HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-HONOR ROSA LUXEMBURG-THE ROSE OF THE REVOLUTION

COMMENTARY 

Every January leftists honor three revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in 1924, Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin. Lenin needs no special commendation.  I made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in this space earlier so I would like to make some points here about the life of Rosa Luxemburg. These comments come at a time when the question of a woman President is the buzz in the political atmosphere in the United States in the lead up to the upcoming 2016 elections. Rosa, who died almost a century ago, puts all such pretenders to so-called ‘progressive’ political leadership in the shade.   

The early Marxist movement, like virtually all progressive political movements in the past, was heavily dominated by men. I say this as a statement of fact and not as something that was necessarily intentional or good. It is only fairly late in the 20^th century that the political emancipation of women, mainly through the granting of the vote earlier in the century, led to mass participation of women in politics as voters or politicians. Although, socialists, particularly revolutionary socialists, have placed the social, political and economic emancipation of women at the center of their various programs from the early days that fact was honored more in the breech than the observance.

All of this is by way of saying that the political career of the physically frail but intellectually robust Rosa Luxemburg was all the more remarkable because she had the capacity to hold her own politically and theoretically with the male leadership of the international social democratic movement in the pre-World War I period. While the writings of the likes of then leading German Social Democratic theoretician Karl Kautsky are safely left in the basket Rosa’s writings today still retain a freshness, insightfulness and vigor that anti-imperialist militants can benefit from by reading. Her book Accumulation of Capital alone would place her in the select company of important Marxist thinkers.

But Rosa Luxemburg was more than a Marxist thinker. She was also deeply involved in the daily political struggles pushing for left-wing solutions. Yes, the more bureaucratic types, comfortable in their party and trade union niches, hated her for it (and she, in turn, hated them) but she fought hard for her positions on an anti-class collaborationist, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist left-wing of the international of the social democratic movement throughout this period. And she did this not merely as an adjunct leader of a women’s section of a social democratic party but as a fully established leader of left-wing men and women, as a fully socialist leader. One of the interesting facts about her life is how little she wrote on the women question as a separate issue from the broader socialist question of the emancipation of women. Militant women today take note.

One of the easy ways for leftists, particularly later leftists influenced by Stalinist ideology, to denigrate the importance of Rosa Luxemburg’s thought and theoretical contributions to Marxism was to write her off as too soft on the question of the necessity of a hard vanguard revolutionary organization to lead the socialist revolution. Underpinning that theme was the accusation that she relied too much on the spontaneous upsurge of the masses as a corrective to the lack of hard organization or the impediments that  reformist socialist elements threw up to derail the revolutionary process. A close examination of her own organization, The Socialist Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, shows that this was not the case; this was a small replica of a Bolshevik-type organization. That organization, moreover, made several important political blocs with the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the defeat of the Russian revolution of 1905. Yes, there were political differences between the organizations, particularly over the critical question for both the Polish and Russian parties of the correct approach to the right of national self-determination, but the need for a hard organization does not appear to be one of them.

Furthermore, no less a stalwart Bolshevik revolutionary than Leon Trotsky, writing in her defense in the 1930’s, dismissed charges of Rosa’s supposed ‘spontaneous uprising’ fetish as so much hot air. Her tragic fate, murdered with the complicity of her former Social Democratic comrades, after the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin in 1919 (at the same time as her comrade, Karl Liebknecht), had causes related to the smallness of the group, its  political immaturity and indecisiveness than in its spontaneousness. If one is to accuse Rosa Luxemburg of any political mistake it is in not pulling the Spartacist group out of Kautsky’s Independent Social Democrats (itself a split from the main Social Democratic party during the war, over the war issue ) sooner than late 1918. However, as the future history of the communist movement would painfully demonstrate revolutionaries have to take advantage of the revolutionary opportunities that come their way, even if not the most opportune or of their own making.

All of the above controversies aside, let me be clear, Rosa Luxemburg did not then need nor does she now need a certificate of revolutionary good conduct from today’s leftists, the reader of this space or this writer. For her revolutionary opposition to World War I when it counted, at a time when many supposed socialists had capitulated to their respective ruling classes including her comrades in the German Social Democratic Party, she holds a place of honor. Today, as we face the fourth year of the war in Iraq we could use a few more Rosas, and a few less tepid, timid parliamentary opponents.  For this revolutionary opposition she went to jail like her comrade Karl Liebknecht. For revolutionaries it goes with the territory. And in jail she wrote, she always wrote, about the fight against the ongoing imperialist war (especially in the Junius pamphlets about the need for a Third International).  Yes, Rosa was at her post then. And she died at her post later in the Spartacist fight doing her internationalist duty trying to lead the German socialist revolution the success of which would have  gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution. This is a woman leader I could follow who, moreover, places today’s bourgeois women parliamentary politicians in the shade. As the political atmosphere gets heated up over the next couple years, remember what a real fighting revolutionary woman politician looked like. Remember Rosa Luxemburg, the Rose of the Revolution.      

