Dear Miguel:
You said it all, and I can only add one thing my late father said... In answer to someone who quoted Winston Churchill to him, - if you are not a socialist by twenty you have no heart, and if you are a socialist after twenty you have no head, - My father said he agreed with the first half, and if the second half happens, you were never a socialist to begin with.
If ever someone should be burned out! I have lost most of my lifes work and my career in law (save for a small corner of American Indian law) over my advocacy of the Gypsy community, however, I remain committed to speaking out against racist murder. It is part of who I am, just as Rabbitts friend who is Gay expresses that in his art. If we are not who we are - dyed in the wool, in our art, it is fashion and not art by definition.
In many circles it is no longer fashionable to be a worker, but there is still too much tar under my fingernails, and I inherited the coal dust my father dug in my blood. Yes, this is no longer fashionable, now that the American worker has been caught sleeping while our ecconomic leaders sold the American means of production to the lowest bidder, giving so many in this country the choice of McJobs or other service work. Being a production worker makes it easier to understand the suffering of others, because you deal with real life, not some plastic world of the office and the fast food ghetto. Yes, I am passionate, because I have seen and lived what I write about and more, the lack of passion on the part of the rest of the world resulted in the destruciton of most of my mothers people in the middle of the century just passed.
There is nothing that scares those in the class that own the resources - no have appropriated the resources of the world, than a passionate working class. Folk music has always expressed that passion, and I for one, even if alone on a street corner or subway tunnel, will continue to sing about the interests and passions of my class.
No apologies, but best wishes
Larry