FromThe American Left History Archives-From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Ur-Tomemonos Boston) Archives-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions! - Defend The Working Class! Take The Offensive! – From The Pen Of Radical Journalist Joshua Lawrence Breslin-On Generals Without An Army?
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Working Class Everywhere!

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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!

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Peter Paul Markin comment:

 

A while back my longtime friend, Josh Breslin (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those old enough to recognize that name from half the alternative presses in this country, large and small, over the past forty years or so) sent me an e-mail the contents of which I have commented on in this space under the entry “General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale.” (See post below.)The substance of the piece was that Josh felt that the Occupy idea was ripe for the picking by those bourgeois political forces that were hovering around the movement lately looking like wolves ready to feast on an easy meal. Without going into detail here he also argued that there were some very Potemkin Village-like aspects of the Occupy Boston movement since the police raid on December 10^th (2011) scattered the tribe. The most remarkable statement though, or at least the one which stuck in my mind after reading his e-mail, was his characterization of Occupy as “generals without an army.’’ That little twist has haunted me not a little since after some thought and some further investigation I find that statement to have some truth in it.       

Now some readers of this post will dismiss the whole notion of generals, or at least the free-wheeling use of any military terms when speaking of the movement, out of hand. That would be unfortunate because that expression was merely a short-hand way for Josh to say what many people I have spoke to already sense. This “leaderless” movement has leaders, there is nothing wrong with leaders emerging if based on doing hard political work and winning authority, and that in a very important sense those fairly small numbers whose lives are now entwined with the Occupy movement are de facto leaders and that is just hard political realty. Period    

And an equally hard fact is that through the thick and thin of committee meetings, working groups, “rump” General Assemblies (Josh’s word but there is also truth in that characterization as well) and other forms of actions (mainly small, very small) over the past period (and thus a mood that pre-dates the demise of Dewey Square) is that the Occupy movement has lost much steam. Some of this was, and should have been, expected. And perhaps with a better political focus here in Boston that may be turned around. But the hard-headed reality is that a lot of possibly very good cadres are spinning their wheels with no forces (or not many) behind them. Others are just doing what comes naturally, content to attend endless meetings, discuss endlessly, and let other hostile forces come in and pick those very good cadres clean. Ya, sometimes Josh Breslin is clueless on stuff but on this on he is preaching to the converted.         

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General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale

Peter Paul Markin comment:

I had never seen my old friend Josh Breslin so irate (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those who know him under that moniker through his various commentary columns in all kind alternative press operations over the past forty years or so). Or rather more correctly I had never read anything of his that practically steamed off the page, the computer screen page that early Monday morning (December 19, 2011, let’s see the time stamp, oh yes, 5:14 AM, Ya early, definitely early for Josh) when I was casually perusing my daily e-mail delete slaughter-house. It seems that he had attended an  Occupy Boston  General Assembly (GA) meeting the night before over at the hallowed Community Church on Boylston Street (hallowed in leftist circles, I had first gone there long ago to attend a commemoration program for Sacco and Vanzetti). Since the police raid on the Occupy camp at Dewey Square in the early morning hours of December 11^th the GAs have been assembling helter-skelter at various locations from the Parkman Bandstand on the Common to various sympathetic indoor as winter sets in locations, mainly churches, in order to keep some continuity during these unsettled times.

At that meeting the main order of business was a simple proposal submitted by the OB Socialist Caucus, a loose group of organizationally-affiliated and unaffiliated people who identify themselves with the socialist cause. The gist of the proposal was to make a forthright statement that Occupy Boston was to be clearly identified, more clearly identified than in any previous document, as independent of the main bourgeois parties, the Democrats in particular, and by implication was not to be a front or voting cattle bloc for any particular organized political operation ready to move in like hungry wolves looking for an easy meal. This proposal never reached a vote, a yea or nay vote, that night because it was “blocked” well before such a vote could be taken by, as Josh called it in his e-mail, the “Rump” assembly (see said e-mail posted below, well the gist of it anyway). The Rump being a minority of those eighty or so brethren in attendance that evening whose maneuver in the consensus-addled GA world stopped the proposal in its tracks. This series of events triggered in Josh some kind of previously well-hidden verbal explosion about the trends that he had witnessed developing in the movement, and that had disturbed him previously. Naturally he had to send his old compadre Peter Paul his bilious e-mail as the first step in his “campaign” to get things off his chest. 

A little explanation is in order to gauge the seriousness of Josh’s maddened impulse and, as well, for why I have taken the time to write this little commentary up and pushed it forward. Josh and I go back a long way, back to the summer of love in San Francisco in 1967 when I was on Captain Crunch’s merry prankster magical mystery tour freedom bus and I met Josh, then going under the moniker “Prince Of Love,” on Russian Hill in that town. Ya, I know, we were just a little too self-important on changing the name changed the person thing but that was the way it was. I was, for a while, known as Be-Bop Benny, among other names.

