70 Years: Never Again! Hiroshima and Nagasaki Week in Massachusetts

70 Years: Never Again! Hiroshima and Nagasaki Week in Massachusetts

70 years after the United States atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 45 years after the entry into force of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 9 nuclear weapons states have not acted on  their solemn commitment to enter into serious negotiations to abolish nuclear weapons.
The Peace & Planet mobilization for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World brought thousands of people from many countries to the streets of New York on April 26, and the Global Wave held over 100 actions around the world calling on governments to eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us.  
Massachusetts Peace Action calls on peace groups, people of faith, youth, community groups, and all people who care about the future of humanity to organize events across Massachusetts on or about August 6-9 to call attention to the people’s demand for nuclear disarmament.

Hiroshima/ Nagasaki Week Events 

May 28 to August 5, Cambridge: 70 Days for Peace vigil at University Lutheran, 66 Winthrop St, 7:00 pm to 7:16 pm. An indoor commemoration will follow the final vigil on August 5 at 7:30 pm.
July 29, Cambridge: Nuclear Savage: Screening and discussion.  First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden St, 7pm.
August 4-9, Leverett, Concord, Lexington, Arlington, Boston, Amherst, and Northampton: Abolish War: Let Us Walk Together. Hearing the Cry of Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Peace Walk.

August 5, Cambridge: Hiroshima and Nagasaki are Still With Us.  Prayers, reflections, music, viewing of images of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of the Hibaku Maria, a statue of Mary that was damaged in, but survived, the atomic bombing in Nagasaki’s Catholic cathedral.  University Lutheran Church, 66 Winthrop St, after the final vigil, 7:30pm.
August 6, Martha's Vineyard: Memorial Vigil for the Victims of Hiroshima and an affirmation of the global consciousness preventing further nuclear bomb attacks. We welcome participants to share music, poetry and dance to deepen our time together. Martha’s Vineyard Peace Council, Sarah and Bruce Nevin, 508-627-8536 or email sarahnevin@gmail.com.  Aquinnah Light House yard, Gay Head Light, sunrise, 5:43 am.

August 6, Waltham: Vigil, Waltham Concerned Citizens.   Info: 781-893-0361 or info@walthamconcernedcitizens.org. Waltham Common, Main and Moody Streets, 7:45 to 8:30 a.m. 

August 6, Boston: Boston Remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Procession and outdoor commemoration. Leverett Peace Pagoda walkers; talks by Elaine Scarry, Fumi Inoue, David Rothauser, Peter Moyer, Denise Simmons, Rashin Khosravibavandpouri, Guntram Mueller; songs by Ann Goodman; Soran Bushi dancers; koto by Akino and Yoshino Watanabe.  Gather at 3pm at First Church of Boston, 66 Marlborough St; procession through Public Garden to Copley Square, ending at 5:30pm.

August 6, Fall River: Vigil to mark the 70th anniversary of the boming of Hiroshima. Quequechan Peace Alliance and Greater Fall River Committee for Peace and Justice.  Contact Steve Camara, 508-678-1463, Rev. James Hornsby, 508-672-6607, or Judith Conrad, judithconrad@mindspring.com. Government Center, 4-6pm.
August 6, Cambridge: Collaborative reading of Thomas Merton’s “Original Child Bomb” and then floating candle boats on the Charles. Cambridge Friends Meeting, 5 Longfellow Park, 7pm.
August 7, Boston: Concert in Observance of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings.  An opportunity to gather, reflect, and meditate on the atomic bombings of August 6th and 9th, 1945 using the healing power of music, community, and our wonderfully enduring cultures. Church of the Advent, 30 Brimmer St, 8pm.

August 9, Amherst: Community Peace Gathering for the 70th Anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  There will be songs for all to sing, perspectives on peace and prayers for peace. Sponsored by Peacebuilders of First Church Amherst and Grace Church Peace Fellowship.  All welcome. The monks and nuns of the Leverett Peace Pagoda will depart from this gathering for a prayer walk for peace  from Amherst to Northampton. First Congregational Church lawn, 165 Main Street, 1 pm to 2 pm.  

August 9th, Watertown: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Building a Nuclear Free World.   Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment.  Film followed by vigil, testimonials and candle boat launch at Charles River Dock, Watertown Square.  Grace Vision Church, 80 Mt. Auburn St., 5:30pm,

August 9, Cambridge: Peace & Planet Poetry & Art Night.  Youth-led event at Out of the Blue Too Art Gallery, 541 Massachusetts Avenue, 6pm.
August 9, Northampton: Memorial event, Smith College, McConnell Hall 103, 7pm; candle-light floating ceremony with members of the Leverett Peace Pagoda, Boathouse on Paradise Pond, 8pm.   American Friends Service Committee of Western Massachusetts.

