Not celebrating

Celebrating Independence Day this weekend seems somehow wrong, bearing in mind the ongoing devastation in the Gulf of Mexico, two endless, useless, cruel wars, the little being done to address climate change, as well as the.....oh we all know the contents of that dismal list. No doubt the challenging planetary configuration we're experiencing this summer has something to do with the insidious gloom that steals in whenever I start thinking on these matters.

The late Howard Zinn always had the right words, words to alert, enlighten and inspire us. He was an outspoken civil rights and anti-war activist, "people's historian" and political scientist. He died this year, aged 87 (and on my birthday, as it happens). I've chosen a few of his wise words to post, below.



Born on 24 August 1922 in Brooklyn, New York, his natal Sun, Mercury and possibly Moon are all in Virgo, ruled by Mercury, the communicator's planet. Saturn, Venus and Jupiter all in Libra, sign of the diplomat. Not every critic looks on Zinn as diplomatic, however. His radical opinions have ruffled a few feathers in the past. Uranus in Pisces lies opposite Mercury in Virgo providing a dynamic pull towards rebellion and against the status quo.





A few of his words:

The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.

Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson – that everything we do matters – is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.

I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

— Howard Zinn

Cameth the hour ~ Eugene V. Debs

"Cometh the hour, cometh the man" - that concept appeals to me. I think it originated, though not in those exact words, in Sir Walter Scott's novel Guy Mannering. There's a wee flavour of astrology about it. It has been known to work too, not always, but on many occasions. It's as though a communal need gathers critical mass and draws to it the right man/woman to deal with a serious or dangerous situation.

In the USA one such guy, in my not so humble opinion, was Eugene Debs. “A dynamic and visionary leader of the 19th century railroad workers; preeminent spokesman for the Socialist labor tradition; beloved by those whose lives he touched.” He came along when things in the USA were getting badly out of balance with the increase in industrialisation. Workers were being exploited, poverty was rife, inequality reigned. Debs didn't make it to the presidency, in spite of running in 1900, 1904, 1908 1912 and 1920 as Socialist Party candidate.His last campaign had to be conducted from behind prison bars, while serving a 10 year sentence for opposing America's entrance into World War I and denouncing the Espionage Act (designed to silence all anti-war sentiment). He was released under under a general amnesty on Christmas Day 1921 by Warren G. Harding.

Eugene Debs' noble ideals were noted and absorbed; some things improved then, and later, because of his efforts.

The late Howard Zinn's 1999 article, Eugene V. Debs and the Idea of Socialism is a good read, I shall take the liberty of using an extract from it here.

Debs was what every socialist or anarchist or radical should be: fierce in his convictions, kind and compassionate in his personal relations. ........................
In the era of Debs, the first seventeen years of the twentieth century-until war created an opportunity to crush the movement-millions of Americans declared their adherence to the principles of socialism. Those were years of bitter labor struggles, the great walkouts of women garment workers in New York, the victorious multiethnic strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the unbelievable courage of coal miners in Colorado, defying the power and wealth of the Rockefellers. The I.W.W. was born-revolutionary, militant, demanding "one big union" for everyone, skilled and unskilled, black and white, men and women, native-born and foreign-born.

The following paragraph I found surprising, particularly the part about our state, Oklahoma. Things have changed beyond recognition here. News came yesterday of a plan by the Oklahoma Tea Party to raise a "constitutional" armed militia here to oppose the Federal government: see here:

More than a million people read Appeal to Reason and other socialist newspapers. In proportion to population, it would be as if today more than three million Americans read a socialist press. The party had 100,000 members, and 1,200 office-holders in 340 municipalities. Socialism was especially strong in the Southwest, among tenant farmers, railroad workers, coal miners, lumberjacks. Oklahoma had 12,000 dues-paying members in 1914 and more than 100 socialists in local offices.

And the following states exactly my own view (thank you Mr. Zinn, RIP)

The point of recalling all this is to remind us of the powerful appeal of the socialist idea to people alienated from the political system and aware of the growing stark disparities in income and wealth-as so many Americans are today. The word itself-"socialism"-may still carry the distortions of recent experience in bad places usurping the name. But anyone who goes around the country, or reads carefully the public opinion surveys over the past decade, can see that huge numbers of Americans agree on what should be the fundamental elements of a decent society: guaranteed food, housing, medical care for everyone; bread and butter as better guarantees of "national security" than guns and bombs; democratic control of corporate power; equal rights for all races, genders, and sexual orientations; a recognition of the rights of immigrants as the unrecognized counterparts of our parents and grandparents; the rejection of war and violence as solutions for tyranny and injustice.

