President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning

Because the public deserves the truth and whistle-blowers deserve protection.

We are military veterans, journalists, educators, homemakers, lawyers, students, and citizens.

We ask you to consider the facts and free US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

As an Intelligence Analyst stationed in Iraq, Pvt. Manning had access to some of America’s dirtiest secrets—crimes such as torture, illegal surveillance, and corruption—often committed in our name.

Manning acted on conscience alone, with selfless courage and conviction, and gave these secrets to us, the public.

“I believed that if the general public had access to the information contained within the[Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy,”

Manning explained to the military court. “I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.”

Journalists used these documents to uncover many startling truths. We learned:

• Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus helped support torture in Iraq.
• Deliberate civilian killings by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan went unpunished.
• Thousands of civilian casualties were never acknowledged publicly.
• Most Guantanamo detainees were innocent.

For service on behalf of an informed democracy, Manning was sentenced by military judge Colonel Denise Lind to a devastating 35 years in prison.

Government secrecy has grown exponentially during the past decade, but more secrecy does not make us safer when it fosters unaccountability.

Pvt. Manning was convicted of Espionage Act charges for providing WikiLeaks with this information, but  the prosecutors noted that they would have done the same had the information been given to The New York Times. Prosecutors did not show that enemies used this information against the US, or that the releases resulted in any casualties.

Pvt. Manning has already been punished, even in violation of military law.

She has been:

• Held in confinement since May 29, 2010.

• Subjected to illegal punishment amounting to torture for nearly nine months at Quantico Marine Base, Virginia, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 13—facts confirmed by both the United Nation’s lead investigator on torture and military judge Col. Lind.

• Denied a speedy trial in violation of UCMJ, Article 10, having been imprisoned for over three years before trial.

• Denied anything resembling a fair trial when prosecutors were allowed to change the charge sheet to match evidence presented, and enter new evidence, after closing arguments.

Pvt. Manning believed you, Mr. President, when you came into office promising the most transparent administration in history, and that you would protect whistle-blowers. We urge you to start upholding those promises, beginning with this American prisoner of conscience.

We urge you to grant Pvt. Manning’s petition for a Presidential Pardon.

FIRST& LAST NAME _____________________________________________________________

STREET ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________

CITY, STATE & ZIP _____________________________________________________________

EMAIL& PHONE _____________________________________________________________

Please return to: For more information: www.privatemanning.org

Private Manning Support Network, c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610

********

Markin comments:   

There is no question that now that her trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, that a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and  nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that Chelsea Manning's case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity and has several legal moves going from action to get the  necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to sign on to the Amnesty International petition above to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.                   

 

I attended some of the sessions of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial in the summer of 2013 and am often asked about what she could expect from the various procedures going forward to try to “spring” her from the clutches of the American government, or as I say whenever I get the chance to not leave “our buddy behind” in the time-honored military parlance. I have usually answered depending on what stage her post-conviction case is in that her sentence was draconian by all standards for someone who did not, although they tried to pin this on her, “aid the enemy.” Certainly Judge Lind though she was being lenient with thirty-five years when the government wanted sixty (and originally more before some of the counts were consolidated). The next step was to appeal, really now that I think about it, a pro forma appeal to the commanding general of the Washington, D.C. military district where the trial was held. There were plenty of grounds to reduce the sentence but General Buchanan backed up his trial judge in the winter of 2014. Leaving Chelsea supporters right now with only the prospect of a presidential pardon to fight for as the court appeals are put together which will take some time.

No question since her trial, conviction, and draconian sentence of thirty-five years imposed by a vindictive American government heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning’s has fallen off the radar. The incessant news cycle which has a short life cycle covered her case sporadically, covered the verdict, covered the sentencing and with some snickers cover her announcement directly after the sentencing that she wanted to live as her true self, a woman. (A fact that her supporters were aware of prior to the announcement but agreed that the issue of her sexual identity should not get mixed up with her heroic actions.) Since then despite occasional public rallies and actions her case had tended, as most political prisoner cases do, to get caught up in the appeals process and that keeps it out of the limelight.            

On Sunday October 12^th Chelsea Manning was honored and remembered by the Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade with a banner calling for her freedom as they marched in the annual Honk parade which goes through Somerville, Ma into Harvard Square for the Octoberfest. The banner drew applause and return shouts of “Free Chelsea.” The Smedley Butler Brigade continues to stand behind our sister. We will not leave her behind. We also urge everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to pardon Chelsea Manning

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30  

I got my start in working with anti-war GIs back in the early 1970s after my own military service was over. After my own service I felt a compelling need to fight the monster from the outside after basically fruitless and difficult efforts inside. That work included helping create a couple of GI coffeehouses near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down at Fort Dix in New Jersey in order for GIs to have a “friendly” space in which to think through what they wanted to do in relationship to the military.

