From The Marxist Archives-Karl Marx and the U.S. Civil War

Workers Vanguard No. 931	27 February 2009

TROTSKY

LENIN

Karl Marx and the U.S. Civil War

(Quote of the Week)

February is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the president during the U.S. Civil War. While Lincoln was not a radical abolitionist and had initially opposed only the expansion of slavery, Karl Marx nonetheless recognized that Lincoln came to the understanding that defeating the Confederacy required the smashing of black chattel slavery. Marx hailed the Civil War as a great bourgeois-democratic revolution and rallied the European working class to support the victory of the North. We reprint below excerpts from an address drafted by Marx for the First International on the occasion of Lincoln’s re-election in 1864. This was written before the systematic export of capital —i.e., imperialism—had come onto the world scene.

We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority.

If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant warcry of your re-election is, Death to Slavery....

When an oligarchy of 300,000 slave-holders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, “slavery” on the banner of Armed Revolt; when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the 18th century; when on those very spots counter-revolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding “the [...] ideas entertained [...] at the time of the formation of the old Constitution,” and maintained “slavery to be a beneficent institution,” indeed the only solution of the great problem of “the relation of labour to capital,” and cynically proclaimed property in man “the corner-stone of the new edifice,” then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slave-holders’ rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labour, and that for the men of labour, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the pro-slavery intervention, importunities of their betters—and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.

While the working men, the true political power of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic; while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned labourer to sell himself and choose his own master; they were unable to attain the true freedom of labour or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation, but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.

The working men of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Anti-Slavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.

—Karl Marx, “To Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America” (November 1864) [brackets in original]

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Articles by Karl Marx in Die Presse 1861

The North American Civil War

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Written: October 1861;
Source: Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume 19;
Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964;
First Published: Die Presse No. 293, October 25, 1861;
Online Version: marxists.org 1999;
Transcribed: Bob Schwarz;
HTML Markup: Tim Delaney in 1999.

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London, October 20, 1861

For months the leading weekly and daily papers of the London press have been reiterating the same litany on the American Civil War. While they insult the free states of the North, they anxiously defend themselves against the suspicion of sympathising with the slave states of the South. In fact, they continually write two articles: one article, in which they attack the North, and another article, in which they excuse their attacks on the North.

In essence the extenuating arguments read: The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war is, further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery and in fact turns on Northern lust for sovereignty. Finally, even if justice is on the side of the North , does it not remain a vain endeavour to want to subjugate eight million Anglo-Saxons by force! Would not separation of the South release the North from all connection with Negro slavery and ensure for it, with its twenty million inhabitants and its vast territory, a higher, hitherto scarcely dreamt-of, development? Accordingly, must not the North welcome secession as a happy event, instead of wanting to overrule it by a bloody and futile civil war?

Point by point we will probe the plea of the English press.

The war between North and South -- so runs the first excuse -- is a mere tariff war, a war between a protectionist system and a free trade system, and Britain naturally stands on the side of free trade. Shall the slave-owner enjoy the fruits of slave labour in their entirety or shall he be cheated of a portion of these by the protectionists of the North? That is the question which is at issue in this war. It was reserved for The Times to make this brilliant discovery. The Economist, The Examiner, The Saturday Review and tutti quanti expounded the theme further. It is characteristic of this discovery that it was made, not in Charleston, but in London. Naturally, in America everyone knew that from 1846 to 1861 a free trade system prevailed, and that Representative Morrill carried his protectionist tariff through Congress only in 1861, after the rebellion had already broken out. Secession, therefore, did not take place because the Morrill tariff had gone through Congress, but, at most, the Morrill tariff went through Congress because secession had taken place. When South Carolina had its first attack of secession in 1831, the protectionist tariff of 1828 served it, to be sure, as a pretext, but only as a pretext, as is known from a statement of General Jackson. This time, however, the old pretext has in fact not been repeated. In the Secession Congress at Montgomery all reference to the tariff question was avoided, because the cultivation of sugar in Louisiana, one of the most influential Southern states, depends entirely on protection.

But, the London press pleads further, the war of the United States is nothing but a war for the forcible maintenance of the Union. The Yankees cannot make up their minds to strike fifteen stars from their standard. They want to cut a colossal figure on the world stage. Yes, it would be different if the war was waged for the abolition of slavery! The question of slavery, however, as The Saturday Review categorically declares among other things, has absolutely nothing to do with this war.

It is above all to be remembered that the war did not originate with the North, but with the South. The North finds itself on the defensive. For months it had quietly looked on while the secessionists appropriated the Union's forts, arsenals, shipyards, customs houses, pay offices, ships and supplies of arms, insulted its flag and took prisoner bodies of its troops. Finally the secessionists resolved to force the Union government out of its passive attitude by a blatant act of war, and solely for this reason proceeded to the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston. On April 11 (1861) their General Beauregard had learnt in a meeting with Major Anderson, the commander of Fort Sumter, that the fort was only supplied with provisions for three days more and accordingly must be peacefully surrendered after this period. In order to forestall this peaceful surrender, the secessionists opened the bombardment early on the following morning (April 12), which brought about the fall of the fort in a few hours. News of this had hardly been telegraphed to Montgomery, the seat of the Secession Congress, when War Minister Walker publicly declared in the name of the new Confederacy: No man can say where the war opened today will end. At the same time he prophesied that before the first of May the flag of the Southern Confederacy will wave from the dome of the old Capitol in Washington and within a short time perhaps also from the Faneuil Hall in Boston. Only now ensued the proclamation in which Lincoln called for 75,000 men to defend the Union. The bombardment of Fort Sumter cut off the only possible constitutional way out, namely the convocation of a general convention of the American people, as Lincoln had proposed in his inaugural address. For Lincoln there now remained only the choice of fleeing from Washington, evacuating Maryland and Delaware and surrendering Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia, or of answering war with war.

The question of the principle of the American Civil War is answered by the battle slogan with which the South broke the peace. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, declared in the Secession Congress that what essentially distinguished the Constitution newly hatched at Montgomery from the Constitution of Washington and Jefferson was that now for the first time slavery was recognised as an institution good in itself, and as the foundation of the whole state edifice, whereas the revolutionary fathers, men steeped in the prejudices of the eighteenth century, had treated slavery as an evil imported from England and to be eliminated in the course of time. Another matador of the South, Mr. Spratt, cried out: "For us it is a question of founding a great slave republic." If, therefore, it was indeed only in defence of the Union that the North drew the sword, had not the South already declared that the continuance of slavery was no longer compatible with the continuance of the Union?

Just as the bombardment of Fort Sumter gave the signal for the opening of the war, the election victory of the Republican Party of the North, the election of Lincoln as President, gave the signal for secession. On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected. On November 8, 1860, a message telegraphed from South Carolina said: Secession is regarded here as an accomplished fact; on November 10 the legislature of Georgia occupied itself with secession plans, and on November 13 a special session of the legislature of Mississippi was convened to consider secession. But Lincoln's election was itself only the result of a split in the Democratic camp. During the election struggle the Democrats of the North concentrated their votes on Douglas, the Democrats of the South concentrated their votes on Breckinridge, and to this splitting of the Democratic votes the Republican Party owed its victory. Whence came, on the one hand, the preponderance of the Republican Party in the North? Whence, on the other, the disunion within the Democratic Party, whose members, North and South, had operated in conjunction for more than half a century?