Josh had, after just graduating from high school up in Olde Saco, Maine hitch-hiked across the country to see “what was happening.” We hit it off right away, probably because my being from North Adamsville here in Massachusetts we were the only New Englanders “on the bus,” even though I was a few years older. In any case our friendship survived through thick and thin, even despite his “stealing” my girl, Butterfly Swirl (okay, okay I will stop with the a. k. a’s), from right under my nose during the first few days we knew each other. Part of that thick and thin has been involvement in a long series of left-wing political struggles where we have not always seen eye to eye but have generally been “on the right of the angels.”

And that, roughly, brings us to the present. Along the way, for a number of reason that shall not detain us here, I increasingly came to socialist conclusions abut the nature of American society and the ways to change it. Josh, while always on the cutting edge of those same conclusions, never crossed over and has maintained a studied non-socialist radical position very similar to many that I have run into as the Occupy movement has gathered steam. As a paid political commentator for various publications Josh  has always kept a certain skeptical distance from going overboard every time there is the slightest left breeze coming in over Boston Harbor. Until now.        

As I have written elsewhere Josh, now retired, still likes to keep his hand in the mix and so has been working on a project that may turn into a book about the Occupy Boston experience. When he first he crossed the river from the wilds of Cambridge he held himself pretty aloof from the doings but soon became totally enmeshed in what was going on. I was, and still am, a lot more skeptical about where the winds are heading. Josh though spent some nights at Dewey Square and got involved in the camp life. He marched up and down the streets of Boston in every possible cause. He brought food and other goods to the site when he came over. He donated money and other resources to the efforts. He even told me that he washed dishes (once) to help out in the kitchen one day. And believe me in the old prankster days the Prince of Love was, well, too “important” to bow down and get his hands wet doing anything as lowly as dishes. So this new experiment (or rather a chance to make up for those youthful mistakes) really energized him.         

So when Joshua Lawrence Breslin, on a darkened Monday morning, signals that something is wrong, something is politically wrong with the direction of the movement I listen up. And, perhaps, you should too.

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Below I have placed the substance of the e-mail that Josh Breslin sent to me that fateful Monday December 19th morning. This is my summarization of the document which was written by him in our usual “code” and with his usual excessive use of expletives to normal ears so that it would be not understandable to “outsiders.” In short I have edited it as best I could while retaining the political direction. If Josh doesn’t like it then he can, well, sue me. Ha ha. Or better, write his own damn translation. Peter Paul Markin.  

December 19, 2011, 5:14 AM  to PeterPaulMarkin@yahoo.com:

Pee Pee, [The reader is hereby warned no to make anything out of this old-time nickname, old time going back to childhood North Adamsville working-class neighborhood days, or else.] You won’t believe what those arrogant airheads did last night at the so-called GA. I call it, and you can quote me on this, the “Rump” like back in Oliver Cromwell’s time when a bunch of cronies controlled everything, or else. They “blocked” the proposal to have a clear statement of independence from the damn Democrats (and Republicans too) but we know who really wants in on this movement.      

What they did was get together enough people to block the thing even though with a simple majority it could have gotten through. So much for democracy.  For once you are right on this blocking and consensus b.s. Now when Miss Betty [Elizabeth Warren] comes a-courting she will have a field day. You and I have disagreed on many things but keeping the bourgeois parties the hell away from our movement (except maybe to do “Jimmy Higgins” work putting up chairs or licking envelopes, stuff like that) has always been something that has united us ever since Chicago in 1968.    

You should have heard the reasons given. Naturally the old chestnut- “we don’t want to alienate anyone” (anyone to the left of Genghis Khan, I guess). “It’s too negative.” Like the bourgeoisie gives a damn about negativity as long as they keep their moola and their power. “The statement we have already posted about transparency and independence is good enough” Like that flimsy one-size-fits-all statement has any political meaning at all. And it degenerated from there.  I was so mad I had to walk out and get some fresh air.       

