Surfers Like Lemmings To The Sea-With The Gaslight Gang In Mind-Take Two  

 

 

 

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Before dawn on a warm winter San Diego Mission Beach morning in 2015 but it could have been any year since about World War II, maybe before, a bunch of guys, and a few gals, dressed in non-fashionista but endlessly long day searching for perfect wave mandatory rubber suits, black from head to toe. Carrying, of course a fully-waxed surf board which they will umbilically, if there is such a word to be used in the surfing vocabulary to explain the real nature of the relationship of board to human, tie to themselves and if there is no such word let us say they will tie the board to their wrists with a cord, and tie that cord to themselves at water’s edge as they head to the far edge of the beach, to the place where the sand gives way to stones and edges toward the sawdust peeling sand cliffs in the distance.

This is important because just the morning before this one as Josh Breslin had walked along the beach that same herd of black-suited lemmings had been anchored around the pier about a mile before the rocks and sawdust cliffs. As Josh well knew, although since he had not been to coastal Southern California for some years he had put the thought somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, the search for the perfect wave will drive every savvy surfer to the place where they think that perfect wave action is likely to happen and if they are not savvy then they will follow the others betting that wiser heads will take them to Nirvana.

All this surfer action this day had gotten Josh to thinking back, thinking back to the mid-1960s back when he had snagged surfer girl Butterfly Swirl, Cathy Callahan, from up the road in Carlsbad. The strangest part, the strangest part after the affair had blown it course, was that he was not a surfer and could barely swim although he had grown up alone the ocean and had hear ocean waves and breezes from early childhood. Worse, despite his love, really love/hate relationship, with the sea, he had when young, about eight or nine years old, had foolishly drifted out to sea on a log at high tide and had almost drowned when he had let go of the log to head back to shore  except for the quick wits of the female life-guard, a mother of one of his fellow female classmates and thus he became the butt of jokes all fall once she had put the word out, kids calling him the deep sea diver and stuff like that. That event had etched his love/fear of the sea, and make him very cautious about going over his head in water until this day. Stranger still Butterfly Swirl was despite her surfer girl tag not a swimmer at all. But that will be explained later.

As befitted the times, if such an old-fashioned word, old-fashioned even  back in the day can be used here to describe the various odd social configurations and permutations of the times,  Butterfly had been a young just out of high school surfer girl on the loose looking for what everybody was talking about, talking about when they talked about the new breeze coming through the land, the new Edenic age when all would shake off their narrow little lives and try to turn the world that had not created, and had no say in creating upside down. This is the stuff that the late Peter Markin had told Josh that he had clued Sam Lowell, Frankie Riley, Jack Dawson and the other corner boys about in the hometown Carver night back in the early 1960s and had laughed at him about at first but they were not laughing about later. Stuff that Markin had told Josh too in the summer of 1967 when they first met up in San Francisco, up on Russian Hill, when Josh had hitchhiked west from Maine the first time and somebody had told him the guys parked in the psychedelically-colored ex-school bus parked across the park had plenty of good dope. And they, he, Peter did have primo dope and took Josh on as a kind of younger brother once he knew that Josh was from back in New England.

That new breeze thing, read the dope, sex and acid-etched rock and roll part of the breeze, Josh had been all over, had his doctorate in that subject and had no mixed feelings about what had been going on back then unlike that mixed relationship of his with the sea. In another time, say the early 1960s or late 1970s no way that Butterfly and Prince Valiant, the moniker Josh was travelling under in that change-your-name-change-your-karma moniker-filled time as Cathy was using Butterfly Swirl, would have crossed paths. Butterfly would probably have endlessly continued to wait on shore for her perfect wave golden surfer boy like some beached sea animal. Young women were not usually surfers themselves but just looked bikini beautiful on the West Coast beaches tanning themselves waiting for the sunlight to fail and then give their pruned boys a little something to take the chill off, and you can figure out what that was. So they needed not know how to swim unless they wanted to do so to kill time or get fitter. Josh, after a serious bout of corner boy petty crime and grifting with the likes of Frankie Giron, Peter Pirot, Jack Dubois,  Jimmy Jenkins and a revolving cast of characters, mostly second or third generation French-Canadians like Markin’s were mainly Irish-American, in high school would have gone off to college and law school like his parents wanted him to do.

He had let those choices hang fire, had caught hell from his working-stiff parents for going off the path they had worked so hard to provide for him, had caught hell from his sometime girlfriend, Marly Dubois,  Jack’s ounger sister, who had the traditional mill-town dreams of marriage after that cookie-cutter college-law school-start-a-small-practice-in-Olde Saco routine got them out from under the old neighborhood burdens, when the siren calls came from out in California (the call could have been from anyplace at a certain point in that decade including Denver, Ann Arbor, up in the Oregons, Seattle, Santa Fe and so on but Josh had his mind set on Frisco where he had heard the new world was beginning, was in flower. Jack, as Markin later would once he had gone west, had also held a certain sway over him since he was the first of the Olde Saco corner boys to head west as soon as they had graduated and see what it was all about, see if all those freedom ideas about the new breeze held up. When Jack had headed back East to bring others back out Josh been the first guy who hitchhiked to the West Coast with him. Once there Jack decided to head to L.A. and Josh had to make do the best he could since he was committed to checking Frisco out.

Back to the Butterfly meet-up though. In order to meet somebody who was hip to the new wave scene Butterfly had left her golden-boy-looking-for-the-perfect-wave surfer boy and headed to San Francisco where all the action that she was interested in was happening. She and Josh (he had initially introduced himself as Prince Valiant which she thought was charming and had said to call her Butterfly Swirl in reply) had met in Golden Gate Park when he was on board Captain Crunch’s psychedelic color-plastered converted yellow brick road school bus and she had come up to him with a come hither look and asked if anybody had any dope. The next generation cometh thought Josh having done exactly the same bit with Markin as he flipped her a joint and lit a match to get her going. Of course new wave or not, new wave in 1967 anyway, no way that a fox like Butterfly was not going to be hit on by an old corner boy “mentor” like Markin who thought he had the old feudal “rights of the first night” or something since he had been on the bus longer than Josh. In any case Markin was lying in wait once he saw her. Butterfly had picked the younger Josh after a little verbal struggle between the two old corner boys who were like high school kids about the situation. Worse since neither of them would have bothered each other back in Olde Saco and Carver respectively under the universal corner boy code-“you don’t mess with another guy’s woman”- maybe an idea honored more in the breech than the observance but still part of the genetic make-up of the corner boy code.  

