Today, The Winsors and The Grandma have met JohnLennon and Yoko Ono, two of the most important artists of the last century, to celebrate SusanaWinsor'sbirthday.
The have been talking about peace and war, and about hippie and punk movements with the figures of CyndiLauper and GillianAnderson, and about the political situation in the USA and Europe during the Vietnam and Falkland Islands wars until nowadays.
Before the meeting, the family has revised again the Possessive Pronouns and they have studied the Comparative of Superiority.
John Winston Ono Lennon (9 October 1940–8 December 1980) was an English singer and songwriter who co-founded The Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of popular music. With fellow member PaulMcCartney, he formed a celebrated songwriting partnership.
Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager; his first band, The Quarrymen, evolved into the Beatles in 1960.
When the group disbanded in 1970, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced albums including John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and songs such as Give Peace a Chance, Working Class Hero, and Imagine.After his marriage to Yoko Ono
in 1969, he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. Lennon disengaged
himself from the music business in 1975 to raise his infant son Sean,
but re-emerged with Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks after its release.
Lennon
revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing,
drawings, on film and in interviews. Controversial through his political
and peace activism, he moved to Manhattan in 1971, where his criticism
of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard Nixon's
administration to deport him, while some of his songs were adopted as
anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture.
At around 10:50 p.m. on 8 December 1980, as Lennon and Ono returned to their New York apartment in the Dakota, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times in the archway of the building. Lennon was taken to the emergency room of nearby Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:00 p.m. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman.
Ono issued a statement the next day, saying There is no funeral for John, ending it with the words, John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him. His body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York's Central Park, where the Strawberry FieldsMemorial
was later created. Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and
was sentenced to 20-years-to-life. In 2016, he was denied parole for a
ninth time.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Marguerite Higgins Hall, the American reporter and war correspondent, who was born on a day like today on 1920.
Marguerite Higgins Hall (September 3, 1920-January 3, 1966) was an American reporter and war correspondent.
Higgins covered World War II, theKorean War, and the Vietnam War, and in the process advanced the cause of equal access for female war correspondents.
She had a long career with the New York Herald Tribune (1942-1963), and later, as a syndicated columnist for Newsday(1963-1965).
She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Correspondence awarded in 1951 for her coverage of the Korean War.
Higgins was born on September 3, 1920, in Hong Kong, where her father, Lawrence Higgins, was working at a shipping company. Her father, an Irish-American, met his future wife and Higgins' mother, Marguerite de Godard Higgins (who was of French aristocratic descent) in WWI Paris. Shortly afterward, they moved to Hong Kong, where their daughter was born.
The family moved back to the United States three years later and settled in Oakland.
Higgins started at the University of California, Berkeley in the fall of 1937 where she was a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority and wrote for The Daily Californian, serving as an editor in 1940.
She walked into the New York Herald Tribune city office after arriving in New York in August 1941. She met with the city editor at the time, L.L. Engel Engelking, and showed him her clippings. While he didn't offer her a job at the time, he told her to come back in a month and maybe he'd have a position for her. Shedecided to stay in New York and studied at Columbia.
Eager to become a war correspondent, Higgins persuaded the management of the New York Herald Tribune to send her to Europe in 1944, after working for the paper for two years. After being stationed in London and Paris, she was reassigned to Germany in March 1945. She witnessed the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945 and received a U.S. Army campaign ribbon for her assistance during the surrender by its S.S. guards. She later covered the Nuremberg war trials and the Soviet Union's blockade of Berlin.
In 1947, she became the Chief of the Tribune's bureau in Berlin.
In 1950, Higgins was named chief of the Tribune's Tokyo bureau, and she received a cold welcome by her colleagues in Tokyo. She later learned that a recently published novel by her colleague in Berlin had created a hostile impression. The novel, Shriek With Pleasure, depicted a female reporter in Berlin who stole stories and slept with sources.
As a result of her reporting from Korea, Higgins received the 1950 George Polk Memorial Award from the Overseas Press Club. She contributed along with other major journalistic and political figures to the Collier's magazine collaborative special issue Preview of the War We Do Not Want, with an article entitled Women of Russia.