I am far from giving up on this Occupy movement but in a lot of ways it really is like that guy, that homeless camper guy, I interviewed over at Dewey Square in early November when the weather got a little cold said. He said the place was a Potemkin Village. I thought he meant about people not staying there overnight. But now I think he meant the whole experiment.  They, we, are generals without any army right now and nothing that is being done lately is calculated to break out from that situation. Were we this ruthlessly obtuse back in the days?  I hope not- Josh      

Postscript from Markin:

As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

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Theatrical protest in Times Square, NYC, this spring to support hunger strike of Guantanamo prisoners Welcome, readers of The New York Times. We are proud to have crowd-funded an ad in the May 23 which got your attention and put the demand to Close Guantanamo before millions, and before the Obama administration as the president spoke Thursday on the issue. TV.MSNBC.com: Over a Thousand Activists Sign Full-Page Ad to Close Guantanamo MichaelMoore.com: “DO SOMETHING:Close Guantánamo Now! Read and join Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Alice Walker, Noam Chomsky, Brig. Gen. (Ret) Janis Karpinski and many more in signing this statement” We thank Medea Benjamin, who signed our collective message, for challenging President Obama during his speech Thursday to use his executive authority to close Guantanamo immediately and to stop targeted killing. She specifically criticized the killing of Abdul Rahman al-Aulaqi, the 16 year old American citizen killed in a drone attack in Yemen. (VIDEO) Alfred, The powerful Close Guantanamo NOW message signed now by 1700 people including notable artists and writers, appeared in The New York Times just before President Obama spoke Thursday on how he will carry forward a “just” war, normalizing, and in some ways escalating U.S. use of targeted assassination and indefinite detention. In light of the president's speech, our message is more relevant than ever, and we have to publish it more widely. The just demands in it have not been met. Guantanamo: 106 days into the prisoners’ hunger strike, the president said he still wants to close Guantanamo (but did not say he would) and “will lift the ban” on releasing the Yemeni prisoners (for which he gave no timetable, and expressed no urgency). Most dangerously, he appeared to endorse continued indefinite detention and the use of grossly unfair military commissions, instead of charging and trying the men with civil judicial process. We said, Close Guantanamo NOW, immediately release cleared prisoners, and end the use of indefinite detention. See In Guantanamo, Fine Words are No Substitute for Freedom by journalist Andy Worthington, one of our signers. Marjorie Cohn, an expert on international law, points out that even though Obama mentioned force-feeding and asked, “Is that who we are,” “...Obama failed to note that the United Nations Human Rights Commission determined in 2006 that the violent force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo amounted to torture and that he has continued that policy.” At best, the prospects of closing Guantanamo are back to those of 2008, when candidate Obama promised to do so. So much depends on us escalating the outcry and demand for justice. Here's what you can do now. Learn more about the prisoners and the hidden history of the detention center built to avoid U.S. law. Guantanamo is a torture camp from which the only exit for the last two years was in a coffin. Thursday, attorney Clive Stafford Smith tweeted that his client from Tunisia, Adel Hamlily, just made a suicide attempt, prompted by the sexual humiliation of genital searches guards recently began on the Guantanamo prisoners. His organization, Reprieve (based in the UK), issued a press release yesterday titled, “Obama fails to provide any meaningful assistance to suffering Guantanamo detainees.” Prisoners are foregoing their right to phone calls with family or lawyers in order to avoid the sexual assaults which accompany them: “Many prisoners now describe their treatment in the camp as being worse than under President George W. Bush.” Moazzam Begg, a British prisoner freed in 2004, said on Thursday that the prisoners are: “...primarily striking for their freedom, for being held for so long without charge or trial - but they’re also striking for being given these invasive cavity searches every time their lawyer visits, and every time he leaves, for the desecration of the Koran, for the strip searches, for the food and all of these things that they’ve had to bear over the past eleven years. And until they actually get to see the plane that is going to be taking them home, and even then they’ll be skeptical, I don’t think they’ll be stopping their protest any time soon.” Help Spread the Close Guantanamo Message. Obama's real promise: expanded targeted killing via drones. Obama defended broad executive authority to kill targets, perhaps even more widely than he has previously. His speech amounted to an argument for, and announcement of a permanent infrastructure for assassination. As the McClatchy newspaper put it, “In every previous speech, interview and congressional testimony, Obama and his top aides have said that drone strikes are restricted to killing confirmed ‘senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces’ plotting imminent violent attacks against the United States. “But Obama dropped that wording Thursday, making no reference at all to senior operational leaders. While saying that the United States is at war with al Qaida and its associated forces, he used a variety of descriptions of potential targets, from ‘those who want to kill us’ and ‘terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat’ to ‘all potential terrorist targets.’” A year ago, Attorney General Eric Holder said in regards to targeted killing that “due process and judicial process are not one and the same.” He and Obama argue that “due process” is whatever they, and their closest advisors, perhaps overseen by some in Congress, say it is. This is actually worse than the Bush standard in its promotion of extra-legal and extra-judicial means. Only in this country (with the biggest military in world history) could it seem legitimate to debate whether large occupying armies or stealth cross-border assassinations with mass incineration would more alienate local populations. But war for empire, no matter the strategy or tactics, is illegitimate, immoral and unjust. As we said in the ad published this week, “Actions that utilize de facto torture, that run roughshod over the rule of law and due process, and that rain down terror and murder on peoples and nations, amount to war crimes.” See: “Is that who we are?” Obama’s Speech on Drones and Preventive and Indefinite Detention by my colleague Dennis Loo who wrote the Close Guantanamo ad. We must show the world there is a section of people in the U.S. who care about humanity. Donate to help publish this message as soon as possible internationally, and in alternative media. 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COUNTDOWN TO 1st JUNE! PROTEST TO DEFEND INTERNATIONAL WHISTLEBLOWER
Each week we highlight different aspects of what Bradley Manning has done for the movement.
Thank You Bradley Manning! “If the public, particularly the American public, had access to this information, it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan, it might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter-terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day … I felt I accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience.”
US opposition to minimum wage increase in Haiti revealed WikiLeaks public cables have showed how the U.S. Embassy in Haiti worked closely with factory owners contracted by Levi’s, Hanes and Fruit of the Loom to block an increase to the minimum wage for Haitian workers. In 2009, the minimum wage was $1.75 per day. In June 2009, responding to workers’ pressure, a parliamentary bill proposed to raise it to $5 per day. Factory owners opposed it saying they would only pay $2.50 “to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica”. Backed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Embassy, they urged then Haitian President René Préval to intervene. The Haiti cables reveal how closely the US Embassy monitored widespread pro-wage increase demonstrations and the political impact of the minimum wage battle. UN troops were called in to quell workers and students protests, sparking further demands for the end of the UN military occupation of Haiti.			A man of exceptional courage and principle In a statement he read in court on 28 February 2013, gay US Army PFC Bradley Manning proudly admitted having leaked information to Wikileaks in order to inform the public of US war crimes and government skulduggery that was being kept from us. He faces charges that could lead to life in prison. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the third time in a row.
"200 Gourdes ($5) right now!"	Because of these fierce demonstrations, sweatshop owners and Washington were unable to keep the minimum wage as low as they had wanted to for long. In August 2009, President Preval negotiated a deal with Parliament to have two minimum wages: $3.13/day for textile workers and $5/day for other workers. But Parliament also adopted a progressive increase over three years so in October 2012 textile workers minimum wage finally went up to $5/day ($6.25 for other sectors).
Was head of UN forces murdered? On 7 January 2006, Brazilian General Bacellar, head of the UN occupation forces in Haiti, was found dead. Bacellar had resisted pressure from Canada, France and the US to raid grassroots areas; the day before his death he opposed plans to occupy Cité Soleil – a stronghold of support for democratically elected President Aristide who was ousted by a US coup. A Wikileaks cable revealed suspicions of Dominican President Fernandez “that the Brazilian government is calling the death a suicide in order to protect the mission from domestic criticism. A confirmed assassination would result in calls from the Brazilian populace for withdrawal from Haiti.”
1 - 8 June: International Actions to Free Bradley Manning So far actions in Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Turkey, UK, USA, Wales…