Josh, as he thought back, still walking head hung down, deep in memory thought, along those sloping Mission Beach sands, thought too about how he had not only snagged Butterfly from her surfer boy but from his old friend Markin and chuckled at the thought since usually Markin with his piss-ass two thousand facts would talk his way into something like Butterfly leaving Josh to get mad about the lost. That Butterfly had in the end turned back into the surfer girl and had gone back home to her golden boy after about a year had also been a sign of the times but Josh had long ago figured out that he had been lucky for what time they had had together since he a New England boy, a bookish New England boy would never have run into a surfer girl otherwise. He never had subsequently and that kind of proved the point.            

 A few times while Josh and Butterfly Swirl were together, usually when they were riding up and down the coast in Captain Crunch’s magical-mystery-tour-yellow brick-road converted school bus, and usually when stoned Josh (then using the moniker Prince of Love once he tired of the Valiant moniker since everybody seemed to switch up without notice as a sign that they were breaking out of their bourgeois old habits of thought and living) would ask Butterfly to tell him about the attractions of the surfer world that he had known really only by photographs and the songs of the Beach Boys who had made a fine career out of paying homage to all the Southern California post-World War II youth cultural signposts.

Butterfly told Josh during those conversations that she was not sure how she had become a surfer girl, although she was hardly alone in that designation in a place like Carlsbad since it was part of growing up in such a town. (or for that matter La Jolla, Mission Beach, the beach cities heading north on to Mecca Malibu and as Josh  remembered back he had also seen the scene in such outposts as Old Orchard Beach, Maine and off the coast of Cape Breton so go figure). In her case as Josh realized since she was a long leggy blondish young woman with ocean blue eyes she was a perfect specimen of the surfer girl then. What Josh could not figure is why in those days somebody as attractive and smart as Cathy would sit on shore all day if necessary waiting for her golden boy to have a shot at the perfect wave or come out of the water prune-like (even with the protective suits long periods in the water tended to prune a guy up). See, unlike today when you are likely to see more than a few surfer girls suited up to search for their own perfect wave, in those days surfer girls by definition waited on shore for their menfolk. Waited maybe working on their tans then to be taken home in the ubiquitous “woodie” in order to get ready to go out that night and catch some act at a surfer bar and then to “curl a guy’s toes” before going home to rest up for another day of the perfect wave.  (That “curl your toes” Cathy’s expression for sex and an expression of what she was capable of doing in bed as Josh found out pretty quickly).      

 That routine had been what Cathy had been was taking a break, a momentary break from as it turned out, when she headed north after breaking up with golden boy. Josh would thereafter always wonder about what drove surfers to the see on those occasions when he saw the sight at any beach about the lure of the surf board where the black-clad brethren held forth. And he was wondering about that the Mission Beach morning when the worm turned.           

But not only surfers inhabit the beach world although they are much more likely to be there at the sun’s call, or cloud’s call or wind’s call than landlubbers who will abandon our mother the sea at the drop of a hat. Josh remembered the time Sam Lowell, a guy, a corner boy guy, from Carver whom Markin had hitchhiked out to California with on one of his many trips back and forth and who had stayed on the bus a couple of months, had told him that when after he had semi-retired from his law practice he went golfing out at Torrey Pines in La Jolla a few years back. Sam had struck up a friendship with some of the regulars there and played with them for a few days straight on very sunny warm days. Then one day they were not there, although they had said they were serious regulars who laughingly said they played about three hundred days a year. He had played in any case. The next day they reappeared and he asked what had happen the day before. They told him it was too cold, too cold at 60 degrees to play. Hell, Sam from snow country cold weather Massachusetts opened his jaw in disbelief. But Josh knew the surfers all suited up and impervious to the prune effect anyway would be there unlike the sullen crowds who are no shows at the golf courses and amusement parks when the weather hits the slightest bit south.     

Yes the worm turns, and turns in odd ways since no way would anybody back in the 1960s be thinking about golf, hell, Josh remembered being at one meeting in San Francisco where they were discussing how to actively stop the goddam war in Vietnam and one guy, and no radical either, just barely a liberal and recent convert to the anti-war struggle, just to show how upside down the times were said that they should burn down the country clubs. Jesus, Sam would flip out now.

Josh thought about another time now that he was thinking about other places as he walked along the beach, being at Mission Beach seemingly exploding some old previously tight kept thoughts in his head. One time, one hot sultry time. Josh and his companion Laura had walked from the Mission Park parking lot at West Bay Bridge to Belmont Park, the amusement center which confronts you before you hit the Mission Beach, a distance of maybe a mile which was easier to do that California wait in the traffic that was going nowhere so Laura could take pictures of the amusement park for some camera club competition. Needless to say old serious Josh, having had his fill growing up about twenty miles north of the Orchard Beach amusement park in Olde Saco normally would give such places a wide berth. Laura too. But that day something of the old time kids taking the rides for the momentary thrill of being bumped, dragged, twirled, jumbled, twisted, made seasick, and just plain bedazzled got to them.

Josh, naturally, as an old arcade man from his Old Orchard days attempted to try his luck on the skee game that he had mastered very early when he was young (unlike the pinball wizard games that he never quite caught and usually had to depend on some generous older corner boy up in his corner at the Colonial Diner on Main Street who had other things to do, go meet some girl or hijack a car or something to leave him his games won).

Josh was excited by the prospect of “winning” some little trinket for Laura although having been down that road before with Josh she just rolled her eyes at the prospect of getting a rabbit’s foot or a feathery snake like in previous Josh efforts down at Paragon Park south of Boston or Seaside Heights in New Jersey. Josh tried to reason with her, telling her his classic skee story about the time when he was twelve or thirteen and this girl, Mary Lou, was having a terrible time working the skee balls, trouble getting the right aim at the targets. So he stepped forward and showed her how. She still could not get the drift and the ever smooth Josh decided that he would win her a trinket so she would not feel like a klutz.  He had been on fire that day and he actually won her a stuffed animal. For his bravado efforts Mary Lou and he walked to the secluded end of the beach and she gave him a big kiss. That was what was at stake. Laura just rolled her eyes again and said that was when he was twelve, get over it.

