An Old-Fashioned Romance-With Donovan’s Catch TheWind In Mind

An Old-Fashioned Romance-With Donovan’s Catch TheWind In Mind

By Lester Lannon

Ben Fuller and Nancy Logan had had an old-fashioned storybook romance, a romance straight out of the movies, not the current movies like Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris where the stresses of modern life take their toll or one of those George Clooney things with the detached unresolved ending but sometime more like Bogie and Bacall in The Big Sleep or To Have Or Have Not where the sparks fly for minute one and they probably would have jumped in the hay right then except Will Hayes’ censorship operation would have had a heart attack or the same Bogie and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Or maybe something out of the books, some misty F. Scott Fitzgerald you pick the story, Gatsby, Tender Is The Night, or a million Saturday Evening Post entries or maybe some modern lesser light like Robert Turner who specialized in such tales. But we might as well get to the details now that you know that while they are as modern in their world outlook, their upwardly-mobile professional careers, their consumer and cultural predilections, and their devotion to every technologically-driven communication devise they were, are incurable romantics although it didn’t start out that way.  

See both Ben and Nancy had known each other for ages, known each other since about fourth grade at Riverdale Elementary when Nancy had in a simple twist of fate pulled Ben’s hair from behind as they both sat in Miss (now Ms., okay) Winot’s class. Ben didn’t like it, but he also did not squeal to dear Miss Winot like other young boys who had not yet discovered the mysteries of young girls for he hardly thought about her existence then but also did not want any of the other boys to bait him like they had when he had merely mentioned that Theresa Wallace was kind of pretty and not like the other silly girls in school (including Nancy then). So he let it past (although later, even much later, they would both be able to recite chapter and verse the events of that day almost exactly as they happened). And that was the way things stayed all through elementary school (where Ben later became enflamed by Theresa Wallace and she him and Nancy was a non-factor) and middle school (except for a change in enflamed to Louisa Stein).

The only contact even though they were always in the same schools since Riverdale was, and is, a small consolidated school system was that each summer Ben’s and Nancy’s families would both summer (the verb ‘to summer” at that time unknown to me, in my hanging around town poor boy no away summer vacation time to have verb application) in Ipswich near Crane’s Beach and a couple of times they had run into each other talked and left it at that. Well maybe not exactly “at that” since one time when they met on Crane’s Beach on one of those off-shore August wind days the winds howling forty miles an hour off the point from Plum Island Ben had sighted Nancy as she was being blown into the fleck-foamed surf  and Ben had run over and pulled her back. Ben was ready to leave her side when Nancy said “maybe I was trying to catch the wind today” with a look like maybe Ben was the wind she was talking about trying to catch. Ben laughed and left somewhat perplexed.           

It was not until high school, the summer of junior year that they again met on Crane’s Beach. Another howling off-shore wind day from the point. There Nancy was, all slim one hundred pounds of her being tossed toward the surf. Ben “saved” her but one thing was different this time Ben stood his ground and said to her that “maybe she was trying to catch the wind again” and gave her a look like maybe he was thinking he was the wind she was trying to catch. And that began the first whirlwind (excuse the pun) romance of Ben and Nancy. A romance that couldn’t last past graduation since Ben was going to State U to study computers and “make a ton of money” and Nancy was off to NYU to be a literary light. The truth was that both had been smitten on the nose by other people, Ben by Samantha James and Nancy by Henry Dillon III of the big money Dillon family that had helped run, own really, Riverdale since who knows when, since as long as anybody could remember. That was that.            

Well almost “that was that,” no, that is not right, that was far from that was that. In the summer after their respective freshman years, quite by accident at least that was the way they told the story they met on another one of those inevitable howling windy days on Crane’s Beach while they were both visiting parents before taking off for other locales. This time Nancy was not caught up by any wind but was chasing a bunch of photographs that had blown off her blanket and were heading toward the dunes. Between them they were able to salvage all but a couple of them. Nancy profusely thanked Ben for his help because these were photos of her fiancé. Ben was shocked not by her being engaged so much as by the fact that the photos were not of Henry Dillon III but an older man, a man of about forty although he was admittedly good-looking at that. Nancy told Ben that she had given up young Dillon about half-way through the school year when at a party given by some poets in the Village she met this professor from Columbia, Jack Logan, who swept her off her feet, made Henry seem like a mere boy she said. Once Ben got over his shock he mentioned to Nancy that “maybe she had caught the wind” she had been looking for so long but she seemed when he asked not to know much about the guy except that he was a big-time academic and that he was very attentive to her (later that “attentive” would be clarified to that he was good in bed).  

Ben, after they parted, parted with backward looks maybe both remembering the times they had caught the winds at Crane’s Beach on their own, that night could hardly sleep thinking about Nancy and about how he had been a serious fool to have let her go just because she had decided to go to NYU rather than State U with him. But what really got to him was that there was something wrong with the whole set-up. Nancy had left home to go to college because her father was always picking on her, telling her she needed to do better no matter how well she did and she wanted to not deal with that any longer. And here she was going to shortly be married to a man old enough to be her father. He decided that he needed to talk to this professor and see what he was all about before Nancy made a mistake, an awful mistake as far as he could tell.   