Under the presidency of Buchanan the sway that the South had gradually usurped over the Union through its alliance with the Northern Democrats attained its zenith. The last Continental Congress of 1787 and the first Constitutional Congress of 1789 -90 had legally excluded slavery from all Territories of the republic north-west of the Ohio. (Territories, as is known, is the name given to the colonies lying within the United States itself which have not yet attained the level of population constitutionally prescribed for the formation of autonomous states.) The so-called Missouri Compromise (1820), in consequence of which Missouri became one of the States of the Union as a slave state, excluded slavery from every remaining Territory north of 36 degrees latitude and west of the Missouri. By this compromise the area of slavery was advanced several degrees of longitude, whilst, on the other hand, a geographical boundary-line to its future spread seemed quite definitely drawn. This geographical barrier, in its turn, was thrown down in 1854 by the so-called Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the initiator of which was St[ephen] A. Douglas, then leader of the Northern Democrats. The Bill, which passed both Houses of Congress, repealed the Missouri Compromise, placed slavery and freedom on the same footing, commanded the Union government to treat them both with equal indifference and left it to the sovereignty of the people, that is, the majority of the settlers, to decide whether or not slavery was to be introduced in a Territory. Thus, for the first time in the history of the United States, every geographical and legal limit to the extension of slavery in the Territories was removed. Under this new legislation the hitherto free Territory of New Mexico, a Territory five times as large as the State of New York, was transformed into a slave Territory, and the area of slavery was extended from the border of the Mexican Republic to 38 degrees north latitude. In 1859 New Mexico received a slave code that vies with the statute-books of Texas and Alabama in barbarity. Nevertheless, as the census of 1860 proves, among some hundred thousand inhabitants New Mexico does not yet count half a hundred slaves. It had therefore sufficed for the South to send some adventurers with a few slaves over the border, and then with the help of the central government in Washington and of its officials and contractors in New Mexico to drum together a sham popular representation to impose slavery and with it the rule of the slaveholders on the Territory.

However, this convenient method did not prove applicable in other Territories. The South accordingly went a step further and appealed from Congress to the Supreme Court of the United States. This Court, which numbers nine judges, five of whom belong to the South, had long been the most willing tool of the slaveholders. It decided in 1857, in the notorious Dred Scott case, that every American citizen possesses the right to take with him into any territory any property recognized by the Constitution. The Constitution, it maintained, recognises slaves as property and obliges the Union government to protect this property. Consequently, on the basis of the Constitution, slaves could be forced to labour in the Territories by their owners, and so every individual slaveholder was entitled to introduce slavery into hitherto free Territories against the will of the majority of the settlers. The right to exclude slavery was taken from the Territorial legislatures and the duty to protect pioneers of the slave system was imposed on Congress and the Union government.

If the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had extended the geographical boundary-line of slavery in the Territories, if the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 had erased every geographical boundary-line and set up a political barrier instead, the will of the majority of the settlers, now the Supreme Court of the United States, by its decision of 1857, tore down even this political barrier and transformed all the Territories of the republic, present and future, from nurseries of free states into nurseries of slavery.

At the same time, under Buchanan's government the severer law on the surrendering of fugitive slaves enacted in 1850 was ruthlessly carried out in the states of the North. To play the part of slave-catchers for the Southern slaveholders appeared to be the constitutional calling of the North. On the other hand, in order to hinder as far as possible the colonisation of the Territories by free settlers, the slaveholders' party frustrated all the so-called free-soil measures, i.e., measures which were to secure for the settlers a definite amount of uncultivated state land free of charge.

In the foreign, as in the domestic, policy of the United States, the interest of the slaveholders served as the guiding star. Buchanan had in fact bought the office of President through the issue of the Ostend Manifesto, in which the acquisition of Cuba, whether by purchase or by force of arms, was proclaimed as the great task of national policy. Under his government northern Mexico was already divided among American land speculators, who impatiently awaited the signal to fall on Chihuahua, Coahuila and Sonora. The unceasing piratical expeditions of the filibusters against the states of Central America were directed no less from the White House at Washington. In the closest connection with this foreign policy, whose manifest purpose was conquest of new territory for the spread of slavery and of the slaveholders' rule, stood the reopening of the slave trade, secretly supported by the Union government. St[ephen] A. Douglas himself declared in the American Senate on August 20, 1859: During the last year more Negroes have been imported from Africa than ever before in any single year, even at the time when the slave trade was still legal. The number of slaves imported in the last year totalled fifteen thousand.

Armed spreading of slavery abroad was the avowed aim of national policy; the Union had in fact become the slave of the three hundred thousand slaveholders who held sway over the South. A series of compromises, which the South owed to its alliance with the Northern Democrats, had led to this result. On this alliance all the attempts, periodically repeated since 1817, to resist the ever increasing encroachments of the slaveholders had hitherto come to grief. At length there came a turning point.

For hardly had the Kansas-Nebraska Bill gone through, which wiped out the geographical boundary-line of slavery and made its introduction into new Territories subject to the will of the majority of the settlers, when armed emissaries of the slaveholders, border rabble from Missouri and Arkansas, with bowie-knife in one hand and revolver in the other, fell upon Kansas and sought by the most unheard-of atrocities to dislodge its settlers from the Territory colonised by them. These raids were supported by the central government in Washington. Hence a tremendous reaction. Throughout the North, but particularly in the North-west, a relief organisation was formed to support Kansas with men, arms and money. Out of this relief organisation arose the Republican Party, which therefore owes its origin to the struggle for Kansas. After the attempt to transform Kansas into a slave Territory by force of arms had failed, the South sought to achieve the same result by political intrigues. Buchanan's government, in particular, exerted its utmost efforts to have Kansas included in the States of the Union as a slave state with a slave constitution imposed on it. Hence renewed struggle, this time mainly conducted in Congress at Washington. Even St[ephen] A. Douglas, the chief of the Northern Democrats, now (1857 - 58) entered the lists against the government and his allies of the South, because imposition of a slave constitution would have been contrary to the principle of sovereignty of the settlers passed in the Nebraska Bill of 1854. Douglas, Senator for Illinois, a North-western state, would naturally have lost all his influence if he had wanted to concede to the South the right to steal by force of arms or through acts of Congress Territories colonised by the North. As the struggle for Kansas, therefore, called the Republican Party into being, it at the same time occasioned the first split within the Democratic Party itself.

The Republican Party put forward its first platform for the presidential election in 1856. Although its candidate, John Fremont, was not victorious, the huge number of votes cast for him at any rate proved the rapid growth of the Party, particularly in the North-west. At their second National Convention for the presidential election (May 17, 1860), the Republicans again put forward their platform of 1856, only enriched by some additions. Its principal contents were the following: Not a foot of fresh territory is further conceded to slavery. The filibustering policy abroad must cease. The reopening of the slave trade is stigmatised. Finally, free-soil laws are to be enacted for the furtherance of free colonisation.