Bradley Manning’s court-martial begins 3 June The Bradley Manning Support Network is calling for a week of actions across the US and around the world from Saturday 1 June to 8 June. On 23 February, an unprecedented groundswell of international support for Bradley emerged when 70 communities in 19 countries took action. Some actions already planned: Canada: 1 June, Rally at US Consulate in Toronto Germany: 31 May, Meeting at Clearing Barrel GI Café, Kaiserslautern. 1 June Solidarity Rally in Berlin, Brandenburg Gate. South Korea, 3-8 June Press conference and demonstration at US Embassy in Seoul. UK: 1 June, 2 pm Picket outside the US Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London US: 1 June Rally at Fort Meade, Maryland, where the court-martial will take place. Information on latest actions here. Join your nearest protest or organize a solidarity event in your area, register it on the BMSN website, and let us know about it so we can help publicise.

Other ways to support Bradley · Write your local press why you support Bradley’s courageous whistleblowing. · Translate this message and/or send to your networks. · Demand media access to the trial, and that court records be released. See BMSN Action Alert. · Show the Collateral Murder video at meetings / put on websites / local TV programs. · Demand San Francisco Pride reinstate Bradley Manning as Grand Marshal · Send messages of support to BMSN. (cc payday@paydaynet.org and we’ll publish on our website.) · Sign Daniel Ellsberg’s petition (Pentagon Papers whistle-blower). · Write to Bradley