Then the roof fell in. Ben went to his computer and Googled onto the Columbia school website to see if he could meet with the professor in New York City soon. No professor by the name Nancy had given him was among the faculty listed at this Ivy League school. He called up the school and after about an hour got to Human Resources and found out that the named professor had taught there although he had only been a lecturer and had been let go after his contract year was up for poor evaluations from the students so he really must have been bad since at State U at least most teachers got a free ride pass. That had been about six years before. Ben then hired a private detective that his father knew from some work he had down when his father thought an employee was stealing and selling information to an insurance competitor, to scope things out and the P.I. had come up after a week’s work with information that the professor had been living off various schemes and women for the past decade. That last piece finally made sense to Ben since Nancy’s family although not as rich as the Dillons (or as long-standing in the town) was well off. So what the professor was doing was playing off the vanities and inexperience of a young girl for dough. Probably had no intention of marrying her, probably had some “can borrow some money since my money is tied up in this project until my ship comes in” plan to bilk her and her family. At least her.         

One day several weeks after he got the P.I’s report Ben finally decided that he had to confront Nancy with the dirty facts before she got seriously hurt. He called her up to tell her he had some information she needed to know. She seemed kind of distant, a little icy but they agreed to meet, meet where else, but at Crane’s Beach. The both arrived about the same time and sat down at the picnic tables near the bathhouses. Ben went right to the heart of the matter. Told Nancy what he had found out about the professor, and how. Nancy started crying, started to break down because as she confessed to Ben then she had already found out about the professor, about his real intentions, when he had tried to borrow money off of her father “until his ship came in” and her father had had the professor investigated. As Nancy dried her eyes she said she wished that Ben had not found out but since he did she hoped he would keep the information confidential.

She got ready to leave after he gave her his assurances that he would be quiet about the whole affair when Ben suggested they go for a walk along the beach since it was a calm day for once. She agreed with a half-smile, maybe thinking for a flash about their “history.” As they walked along the wind as it will do in the summer began to pick up and as it began to howl rather than go back to the parking lot they kept going. Ben holding Nancy’s arm and Nancy holding both her hands on his other arm. Yeah it was like that. As they walked they both said almost at the same time “maybe we will catch the wind” and laughed.

[After Nancy graduated from NYU and Ben from State U they were married that summer. Married on Crane’s Beach. Where else.]            

 

*****Got Them Down-Hearted Blues-With The Empress Of The Blues Bessie Smith In Mind

*****Got Them Down-Hearted Blues-With The Empress Of The Blues Bessie Smith In Mind  

From The Pen Of Sam Eaton

Sure 1920s guys, gals too, black guys, black gals sweating out their short, brutalized lives on Mister’s 28,000 acres of the best bottomland along the river in Mississippi or some such number of acres,  probably it didn't matter to have an official count on the acres to them because all of the land went endlessly to the horizon and the work too had plenty to have the blues about. Had suffered the double whack of having to put up with Mister's Mister James Crow laws to boot which only added to the misery of those endless acres. Sure maybe some woe begotten poor white trash down in hard-boiled Appalachia in those famed hills and hollows had plenty of blues too although they did not call them that even in those few integrated evenings when the whole town went to Rence Jackson's dirty red barn in need of a serious paint job but this is about the blues, the musical blues and not some general social issues commentary. So those “no account” whites don’t play a role here at this time, don't play except as devotes of generic old country British Isles ballads like the ones collected by Francis Child back in the 1850s which thrilled the Brahmins of Brattle Street on a wild utilitarian Saturday night. Actually whites in general don't play a role in the blues since their access to such songs by the likes of the various Blinds, Robert Johnson, and the belting barrelhouse mamas would be minimal in an age when "race" record pieced everybody off into their own tangent. They will not play a role until the music heads north in a generation, or so,  and the “white negro” hipsters (to use big daddy Norman Mailer’s term for the little daddies who hung around the back streets of cool, Harlem 125th Street cool at that time), “beats (to use Jack Kerouac term hustled from some dead-pan beat down hustler, a white negro hipster if it came right down to it named Huncke via high brow John Clellon Holmes for Christ sake),” folkies (to use the Lomaxes’, father and son, expression), college students (to use oh I don’t know the U.S. Department of Education’s expression), and assorted others (junkies, grifters, midnight sifters, drifters on the wing, winos trying to sober up, good time prostitutes, the denizens of Hayes-Bickford's, the Automat, places like that, no hip as a rule) decided that that beat in their heads had Mother Africa who spawned us all had to be investigated but all that indeed was later.

Like I said the real blues aficionados, if only by default, had their say, had their lyrics almost written for them by the events of everyday human existence what with talking in their own "code words" about how Mister and his Mister James Crow laws fitted him, Mister, and his just fine at the expense of those black guys, their women and their righteous children (righteous when they, his children and their children smote the dragon come freedom summer times, come Mississippi and Alabama too goddamn times but that is a story for their generations to tell I want to talk about the great-grand pa’s and ma’s and their doings).

Here is how the scene played out as near as I can figure from a wide-ranging reading of most of the lyrics from that time (and always remember when you speak of "blues," speak of the folk in general this is mostly an oral tradition handed down and bastardized as it gotten handed down so there are very few definitive lyrics but rather more a sense of what miseries were being talked about. How Mister James Crow said every day of the week, even the Lord’s Day, Sunday that if you were black, get back, if you were white and right you were alright and proved it by separate this and separate that, keeping his street clear of stray “negros,” yeah, with small “n” if he was being kind that day, another today socially not acceptable expression if not, telling the brethren to go here, not go there, look this way but not that (and by all means not peeking at his womenfolk), walk there but not here, or face nooses and slugs for his troubles.

