This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
The Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With B.B. King’s Lucille In Mind
Here is the drill. I started out life listening to singer like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby (and his brother Bob), Miss Patti Page, Miss Rosemary Clooney, Miss Peggy Lee, the Andrew, McGuire, Dooley sisters, and all the big swing bands from the 1940s like Harry James, Tommy Dorsey (and his brother Jimmy who had his own band) as background music on the family radio in the 1950s which my mother had always during the day to get her workaday daytime household world and on Saturday night when my father joined in. Joined in so they could listen to Bill Marlin on local radio station WJDA and his Memory Lane show from seven to eleven where they could listen to the music that got them (and their generation) through the “from hunger” times of the 1930s Great Depression and then when they slogged through (either in some watery European theater or Pacific one take your pick) or anxiously waited at home for the other shoe to drop during World War II. I am not saying that they should not have had their memory music after all of that but frankly that stuff then (and now although less so) made me grind my teeth. But I was a captive audience then and so to this day I can sing off Rum and Coca Cola,Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree (the Glenn Miller version not the Andrew Sister) and Vera Lynn’s White Cliffs of Dover from memory. But that was not my music, okay.
Then of course since we are speaking about the 1950s came the great musical break-out, the age of classic rock and roll which I “dug” seriously dug to the point of dreaming my own jailbreak dreams about rock futures (and girls) but that Elvis-etched time too was just a bit soon for me to be able to unlike my older brother, Prescott, call that the music that I came of age to. Although the echoes of that time still run through my mind and I can quote chapter and verse One Night With You (Elvis version, including the salacious One Night Of Sin original), Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry, of course), Let’s Have A Party ( the much underratedWanda Jackson), Be-Bop-a-Lula (Gene Vincent in the great one hit wonder night but what a hit), Bo Diddley (Bo, of course), Peggy Sue (Buddy Holly) and a whole bunch more.
The music that I can really call my own is the stuff from the folk minute of the 1960s which dovetailed with my coming of chronological, political and social age (that last in the sense of recognizing, if not always acting on, the fact that there were others, kindred, out there beside myself filled with angst, alienation and good will to seek solidarity with which I did not connect with until later after getting out of my dinky hometown of Carver and off into the big cities and campus towns where just at that moment there were kindred by the thousands with the same maladies and same desire to turnthe world upside down). You know the mountain tunes of the first generation of the Carter Family coming out of Clinch Mountain, Buell Kazell (from Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music times), Jimmy Rodgers the Texas yodeler who found fame at the same time as the Carters in old Podunk Bristol, Tennessee, the old country Child ballads (Northwest Europe old country collected by Child in Cambridge in the 1850s and taken up in that town again one hundred years later in some kind of act historical affinity), the blue grass music (which grabbed me by the throat when Everett Lally, a college friend and member of the famed Lally Brothers blue grass band let me in on his treasure trove of music from that genre), and the protest songs, songs against the madnesses of the times, nuclear war, brushfire war in places like Vietnam, against Mister James Crows midnight ways, against the barbaric death penalty, against a lot of what songwriter Malvina Reynolds called the ticky-tack little box existences we were slated for by the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk and Phil Ochs. The latter songs being what drove a lot of my interest once I connected their work with the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene (and the adjacent hanging out at the Hayes-Bickford Cafeteria which I have written plenty about elsewhere where I hung on poverty nights, meaning many nights).
A lot of the drive toward folk music was to get out from under the anti-rock and rock musical counter-revolution that I kept hearing on my transistor radio during that early 1960s period with pretty boy singers and vapid young female-driven female singer stuff. (Of course being nothing but one of those alienated teenagers whom the high-brow sociologists were fretting about like we were what ailed the candid world I would not have characterized that trend that way it would take a few decades to see what was what then the music just gave me a a headache). Also to seek out roots music that I kept hearing in the coffeehouses and on the radio once I found a station (accidently) which featured such music and got intrigued by the sounds. Part of that search, a big search over the long haul, was to get deeply immersed in the blues, mainly at first country blues and later the city, you know, Chicago blues. Those country guys though intrigued me once they were “discovered” down south in little towns plying away in the fields or some such work and were brought up to Newport to enflame a new generation of aficionados. The likes of Son House the mad man preacher-sinner man, Skip James with that falsetto voice singing out about how he would rather be the devil than to be that woman’s man, Bukka White (sweating blood and salt on that National Steel on Aberdeen Mississippi Woman and Panama Limited of course Creole Belle candy man Mississippi John Hurt.
But those guys basically stayed in the South went about their local business and vanished from big view until they were “discovered” by folk aficionados who headed south looking for, well, looking for roots, looking for something to hang ontoand it took a younger generation like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the guy whose photograph graces this sketch, B.B. King, to move north, to follow the northern star to the big industrial cities (with a stop at Memphis going up river) to put some electric juice in those old guitars and chase my blues away just by playing like they too had made their own pacts with the devil. And made a lot of angst and alienation just a shade more bearable. Praise be.
