ashamed of Old Colony.
Southie pride had always seemed to be not only about race but also about being hostile to any outsiders, especially if they weren’t Irish. Everyone in the projects thought it was better to be from the tough end of town, but no one admitted to being poor. Reading of these kids talking about class made me realize for the first time that I had grown up poor.”
Recommends the punk band Bad Brains
The irish call sneakers trainers
St paddy’s day isn’t celebrated in Ireland as such a big deal as by the irish in the US; and corned beef is food for dogs
189
The Irish wonder why the Irish Americans have a reputation for hating blacks
193
the conflict in Ireland isn’t about religion at all
“…the Catholics were the colonized Irish who got the shit jobs and shit housing and that the Protestant ascendancy were the Scottish and English planted by the Crown and that they considered themselves English and wanted the North to remain part of Britain.
198
Listening to my cousins, I thought how shocked my neighbors would be to find out that the Irish Catholics they claimed allegiance with identified as much with American blacks. May pointed out a gable wall that had been painted with the words YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY during the Battle of Bogside in 1969. At the height of the civil rights movement to gain access to fair housing and the right to vote, residents had barricaded the Bogside – a neighborhood of housing projects – against violent incursions by loyalists and the police. The Battle of the Bogside sounded like Southie’s busing riots of the seventies. But in Derry the people organized marches modeled on the black civil rights movement in America and ended up having to barricade their neighborhood, while in Southie my neighbors, under siege from a forced busing policy that pit-
199
ted poor whites against poor blacks, lined our streets to shout at passing buses, “Niggers go home!”
199
I wondered why people in Ireland, and in England too, knew their place and where they stood in relation to their politicians, while at home my neighbors on welfare had voted for Reagan.
219
James Connolly statue in Dublin and stands in front of Liberty Hall, headquarters of Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army, made up of workers – irish martyr – faced firing squad for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916. behind Connolly [is] the Plough and Stars, the Citizen Army’s symbol of the workers’ present and future. Connolly was a socialist.
Dublin has a tall monument to Michael Collins, sometimes called the father of modern guerrilla warfare who led the Irish rebels in the War of Independence that followed the Easter Rising and lasted until the British put forth a treaty that divided the Irish. Collins was ambushed and killed in the ensuing civil war.
Father John Murphy, leader of the peasant revolts of 1798 in Wexford had been captured and martyred in Tullow.
223
“…as far back as the fourteenth century, the Kilkenny Statutes proclaimed the Irish as an inferior race. Afraid that the Norman gentry were becoming too Irish, the Crown forbade them to speak Gaelic, to dress like the Irish, to play Irish games like hurling, or to allow Irish poets musicians – a particularly dangerous lot – among them. It established that the Irish would be second-class citizens in their own country.”
228
“… the Southie cops and politicians, who locked up the addicts while providing cover for the ones making all the money. And at the FBI, which, as we’d just learned from press reports, had protected our Whitey Bulger for so long.”
Re: Good Friday Accords
239
“…the agreement was a betrayal of every patriot that died in these hills for Ireland. Until now I’d only heard good things about the Accords. But T.J., who grew up in the years when Ireland fought ot the bitter end for independence, was fuming that the Irish Republic agreed to strike its claim to the North from the constitution. Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution were all that the nationalists had left to show commitment to continued struggle, after the partition of the island. …the Accords were akin to surrender.”
Playlist:
Chic, Good Times
Earth, Wind, and Fire, Boogie Wonderland
Sister Sledge, We are family,
Sex pistols, anarchy
Patti smith, in excelsis deo
Buzzcocks, boredom
Black flag, nervous breakdown
Richard hell and the voidoids, blank generation
Iggy and the stooges, search and destroy
Rocket from the tombs, sonic reducer
Dead boys, sonic reducer
Mikey dread, break down de walls
The clash, armagideon time, police and thieves, I’m not down
Willie Williams, armagideon time
Junior murvin, police and thieves
X-ray spex, oh bondage, up yours!
Mission of burma, that’s how I escaped my certain fate
The slits, heard it through the grapevine
Public image limited (pil), death disco
Siouxsie and the banshees, pull it to bits
Gang of four, not great men, I found that essence rare
Pere ubu, dub housing
Joy division, she’s lost control
Bad brains, big takeover
King tubby, dub from the roots
Liquid liquid, cavern
Traditional, danny boy
Traditional, black and tan gun
William b. yeats, easter 1916
Boston Latin – alma matter of cotton mather, sam adams, and others, and ben franklin was a dropout
73
referencing punk music scene
“I was amazed, though, that white people from place like Old Colony would be so preoccupied in their songs and interveiews with fight racism. And even though they made a whole new whit enoise on stae, most of them listendd to Jamaican music. After our busing riots five years earlier, when Southie’s borders were fortified against both the blacks and the liberals of the outside world, it was shocking to read in the music papers that these English kids wer talking about “class” and about what they had in common with the Jamaican immigrants in their housing estates. They said the “class system” instigated the racism in Britain. The English kids bragged about being from neighborhoods like mine, while I was only ashamed of Old Colony.