So yeah the blues almost cried out to be the order of things. Working all day for chump change in Mister’s fields or worse share-cropper-ing and having Mister take the better portion and leaving the leavings he didn’t want, meaning what he couldn’t sell to his profit as the rest.

Yeah, so there is no way that black guys could not have had the blues back then except some old nappy Tom who didn’t get the word but they were far fewer than you might think the others just fumed at who knows what psychic costs (now too but that in dealt with by the step-child of the blues, maybe second step-child via in your face if there is space hip-hop nations, the angry ones who put words to the rages of the modern “post racial” American society that somebody has jerked them around with lately). Hey and to Mister’s miseries, very real, very scary when the nightriders came, woman trouble (maybe at night the worse kind of trouble if Mister wasn’t in your face all day with her where you been, do this, do that, put it right here, put it right there), trouble with Sheriff Law (stay off the sidewalks, keep your head down, stay down in the bottom lands or else) and trouble with Long Skinny Jones if you mess with his woman, get your own (or face his razor and gun down on Black Mountain).

Plenty of stuff to sing about come Saturday night after dark at Smilin’ Billy’s juke joint complete with his home-made brew, freshly batched, which insured that everybody would be at Preacher Jack’s  Sunday service to have their sins, lusts, greeds, avarices, covets, swaggers, cuts, from the night before (or maybe just minutes before) washed clean under the threat of damnation and worse, worse for listening to the “devil’s music” (funny because come the white rock and roll teen explosion a generation later Mister, some Mister, said that too was the devil’s music which confused those clean cut angelic angst-filled teens although not enough to stop listening to Satan and his siren song) by a guy like Charley Patton, Son House (who had the worst of both worlds being a sinner, loving his whiskey more than somewhat which Howlin’ Wolf took him to task for down in Newport one year in the early 1960s at a jam session, and a preacher man), Lucky Quick, Sleepy John, Robert J, and lots of hungry boys who wanted to get the hell out from under Mister and his Mister James Crow laws by singing the blues and making them go away.          

That’s the guys, black guys and they had a moment, a country blues moment back in the 1920s and early 1930s when guys, white guys usually as far as I know, from small label record companies like Paramount, RCA, the radio company looking to feed the hours on their stations with stuff people would listen to (could listen to in short wave range times and hence regional roots work). They were agents who were parlaying two ideas together getting black people, black people with enough money  (and maybe a few white hipsters, Village, North Beach, Old Town denizens tired of the same old, same old if they were around and if they were called that before the big 1950s “beat” thing), buy, in this case, “race records,” that they might have heard on that self-same radio, nice economics, scoured the South looking for talent and found plenty in the Delta (and on the white side of that same coin plenty in the Southern hill-billy mountains, and hills and hollows too).

But those black blues brothers were not what drove the race label action back then since the rural poor had no money for radios or records for the most part and it was the black women singers who got the better play, although they if you look at individual cases suffered under the same Mister James Crow ethos that the black guys did. There they were though singing barrelhouse was what it was called mostly, stuff with plenty of double meanings about sex and about come hither availability and too about the code that all Southern blacks lived under. And the subjects. Well, the subjects reflected those of the black guys in reverse, two-timing guys, guys who would cut their women up as soon as look at them, down-hearted stuff when some Jimmy took off with his other best girl leaving her flat-footed, the sins of alcohol and drugs (listen to Victoria Spivey sometime on sister cocaine and any number of Smiths on gin), losing your man to you best friend. Some sound advice too like Sippy Wallace’s don’t advertise your man, and some bad advice about cutting up your no good man and taking the big step-off that awaited you, it is all there to be listened to.   

And the queen, the self-anointed queen, no, better you stay with the flow of her moniker, the empress, of barrelhouse blues was Bessie Smith, who sold more records than anybody else if nothing else. But there is more to her claim than mere record sales since she left a treasure trove of songs, well over two hundred before her untimely early death in the mid-1930s (untimely in the Mister James Crow South after an car accident and they would not admit an empress for chrissakes into a nearby white hospital, yes, rage, rage against the night unto the nth generation-black lives matter).

Guys, sophisticated guys, city guys, black guys mainly, guys like Fletcher Henderson, Tin Pan Alley kind of guys in places like high holy Harlem and Memphis, Saint Louis would write stuff for her, big fat sexy high white note sax and chilly dog trombone players would back her up and that was that. Sure Memphis Minnie could wag the dog’s tail with her lyrics about every kind of working guy taking care of her need (and you know she needed a little sugar in her bowl just like Bessie and a million, million other women, and a quick listen to any of a dozen such songs will tell you what that need was or you can figure it out and if you can’t you had better move on), the various other Smiths could talk about down-hearted stuff, about the devil’s music get the best of them, Sippy Wallace could talk about no good men, Ivy Stone could speak about being turned out in the streets to “work” the streets when some guy left town, address unknown, and Victoria Spivey could speak to the addictions that brought a good girl down but Bessie could run it all.

From down-hearted blues, killing her sorrows with that flask of gin, working down to bed-bug flop houses, thoughts of killing that no good bastard who left her high and dry, seeing a good Hustlin’ Dan man off to the great yonder after losing that bout with TB coughing, blowing high and heavy in the thick of the Jazz Age with the prince of wails, looking for a little sugar in her bowl, and every conceivable way to speak of personal sorrows.