 

***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator  – Yeah, Trouble, Trouble With A Big T

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

Those who have been following this series about the exploits of the famous Ocean City (located just south of Los Angeles then now incorporated into the county) private detective Michael Philip Marlin (hereafter just Marlin the way everybody when he became famous after the Galton case out on the coast) and his contemporaries in the private detection business like Freddy Vance, Charles Nicolas (okay, okay Clara too), Sam Archer, Miles Spade, Johnny Spain, know that he related many of these stories to his son, Tyrone Fallon, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Tyrone later, in the 1970s, related these stories to the journalist who uncovered the relationship , Joshua Lawrence Breslin, a friend of my boyhood friend, Peter Paul Markin, who in turn related them to me over several weeks in the late 1980s. Despite that circuitous route I believe that I have been faithful to what Marlin presented to his son. In any case I take full responsibility for what follows.        

*******
As Michael Philip Marlin, Los Angeles’ rough-edged, hard-nosed, no nonsense windmill- chasing (skirt-chasing too) private eye drove up the main driveway of the vast Jeter estate, yes, those Jeter’s the ones who made fortune in the LaBrea tar sands oil money racket, he was trying, desperately trying to remember where he had heard or seen that bit about the rich, the very rich actually being different from you and me. As he turned up in front of the massive mansion named La Strada (they always named their estates something, something European as if to put paid to the point that they had made it) he finally remembered it was F. Scott Fitzgerald in a book he had read a few years back.

He also remembered that the rich, the very rich, were not so very different from you and me when it came to crime, crime all the way up to murder. What was different was that they could afford, easily afford, the fee in his case to hush it all up and go on about their business. And since the private eye business, like everything else in the year 1939, was slow he was glad for a chance to make some office rent dough to get along for another month. He just wondered what kind of nastiness he was supposed to hush up this time, not murder, not from what he had heard through his police grapevine but something that needed hushing if it required his services.    

As Marlin entered old Jeter’s study, the guy who had actually made the money that got these digs, make the money walking over a mountain of human bones, including a couple of suicides when things got tough in 1929,  he saw the living corpse that was what was left of one Herman Jeter.  Human wreck or not, apparently he was feisty enough to want no trouble left surrounding his name before he passed on. Passed on and left his fortune to an errant son who seemingly was hell-bent on spending every last dime on wine, women, and song.

Oh yeah and some high-end gambling too which is what had old Jeter disturbed. Apparently young Jeter, Jeff, had run up a sizable debt at Marty Bennett’s casino over in Santa Monica up the Pacific Coast Highway, something like 50k, and Marty, purely for professional pride and for good business practice was squeezing the old man for the dough. On top of that a dame, wouldn’t it figure, had her hooks into the young pup, planned to marry Jeff and live in splendor. Old Jeter had her down as just another gold-digging whore who had to be paid off like the previous times. So Marlin was on the case, on top of what a rich man wanted done when he had his wanting habits on.   

What the old man did no tell Marlin was that this dame, Leslie Lamour (yeah this was Hollywood remember and just the kind of name which Susan Smith or Jane Jones took when she stepped off the bus at Vine Street looking for some mythical drugstore), was something to look at, something that he would take a run at himself if he got the slightest encouragement. She was in any case not in the market to be bought off for chump change, particularly since she was working with Marty Bennett on this Jeff project but also because old man Jeter had been the cause of  her father’s suicide back in ’29. Yeah, this case was not going to be the walk- over Marlin thought.   

First off things got just a little bit complicated when somebody put two, two slugs, into Jeff Jeter’s chest and stuffed him in a closet in Leslie’s apartment. That left a big hole in Marlin’s job since now there was nothing and nobody to negotiate with. Marty was out big dough and Leslie was down for the count now that Jeff was by-by and so she was back on cheap street. Of course, while it was not strictly in the line of business, trouble business or otherwise, Marlin was more than helpful in helping Leslie get over her loss. (Yes she had an alibi, airtight, and so no snooping cops were going to pin the crime on her even if it was her closet, maybe especially because it was her closet.)They shared a few nights of satin sheets at her place while Marlin figured out who was going to do the big step- off for young Jeter murder.

And Marlin did figure it out, figured it out pretty quickly once he found out that Marty was head-over-heels for Leslie and got so daffy that he let his emotions get the best of him. He had hired Jeff’s chauffeur to do the deed and so Marlowe had to go mano y mano with the chauffer. Well not exactly hand to hand since that chauffer tried like hell to drill Marlin with a sweet .38. Marlin plugged him to give the state its best shot at Marty. So Marty was left holding the bag, no more than the bag since he was the last anybody heard scheduled for the big step –off at Q for the Jeter murder. Leslie, well as Leslies everywhere will do she walked away from whole thing leaving Marlin with nothing but a lingering sandalwood trail to remember her by. You say you never heard about all of this, about the Jeter murder. What did I tell you before the rich, the very rich, are different, very different from you and me. The whole thing had the big hush on it, and I mean big.           

From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-How to organize-From La voix des travailleurs de chez Renault, No 8, 3 June 1947

 

 

... in times of class upsurge like after World War II in Europe (and for a shorter period in the U.S.) even small smart propaganda groups (in the Marxist organizational sense) can make great gains if they have the right programmatic calls and can agitate effectively.  

 

 

 

Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.

