WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

What do Greek Athens, Ukrainian Kiev and US New Orleans have in common? All three (and many others) face crushing demands from a multinational financial elite, exercising corporate (and government) power to impose austerity, privatization and transform cities to serve the wealthy and the privileged few. When the 99% get restless, the elites deploy racial and religious bigotry to ensure that anger is targeted at the poor and the “other”. . .

 

CHRIS HEDGES: The Great Unraveling

The ideological and physical hold of American imperial power, buttressed by the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and global capitalism, is unraveling. Most, including many of those at the heart of the American empire, recognize that every promise made by the proponents of neoliberalism is a lie. Global wealth, rather than being spread equitably, as neoliberal proponents promised, has been funneled upward into the hands of a rapacious, oligarchic elite, creating vast economic inequality. The working poor, whose unions and rights have been taken from them and whose wages have stagnated or declined over the past 40 years, have been thrust into chronic poverty and underemployment, making their lives one long, stress-ridden emergency. The middle class is evaporating. Cities that once manufactured products and offered factory jobs are boarded up-wastelands. Prisons are overflowing. Corporations have orchestrated the destruction of trade barriers, allowing them to stash $2.1 trillion in profits in overseas banks to avoid paying taxes. And the neoliberal order, despite its promise to build and spread democracy, has hollowed out democratic systems to turn them into corporate leviathans.   More

 

HOW THE RULING CLASS REMADE NEW ORLEANS

Since the levee failures, New Orleans has been ground zero for what on its face looks like a diverse cohort seeking to use the Katrina-produced “blank slate” as a canvass on which to enact their vision of twenty-first century reform… New Orleans has not just been reconceived and reimagined — it has been rebuilt to serve and further specific material and ideological interests. It is a city increasingly designed not to produce equality but to give opportunity to the “worthy” while driving out as many “unworthy” as possible. (The exception of course being those needed to staff the low-wage hospitality and service industry, along with those whose labors produce the city’s appeal as something timeless and supposedly outside the market and the profit motive — an appeal that is one of market culture’s most valuable commodities in contemporary capitalism.)… Approximately 100,000 people, mostly African American, have not returned to the city… To put it bluntly, New Orleans has become a tremendously profitable model city for global capital.   More

 

Whitewashing the IMF’s Destructive Role in Greece

President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner insisted that Angela Merkel and French President Sarkozy pressure the IMF to go against the opposition of its own staff and join the European Central Bank’s hardline demands that Greece impose austerity. Geithner and Obama warned that if Greek bondholders were not paid in full, some giant U.S. banks would lose heavily on the default insurance contracts and derivatives they had written, and their losses could spread “contagion” to Europe… The tragic Greek experience should stand as a warning of the need to withdraw from the rules that have turned the eurozone into an economic dead zone, and the IMF and Troika into brutal debt collectors for European, U.S. and British banks and bondholders.  More

 

A long and beautiful speech well-worth reading in full…

Yanis Varoufakis: 'OUR ATHENS SPRING'

As Berthold Brecht once said, “Why send out murderers when we can employ bailiffs?” Why stage a coup d’état when you can send to a freshly elected government the President of the Eurogroup to tell the new finance minister, three days after taking office, that he faces a choice: the pre-existing Austerity Program, which resulted in his country’s Great Depression, or the closure of the nation’s banks? Why send troops in when you can have monthly Troika visits for the explicit purpose of taking over every branch of government and writing each and every piece of a nation’s legislation? … Why do Greece’s creditors… ignore our reform proposals which they knew we could and wanted to implement? Why did they waste the great opportunity we presented them as the only government that had the support of the vast majority of the Greek people? … There is no economic answer here. The only answer is one that resides firmly in the realm of power politics. The Troika’s greatest fear was that our government might succeed. That its own superior wisdom and authority would then be questioned by you dear friends.  More

 

The New Colonialism: Greece and Ukraine

A new form of colonialism is emerging in Europe.  Not colonialism imposed by military conquest and occupation, as in the 19th century. Not even the more efficient form of economic colonialism pioneered by the U.S. in the post-1945 period, where the costs of direct administration and military occupation were replaced with compliant local elites allowed to share in the wealth extracted in exchange for being allowed to rule on behalf of the colonizers. In the 21st century, it is “colonialism by means of financial asset transfer.” It is colony wealth extraction by colonizing country managers, assigned to directly administer the processes in the colony by which financial assets are to be transferred. This new form of colonialism by direct management plus financial wealth transfer is now emerging in Greece and Ukraine.   More

