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Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145 Phone: (206)526-7185 Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org | |||||||||||||||||||
Friday, August 09, 2013
Seattle voters sent a clear
message to an out-of-touch political establishment yesterday that they are fed
up with business as usual, and are looking for an alternative to
corporate-pandering politicians like Richard Conlin. Kshama Sawant, who was
recently written off by The Seattle Times as “too hard left for Seattle,”
won a stunning 35% of the vote, a number that will likely rise as late ballots
are counted. 
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Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145 Phone: (206)526-7185 Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org | |||||||||||||||||||
Thursday, August 08, 2013
From The Marxist Archives-For Class Struggle Defense !
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***Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Crime Noir Night- The Rich Really Are Different –“ Fear In The Night”-A Film Review
DVD Review
Fear In The Night, DeForest Kelley, Paul Kelly, directed by Maxwell Shane, Paramount Pictures, 1947
Okay here is the familiar rote. Not all crime noir is top shelf, top shelf like Out Of The Past or The Maltese Falcon. By now that proposition has been pretty well established after more than a score of crime noir reviews in this space. Still some of these things can be sleepers, of a sort. Take the film under review, Fear In The Night. On the face of it looking at the unfamiliar cast, the no-name director and the B-movie quality of the production one would throw this one in the has- been bin. And mainly that would be right, except that the story line possibilities, never fully exploited, save it for the justly deserved extinction of many of the films in this genre.
Let me show you. A bank clerk (played by Deforest Kelley), an average just -trying- to- get- ahead- in- this- wicked- old- world 1940s marble building bank clerk, has a terrible dream, a nightmare really and cannot figure it out, cannot figure out why he would have, dream or not, murdered an unknown stranger. Moreover in the fresh light of day he cannot figure it out when many parts, too many parts, of the dream wind up being reality. So said clerk takes his problem to a very convenient brother-in-law who just happens to be a homicide detective (played by Paul Kelly). After a ton and one half of skepticism the detective finally sees that this is one bank clerk who is in serious trouble. And solving this riddle is what makes this thing kind of twist and turn a little before the real bad guy is caught.
And the real bad guy, or rather his maniacal plan of operation, is what could have made this thing jump better than it did. Seems a Mayfair swell, a very jealous Mayfair swell, with a young wandering wife finds out she has been keeping company with someone else on his time. So he, the Mayfair swell Mr. Belknap by name, sees red but knowing that crime doesn’t pay or rather that he doesn’t want to pay for the crime sets our bank clerk up, sets him up big-time, through hypnosis. That little off-beat technique makes all the difference in the world. And the theme that could have better explored the social tensions in this film as we know all too well as of late- the rich don’t want to pay for nothing from taxes to their crimes-never gets it full workout. Why? Well, easy on that one. Something that also has become a mantra in this space. Crime, well crime in crime noir, doesn’t pay. Just ask our Mayfair swell.
DVD Review
Fear In The Night, DeForest Kelley, Paul Kelly, directed by Maxwell Shane, Paramount Pictures, 1947
Okay here is the familiar rote. Not all crime noir is top shelf, top shelf like Out Of The Past or The Maltese Falcon. By now that proposition has been pretty well established after more than a score of crime noir reviews in this space. Still some of these things can be sleepers, of a sort. Take the film under review, Fear In The Night. On the face of it looking at the unfamiliar cast, the no-name director and the B-movie quality of the production one would throw this one in the has- been bin. And mainly that would be right, except that the story line possibilities, never fully exploited, save it for the justly deserved extinction of many of the films in this genre.
Let me show you. A bank clerk (played by Deforest Kelley), an average just -trying- to- get- ahead- in- this- wicked- old- world 1940s marble building bank clerk, has a terrible dream, a nightmare really and cannot figure it out, cannot figure out why he would have, dream or not, murdered an unknown stranger. Moreover in the fresh light of day he cannot figure it out when many parts, too many parts, of the dream wind up being reality. So said clerk takes his problem to a very convenient brother-in-law who just happens to be a homicide detective (played by Paul Kelly). After a ton and one half of skepticism the detective finally sees that this is one bank clerk who is in serious trouble. And solving this riddle is what makes this thing kind of twist and turn a little before the real bad guy is caught.
And the real bad guy, or rather his maniacal plan of operation, is what could have made this thing jump better than it did. Seems a Mayfair swell, a very jealous Mayfair swell, with a young wandering wife finds out she has been keeping company with someone else on his time. So he, the Mayfair swell Mr. Belknap by name, sees red but knowing that crime doesn’t pay or rather that he doesn’t want to pay for the crime sets our bank clerk up, sets him up big-time, through hypnosis. That little off-beat technique makes all the difference in the world. And the theme that could have better explored the social tensions in this film as we know all too well as of late- the rich don’t want to pay for nothing from taxes to their crimes-never gets it full workout. Why? Well, easy on that one. Something that also has become a mantra in this space. Crime, well crime in crime noir, doesn’t pay. Just ask our Mayfair swell.
***Once Again- Out In The Be-Bop 1950s High School Dance Night-Save The Last Dance For Me
A YouTube film clip of The Drifters performing their classic Save The Last Dance For Me. Please, pretty please.
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Last Dance, Time-Life Music, 1990
Hey, I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” reviewing many aspects of 1950s American teenage culture (and maybe it spread to Europe too. Think about the Beatles and Rolling Stones and what they were listening to out in the English,especially that Chess Record-driven Chicago blues with Muddy, Howlin' Wolf and the gang). I have honed in here on that inevitable school dance and its also inevitable last dance. John and Mick had to ask too, remember. A last dance, by the way, that I have been at great pains to describe elsewhere as the last chance for glory for shy boys like me (or girls, for that matter, but they can speak for themselves). That seminal event also ritualistically involved setting off the wallflowers from the “in” crowd in the school social pecking order. And from there by some mysterious process that pecking order was set in stone through three or four long serf-like years of high school. Or, perhaps, for you and your crowd, your guy crowd, it acted as a test to prove that you had that something, some moxie to ask that certain she for the last one.