In any case Josh’s story had a weird if modern ending. Apparently even on the lowly skee ball machines you have to deal with the modern technology way of payment. You needed to swipe your debit card to begin the game, to have the balls roll down the chute. No cash accepted although on other wizard machines at the park cash was accepted. Josh had not brought his wallet not thinking that he was to do combat that day at the arcade. He asked, no, begged, cajoled, cried for mercy for Laura to let him use her card. No dice, no way Jose. No way was she going to expose her credit card to whatever craziness was going on in the hacker world, and emphatically was not going to pay for her rabbit’s foot or feathery snake. Josh was “bitter” very bitter about that as they moved on to the bumper cars so Laura could take some photographs.                 

Strangely one of Josh’s fondest memories, fondest brother memories was when they, all four of the them, would bump the bejesus out of each other all trying to get the maximum from a direct frontal or back hit on those saucy bumper cars. Such were the times, better times in the Breslin family. Laura said that she never went on the rides, was too afraid to even look at them usually as they went skyward. She did confess to a weakness that she and her sister had had for the whirl-a-whirl which was just a covered surrey which did dips as it went on its circular route. They would laugh like crazy so it could not have been too scary.

As they left the park Laura spied the inevitable carousel and needed to take photos of the little ones on the painted ponies going up and down, gently as a new generation got used to the momentary thrills produced by the magic of the amusement park. The carousel a relic of a gentler by-gone day before the super-electro dump up and down, speedo, nip and dip rides carried the day. As they walked back to the car they both almost simultaneously said that they had had fun in the park. Yes, they did.    

Thinking about that amusement park day Josh remembered that of course any trip to the sea, waylaid by an amusement park diversion or not, required due homage to our homeland, the ocean, with the obligatory walk, barefooted in good weathers, maybe flip-flops if the going is a little sandy or with appropriate boots in winter time and so before they left the area to head back to the car they had walked Mission Beach. This had been the first time Laura had walked that particular beach, although if one deals with Josh Breslin you will get very jaded after the first twenty or so trips any time you are within ocean breeze of the coast. (One time Josh told Laura when he was heading west hitching with Markin, maybe on that first trip out together, he swore that he could smell that seaweed, seashell, sea animal mucked ocean once they hit Travers City and that town is seventy-five miles from the sea so you know he has a keen sense of the ocean draw). That hot sultry day they walked, talked and observed which half of the fun is when you are at the beach and especially when the weather is warm like that day was warm for a winter’s day. Again a fine day.

Later that night at dinner Laura mentioned to Josh a couple of things  she had observed at the beach while they were walking but had just thought of since she had just seen a very tall, slender  woman, close to six feet maybe more, walking into the restaurant with a man slightly shorter than she was. Laura commented on her very nice figure and clothes but also wondered as she had observed at the beach as well with so many long-legged women in very skimpy bikinis that there were many more tall women around in the generation or two after theirs then when they were growing up. Laura said at five feet, six inches she was not short by her generation’s standards, in fact would be on the taller side, but related to Josh that she had been teased in high school by some of the guys for being so “tall for a girl” and that had hurt her since she was conscious of what that meant in that less enlightened time.

Laura told Josh she also believed that she had lost dates over the matter since guys then didn’t as a rule see anything attractive about woman taller than they were. All the literature, and she remembered especially a short story by Fitzgerald in which the one woman mentioned had been tall, maybe a little ungainly, and left out of the action, made sport of, which spoke to a woman’s height as much as to say that if such a beast was ungainly she should be treated like somebody’s unwanted sister.

Josh spoke up at that remark and said that he once was “forced” to take one of Peter Pirot’s younger sisters to the Spring Frolic at Olde Saco High as a favor to him since she was five feet, eight inches and nobody wanted to take her. The funny part was that she was something of a beauty, and later in college half the guys on campus were looking for dates with her, some begging according to Peter, but the worm was turning on that tall woman thing a little by then. Josh noted as well that aside from that “duty” performed his preference had been to not date girls as tall as or taller than he is, and thus giving Laura anecdotal evidence of the pervasiveness of the old time custom.

He also mentioned that he had broken up with a girl, Josie Davidson, for just that reason after high school when he was serious about her, a young woman almost six feet tall but he could not get over the fact that people, guys, would think less of him because he was with a taller woman. He was extremely self-conscious about that and while he never mentioned her height to her it was one of the things when they were having their final split-up that he was relieved to be leaving behind. Kids’ stuff but any unacknowledged hurt by him aside it was an unacknowledged way tall women were perceived then as Amazons and thus man-eaters.     

Later that night as they headed home in the car Josh mentioned that he remembered reading in some magazine that was hip to such things that these newer generations unlike theirs and earlier generations were corn-fed, got more meat and the like and probably had shot up in height based on that added food supply to their systems as well as whatever DNA stuff was going on. That magazine article also noted that in the 1960s the trend toward very thin women, the Twiggy effect, had started in England after the war when Britain was still reeling from food shortages and that the previously scorned thinness (as against the buxom of say Marilyn Monroe or Jane Russell) changed from a negative to a plus. Apparently at least one guy did not mind being with a thin as a rail woman.

Having exhausted the subject of tall women Laura to switch the subject up a bit started talking about the other generational thing that she had noticed, the incredible number of men and women, mostly younger, who had tattoos. And not just like sailors and bikers in the old days with maybe some rose, some mother sentiment, or some sweetheart’s name, but anything from almost full body tattoos giving some genesis story to a lower back or ankle simple symbol. Josh said in the old days tattoos were reserved for sailors far from home, maybe drunk to give themselves a boost and would go to the convenience tattoo parlors that dotted the wharf areas where sailors hung out when not on ship, bikers who saw it as their way of “showing the colors” and occasionally somebody who had sailed into the China seas and as a result was entitled to wear a tattoo to tout that fact.

