THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, Part 3

BOOK REVIEW

THE CHALLENGE OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION (1928-29), LEON TROTSKY, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1981

If you are interested in the history of the International Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of the writings of Leon Trotsky, Russian Bolshevik leader, from the start in 1923 of the Left Opposition in the Russian Communist Party that he led through his various exiles up until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space) Look in this space under this byline for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by this important world communist leader.

Since the volumes in the series cover a long period of time and contain some material that , while of interest, is either historically dated or more fully developed in Trotsky’s other separately published major writings I am going to organize this series of reviews in this way. By way of introduction I will give a brief summary of the events of the time period of each volume. Then I will review what I believe is the central document of each volume. The reader can then decide for him or herself whether my choice was informative or not.

The period under review is the time after Trotsky and the leading elements of the United Opposition were expelled from the Russian Communist Party and the Communist International by the Stalinist/Bukharinist bloc who controlled the party and the International. The Zinovievist section of the Opposition capitulated almost immediately. However, the bulk of the Opposition led by Trotsky remained in opposition. In 1928 after the political defeat of the United Opposition Trotsky was sent into internal exile at Alma Ata in the far reaches of Russia. Other leading elements of the Opposition were sent elsewhere. Thus, adding to the political defeat was the attempt to physically disburse and breakup the opposition by Stalin and his henchmen. Nevertheless under very trying circumstances the Left Opposition retained some organizational and literary existence. In 1929 even the idea of this disbursed internal opposition became too much for Stalin and Trotsky was sent to external exile in Turkey, never to return to the Soviet Union.

During this period Stalin was also attempting, as a result of previous erroneous domestic and international policies, to shake off his alliance with the Bukharinite Right Opposition and take sole control of the Russian party and the International. His success in doing that allowed him to pursue a ‘left’ course in relationship to the rich peasants which culminated later in the forced collectivization of agriculture and intensified industrialization under his concept of top down central planning. The confusion over this change in policy led many in the Left Opposition to capitulate and was the source of much debate and rancor as demonstrated in several of the writings in this volume. This is also the period of the ‘third period’ in Comintern policy which declared that the final impending crisis of international capitalism was at hand and that revolutionary upheavals were on the order of the day everywhere. This policy was to have catastrophic effects, particularly in Germany, as the Communist isolated themselves from the base of the Social Democratic workers at a time of the rising tie of fascism. We all know the results and it was not pretty.

Unlike the previous two volumes reviewed under this byline no individual piece of writing sticks out here. However, Communists have always prided themselves on their internationalism and so Who is Leading the Comintern Today? is the article that seems to best demonstrate the problems of the Stalinist international policy during this period. Previously the mistakes in revolutionary strategy had been a result of mistaken evaluations of the political situation or the immaturity of the various, mainly European, parties. However, particularly with the false policies on the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee and toward the Chinese Revolution a conscious anti-revolutionary policy set in. That change from international revolution as the ultimate defense of the Soviet Union to turning foreign Communist parties into border guards for the whims of Soviet foreign policy was to continue until the liquidation of the Comintern in 1943.

Trotsky in this article, with his usual insight and rapier pen, looks not only at the implications of these policies but the change of personal which affected the way the policies would be implemented. Stalin, apparently, put every broken leader, failed revolutionary, careerist and Menshevik skater he could get his hands on to staff the International. Revolutions can not be made by such elements but, as Trotsky points out, they can surely be destroyed by them. He highlights the case of Martynov, a long time right-wing Menshevik leader, who came over to the Bolsheviks in 1923. He had stood opposed to everything the Bolsheviks in their prime stood for. Now he was a leading light theoretician of the Chinese defeat. Nothing more needs to be said. Needless to say we have paid dearly for the victory of such Themidorians. Read on.       

 

ON REVOLUTIONARIES AND MORTALITY

THE DUTY OF A REVOLUTIONARY IS TO MAKE THE REVOLUTION-OR FALL TRYING

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I was recently asked by a young militant leftist of vague socialist sympathies why an old militant like myself was still trying to put up what apparently appears to be a forlorn task in my life time- the ‘good fight’ for socialism. My short answer to her was that I was doing it for her. It is true that each political generation will come to terms with the socialist tasks of its era in its own way. However, it would be a serious mistake on the part of young socialist militants to ignore the lessons of the past. Such things as the lessons of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Paris Commune, the early history of the American Communist Party and later the Socialist Workers Party now seemingly in the historic mist of time to today’s young militants need examination. Old militants may not be able to immediately bring about the socialist vision that animated their youth but we sure as hell can pass on the touch to the next generation. Moreover, the links to that past by death, attrition and abandonment of politics by earlier cadre have become extremely attenuated, particularly here in the heartland of world imperialism, and the relatively few of us who still remember that past and who are still fighting that ‘good fight’ are duty bound to pass on what we know.

Now for a little longer answer to that young militant’s question. I came of political age in the 1960’s, a time of much political ferment and many political mistakes on the part of the young leftists of my generation, what I have euphemistically called elsewhere the generation of ’68. Personally, I came, kicking and screaming, relatively late to the Marxist worldview after abandoning left liberal and then soft socialist political positions. I can, however, state with some pride that the lateness of my conversion probably helped to keep my convictions that much more solid. Certainly nothing politically over the past 30 plus years has changed my basis view of the necessity of socialism and the probability that a knock down, drag out fight against the imperialists will be necessary to achieve it. If nothing else that is the example I wish to set by my writings and political actions.

Truth to tell, nobody ever said that individual revolutionaries would live to see the socialist society in their life time. If any thought so they bought the wrong ticket. While it is certainly true that individual activists make their own judgments about the extend of their commitment to their political goals, especially something as seemingly esoteric as the hard fight for socialism, this wicked world holds too many surprises to base one’s political calculations on the dream of actually being a commissar in a soviet society. Our models, however, should be Marx who after 1848 never came close to see the society he predicted but still fought savagely for his world view until his death. And Lenin, who only saw a partial and much distorted completion of his world view before his untimely death. And Trotsky who fought to save the Russian Revolution and later in exile fought to create a new revolutionary international died at his post with his work still uncompleted. Can we do less?