	"Let us follow the example of Bradley, let’s battle for peace, let’s battle against wars, without fear of reprisals, let’s learn from Bradley to be truly human." Hugo Blanco, Director of Lucha Indigena, Perú		“This material [passed to Wikileaks] has contributed to ending dictatorships in the Middle East, it has exposed torture and wrongdoing in all the corners of the world”. Julian Assange Wikileaks founder, who remains in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, protected from extradition to Sweden and to the US
Queer Strike queerstrike@queerstrike.net US: PO Box 14512, SF, CA 94114, / 415-626 4114 UK: PO Box 287 London NW6 2QU / 020 7482 2496 Payday men’s network payday@paydaynet.org US: PO Box 11795 Philadelphia, PA 19101 / 215 848 1120 UK: PO Box 287 London NW6 2QU / 020 7267 8698

The Walking Daddy Of Joy Street

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The Walking Daddy Of Joy Street was a piece of work, a real throwback to ancient times, and to ancient dreams not all pleasant. A time back in the 1960s Boston from whence he came when everything touched by, washed by, the young, held some kind of big flower, big cloud puff promise. He held himself among the young although maybe cutting the high side a little since he had come of age at the tail end of the be-bop beat era, the tail end of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady rushing through mad monk existences before beat, beat down, beat around, beatitude became just another commercial venue, and had smoked his first joint in some poetry- strewn back room of some coffeehouse in about 1959.

See he had fed right in that new scene, fed right into that big cloud puff stuff as the max daddy ganja man in town, at least the white section of town. Christ, the stories they told about him then, about his own mad monk madnesses, and not told by some fried-brained fool all twisted up and brain-mashed from too many hits, way too many, of the pipe making stuff up in order to walk in Walking Daddy’s reflected glory. Stories told straight up in ganga bong pipe smoke-filled rooms and rolled dollar cocaine snort dens about when Walking Daddy turned, or helped turn the town hip.

Walking Daddy was right there at the beginning, at the time when everybody was practically giving as much dope away as they were selling. No sales pitch, no come-on, but just to, well, just to turn the brethren on, new age a-borning turn the sleepy-headed brethren on. He was passing out big rough-edged blunts like they were going out of style, and righteous stuff too. They told a story of some Back Bay bust, booze-busted, dope-busted, maybe some underage sex thing busted too, such things were all kind of mixed up together then on police blotters, where some number, maybe twenty, guys and gals were busted at some too noisy party and hauled into to the stationhouse. Somehow Walking Daddy heard about their plight and through some nefarious connections got a pouch full of Acapulco Gold into the jailhouse and by the time they were done the place smelled was like some college dorm, or some Chinese opium den. Beautiful. (Somebody else had another part of that same story who said that Walking Daddy had gone bail for all of them as well. That sounds right too.)

Then it all kind of turned in on itself. Too much war madness, too much parent anger, too much bad dope, too much, too much. The always lurking greed-heads got greedier, the product got poorer, or really some slap-dash quick- change artists looking for easy money, started passing oregano and other crap as dope to make a fast killing and broke the high. Yah, just broke the high. Walking Daddy just soldiered on though, after all he was a dope- dealer and that was his profession, and had been an honorable one too before the greed-heads burned the thing to the ground, but it was not the same, not the same at all.

Nobody knew his real name, although the name Bob and Tom had been thrown around the place by some young women who seemed to know him more personally, and whom he employed un some unknown conditions to package his product, but Walking Daddy will do just find because this memory blast is not about a name but more a sense of the times (we can skip the reference to Joy Street part too since we know where his kingdom was). A sense of the times and of some of the denizens who survived in that heady atmosphere of late 1970s in Boston before everything turned to ashes, to violence, and to some bizarre behaviors once cocaine became the drug de jus. See Walking Daddy had a sense of that earlier time too, that 60s time, a sense that weed had been played out just like when he had started out and beat had turned to retreat , and people wanted to move on and get their kicks on Route 666 then. Get their kicks on cousin cocaine.

Walking Daddy’s place was smack dab in the center of the action, right there on Joy Street up on Beacon Hill right near the State House. Now the place itself wasn’t anything, maybe less that anything to speak of, two small rooms, a living room and a bed room with a small kitchenette, a studio really. But what made it a magnet was that Walking Daddy, all forty-four years of him, all six-one and one hundred and ninety pounds of him, all long brown hair, beard, eyes of him, was the main man cocaine dealer around that area at a time when cocaine (sister, coke, snow, girl, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood) was just emerging as the drug of choice for those with discretionary incomes who wanted to get their kicks after tiring of marijuana or other lesser drugs. This all happened at a time before guys were winding up very dead in some Sonora dusty dirt road trying to make a score without connections. Guys like his friend Billy Bradley who didn’t know the whole thing was rigged up, and had been since eternity and wound up face down with two slugs in him for trying to go “independent” when the cartels moved in. A time too before cousin cocaine got whipped around in some crack bong pipes and guns started to foul the play. And so Joy Street became a Mecca and Walking Daddy “walked with the king.”