Some wanted help to apply for the then tough to get discharge for conscientious objection. Tough because once inside the military, at least this was the way things went, the military argued against the depth of the applying soldier’s convictions and tended to dismiss such applications out of hand. Only after a few civil court cases opened up the application process later when the courts ruled that the military was acting arbitrarily and capriciously in rejecting such applications out of hand did things open up a little in that channel. Others wanted to know their rights against what they were told by their officers and NCOs. But most, the great majority, wanted a place, a non-military place, a non-GI club, where they could get away from the smell, taste and macho talk of war.

Although there are still a few places where the remnants of coffeehouses exist like the classic Oleo Strut down at Fort Hood in Texas the wars of the past decade or so had produced no great GI resistance. There are many reasons for this, mainly the kind of volunteer the military accepts but probably a greater factor is that back then was the dominance of the citizen-soldier, the draftee, in stirring things up, stirring things up inside as a reflection of what was going on out on the streets and on the campuses. I still believe that in the final analysis you have to get to the “cannon fodder,” the grunts, the private soldier if you want to stop the incessant war machine. Check out what happened, for example, on Russian the front when the desperate soldiers left the trenches during 1917 after they got fed up with the Czar and the whole mess.

Everyone who has the least bit of sympathy for the anti-war struggles of the past decade should admire what Chelsea Manning has done by her actions releasing that treasure trove of information about American atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. She has certainly paid the price for her convictions with a draconian sentence. It is hard to judge how history will record any particular heroic action like hers but if the last real case with which her action can be compared with is a guide, Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, she should find an honored spot. Moreover Chelsea did that action while in the military which has its own peculiar justice system. Her action, unlike back in Vietnam War times, when the Army was half in mutiny was one of precious few this time out. Now that I think about she does not have to worry about her honored place in history. It is already assured. But just to be on the safe side let’s fight like hell for her freedom. We will not leave our sister Chelsea behind.              

 

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

 

 

***The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes-Part II-Marked Woman  

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Marked Woman, starring Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, 1937

Guys, guys like me from old-time working class neighborhoods whatever their take on the situation learned early on that you did not cross the local tough guys, the corner boys, the nickel and dime hoodlums who inevitably populated such neighborhoods and held them in check. Guys, guys like me, also figured the angles a little, made a decision, one way or the other, to either lean into the criminal life, the life of the drifter, grifter, midnight sifter or break out and try some other way, some other life. So some guys who figured all the angles a little toward those dark midnight stars figured a couple of easy scores, maybe with a little luck thrown, although they really believed that you made your own luck, and they would be on easy street. Or face down in some rain-soaked back alley with a couple of errant slugs in their kissers for having played the angles a little too closely. The other guys, guy like me, dipped our fingers in for a minute, drawn by the lure of easy street (compared to the “from hunger” street staring us in the face) and backed off, although that back off was a close thing for guys, guys like me, with big wanting habits. Apparently, at least going by the story-line in the film under review reputed to be based on the case of the then fallen mobster Lucky Luciano, Marked Woman, some gals from the “wrong side of the tracks” also had some decisions to make, had some dreams to make some fast dough and then step out onto easy street, or die trying.            

Here is how the female version goes. Well a girl, a girl from the “wrong side of the tracks” has got to look out for herself especially if she has no great skills other than dressing and dancing well. And that is what corralled five women who made their way in the world as “hostesses,” you know party girls and I don’t to spell out what was expected of them do I, besides dancing and looking beautiful although the film leaves that part, the sex part, rather vague, in a clip joint recently taken over by one hard-nosed, no holds barred mobster, Johnny Vanning (the Lucky Luciano-based figure) who made his decisions strictly by the signs of the cash nexus and of keeping himself out of jail by any means necessary. Of course all the hostesses had dreams, soft, small dreams, but the ones here knew the score and figured easy street was not coming their way. Except Mary (played by the girl with the Bette Davis eyes). See Mary was smart, not school smart but “street smart,” the kind of smart that matters if you are running your dreams toward easy street. She figured a few more bumps and then easy street, no problem.  

