AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Bob Feldman : The Rise of the Texas 'Big Rich,' 1930-1940

Charles Marsh, owner of the Austin American and Austin Statesman (later merged as the Austin American-Statesman), also made big money in the oil business. Image from the Public Welfare Foundation.
The hidden history of Texas

Part 11: 1930-1940/2 -- The rise of the Texas 'Big Rich'

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / January 28, 2013

In his 2009 book, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes, Vanity Fair magazine correspondent Bryan Burrough indicated how ultra-rich Texas folks like Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, and former Austin American and Austin Statesman (they merged into the American-Statesman) owner Charles Marsh were, despite the Great Depression, apparently still able to make big money from Texas’s oil industry between 1930 and 1940:

Though he knew nothing about pipelines, Murchison decided to try to build one... Murchison was amazed how simple the business was; once a pipeline was built, all he did was sit back and collect checks... The pipe alone cost 3 million dollars, all of which Murchison got on credit... He coaxed every last dollar he could out of the Dallas banks, then pushed back repayment... By 1932 his debt had grown to more than $4 million dollars, far more than his net worth...

[H.L.] Hunt used most of his inheritance to buy a 960-acre farm... Negroes worked his land, allowing Hunt to spend much of his time playing cards... By that...summer of 1930 he still hadn’t found a drop of oil in Texas. Then, on Sept. 5 [1930], Hunt took a call... Despite Hunt’s later denials, court documents would show he cut a secret deal with the Deep Rock driller to supply his men with inside information in return for $20,000 in cash...

Charles E. Marsh, co-owner of several Texas newspapers, including the politically influential Austin-American...was using his spare cash to bankroll several Texas wildcatters... It is a measure of how totally Sid Richardson cloaked his business in secrecy that the name of Charles Marsh, the man whose backing made Richardson’s fortune possible, remained unknown to Richardson’s family...

Marsh...had begun negotiating a complicated deal involving First National Bank of Dallas... It appears that Marsh agreed to guarantee Richardson’s debt to the bank. In return, the bank agreed to loan Richardson an additional $210,000, followed by another $150,000... By the summer of 1935 Richardson had used most of Charles Marsh’s investment to buy land all around Gulf’s drill sites...

In 1938, Marsh encountered a sudden...financial reversal... From a single mention in a letter to Richardson -- contained in Marsh’s papers at the Johnson Presidential Library -- it appears that the Internal Revenue Service served Marsh with a request for $1.2 million in overdue taxes... Marsh was forced to repay much of the money. To raise it, he ended up selling all his Texas newspapers.”

Coincidentally, like Sid Richardson, former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson also apparently was backed by former Austin-American and Austin-Statesman newspaper owner Charles Marsh during the 1930s, when LBJ (also using $10,000 that was given to him by the father of First Lady Claudia “Ladybird” Johnson) decided in 1937 that he wanted to get himself elected as Austin’s representative in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1938. As Ronnie Dugger observed in his 1982 book The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson:

Johnson had a special advantage: the partisanship of the Austin newspapers. Charles Marsh... was owner and publisher of the Austin American-Statesman as well as the dailies in 4 or 5 other Texas cities, and he was for Lyndon from the first. Marsh...had been in oil deals...since as early as 1934... Marsh was also... a director and president of Richardson Oils, Inc., which gave Johnson a direct connection to oilman Sid Richardson...

Although the Austin dailies did not formally endorse anyone, Marsh turned them into Lyndon’s harmonicas. "These papers went all-out for him" said Edmonds Travis, one of their earliest editors... From the time the Johnsons arrived in Washington they frequented "Longlea," the plantation home of their friend, publisher Charles Marsh, in Culpeper, Virginia...The publisher also flew Johnson about in his private plane.

And, according to The Big Rich, LBJ also “used Texas Oil’s cash to start his march to... power.”

Besides helping to put Lyndon Johnson into Congress between 1930 and 1940 (and into the U.S. Senate and the White House, eventually, after 1940), Texas “oil money helped bankroll the birth of the religious right;” and “in a very real sense, the influence of Texas conservatives in America today -- in fact, the entire `Texanization’ of right-wing politics that brought George W. Bush and Tom DeLay to national prominence -- can be traced to forces set into motion by restive Texas oilmen during the 1930s,” according to The Big Rich. As the same book also noted:

By 1935...the Kirby Building in downtown Houston was home to...shadowy, interconnected ultra-conservative groups... The Kirby groups were little more than the Ku Klux Klan in pinstripes, a kind of corporate Klan... One of [former National Association of Manufacturers President John Henry] Kirby’s most active allies was Maco Stewart of Galveston, an attorney who...had seen his wealth mushroom when Humble found oil on land he owned south of Houston... The most extreme of Kirby’s circle was George W. Armstrong, a Fort Worth oilman who owned Texas Steel, which made oil field supplies as well as concrete supports for Texas highways...

In his definitive study of Texas conservatives, The Establishment in Texas Politics, George Norris Green pinpoints 1938 as the year oil-backed ultra-conservatives took control of the state’s political structure... Pappy O’Daniel’s victory [in 1938] initiated two decades of ultra-conservative rule in Texas. As governor, O’Daniel became Texas Oil’s reliable partner, freezing wellhead taxes and backing oil industry lobbyists’ takeover of the Railroad Commission. His administration was dominated by ultra-conservatives, many of them oilmen, including his key financial backer, Maco Stewart...

Another ultra-conservative initiative was led by...Texas congressman...Martin Dies, who in 1937 co-sponsored formation of the House Un-American Activities Committee [HUAC]... John Henry Kirby and Maco Stewart were friends and longtime financial supporters of Dies, who was widely viewed as a tool of business and oil interests in the Beaumont area... Dies’s papers indicate he corresponded regularly with Kirby and Stewart.

[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.]

The Rag Blog
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14 January 2013

Bob Feldman : Texas During the Great Depression, 1930-1940

Jobless men picket at San Antonio City Hall, c. 1932. Image from the San Antonio Light Collection, UT Institute of Texan Cultures.
The hidden history of Texas

Part 11: 1930-1940/1 -- Economic survival difficult during Great Depression

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / January 14, 2013

[This is the first section of Part 11 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

The oil industry of Texas continued to produce a lot of wealth for out-of-state Eastern investors, some local Texas businessmen, politicians, and investors, and the “non-profit” University of Texas during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But for most people who lived in Texas as farmers or workers between 1930 and 1940, economic survival continued to be difficult.

In an essay, “Women and Work During the Great Depression in Texas,” that appeared in the 2002 book that Donald Willett and Stephen Curley edited, titled Invisible Texans: Women and Minorities in Texas History, Baylor University Oral History Program Director Rebecca Sharpless described what life was like for most people who lived in Texas between 1930 and 1940:

Cotton families made up most of the rural population in Texas... In 1932, cotton prices hit a low of 5 cents a pound... Farmers spent more money raising their crops than they received for the sale. West Texans, furthermore, endured the miserable conditions known as the Dust Bowl. Between 1933 and 1936, drought scorched the land... Only the fortunate minority had running water in the house. Most rural families used outdoor toilets, known as privies... Most rural and town women still cooked on wood stoves... .

The majority of Texas farmers worked land owned by someone else... Many landowners... turned their tenants off the land... Between 1930 and 1940 the number of tenants in some parts of the state dropped by half... Many unemployed farmers were forced to go on government relief... By mid-1932, an estimated 400,000 Texans were out of work...

During the 1930s, more than half a million Texas women worked for wages. In urban areas, this group encompassed about 25 percent of Anglo women, about 25 percent of Mexican women, and 55 percent of African-American women... In 1932, researchers for the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. government found that women in Texas industries worked for the lowest wages in the nation... More than three-quarters of employed African-American women in Texas worked as domestic servants throughout the 1930s.

According to Randolph Campbell’s Gone To Texas:

The value of farms in Texas would fall from $3.6 billion in 1930 to $2.6 billion in 1940... The state had fewer manufacturing establishments in 1939 than in 1929, and workers... received less in wages. As late as 1940 more than 300,000 Texans had no employment in private enterprises... Black tenants... decreased in number from 65,000 to 32,000... Unemployment among black farm laborers probably ran as high as 90 percent by 1935... An estimated 250,000 Mexicans... left the state between 1929 and 1939.

Most of the Latino people of Mexican descent in Texas who left the state during the 1930s moved to Mexico, and “many left because they were denied access to government relief programs or fell victim to an intense federal repatriation program,” according to the same book.