Finally, let me give a specific example that has sustained me throughout the years. As part of my early Marxist political activity I did a massive amount of political reading, especially about the American socialist movement. In that reading I was drawn to the struggle of the American Trotskyists in the 1930’s who as followers of Trotsky’s Left International were trying to create a new revolutionary communist party in opposition to the Stalinized American Communist Party. As part of that process they tried to regroup with other active left wing anti-Stalinist organizations. One such successful regroupment was with the Workers Party that had led the famous Toledo Auto-Lite strike in 1934 and which along with other later regroupments formed the Socialist Workers Party.

One of the leaders of the Workers Party was New York University Professor James Burnham. Burnham was a high-powered intellectual who could write very persuasively and wrote many articles and pamphlets that militants today can still profitably read. In 1940 he led a major split from the SWP over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. He in turn split from Marxism and later would end up a die-hard anti-Communist in league with conservative William Buckley’s National Review. Such are vagaries of politics, but that is not the main point here. In his heyday in the Socialist Workers Party Burnham was asked by fellow leader James P. Cannon to take a desperately necessary more central role in the leadership of the organization. In response Burnham stated that he personally could, or would not, do so as he was uncertain whether the socialist goals of the organization were attainable in his life-time. That, fellow militants, is exactly the bad example that I have been fighting against most of my political life. I remain at my post.

ON REVOLUTIONARIES AND MORTALITY

THE DUTY OF A REVOLUTIONARY IS TO MAKE THE REVOLUTION-OR FALL TRYING

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman  

I was recently asked by a young militant leftist of vague socialist sympathies why an old militant like myself was still trying to put up what apparently appears to be a forlorn task in my life time- the ‘good fight’ for socialism. My short answer to her was that I was doing it for her. It is true that each political generation will come to terms with the socialist tasks of its era in its own way. However, it would be a serious mistake on the part of young socialist militants to ignore the lessons of the past. Such things as the lessons of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Paris Commune, the early history of the American Communist Party and later the Socialist Workers Party now seemingly in the historic mist of time to today’s young militants need examination. Old militants may not be able to immediately bring about the socialist vision that animated their youth but we sure as hell can pass on the touch to the next generation. Moreover, the links to that past by death, attrition and abandonment of politics by earlier cadre have become extremely attenuated, particularly here in the heartland of world imperialism, and the relatively few of us who still remember that past and who are still fighting that ‘good fight’ are duty bound to pass on what we know.

Now for a little longer answer to that young militant’s question. I came of political age in the 1960’s, a time of much political ferment and many political mistakes on the part of the young leftists of my generation, what I have euphemistically called elsewhere the generation of ’68. Personally, I came, kicking and screaming, relatively late to the Marxist worldview after abandoning left liberal and then soft socialist political positions. I can, however, state with some pride that the lateness of my conversion probably helped to keep my convictions that much more solid. Certainly nothing politically over the past 30 plus years has changed my basis view of the necessity of socialism and the probability that a knock down, drag out fight against the imperialists will be necessary to achieve it.  If nothing else that is the example I wish to set by my writings and political actions.

Truth to tell, nobody ever said that individual revolutionaries would live to see the socialist society in their life time. If any thought so they bought the wrong ticket. While it is certainly true that individual activists make their own judgments about the extend of their commitment to their political goals, especially something as seemingly esoteric as the hard fight for socialism, this wicked world holds too many surprises to base one’s political calculations on the dream of actually being a commissar in a soviet society. Our models, however, should be Marx who after 1848 never came close to see the society he predicted but still fought savagely for his worldview until his death. And Lenin, who only saw a partial and much distorted completion of his world view before his untimely death. And Trotsky who fought to save the Russian Revolution and later in exile fought to create a new revolutionary international died at his post with his work still uncompleted. Can we do less?

Finally, let me give a specific example that has sustained me throughout the years. As part of my early Marxist political activity I did a massive amount of political reading, especially about the American socialist movement. In that reading I was drawn to the struggle of the American Trotskyists in the 1930’s who as followers of Trotsky’s Left International were trying to create a new revolutionary communist party in opposition to the Stalinized American Communist Party. As part of that process they tried to regroup with other active left wing anti-Stalinist organizations. One such successful regroupment was with the Workers Party that had led the famous Toledo Auto-Lite strike in 1934 and which along with other later regroupments formed the Socialist Workers Party.

 

One of the leaders of the Workers Party was New York University Professor James Burnham. Burnham was a high-powered intellectual who could write very persuasively and wrote many articles and pamphlets that militants today can still profitably read. In 1940 he led a major split from the SWP over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. He in turn split from Marxism and later would end up a die-hard anti-Communist in league with conservative William Buckley’s National Review. Such are vagaries of politics, but that is not the main point here. In his heyday in the Socialist Workers Party Burnham was asked by fellow leader James P. Cannon to take a desperately necessary more central role in the leadership of the organization. In response Burnham stated that he personally could or would not do so as he was uncertain whether the socialist goals of the organization were attainable in his life time. That, fellow militants, is exactly the bad example that I have been fighting against most of my political life. I remain at my post.

***HONOR ROSA LUXEMBURG-THE ROSE OF THE REVOLUTION

COMMENTARY

HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT

Every January leftists honor three revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in 1924, Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin. Lenin needs no special commendation. I made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in this space earlier so I would like to make some points here about the life of Rosa Luxemburg. These comments came at a time when the question of a woman President was the buzz in the political atmosphere in the United States in the lead up to the upcoming 2008 elections. Rosa, who died almost a century ago, puts all such pretenders to so-called ‘progressive’ political leadership in the shade.

The early Marxist movement, like virtually all progressive political movements in the past, was heavily dominated by men. I say this as a statement of fact and not as something that was necessarily intentional or good. It is only fairly late in the 20^thcentury that the political emancipation of women, mainly through the granting of the vote earlier in the century, led to mass participation of women in politics as voters or politicians. Although, socialists, particularly revolutionary socialists, have placed the social, political and economic emancipation of women at the center of their various programs from the early days that fact was honored more in the breech than the observance.