 

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 
******** 

6: How to organize-From La voix des travailleurs de chez Renault, No 8, 3 June 1947

La voix des travailleurs de chez Renault was a printed paper, price 2 francs. Though on the front page, the Bois piece is not the main article. Whatever opinion readers may have of its contents, its style and vocabulary are simple, direct and so very easy to translate. Simply from the point of view of the technique of communicating with workers; it may have something to teach many of us.

**************

How can we stay as united as we were during the strike? To run a strike we had a strike committee. But a strike committee stops functioning when the strike ends.
Some comrades think that we should turn the strike committee into an action committee.
Now a committee is a body which has a clear job to do. It can only exist for a well-defined purpose. For instance, a committee can be set up which groups together workers of every type, to run canteens, which will try to control the canteen.
A committee can be set up to purge, which has the well-defined task of purging (whether this is a good or bad thing is another question). A committee can be set up for workers’ defence which will have the job of defending workers’ meetings, premises and press.
But there are continual daily jobs to do in the working class movement. I am thinking of the collection of subs, getting premises for meetings, putting out agitational propaganda and creating continual liaison between workers in different shops and factories; in a word organising the most militant workers. That is the job of a union. And if we disagree with the CGT union it is because they have not done these jobs. Do they tap us for subs? Then they do it to put out lies about strikes. Trade union meetings? They do not do this – they want to prevent the workers from speaking. The shop next door can be on strike and they are not even told about it by their union.
The CGT does not organise workers – it just collects their subs.
We need a real union, that is a union which is not controlled by operators, but which is controlled by the trade union’s rank and file.
We must have democracy now. And we cannot do that in the CGT today. Everyone who has contradicted the leadership has been chucked out. And even where a tiny opposition can still hold out they are forever prisoners of the ‘majority’.
That is why the Collas comrades, after electing an executive from their ranks, are heading into opposition from the trade union bureaucracy, which has refused to recognise them. That is why this Executive Committee, which has organised itself into an Action Committee, has decided to create a union.
Some comrades think that this is too difficult a job. That is to underestimate our strength, and to overestimate that of the leadership of the CGT.
In actual fact the union does not contain millions of trade union members. The union groups and organises the most conscious and combative workers. If today there are a lot of trade union members it is because the trade union only asks them for 40 francs a month. Fifty active trade unionists are better than 2,000 passive subpayers.
The position that we put forward is not that of building a union opposed to the CGT. What we wish to do is to reconstruct the union from its base upwards. We will not build a single separate union either, for that would be to say that we are limiting ourselves to Renault. We are in favour of a single all-embracing union, that is to say a federation of unions grouped into a confederation – like the CGT.
But we think that at the moment there is no CGT. There is only a trade union bureaucracy putting our subs in the bank.
We do not want to pay subs to those people who only betray us. To reform the CGT without its bureaucracy we must rebuild the trade union from the bottom up, which will then group together federations which will then unite in a national confederation. This work may seem difficult, but we have no choice in the matter – there is no other way. What we must do is to reform our union from the base up to create a real democracy through a continuous control of the union by its rank and file. That is why the Collas workers are building the Renault Democratic Union, whose constitution will soon be available and will be put before all the Renault workers.
They appeal then to these workers to support them.
Pierre Bois************

7: The democratic union at Renault

From Front Ouvrier Renault, 10 July 1947

More than five weeks later, this and the following article appeared in Front Ouvrier Renault, 10 July 1947, as a reply to the above statement after the elections to the works council. Front Ouvrier Renault, subtitled Organe de la Tendence Revolutionnaire de la CGT, was four badly duplicated pages. There is no price given, so it was probably handed out as a leaflet. Daniel Renard (1925-1988) remained a member of the PCI and the OCI led by Pierre Lambert until his death on 15 November 1988

*************

The creation of an independent union is not a new thing in the history of the workers’ movement. This question raises numerous problems which we cannot deal with here for lack of space. We will take up this problem in future issues
No.8 of the Voix des Travailleurs tells us of the formation of a Renault Democratic Union. Straightaway we must clearly say that this union, which the comrades of Union Communiste wish to create, has nothing to do with the strike committee which led last April’s strike. The strike committee arose from, and so represented, all the strikers, whatever their political or trade union opinions, but the majority of these comrades do not agree with this initiative of the Voix des Travailleurs. In this sense no tendency can claim to be the rightful successor of the strike committee and to state falsely that: “The most combative elements of the strike committee find themselves in the embrace of the CB of the Democratic Union”. [1]
Is it correct to create an independent union opposed to the CGT and the CNT? In our opinion, no! Today, in spite of their unspeakable behaviour, the trade union bureaucrats have still been able to win the whole list of workers’ delegates. This means that the trade union leaders who betrayed the demands of the workers are going to continue to represent them to Lefauchoux. Was this inevitable? Not at all! During the strike, when these representatives showed themselves to be scabs, the strike committee could have openly called for new trade union elections throughout the works. It would have been possible to throw out the scabs and to elect an EC of those who had shown themselves to be the best defenders of the claim. If this slogan had been given at that time, today the Trade Union Council of the works would have had on it a majority from the strike committee. The CGT would then become again what it had ceased to be: an organisation for the defence of the workers.
Instead of doing this, the SDR, which actually does not represent anyone, will isolate the best fighters from an absolutely vital struggle which must be waged against the Stalinists of the CGT in order to throw them out of its leading positions. So they have committed the same, or an even worse, error than the comrades of the CNT. And when the SDR asks the CNT why it played no role in the strike, which is true, if they continue in this orientation then tomorrow, in another movement, we will put that same question to them. For, if the CNT, despite the devotion of many of its members, was incapable of playing a role, it was because it was isolated from the real struggle of the masses, on the terrain where, in spite of all deceptions, they wished to fight. The terrain of the CGT must be returned to the workers. That is why the old ‘hards’ of Renault, even if they tore up their union cards, even if they did not get their cards stamped up, have voted for the CGT. Not for the Stalinists, but for a trade union organisation which they hoped would one day be theirs again. That is why the militants of Front Ouvrier called upon the workers to take up their cards, to go to the general meetings and to rejoin the union ranks because we want to throw out the incompetents and scabs.
The SDR, because of its narrow character, will not be able to play the role which is that of a mass trade union and to defend the interests of workers. The trade union of a sect renders sterile those tempted by it. It is not too late for comrades embarked on the wrong road to overcome their errors and return to the CGT and force on them a Works Council which is representative of all the workers.
Daniel Renard
1. Note by translator: this does not appear to be a quote from the Bois article though such a statement could be thought as implicit in its contents.