Higgins continued to cover foreign affairs throughout the rest of her life, interviewing world leaders such as Francisco Franco, Nikita Khrushchev, and Jawaharlal Nehru.
In 1955, she established and became chief of the Tribune's Moscow bureau and was the first American correspondent allowed back into the Soviet Union after Stalin's death.
In 1963, she joined Newsday and was assigned to cover Vietnam, where she visited hundreds of villages, interviewed most of the major figures, and wrote a book entitled Our Vietnam Nightmare. While in Vietnam, another feud developed between Higgins and David Halberstam, a New York Times correspondent who was assigned to replace Bigart. Her battle was not for scoops or headlines this time. Instead, it was based on the ideological differences and ego between an experienced correspondent, Higgins, and a young Halberstam.
When Higgins was six months old, she came down with malaria. A doctor told the family to take her to a mountain resort in present-day Vietnam to recover, which she did. Decades later, Higgins returned from assignment in South Vietnam in November 1965, where Higgins contracted leishmaniasis, a disease that led to her death on January 3, 1966, aged 45, in Washington, D.C. She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery with her husband.
I thought then how much more matter-of-fact the actuality of war is than any of its projections in literature. The wounded seldom cry -there’s no one with time and emotion to listen.
Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to read about the Camden 28, a group of Catholic left anti-Vietnam War activists who in 1971 planned and executed a raid on a Camden.Twenty members of the Camden 28 were arrested on a day like today in 1971 by the FBI.
Vietnam War was one of the most terrifying moments of our closest history, a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.
It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand, and other anti-communist allies.
The war, considered a Cold War-era proxy war by some, lasted 19 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973, and included the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.
Lots of voices rose up in the USA against this war and the story of the Camden28 is one of these thousands of stories of people who claimed the end of this war.
The Camden 28 were a group of Catholic left anti-Vietnam War activists who in 1971 planned and executed a raid on a Camden, New Jersey draft board.
The raid resulted in a high-profile criminal trial of the activists
that was seen by many as a referendum on the Vietnam War and as an
example of successful use of jury nullification.
The goal of the group was to make a bold statement in opposition to the war in Vietnam by way of sabotaging the portion of the draft process that was administered through the local draft board in Camden.
Their plan was to break into the draft board offices at night and search for, collect, and either destroy or remove the records of all Class 1-A status draft registrants. It was to be both a symbolic and real blow to the process through which tens of thousands of young American men were being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam.
Some members of the Camden 28 arrested, 1971
Not all of the group's
members were students or hippies, the stereotypical anti-Vietnam War
activists.
The mostly Catholic group also included four priests and a
Protestant minister, people working in education or legal and social
services, veterans, and middle-aged parents. One notable member was Frank Pommersheim.Members of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI were also involved.
One group member, Bob Hardy, was opposed to the war but was also secretly opposed to the group's plans to break the law with this action. Feeling torn between loyalty to his friends in the group and his strict law-and-order personal philosophy, Hardy approached the local FBI with his concerns.
The FBI encouraged Hardy to remain with the group so that he could pass along information about their activities. Hardy agreed to become an informant, allegedly only after receiving assurances from his FBI handlers that none of the group would ever spend any time in jail for the raid against the draft board. The FBI agreed to finance much of Hardy's role within the group.
As an FBI informant, Hardy became heavily involved with the group from a planning and training perspective. As he was a hands-on carpenter and handyman, he helped devise the plan whereby the group could break into the Federal office building within which the draft board was located.
He supplied tools,
mostly paid for by the FBI, expertise and training. Ladders would be
used, windows would be cut with glass cutters and alarms would be bypassed. 2-way radios were supplied by the FBI so that the activists could
better communicate and coordinate their actions when the raid was to
finally occur.
The raid was planned for the early hours of Sunday, August 22, 1971. With the activists all in their positions the raid commenced. Unknown to the activists, the raid was being carefully monitored and documented from the shadows by more than 40 FBI agents. The FBI agents held back and watched as the activists broke into the draft board office and commenced destroying and bagging thousands of draft-related documents.
