***Out In The Be-Bop Doo Wop Night- When Lady Bop Doo Wopped

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Charts performing Deserie.
CD Review

25 Vocal Groups Sing About “The Great Ladies Of Doo Wop”, various artists, Collectibles Records Corp., 2002
Jack Fitzgerald thought about it for a while, a long while, before he approached the other guys, the other corner boy guys, junior varsity division, but not in that division when it came to singing, singing harmonic rock stuff, yes, doo wop stuff. They were ready to turn big time, well, local big time anyway. And here is where Jack’s thinking was headed, but wait a minute, maybe some things should be mentioned first. Well, first when the word corner boy comes on the horizon most people think about young male teenage boys, white or black, hell, Hispanic too if you lived in the cities, the big melting-pot cities not cities like Clintondale, a strictly white-bread city, mainly Irish like Jack, with a mix of Italians, or as Lenny, Lenny Smith, one of Jack’s corner boys liked to say Eye-talians. All very much Catholic, very high-roller Roman Catholic, not those off-shoot Orthodox guys who split early on from the real church and got crazy with their ritual stuff. Maybe a few protestant white-breads too left over from the days when Clintondale produced presidents, ran revolutions, and caused holy hell for old mother, England.

But whatever the ethnic identity code, teenage boys clad in white tee-shirts (no vee-necks need apply those are for old grandpa guys, old grandpa railroad guys maybe), blue jeans, work boots, but they better be black engineer boots, with buckles, at least they had better be if you want to be a corner boy in Clintondale, and yes, hanging watch fob chain (no, not to tell the time, what is time to a corner boy, but just in case, just in case something comes up and a chain could come in very handy) and yes, for those who could afford such things (or had the guts to “clip” them), a tight waist-sized leather jack, black, against the New England colds, and the offshore winds that blew up, blew up out of nowhere. And Jack, Lenny and Jack’s other corner boys, Benny, Bobby, Billly, Sean, and Larry were, like Jack thought, junior varsity division copies, minus the singing, of that Clintondale corner boy world.

Oh ya, except they, Jack’s they, didn’t have a corner. See, there was no mom and pop variety store, no bowl-a-whirl bowling alley, no Bop’s pool hall, no Bijou movie house, no Doc’s drugstore; you name it no, in all of the Acre section of Clintondale. So boys, corner boys or not, being inventive, or trying to be, “squatted’, squatted out in the back section, the section down by the old-time sailors’ graveyard, of the old Clintondale North Elementary School where they had all just graduated from the sixth grade(called locally, in the neighborhood, the Acre school and everybody knew what school you were talking about). And nobody, no Jimmy’s Smith’s corner boys (Lenny’s older brother), no Acre Low-Riders, the motorcycle-riding corner boys, better come near, or else. Yes, or else, although Jack sometimes worked up a sweat thinking what kind of hell would occur if those older guys decided they wanted to stake a claim to that back section. And definitely no girls, no stick girls, no stick twelve-year old girls unless of course, Jack and The Guys (the name of their budding doo wop group, junior division looking to go big time if you didn’t know) were harmonizing and the girls, the shy and bossy alike, started coming around like lemmings from the sea when the boys started their thing. And that was where the problem was.

No, not what you’d think, as Jack continued thinking about his dilemma. Girls were starting to be okay, very okay, mostly, even when the boys were not doo wopping, if you could believe that, because in fifth grade, just a year ago, generic girls were barred, barred no questions asked, from hell’s little back acre. No, what was on Jack’s mind was break-out. Breaking out of the Acre. And even twelve-year old Jack, twelve-year old corner boy Jack, knew that the only way he, and Lenny and the others, were going to break out was by riding the doo wop wave. And the only way that he could see to ride that wave, was one, by getting a girl singer to give a better balance to the now getting too harsh voice-changing age harmonics. But a girl, one girl, meant trouble and Jack knew deep in his young bones that there would be trouble because the only one who qualified, voice-qualified, looks-qualified, and well, just wanted-her-around qualified, was Lonnie Callahan, Sean’s year older sister. But a bunch of boys, corner boys and one looker- girl spelled trouble, watch-fob chain trouble.

And two, maybe worst trouble, the guys needed an original song, and just then an original song with a girl’s name in it like that longing for Deserie stuff by the Charts, My Juanita by the Crests, Aurelia by the Pelicans, Marlena by the Concords, Linda by the Empires, and Barbara by the The Temptations or some other good girl name song that girls couldn’t get enough of and were buying doo wop 45s of like crazy. See all the names The Guys thought of were girls who they were, individually, looking to make points with and so some girls were going to get the short end of the stick. And the short end of the stick meant they would not be coming like lemmings to the sea to listen to Jack and The Guys do doo wop in the Acre be-bop night. So you can see Jack’s problem. Right?

Billy Bradley’s Sad Song

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Once a while back, maybe three months ago, Peter Paul Markin was reading a short story by Nelson Algren, a bottle of milk for mother, about the hard case demise of a young 1950s  Chicago jack-roller named Disek, Cisek, or Bisek, some Polish name,  who stepped over the line, his professional jack-roller line, and  murdered his mark who after he faced the police grilling and was alone in his cell he thought, given his tough life’s circumstances, “well I didn’t expect to make twenty-one anyway,” or words to that effect as he faced the big step off . That got Peter Paul to thinking about a guy, a corner boy guy he knew back in the day, back in the old Adamsville projects days of his stormy youth, Billy Bradley, William James Bradley when the teacher called his name, and about how one night in the summer between the sixth and seventh grade, just before junior high school, when they had committed some petty larceny (they called it “clipping” then, grabbing stuff, jewelry, rings mainly,  from stores and walking out with it) that he didn’t expect to make it to twenty-one either. And as it turned out he just barely made twenty-two when they found him that time face down in Sonora down Mexico way when a big drug deal Billy was trying to put together went wrong, went very wrong and he wound up with two slugs in his head.