Around 20,000 African-Americans who lived in Texas also left the state between 1930 and 1940; and “as late as 1937 Negroes formed 25 percent of all unemployed persons” in Texas, though they only “composed 14 percent” of the state’s population, according to Alwyn Barr’s Black Texans.

In San Antonio, most of the white Anglo women who had jobs between 1930 and 1940 either worked in shops as sales clerks or in offices as clerical workers, while most of the Latina women of Mexican descent who had jobs worked in light industries, the food canning industry, garment factories, cigar rolling firms, pecan shelling firms or as seamstresses.

Although Houston’s unemployment rate in January 1931 was around 23 percent, “Austin, cushioned by the presence of state government employees and the University of Texas probably suffered the least among major cities” in Texas, according to Gone To Texas. So, not surprisingly, during the 1930s the number of people who lived in Austin increased by 66 percent; and by 1940, 88,000 people now resided in Austin. As the “Women and Work During the Great Depression in Texas ” essay recalled:

In Austin... young white women could find employment in the state capital, in various places: state institutions and agencies, the telephone exchange, local mercantile establishments, chain variety stores, laundries, hotels and cafes, beauty parlors, canning factories, or binderies...”

But “black women could find jobs only in laundries, domestic service, and sometimes hotels as `scrub women’ or chamber maids,” “Mexican women could gain employment in canning factories, domestic services, laundries, and occasionally as seamstresses in dry goods stores,” and “the supply of rural women wanting work became so great that the local telephone service began to requiring applicants to have a high school diploma and a year of residence in Austin,” according to the same essay.

[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.]

The Rag Blog
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27 December 2012

Bob Feldman : Race, Unions, and the Booming Texas Oil Business, 1920-1930

Burkburnett oil field, Burkburnett, Texas, circa 1920. Image from Texas in the 1920s.
The hidden history of Texas

Part 10: 1920-1930/2 -- Race, exploitation of workers, and the booming oil business

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / December 27, 2012

[This is the second section of Part 10 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

In 1920 over 741,000 African-Americans lived in Texas. But given the level of KKK influence in Texas and the limited political and economic opportunities that white supremacist and institutionally racist Texas society generally provided most African-Americans between 1920 and 1930, “a good many African-Americans,” not surprisingly, “left the state in the 1920s,” according to Randolph Campbell’s Gone To Texas.

But between 1920 and 1930 the number of Latinos in Texas of Mexican descent increased from over 251,000 to nearly 684,000, and by 1930, 10 percent of Austin’s population was now of Mexican descent.

Although the number of African-Americans who worked for wages as farm laborers in Texas decreased from 75,000 to 41,000 between 1910 and 1930 (due, in part, to the increasing mechanization of agricultural work), 20,000 African-Americans in Texas still owned their own farms (on which most grew cotton) in 1930.

Yet between 1900 and 1930, the number of African-Americans in Texas who were now just tenant farmers increased from 45,000 to 65,000; and 70 percent of all African-American farmers in Texas were just tenant farmers by 1930. In addition, about 64 percent of African-Americans who worked for wages were at this time employed in non-agricultural work in Texas, mostly as servants or unskilled laborers.

Most workers in Texas -- whether white, African-American, or of Mexican descent -- who attempted to organize themselves into unions were apparently exploited or repressed between 1920 and 1930 by the white corporate power structure in Texas. As F. Ray Marshall’s Labor in the South recalled:

The anti-union campaign was particularly vigorous in Texas. In San Antonio, for example, the chamber of commerce ran a free employment agency which placed over 2,000 non-union workers in 1920, by which time it had become almost impossible for union carpenters to get jobs. Mexican workers were brought in by the thousands, and special schools were set up to train non-union workers.

In San Antonio, the program defeated union electricians, carpenters, planning mill operators, butchers, printers and others. Beaumont, which had been a strong union town, became almost "open shop" after the anti-union attacks led by a member of the National Metal Trades Association. The anti-union forces in Dallas imported 1,500 strikebreakers, and even the printers were forced to accept non-union conditions. The Southwest Open Shop Association opened a trade school at Dallas to supply workers and persuaded the governor to send militia to Galveston to break the 1920 longshoremen’s strike.

But although “the ILA locals at Galveston surrendered their chapter in 1922, and company union was chartered in 1924” (and miners in Texas also “lost a 1926 strike against a 25 percent wage cut, and the United Mine Workers [then] disappeared” from Texas), “the open-shop movement” during the Roaring Twenties “was not completely successful, however, because the unions at Fort Worth and Houston were able to survive,” according to the same book.

Although most Texas farmers and workers in Texas did not enjoy much economic prosperity between 1920 and 1930, by 1928, “Texas for the first time led all other states in oil production with... nearly 20 percent of the total for the entire world,” according to Gone To Texas.

Besides producing super-profits for out-of-state, eastern corporate interests like the Mellon family and for some local Texas businessmen, politicians, and investors, Texas’s booming oil industry in the 1920s also began to produce super-profits for the “non-profit” University of Texas in Austin (a university that still discriminated against African-American people in the 1920s). As the same book observed:

Development of the Permian Basin... made the University of Texas... rich. The two million acres of land donated to the Permanent University Fund [PUF] in the 19th century had generated little income... But then in 1923 drillers brought in the Santa Rita wells on university lands in Reagan County...

According to David Humphrey’s Austin: An Illustrated History, “the income from the Permanent University Fund... in 1925... amounted to $225,000, gained largely from grazing leases on University of Texas’s 2 million acres in West Texas;” but “by 1927 revenues from oil leases on University of Texas’s West Texas lands poured into the Permanent University Fund at a rate of almost a quarter of a million dollars a month.”

Yet, although Austin’s “non-profit” University of Texas began to accumulate a lot of surplus wealth from its Texas oil industry property by 1927, in 1930 about 25 percent of Austin homes still had no indoor toilets, tubs, or showers, according to the same book.

[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.]

The Rag Blog
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12 December 2012

Bob Feldman : The Rise of the Klan in Texas, 1920-1930

Flyer for "Ku Klux Klan Day," October 24, 1923. Image from The Portal to Texas History.
The hidden history of Texas

Part 10: 1920-1930/1 -- The rise of the Klan in Texas

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / December 12, 2012

[This is the first section of Part 10 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

Between 1920 and 1930, the number of people living in Texas increased from over 4.6 million to over 5.8 million, and the percentage of Texas residents who now lived in urban towns and cities with populations above 2,500 people increased from 34 to 41 percent.

By 1930, over 292,000 people lived in Houston, over 260,000 people lived in Dallas, over 231,000 people lived in San Antonio and over 163,000 people lived in Fort Worth -- although the number of people living in Austin in 1930 was still less than 54,000.

Between 1920 and 1930 the percentage of farmers in Texas who were now just tenant farmers also increased to 61 percent. And in Texas during the "Roaring Twenties,” as Randolph Campbell recalled in his book, Gone To Texas:

Thousands upon thousands of farmers continued to live in destructive poverty as tenants and sharecroppers. Giant corporations still wielded monopoly power because anti-trust and regulatory laws had always aimed more at "foreign" businesses... Laws protecting children in industry... went unenforced... The doctrine of white supremacy ruled race relations, and in South Texas Anglo bosses exploited Texans of Mexican descent politically and economically...

Alwyn Barr’s Black Texans, observed:

Mob violence increased in the early 1920s with the rise of the new Ku Klux Klan... Klansmen branded a black bellhop in Dallas with acid and castrated a light-skinned Negro accused of relations with a white woman. They raided the office of the Houston Informer and threatened the Dallas Express, both black papers. Hooded groups beat a black youth in Texarkana, removed two Negroes from the Denton jail to flog them, and forced black cotton pickers near Corsicana to end their strike for higher wages...

In addition, during the 1920s, “the new Klan, which claimed over 100,000 members in the state, proved powerful enough... to help elect Earle B. Mayfield, a Klansman, to the United States Senate from Texas,” the same book noted.

According to Gone To Texas :

The KKK arrived in Texas in September 1920 when a kleagle came to Houston and recruited 100 men into the state’s first local chapter. "The initial roster represented literally a glossary of Houston ’s Who’s Who," wrote one observer. The charter members were silk-stocking men from the banks, business houses, and professions...

From its Houston beginning, the Klan spread rapidly across the state. In January 1922, when membership reached more than 75,000, Texas was organized as a realm of the "Invisible Empire" under its own grand dragon, A.D. Ellis, an Episcopal priest from Beaumont. That same year women... obtained a Texas charter as the Women of the Invisible Empire of America. In June 1923, 1,500 masked and robed klanswomen held a parade through Fort Worth. Eventually male membership alone stood at approximately 150,000.

