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Tuesday, May 20, 2014
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From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-
Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.
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.
********
VI: Disaffection in the Army
For our second piece, we are grateful to Julian Putkowski for permission to publish his interview with Dave Wallis, a Young Communist League activist, who carried on the class struggle while serving with the British army in Egypt. The interview reveals details of the methods of political organisation and covert activities in the British army in Egypt during the Second World War. This piece is supplemented by Ian Birchall’s interview with Duncan Hallas, concentrating on dissent amongst the British forces in Egypt in 1946.
Disaffection amongst the ranks of the British army in the Second World War is dealt with in two publications by Raymond Challinor, The Struggle for Hearts and Minds: Essays on the Second World War, Bewick Press, Whitely Bay 1995, pp. 79–86; Military Discipline and Working Class Resistance in World War II, What Next?, no. 17, 2000, pp. 34–7.
Also of interest are Class War on the Home Front, Wildcat, 1986, which contains Socialists and the Army, reprinted from Solidarity, August/September 1942, reviewed by Martin Durham, Anti-Parliamentary Communism, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, Volume 54, part 1, Spring 1989. Peter Ward Fay, The Forgotten Army: India’s Armed Struggle for Independence, 1942–1945, Michigan 1994, deals partly with the mutinies in the Indian army, reviewed by Tariq Ali, The Third Man, Guardian, 24 May 1994; David Duncan, Mutiny in the RAF: The Air Force Strikes of 1946, with a Foreword by John Saville, Socialist History Society Occasional Papers Series, no. 8. Noel Crusz, The Cocos Islands Mutiny, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, WA 2001, describes the mutiny of gunners in the Ceylon Garrison Artillery on 8–9 May 1942, which resulted in three Ceylonese mutineers being executed.
For further information on the Cairo Forces’ Parliament, see Murray Armstrong, The Cairo Commons, Guardian, 27 May 1989; Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, War and the International, London 1986, pp. 88–9 (the forces’ parliaments in Cairo and Cyrenaica where Workers International League member Arthur Ledbetter was Prime Minister and Home Secretary); Tony Aitman, The War Within the War, Militant, 15 September 1989; The Eighth Army Defends Workers’ Right to Strike (an excerpt from Labor Action quoting the Eighth Army News), Workers Liberty, no. 22, June 1995, p. 11; Harry Ratner, Reluctant Revolutionary, Socialist Platform, London 1994, pp. 49ff. Gerry R. Rubin’s Durban 1942: A British Troopship Revolt (Hambledon Press, London 1992) investigates, especially from a legal perspective, events on 13 January 1942 when hundreds of army and air force servicemen refused to board an eastwards-bound British troopship, the City of Canterbury. Albert Meltzer’s I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels (AK Press, Edinburgh 1996) has a section in Chapter 5 on the strikes for demobilisation in Egypt and the Cairo Parliament. Vote for Them, a television play about the Cairo Forces Parliament, was screened on BBC2 on 2 June 1989. Of related interest is Evangelos Spyropoulos, The Greek Military (1909-–1941) and the Greek Mutinies in the Middle East (1941–1944), Eastern European Monographs, Boulder, CO 1993.
David Renton, Bread and Freedom
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.
********
VI: Disaffection in the Army
in the Second World War
The first piece in this section is an article by David Renton on Trotskyists in Egypt during and immediately after the Second World War. The article is particularly concerned with relationships between the British Trotskyists and the Egyptian Trotskyist organisation Bread and Freedom. The article draws on David Renton’s wider researches into Egyptian Trotskyism, and comes replete with many footnotes pointing out guides for further reading, as well as to the whereabouts of source materials. Bread and Freedom is an under-researched organisation. A few articles did appear in the contemporary left press, including J. Damien, Social and Political Conditions In Egypt Today, Fourth International, Volume 7, no. 7, July 1946; Egypte: Un Manifeste Programmatique Des Trotskystes Égyptiens, Quatrième Internationale, July–August 1947; and Egypt, Fourth International, Volume 8, no. 7, July–August 1947.
