Jack A. Smith : Reversing the Vietnam War Verdict

07 June 2012

Jack A. Smith : Reversing the Vietnam War Verdict

Demonstrators at the October 21, 1967 march on the Pentagon carry a banner that says, "Support our GIs, Bring Them Home Now."
Reversing the Vietnam War verdict

Most of the allegations about insults directed at soldiers or vets from war opponents have been fabrications to discredit the antiwar forces.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / June 7, 2012

The Pentagon has just launched a multi-year national public relations campaign to justify, glorify, and honor Washington's catastrophic, aggressive, and losing war against Vietnam -- America's most controversial and unpopular military conflict.

President Barack Obama opened the militarist event, which was overwhelmingly approved by Congress four years ago, during a speech at the Vietnam Wall on Memorial Day, May 28. The entire campaign, which will consist of tens of thousands of events over the next 13 years, is ostensibly intended to "finally honor" the U.S. troops who fought in Vietnam. The last troops were evacuated nearly 40 years ago.

In reality, the unprecedented project -- titled the Vietnam War Commemoration -- will utilize the "pro-veteran" extravaganza to accomplish two additional and more long lasting goals:

• The first is to legitimize and intensify a renewed warrior spirit within America as the Pentagon emerges from two counterproductive, ruinously expensive, and stalemated unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and prepares for further military adventures in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Within days of Obama's speech, for instance, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta announced a big increase of U.S. Navy forces in the Pacific, a move obviously targeting China. At the same time the Obama Administration's drone wars are accelerating as the Oval Office's kill list expands, and the president engages in cyber sabotage against Iran.


• The second is to dilute the memory of historic public opposition to the Vietnam war by putting forward the Pentagon's censored account of the conflict in public meetings, parades, and educational sessions set to take place across the nation through 2025. These flag-waving, hyper-patriotic occasions will feature veterans, active duty military members, government officials, local politicians, teachers, and business leaders who will combine forces to praise those who fought in Vietnam and those on the home front who supported the war. There won't be much -- if any -- attention focused on the majority of Americans who opposed this imperialist adventure, except as a footnote describing how tolerant U.S. democracy is toward dissent.

The principal theme of the president's address was that American troops have not received sufficient laurels for their efforts to violently prevent the reunification of North and South Vietnam. He did not point out that there would have been no war had the United States permitted nationwide free elections to take place in Vietnam in 1956 as specified by the 1954 Geneva Agreement ending the French colonialism in Indochina. Washington recently decided that the war "officially" began in 1962 (although U.S. involvement dates back to the 1950s), allowing the commemoration to begin during the "50th anniversary" year.

President Obama lays a commemorative wreath during Memorial Day ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, May 28, 2012 in Arlington, Virginia. Photo by Mark Wilson / Getty Images.
President Obama told the large, cheering crowd of veterans and their families at the Vietnam Wall exactly what they — and all those who still resented the era's large antiwar movement — wanted to hear:

One of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam -- most particularly, how we treated our troops who served there....

You were often blamed for a war you didn't start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor. (Applause.) You were sometimes blamed for misdeeds of a few, when the honorable service of the many should have been praised. You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened. And that's why here today we resolve that it will not happen again. (Applause.)....

[Y]ou wrote one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history. (Applause.).... [E]ven though some Americans turned their back on you -- you never turned your back on America... And let's remember all those Vietnam veterans who came back and served again -- in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You did not stop serving. (Applause.)

So here today, it must be said -- you have earned your place among the greatest generations. At this time, I would ask all our Vietnam veterans, those of you who can stand, to please stand, all those already standing, raise your hands -- as we say those simple words which always greet our troops when they come home from here on out: Welcome home. (Applause.) Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Thank you. We appreciate you. Welcome home. (Applause.)....

May God bless you. May God bless your families. May God bless our men and women in uniform. And may God bless these United States of America.

There was virtually no criticism in the corporate mass media about the president's gross exaggerations concerning the "mistreatment" of Vietnam era veterans. True, there were no victory parades, but that was because the U.S. Armed Forces were defeated by a much smaller and enormously outgunned adversary -- the guerrilla forces of the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF) and regular forces from North Vietnam.

Members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) hold a peaceful demonstration outside the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami. Photo by JP Laffont / Sygma / Corbis.
By the time many vets returned home the American people had turned against the war and wanted it over, as did a significant portion of active duty troops, including the many who identified with the peace movement or who mutinied or deserted. Undoubtedly some veterans were disrespected -- but to a far lesser extent than Obama and pro-war forces have suggested over the years.

Whenever the U.S. conducts unpopular invasions, as in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Washington and the mass media invariably insist that it is the duty of patriotic citizens to "support the troops" even if they oppose the war. But to manifest the kind of support the government seeks inevitably implies support for the war. This is why the peace groups came up with the slogan "Support the Troops -- Bring 'em home NOW!"

According to the Pentagon, which is in charge of staging the Vietnam War Commemoration, the main purpose is

To thank and honor veterans of the Vietnam War... for their service and sacrifice on behalf of the United States and to thank and honor the families of these veterans. To highlight the service of the Armed Forces during the Vietnam War and the contributions of Federal agencies and governmental and non-governmental organizations that served with, or in support of, the Armed Forces. To pay tribute to the contributions made on the home front by the people of the United States during the Vietnam War..."

Thousands of community, veteran, and various nongovernmental organizations throughout the U.S. are expected to join the Commemorative Partner Program

to assist federal, state and local authorities to assist a grateful nation in thanking and honoring our Vietnam Veterans and their families. Commemorative Partners are encouraged to participate... by planning and conducting events and activities that will recognize the Vietnam Veterans and their families’ service, valor, and sacrifice.

In addition the government and its "partners" will be distributing educational materials about the war, according to the Pentagon, but it is unlikely that the Vietnamese side of the story or that of the multitude of war resisters in the U.S., civilian and military, will receive favorable attention. Many facts, including the origins of the war will undoubtedly be changed to conform to the commemoration's main goal of minimizing Washington's defeat and maximizing the heroism and loyalty of the troops.

Officially, the Vietnam war lasted 11 years (1962-1973), but U.S. involvement actually continued for 21 years (1954-1975). The U.S. financially supported the restoration of French colonial control of Vietnam and all of Indochina after the defeat of Japanese imperialism in 1945 (Japan earlier displaced French rule). By 1954, Washington not only supplied money and advisers but sent 352 Americans to Vietnam in a "Military Assistance Advisory group" supporting the French against liberation forces led by the Vietnamese Communist Party. The liberators defeated the French army at the historic battle of Dien Bien Phu that same year.

The Geneva Conference of 1954, facilitating impending French withdrawal, established that Vietnam would be divided temporarily into two halves until free elections were held in 1956 to determine whether the liberation forces, led by Ho Chi Minh, or Emperor Bao Dai, who had collaborated with both French and Japanese occupation forces and was a puppet of the U.S., would rule the unified state.