Southie pride had always seemed to be not only about race but also about being hostile to any outsiders, especially if they weren’t Irish. Everyone in the projects thought it was better to be from the tough end of town, but no one admitted to being poor. Reading of these kids talking about class made me realize for the first time that I had grown up poor.”
Recommends the punk band Bad Brains
The irish call sneakers trainers
St paddy’s day isn’t celebrated in Ireland as such a big deal as by the irish in the US; and corned beef is food for dogs
189
The Irish wonder why the Irish Americans have a reputation for hating blacks
193
the conflict in Ireland isn’t about religion at all
“…the Catholics were the colonized Irish who got the shit jobs and shit housing and that the Protestant ascendancy were the Scottish and English planted by the Crown and that they considered themselves English and wanted the North to remain part of Britain.
198
Listening to my cousins, I thought how shocked my neighbors would be to find out that the Irish Catholics they claimed allegiance with identified as much with American blacks. May pointed out a gable wall that had been painted with the words YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY during the Battle of Bogside in 1969. At the height of the civil rights movement to gain access to fair housing and the right to vote, residents had barricaded the Bogside – a neighborhood of housing projects – against violent incursions by loyalists and the police. The Battle of the Bogside sounded like Southie’s busing riots of the seventies. But in Derry the people organized marches modeled on the black civil rights movement in America and ended up having to barricade their neighborhood, while in Southie my neighbors, under siege from a forced busing policy that pit-
199
ted poor whites against poor blacks, lined our streets to shout at passing buses, “Niggers go home!”
199
I wondered why people in Ireland, and in England too, knew their place and where they stood in relation to their politicians, while at home my neighbors on welfare had voted for Reagan.
219
James Connolly statue in Dublin and stands in front of Liberty Hall, headquarters of Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army, made up of workers – irish martyr – faced firing squad for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916. behind Connolly [is] the Plough and Stars, the Citizen Army’s symbol of the workers’ present and future. Connolly was a socialist.
Dublin has a tall monument to Michael Collins, sometimes called the father of modern guerrilla warfare who led the Irish rebels in the War of Independence that followed the Easter Rising and lasted until the British put forth a treaty that divided the Irish. Collins was ambushed and killed in the ensuing civil war.
Father John Murphy, leader of the peasant revolts of 1798 in Wexford had been captured and martyred in Tullow.
223
“…as far back as the fourteenth century, the Kilkenny Statutes proclaimed the Irish as an inferior race. Afraid that the Norman gentry were becoming too Irish, the Crown forbade them to speak Gaelic, to dress like the Irish, to play Irish games like hurling, or to allow Irish poets musicians – a particularly dangerous lot – among them. It established that the Irish would be second-class citizens in their own country.”
228
“… the Southie cops and politicians, who locked up the addicts while providing cover for the ones making all the money. And at the FBI, which, as we’d just learned from press reports, had protected our Whitey Bulger for so long.”
Re: Good Friday Accords
239
“…the agreement was a betrayal of every patriot that died in these hills for Ireland. Until now I’d only heard good things about the Accords. But T.J., who grew up in the years when Ireland fought ot the bitter end for independence, was fuming that the Irish Republic agreed to strike its claim to the North from the constitution. Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution were all that the nationalists had left to show commitment to continued struggle, after the partition of the island. …the Accords were akin to surrender.”
Playlist:
Chic, Good Times
Earth, Wind, and Fire, Boogie Wonderland
Sister Sledge, We are family,
Sex pistols, anarchy
Patti smith, in excelsis deo
Buzzcocks, boredom
Black flag, nervous breakdown
Richard hell and the voidoids, blank generation
Iggy and the stooges, search and destroy
Rocket from the tombs, sonic reducer
Dead boys, sonic reducer
Mikey dread, break down de walls
The clash, armagideon time, police and thieves, I’m not down
Willie Williams, armagideon time
Junior murvin, police and thieves
X-ray spex, oh bondage, up yours!
Mission of burma, that’s how I escaped my certain fate
The slits, heard it through the grapevine
Public image limited (pil), death disco
Siouxsie and the banshees, pull it to bits
Gang of four, not great men, I found that essence rare
Pere ubu, dub housing
Joy division, she’s lost control
Bad brains, big takeover
King tubby, dub from the roots
Liquid liquid, cavern
Traditional, danny boy
Traditional, black and tan gun
William b. yeats, easter 1916
posted by Steve Fake at 2:31 AM
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