DOWN WITH THE OBOMBER/KERRY WAR-HANDS OFF SYRIA-Organize The Anti-War Efforts In The U.S. Now!

 

 

 

Karl Liebknecht

 

 
Not One Person, Not One Penny For This War
 

The Obama Administration has made it clear at least since mid-August that it fervently wants to bomb Syria, maybe not back into the Stone Age, but bomb that benighted country back into utter  chaos under the pretext of some international duty to respond to the alleged Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against civilian populations. This has been a hard sell as British Prime Minister David Cameron found out when he, like one of his predecessors Tony Blair in Iraq, tried to join the American parade Syria in late August. The Obama regime as well has been compelled to take the issue to Congress in order to cover it tracks with the authority of Congressional approval. This too is has been a hard sell although a compliant Congress may very well grant Obomber’s wishes. Or, as Obama has repeatedly asserted, he may go to war with or without that authority based on his reading on the power of the imperial presidency to take military action.         

In the event of an American (Allied?) bombing of Syria every anti-war and anti-imperialist militant (or those just sick unto death of the permanent American war footing) in the United States has a special duty here in “the belly of the beast” to not only oppose American military intervention but to call for the defense of the Syria people against the American onslaught.    

No thoughtful militant should be under any illusion that such support to the beleaguered Syrian peoples translates in political support for the murderous regime of the tin-pot dictator (and former American ally) Assad. Sometimes in this wicked old world the political choices are hard. But take this note away. Under conditions of an American attack, an attack by the greatest destructive military power the world has ever known, the stopping of that monstrous machine in its tracks comes first. When the time comes we will know exactly what to do with Assad but we cannot outsource that job to Obomber and his imperial henchmen.

Organize now the fight against Obomber/Kerry war policy in your schools, workplaces and social organizations-To The Streets- Hands Off Syria!-Defend Syria Against U.S. Attack.      

 

 

From The Marxist Archives -In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International