American soldiers carry a wounded comrade through a Vietnam Swamp. Photo by Paul Halverson, 1969. Image from The Veterans Hour.
It is doubtful that the commemoration is going to emphasize the fact that the U.S., led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, used its power to prevent nationwide elections from taking place when it became clear that Ho Chi Minh would win 80% of the vote. Eisenhower acknowledged this in his memoirs. Instead, Washington allied itself to right wing forces in the southern sector to declare "South Vietnam" to be a separate state for the first time in history and set about financing, training and controlling a large southern military force to prevent reunification. The U.S. dominated the Saigon government throughout the following war.

When Paris withdrew remaining French troops in April 1956, according to John Prados in Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 (2009), "their departure made America South Vietnam's big brother," i.e., overlord and military protector against popular liberation forces in the southern half of the country.

By June 1962, 9,700 U.S. "military advisers" plus a large number of CIA agents were training and fighting to support the corrupt U.S.-backed regime in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), at which time President Kennedy's Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, announced that "every quantitative measure shows that we're wining the war."

By 1968, when the number of U.S. troops attained their apogee of 535,040, Washington was obviously losing to its tenacious opponent. This is when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek reelection rather than face the humiliation of defeat. Republican President Richard M. Nixon succeeded to the presidency and vastly increased the bombings while also calling for negotiations to end the war.

Facing an impending defeat and political catastrophe, American troops pulled out in 1973. The CIA and some U.S. military personnel and political advisers remained in diminished South Vietnam assisting the right wing government in Saigon until April 1975 when the entire country was liberated.

The U.S. lost 58,151 troops in the war. Between four and five million Vietnamese civilians and soldiers were killed on both sides in a catastrophe that could have been entirely avoided had Washington allowed the free elections to take place. Over a million civilians in neighboring Laos and Cambodia also were killed or wounded by U.S. firepower.

Vietnam, north and south, was pulverized by U.S. bombs and shells. The Pentagon detonated 15,500,000 tons of ground and air munitions on the three countries of Indochina, 12,000,000 tons on South Vietnam alone in a failed effort to smash the National Liberation Front backed by the North Vietnamese army. By comparison, the U.S. detonated only 6,000,000 tons of ground and air munitions throughout World War II in Europe and the Far East. All told, by the end of the war, 26,000,000 bomb craters pockmarked Indochina, overwhelmingly from U.S. weapons and bombers.

The Pentagon also dumped 18,000,000 gallons of herbicides to defoliate several million acres of farmland and forests. Millions of Vietnamese suffered illness, birth defects, and deaths from these poisonous chemicals. The AP recently reported from Hanoi, Vietnam's capital, that "More than 100,000 Vietnamese have been killed or injured by land mines or other abandoned explosives since the Vietnam War ended nearly 40 years ago, and clearing all of the country will take decades more."

It should also be mentioned -- since it will be suppressed during the commemoration -- that U.S. forces, including the CIA and the Pentagon-controlled South Vietnamese military, tortured many thousands of "suspected" supporters of the liberation struggle, frequently with portable electrical current. An estimated 40,000 "Vietcong" (suspected members or supporters of the NLF) were murdered during the long-running "Operation Phoenix" assassination campaign conducted by the CIA, Special Forces, and killer units of the Saigon forces.

Iconic photo of crying Vietnamese children after an aerial napalm attack near near Trang Bang, Vietnam, June 8, 1972, Photo by Nick Ut / AP.
There were three main fronts in the Vietnam war, in this order: First, the battlefields of Indochina. Second, the massive antiwar movement within the United States and international support for Vietnam. Third, the Paris Peace Talks. Well over 60% of the American people opposed the war by the late 1960s-early '70s. The first peace protest took place in 1962; the first very large protest took place in Washington in 1965. Subsequently there were thousands of antiwar demonstrations large and small in cities, towns, and campuses all over America.

[Disclosure; This writer was a war opponent and a conscientious objector during this period. His information about the war derives from when he functioned as the news editor, managing editor and then chief editor of the largest independent leftist paper in the U.S. at the time, the weekly Guardian. This publication thoroughly covered the war, peace movement, antiwar veterans (Vietnam Veterans Against the War [VVAW] was founded in 1967 and is still active today), the extraordinary resistance of active duty troops in Vietnam and at U.S. bases and COs in prison or in Canada and Europe throughout the period of conflict.]

Most of the allegations about insults directed at soldiers or vets from war opponents have been fabrications to discredit the antiwar forces -- falsehoods Obama chose to repeat as part of the Pentagon's campaign to reverse history's negative verdict on the war in Vietnam. The peace movement's targets were the warmakers in Washington and their allies abroad, not members of a largely conscript army. Perhaps the most notorious of the false accusations were frequent reports about antiwar individuals "spitting" at GIs and vets. The rumors were so wild that sociologist Jerry Lembcke wrote a book exposing the lies -- The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, New York University Press, 1998.

It's extremely doubtful that the war commemoration will dare touch honestly upon the movement of active duty troops against the war and the hundreds of cases killing their own officers.

Historian Howard Zinn included this paragraph on the opposition to the Vietnam War by American soldiers in his People's History of the United States:

The capacity for independent judgment among ordinary Americans is probably best shown by the swift development of antiwar feeling among American GIs -- volunteers and draftees who came mostly from lower-income groups. There had been, earlier in American history, instances of soldiers' disaffection from the war: isolated mutinies in the Revolutionary War, refusal of reenlistment in the midst of hostilities in the Mexican war, desertion and conscientious objection in World War I and World War II. But Vietnam produced opposition by soldiers and veterans on a scale, and with a fervor, never seen before.

According to the Washington Peace Center:

During the Vietnam War, the military ranks carried out mass resistance on bases and ships in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, U.S., and Europe. Military resistance was instrumental in ending the war by making the ranks politically unreliable. This history is well documented in Soldiers in Revolt by David Cortright and the recent film Sir! No Sir!

One of the key reports on GI resistance was written by Col. Robert D. Heinl Jr. and published in the Armed Forces Journal of June 7, 1971. He began:

The morale, discipline and battle worthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at anytime in this century and possibly in the history of the United States.

By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non-commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous. Elsewhere than Vietnam, the situation is nearly as serious.

Intolerably clobbered and buffeted from without and within by social turbulence, pandemic drug addiction, race war, sedition, civilian scapegoatise, draftee recalcitrance and malevolence, barracks theft and common crime, unsupported in their travail by the general government, in Congress as well as the executive branch, distrusted, disliked, and often reviled by the public, the uniformed services today are places of agony for the loyal, silent professions who doggedly hang on and try to keep the ship afloat.

According to the 2003 book by Christian Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides, Gen. Creighton Abrams -- the U.S. military commander in Vietnam -- made this comment in 1971 after an investigation: "Is this a god-damned army or a mental hospital? Officers are afraid to lead their men into battle, and the men won’t follow. Jesus Christ! What happened?"