8: Are the elections a victory for the CGT?

From Front Ouvrier Renault, 10 July 1947

Fifty nine per cent of the voters and 80 per cent of those who voted, such is the CGT score in the last delegate elections.
By comparison with the elections of last year, it is a reverse, but in comparison with the strike pushed against the CGT leadership this is only half a defeat. Why?
The so-called Democratic Union was incapable of putting a list forward in the elections and its call for abstentions was not followed. Faced with the reactionary CFTC, the workers had no other choice but the CGT.
If these are the same delegates as before, this is because the revolutionaries are still unable to destroy their treacherous leadership. But the results of the vote justify the work undertaken by the Front Ouvrier to throw out the scabs and strike-breakers from the leadership of the CGT.
Daniel Renard

***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

…damn, and she was not given to damns, not with that pair of fire and brimstone parents ready to wash out her mouth with soap for every “damn” and “hell” uttered, but damn she wished that he had asked her to dance that last Saturday night. He had looked her way all night but never moved an inch in her direction. That last Saturday night dance before his number was called. The one at Red Ruffin’s barn, the weekly country dance over in Neola, Neola, Iowa if you were not sure of the location, although the story could just as easily have been told in Hullsville, Massachusetts, Olde Saco, Maine, Topeka, Kansas,  Springfield, Illinois or a million other towns and hamlets. Told just then when the world was enflamed with madmen trying to make guys from wheat-fields Iowa and places like that take their stuff, take it and like it. And so guys, shy, bashful guys like him, hands all calloused from hard days of work, guys who eyed girls like her at that dance but were stopped in the furtive glances stage had to take a number and tell those madmen night-takers a thing or too.

But where did that leave her, forlorn her, or Betty, or Sue, or Ida, or Rosa, or Maria, or Beulah, or a thousand other names, girls’ names, young women’s names. Left her to trek over to the General Store in Neola and check the daily causality lists and pray, pray like hell, that his precious name was not on there. And yes to make damn sure, hear that mother and father, damn sure that if he does make it back that he will get anything he wants from her even if she has to sneak into his bed some night …   

 

 

 

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It's That Time Of Year -Again 

LGBT Inclusive Groups Still Seek to March in South Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade

TRT Editor | Jan 09, 2014 | Comments 1

Boston St. Patrick’s Peace Parade participants lining up before parade. 
Photo: TRT Archives

By: Chuck Colbert*/ TRT Reporter—

BOSTON, Mass.—When Irish eyes are smiling, the world is bright and gay, or so go lyrics of the popular song. Except, historically, on St. Patrick’s Day in South Boston, where openly gay groups are still not permitted to participate.

For several years, the parade organizers—Allied War Veterans Council—emboldened by a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, have denied marching permission for LGBT and peace veterans groups as a matter of First Amendment, free-speech rights. However, serious efforts are underway to change that.

“This is the year we all should put pressure on politicians,” said Pat Scanlon, Vietnam veteran and coordinator of Veterans for Peace, Chapter 9, Smedley D. Butler Brigade, an organization banned from marching in the South Boston parade for several years.

Scanlon pointed to changing demographics of South Boston and a new mayor as hopeful signs the peace veterans contingent will be able to march, along with openly LGBT groups. Back in September 2013, Veterans for Peace applied to Allied War Veterans, but by December 9, 2013, when the peace-vet organization had not received a reply, Scanlon sent a follow up letter. 

“When Massachusetts is, in so many ways, a beacon of inclusion for the LGBTQ community, it is disappointing to see parade organizers continue to cultivate a climate of rejection and exclusion.” —Kara Coredini, MassEquality Director.

“The exclusion of Veterans for Peace, the LGBT community, and other peace organizations, from participating [in the parade] should come to an end,” Scanlon wrote. “It is time that there be one parade that is open, inclusive and welcoming to any group wishing to celebrate this very special day. It is Saint Patrick’s Day, a celebration of the patron saint of Ireland and Saint Patrick was a man of peace.”