The substance of Billy point and Peter Paul really couldn’t argue with him on it was that the deck was stacked against guys like him and Peter Paul. Guys coming from poor families up against it from day one whether it was struggling for the rent money and usually being late on that, or some broken down old car that either didn’t work or was in desperate need of repairs, or having to decide whether this week the family would have chicken or peanut butter. Stuff like that day in and day out wore on a person. He said he was through with that it was not for him. He was either going uptown or he was going busted, No in between. Nada. And if things didn’t work out he said he would at least have lived the righteous life not like his people who were clueless about how to get ahead in this wicked old world. He said more stuff too, stuff like how he wouldn’t let the cops take him alive if it came to that but Peter Paul took that as so much hot air then because things at that moment didn’t look as hopeless as they would become.

Peter Paul, having moved on from Billy’s world a few years after that conversation once he finally decided that crime, doing and paying for crime, was just too much effort against reading books and stuff, had nevertheless followed Billy’s doings for a while and then as they got older, maybe out of high school older he lost all contact until he heard the news, heard it from his mother who heard it through an old projects friend. So, no, he did not know the details of Billy’s demise but when he heard the news he immediately thought back to that summer night and how Billy, all twelve- years old of him, had a pretty good sense that his time was not long. And that got Peter Paul to thinking further that maybe there were some tell-tale signs along the way that would have pointed directly to Billy’s fate.            

So Peter Paul spent the better part of a couple of hours thinking about how the fates had dealt Billy a tough hand. He thought back, way back to the early grades in school since they had lived in the same tenement block, were in the same grade, and had the same teachers, but nothing stood out until he thought about Billy’s reaction to the time that he lost the local talent show to a trio of doo wop sisters (literally) who went on to some regional fame during those heady late 1950s days when girl doo wop groups were sweeping all before them in the roll and rock night. Billy did not take it well, not at all, he thought the fix was in, thought the sisters probably gave the promoter a little something on the side, or the promise of it and he was out, out of his career as the next Elvis. As he thought about the details of that contest, since he was in the audience for the performances, Peter Paul could see where that event was a turning point for Billy.   

Billy really was a good singing, really had some what would later be called  charisma, could do some nice covers of the latest guy hits, Elvis, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry, at  the various church and school sock hops that drove the teen and pre-teen  social calendar. And he was a good- looking guy too and the local pre-teen girls would get all moony over him while he was singing. So Billy figured, and Peter Paul figured right along with him, that he was a shoo-in to win that local talent contest sponsored by a radio station in Boston, WMEX, which was giving a record audition as the prize. Yah, Billy wanted that bad to get under from under the low-rent projects, get out from under his ever nagging mother, and out from under his mostly absent father who when around decided that Billy was his punching bag, until Billy got big enough to fend for himself. And Peter Paul thought he did a great job on Elvis’ One Night With You, had all the pre-teen girls, and few older ones too, high school girls, all moony as usual. But that time that late 1958 time was the time of doo wop and not of solo performers singing their hearts out.

Billy said it was all right, said he would get out from under somehow, said he would get the gold the next time but in that twelve-year old night something snapped, snapped hard in Billy’s estimation of the world. Peter Paul, at that point Billy’s best friend, saw it, and saw that he kind of drifted away from his musical interests and started getting into clipping stuff. With Peter Pau right there with him, for a while, until they got caught at a jewelry store one day and that led Peter Paul the other way. After a while their paths met only occasionally when Peter Paul would amble back to the old neighborhood and they would cut up old torches. Then Billy dropped out of school and Peter Paul kept hearing about gas station robberies and maybe a variety store once in a while that had Billy’s signature all over it.    

 The last serious talk that Peter Paul had with Billy was just before he graduated from high school when Billy called up his mother’s house to offer congratulations and Peter Paul happened to be there. They talked for about an hour, talked about this and that, about Peter Paul going to college and about Billy moving up to Boston to move a little more into the big time, big time dope dealing as it turned out. Billy said not more low- rent stick- ups for him drugs were where the money, the easy money, was and he was going for the gold. He said it in such a way, or Peter Paul took it that way, that this was an either up or out situation. Then he didn’t heard from Billy much after that and then not at all as he got deeper into the trade. And then the other show dropped down in Mexico. Peter Paul finished up his thinking this way-some guys do all their living in the front end and that is the way the deal went down with Billy. Still he thought, thought long and hard, Billy had a lot more than twenty-two in him.          

May Day Funeral March Lays Capitalism to Rest
by Boston IMC (No verified email address)	02 May 2013
For the second May Day in a row anarchist organizers in Boston held a mock funeral march for capitalism downtown. Featuring puppets of various sizes, "mourners", a coffin, and a marching band, the march was meant to point out the moral and financial bankruptcy of the capitalist system. Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtcHz3g71VA
The pictures are from the beginning of the march on Boston Common. The march wound through Downtown Crossing, ending at Faneuil Hall with a brief ceremony. Unlike last year, this year's march was favored with good weather.