The Fourth International

The Long March of the Trotskyists

Chapter 10: Those Who Died So That the International Might Live

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We have intentionally devoted this work, above all, to the Trotskyist movement's activity in the area of theory, politics, and organisation relative to half a century of great events -- and to the problems these events have raised in the course of constructing a revolutionary Marxist leadership and revolutionary Marxist parties in every country. We have seen how difficult it is to make progress on the theoretical and political level, how this is possible only at the price of incessant internal debate and discussion, of analysis and re-analysis. But ideas, programmes, and organisations are created by people and kept alive by people. Only in passing have we mentioned the names of the Trotskyist movement's militants.
What books could be written on such a subject! Conditions have been far harsher for Trotskyists than for any other working class tendency -- bourgeois repression being generally a stimulus, while the repression exercised against Trotskyists within their own class, very often by sincerely revolutionary workers misled by bureaucrats who were backed by a powerful workers state, has pushed many able revolutionists into situations where they could not give the best of themselves.
Trotsky's name, to which is inseparably linked that of his companion Natalia, towers over the names of all those who joined the movement he created, and is again beginning to be as celebrated as it was in the heroic days of the revolution. But how many others are there whose names remain stained in the eyes of the workers by the Stalinist slanders, or who remain unknown to the new generations! The Trotskyist movement itself has generally not been very forthcoming about those who fought for the victory of its programme. History will little by little, internationally and in every country, give them their due.
Another result of Stalinism's implacable persecution of the Trotskyists was the confusion and intimidation it sowed in many people over a long period. This drastically reduced the movement's periphery of friends and sympathisers -- a periphery that all vanguard movements need. Thus we also pay homage to those who were our friends in such adversity, as well as to the revolutionary leaders who came out of the Communist International and its parties who, although they did not march with us all the way, or had differences with us, remained faithful to the cause of world revolution to the end of their days.
Among them are:
Alfred and Marguerite Rosmer, in whose home the founding congress of the Fourth International was held.
Maurice Spector, founder of the Canadian Trotskyist movement.
Isaac Deutscher, historian and essayist. He joined the Polish Communist Party in 1926, but was expelled in 1932 for his activities as leader and spokesperson of the anti-Stalinists. In 1939 he came to Britain, where he lived until his death in 1967. Although he opposed the foundation of the Fourth International in 1938, his writings, especially his trilogy on the life of Trotsky -- The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, and The Prophet Outcast -- have had an incalculable effect in drawing people to the basic ideas of our movement.
H. Stockfisch (Hersch Mendel), fighter in the 1905 and 1917 Russian revolutions, who founded the Polish Trotskyist movement, to which he won Isaac Deutscher.
Andres Nin, assassinated by the GPU during the Spanish revolution.
Paul Frölich, Arkadi Maslow, Hugo Urbahns, former leaders of the German Communist Party.
André Marty, who established fraternal contacts with us after his expulsion from the French Communist Party.
John Baird, Labour Party MP, who was always on our side.
Roman Rosdolsky, the eminent Ukrainian Marxist.
Elsa Reiss, barely escaped Stalin's assassins in 1937 when they had orders to kill her and her son as well as her companion Ignace (see below). Her book Our Own People (published under the name Elisabeth K. Poretsky) relives the drama of that terrible period of the 'Yezhov terror', during which Stalin exterminated more revolutionary militants than did the capitalist world, including Hitler.
Louis Polk, member of the Central Committee of the Belgian Communist Party, who participated in founding the Opposition in Belgium and who died in the Neuengamme concentration camp.
Tan Malakka who in 1914 was, with Sneevliet, a founder of the revolutionary socialist movement in Indonesia, missing in action during the guerrilla fighting following the war.
Mario Roberro Santucho, leader of the Argentinian PRT/ERP, murdered by security forces in 1976. A genuine revolutionary internationalist, he joined the Fourth International in 1967 through fusion of his group with the section; our failure to convince him of the correctness of the Trotskyist programme, leading to his break with the International in 1973, was a real defeat for our movement.
Sara (Weber) Jacobs, who served as Trotsky's secretary for almost three years from 1931, and again in 1939.
There follows a very incomplete list of those who carried aloft the banner of Trotskyism, and who died in battle:
Nicola di Bartolomeo (Fosco), Italian Communist worker, in exile in France during the fascist regime, participated in the war in Spain. On his return to France, he was turned over to the Italian authorities, who deported him to a concentration camp. Liberated at the end of the war, he rebuilt the Trotskyist organisation in Italy. He died in 1946, at the age of forty-four.
Angel Amado Bengochea (1926- 1964), a leader of the first student revolts in Argentina in the 1940s, leader of the Socialist Youth. A student at the Faculty of Law in La Plata, he organised a Marxist opposition in the Socialist Party, and joined the Trotskyist movement in 1946. In the 1950s he worked in a factory and became a leader in the Peronist unions. Imprisoned for six months in 1957. Linked to the struggle in other Latin American countries, in 1963 he formed a political-military group and was killed during an explosion.
Edith Beauvais, joined the Trotskyist movement in Canada in the early 1960s, then moved to France. Active in building the JCR and the Ligue Communists; but her most important work was in strengthening the international commissions of the Fourth International. She died in a car accident in 1972.
Fernando Bravo, leader of the Bolivian teachers, representative of the Bolivian FOR (Partido Obrero Revolucionario) to congresses of the International, died in the line of duty.
Antoinette Bucholz-Konikow (1869-1946), became a revolutionary socialist at the age of seventeen and joined Russia's first Marxist organisation, the Emancipation of Labour group, led by Plekhanov. Exiled to the USA, she worked in the Socialist Labour Party and later helped to found the Socialist Party with Debs and others, becoming a member of its Women's Commission. She was a founder of the Second International but broke with it after its capitulation to chauvinism in 1914, helping to launch the Communist Party and the Third International. Among the first to rebel against the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy, she participated in the ten years of activity that culminated in 1938 with the founding of the US Socialist Workers Party and the Fourth International. She was also an early advocate of birth control; as a doctor, she wrote two handbooks on the subject, and in 1928 was arrested for exhibiting contraceptives.
James P. Cannon (1890-1974), joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1910. As a supporter of the October Revolution, he joined the Socialist Party in 1918 and was a founder of the CP in 1919. Sent as its president to Moscow in 1922, he participated for eight months in the work of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. At this time he played a leading role in the International Labour Defence, notably in the campaign to save Sacco and Vanzetti.
A delegate to the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, and made a member of its programme commission, he came to hear of the exiled Trotsky's criticisms of the congress programme presented by Bukharin. Won to Trotsky's arguments, Cannon and Maurice Spector (a member of the Canadian delegation) secretly took his text back to North America and published it. Following his expulsion from the CP for Trotskyism, Cannon -- together with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern -- founded the Communist League (Opposition) in May 1929. He was to remain the central leader of the American Trotskyist movement until ill-health reduced him to an advisory capacity in the 1960s.
