From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Out In The Seals Rock Inn Night -Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm

 

Funny he, Adam Evans, thought, a little sweaty and overheated from the turned too high thermostat put on earlier to ward off the open- eyed chill of the room, as he laid in his toss and turn early morning Seals Rock Inn, San Francisco bed, the rain poured down in buckets, literally buckets, at his unprotected door, the winds were howling against that same door, and the nearby sea was lashing up its fury, how many times the sea stormy night, the sea fury tempest day, the, well, the mighty storm anytime, had played a part in his life. He was under no circumstances, as he cleared his mind for a think back, a think back that was occupying his thoughts more and more of late, trying to work himself into a lather over some metaphorical essence between the storms that life had bestowed on him and the raging night storm within hearing distance. No way, too simple. Rather he was just joy searching for all those sea-driven times, times when a storm, a furious storm like this night or maybe just an average ordinary vanilla storm passing through and complete in an hour made him think of his relationship with his homeland the sea and with its time for reflection. And so on that toss and turn bed he thought.

He thought first and mainly about how early the sea came into his life, almost from birth down at those ragged edge of the sea slopes around Granitetown, the 1950s old time sea air country farm turned modern housing development of single three bedroom homes and duplexes for up and coming World War II veterans like his father with plenty of kids to house and some prospects, where he lived growing up and was tumbled into the sea early. Literally tumbled early to the sea as an errant older brother, aged maybe five, rolled him, maybe aged four, in a barrel, a tinny old trash barrel, down those ragged slopes that formed the outer perimeter of the housing development and gateway to the sea and he would up in about three feet of water crying to get out. Crying also that he had gotten his new trousers and jersey all wet and seaweedy and that he would catch hell (not the word he would have used then but appropriate) when he got home and Ma saw his condition. And Teflon older brother would get away scot-free and he, no snitch even then, would Velcro once again some mother trouble. And he did, although, damn age, he could not recall the penalty, maybe a few days without television.

And learned the power of the sea early when one winter storm night, maybe about fourth grade but in any case a situation that would, minimum, call for at least one no school day, Mother Nature played a dirty trick on her seaward brethren and tried to bring them home to her bosom all in one lashed-up swoop as the exploding high water, ignoring painfully constructed man-made seawalls, came right up to that home’s front door and the lot of them, two parents and three brothers, only reached higher ground in a split second before a big foam-flecked (aren’t they always foam-flecked like some angry man ranting to a rapt crowd when they come in that hard, fast and furious) wave crashed down on their home. A few nights spent in the gymnasium of his elementary school, Snug Harbor (jesus, what a name after that episode), and weeks of clean- up and smells of bleach to get rid of mold and other stuff taught him well the fickleness of old Mother.

And later, childhood later, a few years after the winter storm later anyway, when he, bravo he, decided, yes, consciously decided that the impeding summer storm he could sense coming (he had developed a sense about weather, sea weather anyway, without the need for television prompts) would be no deterrent to his taking that somewhat water-logged log he eyed on the beach and using it to help him swim to China, or some such place, on the current. The China, or someplace being prompted, that day by episode 234 in the Velcro Ma wars that he had just lost another round in and was ready to chuck it all if he could just get away to make his fame and fortune . The subject of the dispute, a case of missing money from her purse (money missing and spent the night before on sweet roll crème-filled Twinkies, ditto cocoa rich chocolate cupcakes, and a few off-hand pieces of penny candy, mary janes , no, not that mary jane what would he have known of weeds, dopes, and such in those suburban dark ages, tootsie rolls, stuff like that, maybe adding up to a dollar, a big dollar just then with Pa just out of work and no dough rolling in and mortgages to pay, and hungry, not sweet tooth hungry kids to feed, and so every penny counted. Round to Ma, and adieu, no more burden son.

But enough of motivation, and enough of not having the sense that god gave geese because just then he let go of the log to do something, something forgotten. And with the sea picking up steam that log kept eluding his grasp as they, he and the log, headed to open water. And losing the log in the churning waters he, not a strong swimmer then (or now) almost drowned, and would have and fate changed, except for the screams of his panic beach-bound older brother (the rolling barrel older brother, thanks, he owed older brother one) seeing his plight sounded the alarm for help and some Madonna savior swimmer, beach-bound too, came and swooped him up before he went down for the third time. And later he yelling beach-bound and still full of water, yelling to his savior bother “Don’t tell Ma, jesus, don’t tell Ma.” And he didn’t .

Or that night, that funny night (funny night in retrospect, then and now retrospect) when he, his buddy since elementary school Will (and proper subject of some wild non-mighty storm tales) and his girl, Carrie he thought although it could have been Donna, Donna whom Will later married and divorced after about three weeks of marriage right after he caught her running around with about four different guys, and a couple of dykes to top things off, and who would wind up a very senior cadre, if cadre is the right word for those times and that feeling, in the summer of love in San Francisco, 1967 not fifteen blocks from this stormy night Seals Rock Inn, and she, she Terry Wallace, his mostly through high school flame, sat in Will’s father-bought high school car, a ’59 Dodge, “making out” (term of art for“doing the do,” “going all the way,” sex, hell, fucking) while the sea churned up around them at old Nippo Point Beach just up from home Granitetown and the police, spotting the storm blasted car and the fix, came and rescued them rescued them while they were in, ah, compromising positions (you figure it out, back seat car figure it out, or read the Karma Sutra, position number twenty- one, or just read it and dream figure your own position, he just laughed his thought laugh) because in the throes of love they had not realized that they were in a couple of feet of sea water and rising that had splashed over some poor man-made seawall built against Mother’s angers. And the cops, the cops snitching, snitching like they always do, snitching like crazy to Ma (and Pa too on all sides), talking about court and under-age, even when Donna, yah, that’s right, it had to be Donna, she was just that bold and sassy, offered to give them a piece, or maybe some head, if they would forget the whole matter. Mas and Pas didn’t and Will and he walked, walked alone all summer, and all summer heard Karma Sutra laughs from fogged up cars down at that broken Nippo Point seawall they claimed.

Or that day, that wind- swept, foam-flecked sea day (okay, enough of foam-flecked seas, enough of rough seas. big swirling rough seas, immense, beyond man-sized immense out in the deep blue deep all green gloss gone falling but almost tepidly to thankful womb shores, cluttered with jetsam and flotsam, logs, ancient memory logs, China-worthy logs, from hurt penny-pinched childhood, cigarette packages, maybe discarded from some white tee- shirted corner boy venture out in the submarine race night, lobster traps, useful for student ghetto table, every smashed and swirled thing, enough of wind, enough to fill a lifetime wind , a lifetime of sad blown winds, a lifetime of false trumpet winds, Miles Davis be-bop full-throated winds, if they, the winds could have “dug” be-bop instead of aimless fury), when his world fell apart, the day when Diana, his first wife, had left him, left him for good, for good after about seventeen mad bouts of irreconcilable differences and about sixteen almost reconciliations. Enough of almost reconciliations to fill a book, a book of how to, and how not to, his version, his final truth version, screw up the genteel, gentle, the broken, or better half-broken women (nah, woman, she ) from saddened youth spills, damnations, and mishaps without really trying.

