On The 11th Anniversary Of The Afghan War- From The "American Left History" Blog Archives-"AN OPEN LETTER TO THE RANK AND FILE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ"

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE RANK AND FILE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ

Your Commander-In-Chief and Chain of Command have stabbed you in the back.

The politicians, Democratic and Republican, have stabbed you in the back and spit in your face.

The anti-war movement has failed you miserably.

Damn, the ball is in your court now. It is time to leave.

This writer usually relies on his own resources to distribute his commentaries. For this important commentary, he urgently asks for the help of anyone whether you agree, agree a little or for that matter violently disagree with the contents to disseminate it. Let the service men and women in Iraq decide what they want about it. If you have friends, relatives or know anyone serving in Iraq e-mail, fax, call or write a letter (if anybody does that anymore) to them about this commentary.

Brother and Sister Soldiers, Sailors and Air Personnel in Iraq, you and I need to talk. However, before we do so I want to come to the table with clean hands. Directly below are the headlines and first paragraph of a blog (dated, August 4, 2006) written by me and placed on several Internet sites recently:

AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS- TAKE THE PLEDGE -SUPPORT THE TROOPS-HELL, NO!

THEY MAY BE OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS BUT THESE ARE NOT OUR TROOPS! END THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ NOW!! IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL OF UNITED STATES/ALLIED TROOPS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST!!!

 “In light of the recent seemingly never-ending revelations concerning American military atrocities toward Iraqi civilians it is high time to set the record straight about the appropriate slogans that anti-war militants use to affect the political outcome of the situation in Iraq. For those militant leftists, including this writer, who have opposed the American war aims since before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 our main slogan expressing our opposition to imperialism has been for the immediate withdrawal of all American and Allied forces from the Middle East. That continues to be the thrust of our political struggle today. But, more, much more, is necessary to accomplish that goal. It is no longer up to us-the ball is in the court of the rank and file service personnel in Iraq………”  

As you can see it calls, in unambiguous terms, for all anti-war activists who have not done so already to renounce the Support The Troops slogan which has motivated many activists and declare forthrightly for Immediate Withdrawal Now- ‘cut and run’ if you will. This writer, an old militant leftist who has known army life, has opposed the Iraqi debacle from before its start under that slogan. I made no apologies for any of the above then and I make none now. But, hear me out.   

It has become a truism but it bears repeating- Your Commander-In-Chief, President George W. Bush, abetted by your Chain of Command from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on down has lied to you the troops who have had to carry out their policy. Did you find, what now seems like an ancient question, weapons of mass destruction? No. Were you ‘liberators’ of the Iraqi peoples?  No. Are you making the world ‘safe for democracy’? Hell, no.  The Iraqi government, such as it is, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the United States government. The Iraqi government’s writ extends no further than the Green Zone, if there. Now, as of August 1, 2006, some of your fellow soldiers are being sent from other parts of Iraq to Baghdad, essentially as hostages, in the ongoing sectarian war. As of August22, 2006 President Bush has declared, as he has in the past, that the troops will not be withdrawn from Iraq on his watch. He means every word of that.

And how about the generals? This misadventure started out as a generals’ war. “Shock and Awe.” Remember? But, it sure in hell is not a generals’ war now. Look at the lists of those killed. I do. There are plenty of sergeants, corporals and PFC’s there but mighty, mighty thin at the officer level. Surprise, surprise. A look at the wounded lists would undoubtedly show the same thing.

Are your senior officers on the ground trying to keep your butts out of harm’s way and get you out of that inferno? Hell, no. They are at least smart enough to know not to leave the Green Zone-it is dangerous out there beyond the zone. Hell, you know that. Now, as of August 3, 2006 your senior command staff no longer believes in the mission. Before a Senate Armed Services Committee panel your day to day operational commanders have sounded the retreat. Read between the lines, please- the war is lost.  Today, that idea is just in their minds, tomorrow for they will be moving on to the next adventure. But, you ain't going nowhere. In short, your civilian and military leaders in the chain of command are stabbing you in the back-and they like it that way. As long as you don’t complain.

But something must be up because Marine Corps General Pace during the week of August 15, 2006 made a point of addressing his Marines in Iraq in person telling them essentially all is well and stay the course. Damn, you know these generals never talk to the rank and file soldiers unless they want something. Hell, yes you have questions about the mission in Iraq but do not expect a straight answer from the brass. They want something and it’s your butt on the line that they want. He, on the other hand, flew out of Iraq the next day. Get it. 

The following has also become a truism-Your Congressional leaders, Democratic and Republican, the people who fund the war have stabbed you in the back. They continue to vote the war budget to keep you there- Read this from a recent blog entry of mine:

 “Well the votes are in from various proposals for withdrawing from Iraq put forth by some Democrats. The results speak for themselves. On the parliamentary level anti-war militants are alone. Forget the ‘softball’ non-binding Levin-Reed proposal. Jesus, they all vote for those things as a cheap way to bolster their tarnished images. They can vote for that kind of proposition all day. No, I am talking about the Kerry proposal. That went down 86-13.

 In this series the writer has been trying to hammer home the one real question that counts on the parliamentary level. Yes or No on the war budget. We had our answer on that one last week- 98-1 for the war budget.  Enough said.”

 Translation- these people do not want you out of Iraq anytime soon. While you are getting shot at, blown away and desert-addled they can wait until next year, or the year after or (my favorite) when the situation in Iraq becomes stabilized. Christ, your grandchildren will be fighting over there by then.  Enough said, indeed!

And what about the anti-war movement? We, and the writer takes his fair share of political responsibility on this, did not have, and still do not have a political strategy that would stop this war. In the final analysis, the only way to do it is to change the government which started it in the first place. For what it is worth the only time that a war was stopped was when the workers and soldiers took over the government and stopped it in World War I. That event was the revolution in Russia in 1917.  That does not help us right this minute, though.  

Let me just relate one thing. The name Markin is a pseudonym I write under. Let me tell where it comes from. Markin was a working class sailor in the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy in World War I. As war-weariness developed and it became abundantly clear that Russia could not continue in the war and revolution was in the air Markin started organizing sailor and soldier committees to challenge the brass and ultimately the government. To make a long story short Markin, and eventually many other Markins were really the individuals who stepped up the plate and did the right thing for themselves and their buddies.  Unfortunately it now is up to you. What are you going to do? Are there any Markins out there in Iraq? 

