Equal Time for Free Thought

Sunsara has recently joined the team that does Equal Time for Free Thought at WBAI radio, 99.5 FM in NYC. It airs Sunday evenings, 6:30 - 7:00.

She produced and hosted her first show on January 22, the anniversary of Roe V. Wade. She played editted excerpts of Bob Avakian's talk, "God Does Not Exist and We Need Liberation Without Gods" and interviewed abortion-provider Dr. Warren Hern.

Archives can be found here:
http://www.njhn.org/etff_archives.html

WBAI's Wake-up Call 2/3/06

Mario Murillo interviews NY State Senator Tom Duane, Michael Ratner of Center for Constitutional Rights and Sunsara Taylor - all speaking for The World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime.
Listen here: http://archive.wbai.org/pls.php?mp3fil=4373

CNN's Showbiz Tonight

Responding to the 1/20/06 World Can't Wait New York Times Ad:
http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/showbiz/2006/01/21/das.stars.vs.bush.affl

Times Flies - Updates from the Road

I was on the Mike Malloy show on Air America two nights ago. You can listen here: http://server4.whiterosesociety.org/content/malloy/MalloyShow-(17-01-2006).mp3
If that doesn't work, go here: http://whiterosesociety.org/Malloy.html
and just scroll down to Tuesday, January 17th. I was on at 10:30 pm, which is about half an hour into the show.

Oh yeah, this Sunday I will be helping to produce a radio segment on abortion and Christian fascism utilizing segments of Bob Avakian's talks on religion (these can be found at bobavakian.net). This will be on WBAI's "Equal Time for Free Thought" at 6:30 pm in NY. (http://www.njhn.org/etff.html)

Later for now,
Sunsara

Schiavo Receives Last RitesBy DAVID SOMMER

http://us.f809.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=dsommer@tampatrib.com

Published: Mar 29, 2005

PINELLAS PARK - Easter began with two ministers performing a sunrise service in front of Terri Schiavo's hospice and turned into the hottest day yet, as increasingly agitated demonstrators gathered for what was becoming a death watch.

The ministers, identified by Pinellas Park police as Richard Barnard, 60, and Chester Gallagher, 55, both of Illinois, were quietly arrested after their nondenominational 7 a.m. service when they told officers they intended to enter the hospice to provide Terri Schiavo with Communion.

Later in the day, Monsignor Thaddeus Malanowski, family spiritual adviser to Schiavo and her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, gave the brain- damaged woman Holy Communion by placing a drop of consecrated wine on her lips. Malanowski said Schiavo's mouth was too parched to receive a particle of the host wafer. Because she had just entered her 10th day without food or water, and ``death is imminent,'' the priest said he also administered Catholic last rites.

Bob Schindler's assessment of his daughter's condition was more optimistic. Schindler said his family doctor told him what to look for as Schiavo's condition deteriorates. Although she appears gaunt from lack of sustenance, when he pinched her skin, it was surprisingly resilient, a sign she remains somewhat hydrated, he said.

``Her cheekbones dominate her face and her eyes look like they are going to pop,'' Schindler said. ``Visualize a concentration camp victim, and that's what she looks like.''
Medical personnel at Hospice House Woodside have begun to treat his daughter with pain medication, Schindler said.

``Whoever tells you that starving to death is a peaceful way to go is full of it,'' he said.
Some Demonstrators Agitated

As the day grew warmer and muggier Sunday morning, some among a growing crowd of approximately 100 demonstrators became unruly.

One man repeatedly taunted a phalanx of police officers by giving them a Nazi salute. The officers ignored him.

Around 11 a.m., a crowd began to chant, ``Give Terri water!'' And a man and a woman approached the police line bearing water bottles.

As had every other arrested person before her, Helen Valdis, 43, of Wisconsin, made a token show of disobeying police orders to desist and was taken away quietly.

However, Colorado resident Doug McBurney, 35, resisted officers by stiffening his body and repeatedly screaming, ``Don't murder her!'' He was handcuffed and placed in a police wagon.
Police Capt. Sanfield Forseth said McBurney was the first of the 37 people arrested up to that point to give officers any trouble at all.

