Tuesday, August 04, 2015

The ABCs Of Crime And Punishment

Workers Vanguard No. 1071
10 July 2015
 
On Crime and Punishment
(Letters)
6 May 2015
 
In the WV article on Attica, it is mentioned that in a socialist society the question of crime and punishment will be dealt with. I was wondering what would be done in an egalitarian socialist society about this question. Would there be prisons? Or would the focus be on the rehabilitation of people who might stray out of the lines. Personally, I do not think that there would be much crime in this sort of society. Also, things like drugs would be decriminalized, as well as prostitution. Then there is the obsession with sex crimes and pornography. Out here they recently arrested a thirty year old woman for supposedly raping two sixteen year old males. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and they are ruining this woman’s life. I agree with the SL position that it is all a question of consent. I do not think that these two youth were forced by the woman.
Comradely, NB
WV replies:
In the conclusion of “Attica: The Nightmare That Never Ends” (WV No. 1065, 3 April), we wrote, “To lay the basis for abolishing the whole wretched system of crime and punishment requires a workers revolution to sweep away the bourgeois state and expropriate the class in whose interest the state is administered.” There can be no fair or humane system of justice for the working class and oppressed under the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Much of the theft, fraud and violence in society is a result of the material scarcity inherent to capitalism and is bolstered by reactionary ideologies like racism and bigotry.
The criminal code is written to justify and enforce the capitalist system of exploitation based on the private ownership of the means of production. In reality, the capitalists are the biggest crooks. As the murderer Macheath in Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera remarked: “What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?” The capitalists require a huge apparatus of repression (the courts, cops and prisons as well as the military) in order to secure their rule over the exploited masses. The bosses’ hired thugs are most casual dispensers of violence against workers and the oppressed, dealing out death with impunity, especially to black people and Latinos.
The capitalist class’ whole system of punishment is based on religious precepts of retribution and penitence. Thus, they inflict vengeful suffering—from incarceration to solitary confinement to the death penalty—on transgressors of their code, to make them “pay for their sins.”
As we described in our last issue, the early Soviet workers state, issuing out of the victorious Russian October Revolution of 1917, pointed to what is possible when the working class establishes itself in power. We noted: “The determination not to base the penal code of a workers state on retribution found its fullest expression in the 1919 party program” of the Russian Communist Party (see “Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!” WV No. 1070, 12 June). That section of the program ended with the vision “that the penal system shall ultimately be transformed into a system of measures of an educative character.”
The goal of Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks was a communist world. They recognized that socialism, the lower stage of communism, was not possible without the productive forces being developed internationally, well beyond current levels of productivity, under the rule of the working class. An egalitarian communist society will provide what people need in exchange for whatever contribution they are able to make. Under communism, classes and the state will have withered away. In The State and Revolution, written in the midst of the revolutionary events of 1917, Lenin explained:
“Freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state.”
Under workers rule and under communism there may still be a need to separate out certain individuals if they are a danger to themselves or others, but this would be done without stigma or deprivation and with education, medical care, rehabilitation and the goal of reintegration as productive members of society.
As NB suggests, there will doubtless be a reduction in crime once the capitalist class is out of power. Many activities that the capitalists label as “crimes” in fact have no victims (e.g., drug use, gambling, consensual sexual activity including prostitution) and we call for them to be decriminalized.
The case NB refers to is that of Lauren Harrington-Cooper, a teacher in Pennsylvania. She was sentenced last September to up to 23 months in prison for having a brief sexual relationship with an 18-year-old male student, performing oral sex on a 17-year-old and two counts of “corrupting minors.” She was convicted under a Pennsylvania law barring any sexual contact between a teacher and a student regardless of age or consent. Rather than a case of rape, all reports indicate the sexual encounters were consensual. Nevertheless, Harrington-Cooper will be on the sex offender register for 25 years and barred from teaching.
As NB notes, the SL believes that effective consent should determine sexual relations. We reject the right of the capitalist class to criminalize consensual sexual activity, dictating who can have sex, where, at what age, or with how many people. This means we oppose “age of consent” laws and special rules against teachers or professors having consensual relationships with their students. Lauren Harrington-Cooper committed no crime; she should be released from prison and have her teaching license reinstated.

The ABCs Of Imperialism- Is Russia Imperialist?