Another former Army colonel in Vietnam, Andrew J. Bacevich Sr. (now a professor of international relations at Boston University and a strong opponent of U.S. foreign/military policy) wrote a book about how the U.S. military labored for a dozen years after the defeat to revamp its war strategy and tactics. (The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, Oxford University Press, 2005.)

One major conclusion was that a conscript army may become unreliable if the war is considered unjust in nature and unpopular at home. This is why conscription was ended for good and the Pentagon now relies on better paid professional standing military supplemented by a large number of contractors and mercenaries, who perform many duties that were once handled by regular soldiers.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War at 2009 Atlanta Veterans Dav Parade. Photo by David Howell.
Veterans' movements from the professional military of contemporary wars, such as Iraq Veterans Against the War and March Forward, as well as from the Vietnam era, are still out in the streets opposing imperialist wars, and public opinion polls reveal that over 60% of the American people oppose the Afghan adventure.

Despite the colossal damage the U.S. inflicted on Vietnam and its people during the war years, the country has emerged from the ashes and is taking steps toward becoming a relatively prosperous society led by the Communist Party. The Hanoi government has received no help from Washington. During the Paris Peace Talks of 1973, Nixon promised Prime Minister Pham Van Dong in writing that the U.S. would pay Vietnam $3.5 billion in reparations. This promise turned out to be worthless.

What strikes visitors to Vietnam in recent years, including this writer, is that the country appears to have come to terms with what it calls the American War far better than America has come to terms with the Vietnam War. Despite the hardships inflicted upon Vietnam, the government and people appear to hold no grudges against the United States.

Hanoi has several times extended the welcome mat to former antagonists, urging Americans and residents of southern Vietnam who now live abroad to "close the past and look to the future." Wherever touring U.S. citizens -- including former GIs -- travel in Vietnam, they are met with the same respect as visitors from other countries.

In the U.S., the Vietnam war still evokes fighting words in some quarters. Some Americans still argue that the U.S. "could have won if it didn’t have one hand tied behind its back" (i.e., used nuclear weapons), and some continue to hate the antiwar protesters of yesteryear, just as they do demonstrators against today’s wars. And some others -- in Congress, the White House and the Pentagon -- still seem to continue fighting the war by organizing a massive propaganda effort to distort the history of Washington's aggression and unspeakable brutality in Vietnam.

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.

The Rag Blog

Harry Targ : Revisiting the Cuban Revolution

05 July 2012

Harry Targ : Revisiting the Cuban Revolution

Havana street scene in 2010. Inset below: school kids in Havana, 2010. Photos by Desmond Boylan / Reuters.
Revisiting the Cuban revolution

Cuban society has been an experimental laboratory... If one set of policies became problematic, the Cubans moved in different directions. Usually change came after heated debate at all levels of society.

By Harry Targ /The Rag Blog / July 5, 2012

I participated in the 2012 “Seminar on Socialist Renewal and the Capitalist Crisis” co-sponsored by the Radical Philosophy Association and the Institute of Philosophy, University of Havana. More than 40 U.S./Canadian/ Latin American scholars met in conference with at least 75 Cuban scholars in a five-day conference to discuss the political and economic changes occurring in Cuba and the United States.

I purposely entitle this essay “revisiting the Cuban Revolution” because I came away from this exciting conference convinced that the revolution continues. I say this because I saw no reason to revise what I wrote in 1992 about the Cuban Revolution (Cuba and the USA: A New World Order? International Publishers, 6):

...the Cuban revolution (even until this day) has constituted a living experiment that most progressive forces around the world identify with. Even though each society has its own history, class structure, level of development, and revolutionary potential, Cuba’s desire to create a government to serve its people and at the same time to transform them from a traditional consciousness to a revolutionary consciousness is shared by progressives everywhere. For progressives, Cuba is a laboratory, a grand social experiment that will provide knowledge for others as they seek fundamental change in their own societies... Cuba’s successes in the years ahead are successes of all progressive forces and, similarly Cuba’s defeats are defeats for all who wish to create egalitarian and humane societies.

The idea of “revolution” refers to a fundamental transformation of economic and political structures and peoples’ consciousness of their place in society and the values that should determine human behavior. Also, revolution is not a fixed “thing”but a process. That means that changes in structures, patterns of behavior, and consciousness are changing over time and in the case of revolution are moving toward, rather than away from, more complete human fulfillment.

What has been most fascinating to observe about the Cuban Revolution is its constantly changing character. Cubans have debated and made decisions about gradual versus fundamental changes, the need to experiment with different ways to allocate scarce national resources and, most critical, how to respond to external economic, political, and military assaults.

Cuban society has been an experimental laboratory, changing public policies as contexts demand. If one set of policies became problematic, the Cubans moved in different directions. Usually change came after heated debate at all levels of society.

For example, after the 26th of July Movement seized power, the revolutionary regime launched programs to reduce rents for urban dwellers, established a nationwide literacy campaign, and after a cool U.S. response to the new government, put in place a large agrarian reform program. As United States hostility escalated Cuba established diplomatic and economic relations with the former Soviet Union. From that point U.S./Cuban hostilities became permanent.

In the mid-1960s, Cuba engaged in a great debate, to some degree unresolved, between those who wanted to move the Revolution along the path to “moral incentives,” that is creating a society in which people act because of their commitment to communist ideals, versus those who argued that in the short run “material incentives,” wages and benefits, needed to serve as the source of human motivation.

Later, the Cuban government embarked on a campaign to produce more sugar than ever before to earn scarce foreign exchange in order to advance the domestic economy. The 10 million ton sugar campaign failed with negative consequences for the sectors of Cuban society that were ignored. Then Cuba embraced the Soviet model of development, including joining the Eastern European Common Market.

By the 1980s, while the economy grew, Cubans saw a decline in the commitment to the Revolution. This recognition led to a campaign of “Rectification,” to reinstill in society and consciousness, the spirit of the Revolution. When the Socialist Bloc collapsed between 1989 and 1991, once again the Cuban Revolution had to adapt. “The Special Period” was instituted in the face of a decline in the economy of at least 40 percent. The Revolution survived, contrary to the predictions of outside experts.

In the 21st century, despite devastating hurricanes, a global economic crisis, and an escalating United States economic blockade, the Revolution continued. Now, the Cubans are embarking on a new set of policies that are designed to overcome economic stagnation, inadequate agricultural productivity, bureaucracy and corruption in government, and insufficient grassroots participation in decision-making, particularly at the work place.

After extensive debate in the society at large, from the leadership of the Communist Party to virtually every workplace, neighborhood and village, the Cubans have decided on new structures and policies.

The new policy guidelines include the expansion of a market in the production of goods and services. This expansion will include a dramatic shift of employment from the state sector to self-employment. Emphasis will be placed on developing cooperatives in manufacturing and services as well as in agriculture.

