Dissident Veteran For Peace: Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Monday, June 16, 2008

Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73

I just recently learned that Utah Phillips died late last month. I met Utah Phillips on a couple of his visits to Ann Arbor in the mid-1990s and was fortunate to participate in some long discussions with him at the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) national office when it was located in downtown Ypsilanti. Utah was a great storyteller who told great stories in song and word. He was a generous man who exemplified the best of the IWW's anarcho-syndicalist principles. You can read the "offical [sic] Obituary as provided by the family" here. Click here to hear Utah's "Moose Turd Pie" story. Below is a clip of Utah talking about how his stint in Korea with the US Army radicalized him.