During the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s occasionally young women would have a butterfly put on their shoulder or on their lower back or ankle. But the latest explosion spoke to a generation trying to scream out its existence to an indifferent world, or some such message. He wondered aloud whether they all knew so young that unless some new therapy to erase the tattoos gets developed they have to live will all this through the skins sags that will come with middle age. Probably didn’t enter their mines, just like they had done what they liked stuff and damn what the rest of the world thought when they were young. Laura chuckled at that. Before bed both agreed once again that it had been a great day.  

Josh got the last word in, surfers, misplaced surfer girls, skee ball champions, tall women and shoulder length tattoos all in a jumble but he said don’t’ blame the ocean for all that though. Laura laughed again.

In Honor Of The 144^th Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-From The American Left History Blog Archives(2007) - On American Political Discourse

 

Markin comment (Winter 2015):

 

In the period 2006-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time and my only fear is that now that Obama and his lame duck presidency are in full flower that as the machines are gearing up for the 2016 presidential campaign maw I will seeking another watershed election where there is none will be tempted, sorely tempted to put my foot in the waters of campaign commentary again. If I do so I deserve the fate that befell Theodore White in his endless campaign books every four years starting with the JFK-Nixon fistfight in 1960 which left his a blathering idiot before he was done. Or worse since he was (is) something of a muse for me what happened to the later Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo when he got caught up in the avalanche of presidential campaigns which probably played no little part in his eventual suicide. I am forewarned.    

 

In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter (literally now as that stunted social network operation replaces Facebook as the place to be). I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers’ party that fights for a workers government . That is where the link to the Paris Commune comes in which in its time was a beacon for the international working class, a first failed attempt for the fellahin to taek charge of their own lives, govern as they saw fit. So with the Paris Commune and its lessons as heady backdrop we have enough, more than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then as talking points to drown out the coming deluge does not have a bad feel to it. Read on.

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THE OTHER SIDE IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR- ROME HONORS FRANCO’S ‘MARTYRS’

COMMENTARY

Under ordinary circumstances I do not give a tinker’s damn about the internal ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church, or for that matter, any church but a recent news item hit me square in the eye. On Sunday October 28, 2007 at Vatican City some 498 priest and nuns killed just prior to or during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 were given a mass of beatification. Apparently beatification is a direct step in the process to sainthood- the Catholic Hall of Fame. Unfortunately the article did not give a list of reasons why these ‘martyrs’ were chosen other than the fact that they had been killed, presumably by forces that supported the lawfully designated Republican government, in the Civil War.

But wait a minute- this is Spain, this is the Spanish Civil War-what the hell- these are General Franco’s agents who fell all over themselves to aid his rebellion and ultimately led to forty years of hell. Those are the kinds of people that the Roman church is giving its blessing to. Let us further set the historical record straight - these were agents of that Romish church that owned significant lands and assumed all the prerogatives of feudal landlords in relationship to their peasant tenants. This, I might add, is the church of the Inquisition; the church that oppressed the poor, downtrodden and other wise confused people of Spain for centuries. Yes, there seems to be some symbolic ‘justice’ here as Mother Church honors her most trusted agents.

Popular anti-clericalism had a long tradition in Spain, justifiably so from any fair reading of the history of that benighted land. Many times during social turmoil ignited by the fed up peasantry and the plebes in the smaller cities prior to the Civil War the first plebian act was to go lay waste to the local church and scatter or otherwise harm the clergy. The period of the Spanish Civil War was no different in that sense. Except that by that time the anti-clerics had also taken on an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist coloration. In fact during this period they made church vandalism into an art form. Thus this batch of ‘martyred’clergy were likely the victims of that tradition, although a stray irate republican, insolent socialist or undisciplined communist may have gotten caught up in it depending on the furies of the local population. Ernest Hemingway in his Spanish Civil War novel For Whom the Bells Toll has one of his characters narrate a very graphic description of what anti-clerical (and anti-central government) revenge was like in one locale.

Historically attacks on churches are an elemental first reaction by the plebian masses in a revolutionary period. In the English Revolution the yeomen of the Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army made a regular practice of reducing churches (for their silverware to be used as ammunition as well as an expression of rage). In the French Revolution the same thing occurred although on a less disciplined basis. Thus Civil War Spain is hardly an exception to that general trend. However socialists, especially Marxist socialists, have always drawn the line on the question how to deal with religion differently. We stand in solidarity with such elemental acts against the oppressions brought by religion however that is not our program. We recognize that we must change the whole material basis of society in order to get rid of the ‘need’ for religion as solace for an unjust and chaotic world. Hey, we are the ‘religion is the opiate of the people’ guys, remember? Thus we spill no tears over the fate of these Popish ‘martyrs’ but neither do we advocate such action to create social change. We go after the big guns- the capitalists.

While we are on the question of honoring those who died in the Spanish Civil War we have our own heroes to recognize. Like those who fought under the banner of the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias and saved the republic, in the short haul, as Franco’s rebellion reared its ugly head. Or those far flung legions of ‘premature” anti-fascists who came from all over Europe and the Americas and formed the International Brigades that did valiant service on the Ebro, the Jarama and elsewhere. Or those who defended Madrid in its hour of need so that Franco should not pass. And the anarchist Friends of Durritti (to speak nothing of Durritti himself) and the fighters of the Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) who were ready to give their all in the last ditch effort to save the revolution in the May Days in Barcelona in 1937. Yes, those are OUR kindred spirits. They stand in no need of beatification. However, in the end the best way to honor their efforts is to fight for socialism. Then we can put religions in the museums as historical curiosities

                

Save the Date - UNAC National Conference, May 8 - 10, 2015

 

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

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), those 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 saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; 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, putting another man to ground or lying their own heads down for some imperial mission. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.  

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as the marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss hi shigh tea. Jesus what a blasted nigh that Great War time was.   

And do not forget when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it turned out artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate …. 

 

 

 

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

by Louisa Young

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You 3.81 of 5 stars 3.81  ·  rating details  ·  3,391 ratings  ·  513 reviews

London, April 1916, Riley Purefoy was walking across Kensington Gardens in the sun, coming up from Victoria station, going home. He hadn't been in London for two years. It seemed very peculiar to him. There were no shells going off. No one was shooting. No gas-gong. It was quiet. There were women.Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Novel Award.      