In the agricultural sector efforts are being initiated to encourage a dramatic increase in those who can return to the land, increasing domestic food production while reducing the need to import food from abroad. New forms of grassroots participation in addition to revitalizing the mass organizations will occur. And the ration system of food distribution will be replaced by the establishment of a safety net for those still in need of food. And where possible, enterprise autonomy, such as in the renovation of Old Havana, will be encouraged and supported.

The new guidelines, over 300 in all, are designed to renovate economic and political institutions, stimulate local entrepreneurial enterprise, increase political participation, and overcome the continuing economic crisis that a small country such as Cuba finds itself in as a result of natural and political disasters as well as a continued effort by the “Colossus of the North” to overthrow the regime.

Debate within Cuban society (and among our North American delegation) about these new guidelines has been animated. Perhaps most basic is the concern about whether the economic reforms will undermine the Socialist character of Cuban society after over 60 years of struggle. Some worry that the introduction of markets may undermine the spirit of compassion and revolutionary consciousness that was inspired by the heroic Che Guevara and the band of scruffy revolutionaries who overthrew a neocolonial regime in 1959.

Still others debate about whether cooperatives constitute a productive and yet inspirational step in the long history of building Socialism and Communism. And what about youth, people ask. Is the revolution ancient history for young people, a youthful population that has had access to a rich educational experience and live a healthful life. Will they have the same fervor for the Revolution that their elders and foreign friends have had?

And, in fairness to the young, how can the Revolution be preserved while serving the lives of people whose historical experiences are different from their elders?

There are no easy answers to these questions; no guarantees of success; no convincing narratives of a linear development from a contradictory present to a utopian future. But, as I clearly saw in 1990 when I started attending meetings of U.S. and Cuban scholars, there is reason for hope. The Cuban Revolution has survived, given so much to the world, and continued to intrigue progressives everywhere. I returned from my encounter to Cuba in June 2012, with renewed optimism.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

FILM / William Michael Hanks : 'Anne Braden: Southern Patriot'

14 July 2012

FILM / William Michael Hanks : 'Anne Braden: Southern Patriot'

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot:
A film by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering

By William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog / July 14, 2012

"The meaning of life is in that struggle which human beings have always been able to do -- to envision something better... that's what makes human beings divine." -- Anne Braden

If you find yourself in Austin Wednesday, July 18, be sure to see the screening of Anne Braden: Southern Patriot. This significant new documentary -- directed by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering and released by Appalshop Films -- is being presented by the Austin Film Society and The Texas Observer at the Alamo Drafthouse South, 1120 South Lamar in Austin, at 7 p.m.

Anne Lewis, who is a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin and a contributor to The Rag Blog, will be at the screening to discuss the film. There have also been recent screenings of Anne Braden: Southern Patriot in San Jose and San Francisco, California.


Who is a “patriot”? The Minute Men, the Continental Army in Valley Forge, Jefferson and Adams debating on the floor of Congress, or maybe the volunteer who serves her country in time of war?

Perhaps, but the one thing that all patriots share is a love of their country and the courage to fight for what they believe in -- to fight for their personal vision of a better America. That is, and will always be, the definition of true American patriotism.

At the close of World War II, America needed patriots. The poor and people of color were on the bottom rung of the ladder with no hope of advancement -- America was an apartheid state. True American patriots who would see a better way and risk their blood and treasure to move us towards a better world were needed more than ever.

America's pastime, baseball, was integrated in 1946 when Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. But racism in America was far from over. Two years later, Anne McCarty married Carl Braden and they began a lifetime of activism together. Through the lens of Anne Braden's life we see the challenges and victories of the civil rights movement.

(Along with her husband Carl, Anne Braden, who died in 2006, edited the iconic Southern Patriot newspaper, published by the Southern Conference Educational Fund.)

In 1954 Anne and Carl bought a house for a black family in a white neighborhood. That set in motion an unimaginable sequence of events that swept Anne into the spotlight, accused of being a communist, and sent her husband, Carl, to prison for sedition against the state. In time it was held that sedition was a federal crime, not prosecutable by the state, and Carl was set free. But, by then, Anne Braden had a glimpse of a better America and worked tirelessly throughout her life to see it became a reality.

There are several remarkable things about this documentary. The technique of the first person narrative is used throughout the film and it flows seamlessly from one person to another as the story of the civil rights struggle throughout the South unfolds. Iconic footage of civil rights demonstrations is intercut with reflections by Anne Braden and other civil rights workers, former co-workers, and scholars -- including Cornel West and Angela Davis -- descriptions of how they were vilified and branded “communists” for trying to realize a better vision of America.

The first-person technique requires rigorous discipline in editing to keep the narrative flowing through the voices of different persons. Anne Braden: Southern Patriot is an outstanding example of that challenging form. Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering are both award-winning filmmakers and this film is a landmark work in both content and style.

Who was Anne Braden? In the 1950's she was a young woman with a determination to follow her conscience. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and moved with her family to Alabama where she enjoyed the privileged life of a child of the middle class. As a young girl, she began to notice the disparities in race relations and she began to develop an active social conscience. A conscience that would not let her stand by and look the other way. Her life is an example of right action -- pursuing the vision of a better world.

Anne Braden:

The meaning of life is in that struggle which human beings have always been able to do -- to envision something better... that's what makes human beings divine.

Anne Braden's life touched others and inspired them to action. Bob Zellner describes his first experience as an organizer in the South:

My first job at SNCC was to head a campus traveling program. The first staff meeting I went to was in McComb, Mississippi, where a freedom march was being planned. I joined the march and was beaten, arrested, and almost lynched that first meeting. They kept calling me a god-damned, nigger-lovin', son of a bitch Jew from New York. And I said well, nine out of 10 is not bad but I'm not from New York!

Anne had taught us you could be for an open political discussion... you can be for integration... and you could still be a good person... a normal person. If it was Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King who convinced me to join the struggle, it was Anne Braden who showed me how to do it.

Anne Braden:

The real danger comes from people in high places, from the halls of Congress to the boardrooms of our big corporations, who tell white people that if their paychecks are eaten up by taxes it’s not because of our bloated military budget but because of government programs that benefit black people. If young whites are unemployed, it’s because blacks are getting all the jobs. Our problem is the people in power who are creating a scapegoat mentality. That’s what is creating the danger of a fascist movement in America.

Anne Braden sensed that what she faced in Alabama was the same fascism that the Allies had just announced a victory over in WWII. In an eerie echo of the recent past, the words of Herman Goering, Hitler's Third Reich Marshall at the Nuremberg trials offer a key to understanding the dynamics in Alabama. He speaks of “war” but substitute any government policy and the formula still works:

Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy. And, it is always a simple matter to drag people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

This simple, age-old, and effective strategy has been used by our leaders, particularly since WWII and the “Communist threat," to suppress dissent and silence voices of righteous anger. But, it did not silence Anne Braden.

