Click on the headline to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive blog page for all kinds of interesting information about that important historic grouping.
Markin comment:
This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. More, later.
***********
Alexander Cockburn (1941-2012)
July 28, 2012
By Sebastiaan Faber-->
Earlier this month, journalism mourned the death of the radical British journalist Alexander Cockburn, son of the journalist and Spanish Civil War veteran Claud Cockburn, aka Frank Pitcairn (1904-1981). Among the many obituaries, The Nation’s Victor Navasky writes:
His style was witty, coruscating, deadly, in the highest polemical traditions of Ambrose Bierce and H.L. Mencken. Yet his most slashing sallies were always fact-based, right up to his final Nation column, last issue, on the Libor scandal.
“Alex knew how good he was,” John Nichols writes,
He knew that he could take readers where other writers could not — to the fields of India where Coca-Cola was stealing water from peasants; to the barricades of neglected labor battles in Austin, Minn., and Kenosha, Wis.; to “The City” of London, where the Libor scandal now unfolds. There were times when the going got rough; Alex’s radicalism was genuine, and he could offend not just foes on the right but friends on the left. He parted company with mainstream liberals on issues ranging from gun control to global warming.
Friday, August 03, 2012
The Latest From The SteveLendmanBlog
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/
Markin comment:
I am always happy to post material from the SteveLendmanBlog, although I am not always in agreement with his analysis. I am always interested in getting a left-liberal/radical perspective on some issues that I don’t generally have time to cover in full like the question of Palestine, the Middle East in general, and civil rights and economic issues here in America and elsewhere. Moreover the blog provides plenty of useful links to other sources of information about the subject under discussion.
Markin comment:
I am always happy to post material from the SteveLendmanBlog, although I am not always in agreement with his analysis. I am always interested in getting a left-liberal/radical perspective on some issues that I don’t generally have time to cover in full like the question of Palestine, the Middle East in general, and civil rights and economic issues here in America and elsewhere. Moreover the blog provides plenty of useful links to other sources of information about the subject under discussion.
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free The Class-War Prisoners-Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Free Leonard Peltier, Free Lynne Stewart And Her Co-Workers-Free The Remaining Ohio 7 Prisoners!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
The Latest From "The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five" Website -Free The Five Ahora! -The Defense Of The Cuban Revolution Begins With The Defense Of The Cuban Five
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from this site.
Markin comment (re-post from July 26, 2011):
On a day, July 26th, important in the history of the Cuban revolutionary movement it is also important, as always, to remember that the defense of the Cuban revolution here in the United States, the "heart of the beast", starts with the defense of the Cuban Five.
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck (now deceased), whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I have been a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases internationally that are brought to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Markin comment (re-post from July 26, 2011):
On a day, July 26th, important in the history of the Cuban revolutionary movement it is also important, as always, to remember that the defense of the Cuban revolution here in the United States, the "heart of the beast", starts with the defense of the Cuban Five.
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck (now deceased), whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I have been a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases internationally that are brought to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
From Archives Of Boston Occupier” –Newspaper Of “Occupy Boston” (OB)-Number Nine-July 2012
Click on the headline to link to the Boston Occupier Archives.
Markin comment:
Defend the Occupy movement! Hands Off All Occupy Protestors!
Markin comment:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
Markin comment:
Defend the Occupy movement! Hands Off All Occupy Protestors!
Markin comment:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Out In The Hills And Hollows Of Appalachia- Man Of Constant Sorrow- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry of the Soggy Mountain Boys performing the Appalachian classic Man Of Constant Sorrow.
CD Review
Man of Constant Sorrow (And other Timeless Mountain Ballads), various artists, Yazoo Records, 2002
Recently I did a CD review in this space of now old- time urban blues folk revival 1960s minute songs, The New City Blues, that featured songs from earlier times down in places like the country blues-rich Mississippi Delta as covered by the aspiring folk artists of that latter period. As part of that review I mentioned that my old-time yellow brick road merry prankster summer of love, 1967 version, San Francisco Great American West night friend , Peter Paul Markin, a few years older than I am, had been instrumental in “tuning” me into those classic songs and folk music in general. Having grown up in backwoods (okay, back ocean) Olde Saco up in Maine and not near any folk centers like Cambridge I was clueless back then about anything except the burgeoning psychedelic rock scene and childhood Bobby Darin/Connie Francis vanilla rock music.
That said, Peter Paul tried, tried like hell, to interest me in even earlier roots music, the music of Appalachia, the hills and hollows country, hard coal- mining and hard-scrabble farming country living off the leavings of the great trek west many years before. No sale, No sale for a long time. Then watching the George Clooney film Brother, Where Art Thou? and listening to the soundtrack from the film about a decade ago I got a little hooked. The finishing touches came when I heard some woman (later identified to me as Emmy Lou Harris) singing Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies on some off-hand CD someone was playing. Strangely this was a song I knew from the yellow brick road days because Peter Paul played it to me several times as sung by the late gravelly-voiced folk singer/historian Dave Von Ronk. Like I said no sale, no way, turn the damn thing off, please.
So tastes change, or develop, but that is not the important story here. The real story here is why Peter Paul was so insistent on my understanding this mountain music, of seeing why he had come to see it as important. He had resisted the draw of the hills and hollows too. He had started out musically tuned into the great rock and roll jail break-out of the mid-1950s with Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and all the other classic (now classic) rock artists, male and female. He had no kid time for old foggy parent music like this. But that word parent is the key to why he tried to drag me in his wake. His father was from down there, down in the hills and hollows, down in coal-mining country. Down in Hazard, Kentucky a place known far and wide in song and hard fighting labor history and a place highlighted in Michael Harrington’s famous book on serious poverty places, The Other America.
This is the music that Peter Paul’s father grew up on in those lonely 1930s Saturday night whiskey-drinking (moonshine whiskey of course) back road barn dances. Or just hanging around some porch guitar, fiddle, mandolin, whatever, whiling away the hours until Sunday church and Monday back-breaking work again. So it was in his DNA, hard-wired into his DNA. That is why, I think anyway, he tried to force feed that old Dave Von Ronk cover
to me back in the day. And maybe by osmosis, or something, it finally rubbed off on me.
You should know this CD, this Man Of Constant Sorrow CD, if you are clueless about mountain music like I was, has a veritable American songbook-mountain music segment(and Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music songbook too) “greatest hits” contained in it. As with many oral traditions, mountain music, as it passed from generation to generation, locale to locale, got twisted around, got words added, ideas added and so on so that some of the versions here are, according to Peter Paul, different from those that he first heard. What is the same though is that the subjects, murder, mayhem, adultery, false love, lost love, very false love, abandonment, very, very false love, too much whiskey Saturday night and too little repentance Sunday morning, and, sometimes, true love get plenty of mention. Just the kind of subjects that the folk in hills and hollows (Markin said I should put in at least one hollas to show respect but what can I do) of Appalachia wanted to hear sung about. And maybe still do.
CD Review
Man of Constant Sorrow (And other Timeless Mountain Ballads), various artists, Yazoo Records, 2002
Recently I did a CD review in this space of now old- time urban blues folk revival 1960s minute songs, The New City Blues, that featured songs from earlier times down in places like the country blues-rich Mississippi Delta as covered by the aspiring folk artists of that latter period. As part of that review I mentioned that my old-time yellow brick road merry prankster summer of love, 1967 version, San Francisco Great American West night friend , Peter Paul Markin, a few years older than I am, had been instrumental in “tuning” me into those classic songs and folk music in general. Having grown up in backwoods (okay, back ocean) Olde Saco up in Maine and not near any folk centers like Cambridge I was clueless back then about anything except the burgeoning psychedelic rock scene and childhood Bobby Darin/Connie Francis vanilla rock music.
That said, Peter Paul tried, tried like hell, to interest me in even earlier roots music, the music of Appalachia, the hills and hollows country, hard coal- mining and hard-scrabble farming country living off the leavings of the great trek west many years before. No sale, No sale for a long time. Then watching the George Clooney film Brother, Where Art Thou? and listening to the soundtrack from the film about a decade ago I got a little hooked. The finishing touches came when I heard some woman (later identified to me as Emmy Lou Harris) singing Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies on some off-hand CD someone was playing. Strangely this was a song I knew from the yellow brick road days because Peter Paul played it to me several times as sung by the late gravelly-voiced folk singer/historian Dave Von Ronk. Like I said no sale, no way, turn the damn thing off, please.
So tastes change, or develop, but that is not the important story here. The real story here is why Peter Paul was so insistent on my understanding this mountain music, of seeing why he had come to see it as important. He had resisted the draw of the hills and hollows too. He had started out musically tuned into the great rock and roll jail break-out of the mid-1950s with Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and all the other classic (now classic) rock artists, male and female. He had no kid time for old foggy parent music like this. But that word parent is the key to why he tried to drag me in his wake. His father was from down there, down in the hills and hollows, down in coal-mining country. Down in Hazard, Kentucky a place known far and wide in song and hard fighting labor history and a place highlighted in Michael Harrington’s famous book on serious poverty places, The Other America.
This is the music that Peter Paul’s father grew up on in those lonely 1930s Saturday night whiskey-drinking (moonshine whiskey of course) back road barn dances. Or just hanging around some porch guitar, fiddle, mandolin, whatever, whiling away the hours until Sunday church and Monday back-breaking work again. So it was in his DNA, hard-wired into his DNA. That is why, I think anyway, he tried to force feed that old Dave Von Ronk cover
to me back in the day. And maybe by osmosis, or something, it finally rubbed off on me.
