I came across Robert Hayden’s moving poem to Frederick Douglass etched on a stone in the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx today. As I bent over to read the poem amid the many colors of fall, I was surprised to hear its recitation over a speaker nearby. What a treat, not to mention a moment of Inspiration! And, Lord knows, don’t we need the latter in these troubled times in which democracy, truth, and freedom are the targets of a furious assault from the MAGA movement and Republican Party.

Frederick Douglass 

BY ROBERT HAYDEN

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,   
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,   
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,   
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more   
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:   
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro   
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world   
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,   
this man, superb in love and logic, this man   
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,   
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives   
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

The tragedy (or missed opportunity) of the past two years is that the Biden administration, politically and legislatively, attempted to break, if not in full, with the logic and policies of neoliberalism – a logic and policies that date back to the mid-1970s. And yet, the coalition, including progressives and the left, that elected Biden, for all practical purposes, sat on its hands.

The same can’t be said about the Republican-MAGA movement. They furiously resisted Biden’s political/legislative agenda and defeated much of it, with the help of a couple of Senate Democrats.

Let’s hope that we don’t pay a steep price on election day for our inaction and more than occasional snipping at the Biden administration and Democratic legislators over the past two years.

With a few weeks to go to election day, it’s all about the Ground Game now. And every one of us can easily participate – phone calls, texting, canvassing, and more for one or another of the Democratic candidates. I live in the Bronx, but I’m participating in the get out the vote drive in the Hudson Valley, north of NYC, for two House candidates. This weekend we’re canvassing door to door in Hyde Park. Next weekend, back to familiar terrain, Kingston, an hour north of the City and sitting quietly on the Hudson.

By the way, if you haven’t already done so, make a contribution(s) to a candidate!!!

Reading Jason Stanley’s “How Fascism Works.” Well worth the time. Actually, it’s a quick read. Stanley writes with clarity and simplicity of expression, staying away from the obtuse and unfamiliar that is the stock and trade with too many academics. Back in the day when socialism was a new interest for me, I always appreciated the writing of Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff for precisely the same reason.

Springsteen covers Commodores’ Night Shift. The song was written in 1985 by lead singer Walter Orange in collaboration with Dennis Lambert and Franne Golde, as a tribute to soul/R&B singers Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye, both of whom died in 1984. A full album, honoring and covering R&B singers of that era, will be released by Springsteen in early November.

I hope to hear some of those songs and more at one of the tour stops of Springsteen and the E-Street next year. I’m still fishing around for a ticket. A tad expensive, but at my age and as a rock and roll lifer, I’m more than willing to pay the price.