In 1934 he played a prominent role in the famous Teamster strikes in Minneapolis. Then in the next years he was instrumental in an important expansion of the American Trotskyist forces, first through a fusion with the Workers Party and then through a short spell of entry into the Socialist Party in 1936-37. The expulsion of the Trotskyists from the SP led to the formation of the Socialist Workers Party. In 1938 Cannon participated in the founding congress of the Fourth International, and in 1939-40 he collaborated with Trotsky in the famous struggle against the petty-bourgeois opposition in the SWP led by Shachtman and Burnham. During the Second World War he was imprisoned for sixteen months along with other members of the SWP under the Smith Act.
Cannon was a prolific writer, particularly for the party press (some of his best articles are collected in Notebook of an Agitator). He also wrote several books. Indeed, as a propagandist and agitator he was perhaps the most prominent figure of the American labour movement in the generation which followed Eugene Debs and Bill Haywood.
Tomas Chambi, member of the Central Committee of the FOR in Bolivia, imprisoned during the Barrientos-Ovando dictatorship, freed when the dictatorship ended; he fell in combat in 1971 while leading a column of poor peasants from the La Pat region in the battle against the Banter coup d'etat. On his body was found a note written in his own hand, a kind of testament by this militant whose sole possession was his revolutionary conviction:'I am a member of the Partido Obrero Revolucionario, which taught me to be brave and to fight for a just cause. For national liberation, and forward to the final victory!'
Emile Decoux (1910-1970), Belgian miner and exemplary militant for thirty-seven years. Joined the Jeune Garde Socialiste (Socialist Young Guard) in 1934, then the Belgian section of the Fourth International. Fulfilled important functions during the period of clandestinity.
Vincent Raymond Dunne (1889-1970), joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) at the age of 17; a founder of the US Communist Party in 1919 and, in 1928, participated in the founding of the US Trotskyist movement. At the head of the great Minneapolis Teamster strikes in 1934, which were a forerunner of the mighty trade union upsurge of the following years. In 1938 participated in discussions with Trotsky preparatory to the founding congress of the Fourth International. Imprisoned in 1941 for sixteen months.
Heinz Epe ( Waiter Held), joined the German Left Opposition in 1931 as a student. Forced into exile in March 1933, he organised the first German publication in the emigration, Unser Wort. In 1934 he was one of the secretaries -- along with Willy Brandt -- of the 'International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organisations', until the Trotskyists were expelled at Brandt's instigation. In 1934 he organised Trotsky's arrival and stay in Norway. Moving to Sweden after the occupation of Norway, he tried to travel to the US via the Soviet Union in 1941 but disappeared with his wife and child.
Ezio Ferrero (Ettore Salvini) (1938-1976), joined the Italian CP and went to Moscow in 1956 to attend the university. As a result of his stay he developed positions critical of the bureaucracy, and joined the Fourth International in 1962. He was a member of the national leadership of the Italian section, the Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari (GCR), and a delegate to the Eighth World Congress; but was best known as a frequent contributor to our press, especially on the Soviet economy and Italian political and economic problems.
Josef Frey (1882-1957), prior to 1914 journalist on the Vienna Arbeiterzeitung, president of the Vienna Council of Soldiers in the 1918 revolution, broke with Otto Bauer and Fritz Adler to join the CP, expelled from the latter in 1927 as a Trotskyist.
José Aguirre Gainsborg, Bolivian revolutionist in exile, leading member of the Chilean CP. Founder of the Bolivian FOR in 1934 -- which he armed theoretically. For many years lived in exile and in prison; died at the age of thirty-four.
Renzo Gambino (1922-1972), a member of the Socialist Party when fascism was overthrown, joined the Italian section of the Fourth International in 1949 and was a member of its national leadership until his death. He was a delegate to many world congresses and for a long time a member of the International Control Commission, becoming its secretary in 1969.
Peter Graham (1945-1971), young Irish revolutionary, started out as a member of the Connolly Youth, rapidly developed towards Trotskyism, became a member of the Irish Workers Group, and then participated in founding the League for a Workers Republic and the Young Socialists in Dublin. He came to London where he joined the International Marxist Group (IMG -- British section of the Fourth International) and was a member of the editorial staff of The Red Mole. Barely returned to Dublin for the purpose of building an Irish section, he was assassinated under circumstances that have never been clarified. The IRA and all the militant organisations of the Irish socialist movement paid homage to his memory.
Arturo Gomes, joined the Trotskyist movement in Argentina as a student leader in the midst of the mass mobilisations in 1958-59. Played a central role in winning a base for Trotskyism in the La Plata region. A member of the Executive Committee and Secretariat of the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (PST), and a delegate to the Tenth World Congress of the International, he was elected to the IEC with consultative status. Died of a heart attack in 1976 as he was preparing the underground struggle after the military coup.
Jules Henin (1882-1964), miner, member of the Parti Ouvrier Belge (Belgian Workers Party) from 1905. One of the first Belgian Communists in 1919, founder of the Trotskyist organisation in 1927, one of the leaders of the Charleroi miners' strike (1932), as a result of which he was imprisoned. Conducted underground activity during the war. Member of the Control Commission of the Fourth International for many years.
Marcel Hic, joined the French Trotskyist movement (POI and Jeunesses Léninistes) in 1933 at the age of eighteen. He rebuilt the French organisation and published La Vérité starting in August 1940. Secretary of the French section during the occupation, he participated in the founding of the European Secretariat of the Fourth International. Arrested in 1943, he was distinguished by his courageous attitude in the Dora concentration camp, where he died.
Joseph Jakobovic (1915-1943), leader of the Austrian group 'Gegen den Strom' (Against the Stream) during the Hitler occupation. He was tried in October 1943 for high treason and for encouraging disaffection in the armed forces, condemned to death and executed.
Georg Jungclas (1902-1975), joined at the age of fourteen the Socialist Youth of Altona (near Hamburg), which opposed the war and the betrayals of the Social Democracy. Became a member of the Spartakusbund and then of the German Communist Party (KPD), and participated in the revolutionary struggles, notably the Hamburg insurrection in October 1923. A supporter of the left in the KPD, he was expelled in 1928, becoming a member of the Leninbund founded by Urbahns. However he defended Trotsky's positions against Urbahns and in 1930 participated in the creation of the German Left Opposition.
He moved to Denmark after Hitler's rise to power, and participated in the Danish Resistance until his arrest by the Gestapo in 1944. Saved from death only by the collapse of the Nazis, he struggled almost alone after the war to rebuild the German section in the choking atmosphere of the Federal Republic. From 1948 he participated in all the world congresses of the International and was elected to its International Executive Committee and its Secretariat. Among the first to begin organising the immigrant workers in Germany, he was also at the centre of activity in support of the Algerian revolution.
Zavis Kalandra, communist historian, denounced the Moscow trials in 1936; secretary of the Czechoslovakian section of the Fourth International, he was arrested and executed in 1950 by the Stalinists as a 'spy'; was rehabilitated during the 'Prague Spring'.
Rose Karsner (1890-1968), joined the US Socialist Party at the age of eighteen. In 1909 she became secretary of the magazine The Masses. She participated in the founding congress of the unified US Communist Party in 1921, and devoted herself to the defence and aid of the victims of repression (notably the Sacco-Vanzetti case). In 1928 she participated in founding the Trotskyist organisation in the United States, to which she was completely committed until the end of her life.
Franz Kascha (1909-1943), leader of the Austrian group 'Gegen den Strom' during the Hitler occupation. He was tried in October 1943 for high treason and for encouraging disaffection in the armed forces, condemned to death and executed.
