Rockets Red Glare

I like your very workable and intriguing song, Edgar

The site where I post my lyrics is very leery of it, apparently. They display it in ways that could only be meant to hide it. My son says it may get me on a government list. Hell, if I ain't on some list by now I never will be.

Who knows, Edgar? In years to come,there may well be (if history is anything to go by) people trying to prove they were on some Government blacklist in 2007.
That they did not 'stand by' and watch the wrong doing silently.:wink:

The demonstrations in the 60s, mailing back my draft card- -no telling what else. I once wrote a letter to the president: "Dear Nixon/Don't be a prick/Give peace a chance." Having an SDS (Students for Democratic Society) membership card. Appearing on the White House lawn with Jesse Jackson. - - - You just never know what will get you on a list.

Don't be a prick/Give peace a chance

I'm having a t-shirt made!

As I recall, the full text of the letter was:
"Dear Nixon. Don't be a prick. Give peace a chance. End the war." Almost forgot that last sentence.

- black t-shirts with

Don't be a prick. Give peace a chance.
********* End The War **********

with the last bit in white
Edgar - it's got something...

It gave me a great deal of satisfaction to mail it. Not that the president ever saw it.

Any more where this came from, Edgar?

Anti war stuff? I could dig around this weekend and see what I've got.

Hey, Edgar - I'd be interested...

In 1968, I briefly flirted with the idea of becoming a member of The Peace and Freedom Party. They were introduced to me as an anti Vietnam War party, with high social ideals. I met one of their representatives during a demonstration and we had a few conversations. But, they were not getting the press, and seemed to fade away right off. I was somewhat surprised to learn the party is still alive in California. - edgarblythe


Peace and Freedom Party
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

United States Peace and Freedom Party logoThe Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) is a ballot-listed minor political party in California. It is a left-wing feminist and socialist party. Although its first candidates appeared on the ballot in 1966, the national party was founded in 1967 as a leftist organization opposed to the Vietnam War. Since that time, the party has become consolidated in California.

Platform
The PFP from the very beginning has been a left-of-center political organization. It is a strong advocate of protecting the environment from pollution and nuclear waste. It advocates the right of self-determination of peoples and personal liberties as well as universal free access to education and health care. Since 1974, the Peace and Freedom Party platform has been feminist and socialist. Its understanding of socialism includes a socialist economy, where industries, financial institutions, and natural resources are owned by the people as a whole and democratically managed by the people who work in them and use them.


Organization
The Peace and Freedom Party is governed by its State Central Committee (SCC) and local County Central Committees. The party central committees are elected in the direct primary election, with any Peace and Freedom registrant eligible to run. Local County Central Committees and the State Central Committee may also appoint persons to membership who wish to be active in the party. A biennial state convention adopts the PFP platform.


History

Founding
The Peace and Freedom Party was organized on June 23, 1967 by social activists in the farm workers, civil rights, and anti-Vietnam War movements. Its initial registration drive began at a demonstration against Lyndon Johnson at the Century City Plaza in Los Angeles California.

The party's name has sometimes created confusion with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, an international anti-war organization. While many Peace and Freedom Party members are also members of WILPF, the two organizations are not affiliated with each other and have no historical connection.

The Peace and Freedom Party grew out of the widespread unhappiness with the Democratic Party's support for the war in Vietnam and failure to effectively support the civil rights movement.

In 1966, three men ran for the U.S. House on the Peace & Freedom Party label. Herbert Apetheker received 3,562 votes in New York's 12th Congressional District; Robert B. Shaw received 1,974 votes in Washington's 7th Congressional District; and Frank L. Patterson received 1,105 votes in Washington's 2d Congressional District.


[edit] Election of 1968
The party achieved ballot status in California at the start of 1968 by registering over 105,000 voters under its banner. It later got ballot status in 13 other states, but in most of those the election laws and small organization meant that it was unable to retain ballot status after 1968.

