The John Mason Talk-Walk, July 18, 2025

I speak about the "Good Trouble" rallies yesterday throughout the nation, the work of John Lewis, and the gutlessness of our corporate-capitalist class. 

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Hello, hello, hello, how is everybody? This is John Mason. Tomorrow is Mother's Day. And it is a time we pay our respects to all the women in our lives, our mothers, and our wives, and our girlfriends, and our sisters, and every other favorite woman that we come across. Happy Mother's Day, ladies. And if we want the best for the women in our lives, we must protect our reproductive rights. Like you can only have an abortion after so many weeks before you even know the woman even knows that uh there's a fetus inside of her. And you remembered uh Katie Brett, a senator from Arkansas, who had this very bad case of ham acting after uh after Biden's uh State of the Union address. Is that the best Republicans can do? Well anyway, she has this bright idea of a database. She's proposing this bill that would establish a database for all women who are pregnant. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, John Mason. How is everybody? I hope you're well. Yesterday, I took part in the in a demonstration in Philly on the north side of City Hall to commemorate the passing of John Lewis. Georgia Congressman, one of the uh outstanding figures of the civil rights movement. He was at twenty at twenty-three, he was the youngest person to speak at the in 1963 at the at the March on Washington for our jobs and freedom. That's the whole title of it, you have to remember that. And in nineteen sixty five, he was one of the marchers in the march on Selma, getting raided across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, when they were agreed by a delegation of every police officer in in Alabama, and and as the police were charging into them, one of them cracked uh Lewis' skull, it could have killed him. But like I say, we came a civil rights legend and a congressman from Georgia, and in honor of whom we I took we took we had these the group 90901.com or dot org organized uh rallies and demonstrations all in thousands of municipalities all over the country to protest against the Trump regime. It was on the theme of good trouble, which was John Lewis's theme. We have to get into good trouble, necessary trouble. A statement compatible to the other the statement by the other civil rights giant, Bayard Rustin, that every community needs a crew of angelic troublemakers. But we're trying to fight trouble. See, the real troublemakers are Trump and everybody who follows his bidding, such as the ICE agents who are patrolling our streets, not grabbing drug dealers or real criminals, but people just going about their business, trying to get a piece of the American dream, trying to trying to make a living for themselves and their families. But instead the the ICE agents would just grab anybody who looks like who fits them so racial profile. And also working and also Trump's minions include such foul little termites as Stephen Miller. You know, that walking butt plug who who's uh supervising the uh the uh deportations. There are reports that he he met with a group of ice off ice uh administrators and screamed at him to nab uh three thousand uh people a day just to fill a quota. D do you think there's that many criminals in this country? That's not that's not the way it works. He's out for ethnically cleansing all b Hispanic people from this country. And he's he's also going after other groups, like like a neighborhood uh neighborhood in uh New York's Haitian community. Uh I mean people crowd the streets against uh the ice vehicles, you know, keeping them from uh going entering their neighborhoods. And there's this great neat new uh app uh available called Ice Block. I got on my cell, and you tap it and you get the and you can see if uh ice is somewhere is in the vicinity, whatever street they are they're on. And you could warn people to stay away from that vicinity. They come here for freedom. And what kind of what the hell kind of freedom is this? That's the trouble we're dealing with. We're not creating trouble, we're fighting trouble. And I gotta say it. The news came out that CBS is going to cancel the late show of Stephen Colbert. I heard about the uh shout fest between Carolyn Leavitt, uh Trump's press secretary and Colbert, and and Colbert won out on this. And this and CBS and Paramount, CBS's parent company, decided to cancel Colbert's show. It's the same thing with uh with CBS News paying a fifteen million dollar payment, a libel payment to Trump, which which wasn't necessary according to legal experts, but Paramount was tr was trying to uh was arranging a merger with another company which could have netted them billions. So they so to hell with freedom of expression, freedom of the press, gimme, gimme, gimme. Bring in the bait billions, baby. That's the whole nine yards of the capitalist system. And sometimes I wonder if our capitalist class is going to be this spineless, this gutless, constantly caving into Trump, question. Are they really so formidable? Are they really so tough? Are they really so difficult to stand up to? To my brother, sister, comrade workers, I say keep that in mind when you're dealing with uh multi-billion dollar corporations. They got weak spots, and the weak spots are starting at the at the board of directors and the CEO. So let's enjoy our weekend, let's enjoy our summer, and keep the fight going. We are in it to win it. And they give if they give us trouble, we'll give them trouble. Good trouble, necessary trouble. No more playing games. The old rules are over. You remember civics class and kids where you were taught that in our system one side presents its opinion and the other side presents its opinion and it works something out and mutually respectfully. Ain't like that. After the New Deal, right wingers have been trying for so long to dismantle the New Deal and everything it stands for. And even the great society and everything it stands for. And they were trying to reestablish their own oligarchy, their own plutocracy. And they associated every each and every form of benefit program benefiting the people, like Social Security, like Medicare, like Medicaid, like VEA, like the GI Bill, like the like nutrition programs to the red menace. It's communism. Well, the Soviet Union is dead. And they and now they're looking for other things to get freaked out about. But they're still trying to uh dismantle all these social programs and remake the state back into an agent of repression against workers. I know I'm leading up to the phrase fascism, but it is real. Fascism is the ultimate realization of their scheme. They're afraid of the assertion of lower class people for their rights, not knowing their place, whatever it is, and forming a government that will put them down once and for all. And they do it with all kinds of revolutionary populist trappings, pretending to be of buying for the people. So we'll find them. This is what you do with fascists, you stand up to them. You can't sit down and negotiate with them. You have to stand up to them. Okay, enough said, advertisements. All this work I do on my on my podcast and my videos and my blog, fiction, poetry, etc. are work. They're all work. I pay money for this work. And that's to be taken care of and all the I need to be compensated for it, and hopefully with enough money I'll push it to a higher level. So please get on my website, johnomason.com, and click either the PayPal button or the buy me a coffee button. Let's see what we can get. I'd appreciate it. And also, my novel Soldier of the Cross is available on Amazon.com. It's the story of David Lucas, who as a young man in the early 60s, is a real punk, a bully, school bully, drunk whore chaser, goes into the army, gets in trouble there, comes out of the army as a fanatical born-again Christian, wanting to be a manly man for Jesus. But the way he goes about it leads him into catastrophe. Please pick it up. Soldier of the Cross on Amazon.com. And also, Hamperic is a lovely little CBD product store located on Snyder Avenue near 15th Street in South Philadelphia. There you'll find some of the finest cannabis-infused products. Gummies and candies and drinks and teas and flour and hand sanitizer, lip balm and dog treats. Yep, dog treats. Look them up please. Hemorificlc.com. And also, my beloved career and business coach Michelle Snow. Michelle's excellent in helping you develop your professional career, your small business. Let you know what you're doing right, where you need work, and help you network with other up-and-coming entrepreneurs and professionals. Please look her up. Grow with snow.com. Alrighty then. Let's enjoy our weekend and get ready to make some beautiful, wonderful trouble for the ones who trouble us. Thank you. Have a good weekend. Shabbat shalom. Bye.