Of course, the critical question, the world historic question, was whether the last one was to be a slow one that meant that you had to dance close and pray to high heaven that you did not ruin your partner’s feet or shoes in the process. And that the hair cream (Wildroot, a little dab will do ya, of course)had kept your cowlick in place, that using your Gillette steel-edged razor hadn't caused terminal blood lost but only a tissue sop wound, that the deodorant that was suppose to get you through the night did not wear off although you seem to be sweating, excuse me, perspiring through your tee-shirt, and that that surefire kiss mouthwash that tasted, well, tasted like mouthwash held up as well.
Or would it be, with hosanna relief, a fast one, that you could kind of fake that you knew how to dance to, but was not as bound up with the ending of your rising social status like those slow ones. And no worry about hold-your nose mouthwash, hair cream, shaving cream or Right Guard.
This compilation will let you have memory either as both types of songs are included so you can get “nostalgic” for what did, or did not, transpire in the old days. Or for the younger set to giggle over what your parents or grandparents got all heated up about and thank somebody that you came along in the days of hip-hop nation and avoided all that. Whee!
Standouts here include: Chuck Berry’s Back In The U.S.A. (fast and great doo-woppy back singing parts so you could sing along while you are not paying attention to your partner just in case things didn't work out); Tommy Edwards’ It’s All In The Game (slow, swoony, ouch, I am thinking about that razor-induced neck wound); the legendary late Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? (fast and sassy, sassy 'cause girls who liked Bo, well, they "did' it, didn't they, and you know what "did it" means, with all that Afro-Carib beat); and, the Flamingos I’ll Be Home (slow, and only if that certain she turned you down and you had to dance with your sister's best girlfriend, or something like that). How is that for deejaying even-handedness?
A YouTube film clip of The Drifters performing their classic Save The Last Dance For Me. Please, pretty please.
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Last Dance, Time-Life Music, 1990
Hey, I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” reviewing many aspects of 1950s American teenage culture (and maybe it spread to Europe too. Think about the Beatles and Rolling Stones and what they were listening to out in the English,especially that Chess Record-driven Chicago blues with Muddy, Howlin' Wolf and the gang). I have honed in here on that inevitable school dance and its also inevitable last dance. John and Mick had to ask too, remember. A last dance, by the way, that I have been at great pains to describe elsewhere as the last chance for glory for shy boys like me (or girls, for that matter, but they can speak for themselves). That seminal event also ritualistically involved setting off the wallflowers from the “in” crowd in the school social pecking order. And from there by some mysterious process that pecking order was set in stone through three or four long serf-like years of high school. Or, perhaps, for you and your crowd, your guy crowd, it acted as a test to prove that you had that something, some moxie to ask that certain she for the last one.
Of course, the critical question, the world historic question, was whether the last one was to be a slow one that meant that you had to dance close and pray to high heaven that you did not ruin your partner’s feet or shoes in the process. And that the hair cream (Wildroot, a little dab will do ya, of course)had kept your cowlick in place, that using your Gillette steel-edged razor hadn't caused terminal blood lost but only a tissue sop wound, that the deodorant that was suppose to get you through the night did not wear off although you seem to be sweating, excuse me, perspiring through your tee-shirt, and that that surefire kiss mouthwash that tasted, well, tasted like mouthwash held up as well.
Or would it be, with hosanna relief, a fast one, that you could kind of fake that you knew how to dance to, but was not as bound up with the ending of your rising social status like those slow ones. And no worry about hold-your nose mouthwash, hair cream, shaving cream or Right Guard.
This compilation will let you have memory either as both types of songs are included so you can get “nostalgic” for what did, or did not, transpire in the old days. Or for the younger set to giggle over what your parents or grandparents got all heated up about and thank somebody that you came along in the days of hip-hop nation and avoided all that. Whee!
Standouts here include: Chuck Berry’s Back In The U.S.A. (fast and great doo-woppy back singing parts so you could sing along while you are not paying attention to your partner just in case things didn't work out); Tommy Edwards’ It’s All In The Game (slow, swoony, ouch, I am thinking about that razor-induced neck wound); the legendary late Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? (fast and sassy, sassy 'cause girls who liked Bo, well, they "did' it, didn't they, and you know what "did it" means, with all that Afro-Carib beat); and, the Flamingos I’ll Be Home (slow, and only if that certain she turned you down and you had to dance with your sister's best girlfriend, or something like that). How is that for deejaying even-handedness?
***The Dancer –With Eli Wallach’s The Line-Up In Mind-Take Two
And the Dancer might have stayed there, stayed doing nickel and dime stuff, working hard, too hard for cheap dough, except Big Chief, that is the only name you need to know, the wise guy of wise guys had hired me to take care of some business, some business having to do with an underling of his in the drug trade, in the heroin trade to be exact, who was skimming way too much off the top in their international operations. So he had to fall, fall hard in order to be made an example of for other punks who might get too greedy as the money from the drug trade exploded a couple of decades back .
But this is where some guys get kind of squirrely no matter how much training they get. No matter how you teach them the fact of life, the facts of our professional lives. The Dancer decided, after realizing that the three packages were worth a huge amount on the street, decided all by himself, that he was keeping this stash, was going into business for himself (or for us, the way he figured it at first). That was a problem a big problem, a Big Chief big problem.