Some opposition to the KKK’s growing influence in Texas electoral politics began to develop within Texas white power structure and political establishment circles (who then backed state-wide candidates that were able to defeat some KKK members who ran against them) by 1924. But as Merline Pitre’s In Struggle Against Jim Crow noted:

The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was a viable force in Houston and throughout the state. In Texas, this vigilante group occupied a position of power and influence unequaled in any other state, giving Texas the designation of Star Klan State. Houston was dubbed as the Star Klan City...

In 1921, Houston Klansmen, led by Deputy Sheriff George E. Kimbro, attacked and castrated a black dentist and beat a white lawyer who represented him. Several years later, the Klan tarred and feathered a black physician. In 1928, a Houston mob dragged a black man, accused of killing a white police officer, from his bed in a local hospital and hanged him from a bridge -- a murder for which no one was ever convicted. Additionally, a Klan newspaper, Colonel Mayfield’s Weekly, circulated throughout the city.

[In Houston ] in 1920, backed by a city ordinance, the American Legion excluded blacks from the annual Armistice Day parade. Blacks also were prohibited from voting in the municipal elections of February 1921. In 1923 and 1924, respectively, blacks were banned from standing in the same lines as whites to purchase stamps at the post office and to pay property taxes at the Harris County Courthouse. In 1925, the Electric Company excluded blacks from riding its buses, while in 1926, the Majestic Theater refused to admit blacks on weekends.

In 1921, Houston ’s Democratic Party also passed a resolution "allowing only whites to vote in the upcoming Democratic primary;” and in 1923 the Texas state legislature passed a law stating that “only white Democrats and none other” could vote in primary elections, according to the same book.

Between 1920 and 1930, the KKK was also visibly active on the streets of Austin, Texas . In 1921, for example, “500 white-robed and hooded Ku Klux Klansmen from Austin and San Antonio marched single file in silence up and down Congress Avenue, while thousands of spectators looked on,” according to David Humphrey’s Austin: An Illustrated History. The same book also observed:

Capital City Klan No. 81 was organized in 1921 and a year later had 1,500 members including the sheriff of Travis County and apparently other highly placed city and county police officials. The Klan thrived in Austin in the early and mid-1920s... In the mid-1920s the Klan even purchased a sizable piece of property off South Congress Avenue and erected a hall or "Klan haven"…

So, not surprisingly, Austin’s “1928 city plan recommended that East Austin be designated a `Negro district’ and that municipal services for blacks, such as schools and parks, be confined to this district” and so “thirteen-acre Rosewood Park in East Austin provided recreational facilities for blacks, but other city parks were closed to them,” 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.]

The Rag Blog
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29 May 2012

Bob Feldman : Socialism, Women's Suffrage, and the NAACP in Texas, 1890-1920

Socialist Eugene V. Debs, top center, visited Texas Socialists. Photo courtesy of Marty Boswell, a descendent of E.O. Meitzen of Hallettsville, who helped organize the Farmers' Alliance. Image from labordallas.org.
The hidden history of Texas

Part IX: 1890-1920/6 -- Socialism, women's suffrage, and the NAACP

By 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:
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09 April 2012

Bob Feldman : Labor and Farmer Activism in Texas, 1890-1920

Southern Pine Lumber Company workers at the company store, Diboll, Texas, about 1907. Photo courtesy of The History Center, Diboll. Image from Texas Beyond History.
The hidden history of Texas

Part IX: 1890-1920/5 -- Labor and farmer activism

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / April 9, 2012

[This is the fifth section of Part 9 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

During the 1890-1920 period of Texas history a post-1900 revival of Texas labor and farmer activism developed into a worker-farmer political alliance which produced some pro-labor laws between 1900 and 1915 in Texas.

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13 March 2012

Bob Feldman : Texas Oil Industry Emerges; O. Henry Publishes, 1890-1920

William Sydney Porter (later to be known as O. Henry) in Austin, circa 1880's. Image from Austin History Center, Austin Public Library / Wikimedia Commons.
The hidden history of Texas

Part IX: 1890-1920/4 -- Oil business emerges; O. Henry publishes

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / February 28, 2012

[This is the fourth section of Part 9 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

It was during the 1890-1920 historical period that an oil industry first began to develop in Texas. As Randolph Campbell recalled in his book, Gone To Texas, “significant commercial production [in Texas] did not begin until 1894, when well drillers seeking water near Corsicana struck oil instead,” and “production in the Spindletop field [near Beaumont], which reached 17,500,000 barrels in 1902, created the state’s first great oil boom.”

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28 February 2012

Bob Feldman : Disenfranchising Black Voters in Texas, 1890-1920

Poll Tax Receipt, January 30, 1908; digital image from the University of North Texas Libraries.
The hidden history of Texas

Part IX: 1890-1920/3 -- Disenfranchising black voters in Texas

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / February 28, 2012

[This is the third section of Part 9 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

Between 1900 and 1910, in an effort to make it more difficult for dissatisfied African-American and poor white small farmers in Texas to express their discontent and their desire for radical democratic political and economic change, politicians intensified their efforts to more permanently disenfranchise African-American voters in the state and to create a poll tax in Texas.

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06 February 2012

Bob Feldman : The Rise and Fall of the Populist Party in Texas, 1890-1920

Negro Populist organizer J. P. Rayner, early 1890's. Image from Vangobot.
The hidden history of Texas

Part IX: 1890-1920/2 -- The Rise and Fall of the Populist Party

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / February 6, 2012

[This is the second section of Part 9 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

In the decade before the then-Democratic Party-oriented white power structure in Texas solidified its early 20th century system of legalized racial segregation and institutionalized white supremacy and white racism, large numbers of politically dissatisfied Texas farmers of different racial backgrounds had thrown their electoral support to an alternative, populist third-party: the People’s Party of America.

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24 January 2012

Bob Feldman : Segregation and Lynchings in Texas, 1890-1920

Unidentified African-American man lynched in Texas, 1910. Image from Legends of America.
The hidden history of Texas

Part IX: 1890-1920/1 -- Segregation and lynchings in Texas

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / January 24, 2012

[This is the first section of Part 9 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

Between 1890 and 1920, the number of people who lived in Texas increased from 2,235,000 to 4,663,000. Yet 66 percent of Texans still lived in rural towns with populations below 2,500. But by 1920, over 100,000 people now lived in Dallas, in Fort Worth, in San Antonio, and in Houston -- although only 34,800 people yet lived in Austin and only 77,500 people in El Paso.

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04 January 2012

Bob Feldman : Populism, Labor Organizing, and White Chauvinism in Texas, 1876-1890

Flag of the Texas Farmers Alliance. Image from HHS AP US History.
The hidden history of Texas

Part VIII: Populism, labor organizing, and white chauvinism in Texas, 1876-1890

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / January 4, 2012

[This is Part 8 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

Between 1870 and 1890 the number of people who lived in Texas increased from 818,000 to 2,235,000 and most of the people residing in Texas in 1890 had previously lived in the southeastern United States.

Although the number of Texas residents who were of African descent increased from 253,000 to 488,000 during these same 20 years, the percentage of all Texas residents who were African-American decreased from 32 to 22 percent during this period. And by 1890, 125,000 people of German descent now also lived in Texas. The number of people of Mexican descent then living in Texas was only 105,000.

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28 December 2011

Bob Feldman : Reconstruction in Texas/2

African-Americans voting in 1867. Image from the Texas Liberal.
The hidden history of Texas

Part VII: Reconstruction in Texas, 1865-1876/2

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / December 26, 2011

[This is the second section of Part 7 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

According to Alwyn Barr’s Black Texans, after the Civil War “the vast majority of ex-slaves” in Texas “settled down to become sharecroppers or tenant farmers" by 1870, and only “a few had saved enough to buy their own farms.” Yet by 1870 a significant proportion of the residents in urban Texas cities like Galveston, San Antonio, Houston, and Austin were also now African-American.

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29 November 2011

Bob Feldman : Reconstruction in Texas, 1865-1876

The hidden history of Texas

Part VII: Reconstruction in Texas, 1865-1876/1

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / October 26, 2011

[This is the first section of Part 7 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

Just before the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865, “the Confederate troops in Texas got out of hand and began rebelling and looting [in] towns like Houston [which] were burned,” according to W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction.

