Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
************
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.
***************
Engels To Marx-In Brussels (1848)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 152;
Written: 14 January 1848;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913 and in full in MEGA, 1929
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paris, 14 January 1848
Dear Marx,
If I haven’t written to you it was because I have as yet still not been able to get hold of that accursed Louis Blanc. Decidedly, he is showing bad will. But I'm determined to catch him every day I go to him or lie in wait for him at the café. Père Flocon, on the other hand, is proving more amenable. He is delighted at the way the Brüsseler-Zeitung and The Northern Star defended the Réforme against the National. Not even the blâme against L. Blanc and Ledru-Rollin have succeeded in flustering him, any more than my announcement that we have now decided in London to come out openly as communists. He, of course, made some capital assertions you are tending towards despotism, you will kill the revolution in France, we have eleven million small peasants who at the same time are the most fanatical property owners, etc., etc., although he also abused the peasants, — after all, he said, our principles are too similar for us not to march together; as for us, we will give you all the support in our power, etc., etc.
I was enormously tickled by the Mosi [Moses Hess] business, although annoyed that it should have come to light. Apart from you, no one in Brussels knew of it save Gigot and Lupus — and Born, whom I told about it in Paris once when I was in my cups. Well, no matter. Moses brandishing his pistols, parading his horns before the whole of Brussels, and before Bornstedt into the bargain!!, must have been exquisite. Ferdinand Wolff’s inventiveness over the minutes made me split my sides with laughter — and Moses believes that! If, by the by, the jackass should persist in his preposterous lie about rape, I can provide him with enough earlier, concurrent, and later details to send him reeling. For only last July here in Paris this Balaam’s she-ass made me, in due form, a declaration of love mingled with resignation, and confided to me the most intimate nocturnal secrets of her ménage! Her rage with me is unrequited love, pure and simple. For that matter, Moses came only second in my thoughts at Valenciennes, my first desire being to revenge myself for all the dirty tricks they had played on Mary.
The strong wine proves to be no more than a 1/3 bottle of Bordeaux. It is only to be regretted that the horned Siegfried did not have his unhappy lot publicly minuted by the Workers’ Society.[158] He is perfectly at liberty, by the way, to avenge himself on all my present, past and future mistresses, and for that purpose I commend to him 1) the Flemish giantess who lives at my former lodgings, 87 chaussée d'Ixelles on the first floor, and whose name is Mademoiselle Joséphine, and 2) a Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Félicie who, on Sunday, the 23rd of this month, will be arriving in Brussels by the first train from Cologne on her way to Paris. It would be bad luck if he were to succeed with neither. Kindly pass on this information to him in order that he may appreciate my honourable intentions. I will give him fair play.
It is nearly all up with Heine. I visited him a fortnight ago and he was in bed, having had a nervous fit. Yesterday he was up but extremely ill. He can hardly manage three steps now; supporting himself against the wall, he crawls from armchair to bed and vice versa. On top of that, the noise in his house, cabinet-making, hammering, etc., is driving him mad. Intellectually he is also somewhat spent. Heinzen desired to see him but was not admitted.
I was also at Herwegh’s yesterday. Along with the rest of his family he has influenza and is much visited by old women. He told me that L. Blanc’s 2nd volume [Histoire de la révolution française] has been quite eclipsed by the enormous success of Michelet’s 2nd volume [Histoire de la révolution française]. I have not yet read either because shortage of money has prevented me from subscribing to the reading room. By the way, Michelet’s success can only be attributed to his suspension[192] and his civic spirit.
Things are going wretchedly with the [Communist] League here. Never have I encountered such sluggishness and petty jealousy as there is among these fellows. Weitlingianism and Proudhonism are truly the exact expression of these jackasses’ way of life and hence nothing can be done. Some are genuine Straubingers,[86] ageing boors, others aspiring petty bourgeois. A class which lives, Irish-fashion, by depressing the wages of the French, is utterly useless. — I am now making one last attempt, if that doesn’t succeed, I shall give up this kind of propaganda. I hope that the London papers [i. e. documents of the Second Congress of the Communist League] will arrive soon and help to liven things up somewhat again; then I shall strike while the iron is hot. Not yet having seen any results from the Congress, the fellows are naturally growing completely supine. I am in contact with several new workers introduced to me by Stumpf and Neubeck but as yet there is no knowing what can be made of them.
Tell Bornstedt: 1) In the matter of his subscriptions [to the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung], his attitude towards the workers here should not be so rigorously commercial, otherwise he'll lose them all; 2) the agent procured for him by Moses is a feeble Jeremiah and very conceited, but the only one who still will and can attend to the thing, so he had better not rub him up the wrong way; the fellow has, moreover, gone to great pains, but he can’t put in money — which, for that matter, he has done already. Out of the money coming in to him he has to cover the expenses correspondence, etc. involves for him; 3) if he is sending separate issues, he should never send more than 10-15 at most of [...] one issue, and these as opportunity offers. The parcels go through Duchâtel’s ministry, whence they have to be fetched at considerable expenditure in time and where the ministry exacts a fearsome postal charge in order to ruin this traffic. A parcel of this kind costs 6-8 francs, and what can one do if that’s what they ask? Esselens in Liège wanted to appoint a courier to deliver it. Write to Liège and tell them this will be arranged. 4) The issues that were still here have been sent by third party to South Germany. Should occasion offer, Bornstedt should send us a few more issues to be used as propaganda in cafés, etc., etc. 5) Within the next few days Bornstedt will be receiving an article [Engels, The Movements of 1847] and the thing about the Prussian finances. But you must again cast an eye over the part about the committees of 1843 [193] and alter it where necessary, since my memory of the subject was very hazy at the time of writing.