As with all 36 others, he was charged with misdemeanor trespassing and jailed with bail set at $250.

After the arrests, Bobby Schindler tried to calm the demonstrators, telling them they were doing his sister no good by taunting police.

``It is not going to help at all,'' the younger Schindler said as he waded into the crowd. ``The cops are just here to do a job.''

A man in the crowd who later identified himself as Robert J. More of the Demonstrably Non-Counterfeit Roman Catholic Protection Network began to argue with Schindler.

``The fact is we are all Terri's brothers,'' More shouted. Again, Bobby Schindler appealed for calm and lawful behavior.

``We are not going to solve this problem today by getting arrested,'' he said. Later, he lamented the lack of civility among some self- professed Schindler supporters.

``I have nothing but praise for the cops, but those people won't listen to me,'' he shrugged.
Police later continued to show restraint when a group of wheelchair users from the organization Not Dead Yet converged on a hospice driveway and slid from their chairs to lie on the ground in an act of civil disobedience.

``We love our tubes and hoses,'' proclaimed activist Carol Cleigh of North Carolina when it was her turn on the bullhorn.

Police declined to make arrests. ``We are not going to press this issue,'' one officer said.

The spectacle continued as one man strode up and down the sidewalk bearing a baby doll smeared with red paint and a sign with the name King Solomon crossed out above the words Judge Greer, in reference to Circuit Judge George Greer. Nearby, another demonstrator held a sign that read: ``Hospice or Auschwitz?''

Counterdemonstrators Appear

A handful of counterdemonstrators holding signs touting the ``Revolutionary Communist Party'' decried what they said was ``Christian fascism.''

It was Judge Greer who ruled, after a January 2000 nonjury trial, that evidence showed Terri Schiavo would not want to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of improvement.

Michael Schiavo and two of his relatives testified that his wife made statements prior to suffering heart failure in 1990 at age 26, indicating her wish not to be kept alive with tubes and hoses.
The Schindlers testified their daughter would want to be kept alive. They dispute their daughter's diagnosis and say she reacts to them and could improve with therapy.

The Gulfport couple have repeatedly appealed the case up and down the state and the federal court systems.

Their only major success came in April 2002 when another judge ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted two days after it was removed for the first time on Greer's order.

In October 2003, when the tube was removed for the second time and Terri Schiavo had gone six days without sustenance, Gov. Jeb Bush interceded using a hastily crafted measure known as Terri's Law that was subsequently ruled unconstitutional.

At afternoon and evening news conferences, Schindler supporters again called on Bush to intervene.

They also asked congressional leaders to enforce witness subpoenas requiring that Terri Schiavo be kept alive so she can testify before House and Senate committees.
Reporter Anthony McCartney contributed to this report.

Sunsara on the frontlines against the Christian fascists. 

From the NY Times, March 28

Two women from New York City arrived late in the afternoon with blank sheets of poster board that they intended to emblazon with the messages "Leave the Dark Ages in History" and "We Need Morality, But Not 'Traditional' Morality."

One of the women, Sunsara Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, said she and her colleague, Debra Sweet, an abortion rights activist, intended to spend two days at the site, to make sure "the other side" is heard.

"What we intend to say is that we don't want to live in a theocracy," Ms. Taylor said. "We don't want to creep towards Christian fascism in this country."

Ms. Sweet said she recognized several people from protests outside abortion clinics around the country. "This is their whole life," she said.