May Day 2013 Reports
by Cradle of Liberty News Email: cradleoflibertynews (nospam) gmail.com (unverified!)	02 May 2013
This May Day, Bostonians held three separate events to mark International Workers Day. Below are reports from two of these events (the final report to come soon).
(Go to www.CradleofLibertyNews.org for reports with photos) May Day March to East Boston Draws Thousands by Jake Carman On May 1st, 2013 at 5pm, around three thousand marchers poured into Central Square in East Cambridge, joining hundreds already gathered to welcome them on the long march from Chelsea, Everett, and Revere. Called by the May 1st Coalition, the annual march celebrates International Workers Day, and promotes immigration reform and a quick path to legalization for the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrant workers (1) living in the United States. Two feeder marches, one from Everett and one from Revere, merged at 4pm with a large rally in front of Chelsea city hall. From there, thousands paraded peacefully, chanting “Si se puede, (We can do it)” “Today we march, tomorrow we vote,” “We are a nation of immigrants,” and “Obama, escucha, estamos en la lucha (Obama, we are in the struggle).” Some of the many organizations present included Chelsea United Against the Wars, Chelsea Collaborative, City Life/Vida Urbana, FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front – the ruling leftist party in El Salvador), Brazilian Mothers Group, The Industrial Workers of the World, Unite Here Local 26, Common Struggle/Lucha Común, and Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The marchers were workers, both documented and not, from all across the Boston area, of every age and nationality. May Day as International Workers Day harkens back to 1886, when Chicago’s workers led a national general strike for the eight hour day on May 1st. The movement gained global renown after the May 4th Haymarket Massacre, when police and anarchists clashed over the police shooting of striking workers on a picket line the previous day. (2) Though celebrated in over 80 countries around the world, May Day isn’t recognized in the United States where it began. The modern Immigrant Workers Movement revived May Day in the United States with the 2006 Great American Boycott. Local and International media (corporate media…that is) failed to cover this year’s mass gathering in East Boston. (1) “By the numbers: How America tallies its 11.1 million undocumented immigrants” NBC News http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/11/17691515-by-the-numbers- (2) “How Migrant Workers Won the Eight-hour Day: A History of May Day” BAAM Newsletter http://jakecarman.com/2013/05/01/history-of-may-day/ May Day Rally at Boston City Hall By John Cleary In the early afternoon of May 1st, 2013, about 40 or 50 people gathered in front of Boston City Hall to celebrate International Workers Day and rally for the rights of immigrants and workers. While the crowd was small, the energy of the speakers and performers attracted passers-by who stopped and listened. Representatives from groups such as the Boston Chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Pirate Party, Occupy Boston, Common Struggle/Lucha Común, and others spoke about immigrant rights, worker rights, and issues affecting our community such as opposing the casino in East Boston, stopping unfair and discriminatory layoffs at Harvard, and the Bangladesh factory collapse. The rally organizers urged people to join the march and rally taking place in East Boston once the Boston rally was concluded.
See also: http://www.cradleoflibertynews.org http://www.cradleoflibertynews.org

Imperialism: Monopoly Capitalism

Workers Vanguard No. 1022	19 April 2013

TROTSKY

LENIN

Imperialism: Monopoly Capitalism

(Quote of the Week)

Writing during World War I, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin defined imperialism as the most advanced stage of capitalist development, with the industrial powers oppressing weaker states in their drive to reap ever more profit. The ongoing crisis in the European Union and the rest of the capitalist world demonstrates yet again that the only way out for the working class and the oppressed is through socialist revolutions that expropriate the bourgeoisie’s capital and establish an internationally planned socialist economy.

Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly. Free competition is the basic feature of capitalism, and of commodity production generally; monopoly is the exact opposite of free competition, but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our eyes, creating large-scale industry and forcing out small industry, replacing large-scale by still larger-scale industry, and carrying concentration of production and capital to the point where out of it has grown and is growing monopoly: cartels, syndicates and trusts, and merging with them, the capital of a dozen or so banks, which manipulate thousands of millions. At the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts....

Without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

—V.I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)

Guantánamo Hunger Strike: Free the Detainees Now!

Workers Vanguard No. 1022	19 April 2013

Guantánamo Hunger Strike: Free the Detainees Now!

APRIL 15—A mass hunger strike at the U.S. military’s Guantánamo detention center in Cuba is now in its third month. Precipitated by a raid in February during which prisoners’ Korans were desecrated, the hunger strike includes a number of men who are near death as they protest being consigned to endless incarceration in the prison’s notorious torture chambers. Lawyers for the detainees report that some 130 prisoners are participating in the hunger strike, with the military force-feeding 13 of them. As one striker told attorney David Remes, detainees “feel like they’re living in graves” (Al Jazeera, 19 March). There has been at least one attempted suicide as well as reports of prisoners coughing up blood and others hospitalized for dehydration. On April 13, shortly after a Red Cross delegation investigating the strike had left the camp, guards fired “non-lethal” rounds at prisoners who resisted being forcibly moved to single-cell lockups. In another display of cruelty, a federal judge today dismissed an emergency motion from a hunger striker that sought an end to the mistreatment, sneering that the prisoner had “self-manufactured” his condition.

The hunger strike is a cry of despair over the legal limbo that detainees have suffered under since U.S. imperialism launched its “war on terror” following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As the U.S./NATO began its murderous occupation of Afghanistan, hundreds of detainees were incarcerated indefinitely without a shred of legal rights. Of the 166 men still imprisoned at Guantánamo, 86 were cleared for release years ago. Most of the remaining 80 have not been charged with any crime, and only 30 detainees are subjects of active “investigations.”

A March 14 letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel by detainees’ attorneys described the prisoners as “feeling hopeless in the face of 11 years of detention without prospect of release or trial and the continuing inability of the political branches to carry through on their commitment to close the prison in a just manner” (ccrjustice.org). It is not only that Barack Obama has reneged on his 2008 campaign pledge to close Guantánamo. The letter reports “a background of increasingly regressive practices at the prison taking place in recent months,” described by prisoners as a return to conditions in the Bush era that were widely recognized as constituting torture.

Hunger striker Shaker Aamer is one of those who have been held since 2002, never charged, never tried or convicted, cleared to go home but still in detention despite protest from the government of Britain, where his family resides. In a statement published in the New Statesman (5 April), Aamer describes the plight of Yemeni detainee Abu Bakr, a/k/a “171,” who has been on hunger strike since 2005 and has now become a special target of the prison administrator: “Back in October, 171 was tied in the feeding chair, and just left there for 52 hours. Then, from 4 January, he was isolated for a full month.... He thinks they’ll kill him off, to encourage the others to give up their strike.”