      

 

 

Elegy

 

In Honor Of The 144^th Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-From The American Left History Blog Archives(2007) - On American Political Discourse

 

Markin comment (Winter 2015):

 

In the period 2006-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time and my only fear is that now that Obama and his lame duck presidency are in full flower that as the machines are gearing up for the 2016 presidential campaign maw I will seeking another watershed election where there is none will be tempted, sorely tempted to put my foot in the waters of campaign commentary again. If I do so I deserve the fate that befell Theodore White in his endless campaign books every four years starting with the JFK-Nixon fistfight in 1960 which left his a blathering idiot before he was done. Or worse since he was (is) something of a muse for me what happened to the later Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo when he got caught up in the avalanche of presidential campaigns which probably played no little part in his eventual suicide. I am forewarned.    

 

In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter (literally now as that stunted social network operation replaces Facebook as the place to be). I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers’ party that fights for a workers government . That is where the link to the Paris Commune comes in which in its time was a beacon for the international working class, a first failed attempt for the fellahin to taek charge of their own lives, govern as they saw fit. So with the Paris Commune and its lessons as heady backdrop we have enough, more than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then as talking points to drown out the coming deluge does not have a bad feel to it. Read on.

 

 

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FORD UAW AUTOWORKERS CONTRACT- VOTE NO

COMMENTARY

NO TWO- TIER WAGE RATES- EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

The big labor news this fall has been the fight by the United Auto Workers (UAW) for new contracts with General Motors, Chrysler and now Ford. I have already discussed the GM and Chrysler settlement and now as of Friday, November 3, 2007 Ford and the UAW have reached a tentative agreement. That agreement is along the same lines as those ratified by GM and Chrysler (barely) - a new two- tier wage system for new hires who will get one half the average pay of senior autoworkers and union takeover of the health and pension funds. As I have lamented previously these contracts are a defeat for the autoworkers. Why? The historic position of labor has been to fight for equal pay for equal work. That apparently has gone by the boards here. Moreover the pension and health takeovers are an albatross around the neck of the union. No way is this an example of worker control not at least how any militant should view it. After all the givebacks its time to fight back even if this is a rearguard action in light of the previous votes. Any illusions that the give backs will by labor peace and or/avoid further layoffs, closedowns or outsourcing got a cruel comeuppance in the previous contract negotiations. No sooner had those contracts been ratified, and well before the new contracts were even printed, Chrysler announced layoffs of 8000 to 10, 000 and GM had previously announced about 1500 layoffs. FORD AUTOWORKERS VOTE NO ON THIS CONTRACT.

I HAVE REPOSTED THE NOTES ON THE GM AND CHRYSLER SETTLEMENTS TO GIVE A PERSPECTIVE OF HOW THE HOPES THAT ORGANIZED LABOR COULD FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE TIDE OF GLOBALIZATION HAVE FADED AS THE PROCESS HAS GONE ON THIS FALL.

A Short Note On the Chrysler Autoworkers Contract Settlement

Commentary

The Wal-Martization of the Once Proud UAW

Yes, I know that we are in the age of ‘globalization’. That is, however, merely the transformation of the same old characters like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in the auto industry that we have come to know and love moving away from mainly nationally defined markets to international markets. In short, these companies allegedly are being forced to fight their way to the bottom of the international labor wage market along with everyone else. As least that was the position of these august companies in the on-going labor contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers (UAW). And the labor tops bought the argument. In the General Motors settlement GM was nicely absolved from having to administer its albatross health and pension funds. Now autoworkers are held responsible for deciding what autoworkers get what benefits. This is not my idea of workers control, not by a long shot. Based on those provisions alone that GM contract should have been soundly defeated. That it was not will come back to haunt the GM autoworkers in the future.

Now comes news that, as of October 27, 2007, the Chrysler workers have narrowly (56%) ratified their contract, although some major plants voted against it and the labor skates pulled out all stops to get an affirmative vote. If anything that contract is worse than the GM contract because it also contains a provision for permitting a two-wage system where ‘new hires’ will be paid approximately one half normal rates. So much for the old labor slogan of 'equal pay for equal work'. If the GM contract will come back to haunt this one already does today. Remember also that Chrysler was bought out by a private equity company that has a history of selling off unprofitable operations, driving productivity up and then selling the profitable parts for huge profits. That, my friends, is what the global race to the bottom looks like in the American auto industry. This contract should have been voted down with both hands. Ford is up next and based on the foregoing that contract should also be voted down.

Look, every militant knows that negotiations over union contracts represent a sort of ‘truce’ in the class struggle. Until there is worker control of production under a workers government the value of any negotiations with the capitalists is determined by the terms. Sometimes, especially in hard times, just holding your own is a ‘victory’. Other times, like here, there is only one word for these contracts-defeat. Moreover, this did not need to happen. Although both strike efforts at GM and Chrysler were short-lived (intentionally so on the part of the leadership) the rank and file was ready to do battle. The vote at Chrysler further bolsters that argument. So what is up?

What is up is that the leadership of the autoworkers is not worthy of the membership. These people are so mired in class collaborationist non-aggression pacts and cozy arrangements (for themselves) that they were easy pickings for the vultures leading management. The epitome of this is the ‘apache’ strategy of negotiating with one company at a time. If in the era of Walter Reuther at a time when there were upwards of a million union autoworkers that might have made some sense today with reduced numbers it makes no sense at all. Labor’s power is in solidarity and solidarity means, in this case, ‘one out, all out’. Beyond that it is clear a new class struggle leadership is needed, just to keep even, and it is needed pronto. Those rank and filers and, in some cases, local union leaders who called for a no vote at Chrysler are the starting point for such efforts.

Important  Mumia Abu Jamal Update-Free Mumia

 

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

Commentary

The legendary social commentator and stand up comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction.

The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be.