Workers Vanguard No. 1071
10 July 2015
 
Is Russia Imperialist?
(Letters)
25 March 2015
Workers Vanguard,
I do have one political question. WV did mention Russia was a regional power and not an imperialist power, as regards the Ukraine. True, Russia is an economic shell compared to what it was when it was the old Soviet Union but they still have an enormous amount of nuclear weapons and they do continue to occupy areas, such as Chechnya, leading to some question as to what it takes to qualify as a true imperialist state?
I have traveled extensively in the Ukraine and it is obvious, that much of Eastern Ukraine and certainly Crimea, are very, very Russian. Certainly, one must oppose NATO and hence, American aggression. Remembering the Russian Revolution however, at what point does the slogan become: “Turn the guns around—the main enemy is at home”?
Red Greetings,
Lawrence of Seattle
WV replies:
The criteria used by the reader to suggest that Russia may be imperialist are essentially military: the fact that it has nuclear weapons, and it waged two savage wars against Chechnya. But military might and aggression do not in and of themselves define a country as imperialist. As Lenin summarized it, “Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed” (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism [1916]). This domination of the world by a few imperialist powers is the biggest barrier to the economic development and social progress of the less developed countries.
The constant struggle of the imperialist powers for access to markets, raw materials and cheap labor leads to the recurrence of imperialist wars to acquire and protect assets in foreign countries. Russia does not play a role in the carve-up of the world on a global scale. While Russia’s significant military might, especially its nuclear arsenal, makes it harder for the imperialists to push it around, Russia does not invade and bomb countries across the globe as the U.S. does. Nor does it, like even second-rate imperialist powers such as Britain and France, send troops to faraway places to advance its national interests.
Russia is a regional power, albeit with imperial ambitions. Post-Soviet Russia has never intervened militarily outside the territory of the former Soviet Union except for a very limited intervention in the former Yugoslavia in the mid 1990s when the Russian forces acted as soft cops for NATO. Moscow has waged two brutal wars in Chechnya to prevent the oppressed Chechens from asserting their right to secede from Russia (a right that we support). But many countries that are not imperialist oppress minority peoples within their borders, for instance, the Tamils in Sri Lanka or the Rohingya in Myanmar (Burma). Russia also fought over pro-Russian South Ossetia with Georgia, which was backed by the U.S. In that 2008 war between two non-imperialist capitalist countries, we had a position of revolutionary defeatism: the class interests of the workers of Georgia and Russia lay in a struggle to overthrow their respective capitalist rulers through socialist revolution.
Arising out of capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92, post-Soviet Russia represents a historically unique and unprecedented phenomenon. Because Russia’s industrial development took place primarily through the collectivized economy of a workers state, Russia does not today neatly fit into the categories of long-established capitalist countries.
Russia’s economy, bolstered by high prices for its fossil fuels over much of the last decade, has recovered somewhat from the depths to which it fell after the capitalist “shock therapy” of the 1990s. But it does not have the economy of an imperialist power. Russia’s new capitalist rulers got their hands on a large industrial base and extensive infrastructure in a country with enormous natural resources. However, its industry lags significantly behind other advanced capitalist countries in technique and product quality. No branch of Russian manufacturing is competitive on the international market except for the armaments industry (mainly inherited from the USSR).
In contrast to imperialist countries, which are characterized by the export of capital, Russia primarily exports natural resources, not capital. Russia’s economy is very dependent on its oil and gas sector, which in 2013 accounted for 16 percent of its GDP, 52 percent of federal government revenues and over 70 percent of exports. What passes for “investment” abroad mostly takes the form of capital flight to imperialist centers or to tax havens.
Sections of the German ruling class look to an alliance with Russia as a means to assert what they see as Germany’s “natural” role as ruler of Eurasia. Even “Atlanticists” like Chancellor Angela Merkel strike a much less belligerent posture toward Russia than Washington does. To date, however, the U.S. and German rulers have maintained their alliance in terms of containing and reducing Russia’s influence in the other countries of the former USSR. Thus, the German-dominated European Union has gone along with Washington in maintaining sanctions against Russia for its actions in Ukraine.
The existing imperialists, headed by the U.S., continue to work to keep Russia out of their club. The imperialist NATO alliance has expanded into East Europe (in the case of Estonia and Latvia, right up to Russia’s borders), the U.S. is increasing its deployment of tanks and other heavy equipment in the region and, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, NATO is discussing strengthening its nuclear deterrent. U.S. imperialism has also sponsored color “revolutions” to install pro-Washington regimes in several former republics of the USSR. The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine last year, which installed a fascist-infested and virulently anti-Russian regime, is a case in point.
Our reader asks whether we should call for soldiers of all the belligerents in Ukraine today to “turn the guns around” against their own capitalist rulers; that is, should we have a position of revolutionary defeatism? Such was Lenin’s position in World War I, which was an interimperialist war fought over the redivision of the world among imperialist powers. In contrast, the current conflict in Ukraine, the direct result of U.S. imperialist machinations, is a civil war. Militants in the eastern part of the country, which is ethnically mixed but predominantly Russian-speaking, rose up because the ultranationalist Ukrainian regime was trampling on their national rights. The Kiev regime responded by mobilizing its army and neo-Nazi volunteer battalions—bombing cities, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying hospitals and industrial plants. It should be noted that while the insurgents in East Ukraine are backed by Russia, Moscow has shown no interest in annexing eastern Ukraine. Contrary to repeated claims by Kiev and its imperialist patrons that the Russian army is invading, Putin has clearly avoided outright war with the Kiev regime.
Revolutionary Marxists have a side in this conflict: the interest of the working class—in Ukraine, Russia and internationally—lies in defense of the population of eastern Ukraine and its right to self-rule. The fact that we side militarily with the “pro-Russian” forces in eastern Ukraine by no means implies political support to the nationalist rebel leaders or to the Putin regime. Our defense of eastern Ukraine’s population is guided by the approach of Lenin, who underlined that the recognition of the right of self-determination is essential to combating national antagonisms and creating conditions where working people of different nations are able to see that the real enemy is their “own” capitalist ruling class, not each other.

*From The Archives- Down With the European Union! No Support to Syriza!

Frank Jackman comment:

Usually when I post something from some other source, mostly articles and other materials that may be of interest to the radical public that I am trying to address I place the words “ A View From The Left” in the headline and let the subject of the article speak for itself, or the let the writer speak for him or herself without further comment whether I agree with the gist of what is said or not. After all I can write my own piece if some pressing issue is at hand. Occasionally, and the sentiments expressed in this article is one of them, I can stand in solidarity with the remarks made. I do so here.     

*The situation in Greece is still so desperate for the working class and its allies that calling this article one from the archives is a little misleading on my part. The voting on the referendum, etc. discussed in the article may be over but the struggle to get out from under the debt, the Troika, the imperialists, the Greek capitalists goes on. Probably nowhere in the world are the objective conditions so right for a socialist transformation as in Greece. These moments as we painfully know from the history of the class struggle over the past one hundred and fifty years or so are fleeting so we better take advantage while we can. Forward to a working-class councils ruled Greece.        
************

Workers Vanguard No. 1071
10 July 2015
 
Down With the European Union! No Support to Syriza!
Greece Votes No to EU Austerity
 

JULY 6—Last night, millions of Greek working people celebrated a landslide victory in the country’s referendum on a bailout deal with the imperialists of the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Asked whether they would accept yet more grinding austerity as the price for a new “rescue package” (in reality a bailout of Greek and international banks), more than 60 percent of voters responded with a decisive “NO!” With this result, the Greek population has justly delivered a slap in the face to the imperialist leaders of the EU. As our comrades of the Trotskyist Group of Greece wrote in their July 1 statement calling for a “no” vote in the referendum (reprinted below), the victory of a “no” vote would “help rally the working people in Greece and throughout Europe against the EU capitalists and their blood-sucking banks.”
 
