NINETY-NINE TO ONE
Words and music by Florence Reece and Rivka and Mike iLL Kilmer

Chords: D- D-/C G- Eb7

Desperation at your door
With a notice in his bag
But you still think he only comes
For those who’s feet will drag

Communities cooperate
For the betterment of all
Some insist they’re better fit
To dictate to the small.

[Chorus:]
Ninety-nine to one
Ninety-nine to one
Think this game is over?
It’s only just begun.

From early morning ’till the sun gets low
Work for a man that you’ll never even know
Defend his wealth and right to grow
With the memorized words from his radio show.

When your job goes south and it won’t come back
Blame it on the Mexicans who live across the tracks
Faced with pure and simple math
Claim “Socialism” and threaten to attack

You sit alone home judging me
Getting’ your news on Fox TV
But come down town you just might see
On so many issues we agree

Come on all good working people and
Hear what I just learned
The system’s got us all in debt
Makin’ up what can’t be earned

Is this the Land of Liberty
Or one big company property
We’ve come together in unity
To take back our democracy

Wealth, like butter, is best when spread
But you’ll rail against it ’till you’re almost dead
With a closet full of pills and stale white bread
Your kids don’t visit ’cause they’re working’ instead

That white House seats have been reduced
For the highest bidder is the sorry truth
If it keeps this way we’ll get our proof
When there’s credit cards slots on the voting booths

Come all you poor workers, good news to you I’ll tell,
How the good old union has come in here to dwell.
Which side are you on, which side are you on?

We’re starting our good battle, we know we’re sure to win.
Because we got the gun thugs lookin’ pretty thin.
Which side are you on, which side are you on?

You go to Harlan County, there is no neutral there.
You’ll either be a union man or a thug for J.H. Blair
Which side are you on, which side are you on?

They say they have to guard us to educate their child.
Their children live in luxury, our children almost wild.
Which side are you on, which side are you on?

Gentlemen can you stand it, oh tell me how you can?
Will you be a gun thug or will you be a man>
Which side are you on, which side are you on?

My daddy was a miner, he’s now in the air and sun.
he be with you, fellow workers, till every battle’s won.
Which side are you on, which side are you on?

– Buff

I’m still working on the story I posted in Liberation Lit.

Keep up the great work.

Johan ‘t Hart

Her version reads,
“My daddy was a miner he’s now in the air and sun, he’ll be with you fellow workers til every battle’s won.”

“You go to Harlan County, there are no neutrals there…”

The last verse is Seeger’s addition, I believe. But don’t get me wrong, I still like Seeger’s adaptation to the song.

but i am ashamed to say that your Redykyulass boyz never reached ME! and i am sad to note that this youth revolution is against everything to do with the past, especially those old people in power, except for their mothers and fathers, but also including people like me. but i don’t think i have done anything so wrong that entitles you to cast me out. i am not that kind of revolutionary but i have history.

i hope you take the whole of that history, in which i have partaken in a minute way, into account, ye youth. otherwise perhaps there is something missing in that kind of revolution that sweeps away the past in toto?

ok we have to dance to your tune because you are in the majority (i don’t mind that – i’ll bring my family along) but i hope you also listen to the generations of music enjoyed by me but ‘set aside’ by the corrupt people in power. not everything in the previous generation ought to be rejected as corrupt and degenerate. perhaps we should not lose our power to distinguish and discern between the good old and the bad old.

Some of the people Mike Eldon met may have simply been passing through (and, like those who have enriched themselves and have flats in Hong Kong, knew that they would not have to live with what we will have to, post- election or -revolution or whatever).

Meanwhile the question that we’ll have to answer BEFORE the completion of any SUCCESSFUL revolution is “what is the Kenya that you lost and wish to recover?” and, if successive revolutions succeed, what will your place be in the pecking order of ‘new mau mau’, based on what criteria? I have not yet met an activist or revolutionary who does not think s/he is an expert at distinguishing between a comrade and a traitor, yet.

May I push the envelope? The Kenyan dream whosever’s it is, is a mediocre one! It is not too early, now, to ask “why just Kenya, anyway? Why not… East Africa or even Black Africa?” Before the colonial day we dreamed of land, women and cattle, from coast to coast. Not of sunrises and sundowners which bind us to the need for some familiarity and consistency to playact if we intend to be anybody in the order of appearance.

Not everyone’s dream about Kenya will be realised (if anyone’s) and, if the funding agencies have it their way, the only dream that will be realised, whether we turn left or right in 2012, is that of preparing the ground for further exploitation for the sake of an overarching dream that was dreamt by the likes of Karen Blixen and shall never be dreamt by even the third or fourth generation Kikuyu, Luhya, Masai, Luo or Muhindi, for that matter.

While the disqualified ‘middle class’ has inherited the colonial heritage and will remain the default agency of exploitation after the revolution is won, the energy will not change overnight (refer to the S African experience). Only they will hold the same place in the pecking order until someone leads them not to the left or right but echoes unawares Kenyatta’s command: “About Turn!”.

Similarly, another establishment poll recently came up with a list of the best 160 (or so) works of fiction published in the past 10 years. Not even mentioned was Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o's Wizard of the Crow, a novel that could justifiably make a list of the top 10 most accomplished and vital novels of the past century. The norms of literature that bury such novels (like Banjo and Wizard of the Crow, not to mention novelists and cultural workers like Claude McKay and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o) are greatly degraded, in a variety of ways.

There is also this desire on Ray’s part not to surrender his intellect, while being refreshed by the earthiness of the black boys, in which he comes close to ascribing a naturally state of ignorance and irresponsibility (appropriating prevailing Western stereotypes of primitive peoples?) as a virtue of the highest order, but as a crime in the eyes of civilization: “He was a challenge of civilization itself. He was the red rag to the mighty-bellowing, all-trampling civilized bull.”

There he penetrates in his analysis and we can see that he has turned “civilized” values on their head to fine effect.

Stylistically, I find it much more an extended essay than a novelistic vision. The boys and Ray are more ideological abstractions than characters, for he seems at this point less concerned with saturating us in the world of people than expositing his ideas about them.

I find the language in turns inventive and dull, sophisticated and careless. If you were to lay some equivalent pages of Gatsby side by side with it, I doubt Banjo could compare line upon line. I would conceed that subject matter and perspective has a hand in this work’s complete obscurity, a good bit, however, is due to the inconsistent quality of the writing and lack of narrative focus. I was growing weary quickly of its fuzzy focus, and its expository fixation (even with the interesting ideas and bursts of fresh and tantalizing language).

For me, in fiction especially, there has to be something I find uplifting, pleasant or encouraging or I have a hard time getting through it. I don’t make the same the demand of non-fiction to the same extent (or maybe in a different way I do because I’ve tuned out many left essays lately finding them redundant, boring or both).

It is a whole year since those problems, Mike, but looking back at your essay, especially the professional composisiton of those folks you met, I can only say that it was natural for them to feel they way they did. I mean com e to think about it, who are they? Aren’t they the real owners of this country, and therefore the ones who would lose the most if things escalated?

especially heartbreaking is your haiku:

Hush, my little one
The bombs know you are my Dear
They will not hurt you