David Renton has recently tried to correct this omission, publishing a full-length history of the Egyptian group: Soldats britanniques et trotskysme égyptien: Pain et Liberté, Cahiers Léon Trotsky, no. 68, 2000, pp. 95–120. He has also published an article on the web, Egypt: A People’s History, Voice of the Turtle (at http://voiceoftheturtle.org/), July 2001. In addition he is co-author (with Anne Alexander) of a chapter in a book that will appear this year, Imperialism and Resistance in Egypt 1890–1990 in L. Zeilig, Marxism and Africa, New Clarion Press, Bristol 2002.For our second piece, we are grateful to Julian Putkowski for permission to publish his interview with Dave Wallis, a Young Communist League activist, who carried on the class struggle while serving with the British army in Egypt. The interview reveals details of the methods of political organisation and covert activities in the British army in Egypt during the Second World War. This piece is supplemented by Ian Birchall’s interview with Duncan Hallas, concentrating on dissent amongst the British forces in Egypt in 1946.
Disaffection amongst the ranks of the British army in the Second World War is dealt with in two publications by Raymond Challinor, The Struggle for Hearts and Minds: Essays on the Second World War, Bewick Press, Whitely Bay 1995, pp. 79–86; Military Discipline and Working Class Resistance in World War II, What Next?, no. 17, 2000, pp. 34–7.
Also of interest are Class War on the Home Front, Wildcat, 1986, which contains Socialists and the Army, reprinted from Solidarity, August/September 1942, reviewed by Martin Durham, Anti-Parliamentary Communism, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, Volume 54, part 1, Spring 1989. Peter Ward Fay, The Forgotten Army: India’s Armed Struggle for Independence, 1942–1945, Michigan 1994, deals partly with the mutinies in the Indian army, reviewed by Tariq Ali, The Third Man, Guardian, 24 May 1994; David Duncan, Mutiny in the RAF: The Air Force Strikes of 1946, with a Foreword by John Saville, Socialist History Society Occasional Papers Series, no. 8. Noel Crusz, The Cocos Islands Mutiny, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, WA 2001, describes the mutiny of gunners in the Ceylon Garrison Artillery on 8–9 May 1942, which resulted in three Ceylonese mutineers being executed.
For further information on the Cairo Forces’ Parliament, see Murray Armstrong, The Cairo Commons, Guardian, 27 May 1989; Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, War and the International, London 1986, pp. 88–9 (the forces’ parliaments in Cairo and Cyrenaica where Workers International League member Arthur Ledbetter was Prime Minister and Home Secretary); Tony Aitman, The War Within the War, Militant, 15 September 1989; The Eighth Army Defends Workers’ Right to Strike (an excerpt from Labor Action quoting the Eighth Army News), Workers Liberty, no. 22, June 1995, p. 11; Harry Ratner, Reluctant Revolutionary, Socialist Platform, London 1994, pp. 49ff. Gerry R. Rubin’s Durban 1942: A British Troopship Revolt (Hambledon Press, London 1992) investigates, especially from a legal perspective, events on 13 January 1942 when hundreds of army and air force servicemen refused to board an eastwards-bound British troopship, the City of Canterbury. Albert Meltzer’s I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels (AK Press, Edinburgh 1996) has a section in Chapter 5 on the strikes for demobilisation in Egypt and the Cairo Parliament. Vote for Them, a television play about the Cairo Forces Parliament, was screened on BBC2 on 2 June 1989. Of related interest is Evangelos Spyropoulos, The Greek Military (1909-–1941) and the Greek Mutinies in the Middle East (1941–1944), Eastern European Monographs, Boulder, CO 1993.
David Renton, Bread and Freedom
Julian Putkowski interviews Dave Wallis:
Backwards from Wivenhoe to Cairo
Swimming Against the Tide:
Duncan Hallas on his Experiences in Egypt
Monday, May 19, 2014
***Of This And That In
The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In
Search Of……Lost Classmates
From The Pen Of Frank
Jackman
I have spent
not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and
the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the
remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to
communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class
website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50th
anniversary reunion (some will never be found by choice or by being excluded
from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate).
I had noted in earlier sketches my own successes with this website in being
able to tout a guy whose photos of my old childhood neighborhood send me
spinning down memory lane, another about an old corner boy and our Adventure
car hop misadventures looking for the heart of Saturday night, writing a
tribute to our classmates fallen in Vietnam, and in answering a perplexing
question about what I saw as my role as a commentator on the site. I admitted I
had to marvel at some of the communications technology that makes our work a
lot easier than back in the day. The Internet was only maybe a dream, a mad
monk scientist far-fetched science fiction dream then as we struggled with
three by five cards and archaic Dewey Decimal systems.
I also admitted
in one of those sketches that for most of these fifty years since graduation I
had studiously avoided returning to the old town for any past class reunions
but this one I had wanted to attend, the reasons which not need detain us here.
