Bring Down Bush » Race and Class in New Orleans

Race and Class in New Orleans

I came to the U.S. in 1973, to New York City. I wasn’t outwardly
political although I was moving in that direction. One thing I was
involved in was music. I loved the blues. Like a whole section of
English kids we were raised listening to the blues and its
offspring, Rock and Roll.

Howling Wolf, Big Bill Broonzy (one of the first names I remember),
Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton and of
course, Chuck Berry, who, influenced Rock and Roll so much come to mind.

There was also Nina Simone, one of the greatest. These were the people that
made such beautiful rhythm. It was music that working class folks
could relate to. These older black folks influenced the likes of
Lonnie Donegan and later on for me, the great blues bands of the
sixties. Racism in America had made it almost impossible for them to get the
recognition they deserved and, for many, it was almost impossible to make a living.

Rod Price who went on to greater fame in Foghat was in a band called
Black Cat Bones. They made one album, Barbed Wire Sandwich; I still
have it. I loved it. On that album was a song Nina Simone sang,
Four women. It’s a song about women of different shades of skin
color in the states, black, brown, yellow. Here were four white
rockers singing this song. When one wants to understand the
difference between racism in Britain and in the U.S. one only has to
imagine four white rock and rollers singing this song in the U.S.; I
don’t think it happened. Bob Dylan made some great political music
but a band of this nature, I can’t imagine it but I’m not a music
historian and could be wrong. It also shows how the civil rights
movement influenced Britain and the world and that it was brought to
some of us through music.

The contribution of Black America to world culture is beyond
description in its greatness. The old blues guys sung about love
and poverty and drinking and fighting and racism. The blues is not
unlike its cousin, country music in that sense, and all working
class music which expresses our life. Naturally, the Blues included
racism in a way that country music couldn’t have, or should I say did, but
from a prejudiced perspective, reflecting the ideology of the racist
white bosses expressed through white working class music.

But these old Blues men and women brought the racism of American
life to the world. Nina Simone was particularly vicious in her
condemnation of American society. Less overtly political perhaps
Big Bill Broonzy with his Black White and Brown gave us a glimpse of
life for Blacks in the U.S.

All the British names escape me now. I remember Alexis Korner and
Long John Baldry who just died. I used to go to concerts to listen
to Joanne Kelly, the British Bessie Smith and her brother Dave Kelly
who was with Tony T.S. Mcphee in the Groundhogs.

So when I came to the U.S. in 1973 I went to work in this factory in
Manhattan, Spring Street was the location. I have heard that is has
become all yuppiefied now. It was gruelling work as anyone that
works or has worked in a factory knows. You’re timed by that damn belt.
Nothing ever ends. Nothing is really completed in a way. At least
when I dug holes and worked in ditches putting something or another
in the ground, I got a sense of completion when the water ran
through that pipe, or the sewage. With the assembly line, packing
boxes, it never ended, was there in just the same way the next
morning. Adding to this was the fact that the day I quit it was 113
degrees in the place; they had salt tablets by the fountain.

But at first I was so excited. The place was full of black guys. I
was the only white guy in the place that I recall except for the
boss and two boss’s kids working there during their summer vacation.
Theexcitement had another source; so many of them played music, wrote
music, performed music. Boy, was I lucky. Here I was in the midst
of the people who transformed British music, whofreed us from the
dismal constraints of whatever there was before, I can’t remember too
well. I know my mum liked Bing Crosby and Slim Whitman, but country
music just didn’t rouse me like the Blues.

But I got a surprise. Most of these folks were younger guys, they
weren’t in to the blues. In fact, when I mentioned Big Bill Broonzy,
no one had ever heard of him. They were in to soul and R&B and
Jazz. In the worst case scenario one young guy seemed to think the blues
was sort of uncle tomish. It was an interesting lesson for me. And I
have learned much more in the last 30 years in America.

