APPEAL/OPEN LETTER TO FIDEL CASTRO

By Andre Vltchek

Fidel,

I am writing this letter from the frozen shore not far from the northernmost Japanese city of Wakkanai. It is pristine and cold here, bitterly cold. When the wind blows, the snow powder takes to the air – on such occasions it looks like a real snowstorm although instead of descending from the sky, the snow is actually elevated from earth. It is as white as it gets anywhere in the world, and then blue late in the evening.

On the shore, huge antennas and satellites are facing north; they are pointed towards Sakhalin – an enormous island that at the end of the WWII was taken by the Soviet Union and now belongs to Russia. More than two decades ago Cold War officially ended, but the dishes, listening posts and who knows what else are still here, scaring the nature and silencing goodwill. Read the rest of this entry »

Walkerville was a city that many were proud to call sedate. The same was true of Willistead Gardens whose luscious grass and carefully tended flowers were meant to be admired quietly. There were no swings, soccer fields or large open spaces.

However, there was a large wooden statue in Willistead Gardens that had recently been carved by a member of the Walkerville Anti-War Coalition. It depicted a man with a badly disfigured face crawling on the ground with a hammer and chisel tied to his fingerless hands. It was about twice as big as an average sized person. People took to calling it “the crippled giant”.

The statue was widely praised. Read the rest of this entry »

Liberation Lit anthology

table of contents

“What’s Lib Lit? – Library, map, lens, scalpel, compost, chisel, textbook, excavation: voices, images, wrestling, contradicting, confirming, the matter of resistant art and practise.”

– Adrienne Rich

“The relation between literature and liberation runs very deep. From Blake to Ginsberg, Shelley to Sartre, literature has often enough served as an image of creativity from which any authentic politics has to learn. In this sense, all artistic work has an implicit utopian dimension; but the pieces in this splendid anthology are unique in explicitly highlighting this concealed underside of literary art, showing us how to hope and desire otherwise. In a darkening political world, this book deserves a wide readership, as it sheds a light on the present from a possible future.”

– Terry Eagleton

BN

On the first day of my Grade 11 history class, Mr. Marini had written out a quote by someone named Arturo Giovannitti on the blackboard. Before I could sit down, Marini gave me a stack of blue paperback books to hand out to everyone.

“These books are yours to keep,” he announced. “In them, you’ll find all the material we’ll be covering this semester.”

The book was “A people’s History of the US” by Howard Zinn.

Peter Howard’s hand shot up in the air.

“Yes, Peter.”

“Sir, how is this ancient history?”

“It isn’t.”

“But you’re supposed to teach us ancient history.”

“I know, but I’m not going to, so you can drop the course, rat me out to your parents, or stay and try to learn something. It’s up to you.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Much of Liberation Lit’s first issue cover art is in the style overviewed below, including work by John Sloan.

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Facing the need to liberate.

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In 2009 Mainstay Press will publish the groundbreaking first anthology of Liberation Lit, the journal of progressive and revolutionary fiction.

Liberation Lit

The images of the front and back cover for this issue help connect the works inside with some of the progressive and revolutionary tendencies in the USA of the past century. The stories move beyond this past, especially in being written by authors from around the world. The cover collage of the first Liberation Lit issue originates mainly from illustrations of The Masses magazine from early last century, and posters from the WPA Federal Theater Project.