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times (14 April), another Yemeni hunger striker, Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, movingly recounted his ordeal, not least the excruciating pain of the force-feedings. Moqbel observed: “The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen.” Indeed, the U.S. president in early 2010 halted the repatriation of detainees to Yemen under the pretext of “current security conditions” in that country. Today, a majority of the remaining Guantánamo detainees are Yemeni nationals. With the detentions provoking protests in Yemen, its president, who has given his unqualified blessing to the U.S. campaign of terror-by-drone in Yemen, felt compelled to intone: “We believe that keeping someone in prison for over ten years without due process is clear-cut tyranny.”

Whereas the Bush administration rounded up hundreds of men (some under 18 years old) and tossed them into the CIA secret prison and rendition network, the Obama White House has preferred to simply kill its targets, mainly through drone strikes. At the same time, under Obama’s plan to shutter Guantánamo, the system of indefinite detention would have continued, simply relocated onto American soil. But with Congress working to ensure that Guantánamo remain a detention center, the military’s Southern Command has requested up to $170 million to upgrade existing facilities and an additional $49 million for a new prison building to hold “special” detainees.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration cynically paints the force-feeding of prisoners—officially recognized by the United Nations and others as a form of torture—as supposedly protecting their safety and welfare. This was too much even for the Obama-friendly New York Times, which ran a 5 April editorial declaring that “the truly humane response to this crisis is to free prisoners who have been approved for release, end indefinite detention and close the prison at Guantánamo.” For such bourgeois liberals, Guantánamo stains the veneer of “democracy” with which America’s capitalist rulers cover their depredations around the world.

As revolutionary proletarian opponents of imperialism, we call for closing Guantánamo as well as for the release of all the remaining detainees, despite the enormous gulf between our Marxist worldview and that of the reactionary Islamist forces that the detainees are alleged to support. Our program is not that of liberal reformers who seek to perfect the mechanisms of imperialist rule by cleaning up its “excesses.” Our fight is to mobilize the working class in opposition to imperialist wars and occupations and in defense of all the exploited and oppressed, a struggle that must culminate in proletarian revolution to destroy the imperialists’ machinery of state terror once and for all. 

For Those Kindred Who Fought For The Republic In The Spanish Civil War-1936-39

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Eddie Clements right up until the day he died in 1997 always said that he left the best part of himself, the part that was generous and not self-serving, in Spain back in his youth, the1930s, specifically 1936 and 1937 when he had served in a POUM (Party Of Marxist Unification in Spanish) battalion on the Lerida front and had fought like seven dervishes to beat back Franco’s forces, and beat them good. For a while. By the way that POUM military organization (all the political parties had their own military arms, at least at first before the command was centralized under the aegis of the Spanish Communist Party, acting as agents for the Soviet Union who were footing the bill, and the only ones providing military to the Republican forces at the time) was the same one that George Orwell got dragooned into and wrote about in his famous book Homage to Catalonia. And a further by the way, just so you know, Eddie Clements was not his real name, not back then anyway but he had shortened it and Anglicized it when the deal went south on the Republican forces and it was a lot better, a hell of a lot better, for him to seem to be English when he tried to immigrate to the United States in1939.

Eddie, born Edward Klementowski, a Polish national, was on the run in those days from the Pilsudski regime in Poland and found himself in Spain like many others when they saw that the shades were being pulled down over Europe by one madman or another. Of course in Poland Eddie had been a Polish Communist Party member in good standing until about 1936 when he was expelled from the party for some vague Trotskyite heresy and hence when he tumbled into Spain he joined the POUM militia since the Polish unit of the International Brigades was off limits to him, way off limits to hear him tell over beer or seven at Mike Diceks’s Tavern over in “Little Poland,” Andrew Square in Boston.

That is where Pete Markin who gave me the story had meet him back in the 1970s when somebody that he worked with, also Polish although born in the United States, who knew the newly left-wing politicized Markin was interested in the Spanish Civil War and guys who actually fought there. And so they met, met occasionally, when Markin was in the area and discussed, or maybe that was too polite a word over a few beers (usually on Markin’s tab) the various maneuvers, military and political of that war. And when they finished up any session Eddie would always, always close by saying that he had left the best part of him in Spain back then. It took Markin a long time to understand that, to mull over the politics of it, since he had been way to young, hadn’t even been born yet, when some hearty men not afraid to fight, and to die became the “premature anti-fascists” in that struggle. He, himself, a military veteran, Vietnam, although kicking and screaming about it, and thus no stranger to war, and rumors of war, could not understand what it was like when men went way out of their various ways to fight in Spain. He was glad that they did, glad that Eddie did so but still he was perplexed by that commitment.

Moreover he and Eddie would have some friendly battle royales (usually after a few too many of Mike’s Polish imported beers) about the “correct” strategy that should have been applied in the Spanish situation. Eddie adamantly stood on the grounds that after the suppression of Franco’s forces by the Republican forces in the summer of 1936 the Commune should have been declared like in Russia in 1917. The Republican forces had the capacity, at least in the areas they controlled, especially in Catalonia, to do so but were, according to Eddie, hamstrung by the policy of the Communist Party (and behind that organization, the Soviet Union) that it was necessary to win the war against Franco first and then the Commune could be proclaimed and some socialist organization of society attempted. Pete felt just the opposite, felt under the influence of the communists that he associated with at the time that, given the isolation of the Spanish Republican forces, the attitude of the British and French governments to try to maintain the status quo in Europe in the face of the menace of Hitler and his associates that military victory was the first consideration. Eddie would bring up the May Day events in Barcelona to buttress his case but Pete would counter that, given the precarious military situation those Barcelona actions were counter-productive (actually he used the stronger words counter-revolutionary in those days). And so they would go back and forth, fighting the old political battles like it was just that minute that such questions had be decided for good. And then Eddie would pull out one his stories, his stories of the personal acts of bravery and bravado in the battles that he had witnessed, had a part in, and the fury of the polemics would wilt before those acts of bravery and devotion. That was reality of Eddie’s Spain, and such material Peter enhanced long time love affair with the kindred of that fight.