Download a Printable Flyer
We hope many churches, synagogues and mosques will ring their bells or hold other observances on or around August 6.  The bells rung by Harvard University’s Lowell House on April 26 as part of the Global Wave provide inspiration.   See more on the faith-based plans for Hiroshima/Nagasaki Week; next meeting July 29.
MAPA’s nuclear abolition group meets every Wednesday during the summer at our office to discuss these plans.  July 15 at 11am, July 22 at 5pm, July 29 at 5pm, August 5 at 11am. Join us in our office, First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden St, in the basement.
Sign our petition to President Obama to take action on de-alerting, no first use, global negotiations, and stopping nuclear weapons modernization.  Help us circulate it; it is available online or in paper form.
Send information on your events to info@masspeaceaction.org or submit them here.  We will publish a calendar of events across the state so that all people who seek a peaceful world will know that they are not alone!

No more Hiroshimas!

No more Nagasakis!

70 Years – Never Again!

Abolish Nuclear Weapons!

Stop Modernizing US Nuclear Weapons!

For Peace and Justice!

Read the Call to Action for Peace & Planet Summer.
The Peace & Planet mobilization for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World brought thousands of people from many countries to the streets of New York on April 26, and the Global Wave held over 100 actions around the world calling on governments to eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us.   Now, let’s take the next step and raise our voices on August 5-9!
Join us!  Contact 617-354-2169 or info@masspeaceaction.org to connect and exchange ideas. 
- Massachusetts Peace Action and American Friends Service Committee

Israel retaliates against Palestinian hunger strikers

Maureen Clare Murphy Rights and Accountability 24 July 2015

Palestinians in Gaza City rally in solidarity with prisoners on 22 July. Muhammad Allan is shown in the poster on the far left and Uday Isteiti in the banner on the right.
Ashraf Amra APA images

A Palestinian detainee who has been on hunger strike for 36 consecutive days is being mistreated by Israeli prison doctors, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club.
Muhammad Allan, a lawyer from Einbus village near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, is on an open-ended hunger strike in protest of his detention without charge or trial — a widespread practice known as administrative detention — since 16 November.
According to the Prisoners Club, and as reported by the Quds news site, Allan is currently only taking in water and is being held in isolation at Eshel Prison in the south of present-day Israel.
During a visit with his lawyer, Allan said that he was suffering from continuous vomiting, shortness of breath and severe headaches.
Allan also reported that the prison authorities transferred him from one prison facility to another in an attempt to pressure him to end his strike and to punish him for refusing medical tests.

“Devoid of legitimacy”

The prisoner said that he would press forward with his hunger strike “because the Israeli military courts are devoid of legitimacy.”
Another prisoner, Uday Isteiti, vowed to continue his open-ended hunger strike, the Prisoners Club stated yesterday. Isteiti began refusing food at the same time as Allan, also in protest of his detention without charge or trial.
Isteiti, from the northern West Bank city of Jenin, is only consuming water and the prison authorities are subjecting him to various measures to pressure him to end his strike.
Two other Palestinian prisoners were reported yesterday to be on hunger strike.
Mousa Sufan, held in Ramon prison in the south of Israel, had entered his third day of refusing food in protest of being denied medical treatment.
Abdallah Abu Jaber was on his fourth day of hunger strike yesterday, demanding that he be released to Jordan, where he holds citizenship, or transferred to a prison there for the rest of his 20-year sentence.
Last week, Khader Adnan, who endured two lengthy hunger strikes in Israeli prison, made a short video appeal for urgent support of Allan and Isteiti.

In the video, Adnan calls for “solidarity with the two imprisoned brothers … and all of those who strike for freedom, dignity and justice.”
“We should not delay, we should not wait for them to strike longer,” he adds.
Adnan was released from prison earlier this month after waging a 55-day hunger strike in protest of being held without charge or trial since last summer.
Adnan had previously gone on hunger strike to protest his administrative detention following his arrest in December 2011. He refused food for 66 days before securing his release in April 2012, nearly losing his life while becoming the icon of a wider political prisoner movement.

“Torture”

As of May 2015, there were 5,750 Palestinians being held by Israel, according to the human rights group Addameer.
One detainee, Dirar Abu Sisi, has been held in solitary confinement for four years, and was recently sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Abu Sisi, an engineer who worked at Gaza’s sole electricity plant, was abducted from a train in Ukraine in 2011 and surfaced in Israeli detention.
Abu Sisi’s lawyer, Smadar Ben-Natan, said that her client had made confessions “under very heavy duress which I would characterize as torture,” the Ma’an News Agency reported this week.
Israel claims that Abu Sisi assisted Hamas’ armed wing in improving its rocket capabilities, but the Islamist party and resistance organization has denied that the engineer had any connection to the group, Ma’an added.

Tags

• political prisoners
• arrest and detention
• hunger strike
• Palestinian Prisoners' Club
• administrative detention
• Uday Isteiti
• Muhammad Allan
• Mousa Sufan
• Abdallah Abu Jaber
• Khader Adnan
• Dirar Abu Sisi
• solitary confinement

“Bomber Bernie’s” Faux Populism – Obama, Redux and a Bad Hair Day. #FeelTheBern (DON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN)

Paul Street, whose book entitled Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics proved the most astute political critique of the Obama era (see our Vermont Commons review below), is back with an insightful look at what might best be called “The Legend Of Bernie Sanders.” In this new arcticle, penned for Black Agenda Report, Street reports on the real story behind Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential election bid, including:

– Alleged “socialist” Sanders’ inside dealings with the Democratic Party as far back as 1990.