Funny, although not humorously funny like his nymph tryst with Terry, or ironically funny like his bonding with the sea from birth, but kind of sad sack funny he and Diana had met, met in Harvard Square in the summer of love, 1967 (check it out on Wikipedia for the San Francisco version of that same year but basically it was the winds blowing the right way for once when make love not war, make something, make your dreams come true with sex, drugs, music had its minute, has its soon faded minute via self –imposed hubris and the death-dealing, fag-hating, nigger-hating, women-hating, self-hating bad guys with the guns and the dough leading, and still leading, a vicious counter-attack), she from Podunk Mid-West (Davenport out in the Iowas if you need to know) far from ocean waters, but thrilled by the prospect of meeting an ocean boy who actually had been there, to the ocean that is.

Oh yah, how they met in that Harvard Square good night for the curious, simplicity itself (his version), she was sitting about half way across the room, the cafeteria room, the old Hayes-Bickford lunch room just up from the old end of the red line Harvard Square subway stop (and no longer there, nor is the subway stop the end of the Red Line), if that name helps (and it did , did help that is, if you had any pretensions to some folkie literary career, some be-bop blessed poet life, or just wanted to rub elbows with what might be the next big thing after that folk minute expired of a British invasion of sexed-up moppets and wet dream bad boys and poetry died of T.S. Eliot and rarified air, or, maybe just a two in the morning coffee, hard pressed sudsy coffee, but coffee, enough to keep a seat in the place, after a tough night at the local gin mills, and hadn’t caught anybody’s attention, sitting by herself, writing furiously, on some yellow notepad, and she looked up.

He, just that moment looked up as well (although he had taken about six previous peeks in her direction but she ignored them with her furious pen), and smiled at her. And she gave him a whimsical, no, a melt smile, a smile to think about eternities over, about maybe chasing some windmills about, about, about walking right over and asking about the meaning of, well, that smile. And he did, and she did, she told him that is. And in the telling, told him, that she had half seen (her version) him peeking and wondered about it. And all this peeking, half peeking, got him a seat at her table, and her a cup of coffee and a couple of hours of where are you from, what do you like, what is the meaning of existence and what the hell are you writing so furiously about at two o’clock on Sunday morning. And one thing led to another and eventually the sea came in, although, damn age against he couldn’t for the life of him remember how that subject came up, except maybe something triggered when she mentioned Iowa, or something.

And what did she look like, for the male reader in need of such detail, especially since she was sitting alone writing furiously at two in the morning, maybe she was, ah, ah, a dog. Nah she was kind of slender, but not skinny, slender in that fresh as sweet cream Midwestern corn-fed way that started to happen after the womenfolk, not prairie fire pioneer women any longer, had been properly fed for a couple of generations after those hard Okie/Arkie western trek push on days of eating chalk dust and car smoke trailing dreams. With her long de riguer freshly- ironed brown hair pulled back from her face (otherwise she would have constantly had to interrupt her furious writing to keep it out of her face as she wrote). And a pleasing face, bright blue eyes, good nose, and nice lips, kissable lips. Nice legs from what he could see when he went over. But who was he kidding, it was that whimsical, no, melt smile, that smile that spoke of eternities, although what it spoke of at that two in the morning was gentle breezes, soft pillows, of that Midwestern what you see is what you get and what you get, well, you better hang on, and hang on tight, and be ready to take some adversity, to keep around that smile. But that was later, later really, when he figured it out better why he tossed and turned all that night (really morning) and that thought would not let him be.

And memory bank of their first time up in ocean’s kingdom, the next day actually she was so anxious to see the ocean, or maybe anxious to see it with him, they talked about it being that way too but let’s just memory call it her anxiety, the rugged cross salvation rocks that make up Perkins’s Cove in southern Maine, up there by Ogunquit. There are stories to be told of his own previous meetings with Mother Perkin’s but this is Diana’ s story and those stories, his stories, involved other women, other treacheries, other immense treacheries, and other delights too. That day thought she flipped out, flipped out at the immensity of it, of the majestic swells (and of her swaying, gently, but rhythmically to the rise and fall of each wave) of the closeness of a nature that she, she of wind- swept wheat oceans, of broken- back bracero wet back labor to bring in the crop, of fights against every form of injury, dust, bugs, fire, drought had not dreamed of. And as if under some mystic spell, or some cornfield mistake, she actually plunged fully-clothed (not having been told of the need for a swimsuit since the ocean itself was the play, the hugeness of it, the looking longingly back to primordial times of it, the reflection in the changings winds of it), in to the ocean at that spot where there was just enough room if the tide was right, just ebbing enough to create a sand bar to do so (today there is no problem getting down there as the Cove trustees have provided a helpful stairs, concrete-reinforced, against old time lumber steps breakaway and lost in some snarled sea) and promptly was almost carried out by a riptide.

He saved her, saved her good that day. Saved her with every ounce of energy he had to take her like some lonesome sailor saving his shipmate, save just to be saving, saving from the sea for a time anyway, or better, saving like the guy, that long gone daddy, who did or said some fool thing to his woman and she flipped out and make a death pact with old King Neptune (and wouldn’t you know want to bring him along for the ride) from that song Endless Sleep by Jody Reynolds. But get this, and get it from him straight just in case you might have heard it from her. That day she was so sexed-up, there is no other way to say it, and there shouldn’t be, what with the first look ocean swells and her swaying , and her getting dunked good (with wet clothes and a slight feverish chill), and her being so appreciative of him saving her (the way she put it, his version anyway, was that save, that unthinking save, meant that whatever might come that she knew, knew after one day, and knew she was not wrong, that he would not forsake her for some trivial) that she wanted to have sex with him right there, right in the cove. (In those days there was a little spot that he knew, a little spot off a rutted dirt path that was then not well known, was unmarked and was protected by rows of shrubbery so there was no problem about “doing the do” there and frankly that thought got him sexed-up too. Today there are so many touristas per square inch in high season and that old rutted path now paved so that the act would be impossible. It would have to wait hard winter and frozen asses, if that same scenario came up again.)