The referendum was called by the government coalition led by Syriza, following months of negotiations with its EU/IMF creditors. Syriza called for a “no” vote with the declared intention of using popular rejection of the EU/IMF extortion as a bargaining chip to secure a slightly less onerous austerity package. Syriza is a bourgeois party, supports the EU and is determined that Greece should remain within the euro currency zone. That is why the TGG said “no vote to Syriza!” in the January general election. The Greek workers should use the powerful rejection of EU/IMF austerity in the referendum as a platform for a class-struggle fight against the Syriza government with the aim of canceling the debt and smashing the capitalists’ austerity programs.
 
The proponents of a “yes” vote, along with Germany’s Merkel, France’s Hollande, Britain’s Cameron & Co., sought to panic the Greek population into capitulating to the EU/IMF diktat with the threat that, following a “no” vote, “Grexit” (Greek exit from the eurozone) and a return to its previous national currency, the drachma, would trigger rampant inflation, mass defaults and bankruptcies as well as further deprivation and political unrest. But for working-class Greeks the past several years of economic crisis have been an ongoing catastrophe that has left them with little more to lose. The threats of the Greek capitalists and their imperialist patrons rebounded against them as more people were driven to vote “no” out of fury at being blackmailed.
 
While the Greek working people have clearly rejected the EU’s vicious austerity, polls have consistently shown that around three-quarters of the Greek population are in favor of remaining inside the eurozone and there are still widespread fears about what exit from the euro and EU might bring. But exiting from the euro and recovering the barest minimum of sovereignty over its currency is a precondition for the country to begin to recover. In the short term, life will likely be harsh for Greek workers following “Grexit,” but in the longer term there will indeed be the possibility of “life after default” as U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz put it (Huffington Post, 30 June). Moreover, the Greek working class would be in a better position to struggle for its class interests.
 
The International Communist League has always insisted that in the long term a common European currency is not viable, something that is being driven home today with the events surrounding Greece. Capitalism is based on nation-states with conflicting interests (making the EU itself inherently unstable), and ordinarily each country has its own currency. When it operates with its own currency—the drachma in the case of Greece—a debtor country can get some relief and regain competitiveness by devaluing the currency. But this is not possible in a currency union like the eurozone.
 
The example of Argentina (or Iceland) graphically shows that Greece might be much better off if it defaulted on its debts and left the eurozone, reinstating its own currency. After Argentina pegged its peso to the U.S. dollar in 1991, its economy went into a deep recession and the country defaulted in 2001. In response, Argentina stopped pegging its currency to the dollar and the economy recovered. Average wages initially dropped 30 percent, but within a year unemployment fell and wages rose. But for Greece to exercise the option of devaluing its currency, it must first break from the euro, which is under the control of the far more powerful German bourgeoisie. Leaving the eurozone and repudiating the debt will not in itself insulate the Greek proletariat from the world economic downturn and capitalist devastation wrought by the imperialists and the Greek capitalist ruling class. The only answer to that is sweeping away capitalist rule through the seizure of power in Greece and extending proletarian rule internationally.
 
We were unique on the left in calling for a “no” vote while giving no support to the Syriza government and drawing a clear class line against the pro-Syriza camp. As the TGG leaflet notes, the Greek Communist Party (KKE) called on its supporters to cast an invalid ballot with its own slogans opposing the EU and the Syriza government. The KKE claimed that a “no” vote in the referendum was equivalent to a “yes” vote to Syriza’s own austerity measures. The KKE leadership’s treacherous “tactic,” which objectively bolstered the pro-EU “yes” vote, backfired when large numbers of the KKE’s own membership rebelled and voted “no.”
 
Comrades of the TGG, along with comrades from other ICL sections, distributed thousands of leaflets—at rallies called by the KKE and by Syriza, in working-class neighborhoods and on campuses. Our leaflet was very well received by many. However, TGG comrades distributing at the final “no” rally were physically driven out by pro-Syriza Greek nationalists who understood clearly enough that our “no” vote in the referendum was certainly not a “yes” vote for Syriza.
 
Those KKE members who wish to oppose the EU and fight the Syriza government should consider the lessons of their leadership’s attempted sabotage of the “no” vote. The Stalinist politics of the KKE leadership are inherently nationalist and can only lead to a dead end in a situation like the current sharp crisis in Greece, which calls out for an internationalist appeal to workers throughout Europe to unite in struggle against their capitalist rulers. For that reason, the KKE has not been able to offer any road forward for the Greek working class, including in this referendum. The TGG seeks to build a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party—at once revolutionary, proletarian and internationalist—as a section of the reforged Fourth International, world party of socialist revolution.
*   *   *
In the Referendum We Say:
Vote NO!
Down With the EU!
No Support to the Syriza Government!
 
The Trotskyist Group of Greece calls for a NO vote in the July 5 referendum. A resounding “no” vote would be an important blow against the imperialist-dominated EU and its savage austerity programs. A “yes” vote would be a victory for the imperialist rulers and the Greek bourgeoisie and a terrible defeat for the working people of Greece and throughout Europe. It would be used by the EU to further devastate the conditions of life for millions. A “no” vote would help rally the working people in Greece and throughout Europe against the EU capitalists and their bloodsucking banks. Down with the EU!
 
The International Communist League, of which the TGG is a section, has opposed the EU on principle from its inception. The EU is an unstable consortium, dominated by German imperialism, aimed at driving down the living standards of working people throughout Europe, including in Germany itself and not least in East Europe. The euro is an instrument for economic domination of the major powers over the poorer states. The only way out of the nightmare of recurrent capitalist crises is to unite the workers throughout Europe in struggle to sweep away the imperialist EU through the fight for socialist revolutions here and internationally. For a Socialist United States of Europe!
 