Sure Walking Daddy wanted to make money, make lots of it from an overheard conversation passed on from one of his “employees” but he also had, and this was passed on too, an idea that he would make his Joy Street digs something of an old time opium den, a place when select company could unwind, could do their lines, and get their kicks in a friendly environment. And what allowed Walking Daddy to do that was two, no, really three things. First he was, unlike poor Billy, connected, connected down Mexico way and so would not expect to find himself in some dusty back road ditch, face down. Second he was connected at the State House at just that moment when cocaine was getting to be the marijuana of the 70s generation who wanted good stuff and had the dough to pay for it. (Some wag said that he could have been an honorary member of the Bar Association for his services to that community. Another said he knew more Assistant-Attorneys-General than the Attorney-General did.) So while, once in a while, out on the streets he had to stand for a drug pat-down by some clueless cop who thought he was on the level, was just doing his job, the cop that is, before higher powers stepped in, he was left alone. Third, and this is where Walking Daddy took a certain pride in his work, he was inclined to give away as much stuff as he sold, especially to the bags full of young women college students who dotted the area.

Strangely though he wasn’t tagged with any woman, although there were always plenty of women around including those previously mentioned “employees”and while there was a little talk that maybe he was a fag, gay, a homo, by those who were outside his circle it seemed more like he was just not into sex, or women or stuff like that although a few were more than ready to give him a chase. Oh yes, and he never touched the stuff himself, maybe a little weed like in the old days if it was passed around but no sister.

So on any given day back then, starting in late afternoon Walking Daddy could be seen walking around Cambridge Street, Charles Street, maybe Beacon Street if he was heading to the Common picking up acolytes, picking up a stray a woman or two to add some zest to the nightly doings. Picking up some low-lifes too, some hard-edged corner boys, some North End toughs or Southie hard guys, maybe just out of Deer Island or Walpole, some beat down old winos from Berkeley Street, or some guys from anywhere who had maybe taken too many hits from the bong in the 1960s and never got over it, since Walking Daddy liked to think that he could cater to all kinds with the common denominator of snow to bind his “nation” together. Yah, Walking Daddy was a piece of work.

***The Blues Is Dues –With Muddy Waters’ Mannish Boy In Mind

FromThe Pen Of Frank Jackman

Johnny Prescott privately daydreamed his way through the music he was listening to just then, the forbidden blues music, the devil’s music in some quarters but colored music,( nigra music from his Southern- born father, nigra being kinder that the n----r that he had come North with and which Mother Prescott banned from the household under penalty, well, it was not clear what penalty since no Prescott, young or old, was willing to chance what that hellish thing might be in Johnny’s growing up 1950s household). He was listening to that sacred music just then on the little transistor that Ma Prescott, Martha to adults, had given him for Christmas after he has taken a fit when she quite reasonable suggested that a new set of ties to go with his new white long-sleeved shirts might be a better gift, a better Christmas gift and more practical too, for a sixteen year old boy. No, he screamed he wanted a radio, a transistor radio, batteries included, of his own so that he could listen to whatever he liked up in his room, or wherever he was, and didn’t have to, understand, didn’t have to listen to some Vaughn Monroe, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, or Harry James 1940s war drum thing, sentimental journey thing, until the boys come home thing, on the huge immobile radio downstairs in the Prescott living room. That music and that monstrosity declared, Johnny declared, strictly squaresville, cubed.

This blues thing, this roots music had been a recent acquisition as Johnny one night, one Sunday night, got a late night blues station with a big range out of Chicago. Previously he had been entirely happy, innocently happy, to listen to, say, Shangra-la by The Four Coins that a few months back he had been crazy for. Or that Banana Boatsong by The Tarriers that everybody was singing but which upon a recent listen had made him think for a moment as it started its dreary trip through his ears that he was not so sure that those ties wouldn’t have been a better deal, and more practical too, if that was all the radio could produce. Yah, that so-called be-bop Boston rock station, WAPX, had sold out to, well, sold out to somebody, because except for late at night, midnight late at night, one could not hear the likes of Jerry Lee, Carl, Little Richard, Fats, and the new, now that Elvis was gone, killer rocker, Chuck Berry who had proclaimed loud and clear that Mr. Beethoven had better move alone, and said Mr. Beethoven best tell one and all of his confederates, including Mr. Tchaikovsky, that rock ‘n’ roll was the new sheriff in town.

