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Freedom from Fascism
Entry 28 of 40 | show all | print this entry |
Caveat #2: I'm going to use another phony dateline in a minute, because it's really May 4th in Amsterdam on the loveliest day of the year so far and I'm writing from the 420 Café this evening after a day of quietly celebrating the 39th birthday of my beloved elder daughter, Marion Sunny Sinclair, born this day in the glorious year of 1967 in Detroit. Happy Birthday, Baby! And now, back to Roma:
(Roma, April 25, 2006)--Today is Freedom Day in Italy, commemorating the end of Mussolini's fascist regime in 1945, and nobody celebrates more fiercely than the residents of the city's autonomous zones, or c.s.o.a.'s-Centros Sociales Occupatos ed Autogestitos. Will Dawson and I started the day with Antonio driving us across town to the original liberated zone of modern-day Roma, an area which is richly reminiscent of the old Lower East Side before that asshole Rudy Guilliani cleaned the city up and made it safe for squares.
Thirty years ago young radical Italians began seizing and occupying buildings and social institutions and reshaping them in their own image. It's shocking to Americans, especially those who witnessed the squat evictions on the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1980s, but in all the major urban centers of Europe I've visited so far there are enclaves of creative artists, poets, musicians, social activists and oppositionists of many sorts squatting in buildings without paying rents and utilizing the space to develop and present their productions of the imagination to their friends and neighbors.
Roma is particularly blessed with the spirit of autonomi, and it's flowing very freely today. This evening we'll meet our three Dutchmen and attend the big Pignatoli Street Fair, and I'll spend the afternoon before that in a terrific little street café drinking espresso and interviewing at length with Eva Gilmore and Emanuela del Frate for a feature story that'll be part of Forte Prenestino's 20th anniversary celebration publication on Monday, May 1st-but Will and I are starting the day at the modest studios of Spazio Sociale Radio Onda Rossa in the middle of the city's original autonomous zone.
Radio Onda Rossa, or Red Wave Radio, first squatted on the public airwaves 27 years ago and has been broadcasting without a license ever since. It's a Socialized Space controlled by the people who do the programming and broadcasting and keep the doors open and the electric bills paid so the sound can go on. They wanna be on the air, and they ARE on the air! I idolize people like this, because my dream of course is to do the same thing: bust onto the airwaves with the good shit and STAY there.
Onda Rossa is broadcasting Giovanna Anna's "Il Punto G" program when we get there, and she's playing Abbey Lincoln singing "Freedom Day" with Max Roach from the classic Candid Records album We Insist! Freedom Now Suite from 1960. Wow! What a great record to hear on a day like this, equating the Italian release from fascism with the African Americans' freedom from chattel slavery almost 100 years earlier.
The brilliant and incredibly gorgeous Giovanna Anna greets us with a stunning smile and pushes a stack of CDs at me: Space Is the Place and The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, The Black Saint & the Sinner Lady and Mingus X 5 on Impulse, Something Else!!!! by Ornette Coleman on Contemporary, The Avant Garde and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. "See anything you like?" she laughs.
My interviewer is another sharp and lovely Onda Rossa program host, Emilia of Destination Venus, who has carefully prepared and typed up a series of questions for me and our translator, a woman from Texas named Ele who makes me sound good as a motherfucker in Italian. Both she and Eva, my translator at the BHAP panel, interpret my responses to the questions and deliver them in Italian with fire and expression that sounds just like me!
I've got to look up some information on my posters from Roma to finish this report, so I'll go back to The Dolphins now and check them out and then finish this entry and send it. Man, they put out some hell of a posters in Roma for all kinds of social and left-wing causes and outré artistic and musical events-they're everywhere and it takes me back to Ann Arbor and Detroit in the 1960s and 70s when our world outlook was in full effect and we were making a small dent in the fast-encroaching wall of total commodification which has since completely subsumed the United States. They're still kicking over here, and it feels really good to be in the middle of it.
OK, while I check out the posters, here's the program description, playlist and podcast of our radio show at Radio Onda Rossa:
The John Sinclair Radio Show #84
Radio Onde Rossa, Roma
Tuesday, April 25, 2006 @ 2:30 - 3:45 pm [20-0613]
Ah! To be in Rome on National Liberation Day 2006, celebrating Italy's release from its previous fascist regime 61 years ago and joining Ms. Giovanna on her "Punto G" ("G Spot") radio program on Radio Onde Rossa (Red Wave), the Spazio Sociale (People's Space) that's squatted on the public airwaves for 26 years without the merest shred of a license. G has her colleague Emilia on board to conduct an interview with me, brilliantly translated by Ele; I do a duet performance with Mark Ritsema and a couple of poems over music by John Coltrane; and G plays records by Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Daronda, Jeanne Lee, and the MC5.