– Sanders’ Harvard University Kennedy School “conversion” to a political centrist with the blessing of the Democratic Party.

– Sanders’ two decades’ of strategic blocking of a viable third party Progressive movement in Vermont.

– Sanders’ voting record in support of aggressive and militaristic U.S. imperialism overseas.

Don’t get fooled again, friends. Ole’ Bernardo is Business as Usual for the U.S. of Empire. And here’s a reprint review of Street’s Obama book from six years ago – might bring some clarity to the fawning over the Sanders campaign.

Free Vermont, and long live the UNtied States!

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Street Cred: Reconsidering Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics

by Rob Williams, 2VR Publisher

I serve as a blank screen onto which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.
Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 2006
Barack Obama is the ultimate modern media creature…his entire political persona is an ingeniously crafted human cipher, a man without race, ideology, geographic allegiances, or indeed, sharp edges of any kind. ~ Matt Taibi, Rolling Stone, February 2007

Sixty years ago, a brilliant young U.S. historian named Richard Hofstadter wrote a book called The American Political Tradition And The Men Who Made It. Long a staple of U.S. college classrooms, Hofstadter’s masterpiece surveyed a wide array of political leaders, from Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, through Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Hofstadter concluded, somewhat devastatingly, that “the range of vision embraced by the primary contestants in the major parties has always been bounded by the horizons of property and enterprise. They have accepted the economic virtues of capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man,” [and] the ‘intensely nationalistic’” nature of U.S. political culture.

In a stunning new book entitled Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics, author Paul Street takes critical aim at what might best be termed “the legend” of Barack Obama. Wisely, Street begins with Hofstadter, whose prescient writing is more relevant that ever in this new millennium, as the U.S. republic slips ever more deeply into Empire. Street is a sharp observer of the Obama phenomenon, having worked in both the Chicago and national political arenas as an independent journalist, policy adviser (Vice President of the Chicago Urban League), historian, and field worker for the John Edwards 2008 presidential campaign run in Iowa (where, he says, he discovered an unthinking devotion to Obama exhibited by his supporters which bordered on “cultlike.” Street’s study is the most important book on Obama I’ve yet read. And yes, Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope are both on my bookshelf, my purchase of them helping to make Obama a millionaire and launch his successful bid for the presidency.

Street begins his study with some general observations about important elements of our deeply debased 21st century U.S. imperial political culture, ingredients that the Obama campaign took full advantage of: an obsession with celebrity, the 24/7 promotion of a “culture of therapy” (thanks, Oprah), the relentless push towards the tele-visual, the bankruptcy of our winner-take-all two-party (or is it 1 party with two heads?) corporately-funded political system, Democratic leaders’ – Clinton, Carter and the Johns (Kennedy and Kerry) – historic tendency to “give away the store” on issues critical to Democratic voters, and the disturbing fact that 6 transnational media conglomerates own most of what we read, see, and hear in what passes for “news” these days. He quotes Noam Chomsky, who astutely observed that, in a 21st century political culture built on spectacle, “spectators are not supposed to bother their heads with issues.” All vital points to understand, but somewhat standard fare from a left-leaning political observer.

Street’s book really takes off when he starts examining some deeply-cherished myths about Mr. O held by Obama’s supporters, as well as closely scrutinizing the Ba-Rock Star’s actual speeches and political record. Here are just a few of the questions Street explores.

Was Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign really funded by millions of small donations and “not by folks writing big checks”?

In a chapter entitled “Obama’s Dollar Value,” Street shows how candidate Obama was vetted, blessed and sanctified by corporate and political elites as far back as October 2003, when he met with Beltway and Wall Street insiders, and began raking in campaign donations from the very same Bail-Us-Out Banksters now in “too big too fail” mode: among them – Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, and Citibank. “What’s the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?” asks one big donor who preferred to remain anonymous. And, not surprisingly, Obama’s voting record indicates he has rewarded his donors with policies and programs that best serve their interests, even as he exudes Clinton-esque “I feel your pain” sympathy for the collapsing U.S. economy’s poor ole’ middle and working class peasants on the Tee Vee week.

Is Barack Obama really an “economic progressive?”

One of Obama’s greatest rhetorical maneuvers, Street suggests, a trick clearly evident in a close reading of his second book The Audacity of Hope, as well as just about every political speech he delivers, is his ability to elevate issues of socioeconomic class over issues of race, and to rhetorically ratchet down expectations for most Americans at a time of tremendous economic disparity. At the same time, Obama hews to the same corporate-friendly “globalist” line on policy matters, sacrificing the interests of working and middle class breadwinners on the altar of political expediency. Obama’s supporters like to point to his rhetorical support for the common man, but you can’t eat a teleprompter screen. “He knew the words to our hymns,” one disillusioned black voter said of Jimmy Carter, “but not the number on our paychecks.” The same, Street suggests, can be said of Obama.