From The A Dimmed Elegy For The Late Peter Paul Markin Series- A New Introduction
Markin's favorite song in the early 1960s-RIP-Markin A New
Introduction From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
A while
back, a few months ago although the project had been percolating in his brain
for the previous year or so after an incident reminded him how much he missed
his old corner boy from the 1960s North Adamsville night, the late Peter Paul
Markin, Bart Webber wrote up what he called, and rightly so I think, an elegy
for him, A
Dimmed Elegy For The Late Peter Paul Markin. That reminder
had been triggered one night the year before when Bart took the visiting
grandchildren of his son Lenny who now lived in New Haven, Connecticut and
worked at Yale to Salducci’s ’ Pizza Parlor “up the Downs” in North Adamsville
for some pizza and soda (that “up the Downs” not some quirky thing Bart made up
but the actual name of the shopping area known by that name to one and all not far from the high
school although nobody ever knew exactly how it got that moniker). Of course
that Salducci’s Pizza Parlor had been the local corner boy hang-out for Bart,
Frankie Riley, Jimmy Jenkins, Johnny Callahan, Fran Rizzo, Markin, me and a
roving cast of sometime corner boys depending on who we picked up (or who had
ditched or been ditched by some faithless girl and thus had time to hang rather
than spent endless hours prepping for dates, or going through “the work-out”
down at Adamsville Beach in some car) before Tonio who treated Frankie Riley
like a son sold the place to moved back to Italy and the new owners did not see
“no account” (their description) corner boys as an asset to their
family-friendly pizza dreams. The corner boys subsequently “hung” at Jack
Slack’s bowling alleys, the ones on Thornton Street near the beach not the ones
in Adamsville Center which was strictly for people who actually bowled, liked
to anyway although that latter information is strictly on the side since what
got Bart Webber in a lather was from Salducci times.
Although
Bart had not been in the place in years and it had changed hands several times
since Tonio ran the place back in the early 1960 the décor, the pizza processing
area complete with what looked like the same pizza ovens and most importantly
the jukebox, the jukebox, man, were still intact (that jukebox selections
composed of many “oldies but goodies” from that time not found on nostalgia
compilations for the local clientele who bring their kids and grandkids in for
pizza and soda, what else, although not three for a quarter like in the old
days but a quarter a pop). That night a young guy, a high school kid really,
was sitting with three guys and a couple of girls all also with the look of
high school about them, was if not loudly then animatedly talking a mile a
minute complete with about one thousand arcane facts to back him up about “a
new breeze coming through the land,” about how he, they were going to save the
planet, stop the wars, make the world a decent place to live in by people like
him, them who had not made the mess but who had a chance now to clean things up
(he, the kid didn’t say that “new breeze” thing but that is what he meant,
meant in all sincerity). Like Markin he went on for the time that Bart and his
grand-kids entered until they left (and he still might be taking if he was
really the ghost of Markin). And of course that talk, that mile a minute talk
complete with those ersatz facts reminded Bart of the night (make that nights)
when Markin held forth about the “new breeze coming” (his actual term) based on
the iceberg tip of events like the fight for nuclear disarmament, the fight for
black civil rights down south, the fight against the big bad brewing war happening
in Southeast Asia, and the first trappings of the counter-culture with the
shift-up in music to a disbelieving group of fellow corner boys who were just
trying finish high school without winding up in jail for the midnight capers
they pulled off to keep themselves in dough(engineered by that same Markin and
pulled off by Frankie Riley’s magic). Yeah, so as the kids today say Bart was “stoked”
to do something to bring back Markin’s memory, warts and all.
Bart had thereafter
approached me about doing the chore, about writing some big book memory thing since we now live in the same town, the same suburban
town which represents a small step up from our growing up in strictly working-class
North Adamsville (and still is), Carver about thirty miles south of that town
(and a town which had its own working-class history with its seasonal “boggers”
who worked the cranberry bogs which originally made the town famous but is now
a bedroom community for the high-tech firms on U.S. 495). Bart figured that
since he had retired from the day to day operations of his print shop which was
now being run by his oldest son, Jeff, and I was winding down my part in the
law practice I had established long ago I would have plenty of time to write
and he to “edit” and give suggestions. He said he was not a writer although he
had plenty of ideas to contribute but that I who had spent a life-time writing
as part of my job would have an easy time of it. Bart under the illusion that
writing dry as dust legal briefs for some equally dry as dust judge to read is
the same as nailing down a righteous piece about an old time corner boy mad man
relic of a by-gone era, with his mad talk, his mad dreams, his mad visions, who
was as crooked as they come, who was as righteously for the “little guy” as a
man could be, who had some Zen under the gun magic which made our nights easier
and who I would not trust (and did not have to trust since we had the truly
larcenous Frankie Riley to lead the way) to open a door sainted bastard. I
turned him down flat which I will explain in a moment.
The way Bart
presented that proposal deserves a little mention since he made the case one
night when the remnant of Markin’s old comrades still alive who still reside in
the area, Frankie, Josh, Jack Callahan, Jimmy Jenkins, Bart and me were
drinking now affordable high-shelf liquors at “Jack’s” in Cambridge near where
Jimmy lives (that high-shelf liquor distinction important for old corner boys who
survived and moved upa peg in the world who drank cheap Southern Comfort by the
fistful pints and later rotgut maybe just processed whiskies from the very low-shelves).