Let me leave it like this for now with two big ideas. First if you have a chance go on YouTube and listen and watch while she struts her stuff on Saint Louis Woman all pain, pathos and indignity as her good man throws her over for, well, the next best thing. That will tell you why in her day she was the Empress. The other is this-if you have deep down sorrows, some man or woman left you high and dry, maybe you need a fixer man for what ails you, you have deep-dyed blues that won’t quite unless you have your medicine then you have to dust off your Billie Holiday records and get well. But if the world just has you by the tail for a moment, or things just went awry but maybe you can see the light of day then grab the old Bessie Vanguard Record or later Columbia Record multiple albums (four double record sets from beginning to end) and just start playing you won’t want to turn the thing off once Bessie gets under your skin.

That’s what I done more than once when I was down on my luck living in flea-bitten rooming house in a cold-water flat with me and my bed, bureau, desk and chair and a battered old RCA record player and just let it wail, let the fellow stew-ball tenants usually behind on their rents anyway howl against the night. Bessie was on the square.                

*****The Latest From The Justice For Lynne Stewart Website

*****The Latest From The Justice For Lynne Stewart Website

 

 

 Click below to link to the Justice For Lynne Stewart website

http://lynnestewart.org/

Although Lynne Stewart has been released by “Uncle” on medical grounds since last winter (2014) after an international campaign to get her adequate medical attention her case should still be looked at as an especially vindictive ploy on the part of the American government in post-9/11 America to tamp down on attorneys (and others concerned about the fate of "los olvidados," the forgotten ones, the forgotten political prisoners)  who  have been zealously defending their unpopular clients (and political prisoners). A very chilling effect on the legal profession and elsewhere as I have witnessed on too many occasions when legal assistance is desperately needed. As a person who is committed to doing political prisoner defense work I have noted how few such “people’s lawyers” there around to defend the voiceless, the framed and “the forgotten ones.” There are not enough, there are never enough such lawyers around and her disbarment by the New York bar is an added travesty of justice surrounding the case. 

Back in the 1960s and early 1970s there were, relatively speaking, many Lynne Stewarts. Some of this reflecting the radicalization of some old-time lawyers who hated what was going in America with its prison camp mentality and it’s seeking out of every radical, black or white but as usual especially black revolutionaries, it could get its hands on.  Hell, who hated that in many cases their sons and daughters were being sent to the bastinado. But mostly it was younger lawyers, lawyers like Lynne Stewart, who took on the Panther cases, the Chicago cases, the Washington cases, the military cases (which is where I came to respect such “people’s lawyers” as I was working with anti-war GIs at the time and we needed, desperately needed, legal help to work our way in the arcane military “justice” system then, and now witness Chelsea Manning) who learned about the class-based nature of the justice system. And then like a puff those hearty lawyers headed for careers and such and it was left for the few Lynne Stewarts to shoulder on. Probably the clearest case of that shift was with the Ohio Seven (two, Jann Laamann and Tom Manning, who are still imprisoned) in the 1980s, working-class radicals who would have been left out to dry without Lynne Stewart. Guys and gals who a few years before would have been heralded as front-line anti-imperialist fighters like thousands of others were then left out to dry. Damn.      

Heroes Of The Ant-Slavery Struggle-Frederick Douglass And John Brown

Heroes Of The Ant-Slavery Struggle-Frederick Douglass And John Brown

 

“Victory To The Fast-Food Workers......Fight For $15 Is Just A Beginning-All Labor Must Support Our Sisters And Brothers

“Victory To The Fast-Food Workers......Fight For $15 Is Just A Beginning-All Labor Must Support Our Sisters And Brothers

Comments of a supporter of the “Fight for $15” action in Downtown Boston on September 4, 2014 as part of a national struggle for economic justice and dignity for the our hard working sisters and brothers. The words still apply as we head into 2016:

No question in this wicked old world that those at the bottom are “the forgotten ones.” Here we are talking about working people, people working and working hard for eight, nine, ten dollars an hour. Maybe working two jobs to make ends meet since a lot of times these McJobs, these Wal-Marts jobs do not come with forty hours of work attached but whatever some cost-cutting manager deems right. And lately taking advantage of cover from Obamacare keeping the hours below the threshold necessary to kick in health insurance and other benefits. Yes, the forgotten people.

But let’s do the math here figuring on forty hours and figuring on say ten dollars an hour. That‘s four hundred a week times fifty weeks (okay so I am rounding off for estimate purposes here too since most of these jobs do not have vacation time figured in).That’s twenty thousand a year. Okay so just figure any kind of descent apartment in the Boston area where I am writing this-say one thousand a month. That’s twelve thousand a year. So the other eight thousand is for everything else. No way can that be done. And if you had listened to the young and not so young fast-food workers, the working mothers, the working older brothers taking care of younger siblings, workers trying to go to school to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty you would understand the truth of that statement. And the stories went on and on along that line all during the action. 

Confession: it has been a very long time since I have had to scrimp and scrim to make ends meet, to get the rent in, to keep those damn bill-collectors away from my door, to beg the utility companies to not shut off those necessary services. But I have been there, no question. And I did not like it then and I do not like the idea of it now.  I am here to say even the “Fight for $15” is not enough, but it is a start. And I whole-heartedly support the struggle of my sisters and brothers for a little economic justice in this wicked old world. And any reader who might read this-would you work for slave wages? I think not. So show your solidarity and get out and support the fast-food and Wal-Mart workers in their just struggles. 

Organize Wal-Mart! Organize the fast food workers! Union! Union! 