Faced with an intractable segregationist power structure in Alabama, Anne and Carl Braden set about doing what they could for social justice in spite of it. Nothing seemed to stop her. She was inspired by a glimpse of something better -- a better life for blacks and whites -- and she saw no reason why it should not be.

When she heard Martin Luther King portrayed as a “dreamer," Anne insisted that "Martin Luther King was not a dreamer, he was a revolutionary.” and she would quote MLK's Riverside Church speech: “True compassion is more than flinging coins to a beggar... true compassion realizes that a society that produces beggars needs to be entirely restructured."

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot is a wellspring of intellectual reason, a blueprint for action, and it includes some of the most iconic footage from the civil-rights movement ever seen. Here Anne Braden describes her discovery of a simple but effective strategy:

If you use every attack as a platform, they can't win and you can't lose. If they leave you alone you keep on organizing, if they attack you, you have a platform to reach a lot more people, so you really can't lose.

In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed the most sweeping civil rights legislation in U.S. history and Dr. Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize. But civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, and beaten in Birmingham and Selma. The struggle goes on. Each generation must shoulder the responsibility of providing oversight to their government. And if we don't, the inexorable concentration and abuse of power will continue.

Anne Braden and Cornel West.
Jackie Robinson retired after the 1956 season, before the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles. Twenty five years after his historic debut, Jackie Robinson, the grandson of a slave, agreed to throw out the first ball of the 1972 World Series. He was dissatisfied with the progress of race relations. “As I write this 20 years later, and sing the anthem, I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1917, I knew that I never had it made.”

So, what do we do if our founders do not rise from the grave to set our country right? We do what they intended us to do -- rise from our slumber and act -- if we have the conscience and the fortitude -- if we have the guts.

The ills that are imbedded in the darker angels of human nature, are in turn reflected in society. We may trace the disease of social oppression through history. And, as certainly as a physical disease diminishes the body, so do societal ills diminish the body politic.

It's not surprising that most of our so-called leaders are afflicted with pride, avarice, and self interest; that is to be expected -- power corrupts. But it is for that very reason that the conscience of the people must call on the brighter angels of our nature.

We are at a crossroads in America -- a crises of conscience. Fortunately, there is a simple, effective cure. Really, all we have to do is follow the example of Anne Braden.


Anne Braden: Southern Patriot, a documentary by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering, will screen at the Alamo Drafthouse South, 1120 S. Lamar, Austin, Texas at 7 p.m., Wednesday, July 18. Don't miss it.

For ticket information: The Austin Film Society.

[William Michael Hanks has written, produced, and directed film and television productions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U. S. Information Agency, and for Public Broadcasting. His documentary film, The Apollo File, won a Gold Medal at the Festival of the Americas. Mike, who worked with the original Rag in Sixties Austin, lives in Nacagdoches, Texas. Read more articles by Mike Hanks on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

JIm Simons : Remembering Cam Cunningham

15 July 2012

JIm Simons : Remembering Cam Cunningham

Former Movement lawyer Cam Cunningham passed away this month. Photo by Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog.
Defending the Movement:
Remembering Cam Cunningham

In 1971 we cleaned out our firm bank account and took off by car to the May Day action in Washington, D.C., where we started out as participants... to 'shut down D.C.' in protest against the Vietnam war and wound up lawyering to get our comrades out of jail.

By Jim Simons / The Rag Blog / July 15, 2012

Jim Simons will join his former Movement law partner Brady Coleman (now an actor and musician) and Brady's band, The Melancholy Ramblers (who will perform live) as Thorne Dreyer's guests on Rag Radio, Friday, July 27, 2-3 p.m., on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the Internet.

AUSTIN -- Cameron McPherson Cunningham was a lawyer nonpareil. Although he succumbed to cancer in July 2012, he will be long remembered in Texas and California, even on the national stage, because he chose to be a lawyer for the people, not for the corporations.

It is not so uncommon now for young lawyers to go into public interest law, or legal services, or even to become radical lawyers, as Bill Kunstler described himself in his memoir. When I was Cam's law partner for the early years in Austin -- 1969 to 1978 -- we both thought of ourselves and self-identified as radical lawyers. As did other partners who came aboard the rollicking ship of our law firm, unlike most all the legal vessels of the time. We meant it to be that way. And I can tell you it was damn good fun in addition to being deadly serious politics.

It all started in Montreat, North Carlolina, in late August or early September 1969. Cam had graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 1967. He received a Reginald Heber Smith fellowship which paid all or part of his salary at a designated legal services program. For him it was the DNA Navajo legal services program, federally funded as part of the War on Poverty, located in the four corners in Arizona. DNA is an acronym for the Navajo phrase Dinébe’iiná Náhiitna be Agha’diit’ahii -- which means “attorneys who work for the economic revitalization of The People."

I had met Cam when he was still in law school and I was with the OEO Regional Office in Austin. (OEO being the federal agency that ran the War on Poverty). Over the next couple of years we became friends. The Movement had galvanized a large segment of young people in the U.S. I opened my solo practice in 1968 and was immediately swamped with cases arising from anti-war demonstrations, the military draft, and civil rights.

Austin's Movement lawyers: From left, Cam Cunningham, Jim Simons, and Brady Coleman, at Austin's Saxon Pub for the first public performance by The Melancholy Ramblers in 1991. Photo by Tom Moriarty.
In December of 1968 Austin activists, including Martin Wiginton and Greg Calvert, with input from Cam in Arizona, organized a conference of lawyers and Movement people at a dude ranch in Wimberley, Texas, just outside of Austin. The purpose was to nudge fee-charging lawyers into pro bono representation of the multitude of arrestees and military resisters.

As a result of the conference, Cam was “hired” as a roving organizer or liaison with the progressively-inclined lawyers in Texas identified at Wimberley. I doubt that much money for living expenses was ever paid but at some point Cam left the legal services program to take on his new task.

He and his wife, Cris, moved into the rented house where my wife and I lived on the east side of Austin. We became closer friends, so to speak. But we did enjoy the companionship and it was the Sixties. I recall that Cam got a part-time position at the law school with the penal code revision project, in part thanks to law professor and friend, Fred Cohen, known facetiously by other faculty folk as “Fred the Red."

By 1969 Cam was committed to devoting his considerable energies and abilities to Movement law. At summer’s end we got wind of the lawyers’ confab known as the Southern Legal Action Movement (SLAM) to be held at Black Mountain near Montreat, North Carolina. Cam convinced me to go although I had been in informal rehab from the law that summer.

Like Wimberley, the Montreat conference was wild and wooly. All the Movement lawyers we ever heard of were there. From the New York Law Commune we found a model for what Cam wanted to do in Austin: a law commune. And so it was born in the wee hours one night in a long whiskey conversation between the two of us. He had the vision and I at least had some experience in such cases, which did not make me enthusiastic at first. We followed the New York lawyers up to New York after the conference and learned a lot.