And what about race in the United States? How “black” is Barack Obama, anyway? Street is at his best explaining the historical and cultural differences between individual and institutional racism in the United States, arguing that Obama’s politically-motivated attempts to transcend divisive issues of race in the United States end up betraying voters of color because discriminatory race-based policy matters go ignored, even as the “post-racial” politics of Obama assuage white voters who don’t really see the Chicago-based Obama as “of color.” “I love Barack. He’s smart. He’s handsome. He’s charismatic,” explained one middle-aged white voter. “I don’t think of him as black.” Or, as African-American observer Debra Dickerson explained in a 2007 Washington Post article, “We’d probably like it better if Barack talked like Jesse Jackson, but ya’ll wouldn’t.”

And are Obama’s allegedly “anti-war” foreign policy positions to date really all that different from those of the Bush/Cheney regime? Aside from Obama’s occasional adoption of a “kinder, gentler” rhetorical tone – let’s close Guantanamo, be nicer to Arab Muslims, and work for world peace – Street argues that Obama’s continued adherence to “American exceptionalism,” his continuation of aggressive Pentagon and CIA policies in the greater Middle East (including his “Bushing” us into war in Afghanistan), and his “blame and hold” strategy in Iraq (blame the Iraqis for all the problems the U.S. helped created since the 2003 invasion, and hold onto whatever bases and other resources the U.S. military can salvage) indicate that it is business as usual for the U.S. Empire abroad.

This short review does little justice to Street’s thoughtful, sophisticated and trenchantly-written critique of Obama’s rise to power and his first year in office. Suffice to say that Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics will push an open-minded reader to a deeper consideration of the situation in which the United States now finds itself as we enter the new millennium. But, to do so, one must look beyond the media-manufactured rhetoric of “hope” and “change” to grapple with some deeper, darker truths about Barack Obama and the future of U.S. politics.





 



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One More Time Down 1950s Record Memory Lane

 

 

 

 

 

Sam Lowell, ex-corner boy in the early 1960s when in the working-class neighborhoods of America you had best have had corner boy comrades when you hung out on date-less, girl-less, dough-less Friday and Saturday nights to have your back if trouble brewed, ex-hippie “flower child” along with his long mourned and lamented friend the late Peter Paul Markin heading out west on the hitchhike roads when the world turned upside down later in the decade, now a sedate grandfatherly lawyer filled with respectability and memories had to laugh about how much he of late had been thinking about the 1950s. The 1950s when he came of age, came of musical age, drawing away from the music on his parents’ family living room radio and their cranky old record player after they had, to insure domestic peace and tranquility if he remembered correctly, his first transistor radio down at the now long gone Radio Shack store and he could sit up in his room and dream of whatever coming of age boys dreamed about, mainly how those last year bothersome girls became this year’s interesting objects of discussion (by the way that room, shared with his two brothers also a beauty of hold up to your ear transistor radio and drown out the world of brotherly scuffings). 

More than that though, more than just thinking about the old days he had via the beauties of the Internet been purchasing several record compilations of the “best of” that period from a commercial distributor (and also keeping up to date on various versions of the songs on YouTube) and through his friend and old corner boy Frankie Riley been spilling plenty of cyber-ink on Frankie’s blog, In The Be-Bop ‘50s Night, going back to the now classic age of rock and roll. He had to laugh about that as well since he had been well known back on the corner, back holding up the wall in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner on those date-less, girl-less, dough-less Friday and Saturday nights for proclaiming to all who would listen (mainly Frankie, Markin, Jimmy Jenkins, Jack Callahan, Kenny Hogan and Johnny “Thunder” Thornton and an occasional girl who wondered what he was talking about) that “rock and roll will never die.”

Mainly, through the archival marvels of modern technology, it had not died although it clearly no longer provided the same fuel for later generations more into hip-hop-ish music. But funny when kids, his grandkids, for example, hear (and see) Elvis, all steamy, smoldering and swiveling in something like the film clip in Jailhouse Rock, Bo Diddley proclaiming that he put the rock in rock and roll, Chuck Berry telling a candid world, a candid teenage world which after all was all that counted then, now too from what he had heard, that Mister Beethoven from the old fogy music museum had better take himself and move over because a new be-bop daddy was taking taking the reins, curl-in-hair Buddy Holly pining away for his Peggy Sue, Jerry Lee Lewis sitting, maybe standing for all Sam knew telling that same candid world that everybody had to do the high school hop bop, confidentially, Wanda Jackson proclaiming that it was party time and an endless host of one hit wonders and wanna-bes they went crazy. Yeah, just like the young Sam who could not believe his ears when he had come of age and, yeah, those same guys who formed his musical tastes back in the 1950s when he had come of age, musical age anyway. Jesus, Jesus too when he came of teenage age and all that meant of angst and alienation.