 

776 People Killed By Police So Far in 2015, 161 Of Them Unarmed

Police killings in America have sparked a national movement for police reform, especially since the death of Mike Brown last year in Ferguson, Missouri. Based on The Guardian’s statistics, police killed more white people than any other race this year. A total 385 white people have been killed by police this year, and 66 of them were unarmed at the time of their death. However, activists like the members of the Black Lives Matter movement argue that police kill blacks at a rate disproportionate to their total percentage of the population — an assertion supported by The Guardian’s statistics. Police killed almost five black people per every million black residents of the U.S., compared with about 2 per million for both white and hispanic victims… Although police advocates claim the frequent use of force is necessary to protect officers from a highly dangerous job, the statistics don’t seem to back this up… Bureau of Labor Statistics released last year show that being a police officer is not even among the country’s 10 most dangerous professions. Indeed, those statistics show that loggers, roofers, pilots and farmers are all more likely to be killed on the job than police.   More

 

Prisoner REsistance Forces California to Scale Back Solitary Confinement

In a major victory for prisoners’ rights, California has agreed to greatly reduce the use of solitary confinement as a part of a legal settlement that may have major implications in prisons nationwide. On Tuesday, California reached a landmark legal settlement with a group of prisoners held in isolation for a decade or more at the Pelican Bay State Prison. California currently keeps nearly 3,000 prisoners alone for more than 22 hours a day in windowless cells. Human rights advocates have long maintained that the practice of solitary confinement is both inhumane and counterproductive. The settlement comes after years of prisoner hunger strikes and sustained protests by prisoners’ loved ones.  More

 

Islamophobia Rising: FBI Warns ‘Militia Extremists’ Are Targeting Muslims

The FBI issued an intelligence bulletin in May, warning that “militia extremists” are increasing their violent rhetoric against Muslims and even potentially making concrete plans to target them for violence. “The FBI makes these assessments with high confidence on the basis of a large body of source reporting generated mainly since 2013,” noted the bulletin. This marks a change from the militia’s usual targets, the agency notes, which typically include the government and any group perceived as a threat to Second Amendment rights… Among the disturbing examples the FBI cites, the most shocking occurred in Mississippi last September, where extremists “discussed kidnapping and beheading a Muslim and posting video of the attack to the Internet.”   More

 

LABOR DAY: We’ll never rebuild this country if we keep wasting money on war

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan together are projected to cost American taxpayers anywhere from $4 trillion to $6 trillion. And now the war on the Islamic State — a direct continuation of the last war in Iraq — has already racked up over $5.8 billion in costs, according to the National Priorities Project. And the tab’s running up at a rate of over $600,000 per hour. That’s money that isn’t available to put unemployed people back to work, fix our nation’s failing infrastructure, provide high quality public education, create a universal Medicare-for-all health care system, build affordable housing, or help transition to a sustainable [demilitarized] alternative economy, among many other major social needs identified by the labor movement. War, in other words, is bad for working people.   More

 

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IRAN: GIVE PEACE A CHANCE?

IRAN: GIVE WAR PEACE A CHANCE?

 

Tuesday, September 8

The Iran Deal: A Step Towards Re-imagining the Middle East

7:00 pm, Christ Church Cambridge, Zero Garden St. (Harvard T)

With Globe columnist Stephen Kinzer, Harvard Prof. Stephen Walt, Dr. Shahin Tabatabaei, an Iranian-born urologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School just returned from a visit to Tehran; MC comedian/activist Jimmy Tingle.

 

Who is against the Iran agreement?  Israel, obviously, along with the gigantic rightwing Israel Lobby in the US, funded by the deep pockets of pro-Israel billionaires. The spotlight thrown on this constellation of power and money by the struggle over the Iran deal is certainly a good thing. The Republican Party is also virtually united in opposition.  This results partly from its evolution into the major “pro-Israel” party, with its dependence on fundamentalist Christians (who are also frequently Zionists) and, increasingly, pro-Israel Orthodox Jews – together with its greed for large campaign donations from those same sources.  Polls and other indicators show that Democrats, at the base, are increasingly skeptical of the “special relationship” with Israel.