You should know this CD, this Man Of Constant Sorrow CD, if you are clueless about mountain music like I was, has a veritable American songbook-mountain music segment(and Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music songbook too) “greatest hits” contained in it. As with many oral traditions, mountain music, as it passed from generation to generation, locale to locale, got twisted around, got words added, ideas added and so on so that some of the versions here are, according to Peter Paul, different from those that he first heard. What is the same though is that the subjects, murder, mayhem, adultery, false love, lost love, very false love, abandonment, very, very false love, too much whiskey Saturday night and too little repentance Sunday morning, and, sometimes, true love get plenty of mention. Just the kind of subjects that the folk in hills and hollows (Markin said I should put in at least one hollas to show respect but what can I do) of Appalachia wanted to hear sung about. And maybe still do.
A Eugene V. Debs Moment -Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her vice presidential running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested during a protest at the offices of mortgage company Fannie Mae on Banker's Row in Philadelphia- A Challenge To The Republicrats.
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for early Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs.
Markin comment:
Every presidential candidate worth his or her salt (and vice-presidential candidates as well) should consider it an honor and a requirement to run for high office by being arrested as described below following in the tradition of Socialist party candidate Eugene V. Debs in 1920 when he ran his campaign from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. And why was Brother Debs in prison? For opposition to his generation’s imperial war, World War I. The one, to remind everyone, that was “to make the world safe for democracy.”
And here is a challenge to the candidates of the major bourgeois parties,
Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney (or is it the other way around?). Why were you not at that demonstration and subject to arrest for a righteous cause? They are more likely to be subject to arrest for other more heinous crimes. Barack Obama for his war crimes against the peoples of the world and Mitt Romney for simple tax evasion and being stupid and greedy in a public place. And tell everybody that is what Debs would say too.
************
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her vice presidential running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested today during a protest at the offices of mortgage company Fannie Mae on Banker's Row in Philadelphia.
Among those arrested along with Dr. Stein and Ms. Honkala were labor lawyer James Moran and Sister Margaret McKenna of the Medical Mission Sisters. An attorney who supports civil disobedience cases is providing legal assistance. All of those arrested are expected to come before a judge early on Thursday morning. At that time bail will either be set or they will be released on their own recognizance.
The protest was originally called for by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign to demand that the giant mortgage company halt foreclosure proceedings against two Philadelphia residents in danger of losing their homes. Stein joined the protest after Cheri Honkala joined her as Stein's vice presidential running mate. Honkala, a former homeless single mother, has been confronting banks and mortgage companies for decades demanding that they adopt policies that will, "keep families in their homes."
At 1pm today about 50 protestors gathered outside of Fannie Mae's Philadelphia headquarters. They heard from Miss Fran and Rhonda Lancaster, the heads of two families evicted by Fannie Mae in its refusal to negotiate an alternative to foreclosure. Fannie Mae executive Zach Oppenheimer had previously promised in writing to meet with the two women in order to discuss other options. Yet no followup meeting ever took place, and so protestors today entered the Fannie Mae building and vowed to stay until Mr. Oppenheimer's word was honored.
At about 2:30pm, an hour after entering the building and beginning a sitdown protest, lower level Fannie Mae officials agreed to meet with Miss Fran and Ms. Lancaster. These meetings proved inconclusive, ending only with promises of more meetings. With Philadelphia police on hand with six paddy wagons and plainclothesman, a smaller subset of protestors stayed inside the building and risked arrest. Five were arrested, including Dr. Stein and Ms. Honkala.
In explaining why she joined the protest, Stein said that almost half of Americans now live in poverty or near poverty, eight million families face eviction from their homes due to foreclosures, and over a third of mortgage holders are "underwater" - meaning that they owe more to the lenders than their properties are worth on the market.
Said Stein, "The developers and financiers made trillions of dollars through the housing bubble and the imposition of crushing debt on homeowners. And when homeowners could no longer pay them what they demanded, they went to government and got trillions of dollars of bailouts. Every effort of the Obama Administration has been to prop this system up and keep it going at taxpayer expense. It's time for this game to end. It's time for the laws be written to protect the victims and not the perpetrators. It's time for a new deal for America, and a Green New Deal is what we will deliver on taking office. "
"The laws and the budgets and the procedures are designed to protect the lenders and to extract as much money as possible from the victims," Honkala explained. "This isn't the way it would be if we really had a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The first goal of government should be to keep families in their homes, and to provide restitution for the deception and fraud that has robbed millions of Americans of financial security."
Stein laid out a number of steps that will be part of a new deal for homeowners when and where the Green Party wins power. First, as President, Dr. Stein would issue an executive order establishing a moratorium on foreclosures of occupied dwellings. Second, municipalities governed by Greens will get homeowners out of underwater mortgages by seizing mortgages through eminent domain and letting non-profit community development organizations - not Wall Street banks - reissue the mortgages.
Noting that the Obama administration has only released 10% of the aid that Congress had promised to homeowners, Stein asserted that "There is much more interest in Washington in protecting the profits of banks than in getting this aid out to the families whose lives are falling apart. President Obama held a big press conference to announce a program that would supposedly help 1.5 million homeowners and so far it has actually helped only 1 per cent of that number. Real help goes to the CEOs who play golf with the President and the people get lip service. This will change only if the people stand up and say we're not going to put up with it anymore."
Statement from RHONDA LANCASTER (Excerpted from People’s Tribune):
My family has lived in this home in Germantown for over 35 years. When my mother got ill and could not afford her health care, a reverse mortgage idea was presented to me. They made it look like it was a great thing. It was going to take care of my mother, and when my mother passed away it would be just fine.
The nightmare started after my mom died. I notified the bank she had passed away, and two days later I was getting ready for her funeral. Relatives and friends were coming in from all over the country. The bank told me to stop everything and let them come in and do an appraisal.
The bank refused to accept me as the executor of her estate, although the proper papers had been filed at City Hall. From that point on it was a complete nightmare. I could get through to no one and no one could help me. They denied me my legal US rights as heir to my mother’s property.
Statement from MISS FRAN (Excerpted from People’s Tribune):
I have lived in Philadelphia all my life, and in this house since 1988. Once when I was forced to file for bankruptcy, my mortgage holder, Chase Bank, suddenly came to court and objected to my bankruptcy plan. Although the law requires them to notify me in advance, I had no warning of their action, so I had no lawyer and no time to prepare my evidence. The judge dismissed my file for bankruptcy and Chase began foreclosure proceedings.
I participated in Philadelphia’s Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program, so I was able to keep my home off the sheriff sale list. Then they claimed I missed a Conciliation Conference even though they had never notified me about it. When I complained, the court rescheduled the sheriff sale of my home from July 1, 2008, to September. I attended that sale on July 1 and was shocked to hear them put my house up for sale anyway. I was in the back of the auditorium and ran to the front making so much noise the sheriff’s lawyer had to stop the sale. Finally they brought in a letter from the sheriff saying they had obtained a court order that same day to sell the house. They had gone to court without even notifying me. The same judge who postponed the sale in the first place had turned around and vacated his own order, all without telling me.
The sale of my home went through on July 1, but my battle was just beginning. Although Chase Bank foreclosed on my home, I found out the sheriff changed the name on the documents to Fannie Mae. There is no bill of sale from Chase to Fannie Mae and no record of any transfer. Fannie Mae has no legal standing to evict me. But that didn’t stop them from trying. They sued to evict me in April 2011. I filed an objection, it was overruled, I answered them, and we were supposed to go to trial in February 2012. Then they filed for a summary judgment against me, which is only supposed to be granted when there is no dispute in the matter. I told them we most definitely do have a dispute: a district court order was ignored and Fannie Mae has no standing. But the judge granted the summary judgment anyway. They obtained a writ of eviction and scheduled my eviction for June 12.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please take an immediate step by making a donation: http://www.jillstein.org/donate
Authorized and paid for by Jill Stein for President
PO Box 260217, Madison, WI 53726-0217
http://www.JillStein.org
Markin comment:
Every presidential candidate worth his or her salt (and vice-presidential candidates as well) should consider it an honor and a requirement to run for high office by being arrested as described below following in the tradition of Socialist party candidate Eugene V. Debs in 1920 when he ran his campaign from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. And why was Brother Debs in prison? For opposition to his generation’s imperial war, World War I. The one, to remind everyone, that was “to make the world safe for democracy.”
And here is a challenge to the candidates of the major bourgeois parties,
Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney (or is it the other way around?). Why were you not at that demonstration and subject to arrest for a righteous cause? They are more likely to be subject to arrest for other more heinous crimes. Barack Obama for his war crimes against the peoples of the world and Mitt Romney for simple tax evasion and being stupid and greedy in a public place. And tell everybody that is what Debs would say too.
************
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her vice presidential running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested today during a protest at the offices of mortgage company Fannie Mae on Banker's Row in Philadelphia.
Among those arrested along with Dr. Stein and Ms. Honkala were labor lawyer James Moran and Sister Margaret McKenna of the Medical Mission Sisters. An attorney who supports civil disobedience cases is providing legal assistance. All of those arrested are expected to come before a judge early on Thursday morning. At that time bail will either be set or they will be released on their own recognizance.