Here’s the thing thought she, Diana, from the sticks, new to Harvard Square summer of love and Boston college scene school didn’t take birth control pills or have any other form of protection that day, although she was fairly sexually experienced (some wheat field farmer and then the usual assortment of colleges guys, some honest ,some, well, one-night stands). And he, he not expecting to be a savior sailor that day carried no protection, hell condoms (and, truth, his circle, the guys anyway, and really the girls knowing what the guys expected, left it up to their partners to protect themselves. Barbarians, okay). So before they could hit the bushes, before they could lose themselves in the stormy throes of love he had to run (yes, he ran, so you know he was sexed-up too) up to Doc’s Drugstore (no longer there, since Doc passed away many years ago and his sons became lawyers and not pharmacists) on U.S.1 right in the center of Ogunquit. And red faced purchased their “rubbers” (and wouldn’t you know there was some young smirky I-know what-you-are-up- to-right-now sales girl behind the counter when he paid for his purchase, jesus). So as the sun started blue –pink setting in the west and to the sound, the symphony really, of those swells clanging on those rugged cross rocks they made love for the first time, not beautiful sultry night pillow love in some high-end hotel (like later), or fearfully (fearful that her prudish dorm roommate would bust in on them) in her dorm room but fiercely, fiercely like those ocean waves crashing mercilessly to shore. The time for exotic, genteel, gentle love-makings (“making it,” out of some be-bop hipster lexicon their way of expressing that desire) would come later, later intermingled with the seventeen differences and sixteen almost reconciliations.

And funny too in that same sad sack love way they early on had vowed, secular vowed (no, not that Perkin’s Cove love day, sex is easier to agree to, to make and unmake, than vows, religious, secular, or blasphemous), that they would not, like their parents fight over every stupid thing.. That night in her dorm room after that full day of activity they stayed up half the night (hell with a little benny that wasn’t hard, and perhaps they stayed up all night, and although her roommate never showed that night they did not, his version, did not make love) remembering his Velcro Ma wars and, as she related that night and many night after, her Baptist father repent sinners weird wars. He related in detail his various wars, wars to the death that left him with no option, no he option except to leave the family house and strike it on his own, on his summer of love terms if possible, since he had sensed that wind that storm swell coming for a while and was as ready as any “hippie” (quaint term, although he did not, and never did, consider himself a hippie but rather traced his summer of love yearnings to beat times, to be-bop boys and girls with shaded eyes and existential desires) to run with the tide. She related in detail her devil father, with seven prayer books in all his hands on Sunday and a thwarted creep up to her room every other day, and of his bend bracero hatred short-changing the wages of the wetbacks who came via train smoke and dreams to bring in the crop (or have the complaisant county sheriff kick them out wage-less, or with so many deductions for cheap jack low rent shack barely held together against the fury of prairie winds room and board, food just shy of some Sally, Salvation Army, hand- out in some desolate back street town (and he knew of such foods, and of kindly thanks yous but that was give away food not sweated labor food) that it made the same thing. Justified of course by some chapter and verse about the heathens (Catholic heathens and he, the father , still fighting those 16^thcentury wars out on prairie America and, and, winning against hard luck ,move on to the next shack and hand-out worthy food harvest stop, endlessly, braceros), and their sorrows .

And they didn’t , didn’t act like their parents, their he and she parents, that summer of love, that overblown ,frantic , wind-changing summer of love, when they sensed that high tide rolling in, hell, more than sensed it, could taste it, taste in the their off-hand love bouts not reserved for downy billows (and he glad, glad as hell, that she, his little temptress she, had freely offered herself to him up on those rugged cross rocks so that he, when he needed a reason, easily coaxed her to some landlocked bushes, or some river, some up river ,Charles River, of course hide-out and she, slightly blushing, maybe, with the thought of it, followed along giggling like a schoolgirl),taste it is the sweet wines handmade in some friend experiment , hey try this (and experiment yogurts, ice cream, dough bread, and on and on, too) , taste it in the tea, ganga, herb, hemp smoke curling through their lungs and moment peace, or later, benny high to keep sleep from their eyes on the hitchhike road, or later too, sweet cousin cocaine, cheap, cheap as hell, and exotic to snuffed noses to take away the minute blues creeping in, taste it in the new way that their brethren (after all not everybody got caught up in the minute, some went jungle-fighting, some went wall street back-biting, some went plain old ordinary nine to five-routining, some went same old same, old love and marriage and here come X and Y with a baby carriage (and mortgages , and saving for junior’s college and ,and…)offered this and that, free, this and that help, this and that can I have this free, taste it in, well, if you don’t want to do that, hell, don’t and not face Ma, or kin, or professional wrath (or she father fire and brimstone), taste it out in those friendly streets, no not Milk Street, not Wall Street, not the Loop, but Commonwealth Avenue, Haight Street, Division Street, many Village streets, many Brattle streets, many Taos streets, Venice Beach streets, all the clots that make the connections, the oneness of it all, the grandness of it all, the free of it all.

And they, they made the kindness, the everyday kindness of it, the simple air-filled big balloon kindness of it like some Peter Max cartoonish figure, and when they filled that balloon with enough kindness and against the slut remarks of high Catholic Ma disapproving of heathens (see not all bigots were out in the prairie wheat field strung out on the lord and, wheat profits) and she Pa disapproving of hippie (never was , beat, beat, yes) they married , justice of the peace high wind Perkin’s Cove- consummated married she all garlanded up like some Botticelli doll model picture (his mistress, his whore, from what they had heard, and Diana blushed at that knowledge), flowered, flowing garment, free hair in the wind and he some black robe throw around , and feasting, feasting on those rugged cross rocks . Too much.

And for as long as they could see some new breeze blowing that they felt part of they were kind to each other (and others of course). Then the winds of change shifted, and like the tides the ebbs set in, maybe not obvious at first, maybe not that first series of defeats, that Loop madness in ’68, that first bust for some ill-gotten dope and some fool snitch to save his ass from stir turned on him, some brethren (he hated snitch, the very word snitch, from that time down in that rolling barrel slope in the water episode with his older brother, his older brother now name-etched in black marble in Washington along with other old neighborhood names), that first Connecticut highway hitchhike bust as they headed to D.C. for one more vain and futile attempt to stop the generation’s damn war, that several hour wait in Madison for some magnificent Volkswagen bus to stop and get them from point C to point D on their journey to this now very storm- driven San Francisco spot (a few blocks up over in North Beach the old beat blocks, Haight Street hippie having turned into a free-fire zone, that “no that is six dollars for those candles , not free brother” sea-change, and the decline of kindness, first casualty their own kindnesses, their own big balloon kindnesses more less frequently evoked, more tired from too much work, more sorry but I have a headache ,he too, and less thoughts about trysts in hidden bushes, or downy billows for that matter. Worse, worse still, he went his way, and she went hers, trying to make it (no longer their “making it” signal to chart love’s love time) in the world, hell, nine to five routining it but it was the kindnesses, those big ball kindnesses that went (and that they both spoke of, marriage counselor spoke of, missing), and seventeen differences, substantial differences, and sixteen almost reconciliations,, they grew older and apart, and…

She left him for another man, another non-sea driven man, a man who hated the outdoors, hated the thought of the ocean (he grew up in lobstertown Maine and had his fill of oceans, of fierce winds, of rubber hip boots, and of rugged cross rocks thank you, she told him of the other man) when she called it seventeen times is enough quits after they had spent a couple of months up in that storm-ravaged Maine cottage that he insisted they go to reconcile after the last difference bout where she, quote, was tired as hell of the sea, of the wind, of the stuff that the wind did to her sensitive skin ( big old sadness at that remark by him for he never said, kindness said, anything about that, or never said he could stop the ravages of time), and, and, tired of him playing out some old man of the seas, some man against nature thing with her in his train, unquote. Yah, she up and left him. Damn, and he had had thoughts of eternity, of always being around that smile, that quizzical smile, or the possibility of that smile, that he first latched onto that first Harvard Square night when he had smiled at her across the room, and she had smiled that smile right between his eyes at him.