If the Mosi business eventually leads to your attacking him in the Brüsseler-Zeitung, I shall be delighted. How the fellow can still remain in Brussels, I fail to understand. Here’s another opportunity to send him into exile at Verviers. The matter of the Réforme will be attended to.
Your
E.
[On the back of the letter]
Monsieur Philipp Gigot
8.-Rue Bodenbroeck, Bruxelles
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Reinstate Dr. Kshama Sawant! Defend Diversity at Seattle Central Community College.
Reinstate Dr. Kshama Sawant! Defend Diversity at Seattle Central Community
College. For democratic rights and job security for part-time professors.
Sponsored by the Seattle Committee to Defend Higher Education
Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) has fired a hard-working professor who was an activist in Occupy, teaches classes that provide a critical analysis of conservative economic theory, and was among those instrumental in bringing Occupy to SCCC after police evicted it from Westlake.
Dr. Sawant has had glowing evaluations from her students, and exceptional performance reviews from her departme
nt. But she teaches from the point of view of the overall needs of society, in other words the 99% rather than the 1%. SCCC claims to be committed to diversity in ideas as well as ethnicity and gender balance. Firing Dr. Sawant violates all of these principles.
This also brings to the fore the astonishing lack of rights of part-time college professors. Students probably don’t know that part-time staff can be fired and removed for any reason or no reason, without any right to defend themselves. Since the vast majority of teachers at SCCC are now part-time, this leads teachers to tailor their lesson plans to what they perceive will be acceptable to the SCCC bureaucracy. Clearly, this reduces the diversity of ideas at SCCC and in this case represents an attack on ideas considered hostile to the 1%.
In addition to her activism in the Occupy movement, Dr. Sawant was a vocal opponent of the attacks on free speech by the SCCC administration that were challenged at several public forums at the end of the 2012 academic year. She has also been active in her union in calling for an end to higher education budget cuts and tuition increases. The underfunding of higher education has led to an increasing proportion of faculty being forced into grossly underpaid and insecure part-time positions. The SCCC administration has sought to force through their agenda of cuts by attempting to force full-time and part-time faculty to compete with each other to protect their livelihoods. We argue that we must completely reject this divide-and-rule strategy and defend the rights of all faculty, as well as students, against these brutal attacks on higher education.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dr. Sawant was fired in retaliation for her activist role at SCCC or for her challenge to right-wing economic views in the classroom. Discrimination on the basis of political views is illegal in the city of Seattle as well as ethically indefensible. The SCCC bureaucracy seeks to protect itself by denying the political basis of the firing, while providing no alternate, plausible explanation why Dr. Sawant was not retained in her position, given her exceptional student evaluations and performance.
In the spring of 2012, Dr. Sawant was upbraided by the college administration for not using a textbook that was favored by the head of her department. This text was written by N. Gregory Mankiw, a controversial ultra-conservative economist who served as the head of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and is now a member of Mitt Romney's 2012 election campaign. On November 2, 2011, about 70 students walked out of Mankiw's Economics 10 class at Harvard. They handed Mankiw an open letter critical of his course, saying in part that it “espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today ... it offers only one heavily skewed perspective rather than a solid grounding on which other courses can expand”.
Forcing a professor to use a particular textbook is a blatant violation of any reasonable idea of academic freedom in higher education. Dr. Sawant was trying to defend her students from this defective, narrow-minded perspective. Conservative economics professors hold that their pro-corporate viewpoint is the only way an economics class can be legitimately taught, while in reality their approach serves as an uncritical defense of the disastrous economic policies that helped create the current economic crisis and that perpetuate inequality and poverty.
Instead of valuing academic diversity, the administration fired Dr. Sawant, and the students she should have been teaching this fall will now be exposed only to this "one heavily skewed perspective".
Occupy has demonstrated the growing anger at the top-down economic model taught by those who support Mankiw's textbook. The non-renewal of a part-time professor who had the courage to help bring Occupy to campus is a chilling precedent which threatens all academic freedom – the freedom to think for oneself – and cannot be allowed to stand. It is a threat to the diversity that students and the community expect at our community colleges.
This action by the administration is one of the latest in a series of attacks on the campus community, such as the ending of the drama, journalism, interpreter training, and film and video programs, the closure of the daycare center, the shutting down of the City Collegian newspaper, and the elimination of elections for student government.
DEMANDS
Immediate reinstatement of Dr. Sawant in the Winter 2013 quarter, including back pay for loss of earnings in Fall 2012 quarter.
Retain the two new part-time professors hired this Fall to teach economics courses. Take action against excessive moonlighting, which reduces diversity and quality of education at SCCC.
Increased job security for part-time teachers. An end to arbitrary firings, and for a legitimate appeal process.
Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) has fired a hard-working professor who was an activist in Occupy, teaches classes that provide a critical analysis of conservative economic theory, and was among those instrumental in bringing Occupy to SCCC after police evicted it from Westlake.
Dr. Sawant has had glowing evaluations from her students, and exceptional performance reviews from her departme
nt. But she teaches from the point of view of the overall needs of society, in other words the 99% rather than the 1%. SCCC claims to be committed to diversity in ideas as well as ethnicity and gender balance. Firing Dr. Sawant violates all of these principles.