Scanlon’s letter pointed not only to changing attitudes toward LGBT people in society at large, but also to cultural and social changes within South Boston.

“Many members of the LGBT community currently live, work and worship” in the neighborhood, he wrote.

In fact, two parades have trekked through the streets of South Boston since 2010 when the peace veterans first applied but were rejected. Scanlon said parade organizers used not wanting the word “peace” connected to the word “veteran” as reason enough to ban the group from marching. Last year, when the Veterans for Peace organized the second march, which took place one hour after the main event and was separated by Boston city street sweepers, the parade had more than 2,000 participants. Those who marched with the St. Patrick’s Peace Parade included six bands, trolleys, duck boats, floats, and the like—all organized into eight separate divisions under the categories of veterans, peace, LGBT, religious, environmental, labor, political, social, and economic justice.

Born on St. Patrick’s Day, Scanlon, 66, a straight Irish American who grew up Catholic in Philadelphia and attended parochial schools for 19 years, explained his motivation.

“This is an injustice,” Scanlon said. “An injustice against one is an injustice against all, and in one of the most progressive cities in the country, if not the world, to have this injustice taking place should not be tolerable.”

The father of a gay son, Scanlon does not mince words in calling out the ban on LGBT groups. 

“It’s homophobic,” he said, referring to the attitude of parade organizers. “It’s exclusion. It’s hatred. That’s what all this is about.”

In addition to applying to the Allied War Veterans Council, Scanlon said his parade group has also asked the City of Boston for its own parade permit with a 12 p.m. kick-off time, one hour before Allied War Veterans’ start time.

Michael Dowling, 59, a gay resident of South Boston for 35 years and president of the South Boston Association of Non-Profits, is taking another approach. He said the community-based non-profit association has applied to the Allied War Veterans, proposing “an inclusive unit called ‘We are South Boston.’” The application, he explained, contains “really strong, inclusive language, including LGBT language with signs that would identify participants in the parade.”

Dowling said he takes issue with Scanlon’s outsider approach.

“The efforts of Pat Scanlon have helped perpetuate the hardships of the neighborhood and how it is portrayed,” Dowling said.

He went on to explain why.

“Because when [Scanlon] calls the neighborhood bigoted and homophobic, he riles up those hatreds that are still there, and makes it more difficult for people to be out, and makes it more difficult for people to work here,” said Dowling. “So it sets us back.”

But Scanlon takes issue with Dowling’s suggestion of such name calling. The South Boston neighborhood is not the problem, said Scanlon, explaining, “The attitudes of the residents of South Boston have changed dramatically in the last 20 years.” It’s the Allied War Veterans who hold bigoted and homophobic attitudes, he said.

At the same time, both Scanlon and Dowling said they believe South Boston has indeed changed significantly in the last two decades.

“Everything in South Boston has changed,” said Scanlon. “The neighborhood has changed, the politics have changed, the culture has changed, and [Catholic] churches have closed. The only thing that has not changed is the attitude of the six guys who run the parade. That too will change.”

Dowling agreed with the changing demographics and attitudes, citing local civic groups that are inclusive of LGBT people, namely One Southie and The New Southie, both of which have Facebook pages, and the West Broadway Citizens group, which Dowling said consists predominantly of gay men who live on that thoroughfare. Dowling said South Boston Association of Non Profits is working with the neighborhood-based civic and social groups, among others, to gain permission to march.

Like Scanlon, Dowling is also seeking to gain support for their respective approaches from elected officials, including state Senator Linda Dorcena of the First Suffolk District and state Representative Nick Collins of the Fourth Suffolk District, both Democrats. South Boston falls within their respective legislative districts. Both Scanlon and Dowling have also contacted Boston’s new mayor, Martin J. Walsh, and District Two City Councilor Bill Linehan, a lifelong South Boston resident, in hopes that they can broker a deal or solution to the standoff. Linehan was also elected president of city council in early January. Scanlon has also written to the Boston Police Department and penned an open letter to residents of the city.

Dowling said he is hopeful that the neighborhood insider’s approach is the way out of the gay-ban situation, a way for the Allied War Veterans and everybody to move forward. Back in the early 90s when an openly gay group—The Irish American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston (GLIB)—marched in the parade, Dowling paid a steep price for supporting the gay group. Along the parade route, he handed out pink roses to gay, lesbian, and bisexual marchers. 

“Every window in my house was broken,” Dowling said.He added, consequently, that he had every good reason “to beat up on the neighborhood.”“But I have chosen to replace hatred of our community with service to that community,” Dowling explained.

A painter and noted artist, Dowling founded Medicine Wheels Production as a South Boston-based nonprofit organization in 2000. Its mission is “to transform communities from the inside out” through “the healing and transcendent power of public art.” Medicine Wheel’s signature event is on World AIDS Day. Another focus addresses youth drug abuse and teen suicide.