The bitter end came one Sunday afternoon as Rainbow (where the hell do they get these creepy songs from he thought) by Russ Hamilton blared on and on and he was then ready to throw in the towel with vanilla music. (Johnny would not get hipped to the roots, to the distinctions between that vanilla music being spoon-fed to he and his white brethren and black-etched blues until much later when he headed south during the early 1960s for the civil rights struggle and learned very quickly the distinctions. Just then thought vanilla was just a feeling not a cultural statement.) Desperately, later that same night, Johnny fingered the dial looking for some other station when he heard this crazy piano riff starting to breeze through the night air, the heated night air, and all of a sudden Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 blasted the airwaves. But funny it didn’t sound like the whinny Ike’s voice that he knew from some Ike and Tina stuff so he listened for a little longer, and as he later found out from the DJ it was actually a James Cotton Blues Band cover. After that performance was finished, fish-tailing right after that one, no commercial breaks, was a huge harmonica intro and what could only be mad-hatter Junior Wells doing When My Baby Left Me splashed through. There was no need to turn the dial further now because what Johnny Prescott had found in the crazy night air, radio beams bouncing every which way, direct from Chicago, and maybe right off those hard-hearted Maxwell streets, was Be-Bop Benny’s Chicago Blues Radio Hour. Be-Bop Benny who started Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino on their careers, or helped.

Now Johnny, like every young high-schooler, every "with it" high schooler in the USA, had heard of this show, because even though everybody was crazy for rock and roll, just then like he said before, the airwaves sounded like, well, sounded like music your parents would dance to, no, sit to at a dance, and some kids still craved high rock. So this show was known mainly through the teenage grapevine but Johnny had never listened to it because, no way, no way in hell was his punk little mother bought Radio Shack transistor radio with two dinky batteries going to even have the strength to pick up Be-Bop Benny’s live show out in Chicago. So Johnny, and maybe rightly so, took this turn of events for a sign. And so when he heard that distinctive tinkle of the Otis Spann piano warming up to Spann’s Stompand finished up with his Someday he was hooked.

And you know, as he listened to song after song for several weeks, toes tapping, fingers popping, he started to see what Billy, Billy Bradley, from over in Adamsville, meant when one night at a school dance where he had been performing with his band, Billy and the Jets, mentioned in an intro to a cover of Elmore James’ rendition of Dust My Broom that if you wanted to get rock and roll back you had better listen to blues, and if you wanted to listen to blues, blues that rocked then you had very definitely better get in touch with the Chicago blues as they came north from Mississippi and places like that.

Johnny who have never been too much south of Gloversville, or west of Albany, and didn’t know too many people who had, couldn’t understand why that beat, that da, da, da, Chicago beat sounded like something out of the womb in his head. Sounded like some ten thousand years of human existence seeking to wail, wail in the night. But when he heard Big Walter Horton wailing on that harmonica on Rockin’ My Boogie he knew it had to be embedded somewhere in his own genes.

Memorial Day for Peace

May 27, 2013, 1:00 – 3:00 pm

Christopher Columbus Park

105 Atlantic Ave.

Boston, Massachusetts

Please join us

Please join Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 and Samantha Smith, Chapter 45, Military Families Speak Out, Mass Peace Action and United for Justice with Peace as we commemorate Memorial Day on Monday May 27, 2013

There will be no parade, no marching band, no military equipment, no guns and drums, no Air Force fly-overs.

There will be veterans and supporters who have lost friends and loved ones. There will be veterans who know the horrors of war and the pain and anguish of loss. There will be friends and families of soldiers, remembering their loved ones. There will be Iraqi Refugees who have suffered terrible losses and will join us as we remember and show respect for their loss.

There will be flowers dropped into the harbor for each fallen U.S. soldier from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Flowers will also be also be dropped into the harbor remembering the loss of Iraqi family and friends.

***Philly Rules- With Silver Lining Playbook In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Let say you had a Philly guy, a regular Philly guy, a regular Philly guy from one of its Little Italy neighborhoods. You know a guy who would root himself hoarse at a Phillies’ game, or for the Flyers, or the ‘76ers (forget U/Penn though) and would go absolutely bonkers (maybe I sure reserve the use of that would here), would get heated up a lot, okay, at an Eagles football game. A guy who would, maybe, know how to make use of a good buffalo wings recipe or the secrets of a good place to get a good cheese and steak submarine sandwich. See a regular Philly guy, okay. Regular except for a little, uh, mental problem, a bi-polar problem, a little problem that got to be a big problem when his ever-lovin’ wife proved unfaithful to him, as some wives will, proved unfaith though maybe because he spent just a little too much time cheering on those sports teams and not enough time being, well, being a well-rounded modern man. And our regular Philly guy went a little overboard in reaction to that treachery and wound up in a mental institution, complete with “meds” to calm him down. Oh yah, and despite those quirky little characteristics he is a voracious reader, a cowboy intellectual (although perhaps I should also reserve the word cowboy as well). Either way keep that reader thing under your hat since “real” Philly guys are too busy to read.