Rudolf Klement, young German Trotskyist, secretary to Trotsky, assassinated in France by the GPU in 1938 on the eve of the founding congress of the Fourth International, to the preparation of which he had devoted himself.
Robert Langston (1933-1977), a true internationalist and revolutionary intellectual, won to our movement from the chauvinist American Socialist Party on the question of Cuba. After joining the SWP he worked as a staff writer for The Militant from 1968-70 and also devoted himself to the education of cadres. His unstinting financial contribution was an invaluable aid to our work.
Rafael Lasala (Nestor), participated in the student struggles in Argentina in 1958-59, joined the Trotskyist movement in 1967. In 1971 he helped to form the Grupo Obrero Revolucionario (GOR), a sympathising group of the International, and was its representative at the Tenth World Congress. Arrested in August 1974, he was tortured and finally murdered in cold blood at the La Plata prison in August 1976.
Abraham Leon (1918- 1944), born in Warsaw, broke with Zionism and wrote The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation. At the beginning of the war he joined the Belgian Trotskyist organisation, of which he became the main organiser, and participated in founding the European Secretariat. Arrested in June 1944, he died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in September 1944.
Leon Lesoil (11(92-1942), soldier in the Belgian Mission in Russia during the First World War, he came out for the October Revolution and was one of the founders of the Belgian Communist Party. He became a member of its Central Committee in 1923, and then was prosecuted for 'plotting against the security of the state'. He was a founder of the Belgian Trotskyist organisation in 1927; leader of the miners' strike in the Charleroi Basin in 1932; and delegate to the founding congress of the Fourth International. Arrested in 1941, he died in the Neuengamme concentration camp in 1942.
Cesar Lora, leader of the Bolivian miners at the Siglo XX mine; was assassinated on 19 July 1965 by Barrientos's troops.
Sherry Mangan (Patrice), American author and journalist, was a Trotskyist from 1934. He participated in the activity of the French Trotskyist organisation under the occupation and though expelled from France by Petain he maintained liaison among the underground groups during the war. Reduced to very difficult living conditions by McCarthyism, he again participated in clandestine work in France to help the Algerian revolution. A member of the International's leadership for many years, he died in 1961 at the age of 57.
Charles Marie (1915-1971), railroad worker, joined the Trotskyist movement shortly after the end of the war. Impassioned and indefatigable militant, for a long time he was practically alone in defending Trotskyism in Rouen. During the Algerian war, in legal and extra-legal activities, he began to build a resurgence of the movement, recruited young people who, in the aftermath of May 1968, were to make Rouen the largest provincial branch of the Ligue Communiste. A cell of railroad workers in Rouen bears his name. He was named honorary chairman of the second national congress of the Ligue Communiste, held in Rouen.
Jean Meichler, was one of the founders of La Vérité in 1929. Editor of Unser Wort, organ of the German Trotskyists in exile, he was arrested for this and held hostage at the time that France was occupied. He was one of the first hostages executed, dying at the age of 45.
Fernando Lozano Menendez, a 22-year-old student and member of the national leadership of the Frente de Izquierda Revolucionaria (FIR), murdered by the Peruvian police in November 1976.
Luiz Eduardo Merlino (Nicolau) (1947-1971), Brazilian journalist assassinated in July 1971 by the repressive forces in his country. Began his activity as a militant in the student organisations in Santos, then in newspaper circles in Sao Paulo, constantly filling the role of inspirer and leader. In 1968 joined the Partido Operario Comunista (POC -- Communist Workers Party), in which he rapidly rose to a leading position. His experiences led him to the positions of the Fourth International. He organised an opposition for which he wrote theses on national and international questions. Shortly after his clandestine return to Sao Paulo from a visit of several months in France, he was arrested, tortured, and murdered.
Chitta Mitra (1929-1976), a leading member of our Indian section, chiefly responsible for establishing a Trotskyist press in Bengali. He also translated a number of Trotsky's works, and wrote a biography of Trotsky, Tomader Trotsky (Your Trotsky), for young people in very simple Bengali.
Henri Molinier (More Laurent) (1898-1944), was an engineer who participated in the founding of La Vérité and carried out many missions with great discretion. In charge of military matters for the PCI during the war, he was killed by a shell in the course of the fighting for the liberation of Paris.
Georg Moltved (1881-1971), Danish doctor. At the turn of the century he belonged to a petty-bourgeois party, but developed towards Marxism, contributing to intellectual periodicals. After 1933, he aided the German anti-fascist refugees in his country. In 1943, under the occupation, he was one of the main leaders of the illegal CP for the region north of Copenhagen. After the war, he was opposed to the CP's acceptance of ministerial posts in the government and to the CP's reformist policy. Expelled in 1950, he joined the Fourth International in 1955. He translated The Revolution Betrayed into Danish, wrote biographies of Lenin and Trotsky, and often presented Trotskyist viewpoints on the radio. Recognised in his country as an eminent person, Moltved was a man of great intellectual capacity.
Martin Monat (Paul Widelin) (1913-1944), was originally a leader of the Socialist Zionist movement and a sympathiser of the German CP before 1933, but then moved towards Trotskyism and broke with Zionism. He emigrated to Belgium in 1939, where he joined the Trotskyist section. During the war he was responsible for organising fraternisation inside the German army in France, publishing the paper Arbeiter und Soldat (Worker and Soldier). He created a cell of German soldiers in Brest, many of whom were arrested and shot. Arrested by the French police and handed over to the Gestapo, he was shot and left for dead in the forest of Vincennes, but managed with help to reach a hospital. Here however, he was recaptured and killed by the Gestapo.
Moulin, German Trotskyist, killed by the GPU during the civil war in Spain.
Jabra Nicola (Abu Said) (1912-1974), was born in Haifa and joined the Palestinian CP before he was 20. As a member of its leadership, he was given responsibility for its organ in Arabic, At Ittihad, but the party split in 1939 along nationalist lines and he refused to join either wing. He was imprisoned under the British occupation from 1940-42. In 1942 he joined a group of Trotskyists, many of them refugees from Europe, but the dislocation of the Trotskyist organisation in the Middle East after the war led him to rejoin the CP, and he was once again given the editorship of its paper in Arabic. In 1956, however, the CP leadership suspended him from his functions because of political disagreements, and in 1962 he joined with others who had left the CP to form the Matzpen group, from which the Israel section of the Fourth International was to develop. Placed under house arrest after the Six Day War in 1967, he left Israel for London in 1970, where he died.
Jabra Nicola was a member of the IEC of the Fourth International from its Seventh World Congress (1963). A brilliant journalist, he wrote numerous articles and pamphlets and also translated some of the classics of Marxism into Arabic. His contribution, both theoretically and politically, to the Fourth International on the problems of the Arab East and the question of Israel within it was unparalleled.
Pantelis Pouliopoulos, prosecuted for his activity in the Creek army in 1922. He translated Das Kapital into Greek. A delegate of the Creek CP to the Fifth Congress of the Communist International, he became secretary of the CP in 1925, but was expelled as a Trotskyist in 1927. Secretary of the Creek Trotskyist organisation, he went underground following the Metaxas coup d'etat in 1936, but was arrested in 1939. He was shot as a hostage by the Italians in 1943 at the age of 43, making a speech to the Italian soldiers while facing the firing squad.
Art Preis (1911-1964), American Trotskyist, while a student at the University of Ohio founded the Free Voice, which was later banned. In 1933 he organised the unemployed in Toledo, then organised employed workers into trade unions and was a member of the Toledo CIO Council. From 1940 on, he was labour editor of The Militant. Author of Labor's Giant Step. Twenty Years of the CIO, a history of the American trade union movement from 1929 to 1955.
