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April 11, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
From the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Juniad Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
April 8, 2002
David
Vest
From
Birmingham to Nashville:
The Making of Tammy Wynette
Rick Giombetti
Paxil, Suicide and Science
Dr. Neve
Gordon
Letter
to an IDF Colonel:
How Did You Become
a War Criminal?
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's Top 10 CDs
Jordy
Cummings
Not
in My Name Anymore
Gavin Keeney
Bush and the Middle East:
Mouth Wide Shut
Edward
Said
The
Future of Palestine
April 7, 2002
Beth Daoud
Accompanying Ambulances
in Bethlehem
Nancy
Stohlman
After
the Invasion:
The Search for Bread
Among the Ruins
Thomas Mountain
"Yellow Peril" In Hawai'i:
Judge Orders Chains and Shackles for Chinese Witnesses
Tariq
Ali
Who
Killed Daniel Pearl?
April 6, 2002
Philip Farruggio
War, Snake Oil and Circuses
Viktor
Litovkin
Russian
Generals Raise Questions About Pentagon Victories in Afghanistan
Patrick Cockburn
CIA Survey of Iraqi Airfields
May Herald Attack
Walt Brasch
Oil
Slick George:
Bush-whacking the Environment
Ralph Nader
Campaign Finance Sham
Sam Bahour
The
Blind Leading the Criminal
Bill Christison:
A Former CIA Official on
Oil and the Middle East
April 5, 2002
Charmaine
Seitz
In
Ramallah: The Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
Nancy Stohlman
The Invasion of Bethlehem
and Our Tax Dollars at Work
Beth Daoud
The
Siege of Bethlehem:
"What Do You Mean God Is Punishing Me?"
Fareed Marjaee:
Demonizing Iran
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Philip
Morris to Canada:
"Drop Dead"
Alex Lynch
Tampa Campus Mirrors
Middle East Strife
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon's
Wars: How the
News Gets Through
April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
of the Nativity
Mike Leon
Rightwing
Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires
Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
Bernard
Weiner
An
American Jew Talks
About His Shame
David Vest
Sting of Stings
Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest
John Chuckman
Of
War, Islam and Israel
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
Resources:
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CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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April 11, 2002
Keep On
Nellie Stone
Johnson, 1905-2002
By Steve Perry
[Editors' note: Nellie
Stone Johnson will be unknown to most Counterpunch readers, but
she was one of the 20th century's great unsung lefty heroes.
A lifelong labor and civil rights warrior who died in Minneapolis
last week at 96, Johnson started her career in politics by distributing
Nonpartisan League pamphlets by horseback as a child; for over
70 years she was one of the Upper Midwest's most tireless fighters
for civil and economic rights. Her memoir, The
Life of an Activist, is available at Amazon by clicking here.]
This morning I sat around watching it rain outside
and trying to cull some signal moment from the many hours I spent
with my friend Nellie Stone Johnson, the labor/civil rights legend
who died April 2 at the age of 96-some little story that might
sum her up for purposes of a remembrance like this. But there
isn't any. She was too thoroughly a force of nature for that.
According to the terms of an old Jewish parable, the student
travels from afar not to hear the great rabbi interpret the Talmud
but to watch him tie his shoes. So it was with Nellie. She wore
who she was and where she had been in her every aspect: the sharp,
graceful lines of her face, the easy dignity with which she carried
herself, the burning clarity and urgency in her voice. If you
had any sense, you simply drank it in whenever the chance presented
itself.
I first met Nellie in 1990. She phoned
me at City Pages one day out of the blue to say that she liked
the things I had been writing and we ought to meet. The truth
is I'd never heard of Nellie Stone Johnson. I had no idea this
woman had made more history than anyone else still alive and
kicking round here.  Nonetheless, something
in her manner precluded my saying no. We met for lunch, and after
talking for an hour or so she gave me my second directive: "I
think you might want to interview me for a story in your paper."
I did as I was told.