The protest was originally called for by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign to demand that the giant mortgage company halt foreclosure proceedings against two Philadelphia residents in danger of losing their homes. Stein joined the protest after Cheri Honkala joined her as Stein's vice presidential running mate. Honkala, a former homeless single mother, has been confronting banks and mortgage companies for decades demanding that they adopt policies that will, "keep families in their homes."
At 1pm today about 50 protestors gathered outside of Fannie Mae's Philadelphia headquarters. They heard from Miss Fran and Rhonda Lancaster, the heads of two families evicted by Fannie Mae in its refusal to negotiate an alternative to foreclosure. Fannie Mae executive Zach Oppenheimer had previously promised in writing to meet with the two women in order to discuss other options. Yet no followup meeting ever took place, and so protestors today entered the Fannie Mae building and vowed to stay until Mr. Oppenheimer's word was honored.
At about 2:30pm, an hour after entering the building and beginning a sitdown protest, lower level Fannie Mae officials agreed to meet with Miss Fran and Ms. Lancaster. These meetings proved inconclusive, ending only with promises of more meetings. With Philadelphia police on hand with six paddy wagons and plainclothesman, a smaller subset of protestors stayed inside the building and risked arrest. Five were arrested, including Dr. Stein and Ms. Honkala.
In explaining why she joined the protest, Stein said that almost half of Americans now live in poverty or near poverty, eight million families face eviction from their homes due to foreclosures, and over a third of mortgage holders are "underwater" - meaning that they owe more to the lenders than their properties are worth on the market.
Said Stein, "The developers and financiers made trillions of dollars through the housing bubble and the imposition of crushing debt on homeowners. And when homeowners could no longer pay them what they demanded, they went to government and got trillions of dollars of bailouts. Every effort of the Obama Administration has been to prop this system up and keep it going at taxpayer expense. It's time for this game to end. It's time for the laws be written to protect the victims and not the perpetrators. It's time for a new deal for America, and a Green New Deal is what we will deliver on taking office. "
"The laws and the budgets and the procedures are designed to protect the lenders and to extract as much money as possible from the victims," Honkala explained. "This isn't the way it would be if we really had a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The first goal of government should be to keep families in their homes, and to provide restitution for the deception and fraud that has robbed millions of Americans of financial security."
Stein laid out a number of steps that will be part of a new deal for homeowners when and where the Green Party wins power. First, as President, Dr. Stein would issue an executive order establishing a moratorium on foreclosures of occupied dwellings. Second, municipalities governed by Greens will get homeowners out of underwater mortgages by seizing mortgages through eminent domain and letting non-profit community development organizations - not Wall Street banks - reissue the mortgages.
Noting that the Obama administration has only released 10% of the aid that Congress had promised to homeowners, Stein asserted that "There is much more interest in Washington in protecting the profits of banks than in getting this aid out to the families whose lives are falling apart. President Obama held a big press conference to announce a program that would supposedly help 1.5 million homeowners and so far it has actually helped only 1 per cent of that number. Real help goes to the CEOs who play golf with the President and the people get lip service. This will change only if the people stand up and say we're not going to put up with it anymore."
Statement from RHONDA LANCASTER (Excerpted from People’s Tribune):
My family has lived in this home in Germantown for over 35 years. When my mother got ill and could not afford her health care, a reverse mortgage idea was presented to me. They made it look like it was a great thing. It was going to take care of my mother, and when my mother passed away it would be just fine.
The nightmare started after my mom died. I notified the bank she had passed away, and two days later I was getting ready for her funeral. Relatives and friends were coming in from all over the country. The bank told me to stop everything and let them come in and do an appraisal.
The bank refused to accept me as the executor of her estate, although the proper papers had been filed at City Hall. From that point on it was a complete nightmare. I could get through to no one and no one could help me. They denied me my legal US rights as heir to my mother’s property.
Statement from MISS FRAN (Excerpted from People’s Tribune):
I have lived in Philadelphia all my life, and in this house since 1988. Once when I was forced to file for bankruptcy, my mortgage holder, Chase Bank, suddenly came to court and objected to my bankruptcy plan. Although the law requires them to notify me in advance, I had no warning of their action, so I had no lawyer and no time to prepare my evidence. The judge dismissed my file for bankruptcy and Chase began foreclosure proceedings.
I participated in Philadelphia’s Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program, so I was able to keep my home off the sheriff sale list. Then they claimed I missed a Conciliation Conference even though they had never notified me about it. When I complained, the court rescheduled the sheriff sale of my home from July 1, 2008, to September. I attended that sale on July 1 and was shocked to hear them put my house up for sale anyway. I was in the back of the auditorium and ran to the front making so much noise the sheriff’s lawyer had to stop the sale. Finally they brought in a letter from the sheriff saying they had obtained a court order that same day to sell the house. They had gone to court without even notifying me. The same judge who postponed the sale in the first place had turned around and vacated his own order, all without telling me.
The sale of my home went through on July 1, but my battle was just beginning. Although Chase Bank foreclosed on my home, I found out the sheriff changed the name on the documents to Fannie Mae. There is no bill of sale from Chase to Fannie Mae and no record of any transfer. Fannie Mae has no legal standing to evict me. But that didn’t stop them from trying. They sued to evict me in April 2011. I filed an objection, it was overruled, I answered them, and we were supposed to go to trial in February 2012. Then they filed for a summary judgment against me, which is only supposed to be granted when there is no dispute in the matter. I told them we most definitely do have a dispute: a district court order was ignored and Fannie Mae has no standing. But the judge granted the summary judgment anyway. They obtained a writ of eviction and scheduled my eviction for June 12.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government
Click on the headline to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for an online copy of his 1940s documents on the labor party question in the United States in his time.
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
*********
The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers’ government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.
That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.
Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when classic capitalism began to become the driving economic norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The most unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really came with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)
So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America, are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.
[A reference back to the American Communist Party’s work in the 1920s may be informative here. As mentioned above there was some confusion, no, a lot of confusion back then about building a labor party base on workers and farmers, a two -class party. While the demands of both groups may in some cases overlap farmers, except for farm hands, are small capitalists on the land. We need a program for such potential allies, petty bourgeois allies, but their demands are subordinate to labor’s in a workers’ party program. Fast forward to today and it is entirely possible, especially in light of the recent Occupy experiences, that some vague popular frontist trans-class movement might develop like the Labor Non-Partisan League that the labor skates put forward in the 1930s as a catch basin for all kinds of political tendencies. We, of course, would work in such formations fighting for a revolutionary perspective but this is not what we advocate for now.]
Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
*********
The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers’ government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.
That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.
Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when classic capitalism began to become the driving economic norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The most unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really came with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)
So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America, are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.
[A reference back to the American Communist Party’s work in the 1920s may be informative here. As mentioned above there was some confusion, no, a lot of confusion back then about building a labor party base on workers and farmers, a two -class party. While the demands of both groups may in some cases overlap farmers, except for farm hands, are small capitalists on the land. We need a program for such potential allies, petty bourgeois allies, but their demands are subordinate to labor’s in a workers’ party program. Fast forward to today and it is entirely possible, especially in light of the recent Occupy experiences, that some vague popular frontist trans-class movement might develop like the Labor Non-Partisan League that the labor skates put forward in the 1930s as a catch basin for all kinds of political tendencies. We, of course, would work in such formations fighting for a revolutionary perspective but this is not what we advocate for now.]
Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Auguste Blanqui 1848-Address of Central Republican Society to the Government
Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
************
Address of Central Republican Society to the Government
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: March 2, 1848;
Source: Louis Auguste Blanqui, Ecrits sur la Révolution, presenté et annoté par A. Munster. Editions Galilee, Paris, 1977;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the firm hope that the government issued from the barricades of 1848 will not, like its predecessor, want to put back in place, along with each paving stone, a law of repression. With this in mind, we offer our assistance to the Provisional Government in the realization of the (beautiful) motto: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
We that demand that the government (immediately) decree as a result of the popular victory:
The complete and unlimited freedom of the press.
The absolute and irrevocable suppression of security deposits and franking and postal rights [for the press].
The complete freedom of circulation for works of the intellect through all possible means: through posters, peddlers, public criers, without any restrictions or hindrances, without any need for prior authorization.
The freedom of the printing industry and the suppression of all privileges represented by licenses, though with prior indemnification.
The holding blameless of printers for any writing whose author is known.
The suppression of art. 291 of the Penal Code, of the law of April 9 1834, and the formal abrogation of laws, ordinances, decrees, edicts or rules of any kind, dated previous to February 25, 1848, capable of limiting or inhibiting the absolute and inalienable right to association and gathering.
The removal from the standing and sitting magistracy of those from the three last reigns, and their provisional replacement by lawyers, advocates, notaries, etc.
The immediate armament and organization in National Guards of all workers not established in a profession and who receive a salary, without any exception, with an indemnity of two francs for each day of active service.
The abrogation of art. 415 and 416 of the Penal Code, as well as of all special laws against working-class coalitions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
************
Address of Central Republican Society to the Government
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Written: March 2, 1848;
Source: Louis Auguste Blanqui, Ecrits sur la Révolution, presenté et annoté par A. Munster. Editions Galilee, Paris, 1977;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.