I do not know whether this is still a part of basic training but when I was in boot camp during the Vietnam War the Drill Sergeant used to beat into our closely-shaven heads that the American army does not retreat.   Bull! That pearl of wisdom is o.k. for green troops but any half-ass officer knows you damn well better have a retreat plan. Where do you think the word ‘skedaddle’ came from? Call it ‘skedaddle’, ‘cut and run’, declare a victory in Iraq, however, you want to say it- but it is time to leave.

I have said enough. Some talking head from cyberspace cannot do your thinking for you. Do this, though- talk it over with your girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, parents, children, anyone you care about and who cares about you.  Then talk to your buddies in the barracks, on guard duty, at the PX, wherever.  You know what the right thing to do is. But above all keep your own counsel. Markin in his time knew what to do. Be a Markin. When the troops in Iraq say Support the Troops-Hell, No! Then you know the end of the war is near. Enough said, for now.

March For Women's Liberation- Boston Common-October 13, 2012 -Noon

March For Women's Liberation- Boston Common-October 13, 2012 -Noon

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The " Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-"When Billie Sought To Be Church Hall Dance Champ"

Click on the headline to link to a <i>YouTube</i> film clip of the Teen Angels performing <i>Eddie, My Love</i> to add some flavor to this sketch.

I, Peter Paul Markin, seemingly, had endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a classic rock series that went  under the general title <i>The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era</i>. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we, we small-time punk (in the old-fashioned sense of that word), we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those of us who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie whom I will talk about later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery-operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion <i>Hail Marys</i> to get right Catholic, ears. Yah right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob (not Bing, not the Bing of <i>Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?</i> anyway) Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.

And that pious, quietist, chase the devil and his (or her) devil’s music away, say a million Acts of Contrition, church-bent, Roman Catholic church-bent, part formed a great deal of the backdrop for how we related to that break-out rock music. And why we had to practically form a secret cult to enjoy it. Now you all know, since you all went to elementary school just like I did, although maybe you didn’t attend in the Cold War, red scare, we could-all-be-bombed-dead tomorrow 1950s like I did, that those mandatory elementary school dances where we rough-hewn boys learned, maybe we learned, our first social graces were nothing but cream puff affairs. Lots of red-faced guys and giggling girls. Big deal, right?

What you maybe don’t know, especially if you were not from a working class neighborhood (or a public housing project) made up of mainly Irish and Italian Roman Catholic families like I was is that “cream puff” school stuff was seen by the Church (need I add any more identifying words?) as the “devil’s playground.” Later, I found out from some Protestant friends that their church leaders felt the same way. No, not those Universalist-Unitarian types who think everything humankind does that is not hurtful is okay but real hard-nosed Protestants, like Episcopalians, Baptists, and Presbyterians. So to counter that secular godlessness, at least in our area, the Church sponsored Friday night dances. Chaste, very chaste, or that was the intention, Friday night dances.

Now these dances from an outside look would look just like those devil-sponsored secular school dances. They were, for example, held in the basement of the church (St. whoever, Our Lady of the wherever, The Sacred whatever, or fill in the blank), a basement, given the norms of public architecture, was an almost exact rectangular, windowless, linoleum-floored, folding chairs and tables, raised stage replica of the elementary school auditorium. That church locale, moreover, when dressed up like on those Friday nights with the usual crepe, handmade signs of welcome, and refreshment offerings also looked the same.

And just so that you don’t think I am going overboard they played the same damn (oops) music as at school, except the sound system (donated, naturally, by some pious parishioner, looking for good conduct points from the fiery-eyed "fire and brimstone" pastor) was usually barely audible. The real difference then, and maybe now, for all I know, was that rather than a few embarrassed public school teacher-chaperones drafted against their wills, I hope, or like to hope, every stick-in-the-mud person (or so it seemed) over the age of eighteen was drafted into the lord’s army for the evening. Purpose: to make sure there was no untoward, unnatural, unexpected, or unwanted touching of anything, by anyone, for any reason. So, now that I think about it, this was really the Friday night prison dance. But not always.

Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. The Billie who wanted fame and fortune (or at least girls) so bad that he could almost taste it. The Billie who, as I related before, entered a teenage talent show dressed up like Bill Haley and whose mother-made suit jacket arms fell off during the performance and he wound up with all the girls in schools as a consolation prize. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or, maybe, almost best friend as we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music, rock music that is.

During the summer, and here I am speaking of the summer of 1958, these church-held dances started a little earlier and finished a little later. That was fine by us. But part of the reason was that during July (starting after the Fourth of July, if I recall) and August there was a weekly dance-off elimination contest. Now these things were meant to be to show off partner-type dancing skills so I never even dreamed of participating, although I was now hip to the girl thing (or at least twelve year old hip to it), and gladly. Not so Billie. You know, or if you don’t then I will tell you so you know now, that Billie was a pretty good singer, and a pretty good shaker as a dancer. Needless to say these skills were not on the official papal list of ways to prove you had some Fred Astaire-like talent. What you needed to demonstrate, with a partner, a girl partner, was waltz-like, fox-trot stuff. Stuff you were glad to know when last, slow dance time came around but not before, please, not before.

But see, if you didn’t know before, I will remind you, Billie was a fiend to win a talent contest, a contest that, the way he figured it, was his ticket out of "the projects" and into all the cars he wanted, all the girls, and half of everything else in the world. Yah, I know, but poor boys have dreams too. And I don’t suppose it is too early to remind you, like I did with the lost sleeve teenage talent show, that Billie later spent those pent-up energies less productively, much less productively once he knew the score, his score about life. This night, this Friday night, at the start of the contest Billie was going for the brass ring though. See, Billie, secretly, at least secretly from me, was taking dance lessons, slow dance lessons with Rosalie, Christ Rosalie, the prettiest girl in our class, the girl that if I had known the word then I would have called fetching, very fetching. That was, and is, high praise from me. And, see also, teaching the pair the ropes is none other than Rosalie’s mother who before she became a mother was some kind of dance queen (I don’t know, or don’t remember, if I knew the details of that woman’s prior life before then). It was almost like the “fix was in.”

Now you know just as well as I do that I have no story to tell, or at least no story worth telling, if Billie and Rosalie don’t make it out of the box, if they just get eliminated quickly. Sure they made it, and now they were standing there getting ready to do battle against the final pair for the sainted dance championship of the christian world, projects branch. Now my take on the dancing all summer was there wasn’t much difference, at least noticeable difference, between the pairs.