This also brings to the fore the astonishing lack of rights of part-time college professors. Students probably don’t know that part-time staff can be fired and removed for any reason or no reason, without any right to defend themselves. Since the vast majority of teachers at SCCC are now part-time, this leads teachers to tailor their lesson plans to what they perceive will be acceptable to the SCCC bureaucracy. Clearly, this reduces the diversity of ideas at SCCC and in this case represents an attack on ideas considered hostile to the 1%.
In addition to her activism in the Occupy movement, Dr. Sawant was a vocal opponent of the attacks on free speech by the SCCC administration that were challenged at several public forums at the end of the 2012 academic year. She has also been active in her union in calling for an end to higher education budget cuts and tuition increases. The underfunding of higher education has led to an increasing proportion of faculty being forced into grossly underpaid and insecure part-time positions. The SCCC administration has sought to force through their agenda of cuts by attempting to force full-time and part-time faculty to compete with each other to protect their livelihoods. We argue that we must completely reject this divide-and-rule strategy and defend the rights of all faculty, as well as students, against these brutal attacks on higher education.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dr. Sawant was fired in retaliation for her activist role at SCCC or for her challenge to right-wing economic views in the classroom. Discrimination on the basis of political views is illegal in the city of Seattle as well as ethically indefensible. The SCCC bureaucracy seeks to protect itself by denying the political basis of the firing, while providing no alternate, plausible explanation why Dr. Sawant was not retained in her position, given her exceptional student evaluations and performance.
In the spring of 2012, Dr. Sawant was upbraided by the college administration for not using a textbook that was favored by the head of her department. This text was written by N. Gregory Mankiw, a controversial ultra-conservative economist who served as the head of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and is now a member of Mitt Romney's 2012 election campaign. On November 2, 2011, about 70 students walked out of Mankiw's Economics 10 class at Harvard. They handed Mankiw an open letter critical of his course, saying in part that it “espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today ... it offers only one heavily skewed perspective rather than a solid grounding on which other courses can expand”.
Forcing a professor to use a particular textbook is a blatant violation of any reasonable idea of academic freedom in higher education. Dr. Sawant was trying to defend her students from this defective, narrow-minded perspective. Conservative economics professors hold that their pro-corporate viewpoint is the only way an economics class can be legitimately taught, while in reality their approach serves as an uncritical defense of the disastrous economic policies that helped create the current economic crisis and that perpetuate inequality and poverty.
Instead of valuing academic diversity, the administration fired Dr. Sawant, and the students she should have been teaching this fall will now be exposed only to this "one heavily skewed perspective".
Occupy has demonstrated the growing anger at the top-down economic model taught by those who support Mankiw's textbook. The non-renewal of a part-time professor who had the courage to help bring Occupy to campus is a chilling precedent which threatens all academic freedom – the freedom to think for oneself – and cannot be allowed to stand. It is a threat to the diversity that students and the community expect at our community colleges.
This action by the administration is one of the latest in a series of attacks on the campus community, such as the ending of the drama, journalism, interpreter training, and film and video programs, the closure of the daycare center, the shutting down of the City Collegian newspaper, and the elimination of elections for student government.
DEMANDS
Immediate reinstatement of Dr. Sawant in the Winter 2013 quarter, including back pay for loss of earnings in Fall 2012 quarter.
Retain the two new part-time professors hired this Fall to teach economics courses. Take action against excessive moonlighting, which reduces diversity and quality of education at SCCC.
Increased job security for part-time teachers. An end to arbitrary firings, and for a legitimate appeal process.
Tell the Candidates: No to Endless Wars
Upcoming Events:
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Boston Rally for Question 4 with Rep. Mike CapuanoCommunity Rally for nonbinding Question 4 Thursday, October 25, 10am Codman Square Health Center 637 Washington St., Dorchester Shawmut or Ashmont (T) This Thursday, Boston political and community leaders will call for a budget that supports working people and solves national budget standoffs. Question 4, on the November 6 ballot throughout Boston and number 4-7 in towns across a third of the state, is the largest public policy question in at least several decades, according to the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office. It has been endorsed by four Mass. congressmen, 23 state legislators, and many local elected officials. The “Budget for All” referendum echoes a pro-people federal budget proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It instructs state legislators to vote for a referendum calling on the President and Congress to:
Over 20 Boston community organizations are supporting the Budget for All. The statewide Question 4 campaign is coordinated by the American Friends Service Committee and Mass. Peace Action. The Mass. Alliance of HUD Tenants, Right to the City VOTE!, Dorchester People for Peace, and the Boston Coalition to Fund Our Communities-Cut Military Spending 25% are leading the Boston campaign.
Upcoming Events:
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NU Students and Workers Host Food Day Celebration!
Students and cafeteria workers at Northeastern University will celebrate Food Day with Justice in the Campus Food Chain, a dinner, panel, and roundtable discussion on Wednesday, October 24 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at the McLeod Suites on the 3rd floor of the Curry Student Center. The roundtable will bring together coworkers and classmates from across the city’s many universities, along with cooks, farmworkers, sustainable food advocates, and community organizers, to envision a united movement for Real Food and Real Jobs. Locally sourced dinner will be provided by Northeastern Dining.
Organized by Northeastern’s chapter of Slow Food and the Progressive Student Alliance, in partnership with UNITE HERE and the Real Food Challenge, the event will feature speakers from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Student / Farmworker Alliance, UNITE HERE Local 26, Haley House, and the Massachusetts Farm to School Project.