Those idealistic principles seem a tad naive now. Like income limitation, legal workers and lawyers all with the same say and voice in the operation, fee cases to pay the way for Movement work, and so on. By the time we got back to Austin I did share Cam’s zeal to proceed with it; he had won me over. We rented a small suite near the University of Texas campus. We had one legal worker, Julie Howell (she is a lawyer now). But it really did not go too well.

Cam was trying to keep the penal code revision job and still practice law. We did defend Richard Chasein at a general court-martial at Fort Hood, after he declined training for riot control in American cities. This was a Movement case we did without fees. Other cases that should have generated fees didn’t. Money was a big problem that fall. I took a job at Dallas Legal Services Project in the spring of 1970. Cam soldiered on. In a few months I returned.

That summer the Radical Lawyers Caucus was formed for a run at the State Bar of Texas convention. With Bill Kunstler as our main speaker and other speeches by Maury Maverick, Jr. and Warren Burnett -- both great progressive Texas lawyers -- we made a splash at the convention. Before the convention the bar’s official journal declined to accept our paid ad about the Radical Lawyers Caucus. The suit we wanted to file was sent to Cam in Austin. I came back in time to brief the law and try the case which we won in federal court.

Our early struggles, stops and starts, changed for the better when a trial lawyer from East Texas contacted us -- or we contacted him after we saw his ad in the Texas Observer. In the fall of 1970 Brady Coleman became the third musketeer and our course was set. For the next couple of years we three were very close. We joked that we were closer to each other than to our wives, which was probably no joke. All three marriages ended in divorce in the early ‘70s.

In court: Com Cunningham, center, in beard, with Brady Coleman, right, successfully defended John Kniffen, left, a former Vietnam Marine who was beaten by Austin cops at an anti-Vietnam war demonstration. Photo by Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog.
Brady had a lot of trial experience and he and Cam became a lethal trial team. Cases all around the state sent us into battle: Dallas, Houston, South Texas, and West Texas. Fort Hood kept us hopping. Busts on a large scale happened around the university. Cam was loving the practice of Movement law. He especially took to the criminal law. He and I defended a black activist charged with setting the UT ROTC building on fire.

Cam and Brady tried some murder cases (not political) and we all represented those charged with drugs. Brady and I tried civil cases against the city, police, even one against Ma Bell, the proceeds of which funded a great party that we dubbed the Last Annual Ma Bell Counter-Ripoff Wild Boar Feast.

In 1971 we cleaned out our firm bank account and took off by car to the May Day action in Washington, D.C., where we started out as participants in the action to “shut down D.C.” in protest against the Vietnam war and wound up lawyering to get our comrades out of jail. Later that summer we went to the riotous National Lawyers Guild convention in Boulder, Colorado, where it was decided amid great controversy that legal workers, jail house lawyers, and law students could be members of the previously all-lawyer Guild, the progressive bar association through the decades representing the Movement.

One thing we always did on these trips: have a big old good time. Cam was the leader of this fun, with all of us singing at the top of our lungs, quaffing any available spirits, toking and talking the talk, later recalling the great stories repeatedly even when they made us look bad -- especially when they made us look bad! We were doing exactly what we wanted to do in a time when it counted for more than any other time.

If Cam was the leader of merriment, Brady was the provider of mellow entertainment with his guitar and voice. I tried to crack jokes, often so droll Cam did not recognize the joke and took it literally, as a Midwesterner is wont to do. (He often spoke of growing up in Detroit.) This was the beginning I guess of small rifts between us.

One night sitting at the old Villa Capri Motel dining room in Austin, Cam excoriated both Brady and me for the conventional, sell-out law we had been guilty of prior to coming under his tutelage. It got so bad we all three slammed out of there in different directions. At a time when there was definitely a bit of tension, we were saved again by adding legal ballast to the firm. We were lucky enough to gain two great new partners, Bobby Nelson and John Howard in fall 1972 at the old 15th Street law office. And soon we were back to doing what we set out to do, representing the Movement.

Anti-war GI's and other activists gathered at the Oleo Strut GI Coffee House in Killeen, Texas, 1971. Cam Cunningham, in inset at right, with long dark hair. Brady Coleman is to his right. Photo by Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog.
In 1972 Cam and Brady were part of the legal team that represented the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in a trial in Gainesville, Florida. The Gainseville 8 were charged with conspiring to blow up the Republican convention. In 1974 John Howard and I represented a defendant in the Wounded Knee occupation (as we might call it now). There had been a siege of 71 days to a standoff with blazing guns. The Indians and their allies who held the store against the FBI were charged with multiple felonies in federal court.

I am unsure of the year, but in that same period, Bobby Nelson was part of a delegation to Cuba. We all had our Movement cases in and around Austin involving defense of GI’s, SDS members, civil rights activists, lawsuits concerning women’s rights, gay rights, and the counterculture in myriad legal battles. The law firm was an institution in the community of Movement groups and people from that Montreat beginning -- Cam’s vision and determination -- to the end of the firm in 1977, the year Cam moved to the Bay Area of California.

[Jim Simons practiced law in Austin for 40 years, representing many movement activists, including anti-war GIs. Jim served as a counsel for members of the American Indian Movement who were arrested at Wounded Knee in 1974. After he retired he published his memoir Molly Chronicles in 2007. Read more articles by Jim Simons on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Jack A. Smith : My Life and Times with the Guardian

02 August 2012

Jack A. Smith : My Life and Times with the Guardian

Progressive journalist Jack A. Smith, 2012.
My life and times with the Guardian

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / August 2, 2012

Longtime radical activist and progressive journalist (and Rag Blog contributor) Jack A. Smith, former editor of the National Guardian (later renamed the Guardian), will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, August 3, 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin. The show is streamed live on the Internet, and is rebroadcast by WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA, Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. (EDT). Shortly after broadcast the podcast of this show can be heard at the Internet Archive.

[I asked Jack Smith to send along some background material, as I always do with my Rag Radio guests, and what he sent was so impressive that we're running it here as a stand-alone article. Jack Smith was one of the most important figures in progressive journalism in the 20th century, and his work, I believe, is underrecognized. Hopefully we're taking one small step to correct that situation! -- Thorne Dreyer]

The National Guardian was founded in 1948 to promote the views of the Progressive Party (which ran Henry Wallace for president that year). The weekly tabloid led an independent left-wing existence soon after the election and continued publishing until 1992. (It changed its name to the Guardian in late 1967, when it became a worker's cooperative.)

The National Guardian strongly opposed the Cold War, imperialism, and racism. It was against the Korean War, Vietnam War, and all the U.S. wars during the Cold War period. It generally supported the socialist countries of the time, though it was not explicitly socialist. True to its third party origins, the paper never backed a presidential candidate from one of the two ruling parties.