Or that time later with Sarah, jesus has it been twenty years now, as the winter seas once again bore down their fury when they, at her insistence she from coastline Oregon near Coos Bay, had moved to water’s edge Marblehead outside of Boston away from city crowds and city concerns and city madnesses and city doubts and too city delights, and the seas came up over a painfully constructed double seawall (watched over time turn from single storm blasted sea wall), damn double seawalls and still not enough, and almost touched the top of their front door steps. And they seeking shelter again in a make-shift home school like he in in kid time and spending obligatory weeks with bleach and mop buckets. She, Sarah she, too eventually calling it quits, although not over another man, or over his man and nature obsession, or over that breeched double sea-wall but just her calling it Sarah quits. Just like the way she came in to that meeting, the Park Street church meeting, some pressing urgent meeting to stop another generation’s war and they connected like the passing air that night they met, both on the hurt rebound, and both clingy, clingy as hell, and both without a word shortly thereafter, maybe a couple of days not more than a week, deciding quickly to stay together for a time, not kid foolish eternity time, an indeterminate time. And she brought forth a rebirth of kindness in him (she was organically kind, needed no winds of time shift, no big world- historic motion motive to do that) and of shared funny times, mature now (ragged bushes, and up river hide-aways just a laugh and tingle memory), although rugged cross rock still travelled, mature travelled and no fair maiden rescues. And he sorry, end of youth, end of mystery awe, end of mad adventure sorry, strangely more than Diana sorry, when she left.

Or that Maine time a few years back when, alone to clear some troubled thoughts after the end of his last marriage (and last marriage), a sudden winter storm came up the coast of Maine and he was stranded in his Thoreau-like lean-to shack not build for heavy gales but summer frolic for a couple of days when Mile Road the sole road in or out, drowned smothered flooded marshland on both sides and so no escape except for the boat-worthy , was cut off sunken under five feet of water, he short of supplies and house fuel not having heard any forecast, his life-long sea trouble radar apparently failing him or maybe unadorned hubris from his quick decision to head north against all cautions after he gathered himself together post-court battle, and he finally knew what it was like to be totally dependent on happenstance, to siren call Mother Nature, on others, and, in the end on his own devises.

Or tonight, the winds blasting away against the open air door to his room, rain splashing down the wind -battered door seeping into the room a little, torrents of rain, torrents of thoughts, momentarily left to his own devises, left to his own thoughts. Just then he thought, that no, no he had been wrong, he really had been searching for that metaphor, that metaphor, that mighty storm metaphor, that would sum up his life.

Pardon Private Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesday December 12th, 5:00 PM

 

Stand In Solidarity With The Pre-Trial Events At Fort Meade.

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. For A Stand-Out For Bradley- Wednesday December 12th From 5:00-6:00 PM

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The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward a mid- winter trial now scheduled for February 2013. The recent news on his case has centered on the many (since last April) pre-trial motions hearings including defense motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial (Private Manning’s pre-trial confinement is now entering 900 plus days), dismissal as a matter of freedom of speech and alleged national security issues (issues for us to know what the hell the government is doing either in front of us, or behind our backs) and dismissal based on serious allegations of torturous behavior by the military authorities extending far up the chain of command while Private Manning was detained at the Quantico Marine brig for about a year ending in April 2011. The latest news from the November 2012 pre-trail sessions is the offer by the defense to plead guilty to lesser charges (wrongful, unauthorized use of the Internet, etc.) in order to clear the deck and have the major (with a possibility of a life sentence) espionage /aiding the enemy issue solely before the court-martial judge (a single military judge, the one who has been hearing the pre-trial motions, not a lifer-stacked panel).    

 

For the past several months there has been a weekly stand-out in Greater Boston across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop (renamed Pardon Bradley Manning Square for the stand-out’s duration) in Somerville on Friday afternoons but we have since July 4, 2012 changed the time and day to 4:00-5:00 PM on Wednesdays. This stand-out has, to say the least, been very sparsely attended. We need to build it up with more supporters present. This Wednesday December 12th  at 5:00 PM  in order to broaden our outreach we, in lieu of our regular Davis Square stand-out, are meeting in Central Square , Cambridge, Ma.(small park  at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue  and Prospect Street) for a stand-out for Private Manning. President Obama Pardon Private Manning Now!  

Short Play Clips- Shakespeare’s King Lear

 

Short Play Clips

King Lear, play by William Shakespeare, 16--

William Shakespeare’s play King Lear on the vagaries of aging, mental breakdown, daughterly duplicity, and other acts of skullduggery gets a workout in this performance headlined by Brian Blessed in the title role. The plot line here centers on the problem of royal inheritance in the female line and finial devotion, or assumed lack of it. After the division of the spoils all hell breaks loose as various parties, including those damn greedy daughters Goneril and Regan, work through their agendas for power. As is the case with medieval settings we are treated to battles, pledges and disavowal of loyalty and honor and a little off-hand romantic intrigue. The key to the play is the role of Lear, however, and his real or assumed madness, dotage or childishness. I confess that unlike other Shakespeare roles like Othello, Falstaff, Prince Hal and Richard the Third where I have seen several interpretations of the roles this is the first time I have seen this play so it is hard to evaluate Blessed’s performance. Off a reading of the play I would say that his is just a little too calculatingly teddy bearish. Notwithstanding that slight criticism, as always with Shakespeare, get the play on film for the language, all three hours and twenty minutes of it. That is almost always worth the price of admission.

Dorchester (Ma.) People For Peace To Honor Bradley-December 10th

Dorchester (Ma.) People For Peace To Honor Bradley-December 10th

Dorchester People For Peace Annual Awards Dinner-December 10, 2012 -6:00-9:00 PM Vietnamese –American Center, 9 Charles Street (Fields Corner Station on Red Line), Dorchester (Boston), Massachusetts

Over the past several months as the Private Bradley Manning case has gained more publicity as a trial date has approached (scheduled now for mid-winter 2013) his cause has been aided immensely by an open declaration of support for his freedom by three Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire, and Adolfo Perez Esquivel. In one of those ironies of history they are asking a fellow Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, U.S. President Barack Obama, to release current Nobel Peace Prize nominee Private Manning from his jails.