I think the judges thought so too, the junior priest, a priest that the pastor threw into this dance thing because he was closer to our ages than the old-timer "fire and brimstone" pastor was, and four ladies from the Ladies' Sodality usually took quite a bit of time before deciding who was eliminated. Rosalie’s mother (and my mother, as well) thought the same thing when we compared notes. See, now with Billie under contract (oh, yah, naturally I was his manager, or something like that) I had developed into an ace dance critic. Mainly though, I was downplaying the opposition to boost my pair's chances, and, incidentally, falling, falling big, for Rosalie. And not just for her dancing.

So here we were at the finals. It was a wickedly hot night in that dungeon basement so the jackets and ties, if wore (and that needed to be worn by the contestant males), were off. Also, by the rules, each finalist couple got to choose their own music and form of dancing. The first couple did this dreamy Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers all hands flailing and quick-movement thing that even impressed me. After than performance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Billie talking to Rosalie, talking fast and talking furiously. Something was up, definitely, something was up.

Well, something was up. Billie, old sweet boy Billie, old get out of the projects at any cost Billie, old “take no prisoners” Billie decided that he was going to stretch the rules and play to his strength by doing a Bill Haley’s <i>Rock Around The Clock</i> jitterbug thing to show the judges his “moves” and what we would now call going "outside the box." And he had gotten Rosalie, sweet, fetching, deserves better Rosalie, to go along with him on it. See, Rosalie, during all those dance lesson things had fallen for old Billie and his words were like gold. Damn.

I will say that Billie and Rosalie tore the place up; at least I guess Billie did because I was, exclusively, looking at Rosalie who really danced her head off. Who won? Let me put it this way, this time the judges, that priest and his coterie of do-gooders didn’t take much time deciding that the other couple won. Rosalie was crushed. Billie, like always Billie, chalked it up to the "fix" being in for the other couple. Life was against the free spirits, he said, something it took me a lot longer to figure out. Rosalie's family moved away not long after that contest, like a lot of people just keeping time at the projects until their ships to better days came in, and I heard later that she was still furious at Billie for crossing up her chances of winning like that. Yah, but, boy, she could twirl that thing.

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-"Save The Last Dance For Me"

Save The Last Dance For Me

A tow-headed boy walks, endless forget waiting for erratic Eastern Massachusetts bus-stop non-stop walks, up named streets, Captain’s Walk (evoking New England Captain Ahab great white madnesses and avenging angel purities, a kindred spirit, and land-bound searches for the great blue-pink American west night drive the frenzy instead of holy death-seeking sea drifts, although that is unnamed just now), Snug Harbor Avenue (evoking, well, just evoking home, or the theory of home, or some happy black and white television version of home), and Sextant Circle (like such a useful nautical instrument could guide some lonely, lonesome boy out of the fetid bog-fed marshes and visions of  pirates seeking booty, or death). On to Taffrail Road, ah, Taffrail Road evoking ship-wreaked damsels, young, waiting for swashbuckling sailor boys raised from local old tar graveyards to restore their honor, their freedom, or just to share their bed. That last is the rub and that is the heart of the matter along those endless non-stop streets where erratic buses serve as the only way out of those clinched-fist producing streets. That tow-headed boy is enthralled, no better, enraged and engorged with his first stirring of interest in damsel time, girls if you must know, thus the time of his time. Yes, clinch those fists very tightly brother and take the ride.  

Unnamed streets abound too, up crooked cheap, low-rent, fifty-year rutted pavement streets, deeply-gouged, one-lane snow-drift hassles streets impassable in winter hard glare and summer sweated heat. A Street cutting off the flow to that old tar cemetery seeking exotic writ names deep-etched in granite slab washed now by birdsong, and dung, rather than damsel sweet smell perfumes. B Street the same, C Street the same, same like some alphabet conspiracy against the boyhood night, against the boyhood dream night when he dreams of manhood, or better feelings of manhood but is clueless, utterly clueless, about what those feelings portent, ominously portent. But what knows he of ominous, or portents for that matter. He confesses, and no church confession either, but etched, gravestone old tar etched, no mortal, not even hangmen evil brothers or harassing cousins, boy or girl, should ever have to face the fifth-grade night rudderless, compass-less and with the mark of Cain upon his neck.

After walking, endless walking through named and unnamed streets, he heads home, not the home of home but his dream home with her, her house home. After all who in their right mind could curse and rail against the fifth grade-night, and why, if not for budding portentous romance with some green tree-coded she. He dare not speak her name for fear of jinx, or unrequited-ness.  The year before, that innocent last fourth-grade year, they, the shes of his enflamed imagination, were all just sticks, hardly distinguishable from boys except perhaps a little smaller, just sticks to be avoided, or ignored, but this year a few, and she among the few, suddenly got interesting and he was stuck, struck really, by that ironic fact, or would have been if he had known what ironic travails he would go through before the end.        

But here, watch him from afar, as he crosses for the fifth, or fifteenth time, or fifteen hundredth time past trees are green, coded, coded fifty years coded, endless trees are green secret-coded waiting, waiting against boyish infinite time, infinite first blush of innocent manhood, boyhood times, gone now, for one look, one look, that would elude him, elude him forever. Such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots. She some fair Rosamund and he a mere serf, and they knew it, or he knew it although it did not stop him from wanting, or waiting for that one glance, and that dancing blue-eyed smile.

The dance of all damn things, the upcoming one-size-fits-all school dance, parent-approved, headmaster-approved, hell, bishop-approved when you came right down to it, and, hell, blessed too from what he had heard, maybe jesus, blessed, is what has him in a mental whirl. Such tow-headed fifth-grade boy whirls made an existence, a walked streets existence, possible just as well as “reds under every bed” scare, russkie atomic-bomb-dropping, get out of the stinking projects and get a new shirt at all costs that disturbed his other nights. But, christ, a two bit dance, some later laughable Podunk gym fiesta, crepe-hanging, some surly drafted, imprisoned teacher to “spin platters” from some RCA music box, and her with the dancing blue-eyes and rounding shape. Yes, that thing drove him crazy, or the possibility of it, in the fragrant perfume-soap, some girlish bath soap for all he knew or heard about from girl cousins, american bandstand night,

And dreams of private dances in dark shadow corners while that silly hung crepe begins to droop above their “spot” and he first, and then she, laughs about how some fourth-grader must have hung it, their private laugh. And dance too, no Fred Astaire waltz old-time fox trot (except maybe that slow one at the end of the night although that was mere planned dream echo in walked streets), but full-blossomed be-bop wild hands and ass gyrating to some Elvis good night rocking or Chuck driving some car over the cliff for love, or something, something unspoken, or ask the older kids who know, know through their well-tuned grapevine, what “it” is. If they will tell you.