Or I should say rather wanted to attend once the reunion committee was able to
track me down and invite me to attend. Or a better “rather” to join a NA64.com
website run by a wizard webmaster, Donna, who was also our class Vice-President
to keep up to date on progress for that reunion.
Part of the
reason I did join the class site was to keep informed about upcoming events but
also as is my wont to make commentary about various aspects of the old hometown,
the high school then, and any other tidbit that my esteemed fellow classmates
might want to ponder after all these years. All this made simple as pie by the
act of joining. Once logged in one is provided with a personal profile page
complete with space for private e-mails, story-telling, various vital
statistics like kids and grandkids, and space for the billion photos of that progeny,
mostly it seems for those darling grandkids that seem to pop up everywhere.
However
taking trips down memory lane is a chancey thing and as I became engrossed in
some of the early stories, some of the photos, and some of the comments I began
to think that I should become more active in trying to gather in the clan for
the upcoming reunion. Put myself in harness and get some of the leg work done.
Now lately, mercifully lately, when I volunteer for some project or other task
I do it with the idea that I will be an active participant and not just some
name on a committee listing. Otherwise I prefer to pass. So after some thought
I decided to leap in, to join the North Adamsville Class of 1964 reunion
committee.
Now as one
might expect in the modern age most of the committee members were scattered about,
although most were in Massachusetts. But here is the beauty of the Internet Donna,
our webmaster introduced above, actually lives in Florida for the winter. Not
to worry though the tasks at hand, the one that interest me here, finding lost classmates
(“missing” we call them on the website until they join) can be divvied up via
the Internet. And so most of the last winter was spent working the “net” trying
to find those elusive scattered to the winds classmates.
My assigned
task since part of my professional work is on the computer anyway was to cull
what existing social networking class-related websites had and to invite the
classmates on those sites to come on board. There were four main sites that I
was able to find after some preliminary Googling-those on Facebook obviously, those who had joined a commercial classmates
site, those who had joined a local North Adamsville site, and those who had
joined through an all-American high schools site. Easy stuff right. Well, kind
of-at least for those who were listed on those sites. All I did was to copy and
paste the following simple message (later expanded and more targeted):
First Notice (Made Simple I Hope- Just Click Below) –Save
The Date -Spread The Word To Any Class Of 1964 People You Are In Contact With
Fellow
classmates from the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964- On behalf of
the Reunion Committee I invite you go to the newly established class website-
click here-
http://www.northadamsville64.com/class_index.cfm
-to find out more information about the planned 50th
anniversary class reunion. The reunion is scheduled for the weekend of
September 20th 2014 at the Best Western Adams Inn in North Adamsville
(adjacent to the Neptune Bridge and river if you haven’t been to NA lately). The
theme “Try To Remember.” We also invite you to join the website, create your
own profile page, and share whatever you want to share with your fellow
classmates. Sorry for the generic nature of this message. Sorry also if you
received this message more than once if you belong to various NA-related
sites.
Naturally there were some snafus, for example, on Facebook unless you wanted to “friend” every person who
was on the North Adamsville Class of 1964 group page you could only leave
messages on a secondary message space-which the classmate, depending on how Facebook-crazed
they were (an iffy proposition for AARP-worthies), might or might not get
around to checking. On a commercial classmate site I had to actually join the
site for a nominal fee since in order to send internal site e-mails one of the
party’s had to be a paying member. Moreover after matching names on that site
with names on our class website, including those who have passed away, I
noticed that a number of names were of those who were now deceased so that site
had not been updated for a while. On the local North Adamsville site I also had
to pay a nominal fee and their internal e-mail was erratic to say the least. Finally
the all-American site although free had a substantial number of names found on
the other sites. Normal detective work problems looking for people who have
been “missing” for fifty years.
Of course this kind of work is labor intensive for the
amount of results. The Internet-related population came in at around 200 names.
The NA Class of 1964 was a big baby-boomer cohort with over 500 graduates. Unfortunately
in conformity with any actuarial table you care to consult about seventy of our
classmates have passed on leaving about 440 possible contacts (not including
spouses, of course except those 15 couples, those 15 class sweetheart couples
who heroically married each other and lived happily ever after). We leveled off
at about 200 who joined the site and each of those brave souls received a
message from Donna upon joining which went like this:
Hi- Welcome to our class website-
For those who have, uh, lost, misplaced or sold off their
“Manet” [class yearbook] to the highest bidder we have a link to the Thomas Public
Library site on the left side of the home page so you can take that big trip
down memory lane. By the way (BTW, okay) the theme for this reunion is
“Try To Remember” so everybody better check that site out or get your yearbook
out of the attic. Spread the word to others from NA64 who you are in contact
with and sent any information that might help us to find missing classmates to webmaster
Donna Murphy McGraw. Also send photos of any previous reunions you may have
attended. Yes, and write stuff, put photos and video on your personal profile
site too. We want to hear about everybody’s story over the past 50 years.
