50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed To Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism

BOOK REVIEW 50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed To Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism By Mickey Z (www.mickeyz.net ) Disinformation Company Ltd. New York 2005 Reviewed by Ken Setter

Every so often we come across a book that surprises. The latest offering by Mickey Z is one such book, don't be fooled by its small size, (13 X 14 cm), it is a gem.

Each of its 150 pages informs, reminds and enlightens us of the brave and insightful Americans who have labored over the past few centuries. These are the visionaries who worked in the hope of freedom, who struggled to realize the dream of a better, softer and more humane world. It might be small, but it is no lightweight, the 50 Revolutions the establishment would seek to hide from us is far weightier than many of the books that roll of the production lines of American's academic presses.

If you think the 50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed To Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism is a dead give away for a ‘conspiracy theory' then you're right on the money. Those with property, power, and printing presses have been busy expunging all reference to any act, any achievement, and any victory they perceived as a threat to the establishment, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem. One has only to recall the words of Adam Smith, yes; the same Adam Smith, the idol of the free market mob, who said, whenever a group of businessmen are gathered they engage in a conspiracy against the public.

Sometimes the tools used are the obvious prerogatives of power, media owners who refuse to broadcast or print, thus depriving oxygen to both people and movements. At other times the heavy armour is requisitioned for battle. Big guns like the House Un-American Activities Committee were used to hunt both workers and cultural organisations under the guise of so-called ‘red menace' from the late 1930s.

Loyalty oaths and blacklists purged Hollywood screenwriters, actors, authors and musicians, such as Charlie Chaplin, Leonard Bernstein, Paul Robeson, Orson Welles, Dorothy Parker and hundreds more fell under the ever-watchful eye of Senator McCarthy, and his inquisitors. They accepted rumours as evidence, and accused anybody and everybody who could be placed at the scene of a subversive thought.

The shadow of the Un-American Activities Committee shrouded the sunlight until 1954 when the ‘Devil' finally called his loyal and faithful servant to sit at his right hand, where we presume he remains to this day, if not comforted at least warmed by the sulphurs fires of hell

During the life of the Committee some 6 million US citizens fell into the nets of government investigations strung together with illegal wiretaps, false testimony and synthetic evidence”.

It has been going on since Biblical days. These days they us the USA PATRIOT ACT and the ‘fight against terrorism'

Mickey Z restores the stories expunged from history. Breathing life into the past he tells us, however briefly, of Thomas Paine, of musicians Woody Guthrie, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday. He reminds us of sporting heroes, Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali, movie personalities, Katherine Hepburn and I F Stone, and many more who today are still battling on the streets of Seattle, so the list goes on.  They are America's finest.

If you think items such as Lizzie Jennings gets on a bus, Katherine Hepburn wears pants and Brando's undershirt seem a little mundane then this little book will dispel any doubts. Mickey Z has the ‘inside' story, or should that be the ‘story behind the story'? The true stories you seldom, if ever, read in the mainstream press?

Together they make fascinating reading and informative reading.

We should ask why have these people been expunged from history?

A good place to start is our own newscasts. Question the words, but also reflect on what is not said, interrogate the omissions, the silences.

When the 24-year-old Billie Holiday integrated Strange Fruit into her repertoire she

exposed the practice and policy of lynching to a new Café Society audience. Brave indeed. The lyrics composed by Lewis Allen, the nom de plume used by Abel Meerpol, who was later to adopt the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg following their judicial murders in 1953. Strange Fruit is possibly the most powerful protest song ever written.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves, blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging on the popular trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Woody Guthrie wrote This Land Is Your Land as a celebration of the ordinary people who proudly call America home. Its words are as true today's as they ever were. It has become an unofficial anthem.

This land is my land; this land is your land

From California to the New York Island

From the red-wood forest

To the Gulf stream waters

This land belongs to you and me

Inspiring, stirring words, patriotic without being militaristic, nationalist born by love of country, inclusive not exclusive, it speaks of a ribbon highway..., endless skyway… golden desert… wheat fields waving… and the dust clouds rolling, beautiful poetic stuff, a song of pride, toil, hardship, and acceptance.

But for the powerful, the timeservers and the cautious people concerned more with self-promotion than the general good, the words were disturbing; so they expunged them.

The forgotten verses of This Land is Your Land

As I was walkin' I saw a sign there

And that sign said ‘No Tresspassin'

But on the other side, it didn't say nothin'

Now that side was made for you and me

In the squares of the city In the shadow of the steeple

Near the relief office, I see some are wonderin'

And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'

If this land's still made for you and me

The working people of America have not failed their class origins they have been betrayed.  All who know anything of the American labor movement have nothing but praise and admiration at the struggles waged by American workers against armed, organised, brutal, and rampaging employers.

When Woody Guthrie wrote This Land Is Your Land he place it under copyright #154085 for a period of 28 years, he also added these words, ‘anyone caught singin' it without permission, will be a mighty good friend of mine‘ he gave up all rights and royalties. He considered it to belong to the people.

Paul Robeson echoed Woody Guthrie's feelings, in 1949 when he said, “I happen to love America very much, not Wall Street and not your press”.

This little book challenges us to redefine our meaning of revolution. The items he brings us are in themselves small brave acts, revolutionary, but bigger when placed to total context. Taken together they change our world.

Each segment is followed by a Timeline; historical snippets to remind us of things past, such historical gems as, Rosa Parks refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955 had historical precedent in the Lizzie Jennings (1830-1901) 1854 case against the Third Avenue Railway Company, a New York Tram Company. We should all know these things.

We should remember that Harriet Tubman (1820-1913) helped start the Underground Railroad to guide slaves to freedom.

How many of us know of the July 1863 New York City Draft Riots?

How many can recall the last words of Crazy Horse. “We preferred our own way of living. We were no expense of the Government. All we wanted was peace and to be left alone” (1877)

The book also offers an alternate way's to define Patriotism.

When love of country takes second place to fervent patriotism is it well to recall Michael Parenti's words. “If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into step behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, not democracy.'

Finally; Institutionalized patriotism is totalitarian.

My, my, that has a familiar ring.

Contact Mickey Z himself to find out where you can buy his books.

Email: mzx2@earthlink.net