All a dream, a street-walked dream until, and when, really when he got up the nerve, the endless streets walking nerve, to ask her. But no dance floor numbness would slake that footsore walking thirst not then, and no high school confidential dance either (hell elementary school was tough enough, man), handy man, breathless, Jerry Lee freak-out blaring off some truck-bed bandstand too improbable for words. So Rosamund fate, young damsel sighted off the sea-side taffrail slid by, and with time the footsoreness turned into dust, or some other psychic pain whirl. But here and now when it counted, at least, know all the rage potato sack stick-turning-into-shape dance with coded name, trees are green, brunette. That will come, that will come. But when?   

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- FromThe "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-"Tales From The 'Hood- The Endless Road?"

Peter Paul Markin comment:

This was the fifth and final story about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. This series got its start as a spin-off from a previous series entitled “History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga” that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family from my old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. The stories here go back to an earlier time and different location to that of the housing project where my family first started out. They are motivated by a search to find out the whys and wherefores of how consciousness of being poor gets implanted early in life. The poor really are different from you the reader. The “what to do about it” part I have discussed discuss, ad infinitum, elsewhere.

As I wrote this final piece a line from a song was going through my head, Jerry Garcia’s Ripple-“There is a road, no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night” That idea of the road, as I will discuss below, very neatly sums up the situation here. Some of this tale is meant as obvious metaphor, other parts are the real deal. In any case here is the central axis of this story line. In this series of sketches I  have been talking about growing up in the 1950’s. This was quintessentially the 'golden age' of the automobile in America. You know the vast possibilities of the open highway – the road-and the promise of adventure-fast and effortless.

The hard fact for the Markin family was that through most of this period we did not have that automobile to break out with. When we did this writer remembers mainly “clunkers” with their inevitable breakdowns in odd and foreboding locations. But, mostly, we had no car. Even in a housing project there was a social dividing line between those with automobiles who could get out and those who were stuck. We were, forever it seems, dependent on the kindnesses of neighbors. Or, usually, walking, public transportation in that isolated location then, as now, being haphazard. I learned to dread the weekly walk to get groceries, etc. Ouch, I can still feel those hot summer roads baking my feet.

Okay, so you can now say that walking is good for you. Fair enough. But here is where the tale gets weird. I have mentioned on several other occasions another wealthy peninsula (detailed in the first tale – “A Story of Two Peninsulas”) that abutted the peninsula where my housing project was located. I have also mentioned that I had been stopped, young as I was, in that locale by the local constabulary who asked where I was from and what was my purpose in being there. Hell, all I wanted to do was to walk along the streets that paralleled the ocean there. The tip-off for the police, apparently, was that I had entered the area on foot (as opposed to having been driven there like ‘normal’ people, I suppose) and they took it from there. When cops start infringing on your right to walk in public space wherever and whenever you feel like then you know that you are in a very class- bound society-at least in these neighborhoods. In short, I was guilty of walking while poor. Enough said.

What have I tried to present here? Clearly, not all class struggles are limited to the visible ones of the picket line or the barricade. Certainly the working class struggles that I have noted here fall well below the radar of history but they also point some hard facts about why we have so little working class political class-consciousness. Putting up with their class hatred of us, their social humiliation of us, the mere fact of being poor, of being constantly on the edge of violence, and of facing the hazards of life in a dysfunctional family that as detailed in these stories are all impediments to political class consciousness. And that is before we even get to the streets. Remember though “there is a road, no simply highway”-the class struggle road.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreams" Sketches- "Growing Up Absurd"

Peter Paul Markin comment:

This was the fourth of a short series of stories about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. This series got its start as a spin-off from a previous series entitled “History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga” that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family, the Callahans, from my old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. The stories here go back to an earlier time and different location to that of the housing project where my family first started out. They are motivated by a search to find out the whys and wherefores of how consciousness of being poor got implanted early. That the poor, the edge of society poor, the working poor mixed in with all the other flotsam and jetsam down there, really are different from you, the reader. The “what to do about it” part I have discussed, ad infinitum, elsewhere over the past forty years or so.

The previous tale in this series that you may have just read , “A Piece of Cloth,” about my less than heroic misadventures as an up and coming square dancer (apparently in preparation for an career on the Grand Ole Opry)  set the tone for this story. In that tale I was subjected to a poor working class mother’s rage for cutting up one of my precious few pairs of pants in order to impress a girl, a rich girl, well rich compared to us. I learned then, if more painfully than was necessary, the hard lesson that the Markin family was poor, dirt poor, in this wicked old world.

Those kinds of incidents involving my mother and I (and my brothers, as well), although generally more severe and less amiably subject to public treatment than that bittersweet tale of pants and love lost, were standard fare in the Markin household. Such incidents are, moreover, well documented in literature and the media and would be merely cumulative if discussed here. Only the reality is grimmer than anything portrayed in book or film. Not physically, there was thankfully little of that in our household, but the psychological warfare was almost as devastating. Let me nevertheless try to put this thing in some perspective now, although Lord knows I was incapable of that as I was going through it.

I have mentioned elsewhere some of the small details of my parent’s struggle for survival. I have also mentioned that their life profiles fit into a familiar pattern similar to others who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and fought or endured World War II. I still feel no need to go into great detail about that here. I however find that I need to mention that my mother married my serviceman father just out of high school and quickly became a teenage mother. Moreover, she had great difficulties with the births of my brothers and me. The three of us furthermore were only separated by a year or so each. In short, a handful.

Those facts along with my father’s continual and constant difficulties in holding onto the unskilled jobs that he was forced into meant a very, very tough existence for a woman who was something a princess (a working class one, to be sure-there is a different but a princess nevertheless) to her parents and brothers. The woman’s respond to her conditions was to be in a constant rage. It was not pleasant. We called it, among us boys, the Irish “shaming” routine. In short, what is apparent here is that the nuclear family structure was far too narrow a basis for her and us to survive under the circumstances. I survived. My brothers did not.

Sherry my invaluable ‘hood historian has related some of the same kind of stories to me about her family life except her family was larger, her mother died when she was a teenager, and she found herself as the oldest girl taking care of the household. Others survivors of ‘the projects’ have related very similar stories, almost monotonously so. We need not even speak here of such things as the effects of alcoholism, and later, drugs, and other social maladies on this fragile nuclear family structure.