What Mary didn’t figure on was one of her “dates,” a guy who ran afoul of Johnny Vanning, and you do not run afoul of Johnny and live to a ripe old age, was found face down in the river. And what Mary also did not figure on was that she was going to be collared for the crime while her kid sister was in town, was right in the room when the coppers pinched her. See Mary had been supporting that kid sister, had sent her to college, and the sister was clueless about how Mary made her dough. So things begin to fall apart in Mary’s well-ordered know all the angles life.  And the number one thing that broke her up, made her see some light, was that her sister, caught in the middle all confused about her future now that Mary’s house of cards world had tumbled, had attended a party at Johnny’s, had squawked when some guy thought she really was a party girl and wound up very dead in Johnny’s favorite spot, the river.           

So Mary, with the same determination that drove her easy street dreams made Johnny V. a marked man and turned to an up and coming assistant district attorney, Graham (played by Humphrey Bogart) who had been put in charge of that “date” murder case and  now was going to nail Johnny for Mary’s sister’s murder. But it was not so easy because a guy like Johnny Vanning knew a few angles too, had a smart mouthpiece who had kept him out of jail for a long time, and had not become a major crime boss by being nice. Worse, worse for Mary’s case, was that her fellow hostesses initially would not come forward against Johnny. Would not come forward until Johnny tried to kill the hostess who had actually seen what Johnny had done to Mary’s sister at the party. Then Mary rallied the other hostesses and between them and our up and coming assistant district attorney Johnny Vanning was going to do some very hard time. And Mary? Well Mary, like all the Marys, hell, like all the guys and gals from the wrong side of the tracks, guys like me, was going to have to reevaluate the kind of angles that she knew about, and her easy street dreams too.           

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poets’ Corner  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed, artists who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other, writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy, writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and the maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets, musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.

And then the war drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for….            

THE BATTLE OF LIÈGE


Now spake the Emperor to all his shining battle forces,
To the Lancers, and the Rifles, to the Gunners and the Horses;--
And his pride surged up within him as he saw their banners stream!--
"'T is a twelve-day march to Paris, by the road our fathers travelled,
And the prize is half an empire when the scarlet road's unravelled--
Go you now across the border,
God's decree and William's order--
Climb the frowning Belgian ridges
With your naked swords agleam!
Seize the City of the Bridges--
Then get on, get on to Paris--
To the jewelled streets of Paris--
To the lovely woman, Paris, that has driven me to dream!"

A hundred thousand fighting men
They climbed the frowning ridges,
With their flaming swords drawn free
And their pennants at their knee.
They went up to their desire,
To the City of the Bridges,
With their naked brands outdrawn
Like the lances of the dawn!
In a swelling surf of fire,
Crawling higher--higher--higher--
Till they crumpled up and died
Like a sudden wasted tide,
And the thunder in their faces beat them down and flung them wide!

They had paid a thousand men,
Yet they formed and came again,
For they heard the silver bugles sounding challenge to their pride,
And they rode with swords agleam
For the glory of a dream,
And they stormed up to the cannon's mouth and withered there, and
  died....
The daylight lay in ashes
On the blackened western hill,
And the dead were calm and still;
But the Night was torn with gashes--
Sudden ragged crimson gashes--
And the siege-guns snarled and roared,
With their flames thrust like a sword,
And the tranquil moon came riding on the heaven's silver ford.

What a fearful world was there,
Tangled in the cold moon's hair!
Man and beast lay hurt and screaming,
(Men must die when Kings are dreaming!)--
While within the harried town
Mothers dragged their children down
As the awful rain came screaming,
For the glory of a Crown!

So the Morning flung her cloak
Through the hanging pall of smoke--
Trimmed with red, it was, and dripping with a deep and angry stain!
And the Day came walking then
Through a lane of murdered men,
And her light fell down before her like a Cross upon the plain!
But the forts still crowned the height
With a bitter iron crown!
They had lived to flame and fight,
They had lived to keep the Town!
And they poured their havoc down
All that day ... and all that night....
While four times their number came,
Pawns that played a bloody game!--
With a silver trumpeting,
For the glory of the King,
To the barriers of the thunder and the fury of the flame!

So they stormed the iron Hill,
O'er the sleepers lying still,
And their trumpets sang them forward through the dull succeeding dawns,
But the thunder flung them wide,
And they crumpled up and died,--
They had waged the war of monarchs--and they died the death of pawns.

But the forts still stood.... Their breath
Swept the foeman like a blade,
Though ten thousand men were paid
To the hungry purse of Death,
Though the field was wet with blood,
Still the bold defences stood,
Stood!

And the King came out with his bodyguard at the day's departing gleam--
And the moon rode up behind the smoke and showed the King his dream.