The PFP's first national convention to nominate candidates for President and Vice President was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on August 17-August 18, 1968. Eldridge Cleaver was nominated for President over Richard C. "Dick" Gregory by a margin of 161.5 to 54. Cleaver, a convicted felon and Black Panther spokesman, was technically not eligible to run since he was only 34 years old at the time. Due to the needs of the state parties to collect signatures, the party fielded several different vice presidential nominees, including Chicago activist Peggy Terry, [FNU] Gonzalez, radical economist Doug Dowd, and Judith Mage, who had been nominated at the national convention. Cleaver personally preferred Yippie leader Jerry Rubin. Gregory formed a competing Freedom and Peace party and ran separately. Two states (California and Utah) refused to list Cleaver on the ballot, although each state listed the Presidential Electors and candidates for Vice President (Terry in California and Gonzalez in Utah).

A variety of people joined the PFP in its first election. Bob Avakian was a spokesman for the party in the San Francisco Area. The New York Peace and Freedom Party consisted of a fractious coalition of competing Marxist groups, along with libertarians led by economist Murray Rothbard. Libertarians briefly took over the California branch of the party as well.

In the election of 1968, the PFP fared fairly well for a new third party. Gregory outpolled Cleaver, receiving 47,097 votes to Cleaver's 36,623. In California and Utah, where no presidential nominee appeared on the ballot, the voters cast 27,887 votes for the PFP. The full nationwide vote for Presidential Electors was thus 111,607. PFP candidates for the U.S. Senate garnered an aggregate nationwide total of 105,411 votes. In Utah, the PFP fielded folk musician Bruce "Utah" Phillips for Congress, garnering 2,019 votes. The PFP gained ballot access in California, which it retained except for the brief period 1999-2003.


The People's Party and the PFP
After 1968, the PFP affiliates in most states dissolved, with the California party as the primary exception. Throughout the 1970s, the California party continued to contest local elections but endorsed the national candidates of the left-wing People's Party. In 1972, the People's Party nominated the democratic socialist and anti-war activist Benjamin Spock for President, and in 1976 it nominated Margaret Wright of California for President.


Recent History
In 1998, the PFP failed to attain more than 2% of the votes cast, causing the party to lose ballot status in the state. Their position on the ballot was restored in 2003 after a voter registration drive. Longtime PFP activist CT Weber was one of 135 candidates who ran for governor in the October 2003 recall election, in which voters threw out then-Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, and elected Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. At the August 2004 State Convention, the militant Native American activist Leonard Peltier was nominated as the party's presidential candidate. Peltier was at the time (and as of 2007, still is) imprisoned as a convicted murderer; however, his supporters believe that he was framed and is a political prisoner instead. Party members who supported Peltier's candidacy hoped to draw attention to his case, and to the effort to win a presidential pardon for Peltier.

The party again fell under the required number of registered voters to retain ballot status in February 2006, and was declared disqualified by the California Secretary of State. However, citing previous instances in which parties not meeting the 'ballot qualification' criteria were still allowed to participate in primary elections and the fact that there had not yet been a regular gubernatorial election since the party regained its ballot status (and as such, the decision was premature), the decision to bar the party from the June 2006 Primary was reversed after less than a week.

In the November 7, 2006 election, two Peace and Freedom Party candidates received over 2% of the vote, thus ensuring the party's ballot status for the next four years. (Elizabeth Barron received 212,383 votes, 2.5% of the total, for Controller,[1] and Tom Condit received 187,618 votes, 2.2% of the total, for Insurance Commissioner.[2])


Presidential tickets
1968 - Eldridge Cleaver & Douglas Fitzgerald Dowd
1972 - Benjamin Spock & Julius Hobson (People's Party)
1976 - Margaret Wright & Benjamin Spock (People's Party)
1980 - Maureen Smith & Elizabeth Barron
1984 - Sonia Johnson (Citizens Party) & Emma Wong Mar
1988 - Herbert Lewin & Vikki Murdock
1992 - Ronald Daniels & Asiba Tupahache
1996 - Marsha Feinland & Kate McClatchy
2004 - Leonard Peltier & Janice Jordan

California Gubernatorial candidates
1970 - Ricardo Romo
1974 - Elizabeth Keathley
1978 - Marilyn Seals
1982 - Elizabeth Martinez
1986 - Maria Elizabeth Muñoz
1990 - Maria Elizabeth Muñoz
1994 - Gloria LaRiva
1998 - Gloria LaRiva
2003 - C.T. Weber
2006 - Janice Jordan

thanks Edgar - this is the bit i liked best



and why the hell not?