 

The other reason for Republican opposition to the deal (aside from reflexive hostility to anything proposed by the Obama administration) is their refusal to accept the verdict of the Iraq War that the US, as powerful as it remains, does not have the economic or military strength to dominate the world through direct armed intervention.  That is why Republicans push for greater military spending and more overt intervention everywhere, from Syria to Ukraine.  This is not to say that the Democrats constitute the “peace” party, but there is increasing reluctance to commit US troops and treasure toward Quixotic campaigns of military intervention -- and a willingness to pursue diplomacy and local proxies to maintain US influence.  That is the context of the struggle over the Iran deal.  

 

Meanwhile, with the Iran agreement’s survival now virtually assured, it is way too early to count out the forces of opposition.  Plans are already being floated in Congress to undermine the deal. And statements from the Obama administration and members of Congress who support the deal are uniform in expressing loyalty to the US-Israel special relationship (with promises of increased military assistance) -- as well as hostility to Iran in every imaginable way, which may limit the transformational possibilities of normalization with that country.  And don’t count out AIPAC, either, though if there is a clear-cut “winner” in DC it may be the “AIPAC-light” as represented by the more liberal pro-Israel lobby J-Street.

 

Four more Senate Democrats back Iran deal, making 38

Three key Democratic holdouts threw their support behind the nuclear accord with Iran on Thursday — onRe day after Obama clinched enough votes to guarantee Congress can’t kill his agreement. Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mark Warner of Virginia and Cory Booker of New Jersey formally announced their backing. All three said the deal isn't flawless but beats the alternative… The Obama administration’s nuclear deal became all but sure to survive the Republican-led Congress when Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) announced Wednesday that she would back the agreement. That meant 34 votes were in favor of the deal, enough to sustain a veto from Obama, should he issue one. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California has said repeatedly that Democrats in her chamber would also protect the agreement.     More    (The fourth is Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, who is announcing today)

 

(The Arms Control Association has published a useful guide to the Iran agreement.)

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

 

--Call your member of Congress today to ask that they support this historic agreement. (and thank those who have announced their support!)

Senator Elizabeth Warren (Phone: (202) 224-4543) and Senator Ed Markey (Phone: (202) 224-2742 back the agreement. As of now, Reps. Lynch, McGovern, Moulton, Clark, Kennedy and Tsongas are announced supporters of the deal; The rest of the delegation is either “leaning yes” or “noncommittal. Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121 for other reps.  Representative Michael Capuano (Phone: 202-225-5111) says he expects to support the agreement “unless something new emerges before the vote”; Reps. Keating and Neal have not yet taken a position

 

The Hill has a Senate “whip count” here.

A count of all Congressional Democrats, here

 

OBAMA'S REAL ACHIEVEMENT WITH THE IRAN DEAL

Obama clearly outlined a paradigm shift with regard to Iran that is in lock step with the preferences of a majority of war weary Americans. He knows that the American public overwhelmingly prefers diplomacy and opposes war when it comes to both Iran's nuclear program and America's projection of power around the world.  Obama can initiate this paradigm shift, but he cannot complete it on his own. His allies and other supporters of the Iran nuclear deal must be mindful of the fact that military justifications for diplomatic solutions implicitly vindicate the military mindset within which the Iran nuclear deal never can be fully appreciated… Indeed, if the Iran nuclear deal solely prevents an Iranian bomb but fails to shift the security paradigm in America towards peace building through diplomacy rather than the militarism of perpetual warfare, then truly a historic opportunity will have been lost.   More

 

BENNIS: As Iran Deal Nears Approval, What Comes Next Remains Vital

Winning the fight to protect the Iran deal in Congress was a huge victory for diplomacy over war. Now we have to look to the future and figure out strategies to win new victories over the existing wars, occupations, and real—not imagined—nuclear weapons, all enabled and furthered by U.S. policies, that continue to create millions of new refugees, escalating violence, and instability across the Middle East and beyond.   More

 