Neither Veterans for Peace nor South Boston Association of Non Profits have heard back yet from parade organizers. Both Dowling and Scanlon said they are preparing strategies if their applications are rejected. Undoubtedly, the issue will find its way to the office of Mayor Walsh, who told a reporter during the mayoral election last fall, “What needs to happen,” is a private “conversation” away from the media’s glare, with “organizers of the parade.”

“As mayor, I will sit down with them and work out a compromise so that people can feel like they can march in the parade,” Walsh explained. “This parade should be inclusive, and that goes for every other parade marching on public streets.”

Meanwhile, MassEquality, the statewide grassroots organization, has also applied to march.

“We will continue to apply every year until MassEquality is permitted to march,” said Kara S. Coredini, executive director.

Like the other two groups, MassEquality has not yet heard back from parade organizers on the status of its application. However, the parade is not among MassEquality’s highest priorities. 

Neither Veterans for Peace nor South Boston Association of Non Profits have heard back yet from parade organizers.

“The LGBTQ community in Massachusetts faces many issues more urgent than the ability to participate in a parade—youth homelessness, bullying, anti-transgender discrimination, HIV/AIDS, elder abuse, and more,” Coredini explained. “But public rejection by an established cultural institution like the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is significant in that it’s emblematic of the more life-altering rejection our community members face every day. When Massachusetts is, in so many ways, a beacon of inclusion for the LGBTQ community, it is disappointing to see parade organizers continue to cultivate a climate of rejection and exclusion. At the heart of MassEquality’s work electing pro-LGBTQ champions and advancing pro-LGBTQ legislation is changing attitudes, and each day because of that work we come closer to the day when this parade will be opened to all.”

This year’s St. Patrick Day Parade is scheduled for Sunday, March 16._______

*Chuck Colbert marched in the 1992 and 1993 South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade as one of 25 participants in the Irish American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston.

 

HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-Honor An Historic Leader Of The American Labor Movement-“Big Bill Haywood  

 

 

 

 EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. DURING THE MONTH WE ALSO HONOR OTHER HISTORIC LEADERS AS WELL ON THIS SITE.

Book Review

Big Bill Haywood, Melvyn Dubofsky, Manchester University Press, Manchester England, 1987

If you are sitting around today wondering, as I occasionally do, what a modern day radical labor leader should look like then one need go no further than to observe the career, warts and all, of the legendary Bill Haywood. To previous generations of radicals that name would draw an automatic response. Today’s radicals, and others interested in social solutions to the pressing problems that have been bestowed on us by the continuation of the capitalist mode of production, may not be familiar with the man and his program for working class power. Professor Dubofsky’s little biographical sketch is thus just the cure for those who need a primer on this hero of the working class.

The good professor goes into some detail, despite limited accessibility, about Haywood’s early life out in the Western United States in the late 19th century. Those hard scrabble experiences made a huge imprint on the young Haywood as he tramped from mining camp to mining camp and tried to make ends mean, any way he could. Haywood, moreover, is the perfect example of the fact that working class political consciousness is not innate but gained through the hard experiences of life under the capitalist system. Thus, Haywood moved from itinerant miner to become a leading member of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and moved leftward along the political spectrum along the way. Not a small part in that was due to his trial on trumped up charges in Idaho for murder as part of a labor crackdown against the WFM by the mine owners and their political allies there.

As virtually all working class militants did at the turn of the 20th century, Big Bill became involved with the early American socialist movement and followed the lead of the sainted Eugene V. Debs. As part of the ferment of labor agitation during this period the organization that Haywood is most closely associated with was formed-The Industrial Workers of the World (hereafter IWW, also known as Wobblies). This organization- part union, part political party- was the most radical expression (far more radical than the rather tepid socialist organizations) of the American labor movement in the period before World War I.

The bulk of Professor Dubofsky’s book centers, as it should, on Haywood’s exploits as a leader of the IWW. Big Bill’s ups and downs mirrored the ups and downs of the organization. The professor goes into the various labor fights that Haywood led highlighted by the great 1912 Lawrence strike (of bread and roses fame), the various free speech fights but also the draconian Wilsonian policy toward the IWW after America declared war in 1917. That governmental policy essentially crushed the IWW as a mass working class organization. Moreover, as a leader Haywood personally felt the full wrath of the capitalist government. Facing extended jail time Haywood eventually fled to the young Soviet republic where he died in lonely exile in 1928.

The professor adequately tackles the problem of the political and moral consequences of that escape to Russia for the IWW and to his still imprisoned comrades so I will not address it here. However, there are two points noted by Dubofsky that warrant comment. First, he notes that Big Bill was a first rate organizer in both the WFM and the IWW. Those of us who are Marxists sometimes tend to place more emphasis of the fact that labor leaders need to be “tribunes of the people” that we sometimes neglect the important “trade union secretary” part of the formula. Haywood seems to have had it all. Secondly, Haywood’s and the IWW’s experience with government repression during World War I, repeated in the “Red Scare” experience of the 1950’s against Communists and then later against the Black Panthers in the 1960’s should be etched into the brain of every militant today. When the deal goes down the capitalists and their hangers-on will do anything to keep their system. Anything. That said, read this Haywood primer. It is an important contribution to the study of American labor history.