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The Dancer was a craftsman alright, a perfect artist just like you see at the ballet or in the art galleries, places like that. He had beautiful moves, knew how to do his work right, once I broke his flame temper and got him to see each action as something to be thought through, planned, and then executed. Incidentally, in case you might have heard otherwise, I was the one who gave him the name Dancer after bringing him around, bringing him around from a rough-hewn kid, a punk maybe if left to his own devises, a punk with no sense of that perfect artist that I knew he had in him.
See we were partners for about a decade, actually maybe more like twelve years, but that decade is what counts because it probably took me two years to cut off Dancer’s rough edges, those rough edges that were holding back his artistry, so let’s call it a decade. I was his coach, at least that is the way I looked at it and after a while that was the way he looked at it too. See Dancer, and me too, were professional “hit men,” guys who big- time guys, guys with no names, no public names, but plenty of dough for what they wanted done, would hire to do what had to be done. And we were good, known far and wide in the right circles as being good, and so there you have it. Here’s the funny thing, funny in a way, I never fired a gun on a job, not in anger anyway, hated the damn things, hated the sight of blood, hated when the job called for a rub-out and nothing else. After a while though I got less squeamish, maybe more indifferent, but I never really liked it. So like I say the Dancer did his part, and I did mine and for that decade we were the walking daddies of the hired killer night.
Let me tell you a little about how I met Dancer, how we moved up the food chain in our chosen profession, and then maybe you will see how an artist was created out of pure rough stuff, almost from scratch except for that potential I saw in him. The Dancer grew up, or at least he told me he grew up and I had no reason to not believe him, in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen, a rough place all the way around. You either figured out some stuff early, figured out fast or you were just another guy to be pushed around by guys who had figured things out. Before we met he was maybe jack-rolling drunks in some dark alley for fives and tens and leaving a bloody mess from what I could gather about his style back then, maybe pimping a couple of whores when times were tough and he needed quick dough, maybe an off-hand armed robbery, some freaking gas station or Mom and Pop variety store, Jesus, or a low level hit from some third-rate hood with a grudge. On that last thing that “hit” work was where he started to get a little wise about where the serious dough was for a guy who knew, knew deep in his bones he was slated to be just another soldier in this world of ours.
It went something like this, this low-level hit stuff, something like some guy needed dough bad, real bad, maybe was into the wise guys way too deep, gambling, drugs, women, an overdue loan, and so he would hire the Dancer to off his wife, or his partner, someone worth something, insurance something and he would do the deed. See rough stuff, kid’s stuff really. Wasting his talent on low-rent outings like that. I could hardly believe he never got caught working off some ten- percent commission stuff. Even our first jobs working our way up the food chain had bigger payouts, and came with expenses paid too. Jesus.
And the Dancer might have stayed there, stayed doing nickel and dime stuff, working hard, too hard for cheap dough, except Big Chief, that is the only name you need to know, the wise guy of wise guys had hired me to take care of some business, some business having to do with an underling of his in the drug trade, in the heroin trade to be exact, who was skimming way too much off the top in their international operations. So he had to fall, fall hard in order to be made an example of for other punks who might get too greedy as the money from the drug trade exploded a couple of decades back .
Now I had regular guys who I worked with, who I coached and planned with, but just that moment they were all either in stir or working some other job. So I asked Soldier McGee, one of the low-rider chieftains of the New York City bike crowd and a middle-level distributor of goods, whether he knew somebody who needed dough, and was not afraid to get his hair all mushed up. Oh yeah, and who did not, I repeat, did not have a criminal record, nothing. Soldier thought about it, thought about my requirements and came up with Sid Lorraine, the Dancer.
I almost didn’t take Sid on when we met, when I quizzed him on his approach his idea of a plan was all wild, all shoot ‘em up, bang-bang and collect the dough. Yeah, and then walk right up to Sing-Sing. So on that caper I showed him how to really do the thing right, how to do the thing with style, no muss, no fuss and gone. My idea was to get the underling’s confidence, play to his weak side, the side that was all wreck-less skim. So the deal was that Dancer was going to be a Big Chief “mule,” a rogue mule looking to go independent, and contact the underling about moving the material letting him cut himself in for a large slice of the proceeds for his efforts.
That underling went for it, went like a lemming to the sea. So when the meet occurred over in the Jersey marshes the Dancer had no problem with the problem guy. The cops as usual never ever found the guy, if they were ever looking for him once he wasn’t around anymore. That job was our ticket up the food chain, and the Dancer started taking my instructions more seriously, although like I said it wasn’t all a bed of roses because there was always a little bang-bang and done in him.
Once we moved up as far as we could go in our profession we were given nothing but high-end assignments. All strictly high-end drug deals. This is how it worked (the cops even if they saw this wouldn’t believe it anyway, or would take their cut and look the other way like usual). The Big Chief had agents all over the world, but with the heroin trade mainly in the Far East, places like the Golden Triangle, or South Asia, like maybe Afghanistan. Those agents would procure the stuff (cheap too, cheap to our eyes anyway), and then use “marks,” mostly unknowing people, tourists, businessmen, people like that, who purchased something, a vase, a doll, a figurine, for whatever reason and they would “carry” the stuff through customs. Beautiful right. Then when the dope got state-side we went to work. We went to“collect” the dope. Anyway we could.
That, after a while, was how the Dancer became a perfect artist. See, he would know who he would have to “hit”and who he wouldn’t. Say some sailor brought the stuff in. Dancer knew, knew deep in his bones, that there was no other way than a hit to get the merchandise. So we planned accordingly, set the bait, did the deed, got the merchandise then vanished, no trace. Other times, with the tourists though, he could almost just con his way into letting him have the carrier object and be done with it. And it worked like clockwork for that decade I mentioned before but like all things it went off the tracks.