Sam had thought again recently about going back to those various commercially-produced compilations put out by demographically savvy media companies to cull out the better songs, some which he had on the tip of his tongue almost continuously since the 1950s(the Dubs Could This Be Magic the great last chance dance song that bailed him out of being shut out of more than one dance night although his partner’s feet borne the brunt of the battle, and the Teen Queens Eddie My Love, where Eddie took advantage of the girl and she is wondering when he is coming back, a great love ‘em and leave ‘em song and the answer is still he’s never coming back, are two examples that quickly came to his mind). Others like Johnny Ace’s Pledging My Love or The Crows Oh-Gee though needed some coaxing by the compilations to remember.

But Sam, old lawyerly Sam, had finally found a sure-fire method to aid in that memory coaxing. Just go back in memory’s mind and picture scenes from teenage days and figure the songs that went with such scenes (this is not confined to 1950s aficionados anybody can imagine their youth times and play). But even using that method Sam believed that he was cheating a little, harmlessly cheating but still cheating. When he (or anybody familiar with the times) looked at the artwork on most of the better 1950s CD compilations one could not help but notice the excellent artwork that highlights various institutions illustrated back then. The infamous drive-in movies where you gathered about six people (hopefully three couples but six anyway) and paid for two the other four either on the back seat floor or in the trunk. They always played music at intermission when we gathered at the refreshment stand to grab inedible hot dogs, stale popcorn, or fizzled out sods, although who cared, especially if that three couples thing was in play, and that scene had always been associated in Sam’s mind with Frankie Lyman and the Teenager’s Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

So that is how Sam played the game. Two (or more) can play so he said he would just set the scenes and others can fill in their own musical selections. Here goes: the first stirrings of interest in the opposite sex at Doc’s Drugstore with his soda fountain AND jukebox; the drive-in restaurant with you and yours in the car, yours or father borrowed for an end of the night bout with cardboard hamburgers, ultra-greasy french fries and diluted soda; the Spring Frolic Dance (or name your seasonal dance) your hands all sweaty, trying to disappear into the wall, waiting, waiting to perdition for that last dance so that you could ask that he or she that you had been eyeing all evening to dance that slow one  all dreamy; down at the beach on day one of out of school for the summer checking out the scene between the two boat clubs where all the guys and gals who counted hung out; the night before Thanksgiving football rally where he or she said they would be, how about you; on poverty nights sitting up in your bedroom listening to edgy WMEX on your transistor radio away from prying adult eyes; another poverty night you and your boys, girls, boys and girls sitting in the family room spinning platters; that first sixth grade “petting” party (no more explanation needed right); cruising Main Street with your boys or girls looking for, well, you figure it out listening to the radio in that “boss” Chevy, hopefully; and, sitting in the balcony “watching” the double feature at the Strand Theater on Saturday afternoon when younger and at night when older. Okay, Sam has given enough cues. Fill in the dots, oops, songs and add scenes too.                      

In Honor of Anniversary Of The Cuban July 26th Movement

In Honor of Anniversary Of The Cuban July 26^th Movement

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Every leftist, hell, everybody who stands on the democratic principle that each nation has the right to self-determination should cautiously rejoice at the “defrosting” of the long-time diplomatic relations between the American imperial behemoth and the island of Cuba (and the freedom of the remaining Cuban Five in the bargain). Every leftist militant should understand that each non-capitalist like Cuba going back to the establishment of the now defunct Soviet Union has had the right (maybe until we win our socialist future the duty) to make whatever advantageous agreements they can with the capitalist world. That despite whatever disagreements we have with the political regimes ruling those non-capitalist states. That is a question for us to work out not the imperialists.

For those who have defended the Cuban Revolution since its victory in 1959 under whatever political rationale (pro-socialist, right to self-determination, or some other hands off policy) watching on black and white television the rebels entering Havana this day which commemorates the heroic if unsuccessful efforts at Moncada we should affirm our continued defense of the Cuban revolution. Oh yes, and tell the American government to give back Guantanamo while we are at it.    

From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba
Blog

 

 

 

 

Click below to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive blog page for all kinds of interesting information about that important historic grouping in the International Brigades that fought for our side, the side of the people in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

http://www.albavolunteer.org/category/blog/

 

 

As everybody probably knows by now who has following this blog for a time Ralph Morris and I, Sam Eaton, met down in Washington, D.C. on May Day 1971 on the football field at then RFK Stadium while being held by the D.C. police (although Ralph was picked off by a National Guard soldier who transferred him to D.C. hands as the division of labor played out that day) for having tried to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war, that war being the Vietnam War that tore our generation, our nation asunder. I had gone down to Washington that weekend before May Day with a group of radicals from Cambridge who were part of an larger affinity group which had planned to “capture” the White House and Ralph had joined a group of anti-war Vietnam veterans who had planned to surround the Pentagon, a less exciting but more possible task.