Panel
Organized by Northeastern’s chapter of Slow Food and the Progressive Student Alliance, in partnership with UNITE HERE and the Real Food Challenge, the event will feature speakers from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Student / Farmworker Alliance, UNITE HERE Local 26, Haley House, and the Massachusetts Farm to School Project.
Panel
- Santiago Perez — Organizer, Coalition of Immokalee Workers
- Claudia Saenz — Organizer, Student / Farmworker Alliance
- Angela Bello — Northeastern University Cafeteria Worker, UNITE HERE Local 26
- Bing Broderick — Business and Marketing Director, Haley House
- Simca Horwitz — Farm to Cafeteria Coordinator, Massachusetts Farm to School Project
WHEN
October 24, 2012 at 7pm - 9pm
WHERE
McCleod Suites, Curry Student Center, Northeastern University
346 Huntington Ave
3rd Floor, Room 318
Boston, MA 02115
United States
Google map and directions
346 Huntington Ave
3rd Floor, Room 318
Boston, MA 02115
United States
Google map and directions
CONTACT
Aaron Martel · amartel@unitehere.org
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Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership today! Dues are $40/year or $10 for student/unemployed/low income. Pay now and you will be a member in good standing through December 2013. Your financial support makes this work possible!  Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 617-354-2169 • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter Click here to unsubscribe |
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-When The World Imitated Elvis, Circa 1956
Click on the headline to link to a Youtube film clip of Carl Perkins performing Bopping The Blues.
CD Review
The Rock and Roll Era: 1956, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989
Nobody in the whole wide Western world wanted to be the be-bop max daddy king hell king of rock and roll more than Billie (not Billy, not regular old ordinary vanilla Billy) Bradley. Well, nobody except maybe the king himself, Elvis, but Billy was a close second. What Billy was first at, and maybe more first than Elvis, was the desire to use whatever musical talents he had (and they were promising) to be the king hell king of the projects where he grew up. And so whenever Billie (don’t spell it the other way even now, even now when he is long gone from king hell king strivings) was not in school, was not humoring his corner boys (including me) with some song or skit, or was not robbing some uptown Olde Saco merchant of his earthy goods or planning to, he was before the mirror (vanity thy name is Billie or one of thy names is Billie) singing some song but more importantly developing that certain look that was to drive the girls wild.
And it worked for a while, a while around the Olde Saco projects for a while with the local girls (junior division about age twelve or under) who wanted their Elvis moment even if it was once removed. Not that Billie’s look was anything like Elvis’ (in tense moments Billie would call Elvis’ style pure punk, nothing , nada). Every time Olde Saco South Elementary School put on a charity talent show during the period from, say 1956 to 1958 Billie was there. And for several shows running he was the be-bop king hands downs. The girls would flock around him and his “rejects” would wind up with his corner boys (including me) and so for all the Olde Saco days and nights of that period we were his biggest promoters. Praise be king Billie.
Then one night one 1958 night at a church benefit held in the basement of Sainte Brigitte’s Billie came unglued. See he had become something of a local kid celebrity by then and so Alabaster Records, the big label for new talent, had sent an agent to see Billie do his stuff. Naturally Billie wanted to impress so he tore into his best cover, Carl Perkin’s Bopping The Blues. What nobody knew, at least nobody in the audience (except said corner boys), was that his suit, his sweet Billie suit, had been quickly made by his mother on the fly from material purchased at some bargain discount joint. About half way through the performance first one arm of his suit jacket came flying off and then the other. Needless to say the Alabaster agents wrote Billie off without a murmur.
Here is the funny part. The girls, those giggling teeny-bopper girls, thought that the arm gag was part of Billie act and so for many, many months Billie was followed by a bevy (nice, word, huh) of adoring girls from school and the neighborhood. And we, his loyal corner boys gladly took his “rejects.” Here is the not funny part though. After than night, after that rejection something, and I don’t know what and I was closest to him at that point, snapped in Billie. Something about the world being fixed a certain way, a certain not Billie way and it ate at him. From that point on the wanna-be gangster began to take over. I stayed with him through part it and then moved on. But when he was in his Elvis moment, yes, when he was in his Elvis moment, he made the earth move.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Flyer For The Smedley Butler Brigade- Veterans For Peace 2012 Veterans Day/Armistice Day Commemoration –Sunday November 12 in Boston At Noon
President Obama Pardon Private Bradley Manning Now!
Free The Alleged Wikileak Whistleblower Now!
Bradley Manning in his own
words:
"God knows what happens
now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms...
I want people to see the
truth... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a
public."
*************
The Smedley Butler Brigade of
Veterans for Peace proudly stands in solidarity with, and defense of, Private
Bradley Manning and his fight for freedom from his jailers, the American
military.
Private Manning is facing a
February 2013 court-martial for allegedly simply blowing the whistle on
something that is a hard fact of war- war crimes by American soldiers through
release of the “Collateral Murder” tape and what have become known as the Iraq
and Afghan War logs.
Private Manning has paid the
price for his alleged acts with almost 900 days of pre-trial confinement,
including allegations of torture during this period, and is now facing life
imprisonment for simple acts of humanity. For letting the American people know
what they perhaps did not want to know but must know- when soldiers, American
soldiers, go to war some awful things can and do happen.