How Obama defeated AIPAC on Iran

For years, the organization has worked to ensure that both Democrats and Republicans provide the Israeli government unquestioning support. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, by embracing Mitt Romney in 2012, colluding with Republicans to organize a speech to Congress behind Obama’s back this spring and making Ron Dermer, a former GOP operative, his top representative in Washington, has made AIPAC’s work harder.  AIPAC itself has also changed. In the 1980s, when it was led by Tom Dine, a former staffer to Ted Kennedy, Democrats comprised a larger share of its membership. But over the decades, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have made hawkish Jews more comfortable in the GOP. Others have left the Democratic Party because of Barack Obama. Orthodox Jews, who vote overwhelmingly Republican, also play a larger role in AIPAC than they did a few decades ago… Why should Democrats listen to Republican AIPAC activists who will oppose them no matter what?   More

 

AIPAC's Plan B?

A summary of a draft bill…  is circulating that is designed (almost certainly by AIPAC) to appeal to those Democrats eager to “kiss and make up” after their defiance of the most powerful Israel lobby group (whose reputation for omnipotence just took a very heavy hit) and its donors. Although most of the bill appears to be innocuous and consistent with the administration’s own intentions, it also contains a number of “poison pills,” which, if approved, appear calculated to raise new obstacles to implementation and Tehran’s confidence that the U.S. will fully comply with both the spirit and the letter of the JCPOA… We hear that the sponsors intend to push this through Congress as a companion to the disapproval resolution. The idea is to enable nervous Democrats to demonstrate their strong support for Israel and their undiluted distrust and hostility toward Iran. The fear is that if this measure isn’t passed now, then it could prove much more difficult to pass once Iran begins to implement the agreement.   More

 

Bad advice from Harvard’s Mr. Burns. . .

What Should Obama Do Next on Iran?

Mr. Obama should not be content to have his veto sustained in Congress. His more important aim, looking beyond the vote, is to win the long-term struggle with Iran for power in the Middle East. To begin this effort, the administration should commit to a policy of coercive diplomacy — major steps to keep Iran on the defensive and push back against its growing power in the Middle East. The president should suggest that Republicans and Democrats agree on a separate resolution to support this more tough-minded approach. Such a resolution could begin to heal the wounds from the bruising Iran debate and to chart a more assertive American posture in the region… As Mr. Obama and congressional leaders look beyond the Iran vote, the reassertion of a stronger American presence in the Middle East could earn bipartisan support.   More

 

The Boston Globe seemed to take this same view in an editorial this week.

 

What America will offer Israel after the nuclear deal

For starters, President Barack Obama seems ready to offer an array of security enhancements. Among them are accelerating and increasing defense assistance to Israel over the next decade; increasing the U.S. military presence in the Middle East; stepping up the enforcement of non-nuclear related Iran sanctions; enhancing U.S. interdiction against disruptive Iranian activity in the region; and increasing cooperation on missile defense. There also will be an emphasis on keeping any of the tens of billions of dollars to which Iran will gain unfettered access through the sanctions relief from reaching Iran’s proxies… Speaking of Israel, he said, “We can do even more to enhance the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation that we have with them, and to see, are there additional capabilities that Israel may be able to use to prevent Hezbollah, for example, from getting missiles.”   More

 

A push to boost military support to Israel because of Iranian nuclear deal

Obama pointed out that the administration is holding talks with Israeli officials to extend for an additional decade the Bush administration’s 10-year, $30 billion plan to pay for Israel’s foreign military purchases of equipment and training, mostly from U.S. firms. The agreement was signed in 2007 and runs out in fiscal 2018. The new deal would “cement for the next decade our unprecedented levels of military assistance,” Obama said in the Nadler letter.  Current discussions involve raising the annual amount, which at $3.1 billion a year is more than half of all U.S. foreign military sales support worldwide, to possibly $3.5 billion a year. At that level it would almost equal 20 percent of Israel’s entire defense budget. Another unique element of the Israeli weapons purchase program is that up to 26.3 percent of the U.S. money can be spent for Israeli-manufactured military equipment… Beyond that annual $3.1 billion in foreign military sales money, the administration has been providing grant money for Israeli missile defense programs. Obama noted that the United States has provided $3 billion over the years to help develop and purchase the Israeli-manufactured Iron Dome short-range missile interceptor systems and to pay for the Arrow 4 and David Sling [Israeli] missile defense systems.   More

 

Did AIPAC just waste tens of millions fighting the Iran deal? Not really.