To be sure, even under socialism, it will take a massive reallocation of funds to right these kinds of situations. Moreover, and here is the hard part for many to understand today, rich or poor, the nuclear family structure is just too narrow a setting to free up the potential energies of humankind. It needs be replaced.

Despite all the pains of growing up poor, despite all the dislocations of psyche that I have dealt with over lifetime to fight the good fight for socialism it has still been worthwhile if only for the promise that some future generation will not have to go through my childhood experiences. Although I will not live long enough to see the replacement of the nuclear family with something better and more attuned to human potentialities I am satisfied with that. On reviewing this piece I find that it was not really a story after all but one of my political screeds. However, remember that mother’s impotent rage against her fate. That is the story.

Peter Paul Markin comment:

This was the fourth of a short series of stories about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. This series got its start as a spin-off from a previous series entitled “History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga” that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family, the Callahans, from my old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. The stories here go back to an earlier time and different location to that of the housing project where my family first started out. They are motivated by a search to find out the whys and wherefores of how consciousness of being poor got implanted early. That the poor, the edge of society poor, the working poor mixed in with all the other flotsam and jetsam down there, really are different from you, the reader. The “what to do about it” part I have discussed, ad infinitum, elsewhere over the past forty years or so.

The previous tale in this series that you may have just read , “A Piece of Cloth,” about my less than heroic misadventures as an up and coming square dancer (apparently in preparation for an career on the Grand Ole Opry)  set the tone for this story. In that tale I was subjected to a poor working class mother’s rage for cutting up one of my precious few pairs of pants in order to impress a girl, a rich girl, well rich compared to us. I learned then, if more painfully than was necessary, the hard lesson that the Markin family was poor, dirt poor, in this wicked old world.

Those kinds of incidents involving my mother and I (and my brothers, as well), although generally more severe and less amiably subject to public treatment than that bittersweet tale of pants and love lost, were standard fare in the Markin household. Such incidents are, moreover, well documented in literature and the media and would be merely cumulative if discussed here. Only the reality is grimmer than anything portrayed in book or film. Not physically, there was thankfully little of that in our household, but the psychological warfare was almost as devastating. Let me nevertheless try to put this thing in some perspective now, although Lord knows I was incapable of that as I was going through it.

I have mentioned elsewhere some of the small details of my parent’s struggle for survival. I have also mentioned that their life profiles fit into a familiar pattern similar to others who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and fought or endured World War II. I still feel no need to go into great detail about that here. I however find that I need to mention that my mother married my serviceman father just out of high school and quickly became a teenage mother. Moreover, she had great difficulties with the births of my brothers and me. The three of us furthermore were only separated by a year or so each. In short, a handful.

Those facts along with my father’s continual and constant difficulties in holding onto the unskilled jobs that he was forced into meant a very, very tough existence for a woman who was something a princess (a working class one, to be sure-there is a different but a princess nevertheless) to her parents and brothers. The woman’s respond to her conditions was to be in a constant rage. It was not pleasant. We called it, among us boys, the Irish “shaming” routine. In short, what is apparent here is that the nuclear family structure was far too narrow a basis for her and us to survive under the circumstances. I survived. My brothers did not.

Sherry my invaluable ‘hood historian has related some of the same kind of stories to me about her family life except her family was larger, her mother died when she was a teenager, and she found herself as the oldest girl taking care of the household. Others survivors of ‘the projects’ have related very similar stories, almost monotonously so. We need not even speak here of such things as the effects of alcoholism, and later, drugs, and other social maladies on this fragile nuclear family structure.

To be sure, even under socialism, it will take a massive reallocation of funds to right these kinds of situations. Moreover, and here is the hard part for many to understand today, rich or poor, the nuclear family structure is just too narrow a setting to free up the potential energies of humankind. It needs be replaced.

Despite all the pains of growing up poor, despite all the dislocations of psyche that I have dealt with over lifetime to fight the good fight for socialism it has still been worthwhile if only for the promise that some future generation will not have to go through my childhood experiences. Although I will not live long enough to see the replacement of the nuclear family with something better and more attuned to human potentialities I am satisfied with that. On reviewing this piece I find that it was not really a story after all but one of my political screeds. However, remember that mother’s impotent rage against her fate. That is the story.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Series-"Tales From The 'Hood- A Piece of Cloth"

Peter Paul Markin comment:

This was the third of a short series of stories about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. This series got its start as a spin-off from a previous series entitled History and "Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga" that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family from my old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. The stories here go back to an earlier time and different location to that of the housing project where my family first started out. They are motivated by a search to find out the whys and wherefores of how consciousness of being poor got implanted early. The “what to do about it” part I have discussed, ad infinitum, elsewhere in other ways of the past forty years or so.

The question posed above concerning how working class consciousness gets instilled is important to know, especially for ‘politicos’ trying to organize working people in order that those who labor can rule this society. So, how does one become conscious that one is poor, comes from a poor family, and lives in poor housing in a poor neighborhood when one is, say, ten years old, the time frame for the story I want to tell here? This requires some reflection because, without exterior prompts, it is not immediately obvious to a ten year old; at least it was not to this ten year old.

Is it the run down school that one goes to? Is it the garbage-strewn unkempt yards? Is it the constant screaming of kids, parents, or anyone who has a voice and wants someone in this sorry and wicked old world to listen? Is it your father home on a workday because he has no work? Or is it that very much smaller portion of Christmas presents under the tree than one had wished for? Well, all of those things are certainly candidates but follow me here and I will tell you exactly how I learned the elemental social facts of life in this society. Moreover, Sherry, my invaluable ‘hood historian (and fellow classmate at old Adamsville South Elementary School where this sketch takes place) for this series was there to witness my baptism of fire. Listen up:

At some point in elementary school a boy is inevitably supposed to learn to do two intertwined socially-oriented skills- the basics of some kind of dancing and also  be paired off with, dare I say it, a girl in that activity. I can already hear your gasps, dear reader, as I present that scenario. In my case the dancing part turned out to be the basics of square dancing (go figure, for a city boy, right?). Not only did this clumsy young boy have to do the basic “swing your partner” but I also had to do it while I was paired, for this occasion, with a girl that I had a “crush” on. That girl, moreover, was not from the ‘hood but from that other peninsula, the rich one, that formed the backdrop for the first story in this series- “A Story of Two Peninsulas.” I will not describe her, although I could do so even today, but let us leave it that her name was Rosalind. Enchanting name, right? There is nothing special about the story so far though. Just your average “one of the stages of coming of age” story. I wish.