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The ULA, the fight against austerity & building a new party of the working class

www.socialistworld.net, 28/01/2013
website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI

The Socialist Party (CWI) has ended its membership of the United Left Alliance (ULA)

Statement by the Socialist Party (CWI in Ireland)

We do so with regret as we initiated the negotiations that led to the ULA and are genuine in our preparedness to work with others on the left in a respectful, democratic and principled fashion.However some in the United Left Alliance (ULA), including TDs (members of the Irish parliament), have moved away from a principled left position and have ditched the collaborative spirit. Apart from the Socialist Party, the other groups in the ULA have accepted this situation, leaving us with no choice but to withdraw.

These developments decisively undermined the ULA, which was already in a weakened state as ordinary working class people had not joined it in any significant numbers, along with the withdrawal of the Workers and Unemployed Action Group (Tipperary) last autumn. As a result, any potential that the ULA had of playing a role in building a new mass Left in Ireland is now gone.

New opportunities for the political re-organisation of the working class

At the same time, the struggle against the Household and Property Tax emerged as a real challenge to the Troika’s and the Government’s disastrous policy of austerity.

This struggle, which more than any other issue encapsulates the opposition to austerity, has now reached a decisive stage with the threat of deducting the tax at source from people’s wages and benefits. It is clear that a major struggle on the Property Tax will politicise tens of thousands of people and will give an enormous impetus to the political re-organisation of the working class, something that unfortunately the ULA proved incapable of achieving.

The Socialist Party remains committed to building a mass and democratic party of the working class and believes that all who are committed to that objective should register the potential significance of the Property Tax issue.

At the start of last year 30,000 people attended meetings organised by the Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes (CAHWT). 15,000 marched on the Fine Gael Ard Fheis and by the end of the year nearly 700,000 households, 52% of single home owners, had not registered or paid for the Household Tax.

The threat to rob people’s wages and benefits at source poses difficulties for the campaign and for ordinary people, but it has also deepened the anger. If a strong lead is given on the Property Tax there is a real possibility of even stronger protests this year than last.

An aspect of this struggle should be to connect to the widespread mood to punish Labour and Fine Gael. If out of the struggle came the proposal for a slate or an alliance of anti-Property Tax / anti-austerity candidates for the Local and European Elections next year, that would really ratchet up the pressure on the Government, and on Labour in particular.

Such a proposal could gain huge support and could lead to the involvement of thousands of working class people in a political struggle, with the possibility that many working class activists could get elected. Such developments would not only be a massive step towards forcing the scrapping of the Property Tax, but would also represent a big step towards a new mass party of the working class.

Lessons from the ULA’s demise

The original idea of the ULA was for an electoral and parliamentary alliance of groups. On the suggestion of the Socialist Party, a membership was established to try to build a more significant alliance.

The launching of the ULA was a positive development coinciding as it did with the imposition of the Troika’s Programme and the looming general election. However, the worsening austerity combined with the abysmal failure of the trade union leadership to mount any struggle against it in the wake of the major public sector strike and mass demonstration in November 2010, dented people’s confidence and there was a tendency to wait and see if the new Fine Gael / Labour Government might be different.

Unfortunately, the absence of industrial struggles or battles against austerity, combined with a feeling that there was no alternative to austerity, meant that working class people weren’t pushed towards getting politically involved and the ULA didn’t grow despite many public recruitment meetings. Overwhelmingly the very limited numbers who did join were already established left activists, so instead of growing, the ULA barely got off the mark.

Last summer sections of the media consciously used Mick Wallace’s tax evasion and Clare Daly’s close political connection to him to attack the Left. This damaged the Socialist Party and the ULA’s standing as principled Left organisations.

The Socialist Party insists that its elected representatives must be politically independent from business or capitalist interests or people who represent such interests, even more so when tax evasion is involved. In this instance, the fact that the Socialist Party was prepared to lose a TD rather than compromise on an important principle meant that we overcame that damage and gained considerable credit among working class people in particular, who strongly disapprove of Mick Wallace’s actions.

Political independence of the left can’t be compromised

Unfortunately Clare Daly and another ULA TD, Joan Collins, intensified this political connection with Mick Wallace. They co-presented the X case abortion bill with him in late November. Furthermore on 20 December they organised a major press conference with him, and also Independent TD Luke Flanagan, on the issue of alleged corruption among certain members of the Garda in erasing penalty points for traffic offences. These generated significant media coverage.

They consciously chose not to organise on these issues under the ULA banner but instead opted to promote what is essentially a new alliance of parliamentarians who are not of the Left. This was a body blow to the already diminished credibility of the ULA.

Just as damning for the future of the ULA as these actions, was the fact that none of the other groups in the alliance, the People Before Profit Alliance, the Independent / Non-aligned Group nor significantly, the Socialist Workers Party, opposed this approach of supposedly being committed to a left project but in practice contradicting that by organising a political alliance with others in the Dáil Technical Group who couldn’t at all be characterised as on the Left.

On 25 November, at the ULA Council, a motion moved by the Socialist Party on the need to end the political connection with Mick Wallace was voted down by all the other groups. In so doing they assisted in the jettisoning of a cornerstone principle for any left organisation, that it must take seriously its political independence from business interests or forces representing business interests.

Around the same time, the “Daly Bill” on the X case was resubmitted for the ULA’s Private Member’s slot on 27 November but, unfortunately, this was done without any consultation and in defiance of a specifically agreed procedure which necessitated discussion and consensus. If the Socialist Party had the opportunity, we were going to advocate that the ULA submit a bill on the X case but that it should be expanded to cater for a risk to a woman’s health as grounds for an abortion, with a view to broadening out the debate and discussion on abortion in the wake of the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar.

ULA at an impasse, but a real basis for optimism for the future

This subverting of democratic procedure undermined the structures and relations in the ULA. Despite the facts, any wrong doing was denied and again unfortunately, none of the other groups made any serious objection to what had happened when it was raised at the Council meeting. These developments destroyed any basis for principled political collaboration and the ULA has been at an impasse ever since.

The ULA is compromised and cannot now be seen as an independent, principled Left alliance nor any longer can there be hope that it could prepare the ground for a new mass workers’ party in the years ahead. These are the reasons why, as well as the need to avoid any future damaging associations for the party or for struggles that we are involved in, the Socialist Party is withdrawing from the ULA.

The Socialist Party is open to work with those who remain in the ULA on specific issues, on an agreed basis, both inside and outside the Dáil. However we believe that the key to building a Left alternative will flow from a serious struggle against the disastrous austerity and bailout agenda and in particular from the involvement of thousands of working class people in the battle against the property and water taxes in the year ahead.

Socialist Party members will be among the most active fighters in all aspects of the battle against the Property Tax. As part of that our members will raise in a democratic fashion, locally and nationally, the idea that an anti-Property Tax and anti-austerity challenge in the Local and European Elections in 2014 should be pursued by the campaigns.

Such an electoral initiative, combined with the active struggle against the tax and mass mobilisations against the Government, has the potential to pose a more real and substantial opportunity to build a new mass party of the working class.

Through the establishment of the ULA, initiated by the Socialist Party, an alternative was posed in half the Dáil constituencies in the last general election. We believe that the hopes engendered for a genuine left and socialist alternative which that stand raised, can be surpassed in the months ahead, if the unprecedented opportunity that the next elections offer, is fully grasped.

Occupy Boston Announcement

NLG Press Release. Please support NLG in their fundraiser and pack
the courtrooms for upcoming 5 Occupy Boston Political Trials.

Since its beginnings the National Lawyers Guild has been an
organization that radicals and activists can depend on for legal
support when attacked by the government. For nearly 40 years, the NLG
Mass Defense Committee has been advising, assisting, and representing
activists who are engaged in struggles for political, legal, and
social changes to benefit the disfranchised members of the
society. Continuing in this proud tradition, the Mass Defense
Committee of our Massachusetts chapter provides vital legal support to
social justice movements throughout Massachusetts.

In the last two years, the Mass Defense Committee has provided legal
representation for activists arrested fighting foreclosures and
evictions in our community. They are representing people arrested at
the offices of TransCanada protesting the Keystone XL pipeline. From
the beginning, the National Lawyers Guild was providing vital legal
services to activists and organizers at Occupy Boston.

On October 10th and December 10th of 2011, the City of Boston raided
the Occupy Boston encampment arresting dozens of people. From the
moment of the first arrests, the Mass Defense Committee was on the
ground to make sure that everyone arrested had effective legal
representation. More importantly, the Mass Defense Committee has
remained committed to a political defense strategy that ensures that
the message of Occupy Boston isn't left at the courthouse doors. 25 of
the Occupy defendants are insisting on their 6th Amendment right to
trial, and the first of these trials will be held on February 11th at
the Boston Municipal Court.