We had a job set-up in Frisco, a town neither of us knew, but which looked like an average job. The China Star out of Hong Kong was coming in with three marks, all tourists, all carrying heroin in respectively, a horse figurine, a rag doll, and an intricate jade necklace. We had to kill the first guy because he just wasn’t going to give up the damn figurine, he had brought it back for his wife, paid big dough for it and so that was that. The second guy, or really his daughter, gave it up with, well, a little struggle but she lived for another day. . The third, a woman, we had to waste since she would not take off the necklace, no way, but we kind of figured that the way dames are about jewelry. So that part was no big deal.
But this is where some guys get kind of squirrely no matter how much training they get. No matter how you teach them the fact of life, the facts of our professional lives. The Dancer decided, after realizing that the three packages were worth a huge amount on the street, decided all by himself, that he was keeping this stash, was going into business for himself (or for us, the way he figured it at first). That was a problem a big problem, a Big Chief big problem.
I tried to talk him out of it, tried to say it couldn’t work out right no matter how it was cut up, that we had a our place in the food chain, a pretty good place. That we were soldiers and nothing else. Naturally he would not listen and naturally I had to “hit” him when Big Chief sent the word once the packages were not delivered. I was to do the hit myself, no outsiders, no assistants. Here was the beauty of it though. Dancer never knew what hit him I set the thing up so well. See, I pretended to go along with him, him and his rogue operation. We were supposed to meet some guy, some guy from down in Los Angeles over at the Sutro Baths, over on the Frisco ocean side of town. Now this Sutro Baths was a big attraction for the tourists and a place that was not only baths and swimming, stuff like that, but had an amusement park. In other words plenty of noise, kid noise especially. So all I did was get Dancer off in a corner, a corner near a drain pipe that led into the ocean, him in the lead, me behind, and plug him. Then slipped his body down the pipe and done, no muss, no fuss.
Sure I was nervous, what did you expect. My first kill. I still didn’t like it, still didn’t, don’t, like guns, still don’t like the sight of blood, didn’t like sending him out with the Japan Current like some easy mark. But I did it. I went solo after that, went solo out of respect for Dancer’s magic. And now these many years later, now that I have “retired”all I have is the memory of the Dancer, the perfect artist.
***A Bit Of The “Odd Manner”- Irish Style- The Childhood Saga Of Frank McCourt-“Angela’s Ashes”
Book Review
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir Of Childhood, Frank McCourt, Flamingo, London, 1997
Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes is probably the easiest review that I have had to write since I have been doing such reviews in this space. Why? Frank McCourt’s book of childhood memoirs is my story. No. Not in the details of his life’s story, or mine. But rather how the fact of being Irish, of being poor, and of being uprooted affected your childhood, and later times as well. And those traumas, for good or evil, crossed generational lines. McCourt, we are told as his story unfolds, was born in America of immigrants of the diaspora after Irish independence who, for one reason or another, returned to the old country in defeat in the 1930’s. As McCourt noted right at the beginning, that fact in itself provides a rather ironic twist if one is familiar with Irish history and the endless waves of migration (at least until very recently and now that has again been reversed with the latest “troubles”).
McCourt was, in any case, thus a child of the Great Depression and World War II, the generation of my parents, as it was refracted through Ireland during that period. I, on the other hand, am a child of the 1960’s, the “Generation of ‘68” here in America born of the dreaded Irish Catholic-English Protestant combination- and raised in an Irish Catholic enclave. Nevertheless the pages of this memoir are filled to the brim with the results of the emotional (and sometimes physical scars) of being “shanty” Irish (and decidedly not “lace curtain” or “chandelier,” the other “classes” of the dispensation) in this world that hit home, and hit home hard, to this reader.
That said, we do not share the terrible effect that “the drink” (nice way to put it, right) had on creating his dysfunctional family with his father’s, Malachi McCourt’s, crazed need for the alcohol “cure” in order to drown his sorrows and his bitternesses and the fact that his great moment in life, his "fifteen minutes of fame" was his bit for “the cause” (of Irish independence). A familiar story in the Irish community here, and in the old country, but my father, my poor old shambles of a father, seldom drank, although he too was constantly out of work and shared with Frank’s father that same bitterness about his fate.
A quiet despair bitterness that touched the whole family, and touched every even small event, good or bad, sometimes the good worst than the bad. My father was uneducated, lacking in skills, and prospects and as a “hillbilly” Protestant Southerner from coal country down in Kentucky was thus, an ‘outsider’ in the Boston milieu like Frank’s father had been in Limerick. That is the commonality that caught my eye (and sometimes my throat) as I read of Frank’s youthful trials, tribulations and adventures. McCourt’s ability to tap into that “mystical” something is what makes this a fine read, whether you are Irish or not.
Throughout the book McCourt’s woe-begotten but fatally prideful father is constantly referred to in the Irish-town working class poor ghetto of Limerick (and elsewhere, as well, but the heart of the story is told from there) as having an "odd manner." This reflects a certain clannishness against those from the North of Ireland (Dare I say it, the area then known as Ulster) and a sneaking suspicion amount that crowd of some alien (meaning English Protestant) heritage. As the book progresses that odd trait is transferred (by heredity?) to Frank in his various wanderings, enterprises, and desires. What joins us together then is that "odd manner" that gets repeatedly invoked throughout the book. Frank survived to tell the tale. As did I. But in both cases it appears to have been a near thing.