The vitally important point in this platform was that not a foot of fresh terrain was conceded to slavery; rather it was to remain once and for all confined with the boundaries of the states where it already legally existed. Slavery was thus to be formally interned; but continual expansion of territory and continual spread of slavery beyond its old limits is a law of life for the slave states of the Union.

The cultivation of the southern export articles, cotton, tobacco, sugar , etc., carried on by slaves, is only remunerative as long as it is conducted with large gangs of slaves, on a mass scale and on wide expanses of a naturally fertile soil, which requires only simple labour. Intensive cultivation, which depends less on fertility of the soil than on investment of capital, intelligence and energy of labour, is contrary to the nature of slavery. Hence the rapid transformation of states like Maryland and Virginia, which formerly employed slaves on the production of export articles, into states which raise slaves to export them into the deep South. Even in South Carolina, where the slaves form four-sevenths of the population, the cultivation of cotton has been almost completely stationary for years due to the exhaustion of the soil. Indeed, by force of circumstances South Carolina has already been transformed in part into a slave-raising state, since it already sells slaves to the sum of four million dollars yearly to the states of the extreme South and South-west. As soon as this point is reached, the acquisition of new Territories becomes necessary, so that one section of the slaveholders with their slaves may occupy new fertile lands and that a new market for slave-raising, therefore for the sale of slaves, may be created for the remaining section. It is, for example, indubitable that without the acquisition of Louisiana, Missouri and Arkansas by the United States, slavery in Virginia and Maryland would have been wiped out long ago. In the Secessionist Congress at Montgomery, Senator Toombs, one of the spokesmen of the South, strikingly formulated the economic law that commands the constant expansion of the territory of slavery. "In fifteen years," said he, "without a great increase in slave territory, either the slaves must be permitted to flee from the whites, or the whites must flee from the slaves."

As is known, the representation of the individual states in the Congress House of Representatives depends on the size of their respective populations. As the populations of the free states grow far more quickly than those of the slave states, the number of Northern Representatives was bound to outstrip that of the Southern very rapidly. The real seat of the political power of the South is accordingly transferred more and more to the American Senate, where every state, whether its population is great or small, is represented by two Senators. In order to assert its influence in the Senate and, through the Senate, its hegemony over the United States, the South therefore required a continual formation of new slave states. This, however, was only possible through conquest of foreign lands, as in the case of Texas, or through the transformation of the Territories belonging to the United States first into slave Territories and later into slave states, as in the case of Missouri, Arkansas, etc. John Calhoun, whom the slaveholders admire as their statesman par excellence, stated as early as February 19, 1847, in the Senate, that the Senate alone placed a balance of power in the hands of the South, that extension of the slave territory was necessary to preserve this equilibrium between South and North in the Senate, and that the attempts of the South at the creation of new slave states by force were accordingly justified.

Finally, the number of actual slaveholders in the South of the Union does not amount to more than three hundred thousand, a narrow oligarchy that is confronted with many millions of so-called poor whites, whose numbers have been constantly growing through concentration of landed property and whose condition is only to be compared with that of the Roman plebeians in the period of Rome's extreme decline. Only by acquisition and the prospect of acquisition of new Territories, as well as by filibustering expeditions, is it possible to square the interests of these poor whites with those of the slaveholders, to give their restless thirst for action a harmless direction and to tame them with the prospect of one day becoming slaveholders themselves.

A strict confinement of slavery within its old terrain, therefore, was bound according to economic law to lead to its gradual effacement, in the political sphere to annihilate the hegemony that the slave states exercised through the Senate, and finally to expose the slaveholding oligarchy within its own states to threatening perils from the poor whites. In accordance with the principle that any further extension of slave Territories was to be prohibited by law, the Republicans therefore attacked the rule of the slaveholders at its root. The Republican election victory was accordingly bound to lead to open struggle between North and South. And this election victory, as already mentioned, was itself conditioned by the split in the Democratic camp.

The Kansas struggle had already caused a split between the slaveholders' party and the Democrats of the North allied to it. With the presidential election of 1860, the same strife now broke out again in a more general form. The Democrats of the North, with Douglas as their candidate, made the introduction of slavery into Territories dependent on the will of the majority of the settlers. The slaveholders' party, with Breckinridge as their candidate, maintained that the Constitution of the United States, as the Supreme Court had also declared, brought slavery legally in its train; in and of itself slavery was already legal in all Territories and required no special naturalisation. Whilst, therefore, the Republicans prohibited any extension of slave Territories, the Southern party laid claim to all Territories of the republic as legally warranted domains. What they had attempted by way of example with regard to Kansas, to force slavery on a Territory through the central government against the will of the settlers themselves, they now set up as law for all the Territories of the Union. Such a concession lay beyond the power of the Democratic leaders and would only have occasioned the desertion of their army to the Republican camp. On the other hand, Douglas's settlers' sovereignty could not satisfy the slaveholders' party. What it wanted to effect had to be effected within the next four years under the new President, could only be effected by the resources of the central government and brooked no further delay. It did not escape the slaveholders that a new power had arisen, the North-west, whose population, having almost doubled between 1850 and 1860, was already pretty well equal to the white population of the slave states -- a power that was not inclined either by tradition, temperament or mode of life to let itself be dragged from compromise to compromise in the manner of the old North-eastern states. The Union was still of value to the South only so far as it handed over Federal power to it as a means of carrying out the slave policy. If not, then it was better to make the break now than to look on at the development of the Republican Party and the upsurge of the North-west for another four years and begin the struggle under more unfavourable conditions. The slaveholders' party therefore played va banque. When the Democrats of the North declined to go on playing the part of the poor whites of the South, the South secured Lincoln's victory by splitting the vote, and then took this victory as a pretext for drawing the sword from the scabbard.

The whole movement was and is based, as one sees, on the slave question. Not in the sense of whether the slaves within the existing slave states should be emancipated outright or not, but whether the twenty million free men of the North should submit any longer to an oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders; whether the vast Territories of the republic should be nurseries for free states or for slavery; finally, whether the national policy of the Union should take armed spreading of slavery in Mexico, Central and South America as its device.

In another article we will probe the assertion of the London press that the North must sanction secession as the most favourable and only possible solution of the conflict.

Yeah, That Old Seven-Year Itch-Take Two

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

You never know when a guy, a rationale ordinary guy under most circumstances is going to go off the deep end, going to get, ah, that seven –year itch. You know what I am talking about if you are a guy, hell, now that we live in a more enlightened time, a little more anyway, women too. But today I speak of the male version of the itch. Take Professor Joseph Sanders, yes, that Joseph Sanders, the well-respected second generation acolyte of Sigmund Freud, who wrote the book, THE book, on the psychological dysfunctional of American family a generation or so back, and which is still footnoted by eager doctoral candidates, and for all I know is still frantically consulted in tough family-related cases in the real world.