During those years at City Pages, she
became a mentor to several of us on staff-Monika Bauerlein,
Jennifer Vogel, me. And in having her way with us she could be
as dogged and as demanding as she ever was in confronting foes.
Many was the time the phone rang at 2:00 on Tuesday afternoon,
a couple of hours from press deadline, to disgorge Nellie from
the other end, primed for her one of her pack-a-lunch lectures
on some piece of skullduggery she was trying to bring to light.
It didn't matter that you had heard this one before and had more
pressing things to do; you listened, and it was always worth
as much time as it required.
Within a couple of days of her passing,
both the Minneapolis and St. Paul papers published long, glowing
tributes. I read them with faint distaste. It's in the nature
of obituaries to domesticate whatever they seek to memorialize;
saint and scoundrel alike turn cuddly in death's embrace. So
let us say it one last time, with emphasis: Nellie Stone Johnson
did not like to be called a lady or a liberal. Despite her extensive
involvement in practical politics-she visited the Capitol more
than some legislators-Nellie remained a radical, as the Pioneer
Press correctly noted, a former member of the Young Communists
League, the Young Socialists, the Socialist Workers Party, and
several other hard-line labor groups. She was a fighter from
first to last. But she was never content to be a marginal character.
Nellie helped midwife the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor
parties in 1944. Much later, at an age when most people are retired,
she served a stint on the Democratic National Committee. Her
radicalism ensured that she always had far more enemies than
friends; these included the establishment civil rights organizations,
a sizable number of liberal middle class feminists, and anyone
else from either party who would neglect or subvert the hard-won
gains in labor and civil rights she had given her life to.
After she died everyone took pains to
say that even her enemies respected her, as if that meant a damn
thing. I can tell you for the record that she had no use for
their reverence; she saw it for the patronizing flip-off it was.
All her life she was wise enough to stay clear of the clutches
of anyone who might disarm her. That is why she passed up the
countless political jobs and other bits of patronage that could
have been hers across the years. She sacrificed enormously and
without complaint, continuing to operate her seamstress shop
on Nicollet Mall well past the age of 85, until finally she could
not walk up the stairs anymore.
But then again it hardly amounted to
sacrifice in her eyes. She was exactly where she wanted to be.
As Walter Mondale put it, with affection and perhaps a little
discomfiture, she was a tough old bird. Unlike so many leaders
of the civil rights movement, Nellie had no real use for the
church. She respected its political contributions but harbored
no affinity for musings about God. "I just figured it was
real simple," she told me once. "You do what you can
for people and you don't worry about God." I doubt she'd
have called herself an atheist; that would imply too much attention
to the question. She was an Enlightenment rationalist to her
core. Her whole ideology could be nailed down with two planks-the
value of education and the dignity of a decent job.
"She was so incredibly generous,"
Jennifer Vogel wrote me a couple of days later, "but she
wouldn't have seen it that way. She fought because that was the
only thing a decent, seeing person could do. I also liked how
she gathered soldiers along the way. She saw the best in those
who were trying to do good. She was forgiving of weakness, though
I'm not sure she truly understood it. She looked past whatever
your particular fears were and tried to nurture your strengths."
Nellie's public life was everything to
her, and that is where she sought and found her friends. She
eventually abandoned any pretense to traditional domesticity
after her second failed marriage and toiled on by herself for
another 50 years, a life odyssey that surely befitted one so
indefatigable and so fiercely unsentimental. If she were reading
this I imagine she'd say about now, That's all very well;
you wrote some nice things. But if I was your teacher, then what
is it I taught you? All right then. Call this the short list.
Do the legwork.
Know your history.
Concern yourself with others, always.
Stay busy and you will stay as close to selfless as possible.
Keep your own counsel; be beholden to no one.
Be proud of what you do.
Let good faith be its own reward.
Remember that regret wastes time.
Keep on.
Steve Perry writes a regular column for
The Rake. He can
be reached at: sperry@usinternet.com
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