All of this is by way of saying that the political career of the physically frail but intellectually robust Rosa Luxemburg was all the more remarkable because she had the capacity to hold her own politically and theoretically with the male leadership of the international social democratic movement in the pre-World War I period. While the writings of the likes of then leading German Social Democratic theoretician Karl Kautsky are safely left in the basket Rosa’s writings today still retain a freshness, insightfulness and vigor that anti-imperialist militants can benefit from by reading. Her book Accumulation of Capital alone would place her in the select company of important Marxist thinkers.

But Rosa Luxemburg was more than a Marxist thinker. She was also deeply involved in the daily political struggles pushing for left-wing solutions. Yes, the more bureaucratic types, comfortable in their party and trade union niches, hated her for it (and she, in turn, hated them) but she fought hard for her positions on an anti-class collaborationist, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist left-wing of the international of the social democratic movement throughout this period. And she did this not merely as an adjunct leader of a women’s section of a social democratic party but as a fully established leader of left-wing men and women, as a fully socialist leader. One of the interesting facts about her life is how little she wrote on the women question as a separate issue from the broader socialist question of the emancipation of women. Militant women today take note.

One of the easy ways for leftists, particularly later leftists influenced by Stalinist ideology, to denigrate the importance of Rosa Luxemburg’s thought and theoretical contributions to Marxism was to write her off as too soft on the question of the necessity of a hard vanguard revolutionary organization to lead the socialist revolution. Underpinning that theme was the accusation that she relied too much on the spontaneous upsurge of the masses as a corrective to the lack of hard organization or the impediments that reformist socialist elements threw up to derail the revolutionary process. A close examination of her own organization, The Socialist Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, shows that this was not the case; this was a small replica of a Bolshevik-type organization. That organization, moreover, made several important political blocs with the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the defeat of the Russian revolution of 1905. Yes, there were political differences between the organizations, particularly over the critical question for both the Polish and Russian parties of the correct approach to the right of national self-determination, but the need for a hard organization does not appear to be one of them.

Furthermore, no less a stalwart Bolshevik revolutionary than Leon Trotsky, writing in her defense in the 1930’s, dismissed charges of Rosa’s supposed ‘spontaneous uprising’ fetish as so much hot air. Her tragic fate, murdered with the complicity of her former Social Democratic comrades, after the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin in 1919 (at the same time as her comrade, Karl Liebknecht), had causes related to the smallness of the group, its political immaturity and indecisiveness than in its spontaneousness. If one is to accuse Rosa Luxemburg of any political mistake it is in not pulling the Spartacist group out of Kautsky’s Independent Social Democrats (itself a split from the main Social Democratic party during the war, over the war issue ) sooner than late 1918. However, as the future history of the communist movement would painfully demonstrate revolutionaries have to take advantage of the revolutionary opportunities that come their way, even if not the most opportune or of their own making.

All of the above controversies aside, let me be clear, Rosa Luxemburg did not then need nor does she now need a certificate of revolutionary good conduct from today’s leftists, the reader of this space or this writer. For her revolutionary opposition to World War I when it counted, at a time when many supposed socialists had capitulated to their respective ruling classes including her comrades in the German Social Democratic Party, she holds a place of honor. Today, as we face the fourth year of the war in Iraq we could use a few more Rosas, and a few less tepid, timid parliamentary opponents. For this revolutionary opposition she went to jail like her comrade Karl Liebknecht. For revolutionaries it goes with the territory. And in jail she wrote, she always wrote, about the fight against the ongoing imperialist war (especially in the Junius pamphlets about the need for a Third International). Yes, Rosa was at her post then. And she died at her post later in the Spartacist fight doing her internationalist duty trying to lead the German socialist revolution the success of which would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution. This is a woman leader I could follow who, moreover, places today’s bourgeois women parliamentary politicians in the shade. As the political atmosphere gets heated up over the next couple years, remember what a real fighting revolutionary woman politician looked like. Remember Rosa Luxemburg, the Rose of the Revolution.

***THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

BOOK REVIEW

THE AGE OF REVOLUTION, 1789-1848, E.J. HOBSBAWN, THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY, NEW YORK, 1962

The eminent British Marxist historian E.J. Hobsbawn has written, over an extended period, several books highlighting the key trends in the modern history since the English Revolution, particularly modern revolutionary history. The book under review is to this writer the best of the series. Why? The period from the French Revolution to the Revolutions of 1848 is the decisive period of the age of democratic revolution, the necessary precursor to all later socialist and communist movements. This is the period when, not without setbacks and dashed hopes for the laboring masses, those masses began their first definitive appearance on the world- historic stage, even if at that time only in the wake of the victorious bourgeoisie. Re-reading the book in 2013, however, makes one realize that the fight started in the‘golden age of the democratic revolution’ has suffered some regression and many of the issues like religious toleration, meaningful political representation, the elimination of economic inequality, the right to national self-determination, the fight against imperialism, etc. that one would have thought had been decisively settled then are still in need of further struggle.

Professor Hobsbawn’s central theme is the intertwining of the spreading of political revolution unleashed by the great revolution in France in 1789 and the establishment of the rudiments of industrial society by the developments, primarily in England at that time, of the Industrial Revolution. The implications inherent in this form of thematic presentation cannot be underestimated in the development of modern society as we know it. It is, perhaps, hard to understand today the tremendous effect that the changing of individuals from subjects to an arbitrary sovereign to citizens of a messy democracy had on unleashing the energies of society. It is not unfair to state that that process is what changed people, at least in the European/ North American land masses, into individuals from a previously largely undifferentiated mass. Moreover, the rise and definitive victory of industrialization held out the promise, if only the promise, of taking the struggle against scarcity-the struggle for daily existence- off the agenda as the motive force of history to be replaced by more communal and cultural pursuits. Ah, but, unfortunately, that is still the music of the future.