That is the high political profile end of the support for Private Manning. But down in the anti-war trenches, down where the questions of war and peace are matters of personal, and life or death, interest there is also growing support for Private Manning’s cause. An example of this is Private Manning ‘s selection this year as a recipient of a Peace Prize from the Dorchester People for Peace, a grassroots organization with long time and long worked at roots in that multi-cultural working class neighborhood of Boston. This may not have the prestige of the Nobel Peace Prize but Private Manning should cherish it just as much. Join DPP in honoring Private Manning on December 10th. A representative of the local Bradley Manning Support Group (and member of Veterans for Peace, a strong supporter of his defense) in Boston will accept and pass on the award to Private Manning.

From The American Left History Blog Archives- (2007) A Small Victory- On The Death Penalty-In Remembrance Of Troy Davis

 

One of the best pieces of political wisdom I have ever received, and that from an old communist, is that a left political militant must make sure to protect the gains of the past political fights after going on to fight new battles. The nature of capitalist politics is such that no hard-fought political gain comes with an automatic guarantee that it is not reversible. Additionally, I was told that if the political tide is running against you and you cannot hold on to those hard fought gains then you must keep up the propaganda fight and not give into the reactionary flow. Enduring a seemingly never-ending stream of political and social reversals in the ‘culture wars’ over the last few decades that advice has kept my head above water.

In my ‘flaming’ at first liberal, then radical youth three issues formed the core of my political beliefs: the fight for black civil right in the South (and later in the North); the fight for nuclear disarmament; and, the fight against the barbaric death penalty. A look at the current political landscape confirms that those struggles are still in dire need of completion. One need only look at the current fight for freedom for the Jena Six down in Louisiana, the overflowing American nuclear arsenal and the fact that 37 states and the federal government still have the death penalty on their books. This last fact is what I am interested in commenting on today.

On Thursday December 14, 2007 the New Jersey Assembly voted, apparently mainly along party lines, to abolish the death penalty in that state. As a result it only awaits the governor’s signature to become law and thus become the first state in forty years to take such action. The governor has indicated that he will sign the legislation. What is more, other states are in various stages of taking the same action. And, of course, there is an unofficial moratorium in place while the United States Supreme Court decides whether lethal injection in the administration of the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. So the worm turns, perhaps.

During the past decade there has been more than enough evidence from such sources as DNA testing to the results of the various Innocent Projects to convince any rationale person that the administration of the death penalty and even the idea of that ultimate act as a penalty is ‘arbitrary and capricious’, as the language of the legal decisions would have it. In the New Jersey debate one Democratic Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo was quoted by Tom Hester, Jr. of the Associated Press as saying “It’s time New Jersey got out of the execution business. Capital punishment is costly, discriminatory, immoral, and barbaric. We’re a better state that one that puts people to death.” Well put. I would only add that from my leftist perspective we do not want to concede to this government the power over life and death for the guilty or the innocent. Put concretely in today’s political terms we do not want the George W. Bushes of the world to have that power.

Coming from Massachusetts, the state that sent the framed-up and martyred Sacco and Vanzetti to their executions, in my youth I was strongly aware of the injustice of the death penalty. One of my early political acts in high school was to attend the annual memorial meeting here in their honor. Moreover, in my household at least, there were always whispers about the injustice done to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Not out of any political sympathy but from the traditional Catholic antipathy to the death penalty. Those were the days when we had the death penalty advocates somewhat on the run but the spirit of the Sixties barely outlasted the decade as the yahoos went on a rampart for reintroduction. Pardon me then if I see just a little glimmer of light that we may have turned the corner on this issue again. But, as noted above, we better keep fighting like hell just the same.       

Workers Vanguard No. 1012	9 November 2012

Free the Class-War Prisoners!

27th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

This year marks the 27th Holiday Appeal for class-war prisoners, those thrown behind bars for their opposition to racist capitalist oppression. The Partisan Defense Committee provides monthly stipends to 16 of these prisoners as well as holiday gifts for them and their families. This is a revival of the tradition of the early International Labor Defense (ILD) under its secretary and founder James P. Cannon. The stipends are a necessary expression of solidarity with the prisoners—a message that they are not forgotten.

Launching the ILD’s appeal for the prisoners, Cannon wrote, “The men in prison are still part of the living class movement” (“A Christmas Fund of our Own,” Daily Worker, 17 October 1927). Cannon noted that the stipends program “is a means of informing them that the workers of America have not forgotten their duty toward the men to whom we are all linked by bonds of solidarity.” This motivation inspires our program today. The PDC also continues to publicize the causes of the prisoners in the pages of Workers Vanguard, the PDC newsletter, Class-Struggle Defense Notes, and our Web site partisandefense.org. We provide subscriptions to WV and accompany the stipends with reports on the PDC’s work. In a recent letter, MOVE prisoner Eddie Africa wrote, “I received the letters and the money, thank you for both, it’s a good feeling to have friends remembering you with affection!”

The Holiday Appeal raises the funds for this vital program. The PDC provides $25 per month to the prisoners, and extra for their birthdays and during the holiday season. We would like to provide more. The prisoners generally use the funds for basic necessities: supplementing the inadequate prison diet, purchasing stamps and writing materials needed to maintain contact with family and comrades, and pursuing literary, artistic, musical and other pursuits to mollify a bit the living hell of prison. The costs of these have obviously grown, including the exponential growth in prison phone charges.

The capitalist rulers have made clear their continuing determination to slam the prison doors on those who stand in the way of brutal exploitation, imperialist depredations and racist oppression. We encourage WV readers, trade-union activists and fighters against racist oppression to dig deep for the class-war prisoners. The 16 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below:

*   *   *

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Last December the Philadelphia district attorney’s office announced it was dropping its longstanding efforts to execute America’s foremost class-war prisoner. While this brings to an end the legal lynching campaign, Mumia remains condemned to spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence.

Mumia was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and was initially sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Mountains of documentation proving his innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner, have been submitted to the courts. But from top to bottom, the courts have repeatedly refused to hear the exculpatory evidence.

The state authorities hope that with the transfer of Mumia from death row his cause will be forgotten and that he will rot in prison until he dies. This must not be Mumia’s fate. Fighters for Mumia’s freedom must link his cause to the class struggles of the multiracial proletariat. Trade unionists, opponents of the racist death penalty and fighters for black rights must continue the fight to free Mumia from “slow death” row in the racist dungeons of Pennsylvania.

Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier’s frame-up for the 1975 deaths of two marauding FBI agents in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, shows what capitalist “justice” is all about. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 68-year-old Peltier is still locked away. Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family. He is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another 12 years!

Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 35th year of prison. They were sentenced to 30-100 years after the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings. None have been released.