For more information about
the Private Manning case and what you can do to help or to sign the online
petition to the Secretary of the Army for his release contact:
Bradley Manning Support
Network: http://www.bradleymanning.org/ or the Courage To Resist Website:http://www.couragetoresist.org/
Smedley Butler Brigade-
Veterans for Peace Website: http://smedleyvfp.org/ - on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/smedleyvfp -on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/SmedleyVFP#
09 May 2012
BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : Rules are Rules: 'The Passion of Bradley Manning'
Rules are rules as any fool can see:
'The Passion of Bradley Manning'
By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / May 9, 2012
[The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History by Chase Madar (2012: OR Books); Paperback; 190 pp.; $15.]
I remember the very first time I saw the Wikileaks-released video filmed from a U.S. gunship showing the murder of a dozen unarmed civilians including two journalists. The video proved the true brutality of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the distressing disregard for human life common among U.S. soldiers.
Sadly, I wasn’t shocked or surprised at what I saw. Even after having heard about such incidents in conversations with returning veterans, the visual evidence was still quite disturbing to watch.
That video was the first time most Americans had heard about Wikileaks. Not long after, the name of Bradley Manning also entered the U.S. consciousness. He would be accused of releasing that video and thousands of other documents relating to the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, along with thousands of diplomatic cables describing in oftentimes explicit detail the crimes and morally questionable actions and words of Washington officials.
Soon, Mr. Manning would be charged with treason and aiding the enemy (among other charges) for his actions. He is currently on trial in a U.S. military court located at Fort Meade, MD. and faces life imprisonment. It is my belief that only an immense and broad popular movement could possibly change that fate.
Bradley Manning’s decision and the subsequent reaction is the subject of a newly published book by civil rights attorney and commentator Chase Madar. This book, titled The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History, presents Manning’s decision in the context it was meant to be understood: as a political act by a man who saw his duty to humanity to be greater than his orders to protect the Pentagon and politicians that sent him and thousands of other GIs to war.
Madar attacks the very system of secrecy Manning is charged with violating. He details the overzealous use of secret and top secret classifications by government officials, calling it a “tragic, bloated farce.” He questions the use of the Espionage Act to charge Manning and other men whose actions are not about aiding the enemy, but about exposing the misdeeds of the U.S. government.
In discussing the frequent use of strategic leaks by government officials to get a piece of legislation approved, Madar surmises that Manning’s biggest mistake is that, unlike those government officials, he didn’t break the law properly.
What did the documents Manning sent to Wikileaks contain? While it is impossible to even begin to summarize the millions of words in those documents in the brief space of Madar’s text, he does list the basics of some of the content.
The documents showed a brutal pacification campaign in Afghanistan where civilian deaths were all too common and sometimes intentional. They acknowledged massive civilian casualties from U.S. fire in Iraq and detailed Washington’s retail diplomacy with the Vatican hoping to convince the Holy See to call the U.S. wars just.
In other areas, the diplomatic cables exposed the role of the U.S. Embassy in Haiti in fighting attempts to raise the minimum wage there to 61 cents an hour and U.S. complicity in covering up Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
Yet, despite the revelations they contained, the U.S. government has been unable to prove that the leaks harmed any individual. Unfortunately, neither have they changed the essence of U.S. policy.
After acknowledging this, Madar writes about two leaks that probably did matter. One was a 1968 leak by Daniel Ellsberg to presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy that detailed the Johnson administration’s plans to expand the U.S. war to Laos and Cambodia. The leak and Kennedy’s revealing it probably prevented that expansion under LBJ. Of course, Nixon wasted little time in doing exactly what Johnson didn’t do.
Another more recent example occurred in 2003 when the national intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons capability was leaked. This document stated clearly that Iran had no nuclear weapons and was not building any at the time. That leak probably prevented the U.S. from attacking Iran.
Like it or not, since his arrest Manning's treatment has been shameful. His imprisonment, which includes solitary confinement and forced nakedness, is nothing short of torture. Indeed it has been condemned as such by the German Bundestag and several other individuals in European governments and even some high ranking U.S. officials.
Madar’s discussion of Manning's treatment is revealing and likely to garner a number of denials by liberals and neocons in the halls of power. This is especially true when he argues against the view promulgated by U.S. liberals that the treatment is an aberration.
The fact is, writes Madar, the abuses experienced by Manning and by prisoners in U.S.-run prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan are also commonplace in U.S. prisons. Furthermore, torture is a common occurrence in U.S. jails at all levels of the penal system.
In the early 1970s Kris Kristofferson recorded a song whose chorus includes the lines, “The law is for protection of the people/ Rules are rules as any fool can see...” The song proceeds to show the use of this maxim by the powers that be to lock up those that disrupt their rule. The sarcasm of the lyrics continues, pointing out how laws are not only applied unequally, but are often written only to protect the wealthy and powerful. If Kris Kristofferson were to add a verse to his tune in 2012, it could be about Bradley Manning.
When pressed to explain the charges arrayed against Manning, the reason given most often is that he broke the rules regarding classified information and that is reason enough. As Madar points out over and over in his book, these rules are broken quite often by government officials in the pursuit of certain policies and those violations are rarely challenged.
Furthermore, and considerably more appalling, is the reality that the atrocities and diplomatic maneuverings revealed in the documents Manning released are not illegal. Why? Simply put, because the laws are written by the warmakers and profiteers. So, those who reveal the machinations of the powerful are more likely to go to prison than those who kill, torture, bribe, and steal in the name of empire.