After a significant amount of time passed during which thousands of documents had been handled, the hidden FBI agents were ordered to spring into action and arrest everyone involved. Those arrested, including two Catholic priests and a Protestant minister, became known as the Camden 28. The fact that BobHardy had betrayed the activists became readily apparent as the night wore on.
By the time that the Camden 28 were brought to trial in the Spring of 1973, their case was viewed by many as a referendum on the Vietnam War. Each of the 28 faced seven felony charges stemming from the raid and more than 40 years in prison if convicted. The 28 chose to be tried together.
Some members of the Camden 28
Immediately prior to the trial they were offered a plea-bargain whereby they would each plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge and the rest of the charges would be dropped.
After intense discussion the28 decided that they would not take the plea and that as political activists they preferred to be put on trial. Historian Howard Zinn was brought in to testify on behalf of the defendants.
Unfortunately for the prosecution, its star witness Bob Hardy was feeling that he had been betrayed by the government. Hardy maintained that from the start of his interaction with the FBI he sought and received assurances that none of his co-conspirators in the raid would see any jail time. Now, as the trial loomed ahead, each of the 28 was facing more than 40 years in prison.
For the FBI and the prosecution, the cost of betraying Hardy in this fashion was to lose him as a friendly witness. Scorned, Hardy would now, in fact, testify extensively for the defense. Hardy would testify regarding the extent to which the FBI encouraged and enabled the raid on the draft board to take place.
Through Hardy's testimony, the raid came across as being funded and driven by the FBI, and the defense was able to argue effectively that through the FBI,the government "over-reached" in its zeal to arrest and prosecute this particular set of anti-war activists.
Additionally, it became apparent that the FBI had enabled the plot to form and develop because it believed the Camden group might have been connected to the theft and publication of FBI documents in Media, PA several months prior.
In fact, at least two of the Camden defendants (Keith Forsyth and RobertWilliamson) had been involved in the Media burglary, though this was not revealed until they stepped forward in 2014.
Those documents had revealed the COINTELPRO program, and the Camden defendants essentially used their own trial to publicize and question FBI methods.
On May 20, 1973, the jury returned not guilty verdicts for all counts against all 28 defendants, acquitting them. Howard Zinn had testified at the trial and recommended civil disobedience and jury nullification. Nearly 50 years after breaking into the Camden draft board and destroying records to protest the war in Vietnam, members of the Camden 28 took to the stand in the federal courtroom where they were tried.
Supreme Court Justice William Brennan called the trial, one of the great trials of the 20th century. Father Michael Doyle, one of the 28 who was a Catholic priest at Sacred Heart Church in Camden at the time, remains a priest and community leader there today. The church, led by Doyle, continues to campaign for peace, equality, and social justice and holds an annual PeaceGathering.
John Winston Ono Lennon (9 October 1940–8 December 1980) was an English singer and songwriter who co-founded The Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of popular music. With fellow member Paul McCartney, he formed a celebrated songwriting partnership.
Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager; his first band, The Quarrymen, evolved into the Beatles in 1960.
When the group disbanded in 1970, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced albums including John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and songs such as Give Peace a Chance, Working Class Hero, and Imagine. After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to raise his infant son Sean, but re-emerged with Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks after its release.
Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. Controversial through his political and peace activism, he moved to Manhattan in 1971, where his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard Nixon's administration to deport him, while some of his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture.
Yoko Ono and John Lennon in Gibraltar, UK
At around 10:50 p.m. on 8 December 1980, as Lennon and Ono returned to their New York apartment in the Dakota, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times in the archway of the building. Lennon was taken to the emergency room of nearby Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:00 p.m. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman.
Ono issued a statement the next day, saying There is no funeral for John, ending it with the words, John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him. His body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York's Central Park, where the Strawberry FieldsMemorial was later created. Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20-years-to-life. In 2016, he was denied parole for a ninth time.
My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role,
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