That though was in the days before the good professor got the itch, before he went off the deep end, back in the days when one and all would see him coming and going cutting diagonally through Washington Square, New York City’s Washington Square, the one made famous, or infamous if you prefer, by Henry James back around the turn of the 20^thcentury, with that patented homburg of his and that obligatory cigar sticking out of his mouth as he headed to the Compton Club after a hard day of lecturing the young and innocent at New York University where he had taught for many years. But that was before she, and you knew damn well if a guy was going off the deep-end, stevedore or professor, a dame, a frail, a twist, a femme fataleif you go for such descriptions, or whatever you call a heart-breaker of a woman in your neighborhood, had to go with the story. So we might as well get to it.

Funny, funny because of all people Joe Sanders, he liked to be called Joe to show that he could be a regular guy and show too that he hadn’t forgotten his working poor roots growing up in Paterson across the river, the Hudson River if you need to know the exact river, was the guy least likely to get the itch, to go off the tracks. For one thing off he was strictly a square, although that was not the term used in his circles, his mainly male club circle who hiding their own, ah, placid existences, liked to call Joe, ah, stuffy. Joe kept to a routine, up at dawn, maybe before, do some work, some heavy think work, eat a light breakfast, teach a couple of classes in the morning, then heading across that Washington Square diagonal to lunch at the Compton Club, a little advising on this and that in the afternoon, then back to the club for a few drinks, home, supper and to bed by nine or ten. Like clockwork and like I say a square. No lady’s man, not with that homburg and cigar a constant presence, and not with his tight circle of male friends who, with their own secret lusts well disguised behind grey flannel suits, the male professional attire of the time, gathered at the club and provided whatever he desired for non-family companionship (desired like I said before until she knocked him of his moorings).

Funny too because strictly speaking Joe Sanders did not technically have a seven-year itch, although he had an itch all right, but it came at the thirteenth year of his marriage. His rather late marriage to the former Louise Daye, whom he courted for almost a decade before he married and with whom he produced two daughters, and whom he constantly said, said to her and to one and all, that he was quite happy with. And maybe that was to be his downfall. New York City had been a bear that summer, that summer of 1953, had had day after day of high temperatures and high humidity which made things worse in the closed- in city. So because he loved his wife and two daughters dearly he sprung for a summer’s vacation for the whole lot down at Atlantic City. He had to finish some paper and would join them on week-ends later so on the face of it the whole idea would work splendidly.

No sooner than the good Professor had seen his family off on the train at 42^nd Street than he ran into her. Now the guys, his friends, his circle of male friends in particular, at the club later, later when recalling the start-up events counted, were not sure whether he bumped into her or she bumped into him but there was no question that an off-hand bump started it. He made that clear when he started to miss the club gathering, for, for, pressing business, That is when Joe “met” Alice, Alice Reed, the woman for whom he would go off the rails. Not in dispute is that Joe, in any case, made apologies as a well-bred and thought of gentleman would, and offered to buy her a drink as a token of good –will.

The good professor expected to be turned down and that would be the end of it. He expected to be turned down mainly because, at best, he was aware that he a very ordinary looking aging guy with homburg and cigar, not appendages that would set a flaming young New York City woman on fire. And turned down too because one Alice Reed, a photographer’s model, and make of that what you will, was drop-dead beautiful, was all that a man, a handsome young rich man would try to catch, and an old man dream of, dream of to disturb his sleep. Alice, a brunette wearing her hair in that longest 1950s New York fashion, long legs, well-turned ankles, nice figure, maybe a bit on the slim side, and great big laughing blue eyes.

What one Professor Joseph Sanders, now many years removed from those from hunger Paterson tenement days, dead father, single mother working the textile mills to bring in a few dollars, did not know was that drop-dead beautiful girls, or maybe ugly women for that matter, who were struggling in the New York City heat and night were not turning down an offered drink from anybody for any reason that year. And so it started. They went to the Skyline Club, a couple of blocks from the train station, ordered drinks and more drinks and talked for a couple of hours. She said he was funny, witty, amusing and he said she was beautiful. At the end of the evening, and here again there is a dispute whether he or she said they should get together again, for dinner maybe. That maybe turned into a date. And so they had dinner the next night.

After that next night dinner, or maybe it was that first encounter, that first off-chance bump, she, Alice Reed she, had her hooks into our good professor bad, bad as a woman can have those hooks with a man. He started to send her presents, started to visit her at her flat (a walk-up studio, fold-up wall bed, small kitchenette, you know small as befits a struggle young, ah, photographer’s model), started taking her build-up of him more seriously as time went on. At first he could not quite believe her protestations that she was tired of flashy guys with no manners and big wanting habits, wanting habits with nothing but front to show her. That she was tired, very tired of living hand-to-mouth and tired of not having things, not having what the Mayfair swells who would buy photographs of her had to offer.

She said he was different, that he knew from hunger after he told her his Paterson poor boy story, knew her needs. As time went on though Joe began to believe her words, wanted to believe her words. His only complaints, silly things really, were her constant chewing of gum, Wrigley’s, that he said took away from her look while chewing and her dropping of her “g’s” which bespoke (his word) of a lack of language skills. Then the other shoe dropped.

One night while they were having supper at her place an ex-lover, Jack Rogers, well, really an ex-walking daddy, a sugar daddy as she explained to Joe later, turned the key to her door and walked in on them. Needless to say this Rogers who was an older man, rich, and a sugar daddy that Alice had neglected to mention had until the month before been paying her, ah, rent and expenses. They had had a row over expenses, overhead expenses for beauty, or something and they had split up, or so she thought. This Rogers had quite apparently been drinking and put up a frenzied an argument about why was Joe there, arguing too right in Joe’s face that Alice was private stock, and things like that. Rogers tried to attack Alice and Joe, no prize-fighter, somehow had to fend him off. They finally got him out of the flat, and Joe thought that would be the end of it, especially when Alice stated that Joe was the only man for her.

And that is really where a woman getting her hooks into a man came into play. Alice convinced him, although he probably needed little convincing by that time, that their happiness depended on getting rid of Jack, getting rid of Jack for good. So in the course of events Joe purchased a gun, a gun for Alice’s protection he said. About a week after that first encounter with Jack Rogers he came to her door again drunk, drunk and nasty. Before Joe realized what had happened Alice took the gun from a desk drawer and shot Jack point blank, shot him dead, very dead.

Once Joe realized what had happened, once he started thinking he knew his die was cast, knew that their fates were now joined. They fled the flat, her taking a rushed suitcase of things with her, went to his house where he got a suitcase full of his things and grabbed a cab to the bus station, the Greyhound bus station, and headed out of town. The last anybody had heard, and that was sketchy by an old friend of Joe’s, a manlooking very much like Joe and a young woman were seen in Paterson, seen being escorted by an old time hood, a gangster from his boyhood streets, from Joe’s old neighborhood to parts unknown. Yeah, you never know about that itch, that seven-year itch.