Simultaneously an indictment of a government obsessed with secrecy and a nation addicted to war, The Passion of Bradley Manning is also a concise and clear explanation of who Bradley Manning is. It explains why he risked his life and future by committing the overtly political act of exposing his government’s crimes and lies.
Perhaps most importantly, it is a call to us to act not only in defense of Manning, but in defense of our futures.
[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
10 May 2012
BOOKS / Mariann G. Wizard : 'Inside/Out': The Poetry of Marilyn Buck
'Inside/Out':
The poetry of Marilyn Buck
By Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog / May 10, 2012
The Rag Blog's Mariann Wizard will join fellow poets Czarina Aggabao Thelen, Lilia Rosas, Jorge Renaud, Michelle Mejia, and Jane Madrigal (San Quilmas) at "Inside/Out: a Reading and Celebration of a new poetry book by former political prisoner Marilyn Buck," presented by Red Salmon Arts at 7 p.m., Wednesday, May 16, 2012, at Resistencia Book Store, 1801-A South First St., Austin.[Inside/Out: Selected Poems by Marilyn Buck; Foreword by David Meltzer (2012: City Lights Books, San Francisco); Paperback; 128 pp.; $13.95.]
Marilyn Buck's fellow poet and mentor David Meltzer writes that once when he was visiting her in Dublin Federal Correctional Center (prison), she expressed a desire to be known "not as a political prisoner poet, but simply as a poet."
For this collection, racing against uterine cancer until her death, she and a small group of now-surviving artistic and political friends (Meltzer, Felix Shafer, and Miranda Bergman, with poet Jack Hirschman and City Lights publisher Elaine Katzenberger) selected 63 poems that will give general poetry lovers their first real opportunity to savor her body of work.
Marilyn Buck was a Ragstaffer in Austin and Newsreel activist in San Francisco before becoming active in the Black Liberation movement. She died in August, 2010, in her 63rd year, after 25 years in federal prison and 19 days of freedom.
She began writing poetry in prison as one of the few means of self-expression open to her. As she wrote in her Master's thesis, On Becoming a Poet and Artist: Beyond Censorship to Re-Imagination (New College of California, Fall 1999, author's copy), "I was a censored person by virtue of being a political prisoner. Ironically, defiance of State censorship reduced me to self-censorship. Nevertheless, I needed to affirm myself... I turned to poetry, an art of speaking sparely, but flagrantly."
Buck's earlier collections (a chapbook, Rescue the Word [San Francisco and New York: Friends of Marilyn Buck, 2001], and a CD, Wild Poppies [San Francisco: Freedom Archives, 2004]), and other published works, while including poems that didn't spring from political or criminal convictions or fugitive experience, leaned heavily in that direction and by her choice.
While Inside/Out certainly doesn't slight her political and prison-related work, we may also see several other facets of a woman who was much more than a one-dimensional icon. In almost all, she preserves her hallmark "spare... but flagrant" style.
Some selections will be familiar to Buck's readers, and already beloved. "Clandestine Kisses" celebrates love against the rules with defiant elán. Like many of her poems, it summons a vision of irrepressible life finding a foothold in a world of steel and concrete.
"Woman with Cat and Iris" is another understated, sleight-of-hand creation: a tranquil Sunday morning illusion of normalcy dissolves in clanging steel doors and the shouts of guards, but the cat and flower linger, Cheshire-like, in the mind.
Marilyn wrote often about how the human mind can escape the sterility of prison, even for a moment; road maps, perhaps, for other prisoners, of whatever barred crucible, with "Gone" the most direct. "Night Showers," celebrating washing off the pain and grief of each day along with its grit and grime, and "Woman's Jazz Band Performs at Women's Theater" also mine this theme.
Incarceration is in large part a punishment because of its sensory deprivation. Deprivation from color, movement, textures, tastes, rain, the moon, etc., loom large in Buck's work, but as Meltzer notes, it also bursts with music.
The jazz cadences of her longer poems beg for a saxophone's honk and moan, a conga's quick counterpoint. The centrality of music and poetry in liberation struggles past and present, personal and political, is never lost on her. Here are a few lines from the previously unpublished "Reading Poetry":
Chao Ut reads Vietnamese poetryOr this, from "Boston Post Road Blues":
I tell her she reads well
she smiles...
she reads another poem
it sounds like music, I say
yes I'll read it again
the way we everyday talk
she reads
do you hear?
yes, I say...
...I wait in the car's darkness I countBuck had a dry, playful wit, well-known to friends but seldom given rein in her published work. It's nice to find it here in a few poems such as "Definition":
minutes and coins
11:00 I step through blinking neon
into the vacant booth drop coins
and hear a click
the plum-colored voice
Baby I'm here
trumpet notes tap along my spine
my delight a waterfall
blues turn bold
intimate in the dark…
when I was much youngerMany poems seen for the first time in this collection are intensely personal. "Our Giant" recalls the darker side of Marilyn's father. Louis Buck was defrocked as an Episcopal priest for opposing segregation. Crosses were burned on the family's lawn during Marilyn's childhood.
than I am now
my mom told me
look out for tall dark strangers
I thought she meant
look for one
A courageous, outspoken crusader to the world, he was a controlling tyrant to his wife and children, demanding perfection, as he defined it, from each of them:
brooding Irish AtlasWhen Marilyn's increasing radicalism led to her involvement in Black Liberation groups embracing armed self-defense, their estrangement increased. After she became a fugitive from the law, she and her father had no contact for many years.
props long-legged baby
in the window of a '47 car
(a car I remember better
than my father's sweet attentions)
the only clue left of kindness
a bled-orange Kodacolor
a handsome rundown football player
like a thundering giant
he dangled our lives from his fingertips
four morsels
we hovered over the chasm of his rage
our tears seasoned his wounds
swallowed whole
we were regurgitated
each daybreak...