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program- Twelve -Sacramento, 1967

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program- Twelve -Sacramento, 1967     

…there is a famous picture of them, of the Black Panther core, Huey and the Bobbys, all black proud and black smart, not just street smart that day, but all the way smart, kind of  “turn whitey’s rules back on him” smart, in May 1967  over in Sacramento at the State Capitol, arms in hand, shotguns, serious business shotguns if the occasion arose, arms and shotguns uplifted away from any thought of placing anyone in harm’s way like whitey’s law book said was okay, just fine out in the cool blue-pink American West night. It might not have worked in Cambridge or Peoria but out when the cowboy lands ended, real and faux cowboys, anything went, went with whatever small uplift proviso the local government attached to it.

That day though all black proud, armed, berets tilted slightly showing a sign of determination and not just show, black leather jackets, sharp, yah, uniform sharp and leaving that same uniform sharp impression any serious uniform brings up (soda jerks, McDonald ‘s burger flippers, and gas jockeys step back, step way backs serious uniforms are in town). That day too those brothers evoked, evoked proud black manhood, evoked memories of Africa slave-catcher revolts, evoked memories of maroon fights down in Caribe islands, evoked old Nat Turner come and gone plantation fires, evoked old Captain Brown and his brave band at Harpers Ferry fight, evoked the memory of those two hundred thousand blue-capped, blue-uniformed, yes, uniformed, sable warriors who made Johnny Reb cringe and wish he had never been born. Evoked too, Africa freedom struggles, and desperate fights to break the down presser man’s will, his fortitude, and his hunger to keep what was never his. And evoked no more turning the other cheek stuff, no more waiting on whitey, even leftie, and more, much more, the great white fear…negros with guns, jesus.                

And they freaked, those whites guys freaked like they always did, like they always did when even the idea, no, even the thought of an idea of armed black men touched their radar. Hence death this and death that slave codes, hence Nat Turner brutal ashes, hence no quarter given, no respect, no  black honor respect before Fort Wagner fight when black men bled red for freedom and on a hundred other battlefields, hence Robert F. Williams flights. So that day, that freaked-out day a sort of cold (soon to be hot) civil war was a-brewing. And whitey, maybe not so smart but afraid of armed black men and ready to act forthwith on that decided that maybe, just maybe, the wild west needed a little taming, just in case the brothers decided to aim those guns straight at someone.       

*****Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Then, And Now

*****Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Then, And Now  

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Several years ago, I guess about four years now, in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement with the shutting down of its campsites across the country by the police acting in concert with other American governmental bodies I wrote a short piece centered on the need for revolutionary and radical intellectuals, or those who had pretensions to such ideas to take their rightful place on the activist left, on the people’s side, and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines. Or wherever they were hiding out, hiding out maybe as far back in some cases as the Vietnam War days which saw much of the current senior contemporary academia turn from the streets to the ivied-buildings, maybe hiding out in bought and paid for think tanks with their bright-colored “wonk” portfolios like some exiles-in-waiting ready to spring their latest wisdom, maybe posing as public intellectuals although with no serious audience ready to act on their ideas since they were not pushing their agendas beyond the lectern, maybe some in the hard-hearted post 9/11 world having doubts about those long ago youthful impulses that animated "the better angels of their natures" have turned to see the “virtues” of the warfare state and now keep their eyes averted to the social struggles they previously professed to live and die for, or maybe a la Henry David Thoreau retiring to out in some edenic gardens in Big Sur or anywhere Oregon like some 60s radicals did never to be heard from again except as relics when the tourists pass through town.

One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement a certain stock-taking was in order (and which is in 2015 and beyond still in order). A stock-taking at first centered on those young radicals and revolutionaries that I ran into in the various campsites and on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and discouraged when their utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of regret from the masses they professed to be fighting for (and with not a little hostility from that same work-a-day mass hostile to people hanging out and not working, or not doing much of anything, as well but mainly indifference to the fight these idealistic youth were pursuing, really their fight too since that had been pummeled by the main Occupy culprits, the banks who got bailed out, the mortgages companies who sold them a false bill of goods, the corporations more than ready to send formerly good paying jobs off-shore leaving Wal-Mart for the unemployed. Now a few years later it is apparent that they, the youth of Occupy have, mostly, moved back to the traditional political ways of operating via the main bourgeois parties who let the whole thing happen (witness the New York mayor’s race, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders et. al) or have not quite finished licking their wounds (they couldn’t believe as we elders could have told them after all the anti-Vietnam War actions, including the massive May Day 1971 arrests that the government had no problem crushing their own, their own young if they got out of line).

Although I initially addressed my remarks to the activists still busy out in the streets I also had in mind those intellectuals who had a radical streak but who then hovered on the sidelines and were not sure what to make of the whole experiment although some things seemed very positive like the initial camp comradery, the flow of ideas, some half-baked on their faces but worthy of conversation and testing, the gist for any academic. In short, those who would come by on Sundays and take a lot of photographs and write a couple of lines about what they saw but held back. (I would argue and this may be the nature of the times that the real beneficiaries of Occupy were all those film students and artists, media-types who made the site their class project, or their first professional documentary.) Now in 2015 it is clear as day that the old economic order (capitalism if you were not quite sure what to name it) that we were fitfully protesting against (especially against the banks who led the way downhill and who under the sway of imperialism's imperative made it clear finance capitalism writ large is in charge) has survived another threat to its dominance. The old political order, the way of doing political business now clearly being defended by one Barack Obama and his hangers-on, Democrat and Republican, with might and main is still intact (with a whole ready to take his place come 2016).