The TGG opposed a vote to Syriza in the January election and stands in irreconcilable opposition to the capitalist Syriza government. The Syriza-led coalition has bent over backward to appease the Troika [the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the IMF], seeking merely to haggle over how much austerity should be implemented, while fostering illusions that the EU can be reformed into a “democratic and social Europe.” The Syriza-ANEL [right-wing nationalist Independent Greeks] coalition has whipped up Greek nationalism, which fuels anti-immigrant racism. The reformist ANTARSYA coalition seeks to pressure the capitalist Syriza party to break with the EU and IMF. In contrast, we call upon the working class of Greece to struggle against the Syriza government and the entire capitalist ruling class.
 
The KKE leadership is asking working people to throw away their vote by casting an invalid ballot with the KKE’s own slogans. The KKE’s refusal to mobilize for a victory for the “no” vote is in complete contradiction with its stated opposition to the EU. The KKE leaders claim that to vote down the Troika’s deal is an implicit vote for Syriza’s own rotten austerity package. No! Voting down the Troika’s deal is just that: telling the imperialist rulers of the EU to get lost! If the “yes” vote wins, the downfall of the Syriza government will come at the hands of the EU imperialists and their Greek lackeys. This will strengthen the hand of the Troika for even more vicious attacks on the working class and oppressed.
 
In practice, the KKE’s call to cast invalid ballots will reduce the number of people voting “no” and could help the “yes” vote win. Anything but a clear “no” in this referendum is a betrayal of the interests of workers here and internationally. Our opposition to the EU is from the standpoint of revolutionary internationalism, not Greek nationalism. The KKE opposes the EU on a nationalist basis. This is demonstrated by the fact that the KKE leadership posits that socialism can be achieved within the borders of Greece alone, without an international extension of workers revolution.
The imperialist governments are trying to blackmail the Greek people into voting “yes” with the spectre of unspeakable suffering if Greece ends up outside the eurozone/EU. A Greek exit from the EU as a result of militant workers struggle would be a step forward, but not a solution in itself. The situation in Greece is part of a global capitalist economic crisis, which cannot be resolved within the borders of any single country, particularly a small dependent country such as Greece with its low level of industry and resources. The only way forward is a series of socialist revolutions that will expropriate the bourgeoisies, including in the imperialist centers, and establish a global collectivized, planned economy under workers rule.
 
The TGG stands counterposed to the perspective of the opportunist Greek left, who all dissolve the working class into the “people” and promote Greek nationalism (see our most recent article, “Syriza: Class Enemy of Workers and Oppressed,” 22 April 2015 [reprinted in WV No. 1068, 15 May]). A concrete example of our party’s internationalism is that our German section, the Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, calls for the cancellation of Greece’s debt in opposition to its own bourgeoisie. Our goal is to build a revolutionary, internationalist workers party like the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky. Such a party can be built only as part of a reforged Fourth International, the necessary instrument to lead the working class to power internationally. For new October Revolutions!

Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind




There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities that he would rather not forget, things that defined his life, gave him that “fifteen minutes of fame,” if only to himself and his, that everybody kept talking about that everyone deserved before they departed this life. That is what got him thinking one sunny afternoon in September about five years ago as he waited for the seasons to turn almost before his eyes about the times around 1964, around the time that he graduated from North Adamsville High School, around the time that he realized that the big breeze jail-break that he had kind of been waiting for was about to bust out over the land, over America. It was not like he was some kind of soothsayer anything like that back then, could read tea leaves or tarot cards like some latter day Madame La Rue who actually did read his future once down at the Gloversville Fair when she had come to that location with her daughter, Gypsy Anne, one hot August week when he was about twelve, read that he was made for big events. The big event that he was interested in just then was winning a doll, a stuffed animal or something like that for Gypsy Anne at the Skee game which he was an expert at.  And he did win her a stuffed animal and got a very big long wet kiss for his heroics. No way though that tarot reading when he was twelve left an impression for a while.

 

That big breeze blowing through the land thing was not his idea anyway but came from “the Scribe,” the late Peter Paul Markin, a corner boy at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys on Thornton Street where he occasionally hung out since he was childhood friends with the leader of that crowd, Frankie Riley, who read books and newspapers a lot and would go on and on about the thing on lonesome Friday nights when all the guys were waiting, well, just waiting that is all you need to know. Here is where that big breeze twelve million word description thing Markin was talking about intersected though. Edward’s take on the musical twists and turns back then is where he had something the kids at North Adamsville High would comment on, would ask him about to see which way the winds were blowing, would put their nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukeboxes to hear based on his recommendations. Even Markin deferred to him on this one, although the main way that Markin worked the jukebox was to con some lonely-heart girl who maybe had just broken up with her boyfriend, maybe had been dateless for a while, or was just silly enough to listen to him into playing what he wanted to hear based on what Edward had told him. Jesus Markin was a piece of work.

See Edward’s senses were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll in the early 1960s where he sensed what he called silly “bubble gum” music (what high priest Markin called something like the musical counter-revolution but he was always putting stuff in political bull form like that) that had passed for rock.  Which, go figure, the girls liked, or liked the look of the guys singing the tunes, guys with flipped hair and dimples like Fabian and Bobby Rydell but was strictly nowhere with Edward. The breeze Edward felt was   going to bury that stuff under an avalanche of sounds going back to Elvis, and where Elvis got his stuff from like Lonnie Johnson and the R&B and black electric blues guys, the rockabilly hungry white boys, and forward to something else, something with more guitars all amped to big ass speakers that were just coming along to bring in the new dispensation.