_Dana Burnet_

From The Marxist Archives- In Honor Of The 97^th Anniversary Of The Russian October Revolution- Leon Trotsky On The Lessons Of The Russian Revolution

 


Workers Vanguard No. 968

5 November 2010

In Honor of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution

For New October Revolutions!

(From the Archives of Marxism)

 

November 7 (October 25 by the calendar used in Russia at the time) marks the 93rd anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Led by the Bolshevik Party of V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the workers’ seizure of power in Russia gave flesh and blood reality to the Marxist understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Despite the subsequent Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet workers state, culminating in its counterrevolutionary destruction in 1991-92, the October Revolution was and is the international proletariat’s greatest victory; its final undoing, a world-historic defeat. The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) fought to the bitter end in defense of the Soviet Union and the bureaucratically deformed workers states of East Europe, while calling for workers political revolutions to oust the parasitic nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies that ruled these states. This is the same program we uphold today for the remaining workers states of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.

Having been expelled from the USSR in 1929 by Stalin, Trotsky spent the remainder of his life in exile. In November 1932, he gave a speech to a Danish social-democratic student group in Copenhagen. He outlined the political conditions and the social forces that drove the Russian Revolution, stressing the decisive role of the Bolshevik Party. Illuminating the worldwide impact of the Russian Revolution and its place in history, Trotsky underlined the necessity of sweeping away the decaying capitalist order and replacing it with a scientifically planned international socialist economy that will lay the material basis for human freedom.

The ICL fights to forge workers parties modeled on Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks to lead the struggle for new October Revolutions around the globe.

* * *

Revolution means a change of the social order. It transfers the power from the hands of a class which has exhausted itself into those of another class, which is on the rise....

Without the armed insurrection of November 7, 1917, the Soviet state would not be in existence. But the insurrection itself did not drop from Heaven. A series of historical prerequisites was necessary for the October revolution.

1. The rotting away of the old ruling classes—the nobility, the monarchy, the bureaucracy.

2. The political weakness of the bourgeoisie, which had no roots in the masses of the people.

3. The revolutionary character of the peasant question.

4. The revolutionary character of the problem of the oppressed nations.

5. The significant social weight of the proletariat.

To these organic pre-conditions we must add certain conjunctural conditions of the highest importance:

6. The Revolution of 1905 was the great school, or in Lenin’s words, the “dress rehearsal” of the Revolution of 1917. The Soviets, as the irreplaceable organizational form of the proletarian united front in the revolution, were created for the first time in the year 1905.

7. The imperialist war sharpened all the contradictions, tore the backward masses out of their immobility and thereby prepared the grandiose scale of the catastrophe.

But all these conditions, which fully sufficed for the outbreak of the Revolution, were insufficient to assure the victory of the proletariat in the Revolution. For this victory one condition more was needed:

8. The Bolshevik Party....

In the year 1883 there arose among the emigres the first Marxist group. In the year 1898, at a secret meeting, the foundation of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party was proclaimed (we all called ourselves Social-Democrats in those days). In the year 1903 occurred the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In the year 1912 the Bolshevist fraction finally became an independent Party.

It learned to recognize the class mechanics of society in struggle, in the grandiose events of twelve years (1905-1917). It educated cadres equally capable of initiative and of subordination. The discipline of its revolutionary action was based on the unity of its doctrine, on the tradition of common struggles and on confidence in its tested leadership.

Thus stood the Party in the year 1917. Despised by the official “public opinion” and the paper thunder of the intelligentsia press, it adapted itself to the movement of the masses. Firmly it kept in hand the control of factories and regiments. More and more the peasant masses turned toward it. If we understand by “nation,” not the privileged heads, but the majority of the people, that is, the workers and peasants, then Bolshevism became in the course of the year 1917 a truly national Russian Party.

In September 1917, Lenin, who was compelled to keep in hiding, gave the signal, “The crisis is ripe, the hour of the insurrection has approached.” He was right. The ruling classes had landed in a blind alley before the problems of the war, the land and national liberation. The bourgeoisie finally lost its head. The democratic parties, the Mensheviks and social-revolutionaries, wasted the remains of the confidence of the masses in them by their support of the imperialist war, by their policy of ineffectual compromise and concession to the bourgeois and feudal property-owners. The awakened army no longer wanted to fight for the alien aims of imperialism. Disregarding democratic advice, the peasantry smoked the landowners out of their estates. The oppressed nationalities at the periphery rose up against the bureaucracy of Petrograd. In the most important workers’ and soldiers’ Soviets the Bolsheviki were dominant. The workers and soldiers demanded action. The ulcer was ripe. It needed a cut of the lancet.