Inevitably we had been arrested well before achieving either of our objectives along with thousands of others who were outraged by that endless war and committed to shutting it down, shutting it down some damn way so don’t smirk when you read this (“endless war,” sound familiar?). Ralph had noticed me wearing a button on my shirt indicating that I was a supporter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and had asked me if I had served in Vietnam. Having been exempted from military service by a hardship deferment due to my being the sole surviving supporter of my mother and four much younger sisters after my father had died of a massive heart attack in 1965 I rather sheepishly told Ralph the story of how my best buddy, my closest “corner boy,” Jeff Mullins, had been blown away in some God forsaken village up in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and that had spurred me who had been really indifferent to the war before to get involved as an anti-war activist a couple of years before doing civil disobedience actions leading up to the big action in D.C. in 1971. Ralph that afternoon (and late into the night since we wound up being held for three days before we figured that some side exits were unguarded and scooted out of the place) had told me his story of how he had come out of the Army after serving eighteen months with a unit up in that same Central Highlands where Jeff had been blown away and had been so angry at the government for making him and his Army buddies what he called “animals” that on discharge he had lined up with VVAW (through a fellow soldier in him in whom he had kept in touch with while stationed at Fort Devens in Massachusetts before he time was up).

After many hours of talking and getting a feel for each other we thereafter joined forces, did a number of actions later over the next couple of years until the high tide of the 1960s ebbed and faded. We have remained friends throughout, although some years sporadically,   and up until 2003 with the big invasion of Iraq would “do our duty” when some anti-war or social justice issue hit us between the eyes. Since then we have been on a steady diet of fighting the endless wars the last two American governments have immersed the country in without being any closer to the end than when we started.    

After May Day 1971, and for a while after the high tide ebbed through about 1976 I think (and Ralph thinks that is about the right time frame as well) he and I would attend various study groups run by radicals and “reds” to find out about the earlier history of the left-wing movement in America and internationally to see if we could learn any lessons that might help us in our social struggles. The whole summer of 1972 was spent in one such group when I was living in a commune in Cambridge and invited Ralph to stay with me and get involved in one of the “red collective” study groups that were sprouting up then as people despaired over the old strategies and tactics that had ground us to a standstill.

One of the big events that we studied which held us in thrall, especially since neither of us were history buffs or knew much from our high school history classes was the fierce battle between the fascists and republicans in the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. Particularly the exploits of the International Brigades and the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15^th Brigade that fought valiantly if forlornly on the Republican side. Many a night we would ask ourselves the question of whether we would have fought, fought honorably in Spain (assuming that the Stalinists who controlled entry, controlled the “politically reliable elements” that they vetted into the Abraham Lincoln would have let us in). We hoped we would have. As Ralph and I have been fighting the good fight against the endless wars this time around (everyone will agree that over a dozen years and counting with no end in sight qualifies for such a designation) we have taken advantage of the Internet to see what other organizations and individuals have been up to. One day when I was Googling I came up upon this Abraham Lincoln Brigade website and was intrigued by its offerings. I made some comments about it and about Spain in the 1930s on the site. Here is what I had to say (I wrote this but Ralph put in his fair share of ideas so it is a two person commentary):            

This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. Viva La Quince Brigada!  

*******

I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was in my twenties. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat (okay, okay working class) certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution of 1917 Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky who had helped lead the successful October revolution and then led the military fight to defend the gains against the Whites arms in hands noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which were made into a volume for publication is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.

This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice. I further note that the question of the crisis of revolutionary leadership still remains to be resolved by the international working class.

Trotsky's polemics in that volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM an organization which almost consciously limited itself to organizing in vanguard Catalonia in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.

Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn,’ into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basis for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left-wing organizations like the POUM, the left-anarchists around Durrutti and so on. For more such examples of the results of the crisis of leadership in the Spanish Revolution read this book which is available on-line at the Leon Trotsky Archives section of the Marxist Internet Archives for the year 1939.

"Viva La Quince Brigada"- The Abraham Lincoln Battalion In The Spanish Civil War (2006)

BOOK REVIEW

THE ODYSSEY OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE: AMERICANS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, Peter N. Carroll, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1994.
I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 since I was in my twenties. My first paper for a study group presentation sponsored by one of the “red collectives” that were sprouting forth in the early 1970s as disoriented and disheartened radicals and “reds” were seriously and studiously searching for ways to fight the American monster government after years of failure was on this subject. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917. That calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Mr. Carroll’s book while not directly addressing that issue nevertheless demonstrates through the story of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion how the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and through it the policy of the Communist International in calling for international brigades to fight in Spain aided in the defeat of that promising revolution.

Mr. Carroll chronicles anecdotally how individual militants were recruited, transported, fought and died as ‘premature anti-fascists’ in that struggle. No militant today, or ever, can deny the heroic qualities of the volunteers and their commitment to defeat fascism- the number one issue for militants of that generation-despite the fatal policy of the various party leaderships. Such individuals were desperately needed then, as now, if revolutionary struggle is to succeed. However, to truly honor their sacrifice we must learn the lessons of that defeat through mistaken strategy as we fight today. Interestingly, as chronicled here, and elsewhere in the memoirs of some veterans, many of the surviving militants of that struggle continued to believe that it was necessary to defeat Franco first, and then fight for socialism. This was most dramatically evoked by the Lincolns' negative response to the Barcelona uprising of 1937-the last time a flat out fight for leadership of the revolution could have galvanized the demoralized workers and peasants for a desperate struggle against Franco.