More importantly since the issue of jailbreaks and sea changes were in the air Edward was the very first kid to grasp what would later be called “the folk minute of the early 1960s,” and not just by Markin when he wrote stuff about that time later before his sorry end. Everybody would eventually hone in on Dylan and Baez, dubbed the king and queen of the moment by the mass media always in a frenzy to anoint and label things that they had belatedly found about out about and run into the ground.  But when folks tunes started showing up on the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner it was guys like the Kingston Trio, the Lettermen, and the Lamplighters who got the play after school and some other girls, not the “bubble gum” girls went crazy over the stuff when Edward made recommendations. He had caught the folk moment almost by accident late one Sunday night when he picked up a station from New York City and heard Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie songs being played, stuff that Mr. Dasher his seventh grade music teacher would play in class to broaden youthful minds, meaning trying to break the Elvis-driven rock and roll habit. So that musical sense combined with his ever present sense that things could be better in this wicked old world drilled into him by his kindly old grandmother who was an old devotee of the Catholic Worker movement kind of drove his aspirations (and Markin’s harping also triggered by his grandmother’s devotion to the Catholic Workers movement added in). But at first it really was the music that had been the cutting edge of what followed later, followed until about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land.

That fascination with music had occupied Edward’s mind since he had been about ten and had received a transistor radio for his birthday and out of curiosity decided to turn the dial to AM radio channels other that WJDA which his parents, may they rest in peace, certainly rest in peace from his incessant clamoring for rock and roll records and later folk albums, concert tickets, radio listening time on the big family radio in the living room, had on constantly and which drove him crazy. Drove him crazy because that music, well, frankly that music, the music of the Doris Days, the Peggy Lees, The Rosemary Clooneys, the various corny sister acts like the Andrews Sisters, the Frank Sinatras, the Vaughn Monroes, the Dick Haynes and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise, no, in order to end the family civil war, they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.

One night, one late night in 1955, 1956 when Edward was fiddling with the dial he heard this sound out of Cleveland, Ohio, a little fuzzy but audible playing this be-bop sound, not jazz although it had horns, not rhythm and blues although sort of, but a new beat driven by some wild guitar by a guy named Warren Smith who was singing about his Ruby, his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby who only was available apparently to dance the night away. And she didn’t seem to care whether she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Edward Rowley, something he could not quite articulate then call her woman, call her Ruby and you will not be far off. And so with that as a pedigree Edward became one of the town’s most knowledgeable devotees of the new sound.

Problem was that new sound, as happens frequently in music, got a little stale as time went on, as the original artists who captured his imagination faded from view one way or another and new guys, guys with nice Bobby this and Bobby that names, Patsy this and Brenda that names sang songs under the umbrella name rock and roll that his mother could love. Songs that could have easily fit into that WJDA box that his parents had been stuck in since about World War II.

 

So Edward was anxious for a new sound to go along with his feeling tired of the same old, same old stuff that had been hanging around in the American night since the damn nuclear hot flashes red scare Cold War started way before he had a clue about what that was all about. It had started with the music and then he got caught later in high school up with a guy in school, Daryl Wallace, a hipster, or that is what he called himself, a guy who liked “kicks” although being in high school in North Adamsville far from New York City, far from San Francisco, damn, far from Boston what those “kicks” were or what he or Eddie would do about getting those “kicks” never was made clear. But they played it out in a hokey way and for a while they were the town, really high school, “beatniks.”  So Eddie had had his short faux “beat” phase complete with flannel shirts, black chino pants, sunglasses, and a black beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home in his bedroom closet once he found out after his parents had seen and heard Jack Kerouac reading from the last page of On The Road on the Steve Allen Show that they severely disapproved of the man, the movement and anything that smacked of the “beat” and a beret always associated with French bohemians and foreignness would have had them seeing “red”). And for a while Daryl and Eddie played that out until Daryl moved away (at least that was the story that went around but there was a persistent rumor for a time that Mr. Wallace had dragooned Daryl into some military school in California in any case that disappearance from the town was the last he ever heard from his “beat” brother). Then came 1964 and  Eddie was fervently waiting for something to happen, for something to come out of the emptiness that he was feeling just as things started moving again with the emergence of the Beatles and the Stones as a harbinger of what was coming.

That is where Eddie had been psychologically when his mother first began to harass him about his hair. Although the hair thing like the beret was just the symbol of clash that Eddie knew was coming and knew also that now that he was older that he was going to be able to handle differently that when he was a kid.  Here is what one episode of the battle sounded like:                   

“Isn’t that hair of yours a little long Mr. Edward Rowley, Junior,” clucked Mrs. Edward Rowley, Senior, “You had better get it cut before your father gets back from his conference trip, if you know what is good for you.” That mothers’-song was being endlessly repeated in North Adamsville households (and not just those households either but in places like Carver, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Ann Arbor, Manhattan, Cambridge any place where guys were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing hair a little longer than boys’ regular was the flash point) ever since the British invasion had brought longer hair into style (and a little less so, beards, that was later when guys got old enough to grow one without looking wispy, had taken a look at what their Victorian great-grandfathers grew and though it was “cool.” Cool along with new mishmash clothing and new age monikers to be called by.)

Of course when one was thinking about the British invasion in the year 1964 one was not thinking about the American Revolution or the War of 1812 but the Beatles. And while their music has taken 1964 teen world by a storm, a welcome storm after the long mainly musical counter-revolution since Elvis, Bo, Jerry Lee and Chuck ruled the rock night and had disappeared without a trace, the 1964 parent world was getting up in arms.

And not just about hair styles either. But about midnight trips on the clanking subway to Harvard Square coffeehouses to hear, to hear if you can believe this, folk music, mountain music, harp music or whatever performed by long-haired (male or female), long-bearded (male), blue jean–wearing (both), sandal-wearing (both), well, for lack of a better name “beatniks” (parents, as usual, being well behind the curve on teen cultural movements since by 1964 “beat”  except on silly television shows and by “wise” social commenters who could have been “Ike” brothers and sisters, was yesterday’s news).