CNN.com March 27, 2005

Backers of Schiavo's parents head to Washington
Dying woman receives Easter Communion -- a drop of wine
Monday, March 28, 2005 Posted: 9:38 AM EST (1438 GMT)
var clickExpire = "-1";

Demonstrators on both sides of the debate shout and hold signs outside the hospice Sunday.
Image:


TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) -- With their court battles apparently exhausted, supporters of Terri Schiavo's parents on Monday will go to Washington to again implore lawmakers to step in.
Previous moves by Congress to intervene in the case have been struck down by courts on both the state and federal levels.
On Easter Sunday, Schiavo's ninth day without food or water, the severely brain-damaged woman received Holy Communion -- a single drop of wine on her tongue.
As Schiavo continues to deteriorate, her parents' backers aren't giving up.
The Rev. Patrick Mahoney, a conservative Christian activist who has become a prominent figure in the protests over Schiavo's case, said he will go to Washington to plead with congressional leaders and the Bush administration to enforce a subpoena issued March 18 by a House committee for the 41-year-old woman to appear before Congress.
The conclusion of Mahoney's news conference Sunday afternoon was disrupted by a minor scuffle among protesters jostling to get their signs within camera range.
After remarks by Randall Terry -- an anti-abortion activist who has been acting as a spokesman for Terri Schiavo's family, the Schindlers -- members of a group calling itself the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigades seized control of the microphones and blasted Terry as a "Christian fascist thug" trying to interfere in "the most intimate affairs of life and death."
"[Terri Schiavo's] brain is not functional. It's not going to recover. Let her die in peace," pleaded Sunsari Taylor, a member of the group.
Before the disruption, Mahoney had said: "We are going to plead for Terri, to be her voice in Washington, D.C."
The congressional subpoena was quashed the same day it was issued by the Florida judge who ordered Schiavo's feeding tube removed, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal of that decision by Republican congressional leaders.
Mahoney said the fact that Schiavo has survived nearly 10 days since the removal of the tube that has supplied her with nutrition and water indicates that she wants to appear before the House Government Reform Committee.
He challenged House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, to show that he was not "just playing politics" with the subpoena.
Security tightened at hospice
With tensions flaring, security outside Schiavo's hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida, was doubled Sunday from the day before to as many as 10 police officers.
Protesters have gathered daily outside the hospice, and some have been arrested trying to enter the facility in ceremonial efforts to take water to Terri Schiavo.
Despite the Schindlers' requests that people spend Easter at home with their families, demonstrators showed up outside the hospice Sunday. Their son, Bobby Schindler, asked protesters to stop volunteering to be arrested.
"It's not going to help at all to do anything that's going to lead to arrests," Schindler said. Police "are here to do a job," he added.
Spokesmen disagree
The feeding tube that has been Schiavo's sole source of sustenance since 1990 was removed after a lengthy legal battle between her husband, Michael, and her parents.
Michael Schiavo says his wife would not want to be kept alive in her current state, and a succession of court rulings has supported him.
Attorneys for Michael Schiavo had no word on her condition Sunday.
But an attorney for Schiavo's parents said the woman who doctors have said is in a persistent vegetative state was "past the point of no return."
"Terri is declining rapidly. We believe she has, at this point, passed where physically she would be able to recover," David Gibbs, the Schindler family's lawyer, said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
But a few hours later, Terry rejected those remarks. He said Gibbs represents the Schindler family "in matters of court, but he did not represent them this morning when he gave that report about Terri."
The Holy Communion that Terri Schiavo received Sunday afternoon was administered by Monsignor Thaddeus Malanowski, aided by the chaplain of the hospice where Schiavo lay.
"I gave her the drop of precious blood on the tongue, so we know she received Christ," Malanowski said. He said he was unable to give Schiavo the traditional host wafer "because her tongue is dry and parched."
But doctors have said Terri Schiavo has been unable to swallow food since February 1990, when she collapsed in her home, suffering from cardiac arrest related to an eating disorder.
Schiavo suffered severe brain damage before paramedics were able to restart her heart. Michael Schiavo said his wife suffered from bulimia, an eating disorder that resulted in a potassium deficiency that triggered her heart failure.
Gibbs also said Terri Schiavo is receiving morphine for pain.
The American Academy of Neurology issued a position statement in 1988 on the persistent vegetative state, declaring that such patients "do not have the capacity to experience pain or suffering."
On Saturday, Bobby Schindler said Terri Schiavo was "not dying peacefully and painlessly."
But George Felos, an attorney for Michael Schiavo, visited her Saturday and said she was "calm," "peaceful" and "resting comfortably."
Governor says he can't help
On Sunday, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said there is nothing he can do to save Terri Schiavo's life.
"I cannot violate a court order," Bush said after attending Easter Sunday church services. "I don't have powers from the United States Constitution -- or, for that matter, from the Florida Constitution -- that would allow me to intervene after a decision has been made.
"I'm sad that she's in the situation that she's in," Bush said, commenting publicly on the case for the first time since Thursday. "I feel bad for her family. My heart goes out to the Schindlers and, for that matter, to [her husband] Michael [Schiavo]," Bush said. "This has not been an easy thing for any, any member of the family. But most particularly for Terri Schiavo."
To Terri Schiavo's parents -- who have said Bush should do more to help their daughter -- the governor said: "I can't. I'd love to, but I can't."
Doctors say death for Schiavo now could come at any time.
CNN's Ed Henry contributed to this report.