During the conversation, not for the first time, Bart mentioned that he was
still haunted by the thought he had had
a few years before about the time that Markin had us in thrall one night out in
Joshua Tree in 1972 when we were all high as kites on various drugs of choices
and he, Markin, at first alone, and then with Josh began some strange
Apache-like dance and they began to feel (at least according to Josh’s
recollection) like those ancient warriors who tried to avenge their loses when
white settlers had come to take their lands and we all for one moment that long
ago night were able to sense what it was like to be warrior-avengers, righters
of the world’s wrongs that Markin was always harping on. Markin had that effect
on the rest of us, was always tweaking us on some idea from small scale larcenies
to drug-induced flame-outs. Yeah, that miserable, beautiful, so crooked he
could not get his legs in his pants, son of a bitch, sainted bastard still is
missed, still has guys from the old days moaning to high heaven about that
lost. Bart insisted there was a story there, a story if only for us and someone
(all eyes on me) should write it up.
I can say
all of that and say at the same time that I can say I couldn’t write the piece.
See while at times Markin was like a brother to me and we treated each other as
such he also could have his “pure evil” moments which the other corner boys
either didn’t see, or didn’t want to see. These may be small things now on
reflection but he was the guy who almost got me locked up one night, one summer
night in 1966 before our senior year when Frankie who usually was the “on-site”
manager of our small larcenies was out of town with his girlfriend. Markin
figured since he was the “brains” behind the various capers that he could do
one on his own but he needed a look-out, me. The caper involved a small heist
of a home in the Mayfair swells part of North Adamsville whose owners were
“summering” somewhere in the Caribbean. Markin had “cased” or thought he had
cased the place fully except he didn’t factor in that the owners had a house-sitter
during that time, some college girl doing the task for a place to stay near Boston
that summer from what we figured later. Markin startled her as he entered a
side door, she screamed, Markin panicked, as she headed for the telephone to
call the police and he fled out the door. But see Markin came running out that
door toward me just when the cops were coming down the street in their squad
car directly toward us where we met up. They stopped us, told to get in the car
and headed back to that Mayfair house. As it turned out the house-sitter
couldn’t identify either of us, couldn’t identify Markin and the cops had to
let us go. No question Markin panicked and no question he made a serious
mistake by heading my way knowing what he knew had happened with the sitter and
her response to the invasion. I had, and have always had, the sneaking
suspicion that he might have rolled me over as the B&E guy if it had been
possible. I have a few other stories like that as well but that gives you a
better insight into what Markin could turn into when cornered.
A couple of
other incidents involved women, one my sister, the other an old flame or rather
someone I wanted to be my flame. One of the reasons that I, unlike Markin who
did serve in Vietnam which I think kind of turned him over the edge to the
“dark side” once his dream about a “newer world” as he called it started to
evaporate in the early 1970s, did not do military duty since I was the sole
support, working almost full time after school during high school, of my mother
and four very younger sisters after my old-fashioned Irish drunken
half-dead-beat father died of a massive heart attack in 1965. My oldest sister,
Clara, only thirteen at the time while we were in high school, was smitten by
Markin from early on and I could see that he was willing to take advantage of
her naiveté as well although I warned him off more than once. Now I could never
prove it, and Clara would not say word one about it to me, but I believe he
took her virginity from her. I do know during that period I found a carton of
Trojans, you know “rubbers,” in her bureau drawer when I was looking for
something I thought she had of mine and she was not around to ask. I didn’t
confront him directly since among corner boys such things would have been
“square” to discuss even about sisters but I continued to keep warning him off
like I didn’t know anything had happened and before long I saw Clara had taken
up with a boy her own age so I let it drop. (Clara, now a professor at a New
York college and with a great husband and three great kids, a bright young
woman even then except around Markin who had some spell on her, even later when
she had a boyfriend and would come into Salducci’s trying to make him jealous
from the way she acted, cried to high heaven when I told her the news of his
fate.)
The flame thing
involved Laura Perkins who I was “hot” for from the ninth grade on and who I
had several dates with in the tenth grade and it looked like things were going
well when she threw me over for Markin. Now that situation has happened eight
million times in life but corner boys were supposed to keep “hands off” of
other corner boys’ girls although I was not naïve enough to believe that was
honored more in the breech than the observance having done a couple of
end-around maneuvers myself but this Laura thing strained our relationship for
a while. Here is the funny part though after a few weeks she threw Markin over
for the captain of the football team (she was a cheerleader as well as bright
student, school newspaper writer, on the dance committee and a bunch of other
resume-building things) who we all hated. Funnier still at our fortieth reunion
a few years back Laura and I got back together (after her two marriages and my
two marriages had flamed out something we laughed about at the time of the
reunion) and we have been an “item” ever since. But you can see where I would,
unlike say Bart, have a hard time not letting those things I just mentioned get
in my way of writing something objective about that bastard saint.