Mass Defense work costs money, and the lawyers who do this work take
these cases pro-bono. Meanwhile, those we are up against enjoy the
full resources of the District Attorney's Office and the Boston Police
Department. We have to ensure that the people's struggle for justice
is never silenced by this criminal injustice system.

THAT IS WHY WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT! Join us on Friday 8th, from 6:00 PM
- 9:00 PM+, for a night of food, drinks and pool at Jillians, 145
Ipswitch St. Boston, MA. Sliding scale of $25.00-$500.00.

Thank-you, Rita

***The Lessons Of The Spanish Revolution-1936-1939-Felix Morrow’s “Revolution And Counter-Revolution In Spain (1938)

Book Review

Revolution and Counter-Revolution In Spain, Second Edition, Felix Morrow, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1974

AS WE APPROACH THE 77 ^THANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO DRAW THE LESSONS FOR THE DEFEAT OF THAT REVOLUTION.

In honor of the tragically too few Bolshevik-Leninists who fought for socialist revolution in the Spanish Civil War.

I have been interested, initially as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager back in the early days of the Kennedy Administration when a fresh breeze was blowing over the land and stuff like what happened in Spain and elsewhere became important to understand if we were to change the way the world’s business was conducted. Those lessons went for naught, mainly, as we of that next generation, the generation that went out to “seek a newer world” were consumed by our own hubris, angst, and other failings. A story that I have told elsewhere and need not detain us in referring back to 1930s Spain.
What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, was the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political and economic organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15^th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat, as then U.S. Socialist Workers Party leader and author of this tract under review, Felix Morrow, noted, certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees that sprang up in 1936 after Franco’s insurrection. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky, in his own more general works written during this period, noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represented a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Felix Morrow’s work fills in the more specific terms and details and provides more hands-on account of ebb and flow of the struggles of the period. In short he names names, from the vapid “shadow of the bourgeoisie’to the various anarchist configurations including the heroic Friends of Durutti to the POUM to the fledgling Bolshevik-Leninists, the few adherents of Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International in Spain. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisies today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Morrow, like Trotsky, was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, again like Trotsky, Morrow’s analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky and his followers could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Morrow had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front which he patiently and mercilessly subjects to his close analysis.

The central question Morrow addressed throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Morrow, like Trotsky, thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership, subjecting the various claimants to leadership, various social-democratic contingents most forcefully a look at the Caballero government, the perfidious and treacherous role of the Stalinists as active agents of counter-revolution, the know-nothingness of the anarchists and there main organization, the FAI, and, most tellingly the insularity of the POUM and its leadership, especially Nin and Andrade, that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish. One came almost see the withering away of the revolutionary élan after the failure of the Barcelona uprising of May 1937, a key event in this period and a serious test for all parties, which he subjects to close analysis. For that and other events in Spain during this period read this book. And then you, like I did, will have a much clearer idea of what went wrong in that troubled land.

Monday, January 28, 2013

His Kind Of Woman , Indeed –Howard Hughes’ “His Kind Of Woman”

DVD Review

His Kind Of Woman .starring Robert Mitchum, Jan Russell, Vincent Price, Raymond Burr, produced by Howard Hughes, RKO Radio Pictures, 1951

…he, Howard Hughes, he, of the flamboyant personality, the take charge guy, the ever forward guy, whether it was stocks, inventions, planes, films, or women, particularly those last two in his heyday before he began to fear the world, fear some microbe madness, and went into splendid hiding, decided that he needed to get his, uh, prodigy, his woman, Jane Russell before the cameras. And since she, luscious brunette with a drop- dead body (drop dead in those days, those 1940s and early 1950s days, being, uh, large bosom, small waist, and wide hips, say 36-32-36 or something like that, don’t quote me on the numbers, please I could be way off, way off like I am about a lot of things with women), luscious hair, luscious eyes, luscious big ruby red lips (imagined in this black and white vehicle), luscious, looked good, could sing a little (although not enough to make a living at , unless she had some walking daddy, a walking daddy like, say, Howard Hughes who could buy the cabaret, or a string of them ), keep her lines straight a little, and could get the guys (in the movie and in the audience) thinking about those luscious things this film popped out. A comedy noir, comedy of errors for the comedy part, noir for the spiffy language and those languid looks between Jane and Robert Mitchum (Dan and Lenore in the film), if you will.

So here the skinny on the plot here and you can decide whether this thing was just a very expensive present for a wayward girlfriend looking to keep busy when not busy with Brother Hughes or something more. Now remember, as I go through the numbers, that Robert Mitchum is already in the film noir hall of fame for his little misbegotten tryst with Jane Greer in Out Of The Past so the big brawny guy with the line of patter around the woman, and the body that was built to take a beating or seven, and so he ain’t brittle, has some pretty big shoes to fill for his part. Jane, well, Jane just had to look into his eye, and well, let’s leave it as just had to look into his eyes and guys, including Mitchum, would be reaching for their sweaty handkerchiefs

Dan (Mitchum) is a professional gambler, and as such, has a seedy past, maybe has done some small jail time but mainly has to keep low, deal high and keep moving. So he hasn’t got any grieving wife or worried friends into the world. Thus a perfect guy for the caper exiled crime boss Nick has in mind (played by Raymond Burr before he got, uh, religion and started working the other side of the street as television’s Perry Mason series) who is desperate to get back into Estados Unidos to make, well, to make some big easy dough again, and to be the king hell king of the gangster night. And so Nick has an idea, an illegal idea, to be sure, but an idea. Get some stooge, give him some dough, or promise of dough, ship him off to Mexico to hide-out and use his, the stooge’s, identification to get back on jump street in the old U.S. of A. Simple. And if things don’t work out with the stooge, or he gets on his high horse well Nick has that covered, the big sleep, naturally. So that explains why Dan is down south of the border. Lenore (Russell),well, she is in sunny Mexico (Mexico before the cartels and high density shoot ‘em ups for real obviously) because, uh, she is from hunger and is ready to lay it on the line if a certain famous movie star (played by Vincent Price) is on the level and will divorce his wife. Got it.

Of course as Dan and Lenore start to steam up the screen, that certain actor’s Mrs. hit south of the border and as Dan starts to get wise to his real fate then the fireworks begin with plenty of mishaps, a few dead bodies, and the problem of Nick and his needs (or wants) get all bundled up. But know this, or know these two things. No way, no way on this good green earth is a hulk, is a street smart guy like Robert Mitchum going to go under to some cheap jack hood’s odd-ball scheme. And no way, no way in hell, are those steamy languid looks between Dan and Lenore going to go to waste by that pair not surviving whatever rotten deal was going down. So Howard you did okay, okay indeed.

Laura’s Look- With Roger McGuinn’s “The Lady” In Mind

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

…she, Laura she, sat up on the stage, altar or whatever they called it in U-U church land over in Waterville that cold winter night (Universalist-Unitarian showing an interesting weave of Protestant schism when they joined declining forces about forty or fifty years ago and always at the ready for the good of the cause from folk concerts to anti-war struggles), waiting to do angel-voiced back up harmony with her friend and musical companion on a selection of one of that friend’s homemade songs. He, Peter Paul Markin, could tell, tell even from a row in the audience about four or five back, that she had that faintly determined look, that certain tightening of her jaw when she was a little bit nervous about doing some task to perfection. He called that look her swimming stroke look, the look he would notice most graphically when she did her little doggie paddle in some sunny land swimming pool in California or Florida and was determined to get from point A to point B in the pool on her own terms come hell or high water. That look however this night was not the look that he was focused on as he got ready to do his sound check, his own personal sound check of her performance. No, that check was not some technician’s sound system gismo affair, far from it, he would not know step one of such a procedure, and would in any case be waved off, decidedly waved off, by knowing hands if he tried anything so rash. He merely lowered his head during the performance, put his elbows on his knees, placed his hands on his eyes and closed them. And listened.