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Some facts about the case from the PDC (2006):

Mumia Is an Innocent Man Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty   Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row for nearly 24 years, falsely convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent and mountains of evidence show this, including the confession of another man, Arnold Beverly, to the murder. All the elements of the capitalist “justice” system colluded in framing up this former Black Panther and MOVE supporter because he is an eloquent and defiant spokesman for the oppressed. The fight to free Mumia has now reached a critical juncture. Last December, the federal appeals court put Mumia’s case on a “fast track” for decision, marking the last stages of the legal proceedings. Both Mumia and prosecutors are appealing decisions made in 2001 by U.S. District Court judge William Yohn, who overturned the death sentence but upheld every aspect of Mumia’s frame-up conviction. The state is as determined as ever to execute Mumia and has appealed. He has been barred by the courts from presenting evidence that he is innocent. But the district attorney filed legal papers in the federal appeals court in April, opening its case with a venomous, lying statement to portray Mumia as a cop-killer who must be executed. In a short time, even as soon as six months, the court could decide what is next for Mumia: death, life in prison or more legal proceedings. Mumia was locked up on death row in 1982 based on lying testimony extorted by the cops without a shred of physical evidence. The judge at his trial, Albert Sabo—known as the “King of Death Row”—was overheard by a court stenographer saying, “I’m going to help ’em fry the n----r.” Rigging the jury to exclude black people, the prosecution incited jurors with the grotesque lie that Mumia’s membership in the Panthers as a teenager proved he was committed to kill a cop “all the way back then.” The 1982 conviction was secured with arguments that the jury could disregard any doubts about Mumia’s guilt because he would have “appeal after appeal.” In nearly two decades of appeals, each and every court has rejected the reams of documented evidence of the blatant frame-up of Mumia. For over four years, Pennsylvania state as well as federal courts have refused to even consider the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner. The execution of Stanley Tookie Williams by the state of California in December casts an ominous shadow. The legal lynching of Williams, which provoked an outcry nationally and internationally, signaled the determination of the U.S. capitalist rulers to fortify their machinery of death in the face of growing reticence in the population over how the death penalty is applied. Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s foremost political prisoner, is the executioners’ number one target. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made this clear when, in denying clemency for Williams, he cited the fact that Williams’ 1998 book, Life in Prison, was dedicated to—among others—Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia’s case demonstrates what the racist death penalty is all about. It is the lynch rope made legal, the ultimate weapon in the government’s arsenal of repression aimed at the working class and oppressed. A legacy of chattel slavery, the death penalty is maintained in a society where the segregation of the majority of the black population is used as a wedge to divide the laboring masses and perpetuate the rapacious rule of capital. The murderous brutality of the racist capitalist system was displayed for all to see when thousands of people, overwhelmingly black and poor, were left to die in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Mumia’s appeal takes place in the context of the government’s assertion of its “right” to disappear, torture or even assassinate its perceived opponents, and to wiretap and spy on anyone and everyone. In the name of the “war on terror,” rights won through tumultuous class and social battles are being put through the shredder by the Bush administration with the support of the Democratic Party. The purpose is to terrorize and silence any who would stand in the way of the capitalist rulers’ relentless drive for profits and their imperialist adventures, like the colonial occupation of Iraq. As Mumia’s case moves through the final stages of legal proceedings, the fight for his freedom is urgently posed. The Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League/U.S.—stands for pursuing every legal avenue in Mumia’s behalf while putting no faith in the “justice” of the capitalist courts. Through publicity and action, we have struggled to mobilize the broadest social forces, centered on the labor movement, to demand Mumia’s freedom and the abolition of the racist death penalty. As Mumia faced execution in August 1995, a mass outpouring of protest nationally and internationally—from civil liberties organizations and such heads of state as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela to trade unions representing millions of workers—succeeded in staying the executioner’s hand. Today we face greater odds. But if undertaken through a mobilization based on the social power of the working class, the fight for Mumia’s freedom would be a giant step forward in the defense of all of us against the increasingly depraved and vicious rulers of this country.   Anatomy of a Frame-Up In the eyes of the capitalist state, from the time Mumia was a 15-year-old spokesman for the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia in 1969, he was a dead man on leave. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover pronounced: “The Negro youth and moderate[s] must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries.” This policy was carried out under both the Democratic administration of Lyndon Johnson and his Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, and the Republican Nixon administration. Under the FBI’s “counter-intelligence” program known as COINTELPRO, 38 Panthers were murdered and hundreds of others framed up and railroaded to prison. The 900 pages of FBI files the PDC was able to obtain on Mumia’s behalf, even though highly expurgated, make clear that the FBI and cops used any “dirty trick” in their mission to get him. His every move was tracked and his name put on the FBI’s Security Index, the 1960s version of a “terrorist” hit list. Even with the demise of the Panthers, the state did not call off its vendetta against Mumia. As a journalist known as the “voice of the voiceless,” Mumia’s impassioned defense of black rights continued to enrage them. The Philly cops particularly seethed over his sympathetic coverage of the MOVE organization, which was subjected to an onslaught of state terror. Mumia was targeted for death because of his political beliefs, because of what he wrote, because of what he said. And in the early morning hours of 9 December 1981 at the corner of 13th and Locust Streets in Philadelphia, the cops finally saw their chance. Mumia was driving a cab through the area that night. He heard gunshots. He saw people running, saw his own brother and got out of his cab to help him. Moments later, Mumia was critically wounded by a bullet through the chest. Nearby lay a wounded police officer, Daniel Faulkner. The cops found their long-awaited opportunity and seized on it to frame up Mumia as a “cop killer.” The prosecution’s case rested on three legs, all based on lies: the testimony of “eyewitnesses” coerced through favors and terror; a “confession” purportedly made by Mumia the night of the shooting that was such a blatant hoax that it didn’t surface until months later; and nonexistent ballistics “evidence.” In 2001, this frame-up was completely blown to pieces with Arnold Beverly’s confession that he was the man who shot Faulkner. In a sworn affidavit printed in the PDC pamphlet Mumia Abu-Jamal Is an Innocent Man!, Beverly stated:   “I was hired, along with another guy, and paid to shoot and kill Faulkner. I had heard that Faulkner was a problem for the mob and corrupt policemen because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal activity including prostitution, gambling, drugs without prosecution in the center city area.   “Faulkner was shot in the back and then in the face before Jamal came on the scene. Jamal had nothing to do with the shooting.” Beverly stated that the second shooter also fled the scene. This is supported by a sworn affidavit by Mumia’s brother, Billy Cook, who testified that his friend Kenneth Freeman was a passenger in Cook’s VW at 13th and Locust that night. Freeman later admitted to Cook that he was part of the plan to kill Faulkner and had participated in the shooting and then fled the scene. This is further corroborated by the testimony of a witness at the scene, William Singletary, who said he saw a passenger get out of Cook’s VW, shoot Faulkner and then flee the scene. At least half a dozen witnesses who were on the scene the night of the shooting saw, from several different vantage points, one or more black men flee. Police radio “flashes” right after the shooting reported that the shooters had fled the scene with Faulkner’s gun. Five witnesses, including two cops, describe someone at the scene wearing a green army jacket, which both Beverly and Freeman were wearing that night. Neither Mumia nor Cook wore a green army jacket: Mumia wore a red ski jacket with wide vertical blue stripes and Cook had a blue jacket with brass buttons. Beverly said that Mumia was shot by a cop at the scene. This is confirmed by no less an authority than the state Medical Examiner’s office, whose record written the same morning as the shooting quotes a homicide officer saying that Mumia was shot by “arriving police reinforcements,” not by Faulkner. Other witnesses have corroborated Beverly’s testimony that undercover and uniformed police were in the vicinity at the time of the shooting, which Beverly assumed meant that they were in on the