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We have the firm hope that the government issued from the barricades of 1848 will not, like its predecessor, want to put back in place, along with each paving stone, a law of repression. With this in mind, we offer our assistance to the Provisional Government in the realization of the (beautiful) motto: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
We that demand that the government (immediately) decree as a result of the popular victory:
The complete and unlimited freedom of the press.
The absolute and irrevocable suppression of security deposits and franking and postal rights [for the press].
The complete freedom of circulation for works of the intellect through all possible means: through posters, peddlers, public criers, without any restrictions or hindrances, without any need for prior authorization.
The freedom of the printing industry and the suppression of all privileges represented by licenses, though with prior indemnification.
The holding blameless of printers for any writing whose author is known.
The suppression of art. 291 of the Penal Code, of the law of April 9 1834, and the formal abrogation of laws, ordinances, decrees, edicts or rules of any kind, dated previous to February 25, 1848, capable of limiting or inhibiting the absolute and inalienable right to association and gathering.
The removal from the standing and sitting magistracy of those from the three last reigns, and their provisional replacement by lawyers, advocates, notaries, etc.
The immediate armament and organization in National Guards of all workers not established in a profession and who receive a salary, without any exception, with an indemnity of two francs for each day of active service.
The abrogation of art. 415 and 416 of the Penal Code, as well as of all special laws against working-class coalitions.
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Thursday, August 02, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- When Eric Von Schmidt Snuck The Blues Into Harvard Square
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bukka White performing Aberdeen Mississippi Blues. Everybody else step back, step way back.
CD Review
New City Blues: The Prestige/Folklore Years: Volume Two, various artists including Eric Von Schmidt of the headline, Fantasy Records, 1994
Everything I know about the Cambridge (Ma) /Village (NYC)/North Beach (SF) (locations provided for the younger set, just in case) folk scene in the early 1960s I know from my old time friend, Peter Paul Markin. I met Markin out in the “great awakening” search for the great American West night, yellow brick road “on the bus” summer of love, circa 1967 night when we connected on Russian Hill in San Francisco. And that date is important because that is the year that I graduated from high school up in Olde Saco (Me). So I was far too late, far too disinterested, and far too committed to some version of psychedelic rock to appreciate what went on in those locales in the early 1960s. But I learned, and learned good.
Even Markin confessed to me one time that he was, being just three years older than me, kind of late onto the scene himself having first become aware of such things as folk music and coffeehouses in 1962 high school days when he, by accident, heard some early Dylan stuff on some late night Sunday radio show, Bill Bixby’s Folk Hour.
The accident part was that he had tuned in assuming that he was going to listen to the Irish National Hour that his grandfather had trained him to tune into religiously. The station had changed the hour (put it an hour later) due to the increasing popularity of, if you can believe this, folk music, roots music, hillbilly stuff. Or so Markin thought then. But he was hooked, and listened to that show religiously every week. Previously, other than music from the “old sod” he had, like every other denizen of what would later be called the generation of ’68, suffered through that rock and roll drought when Bobby Vee, Bobby Darin, Connie Francis and cast of thousands of other one- hit wonders mucked up the airways after “they” killed Elvis, threw Chuck Berry in jail, sneered at Jerry Lee’s sex life, and we lost Buddy Holly.
Now what does all of this have to do with reviewing an early folk blues CD, or with Eric Von Schmidt? Plenty. See Eric was back in the late 1950s one of the first to create the Cambridge folk scene making it safe for young impressionable teens to curse the day Neil Sedaka and Freddy (Boom Boom) Cannon were born. He made (along with others although he gets kudos here because three of his songs, including the famous Light Rain, are part
of this compilation) the search for roots music that we half-knew we were looking for possible to surface, and survive. This was the day of the great urban homage to the country blues, mainly black, who were being “discovered” (really re-discovered”) down in the Mississippi Delta, the back woods of Alabama, and along the Texas panhandle.
And the performers on this album were among those others who tried to put a new spin on some old country blues classics, and had enough sense of history to do the covers up right. Special attention here should go to the late folk historian Dave Von Ronk who was a fountain of knowledge about the old- timers. And shared that information and respect. Attention should also go to Geoff Muldaur who continues to perform many of the classics of the folk portion of the American songbook. I should note that today through networks like YouTube we can see some of the country blues old-timers perform their songs and compare. Take Muldaur’s cover of Aberdeen Mississippi Blues. Very good. Then take Bukka White’s version. Step back on that one Geoff. But listen to this CD-this is the new old-timers (ouch) blues.
CD Review
New City Blues: The Prestige/Folklore Years: Volume Two, various artists including Eric Von Schmidt of the headline, Fantasy Records, 1994
Everything I know about the Cambridge (Ma) /Village (NYC)/North Beach (SF) (locations provided for the younger set, just in case) folk scene in the early 1960s I know from my old time friend, Peter Paul Markin. I met Markin out in the “great awakening” search for the great American West night, yellow brick road “on the bus” summer of love, circa 1967 night when we connected on Russian Hill in San Francisco. And that date is important because that is the year that I graduated from high school up in Olde Saco (Me). So I was far too late, far too disinterested, and far too committed to some version of psychedelic rock to appreciate what went on in those locales in the early 1960s. But I learned, and learned good.
Even Markin confessed to me one time that he was, being just three years older than me, kind of late onto the scene himself having first become aware of such things as folk music and coffeehouses in 1962 high school days when he, by accident, heard some early Dylan stuff on some late night Sunday radio show, Bill Bixby’s Folk Hour.
The accident part was that he had tuned in assuming that he was going to listen to the Irish National Hour that his grandfather had trained him to tune into religiously. The station had changed the hour (put it an hour later) due to the increasing popularity of, if you can believe this, folk music, roots music, hillbilly stuff. Or so Markin thought then. But he was hooked, and listened to that show religiously every week. Previously, other than music from the “old sod” he had, like every other denizen of what would later be called the generation of ’68, suffered through that rock and roll drought when Bobby Vee, Bobby Darin, Connie Francis and cast of thousands of other one- hit wonders mucked up the airways after “they” killed Elvis, threw Chuck Berry in jail, sneered at Jerry Lee’s sex life, and we lost Buddy Holly.
Now what does all of this have to do with reviewing an early folk blues CD, or with Eric Von Schmidt? Plenty. See Eric was back in the late 1950s one of the first to create the Cambridge folk scene making it safe for young impressionable teens to curse the day Neil Sedaka and Freddy (Boom Boom) Cannon were born. He made (along with others although he gets kudos here because three of his songs, including the famous Light Rain, are part
of this compilation) the search for roots music that we half-knew we were looking for possible to surface, and survive. This was the day of the great urban homage to the country blues, mainly black, who were being “discovered” (really re-discovered”) down in the Mississippi Delta, the back woods of Alabama, and along the Texas panhandle.
And the performers on this album were among those others who tried to put a new spin on some old country blues classics, and had enough sense of history to do the covers up right. Special attention here should go to the late folk historian Dave Von Ronk who was a fountain of knowledge about the old- timers. And shared that information and respect. Attention should also go to Geoff Muldaur who continues to perform many of the classics of the folk portion of the American songbook. I should note that today through networks like YouTube we can see some of the country blues old-timers perform their songs and compare. Take Muldaur’s cover of Aberdeen Mississippi Blues. Very good. Then take Bukka White’s version. Step back on that one Geoff. But listen to this CD-this is the new old-timers (ouch) blues.
The Latest From The "National Jericho Movement"- Free All Our Class-War Prisoners
Click on the headline to link to the National Jericho Movement website for the latest news on our brother and sister class-war political prisoners.
Markin comment:
Free Mumia, Free Lynne, Free Bradley, Free Hugo, Free Ruchell-Free all our class-war prisoners
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Markin comment:
Free Mumia, Free Lynne, Free Bradley, Free Hugo, Free Ruchell-Free all our class-war prisoners
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
The Latest From The "Leonard Peltier Defense Committee" Website-Free Leonard Peltier Now!-Free All Our Class-War Prisoners!-An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!
Click on the headline to link to the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee website for the latest news on our class-war political prisoner brother, Leonard Peltier.
Markin comment:
Long live the tradition of the James P. Cannon-founded International Labor Defense (via the American Communist Party and the Communist International's Red Aid). Free Leonard, Free Mumia, Free Lynne, Free Bradley, Free Hugo, Free Ruchell-Free all our class-war prisoners!
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Markin comment:
Long live the tradition of the James P. Cannon-founded International Labor Defense (via the American Communist Party and the Communist International's Red Aid). Free Leonard, Free Mumia, Free Lynne, Free Bradley, Free Hugo, Free Ruchell-Free all our class-war prisoners!
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
The Latest From The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee- Free Lynne Stewart And Her Co-Workers Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Justice For Lynn Stewart Defense Committee for the latest in her case.
Markin comment:
Free Lynne Stewart and her co-workers! Free Grandma Now!
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Markin comment:
Free Lynne Stewart and her co-workers! Free Grandma Now!
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government
Click on the headline to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for an online copy of his 1940s documents on the labor party question in the United States in his time.
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
*********
The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need for to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.
That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.
Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when capitalism began to become the driving norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The real unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really comes with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)
So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is really something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.