Lynne Stewart is a radical lawyer sentenced to ten years for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric imprisoned for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. For this advocate known for defense of Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state, her sentence may well amount to a death sentence as she is 73 years old and suffers from breast cancer. Originally sentenced to 28 months, her resentencing more than quadrupled her prison time in a loud affirmation by the Obama administration that there will be no letup in the massive attack on democratic rights under the “war on terror.” This year her appeal of the onerous sentence was turned down.

Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Their children were kidnapped at gunpoint by the Feds.

The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals during the Vietnam antiwar movement and by New Leftists who wrote off the possibility of winning the working class to a revolutionary program and saw themselves as an auxiliary of Third World liberation movements. But, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.

Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now spent more than 40 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long-suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.

Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious torture chamber, Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in California, a focal point for hunger strikes against grotesquely inhuman conditions.

Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.

Short Book Clips- A Biography Of An American Communist-James P. Cannon

Short Book Clips

JAMES P. CANNON AND THE ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY LEFT, 1890-1928, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS, 2007

I have reviewed many of the writings of the American revolutionary James P. Cannon elsewhere in this space. This review should serve as an interim evaluation of this excellent biography of the premier Communist leader to come out of that movement in the 20^th century. As such it is long overdue and, as pointed out below timely. I have read through this book once but want to read it again before making a full evaluation. I also want to dig more deeply into the incredible number of footnotes, perhaps more than the average reader may comprehend, the author has provided. More later. Kudos to Professor Palmer.

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.

At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent `death of communism' it may seem fantastic and utopian to today's militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American Socialist Revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.

For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction and copious footnotes by the author give an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities, where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the `dog days' of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal dispute in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.

As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. I have, as is the nature of the case, dwelt here on Cannon’s development as a Communist in the early days of that party. When I update this review I will discuss his formative years in Kansas, his father’s tutelage in his development as a socialist, his self-education in the rough and tumble of socialist and IWW (Wobblies) politics and some details of his personal life as they affected his political development. For now, if you want to know what it was like in the 'hothouse' (some would say loony bin) in the early days this is the book for you. Hopefully the author will continue this biography further to the, in many ways later more decisive events, that finished Cannon’s education as a communist leader.

Short Book Clips-The Heyday of the Philadelphia Quaker Merchants

Short Book Clips

Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia 1682-1763, Frederick B. Tolles, W.W. Norton and Co., New York, 1948

As I noted previously in a review of Paul E. Johnson’s A Shopkeeper’s Millennium, an account of the rise of the industrial capitalists of Rochester, New York in the 1830’s, in any truly socialist understanding of history the role of the class struggle plays a central role. Any thoughtful socialist wants to, in fact needs to, know how the various classes in society were formed, and transformed, over time. A lot of useful work in this area has been done by socialist scholars. One thinks of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, for example. One does not, however, need to be a socialist to do such research in order to provide us with plenty of ammunition in our fight for a better world. Frederick Tolles account of the importance of Philadelphia Quaker merchants in pre-revolutionary America is another such work.

The last time we had heard from the Quakers in this space was as part of British historian Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down, an account of the turbulent 1640-60 period in English revolutionary history where they formed one of the many sects that immerged from that experience (and were among the last armed defenders of the Cromwellian republican experiment). Well, in the reaction of the Stuart Restoration the Quakers got quiet, very quiet or immigrated from Merry Old England. The immigrants who wound up in William Penn’s Pennsylvania are the subject of this narrative. These Quakers brought their religion, but also their fierce sense of ‘calling’ with them. As a result, for a period anyway, they formed the mercantile elite of that colony. Moreover, their success formed an important component for the latter industrial capitalist development of this region in the 19^th century.

As Professor Tolles cogently point out in the post- revolutionary Stuart Quaker persecution two trends developed both in England and America. One was a fierce sense of communitarianism as regard the ‘world’ and their fellow Quakers wherever they were and the other a need to be ‘making and doing in the world. As they gained financial success some of the rough edges of their religious experiences fated into the past. This culminated in a three-quarter of a century political domination of colonial Pennsylvania. During this period they also left their imprint on many facets of social life. Professor Tolles details those developments, as well.

The good professor spent some time going through the overall Quaker experience in Pennsylvania. The successful Quaker domination of trading and the crafts has been noted above. They also placed their imprint on the financial system, the social mores of the credit system, land use, architecture, the manner of dress, education and the use of personal and social time. Some of this overlaps with the general Puritan ethic of the period prevalent in most colonies but the Quaker experience is dominated by much more anguish over the tension between individual achievement and social responsibility than the puritan ethic is. That this Quaker experiment did not outlast the revolution and the rise of industrial capitalism, in hindsight, seems a forgone conclusion. But damn, that peace witness central to the Quaker belief might have changed things around a little if they hadn’t, in the end, gone quiet and introspective on us.

Short Book Clips-“Woman’s Sphere” in the Rise of American Capitalism-

Short Book Clips

The Bonds of Womanhood:“Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835, Nancy F. Cott, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1977

As I noted previously in a review of Paul E. Johnson’s A Shopkeeper’s Millennium, an account of the rise of the industrial capitalists of Rochester, New York in the 1830’s, in any truly socialist understanding of history the role of the class struggle plays a central role. However, the uneven development of society throughout history has created other forms of oppression that need to be address. In America the question of the special oppression of blacks as a race clearly fits that demand. And everywhere the woman question cries out for solution.

Any thoughtful socialist wants to, in fact needs to, know how the various classes in society were formed, and transformed, over time. I have mentioned previously that a lot of useful work in this area has been done by socialist scholars. One thinks of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, for example. One needs to have a sense about the evolution of the forms of woman’s oppression, as well. One does not, however, need to be a socialist to do such research in order to provide us with plenty of ammunition in our fight for a better world. One of the great developments of the past thirty or forty years is the dramatic increase in research, leader by the feminist resurgence, on woman’s history. The book under review here Nancy Cott’s study of the role of women in early capitalist America, The Bonds of Womanhood, is an early such addition.

I have mentioned in other reviews of this period in American history that the changes from an agrarian/mercantile society at the time of the American Revolution to the contours of an industrial society in the Age of Jackson were dramatic and longstanding. This was also the case with the role of women. Women, due to their biological function have always been central to the cohesion of the family throughout class history. The form that has taken however has varied with changes in the economic superstructure. Thus such occurrences, due to the nature of industrial development, as the decrease in extended families, the dividing of work from the home, the putting out system, the dominance of the male as ‘breadwinner’ and the domestication of women as center of family life had profound changes in the way the family related to the world, the way children were socialized and the way woman subordinated their desires and creativity to the tasks at hand. Sound familiar?