During the late 1960s through the 1970s The Guardian was the largest circulation independent left-wing paper in the U.S. (24,000 paid copies a week, with up to three or four pass-on readers per copy).

Jack A. Smith, then a reporter for the National Guardian, in 1964.
I was born in New York City to a low income family in 1934, so I'll be 78 this month, August. My widowed mother went to work to support her two kids, my sister, and me. I began working full time at 16, attending night school to get my high school diploma. I began reading radical papers, including the National Guardian, as a freshman in high school and developed socialist views at that time, which I still hold.

I started Queens College at night, working days first as a copy boy then wire editor and news writer for United Press International (America's second largest news agency at the time) but dropped out of school after the first semester in order to work a second job when my girlfriend became pregnant and we got married. (We divorced around the time I went to prison.)

I was involved with the radical pacifist movement in my early 20s and at 26 (1961) returned my draft card to the Selective Service System, defying the law forcing all young men to carry the card "on their person at all times." I told the SS that I opposed President Kennedy's war threats, U.S. support for South Vietnam, and the nuclear buildup, and would not carry a card in protest.

After interviews with the SS and FBI, the federal government drafted me as punishment. I was overage for the draft, 27 by now, plus I was deferred because I had two young children. When I refused the draft, I was indicted. UPI thereupon fired me, after eight years. I edited the Bulletin of the Committee for Nonviolent Action until my trial and conviction. I served nine months in federal prison. I began to identify as a Marxist in prison and drifted away from absolute pacifism.

When I got out it was evident that I was blackballed from getting work in the bourgeois media. I had written a few articles for the National Guardian in earlier years and the paper hired me a few weeks after I regained my freedom in mid-1963, and I remained for 21 years, moving from writer to news editor to the paper's editor over a few years.

My biggest accomplishments at the Guardian included: transforming the paper into a worker's cooperative (with equal, very low pay for all and a child allowance plus health insurance); doubling the size of the Guardian from 12 to 24 pages a week; increasing the paper's coverage of the vibrant U.S. movements for social change (students, peace, women's, gays, black power, civil rights, radical union struggles); switching from a "left progressive" editorial stand to Marxism; and working to make sure the Guardian contained the best coverage of the Vietnam War from a pro-Vietnamese point of view and that of the various peace groups in the U.S.


I left the Guardian on friendly terms in 1984. I was very deeply in debt by that time -- after 21 years of sub-minimum wages, and raising a child on my own -- and simply had to get a better-paying job. I edited several commercial magazines until retiring from paid work in 1999. During this time I remained politically active and was associated with Marxist groups, as I remain today.

My wife Donna Goodman and I moved from NYC to the college town of New Paltz, N.Y., about two hours north of the big city, in the early 1990s. We became politically active and began organizing a great many demonstrations and public meetings of a political nature, mostly in opposition to the imperialist wars (many of them were in conjunction with the Answer Coalition).

When I retired I began writing and editing our own email Activist Newsletter and calendar every two weeks (now monthly) to people living in the Hudson Valley region where we organize. The Newsletter circulates to over 3,000 readers, most of whom took part in one or more of our rallies, meetings, and long distance bus trips.

We've taken from two to seven buses of local people to Washington demonstrations and back 24 times, beginning in the mid-90s). Our next action will be August 26 when the Newsletter is organizing a march and rally in New Paltz in opposition to the War on Women.

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.

The Rag Blog

BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : Richard Seymour's 'American Insurgents'

04 September 2012

BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : Richard Seymour's 'American Insurgents'

Opposing the eagle’s talons

"And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land." -- Mark Twain

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / September 4, 2012

[American Insurgents: A Brief History of American Anti-Imperialism, by Richard Seymour (2012: Haymarket Books); Paperback; 230 pp.; $17.]

When my book The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground was published in 1997, at least one of its critics challenged my use of the terms imperialism and its opposite, anti-imperialism. These terms, he wrote, were specific to a time and no longer relevant.

My response was simple. These words would be irrelevant only when there were no more imperialist nations. Fifteen years and two wars and occupations later, these words are part of the general discourse and the concept of imperialism is considered by those who champion it and those who oppose it.

A book titled American Insurgents: A Brief History of American Anti-Imperialism, by Richard Seymour, is a recent and important addition to this discourse. Seymour, who also wrote The Liberal Defence of Murder wherein he discusses the currently popular humanitarian rationale for imperial intervention, provides the reader of American Insurgents with a historical survey of the antiwar and anti-imperialist efforts throughout U.S. history.

Within this discussion, Seymour includes religious and feminist opposition; leftist and conservative; and various coalitions of all of the aforementioned manifestations.

From the beginning of the book, it becomes clear how fundamental racism is to the U.S. mission of Empire. If it weren’t for the historical fact of African slavery in the U.S. this would not be a cause for special consideration, since most European empires utilize racism and racial superiority as reasoning for their empires.

However, the special history of men and women of African descent in the United States makes the fact of racism in the U.S. pursuit of empire especially heinous and unusual. In addition, the internalized racism of most U.S. whites, even in the anti-imperialist movement, often made alliances across the color line difficult. Consequently, this limited the effectiveness of these movements.

According to Seymour, it wasn’t until the movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam that white and black Americans worked together in a substantial way to oppose the U.S. Empire. Even though the links between the racism of slavery and U.S. Empire had been made earlier, it was not until the anti-Vietnam war movement acknowledged and learned from the civil rights and black liberation movements in the United States that the union of black and white made a difference.

While Seymour does discuss the libertarian and paleoconservative elements of the anti-imperialist movement in the U.S. -- even praising the role those elements have played in the past 20 years with the website Antiwar.com and other endeavors -- he focuses primarily on the left and pacifist elements. Given the predominance of groups with these sentiments in the movement throughout history, this makes sense. Although a longer discussion of the conservative side of the movement would have been useful, its absence does not detract from the book.

Addressing a discussion very familiar among those to the left of anybody in the Democratic Party, Seymour provides an ultimately tragic history of the role Democrats have played in diverting and destroying anti-imperialist sentiment.

It was during the Spanish-American War that the future Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan would oppose that adventure and align with the Anti-Imperialist League most famous for the membership of Mark Twain, John Dewey, Samuel Gompers, and Andrew Carnegie. In 1900, the League would hitch its star to Bryan’s candidacy. He lost to the empire-builder McKinley, rendering the League essentially moot.

A remarkably similar situation exists today, except that the candidate of the liberals in the Iraq and Afghanistan antiwar movement won the election. Of course, I mean Barack Obama. As Seymour points out (and as most everyone knows), the war in Afghanistan saw an escalation soon after Obama’s inauguration and the occupation of Iraq by the U.S. continues, albeit with considerably less bloodshed.

Efforts to build a movement against a possible war on Iran have failed to excite everyone but the most dedicated pacifists and anti-imperialists, while U.S./NATO military and intelligence operations against the regimes of Gaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria have even been tacitly supported by some in the antiwar movement.