Let’s say while our regular Philly guy, Pat to give him a name, was getting well (and not getting within shouting distance of his wife under penalty of another stretch, maybe some prison time the next time) and trying to make himself worthy of his wife’s affections when she comes along. The she in question being another of the world’s waif, Tiffany, who has her own set of, uh, mental problems but who came on board to try to get Pat through his rough spots on the road to reuniting with his wife.

And let’s say that Ms. Tiffany is, well, kind of screwy, kind of outdoes Pat in the screwy department. At least for a while. On the face of it one regular Philly guy (albeit with those little problems mentioned above), and one screwy Philly dame with her own set of high octane problems would be strictly oil and fire. No go, nada, get lost. Except she had a thing for regular Philly guys with problems, or for one Philly guy with problems. And so to lure the unsuspecting Pat in she, as part of an agreement to with him to contact his wife, bargains him into becoming her amateur night dancing partner. Just partners that’s all. As it turns out, they aren’t half bad after a ton of practice and a road strewn filled with pitfalls. See too, though as it turned out he developed a thing for regular (if screwy) Philly gals (or gal).

Now let’s say all this happened, plus a few odd-ball things around Pat’s family issues, then you would have a very amusing and well-produced romantic comedy for the 21^st century. Hey, I’ll take the Eagles and three points, okay Pat. See this one, okay, even if you aren’t a regular Philly guy or gal.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night -Sweet Dreams, Baby- With Thanks to Mister Roy Orbison

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Sixteen and sex. Hold on a minute let me explain, although the clued in of any generation know what I mean without having to write a thesis about it. The clueless, any generation, well maybe they will or maybe they won’t but don’t say I didn’t try to tell them what it was like back then, back in the late 1950s, early 1960s night. So sixteen and sex. No, not touchy feely stuff in some backseat coupe (maybe a “boss” ’57 Chevy and if not then any old car, hell, maybe your father’s borrowed Buick that you better bring back in one piece, or else). No, right now I am not, hear me, not talking about some back seat down by the seashore, up some hilled lovers’ lane, or in some midnight minute motel kind of thing, at least not yet. This is just about getting to know her (and the young woman reader can change the gender and draw her own diagram), easy know her, and let things take their course from there. No more of this frenzied, heated, beating some other guy’s time (or trying to) like he had just got finished doing with Lucy. No more Lucys, and as an amendment, make it a constitutional amendment if you want, no more dog-eat-dog fighting over girls, women, you know, frails.

That is exactly what Johnny Prescott had on his mind as noticed this cool looking frill (girl) across the field heading his way. The field being, for those not from Clintondale, unofficially known as “the meadows,” a family outing place not well-used now that they had the big Gloversville Amusement Park going full blast but just the place to go and think through, well think through, sixteen and sex, boy sixteen and sex. So he knew, knew as sure as he knew he own think through habits that this frill (girl) was also here to do some thinking. Maybe some getting over a boy think like he was getting over Lucy. Or maybe thinking that the way the boy meets girl rules were set up were just flat-out screwy. He hoped so.

And as she, this girl okay, approached he recognized her from school, from Clintondale High. At least he thought so because although the high school was fairly big it was small enough so that he should have recognized her, even if only from the “caf.” As she came very close in view he noticed that it was none other than Timmy Riley’s younger sister, Betty Ann, a sophomore a year behind him. At first he was going to pass because now that he thought about it, although it was clear that she was pretty in a second look way, and maybe a third look way too, she was known as one of those bookish-types that, well, you know were too bookish to think about sixteen year old boys and sex, or maybe boys of any age. And, well Timmy, Timmy Riley, was the star fullback on the Clintondale Red Raiders football team, and who the hell knew how Timmy felt about his bookish sister and sexed-up sixteen year old boys.

But Johnny felt lucky, or maybe just desperate, and started to speak. But before he could get word one out Betty Ann said, “It’s a nice day for walking the meadows with nobody around. I come here when I want to think about stuff, about my future and what I want to do in the world. How about you?” Bingo, thought Johnny. I am going to talk to Betty Ann, and I’ll take my chances with Timmy- the hell with him (unless he reads this then it’s strictly only in his head, okay Timmy). And they talked and talked until almost dark. Talk-weary but still no wanting to move more than three yards from each other Johnny pulled out his transistor radio and they listened to WMEX, the be-bop, non-stop rock ‘n’ roll station that was mandatory listening for those under eighteen, for those who counted.

And while listening to Roy Orbison trill out Dream Baby; Brenda Lee heart-breakingly warble All Alone Am I: Patty Cline ditto heartbreak She’s Got You; Don and Juan telegraphing Johnny’s pitch line What’s Your Name; The Angels silky be-bop ‘Til; and Frank Ifield croon I Remember You Johnny and Betty Ann began what became one of the great Clintonville High romances of 1962. Sex, well you figure it out, clued in or clueless.