There is more that unites us. The shame culture, not an exclusive Irish Catholic property but very strong nevertheless, drilled in by the clannishness, the closeness of neighbors, the Catholic religion and by the bloody outsiders- usually but not always Protestants of some sort (as least for blame purposes- you know, the eight hundred years of British tyranny in the misty past, although very real to be sure). All driven, and driven hard, by not having nearly enough of this world’s goods.
Every time I read a passage about the lack of food, the quality of the food, the conditions of the various tenements that the McCourt family lived in, the lack of adequate and clean clothing, I cringed at the thoughts from my own childhood. Or during the various times when his family was seriously down and out and his mother, the beloved Angela of the title, had to humble herself and beg for charity, of one form or another, from some institution that existed mainly to berate the poor. I can remember own my mother’s plaintive cry when my brothers and I misbehaved that the next step was the county poor farm.
And how about the false pride and skewed order of priorities? Frank’s father was a flat-out drunk and was totally irresponsible. From a child's perspective, however, he was still your dad and must be given the respect accordingly, especially against the viciousness of the outside world. But life’s disappointments for the father also get reflected in the expectations of the son. The dreams are smaller. Here, the horizons are pretty small when a governmental job with its security just above the “dole” is the touchstone of respectability. Sean O’Casey was able to make enduring plays from the slums of Dublin out of this material. And Frank McCourt enduring literature. Thanks, brother.
Note: The movie version of “Angela’s Ashes” pretty fairly reflects the intentions of Frank McCourt in his childhood memoirs and follows the book accordingly, without the usual dramatic embellishments of that medium. The story line is so strong it needs no such “touch-ups.” Particularly compelling is the very visual "piss pot" sense of utter poverty down at the base of Irish society in Frank McCourt’s childhood.
The two songs below are constantly being sung by Frank McCourt's father when he is "on the drink" to give a little musical flavor to this entry.
"Roddy McCorly"
O see the fleet-foot host of men, who march with faces drawn,
From farmstead and from fishers' cot, along the banks of Ban;
They come with vengeance in their eyes. Too late! Too late are they,
For young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.
Up the narrow street he stepped, so smiling, proud and young.
About the hemp-rope on his neck, the golden ringlets clung;
There's ne'er a tear in his blue eyes, fearless and brave are they,
As young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.
When last this narrow street he trod, his shining pike in hand
Behind him marched, in grim array, a earnest stalwart band.
To Antrim town! To Antrim town, he led them to the fray,
But young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.
There's never a one of all your dead more bravely died in fray
Than he who marches to his fate in Toomebridge town today; ray
True to the last! True to the last, he treads the upwards way,
And young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.
"Kevin Barry"
In MOUNT JOY jail one Monday morning
High upon the gallows tree
Kevin Barry gave his young life
For the 'cause of liberty
Just a lad of eighteen summers
Yet no true man can deny
As he walked to death that morning
He proudly held his head up high
Another martyr for old Erin
Another murder for the crown
The British laws may crush the Irish
But cannot keep their spirits down
Just before he faced the hangman
In his dreary prison cell
The British soldiers tortured Barry
Just because he would not tell
The name of all his brave companions
And other things they wished to know
Turn informer or we'll kill you
Kevin Barry answered no
Another martyr for old Erin
Another murder for the crown
Whose cruel laws may crush the Irish
But CANNOT KEEP their spirits down
Book Review
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir Of Childhood, Frank McCourt, Flamingo, London, 1997
Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes is probably the easiest review that I have had to write since I have been doing such reviews in this space. Why? Frank McCourt’s book of childhood memoirs is my story. No. Not in the details of his life’s story, or mine. But rather how the fact of being Irish, of being poor, and of being uprooted affected your childhood, and later times as well. And those traumas, for good or evil, crossed generational lines. McCourt, we are told as his story unfolds, was born in America of immigrants of the diaspora after Irish independence who, for one reason or another, returned to the old country in defeat in the 1930’s. As McCourt noted right at the beginning, that fact in itself provides a rather ironic twist if one is familiar with Irish history and the endless waves of migration (at least until very recently and now that has again been reversed with the latest “troubles”).
McCourt was, in any case, thus a child of the Great Depression and World War II, the generation of my parents, as it was refracted through Ireland during that period. I, on the other hand, am a child of the 1960’s, the “Generation of ‘68” here in America born of the dreaded Irish Catholic-English Protestant combination- and raised in an Irish Catholic enclave. Nevertheless the pages of this memoir are filled to the brim with the results of the emotional (and sometimes physical scars) of being “shanty” Irish (and decidedly not “lace curtain” or “chandelier,” the other “classes” of the dispensation) in this world that hit home, and hit home hard, to this reader.
That said, we do not share the terrible effect that “the drink” (nice way to put it, right) had on creating his dysfunctional family with his father’s, Malachi McCourt’s, crazed need for the alcohol “cure” in order to drown his sorrows and his bitternesses and the fact that his great moment in life, his "fifteen minutes of fame" was his bit for “the cause” (of Irish independence). A familiar story in the Irish community here, and in the old country, but my father, my poor old shambles of a father, seldom drank, although he too was constantly out of work and shared with Frank’s father that same bitterness about his fate.
A quiet despair bitterness that touched the whole family, and touched every even small event, good or bad, sometimes the good worst than the bad. My father was uneducated, lacking in skills, and prospects and as a “hillbilly” Protestant Southerner from coal country down in Kentucky was thus, an ‘outsider’ in the Boston milieu like Frank’s father had been in Limerick. That is the commonality that caught my eye (and sometimes my throat) as I read of Frank’s youthful trials, tribulations and adventures. McCourt’s ability to tap into that “mystical” something is what makes this a fine read, whether you are Irish or not.