[A reference back to the American Communist Party’s work in the 1920s may be informative here. As mentioned above there was some confusion, no, a lot of confusion back then about building a labor party base on workers and farmers, a two -class party. While the demands of both groups may in some cases overlap farmers, except for farm hands, are small capitalists on the land. We need a program for such potential allies, petty bourgeois allies, but their demands are subordinate to labor’s in a workers’ party. Fast forward to today and it is entirely possible, especially in light of the recent Occupy experiences, that some vague popular frontist trans-class movement might develop like the Labor Non-Partisan League that the labor skates put forward in the 1930s as a catch basin for all kinds of political tendencies. We, of course, would work in such formations fighting of a revolutionary perspective but this is not what we advocate for now.]
Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
*********
The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need for to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.
That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.
Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when capitalism began to become the driving norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The real unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really comes with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)
So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is really something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.
[A reference back to the American Communist Party’s work in the 1920s may be informative here. As mentioned above there was some confusion, no, a lot of confusion back then about building a labor party base on workers and farmers, a two -class party. While the demands of both groups may in some cases overlap farmers, except for farm hands, are small capitalists on the land. We need a program for such potential allies, petty bourgeois allies, but their demands are subordinate to labor’s in a workers’ party. Fast forward to today and it is entirely possible, especially in light of the recent Occupy experiences, that some vague popular frontist trans-class movement might develop like the Labor Non-Partisan League that the labor skates put forward in the 1930s as a catch basin for all kinds of political tendencies. We, of course, would work in such formations fighting of a revolutionary perspective but this is not what we advocate for now.]
Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
From the Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Tales From The 'Hood- "The Romance of the Gun"
He, Peter Paul Markin, had spent his early childhood in an all-white public housing project, an unremarkable feat in those days and maybe today too although he did not think so unless you went to deep hill country in some Appalachia coal patch. That fact, that hard desperate white working poor fact in 1950s golden age America drives this sketch, although only partially explains it. His later childhood, the time of his time, of his coming of age time, of his will he turn right or left, good or bad, up or down, or just get caught up in things like a lot of corner boy guys did was spent in a poor all-white working class neighborhood filled with small, cramped single-family homes packed in closely together with little yards and few amenities. Places where one could almost hear one neighbor snoring in the night or another screaming, usually at anyone, or no one, at any time. And those were the good days. Jesus.
In adulthood time he had lived in poor white neighborhoods, mixed student neighborhoods, the black enclaves of Oakland, Detroit and Washington, D.C., and, back in the days, in an integrated urban commune (for those who do not know, that is a bunch of unrelated people living on the same premises by design). He had even, during the few times that he had had rich girlfriends, lived in the leafy suburbs. He now lives in a middling working class neighborhood. In short, he has have been all around the housing question. This story from the ‘hood (okay, okay “the projects” just to keep a little literary consistency deals with the relationship between where you live and crime. More particularly the tolerance for the culture of crime, really, the 'romance' of crime, if you will, that is inherent in living down at the bottom of society. Make no mistake, my friends, that is indeed a dangerous place.
More than one sociological survey has noted the correlation between low income and high crime rates, although I note that they tend to come up short, very short on what to do about it. That is, however, a point for another time. More importantly now is this question-where, dear reader, is that correlation closer than in the housing projects- down there in the mean streets of America, the streets of busted dreams, or no dreams? Peter Paul’s housing project did not start out as a haven for hoodlums. As I have explained before after he explained it to me initially the place was a way station, due to the extreme housing shortage, for returning World War II veteran like his father (and mine too if there had been such a thing up in proud poor Olde Saco in Maine in those days). But, in the nature of things, as those who were going to make it in post-war society moved on and the rest of us (yes, my family too) were left behind that is the reputation that it started to develop well before it was converted to a subsidized low-income housing project in the 1960's. His family had left by that point, but not without the scars.
In conversation with Sherry (his late invaluable ‘hood historian mentioned in an earlier sketch and an elementary school classmate) Peter Paul had asked about the fate of a number of his classmates, mainly boys that he had hung around with. Without exaggerating their numbers to buttress my point here, it appears to me, from her very detailed knowledge of their fates that an extraordinary number of boyhood friends wound up serving prison sentences for aggravated crimes, or died from unnatural causes early as a result of that life. Sherry related a number of such cases in her own family, including one younger brother still imprisoned, through several generations, not without a sense of embarrassment. Down among the desperate working poor the line between respectability and the lure of the lumpen lifestyle is, indeed, a very, very close thing.
Peter Paul, one dark time barroom night when he was in an expansive mood noted that this sociological fact was true, if a little less so, for the neighborhood where he came of age. He shocked me , moreover, when he confess to me that one of his own brothers spent considerable time in state prison for a laundry list of offenses, and another was in and out the county jails for many years for a host of petty crimes (mainly against property). I did not know that he even had brothers as he had never spoken of them and I had known him for many years then going back to yellow brick road summer of love San Francisco 1960s days. His own brushes with the law have been for political offenses (except for one silly hitchhiking offense in Connecticut way back when, but you know how that state is on hitchhikers, or was) so those do not count. I guess that made Peter Paul the ‘good’ son just like Sherry was the good survivor. What gives here?
Part of the headline of this piece is titled “Romance of the Gun.” and with reason. The gun, whether I am using this term here as a metaphor for toughness and a lumpen existence or actual guns, was central to ‘the projects’ culture. Not that he and the other younger boys ever had one (as far as he knew) but he knew older boys and men who did and did things with them. Things like gas station stickups, robbing taxis or the like. Those who were capable of that or, at least, had that reputation were looked up to, if not idolized (with a little fear thrown in). These things did not occur every day nor did they include police shoot-outs, drive-bys or anything dramatic but the thrill of learning about such exploits was palpable. It was like the air he breathed he said.
If imitation is a form of flattery then the lumpen existence of the older boys and men set the standard. The main thing was that they seemed to always have money in contrast to, let us say, his poor father who lived from check to check with hungry young mouths to feed and who constantly feared been laid off from the little work that he was able to obtain. No hero there for young boys, right? His brothers could not resist the draw of the lumpen life style and eventually were drawn into that life, as a way of life. But that is not where lumpen influence ended.
Even for a ‘good’ boy like Peter and some of the boys that he hung around with there were certain rituals to prove ‘manhood’. This inevitably entailed stealing things, at first from grocery stores, then department stores, and ultimately jewelry stores. He did it for a while but the glamour wore off soon enough and he retreated to the library and adventures of the mind. Some others, however, took it seriously and form part of the statistic of the ‘hood mentioned above but for him it was just too much work. But he was in the minority and took more than one physical beating for his nerdishness from the ‘boyos’. Still, he said those ‘hard boys’ were something to wonder at.
Well, I can end this story by trying to draw a few conclusions. One of the things that drew me to working to defend the Black Panthers (at the times when they would cooperate with white leftists) and later the Irish Republican Army (Provos) in the old days were the simple facts that they, as least the street cadre, were from their own ‘hoods like mine, knew the busted dream scheme of life by heart just as I did, and were not afraid to pick up the gun to defend themselves, if necessary. I did not need to glorify the lumpen proletariat as the vanguard. I did not need to read Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to theorize about the purifying nature of violence against the oppressor. I did not need to justify every idiotic criminal act as a revolutionary act. All I needed to do was remember those ‘hard boys’ Peter described, including his brothers, from his youth and what happened to them without a political perspective. So much for the “romance of the gun.” And Peter Paul Markin agrees.
In adulthood time he had lived in poor white neighborhoods, mixed student neighborhoods, the black enclaves of Oakland, Detroit and Washington, D.C., and, back in the days, in an integrated urban commune (for those who do not know, that is a bunch of unrelated people living on the same premises by design). He had even, during the few times that he had had rich girlfriends, lived in the leafy suburbs. He now lives in a middling working class neighborhood. In short, he has have been all around the housing question. This story from the ‘hood (okay, okay “the projects” just to keep a little literary consistency deals with the relationship between where you live and crime. More particularly the tolerance for the culture of crime, really, the 'romance' of crime, if you will, that is inherent in living down at the bottom of society. Make no mistake, my friends, that is indeed a dangerous place.
More than one sociological survey has noted the correlation between low income and high crime rates, although I note that they tend to come up short, very short on what to do about it. That is, however, a point for another time. More importantly now is this question-where, dear reader, is that correlation closer than in the housing projects- down there in the mean streets of America, the streets of busted dreams, or no dreams? Peter Paul’s housing project did not start out as a haven for hoodlums. As I have explained before after he explained it to me initially the place was a way station, due to the extreme housing shortage, for returning World War II veteran like his father (and mine too if there had been such a thing up in proud poor Olde Saco in Maine in those days). But, in the nature of things, as those who were going to make it in post-war society moved on and the rest of us (yes, my family too) were left behind that is the reputation that it started to develop well before it was converted to a subsidized low-income housing project in the 1960's. His family had left by that point, but not without the scars.
In conversation with Sherry (his late invaluable ‘hood historian mentioned in an earlier sketch and an elementary school classmate) Peter Paul had asked about the fate of a number of his classmates, mainly boys that he had hung around with. Without exaggerating their numbers to buttress my point here, it appears to me, from her very detailed knowledge of their fates that an extraordinary number of boyhood friends wound up serving prison sentences for aggravated crimes, or died from unnatural causes early as a result of that life. Sherry related a number of such cases in her own family, including one younger brother still imprisoned, through several generations, not without a sense of embarrassment. Down among the desperate working poor the line between respectability and the lure of the lumpen lifestyle is, indeed, a very, very close thing.