So, back to my opening sentence. The scenes in new Orleans of black
folks, poor working class folks, my comrades, sisters and brothers
being treated like dogs by this corrupt, rotten system. It’s not
surprising or new. All workers lives are expendable white black or
otherwise but as I looked at the faces of the older black folks in
particular I couldn’t help thinking about the civil rights movement.
This is the south. It was one of the most vicious regimes that ever
existed. It was sheer terror for a whole section of its population.
It was state terror too; let’s not forget that. There weren’t
roving bands of marauders that would be brought to justice by
the state for their crimes. They were the local businessmen and
sheriffs and local politicians who who were all in on it; it was hell.

As I was sharing this with my wife who is Chinese American I
couldn’t help thinking that many of these older folks being pissed
on in New Orleans by the government and slandered by the racist capitalist
media, must have participated in the civil rights movement. I say
this not to undermine the struggle of white workers or any other
specially oppressed minorities or women but the fact that my wife
went to college as did other Asian Americans of that period. The
fact some of my Latino friends had the same opportunity. The
inclusion of the ethnic studies departments in the universities, the
creation of jobs in the public sector like where I worked, the
advances white women have made as a minority group; we owe this to
the heroic struggle of working class black youth who faced dogs and
guns and water cannons and the state in the struggle to end the
vicious apartheid system that existed in one fifth or so of the
United States. They led that movement which benefited us all and
many of them are floating in the squalid cess pools of New Orleans you
can bet on that. They are being portrayed as looters and helpless by
the rich man’s media yet they are some of the brothers an sisters who
challenged the mighty U.S. capitalist class and forced them to retreat.
This lesson is also forgotten by the black middle class who, like any
middle class convinces themselves that they have advanced through
their own individual efforts alone.

The images that the racist media brings to us subtly and not so
subtly are no different to any other tactic the capitalist class use to
divide and weaken the working class. They are filth, these people.
The news media, the tennis stars I saw yesterday with their Nike symbols
all over them are nothing but the paid and sold out whores of capitalism.
They are owned lock stock and barrel by the Nike’s of this world. The bosses
might have gone a little too far here. I don’t know much about him but that
rapper who accused Bush and the U.S. of not caring about black people and
the poor in general is a good resonse.

I am grateful to those who helped educate me and save me from what
could have been the narrow confines of working class life, the black
folks of the U.S. played a very prominent role in that for me before
I ever met them. Seeing the black working class of new Orleans
suffer in this way has jolted my memory. It’s made me think again
of the past. Not in a sad, sorrowful guilt ridden way like the white
liberals do, but with feelings of solidarity, at what is being done to
my people in new Orleans.

Much healthier than guilt is the increased anger I feel toward the
system and wanting to rid us of it. Some say that often good things
come from tragedy. This is true, sometimes it takes bosses the whip
to wake people up.

I always remind my co-workers or friends whenever we are talking
about the need to defend what we have that someone fought for me to
have what I have and it wasn’t Ted kennedy. Many of them probably
couldn’t read too well, weren’t well spoken, and many of them died.
But by understanding this I have an obligation to play the same role
for the future, to not take what they gave me and then deny it to
our children by not fighting to keep and expand upon it. And, in the
last analysis to transform society, for me, as a socialist, this means to
take the ownership of the means of production, exchange and
distribution of the necessities of life that we create out of private hands
and in to the collective hands of the masses.

It is the same with the slaughter in New Orleans. There is no doubt
in my mind that it is an attack on a huge section of our brothers
and sisters who were in the forefront of the struggle for a better life
for us all even if there’s improved only minimally.

We have solidarity with it, we are angry at it, and we will get our
revenge. Bringing the Bush clique down would be a positive first step

One Response to “Race and Class in New Orleans”

Kasha Dziewisz Says:
March 26th, 2006 at 1:43 am
Jeremy, I am an artist in Lowell, MA, looking for any banners and other fabric signs or debris from Katrina that I can make into a non-traditional quilt for the national Lowell Quilt Festival in August.

Do you know of anyone who is involved in clean-up who might be willing to send me such things so that I can create this art? There will also be three women and a child, in beautiful fabrics, of all races in the piece. If accepted by the judges y it would be seen by thousands or people from all over the country.

Thanks for much,
Kasha Dziewisz
603-759-6675

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Race and Class in New Orleans

One Response to “Race and Class in New Orleans”

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