Professor Hobsbawn is, however, not merely an ideologue for these two above-mentioned trends of history as they played out at the time but further does a masterful job of connecting all the conflicting tendencies of the period. If at the end of the day some attenuated form of democracy (or rather liberalism, which is not the same thing) triumphed and capitalism, very ugly warts and all, also was victorious those were not necessarily the only outcomes possible in this period. To that end, Hobsbawn analyzes the land question and the related question of the displacement of populations which created the urban proletariat and gave rise to great cities; the tensions between the liberalism of the middle- classes and the rough democratic spirit of the laboring masses; the critical role of science, particularly the applied sciences in giving a boost to industrial organization; the fight against religious obscurantism and the counter-attack by religious reaction; the unusually prominent role of the arts and artists as spokesmen for democratic causes during this period; and, the beginnings of the attempts by the laboring masses to exercise their own political program culminating in the revolutions of 1848. All these trends bring us to the age of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. If you want a thoughtful, incisive overview of an important period of the history of humankind this is your stop.

***The Cold War Dream- With My Week With Marilyn In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

She, Marilyn she, all curves, slopes and harmless teeter, enflamed the red scare cold war 1950s night, the night of the long knives, the night of the snitch and the stabber- in- the- back, the night of the man in the gray-flannel suit, the night of go along or else, the night of the freeze- frame cultural stop. She, Marilyn she, enflamed fathers’ flickered hearts, fathers worn out from endless struggles against the haphazard, uneven economic circumstances of the great depression whirlwind dust bowl which drove them to despair and more recently some shallow water Pacific atolls, some damn coral reef , or some desolate Norman beach, slogging east and west to break the back of some evil men. And thinking, thinking that father’s wit thinking while blanked out in some father’s newspaper night chair, or better, in some restless sultry rumpled sheets night bed, the little woman harmlessly next to him sleeping the sleep of the just, mind you just thinking- hey why couldn’t I get next to that, why couldn’t I who sacrificed this and that get next to that blonde goddess. Hell, they say she likes men, likes them by the score (before spitting them out posthaste but how were they to know that if they didn’t get their chance next to that). Maybe she just needed a solid guy, a guy who worked as a welder down at the shipyard (or fill in the blank for the work-a-day world job) to straighten her out.

Oh yes, then snapping back to reality there was the question, always the question, of that little woman harmlessly sleeping next to him, about her fate without him in a mated world (and she a Catholic and so really up against it in the marriage lottery), about those two young boys sleeping another sleep of the just in the next room (already neck-deep in ideas od college pushed by that little woman so they can get ahead of mother and father), about that fresh mortgage hanging over their heads and the dog needing some work at the vet’s. Yes, that mix would stop a better man than him, stop him cold in his red scare cold war tracks. And so he would have to forgo that blonde goddess experience, have to shoulder on in the red scare cold war night and try to do the best he could. But in the far reaches of his mind every time he saw her in some film down at the Strand (and he saw them all), every time some newsreel photo showed up on the screen, every time he picked up a copy of Playboy or some girlie magazine (making sure that with those two growing, exploring always asking questions boys the damn thing was well hidden behind the shelves in the garage), every time he went to take a leak in the men’s room down at work and spied her figure gracing the calendar on the toilet wall he would think how he could have gotten next to that, gotten next to that easy.

That little woman, the mother of his children, those two sleeping boys in the next room, well, she sensed, sensed every time they went to the Strand, just the two of them with his mother doing the baby-sitting chores to give them a night out, bless her, and she, Marilyn she, was in the film (or hogging all the air in some damn newsreel chronicling her doings, or not doings ), or when they passed some newsstand and her picture was plastered all over Look or Life or some movie magazine detailing her latest infatuation or infidelity, or worst when he went out to the garage late at night (she knew all about that damn smut magazine stuff he hid behind the shelves- who did he think he was fooling ) his heart would beat a little more quickly. His hand in hers previously held tight would go a little bit limp. And she could sense a faraway look in his eye, a look that she knew, she was a woman after all, said he was thinking, thinking-“ well hell I could have gotten next to that, gotten next to that easy.” And she laughed, laughed at such a preposterous idea, laughed at the vanity of men and their dream-encrusted ideas.

She furthermore knew, knew when she stopped laughing that it was just a “phase,”that such dreams in any case were harmless, mostly harmless, and that if he had gotten within fifty yards of her, Marilyn, he would have swooned and gotten all tongue-tied just like that first night he had asked her for a date, asked to see her again after that USO dance down at the Starlight Ballroom when he was in the service and was stationed at the same Naval Depot where she worked in the civilian section. She had been good enough for him then, and he said, made a point of saying, she was good enough for him now especially after they had come out of one of her, Marilyn’s, movies. She of the good earth high collar house dress and sensible shoes. She of the making do when he first got out of the service and jobs were scarce and the first boy was coming soon. She of the making a good home for him and the boys. She, well, she of his real day- time dreams. Then she thought, going back to girlish times, the times before she was married, and was looking around for a mate that all the guys were always swarming around her always ready to ask her out at the slightest hope. And she, in her way, has played her little coquettish games, and had done her little ass-shakings if it came to that.

While in that frame of mind, and after taking a quick glance in the mirror, she frankly confessed that maybe she had lost a step, had not kept up her appearances, had grown into some matronly housewife what with raising kids, doing the household chores, including that damn laundry and so she resolved to take a step back and promote herself as a woman, as his woman. And promoting oneself as a woman in 1950s Marilyn America meant only one thing, for starters. Color thy hair. Whether you were a perky red-head, a feisty brunette (like her), a raven-haired devil woman or just slightly legally blonde that was step one. Lighten the damn thing as far as you could without becoming freakish. Reddish blonde, brunette blonde, black blonde, and blonde blonde a la Mae West but blonde.