Yes Louis' uncompromising ideals and stubborn courage clearly informed much of her own conduct, including, some might say, the self-destructive parts. Their reconciliation before his death was extremely important to Marilyn. Here she expresses the terror, admiration, and eventual compassion he inspired:
...he was our giant, defrockedHer mother, Virginia, to whom the volume is dedicated, is also recalled in "Loss." Her death from the same type of cancer that would claim Marilyn was not only a grievous loss in itself, but a blow to the hope that Marilyn might survive to a healthy old age in freedom.
he stomped in "jesus sandals"
stained the silken robes
of rich men's hypocrisy
a jeremiah in farmboy overalls
and starched Mexican wedding shirt
titanic storms flayed his flesh
too angry to leave this too-small world…
Besides her poetry, much still uncollected, Marilyn Buck over time developed her ability to express herself "sparely yet flagrantly," making significant contributions to radical and liberation theory and discussion, contributing to numerous journals and publications.
She taught herself Spanish, and in 2008 City Lights published her translation of exiled Uruguayan poet Cristina Peri Rossi's collection, State of Exile, in a bilingual volume.
In prison, Marilyn became a certified literacy instructor and taught hundreds of women to read. She learned and taught yoga, became an advocate for women's healthcare, and organized AIDS education and prisoner fundraising activities. She mentored uncountable prisoners, prisoners' family members, and poets around the world. She was a voracious reader who maintained a vast and varied correspondence, including with my grateful self.
One fault with Inside/Out is that is doesn't tell when the poems were written, except those with dates in their titles. This would have been useful not only to academic readers but to friends and fellow poets who will long to know when such epic works as "Blake's Milton: Poetic Apocalypse" and "Revelation" were composed. Much longer than most of her other poems, these works blaze with intense visions wherein prison walls have neither substance nor meaning, such as these lines from "Revelation":
...Do you see demons and desolation, hear soundsThere are no apologies here, no appeals for special consideration. As she rejected white-skin privilege in life, binding herself to oppressed people in words and deeds, Marilyn Buck sought no deathbed, deus ex machina salvation from prison, cancer, or the condemnation of the self-righteous.
of screams, wailing? Or smell sulfur burn
behind your tongue – a taste of wormwood
and aloes? Or encounter the touch as a torch upon the skin?
You imagine fire but it might be ice...
For those who loved and miss her, Inside/Out is a special gift, long dreamed-of. For those who don't know her, or who've had limited knowledge of her as person or poet, here she is at last free to speak outside State restraints. No more bars, shackles, solitary confinements, or super-max jails.
The last poem included is "The First Year You Learn to Wear the Robes":
his teacher told him on stepping into the Zen priesthoodIn my heart, I see Buck's eager spirit wearing new robes now, a rebel angel inspiring poets and activists around the world to work compassionately yet relentlessly for justice, peace, and freedom. She lives this day, and tomorrow, in the words left behind.
to wrap one robe and then another, is not as simple as it looks
rather this is not a simple matter of getting dressed, not a covering
a process of finding oneself inside one's situation,
revelation
a prisoner must learn to wear robes of absence
prepared to live this day
[Mariann G. Wizard, a Sixties radical activist and contributor to The Rag, Austin's underground newspaper from the 60s and 70s, is a poet, a professional science writer specializing in natural health therapies, and a regular contributor to The Rag Blog. Read more poetry and articles by Mariann G. Wizard on The Rag Blog.]
Inset art above: Hand-rubbed woodcut print of Marilyn Buck by Chicana artist Jane Madrigal, from her forthcoming collaborative project/exhibition: "Revolutionary Women Woodcuts."
Read articles (and poems) by and about Marilyn Buck on The Rag Blog.
The Rag Blog
29 May 2012
Bob Feldman : Socialism, Women's Suffrage, and the NAACP in Texas, 1890-1920
The hidden history of Texas
Part IX: 1890-1920/6 -- Socialism, women's suffrage, and the NAACPBy Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / May 28, 2012
[This is the sixth section of Part 9 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]
During the period between 1890 and 1920 there was much dissatisfaction among Texas workers and farmers with how capitalist society treated them. So it’s not surprising that political support for an anti-corporate electoral alternative third-party to the pro-corporate Democrats and Republicans -- the Socialist Party -- began to develop in Texas by the beginning of the 20th century. As F. Ray Marshall’s Labor in the South noted:
The Texas Socialist Party... was a member of the radical wing of the national party. E.O. Meitzen of Hallettsville, a member of the Grange, who helped organize the Farmers’ Alliance in Fayette County, and edited a German Populist paper (Der Anzeiger) during the 1890’s, was an active Socialist, and was secretary of the Renters Union, formed by Texas Socialists around 1909. Meitzen’s activities were continued by Thomas Hickey, a lecturer for the Social-Democratic Party in the south during the early 1900’s. Hickey published a magazine, The Rebel, from Hallettsville for many years... In 1912, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate for President of the United States [got] about 9 percent of the Texas vote...According to the labordallas.org website, the circulation of The Rebel “went over 20,000” before it “was suppressed by the United States government as World War I began and never was reborn.” The same Texas labor history website also recalled that Texas Socialist Party leader Meitzen “was elected County Judge in LaVaca County and... gained 11.7 percent of the votes in the governor’s race” in Texas in 1914, “was shot by a sheriff he had accused of `losing’ important records concerning county monies” that same year, and “survived the shooting and other physical assaults” before he “died in Houston in 1934.”