It is my belief that a good part of the reason for the disintegration of the movement against the war in Iraq has to do with that movement’s politics. Seymour agrees, pointing out that the millions willing to hit the streets to oppose the war when George Bush was president have not even called their Congressperson now that a Democrat is in the White House.

The presence of Democratic Party allies on the coordinating committee of the largest antiwar network combined with the acquiescence of former Communist Party members to the Democrats' agenda ensured this disintegration. There was never a genuine anti-imperialist politics that guided the majority of the movement. That fact explains not only the belated opposition to the Afghanistan occupation but also the seeming refusal to address the belligerent role played by Israel in the wars against Muslim and Arab nations and peoples.

Any future antiwar movement must keep the Democratic Party at an arm’s length. Organizing amongst those who vote Democrat makes sense. Taking money and leadership from donors and operatives dedicated to the party’s domination of left-leaning politics doesn’t. In fact, as Seymour makes clear in his history of U.S. anti-imperialist movements, doing so is suicide for the movement in question. The Democrats cannot be anti-imperialist because they are essential to the very empire anti-imperialists oppose.

In the weeks and months ahead, as the nations of the Middle East remain in turmoil and Washington, Tel Aviv, and various European capitals debate how they want to control the region, the need for an anti-imperialist movement will grow. If we are to avoid making mistakes already made in the past, American Insurgents becomes essential reading.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

INTERVIEW / Jonah Raskin : Fred Klonsky and the Chicago Teachers' Strike

13 September 2012

INTERVIEW / Jonah Raskin : Fred Klonsky and the Chicago Teachers' Strike

Chicago teachers on strike. Photo by Fred Klonsky / The Rag Blog.
An interview with Fred Klonsky:
Chicago teachers in red and on strike

If the city of Chicago wins this strike it will very likely give the green light to big cities such as Los Angeles and New York to go after teachers’ unions there.

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / September 13, 2012

Fred Klonsky, 64, retired in June 2012 after 30 years of working as an art teacher in grades k-5 in the public school system in Illinois.

He doesn’t go into the classroom to teach kids anymore, but he hasn’t retired from political activism and from protesting 101. A long-time president of his local union, he’s as politically active now as he’s ever been. With Chicago teachers on strike, he’s out in the streets with tens of thousands of other teachers and like them wears a red shirt. He also writes about the strike almost daily on his blog, FredKlonsky.com.

If the name Fred Klonsky rings a bell it might be because he’s a former SDS member and because his older brother Michael was national secretary of SDS in the late 1960s. Twenty years old in 1968, Fred participated in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the Vietnam War era. He attended Los Angeles City College and the University of Illinois at Chicago where he graduated in 1984. “Solidarity Forever,” the old union slogan, still lights a fire in his belly.

Fred Klonsky. Photo by Anne Klonsky / The Rag Blog. Inset photo below by Fred Klonsky / The Rag Blog..
Jonah Raskin: What’s at stake in the teachers’ strike that’s going on in Chicago now and that has been getting national media attention?

Fred Klonsky: Everything! The city is attacking the unions and collective bargaining rights. The Democratic Party administration wants to make it difficult if not impossible for teachers to go on strike. They want to break the back of the teachers’ union and they want school principals to have total control of the hiring and the firing of teachers.

It sounds like they’d like to put the old patronage system in place.

Chicago is famous for people getting jobs based on who they know not what they know or what they can do. They want to apply the same principle to education.

It seems to me to be an intense power struggle.

If the city of Chicago wins it will very likely give the green light to cities such as Los Angeles and New York to go after teachers’ unions.

Are you an observer or a participant in this strike?

I’m some of both. I’ve been on picket lines. Two days ago I was on the line from 6:30 a.m. to noon. I’m also writing about the strike.

What’s it like out there on the street?

I’ve been at a lot of demonstrations over the years, but there is nothing like what’s happening here. It’s beautiful. The striking teachers are wearing red shirts and at the rallies there’s a sea of red. The picket lines are spirited and lively. I’ve seen former students out there, too, and that’s gratifying.

What’s the ethnic make up of the striking teachers?

In 1987, which is when the last teachers’ strike took place in Chicago, over 50% of the teachers were African American. Today it’s about 19%. If the mayor wins and we lose I think that the number of African-American teachers will plummet even more. Moreover, the goal will be to serve wealthier kids not the most needy kids.

Does the city want to gentrify the schools?

Chicago is following the European model in which the wealthy live in the center of the city and the poor and the working classes in suburban enclaves.

What is the big demographic picture in Chicago?

Once upon a time there was white flight. That pattern has reversed since the 1970s. The 2010 census shows that the African-American population has declined sharply. Young white professionals have settled in the center of the city, but they leave when their kids are of school age.

So the city wants the public school system in Chicago to reflect demographic changes and bring the wealthier kids back into the school district?

Yes, the city wants to do that and to privatize schools and educational services which are a multi-billion-dollar a year business.

Why are teachers demonized and made the scapegoats in our society? Are they in the way of the corporations?

To a large extent the union movement in the private sector has been destroyed. The powers-that-be are aiming to destroy unions in the public sector. The National Education Association (NEA) with three- and-one-half-million members is the largest union in the United States. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has one million members. That’s a combined total of four million organized workers. They’re the last union men (and women) standing.

In this strike the city is depicting teachers as greedy folks who are against change and who want to keep the status quo. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Are Chicago schools typical of schools elsewhere?

They are like urban schools everywhere. There are 360,000 students in the Chicago public school system that now mainly serves the poorest of the kids from the poorest of families. Eighty-five percent of the students qualify for free lunches. That means they’re very poor. Those who can afford to have taken their kids out of the public schools and put them in charter or private schools. The public schools have very few supplies and very few books. They do not have adequate resources.

Is Chicago different?

The union leadership here is taking a real stand. There is real backbone among union members. Moreover, the unions for the police and for firemen are supporting the strike. There’s real solidarity here.

What grade would you give Mayor Rahm Emanuel so far in the strike?

A failing grade and not only because of what he’s done during the strike. He has said that no matter what, 25% of students will fail. That’s unacceptable to teachers and their union. Emanuel has only been in office for a year, but violence in the city has skyrocketed. There have been more murders here in the last year than in Afghanistan. He’s turned my city into crap. Harold Washington, who was the mayor in the 1980s, was far better. He actually paid attention to the needs of the most needy. Rahm Emanuel doesn’t.

Will the strike affect the presidential election?

I can’t imagine that Obama is happy about the strike. So far he has had no comment. Of course, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have offered their support to Mayor Emanuel. We have a Democratic mayor putting Republican educational policies into practice. It’s a sad day for the city of Chicago.

[Jonah Raskin, professor emeritus at Sonoma State University and the author of biographies of Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack London, is a frequent contributor to The Rag Blog. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

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