So Bart
wrote the piece himself, wrote the “dimmed” elegy (the “dimmed” being something
I suggested as part of the title) and did a great job for a guy who said he
couldn’t write. Frankly any other kind of elegy but dimmed would fail to truly honor
that bastard saint madman who kept us going in that big night called the early
1960s and drove us mad at the same time with his larcenous schemes and
over-the-top half-baked brain storm ideas and endless recital of the eight
billion facts he kept in his twisted brain (estimates vary on the exact number
but I am using the big bang number to cover my ass, as he would). I need not go
into all of the particulars of Bart’s piece except to say that the consensus
among the still surviving corner boys was that Bart was spot on, caught all of
Markin’s terrible contradictions pretty well. Contradiction that led him from
the bright but brittle star of the Jack Slack’s bowling alleys corner boy back
then to a bad end, a mucho mal end murdered down in Sonora, Mexico in 1976 or 1977
when some drug deal (kilos of cocaine) he was brokering to help feed what Josh
said was a serious “nose candy” habit went sour for reasons despite some
investigation by Frankie Riley, myself and a private detective Frankie hired were
never made clear. The private detective, not some cinema Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe,
but a good investigator from his scanty report was warned off the trail by everybody
from the do-nothing Federales to the U.S. State Department consular officer in
Sonora, and warned off very indirectly both down there and in Boston not to
pursue the thing further, the implication being or else. What was clear was
that he was found face down on some dusty back road of that town with two slugs
in his head and is buried in the town’s forlorn potter’s field in some unmarked
grave. That is about all we know for sure about his fate and that is all that
is needed to be mentioned here.
That foul
end might have been the end of it, might have been the end of the small legend
of Markin. Even he would in his candid moments accept that “small” designation.
Yes, been the end of the legend except the moaning to high heaven every time
his name comes up. Except this too. Part of Bart’s elegy referenced the fact
that in Markin’s sunnier days before the nose candy got the best of him, brought
out those formerly under control outrageous “wanting habits,” in the early
1970s when he was still holding onto that “newer world” dream that he (and many
others, including me and Bart for varying periods) did a series of articles
about the old days and his old corner boys in North Adamsville. Markin before
we lost contact, or rather I lost contact with him since Josh Breslin his
friend from Maine (and eventually our friend as well whom we consider an
honorary Jack Slack’s corner boy) met out in San Francisco in the Summer of
Love, 1967 knew his whereabouts outside of San Francisco in Daly City until
about 1974 wrote some pretty good stuff, stuff up for awards, and short-listed
for the Globe prize.
Pushed on by
Bart’s desire to tell Markin’s story as best he could who must have been driven
by some fierce ghost of Markin over his shoulder to do such yeoman’s work, he, Frankie
(as you know our corner boy leader back then who had Markin as his scribe and
who coined the moniker “the Scribe” for him that we used to bait or honor him
depending on circumstances and now is a big time lawyer in Boston), Josh, and I
agreed that a few of the articles were worth publishing if only for ourselves
and the small circle of people whom Markin wrote for and about. (Markin’s
oldest friend from back in third grade, Allan Johnson, who would have had
plenty to say about the early days had passed awayafter a long-term losing fight with cancer
before this plan was hatched, RIP, brother.) So that is exactly what we did. We
had a commemorative small book of articles and any old time photographs we
could gather put together and had it printed up in the print shop that Bart’s
oldest son, Jeff, is now running for him since his retirement from the day to
day operations last year.
Since not
all of us had everything that Markin wrote, as Bart said in his piece, what the
hell they were newspaper or magazine articles to be used to wrap up the fish in
or something after we were done reading them, we decided to print what was
available. Bart was able to find copies of a bunch of sketches up in the attic
of his parents’ home which he was cleaning up for them when they were putting
their house up for sale since they were in the process of downsizing. Josh,
apparently not using his copies for wrapping fish purposes, had plenty of the
later magazine pieces. I had a few things, later things from when we went on
the quest for the blue-pink Great American West hitchhike road night as Markin
called it. Unfortunately, we could not find any copies of the long defunct East Bay Eye and so could not include
anything from the important Going To The Jungle
series about some of his fellow Vietnam veterans who could not adjust to the
“real” world coming back from ‘Nam and wound up in the arroyos, canyons,
railroad sidings and under the bridges of Southern California. He was their
voice on that one then, if silent now when those aging vets desperately a voice.So Markin can speak to us still. Yeah, like
Bart said, that’s about right for that sorry ass blessed bastard saint with his
eight billion words.