A few days later she did just that, did a rinse job at home with some hydrogen peroxide, and he didn’t notice it when he came in for supper (nor did the kids but that was no surprise what would they know of love’s desperate trials and tribulations). A couple of days after that she tried some Clairol, still no takers (although one of the boys said something smelled funny after she had completed her task). Finally she resolved to take her pin money and take her case to the local beauty parlor. The results, kind of dark ash blonde which given her brunette roots was about as far as such things could reasonably go, she admitted were fabulous. That night he came home to supper and asked with a quizzical smile if she had done something to her hair. Well, yes (the kids still clueless kept to their cluelessness). He kind of kept looking at her all evening in some kind of stupor. That Saturday night though when they went to the movies, just the two of them, for a break (his mother doing the baby-sitting chores, bless her) and guys were kind of giving he the once –over she noticed that he held her hand very tightly throughout the whole movie. And that night, well, she would leave it to the imagination about what happened that night.

And of those two clueless boys, or at least one of them, Kenny, did not give a rat’s ass (his term, Kenny’s term, his neighborhood hang-out boys, age twelve bracket, exploring their own coded language to avoid scrutiny by those she, Marilyn she, smitten fathers and ashy blonde mothers) about Marilyn Monroe. He had thought her ugly with that little black beauty mark on her face, a funny shape unlike his mother’s and a funny whispery voice, when he had seen her with the parents at the Strand in Some Like It Hot or some name like that. See he had troubles closer to home, well, school trouble, well not exactly school troubles but a girl at school troubles. See Alison Crowell “liked” him (and how he knew that she liked him was through that ancient grapevine that defied all advances in communication technology when Alison had told Timmy Jones’ sister Beth and Beth conveyed that knowledge to Timmy, and Timmy, being one of those coded language rat’s ass hang-out guys, told Kenny. Simple). The problem, the trouble really was that he “liked” Alison too. Could anyone believe that. The previous year in fifth grade she was just kind of a stick, just kind of a giggling girl to be avoided at all costs in that boy hang-out world. But this year, this year she kind of got a certain little shape, a bump here and there, and , moreover, when he talked to her, or she to him, she seemed, well, she seemed kind of interesting (although she still giggled a little too much for his tastes). So no, no way, was he going to give a rat’s ass about some blonde, some movie actress (and how did anybody know if she was really a blonde, it looked fake, just like his mother’s although don’t tell her that, his mother, because he was supposed to be just a clueless kid when it came to girls’ things. He had seen Mom walking out of Lucille’s Beauty Parlor looking, well, looking different), when he, Kenny he, had to figure out how to get Alison Crowell up into the Strand balcony for the Saturday matinee. Jesus.

Many years later, the number does not matter, but many, Kenny was accompanying his wife (his third wife, Anita, so some things, well a lot of things, had got awry in his life’s love department since innocent Alison times) to a Sunday indoor flea market (invoking shades of the master flea marketer and prolific author Larry McMurtry and his doings since he was looking for old books and she, Anita, was looking for old western jewelry) on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. While there he passed (and re-passed) a life-sized (and life-shaped) cardboard poster of a woman, a blonde woman, nude, and wondered who she was because the face certainly looked familiar. Upon inquiry of the dealer selling the item (and if he had had his wits about him instead of drooling, wondering how maybe he could get next to someone like that, something like that under the sheets, he would have noticed that the dealer was exclusively selling movie-related items) he found out that she was a young Marilyn Monroe, a Marilyn at a time when she might have been from hunger, but also before she was all dolled up with every form of surgery and uplift imaginable. At that moment he finally knew why his father had that girlie magazine hidden behind the shelves that he (and his brother) found one night when they, his parents, were out and they had gone exploring. And knew too now why his mother had started to lighten her hair that time when his father would come home after work and have those far away looks sitting in his nighttime newspaper chair (and continued to lighten it until she was very blonde before she conceded to age and let it go back to its natural color and then to grey).

But that is not the end of Kenny’s story, and would not be complete without this last tidbit. That flea market moment got him to thinking, as was his wont when he was in a film mood, about Marilyn’s films, films that he had not seen for a long time, since those days at the Strand. So when he and Anita got home to Los Angeles he scurried to the local library that was choke full of DVDs to rent. He made a number of selections and over a few weeks viewed most of her films. Frankly he still didn’t see what the big deal was, what made his father and other fathers have wandering thoughts although he thought better of that Some Like It Hot than his dragged- to- the-movies as a kid opinion. What did change his view somewhat was when he viewed her in her last film, The Misfits, something her husband (or ex-husband, such things are confusing in the modern world), playwright Arthur Miller, put together for her.

There she just dominated the screen and he found himself thinking that if they had let her loose more and not faked her up maybe she would be remembered as more than some Andy Warhol icon, some American icon. But with that movie he now finally understood why Norman Mailer wrote a big- ass book about her, why that same Andy Warhol silk-screened her to eternity, why Joe DiMaggio would let his batting average slip for her, why Arthur Miller spent many sleepless nights fretting over some words that would do her justice, why some guy over in England spent a week with her being enchanted, and why his father would always make a point of saying to anyone who would listen that he had seen every film that she had ever made. Thanks Marilyn.

***Poet's Corner- William Butler Yeats' "Easter, 1916"

Guest Commentary

This is the 97th Anniversary of the Irish Easter Uprising-

BELOW ARE TWO FAMOUS POEMS BY THE ANGLO-IRISH POET WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS-CHOCKY AR LA

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born. 80

September 25, 1916


Sixteen Dead Men

O but we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?

You say that we should still the land
Till Germany's overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is there logic to outweigh
MacDonagh's bony thumb?

How could you dream they'd listen
That have an ear alone
For those new comrades they have found,
Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,
Or meddle with our give and take
That converse bone to bone?

Songwriter's Corner- Spain 1936- The Irish Connection

Commentary

I have spilled no small amount of ink, and gladly, writing about the heroic military role of those Americans who fought in the American-led Abraham Lincoln Battalion of 15th International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. The song "Viva La Quince Brigada" can apply to those of other nationalities who fought bravely for the Republican side in that conflict. Here's a take from the Irish perspective. Note the name Frank Ryan included here, a real hero of that operation.


Viva La Quince Brigada
(Christy Moore)

Ten years before I saw the light of morning
A comradeship of heroes was laid.
From every corner of the world came sailing
The Fifteenth International Brigade.