Peter Paul, one dark time barroom night when he was in an expansive mood noted that this sociological fact was true, if a little less so, for the neighborhood where he came of age. He shocked me , moreover, when he confess to me that one of his own brothers spent considerable time in state prison for a laundry list of offenses, and another was in and out the county jails for many years for a host of petty crimes (mainly against property). I did not know that he even had brothers as he had never spoken of them and I had known him for many years then going back to yellow brick road summer of love San Francisco 1960s days. His own brushes with the law have been for political offenses (except for one silly hitchhiking offense in Connecticut way back when, but you know how that state is on hitchhikers, or was) so those do not count. I guess that made Peter Paul the ‘good’ son just like Sherry was the good survivor. What gives here?
Part of the headline of this piece is titled “Romance of the Gun.” and with reason. The gun, whether I am using this term here as a metaphor for toughness and a lumpen existence or actual guns, was central to ‘the projects’ culture. Not that he and the other younger boys ever had one (as far as he knew) but he knew older boys and men who did and did things with them. Things like gas station stickups, robbing taxis or the like. Those who were capable of that or, at least, had that reputation were looked up to, if not idolized (with a little fear thrown in). These things did not occur every day nor did they include police shoot-outs, drive-bys or anything dramatic but the thrill of learning about such exploits was palpable. It was like the air he breathed he said.
If imitation is a form of flattery then the lumpen existence of the older boys and men set the standard. The main thing was that they seemed to always have money in contrast to, let us say, his poor father who lived from check to check with hungry young mouths to feed and who constantly feared been laid off from the little work that he was able to obtain. No hero there for young boys, right? His brothers could not resist the draw of the lumpen life style and eventually were drawn into that life, as a way of life. But that is not where lumpen influence ended.
Even for a ‘good’ boy like Peter and some of the boys that he hung around with there were certain rituals to prove ‘manhood’. This inevitably entailed stealing things, at first from grocery stores, then department stores, and ultimately jewelry stores. He did it for a while but the glamour wore off soon enough and he retreated to the library and adventures of the mind. Some others, however, took it seriously and form part of the statistic of the ‘hood mentioned above but for him it was just too much work. But he was in the minority and took more than one physical beating for his nerdishness from the ‘boyos’. Still, he said those ‘hard boys’ were something to wonder at.
Well, I can end this story by trying to draw a few conclusions. One of the things that drew me to working to defend the Black Panthers (at the times when they would cooperate with white leftists) and later the Irish Republican Army (Provos) in the old days were the simple facts that they, as least the street cadre, were from their own ‘hoods like mine, knew the busted dream scheme of life by heart just as I did, and were not afraid to pick up the gun to defend themselves, if necessary. I did not need to glorify the lumpen proletariat as the vanguard. I did not need to read Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to theorize about the purifying nature of violence against the oppressor. I did not need to justify every idiotic criminal act as a revolutionary act. All I needed to do was remember those ‘hard boys’ Peter described, including his brothers, from his youth and what happened to them without a political perspective. So much for the “romance of the gun.” And Peter Paul Markin agrees.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- She Stoops To Conquer
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity.
“Yah, he had it bad alright. He had it bad for her right up until her last breath, and maybe after that for all he knew, maybe for eternity. It might have been that way; it is sometimes, sometimes when a thing is written in the stars. Even if they are star-crossed stars,” opined my old time Olde Saco, Maine schoolboy friend Jimmy Jacques when he related to me the story about two lovers who in the end had a falling-out that no love, and no uncrossed stars, could survive.
Jimmy was always telling me, even in high school where we ran track together, stories about the underside of life, about star- crossed stuff once he found out that I was a fan of black and white crime noir films from the 1940s and 1950a and their tales of crime doesn’t pay, thieves falling out among themselves, and gun-blaring femme fatales, especially that last category. Yes, I have it bad , real bad for hard-as-nails-hard loving, hard-hating femmes who don’t mind throwing a slug, or six, into some guy, some guy who still comes up grinning and asking for more. And this one, this Jimmy Jacques one, related a few years back, actually about twenty years back now that I think of it, before I moved back to the old home town and he came to see me when I lived in California, had them all. More importantly he was there when Willy Webb spilled his guts about her, about the hold she had on him, and how it had to end, end the way it did, just like in the movies, except for the real blood.
Here is how Jimmy told it, or really how Willy told it to Jimmy like he was some father-confessor. And maybe for that moment that is what Willy thought Jimmy was although one look at Jimmy would tell, tell clear as day, that he had not even a passing acquaintance with god since the old days at Ste. Brigitte’s.
See Jimmy and Willy worked together for a while down at the Olde Saco Garage. A- One mechanics working on cars, young and old, right after they got out of high school. Although they knew each other in high school, passing corridor nod knew each other, it was at the garage that they became fast friends. Sharing a taste, like a lot of guys who aren’t mechanics, for fast cars, fast liquor highs, and fast women, especially the last. Then Willy drifted off to find better work at a high- end garage up in Bar Harbor fixing dents and fine-tuning the precision motors of the automobiles of the Mayfair swells that flocked there in summer and for the “townies,” the rest of the year.
The years passed and Jimmy and Willy lost touch. Then one day Willy showed up at the garage where Jimmy was now part-owner as he was passing through town. He told Jimmy that, if things, things left unspoken, worked out right with a woman thing he had going maybe he and Jimmy could swing a deal to buy the place where he worked as an ace mechanic for the swells. Sweet, easy street work. Jimmy didn’t hear from Willy again
until one night when Willy showed up at the open bay door of the garage where Jimmy had been working late on some jazzed up green 1964 Mustang that “Stewball Stu” was getting ready to race in a “chicken race” down at Olde Saco Beach the next day.
Willy showed up, by the way, wearing a red splash on most of his upper shoulder getting redder by the minute, and a grey face getting greyer. Finally he just collapsed under his own weight, asked for a pillow, or something to prop his head up, and a smoke (Camels, unfiltered, for the curious, a brand both men had been smoking since about eighth grade). Then he started talking, slow like he wanted it taken down in Jimmy’s brain just like it was coming out of his mouth, slow too because the life was draining out of him and slow was the only way he could have his say, have his peace say:
“It didn’t start out wrong, I don’t think. No more wrong that with any other woman that I ever ran around with. Maybe less so. I don’t have time to argue those fine points right now. But let me go back to the beginning, that first day when she came through Bill Bentley’s Cadillac up in Bar Harbor, the place I told you about and about us becoming partners at. The place where all the swells come for oil changes and tune-ups in the summer. Or have the million and one dents their kids, or their wives, put in that old Rolls, Buick, Lincoln or whatever they use to make up hell for dear old dad’s insurance premiums.”
“I had my head buried down looking at the engine block in Mr. Pepper’s Cadillac and when I pulled my head up there she was. Estelle Pepper, Mrs. Clarence Pepper, I found out later, ten minutes later when it was too late. Young, twenty something young, fresh as a daisy, dressed in white, summer white, shorts and blouse, wearing blonde hair, wearing long legs, wearing well, in the end wearing some jasmine perfume that took the all the hell out of the oil, gas, diesel, funk smell of that old garage. Yah, in the end it was that perfume that got to me, got to me bad.”
“But before the end, way before, it was that look that tiger hungry look that some women get when they are bored, lonely, or just being frisky, frisky with the hired help. That was the first look she gave me, and then she put on the smile, a faint ironic smile like brother, guess what, this is your lucky day and I am the prize smile. And I, I, just grinned”
“So we started, started the man-woman back and forth chatter, eyes blazing, and other stuff too, stuff that knew only one way to end, end in some dreamy outsized bedroom complete with outsized private bath, or some hotel, motel, no tell bed in some by the hour joint on Route One near the Ellsworth line. That’s when I found out she was Mrs. Clarence Pepper, the wife of the big New York stockbroker, and not as I had thought his daughter, his slumming daughter. Here in Bill Bentley’s to pick up the old family Caddy, and drive me to hell. Like I said by that time, by that hungry look, faint smile time it didn’t matter, matter at all, if she was married to five guys. Or fifty.”
Willy stopped for a minute to put out his cigarette, and ask for another.
“ So, naturally, after some more banter, a few smiles, and a couple of grins from me, I had to drive her home to make sure everything was alright with the vehicle. Drive her to Bar Harbor Estates where the Peppers held forth and had for generations. And before I knew it we were drinking heaven scotch, heaven Clarence Pepper- bought scotch, by the pitcher in her dreamy outsized bedroom with that outsized bath getting ready to muss up the sheets. Not a new story, no way, bored rich house wives, bored young housewives, looking for working stiff thrills have been doing this since they invented Bar Harbor, and not just Bar Harbor either.”
“Here is what was new though, new to me, some dames, yah, dames, just don’t know when they have it good. Estelle coming out of a from nowhere bracero, okie, arkie home in suburban California, and having done tours as a waitress serving them off the arm and fending off the truckers lined up to take shot at her, a lingerie model for guys looking for socks for their ever-loving wives, and a call girl (that is how and where they met at the Waldorf in New York City ) took Clarence’s offer of marriage (his third ) in a flash before he changed his mind, or died.