 

***From The Archives- Labor’s Untold Story- A Personal View Of The Class Wars In The Kentucky Hills And Hollows-"Once Again, Hard Times In Babylon- Growing-Up Working Poor"

Once Again, Hard Times in Babylon-revised

Markin comment:

I had, several years ago, received a recent comment (not on this site) concerning my take on the labor movement these days. (See my entry at the American Left History blog, The AFL-CIO bureaucracy and the 2008 elections, dated September 25, 2007). The gist of the comment concerned my argument on the necessity of organizing (or rather, in effect, re-organizing) the coal miners, in the eastern and western sections of America (and elsewhere as well). As part of that comment I noted that one of the problems in such organization is the geographical and physical isolation of the mines. I also noted that the miners tend to be a parochial lot and mistrustful of outsiders, as a result. That seemed to have set the reader off. In short, that person questioned my ‘credentials’ to speak on the question. He or she, apparently, missed the sentences about my father’s experiences as a young coal-miner in Eastern Kentucky. That does not qualify me to be president of the United Mineworkers Union (which, I believe, at last look required five years in the mines before one could run for that office) but I know the ‘coal’ in an indirect way. Here’s a little bio sketch on that point.

GROWING UP DIRT POOR IN THE 1950’S



Several years ago I wrote a personal commentary about a childhood friend from back in the old neighborhood in North Adamsville where I grew up in the 1950’s who had passed away.(see An Uncounted Casualty of War,, May 8, 2007 archives). I had also at that time been re-reading the then recently deceased investigative journalist David Halberstam’s book, The Fifties, that covers that same basic period. Halberstam’s take on the trends of the period, in contrast to the reality of my own childhood experiences as a child of the working poor that missed most of the benefits of that ‘golden age,’ rekindled some memories, a few painful. It is no exaggeration to say that those were hard times in Babylon. Not so much for individual lacks like a steady (and reliable) family car to break out of the cramped quarters, house on house, where we lived once in a while. Or the inevitable hand-me-down clothes (all the way through high school, almost), or worst the Bargain Center bargains that were no bargains (the local “Wal-Mart” of the day to give you an idea of what I mean). Or even the always house coldness in winter (to save on precious fuel even in those cheap-priced heating oil times) and hotness in summer (ditto, save on electricity so no A/C, or fans).

They, and other such lacks, all had their place in the poor man’s pantheon, no question. No, what, in the end, turned things out badly was the sense of defeat that hung, hung heavily and almost daily over the household, the street, the neighborhood at a time when others, visibly and not so far away, were getting ahead. Some sociologist, some academic sociologist, for, sure, would call it the death of “rising expectations.” And for once they would be right, or at least on the right track. Thinking back on those times has also made me reflect on how the hard anti-communist politics of the period, the “red scare” left people like my parents high and dry, although they were as prone to support it as any American Legionaire. The defeat and destruction of the left-wing movement, principally pro-communist organizations, of that period has continued to leave a mark, and a gaping vacuum on today’s political landscape, and on this writer.

There are many myths about the 1950’s to be sure. However, one cannot deny that the key public myth was that those who had fought World War II and were afterwards enlisted in the anti-Soviet Cold War fight against communism were entitled to some breaks. The overwhelming desire for personal security and comfort on the part of those who had survived the Great Depression and fought the war (World War II just so there is no question about which in the long line of wars we are talking about) was not therefore totally irrational. That it came at the expense of other things like a more just and equitable society is a separate matter. Moreover, despite the public myth not everyone benefited from the ‘rising tide.' The experience of my parents is proof of that. Thus this commentary is really about what happened to those, like my parents, who did not make it and were left to their personal fates without a rudder to get them through the rough spots. Yes, my parents were of the now much ballyhooed and misnamed ‘greatest generation’ but they were not in it.

I will not go through all the details of my parents’ childhoods, courtship and marriage for such biographic details of the Depression and World War II are plentiful and theirs fits the pattern. One detail is, however, important and that is that my father grew up in the hills of eastern Kentucky, Hazard, near Harlan County to be exact, coal mining country made famous in song and story and by Michael Harrington in his 1960s book The Other America. This was, and is, hardscrabble country by any definition. Among whites these “hillbillies” were the poorest of the poor. There can be little wonder that when World War II began my father left the mines to join the Marines, did his fair share of fighting in the Pacific, settled in the Boston area and never looked back.

By all rights my father should have been able to take advantage of the G.I. Bill and enjoyed home and hearth like the denizens of Levittown (New York and elsewhere) described in Halberstam’s book and shown on such classic 1950s television shows as Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It To Beaver. But life did not go that way. Why? He had virtually no formal education. And moreover had three young sons born close together in the immediate post-war period. Furthermore he had no marketable skills usable in the Boston labor market. There was (and is) no call for coal-miners here. My father was a good man. He was a hard-working man; when he was able find work. He was an upright man. But he never drew a break. Unskilled labor, to which he was reduced, is notoriously unstable, and so his work life was one of barely making ends meet. Thus, well before the age when the two-parent working family became the necessary standard to get ahead, my mother went to work to supplement the family income. She too was an unskilled laborer. Thus, even with two people working we were always “dirt poor.” I have already run through enough of the litany of lacks to give an idea of what dirt poor meant in those hard times so we need not retrace those steps.

Our little family started life in the Adamsville housing projects, at that time not the notorious hell-holes of crime and deprivation that they later became but still a mark of being low, very low, on the social ladder at a time when others were heading to the Valhalla of the newly emerging suburbs. By clawing and scratching my parents saved enough money to buy an extremely modest single-family house. Hell, why pussyfoot about it, a shack. The house, moreover, was in a neighborhood that was, and is, one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped, and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950’s, my parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted off into decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. This is social progress?

But enough of all that. Where in this story though is there a place for militant left-wing political class-consciousness to break the trap? Not the sense of social inferiority of the poor before the rich (or the merely middle class). Damn, there was plenty of that kind of consciousness in our house. A phrase from the time, and maybe today although I don’t hear it much, said it all “keeping up with the Jones.’” Or else. But where was there an avenue in the 1950’s, when it could have made a difference, for a man like my father to have his hurts explained and have something done about them? No where. So instead it went internally into the life of the family and it never got resolved. One of his sons, this writer, has had luxury of being able to fight essentially exemplary propaganda battles in small left-wing socialist circles and felt he has done good work in his life. My father’s hurts needed much more. The "red scare" aimed mainly against the American Communist Party but affecting wider layers of society decimated any possibility that he could get the kind of redress he needed. That dear reader, in a nutshell, is why I proudly bear the name communist today. And the task for me today? To insure that future young workers, unlike my parents in the 1950’s, will have their day of justice.

***The "Projects" Boys... And Girls-For Denny And All The Other Adamsville Housing Authority Survivors From The Class Of 1964-With Tom Waits In Mind

A YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing Jersey Girl

"Ain't Got No Time For The Corner Boys, Down In The Streets Making All That Noise"- The first line from Bruce Springsteen's classic working-class love song, Jersey Girl. The best version of the song is by Tom Waits (Waits lyrics below).
***********
Peter Paul Markin, Adamsville Housing Authority Alumnus and North Adamsville, Class Of 1964, (although most AHA alumni graduated from cross-town rival, Adamsville High) comment:

Funny how some stories get their start. A few years back one of my old Adamsville South Elementary corner boys, Denny Romano, he of the squeaky burgeoning tenor in our impromptu 1950s back end of the school-yard summer nights doo- wop group (and I of the squeaky bass, low, very low bass) “connected” with me again. He did so not through this website but through one of those looking for old high school graduate-based Internet sites that relentlessly track you down just as, in your dotage; you think you have finally gotten out from under that last remnant speck of fighting off the last forty years of your teen alienation and teen angst.