And so it goes…
In Honor Of May Day 2014-From The American Left History Blog Archives -From The May Day Organizing
2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts
Boston's International
Workers Day 2013
BMDC International Workers Day Rally
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall
Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM
(Court St. & Cambridge St.)
T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)
To download flyer click here. (Please print double-sided)
Other May Day events:
Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston)
East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm
BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally
Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston
********
All Out May Day 2012: A Day Without the
99% -General Strike Occupy Boston Working Group
In late December
2011 the General Assembly (GA) of Occupy Los Angeles, in the aftermath of the
stirring and successful November 2nd Oakland General Strike and December 12th
West Coast Port Shutdown, issued a call for a national and international
general strike centered on immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a
moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. These and
other political issues such as transparency and horizontal democracy that have
become associated with the Occupy movement are to be featured in the actions
set for May Day 2012.
May Day is the
historic international working class holiday that has been celebrated each year
in many parts of the world since the time of the Haymarket Martyrs in Chicago
in 1886 and the struggle for the eight-hour work day. More recently it has been
a time for the hard-pressed immigrant communities here in America to join
together in the fight against deportations and other discriminatory aspects of
governmental immigration policy.
Some political
activists here in Boston, mainly connected with Occupy Boston (OB), decided
just after the new year to support that general strike call and formed the
General Strike Occupy Boston working group (GSOB). GSOB has met, more or less
weekly, since then to plan our own May Day actions. The first step in that
process was to bring a resolution incorporating the Occupy Los Angeles issues before
the GA of Occupy Boston for approval. That resolution was approved by GA OB on
January 8, 2012.
Early discussions
within the working group centered on drawing the lessons of the West Coast
actions last fall. Above all what is and what isn’t a general strike.
Traditionally a general strike, as witness the recent actions in Greece and
other countries, is called by workers’ organizations and/or parties for a
specified period of time in order to shut down substantial parts of the
capitalist economy over some set of immediate demands. A close analysis of the
West Coast actions showed a slightly different model: one based on community
pickets of specified industrial targets, downtown mass street actions, and
scattered individual and collective acts of solidarity like student support
strikes and sick-outs. Additionally, small businesses and other allies were
asked to close and some did close in solidarity.
That latter model
seemed more appropriate to the tasks at hand in Boston given its sparse recent
militant labor history and that it is a regional financial, technological and
educational hub rather than an industrial center. GSOB also came to a
realization that successful actions in Boston on May Day 2012 would not
necessarily exactly follow the long established radical and labor traditions of
the West Coast. Our focus will be actions and activities that respond and
reflect the Boston political situation as we attempt to create, re-create
really, an on-going May Day tradition beyond the observance of the day by labor
radicals and the immigrant communities.
Over the past
several years, starting with the nation-wide actions in 2006, the Latin and
other immigrant communities in and around Boston have been celebrating May Day
as a day of action on the very pressing problem of immigration status as well
as the traditional working class solidarity holiday. It was no accident that
Los Angeles, scene of massive immigration actions in the past and currently one
of the areas facing the brunt of the deportation drives by the Obama
administration, would be in the lead to call for national actions this year.
One of the first steps GSOB took was to try to reach out to the already
existing Boston May Day Coalition (BMDC), which has spearheaded the annual
marches and rallies in the immigrant communities, in order to learn of their
experiences and to coordinate actions. After making such efforts GSOB has
joined forces with BMDC in order to coordinate the over-all May Day actions.
Taking our cue
from the developing Occupy May Day movement, especially the broader and more
inclusive messages coming out of Occupy Wall Street, GSOB has centered our
slogans on the theme of “Occupy May First - A Day Without the 99%” in order to
highlight the fact that in capitalist America labor, of one kind or another,
has created all the wealth but has not shared in the accumulated profits.
Highlighting the increasing economic gap, political voiceless-ness, and social
issues related to race, class, sexual inequality, gender and the myriad other
oppressions we face under capitalism is in keeping with the efforts initiated
by Occupy Boston last fall.
On May Day GSOB
is calling on the 99% to strike, skip work, walk out of school, and refrain
from shopping, banking and business in order to implement that general slogan.