There are people fearful of the word, all along the political spectrum. What is important, I think, is not the word, but a determination to hold up before a troubled public those ideas that are both bold and inviting-the more bold, the more inviting. That's what remembering Debs and the socialist idea can do for us.

Eugene V. Debs was born on 5 November 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana. I can find no time of birth for him on-line, which I find surprising; Astrodatabank doesn't even have an entry for him.
So, a 12 noon chart must suffice. Ascendant degree/sign is unknown as is Moon's degree, though Moon would be in Virgo until 8pm and Libra afterwards.


Debs' natal Sun was in passionate, magnetic Scorpio. I've noticed that Scorpio input can often translate into personality as someone who has an exceptional ability to use words to their most mesmerising effect - Carl Sagan springs immediately to mind. Debs certainly had this very special talent.

Outer planets Pluto (ruler of his Scorpio Sun) and Uranus the rebel planet were both in Taurus and loosely opposing his Sun/Mercury. This opposition reflects a dynamic push-pull between two transformative outer planets in the rather stubborn conservative sign of Taurus against his Sun (self) and Mercury (mental processes ) in passionate, determined Scorpio. Debs, fortunately, was able to harness this dynamic to draw the best from both.

The other outer planet, Neptune (imagination, dreams, creativity) lay in its own sign, Pisces in harmony with Debs' Scorpio Sun, and forming a wide Grand Trine with the addition of Saturn in the last degree of Gemini, about to move into Watery Cancer. The near-trines here are too wide to be strong aspects however, but the planets are in harmony. Neptune and Saturn in harmony bring the stability and common sense of Saturn into the often foggy dreams of Neptunian imagination. That's good! I'd guess this Water "circuit", and the fact that Debs' had no planets in the more potentially aggressive Fire signs, accounts in part for his reputation as a gentle, kindly guy. Howard Zinn starts the article linked above thus:

We are always in need of radicals who are also lovable, and so we would do well to remember Eugene Victor Debs.....Debs was nationally famous as leader of the Socialist Party, and the poet James Whitcomb Riley wrote of him:
"As warm a heart as ever beat
Betwixt here and the Judgment Seat."

These words from Eugene Debs himself are what endear him to me:

"If you go to the city of Washington, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of congress, and mis-representatives of the masses claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad that I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks."

Back my first thought: "Cometh the hour, cometh the man" - where is such a mortal in 2010? I suspect that "the hour" is nigh!

The People Speak ~ Howard Zinn

A TV programme on the History Channel tomorrow evening is going to be a rare treat. "The People Speak" is based on historian Howard Zinn's 1980 book, A People's History of the United States, the story of the USA from a perspective of disenfranchised minorities rather than the more traditional perspective of the powerful elite.

Howard Zinn is an outspoken civil rights and anti-war activist, "people's historian" and political scientist.


Born on 24 August 1922 in Brooklyn, New York, his natal Sun, Mercury and possibly Moon are all in Virgo, ruled by Mercury, the communicator's planet. Saturn, Venus and Jupiter all in Libra, sign of the diplomat. Not every critic looks on Zinn as diplomatic, however. His radical opinions have ruffled a few feathers in the past. Uranus in Pisces lies opposite Mercury in Virgo providing a dynamic pull towards rebellion and against the status quo.

I look forward to seeing "The People Speak". Naturally it will focus on the USA, but similar history could be presented about most countries in the world. I've had reason lately to become more aware of what life was like in England around a couple of centuries ago. While researching my family tree at Ancestry.com I've come across lots of clues, especially relating to folks who lived in rural areas. History books record activities of the great, the good, and the wealthy, but seldom draw our attention to the detail of life's indignities and daily grind for ordinary people. I suppose the folk in question didn't see it quite that way, for they knew no other. They lived their lives having to bow and scrape, physically and psychologically, to the aristocracy, landowners and wealthy classes. Minor crimes and misdemeanors were rewarded at best with a whipping, at worst with deportation on prison ships to Australia or New Zealand. Thousands lived their lives in "workhouses", little more than prisons for the poor, while the wealthy lived in palatial mansions with armies of servants to wait upon them.

Bad as it was in the countryside and in small towns, things were even worse in urban areas where the industrial revolution was in full swing creating demand for child labour and what could be termed as slavery in cotton and woollen mills and factories. Children as young as 5 years old were sent to work in coal mines; small children were forced to climb up inside chimneys to clean them. There was little sanitation or medical care. Life-spans were short.

Today, though the world's wealth is still owned by a tiny proportion of its population, ordinary people have, at last, slowly and painfully over many decades forced themselves out from under.

We have our problems, but we also have an awful lot to be thankful for in the 21st century.