SATURDAY HIGH NOON

State news shorts, commentary and part 3 of my discussion with Kansas activist Frank Smith of Pine Bluff about the billionaire Koch brothers and emperor Brownback's legions.

Read Chris Reeves up-to-the-minute state budget report as the legislature "goes into hiding."

Thaddeus Russell is author of A Renegade History of the United States (Free Press, 2010). Russell's talk was recorded by Todd Boyle and broadcast on "Mind Over Matters" by Mike McCormick (www.talkingsticktv.org).

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "gun") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

The leisure we enjoy today--weekends, vacations, etc--was not granted freely by employers. Rather, it was taken without permission by "renegade" workers of decades past. These included slaves, drunken craftsmen, unmotivated factory hands, etc. For instance, plantation slaves established the practice of "vacation"--much to the annoyance of their masters. (They'd agree to return in exchange for not being punished.)

Part 2 focuses on sex and women's rights. Many rights and freedoms enjoyed today by U.S. women (and their male friends) were won for them--not by feminists--but by 19th & early-20th century prostitutes & madams. These include the right to own property; to acquire wealth; to dance, smoke, and drink in public; to wear attractive clothing; to give or receive oral sex; to have interracial intimacy; and to use contraceptives. 

A rollicking good story, well-told by Thaddeus Russell.