Denny asked me to speak of the old “corner boy” days down at “the projects,” the Adamsville Housing Authority low-rent housing where the desperately poor, temporarily so or not, were warehoused in our town in the post-World War II good night when some returning veteran fathers needed a helping hand to get them going back into civilian life. Corner boys, in case you were clueless (or too young to know of anything but mall rat-dom), were guys, mainly, who “hung out” together. Poor boy, no money, no other place to go, or with no transportation to get some other place, hung out in front of a million mom and pop variety corner variety stores, corner pizza parlors, corner bowling alleys, corner fast food joints, hell, even corner gas stations in some real small towns from what some guys have told me when I asked them. Here is the odd part though. Yeah, we were corner boys even that young, although we had no corner, no official corner like a corner mom and pop variety store, or a pizza parlor like I did later at Doc’s Drugstore in middle school and then as the king hell king’s scribe to Frankie Riley in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor in high school but just the back end of the elementary school, as long as we were quiet and nobody cried murder and mayhem to the cops. The following, in any case, a little revised, represents my “homage” to Denny and the gang from those by-gone days and even the girls that ninety-three point four percent of the time I was scared to death of/ fascinated by. Well, some things haven’t changed anyway.
*******

Taffrail Road, Yardarm Lane, Captain's Walk, Quarterdeck Road, Sextant Circle, the Old Sailor’s Home, the Shipyard (abandoned now) and Sea Street. Yes, those streets and places from the old public housing project down in the Germantown section of Adamsville surely evoke imagines of the near-by sea that touched its edges, of long ago sailing ships, and of battles fought off some mist-driven coast by those hearty enough to seek fame and fortune. And with the wherewithal to hold on to their booty (no, not that booty, booty call boot, dough, prizes, stuff like that) But, of course, we know that anyone with even a passing attachment to Adamsville had to have an instinctual love of the sea, and fear of its furies when old Mother Nature turns her back on us. Yes, the endless sea, our homeland the sea, the mother we never knew, the sea... But, enough of those imaginings.

Today I look to the landward side of that troubled housing project peninsula, that isolated expanse of land jutting out of the water and filled with wreckage of another kind, the human kind . No, this will not be a sociological survey of working- class pathologies made inevitable by the relentless struggle to scramble for life's necessities, the culture of poverty, or the like. Nor will it be a political screed about rising against the monsters that held us down, or the need for such a rising. Nor even about the poetic license necessary to cobble pretty words together to speak of the death of dreams, dreamless dreams or, maybe, just accepting small dreams to fit a small life. Rather, I am driven by the jumble of images that passed through the thoughts of a ragamuffin of a project boy as he tried to make sense out of a world that he did not create, and that he had no say in.

Ah, the scenes. Warm, sticky, humid summer nights, the air filled with the pungent, overpowering soapy fragrance from the Proctor & Gamble factory across the channel that never quite left one's nostrils. Waking up each morning to face the now vanished Fore River Shipyard superstructure; hearing the distant clang of metals being worked to shape; and, the sight of flickering welding torches binding metals together. The endless rust-encrusted, low-riding oil tankers coming through the channel guided to port by high whistle-blowing tugs.

More-The interminable wait for the lifeline, seemingly never on time, Eastern Mass bus that took one and all in and out through that single Palmer Street escape route to greater Adamsville. Or that then imposing central housing authority building where I was sent by my mother, too proud to go herself, with the monthly rent, usually short. Oh, did I mention Carter's Variety Store, the sole store for us all the way to Sea Street but police take notice off limits to corners boys young or old, another lifeline. Many a time I reached in Ma's pocketbook to steal money, or committed other small hoodlum wanna-be larcenies, in order to hike down that long road and get my sugar-drenched stash (candy bars, soda, a.k.a. localism "tonic" then but that word is long gone, Twinkles, Moon Pies, and so on, sugar-drenched all)

And the kids. Well, the idea in those “golden” post-war days was that the projects were a way-station to better things, or at least that was the hope. So there was plenty of turn-over of friends but there was a core of kids, kids like me and my brothers, who stayed long enough to learn the ropes. Or get beaten down by guys just a little hungrier, a little stronger, or with just a little bigger chip on their shoulder. Every guy had to prove himself, tough or not, by hanging with guys that were "really" tough. That was the ethos, and "thems were the rules." Rules that seemed to come out of eternity’s time, and like eternity never challenged.

I took my fair share of nicks but also, for a moment, well for more than a moment as it turned out, I was swayed by the gangster lifestyle. Hell, it looked easy. With old elementary school classmate Rickie B., Denny knows who I am talking about, who, later, served twenty years, maybe more for all know, for a series of armed robberies, I worked my first "clip" in some downtown Adamsville Square jewelry store, Sid’s I think, the one with all the onyx rings on display in the front and the twelve signs about how you could have anything in the place on very easy terms, only a million installments (with interest piling up, of course). No, thanks.

The clip, again for the clueless, is nothing but kids’ stuff, strictly for amateurs because no professional thief would risk his or her good name for such a low-rent payoff. The deal was one guy went in and got the salesperson’s attention while the other guy ripped off whatever was “hanging low on the tree.” In that arrangement I was usually the “tree” guy not because I had quick hands, although come to think of it I did (and big eyes, big greedy eyes for all the booty, and you know what booty means here now since I told you before), but because I didn’t have the knack of talking gibberish to adults. Hell, you probably did the clip yourself, maybe for kicks. And then forgot about it for some other less screwy kick. Not me.

Okay, so at that point maybe every kid, every curious kid ready in whatever manner to challenge authority and I (and most of my then corner boys, although not Denny if I recall correctly) are even. Here is the tie-breaker though. Moving on, I was the "holder" for more expansive enterprises with George H. (who, later, got killed when a drug deal he was promoting, a lonely gringo deal down in Mexico, went south, real two bullet south on some dusty Mex back road on him).

See George was a true artist, a true sneak thief who was able to get into any house by stealth and sheer determination. Mainly houses up in Adams Shore where people actually had stuff worth stealing unlike in the projects where the stuff was so much Bargain Center specials (the local Wal-Mart-like operation of it's day). He needed me for two, no three, things. First, I was the “look-out” and even the clueless know what that means. Secondly, I actually held and carried some of the loot that he passed to me out of the window or door, and one time out a backyard bulkhead (the good stuff, televisions, silverware, a stamp collection, a coin collection, and some other stuff that I have forgotten about, was in the basement family room). Lastly, as George started to draw school and police attention I actually “held” the stuff in a safe location (which I will not disclose here just in case the various statutes of limitations have not run out). That went on for a while but George got busted for something else, some unruly child baloney rap thing, and that was that.

That was just a kid’s gangster moment, right? It was not all larcenies and kid dreams of some “big score” to get himself, and his family, out from under though. It couldn’t be for a kid, or the whole world, poor as it was, would have just collapsed over my head, and I would not be here to honor Denny’s request.