***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin –The Big Knock-Out

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

Those who have been following this series about the exploits of the famous Ocean City (located just south of Los Angeles then now incorporated into the county) private detective Michael Philip Marlin (hereafter just Marlin the way everybody when he became famous after the Galton case out on the coast) and his contemporaries in the private detection business like Freddy Vance, Charles Nicolas (okay, okay Clara too), Sam Archer, Miles Spade, Johnny Spain, know that he related many of these stories to his son, Tyrone Fallon, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Tyrone later, in the 1970s, related these stories to the journalist who uncovered the relationship , Joshua Lawrence Breslin, a friend of my boyhood friend, Peter Paul Markin, who in turn related them to me over several weeks in the late 1980s. Despite that circuitous route I believe that I have been faithful to what Marlin presented to his son. In any case I take full responsibility for what follows.        

*******
Every wise guy, every sporting guy, every crippled corner newsie, hell, everybody over the age of twelve, no more, knows, knows to a certainty that boxing, you know guys (and these days gals) beating each other down for the amusement of the blood-lusted crowds is fixed. Is fixed six ways to Sunday even before the first bell is sounded. It is worst now than in the old days when you at least knew that when a champ was crowned he was the one and only champ not like now the World Boxing this, Federated Boxing that, and United Boxing the other thing handing out gaudy belts like they were going out of style. But just so nobody gets all nostalgic about the good old days, gets misty-eyed that only one champ meant only one skinning on the bet line, only one fix, let’s look at our trusty brother tough-edged, hard guy private eye Michael Philip Marlin as he tried to unravel murder and mayhem on the canvas. And while Marlin had seen it all, had figured out a few things in his time he almost for a minute believed with this kid, this well-built, scrappy kid that was being groomed for a championship fight was on the up and up. That momentary slip almost cost him his life so listen up…

Marlin thought that he really should have passed on the job, should have just walked away and maybe seen if that graveyard shift as the house- peeper at the old Taft Hotel was still available. Yes, he was short of dough, short of office rent money, short of room rent but lining himself up with Jacky Craig, the, ah, boxing promoter, and man of many operations, mostly illegal, gave him pause. But damn that rent had to be paid and so in the year of our lord 1940 one more gumshoe took a walk on the wild side and he showed up at Craig’s gym to find out what was expected of him. See what Jackie wanted to see him about.

Of course a wise guy, if he wants to stay a wise guy, or at least alive covers himself with layers of protection so Markin was prepared when he was frisked by Frankie Lip, a cheapjack gunsel who had been with Craig for years, before entering his majesty’s office. The nature of Craig’s offer though was pretty straight up, pretty straight up on the face of it, a job for a tough- guy private eye and not for some brainless muscle only good for taking shots to protect the boss. What Jackie wanted was for Marlin to investigate who had been threatening Earl Avery, the best fighter in his stable and a boxer everybody said was slated to take a run for the light heavy-weight championship, when he was ready. Not only had somebody, some punk, Jackie called him been threatening the Earl but also Jean, the girlfriend that Jackie had provided to keep Earl amused, and to keep an eye on him in the sex, drugs, booze department.  No booze, no dope and one girl, this Jean, who had Earl under her thumb about two minutes after he saw her.       

This Jean was a looker, the kind of woman Marlin favored, the kind he would take straight aim at if she wasn’t attached to the Earl, or to Jackie. Hell, taking a second look he thought if things worked out right he might take that run anyway, especially once he got close enough to get a small whiff of that sandalwood perfume she was wearing, wearing just enough to make a guy, a red-blooded guy, jump.  Moreover Jean’s story, when Marlin got around to hearing it, included some tough times, some down times. She had come West like a million other frails as she tried to make a go as a singer, along with another  woman doing duos and had finally caught on when Jackie heard them, mainly her over at the Club Lola near the Santa Monica Pier. Jackie signed them to perform at his club-casino, The Lighthouse, up in Malibu. But enough of Jean, enough for now because  Marlin was on the case to find out what the hell was going on in that murky world of boxing, big- time money boxing out on the angel streets of his city, Los Angeles.

What happened was simplicity itself a guy like Jackie Craig doesn’t take chances, tries to control his environment and so it was the case here too. That is why a certain Sammy Sams (believe it or not his real given name so why change it), a punk, was found floating out with the tide, a classic Jackie job and Marlin was ripping mad once he found out that he had been simple-simon doped up by Jackie. And Jackie tried to control all his arena, his boxing business, tried to control the new boxing commissioner, Steve Earle, a former state senator and power in the state capital, who had come in declaring the he was going to “clean the sport up.” So Jackie tried by might and main to buy him off, buy him off good. And Brother Earle turned out to be looking for the main chance, and that had Jackie’s signature all over it too. That was what Marlin was up against and after a few fists flying, a few off-hand shootings at The Lighthouse, and a few off-hand tosses under the sheets with Jean he closed down Jackie’s operation, closed down Earle’s operation and felt he had done some good work. Even if he got no dough to pay that office rent coming due at the end of the week.                    