Only under these social and political conditions was the insurrection possible. And thus it also became inevitable. But there is no playing around with the insurrection. Woe to the surgeon who is careless in the use of the lancet! Insurrection is an art. It has its laws and its rules.

The Party carried through the October insurrection with cold calculation and with flaming determination. Thanks to this, it conquered almost without victims. Through the victorious Soviets the Bolsheviki placed themselves at the head of a country which occupies one sixth of the surface of the globe....

Let us now in closing attempt to ascertain the place of the October Revolution, not only in the history of Russia but in the history of the world. During the year 1917, in a period of eight months, two historical curves intersect. The February upheaval—that belated echo of the great struggles which had been carried out in past centuries on the territories of Holland, England, France, almost all of Continental Europe—takes its place in the series of bourgeois revolutions. The October Revolution proclaims and opens the domination of the proletariat. It was world capitalism that suffered its first great defeat on the territory of Russia. The chain broke at its weakest link. But it was the chain that broke, and not only the link.

Capitalism has outlived itself as a world system. It has ceased to fulfill its essential mission, the increase of human power and human wealth. Humanity cannot stand still at the level which it has reached. Only a powerful increase in productive force and a sound, planned, that is, Socialist organization of production and distribution can assure humanity—all humanity—of a decent standard of life and at the same time give it the precious feeling of freedom with respect to its own economy. Freedom in two senses—first of all, man will no longer be compelled to devote the greater part of his life to physical labor. Second, he will no longer be dependent on the laws of the market, that is, on the blind and dark forces which have grown up behind his back. He will build up his economy freely, that is, according to a plan, with compass in hand. This time it is a question of subjecting the anatomy of society to the X-ray through and through, of disclosing all its secrets and subjecting all its functions to the reason and the will of collective humanity. In this sense, Socialism must become a new step in the historical advance of mankind. Before our ancestor, who first armed himself with a stone axe, the whole of nature represented a conspiracy of secret and hostile forces. Since then, the natural sciences, hand in hand with practical technology, have illuminated nature down to its most secret depths. By means of electrical energy, the physicist passes judgment on the nucleus of the atom. The hour is not far when science will easily solve the task of the alchemists, and turn manure into gold and gold into manure. Where the demons and furies of nature once raged, now rules ever more courageously the industrial will of man.

But while he wrestled victoriously with nature, man built up his relations to other men blindly, almost like the bee or the ant. Belatedly and most undecidedly he approached the problems of human society. He began with religion, and passed on to politics. The Reformation represented the first victory of bourgeois individualism and rationalism in a domain which had been ruled by dead tradition. From the church, critical thought went on to the state. Born in the struggle with absolutism and the medieval estates, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people and of the rights of man and the citizen grew stronger. Thus arose the system of parliamentarism. Critical thought penetrated into the domain of government administration. The political rationalism of democracy was the highest achievement of the revolutionary bourgeoisie.

But between nature and the state stands economic life. Technology liberated man from the tyranny of the old elements—earth, water, fire and air—only to subject him to its own tyranny. Man ceased to be a slave to nature, to become a slave to the machine, and, still worse, a slave to supply and demand. The present world crisis testifies in especially tragic fashion how man, who dives to the bottom of the ocean, who rises up to the stratosphere, who converses on invisible waves with the Antipodes, how this proud and daring ruler of nature remains a slave to the blind forces of his own economy. The historical task of our epoch consists in replacing the uncontrolled play of the market by reasonable planning, in disciplining the forces of production, compelling them to work together in harmony and obediently serve the needs of mankind. Only on this new social basis will man be able to stretch his weary limbs and—every man and every woman, not only a selected few—become a full citizen in the realm of thought.

—“Leon Trotsky Defends the October Revolution” (Militant, 21 January 1933)

 

In Defense Of The October Russian Revolution Of 1917- Comrade Markham’s Tale-Take One

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

 

Comrade Markham had been born a “red diaper baby.” I will explain what that means in a minute but first to that Comrade Markham moniker. That name is the only name I have known him by ever since I ran into him at an anti-war planning session over in Cambridge a couple of years back, back in the fall of 2012, when we were trying, people like Comrade Markham, the guys from Veterans for Peace, guys and gals from some socialist groups and the usual Quakers, traditional peace activists who always sign on to these efforts, to organize against the latest governmental war cries. Although the previous decade or so had seen anti-war mobilizations, great and small, mainly small, this session was planning a rally to oppose President Obama’s then latest attempt to intervene in the civil war in Syria. Comrade Markham, then eighty-seven years old and still trying to change this wicked old world for the better rather than sitting in some assisted living hellhole wasting away, had introduced himself to the group under that moniker and although I had not seen him around before, had no sense of his history then, others greeted and addressed him by that name without a snicker.