Mrs. Rowley would constantly harp about “why couldn’t Eddie be like he was when he listened to Bobby Vinton and his Mr. Lonely or that lovely-voiced Roy Orbison and his It’s Over and other nice songs on the local teen radio station, WMEX (he hated that name Eddie by the way, Eddie was also what everybody called his father so you can figure out why he hated the moniker just then). Now it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a cranky-voiced guy named Bob Dylan that has his attention. And that damn Judy Jackson with her short skirt and her, well her… looks” (Mrs. Rowley like every mother in the post-Pill world refusing to use the “s” word, a throw-back to their girlish days when their mothers did not use such a word.)     

Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up anyway, she let out what was really bothering her about her Eddie’s behavior, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And you and that damn Peter Markin, who used to be so nice when all you boys hung around together at Jimmy Jack’s Diner [Edward: corner boys, Ma, that is what we were and at Jack Slack’s alleys not Jimmy Jack’s that was for the jukebox and for checking out the girls who were putting dough in that jukebox] and I at least knew you were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If your father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as you are. Worse though, worse than worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving North Adamsville, defenseless against the communists with your talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone and stuck with your idea of forming a band that would play nice songs that make kids feel good like Gale Garnet’s We’ll Sing In The Sunshine or that pretty Negro girl Dionne Warwick and Her Walk On By instead of getting everybody upset."

And since Mrs. Rowley, Alice, to the neighbors had mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Edward’s flame and according to Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talk, Judy’s talk they had “done the deed” and you can figure out what the deed was let’s hear what was going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Edward was wearing his hair longer was because Judy thought it was “sexy” and so that talk of doing the deed may well have been true if there were any sceptics. Hear this:      

“Young lady, that dress is too short for you to wear in public, take it off, burn it for all I care, and put on another one or you are not going out of this house,” barked Mrs. James Jackson, echoing a sentiment that many worried North Adamsville mothers were feeling (and not just those mothers either but in places like Gloversville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where gals were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing their skirts a little longer than mid-calf was the flash point) about their daughters dressing too provocatively and practically telling the boys, well practically telling them you know what as she suppressed the “s” word that was forming in her head. She too working up a high horse head of steam continued, "And that Eddie [“Edward, Ma,” Judy keep repeating every time Mrs. Jackson, Dorothy to the neighbors, said Eddie], and his new found friends like Peter Markin taking you to those strange coffeehouses in Harvard Square with all the unwashed, untamed, unemployed “beatniks” instead of the high school dances on Saturday night. And that endless talk about the n-----s down South, about get books for the ignorant to read and other trash talk about how they are equal to us, and your father better not hear you talk like that, not at the dinner table since he has to work around them and their smells and ignorance over in that factory in Dorchester.  And don’t start with that Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch of them and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."

Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Markin were sitting in the Club Nana in Harvard Square sipping coffee, maybe pecking at the one brownie between them, and listening to a local wanna-be folk singing strumming his stuff (who turned out to be none other than Eric Von Schmidt whose Joshua Gone Barbados and a couple of other songs would become folk staples and classics). Beside them cartons of books that they are sorting to be taken along with them when they head south this summer after graduation exercises at North Adamsville High School are completed in June. (By the way Peter’s parents were only slightly less irate about their son’s activities and used the word “Negro” when they were referring to black people, black people they wished their son definitely not to get involved with were only slightly less behind the times than Mrs. Rowley and Mrs. Jackson and so requires no separate screed by Mrs. Markin. See Peter did not mention word one about what he was, or was not, doing and thus spared himself the anguish that Edward and Judy put themselves through trying to “relate” to their parents, their mothers really since fathers were some vague threatened presence in the background in those households.)

They, trying to hold back their excitement have already been to some training sessions at the NAACP office over on Massachusetts Avenue in the Roxbury section of Boston and have purchased their tickets for the Greyhound bus as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet others who will be heading south on a chartered bus. But get this Peter turned to Edward and said, “Have you heard that song, Popsicles and Icicles by the Mermaids, it has got great melodic sense.” Edward made a very severe funny face. Yes, we are still just before the sea change after which even Peter will chuckle about “bubble gum” music. Good luck though, young travelers, good luck.


In The Time Of The 1960 Be-Bop Baby-Boomer Jail Break-Out- My Baby Loves The Western Movies, Okay?” –Take Two


In The Time Of The 1960 Be-Bop Baby-Boomer Jail Break-Out- My Baby Loves The Western Movies, Okay?” –Take Two

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin: 

 

With an introduction by Sam Lowell

 

I first met Josh Breslin several months after my old corner boy high school friend, the late Peter Paul Markin, brought him around our hang-out, Jack Slack’s bowling alley, in the winter after the summer of love, 1967 (or is it Summer of Love, 1967 I have seen it both ways) out in San Francisco when Josh had gone up on to Russian Hill searching for dope, marijuana at the time the drug of choice among the newly liberated from uptight-ness about the evils of such pleasures, and ran into Markin asking him if he had a joint. Markin, freshly dropped out of college (Boston University) in order to “find himself” had been travelling on one of the ubiquitous psychedelically-painted converted yellow brick road school buses with Captain Crunch (road moniker which we would all take once we hit the road as some form of liberation from tired out old names) for a few months and had been staying in the park on the hill waiting, waiting for anything at all to happen told Josh “here light this one up, but ‘don’t bogart that joint’ when you are done because we save every twig to build up enough for the pipe.” And with that a 1960s-type friendship started, one that would have them travelling together over the next several years (minus Markin’s two years in the Army in Vietnam but that is a story for another time) until Josh lost touch with him before he took that last fatal trip to Mexico where he was murdered by parties unknown after a busted drug deal and is now resting in an unmarked grave in potter’s field in Sonora and moaned over to this day by his old friends, including Josh and me.