And it was while he was doing that ritual listening, listening to get his ear tuned in to that angel thing she beamed out to the world, that he thought about other looks, looks that counted, counted a lot in her favor, the ones that made him glad, glad as hell, that he was sitting in just that fourth or fifth row seat that night, and other nights too for that matter. The look he was thinking about had started way back when he first met her, first met her in some Harvard Square gin mill, all smoky and dark enough to hide in for listening to the live music, mostly country rock in his country minute days, old Johnny Fleet’s, long gone now, of blessed memory, when he, she too, was looking, looking for something to take the curse out of the night, something to hold onto, hold onto tight, in a ramshackle world, a world neither of them had created, and certainly had not been asked about creating either. That night, the night they met (or “re-met” but that has nothing to do with looks and so is a story for another time), they sat together at the bar, fumbling a little at first to say things that made sense like a lot of people, like a lot sensitive or shy people, like a lot of waifs in this wicked old world do.

What he noticed was that she would look straight at him when he had something to say, would look at him with a slight whisper of a smile, her headed at a certain angle like she was urging him to go on with what he had to say. Like what he had to say, important or not, was the most important thing for her to hear in the whole wide world. There is a picture of her with that look, or the instant photographic representation of that look, on the wall of her dining room, taken up in some desolate summer music camp in New Hampshire that she love-hate’s to attend each summer in order stay connected to her muses. With a pinkish orange summer sleeveless blouse on and sporting a slight summer tan which made a lady not born for colds more perky anyway she gave off that look aura, a picture Peter Paul never tired of peeking at when he wanted think about that look. That is the look that intrigued him, held him to her that first night, and many nights thereafter, and still held him.

And that “still held him” was what took up most of Peter Paul’s thoughts after he flashed on that look. He would, and gladly, harness himself to the work, spent an eternity trying to figure out how a woman who had had her fair share of miseries growing up, growing up in some foreboding upstate New York farming community with farm-centered (he was being kind here) parents, her fair share of feeling like the odd-person out as a result, her fair share of never feeling quite good enough, her fair share of hurts and slights could rear back and kiss the world of those around her like that. Then he thought about her struggles to find herself over her life, her eternal search for some mystical connection, some one-ness with universe, some sense of purpose and some late-found written expression of that search through her music, her simple sweet mama music. And it dawned on him then that that mystical search, a search that he, more prosaic and this worldly-driven, could not take, was what produced that world user-friendly look.

Oh yah, her performance that night, that head-in-hands night. Weren’t you listening before? I said angel-voiced back-up, didn’t I- if angels had voices, and if they were capable of that winsome look.

**********
Songwriters: MC GUINN, ROGER/LEVY, JACQUES

The lady's eyes are beautiful
They wander through the dictionary
Searching for a way to say I love you
To a friend
Sun comes up and sun goes down
Still no word has the lady found
And she'll go right on
Searching till the end

Oh, the lady is a very unlikely lady
In her time she might hit you
For a dime or two
But change is not the only
Offer she's had, oh no
And she can find yeah,
A reason to be bad for you

The lady's hands are magical
They reach for you and seem to hold you
Comfort is a blessing, yes
A baby understands
Winter in her knitted gloves
Summertime as free as her love
But she comes up with nothing
In her hands

The lady's soul is mystical
And in the night it flies to heaven
Trouble finds a holy soul
That's looking for a dream
Visions grow and they fade away
And the lady begins to pray
But grace is not as easy as it seems

Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM – Support The Bradley Manning International Day OfSolidarity February 23, 2013 –The 1000th Day Of Pre-Trial Confinement-Update

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- Wednesdays From 5:00-6:00 PM

Support And Build The Bradley Manning International Day Of Solidarity February 23, 2013 –The 1000^thDay Of Pre-Trial Confinement- Park Street Redline MBTA Station-Boston Common-1:00-2:00 PM

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Beginning in September 2011, in order to publicize Private Manning’s case locally, there have been weekly stand-outs (as well as other more ad hocand sporadic events) in various locations in the Greater Boston area starting in Somerville across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop on Friday afternoons and later on Wednesdays. Lately this stand-out has been held each week on Wednesdays from 5:00 to 6:00 PM at Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. (small park at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street just outside the Redline MBTA stop, renamed Manning Square for the duration of the stand-out) in order to continue to broaden our outreach. Join us there in calling for Private Manning’s freedom. President Obama Pardon Private Manning Now!
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The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward an early summer trial now scheduled for June 2013. The news on his case over the past several months (since about April 2012) has centered on the many pre-trial motion hearings including recent defense motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial. Private Manning’s pre-trial confinement is now at 900 plus days and will be over 1000 days by the time of trial. That motion, still not ruled on as of this writing, is expected to be decided by the next round of pre-trial hearings in late February.

The defense contends that the charges should be dismissed because the military by its own statutes (to speak nothing of that funny old constitutional right to a speedy trial guarantee that our plebeian forbears fought tooth and nail for against the bloody British and later made damn sure was included in the Amendments when the founding fathers“forgot” to include it in the main document) should have arraigned Private Manning within 120 days after his arrest. They hemmed and hawed for almost 600 days before deciding on the charges and a court martial. Nobody in the convening authority, as required by those same statutes, pushed the prosecution forward in a timely manner. There were no serious efforts to push the work of the classifying agencies (the agencies that would determine what level of security classification had been allegedly violated) throughout most of that time although the government knew what documents it was going to proffer at the Article 32 hearing well before that work was finished. In fact the court-martial convening authority, in the person of one Colonel Coffman, seems to have seen its role as mere “yes man, ” a “rubber stamp” in the defense’s words, to each of the government’s eight requests for delays without explanation (and without informing the defense in order to take their objection). Apparently the Colonel saw his role as a mere clearing agent for whatever excuse the government gave, mainly endless addition time for clearing various classified documents a process that need not have held up the proceedings. The defense made timely objection to each governmental request after the fact to no avail.

Testimony from military authorities at pre-trial hearings in November 2012 about the reasons for the lack of action ranged from the lame to the absurd (mainly negative responses to knowledge about why some additional delays were necessary. One “reason” sticks out as a reason for excusable delay -some officer needed to get his son to a swimming meet and was thus “unavailable” for a couple of days. I didn’t make this up. I don’t have that sense of the absurd. Jesus, a man, a presumably innocent man, was rotting in Obama’s jails and they let him rot a little longer because of some damn swim meet.). The prosecution, obviously, has argued that the government has moved might and main to move the case along and had merely waited until all leaked materials had been determined before proceeding.

We shall see but here is a good statement of the situation right now and the options for the Bradley Manning Support Network:

“Three years is not a speedy trial

On Bradley Manning’s 964^th day in prison without trial, both parties argued over the defense’s motion to dismiss charges for lack of a speedy trial. Under Rule for Court Martial 707, the military was supposed to arraign Bradley in 120 days, but it took over 600. Under Uniform Code for Military Justice Article 10, prosecutors are obligated to maintain diligence in trying the accused. Defense lawyer David Coombs explained to the court that rather than being proactive, the military was reactive, waiting for months and months for other agencies to complete classification reviews, when it should have been hurrying those processes along to get to court-martial as quickly as possible. If Judge Lind finds Article 10 was violated, she must dismiss charges. If she dismisses charges “with prejudice,” meaning she finds that the military was prejudicial in denying Bradley a speedy trial, then Bradley will walk free. However, if she dismisses “without prejudice,” finding the delays were negligent but not malicious, the military could simply re-charge Bradley with all of the same offenses. She’ll rule at the next hearing, February 26 through March 1.”
******
The defense has also recently pursued a motion for a dismissal of the major charges (espionage/ indirect material aid to terrorists) on the basis of the minimal effect of any leaks on national security issues as against Private Manning’s claim that such knowledge was important to the public square (freedom of information issues important for us as well in order to know about what the hell the government is doing either in front of us, or behind our backs). Last summer witnesses from an alphabet soup list of government agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, etc., etc.) testified that while the information leaked shouldn’t have been leaked that the effect on national security was de minimus. The Secretary of Defense at the time, Leon Panetta, also made a public statement to that effect. The prosecution argued, successfully at the time, that the mere fact of the leak of classified information caused irreparable harm to national security issues and Private Manning’s intent, even if noble, was not at issue.

The recent thrust of the motion to dismiss has centered on the defense’s contention been that Private Manning consciously and carefully screened any material in his possession to avoid any conflict with national security and that most of the released material had been over-classified (received a higher security level than necessary).(Much of the materials leaked, as per those parts published widely in the aftermath of the disclosures by the New York Times and other major outlets, concerned reports of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and diplomatic interchanges that reflected poorly, poorly to say the least, on that profession.) The Obama government has argued again that the mere fact of leaking was all that mattered. That motion has also not been fully ruled on and is now the subject of prosecution counter-motions and a cause for further trial delay.