 

Of course as I found out later that moniker was not his real name but had been the one that he had used in his long-time membership in the old American Communist Party, not the current version which is kind of out in limbo, but the one that we who came of age in the 1960s had cut our teeth on as the great “red menace,” who were taking “Moscow gold,” taking Stalin and his progeny’s gold,  in order to undermine the American way of life and so we had to be ever vigilant in the red scare Cold War night. He had used the name so long that he knew no other to be called and in my associations with him as he told me his story that is what I always called him. Someday I suppose we will find out his real name but his story, an unusual American story, is what matters and what will be forever his memorial.

 

But back to that “red diaper baby” designation I promised to tell you about. Now I had heard that designation before, back in the late 1960s when Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was cutting a big swath through the political landscape, especially among students. A fair number of the emerging leaders had had parents who belonged to the Communist Party or some other left-wing organization and were not like many of us the first generation of radicals in our families. Thus the red diaper baby designation which in some cases gave those who had grown up in that political milieu an unwarranted standing based on some usually long past affiliation by their now bourgeois parents. What made Comrade Markham unique in my experience is that he was a red diaper baby from parents who had helped establish the Communist Party in America back around 1920 (or one of the two but that story of the hows and whys of two are beyond what I want to tell you about here except in passing).

 

That thread of history intrigued me, his whole story intrigued me as I pieced it together, and so after a couple of those planning sessions I asked him to sit down with me wherever he liked and tell me his story. We did so in several sessions most of them held in the Boston Public Library where he liked go and check out books, magazines and newspapers about the old days, about the time of his activist political prime. What I did not expect to get was an almost chemically pure defense of the Soviet Union, of the Soviet experience, through thick and thin until the end in 1990 or so. That is why his story appears here as a running personal commentary on this 97^th anniversary year of the Russian October Revolution of 1917.

 

It is probably hard today at least three generations removed from the time of the great Russian October Revolution of 1917 to understand, to understand in depth the strong pro-revolutionary feeling that that event brought forth in the world- the first fitful workers’ state, a state for the international working-class to call its own, to defend against all the international reaction. Of course that strong pro-revolutionary response also has its opposite effect on the international bourgeoisie which was ready to move might and main to break the back of the revolution and did so, actively, one way or another, supporting one native anti-revolutionary faction or another, or intervening directly. (The international bourgeoisie had as its allies as well some of the reformist leaderships and better off segments of the Western working class who were as fearful of revolution as any bourgeois). This was the heady atmosphere in which Comrade Markham’s parents, known in the party as Comrade Curtis and Comrade Rosa (after the late martyred Polish revolutionary liked after the failed Spartacist uprising in Germany in late 1918, Rosa Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution), moved in the early days of the party formed here in America.        

 

See Curtis and Rosa had a long socialist past, had grown up respectively in a Kansas farm belt and a Chicago steel belt, had worked individually to build the pre-World War I Socialist Party in their respective places of birth and had met in Chicago when Curtis moved there to work on the 1912 presidential campaign for the revered Eugene V. Debs (who amassed over one million votes that years, a watershed year for socialist votes, gathered in large part by activists like Curtis and Rosa who worked overtime for his election). They had been aligned with the left-wing of the party in most of its internal debates and votes, especially as President Woodrow Wilson and his administration started beating the war drums to go to the aid of the Allies in the utterly stalemated World War I as the flower of the European youth had laid down their heads for no apparent reason, and segments of the party wanted to support those efforts or to “duck” the issue. So they were strongly for him and his supporters when Debs decided to outright oppose the war entry publicly in 1917. Naturally they were rounded up and went to jail for a time (at this time they also got married in order to be able to visit whichever one was in jail at any given time) and became more closely associated with the left-wing that was forming to defiantly oppose American entry into the war but also a myriad of policies that the right-wing leadership (socialist right-wing not generic right-wing) had imposed on the party.  