plan to kill Faulkner. One witness, Marcus Cannon, saw two undercover cops on the street across from the shooting. William Singletary also saw “white shirts” (police supervisors) at the scene right after the shots were fired. The prosecution dismisses the idea that the cops would kill one of their own as an outlandish invention. Leaving aside that Beverly passed two lie detector tests, his account fits with the fact that at the time of Faulkner’s killing in 1981, there were at least three ongoing federal investigations into police corruption in Philadelphia, including police connections with the mob. Police working as FBI informants were victims of hits in the early 1980s. A former federal prosecutor acknowledged that the Feds had a police informant whose brother was a cop, just as Faulkner had a brother who was a cop. A sworn affidavit by Donald Hersing, a former informant in an FBI investigation into police corruption, confirms that at the time of Faulkner’s shooting the word was out that the Feds had an informant in the police force. The commanding officer of the Central Police Division, where the murder of Faulkner took place, the chief of the police Homicide Division and the ranking officer at the scene of Faulkner’s killing, Alfonzo Giordano, were all under investigation at the time on federal corruption charges. These cops were literally the chain of command in the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Giordano had been the right-hand man for Philadelphia’s notoriously racist police chief and later mayor, Frank Rizzo. From 1966 to 1970, Giordano was in charge of the cop “Stakeout” squad, which led the police raid on the Black Panthers’ headquarters in 1970. He was also the supervisor of the 15-month police siege of MOVE’s Powelton Village house in 1977-78, which resulted in nine MOVE members being sent to prison on frame-up charges of killing a cop. Giordano knew exactly who Mumia was. The senior officer on the scene, he had both motive and opportunity to frame up Mumia for the killing of Faulkner. Giordano originated the claim that Mumia’s gun—the putative murder weapon—was lying beside him on the street. But according to police radio records, the cops were still looking for the gun some 14 minutes after hordes of police had arrived on the scene. Giordano arranged the identification of Mumia by cab driver Robert Chobert, who became a witness for the prosecution. Giordano was the central witness for the prosecution at Mumia’s pretrial hearing. But he was never called as a witness at Mumia’s trial. Shortly before the trial, he was assigned to a desk job. One working day after Mumia was convicted, Giordano resigned from the force. In 1986, Giordano copped a plea on federal charges based on his receiving tens of thousands of dollars in illegal payoffs from 1979 to 1980. He didn’t spend a day in jail.   Prosecution’s Web of Lies The prosecution’s story is that two people were on the corner of 13th and Locust where Faulkner was shot: Mumia’s brother Billy Cook and Faulkner. They claim that Mumia ran across the street when he saw his brother being beaten by Faulkner. According to police and prosecutors, Mumia shot the cop in the back, the cop shot back at Mumia and then Mumia stood over the fallen cop and shot him “execution style” several times in the head. Even a close examination of the cops’ and prosecution’s own evidence gives the lie to this scenario. A look at the “three legs” of the prosecution’s case provides not only stark confirmation of Mumia’s innocence but clear corroboration of Beverly’s testimony. The Prosecution’s Witnesses: Even with police and prosecution threats and favors at the time of the 1982 trial, no witness testified to seeing Mumia actually shoot Faulkner. Only one, Cynthia White, the prosecution’s star witness, testified that she thought she saw a gun in Mumia’s hand when he crossed the street. A prostitute working in the area, White claimed to have witnessed the events from the southeast corner of 13th and Locust. Yet the other two prosecution witnesses, as well as two defense witnesses who knew White, all denied she was at the scene during the shooting! Other prostitutes testified in subsequent court hearings that White alternately got police favors or was threatened by police in order to extract her testimony. As for Robert Chobert, at first he told police that the shooter “ran away.” After further interrogation, he changed his story, claiming that Mumia stood over Faulkner while the shots were fired and that no one ran away. A cab driver using a suspended license while on probation for felony arson, Chobert was given favors by the prosecution in exchange for his testimony. He later admitted that he never saw the shooting. The third state witness was Michael Scanlan. He initially identified Mumia as the VW driver but then claimed that the shooter ran across Locust Street, which Beverly admits that he did. He also admitted that he did not know if Mumia was the man he saw. Ballistics and Forensics: The prosecution claimed that ballistics evidence was “consistent” with Mumia’s gun being the murder weapon even while admitting that the “consistency” applied to millions of handguns. There is no evidence that Mumia’s gun was even fired that night. There was every opportunity to test Mumia’s hands, or the gun, for evidence that it had been recently fired. But according to police no such tests, which are standard operating procedure, were ever done! The Stakeout officer who claimed he picked up Mumia’s gun did not turn it over for more than two hours, providing more than ample time to have it tampered with. The Medical Examiner’s report states that Faulkner was shot with a .44 calibre bullet, yet Mumia’s gun was a .38 calibre. Although the crime lab claimed that the main bullet fragment removed from Faulkner’s head was too damaged to test, the defense team’s ballistics expert denied this. A second bullet fragment removed from the head wound simply disappeared without a trace. Evidence at the scene—bullet fragments, blood stains, the absence of divots in the sidewalk—refutes the prosecution claim that Faulkner was shot repeatedly while lying on the ground. The bullet patterns are far more consistent with multiple shooters, as Beverly testifies. A copper bullet jacket found at the scene was inconsistent with either Faulkner’s or Mumia’s guns, suggesting that a different gun was fired. Similarly, type O blood was found at the scene, but Faulkner, Mumia and Cook were all type A, suggesting that another person was present and injured. The angle of Mumia’s own wounds is impossible if he was shot while standing over Faulkner as the prosecution claimed. However, Mumia’s wounds are consistent with Beverly’s testimony that Mumia was shot by a cop at the scene. The “Confession”: The frame-up’s final leg was the claim that Mumia, lying in a pool of blood at the hospital where he was taken for treatment, shouted out that he had shot the cop. Yet the police officer assigned to guard Mumia there reported that same day that Mumia “made no comments.” In reality, he was so badly wounded, with a bullet hole through one lung, and had been so badly beaten by police on the street and at the hospital, that he could not have “shouted” anything. The “confession” was manufactured by the prosecution at a roundtable meeting with cops two months after the shooting. Priscilla Durham, a security guard, was the only hospital employee who backed up the cops’ “confession” lie. In 2003 Durham’s stepbrother Kenneth Pate swore that Durham said she was pressured by the cops to say Mumia confessed. Pate also said Durham heard Mumia say, “Get off me, get off me, they’re trying to kill me.” Mumia Abu-Jamal has always categorically maintained his innocence. As he declared in a 2001 affidavit: “I did not shoot Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. I had nothing to do with the killing of Officer Faulkner. I am innocent…. I never confessed to anything because I had nothing to confess to.” Mobilize Now to Free Mumia! The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is an object lesson in the class nature of the capitalist state. Its justice system is class- and race-biased to the core. The cops and courts who framed up this innocent man, the living tomb of the prison system in which he is jailed, the executioner who stands ready to kill—all are instruments of organized violence used to preserve the rule of the capitalist class through the forcible suppression of the working class and oppressed. Smashing this racist frame-up machine will require a socialist revolution that overturns the capitalist system. Demands for a “new trial” which have been raised by liberals, self-proclaimed socialist organizations, black nationalists and others have fed illusions that there can be justice in the capitalist courts. Those illusions demobilized a movement of millions around the world in Mumia’s defense. The time is now to rekindle mass protest—nationally and internationally—on behalf of Mumia. Mumia’s freedom will not be won through reliance on the rigged “justice” system or on capitalist politicians, whether Democrat, Republican or Green. The power that can turn the tide is the power of millions—working people, anti-racist youth, death penalty abolitionists—united in struggle to demand the freedom of this innocent man. Crucial to this perspective is the mobilization of the labor movement, whose social power derives from its ability to shut down production. As we have stated since we first took up Mumia’s defense in the mid 1980s, what’s necessary are labor-centered united-front actions, generating effective protest across a spectrum of political beliefs while assuring all the right to have their own say. The time is now to make Mumia’s case a rallying cry against the racist death penalty, against black oppression, against government repression. Raise your voice and organize now in your union, on your campus, in your community to demand: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the racist death penalty! —Partisan Defense Committee, 27 May 2006