Here is the latest from the Bradley Manning Support Network on this issue while will the subject of May pre-trial hearings:

“Turning whistle-blowing into treason

Meanwhile, in an attempt to curtail the defense’s ability to show Bradley Manning is a whistle-blower, the government moved to preclude discussion of his motive in determining his guilt or innocence. Judge Lind granted this motion in part: the defense will not be allowed to show Bradley’s motive, such as chatlog quotes showing that he wanted information to be free, in debating whether he knew Al Qaeda would have access to the cables he released (but it will be allowed to discuss motive during a potential sentencing portion). The military will have to prove that Bradley knew he was “dealing with the enemy” in passing information to WikiLeaks. The defense will be allowed to show that Bradley selected certain cables or types of cables to prove he knew which information would not cause harm to U.S. national security if made public. The government also moved to preclude discussion of over classification, trying to prevent the defense from arguing that documents released needn’t have been classified in the first place. Judge Lind decided to defer that ruling, and will make it at a later hearing. In this hearing, the military also said that it would still charge Bradley Manning with “aiding the enemy” if he’d released information to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, an argument that would effectively turn whistle-blowing into treason and one which troubled many journalists following the proceedings.”

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A defense motion for dismissal based on serious allegations of torturous behavior by the military authorities extending far up the chain of command (a three-star Army general, not the normal concern of someone so far up the chain in the matter of discipline for enlisted personal) while Private Manning was first detained in Kuwait and later at the Quantico Marine brig for about a year ending in April 2011 has now been ruled on. In late November and early December Private Manning himself, as well as others including senior military mental health workers, took the stand to detail those abuses over several days. Most important to the defense was the testimony by qualified military mental health professionals citing the constant willful failure of those who held Private Manning in close confinement to listen to, or act, on their recommendations during those periods

Judge Lind, the military judge who has heard all the pre-trial arguments in the case thus far, has essentially ruled unfavorably on that motion to dismiss given the potential life sentence Private Manning faces. As she announced at an early January pre-trial hearing the military acted illegally in some of its actions. While every Bradley Manning supporter should be heartened by the fact that the military judge ruled that he was subject to illegal behavior by the military during his pre-trial confinement her remedy, a 112 days reduction in any future sentence, is a mere slap on the wrist to the military authorities. No dismissal or, alternatively, no appropriate reduction (the asked for ten to one ratio for all his first year or so of illegal close confinement which would take years off any potential sentence) given the seriousness of the illegal behavior as the defense tirelessly argued for. And the result is a heavy-handed deterrent to any future military whistleblowers, who already are under enormous pressures to remain silent as a matter of course while in uniform, and others who seek to put the hard facts of future American military atrocities before the public.

Here is the Bradley Manning Support Network’s take on Judge Lind’s decision:

“Judge ruled abusive treatment at Quantico was unlawful, awards sentencing credit

Following over two weeks of testimony from Quantico guards and higher officers about keeping Bradley in a 6×8 cell for 23 hours a day and denying him exercise time and easy access to basic hygiene items Judge Denise Lind ruled that Bradley was treated harshly and awarded him 112 days off of a potential sentence. This is a meager rebuke and a scant reduction when compared to the life sentence Bradley could face, but it is an important symbolic vindication for those who fought so hard to raise awareness of the disturbing treatment and to move Bradley from Quantico.”

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Some other important recent news, this 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 espionage /aiding the enemy issue (with a possibility of a life sentence) solely before the court-martial judge, Judge Lind (the one who has been hearing the pre-trial motions, not some senior officer, senior NCO lifer-stacked panel. A wise move, a very wise move.).

Since this defense ploy, an unusual one, and not commonly used or known about, according to knowledgeable sources, was the subject of some confusion, among supporters and the media so here is the Bradley Manning Support Network’s statement on the issue:

“Why, what it means, doesn’t mean, and what next

By Jeff Paterson, Bradley Manning Support Network. November 19, 2012. Published at Allvoices.com

Army Private Bradley Manning recently informed the military court that he was, in fact, the source of information published by WikiLeaks. While the 24 year old Intelligence Analyst, effectively, took responsibility for transferring classified documents, in violation of military regulations, he maintained that he was not guilty of all 22 charges against him.

“PFC Manning has offered to plead guilty to various offenses through a process known as“pleading by exceptions and substitutions,” explained Manning civilian defense attorney David Coombs on his blog. Manning is “attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged offenses…. PFC Manning is not pleading guilty to the specifications as charged by the government,” added Coombs. Nor is he “submitting a plea as part of an agreement or deal with the government.”…

…What does such a plea actually change?

The plea offered by Manning doesn’t change the charges against him, nor does it alter the possible maximum sentence of life in prison.

The presiding judge, US Army Colonel Denise Lind, may choose to reject Manning’s plea on technical grounds (if so, technically, Manning will have to unaccept responsibility). If the plea is accepted, the prosecution is free to present its case as planned. Manning’s plea offering only addresses three lesser aspects of a couple lesser charges, so the government could easily accept Manning’s plea and still“upcharge” him.

Manning’s plea could make the prosecution’s job easier, if they are relieved of the burden of proving he accessed documents and transferred them to WikiLeaks. Without this new twist, Manning’s court martial was expected to last at least six weeks, with possibly four of those weeks dedicated to testimony covering information technology-related forensic evidence–such as computer and router logs, login passwords, network access records, and hard drive images. The court martial might now become an expedited two or three week affair.

While the government’s burden of proof may have been reduced overall, it is important to understand that Manning is only admitting to violating military regulations that cover the approved usage of secure computers and the appropriate handling of information. During previous pre-trial hearings, Manning’s defense has shown that every member of his intelligence office in Iraq also violated these same regulations. While other soldiers didn’t share documents with WikiLeaks, they did install unauthorized video games and software and they shared a library of bootleg music and movies on secure Army computers. As Manning is the only soldier charged with any of these violations, the issue of selective prosecution is raised….

…The real defense

Manning’s attorney has long contended that the defense will show that the release of these documents brought little to no harm to U.S. national security, and that Manning’s motives were to expose crime, fraud, corporate malfeasance, and abuse. They hope to show that this was, indeed, the outcome. The prosecution’s position will remain that Manning’s motives and the actual outcomes are irrelevant during the guilt phase of trial. …”

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Also there has been increased media attention by mainstream outlets around the case (including the previously knowingly oblivious New York Times). Here is a little bit more on the subject from the Bradley Manning Support Network site:

“By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. January 18, 2013.

Last week in Fort Meade, MD, government prosecutors said that if PFC Bradley Manning had released documents to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, they would still charge him with indirectly ‘aiding the enemy,’ which carries a life sentence.

This would be unprecedented: never before has a soldier been sent to jail for ‘aiding the enemy’ as a result of giving information to a news outlet. Government prosecutors argue that Manning needn’t have intended to aid the enemy; merely that he knew Al Qaeda could use the information is enough. This would turn all government whistle-blowing into treason: a grave threat to both potential sources and American journalism.

Following this contention in court, the Los Angeles Times called on the government to drop the‘aiding the enemy’ charge, writing in an editorial, “That charge strikes us as excessive in the absence of evidence that Manning consciously colluded with hostile nations or terrorists.”

Since then, even higher-profile media members have condemned the military’s pernicious claim and the precedent it would set. In an email in which she explained she couldn’t speak on behalf of her newspaper but could comment as a lifelong journalist and a former newspaper editor, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan said,

“The implications for press freedom in the Bradley Manning prosecution trouble me, as does the federal government’s unprecedented targeting, in recent years, of whistleblowers and those who leak to the press. The issues certainly aren’t black and white, but if the public expects the press to do its crucial job in our democracy, people ought to be more worried than they apparently are. And I agree with the Los Angeles Times editorial that the “aiding the enemy” charge, which could result in a life sentence, is excessive.”

New York Times columnist and former executive editor Bill Keller said, “I think the treatment of Manning feels heavy-handed and out of proportion to actual harm done.”

In Michael Calderone’s story for the Huffington Post, “Manning Case Raises Troubling Questions For Journalists,”about the implications of this argument, the Washington Post’s Dana Priest said, “they don’t want other people to get the idea that they should be doing this,” and that it’ll have a “chilling effect on sources.”…”

Glenn Greenwald wrote for the Guardian, “[the government’s argument] can be – and almost certainly will be – just as easily applied to the vast majority of leaks on which investigative journalism has always relied.”