Below is the
short introduction that I wrote for that book which we all agreed should be put
in here trying to put what Markin was about in content from a guy who knew him
about as well as anybody from the old neighborhood, knew his dark side back
like I mentioned then and when that side
came out later too:
“The late
Peter Paul Markin, also known as “the Scribe, ” so anointed by Frankie Riley
the unchallenged self-designated king hell king of the schoolboy night among
the corner boys who hung around the pizza parlors, pool halls, and bowling
alleys of the town, in telling somebody else’s story in his own voice about
life in the old days in the working class neighborhoods of North Adamsville
where he grew up, or when others, threating murder and mayhem,wanted him to tell their stories usually gave
each and every one of that crew enough rope to hang themselves without
additional comment. He would take down, just like he would do later with the
hard-pressed Vietnam veterans trying to do the best they could out in the
arroyos, crevices, railroad sidings and under the bridges when they couldn’t
deal with the “real” world after Vietnam in the Going To The Jungle series that won a couple of awards and was
short-listed for the Globe award, what they wanted the world to hear, spilled
their guts out as he one time uncharitably termed their actions. Not the
veterans, not his fellows who had their troubles down in L.A. and needed to
righteously get it out and he was the conduit, their voice, but the zanies from
our old town, and then lightly, very lightly if the guy was bigger, stronger
than him, or in the case of girls if they were foxy, and mainly just clean up
the language for a candid world to read.
Yeah Markin
would bring out what they, we, couldn’t say, maybe didn’t want to say. That talent
was what had made the stories he wrote about the now very old days growing up
in North Adamsville in the 1960s when “the rose was on the bloom” as my fellow
lawyer Frankie Riley used to say when Markin was ready to spout his stuff so
interesting. Ready to make us laugh, cringe, get red in the face or head toward
him to slap him down, to menace him, if he got too ungodly righteous. Here is
the funny part though. In all the stories he mainly gave his “boys” the best of
it. Yes, Bart is still belly-aching about a few slights, about his lack of
social graces then that old Markin threw his way, and maybe he was a little off
on the reasons why I gave up the hitchhike highway blue-pink Great American
West night quest that he was pursuing (what he called sneeringly my getting “off
the bus” which even he admitted was not for everyone) but mainly that crazy
maniac with the heart of gold, the heart of lead, the heart that should have
had a stake placed in its center long ago, that, ah, that’s enough I have said
enough except I like Bart still miss and mourn the bastard.”
Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Fighters Of The International Working Class Today-The International Working Class Anthem The Internationale
A YouTube film clip of a performance of the classic international working class song of struggle, The Internationale.
Ralph Morris comment:
“Never in a million years” if you had asked me the question of whether I knew the words, melody or history of The Internationale before I linked up in 1971 with my old friend and comrade, Sam Eaton, asked me whether I had known how important such a song and protest music in general was to left-wing movements as a motivating force for struggle against whatever the American government is down on in the war or social front to squeeze the life out of average Joes and Joanne. To the contrary I would have looked at you with ice picks in my eyes wondering where you fit into the international communist conspiracy if you has asked me that question say in 1964, 1965 maybe later, as late as 1967. Then living in Troy, New York I imbibed all the working class prejudices against reds (you know communist dupes of Joe Stalin and his progeny who pulled the strings from Moscow and made everybody jumpy), against blacks (stood there right next to my father, Ralph, Sr., when he led the physical opposition to blacks moving into the Tappan Street section of town and had nothing, along with me and my corner boys at Van Patten’s Drugstore, but the “n” word to call black people sometimes to their faces), against gays and lesbians (you know fag and dyke baiting them whenever the guys and I went to Saratoga Springs where they spent their summers doing whatever nasty things they did to each other), against uppity woman (servile, domestic women like my good old mother and wanna-bes were okay). Native Americans didn’t even rate a nod since they were not on the radar. But mainly I was a red, white and blue American patriotic guy who really did have ice picks for anybody who thought they would like to tread on old Uncle Sam (who had been “invented” around our way).
But things sometimes change in this wicked old world, change when some big events force everybody, or almost everybody since some people will go on about their business as if nothing had happened even come judgment day. That event for me was the Vietnam War, the war that tore this nation, my generation and a whole lot more asunder and has not really been put back together even now. And that Vietnam War was not an abstract thing like it was for a lot of guys who opposed it on principle, or were against the draft at least for themselves since once I got my draft notice in early 1967 I decided to enlist to avoid being cannon fodder for what looked to me a bloodbath going on over there. But I did that enlistment out of patriotic reasons since my idea also was to use some skills I had in the electrical field to aid the cause. When I got my draft notice I was working in my father’s high skill electrical shop where he did precision work for the big outfit in the area, General Electric (which was swamped with defense contract work at the time) and figured that is what I could do best. My recruiting sergeant in Albany led me to believe that as well. Silly boy (silly boy now but then he promised the stars and I taken in by his swagger bought the whole deal).
Pay attention to that year I got my draft notice, 1967. What Uncle was looking for that year (and in 1968 as well) were guys to go out in the bush in some desolate place and kill every commie they could find (and as I know from later experience if you didn’t have a commie to count just throw a red star on some poor son of a peasant who had just been mowed down in the crossfire and claim him, hell, claim her as an enemy kill, Jesus). So I wound up humping the hills of the Central Highlands of Vietnam not just for a year like most guys but I extended for six month to get out a little earlier when I got back to the “real” world. This is not the place to tell what I did, what my buddies did, and what the American government made us do, made us in nothing but animals but whatever you might have heard about atrocities and screw ups is close enough to the truth for now.