Professor Cott makes her case for this observable changes by looking at changes of various types of New England families from self-sufficient farmers to producers for the market, etc. She also relies heavily, as all historians of necessity must, on the record left behind by women mainly through their diaries. There are certain methodological problems inherent in that approach and a tendency to generalize off of the relatively small numbers for whom a record survives but nevertheless her early would is the starting place for a better understanding of the crisis in the family that occurred with the rise of capitalism in America. I would note as a sidelight that her digging up various self-help manuals for child-rearing and other domestic responsibilities was quite interesting. Dr. Spock in the last generation and today Oprah and Doctor Phil and their ilk thus come from a long pedigree of those who had something to say about the correct raising of YOUR children. Read on.

Short Book Clips –“T” for Texas- Larry McMurtry’s “Cadillac Jack” Is In The House-

Short Book Clips

Cadillac Jack, Larry McMurtry

With the exception of reviews of the book and movie version of  The Last Picture Show the usual mention that I make about Larry McMurtry revolves around his reviews works of the history of the Old West (most recently on General Custer) in the New York Review of Books. I know three things about him from those articles. He loves books, I mean he really loves them. He loves the Old West, a place where he grew up (deep in the heart of Texas). And he loves to talk about swap meets, etc. That is important here because this seemingly bedraggled profession is central to the story that he tells here.

Cadillac Jack is an ex-professional cowboy turned (to be kind) second-hand enterpreour. At least, that is his cover for this story. The major action of the story is centered in the secondary power lanes of Washington, D.C., the Beltway, but not, you the big guys, yah, not the lobbyist on 14^th and K.  But still inside 495 so watch out-those guys have that mean and hungry look that Shakespeare warned about in Julius Caesar.  Now what can one expect from an old cowboy trying to get messed up with that crowd. Those guys will eat toy for lunch and have time for dessert. They make bull riding or auction cruising seem like a day in the park.  What really ails old Cadillac is his success with the women (surprise, surprise) although he seems to have had his fair share of experiences with them. What ties the whole story together, as in my limited experience with McMurtry’s  work  seems to always do, is the doings (and undoings) of a strong secondary set of characters who are either buying or selling something, not always legally.  Needless to say I need to investigate Mr. McMurtry’s work further. But, dear reader, this is not a bad place to start.     

Short Film Clip - Mountain Dew- The Carter Family In Film- A PBS Documentary Review

Film Clip

Will The Circle Be Unbroken, The Carter Family. PBS

I have reviewed the various CD’d put out by the Carter Family elsewhere in this space. Many of the thoughts expressed there apply here, as well. The recent, now somewhat eclipsed, renewed interest in the mountain music of the 1920’s and 30’s highlighted in such films as The Song Catcher and Brother, Where Art Thou necessarily had to create a renewed interest in the Carter Family. I might add that the success of the Walk the Line about the relationship between the legendary Johnny Cash and one of the next generations of Carter’s, June expanded on that base.

What this PBS production has done, and done well, is put the music of the Carters in perspective as it relates to their time, their religious sentiments and their roots in the simple mountain lifestyle. I have mentioned elsewhere and it bears repeating here that this fundamentalist religious sentiment expressed throughout their work does not have that same razor-edged feel that we find with today’s evangelicals. They took their beating during the Scopes Trial era and turned inward. Fair enough. That thy also produced some very simple and interesting music is the product of that withdrawal.

 

Short Film Clips – Robert Altman’s 1970s “California Split-The Stuff that Dreams are Made of, Part III

Film Clip

California Split, starring George Segal, Elliot Gould, directed by Robert Altman

Okay, to keep things straight Dashiell Hammet’s Maltese Falcon was Part I, John Huston’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre was Part II, and here with California Split we have Part III of the age old dream of humankind to get rich without having to work, or do much of it. Or is there something else that holds life (and these films together? The business is the open for the quest- for the damn bird in Maltese, the damn pot of gold in Treasure or the damn jackpot here. The end of this film tells it all. After finishing up on a winning streak to end all winning streaks when it is time to divvy up the cash there is no closure. That is the message; still it is nice to think of getting the payoff without having to work for it. After all, humankind has spend a many millennia organizing itself and creating labor–saving devices for just such a condition. Except someone forget to tell the few greed heads that this social product was to be for the benefit of every one.

The early to mid 1970’s was the heyday of the male ‘buddy’. The films of Robert Redford done with Paul Newman like the Sting come to mind. Here Elliot Gould (as Charley) and George Segal (as Bill) two compulsive gamblers who will bet on anything at any time make a run for the roses in Reno. Along the way they get beat up, taken, and every other imaginable scenario before they get their stake for the run. Today such a scenario would include some time in a twelve step program but that is neither here nor there. These two certainly have chemistry working off each other Segal is the moody, enigmatic one; Gould is the classic hustler of the literary imagination. He would find congenial company in a Damon Runyon story. I might add that the romance of gambling for a livelihood certainly gets a workout here. My experience at race tracks and betting parlors has not included these wholesome types. But enough see this movie.

THE GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDDADDY OF MODERN REVOLUTIONARIES-Honor Oliver Cromwell

BOOK REVIEW

GOD’S ENGLISHMAN-OLIVER CROMWELL AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. Christopher Hill, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1970

The late eminent British Marxist historian Christopher Hill, more noted for studies (to be reviewed later, elsewhere) of the ‘underclass’ in the English Revolution of 1640-1660, has written a serviceable biography of the outstanding bourgeois leader of the English Revolution-Oliver Cromwell.  Professor Hill in his analysis displays Cromwell ‘warts and all’ in order to place him in proper historical perspective. Other biographers, particularly British biographers, seem to have never forgiven Cromwell his ‘indiscretion’ of beheading Charles I and therefore dismiss his importance in the fight for bourgeois democracy. Professor Hill has no such inhibition.

This writer’s sympathies lie more with the social program put forth by John Lilburne and the Levellers and the social actions of Gerard Winstanley and the True Levellers (or Diggers) on Saint George’s Hill. Hill’s studies of those movements and others, as expressed in the religious terms of the day, initially drew me to the study of the English Revolution. Nevertheless, those plebian-based programs in the England of the 1600’s were more a vision (a vision in many ways still in need of realization) than a practical reality. Even Cromwell’s achievements were a near and partially reversible thing. Such are the ways of humankind’s history. 

For leftists Cromwell therefore is not the natural hero of that Revolution. However, his role as military leader of the parliamentary armies when it counted, his fight for the political supremacy of the rising bourgeois class to which he belonged and his practical discrediting of the theory of the divine right of kings-by beheading the defeated king- Charles I place him in the Pantheon of our revolutionary forbears. For today’s leftists these are the ‘lessons’, so to speak, that we can learn from Cromwell’s struggle.