Mainstream news outlets, Greenwald said,

“might want to take a serious interest in this fact and marshal opposition to what is being done to Bradley Manning: if not out of concern for the injustices to which he is being subjected, then out of self-interest, to ensure that their reporters and their past and future whistle-blowing sources cannot be similarly persecuted.”

So why does the government continue to prosecute this way? Keller said, “It’s been clear from the outset that the government decided to make a lesson of Bradley Manning,”and that “the extreme conditions of his early confinement and the aiding-the-enemy charges suggest a deep animus toward Bradley.”

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Finally, there had been as well an important statement by three Nobel Peace Laureates (including Bishop Tutu from South Africa) calling on their fellow laureate, United States President Barack Obama, to free Private Manning from his jails.

Check the Bradley Manning Support Network -http://www.bradleymanning.org/ for details and future updates.

*Contribute to the Bradley Manning Defense Fund- as the trial date approaches funds are urgently needed! For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/ for

*Sign the online petition at the Bradley Manning Support Network (for link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/ )at the Bradley Manning Support Network site to the Secretary of the Army to free Bradley Manning-1000 days is enough!

*Call (Comments: 202-456-1111), write (The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500),, e-mail (http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments)the White House to ask (or demand) President Obama to pardon Bradley Manning- In federal cases, and military cases are federal cases, the President of the United States can pardon the guilty and the innocent, the convicted and those awaiting trial- Free the whistleblower!

Sunday, January 27, 2013

When The Blues Was Dues- Hard Times In Babylon

… Frankie Riley needed a drink bad, as bad as man with a three day itch, unquenched, needed a drink. He wouldn’t have been fussy either, he needed no old -time, good times, high- roller high shelf scotch, maybe bonded Haig& Haig, nor even low-shelf Jim Bob’s distilled essence of scotch (or rye whiskey, or bourbon or whatever you wanted to call it, call it for that honey you were trying, desperately trying, to get to take a shot straight up in order for her to accept your easy rider proposition without a slap in the face, and face it, without it young girl hurting as was often the case with those fresh flowers once she accepted) when he had stated out in drink-dom, back in the back woods days when Jim Bob was the only one who would sell to underage wild corner boys from Louisville (and even then he was the only one of his corner boy crowd, the crowd that used to hang around Colonel Bob’s Drive-In , that Jim Bob would sell to once he knew that Frankie had kin, known kin, from around those back water hill and hollows of eastern Kentuck, around Harlan County).

Nor, in a pinch, did he need hard liquor at all, some sweet berry wine, some hobo tramp bum railroad jungle Thunderbird that he had become exceedingly used to, if not exceedingly fond of, would do if he could just get back to that old Baltimore& Ohio siding over near Steubenville where the brethren would give him the succor of a few swigs of the stuff. Hell, although he would not, like some tramps that he knew, stoop to burning up sterno, or distilling wood alcohol, a cheap beer, maybe a local brand, like the Knickerbocker that he used to drink when he went to school up in Boston would do. Even the thought of that old time brew, cheap and in giant imperial quarts to get a little extra quantity (purchased, under-aged purchased, via a local wino bum, who knows maybe now a fellow traveler that he might have met on the road the last few years when he himself went on the bum, who would purchase the goods as long as he got his bottle of Thunderbird or Tokay for his efforts) make his thirst, his need, just that much greater.

He resolved to put drink thoughts, the thought of getting a drink thought, out of his mind and concentrate on trying to make it through the next few minutes while his drink lust hit its peak. It helped, helped sometimes to take stock of how he had gone downhill, gone downhill kind of fast from the days when he rolled the dice on Wall Street for old Smith Barney and earned some big numbers and make some big money for his investors before the roof fell in. His personal roof, not some bogus recession, or depression, or bull or bear market noise. Hell he knew how to make money, make money hand over fist, in any kind of market, if there was a market, and if there wasn’t, he would make one like he did on the Argentina futures stock dump when the stuff was selling for ten cents on the dollar. That was beauty, they might still be talking about that one on the street when they wanted to talk about the days when men (and a few women too) knew how to take chances for keeps, and not cry if things didn’t work out.

But he could only keep that thought for so long because then the hard times part would come crashing in. Sure whiskey, high-shelf whiskey, that bonded Haig & Haig, until all hours of the night (and then day) was part of it, a little at the beginning, and sure a whole range of drugs was part of it too when he was really in the clover, was really making markets, and would buy a kilo of something, usually cocaine or heroin wholesale and pass the stuff out for gifts (and a few sniffs and hits for himself when he was feeling blue or whiskey-saturated, sometimes he said to keep the demons away). And sure too part of it was the gambling, gambling on everything that moved, man or beast, sometimes on stuff that would not move (betting, side-betting for a hundred, two hundred a whack whether something would or would not move for kicks, he won or lost thousands on a single game, it didn’t matter, only the action, the game market mattered), that began to take up his interest, and time, more and more rather making money for his clients, but it really got out of hand when he fell short on his gambling debts, and began grabbing dough from his clients’ funds, or wherever he could cadge some serious dough, until he got caught. And then one of the roofs fell in.

He might have made it through if she, Susan, Susan Pride, had stood by him, had even thought to stand by him once he was booted out of Smith Barney (they had hushed his manipulations up and decided not to prosecute but he was finished in the American financial markets) but that roof fell, fell in the day he was booted. Good-bye, adios, adieu and no returned telephone calls. He had met her at the Four Seasons in sunny times, all WASP beautiful and charming like out of some poor boy dream. when he was riding high and she was looking for somebody not to Fifth Avenue and the Hamptons born, a democratic experiment and it had worked, worked while he was riding high, and even a little as he went on the downslope but genetics, social genetics, were too strong, especial when some of her Sarah Lawrence classmates began to snub her. Her stockbroker father she said would be ruined if she stayed with him, and daddy held the purse strings, purse strings that could have gotten him afloat, maybe down in Argentina or some off-market where he could have pushed his way back. Yah, sure honey whatever is right, he said to himself after she gave him the kiss-off although that august father was nothing but a stiff until he gave him some very nice inside stuff. Frankie started drinking, drinking lower and lower on the quality scale (both booze and barroom) and then, cash-less, friend-less and home-less he finally went on the bum.

Jesus, just then the drink thirst came back. No, puzzling through the past, especially the Susan past, would not curb his need this night. He started thinking about how pan-handling a little downtown to get enough dough for a little rubbing alcohol over at CVS might just this one time help him through the night …

Portland, Maine Tar Sands Protest Sees Hundreds Rally Against Proposed Pipeline From Montreal

AP | By By CLARKE CANFIELD Posted: 01/26/2013 2:37 pm EST

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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Hundreds of people rallied in Portland on Saturday in what was billed as the largest protest yet against the possibility of so-called tar sands oil being piped in from Montreal.
Protesters gathered downtown, then marched to the city's waterfront for a rally that included speeches from Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, Portland Mayor Michael Brennan and others who said allowing heavy oil from western Canada to cross northern New England poses serious environmental risks.
Environmental groups say plans are in the works to bring oil by pipeline from western Canada to Montreal and then to Portland. Critics say tar sands, or oil sands, oil is so corrosive, acidic and thick that it's more likely to spill than conventional crude oil and that would put rivers, lakes and streams at risk in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. They further say that renewable energy should be promoted to reduce reliance on oil.
"With climate change once again at the forefront of our minds, it is crucial that we work together to end our dependence upon on foreign oil and keep our community free of fuels like tar sands," Brennan said in a statement. "We need to work together to expand the market for renewable energies and eliminate the demand for tar sands and other fuels that are not only a root cause for climate change but also carry real risks of pollution and spills in our backyard."
The debate in northern New England comes at the same time that debate is increasing in Washington over the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, a $7 billion project that would carry oil from Canada to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. Environmental groups say the pipeline would transport "dirty oil" from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, and produce heat-trapping gases that contribute to global warming.
The company that owns pipelines connecting western Canada to Montreal, and a separate company that owns the 236-mile pipeline from Portland to Montreal, both say there are no plans to bring tar sands oil across northern New England to Portland. The Portland-to-Montreal pipeline now carries oil that arrives in Portland by ship from overseas through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Quebec to Montreal.
Opponents of oil sands oil are putting out misinformation, said John Quinn, executive director of the New England Petroleum Council, which represents the oil industry.

Seventy percent of the gasoline sold in Maine now comes from oil from Alberta that's refined in New Brunswick, he said. The oil is no more corrosive or dangerous than conventional crude oil, he said.
"They intend to demonize oil sands because it's a direct threat to wind power," Quinn said. "Many of the organizers of this rally oppose petroleum in any form."

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