We encourage working people to request the day off, or to call in sick. Small
businesses are encouraged to close for the day and join the rest of the 99% in
the streets.
For students at
all levels GSOB is calling for a walk-out of classes. Further we call on
college students to occupy the universities. With a huge student population of
over 250,000 in the Boston area no-one-size-fits- all strategy seems
appropriate. Each kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school,
college, graduate school and wayward think tank should plan its own strike
actions and GSOB suggests at some point in the day that all meet at a central
location in downtown Boston.
In the early
hours on May 1st members of the 99% will converge on the Boston Financial
District for a day of direct action to demand an end to corporate rule and a
shift of power to the people. The Financial District Block Party will start at
7:00 AM on the corner of Federal Street & Franklin Street in downtown
Boston. Banks and corporations are strongly encouraged to close down for the
day.
At noon there
will be a permit-approved May Day rally at Boston City Hall Plaza jointly
sponsored by BMDC and GSOB. Following the rally participants are encouraged to
head to East Boston for solidarity marches centered on the immigrant
communities that will start at approximately 2:00 PM and move from East Boston,
Chelsea, and Revere to Everett for a rally at 4:00 PM. Other activities that
afternoon for those who chose not to go to East Boston will be scheduled in and
around the downtown area.
That evening, for
those who cannot for whatever reasons participate in the daytime actions, there
will be a “Funeral March” for the banks forming at 7:00 PM at Copley Square
that steps off at 8:00 PM and will march throughout the downtown area.
The GSOB is urging the following slogans for May 1st. - No work. No school. No chores. No
shopping. No banking. Let’s show the 1% that we have the power. Let’s show the
world what a day without the 99% really means. And let’s return to the old
traditions of May Day as a day of international solidarity with our working and
oppressed sisters and brothers around the world. GSOB urges -All Out For May
Day 2012!
***A Simple Act Of Bravery-Concerning The Second Selma To Montgomery Civil Rights March, Circa 1965
**********
Kudos, Dave Patrick, Kudos
*******
Dave
*********
Kudos again Dave of such small acts human history rather than an unending story of crushed piles of bones gives hope.
From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin
We all know the heroes or at least the names of the highly publicized heroes of the black civil rights movement down South (and later up North and West) in the 1960s led by the courageous Doctor Martin Luther King and his compatriots. Less well known, and generally unknown except perhaps at the margins of specialty books on the subject, are the mass of average, well maybe more than average, citizens, mainly from the North, and mainly students or the young who put themselves on the line, put themselves on the line of fire to do the right thing in the face of civil evil. This is a short sketch about one such simple act of bravery.
Not everybody who participated in the civil rights struggles down South came to those tasks fully aware politically or with the deepest motives-but they were there. Take the case of Dave Patrick from my hometown of North Adamsville, a small city just outside of Boston which despite its proximity to the city had virtually no blacks living there in the early 1960s the time of the great struggles down South (and according to some fairly current census information the black population of the town today is still minuscule). And we had no blacks, none in our graduating class and one sole black teacher during our four year stay. Dave Patrick, although we graduated together in 1964 was unknown to me until recently when through a 50th Anniversary class reunion site we “met” and he related the information that he had participated in the second Selma to Montgomery march in 1965. Not necessarily for the highest political motives at first but he went.
I was surprised by the story of his action because I believed, as mentioned below in my e-mail responses that I was the only vocal pro-civil rights activist in the school or the neighborhood. Certainly the town, white working-class, mainly third and fourth generation Irish and Italian, at its core and dependent on the local ship-building industry for many jobs and industry-related jobs held the common racial views of day and might have had, if it rose to that level then, some sympathy with the whites down south. And certainly in the high school to the extent that such dramatic social issues drew any attention at all as against who the hot girls or guys were, who had a hot car, who was doing what to whom down at the midnight “submarine races” lovers’ lane beachfront well-detailed in Monday morning before school boys’ and girls’ “lav” talkfest, students would reflect for the most part what was being said at home. Of course once a lot of us got away from the town, got emerged in issue-oriented campus life and away from the high school norms many things changed. They did for David anyway.
