Oh! Good Old-Fashioned War!

The Ballad Of William Worthy

William Worthy

July 7th, 1921 - May 4th, 2014

"Only a gullible American public would go on, revolution after revolution, decade after decade, swallowing what Lippmann and Merz nailed as "double­ think" long before George Orwell coined the word. Even if a dying or already dead revolutionary government some­ how managed to spread feeble propaganda beyond its own borders, what revolution-hungry people anywhere on earth would buy into and emulate a widely heralded and demonstrable failure? ... With few exceptions, the American people for years after a revolution receive totally negative journalistic images, with virtually nothing to suggest a return to normalcy in the lives of most of the people."

Quote excerpted from Prolonged Surrender to Reality: U.S. Media Coverage Of Revolutions, 1985

When The Ship Comes In

"We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate facilities are inherently unequal." -SCOTUS ruling, May 17th, 1954

Keep On Keepin' On!

"The only thing workers have to bargain with is their skill or their labor. Denied the right to withhold it as a last resort, they become powerless. The strike is therefore not a breakdown of collective bargaining — it is the indispensable cornerstone of that process."

Quote from a Canadian Federation Of Labour publication, 1979

Free Cecily!

An Obvious Choice?

"The increasing anxiety of American life comes from the covert guilt that abundance and equality remain utterly separated, and we have reached the point where socialism is not only morally demanding but unconsciously obvious — obvious enough to flood with anxiety the psyches of those millions who know and yet do nothing." -Norman Mailer

From Advertisements For Myself, 1959

A Jury Of Her Peers

Justice For Cecily

Letter via The Guardian

A Vision Of The Future

"The verdict in the biggest Occupy related criminal case in New York City, that of Cecily McMillan, came down Monday afternoon. As disturbing as it is that she was found guilty of felony assault against Officer Grantley Bovell, the circumstances of her trial reflect an even more disturbing reality – that of normalized police violence, disproportionately punitive sentences (McMillan faces seven years in prison), and a criminal penal system based on anything but justice. While this is nothing new for the over-policed communities of New York City, what happened to McMillan reveals just how powerful and unrestrained a massive police force can be in fighting back against the very people with whom it is charged to protect." -Molly Knefel, The Guardian

Justice For Cecily's statement

Witness To History

The '60s: Decade Of Change

"My photographs became my protest. My friends stood up and picketed, and I was a surrogate of them. I protested for them and with them, through my pictures." -Benedict J. Fernandez

On exhibit from May 2nd – Friday, July 20th

Bronx Documentary Center

614 Courtlandt Avene, Bronx, NY

Photograph: 1968 MLK Solidarity march, © Benedict J. Fernandez

The Long Revolution

"It is our basic case, in this manifesto, that the separate campaigns in which we have been active, and the separate issues with which we have all been concerned, run back, in their essence to a single political system and its alternatives. We believe that the system we now oppose can only survive by a willed separation of issues, and the resulting fragmentation of consciousness. Our own first position is that all the issues, industrial and political, international and domestic, economic and cultural, humanitarian and radical, are deeply connected; that what we oppose is a political, economic and social system, that what we work for is a different whole society." -from The May Day Manifesto, 1967

"This is a language of socialist aspiration which is today scarcely uttered. At a time when many are coming to see that the triumph of neoliberalism — an unfettered version of capitalism — has come at enormous economic, social and environmental cost, it seems to me that The May Day Manifesto deserves to be read again as a contribution to the project of inspiring a concerted resistance to the system that now dominates much of the world." -from The May Day Manifesto, 1968 edition

Download: The May Day Manifesto