They came to stand beside the Spanish people.
To try and stem the rising Fascist tide
Franco's allies were the powerful and wealthy,
Frank Ryan's men came from the other side.

Even the olives were bleeding
As the battle for Madrid it thundered on.
Truth and love against the force af evil,
Brotherhood against the Fascist clan.

Vive La Quince Brigada!
"No Paseran" the pledge that made them fight.
"Adelante" was the cry around the hillside.
Let us all remember them tonight.

Bob Hillard was a Church of Ireland pastor;
From Killarney across the Pyrenees ho came.
From Derry came a brave young Christian Brother.
Side by side they fought and died in Spain.

Tommy Woods, aged seventeen, died in Cordoba.
With Na Fianna he learned to hold his gun.
From Dublin to the Villa del Rio
Where he fought and died beneath the Spanish sun.

Many Irishmen heard the call of Franco.
Joined Hitler and Mussolini too.
Propaganda from the pulpit and newspapers
Helped O'Duffy to enlist his crew.

The word came from Maynooth: 'Support the Fascists.'
The men of cloth failed yet again
When the bishops blessed the blueshirts in Dun Laoghaire
As they sailed beneath the swastika to Spain.

This song is a tribute to Frank Ryan.
Kit Conway and Dinny Coady too.
Peter Daly, Charlie Regan and Hugh Bonar.
Though many died I can but name a few.

Danny Doyle, Blaser-Brown and Charlie Donnelly.
Liam Tumilson and Jim Straney from the Falls.
Jack Nally, Tommy Patton and Frank Conroy,
Jim Foley, Tony Fox and Dick O'Neill.

Written in 1983
Copyright Christy Moore
apr97


Here are a couple more Yeats classics.

THE SECOND COMING

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The Second Coming" is reprinted from Michael Robartes and the Dancer. W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

ON A POLITICAL PRISONER

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

HE that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
Down to her cell and there alit,
And there endured her fingers' touch
And from her fingers ate its bit.

Did she in touching that lone wing
Recall the years before her mind
Became a bitter, an abstract thing,
Her thought some popular enmity:
Blind and leader of the blind
Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?

When long ago I saw her ride
Under Ben Bulben to the meet,
The beauty of her country-side
With all youth's lonely wildness stirred,
She seemed to have grown clean and sweet
Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird:

Sea-borne, or balanced in the air
When first it sprang out of the nest
Upon some lofty rock to stare
Upon the cloudy canopy,
While under its storm-beaten breast
Cried out the hollows of the sea.

"On a Political Prisoner" is reprinted from Michael Robartes and the Dancer. W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

***Poet's Corner- William Butler Yeats' "Easter, 1916"

Guest Commentary

This is the 97th Anniversary of the Irish Easter Uprising-

BELOW ARE TWO FAMOUS POEMS BY THE ANGLO-IRISH POET WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS-CHOCKY AR LA

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born. 80

September 25, 1916


Sixteen Dead Men

O but we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?

You say that we should still the land
Till Germany's overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is there logic to outweigh
MacDonagh's bony thumb?

How could you dream they'd listen
That have an ear alone
For those new comrades they have found,
Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,
Or meddle with our give and take
That converse bone to bone?

Songwriter's Corner- Spain 1936- The Irish Connection

Commentary

I have spilled no small amount of ink, and gladly, writing about the heroic military role of those Americans who fought in the American-led Abraham Lincoln Battalion of 15th International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. The song "Viva La Quince Brigada" can apply to those of other nationalities who fought bravely for the Republican side in that conflict. Here's a take from the Irish perspective. Note the name Frank Ryan included here, a real hero of that operation.


Viva La Quince Brigada
(Christy Moore)

Ten years before I saw the light of morning
A comradeship of heroes was laid.
From every corner of the world came sailing
The Fifteenth International Brigade.

They came to stand beside the Spanish people.
To try and stem the rising Fascist tide
Franco's allies were the powerful and wealthy,
Frank Ryan's men came from the other side.

Even the olives were bleeding
As the battle for Madrid it thundered on.
Truth and love against the force af evil,
Brotherhood against the Fascist clan.

Vive La Quince Brigada!
"No Paseran" the pledge that made them fight.
"Adelante" was the cry around the hillside.
Let us all remember them tonight.

Bob Hillard was a Church of Ireland pastor;
From Killarney across the Pyrenees ho came.
From Derry came a brave young Christian Brother.
Side by side they fought and died in Spain.

Tommy Woods, aged seventeen, died in Cordoba.
With Na Fianna he learned to hold his gun.
From Dublin to the Villa del Rio
Where he fought and died beneath the Spanish sun.

Many Irishmen heard the call of Franco.
Joined Hitler and Mussolini too.
Propaganda from the pulpit and newspapers
Helped O'Duffy to enlist his crew.

The word came from Maynooth: 'Support the Fascists.'
The men of cloth failed yet again
When the bishops blessed the blueshirts in Dun Laoghaire
As they sailed beneath the swastika to Spain.

This song is a tribute to Frank Ryan.
Kit Conway and Dinny Coady too.
Peter Daly, Charlie Regan and Hugh Bonar.
Though many died I can but name a few.

Danny Doyle, Blaser-Brown and Charlie Donnelly.
Liam Tumilson and Jim Straney from the Falls.
Jack Nally, Tommy Patton and Frank Conroy,
Jim Foley, Tony Fox and Dick O'Neill.

Written in 1983
Copyright Christy Moore
apr97


Here are a couple more Yeats classics.

THE SECOND COMING

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The Second Coming" is reprinted from Michael Robartes and the Dancer. W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

ON A POLITICAL PRISONER

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

HE that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
Down to her cell and there alit,
And there endured her fingers' touch
And from her fingers ate its bit.

Did she in touching that lone wing
Recall the years before her mind
Became a bitter, an abstract thing,
Her thought some popular enmity:
Blind and leader of the blind
Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?

When long ago I saw her ride
Under Ben Bulben to the meet,
The beauty of her country-side
With all youth's lonely wildness stirred,
She seemed to have grown clean and sweet
Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird:

Sea-borne, or balanced in the air
When first it sprang out of the nest
Upon some lofty rock to stare
Upon the cloudy canopy,
While under its storm-beaten breast
Cried out the hollows of the sea.