 

The pre-war Socialist Party in America like a lot of socialist parties around the world then had been based on the working class but had also been reliant on other classes like farmers and urban professionals, especially during electoral periods. So the American organization was a loose organization (loose until faction fight time, or when the leadership felt some threat and pulled the hammer down on party discipline usually gunning for elements to their left but sometimes just any opposition that might vie for party power) which encompassed many divergent elements. Elements that were not always on the same page. The biggest organizations, better to say federations, were the Midwestern farmers, those sturdy wheat and corn farmers from Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma who had moved over from the defunct Populist and Greenback parties who could not keep up with the times, the foreign language federations which included both American citizens and recent immigrants who were merely transferring their socialist loyalties from their native parties to the American one , and a smaller grouping of what I would call “natives” who had been around America for a few generations and who were city dwellers or worked in city professions like lawyering, journalism, medicine and the like. These three rather heterogeneous groups and what happened to them later are important to Comrade Markham’s parents’ story since they were both native born and his father had been a law clerk and his mother a school teacher.

 

 

 A fair number of the foreign language federations were opposed to American entry into the war, as were farmers and the professionals and as noted a fair number were rounded up and went to jail (or like with the IWW, Industrial Workers of the World, Wobblies, anarchist workers were deported quickly if their immigration status was shaky). What started the big fights inside the party, what got Comrades Curtis and Rosa up in arms, was what attitude to take toward the Russian revolution not so much the February 1917 revolution which overthrew the useless Czar but the Bolshevik-led October revolution which its leaders, Lenin and Trotsky, proclaimed as the first victory in the international battle to make socialism the new way to produce and distribute the world’s goods. The party split into several factions over this issue but what is important is that Curtis and Rosa found themselves working with other “natives,” guys like Jim Cannon, John Reed, some of the New York union leaders, and many party writers who saw the Russian October as the new wave for humankind and were ready to move might and main to defend that revolution against all comers. That is the baptism of fire that the as yet unborn Comrade Markham had in his genes.                              

             