Eddie would tell one story in particular about when his unit was pinned down in some desolate out rock and it looked like curtains for them because the Franco forces had them surrounded on three sides and the other exit was over some tough and exposed rocky terrain. Now his unit was strictly an international unit because at that time the POUM was putting together such units as morale boosters and as signs of internationalism. One guy, an Irishman, Duffy, who had fought the bloody British in early 1920s when the heat for an independent t nation in Ireland was on, had been a sapper and so he, out of seemingly nowhere had put together a charge to try to block the Francoists from over-running their position. He and Duffy stayed behind in order to set the charge behind as the others cleared out. Then Duffy told Eddie to get the hell out of there. Duffy stayed and blew the charge blocking the Francoists. At the cost of his own blessed live. Yes, it was stuff like that drove Eddie’s memory bank.

Eddie was reticent to discuss his life after Spain, how he got to America, and the like but later on a few years before he died he told Markin that he had spent too much time drinking and alley-catting while in America and that he just kind of had a tough time adjusting after the various brushes with death that he undertook gladly back then. And that is when Pete finally realized what Spain had meant to Eddie, and maybe that story about Duffy just kind of put paid to the whole experience. Funny though after Eddie died Pete started thinking about all the times that they had argued and Pete started to see that maybe Eddie had a point about the right strategy in Spain. All he knew was that he had lost his last living connection with Spain and he cursed each time he thought that he had not even been born then to leave the best part of himself there like Eddie.

LGBTQ leaders uphold selection of Bradley Manning as SF Pride grand marshal

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Donate here to help us publish this open letter in San Francisco, including the SF Bay Reporter and SF Chronicle. Encourage SF PRIDE! to reinstate Bradley Manning as a Grand Marshal – SF Pride Offices: 415.864.0831; SF Pride President Lisa Williams: 415.424.9660; info@sfpride.org; Fax: 415.864.5889 Are you an LGBTQ member interested in signing this statement? Please contact: emma@bradleymanning.org and include how you would like to be described in the signature First published by the San Francisco Bay Guardian

May 2, 2013
Recently, it was announced that PFC Bradley Manning would be a grand marshal of the 2013 San Francisco Pride Celebration. We felt this decision was a bold and uplifting choice, bestowing a great May honor on a young whistleblower being persecuted for following his conscience.
Much to our disappointment, two days later SF Pride board president Lisa Williams issued a separate announcement that the SF Pride board would not be honoring PFC Manning as a grand marshal after all. It appears the SF pride board’s reversal was affected by criticism from a recently formed gay military rights group.
We want the world to know that the SF Pride board’s decision is not reflective of the LGBTQ community as a whole, and that many of us proudly celebrate PFC Manning as a member of our community. Unfortunately, the statements by Williams, and the group which originally advocated against PFC Manning as grand marshal, continue to perpetuate certain factual inaccuracies with regards to the military prosecution against him.

Bradley Manning, while on active duty, at a Washington DC Pride march, summer 2009

The first inaccuracy would be that PFC Manning did not advocate for gay rights. In fact, while serving in the military, PFC Manning experienced harassment and physical assault because of his perceived sexuality. He responded by marching against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the DC pride parade, where he spoke to reporters about his position, in addition to attending a fundraiser with Gavin Newsom and the Stonewall Democrats so he could discuss the issue of homophobia in the military. He told a friend in February of 2009 that his experience living under DADT and experiencing the oppression that entailed helped increase his interest in politics more generally.
LGBTQ activists fought hard for years to win the right to live free from the fear that we could be targeted with violence deemed acceptable to society at large, simply for being who we are. We members of the LGBTQ community would like to stand in solidarity with others around the world who still must live in fear of violence and oppression, simply for being born into a particular group.
Contrary to SF Pride Board president Lisa Williams’s claim, no evidence has been presented that PFC Manning’s actions endangered fellow soldiers or civilians. In fact, the military prosecution has successfully argued in court that it isn’t required to provide such evidence, and former State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley continues to insist that the “Aiding the enemy” charge is unwarranted.
In a February 28, 2013, court statement, PFC Manning detailed the due diligence he performed prior to releasing materials to ensure this lack of harm, in addition to explaining,
“I believed the detailed analysis of the [Iraq and Afghanistan war log] data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to even to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the affected environment every day.”

Bradley Manning attending a fundraiser with Gavin Newsom and the Stonewall Democrats, summer 2009.