"On a Political Prisoner" is reprinted from Michael Robartes and the Dancer. W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

***In Honor Of James Connelly On The Anniversary Of The Easter Uprising-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Crtical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

"James Connolly"

The man was all shot through that came to day into the Barrack Square

And a soldier I, I am not proud to say that we killed him there

They brought him from the prison hospital and to see him in that chair

I swear his smile would, would far more quickly call a man to prayer

Maybe, maybe I don't understand this thing that makes these rebels die

Yet all men love freedom and the spring clear in the sky

I wouldn't do this deed again for all that I hold by

As I gazed down my rifle at his breast but then, then a soldier I.

They say he was different, kindly too apart from all the rest.

A lover of the poor-his wounds ill dressed.

He faced us like a man who knew a greater pain

Than blows or bullets ere the world began: died he in vain

Ready, Present, and him just smiling, Christ I felt my rifle shake

His wounds all open and around his chair a pool of blood

And I swear his lips said, "fire" before my rifle shot that cursed lead

And I, I was picked to kill a man like that, James Connolly



A great crowd had gathered outside of Kilmainham

Their heads all uncovered, they knelt to the ground.

For inside that grim prison

Lay a great Irish soldier

His life for his country about to lay down.

He went to his death like a true son of Ireland

The firing party he bravely did face

Then the order rang out: Present arms and fire

James Connolly fell into a ready-made grave

The black flag was hoisted, the cruel deed was over

Gone was the man who loved Ireland so well

There was many a sad heart in Dublin that morning

When they murdered James Connolly-. the Irish rebel



"James Connolly"

Marchin' down O'Connell Street with the Starry Plough on high
There goes the Citizen Army with their fists raised in the sky
Leading them is a mighty man with a mad rage in his eye
"My name is James Connolly - I didn't come here to die

But to fight for the rights of the working man
And the small farmer too
Protect the proletariat from the bosses and their screws
So hold on to your rifles, boys, and don't give up your dream
Of a Republic for the workin' class, economic liberty"

Then Jem yelled out "Oh Citizens, this system is a curse
An English boss is a monster, an Irish one even worse
They'll never lock us out again and here's the reason why
My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die....."

And now we're in the GPO with the bullets whizzin' by
With Pearse and Sean McDermott biddin' each other goodbye
Up steps our citizen leader and roars out to the sky
"My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die...

Oh Lily, I don't want to die, we've got so much to live for
And I know we're all goin' out to get slaughtered, but I just can't take any more
Just the sight of one more child screamin' from hunger in a Dublin slum
Or his mother slavin' 14 hours a day for the scum
Who exploit her and take her youth and throw it on a factory floor
Oh Lily, I just can't take any more

They've locked us out, they've banned our unions, they even treat their animals better than us
No! It's far better to die like a man on your feet than to live forever like some slave on your knees, Lilly

But don't let them wrap any green flag around me
And for God's sake, don't let them bury me in some field full of harps and shamrocks
And whatever you do, don't let them make a martyr out of me
No! Rather raise the Starry Plough on high, sing a song of freedom
Here's to you, Lily, the rights of man and international revolution"

We fought them to a standstill while the flames lit up the sky
'Til a bullet pierced our leader and we gave up the fight
They shot him in Kilmainham jail but they'll never stop his cry
My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die...."

***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts

Boston's International Workers Day 2013


BMDC International Workers Day Rally
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall
Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM
(Court St. & Cambridge St.)
T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)

To download flyer click here. (Please print double-sided)

Other May Day events:

Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston)
East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm

BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally

Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston

*******

Build Power-May Day 2012

In addition to showing our power on May 1st, we need to build bases of popular, bottom-up, collective, anti-oppressive and anti-hierarchical power in our workplaces, communities, and schools. So we will be doing a variety of workshops, building a variety of organizing campaigns, and engaging a variety of actions on the local level to contribute to the building of such collective power. Some of the workshops, campaigns and actions that we will develop and engage in include: organizing new unions, becoming more active in participatory unions; making our hierarchical unions more participatory; occupying foreclosures; building tenant unions; blocking evictions; preventing foreclosures; and creating solidarity networks, to name a few.

We will not be co-opted by electoral parties, or hierarchical organizations looking to use the movement to serve their interest while diffusing our power. Instead we will organize, educate, and agitate where we are at to build power with each other and to fight directly for our interests: the interests of popular power against the interests of elite power. All of us must contribute for this effort to be effective; but, to the greatest degree possible, those contributions must be collective in nature because our true power is in our solidarity with each other.

Through this effort we are looking to offer real solutions to addressing issues of immediate concern where each of us is at, through direct collective action from the bottom-up. The goal is to continue the ongoing shift currently happening within the movement from just mobilizing, to organizing (or to move from mobilization, to massification.

Mobilizing is necessary, but it is not enough. We can’t just call people out to engage in action. We need to build the networks, organizations and campaigns that provide the opportunities for an ever greater number of people to participate in the decision-making process and functioning of the autonomous popular organizations we are creating.

Our movement is leaderless, which also means that we all must be leaders. But the

leadership we build is again, with, not over, others. We need to all truly listen to and support each other in developing our consciousness, capacities and confidence. We need to see the fights against the various oppressions which keep folks down and divide the 99% against itself, as central to, not distractions from, the effectiveness of our struggle.

We must discourage and isolate egotistical, self-serving and movement-killing

tendencies we encounter while encouraging and developing collective,
liberatory and movement-building tendencies. Our participatory,
bottom-up networks, organizations and campaigns will be the way through which we build our power and make small gains in the medium term. But they will
also serve as the basis for a new world that we are building toward.