New York Times, August 31st, 2004

August 31, 2004NIGHT LIFE

At Midnight, Protesters Turn Poets and Dreamers
By JULIE SALAMON

On a tropical summer night with a big moon hanging low, New York can look like a landscape meant for poets and dreamers. At least that is how it seemed in the late hours after Sunday's big protest, even with clusters of police officers gathered at street corners and helicopters buzzing overhead.

The Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade didn't want the day to end. So toward midnight, tired and sunburned from marching and hanging out in Central Park, about 65 of its members gathered in a borrowed Chinatown space to eat and entertain themselves with what they referred to as a "talent show," which lasted until nearly 2 a.m.

"We think people even in the most intense time need to be involved in artistic endeavors," explained Sunsara Taylor, a slight, intense woman who is a poet, office worker and spokeswoman for the Youth Brigade.

Ms. Taylor and the rest of her group - Marxist-Leninist-Maoist followers of Bob Avakian, chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party - are young, mostly in their late teens and 20's, which may explain their casual mixture of summer camp and radical rhetoric (they believe in the inevitability of armed revolution) and their stamina. When Ms. Taylor's turn before the audience arrived, close to 1:30 a.m., she delivered two fiery poems in a voice hoarse from shouting during hours of protest.

New York is always a 24-hour town, but with the Republican convention here, the alternative cultural scene has gone into overtime. The Bowery Poetry Club, an East Village nightclub on the Bowery between Bleecker and Houston Streets, is remaining open all night this week for restless souls and insomniacs looking for political conversation and pageantry and yoga. The Tank, a space on West 42nd Street that is normally a venue for performing and visual arts, has become a counterculture way station as well, providing entertainment at night and daytime tourism aid for protesters, including doughnuts and coffee in the mornings - also offered to police officers, if any happen by.

On its Web site, imagine04.org, the Imagine Festival, the umbrella for scores of politically minded arts events this week, advertises several all-night venues, including the Freedom of Expression National Monument, a giant red megaphone aimed at the sculptures of Law, Truth and Equity arrayed on the New York County Courthouse in Foley Square. There were no visitors there at 2:30 a.m. Monday. Some police officers across the street with a big dog - the only life around - said there probably wouldn't be any speakers for another seven or eight hours.
Likewise, "True Story Project: Being," a video installation in a storefront at 217 East 42nd Street advertised as an all-night happening, had no audience in the middle of the night, mainly because there weren't any pedestrians. The situation was worse at "The War Room,'' an installation at 208 West 37th Street described as "poignant paintings of the war and its aftermath," but impossible to see behind locked gates covering the windows.

A spokeswoman for Billionaires for Bush, the street-performance parody group, urged protesters not to partake of after hours events, artistic or otherwise. In an e-mail message, she advised: "It is very important that all protesters realize beforehand, that protesting zaps a lot of energy, and requires people to be in good health, well rested and hydrated.''