Yes, Estelle had this sweet set-up, old Clarence, accepted, or at least didn’t cry over her infidelities and trysts, and looking at any actuarial table in the year 1978 would show that the life expectancy of a seventy-three hard drinking, hard- smoking, hard- living man was short, short enough for a twenty something woman to wait out.”
“Could she wait? Hell, no. More importantly though once that jasmine got into, under, over, between my skin and made me skirt-crazy, no Estelle crazy, neither could I. See, she said she loved me, loved me like no other man, and could never love another man like that again. And she would nuzzle that jasmine scent right on my shoulder. Then she started, started slow at first, with little hints about what would happen if this or that happened to an engine, or this or that happened to the brakes, or this or that happened to the tires, until I got so crazy I just confronted her straight up and asked what she had in mind. Knowing, and she knowing that I knew, what she had in mind. She said it straight up, straight up like it was an everyday thought (and maybe it was), straight up no way to avoid the word, murder.”
“And all this jackass of a bum mechanic said was, ah, how are we going to do it. Yah, I had it bad, bad as a man can have it for a woman. She knew the answer before I finished asking when she “suggested” a loose valve while beloved Clarence was driving to his fuddy-duddy old golf course up in the hills toward Arcadia National Park. I said, that would not work, no way would we get away with that, no way. So I worked out a plan, a plan involving just the slightest pinprick in an engine line that would cause the fumes to come up in his face while driving causing him to conk out and, well, kill himself. Perfect, or perfect enough for what we had in mind”
“But see that is where the whole thing went awry, crazy. Clarence wasn’t such an old fool after all, or at least fool enough to our advantage. He never really did not accept Estelle’s affairs, he had her watched, had her followed, and in the end had me followed. And he never did drive that damn car. See he took it to Bill Bentley himself to have it inspected, thoroughly inspected.
Bill found that faint pinprick, really not so faint by the time he inspected it.”
“Knowing what had happened old Clarence devised a plan, a simple plan.
He invited Estelle and her companion, me, to his study for some before dinner drinks. Prior to this Estelle had been bugging me to devise another plan, a non-car plan. I had balked at any rough stuff though. We went into the giant dining room and made idle conversation. Then, after some banter about the weather, Estelle took out a gun, a .44 I think, and shot at one Clarence Pepper at point-blank range. And then one William Webb as well. I fell to the floor in shock.”
“Here is some advice, buddy. Never trust a woman with a gun. She totally missed Clarence even at point-blank range. And that was fatal, fatal for her. See Clarence, before Estelle messed up the play, also had planned to have a little shoot-out himself before dinner was served. And he won. Later when I woke up there was one Clarence Pepper standing over me ready to put a couple more in me. I gathered all my strength, pushed the old man away, opened the front door and got into my car and sped like hell here. End of story.”
Well not quite the end of the story. See Willy was the guy who tipped Bill Bentley off to the pinprick leak, and the guy who made it bigger, big enough so even Bill Bentley could see the damn thing. Willy, when the deal went down, jasmine-crazy or not, just couldn’t take the old guy’s life. Fool? Yes, fool maybe as he took out of his pocket a small handkerchief that Jimmy said smelled of jasmine, brought it to his nose and expired, expired with that grin, that grin on his face like he had when she first came in that garage door . And Clarence Pepper? Nothing happened to him but old age. See while Willy was out cold Clarence put the old six-shooter in his hand and the fingerprints found, at least the one’s that counted for the Bar Harbor coroner were Willy’s.
“Yah, he had it bad, six ways to Sunday bad, poor old Willy,” opined Jimmy Jacques. And Josh Lawrence agreed. Dames.
“Yah, he had it bad alright. He had it bad for her right up until her last breath, and maybe after that for all he knew, maybe for eternity. It might have been that way; it is sometimes, sometimes when a thing is written in the stars. Even if they are star-crossed stars,” opined my old time Olde Saco, Maine schoolboy friend Jimmy Jacques when he related to me the story about two lovers who in the end had a falling-out that no love, and no uncrossed stars, could survive.
Jimmy was always telling me, even in high school where we ran track together, stories about the underside of life, about star- crossed stuff once he found out that I was a fan of black and white crime noir films from the 1940s and 1950a and their tales of crime doesn’t pay, thieves falling out among themselves, and gun-blaring femme fatales, especially that last category. Yes, I have it bad , real bad for hard-as-nails-hard loving, hard-hating femmes who don’t mind throwing a slug, or six, into some guy, some guy who still comes up grinning and asking for more. And this one, this Jimmy Jacques one, related a few years back, actually about twenty years back now that I think of it, before I moved back to the old home town and he came to see me when I lived in California, had them all. More importantly he was there when Willy Webb spilled his guts about her, about the hold she had on him, and how it had to end, end the way it did, just like in the movies, except for the real blood.
Here is how Jimmy told it, or really how Willy told it to Jimmy like he was some father-confessor. And maybe for that moment that is what Willy thought Jimmy was although one look at Jimmy would tell, tell clear as day, that he had not even a passing acquaintance with god since the old days at Ste. Brigitte’s.
See Jimmy and Willy worked together for a while down at the Olde Saco Garage. A- One mechanics working on cars, young and old, right after they got out of high school. Although they knew each other in high school, passing corridor nod knew each other, it was at the garage that they became fast friends. Sharing a taste, like a lot of guys who aren’t mechanics, for fast cars, fast liquor highs, and fast women, especially the last. Then Willy drifted off to find better work at a high- end garage up in Bar Harbor fixing dents and fine-tuning the precision motors of the automobiles of the Mayfair swells that flocked there in summer and for the “townies,” the rest of the year.
The years passed and Jimmy and Willy lost touch. Then one day Willy showed up at the garage where Jimmy was now part-owner as he was passing through town. He told Jimmy that, if things, things left unspoken, worked out right with a woman thing he had going maybe he and Jimmy could swing a deal to buy the place where he worked as an ace mechanic for the swells. Sweet, easy street work. Jimmy didn’t hear from Willy again
until one night when Willy showed up at the open bay door of the garage where Jimmy had been working late on some jazzed up green 1964 Mustang that “Stewball Stu” was getting ready to race in a “chicken race” down at Olde Saco Beach the next day.
Willy showed up, by the way, wearing a red splash on most of his upper shoulder getting redder by the minute, and a grey face getting greyer. Finally he just collapsed under his own weight, asked for a pillow, or something to prop his head up, and a smoke (Camels, unfiltered, for the curious, a brand both men had been smoking since about eighth grade). Then he started talking, slow like he wanted it taken down in Jimmy’s brain just like it was coming out of his mouth, slow too because the life was draining out of him and slow was the only way he could have his say, have his peace say:
“It didn’t start out wrong, I don’t think. No more wrong that with any other woman that I ever ran around with. Maybe less so. I don’t have time to argue those fine points right now. But let me go back to the beginning, that first day when she came through Bill Bentley’s Cadillac up in Bar Harbor, the place I told you about and about us becoming partners at. The place where all the swells come for oil changes and tune-ups in the summer. Or have the million and one dents their kids, or their wives, put in that old Rolls, Buick, Lincoln or whatever they use to make up hell for dear old dad’s insurance premiums.”
“I had my head buried down looking at the engine block in Mr. Pepper’s Cadillac and when I pulled my head up there she was. Estelle Pepper, Mrs. Clarence Pepper, I found out later, ten minutes later when it was too late. Young, twenty something young, fresh as a daisy, dressed in white, summer white, shorts and blouse, wearing blonde hair, wearing long legs, wearing well, in the end wearing some jasmine perfume that took the all the hell out of the oil, gas, diesel, funk smell of that old garage. Yah, in the end it was that perfume that got to me, got to me bad.”
“But before the end, way before, it was that look that tiger hungry look that some women get when they are bored, lonely, or just being frisky, frisky with the hired help. That was the first look she gave me, and then she put on the smile, a faint ironic smile like brother, guess what, this is your lucky day and I am the prize smile. And I, I, just grinned”
“So we started, started the man-woman back and forth chatter, eyes blazing, and other stuff too, stuff that knew only one way to end, end in some dreamy outsized bedroom complete with outsized private bath, or some hotel, motel, no tell bed in some by the hour joint on Route One near the Ellsworth line. That’s when I found out she was Mrs. Clarence Pepper, the wife of the big New York stockbroker, and not as I had thought his daughter, his slumming daughter. Here in Bill Bentley’s to pick up the old family Caddy, and drive me to hell. Like I said by that time, by that hungry look, faint smile time it didn’t matter, matter at all, if she was married to five guys. Or fifty.”
Willy stopped for a minute to put out his cigarette, and ask for another.
“ So, naturally, after some more banter, a few smiles, and a couple of grins from me, I had to drive her home to make sure everything was alright with the vehicle. Drive her to Bar Harbor Estates where the Peppers held forth and had for generations. And before I knew it we were drinking heaven scotch, heaven Clarence Pepper- bought scotch, by the pitcher in her dreamy outsized bedroom with that outsized bath getting ready to muss up the sheets. Not a new story, no way, bored rich house wives, bored young housewives, looking for working stiff thrills have been doing this since they invented Bar Harbor, and not just Bar Harbor either.”