Luis Pujals (1942-1971), young Argentinian revolutionist, joined the Palabra Obrera group in 1961.A founding member of the PRT in 1964, he was elected a member of its Central Committee at its Second Congress and later elected to its Executive Committee. He was in charge of political and military affairs for the Buenos Aires region. Arrested on 17 September 1971, he was sent by the authorities to Rosario and brought back to Buenos Aires on 22 September, at the very moment the authorities were denying that he was in custody. According to all indications, he died under torture.
B. Mallikarjun Rao, participated in the revolutionary movement as a student in Andhra and then in Bombay, and became active in the trade union movement. One of the founders in 1941 of the Mazdoor Trotskyist Party of India, in 1942 he participated in the uprising against British imperialism, went underground, was arrested in 1944 and sentenced to two years in prison. In 1947-48 he took part in the guerrilla movement against the Nizam of Hyderabad until this principality was integrated into the Indian Union. He was elected to a trade union post in 1949; and arrested anew in 1959 for his role in the civil service strike in Andhra Pradesh. In 1965 he was a member of the organising committee of the Socialist Workers Party (Indian section of the Fourth International). He died in 1966 after more than thirty years of militant activism.
Ignace Reiss (Ludwig), Polish communist, hero of the civil war during the Russian Revolution, was one of the principal leaders of the Soviet Union's special services. In 1937, following the first Moscow trial, he broke with Stalinism and returned his medals, declaring,'I am joining Trotsky and the Fourth International'. He was assassinated by the GPU a few weeks later near Lausanne.
Alfonso Peralta Reyes (1939-1977), lecturer and member of the Political Bureau of the Mexican Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT), assassinated by the 'Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre' guerrilla group in May 1977 while leading a struggle by the university trade unions against the government's austerity measures.
German Rodriguez Sainz, joined the Trotskyist movement in Spain in 1971 and played a prominent part in the fusion between the LCR and ETA(VI), the revolutionary wing of the Basque nationalist movement. He was an active member of the Workers Commissions and a central leader of the 1973 Pamplona general strike, for which he was jailed for two and a half years. Over 30,000 attended his funeral after he had been murdered by police during a Basque nationalist protest in Pamplona in July 1978.
Wolfgang Salus, young Czechoslovakian communist, participated in founding that country's Trotskyist movement in 1929 at the age of 18. He died in exile after having contributed to the reorganisation of the Czechoslovakian movement after the war.
Leon Sedov (1905-1938), Trotsky's son, was expelled from the CPSU in 1927 and from that time on devoted his life to helping Trotsky in the latter's work. Was a defendant along with Trotsky in all the Moscow trials, in which he was sentenced to death. He died mysteriously in Paris, most assuredly assassinated by the GPU.
Henricus Sneevliet (1883-1942), Dutch working class leader, founder of the Indonesian socialist movement in 1914, then of the Indonesian CP in 1920. He was its delegate to the Second Congress of the Communist International, and representative of the Communist International to the Chinese CP, but broke with Stalinism. A leader of the Dutch trade union confederation NAS, he was imprisoned in 1932 for his support of a sailors' mutiny. A founder of the RSAP, he was arrested during the war, and shot by the Nazis on 13 April 1942. His heroic death has been held up as an example in his country.
Shuji Sugawara (1949-1978), national secretary of the Japan Communist Youth (Trotskyist youth group) and a national organiser for the struggle against the opening of Narita airport, died of a brain haemorrhage.
Chen Tu-hsiu (1879-1942), professor at the University of Peking, was one of the leaders of the democratic revolution of 1911. A founder of the Chinese CP, of which he was secretary from 1920 to 1927, but then joined the Trotskyist Opposition. He was seized by the Kuomintang in 1932 and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. Freed on parole in 1937, he died in 1942. His memory is still slandered today by the leadership of the Chinese CP.
Ta Thu Thau, founder of the Vietnamese Trotskyist movement, leader of the Saigon workers in the years preceding the war and imprisoned during the war. Freed in 1946, he disappeared mysteriously shortly thereafter, probably assassinated by the Stalinists.
Pierre Tresso (Blasco) (1893-1943), member of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau of the Italian CP from 1925, party delegate to congresses of the Communist International. Expelled as a Trotskyist in 1930, he was active as an exile in France; participated in the leadership of the Ligue Communiste, in the Copenhagen Conference in 1932, and in the founding congress of the Fourth International. Condemned to ten years of forced labour during the war by the Marseilles military court, and placed in the Puy prison, he was liberated along with all the others by the Resistance forces, shortly thereafter, as was the case with other Trotskyists, he disappeared while with the Resistance forces, in all likelihood assassinated by the Stalinists.
Humberto Valenzuela (1908-1977), born in the nitrate-mining area of northern Chile, recording secretary of the nitrate miners union in Huara at the age of fourteen. Joined the Chilean CP soon after its foundation, but left after the Trotskyists were expelled to join the Izquierda Comunista (Communist Left), formed in 1931. A leader of the United Construction Union, he also helped in the formation of peasant unions. In 1942 he ran as Trotskyist candidate for the presidency. In 1969, he devoted himself to the foundation of a new Chilean section, the Partido Socialista Revolucionario (PSR); he also worked with the MIR to build organs of popular power and was elected a national leader of the Revolutionary Workers Front. After the coup he continued to work underground, organising resistance committees and Marxist education classes.
Joseph Vanzler (John G. Wright), student in chemistry at Harvard University, joined the American Trotskyist organisation in 1929, translated numerous works by Trotsky, died in 1956 at the age of 52.
Libero Villone (1913-1970), became active in the Italian CP under the fascist regime, when it was illegal. He was expelled from the CP in 1938 for having criticised the Moscow trials. Arrested in 1943, he was freed when Mussolini fell. Readmitted to the CP, he was soon expelled for criticising the policy of class collaboration. He joined the Trotskyist movement in 1945. A teacher, he held various positions in the teachers' union. He was editor of Bandiera Rossa for several years.
Neil Williamson, Scottish militant of the International Marxist Group, who played the key role in leading the IMG to understand the new prominence of the national question in Scotland. His funeral after his death at the age of 26 in a car crash in October 1978 was attended by representatives of every significant section of. the labour movement, testifying to the enormous respect he had won in ten years of unceasing political activity.
Erwin Wolf (N. Braun), Trotskyist of Czechoslovakian origin, Trotsky's secretary in Norway, was assassinated by the GPU during the civil war in Spain.
Niiyama Yukio (1954-1978), member of the Japan Revolutionary Communist League, died of injuries received during the struggle against the opening of the Narita international airport at Sanrizuka.
Joseph Hansen (1910-1979), a central leader of the American Socialist Workers Party and the international Trotskyist movement, died as this book was going to press. From 1937 he spent much time with Trotsky in Mexico, assisting in the preparation of the founding congress of the Fourth International. He was present when Trotsky was assassinated, and prevented his killer from fleeing. A very talented journalist, he was editor of The Militant for several years after 1940. He played a decisive role in reunification of the Fourth International in 1962-63 and was subsequently a regular observer at its congresses and plenums. In the last years of his life his political activity mainly centred on the editing of the weekly Intercontinental Press/Inprecor, which he had helped to launch as World Outlook in the wake of the 1963 reunification.
* * *