Throughout the book McCourt’s woe-begotten but fatally prideful father is constantly referred to in the Irish-town working class poor ghetto of Limerick (and elsewhere, as well, but the heart of the story is told from there) as having an "odd manner." This reflects a certain clannishness against those from the North of Ireland (Dare I say it, the area then known as Ulster) and a sneaking suspicion amount that crowd of some alien (meaning English Protestant) heritage. As the book progresses that odd trait is transferred (by heredity?) to Frank in his various wanderings, enterprises, and desires. What joins us together then is that "odd manner" that gets repeatedly invoked throughout the book. Frank survived to tell the tale. As did I. But in both cases it appears to have been a near thing.
There is more that unites us. The shame culture, not an exclusive Irish Catholic property but very strong nevertheless, drilled in by the clannishness, the closeness of neighbors, the Catholic religion and by the bloody outsiders- usually but not always Protestants of some sort (as least for blame purposes- you know, the eight hundred years of British tyranny in the misty past, although very real to be sure). All driven, and driven hard, by not having nearly enough of this world’s goods.
Every time I read a passage about the lack of food, the quality of the food, the conditions of the various tenements that the McCourt family lived in, the lack of adequate and clean clothing, I cringed at the thoughts from my own childhood. Or during the various times when his family was seriously down and out and his mother, the beloved Angela of the title, had to humble herself and beg for charity, of one form or another, from some institution that existed mainly to berate the poor. I can remember own my mother’s plaintive cry when my brothers and I misbehaved that the next step was the county poor farm.
And how about the false pride and skewed order of priorities? Frank’s father was a flat-out drunk and was totally irresponsible. From a child's perspective, however, he was still your dad and must be given the respect accordingly, especially against the viciousness of the outside world. But life’s disappointments for the father also get reflected in the expectations of the son. The dreams are smaller. Here, the horizons are pretty small when a governmental job with its security just above the “dole” is the touchstone of respectability. Sean O’Casey was able to make enduring plays from the slums of Dublin out of this material. And Frank McCourt enduring literature. Thanks, brother.
Note: The movie version of “Angela’s Ashes” pretty fairly reflects the intentions of Frank McCourt in his childhood memoirs and follows the book accordingly, without the usual dramatic embellishments of that medium. The story line is so strong it needs no such “touch-ups.” Particularly compelling is the very visual "piss pot" sense of utter poverty down at the base of Irish society in Frank McCourt’s childhood.
The two songs below are constantly being sung by Frank McCourt's father when he is "on the drink" to give a little musical flavor to this entry.
"Roddy McCorly"
O see the fleet-foot host of men, who march with faces drawn,
From farmstead and from fishers' cot, along the banks of Ban;
They come with vengeance in their eyes. Too late! Too late are they,
For young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.
Up the narrow street he stepped, so smiling, proud and young.
About the hemp-rope on his neck, the golden ringlets clung;
There's ne'er a tear in his blue eyes, fearless and brave are they,
As young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.
When last this narrow street he trod, his shining pike in hand
Behind him marched, in grim array, a earnest stalwart band.
To Antrim town! To Antrim town, he led them to the fray,
But young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.
There's never a one of all your dead more bravely died in fray
Than he who marches to his fate in Toomebridge town today; ray
True to the last! True to the last, he treads the upwards way,
And young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.
"Kevin Barry"
In MOUNT JOY jail one Monday morning
High upon the gallows tree
Kevin Barry gave his young life
For the 'cause of liberty
Just a lad of eighteen summers
Yet no true man can deny
As he walked to death that morning
He proudly held his head up high
Another martyr for old Erin
Another murder for the crown
The British laws may crush the Irish
But cannot keep their spirits down
Just before he faced the hangman
In his dreary prison cell
The British soldiers tortured Barry
Just because he would not tell
The name of all his brave companions
And other things they wished to know
Turn informer or we'll kill you
Kevin Barry answered no
Another martyr for old Erin
Another murder for the crown
Whose cruel laws may crush the Irish
But CANNOT KEEP their spirits down
3 May 2013
Free Tinley Park Anti-Fascists!
| Last May (2012), some 18 anti-racist militants broke up a gathering of fascists in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park called to organize a “White Nationalist Economic Summit.” Among the vermin sent scurrying were some with links to the Stormfront Web site run by a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon. Such fascist meetings are not merely right-wing discussion clubs but organizing centers for race terror against black people, Jews, immigrants, gays and anyone else the white-supremacists consider subhuman. For their basic act of social sanitation, five of the anti-fascist fighters were sentenced by a Cook County court to prison terms of three-and-a-half to six years on charges of “armed violence.” (See “Freedom Now for Tinley Park 5!” WV No. 1018, 22 February.) The Spartacist League and the Partisan Defense Committee stand by these militants and call on workers, leftists and anti-racist fighters to demand freedom for the Tinley Park Five. The fascists are a deadly threat to the integrated labor movement, which should be in the forefront of efforts to crush them in the egg. Four of the five who were sentenced—Jason Sutherlin, Cody Lee Sutherlin, Dylan Sutherlin and Alex Stuck—have agreed to receive $25 monthly stipends the PDC sends to class-war prisoners. The PDC program, which includes additional gifts during the holiday season, serves not merely to alleviate some of the harshness of incarceration but also as a message of solidarity from those outside prison walls. The courage of the Tinley Park defendants was seen in their principled response to the government vendetta. Each of the five was initially charged with 37 felony counts, including armed violence, property damage and mob action. The cops and prosecutors applied continuous pressure to try to get them to give up names of those involved in