Well, the long and short of it was that we were practicing this square dancing to demonstrate our prowess before our parents in the school gym. Nothing unusual there either. After all there is no sense in doing this type of activity unless one can impress one’s parents. I forget all the details of the setup of the space for demonstration day and things like that but it was a big deal. To honor the occasion, as this was my big moment to impress Rosalind, I had, earlier in the day, cut up my dungarees to give myself an authentic square dancer look.

I thought I looked pretty good. That is until my mother saw what I had done to the pants. In a second she got up from her seat, marched over to me and started yelling about my disrespect for my father’s and her efforts to clothe me and about the fact that since I only had a couple of pairs of pants how could I do such a thing. In short, airing the family troubles in public for all to hear. That went on for what seemed like an eternity. Thereafter I was unceremoniously taken home and placed on restriction for a week. Needless to say my father heard about it when he got home, and I heard about it for weeks afterward. Needless to say I also blew my ‘chances’ with dear, sweet Rosalind.

Now is this a tale of the hard lessons of the class struggle that I am always more than willing to put in a word about? Surely not. Is this a sad tale of young love thwarted by the vagaries of fate? Maybe. Is this a tale about respect for the little we had in my family? Perhaps. Was my mother, despite her rage, right? Well, yes. Did I learn something about being poor in this wicked old world? Damn right. That is the point. But, ah, Rosalind…

From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-The Struggle For The Communist League-Letter by Wilhelm Weitling to Moses Hess (1846)

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.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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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!

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Markin comment:

This foundation article by Marx or Engels goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space.

Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.

Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.
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Letter by Wilhelm Weitling to Moses Hess

This personal letter was written by Wilhelm Weitling, to Moses Hess, the day after the meeting of the Communist Correspondence Committee. Present at this meeting were: Weitling, Marx, Engels, Philippe Gigot, Louis Heilberg, Sebastien Seiler, Edgar von Westphalen (Marx’s brother-in-law), Joseph Weydemeyer, and Pavel Annenkov.


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Brussels, March 31, 1846
Dear Hess!

Last evening we met again inpleno. Marx brought with him a man whom he presented to us as a Russian [Annenkov], and who never said a word throughout the whole evening. The question was: What is the best way to carry on propaganda in Germany? Seiler posed the question, but he said he could not go into further detail now, since some delicate matters would have to be touched upon, etc. Marx kept on pressing him, but in vain. Both became excited, Marx violently so. In the end, the latter took up the question. His resume was:

An examination must be made of the Communist party.
This can be achieved by criticizing the incompetent and separating them from the sources of money.
This examination is now the most important thing that can be done in the interest of communism.
He who has the power to carry authority with the moneyed men also has the means to displace the others and would probably apply it.
“Handicraft communism” and “philosophical communism” must be opposed, human feeling must be derided, these are merely obfuscations. No oral propaganda, no provision for secret propaganda, in general the word propaganda not to be used in the future.
The realization of communism in the near future is out of the question; the bourgeoisie must first be at the helm.
Marx and Engels argued vehemently against me. Weydemeyer spoke quietly. Gigot and Edgar did not say a word. Heilberg opposed Marx from an impartial viewpoint, at the very end Seiler did the same, bitterly but with admirable calm. I became vehement, Marx surpassed me, particularly at the end when everything was in an uproar, he jumping up and down in his office. Marx was especially furious at my resume. I had said: The only thing that came out of our discussion was he who finds the money may write what he pleases....
That Marx and Engels will vehemently criticize my principles is now certain. Whether or not I will be able to defend myself as I would like to do, I don’t know. Without money Marx cannot criticize and I cannot defend myself; nevertheless, in an emergency it may not matter that I have no money. I believe Marx and Engels will end by criticizing themselves through their own criticism. In Marx’s brain, I see nothing more than a good encyclopaedia, but no genius. His influence is felt through other personalities. Rich men made him editor, voila tout. Indeed, rich men who make sacrifices have a right to see or have investigations made into what they want to support. They have the power to assert this right, but the writer also has the power, no matter how poor he is, not to sacrifice his convictions for money. I am capable of sacrificing my conviction for the sake of unity. I put aside my work on my system when I received protests against it from all directions. But when I heard in Brussels that the opponents of my system intended to publish splendid systems in well-financed translations, I completed mine and made an effort to bring it to the man [Marx]. If this is not supported, then it is entirely in order to make an examination. Jackass that I was, I had hitherto believed that it would be better if we used all our own qualities against our _enemies_ and encouraged especially those that bring forth persecutions in the struggle. I had thought it would be better to influence the people and, above all, to organize a portion of them for the propagation of our popular writings. But Marx and Engels do not share this view, and in this they are strengthened by their rich supporters. All right! Very good! Splendid! I see it coming. I have often found myself in similar circumstances, and always things turned out for the best....

Yours,
Weitling

Veterans For Peace Demand Peace And Justice- October 7, 2012- New York City

Click on the headline to link to the Veterans For Peace website.

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At 10 p.m. on May 1,2012, the New York Police Department closed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, driving out members of the Occupy movement who were holding a nonviolent General Assembly. Eight members of the Veterans Peace Team and two members of Occupy Faith were arrested for standing their ground. A small metal sign has been posted at the park stating that it closes at 10 p.m. This was Vietnam vet Paul Appell's reaction:

"Plato wrote 'only the dead have seen the end of war.' War veterans, loved ones of the fallen, and certainly those living in war ^ones do not have the option of closing down their memories at 10p.m. There is a good reason why suicide is an attractive option for many. It is truly the only sure way of ending the memories. For a memorial to shut down at some convenient time for the city is an insult to all those who do not have the luxury of shutting down their war memories at a specific time. I know that many want us war vets to go out of sight and nof bother them, except when we are needed for some parade. Some of us are not going away at 10 p.m. or any other time. If they do not like it, maybe they should have thought of that before they sent us to war."

From the Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Tales From The 'Hood- "The Romance of the Gun"

From the Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Tales From The 'Hood- "The Romance of the Gun"

 Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

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 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 poor proud 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 the 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.