Oh yeah, about Jean, about that perfume driving Marlin crazy every time he came with a mile of her. The Earl Avery thing was strictly as a favor to Jackie, a favor to get her act on his stage and before long Marlin and she were roughing up some sheets. Here is the funny thing though this Jean had her own ax to grind, grind against Steve Earle. Her previous performance companion, Ada, had committed suicide after they were forced, after striking out in a few mean street gin mills doing opening act duos for third-rate has-beens out in the heartland, to turn a few tricks out on the mean streets to keep body and soul together and Ada was too ashamed to face that fact. The funny part although obviously not funny was that this Ada was allegedly Steve Earle’s daughter and so Jean had drifted to L.A. to squeeze Earle for some dough, for retribution dough.

Naturally any girl, any guy for that matter, down on her uppers was entitled to take a chance at getting out from under with guys who had dough. But this Earle character proved quite reluctant even when she put the proposition to the boss, Jackie. But before she could properly squeeze the main chance Jackie as was his way tried to insure that his boy Earl had a one- hundred percent chance, no one-hundred and ten percent chance of winning that championship so the fix was in, in big time. Jackie bought Earle (who actually needed dough and so it made sense that Jean’s pitch fell on deaf ears) into the tent. Avery in three.  

Marlin took that probability off the agenda though when he confronted Jackie with his evidence. Those aforementioned fists and guns flailed away. Needless to say the boxing world was short one promoter. In the fallout Earle tumbled under Jackie’s weight after Marlin pulled the hammer down on his operation Jean and so lost her chance for serious dough. But ever the trouper all Jean said when her current partner said that The Lighthouse was closed was “I guess we have to hit the road again.” Nice. Nice too that Marlin told her to keep in touch, and keep wearing that sandalwood next time they met.           

***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

…she could not have been more thrilled, thrilled to be sitting, actually sitting, in Boston’s famous jazz club, the Hi-Top that she had heard so much about, sitting waiting just that minute with Lillian, her tagalong girlfriend, for the  Duke to begin his show. And as she, they, waited she thought back to just a few short months before when she had dismissed jazz, swing, anything faster than some slow waltzy thing as nothing but the devil’s music and good riddance.

Of course that theory had been drilled into her (and Lillian too) by every single thing that had happened in their blessed lives back up in Olde Saco, that’s in Maine if anybody was asking. Her (their) old-fashioned parents who had come down the vale of tears from Quebec and tried to replicate everything that had gone on there. Including tolerating only jolie blon music that seemed to have come from about the time of the forbears’ expulsion from Arcadia by the bloody British. Apparently they had not gotten over it (especially her father, Jacques, a frantic francophone ). Worse, if anything could be worse, was the weekly (maybe daily if she counted her parents’ harangues) preachment from the pulpit at Saint Anne Dupre’s railing against jazz, blues, mixing with the coloreds, and any movement faster that a trot. Jesus. (She knew she shouldn’t say that but there in Boston it probably would not get back to Olde Saco and penance.)

But that was then. One night, a Friday night after work, she (they) had gone to the Starlight Ballroom down by the far end of the beach at Olde Saco where they expected to hear Lester Mack and the Pack play their slow, dreamy music for the mixed crowd of G.I.s from the local military installations and civilians who had not heard the new dispensation. Somehow Lester had taken sick and Jean Bleu and the Dews were that band’s replacements and they came out swinging with Duke’s “A-Train.” What a night, a night when all those dreary guys turned out to be very happy to see some Jills (she, Lillian, and all the women in the place) swing to high heaven, jitter-bug to give it a name.    

That was the start and that was why on that very cold October night in 1943, after a three- hour train ride down from Portland, she (they) were sitting waiting on his lordship the Duke. And the only worry she (they, see they had talked it all over coming down on the train) had was where they were to meet the next morning if either of them “got lucky.” Yeah, bless that old devil’s music … 

 

*** Out In The 1950s B-Film Noir Night- Robert Lippert’s Motor Patrol

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Motor Patrol, 1950

Yes, if anybody is asking, I am on a B-film noir tear these days having exhausted most of the A-list stuff like Out Of The Past and Gilda. Down in the Bs though things get dicey- either the plotline is weird or the acting is wooden or the scenery looks like it cost about twelve dollars and some change to create. The film under review, Motor Patrol, fits that second category since the plotline is fairly decent, not up to its brothers and sisters on the A-list but not bad. Here it is in a nutshell.

The sprawling Los Angeles area in the post-World War II period needed every law enforcement tool at its command so it beefed up the motorcycle squad to handle the increased traffic, and an occasional murder. That murder, or rather murders part is what drives this film. A seemingly routine hit and run accident uncovered a big-time car heist operation-in a car crazy city that is hardly extraordinary although murder to keep such an operation going is a little unusual. As the coppers started zeroing on the bad guys, especially the head of the operation, a veteran motorcycle cop in pursuit of that honcho was killed.     

Naturally that set the whole city police apparatus on the trail, including using a police cadet to infiltrate the operation (said rookie the fiancé of the dead motorcycle cops’ sister-so it was personal). As he wormed his way into the operation as a top-flight out of town (Chi town, okay) car thief he raised suspensions (especially when he was clueless about auto repair) and was eventually exposed. But nothing bad happened to him since half the force came to his before that point, the point where the bad guys were just ready to do him in. The bad guys tumbled and that now seasoned rookie decided to tryout for the bikes squad. Figures.