AIPAC now operates with a $110 million annual budget, and wants to double that budget over the next five years. To do that, it needs to raise considerable money. That means giving donors a strong reason to contribute.  We don't know for sure who donates to AIPAC, since as a 501(c)(4) organization, it does not disclose its donors. But we can make an educated guess that the major donors to AIPAC have both strong feelings and very deep pockets. It would not be unreasonable to guess that some of them wanted to fight the deal even against long odds, and wouldn't blink at spending tens of millions of dollars to do so.  If AIPAC had decided to hold its lobbying fire, by contrast, it would have left itself open to charges that it had softened, that it wasn't a true supporter of Israel. If it abandoned the hard-line position, it's quite possible that some of its biggest donors would take their money to a new organization that promises to be that hard-line voice.   More

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.

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

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

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 Edward 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. (For those clueless about Skee, have forgotten or have never spent their illicit around carnivals, small time circuses, or penny-ante amusement parks, the game is simplicity itself once you get the hang of it and play about 10,000 hours’ worth of games you roll small balls, which come down a chute one you pay your dough, or credit/debit card the way they have the machines worked now acre, and you roll them like in bowling up to a target area like in archery and try to get a ton of points which gives you strips of coupons to win a prize depending on high your score is, and what you want. Like I say, simple.) And Edward did win her a stuffed animal, a big one, and got a very big long wet kiss for his heroics (and “copped a little feel”) down by the beach when she gave her best twelve year old “come hither” look, not the last time he would be snagged by that look. No way though that tarot reading when he was twelve left an impression, not then when the hormones drove his big thoughts, and not for a long while.

That big breeze blowing through the land thing was not Edward’s 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 had been 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 for something to happen in woebegone North Adamsville where the town mainly went to sleep by ten, or eleven on Friday and Saturday night when Jack Slack’s closed late (for the younger set, Doc’s Drugstore, the place where he and Frankie hung in their younger days as well, the place where they all first heard rock and roll played loud on Doc’s jukebox by the soda fountain, every night was nine o’clock night and you wonder, well, maybe not you, but parents wondered why their kids were ready to take the first hitchhike or hitch a freight train ride out of that one-horse town (expression courtesy of the grandmothers of the town, including Edward’s where he first heard the words).

Here is where that big breeze twelve million word description thing Markin was talking about intersected with that unspoken trend (unknown since the corner at Jack Slacks’ did not have a resident professional academic sociologist in residence and Markin was picking his stuff up from newspapers and magazines who were always way behind the trends until the next big thing hit them in the face). 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, on his musical sense, the beat or the “kicks” as he called then although he would horn in, or try to, on the glory by giving every imaginable arcane fact about some record’s history, roots, whatever which would put everybody to sleep, they just wanted to heard the “beat” for crying out loud. Edward had to chuckle though at the way, the main way, that Markin worked the jukebox. He used 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. But he was smooth in his way since he would draw a bee-line to the girl who just put her quarter in for her three selection on Jack Slack’s jukebox (Doc’s, sweet and kindly saint Doc had five for a quarter if you can believe that). He would become her “advisor,” and as the number one guy who knew every piece of teenage grape vine news in the town and whom everybody deferred to so he would let her “pick” the first selection, usually some sentimental lost love thing she could get weepy over, the second selection would be maybe some “oldie but goodie” which everybody still wanted to hear, and then on number three, the girl all out of ideas Markin would tout whatever song had caught his ear. Jesus, Markin was a piece of work. Too bad he had to end the way he did down in Mexico back in the mid-1970s which guys from the old town were still moaning about.

That was Markin on the fringes but 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 folk tunes started showing up on the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner over on Latham Street where the college guys hung and families went to a cheap filling dinner to give Ma a break from the supper meal preparations 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 had played 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 with the political and so-called historical slant triggered by his grandmother’s devotion to the Catholic Worker 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 Edward 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 Edward 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 Edward 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  Edward 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 Edward 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 Edward 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 Edward 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 either and so everybody learned about sex is some strange osmotic way just like now.)     

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 off-putting “no way” 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.