 

Markin often said, and it proved to be true, that despite a couple of years difference in age and despite the fact that Josh had grown up in Olde Saco in Maine, an old-time textile mill town, his life story, the things that drove him in his younger days were remarkably similar to ours down in North Adamsville, an old industrial town about twenty miles south of Boston. That was why they got along on the road out West and why we who took to the road with Markin later once we got the bug to move along got along with Josh as well. Josh is today an honorary North Adamsville corner boy when we, the remnants still living anyway, get together to speak of those times. (And always wind up with some mention of some madcap, maniacal thing Markin did which only gets us mistier about the bastard these days.)

 

Recently a bunch of us, Frankie Riley, the old corner boy leader now a big-time lawyer in Boston (“of counsel” these days whatever that means other than big dough for saying word one to a client), Jimmy Jenkins, Jack Callahan, Bart Webber, Lefty Malone, Josh and me got together at Jack’s Grille in Cambridge to have a few drinks and swap a few lies. Bart who still lives in growing up town North Adamsville mentioned that the old site the North Adamsville Drive-In Theater of blessed memory which got us through many a weekend night, sometimes successfully, sometimes with nothing but empty dreams which had been long abandoned had been turned into the inevitable million box condo units, called something like Granite Gardens. Naturally that triggered many stories about what did or did not at the drive-in, talk that seemed almost an exact replica of the kind of talk that went on in Monday morning before school boys’ “lav” talkfest about what happened over the weekend back then (including many lies, recollection lies too). Josh, who is a writer of sorts, a music reviewer mostly these days from what he says, wrote up something about his relationship to those now classic drive-in movies days triggered not only by the talk that night but by a recent visit to his old hometown of Olde Saco up in Maine which still has a functioning drive-in if you can believe that.       

 

Here is what he had to say:                         

 

A while back I was on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in of an extensive rock and roll series, you know those “oldies, but goodies” compilations pitched to, uh, a certain demographic, an ARRP-worthy demographic, okay. A lot of those reviews had been driven by the artwork which graced the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and rather truly reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation, the generation of ’68, who lived and died by the music. That “generation of ’68” designation picked up from the hard fact that that seminal year of 1968, a year when the Tet offensive by the Viet Cong and their allies put in shambles the lie that we (meaning the United States government) was winning that vicious bloodstained honor-less war, to the results in New Hampshire which caused Lyndon Baines Johnson, the sitting President to run for cover down in Texas somewhere after being beaten like a gong by a quirky Irish poet from the Midwest and a band of wayward troubadours from all over, mainly the seething college campuses, to the death of the post-racial society dream as advertised by the slain Doctor Martin Luther King, to the barricade days in Paris where for once and all the limits of what wayward students could do without substantial allies in bringing down a reactionary government, to the death of the search for a “newer world” as advertised by the slain Robert F. Kennedy, to the war-circus of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago which put paid to any notion that any newer world would come without the spilling of rivers of blood, to the election of Richard Milhous Nixon which meant that we had seen the high side go under, that the promise of the flamboyant 1960s was veering toward an ebb tide.

 

Most of the artwork, at most, simply alluded to that backdrop. Rather what that work suggested was who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. One, a 1963 cover was a case of the former, of fitting in. And that fitting in was triggered by a real life example, as I was passing by the still operating Olde Saco Drive-In up in my old hometown, up in Maine to be exact as I was there on a recent visit.

 

On that CD cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time, the no school time, no carping teachers, no curly-eyed cops wondering if we were playing hooky , and no nagging Ma, always Ma, in those days, except for big stuff since Dads were working their butts off trying to keep their families’ heads above water, when we had at least the feel of our generational break-out minute ) we are at the drive-in, the drive-in movies for those of the Internet/Netflicks/YouTube generations who have not gotten around to checking out this bit of Americana on Wikipedia, with the obligatory 1950s-early 1960s B-movie monster movie (outer space aliens, creatures from the black lagoon, blobs, DNA-damaged dinosaurs, foreign-bred behemoths a specialty) prominent on the screen.

 

Oh sure, everyone of a certain age, a certain baby-boomer age, a generation of ’68 age, has plenty of stories to tell of being bundled up as kids, maybe pre-set with a full set pajamas on to defend against the late sleepy-eyed night, the sleepy-drowsy late movie night, placed in the car backseats and taken by adventurous parents (or so it seemed) to the local open air drive-in for the double feature. That usually also happened on a friendly summer night when school did not interfere with staying up late (hopefully through both films). And to top it all off you got to play in the inevitable jungle jim, see-saw, slide, swing set-laden playground during intermission between the film while waiting, waiting against all hope, for that skewered, shriveled hot dog, rusty, dusty hamburger, or stale, over the top buttered popcorn that was the real reason that you “consented” to stay out late with the parents. Yah, we all have variations on that basic theme to tell, although I challenge anyone, seriously challenge anyone, to name five films that you saw at the drive-in that you remembered from then-especially those droopy-eyed second films.

 

In any case, frankly, I don’t give a damn about that kid stuff family adventure drive-in experience. Come on that was all, well, just kids’ stuff, fluff. The “real” drive-in, as pictured in the cover art I am speaking of is what I want to address. The time of our time in that awkward teen alienation, teen angst thing that only got abated, a little, by things like a teenage night at the drive-in.

 

Yah, that was not, or at least I hope it was not, you father’s drive-in experience. That might have been happening in the next planet over, for all I know. For one thing, for  starters, our planet involved girls (girls, ah, women, just reverse the genders here to tell your side of the experience), looking for girls, or want to be looking for girls, preferably a stray car-full to complement your guy car-full and let god sort it out at intermission. (And see, I can finally, in the year of our lord, 2015, reveal the hidden truth, that car-full of girls had worked on the same premise, they were looking for guys to complement their car-full and let god sort it out at intermission, the common thread intermission.) 