Probably the most important part of Mr. Carroll’s book is tracing the trials and tribulations of the volunteers after their withdrawal from Spain in late 1938. Their organization-the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade- was constantly harassed and monitored by the United States government for many years as a Communist “front” group. Individuals also faced prosecution and discrimination for their past association with the Brigades. He also traces the aging and death of that cadre. In short, this book is a labor of love for the subjects of his treatment. Whatever else this writer certainly does not disagree with that purpose. If you want to read about what a heroic part of the vanguard of the international working class looked like in the 1930’s, look here. Viva la Quince Brigada!!

Hey, I’m Just Killing The Blues-With Rolly Sally’s Killing The Blues In Mind

Hey, I’m Just Killing The Blues-With Rolly Sally’s Killing The Blues In Mind

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Sam Lowell never drew a break, never drew a blessed break with his woman relationships. Not flirtations; Christ, even in elementary school he had had his heart broken by some young thing in blonde hair and sun dress who asked him to kiss her, didn’t like it and with home to tell her mother and then she his mother that he had made an unwanted advance, took a beating for his mother another time when to impress some Mayfair swell new girl from the new all the rage ranch house development up the street at a school square dance he cut up his one of only two pairs of pants and afterward she laughed at him like some silly rube, he took the beating stoically though; not one-night-stands which usually cost him at least a hang-over and a lot of dough plying young women with liquor or dope or both before he or she snuck out the door, provide for free fear of a dose and if you don’t know what means then move, or more scarily one time pregnancy when the young woman didn’t like “rubbers” and though her cycle was okay and it had been a close thing and some sweated days; not flings, although started with light-hearted intentions neither party looking for anything but shelter from the storm and he became the fall guy when she decided that that temporary shelter should be permanent or he took the fall hard; and not upswing affairs (he liked to use that word “affair” since as a boy, a Catholic boy growing in the 1950s, around the house his mother rather than using the “s” word would said that so and so was having an “affair” and he thought it was just some boy and girl kissing thing, you know chaste, until he found out better when he entered the world of, well, affairs).

Certainly not in marriage or rather marriages, two, one of which had been something like a “shot-gun” wedding when he/she thought she was pregnant so he could avoid the Army as a father in the Vietnam War days at a time when they were not drafting fathers and she turned out to not be so (he got deferred on other grounds) but dear Catholic parents on her side insisted on the virginal ceremony but that one despite two kids, good kids too although he was always like his own father rather distant from both broods of children, was not made in heaven once she took up with the lawyer she worked for and the other had been a marriage of convenience which again despite two kids, ditto on the good and distant part, dissolved into the night when he had proven to be less a good provider than her high-roller dreams could handle. Two marriages and two divorces which he was still paying for.

So somebody, somebody like Jimmy Jenkins, who had grown up with Sam in the Acre section of Carver, the tough hard knocks section married to his high school sweetheart, Betsy, going on forty something years could not understand Sam’s tangled relationships with women, could not understand why he when they met occasionally for a few beers at Henning’s Bar and Grille in downtown Carver constantly said he was just “killing the blues.” (The Acre known by one and all locally as the place where the working poor, the “boggers” who worked in season in the cranberry bogs for which the town was famous met the dregs of society in the town “projects” and a place to be avoided at all costs by polite society, at least that is what Sam’s mother told him when he asked why his friends from school would not come to his house and he had to go to theirs to play)        

Maybe Sam was just born under an unlucky star but maybe a look at his most recent “affair” which ended up once again in the dumps might shed some light on why he lived under the star of that strange expression.

Jimmy and Sam, who now lived in an apartment in Plymouth the next town over from Carver and thus close-by (previously his second wife, Laura, the big high-roller dreamer gone bust had insisted that they live in high-end Cambridge away from the “boggers” as she sneeringly called them, she a daughter of a Andover cop for Christ sake) since his last divorce about three years before, had been getting together more frequently in the recent past since that had both been anticipating their fiftieth class reunion, the Carver High Class of 1963, coming up that fall. Bart, as a member in good standing of previous reunion committees and one of the few with Betsy standing who still resided in the town, was once again on the committee and having rekindled his relationship with Sam tried to recruit him to go to the reunion. Bart and Betsy were hardly new to such organizing operations since they met in ninth grade at the Freshman Mixer committee meeting which got that class acclimated to the big school after the shelter of junior high school and had fallen in love for eternity shortly thereafter. Somehow Bart and Betsy savored providing the party favors, mugs, nostalgia paraphernalia and oldies but goodies songs such greying class reunions entailed. He had succeeded since Sam, who had never gone to any previous reunions, was curious about the old crowd and what had happened to them. Previously, alienated and estranged from his own family for many years, he refused to go “back home” in case he ran into anybody from the clan but after a final brief reconciliation shortly before his parents died after the fortieth class reunion he was as ease on that question.