“Here is what was new though, new to me, some dames, yah, dames, just don’t know when they have it good. Estelle coming out of a from nowhere bracero, okie, arkie home in suburban California, and having done tours as a waitress serving them off the arm and fending off the truckers lined up to take shot at her, a lingerie model for guys looking for socks for their ever-loving wives, and a call girl (that is how and where they met at the Waldorf in New York City ) took Clarence’s offer of marriage (his third ) in a flash before he changed his mind, or died.
Yes, Estelle had this sweet set-up, old Clarence, accepted, or at least didn’t cry over her infidelities and trysts, and looking at any actuarial table in the year 1978 would show that the life expectancy of a seventy-three hard drinking, hard- smoking, hard- living man was short, short enough for a twenty something woman to wait out.”
“Could she wait? Hell, no. More importantly though once that jasmine got into, under, over, between my skin and made me skirt-crazy, no Estelle crazy, neither could I. See, she said she loved me, loved me like no other man, and could never love another man like that again. And she would nuzzle that jasmine scent right on my shoulder. Then she started, started slow at first, with little hints about what would happen if this or that happened to an engine, or this or that happened to the brakes, or this or that happened to the tires, until I got so crazy I just confronted her straight up and asked what she had in mind. Knowing, and she knowing that I knew, what she had in mind. She said it straight up, straight up like it was an everyday thought (and maybe it was), straight up no way to avoid the word, murder.”
“And all this jackass of a bum mechanic said was, ah, how are we going to do it. Yah, I had it bad, bad as a man can have it for a woman. She knew the answer before I finished asking when she “suggested” a loose valve while beloved Clarence was driving to his fuddy-duddy old golf course up in the hills toward Arcadia National Park. I said, that would not work, no way would we get away with that, no way. So I worked out a plan, a plan involving just the slightest pinprick in an engine line that would cause the fumes to come up in his face while driving causing him to conk out and, well, kill himself. Perfect, or perfect enough for what we had in mind”
“But see that is where the whole thing went awry, crazy. Clarence wasn’t such an old fool after all, or at least fool enough to our advantage. He never really did not accept Estelle’s affairs, he had her watched, had her followed, and in the end had me followed. And he never did drive that damn car. See he took it to Bill Bentley himself to have it inspected, thoroughly inspected.
Bill found that faint pinprick, really not so faint by the time he inspected it.”
“Knowing what had happened old Clarence devised a plan, a simple plan.
He invited Estelle and her companion, me, to his study for some before dinner drinks. Prior to this Estelle had been bugging me to devise another plan, a non-car plan. I had balked at any rough stuff though. We went into the giant dining room and made idle conversation. Then, after some banter about the weather, Estelle took out a gun, a .44 I think, and shot at one Clarence Pepper at point-blank range. And then one William Webb as well. I fell to the floor in shock.”
“Here is some advice, buddy. Never trust a woman with a gun. She totally missed Clarence even at point-blank range. And that was fatal, fatal for her. See Clarence, before Estelle messed up the play, also had planned to have a little shoot-out himself before dinner was served. And he won. Later when I woke up there was one Clarence Pepper standing over me ready to put a couple more in me. I gathered all my strength, pushed the old man away, opened the front door and got into my car and sped like hell here. End of story.”
Well not quite the end of the story. See Willy was the guy who tipped Bill Bentley off to the pinprick leak, and the guy who made it bigger, big enough so even Bill Bentley could see the damn thing. Willy, when the deal went down, jasmine-crazy or not, just couldn’t take the old guy’s life. Fool? Yes, fool maybe as he took out of his pocket a small handkerchief that Jimmy said smelled of jasmine, brought it to his nose and expired, expired with that grin, that grin on his face like he had when she first came in that garage door . And Clarence Pepper? Nothing happened to him but old age. See while Willy was out cold Clarence put the old six-shooter in his hand and the fingerprints found, at least the one’s that counted for the Bar Harbor coroner were Willy’s.
“Yah, he had it bad, six ways to Sunday bad, poor old Willy,” opined Jimmy Jacques. And Josh Lawrence agreed. Dames.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The Okie Blue-Pink American West Night- The Maddox Brothers And Rose- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Maddox Brothers and Rose performing Okie Boogie.
CD Review
The Maddox Brothers and Rose; America’ Most Colorful Hillbilly Band: Original First Recordings 1946-1951, includes informational booklet, The Maddox Brothers and Rose, Arhoolie Records, 1993
Hey, I have spent a lot of cyber-ink in this space touting my version (and that of my fellow traveler met on the long ago merry prankster yellow brick road magical mystery tour “on the bus” road , Peter Paul Markin) of the search, the seemingly primordial search for the great blue-pink American West night. In short, California dreaming, California searching. Apparently that search has been endless, and endlessly varied, since the first 19th century prairie schooner treks as the informative booklet that accompanies the CD under review, The Maddox Brothers and Rose, informs us.
This family hillbilly band (mostly the brothers and Rose) came out of the Okie, arkie, ‘bama, kentuck hillbilly migration west in the Great Depression of the 1930s (the big one before this current one) searching for, for something to eat for starters. But they, like intrepid 1960s hitchhike road merry pranksters, were not going to leave it at that. They had hard-scrabble times that sounded like something out of the Joads of Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath fame. Yes, picking crops, picking whatever what around for picking. But as soon as some dust settled they set out to make a name, maybe not a big name, but a name for themselves as musicians following the rodeo circuit and the moonbeam radio shows selling biscuits and baskets between songs. Tough, yes, but not tougher, as one of the family band members put it, than stoop labor under the hot California sun. Check.
And if you think about the possibilities under those conditions mix a little musical talent (or enough) with a lot of stagecraft geared to entertaining their audiences a whole career could be made, be made in California anyway, out of playing nostalgia stuff for the Okie migration just before and immediately after World War II. That is before they became the self-satisfied “civilized" parents with a little extra cash of those corn- fed wild boy surfers, hell’s angels, and hot rod aficionados whom the novelist Tom Wolfe chronicled in a number of his early books. That is the Maddox clan to a tee as they captured a niche in that market going to carnivals, corrals, and western outfit stores with their fresh brand of music and fooling around.
This CD is centered on their most productive and original period, 1946-1951, and has a number of covers of material by the likes of wild boy Hank Williams. Some are from the early stages of the modern cowboy, country and western section of the American Songbook with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown covered. The most surprising cover though to me, an old time folkie, is their early cover of Woody Guthrie’s Philadelphia Lawyer. But, silly me, of course Woody was out there in California in the Joad 1930s too singing like crazy on those big blue-pink California airways. Brothers and sisters, boys and girls, guys and gals, this stuff is part of our plebeian cultural heritage, Listen up
CD Review
The Maddox Brothers and Rose; America’ Most Colorful Hillbilly Band: Original First Recordings 1946-1951, includes informational booklet, The Maddox Brothers and Rose, Arhoolie Records, 1993
Hey, I have spent a lot of cyber-ink in this space touting my version (and that of my fellow traveler met on the long ago merry prankster yellow brick road magical mystery tour “on the bus” road , Peter Paul Markin) of the search, the seemingly primordial search for the great blue-pink American West night. In short, California dreaming, California searching. Apparently that search has been endless, and endlessly varied, since the first 19th century prairie schooner treks as the informative booklet that accompanies the CD under review, The Maddox Brothers and Rose, informs us.
This family hillbilly band (mostly the brothers and Rose) came out of the Okie, arkie, ‘bama, kentuck hillbilly migration west in the Great Depression of the 1930s (the big one before this current one) searching for, for something to eat for starters. But they, like intrepid 1960s hitchhike road merry pranksters, were not going to leave it at that. They had hard-scrabble times that sounded like something out of the Joads of Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath fame. Yes, picking crops, picking whatever what around for picking. But as soon as some dust settled they set out to make a name, maybe not a big name, but a name for themselves as musicians following the rodeo circuit and the moonbeam radio shows selling biscuits and baskets between songs. Tough, yes, but not tougher, as one of the family band members put it, than stoop labor under the hot California sun. Check.
And if you think about the possibilities under those conditions mix a little musical talent (or enough) with a lot of stagecraft geared to entertaining their audiences a whole career could be made, be made in California anyway, out of playing nostalgia stuff for the Okie migration just before and immediately after World War II. That is before they became the self-satisfied “civilized" parents with a little extra cash of those corn- fed wild boy surfers, hell’s angels, and hot rod aficionados whom the novelist Tom Wolfe chronicled in a number of his early books. That is the Maddox clan to a tee as they captured a niche in that market going to carnivals, corrals, and western outfit stores with their fresh brand of music and fooling around.
This CD is centered on their most productive and original period, 1946-1951, and has a number of covers of material by the likes of wild boy Hank Williams. Some are from the early stages of the modern cowboy, country and western section of the American Songbook with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown covered. The most surprising cover though to me, an old time folkie, is their early cover of Woody Guthrie’s Philadelphia Lawyer. But, silly me, of course Woody was out there in California in the Joad 1930s too singing like crazy on those big blue-pink California airways. Brothers and sisters, boys and girls, guys and gals, this stuff is part of our plebeian cultural heritage, Listen up
The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government
Click on the headline to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for an online copy of his 1940s documents on the labor party question in the United States in his time.
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
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The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need for to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.
That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.
Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when capitalism began to become the driving norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The real unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really comes with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)
So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is really something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.
Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
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The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need for to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.
That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.
Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when capitalism began to become the driving norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The real unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really comes with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)
So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is really something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.
Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
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