David had gone away to college after being a very bright high school student. But he like a lot of us then (and maybe now too but I see very little when I am on real campuses) got caught up in the turbulent social life of the times, the experimental 1960s time of blessed memory -drugs, sex and rock and roll to put a short name to it. While at one particular party, a frat party at his school he was confronted with a blatantly racist-themed event (mock, and maybe not so mock, honoring the KKK) and plenty of street-wise racist talk and he balked at it. Dave told me that event, and the cold hard fact that he was going to flunk out of school anyway because of his excessive social life, led him to the Selma march. A mixed motive, no question. He also said that he was afraid every minute that he was down there in Alabama since he had never been that far south, had been heckled, and the whole police state presence there unnerved him. But he marched and survived to tell the tale.
Below are my e-mail responses to the details of his story and some observations of my own. **********
Kudos, Dave Patrick, Kudos
Although you really should have placed your fine piece about your participation in the second Selma to Montgomery march in 1965 in the “Message Forum” section so all your fellow classmates could read it I am just glad you placed the piece somewhere.
Since we have exchanged previous e-mails on this subject I would now publicly honor your brave act of heading south whatever your private reasoning. Alabama and Mississippi were murderous dangerous places foremost for militant black freedom- fighters and just behind then white Yankee civil-rights supporters. As you know from one of our previously exchanged e-mails in the summer of 1964 when the civil rights movement was desperate for people to head south to Alabama I had volunteered to go. When my family, including my mother usually supportive but not on this one, heard about that idea they threatened to disown me, to throw me out of the house. I buckled under and did not go. The most I did in those times was to be part of a small group of students in high school sending books to children in Alabama, earlier on joining an occasional picket line in front of Woolworth’s in downtown Boston in support of the lunch counter sit-in demonstrators down South, and some work a few weeks one summer on voter registration in North Carolina. So you can see why I say, and continue to say, kudos, brother, kudos.
As we have been recollecting those bedeviled times I keep feeling how strange it was that you and I, others too maybe, who came out of very white working-class North Adamsville and were just a step or two economically above the blacks we were supporting had decided to cast our fate with what Jack Kerouac called the fellaheen of the world, the downtrodden and forgotten ones. Given the racial climate around town then, and probably now too, it seems almost impossible except as an act of extreme idealism that I could have thought of heading, and you did, head south then. Those were certainly heady times.
******
Dave- interesting story about how you got to Alabama. I will tell you however that rather than hide the fact you should have just left it as is on your profile page. It did not matter why you went. YOU WENT and coming out of lily- white North Adamsville where we only had one black teacher and no black fellow students (we might as well have been in the South on that account) despite the historic black community of Roxbury being within a stone’s throw right over the bridge that speaks to me as a very brave and honorable act.
Moreover- to place your act in context- in high school I, along with some students from North Adamsville and Hullsville High were involved in a books for Alabama program sponsored by the NAACP in Boston and we took a lot of heat from our friends and neighbors for that small action. As well as the few times I went into Boston in support of trying to de-segregate the lunch-counter down south by picketing Woolworth’s where we took much heat from local yahoos. You actually went down to the heart of the beast so kudos, brother, kudos.
My more serious work with the black liberation struggle actually came later when I lived in Oakland and got involved with Black Panther defense as the government was trying to jail and/or kill every black militant it could get its hands on and still later on apartheid in South Africa. I will keep what you sent to me by private e-mail in confidence if you wish but believe me I have great admiration for what you did.
Later Peter Paul Markin *******
Dave
To finish up on the Selma-Montgomery March second e-mail of 3/16 I should note that I faced some of the same family hostility that you encountered. With the exception of my mother who has some kind of low-level Dorothy Day Catholic Worker spirit that drove her on social issues (her social concerns for other people, for her sons nothing but rancor and “disappointment”) that hostility was palpable. My mother is probably where I picked up my own fledgling sense of social consciousness (overlaid back then with that loner, existential “king hell king” thing). My father was nothing but a good old boy Kentucky coalminer displaced by World War II and the Marines who wound up being stationed at the Hullsville Naval Depot before being demobilized. The best I/we could ever get him to say about black people was “nigras.”
On my mother’s side there were nothing but Irish rednecks many of whom still lived over in the old family town of South Boston and who in our generation were well known in the fight against desegregation that rocked that area in the mid-1970s and 1980s. Hell I could not even go over there then without being harassed the minute I hit L Street where they hung out. Here is the kicker though- in 1964 when the civil rights movement was desperate for people to head south to Alabama I had volunteered to go. When my family, including my mother on this one, heard about that they threatened to disown me, to throw me out of the house. I buckled under and did not go. So you can see why I say, and continue to say, kudos, brother, kudos.
Later Peter Paul Markin*********
Kudos again Dave of such small acts human history rather than an unending story of crushed piles of bones gives hope.
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