The night of the reunion Sam ran into Melinda Loring, whom Sam had been after all through high school with no success. See Melinda, smart, pretty (and long and slender with well-turned legs and auburn hair as was his preference in those days) and ambitious would not give the “boggers” from the other side of town the time of day then. That turned out to be wrong, or the wrong reason that he got nowhere. As it turned out once they talked that reunion night she would not have given him the time of day since her hard-bitten Protestant parents would not allow her to date a Catholic boy, and she followed her parents’ wishes and in fact had agreed with that discussion. She knew that Sam was a Catholic having seen him coming out of the Sacred Heart church one Sunday morning on her way to her own church service. Sam back then had asked around, asked her friend John “Ducky” Drake who was her neighbor specifically, as guys and gals did back in the 1960s and maybe they still do to get “intelligence,” on the school grapevine network that was so up-to-date it would put the CIA and NSA to shame to see if she was “going steady” or had somebody’s class ring on a chain around her neck which amounted to the same thing. Ducky told him flat out that “boggers” need not apply. Final. As he was to find out shortly later that evening that reason was not true when Melinda told him the unsavory real reason, although Ducky, RIP, was not responsible for that error, in reality that “ice queen” demeanor Melinda put on in public back then was just a defense against an awful home life, worse than Sam’s in lots of ways but that hardy did him any good back then.

That night though perhaps having been through a few of life’s travails herself since then (she twice married and divorced twice with no children by her preference  that number two as Sam mentioned to Jimmy later seemed to be the fate of their generation, what he called the Generation of ’68 after the turbulent year that had a deep effect on many in their generation in the love department) Melinda and Sam struck up an interesting conversation. The pair in the process of some AARP-ten tips for meeting new plus sixties flirting while sitting at the bar, after more conversation seemingly having beside the two divorces apiece a lot in common, she an owner of a small high tech company and he owner of the town’s last remaining independent print shop (since sold to a large print imaging company once Sam realized that he could no longer keep up with the rapid changes in the industry and he was ready to retire in any case). They also had common musical interest since both had been smitten by the folk music revival minute that washed through the early 1960s after their high school days (particularly jug band music so esoteric a common interest that seemed to portent some “written in the stars” expectations) and kept their interests even after it then ebbed with the subsequent British invasion and the day of acid-etched rock, reading (historical novels), and movies (black and white film noir classics like Out Of The Past and The Big Sleep).  Both liked to travel although not too far and were emphatically not interested in getting married again (under something like the principle of “three strikes and you are out”).

So naturally based on these slender reeds they began what was a stormy if short affair. An affair that had Sam reeling behind the idea in his mind that 16 or 66 he could not do anything but sing the blues with women when the affair, or his part, began to unravel a couple of months later. Who knows how things began to turn down, to get Sam thinking he was “killing the blues” (a feeling that could work two ways, one while in the relationship when things got dicey and he was waiting for the ax to fall and the other when it was over whether of his doing or not, or of both when he would feel something like ennui).  Maybe it was when Melinda, who seemed to have been grasping for something in the relationship earlier that Sam, had their futures all mapped out unto the nth degree when they had only just began their affair (she hated that word, gave him more than his share of grief when he used it innocently to define what they had even after he had told her his sense of the term going back to ancient now abandoned Catholic mother sensibilities). She had them retiring to California, (Florida, Puerto Rico and Cancun were also in the mix as possibilities complete with well-researched brochures by here including costs about all those locations), had them living in her house until then, had them sharing expenses from the get-go, had trips in the meantime all planned out, stuff like that, woman stuff and not bad in itself but Sam was not even sure that he even liked Melinda all that much at that point, or enough to break up his own personal household such as it was. He just wanted to go slow, let things take their proper course. And maybe they would have if she had let up a bit.

All Sam knew, after the first few weeks of something like a welcome calmness in his life, when he finally came under the gun of Melinda’s “wants”’ he began getting a feeling a feeling that he had gotten before so it was not something that took him by surprise that he was “happy” whenever he left her house after a couple of days (she “refused” to stay at his apartment calling it small and dingy), but mixed in with that “happy” was the seemingly inevitable feeling that he was marking time, just killing the blues after a couple of months of calm before the storm. So as such things go at some point thereafter, after he got the “moving on” feeling he began a campaign to break up the relationship. Sent Melinda an unwise e-mail to that effect stating that he was not sure how he felt about her, about her plans and about what he wanted to do in the future. That slight questioning got him the “door.” She summarily wrote him off, wrote him out of her life. They had met at a restaurant one evening in Hingham to discuss the matter and the scene had been stormy with her walking out after he took offense at some remark that she made. As he watched from the parking lot as he headed to his own the rear lights of her car go off into the night Sam though now the “killing the blues” phase after losing her would set in. Set in for a long time since he had begun to doubt whether he had done the right thing, whether he didn’t have more feelings for her than he had expressed. 

Yeah, Jimmy thought to himself after hearing Sam’s sad tale old Sam never drew a blessed break with women.        

'Cocaine Habit Blues' THE MEMPHIS JUG BAND (1929) Memphis Blues Legend

The Memphis Jug Band - K.C. Moan