sending the fascists scattering, which the five steadfastly refused to do. Unable to meet the exorbitant bonds, which ranged up to $250,000, they spent seven months in Cook County Jail. Facing the prospect of up to another year behind bars awaiting trial, they accepted a non-cooperating agreement in which each pleaded guilty to three counts of armed violence in return for guarantees of time off for good behavior. In their letters agreeing to receive PDC stipends, the four expressed appreciation for the contributions and also for the issues of Class-Struggle Defense Notes and Workers Vanguard that they have received. One noted that his fellow inmates lined up to read the WV article about their case. Initiated in 1986, the stipend program takes as its model that of the International Labor Defense (ILD), affiliated to the early Communist Party, which provided stipends to over 100 prisoners of the class war. As James P. Cannon, founder and first secretary of the ILD, wrote, “The class conscious worker accords to the class war prisoners a place of singular honor and esteem” (“The Cause That Passes Through a Prison,” Labor Defender [September 1926]). Past PDC recipients worldwide include an Irish Republican Socialist Party militant, members of the British National Union of Mineworkers and members of the U.S. miners, Teamsters and Steelworkers unions. Now, the Tinley Park anti-fascists are joined in the program with America’s foremost class-war prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier, radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, former Black Panther supporters Mondo we Langa and Ed Poindexter and imprisoned members of the Philadelphia MOVE commune. We urge WV readers to contribute to the stipend program by sending checks payable to the PDC and earmarked “prisoners stipends fund” to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal St. Station, New York, NY 10013-0099. Letters to the Tinley Park Five can be sent to: Alex Stuck M34020, 2600 N. Brinton Avenue, Dixon, IL 61021; Cody Sutherlin M34021, 13423 E. 1150th Avenue, Robinson, IL 62454; Dylan Sutherlin M34022, P.O. Box 7711, Centralia, IL 62801; Jason Sutherlin M34023, 100 Hillcrest Rd., East Moline, IL 61244; John Tucker M34024, P.O. Box 549, Lincoln, IL 62656.
* * *
(reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 1023, 3 May 2013)
Workers Vanguard is the newspaper of the Spartacist League with which the Partisan Defense Committee is affiliated.
|
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!
Protest Prison Harassment of Mumia Abu-Jamal!
| Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, renowned journalist and supporter of the Philadelphia MOVE organization, is America’s foremost class-war prisoner. Mumia was railroaded to death row in 1982 on false charges of killing a police officer. In December 2011, the death sentence was removed, but Mumia still remains sentenced to life in prison without parole. The following is a July 6 letter from the Partisan Defense Committee to John E. Wetzel of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. We write to protest recent administrative measures taken against political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Prison officials suspended Mr. Jamal’s access to telephone communication for two weeks as punishment for a phone interview with Philadelphia attorney Michael Coard, on his WURD program, “Radio Courtroom.” In 1998, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found that Mr. Abu-Jamal had a First Amendment right to make radio commentaries as well as written ones. The court enjoined attempts by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to interfere with or otherwise punish Mr. Abu-Jamal for exercise of this right, one it held protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, see Abu-Jamal v. Price 154 F3d 122 (3rd Circ. 1998). The court also ruled that the punitive actions in violation of his free speech rights caused Mr. Abu-Jamal irreparable harm. We also protest the refusal of prison officials to permit contact visitation between Mr. Abu-Jamal and his son Jamal Hart. Mr. Abu-Jamal spent almost 30 years in the isolation of death row based on a sentence that in late 2011 was finally adjudged illegal. The Department’s current actions violate not only his First Amendment rights to speech, but in isolating him from his family recall the illegal deprivations he suffered on death row for three decades. We urge you to reinstate Mr. Abu-Jamal’s telephone access, desist from any further interference with his free speech rights, and permit contact visitation with his son.
* * *
(reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 1027, 12 July 2013)
Workers Vanguard is the newspaper of the Spartacist League with which the Partisan Defense Committee is affiliated.
|
Free Lynne Stewart Now!-Let Grandma Go Home!
Legal Documents Filed 7-29-13 in Support of Lynne’s Release
August 6th, 2013Legal Documents – links below:
Transcript of 7-31-13 Hearing
August 6th, 2013Click here to read the 7-31-13 Hearing transcript.
Rally for Lynne Thursday August 8
August 3rd, 2013
A RALLY IN OUR COMMUNITY,
THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 2013
Free Lynne Stewart Now!
12 – 2PM
Near the Federal Court Building
AT FOLEY SQUARE, IN THE PARK in Lower Manhattan
Trains: J/Z, 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall.
Message from Lynne July 25
August 2nd, 20137/25/13
To All:
By Now we will have filed papers which take us back into Federal Court in New York City to request that Judge Koeltl overturn the barbaric decision by the Bureau of Prisons and allow me to leave this empty loveless Prison and go home to People and Places familiar and beloved. I certainly am sick enough–even my oncologist revised her prognosis down to 18 months now. However, my spirit remains undaunted and when I compare myself to other far worse off than I am–the Guantanamo and Pelican Bay prisoners, Marie Mason, Afra Siddiqui, Hugo Yogi Pinell, those under death Penalty like Kevin Cooper, the remaining Angola 2, Ruchel Magee and my fellow New Yorkers Jalil, Sekou, Herman, Seth, David, Abdul –let me stop before I choke up here… I know we MUST win my fight and the struggle for all other political prisoners to be freed. And then we must struggle for all to be free in this country.
How much can we, the People, take? Their austerity is barbaric cruelty with food stamps gone and public housing unavailable, permanently. How long can the 1% continue to rule and the corporations call the shots? There is so much wrong but we are not allowed to despair since we have been given sight in this land of the blind and hopeless and heartless, So, that said, let’s once again get out there as often as needs be–for all the causes, for all the humanity. for the future. Forward, ever Forward !!