For some counterculture visitors to New York, the protests merely provide an excuse for poetry. At close to 4 a.m. on Monday, C. C. Arshagra was sitting at the bar of the Bowery Poetry Club explaining how he and some poet friends managed not to find the half-million or so people marching in Sunday's big protest.

"I know I'm going to look like an idiot, but the truth is the truth," said Mr. Arshagra, a slender 46-year-old man dressed, poetically, all in black, with his long graying hair pulled back into a pony tail. "We gave up. We were hungry."

Further explanation was offered by his fellow poet Jamie Mclaughlin, 24, who was wearing a dress she'd made out of a shawl. "We were with a woman walking really slowly and smoking cigarettes," said Ms. Mclaughlin, a street musician and artist's model.

Mr. Arshagra, who works as a livery driver in Boston, said he really didn't mind. After coming to New York with some fellow poets for the Howl festival, which concluded last Tuesday, he said, he decided to hang around for the Republican convention. His goal was to recite poetry where and when he could - he got a gig at the FusionArts Museum on the Lower East Side - while remaining receptive to serendipitous encounters.

He missed the march but found lots of serendipity. There was free vegetarian food at Tompkins Square (potato stir-fry and vegan corn chowder -"delicious," pronounced Mr. Arshagra) and Israeli-Arabic influenced music he liked at St. Mark's Church on East 10th Street early Sunday evening. Then he and Ms. Mclaughlin found their way to a concert at the Tank, leaving at around 1:30 a.m. to head for the Bowery.

As part of this impromptu cultural tour, the Boston poets earlier in the day also visited the 6BC Botanical Garden, a flowering green space tucked midblock on Sixth Street between Avenues B and C. They chatted with a nice woman sitting on a stoop near St. Mark's Church, a potter who told them how gentrification had caused rents to skyrocket in the East Village in the last 25 years. They ate another free vegetarian meal at St. Mark's, for which Mr. Arshagra washed dishes for half an hour in gratitude. After that a woman named Jeanette gave them a ride from St. Mark's to the Tank.

At the Bowery Poetry Club, almost everyone of the dozen or so people on hand at 4 a.m. went onstage to read or recite a poem. Teli Cardaci, a performance artist who moved to New York from Maryland three weeks ago, changed into cowboy gear and jumped through lassos he kept spinning wildly. "I'm here representing cowboys against war," he said.

The political spectrum was varied. The young communists officially denounce both candidates. Ms. McLaughlin is voting for the Green Party slate, while Mr. Arshagra said he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry.

Mr. Arshagra said he had to go soon. Dawn was approaching. His car was parked at a meter and his time was about up.

WBAI - Burn Baby Burn!

Date: Thursday, January 13th 2005
Time: 4:00 AM - 6:00 AM
Location: On the Air on WBAI
City/State: The Metropolitan Area, VA
Category: The Battle for the Future...Contact: comradecarl@hotmail.com
Website: http://wwwrwor.org/future

The battle for the future will be fought from here forward! Join the revolutionary conversation on WBAI Thursday morning from 4 am to 6 am when Lister Hewan-Lowe engages revolutionary communists Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor on questions about raising the resistance tempo to defeat the Bush-Christian Fascist agenda and the revolutionary way out.

Bush and his people aren’t just ordinary Republicans! And they’re not ordinary Christians either. They are Christian Fascists, dangerous fanatics out to make the US a religious dictatorship and plunge the US and the world into a high tech Dark Ages. In face of this what we need now is resistance... \"that refuses to be bound by the terms of mainstream politics...\" People everywhere must see that there really are two roads squaring off over the future... And we need to imagine not just a different future, but to fight for a communist future where people consciously learn about and transform the world, and not be imprisoned by the chains of tradition and ignorance.

Listen on Thursday morning (1/13) 4 am to 6 am on WBAI for a wide-ranging revolutionary conversation about the battle for the future with Lister Hewan-Lowe, Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor.

Calendar: Pacifica Peace and Justice Calendar Url: http://www.pacifica.org/calendar/index.pl?Calendar=rootcalendar