All of that made me a very angry young man when I got out of the Army in late 1969. I tried to talk to my father about it but he was hung up in a combination “good war, World War II, his war where America saved international civilization from the Nazis and Nips (my father’s term since he fought in the Pacific with the Marines) and “my country, right or wrong.” All he really wanted me to do was get back to the shop and help him fill those goddam GE defense contract orders. And I did it, for a while.
One day in1970 though I was taking a high compression motor to Albany and had parked the shop truck on Van Dyke Street near Russell Sage College. Coming down the line, silent, silent as the grave I thought later, were a ragtag bunch of guys in mismatched (on purpose I found out later) military uniforms carrying signs but with a big banner in front calling for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam and signing the banner with the name of the organization-Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). That was all, and all that was needed. Nobody on those still patriotic, mostly government worker, streets called them commies or anything like that but you could tell some guys in white collars and who never came close to a gun, except maybe to kill animals or something defenseless really wanted to. One veteran as they came nearer to me shouted out for any veterans to join them, to tell the world what they knew first-hand about what was going on in Vietnam. Yeah, that shout-out was all I needed, all I needed to join my “band of brothers.”
I still worked in my father’s shop for a while but our relationship was icy (and would be for a long time after that although in 1991 when he retired I took over the business) and I would take part in whatever actions I could around the area (and down in New York City a couple of times when they called for re-enforcements to make a big splash). Then in the spring of 1971, the year that I met Sam Eaton, I joined with a group of VVAWers and supporters for an action down in Washington, D.C.
The idea, which will sound kind of strange today in a different time when there is very little overt anti-war activity against the current crop of endless wars but also shows you how desperate we were to end that damn war, was to on May Day shut down the government if it did not shut down the war. Our task, as part of the bigger scheme, since we were to form up as a total veterans and supporters contingent was to symbolically shut down the Pentagon. Wild right, but see the figuring was that they, the government, would not dare to arrest vets and we figured (we meaning all those who planned the events and went along with the plan) the government would treat it somewhat like the big civilian action at the Pentagon in 1967 which Norman Mailer won a literary prize writing a book about, Armies of the Night. Silly us.
Naturally we were arrested well before we even got close to the place and got a first-hand lesson in what the government was willing to do to maintain itself at all costs. And in the RFK Stadium that day where we had been herded little cattle by the forces of order since we had thousands of people being arrested is where I met Sam who, for his own reasons which he has, I think, described elsewhere on his own hook, had come down from Boston with a group of radicals and reds whose target was to “capture” the White House. And so we met on that forlorn summertime football and formed our lifelong friendship. Sam, I know, if I know anything has already told you about all of that so I will skip past the events of those few days to what we figured out to do afterwards.
No question we had been spinning our wheels for a long time in trying to oppose the war (and change other things as well as we were coming to realize needed changing as well) and May Day made that very clear. So for a time, for a couple of years after that say until about 1974, 1975 when we knew the high tide of the 1960s was seriously ebbing,we joined study groups and associated with “red collectives” in Cambridge where Sam lived in a commune at the time. The most serious group “The Red October Collective,”a group that was studying Marxism in general and “Che” Guevara and Leon Trotsky in particular, is where we learned the most in the summer of 1972 when Sam asked me to join him (my father was pissed off, went a little crazy but I wanted to do it and so I did). The thing was that at the end of each class, each action, each meeting the Internationale, or some version of it would be sung in unison to close the event and express solidarity with all the oppressed.
At the beginning some of my old habits kind of held me back, you know the anti-red stuff, Cold War enemy stuff, just like at first I had trouble despite all I knew about calling for victory to the Viet Cong (who in-country we called Charlie in derision although in Tet 1968 with much more respect when he came at us and kept coming despite high losses). But I got over it, got in the swing. Funny not long after that time and certainly since the demise of the Soviet Union and its satellites when socialism took a big hit out of favor to solve world’s pressing problems I very seldom sing it anymore, in public anyway.
Sam, who likes to write up stuff about the old days more than I do, writes for different blogs and websites on the Internet and he asked me to do this remembrance about my experience learning the Internationale as part of a protest music series that a guy he knows named Fritz Jasper has put together. So I have done my bit and here is what Sam and Fritz want to convey to you:
Fritz Jasper comment:
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our socialist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow. ****** Fritz Jasper comment on this issue: Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1969, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle around the effects of containerization of shipping on the West Coast docks, a question that we now know costs many union jobs by the failure of longshoremen’ union to tie in technological improvement with unionized labor employment. And, of course, the union bureaucracy’s penchant for making “sweetheart” deals rather than a class struggle fight over the issue.
This issue does pose the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialists are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1969 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later, in 1970, take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
The other section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, union caucus organizing. The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. Once again this says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
“The level of grassroots support for this campaign has been truly impressive. Close to 1,100 donors in just 48 hours made their voices heard for Chelsea’s cause," Trevor Timm, executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement. "It really shows how small donations can add up to something huge. Because of this success, we’re raising our goal to the full amount Chelsea Manning’s attorney has estimated will be needed to bring the case through oral arguments in the Army Court of Appeals. We’re confident, with your help, we can get there."