Lynne
IMMEDIATE UPDATE ON THE COURT HEARING CONCERNING LYNNE STEWART
August 2nd, 2013Update on Lynne Stewart’s court hearing 7/31/13
Ten minutes ago the hearing today before Judge John Koetl concluded. The following is a synopsis of what transpired as reported in a telephone call with Ralph Poynter:
Lynne Stewart’s attorneys filed an emergency Motion (2255) with Judge Koetl seeking Lynne’s “immediate conditional release” pending consideration of the legal issues presented in their brief.
The judge asked why they chose to exhaust their one time right to an emergency motion. The Defense response was that Lynne Stewart is terminally ill. The luxury of time is not available to her or her counsel. An expeditious response from the Court is imperative in the face of her medical condition and in the light of the Bureau of Prisons’ unwarranted denial of her application for compassionate release and protracted delays that could be expected if she submitted another application.
The Prosecution, acting for the Justice Department of Barack Obama, asserted that the Judge has no standing because there is no motion for Compassionate Release before him from Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Charles E. Samuels, Jr. as specified in the 1984 Sentencing Act.
The Defense presented a Brief which documents that the Federal Bureau of Prisons had violated separation of powers as the 1984 Congressional Statute assigns to the Court the right to modify a prison sentence in light of facts not available at the time of trial, notably those pertaining to terminal illness. “The BOP has implemented its own interpretation and refused to notify the sentencing judge of objectively ‘extraordinary and compelling circumstances,’ including but not limited to imminent death, unless, in its own judgment, a motion should be granted. Between 2000 and 2008, on average, 21.3 motions were filed each year. In about 24% of those motions, the prisoner died before the district court ever had a chance to rule on the motion.”
“Lynne Stewart is dying,” wrote her attorneys. She does not want to die in prison or become another statistic of someone who dies while the Bureau of Prisons delays its reconsideration of another application for compassionate release that she plans to file soon.
Judge Koetl gave a directive to the Federal Attorney to set out its case by next Tuesday and also to explain why the Bureau of Prisons has refused to disclose or release the records that provide the basis for its denial of Lynne Stewart’s recent application for compassionate release.
Lynne Stewart’s defense attorneys will have one day to answer before the next hearing scheduled for Thursday, August 8 at 2 p.m.
Judge Koetl has the authority to mandate immediate conditional release to Lynne Stewart.
Photo from NLG-San Francisco Rally for Lynne
August 2nd, 2013
A great turnout in San Francisco! NLG attorney and national Executive Vice President Nadia Kayyali (right) speaks to the crowd.
San Francisco Rally for Lynne Stewart August 1st
July 23rd, 2013Rally to Free Lynne Stewart
Free Lynne Stewart Now!
Rally in Support of Activist lawyer and Guild Member Lynne Stewart
Thursday, August 1, Noon
Federal Building
7th & Mission in San Francisco
Send a message to Bureau of Prisons Director Charles E. Samuels Jr. that he must reverse his decision.
Link for this event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/150549631807513/
Long-time National Lawyers Guild member and activist lawyer Lynne Stewart needs our help and she needs it now! The Federal Bureau of Prisons has denied Lynne Stewart’s application for compassionate release, despite recommendations in favor from the warden at her facility, the Regional Office Director, and vetting of Stewart’s release plans by the Federal Probation Office in New York.
Lynne Stewart’s condition is deteriorating rapidly. Medical treatment to arrest the cancer that is metastasizing in her body has been halted because she is too weak to receive it. She remains in isolation, as her white blood cell count is so low that she is at risk for generalized infection.
For over 30 years, Lynne Stewart devoted her life to the oppressed – a constant advocate for the countless many deprived in the United States of their freedom and their rights. She, herself, was targeted and prosecuted because she defended vigorously her unpopular clients – people the U.S. government sought to execute, disappear, and demonize. Read the rest of this entry »
Rally in Support of Activist lawyer and Guild Member Lynne Stewart
Thursday, August 1, Noon
Federal Building
7th & Mission in San Francisco
Send a message to Bureau of Prisons Director Charles E. Samuels Jr. that he must reverse his decision.
Link for this event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/150549631807513/
Long-time National Lawyers Guild member and activist lawyer Lynne Stewart needs our help and she needs it now! The Federal Bureau of Prisons has denied Lynne Stewart’s application for compassionate release, despite recommendations in favor from the warden at her facility, the Regional Office Director, and vetting of Stewart’s release plans by the Federal Probation Office in New York.
Lynne Stewart’s condition is deteriorating rapidly. Medical treatment to arrest the cancer that is metastasizing in her body has been halted because she is too weak to receive it. She remains in isolation, as her white blood cell count is so low that she is at risk for generalized infection.
For over 30 years, Lynne Stewart devoted her life to the oppressed – a constant advocate for the countless many deprived in the United States of their freedom and their rights. She, herself, was targeted and prosecuted because she defended vigorously her unpopular clients – people the U.S. government sought to execute, disappear, and demonize. Read the rest of this entry »
Demonstration in Support of Lynne in Seattle (Photo)
July 21st, 2013
Dick Gregory at BOP (Photo)
July 21st, 2013
Dick Gregory protests in support of Lynne at the Bureau of Prisons, June 18th 2013.
Rallies for Lynne
July 8th, 2013RALLIES FOR LYNNE:
Tues., July 9, New York City
Gather at Foley Sq, Lower Manhattan Courts, 4 – 7 pmAnd march to 500 Pearl St.
Tues., July 9, Los Angeles
Protest at Westwood Federal Building11000 Wilshire Blvd., 5 p.m.
Fri., July 12, Washington, D.C.
Columbia Heights Civic Plaza 5:30 – 8 pm14th St & Park Rd. NW
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