Stop the abuse and torture of prisoners!
Six prisoners from a prison in Dallas, Pennsylvania, USA who face trial on Nov 10 for blowing the whistle on & protesting against solitary confinement, abuse and violence by prison guards. On April 29, 2010 six courageous African American prisoners at SCI Dallas staged a peaceful protest against the widespread abuse, violence and torture by guards against Black, Latino and white prisoners which they had documented and took a stand against.  The abuse includes beatings; mental abuse; foreign objects in food such glass, metal, feces, spit and urine; mail tampering; deprivation of human contact; withholding medication; and starvation.  When they covered their cell doors and windows in protest, prison authorities responded by viciously beating them in so-called “cell extractions” (see video evidence) and four months later charging them with “rioting” after the official complaints they had filed were publicized.  As communities in the US from Ferguson to Florida protest and spotlight abuse and violence by law enforcement officers, prisoners in Pennsylvania – the Dallas 6 – along with tens of thousands of prisoners, across racial lines, in California and a half dozen other states have been doing the same inside prison, courageously exposing and protesting abuse and violence by correctional officers and the inhumane policies they enforce including months and years of solitary confinement. On November 10 the Dallas 6 will be in a Pennsylvania courtroom to finally, four years later, stand trial.  People from many different communities in Pennsylvania and beyond will stand with them, in a case that is increasingly gaining national and international attention. The trial begins on November 10th at the Luzerne County Courthouse in Wilkes-Barre PA.  Luzerne County is globally infamous for the Kids for Cash crime, in which two judges were convicted of taking kickbacks for incarcerating children and young people to make profit for private prisons. Help to pack the court on Nov 10  Let them know we are committed to whistleblowers fighting for justice.
Dallas 6 member Derrick Stanley	Shandre Delaney, mother of Dallas 6 member Carrington Keys, leading the support campaign
WHAT YOU CAN DO 1. Endorse the Call to free the Dallas 6. 2. Sign the Petition to indict corrupt officials who cover up prisoner abuse and made false charges against the Dallas 6. 3. Make a Donation to help with housing, rides, food for those coming to the trial. 4. Circulate this email (especially to friends in the US). Translate it.   MORE INFO: View Community Forum in Philadelphia on Oct 24 Hear Mumia Abu Jamal's Dallas 6 commentary (then known as Dallas 5) Contact (412) 403-6101 sd4hrc@gmail.com   Facebook    Justice for the Dallas 6 Support Campaign: Abolitionist Law Center, Decarcerate PA, Fight for Lifers West, Germantown Friends Meeting Mass Incarceration Working Group, Global Women’s Strike & Women of Color@GWS, Human Rights Coalition, Payday men’s network.   Endorsers: Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Patrice Armstead, Building People’s Power and Coalition Demanding Reinstatement of Dr. Monteiro; Malik Aziz, Founder, Men United for a Better Philadelphia and Chairman, National Exhoodus Council; Brandywine Peace Community; The Center for Returning Citizens (TCRC); Every Mother is a Working Mother Network; Pastor Antoinette Johnson, King Solomon Baptist Church; Dr. Anthony Monteiro; Peacehome Campaigns; Dr. Heather Ann Thompson, Professor of African American Studies & History, Temple University; WHAT’S UP?! Pittsburgh; Dr. Carla Willard, Africana Studies Program, Franklin & Marshall College. Partnering with: AFSC Prison Watch.
Visit scidallas6.blogspot.com for more info, to endorse and to donate PACK THE COURTROOM FOR THE DALLAS 6 November 10, 2014 at 9:00 am Luzerne County Courthouse 200 N. River St Wilkes-Barre, PA 18711 Judge Lisa Gelb This trial pertains to an April 29, 2010 peaceful protest against illegal and inhumane and tortuous conditions created by the Department of Corrections’ prison guards in the "hole" at the State Correctional Institution at Dallas PA (SCI Dallas), including food starvation, mail destruction, beatings, medical neglect, use of a "torture chair" and deaths of various prisoners.  After guards tortured fellow prisoner Isaac Sanchez in a "torture chair" overnight and threatened several Dallas 6 members with death, prisoners Andre Jacobs, Carrington Keys, Duane Peter, Derrick Stanley, and others decided that they didn’t want to suffer anymore. Covering their cell door windows with bedding, the prisoners demanded that the abuse stop, and requested access to their counselors, state police, the District Attorney and the Public Defenders’ Office. They had no access to telephones or computers and their incoming and out-going mail were being destroyed to undermine their ability to expose the corruption. Rather than investigate or attempt to resolve the issues which occurred for over a year prior to April 29, 2010, prison officials staged an armed assault against the unarmed men, who were all locked inside of their individual cells, viciously attacking them with electro-shock shields, tazers, fists, and pepper-spray. While all of the guards involved in the incident admitted that they did not suffer any injuries, members of the Dallas 6 were left bloody, naked, with burnt skin, in pain. Following the assaults, several Dallas 6 members were transferred to other prisons. Hundreds of documents were generated, including specific claims of misconduct alleged against the Dallas 6. Not once was the word "riot" mentioned. After civil actions and other complaints were filed against prison guards and officials regarding the events, the prison, state police, and the Luzerne County District Attorney’s Office formed an alliance to bring criminal charges against the Dallas 6.  They have broken the law to pursue bogus charges, cover up their crime and carry out a personal vendetta.  These are the individuals who should be on trial not the Dallas 6. The US has the largest prison population in the world with Black and Brown communities disproportionately impacted. Prisoners across the US are taking action and speaking out against their inhumane and tortuous conditions, including prisoner hunger and work strikes in Georgia, Ohio, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia and California. As a result of their actions, prisoners are retaliated against by prison authorities. The trial of the Dallas 6 will represent a moment of truth and exposure about wide-spread use of solitary confinement and torture in prisons.   We call on all who believe in justice and equality to support the Dallas 6. Pack the court on Nov. 10th!

Hear Aviva Chomsky/Gabe Camacho: The Immigration "Crisis" / Tuesday, Nov 11, at 7:00 pm / UJP & MA Trust Act Coalition When: Tuesday, November 11, 2014, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm Where: encuentro 5 • 9 Hamilton Place • Park St T • Boston A forum cosponsored by United for Justice with Peace and Massachusetts Trust Act Coalition What is the "border crisis" and how does it affect Massachusetts? What are political and social consequences of terms such as  "illegal aliens" How has US foreign policy contributed to the problem? How are local communities confronting the criminalization of immigration polices, and helping recently arrived refugees? Prof. Aviva Chomsky will provide historical context on the creation of the so-called “illegal immigrant” in the US. She will discuss the effects of military aid that the US poured into Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in the 1980s that helped create a violently enforced inequality leading to the problems today. Prof. Chomsky is coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University and author of Undocumented: How Immigration Become Illegal (2014). Gabriel Camacho is the Immigration Programs Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. Locally the AFSC is on the Steering Committee of the Massachusetts Trust Act Coalition. With the protracted death of "immigration reform" at the federal level, and President Obama's repeated delays on executive action, Gabe will speak on conditions facing newly arrived refugee families and how local communities are confronting these issues. United for Justice with Peace (617) 383-4857 www.justicewithpeace.org info@justicewithpeace.org