In ending this most incomplete list at this point, with the observation that the losses of the Trotskyists, relative to their number, are probably greater than those of all other tendencies in the working class movement, let us remember once again the exceptional pleiad of revolutionists who originated the movement, the Soviet Trotskyists, who stood up against all persecution until the day that Stalin decided on their total extermination. The story of their struggle at Vorkuta, of (among others) the great hunger strike conducted by more than a thousand prisoners for 132 days (from October 1936 to March 1937), in the course of which many perished, has come down to us through eyewitnesses returned from the camps. Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The First Circle has given their heroic end a suitable place in the great literature of the world. To their memory, and to the memory of all those who died fighting for the Fourth International, I dedicate this book.

In The Time Of The Second American Revolution-Post Civil War Reconstruction

Book Review

The Era of Reconstruction, Kenneth Stampp, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1975

The Reconstruction period directly after the American Civil War ended in 1865 was cast as the time of the ‘scalawags’, ‘carpetbaggers’, Black Codes and ultimately after a determined and ugly political and military fight by the ‘right’ people, the so-called natural rulers in the South, ‘redemption’. In short, a least for any radical, a time of shame in the American experience and, at least implicitly, a racist slap at blacks and their supporters for attempting to upset the traditional social order.

There certainly was plenty that went wrong during Radical Reconstruction (there were, as Professor Franklin points out several phases of Reconstruction, not all of them radical) in the South but the conventional high school history textbooks never got into the whole story. Nor did they want to. The whole story is that until fairly recently this Radical Reconstruction period was the most democratic period in the South in American history, for white and black alike. The book under review that reflects the earlier efforts of the likes of Professor Kenneth Stamp (whose book of essays on Reconstruction I have previously reviewed in this space) goes a long way toward a better understanding of the period than those old high school textbooks.

Professor Stamp, as he must, starts off his book by describing the political problems associated with most of the earlier studies of Reconstruction done by those influenced by Professor Dunning and his school in the early 20th century. That picture presented, as I described in my opening sentence, the familiar corrupt and scandalous activities associated with this period. Needless to say this position dovetailed very nicely with the rationale for Jim Crow in the pre-1960’s South. Moreover, in the hands of its northern liberal devotees it nicely covered up the burgeoning corruption of the northern- based ‘robber barons’. There is an old adage that history is written by the victors. Whatever the truth to that assertion early Reconstruction history was written by the losers, or rather their apologists once removed.

The Reconstruction era was dominated by three basic plans that Professor Stampp describes in some detail; the aborted Lincoln ‘soft’ union indivisible efforts; the Johnson ‘soft’ redemption plans; and, the radical Republican ‘scorched earth’ policy. In the end none of these plans was pursued strongly enough to insure that enhanced black rights gained through legislation would lead to enlightened citizenship. Stampp presents detailed critiques of all these plans and some insights about the social and cultural mores of the country at the time that do not make for pretty reading.

The professor then goes on to try to demystify what the radical reconstruction governments did and did not do. That there were scandalous activities and more than enough corrupt politicians to go around goes without saying. However like most myths there is a snowball effect about how bad things really were that obliterates the very real advances for black (and some poor whites) like public education, improved roads and increased state facilities that were anathema to the planting class that formerly ruled the South.