 

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Save Private Bradley Manning-Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us At Veterans Square (Corner Adams Street and Dorchester Avenue )-Fields Corner- Dorchester –Tuesday October 9, 2012 From 4:00-5:00 PM

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Save Private Bradley Manning-Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us At Veterans Square  (Corner Adams Street and Dorchester Avenue )-Fields Corner- Dorchester –Tuesday October  9, 2012 From 4:00-5:00 PM  

<b>Markin comment:

</b>

The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward a mid- winter trial. Those of us who support his cause should redouble our efforts to secure his freedom. For the past several months there has been a weekly stand-out in Greater Boston across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop (renamed Bradley Manning Square for the stand-out’s duration) in Somerville on Friday afternoons but we have since July 4, 2012 changed the time and day to 4:00-5:00 PM on Wednesdays. This stand-out has, to say the least, been very sparsely attended. We need to build it up with more supporters present. Please join us when you can. Or better yet if you can’t join us start a Support Bradley Manning weekly stand-out in some location in your town whether it is in the Boston area, Berkeley or Berlin. And please sign the petition for his release either in person or through the <i>Bradley Manning Support Network</i>. We have placed links to the <i>Manning Network</i> and <i>Manning Square</i> website below.

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Bradley Manning Support Network

http://www.bradleymanning.org/

Manning Square website

http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/

http://www.standwithbrad.org/

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News has reached us that some of the folks at the Dorchester People for Peace (DPP) are having a stand-out for Private Manning to be held October 9,  2012 at 4:00 PM at the Veterans Square location (corner of Adams Street and Dorchester Avenue) in Fields Corner Dorchester (just up from the Fields Corner Red Line stop). Please join them on that day.  

Honk Fest Oct. 7- Harvard Square- Cambridge, Ma -October 7th

Sunday, Oct 7th Noon – 2:00p:

HONK! PARADE to “Reclaim the Streets for Horns, Bikes and Feet” featuring HONK! bands and community groups, from Davis Square to Harvard Square’s Oktoberfest celebration. The parade leaves Davis Square at 12 noon, travels down Elm Street, then Beech Street onto Massachusetts Ave to Harvard Square.

2:15 – 6:00: HARVARD SQUARE OKTOBERFEST HONK! bands perform at the Harvard Square Oktoberfest (www.harvardsquare.com).

Loads more starting Oct 4th see schedule: http://honkfest.org/schedule/

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- FromThe "Ancient Drems, Dreamed" Sketches- " A Tale Of Two Penisulas"

There was something, something weird about growing up poor, hell growing up dirt poor, certified dirt poor, and about growing up in the 1950s, the “golden age America” childhood period of what he would later call, and maybe would be called too by some smug sociologists but with a smirk, the generation of ‘68. Peter Paul  couldn’t put his finger on it just then and that hard fact bothered him. Yes he was at it again, thinking those old memory thoughts, thinking that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family from his old working class neighborhood that he had just heard about from its original source. Some, after reading this, might claim that it was really his family that he was talking about, thinking about, but, no, it was, strange as it seems, another family caught up just like his in a downward spiral while all around them that golden age was a-borning. 
For the benefit of the two or three people in the world who do not know, hell he wrote about it enough in half the damn unread radical periodicals and progressive journals in the country when such stories were the rage, his own family had started life and he had grown to young manhood in the housing projects, at that time not the notorious hell holes of crime and deprivation that they later became (and which he wrote many investigative reports about) but still a mark of being low, very low, on the social ladder at a time when others were heading to the nirvana of the newly emerging outer suburbs.

The housing project that he grew up in, officially the Adamsville Housing Authority apartments just outside of Boston, was originally meant to serve as a way station for returning veterans from World War II caught up in the post war housing shortage. Thus, his family of five were actually the first tenants in their unit, although it did not take long for the place, small and cramped, of shoddy construction befitting the low bid mentality of the construction company and the political judgment that this was strictly temporary, to seem old. Needless to say as well this project was all white, reflecting the population of city, Adamsville, at the time. Although he was not sure of the city’s current population break-down he had checked to find that that still very existing projects was about 20% minority, mainly Asian-American, reflecting the city's population change.

A recent trip back to the old homestead revealed that the place was in something of a time warp. The original plot plan consisted of a few hundred four-unit two-floor apartment complexes, a departure from the ubiquitous later high-rise prison-like hellholes at least. It looked, structurally, almost the same as in the 1950’s except that it was dirtier, much less kept-up and he believed that the asphalt sidewalks and streets have not been repaved since his family left in the late 1950s to move a quarter- step up the poor rung from dirt poor to just poor as church mice. A very visible police substation was the only apparent addition to the scene. That told him all he needed to know about the doings now. (Although in the old days he had thrilled, vicariously thrilled, to hard-bitten tales of local desperadoes holding up gas stations, robbing liquor stores and, occasionally pulling an armed robbery.)

This housing project is located on what, as local lore had it,  was an isolated, abandoned piece of “ghost” farmland on a peninsula that juts out into a bay and is across from various sea-going industrial activities. This complex of industrial sites and ocean-related activity mars the effect of being near the ocean here. Certainly no Arcadian scenes come to mind. Moreover, he recalled (and on that return trip he swore he could almost smell the stuff) the smells and sounds from those activities were nauseating and annoying at times. A particularly pungent smell of some soap product filled the air on many a summer’s evening. Ships unloading, with their constant fog horns blowing, provided the sound effects.

A narrow two-lane, now deeply pot-holed, road was (is) is the only way in or out of this location. Over fifty years later the nearest shopping center or even convenient store is still several miles away requiring an automobile or reliance on haphazard and still infrequent public transportation. In short, and he had asked other people about this, one could live within shouting distance of the place and not know where it was. In short, a very familiar concept of public welfare social planning that he had endlessly railed against-out of sight, out of mind?

The ‘projects” were, in any case, where he passed his early childhood, including elementary school, Adamsville South. The elementary school was, however, located not in the projects but up that narrow one way out road previously mentioned some distance away at the beginning of another peninsula. That other peninsula, with its unobstructed views of the open ocean and freedom from the sight and sound of those industrial complexes, had many sought after old money, old fashioned Victorian houses and a number of then recently constructed upscale colonial-type houses favored by the up and coming middle class of the fifties. The place might as well have been in another world. The school nevertheless, at least in the 1950s, serviced the children of both peninsulas.

He thought hard before realizing that he never had one friend from that other peninsula. Sure he talked to the Jimmy Prescotts but always in school, not outside. Later conversations with others, who also grew up in the housing project, concurred with his observation. He blushed as he thought about the couple of times that he had wandered over into that other peninsula and of his being stopped by the local constabulary, even at that young age, and asked where he was from and what he was doing there.

This is as good a place as any to introduce what he called the ‘hood historian, Sherry. As part of his memory search he connected, by use of various resources including the Internet, with a number of people. One of them was Sherry, who is the real narrator here, and is the source for many of the observations and physical details that fill out this story. He and Sherry went to elementary school together. He remembered her as pretty, a working class pretty that would fade with the effects of childbirths and the toils of motherhood and other sorrows.