 

Wait a minute. I am getting ahead of myself in this story. First you needed that car, because no walkers or bus riders need apply for the drive-in movies like this was some kind of lame, low-rent, downtown Saturday matinee last picture show adventure. For this writer that was a problem, a personal problem, as I had no car and my family had cars only sporadically. Fortunately we early baby-boomers lived in the golden age of the automobile and could depend on a friend to either have a car (praise be teenage disposable income/allowances) or the use of the family car. Once the car issue was clarified then it was simply a matter of getting a car-full of guys (or sometimes guys and gals) in for the price of two (maybe three) admissions. This was in the days before they just charged a flat fee for the whole carload.

 

What? Okay, I think that I can safely tell the story now because the statute of limitations on this “crime” must have surely passed. See, what you did back then was put a couple (or three guys) in the trunk of that old car (or in a pinch one guy on the backseat floor the rest in the trunk) as you entered the drive-thru admissions booth. The driver paid for the two (or three tickets) and took off to your parking spot, that secluded area far from kiddie pajama night madnesses (complete with a ramp speaker just in case you wanted to actually listen to the film shown on that big wide white screen). Neat trick, right? (I think the record was either ten or eleven in one car, but I only know this second-hand, from some Monday morning before school boys’ “lav” talk when one of the participants touted the feat, so I don’t know the gender mix, or whether there were midgets to fill in since it seemed improbable that many growing teenagers could squeeze into that standard sedan of the period, or anything like that.)  

 

Now, of course, the purpose of all of this, as mentioned above, was to get that convoy of guys, trunk guys, backseat guys, backseat floor guys, whatever, to mix and moon with that elusive car-full of girls who did the very same thing (except easier because they were smaller) at the intermission stand or maybe just hanging around the unofficially designated teen hang-out area. Like I said no family sedans with those pajama-clad kids need apply (nor, come to think of it, would any sane, responsible parent get within fifty paces of said teens). Occasionally, very occasionally as it turned out, some “boss” car would show up complete with one guy (the driver) and one honey (girl, ah, woman) closely seated beside him for what one and all knew was going to be a very window-fogged night.

 

And that was, secretly thought or not, the guy drive-in dream. (Although unlike at Seal Rock, the local lovers’ lane, down the far end of Olde Saco Beach, that one-on-one scene, and speculation about what went on, was not the subject of any comment, none, like some unwritten law precluded such discussion in the sacred drive-night.) The reader should however not get the wrong idea about what actually went on at that secluded, reserved end of the drive-in. Sure, car loads of boys were looking for car loads of girls to mix and match, preferably from some other town, for a change of pace (and because the one-on-one no talk rule didn’t apply in that milieu and hence Monday morning chatter, plenty of it, I wish I had taken notes).

 

The collective drive-in scene though was more like surveillance than anything risky (or risqué). Let me give you an example, a good example, and then you can judge for yourself what it was all about. One Friday night, a 1963 summer night of course, a car load of farm girls came over from Arundel after they heard about what went on at Olde Saco (we found about the “urban, ah, rural legend of the Olde Saco Drive-In” later when it seemed every teenager in Southern Maine with anything going for him or her was plotting almost daily to storm heaven). Since they didn’t know the social etiquette (the “casing the joint” ethos we had well-tuned to a science) as soon as they pulled into their spot, saw me and my corner boys, they just starting preening and giving those sly glances that meant only thing once we gave our own sly glances right back -this was the combo mix and match for the evening. Like I said these were farm girls, Maine farm girls, although nice- looking and fun to talk to, they were a little behind the curve as for “making out” (if you don’t know the term figure it out, teen boy, teen girl, back seat of a sedan, okay). Truth, what happened that night was that we (and they too) made some mental notes, like Sandy was cute but didn’t let you touch her bosom, stuff like that, for future reference, for that future reference “one on one” at the drive-in or, more probably, Seal Rock.

 

That was how it was with this Donna that I eyed that night (although she might have been a farm girl she wound up at Colby and some other place for graduate school I heard later). Since it was hot we kind of slow-danced to some music coming from a car radio, she kind of nestled her body very close to mine. I took a note. A few weeks later when we were at Seal Rock I expanded on that note and we would up at point number sixteen on the first day back at school before school boys’ talkfest. Got it.                       

 

As for the movies shown at said drive-in? Did they show movies there? Enough said.

 

Oh, except that at said drive-in, before the first show started at dusk, between shows and on the way home, girl-matched or not, you were very liable to hear many of the songs from this old CD on the old car radio. Stuff like : Heat Wave (not as good as Dancing In The Streets but good), Martha and the Vandellas; Just One Look (make that look my way, please, even if you are munching on popcorn) Doris Troy; Wild Weekend (just in case you wanted to dance during intermission rather than watch the screen clock ticking off the time until that next film began), The Rockin’ Rebels ; and, Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad About My Baby (yah, you have got that right, sisters), The Cookies. Yah, that was the frosting on the cake in that good night.

 

Veterans For Peace National Convention

Veterans For Peace 30th Annual Convention
 
Veterans For Peace National Convention
http://www.vfpnationalconvention.org/  
 


 
VFP 2015 Annual Convention
August 5-9, 2015
 
 
 


Keynote Banquet Speaker:  Seymour Hersh  
 
Scheduled Speakers
Sylvia Aurora
Dr. Kathleen Barry
Phyllis Bennis
Majorie Cohn
Ben Griffin
Dr. Thao Ha
Willie Hager
Le Ly Hayslip
Ray McGovern
Dr. Akiko Mikamo
Miko Peled
Dylan Ratigan
Pedro Rios
Claude Anshin Thomas
Col. Ann Wright
 
 
 
Hosting Chapter: Hugh Thompson Memorial Chapter 091 -
San Diego - CA
 
 
 
 

Please remember these special events:

  • Wednesday evening: Film “Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard”
  • Thursday evening:  “Peace at Home, Peace Abroad” community  panel discussion
  • Friday evening:  San Diego Harbor Dinner Cruise and Golden Role visitation
  • Saturday evening:  Annual Veterans For Peace Banquet
  • Sunday morning:  Reconciliation Ceremony and Bowl Burning