The last part of the book deals with the conservative counter-revolution to overthrow the radical governments culminating in the well-known Compromise of 1877. The actions of that rabble, rich and poor whites alike formed in militias and other para-military operations like the Klan, is certainly not pretty reading. Moreover it took about a century and a ‘cold’ civil war during the 1960’s (a battle that continues today) to even minimally right that situation. For those that need an in depth, definitive study of this subject you must turn to the master, Eric Foner, and his monumental Reconstruction, 1863-1877. However, if you want an earlier, shorter but nevertheless informative overview of Reconstruction this is your first stop.

*Poet's Corner-Robert Lowell's "For The Union Dead"

Link to essay by poet and literary critic Helen Vendler about Robert Lowell's "For The Union Dead".


http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lowell/uniondead.htm

Guest Commentary


On the 152th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War in honor of the Northern armies that fought and died defending the union and/or the abolition of slavery a poem written by Robert Lowell during the Centenary in 1964. Markin
Robert Lowell - For the Union Dead- 1964

"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gently tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die--
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
*Poet's Corner-Robert Lowell's "For The Union Dead"

Link to essay by poet and literary critic Helen Vendler about Robert Lowell's "For The Union Dead".


http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lowell/uniondead.htm

Guest Commentary


On the 152th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War in honor of the Northern armies that fought and died defending the union and/or the abolition of slavery a poem written by Robert Lowell during the Centenary in 1964. Markin
Robert Lowell - For the Union Dead- 1964

"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gently tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die--
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

Necesitamos con urgencia 100, 000 firmas por 20 de septiembre 2013-firmar la petición en línea, el presidente Obama Pardon soldado Manning - Manning-The Private libre Heroica Denuncias Ahora!

La lucha por la libertad del soldado Manning continúa ...

El draconiano 35 años sentencia dictada por un juez militar el 21 de agosto 2013 marcó un nuevo enfoque en la campaña para Manning privado gratuito. El tema central de la nueva campaña - ". Presidente Obama Pardon Bradley Manning" Una tarea inmediata es comenzar a organizarse en torno a la llamada iniciada por la Red de Apoyo a Manning Amnistía Internacional y el 20 de agosto 2013 para firmar una petición en línea dirigida al Presidente. El objetivo es conseguir 100.000 firmas en línea el 20 de septiembre 2013 para hacer que nuestro caso fuerte y claro. Únete a miles de compatriotas y seguidores de todo el mundo para decir alto y claro-presidente Obama Pardon soldado Manning

A continuación se muestra el enlace a la Amnistía Internacional / Private Network Support Manning para firmar la petición on-line en la Cámara-impuesta 20 de septiembre 2013 fecha límite Blanca. Gracias

pardon.bradleymanning.org.

We Urgently Need 100, 000 Signatures By September 20, 2013 -Sign The On-Line Petition-President Obama Pardon Private Manning - Free Private Manning- The Heroic Whistle-Blower Now!

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

 The Fight For Private Manning’s Freedom Continues…

The draconian 35 years sentence handed down by a military judge on August 21, 2013 marked a new focus on the campaign to free Private Manning. The central theme of the new campaign is –“President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning.” An immediate task is to begin organizing around the call started by Amnesty International and the Private Manning Support Network on August 20, 2013 to sign an on-line petition directed to the President. The goal is to get 100,000 on-line signatures by September 20, 2013 to make our case loud and clear. Join many thousands of fellow citizens and supporters around the world to say loudly and clearly-President Obama Pardon Private Manning

 
Below is the link to the Amnesty International/Private Manning Support Network to sign the on-line petition before the White House- imposed September 20, 2013 deadline. Thank you

 

pardon.bradleymanning.org.

***Out In The 1950s Be-Bop Crime Noir Night- Humphrey Bogart’s “Beat The Devil”-A Film Review

DVD Review

Beat The Devil, starring Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Peter Lorre, directed by John Huston, 1953
When Humphrey Bogart was in his prime, say from the time of Petrified Forest in the late 1930s until say 1947’s Dark Passage, he was hands down king of film noir hill. No question. There were prettier faces (Clark Gable), there were better actors (Spencer Tracey), there were actors with more angst per ounce (Montgomery Cliff) but for sheer gritty, grizzled, gnarly (nice, huh) film presence Bogie was the one. Of course even those who have not kept up with their history know that every king (or queen) has his (or her) day. And then-done. Well, not exactly done but since actors, like some generals, only fade away and hang on for just as long as studios think they have “star” quality to put in the bank. In the film under review, Beat The Devil, our man Bogie is in such a quandary. Clearly, on the screen, it is almost painful to see his physical decline from his prime (only slightly hidden by “make-up magic”) if not his ability to throw off a few off-hand devil take the hinter-post lines in this one.

Fortunately this film, directed skillfully to enhance the black and white features, by John Huston, is not desperately in need of “high” Bogie to carry it along. The story line, about a motley crew of “desperados” seeking fame and fortune in post-World War Africa is fairly straight forward and mundane. Unfortunately, for them, they are stuck in an out-of the-way port in Italy. The keys to the kingdom that this crew is trying to corner in the heated up Cold War world- uranium (or some other equally precious commodity, if things turn out badly). If in earlier times gold or diamonds stirred men’s (and women’s) greedy thoughts just then in that red scare night it was that particularly important product. However not for one moment can any of the parties (and those like Ms. Jennifer Jones and her down-at-the-heels British husband who wonder what this crew is doing out in the sticks) take one eye, much less two, off the others. And that, more than the thin plot line, is what carries the day here. The collective day, with likes of Robert Benchley, Peter Lorre and Ms. Jones, playing off against Bogie’s world-wary, world-weary performance. Add into the mix a little off-hand undone infidelity for the good of the cause and that makes a very interesting mix. If you need classic “high” Bogie then go to Casablanca, To Have Or Have Not or The Big Sleep. But if you want to see him play against type and in an ensemble performance watch this one. 