The truth is that President Bush and VP Cheney’s aggressive wars in the Middle East endangered far more LGBTQ service members and civilians than any Army whistle-blower. Unlike PFC Manning, however, they have never served prison time, and likely never will.
Millions of people around the world support Bradley for the personal risk he took in sharing realities of complicated U.S. foreign conflicts with the American people. He is the only gay U.S. serviceperson to be nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. In joining the Army, soldiers take an oath to protect the U.S. Constitution, and we believe that by his actions PFC Manning strengthened our democracy, and fulfilled that oath to a greater degree than most enlisted.
We are proud to embrace PFC Bradley Manning as one of our icons, and intend to march for him in pride contingents across the country this year, as we have in years past. We think Bradley Manning sets a high standard for what a U.S. serviceperson, gay or straight, can be.
Organizations listed for identification purposes only
Lt. Dan Choi – 2009 SF Pride Celebrity Grand Marshal, anti-DADT activist
Joey Cain – 2008 SF Pride Community Grand Marshal, past Board Member and President of SF Pride
Gary Virginia – 2012 SF Pride Community Grand Marshal
John Caldera – Commander, American Legion Bob Basker Post 315ED & SF Veterans For Peace
John O’brien - Stonewall Rebellion Leading Participant; member, 1970 Inaugatory Pride Committee
Dr. Gray Brechin – author Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin
Susie Bright – Public speaker, educator, and writer
Troy Abraham - President Of Human Equality Organizations
Luke Adams - Community mental health counselor, minister, and organizer
Adele Carpenter – Civilian-Soldier Alliance, SF Chapter
Merrill Cole - Associate Professor of English, Western Illinois University
Gabriel Conaway – Equality activist; Steering Committee of SAME
Salvatore Conti -KS
Dossie Easton – Therapist and author
Leslie Feinberg – Transgender author and activist
Stephen Eagle Funk – Artistic Director, Veteran Artists
Glenn Greenwald – Award-winning journalist
Evan Greer – Radical queer riotfolk musician
Liz Henry – Poet and activist
Lori Hurlebaus – Civilian Soldier Alliance, SF Chapter; Co-founder, Courage to Resist
Pat Humphries – Musician, Emma’s Revolution
Sergei Kostin - Art Director, CODEPINK Women for Peace
Sandy Opatow – Musician, Emma’s Revolution
Malachy Kilbride – Coordinating Committee, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
Drew Langdon - Lavender Green Caucus; Candidate for Rochester, NY City Council
Jill McLaughlin – World Can’t Wait Steering Committee
David McReynolds – War Resisters League; first openly gay U.S. presidential candidate
Pamela Means – Award-winning OUT musician
Minnie-Bruce Pratt – Award-winning lesbian writer, anti-racist & anti-imperialist activist
Rainey Reitman – Steering Committee, Bradley Manning Support Network
Martha Shelley – Co-founder, Gay Liberation Front; Radicalesbians, NYC
Oliver Shykles – Queer Friends of Bradley Manning
Peter Tatchell – Founder, Peter Tatchell Foundation
Andy Thayer – Co-founder, Gay Liberation Network
Lori Selke – Author and activist
Becca von Behren - Staff Attorney, Swords to Plowshares Veterans Service Organization
Kit Yan – Queer & trans Asian-American poet
Orus Barker -Bradley Manning supporter
Russell Zellers - Former Assistant Director, HIV Health Services AIDS Office, SFDPH

Supporters of Bradley Manning marching in SF Pride 2011. Join us again this year on Sunday, June 30, 2013.

Get on the bus for Bradley. June 1, 2013

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RSVP for your seat. Leaving from Baltimore, MD, Washington DC, and New York City.

Buses have been organized from Baltimore, MD, Washington DC, and New York City. Reserve your seat today!

The campaign to free Army whistle-blower Bradley Manning has stayed strong for three long years, thanks to your support. From thousands of letters and calls directed to top military officials, to hundreds of protests around the world, including at Quantico which led to Bradley being transferred to more humane prison conditions, supporters have gathered together to give Bradley a real chance at the life he deserves. Now we are asking you to join us at the gates of Fort Meade, where Bradley’s trial will begin.
Join us at Ft. Meade, MD on June 1, 2013, for a mass demonstration in support of the heroic 25 year-old soldier who exposed war crimes and disturbing foreign policy through the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning will have spent over three years in prison by the start of his trial — 11 months of which were spent in solitary confinement. The UN has issued a report calling his treatment cruel, inhuman and degrading.
Top military officials have the power to reduce Bradley’s sentence. However, they have done everything in their power to distract public attention from this case. Reporters have complained they have less access to these proceedings than Guantanamo Bay military tribunals. Let’s show the military and President Obama the public support that exists for our most prominent American whistle-blower, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bradley Manning! Don’t let the military get away with unjust persecution, abuse, and sending a whistle-blower to prison for life. Bradley is in prison for us, let’s get out to Ft. Meade for him!

Bus from Baltimore, MD

Leaving June 1st at 11:30 am from The 2640 Space at 2640 St. Paul Street, Baltimore.
Contact baltimore@bradleymanning.org, or better yet, reserve your seat today ($10).

Bus from New York City

Leaving June 1st at 7:30am from 1270 Broadway (near Penn Station), NYC.
Reserve your seat today ($20).

Bus from Washington, DC

Leaving June 1st at 11:30am from in front of Union Station, Washington, DC.
Contact malachy@bradleymanning.org, or better yet, reserve your seat today ($10).

Bus from Willimantic (Hartford/Windham area), CT

Leaving June 1st at 2:00am from downtown Willimantic at the corner of Rt 66 & Rt 195.
Contact Bill Potvin to reserve your seat today ($40), phone 860-423-5085
Will arrive back in Willimantic approx. 24 hours later

Located outside these cities, but interested in organizing others to go to Ft. Meade? We are offering small grants to help with organizing buses and vans to carpool to Ft. Meade for June 1st!

May Day 2013 National Immigrant Workers Rights March! CALL TO ACTION! Lists of Local May Day 2013 Events National Immigrant Solidarity Network http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org Please send your May Day 2013 action report to info@immigrantsolidarity.org We are calling A national day of multi-ethnic unity with youth, labor, peace and justice communities in solidarity with immigrant workers and building new immigrant rights & civil rights movement! Wear White T-Shirt; organize local actions to support immigrant worker rights! 1. No to anti-immigrant legislation, police surveillance and the criminalization of the immigrant communities. 2. No to militarization of the border. 3. No to the private prison, immigrant detention and deportation. 4. No to the guest worker program. 5. No to the NDAA, Gitmo political prisoner's camp. 6. Yes to a path to legalization without condition for undocumented immigrants NOW. 7. Yes to speedy family reunification. 8. Yes to civil rights and humane immigration law. 9. Yes to labor rights and living wages for all workers. 10. Yes to the education and LGBTQ immigrant legislation. We encourages everyone to actively linking our issues with different struggles: wars in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine & Korea with sweatshops exploitation in Asia as well as in Los Angeles, New York; international arm sales and WTO, FTAA, NAFTA & CAFTA with AIDS, hunger, child labors and child solider; as well as multinational corporations and economic exploitation with racism and poverty at home—in order we can win the struggle together at this May Day 2013! Past May Day Actions: May Day 2011May Day 2010 Reports from Across the Country May Day 2010 Reports Home Page Los Angeles, May Day 2010 May Day 2009 Photos & Essay Reports from around the World ============================================================================== National Immigrant Solidarity Network No Immigrant Bashing! Support Immigrant Rights! webpage: http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org e-mail: info@ImmigrantSolidarity.org New York: (212)330-8172 Los Angeles: (213)403-0131 Washington D.C.: (202)595-8990 Chicago: (773)942-2268 * join the immigrant Solidarity Network daily news litserv, send e-mail to: isn-subscribe@lists.riseup.net Please consider making a donation to the important work of National Immigrant Solidarity Network Send check pay to: National Immigrant Solidarity Network/AFGJ National Immigrant Solidarity Network P.O. Box 751 South Pasadena, CA 91031-0751 (All donations are tax deductible) =--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--= You can review old listings by going to http://igc.topica.com/lists/act-ma-discuss/read to (un)subscribe send email to act-ma-discuss-(un)subscribe@topica.com For more info on ACT-MA and posting guidelines see http://web.mit.edu/cwelch/lacasa/calendar.html