The English Revolution was by any definition a great revolution. It is therefore interesting to compare and contrast that revolution to the two other great revolutions of the modern era- the French and the Russian. The most notably thing all three have in common is once the old regime has been defeated it is necessary to reconstruct the governmental apparatus on a new basis, parliamentary rule, assembly rule or soviet role. The obvious contrast between revolutions is what class takes power- patricians or plebeians?  That has been the underlying strain of all modern social revolutionary movements. Who holds power in the end of the process is a different question.

Cromwell, unlike Napoleon or Stalin, was from the beginning both a key military and political leader on the parliamentary side. Moreover, in the final analysis it was his skill in organizing the New Model Army (the famous Ironsides) that was decisive for the parliamentary victories. Thus, the army played an unusually heavy role in the political struggles, especially among the plebian masses which formed the core of the army (through the ‘Agitators’). In an age when there were no parties, in the modern sense, the plebian base of the army is where the political fight to extend parliamentary democracy was waged. That it was defeated by military action led by Cromwell at Burford in 1649 represented a defeat for plebian democracy. In that sense Cromwell also represented the Thermidorian reaction (from the French Revolutionary period represented by the overthrow of Robespierre and Saint Just by more moderate Jacobins in 1794) that has been noted by historians as a condition that occurs when the revolutionary energies become exhausted. Thus, Cromwell is central to the rise of the revolutionary movement and its dissipation. For other examples, read this book.    

 

 

 

NOTE- The above review has not dealt with Oliver Cromwell and the Irish question. The central importance of Cromwell in his time was his role in the development of parliamentary supremacy, the revolutionary role of armed forces in the conflict with the old regime, and discrediting the theory of the divine right of kings. For those efforts his rightly holds a place in revolutionary history.  Cromwell’s Irish policy, if one can call the deliberate military subjugation of a whole people and indiscriminate slaughter a policy, was ugly. This writer makes no apologies for it.  Note well, however, that no British political leader up to and including Mr. Tony Blair has had a good policy on the Irish question. That is a question that British and Irish revolutionaries will have to deal with when they take power and finally make some retribution for the wretched history of Irish-English relations.            

From The Archives Of The “American Left History” Blog (2006) ISRAEL OUT OF LEBANON NOW –DEFEND THE LEBANESE PEOPLE!

Markin comment (2012): So things in this wicked old world don't change much just a twist here or there...

 

…Nor in this particular case are we concerned about a ‘proxy’ war being fought by Hezbollah on behalf of Iran and/ or Syria. Or Israel as a 'proxy' for American imperialism. These opponents have their own scores to settle. While Hezbollah has apparently long been supplied by Iran and or Syria the forces on the ground are a quasi-Lebanese national army in South Lebanon. This is in fact an old fight between these opponents. Only now it appears, one way or the other, it is going to be fought to the finish. 

Israel is a modern, sub-imperialist capitalist state which has overwhelming military superiority in this contest. Lebanon, after the destructive events of the past 30 years, is barely a nation-state. Hezbollah’s militia, for all intents and purposes, stands in as the Lebanese national army in South Lebanon.  Given the vast disproportion between the forces in dispute leftists are duty bound to stand in defense of the weaker force here- Hezbollah’s militia. A military victory here for Israel is not in the interest of the oppressed of the world, including Israel’s own working classes. As a practical matter militant leftists here must call for the American and other governments to stop military shipments to Israel. Now! I told you it wasn’t pretty.  

I hope that I am not the only militant leftist who is feeling squeamish about the duty to defend Hezbollah’s militia against the Israeli onslaught. They are not even making a pretense that their actions are a ‘second front’ in aid of the beleaguered Palestinian people who are in desperate straits in Gaza and the West Bank. That would, at least, give us a little something to hang on to Moreover, Hezbollah, as I understand it, in Arabic means “Army of God”. Hell, militant leftists are in a bad way in the Middle East when the “Army of God” is the ‘progressive’ side in a conflict.   

When the deal goes down Hezbollah is eventually the same force we will have to fight if we want to see a desperately needed socialist solution in the Middle East as hard as that is to imagine today. If anyone needs a quick history lesson on this remember the kindred spirits of Hezbollah who, gladly assisted by the American government, fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. Most of those fighters went on to form the Taliban, No. These are definitely not our people. However, that is another fight for another time. Right now in this situation this is what we are up against. Yes, we make our own history- but, damn, let’s start to set the terms of engagement around so we can at least support forces that can see past the 8^th century. Enough said.

 

From The Archives Of The Class Struggle- Documents Of The Levellers In The English Revolution

 

 

The names John Lilburne, Robert Overton and William Walwyn, key radicals in the leftist phase of the English revolution do not come to mind when thinking of the leaders of the English Revolution like Robespierre and Saint Just do for the French Revolution and Lenin and Trotsky do for the Russian Revolution, but they should. They represented the heart of the London-centered programmatically- based plebian urban artisan democratic opposition to monarchy and hierarchic rule. Although Oliver Cromwell is, from a military perspective at least, more justly recognized as a destroyer of the principle of monarchy from a historical perspective the documents of the Levelers presented here in detail represent a precious accrual of propaganda for all later democratic movements.

As far as the English revolution is concerned this writer’s sympathies lie with the social program put forth by John Lilburne and the Levellers and the social actions of Gerard Winstanley and the True Levellers (or Diggers) on Saint George’s Hill. The English historian Christopher Hill’s studies of those movements and others, as expressed in the religious terms of the day, initially drew me to the study of the English Revolution. Those plebian-based democratic programs in the England of the 1600’s were more a vision (a vision in many ways still in need of realization) than a practical reality. Even Cromwell’s achievements were a near and partially reversible thing. Such are the ways of humankind’s history. 

The English Revolution was by any definition a great revolution. It is therefore interesting to compare and contrast that revolution to the two other great revolutions of the modern era- the French and the Russian. The most notably thing all three have in common is once the old regime has been defeated it is necessary to reconstruct the governmental apparatus on a new basis, parliamentary rule, assembly rule or soviet role, as the case may be. The obvious contrast between revolutions is what class takes power- patricians or plebeians?  That has been the underlying strain of all modern social revolutionary movements. The defeat  of the Levellers and their democratic program, based as it was on the relatively small urban artisan class  and their supporters in the New Model Army demonstrates that they were just a little to early in the development of the capitalist modern world to succeed.

The editor has provided a good introduction to these documents which places the struggle for adoption of such Leveller programs as the various Agreements of the People in proper perspective for those not familiar with the details of the English Revolution. I note, as the editor does, that the army played an unusually heavy role in the political struggles, especially among the plebian masses which formed the core of the army (through the ‘Agitators’). In an age when there were no parties, in the modern sense, the plebian base of the army is where the political fight to extend parliamentary democracy was waged. That it was defeated by military action led by Cromwell at Burford in 1649 represented a defeat for plebian democracy. Thus, the political fortunes of the Levellers rose and fell with their influence in the army. In the latter revolutions mentioned above urban-based political parties that the army as a sword of the revolution. That is quite a different proposition Read on.