Sherry and her family, after his family left, stayed in the projects for almost thirty years so that she saw the place as it evolved from that previously mentioned way station for hard-pressed returning World War II veterans to the classic “projects” of media notoriety. She knew “the projects.” Moreover, from what he had gathered about her, although she did not have a political bone in her body, she now wore her working class background on her face, in her personality, and her whole manner. Not in abject defeat, however, but as a survivor. That too tells a tale.

As they reconnected the obvious place for them to start was a little trip down memory lane to old school days. Naturally, since he had an ulterior motive and had a fierce sense of class society, he wanted her opinion on the kids from the other peninsula. Sherry then related, in some detail, what she had to tell about her life in elementary school, not without a tear in her eyes even at this remove. She spend her whole time in that school being snubbed, insulted and, apparently, on more than one occasion physically threatened by the prissy girls from the other peninsula for her poor clothing, her poor manners and for being from “the projects.” 

He said that he would spare the reader the details here, although if you have seen any of the problematic working class ‘coming of age’ movies or suburban teenage cultural spoofs the episodes she related are the grim real life underlying premises behind those efforts. You know the unkind, hell, cruel, snubs about hair not being “permed” just right, about wrong color (for the minute) dresses, or old style (for the minute), about not attending Miss Prissy’s (sic) after school dance classes, etc.  Hell, even about her father being the janitor at one of the girls’ father’s shipyards. Moreover, she faced this barrage all the way through to high school graduation as well, including a nasty incident at her prom where one girl threw (or tried to throw) a drink on her hard fought for (and hard paid for too) dress. Jesus

It was painful for him to heard Sherry retell her story, and as he said, not without a few tears. Moreover, it was hard for him to hear because, although he did not face that other peninsula barrage then, he faced it later when his family moved to the other side of town and kids taunted him when they found out he was from “the projects.”  Things like about his hand-me-down clothes, about his family not having a car most of the time, about his constant walking around town (rather than being “chauffeured” by mom), about his bringing his lunch rather than buying it at school (if you can believe that). And it got worst later when he went “beat” (well, imitation beat).  

Now were the snubs and hurts due to Sherry’s (or his) personality? Maybe. She can be, now anyway, a little abrupt although he remembered a polite young girl.  Is this tale a mere example of childhood’s gratuitous cruelty? Perhaps. Is this story the childhood equivalent of the working class battles at their nastiest on the picket lines of a strike? Hell, no. But the next time someone tells you that there are no classes in this society remember this story. Then remember Sherry’s tears. Damn.
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In The Time Of The Great English Revolution- Professor Ivan Roots’ View- A Book Review

In The Time Of The Great English Revolution- Professor Ivan Roots’ View- A Book Review http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Cooper%2C_Oliver_Cromwell.jpg

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 17th Century English revolutionary Oliver Cromwell.

Book Review

The Great Rebellion-1642-1660. Professor Ivan Roots, Billing &Sons Ltd., London, 1966

There isno question that for those Western political activists today who look to past social movements as a guide to action that the French Revolution is the logical point of reference. That classical revolution, as more than one political commentator has pointed out, still two hundred plus years later has something to say to us. Moreover the main gains derived from that revolution are still in need of completion in many parts of the world. Not taking anything away from the importance of the French Revolution and its lessons, I would here like to argue for, since the book under review, The Great Rebellion-1642-1660, details the earlier English Revolution, a kind of “great rebellion” exception to the French example. And the basis for that exception is nothing more (although not less either) than having grown up in New England with its myriad historical references to the old mother country and the struggle of the Puritans and others to create some new social order so that I am keenly aware of the debt that the French Revolution (and the American as well) to the that earlier explosion of struggle to find a new way of organizing society.

After reading Professor Roots’, an acknowledged authority on the parliamentary struggles in mid-17th century England, now old time narration of the events (and others in the field from Trevor-Roper to Christopher Hill) I am more confirmed in my opinion. Professor Roots takes pains to explore the various tendencies from arch-monarchist to “fifth monarchists” who were contending for power during this period. Although by the cast of his narration Professor Roots appears more than a little shocked by the thought that the plebeian (meaning everybody from the emerging bourgeois urban types to the yeoman who defended the parliamentary order through it all) masses of that time could upend the king and the kingdom. But aside from his various off-hand remarks he presents a very well-written and fast moving narrative of the events that make up the period of the English Revolution proper. This is done by looking at the various contending power centers (royalist, great landowners, rising and declining, the Scots and the other nationalist movements, religious orders, urban bourgeois types, army cadre, etc.) their reaction to events and, in the end, the movements, while it was not pre-ordained that Charles II would reclaim the throne, that made that possible. The good Professor, other than in passing, does not like Professor Hill dwell on underbelly of the revolution, on those groupings like the Levellers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchists, shakers, quakers, ranters, ravers and what not who make this such a historically colorful time.

As Professor Roots noted Charles I made every possible mistake in the book in dealing with his political opponents, his religious opponents, and even some of his quasi-supporters. Of course this trait is common when revolution is in the air but probably more that later times Charles seemed to go out of his way to alienate anybody who did not buy into his version of “divine right of kings.” And in the end he paid for that fault with his head. Along the way there were various political, but more importantly military turning points, which spelled his demise. The most important was the parliamentary New Model Army which emerged when things were stalemated. That army in concentrated form expressed both the new “democratic” spirit that animated the plebes and put forth many new leaders who would also make their mark in civilian society, notably Oliver Cromwell who rise to Lord Protector was almost totally as a result of his military prowess in using that army and as a lever in the political struggles in the republican period.

The most interesting part of Professor Roots book is his study of the various pro-parliamentary groupings, military and civilian, in the republican period when everyone was trying to get some combination that would make governing in a non-monarchial society possible. That mighty task had many ups and downs from the bright days of the Levellers and army agitators to the very close to dictatorial rule by Cromwell. However, in the end, the republican project was not sustainable at that time. Nevertheless the issue of parliamentary primacy was decisively established. That is the major lesson we take from the English Revolution. To get a better idea of the ins and outs of that struggle at the governmental level read Professor Roots important basic book.

SEIU Wokers Reach Tentative Contract- Victory To SEIU LOcal 615!

Click on the headline to link to the SEIU Local 615 website for details of the tentative contract agreement. Markin comment: Victory to the janitors!/b>

In Defense Of Bradley Manning-From The "Boston Phoenix"