Sunday, November 01, 2015

On The 100th Anniversary Of The 1912 Presidential Election- From The Pen Of Early American Socialist Leader Eugene V. Debs- "American Socialist"-Forerunner Of A Powerful Revolutionary Press

Click on the headline to link to the Eugene V. Debs Marxist Internet Archive website article listed in the headline..

Markin comment on this From The Pen Of Eugene V. Debs series:

The Political Evolution of Eugene V. Debs

For many reasons, the most important of which for our purposes here are the question of the nature of the revolutionary party and of revolutionary leadership, the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was a turning point in the international labor movement. In its aftermath, there was a definitive and I would argue, necessary split, between those leftists (and here I use that term generically to mean socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists and the like) who sought to reform the capitalist state from within and those who saw that it needed to be destroyed “root and branch” and new institutions established to create a more just society. This division today continues, in truncated form to be sure, to define the contours of the question. The heroic American pre- World War II socialist labor leader and icon, Eugene V. Debs, contained within his personal political trajectory all the contradictions of that split. As will be described below in more detail we honor Debs for his generosity of socialist spirit while at the same time underscoring that his profile is, in the final analysis, not that of something who could have led a proletarian revolution in the earlier part of the 20th century.

Debs was above all others except, perhaps, “Big Bill” Haywood in the pre-World War I movement. For details of why that was so and a strong biographic sketch it is still necessary to go Ray Ginger’s “The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs”. I will review that effort in this space at a later time. For now though let me give the highlights I found that every serious labor militant or every serious student of socialism needs to think through.

If history has told us anything over the past one hundred and fifty years plus of the organized labor movement it is that mere trade union consciousness under conditions of capitalist domination, while commendable and necessary, is merely the beginning of wisdom. By now several generations of labor militants have passed through the school of trade unionism with varying results; although precious few have gone beyond that to the class consciousness necessary to “turn the world upside down” to use an old expression from the 17th century English Revolution. In the late 19th when American capitalism was consolidating itself and moving onto its industrial phases the landscape was filled with pitched class battles between labor and capital.

One of those key battles in the 1890’s was led by one Eugene V. Debs and his American Railway Union against the mammoth rail giant, The Pullman Company. At that time the rails were the key mode of transportation in the bustling new industrial capitalist commerce. At that time, by his own reckoning, Debs saw the struggle from a merely trade unionist point of view, that is a specific localized economic struggle for better wages and conditions rather than taking on the capitalist system and its state. That strike was defeated and as a result Debs and others became “guests” of that state in a local jail in Illinois for six months or so. The key conclusion drawn from this ‘lesson’, for our purposes, was that Debs personally finally realized that the close connection between the capitalists and THEIR state (troops, media, jails, courts) was organic and needed to be addressed.

Development of working class political class consciousness comes in many ways; I know that from my own personal experiences running up against the capitalist state. For Debs this “up close and personal” confrontation with the capitalist drove him, reluctantly at first and with some reservations, to see the need for socialist solutions to the plight of the workingman (and women). In Debs’ case this involved an early infatuation with the ideas of cooperative commonwealths then popular among radicals as a way to basically provide a parallel alternative society away from capitalism. Well again, having gone thorough that same kind of process of conversion myself (in my case 'autonomous' urban communes, you know, the “hippie” experience of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s); Debs fairly quickly came to realize that an organized political response was necessary and he linked up his efforts with the emerging American Socialist Party.

Before World War I the major political model for politically organizing the working class was provided by the Marxist-dominated German Social Democratic Party. At that time, and in this period of pre-imperialist capitalist development, this was unquestionably the model to be followed. By way of explanation the key organizing principle of that organization, besides providing party discipline for united action, was to create a “big tent” party for the social transformation of society. Under that rubric the notion was to organize anyone and everyone, from socialist-feminists, socialist vegetarians, pacifists, municipal reformers, incipient trade union bureaucrats, hard core reformists, evolutionary socialists and- revolutionaries like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg who we honor to this day. The American Social Party that Debs joined exhibited all those tendencies (and some even more outlandish) of the German model. And as long as no great events acted to disrupt the “unity” of this amorphous formation the various tensions within the organization concerning reform or revolution were subdued for a time. Not forever though.