An Open Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal Supporters-A Personal Commentary (April 2008)


The Partisan Defense Committee has passed "An Open Letter to All Supporters of Mumia‘s Freedom" to this writer. Those few who might not know of the torturous legal battles to free this innocent man can find further information at the above-mentioned Partisan Defense site. I make my own comments below.

Normally I pass information about the case of political prisoner Mumia abu-Jamal on without much comment because the case speaks for itself. The case has been front and center in international labor defense struggles for over two decades. However, in light of the adverse ruling by a majority of a federal Third Circuit Court of Appeal panel in March 2008 that affirmed Mumia’s 1982 conviction for first-degree murder of a police officer and left the only issue for decision that of resentencing to either reinstate his original death sentence or keep him imprisoned for life without parole I have some things to say about this fight.

Occasionally, in the heat of political battle some fights ensue around strategy that after the smoke has cleared, upon reflection, leave one with more sorrow than anger. Not so today. Today I am mad. Am I mad about the irrational decision by the majority of the Third Circuit panel in Mumia’s case? Yes, but when one has seen enough of these cases over a lifetime then one realizes that, as the late sardonic comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, in the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

What has got me steamed is the obvious bankruptcy of the strategy, if one can use this term, of centering Mumia’s case on the question of a new trial in order to get the ‘masses’- meaning basically parliamentary liberal types interested in supporting the case. This by people who allegedly KNOW better. The bankruptcy of this strategy, its effects on Mumia’s case and the bewildered response of those who pedaled it as good coin is detailed in the above-mentioned Open Letter. Read it.

Today, in reaction to the Third Circuit court’s decision, everyone and their brother and sister are now calling for Mumia’s freedom. At a point where he is between a rock and a hard place. However, it did not have to be that way. Mumia was innocent in 1982 and he did not stop being innocent at any point along this long road. Freedom for Mumia was (and is) the correct slogan in the case. A long line of political criminal cases, starting in this country with that of the Haymarket Martyrs if not before, confirms that simple wisdom. Those who consciously pedaled this weak ‘new trial’ strategy as a get rich quick scheme now have seen the chickens come home to roost. And Mumia pays the price.

I would point out two factors that made a ‘retrial’ strategy in the case of an innocent man particularly Pollyanna-ish for those honest militants who really believed that Mumia’s case was merely a matter of the American justice system being abused and therefore some court would rectify this situation if enough legal resources were in place. First, it is illusory that somehow, as exemplified in this case, a higher court system would remedy this egregious wrong. Long ago I remember a lawyer, I believe that it might have been the late radical lawyer Conrad Lynn no stranger to political defense work, telling a group of us doing defense work for the Black Panthers, that all these judges belong to the same union. They do not upset each other’s work except under extreme duress.

Second, and this is where the ‘wisdom’ of the reformists about reaching the ‘masses’ by a stagest theory of defense work (fight for retrial first, then freedom) turns in on them. As witness the list of names of those who have signed the Partisan Defense Committee’s call for Mumia’s freedom, excepting professional liberals and their hangers –on, those interested in Mumia’s case (or any leftwing political defense case) will sign on just as easily for freedom as retrial. Thus, opportunism does not pay, even in the short haul. That said, Free Mumia- say it loud, say it proud.
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