***Out In The 1950s Be-Bop Crime Noir Night- Humphrey Bogart’s “Beat The Devil”-A Film Review

DVD Review

Beat The Devil, starring Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Peter Lorre, directed by John Huston, 1953
When Humphrey Bogart was in his prime, say from the time of Petrified Forest in the late 1930s until say 1947’s Dark Passage, he was hands down king of film noir hill. No question. There were prettier faces (Clark Gable), there were better actors (Spencer Tracey), there were actors with more angst per ounce (Montgomery Cliff) but for sheer gritty, grizzled, gnarly (nice, huh) film presence Bogie was the one. Of course even those who have not kept up with their history know that every king (or queen) has his (or her) day. And then-done. Well, not exactly done but since actors, like some generals, only fade away and hang on for just as long as studios think they have “start” quality to put in the bank. In the film under review, Beat The Devil, our man Bogie is in such a quandary. Clearly, on the screen, it is almost painful to see his physical decline from his prime (only slightly hidden by “make-up magic”) if not his ability to throw off a few off-hand devil take the hinter-post lines in this one.

Fortunately this film, directed skillfully to enhance the black and white features, by John Huston, is not desperately in need of “high” Bogie to carry it along. The story line, about a motley crew of “desperados” seeking fame and fortune in post-World War Africa is fairly straight forward and mundane. Unfortunately, for them, they are stuck in an out-of the-way port in Italy. The keys to the kingdom that this crew is trying to corner in the heated up Cold War world- uranium (or some other equally precious commodity, if thinks turn out badly). If in earlier times gold or diamonds stirred men’s (and women’s) greedy thoughts just then in that red scare night it was that particularly important produce. However not for one moment can any of the parties (and those like Ms. Jennifer Jones and her down-at-the-heels British husband who wonder what this crew is doing out in the sticks) take one eye, much less two, off the others. And that, more than the thin plot line, is what carries the day here. The collective day, with likes of Robert Benchley, Peter Lorre and Ms. Jones, playing off against Bogie’s world-wary, world-weary performance. Add into the mix a little off-hand undone infidelity for the good of the cause and that makes a very interesting mix. If you need classic “high” Bogie then go to Casablanca, To Have Or Have Not or The Big Sleep. But if you want to see him play against type and in an ensemble performance watch this one.

***Not Ready For Prime Time AARP Songs- The Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four"

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Beatles performing When I'm Sixty-Four from the animated movie Yellow Submarine.


Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964 and thus already past sixty-four, comment:

Many of my fellows from the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.

When I'm Sixty-Four - The Beatles

When I get olded, loosing my hair,
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me the Valentine,
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine

If I stay out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.

You'll be older too,
And if you say the word I could stay with you.

I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday morning go for a ride

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.

Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight,
if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form,
Mine for evermore,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.

*******
Ancient dreams, dreamed:

To be born under a portentous sign. Yah, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair kind of smiling, okay, maybe just half-smiling. He had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and then de rigueur bandana, white as well, holding back her hair. She may have been just another blonde, another very blonde frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. Trouble, big trouble. I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled at the movie screen for him to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end.

Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window apartment dwell, small, warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching as he, that brother, goes off to foreign places and one is left to ponder his own place in those places.

A cloudless day, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, starting to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means, that and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes but changes.

Endless walks, endless sea street walks, rocks strewn every which way, making way for the uptown drug store valentine night bushel, if only she, about five candidates she just then, would give a look his way his endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash would be quiet.

Nighttime fears, red Stalin-named fears, red bomb shelter blast fears against the dark school yard night and avoidance, clean, clear avoidance of old times sailors, tars, AND deaths in lonely seaside graveyards.

Walks, bus stop non stop walks, up crooked cheap, low rent, fifty-year rutted pavement streets pass trees are green, endless trees are green waiting, waiting against infinite time for one look, one look that would elude him, elude him forever. Such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots.

City square standing, waiting, standing going in, coming out, coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carat for his efforts such is the way of young crime, no value, no look just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dreams make no more sense.

A bridge too far. Bicycle boy churning through endless heated streets, names all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea. Twelve-year old miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old grifter, midnight shifters friends hard against the named seas, against those slo-fast changes that kind of hit one sideways all at once.

Lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, I don’t think, just some junior league dream fuss, some sweated night pastry crust and I too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic windows.

Sweated dust bowl nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic nights but something else for something inside for some sense of worth in the this moldy shirt, mildewed shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval ,watch tick in hand, looking, looking I guess for immortality, immortality even then.

Main street walked, main street telephone booth walked, searching for some Diana greek goddess wholesale on the atlantic streets. Or rather courage, nickel and dime courage as it turns out, nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights, No way, no way, Jack, not my name, and then red-face, red-face even forty years later. Wow.

Multi-colored jacket worn, cigarette hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Finally, that one minute, no not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of fame, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss on non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson, very tough.


Drunk, whisky drunk in some bayside bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish although who could have known that then.

Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no, one hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, and no earthly good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession.

The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black madonna of night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little.

Bloodless bloodied streets, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.

Chill chili nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Calais’, Monkton, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas flats, golden-gated bridges, malibus, Joshua Trees, pueblos, embarkederos, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern wall. Enough, okay.

He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle.

Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.

A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million time in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Ya that seems right, right.

White flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more dastardly fight against time, against a bigger opponent, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other he said struggle, struggle. Ya, easy for you to say.

Desperately clutching his new white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this is no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say, oh yes, struggle.

One more battle, one more, please one more. He chains himself, well not really chains, but more like ties himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief . Another guy does the same, except he uses some plastic stuff. A couple of women just stand there, hard against that ebony fence, can you believe it, just stand there. More, milling around, disorderly in a way, someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene is complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knows, knows for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora whom he needed to worry about, and that his child dream was a different thing altogether. But who, just a child, could have known then.