This new world in our hearts that we are building and showing, withinthe shell of the old one that we are confronting, is one in which peopleshare power with, not over, each other. It's where workers themselvesdemocratically control their workplaces; where everyone can findmeaningful, socially-useful and balanced work that is carried out in comfortable conditions. It's where those who aren't able to work (or whohave put in their share of their lifetime) are taken care of by society;where we abolish rulers over us and instead societies directly decidefor themselves how to live, develop and grow. It's where our environments are healthy, beautiful and sustainable; where we all have the educational and social opportunities to develop and contribute our full capacities toour families and societies. It's where people can live in nice homes and safe communities, get their health needs fully taken care of, eat healthy and well, and not have to worry about meeting their needs or the needs of their families; where we can all have time and resources to enjoy life; and where the global human society is driven not by competition, oppression, exploitation, domination and war; but by love, freedom and solidarity. We, the 99%, will build our power and show our power until we've occupied our workplaces, our communities, our schools, our lives, our world... until we've occupied everything!

***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts

Boston's International Workers Day 2013


BMDC International Workers Day Rally
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall
Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM
(Court St. & Cambridge St.)
T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)

To download flyer click here. (Please print double-sided)

Other May Day events:

Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston)
East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm

BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally

Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston
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Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back! 

Last fall there were waves of politically-motivated repressive police attacks on, and evictions of, various Occupy camp sites throughout the country including where the movement started in Zucotti (Liberty) Park. But even before the evictions and repression escalated, questions were being asked: what is the way forward for the movement? And, from friend and foe alike, the ubiquitous what do we want. We have seen since then glimpses of organizing and action that are leading the way for the rest of us to follow: the Oakland General Strike on November 2^nd, the West Coast Port Shutdown actions of December 12^th, Occupy Foreclosures, and other actions including, most recently, renewed support for the struggles of the hard-pressed longshoremen in Longview, Washington. These actions show that, fundamentally, all of the strategic questions revolve around the question of power. The power, put simply, of the 99% vs. the power of the 1%.

Although the 99% holds enormous power -all wealth is generated, and the

current society is built and maintained through, the collective labor
(paid and unpaid) of the 99%-, we seldom exercise this vast collective power in our own interests. Too often, abetted and egged on by the 1%, we fruitlessly fight among ourselves driven by racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, occupational elitism, geographical prejudice, heterosexism, and other forms of division, oppression and prejudice.

This consciously debilitating strategy on its part is necessary, along with its control of politics, the courts, the prisons, the cops, and the military in order for the 1% to maintain control over side without worrying for a minute about their power and wealth. Their ill-gotten power is only assured by us, actively or passively, working against ourselves. Moreover many of us are not today fully aware of, nor organized to utilize, the vast collective power we have. The result is that many of us - people of color, women, GLBTQ, immigrants, those with less formal educational credentials, those in less socially respected occupations or unemployed, the homeless, and the just plain desperate- deal with double and triple forms of oppression and societal prejudice.

Currently the state of the economy has hit all of us hard, although as usual the less able to face the effects are hit the hardest like racial minorities, the elderly, the homeless and those down on their luck due to prolonged un and under- employment. In short, there are too many people out of work; wage rates have has barely kept up with rising costs or gone backwards to near historic post-World War II lows in real time terms; social services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have continued to be cut; our influence on the broken, broken for us, government has eroded; and our civil liberties have been seemingly daily attacked en masse. These trends have has been going on while the elites of this country, and of the world, have captured an increasing share of wealth; have had in essence a tax holiday for the past few decades; have viciously attacked our organizations of popular defense such as our public and private unions and community organizations; and have increase their power over us through manipulating their political system even more in their favor than previously.

The way forward, as we can demonstrate by building for the May Day actions, must involve showing our popular power against that of the entrenched elite. But the form of our power, reflecting our different concepts of governing, must be different from the elite’s. Where they have created powerful capital profit driven top down organizations in order to dominate, control, exploit and oppress we must build and exercise bottom-up power in order to cooperate, liberate and collectively empower each other. We need to organize ourselves collectively and apart from these top down power relationships in our communities, schools and workplaces to fight for our interests. This must include a forthright rejection of their attempts, honed after long use, to divide and conquer in order to rule us. A rejection of racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, elitism and other forms of oppression, and, importantly,  a rejection of attempts by their  electoral parties, mainly the Democrats and Republicans but others as well,  powerful special interest groups, and others to co-opt and control our movement.

The Occupy freedom of assembly-driven encampments initially built the mass movement and brought a global spotlight to the bedrock economic and social concerns of the 99%. They inspired many of us, including those most oppressed, provided a sense of hope and solidarity with our fellow citizens and the international 99%, and brought the question of economic justice and the problems of inequality and political voiceless-ness grudgingly back into mainstream political conversation. Moreover they highlighted the need for the creation of cultures, societies and institutions of direct democracy based on "power with"- not "power over"- each other; served as convivial spaces for sharing ideas and planning action; and in some camps, they even provided a temporary space for those who needed a home. Last fall the camp occupations served a fundamental role in the movement, but it is now time to move beyond the camp mentality and use our energies to struggle to start an offensive against the power of the 1%. On our terms.

Show Power

We demand:

*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!

* Put the unemployed to work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!

*End the endless wars!

* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!

* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!

* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!

* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!

*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!

To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:

*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where
there is no union - a one-day general strike.

*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible  to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”

*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.

*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.

These actions, given the ravages of the capitalist economic system on individual lives, the continuing feelings of hopelessness felt by many, the newness of many of us to collective action, and the slender ties to past class and social struggles will, in many places, necessarily be a symbolic show of power. But let us take it as a wakeup call by a risen people.

And perhaps just as important as this year’s May Day itself , the massive organizing and outreach efforts in the months leading up to May 1st will allow us the opportunity to talk to our co-workers, families, neighbors, communities, and friends about the issues confronting us, the source of our power, the need for us to stand up to the attacks we are facing, the need to confront the various oppressions that keep most of us down in one way or another and keep all of us divided, and the need for us to stand in solidarity with each other in order to fight for our collective interests. In short, as one of the street slogans of movement says –“they say cut back, we say fight back.” We can build our collective consciousness, capacity, and confidence through this process; and come out stronger because of it.

Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.

All out in Boston on May Day 2012.