Oh, the different things that came up. Oddball things like Christmas tree bonfires on New Year’s Eve where we scurried like rats just as soon as neighbors put their trees out to be taken away in order to assemble them on the beach ready to be fired up and welcome in the new year. Or annual Halloween hooliganism where we, in a sugar frenzy, worked the neighborhood trick or treat racket hitting every house like the 82nd Airborne Division, or some such elite unit running amok in Baghdad or some Iraqi town ...

Hey, wait a minute, all this is so much eyewash because what, at least in my memory's eye, is the driving "projects" image was the "great awakening." Girls. Girls turning from sticks to shapes just around the time that I started to notice the difference, and being interested in that different if not always sure about what it meant. You don’t need a book to figure that out, although maybe it would have helped. And being fascinated and ill at ease at the same time around them, and being a moonstruck kid on every girl that gave me a passing glance, or what I thought was a passing glance, and the shoe leather-wearing out marathon walking, thinking about what to do about them, especially when the intelligence-gatherers told you about a girl who liked you. And the innocent, mostly dreaded, little petting parties, in dank little basements that served as 'family rooms' for each apartment, trying to be picked by the one you want to pick you and, well, you get the drift. Remind me to tell you some time, and here is where Denny comes in, how we put together, a bunch of corner-less corner boys, a ragtag doo- wop group one summer for the express, the sole, the only purpose of, well, luring girls to the back of the school where we hung out. And it worked.

Now a lot of this is stuff any kid goes through, except just not in "the projects." And some of it is truly "projects" stuff - which way will he go, good or bad? But this next thing kind of ties it together. Just about the time when I was seriously committed to a petty criminal lifestyle, that “holding” stuff with my corner boy comrade George, I found the Thomas Crane Library branch that was then in the Adamsville South Elementary School (now further up the street toward Adamsville Square). And one summer I just started to read every biography or other interesting book they had in the Children's Section. While looking, longingly, over at the forbidden Adult Section on the other side of the room for the good stuff. And I dreamed. Yes, I am a "projects" boy, and I survived to tell the tale. Is that good enough for you, Denny?


Tom Waits Jersey Girl Lyrics

Got no time for the corner boys,
Down in the street makin' all that noise,
Don't want no whores on eighth avenue,
Cause tonight i'm gonna be with you.

'cause tonight i'm gonna take that ride,
Across the river to the jersey side,
Take my baby to the carnival,
And i'll take you all on the rides.

Down the shore everything's alright,
You're with your baby on a saturday night,
Don't you know that all my dreams come true,
When i'm walkin' down the street with you,
Sing sha la la la la la sha la la la.

You know she thrills me with all her charms,
When i'm wrapped up in my baby's arms,
My little angel gives me everything,
I know someday that she'll wear my ring.

So don't bother me cause i got no time,
I'm on my way to see that girl of mine,
Nothin' else matters in this whole wide world,
When you're in love with a jersey girl,
Sing sha la la la la la la.

And i call your name, i can't sleep at night,
Sha la la la la la la.

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We Won't Go Back! We Will Fight Back! National Day of Actions for Women's Equality Day Sunday, August 25 - 2:00 PM Park St. Station - Boston Click here for the Facebook event As part of nationwide demonstrations in honor of Women's Equality Day, WORD Boston and other organizations and individuals are joining together for a rally in Boston. Click here to read the full call to action from WORD Across the country, abortion rights, voting rights and workplace protections are under attack. While Black and Brown youth are targeted and face constant persecution, racist police and the George Zimmerman's of the world roam free. Right-wing and corporate forces seek to undo the gains won by the Civil Rights movement, the movement for women’s rights and every progressive movement that has changed the history of this country for the better. Women nationwide are taking the streets to defend the gains of our movements and to push for greater rights and equality for all. Full reproductive rights now: Access to safe, legal abortion and birth control – on demand. We want healthcare that covers these services and access to it for all women. We want the information that we need to stay healthy, including an end to abstinence-only sex education in our schools. Defend women in the workplace: Close the wage gap and provide equal pay for equal work. All jobs must offer maternity leave, access to childcare and an end to discrimination against working mothers. End sexual harassment at work. Stop the budget cuts: Cutting federal, state and local social services punishes poor women. We demand government funding for SNAP, WIC and other social services that millions of working and poor women depend on. We want full equality and respect now: Fight racism, sexism and anti-LGBT bigotry. Stop the exploitation and commercialization of women in mass media. An injury to one is an injury to all! Shoulder to shoulder, and side by side, join the fight for women's rights and the rights of all oppressed people. Together, our voices will be heard! For more info and to get involved, call (617) 506-WORD (9073) or email Boston@defendwomensrights.org

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CCR Condemns Manning Sentence, Says Whistleblower Should Have Never Been Prosecuted

By: Center for Constitutional Rights Wednesday August 21, 2013 11:44 am

The following is a press release issued by the Center for Constitutional Rights in response to today’s sentencing of Bradley Manning.

Pfc. Bradley Manning (Illustration by C. Stoeckley)

We are outraged that a whistleblower and a patriot has been sentenced on a conviction under the Espionage Act. The government has stretched this archaic and discredited law to send an unmistakable warning to potential whistleblowers and journalists willing to publish their information. We can only hope that Manning’s courage will continue to inspire others who witness state crimes to speak up.
This show trial was a frontal assault on the First Amendment, from the way the prosecution twisted Manning’s actions to blur the distinction between whistleblowing and spying to the government’s tireless efforts to obstruct media coverage of the proceedings. It is a travesty of justice that Manning, who helped bring to light the criminality of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being punished while the alleged perpetrators of the crimes he exposed are not even investigated. Every aspect of this case sets a dangerous precedent for future prosecutions of whistleblowers – who play an essential role in democratic government by telling us the truth about government wrongdoing – and we fear for the future of our country in the wake of this case.
We must channel our outrage and continue building political pressure for Manning’s freedom. President Obama should pardon Bradley Manning, and if he refuses, a presidential pardon must be an election issue in 2016.

The Center for Constitutional Rights non-profit legal advocacy organization based in New York City dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Posted with permission (taken from Firedoglake). Please share; will take this press release and the one

from VFP to the sentencing protests.