The needs of working people although now widely discussed in academia and on the more thoughtful talk shows have not been ameliorated (the increasing gap between the rich, really the very rich, and the poor, endlessly lamented and then forgotten, the student debt death trap, and the lingering sense that most of us will never get very far ahead in this wicked old world especially compared to previous generations). All of this calls for intellectuals with any activist spark to come forth and help analyze and plan how the masses are to survive, how a new social order can be brought forth. Nobody said, or says, that it will be easy but this is the plea. I have reposted the original piece with some editing to bring it up to date.          
******
No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon, a founding member of the American Communist Party in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and when that revolution began to seriously go off the rails followed the politics of the Trotsky-led International Left Opposition  and eventually helped found the Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned elsewhere  that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution in less developed capitalist countries and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined. A century later with some tweaking, unfortunately, those same theories and the same need for organization are still on the agenda although, as Trotsky once said, the conditions are overripe for the overthrow of capitalism as it has long ago outlived its progressive character in leading humankind forward.   

The conclusion that I originally drew from that initial  observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them, and plenty of them, especially those who can write, is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders, guys like Cannon, like Debs from the old Socialist Party, like Ruthenburg from the early Communist Party, to lead the fight for state power.

In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. He led the anti-war movement in Germany by refusing to vote for the Kaiser’s war budgets, found himself in jail as a result, but also had tremendous authority among the left-wing German workers when that mattered. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have, as mentioned previously, held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. Not so Communist Party leaders like William Z. Foster and Earl Browder (to speak nothing of Gus Hall from our generation of '68) or Max Shachtman in his later years after he broke with Cannon and the SWP. That basically carried us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spent a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. I find that position stands in need of some amendment now.

Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to lead the struggle to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century continues to hold true. That said, rather than some tweaking, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.

It is almost a political truism that each generation of radicals and revolutionaries will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size and importance of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated), special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not felt they needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.

As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the “new” working class or a “new” vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle, an idea that goes back to the days of Marx himself.

And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem was that “he was the problem” with his impressionistic theories based on, frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray (in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives out in bloody nomadic jungles of the American continent). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion codifying the experiences of the third Chinese revolution that the countryside (the “third world with its then predominant peasantry now increasingly proletarianized) would defeat the cities (mainly the West but the Soviet Union as well in some circles) that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. The late Mandel’s students from the 1960s have long gone on to academia and the professions (and not an inconsiderable few in governmental harness-how the righteous have fallen). Debray’s guerilla foci have long ago buried their dead and gone back to the cities. The “cities” of the world now including to a great extent China had broken the third world countryside though intense globalization. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?

Veterans For Peace Weekly E-letter

If you'd like to view this email in a Web browser, please click here.