Bradley Manning is off limits at SF Gay Pride parade, but corporate sleaze is embraced

A seemingly trivial controversy reveals quite a bit about pervasive political values

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• • Glenn Greenwald
  • guardian.co.uk, Saturday 27 April 2013 10.36 EDT
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(FILES)PFC Bradley Manning is escorted by military police as he departs the courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland in this April 25, 2012 file photo. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

News reports yesterday indicated that Bradley Manning, widely known to be gay, had been selected to be one of the Grand Marshals of the annual San Francisco gay pride parade, named by the LGBT Pride Celebration Committee. When the predictable backlash instantly ensued, the president of the Board of SF Pride, Lisa L Williams, quickly capitulated, issuing a cowardly, imperious statement that has to be read to be believed.
Williams proclaimed that "Manning will not be a grand marshal in this year's San Francisco Pride celebration" and termed his selection "a mistake". She blamed it all on a "staff person" who prematurely made the announcement based on a preliminary vote, and she assures us all that the culprit "has been disciplined": disciplined. She then accuses Manning of "actions which placed in harms way [sic] the lives of our men and women in uniform": a substance-free falsehood originally spread by top US military officials which has since been decisively and extensively debunked, even by some government officials (indeed, it's the US government itself, not Manning, that is guilty of "actions which placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform"). And then, in my favorite part of her statement, Williams decreed to all organization members that "even the hint of support" for Manning's actions - even the hint - "will not be tolerated by the leadership of San Francisco Pride". Will not be tolerated.
I originally had no intention of writing about this episode, but the more I discovered about it, the more revealing it became. So let's just consider a few of the points raised by all of this.
First, while even a hint of support for Manning will not be tolerated, there is a long roster of large corporations serving as the event's sponsors who are welcomed with open arms. The list is here. It includes AT&T and Verizon, the telecom giants that enabled the illegal warrantless eavesdropping on US citizens by the Bush administration and its NSA, only to get retroactively immunized from Congress and thus shielded from all criminal and civil liability (including a lawsuit brought in San Francisco against those corporations by their customers who were illegally spied on). Last month, AT&T was fined by OSHA for failing to protect one of its employees who was attacked, was found by the FCC last year to have overcharged customers by secretly switching them to plans they didn't want, and is now being sued by the US government for "allegedly bill[ing] the government improperly for services designed for the deaf and hard-of-hearing who place calls by typing messages over the web."
The list of SF Pride sponsors also includes Bank of America, now being sued for $1 billion by the US government for allegedly engaging in a systematic scheme of mortgage fraud which the US Attorney called "spectacularly brazen in scope". Just last month, the same SF Pride sponsor received a record fine for ignoring a court order and instead trying to collect mortgage payments from bankrupt homeowners to which it was not entitled. Earlier this month, SF-Pride-sponsoring Bank of America paid $2.4 billion to settle shareholder allegations that Bank executives "failed to disclose information about losses at Merrill Lynch and bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch employees before the brokerage was acquired by Bank of America in January 2009 for $18.5 billion."
Another beloved SF Pride sponsor, Wells Fargo, is also being "sued by the US for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages over claims the bank made reckless mortgage loans that caused losses for a federal insurance program when they defaulted". Last year, Wells Fargo was fined $3.1 million by a federal judge for engaging in conduct that court called "highly reprehensible" relating to its persecution of a struggling homeowner. In 2011, the bank was fined by the US government "for allegedly pushing borrowers with good credit into expensive mortgages and falsifying loan applications."
Also in Good Standing with the SF Pride board: Clear Channel, the media outlet owned by Bain Capital that broadcasts the radio programs of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck; a pension fund is suing this SF Pride sponsor for making cheap, below-market loans to its struggling parent company. The health care giant Kaiser Permanente, another proud SF Pride sponsor, is currently under investigation by California officials for alleged massive privacy violations in the form of recklessly disclosing 300,000 patient records, and was previously targeted with criminal and civil charges, which it settled, for dumping a homeless patient, still in a hospital gown, on skid row.
So apparently, the very high-minded ethical standards of Lisa L Williams and the SF Pride Board apply only to young and powerless Army Privates who engage in an act of conscience against the US war machine, but instantly disappear for large corporations and banks that hand over cash. What we really see here is how the largest and most corrupt corporations own not just the government but also the culture. Even at the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, once an iconic symbol of cultural dissent and disregard for stifling pieties, nothing can happen that might offend AT&T and the Bank of America. The minute something even a bit deviant takes place (as defined by standards imposed by America's political and corporate class), even the SF Gay Pride Parade must scamper, capitulate, apologize, and take an oath of fealty to their orthodoxies (we adore the military, the state, and your laws). And, as usual, the largest corporate factions are completely exempt from the strictures and standards applied to the marginalized and powerless. Thus, while Bradley Manning is persona non grata at SF Pride, illegal eavesdropping telecoms, scheming banks, and hedge-fund purveryors of the nation's worst right-wing agitprop are more than welcome.
Second, the authoritarian, state-and-military-revering mentality pervading Williams' statement is striking. It isn't just the imperious decree that "even a hint of support" for Manning "will not be tolerated", though that is certainly creepy. Nor is it the weird announcement that the wrongdoer "has been disciplined". Even worse is the mindless embrace of the baseless claims of US military officials (that Manning "placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform") along with the supremely authoritarian view that any actions barred by the state are, ipso facto, ignoble and wrong. Conduct can be illegal and yet still be noble and commendable: see, for instance, Daniel Ellsberg, or most of the leaders of the civil rights movement in the US. Indeed, acts of civil disobedience and conscience by people who risk their own interests to battle injustices are often the most commendable acts. Equating illegal behavior with ignominious behavior is the defining mentality of an authoritarian - and is particularly notable coming from what was once viewed as a bastion of liberal dissent.
But the more one learns about the parties involved here, the less surprising it becomes. According to her biography, Williams "organized satellite offices for the Obama campaign" and also works for various Democratic politicians. It was President Obama, of course, who so notoriously decreed Bradley Manning guilty in public before his trial by military officers serving under Obama even began, and whose administration was found by the UN's top torture investigator to have abused him and is now so harshly prosecuting him. It's anything but surprising that a person who was a loyal Obama campaign aide finds Bradley Manning anathema while adoring big corporations and banks (which funded the Obama campaign and who, in the case of telecoms, Obama voted to immunize).
What we see here is how even many of the most liberal precincts in America are now the leading spokespeople for and loyalists to state power as a result of their loyalty to President Obama. Thus do we have the President of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade sounding exactly like the Chairman of the Joints Chief, or Sarah Palin, or gay war-loving neocons, in depicting any meaningful opposition to the National Security State as the supreme sin. I'd be willing to bet large amounts of money that Williams has never condemned the Obama administration's abuse of Manning in detention or its dangerously radical prosecution of him for "aiding the enemy". I have no doubt that the people who did all of that would be showered with gratitude by Parade officials if they attended. In so many liberal precincts in the Age of Obama - even now including the SF Gay Pride parade - the federal government, its military, and its federal prosecutors are to be revered and celebrated but not criticized; only those who oppose them are villains.
Third, when I wrote several weeks ago about the remarkable shift in public opinion on gay equality, I noted that this development is less significant than it seems because the cause of gay equality poses no real threat to elite factions or to how political and economic power in the US are distributed. If anything, it bolsters those power structures because it completely and harmlessly assimilates a previously excluded group into existing institutions and thus incentivizes them to accommodate those institutions and adopt their mindset. This event illustrates exactly what I meant.
While some of the nation's most corrupt corporations are welcome to fly their flag over the parade, consider what Manning - for whom "even a hint of support will not be tolerated" - actually did. His leak revealed all sorts of corruption, deceit and illegality on the part of the world's most powerful corporations. They led to numerous journalism awards for WikiLeaks. Even Bill Keller, the former Executive Editor of the New York Times who is a harsh WikiLeaks critic, credited those leaks with helping to spark the Arab Spring, the greatest democratic revolution the world has seen in decades. Multiple media accounts describe how the cables documenting atrocities committed by US troops in Iraq prevented the Malaki government from allowing US troops to stay beyond the agreed-to deadline: i.e., helped end the Iraq war by thwarting Obama's attempts to prolong it. For all of that, Manning was selected by Guardian readers as the 2012 Person of the Year, while former Army Lt. (and 2009 SF Parade Marshal) Dan Choi said yesterday:

As we move forward as a country, we need truth in order to gain justice, you can't have justice without the whole truth . . . So what [Manning] did as a gay American, as a gay soldier, he stood for integrity, I am proud of him."

But none of those vital benefits matter to authoritarians. That's because authoritarians, by definition, believe in the overarching Goodness of institutions of power, and believe the only bad acts come from those who challenge or subvert that power. Bad acts aren't committed by the National Security State or Surveillance State; they are only committed by those who oppose them. If a person's actions threaten power factions or are deemed prohibited by them, then Good Authoritarians will reflexively view the person as evil and will be eager to publicly disassociate themselves from such individuals. Or, as Williams put it, "even the hint of support" for Manning "will not be tolerated", and those who deviate from this decree will be "disciplined".
Even the SF Gay Pride Parade is now owned by and beholden to the nation's largest corporations, subject to their dictates. Those who run the event are functionaries of, loyalists to, the nation's most powerful political officials. That's how this parade was so seamlessly transformed from orthodoxy-challenging, individualistic and creative cultural icon into yet another pile of obedient apparatchiks that spout banal slogans doled out by the state while viciously scorning those who challenge them. Yes, there will undoubtedly still be exotically-dressed drag queens, lesbian motorcycle clubs, and groups proudly defined by their unusual sexual proclivities participating in the parade, but they'll be marching under a Bank of America banner and behind flag-waving fans of the National Security State, the US President, and the political party that dominates American politics and its political and military institutions. Yet another edgy, interesting, creative, independent event has been degraded and neutered into a meek and subservient ritual that must pay homage to the nation's most powerful entities and at all costs avoid offending them in any way.
It's hardly surprising that someone who so boldly and courageously opposes the US war machine is demonized and scorned this way. Daniel Ellsberg was subjected to the same attacks before he was transformed many years later into a liberal hero (though Ellsberg had the good fortune to be persecuted by a Republican rather than Democratic President and thus, even back then, had some substantial support; come to think of it, Ellsberg lives in San Francisco: would expressions of support for him be tolerated?). But the fact that such lock-step, heel-clicking, military-mimicking behavior is now coming from the SF Gay Pride Parade of all places is indeed noteworthy: it reflects just how pervasive this authoritarian rot has become.

Corporate corruption and sleaze

For a bit more on the dominance of corporate sleaze and corruption in our political culture, see the first few paragraphs of this extraordinary Politico article on a new book about DC culture, and this Washington Post article detailing the supreme annual convergence of political, media and corporate sleaze called "the White House Correspondents' Dinner", to be held this weekend.