Listen here: John Sinclair Show #84 @ Radio Onde Rossa, Roma, April 25, 2006 (.mp3)
Program #84
[01] Opening Music: Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln: Freedom Day
[02] Comments by Giovanna
[03] Rahsaan Roland Kirk: I Say a Little Prayer
[04] Daronda: Legs (Part 1)
[05] Comments by Giovanna
[06] Daronda: Didn't I > [Unidentified Artists & Selections]
[07] Jeanne Lee: I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
[08] Comments by Giovanna and John Sinclair Intro
[09] John Sinclair & Mark Ritsema: everything happens to me
[10] Emilia Interviews John Sinclair, Translated by Ele (Part 1)
[11] MC5: Kick Out the Jams
[12] Emilia Interviews John Sinclair, Translated by Ele (Part 2)
[13] John Coltrane: Resolution / John Sinclair 'Live': Spiritual > Consequences
[14] Comments by Giovanna & John Sinclair
[15] Closing Music: John Coltrane: Pursuance with Giovanna Outro
Hosted by Giovanna Anna for "Il Punto G," Radio Onde Rossa, Roma
Produced & Engineered by Giovanna Anna
Interviewer: Emilia, Translated by Ele
Executive Producer: John Sinclair
Special thanks to Antonio & all the people at Radio Onde Rossa
Sponsored by c.s.o.a. Forte Prenestino, Roma & The Dolphins, Amsterdam
©(P) 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Podcasted @ May 1, 2006
* * * * *
Speaking of freedom from fascism, James C. McKinley Jr. reported in the New York Times of April 29th that Mexico Passes Law Making Possession of Some Drugs Legal, and we quote:
MEXICO CITY, April 28 - Mexican lawmakers passed a sweeping new drug law early Friday that would crack down on small-time dealers, legalize the possession of small quantities of drugs and mandate treatment for addicts.
Under the bill, it would be legal to have 25 milligrams of heroin, a fifth of an ounce of marijuana or half a gram of cocaine. The bill also makes it legal to possess small amounts of LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, amphetamines and peyote.
President Vicente Fox had proposed the law in January 2004 in the hopes of slowing down the rapid growth in drug addiction and the ranks of small-time dealers that has hit Mexican cities and towns in recent years, just as it has long plagued American cities.
Well, James is editorializing there, and some of us might say "the ranks of small-time drug dealers that...has long blessed American cities." But that's because many of our best friends are "small-time drug dealers," while others are BIG-TIME drug dealers. How else are we gonna get our medications?
If you read the rest of the story, which I'm not gonna print here, you'll see that Mexico isn't making any provisions to deliver the sacraments to the believers in a safe, effective and harm-free way, either. Only here in Holland has the essential question been confronted and properly answered, at least in part: LET THE SMOKER BUY HIS OR HER WEED OVER THE COUNTER AND SMOKE IT! Case closed. No drug police, no War on Drugs, no criminalization of the humble smoker who wants only to get high and ease the pains of life on this strenuous planet.
Of course they aren't smart enough here yet to legalize the growing and delivery of marijuana-these remain crimes employing drug police, courts, jails etc.-but at least they're thinking about it. For me, after 42 years fighting in the War on Drugs-42 years!-I'm still happy to see any little shreds of progress in the face of the United Snakes War Machine and its world-wide bullying on the drugs issue. And in Mexico, where the shit came from to us in the first place! Yeah you rite!
On the other hand, the new Nixons in Canada are turning the ship of state around on the marijuana issue and aiming it at Canadian smokers in a big way. I don't even wanna talk about it; suffice it to say that I was deported from Canada in 1969 because of a US marijuana conviction and haven't been allowed legal entry ever since. These assholes don't have much of a sense of humor, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will be riding down on a whole lot of citizens up there as soon as they get their horses out of the barn.
Freedom!
I'll send this now and look at the posters when I go up to my room and add anything from them to my next post #29--so good night for now....
Latest Comments (4)
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Radio Onda Rossa - Radio Show (reply)
May 7, 2006 19:03 EST by emilia
Very proud to host you, John, and glad to meet you!
this is a big join : Radio Onda Rossa - Radio Free Amsterdam
you can listen to us via streaming:
www.ondarossa.info
:))
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Radio Onda Rossa - Radio Show (reply)
May 7, 2006 19:03 EST by emilia
Very proud to host you, John, and glad to meet you!
this is a big join : Radio Onda Rossa - Radio Free Amsterdam
you can listen to us via streaming:
www.ondarossa.info
:))
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Freedom from Fascism (reply)
May 4, 2006 22:08 EST by joebryak
Sounds great, John! Leave a trail of birdseed behind you so I can follow as soon as I can get away from this hornet's nest of mad bomber presidents, thieving politicians, voice mail, commercials, INS raids, meter maids, Baptist textbook censors, benefit-slashing, feel good 'news', fear-mongering Republicans, ass-licking Democrats, planet destroying capitalist mad dogs. It's a great place, though. ... show all
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