"Governments derive their power from the consent of the governed."--US Declaration, 1776

"Consent is not 'consent' if it is not informed."--Edward Snowden, 2013

Coombs, Bradley, Amnesty Appeal for Presidential Pardon

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Outrageously sentenced to 35 years in prison: Campaign for presidential pardon begins The White House petition to pardon Bradley Manning requires 100k signatures in the next 30 days! Please sign and share! Outrageously, Bradley Manning was sentenced today to 35 years in prison - a sentence meant to carry a chilling message to anyone considering future exposures of government illegalities. Bradley’s lawyer David Coombs held a press conference immediately following the announcement where he shared a profound letter written by Bradley Manning which will be delivered to the White House asking for a presidential pardon. He also recounted that when faced with the sentence, Bradley Manning spoke with integrity and composure: “I’m going to get through this” he said. In response to this travesty of justice, Amnesty International and the Bradley Manning Support Network launched a White House petition today calling for Bradley Manning’s sentence to be commuted to time served. We must accumulate 100,000 signatures in the next month. Please share this petition widely! Sign the petition. Coinciding with the campaign to pardon Bradley Manning, a new website has been launched inviting people to show their support by submitting a photo holding a “Pardon Bradley Manning” sign, along with a personal message. View photos and submit your own here. Lawyer David Coombs reads powerful letter by Bradley Manning View the press conference on YouTube This profound statement by Bradley Manning was read by David Coombs at the press conference: Supporters holding emergency rally at the White House after the sentence was announced. Pardon Bradley Manning! The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of the concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We have been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on a traditional battlefield. Due to this fact, we’ve had to alter our methods of combatting the risk posed to us and our way of life. I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend our country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time that I realized that our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we had forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability. In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror. President Obama: Pardon Bradley Manning! Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown any logically based dissension, it is usually an American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission. Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism and the Japanese-American internment camps—to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light. As the late Howard Zinn once said, there is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. I understand that my actions violated the law. I regret that my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and my sense of duty to others. If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my request knowing that some time you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.” Bradley's family also responded to the sentence through David Coombs: "We are saddened and disappointed in today's sentence. We continue to believe that Brad's intentions were good, and that he believed he was acting in the best interests of his country. We would again like to thank his extraordinary defense team for their tireless efforts on his behalf, and of course we want to thank Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network and the thousands of supporters around the world who have stood with Brad throughout this ordeal. Please know that his fight is not over." Help us continue to cover 100% of Bradley's legal fees! Donate today.

Boston Workers Alliance MLK 50th Anniversary March - Continue the Struggle for Jobs, Justice and Freedom!

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Boston Workers Alliance 411 Blue Hill Ave, Dorchester MA 02121 (617) 606-3580, (617) 606-3582 (fax) PRESS RELEASE Boston’s Unfinished March for Jobs, Freedom & Justice An Event Marking the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington The Boston Workers Alliance, Inc. has issued a clarion call for a mobilization in Boston on the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. A coalition of neighborhood organizations, base building community organizing groups, labor unions, civil rights organizations, and faith communities will gather to mark “re-remember, re-imagine, and relive the March for our times. We are holding Boston’s Unfinished March for Jobs, Freedom & Justice on Wednesday, August 28, 2013 4:30pm on the Boston Common. With the recent tragic verdict in the Zimmerman case, and the loss of the Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, we feel called to organize and mobilize to address the continued devaluing of Black people, Black bodies, and Black political and economic interests. The recent developments remind us that many of us are still vulnerable to violence at the hands of police and citizens who wrongfully believe that they have the power to track police and violate the dignity of Black people. Equally important is our call to respect the rights and dignity of immigrants seeking their full human rights. High unemployment and underemployment of Black and Brown people remains persistent, structural and unaddressed. Fifty years ago the movement connected these issues with the March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom. It is time for us to look anew at the significance of the moment because of the Fierce Urgency of Now. Boston’s Unfinished March for Jobs, Freedom & Justice Wednesday, August 28, 2013 at 4:30 Boston Common Points of Contact: Phil Reason, Director of Organizing, Boston Workers Alliance (617) 606-3580, phil@bostonworkersalliance.org Chuck Wynder, Jr., Executive Director, Boston Workers Alliance (617) 238-5751, chuck@bostonworkersalliance.org As part of the National JUSTICE for TRAYVON MARTIN Assemblies on the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice, Boston Peoples Power Assemblies calls on everyone to participate in the Boston Workers Alliance Rally on the Boston Common at 4:30 PM on August 28. BOSTON PEOPLES POWER ASSEMBLIES, c/o Action Center, 284 Amory St, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 617-286-6574 DONATE to the Action Center (support ongoing organizing against war, racism and sexism and for economic justice)

Wednesday, August 28:

Boston's Unfinished March for Jobs, Justice & Freedom

4:30pm on the Common.

The Boston Workers Alliance has issued a call for a mobilization on the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. Join us on and others on Wednesday, for Boston's Unfinished March for Jobs, Freedom & Justice. We ask you to join us and others as we "re-remember, re-imagine, and relive" the March for our times and context. The trial in the Zimmerman case and its disavowal of Trayvon Martin's humanity, dignity and personhood is a strike against all of our freedom. The Supreme Court decision that invalidates Section 4 and effectively Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is a reminder of that fight for our political empowerment continues. The violence that these developments pose to our communities is significant and real. So too, is our the ongoing and persistent long-term unemployment and unemployment of people in our communities. The link between the mass incarceration and the verdict in the Zimmerman trial reinforce the message that Jim Crow, Jane Crow, New Jim Crow are alive and pose threats to us collectively - our families and communities.

DPPers are urged to meet at 4:15pm outside the Park Street T-stop

BILL FLETCHER: Claiming and Teaching the 1963 March on Washington

Teaching about the March on Washington presents a series of challenges precisely because it involves counteracting sanitized textbooks and demythologizing not only the march, but also the Black Freedom Struggle—the Civil Rights Movement, as it became known… We can all do justice to this anniversary by asking the right questions and providing the actual historical context in which the 1963 March unfolded. More so, we can also offer, as Rustin asked the marchers in 1963, our “personal commitment to the struggle for jobs and freedom for Americans. . .and the achievement of social peace through social justice. How do you pledge?” More

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Another event in South Boston that evening:

Beacon to the Dream:

10,000 lanterns to encircle Castle Island South Boston, Honoring the 50^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s, I have a Dream speech

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Wednesday, August 28^:

7-9pm, Castle Island South Boston, MA

Includes screening of Dr. Kings’ I Have a Dream Speech on the Walls of Fort Independence; Musical Program Nancy Armstrong Alan Rias Ja-Naé Duane; Lantern Walk and Community celebration of Inclusion

You are invited to take a cultural action by carrying a lantern to Castle Island in South Boston, a symbolic gesture, moving beyond diversity to inclusion, honoring the 50^th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The hope is to have several thousand lanterns encircle Pleasure Bay. The event, which we are calling “Beacon to the Dream,” is also invitation for artists from all over Boston to become part of an evening long program that will celebrate the richness and diversity of The City of Boson!

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JOBS NOT JAILS!

Boston Workers Alliance (BWA) and EPOCA (Ex-prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement) launched a new “Jobs Not Jails” statewide campaign and coalition on July 13 (more info here).

Corporate America's New Profit Center: Put as Many People in Jail as Possible

Turn unemployed Americans into criminals. Track them, punish them for any crime possible, take away their rights and throw them into for-profit prisons. Once thrown inside a for-profit prison, an inmate needs food, housing, healthcare and other services. This means huge profits for capitalists. They’re raking in tens of thousands of dollars per prisoner per year – hundreds of percent more than Roosevelt paid to simply put them back to work. And turning unemployed Americans into very profitable prisoners is a booming business. More

Two major actions are planned:

---a petition campaign, 50,000 signature goal: against the planned prison construction; for use of those resources for jobs; directed at the state legislators and the governor; signatures to be gathered between now and March 31, 2014.
---a big rally on Boston Common, 10,000 people goal, to be held in April, 2014; same message and targets.