Nancy Hollander, Manning’s attorney, said contributions to the crowdsourced fund are “beyond our wildest dreams."
"We are grateful for this outpouring and continued support as we travel down this long road,” Hollander said.
Manning, 27, is imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas for giving hundreds of thousands of government files to WikiLeaks, including information on U.S. operations in Guantánamo Bay and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Formerly Pfc. Bradley Manning, she will be eligible for parole in about 2020.
Manning began the process of transitioning to a woman last year, and was approved for a gender-reassignment hormone therapy in February. It was the first time the Defense Department has authorized such a treatment for an active service member, and followed a lawsuit pressing the military to allow Manning's transition.
Manning and her legal team are pursuing an appeal of her conviction, with the hope of reducing her prison term. Prior to the fundraising campaign, Manning had collected about $40,000 in donations to cover legal fees.
First Look Media, the news organization created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, announced the campaign on Wednesday, and pledged to match $60,000 in donations. According to the statement, $10,000 of the match will come from First Look’s prominent investigative journalist, Glenn Greenwald, who has led coverage of former National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden's disclosures of government spying on ordinary citizens.
Greenwald explained the campaign in a post for First Look's investigative news outfit, The Intercept:
“Whatever else one thinks of Manning, she should not face limits in her ability to pursue her legal rights with full zeal, nor should her already difficult circumstances be exacerbated by worries over how to pay legal fees,” he wrote. “Her actions redounded to the benefit of all of us, and it’s incumbent on those who are able to do what they can to help her defend her legal rights. It’s in our collective interest to ensure that whistleblowers are able to receive a full, vigorous defense of their rights, and that the government’s pernicious anti-transparency theories be contested.”
The campaign continues to accept donations, which can be made here.
As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Comes To A Close... Some Remembrances
The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European youth form all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts. Also clogged, or rather thrown in the nearest bin were the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. Other than isolated groups and individuals mostly in the weaker countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove thir manhood.
Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the last month of the first year of war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19th century), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.
The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20th century when the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last war on the fronts (that is how the generals saw it mainly having won their promotions in those earlier wars and so held captive to the past). However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.
The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can, hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.
A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’sprisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America the Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “club fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell), were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.
Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day.
So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.
Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Newsreel Footage Of The 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike
Commentary
This year marks the 79th Anniversary of three great labor struggles that ended in victory in heart of the Great Depression(the 1930s version of what we, at least partially, confront today); the great General Strike in San Francisco that was led by the dockers and sailor unions and brought victory on the key issue of the union hiring hall (since then greatly emasculated); the great Minneapolis Teamster strikes that led to the unionization of truck drivers and allied workers in that labor-hating town and later to the organizing of over-the-road drivers that created one of the strongest (if corrupt) unions in North America; and, the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike whose key component was leadership by the unemployed workers. Does all of this sound familiar? Yes and no. Yes, to labor militants who, looking to a way out of the impasse of the condition of today's quiescent labor movement, have studied these labor actions. No, to the vast majority of workers who are either not organized or are clueless about their history. In either case, though, these actions provide a thread to how we must struggle in the future. Although 75 years seems like a long time ago the issues posed then have not gone away. Far from it. Study this labor history now to be ready to struggle when we get our openings.
***** Guest Commentary
Toledo Auto-Lite Strike
Below is a speech given by Ted Selander on June 3, 1984 at an anniversary celebration of the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite strike. Selander was a participant in the historic strike, the leadership of which shortly afterwards joined the Trotskyist movement. This article is reprinted from the March 1986 issue of Socialist Action newspaper. An expanded version appeared in the July 1984 issues.
Brothers and sisters, the key to an understanding of the magnificent Auto-Lite strike in 1934 is that it was a strike won on the picket line by a community uprising. I repeat: on the picket line by a community uprising.
Toledo was in the grip of a tremendous popular upsurge of anger at the greedy bosses who have to give their wage slaves a few cents more in their pay.
This was 1934 B.T. – B.T. meaning before television. As a matter of fact, it was before all the social gains when we fought for and won in the ‘30s – before unemployment pay, before food stamps, before social security, before the CIO, and before Medicare, etc.
After four years of depression, the Toledo workers were in an angry mood because of the bank failures, the idle factories, the over-stocked granaries, and the 15 million unemployed. For four years we had poverty in the midst of plenty. Even the establishment was losing confidence in themselves and their system.
Rank and file muzzled
I don’t think (as James P. Cannon once pointed out) there was any real difference between the Toledo Auto-Lite strikers and the workers involved in many of the lost strikes in the United States at that time. In practically every strike, the rank and file always displayed courage. The difference was in the leadership and their strategy and tactics. In nearly every strike the militancy of the rank and file was muzzled, many times snuffed out from the top.
The leaders are tricked by the courts, the labor boards, the mediators, the government, and the media to shift the fight from the picket line to the court and conference room. But all the while, the company keeps hiring scabs to take the strikers’ jobs.