Dissatisfied feminist white women in Texas also began to organize during the 1890 to 1920 historical period. As Randolph Campbell’s Gone To Texas observed, in Texas the white feminist movement "stirred slightly in 1903 with formation of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association” and “suffragettes by 1916 formed 80 local chapters and claimed 9,500 members for their statewide organization.”
In Austin, the Austin Woman’s Suffrage Association was founded in 1908; and when the wife of Austin ’s then-Superintendent of Schools, Jane McCallum, became the Austin Woman’s Suffrage Association’s president in 1915, this group had 80 members.
So, not surprisingly, the Texas state legislature soon passed an act in 1918 which allowed white women in Texas to also vote in Texas primary elections; and after a May 1919 referendum in Texas, white women also were given the right to vote in U.S. presidential elections, when Texas became the ninth state to ratify the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Ironically, “among those Austinites who supported the women’s voting rights movement was Adele Burleson, wife of Woodrow Wilson’s postmaster general [whose] husband urged the president to introduce racial segregation into the federal civil service,” according to David Humphrey’s Austin: An Illustrated History.
The same book also observed that former Austin Mayor A.P. Wooldridge “similarly sought to expand the rights of women while he limited those of blacks” and that “he advised a group of Austin blacks in 1919 [to] `keep out of politics’" and told them not to forget "that whites `will tolerate no idea of social equality.’”
After the Democratic Wilson Administration decided to involve the U.S. military in the European war in 1917 -- over 197,000 people from Texas were either drafted into the military or volunteered during World War I. And according to Alwyn Barr’s Black Texans, “Negroes provided about 25 percent -- 31,000 men -- of the troops called up from Texas, though they formed only 16 percent of the state’s population” at that time.
Most draftees and volunteers from Texas served in the U.S. Army during World War I and “more than 5,000 men and 1 nurse” from Texas “died while in the service, most losing their lives in the great influenza epidemic of 1918,” according to Gone To Texas.
And the free speech rights and civil liberties of anti-war activists and dissidents in Texas who opposed U.S. military intervention in Europe during World War I were curtailed after the U.S. Congress passed its Declaration of War in 1917. According to the same book, “a special session of the... state legislature... passed espionage and sedition laws that made it a crime to criticize the U.S. government, its officials, the flag, or soldiers;” and the University of Texas regents "fired a well-known anti-war professor."
African-American soldiers who were stationed in Texas after the U.S. military entered World War I also apparently challenged the racism of the Houston police department and white supremacy in Texas in a militant way in August 1917. As Gone To Texas recalled:
On Aug. 23, 1917, Houston police arrested a black soldier and then fired at and arrested a black military policeman who went to inquire about the first serviceman…The men still in camp... decided to march on the police station to secure the MP’s release... Gathering rifles, the soldiers... moved toward downtown Houston... killing 15 whites and wounding 12 others. Four of the soldiers also died...But the U.S. Army subsequently found 110 of the African-American soldiers involved in this apparently anti-racist protest “guilty of mutiny and riot” and “19 were hanged and 63 received life sentences,” according to the same book.
The police had also “roughed up [a] black woman" on Aug. 23, 1917, according to Black Texans, and the incident “stimulated a retaliatory raid by about 150” African-American troops. So, not surprisingly, after World War I ended, African-Americans in Texas “organized an Equal Rights Association to promote democratic government and equal justice” in Texas in 1919 -- the same year that there were also anti-black race riots by some white Texans in Port Arthur and Longview (where homes of African-Americans were burned), according to the same book.
And according to Merline Pitre’s In Struggle Against Jim Crow: Lulu B. White and the NAACP, 1900-1957:
The Houston Riot of 1917 served as a catalyst for the establishment of the Houston chapter of the NAACP. Investigating the 1917 riot, NAACP field worker Martha Gruening found the time ripe for organizing a Houston chapter... Shortly after Gruening’s trip to Houston, M.B. Patten, a postal worker... called a meeting of the city’s leading black professionals, clergymen, and business people... Subsequently the Houston chapter of the NAACP was established on May 31, 1918... By the end of 1918, membership in the Houston branch had reached 414...By 1919, according to Black Texans, 31 chapters of the NAACP existed in Texas “with 7,000 members -- over 1,000 in both Dallas and San Antonio.” Yet in Austin -- which at the time was still just the 10th-largest city in Texas -- the following incident happened in August of 1919, according to Austin: An Illustrated History:
John Shilladay, the white executive secretary of the NAACP... journeyed to Austin in 1919 to assist with legal difficulties encountered by the NAACP’s Austin branch... At mid-morning just outside the Driskill Hotel, John Shilladay was assaulted by County Judge David Pickle, a county constable, and several other Austinites...And that same month Democratic Texas Governor Hobby also warned NAACP national officers that “your organization can contribute more to the advancement of both races by keeping your representatives and their propaganda out of this state than in any other way.”
As late as 1910, Austin still “had virtually no public parks or playgrounds, only two paved streets, and few sidewalks, ...refuse accumulated in alleys and was dumped on the banks of the Colorado, [and] the majority of residents still relied on backyard privies in the absence of sewer lines,” according to Austin: An Illustrated History.
[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]
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