Join or Renew Membership | Donate | Chapter Contacts | Online Store
	Friday, February 26, 2016 VFP Issues Statement on Torture Rhetoric In 2016 Presidential Campaign Veterans For Peace believes all torture, including waterboarding, is a human rights violation and constitutes a war crime. We will not defeat terrorism by adopting terrorist tactics. We will not achieve peace by practicing revenge. We will not preserve our precious democracy by abandoning our commitment to human rights. It is appalling that the efficacy of torture is now part of the American conversation. It dehumanizes us when we resort to such baseness. This is not what millions of U.S. military veterans fought for. We should reject such simplistic and vengeful suggestions on the campaign trail. Instead of doubling down on a shameful era, Americans should be turning the page to a new era of peace at home and peace abroad. The tortured logic of waterboarding is not the way to get there. <Full Statement> Back to Top Veterans Challenge Islamophobia Past President Elliott Adams and VFP member John Amidon displayed banner at a Trump rally in Las Vegas which read, Veterans to Mr. Trump:  End Hate Speech Against Muslims. John Amidon holding banner during Trump Rally in Nevada Click image to watch video Statement by Elliott Adams "I'm a Republican and I'm saddened by what I see in the Republican Party today. "A lot of the candidates are kind of screwballs. The party rode the tiger of the Tea Party and the evangelical right and now they're getting eaten.” He added: "I'm very concerned by the hate speech, the politics of hate and fear, the violation of the First Amendment that protects freedom of religion, this hatred of Muslims and xenophobia. America was founded as the great melting pot."  <Full Article courtesy of telegraph.co.uk> Statement by VFP members, Elliott Adams,  Will Covert and Kathleen Hernandez the day before the rally: "As veterans we call on the nation to stand-down from the hate speech, the Veterans Challenge Islamophobia and the religious discrimination. Unless we the people banish this gospel of fear and hate we will find that our Constitution and freedoms are MIA (Missing In Action). As a soldier I took an oath to defend the US Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. Trump should defend the Constitution too by rejecting his politics of fear and hate. Trump should embrace the All American principle of freedom for all religions and our history as the great American melting pot.” VETERANS write an opinion piece or short statement as to why you think this campaign is important. Send a copy of your statement to shelly@veteransforpeace.org Veterans sign on to our statement. Non-veterans, please support our cause Back to Top Join Us Mar 5-6, 2016 for the Summit on Saudi Arabia Date:  Mar 5-6, 2016 Time: Saturday, 8:00am to 9:00pm | Sunday, 8:00am to 5:00pm Location: The UDC David A. Clarke School of Law (4340 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008) CODEPINK, along with VFP, The Nation Magazine, Institute for Policy Studies, Peace Action, and many other organizations are hosting a two-day summit examining the policies and practices of Saudi Arabia and U.S.-Saudi ties. This Summit will address issues such as human rights; Saudi internal and foreign policy; and the prospects for change inside the kingdom and in U.S.-Saudi relations. For more information, email Andrea at andrea@codepink.org Purchase your ticket today! $20 - $100 sliding scale, includes lunch Back to Top Zinn Fund Request For Proposals Does your chapter have a project to promote peace and justice? The Howard Zinn Fund for Peace and Justice provides support to local chapters to start or to significantly develop ongoing local programs that produce substantive changes for the VFP mission.  Two types of awards are made, depending on available funds: Several Independent Awards of up $500 to support focused local projects which further the VFP mission. One Partnership Award of up to $5,000 to support the development of an ongoing chapter program that will produce significant results for the long-term mission of VFP.  This involves a collaborative process between the chapter team and the Zinn Fund Committee over several months to develop the project and the final proposal.  The collaboration continues during the grant period as the project is implemented and project reports are prepared.  These projects are used to demonstrate VFP activities and to promote support for the VFP mission. The deadline for Zinn Fund Applications is Friday March 18 For more information, visit the webpage Howard Zinn Fund. Back to Top This Weekend - Stand With Our Muslim Friends hosted by VFP Smedley Butler Chapter When:  Saturday, Feb 27, 2016              Start time:  11am  Where:  Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center              100 Malcolm x Blvd., Roxbury, MA The chapter is planning a program/rally at the Islamic Society of Boston on Saturday, February 27. This is the largest Mosque in New England, located in Roxbury, MA. We have been working with members of the Mosque to put together a program showing our support, as veterans, for our Muslim friends, neighbors, and co-workers. VFP Board President, Barry Ladendorf is scheduled to speak. Back to Top Save the Date:  March 27-April 2, 2016 - 2nd Annual Shut Down Creech Join us March 27-April 2, 2016 at Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada for a 2nd national mobilization of nonviolent resistance to shut down killer drone operations in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia and everywhere. Last year 150 activists joined us from 20 different states, including than 50 veterans. Sponsored by: VFP, CODEPINK: Women For Peace, Nevada Desert Experience, Voices for Creative Nonviolence Register Online Visit Website For More Info View and Share Facebook Event Page Back to Top Two Drone Protesters Arrested at Volk Field Air National Guard Base This Week Brian Terrell and Kathy Kelly, appeared before Judge Curran from the Juneau County jail via the jail’s video link.  The two had been held overnight.  They were served documents charging them with trespassing at the “dwelling” of Volk Field.  Pilots train at Volk Field to operate Shadow Drones over other countries. <More> Back to Top 501(c)(3) and Political Election Activity VFP will abide by the 501(c)(3) rules set forth by the law firm Harmon, Curran, Spielberg Eisenberg, LLC regarding political election activity.  The document contains a list of "10 Mistakes Nonprofits Should Avoid in an Election Year" Back to Top John Barr - Presente! John was the second President of Veterans For Peace.  He addressed various audiences with his message of peace, including high schools and colleges.  His contribution to informing and educating citizens about the dangers of nuclear weapons was immense.  He was a good and decent man.  <Obituary> Back to Top Travel Opportunities for Activists Location Sponsored by Dates Contact Việt Nam Việt Nam's  Hoa Binh (Peace) Chapter 160 Mar 14- 30, 2016 For more information, please email Nadya Williams Cuba Code Pink May 2016 Visit the Code Pink website Palestine Interfaith Peacebuilders May 21 - Jun 1 2016 For more information email esiegel@ifpb.org Palestine Interfaith Peacebuilders Jul 16- 29 2016 For more information email esiegel@ifpb.org Palestine Interfaith Peacebuilders Oct   24-Nov     6 2016 For more information email esiegel@ifpb.org Back to Top		In This Issue: VFP Issues Statement on Torture Rhetoric In 2016 Presidential Campaign Veterans Challenge Islamophobia Join Us Mar 5-6, 2016 for the Summit on Saudi Arabia Zinn Fund Request For Proposals This Weekend - Stand With Our Muslim Friends hosted by VFP Smedley Butler Chapter Save the Date:  March 27-April 2, 2016 - 2nd Annual Shut Down Creech VFP Members Can Help Increase VFP's UN Interaction 501(c)(3)s and Political Election Activity John Barr - Presente Travel Opportunities for Activists Two Drone Protesters Arrested at Volk Field Air National Guard Base This Week Wayne Wittman - Presente Seeking VFP Chapter to Host 2017 Convention 2016 Convention Update 2016 Proposed Convention Program VFP Statement of Purpose Available in Other Languages Okinawa Update - Thousands in Japan Rally against U.S. base on Okinawa VFP Members Can Help Increase VFP's UN Interaction Calling All Book Fanatics and VFP Authors! The Drones Quilt Project Needs Your Support Seeking Women Candidates for VFP Board Member Highlights Save the Dates:  Upcoming VFP Endorsed Actions/Events A Thought Worth Remembering! Wayne Wittman - Presente The national office learned yesterday that VFP member, Wayne Wittman, lifetime member and past board member passed away this week.  His celebration of life will be held Sunday Feb 28, 4-7 pm at the St. Paul Labor Federation Hall, 545 W. 7th St, St. Paul.  Funeral Mass 10 am Monday, February 29 at Our Lady of the Presentation Chapel, 1884 Randolph Ave, St. Paul with visitation one hour prior. Mary McNellis of the Minneapolis Chapter 27 has written a beautiful tribute honoring Wayne.  <Tribute> Back to Top Seeking VFP Chapter to Host 2017 Convention The national office is seeking a volunteer chapter to host the 2017 convention.  If interested, please email  shelly@veteransforpeace.org. 2016 Convention Update Theme:  Peace At Home, Peace Abroad A Just and Sustainable Future for the World’s Children   The 2016 convention hosting chapter is VFP San Francisco Chapter 69.  The dates for the convention are Thursday, August 11 thru Monday, August 15 @ University California - Clark Kerr campus in Berkeley CA.  Please note the change from our past program.  This convention will not be Wednesday thru Sunday. Workshop applications will be available starting Mar 4th.  Workshops will be held on Friday and Sunday. Proposed Convention Program Thu, Aug 11 - Presidents Reception/Poetry Reading Fri, Aug 12 - Opening Plenary, Workshop Presentations Sat, Aug 13 - Business Meeting, Banquet Sun, Aug 14 - Workshop Presentations Mon, Aug 15 - Closing Back to Top VFP Statement of Purpose Available in Other Languages VFP's statement of purpose is available from the national office in Chinese, French, German and Spanish.  Please submit this form if you would like to receive a translated copy. Back to Top Okinawa Update - Thousands in Japan Rally against U.S. base on Okinawa Thousands of people surrounded Japan's parliament this past Sunday to protest against government plans to relocate a U.S. military base on Okinawa island.  Many residents of Okinawa say they associate U.S. bases with noise, pollution and crime. <Article courtesy of aol.com> Back to Top VFP Members Can Help Increase VFP's UN Interaction Participants are needed for the 2016 NGO Conference to be held in South Korea in late May/early June.  The planning committee is also seeking participants.  There are several VFP slots available for the conference.  Registration will open soon. Here are a few ways that members can get involved Provide input about counter-recruiting in schools. Run for the Department of Public Information Board -  Elections are held in May.  Email, Ellen Barfield @ ellene4pj@yahoo.com if you are interested in any of these opportunities. 2015 Report on VFP and the UN by Ellen Barfield Back to Top Calling All Book Fanatics and VFP Authors! Whether you're an avid reader or an author, we would like you to consider using the Powell's Books website. VFP has an agreement with Powell's to earn 7.5% on online book sales.  Avid readers, not only do you have the luxury of choosing a book from the VFP bookshelf, any book purchased on the site will satisfy our agreement as long as you use this link when you first enter the site.  If you're an author, add your book on the site! Submit this form with the title of your book, ISBN number and we post it to the site.   It is up to you to supply inventory to the site. Back to Top The Drones Quilt Project Needs Your Support The Drones Quilt Project (DQP) is looking for VFP chapters to host the DQP exhibit in their towns.  Several VFP chapters have already done this, and they have been very worthwhile events.  The DQP exhibit consists of 1-10 quilts which memorialize the victims of combat drones, and 4 posters which explain the immorality and illegality of the weaponized drones program.  Please consider bringing the DQP exhibit to your town!  Contact Leah Bolger, leahbolger@comcast.net, or 541-207-7761, to schedule the exhibit. Back to Top Seeking Women Candidates for VFP Board If you are interested in becoming a Board member, please send a short resume including a statement explaining why you are interested in serving as a VFP Board member to Board President Barry Ladendorf bdlvfp@gmail.com or call the VFP National Office 314-725-6005 to speak to the Executive Director Michael T. McPhearson to answer any questions. Back to Top New VFP Tote Bag Union made canvas tote with shoulder  strap, Measures 18 inches wide x 15 inches high x 5 inches deep. $10 Order today Back to Top Member Highlights F. Lincoln Grahlfs, WWII veteran and  member of Clarence Kailin Chapter 25 in Southern Wisconsin is proposing to designate July 16th, as  Atomic Veterans Recognition Day.  <Read his proposal> Col Ann Wright, was asked by an Aljazeeran reporter for her thoughts on the recent talk of making Aegis Ashore test facility in Hawaii an operational facility.  <Article courtesy of america.aljazeera.com> Back to Top Save the Dates:  Upcoming VFP Endorsed Actions/Events Feb 27 - Muslims Are NOT our Enemy Rally in Boston MA Mar 1-25 - Art Display:  Peace is Patriotic: A Soldier’s (mis)Remembrances in Maryville, TN Mar 5-6, 2016 - 2016 Summit on Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC Mar 27- April 2, 2016 - Shut Down Creech AFB outside of Las Vegas, NV Mar 30 - Inside Drone Warfare: Perspectives of Whistleblowers, Families of Drone Victims and Their Lawyers in Las Vegas, NV Apr 15 - GDAMS (Global Day Against Military Spending) Apr 22 - Earth Day May 14-21 - Sam's 5th Annual Ride for Peace, Raleigh, NC to Washington, DC May 23-25 - VFP 2nd Annual Lobby Days May 30 — Memorial Day (Observed) Jul 27 - Korean War Armistice Day Aug 11-15, 2016 - VFP Annual Convention at Clark Kerr campus of University of California Berkeley, CA Sep 21—International Day of Peace Oct 7-10 - First SOAW bi-national convergence at the U.S./Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona Nov 11 - Armistice Day Back to Top A Thought Worth Remembering! Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder....Bysshe Shelley Back to Top
Forward to a Friend Veterans For Peace, 1404 N. Broadway, St. Louis, MO 63102   Veterans For Peace appreciates your tax-exempt donations. We also encourage you to join our ranks. Click to no longer receive updates from Veterans For Peace