In the Auto-Lite strike, the company was hiring scabs by the hundreds and claimed they now had 1800 workers. We understood what was happening. We knew that the strike was dying and doomed. Only some bold, dramatic action could revive it, and even then it would have to be followed up with plenty of action and support to give the company an all-out fight. And nothing short of an all-out fight would do.
As you probably know, we wrote a public letter to Judge Stuart telling him that we were going to violate his anti-labor injunction and call for mass picketing. By mass picketing we didn’t mean a few hundred, we meant thousands. Could we get thousands down to that picket line? Well, that was the $64 question.
We had spent the previous year organizing what some qualified observer said was the largest and most militant unemployed organization in the country – the Lucas County Unemployed League. We had held meetings and spoke in every section of the city and in the townships; organized countless marches, demonstrations, sit-ins; stopped evictions; won cash relief with a relief strike; and had held many, many other actions.
Because of this vast experience, we felt sure that we knew the temper of the Toledo workers. We felt we had a good chance to be the fuse that could ignite a spirit of solidarity with the Auto-Lite strikers to get union recognition and perhaps even win the first union contract in the auto plants of Toledo.
Workers violate injunction
On the first day that we violated the injunction, our mass picket line consisted of four individuals. That’s right – just four. We were arrested, jailed, convicted and let out on bail and warned not to return to the picket line. But we told the judge that we were going back. And we did – picking up some 50 pickets on the way.
After that, there were a series of arrests, each one with a greater amount of pickets – first 46, then 108, and in between many smaller numbers. Every time we went back from the courts and jail, the picket lines kept growing steadily until on May 23 there were 10,000 reported on the street in front of the plant.
Now when you have a mass picket line of thousands, it enables you to counter the company’s offensive moves. For example, they brought out a high-pressure hose and turned a stream of water on us. But it didn’t take very long for a couple of hundred pickets to take the hose away and turn the water on them.
Many times the police and deputies brutally clubbed the pickets; but before they could shove them into a patrol wagon enough pickets rushed in and grabbed the pickets away and often gave the cops a taste of their own clubs.
You know that every good union has two educational committees: one to arrange lectures of all kinds and the other to educate scabs who won’t attend classes.
Half the employees at the Auto-Lite were women who were among the very best strikers we had. A couple of days after the National Guard came in, the women grabbed a scab, took him into an alley, and stripped every bit of clothing off of him except his tie and shoes. Then they marched him, naked as a jaybird, up and down the downtown streets.
Next day the papers carried a large picture of him on the front page, but they had their artist broaden and lengthen the tie to hid the family jewels. You can bet that picture discouraged a lot of scabs, but it got a big round of applause from the unionists in Ohio.
Strikers fight National Guard
The Auto-Lite strikers battled first the police, then the company guards and deputies, and finally the National Guard. The first day the Guard came in they fired without warning at the unarmed strikers, killing two and wounding 25.
After those murders, the enraged strikers fought the guard for six days and nights – returning again and again to face tear gas and vomit gas, bayonet charges, and even rifle fire.
During the lulls in the battle, we stood on boxes educating the guardsmen about the issues in the strike and how they were being used against the workers. By the way, the casualties were not all one-sided. The hospitals were patching up not only strikers but police, deputies, and the National Guardsmen.
On June 4, the company surrendered and signed on the dotted line a union contract giving the strikers priority on jobs, a 5-percent wage increase, and other concessions; agreed to withdraw all court charges and to pay all court costs. The logjam in Toledo had finally been broken, and 19 auto plants were organized before the year ended. The road was cleared to make Toledo a union town.
As a participant in the Auto-Lite strike of 1934, I appreciate this opportunity to join with you in this 50th anniversary celebration. It is a credit to all of you who organized this anniversary to keep alive the memory of labor’s untapped strength as demonstrated in the Auto-Lite strike and all the other battles which prove that in unions we are strong.
Below is the letter that the Auto-Lite strikers sent to Judge R.R. Stuart to inform him of their intention to violate his injunctions against picketing.
May 5, 1934
His Honor Judge Stuart County Court House Toledo, Ohio
Honorable Judge Stuart:
On Monday morning May 7, at the Auto-Lite plant, the Lucas County Unemployed League, in protest of the injunction issued by your court, will deliberately and specifically violate the injunction enjoining us from sympathetically picketing peacefully in support of the striking Auto Workers Federal Union.
We sincerely believe that this court intervention, preventing us from picketing, is an abrogation of our democratic rights, contrary to our constitutional liberties and contravenes the spirit and the letter of Section 7a of the NRA.
Further, we believe that the spirit and intent of this arbitrary injunction is another specific example of an organized movement to curtail the rights of all workers to organize, strike and picket effectively.
Therefore, with full knowledge of the principles involved and the possible consequences, we openly and publicly violate an injunction which, in our opinion, is a suppressive and oppressive act against all workers.
Sincerely yours,
Lucas County Unemployed League Anti-Injunction Committee Sam Pollock, Sec'y