Various revolutionary tendencies within the workers’ movement have historically had opposing positions concerning parliamentary politics: what to do politically while waiting for the opportune moment to take political power. The controversy centered (and today centers around) whether to run for elective executive and/or legislative offices. Since World War I a very strong argument has developed that revolutionaries should not run for executive offices of the capitalist state on the principle that we do not want to be responsible for the running of the capitalist state. On the other hand running for legislative office under the principle of acting as “tribunes of the people” continues to have validity. The case of the German revolutionary social democrat Karl Liebknecht using his legislative office to denounce the German war effort DURING the war is a very high-level expression of that position. This question, arguably, was a little less clears in the pre-war period.

If Eugene V. Debs is remembered politically today it is probably for his five famous runs for the American presidency (one, in 1920, run from jail) from 1900 to 1920 (except 1916). Of those the most famous is the 1912 four- way fight (Teddy Roosevelt and his “Bull Moose” Party providing the fourth) in which he got almost a million votes and something like 5 percent of the vote- this is the high water mark of socialist electoral politics then and now. I would only mention that a strong argument could be made here for support of the idea of a revolutionary (and, at least until the early 1920’s Debs considered himself, subjectively, a revolutionary) running for executive office- the presidency- without violating political principle (of course, with the always present proviso that if elected he would refuse to serve). Certainly the issues to be fought around- the emerging American imperial presence in the world, the fierce wage struggles, the capitalist trustification and cartelization of industry, the complicity of the courts, the struggle for women’s right to vote, the struggle against the emerging anti- black Jim Crow regime in the South would make such a platform a useful propaganda tool. Especially since Debs was one of the premier socialist orators of the day, if perhaps too flowery and long-winded for today’s eye or ear.

As the American Socialist Party developed in the early 20th century, and grew by leaps and bounds in this period, a somewhat parallel development was occurring somewhat outside this basically parliamentary movement. In 1905, led by the revolutionary militant “Big Bill” Haywood and with an enthusiastic (then) Debs present probably the most famous mass militant labor organization in American history was formed, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies). As it name denotes this organization stood as, in effect, the nucleus of the industrial unionism that would win the day among the unorganized in the 1930’s with the efforts of the CIO. But it also was, as James P. Cannon an early IWW organizer noted in one of his books, the nucleus of a revolutionary political party. One of the reasons, among others, for its demise was that it never was able to resolve that contradiction between party and union. But that is an analysis for another day.

What is important to note here is that organization form fit in, very nicely indeed, with Debs’ notions of organizing the unorganized, the need for industrial unionization (as opposed to the prevailing narrow craft orientation of the Samuel Gompers-led AFL). Nevertheless Debs, to his credit, was no “dual unionist”, that is, committed to ignoring or going around the AFL and establishing “revolutionary” unions. This question of “boring from within” organized labor or “dual unions” continues to this day, and historically has been a very thorny question among militants faced with the bureaucratic inertia of the trade union bureaucracy. Debs came down on the side of the angels on this one (even if he later took unfavorable positions on IWW actions).

Although Debs is probably best known for his presidential runs (including that one from Atlanta prison in 1920 that I always enjoy seeing pictures of the one where he converses with his campaign staff in his cell) he really should be, if he is remembered for only one thing, remembered for his principled opposition to American war preparedness and eventual entry into World War I in 1917. Although it is unclear in my mind how much of Debs’ position stemmed from personal pacifism, how much from Hoosier isolationism (after all he was the quintessential Midwestern labor politician, having been raised in and lived all his life in Indiana) and how much was an anti-imperialist statement he nevertheless, of all major socialist spokesmen to speak nothing of major politicians in general , was virtually alone in his opposition when Woodrow Wilson pulled the hammer down and entered American forces into the European conflict.

That, my friends, should command respect from almost everyone, political friend or foe alike. Needless to say for his opposition he was eventually tried and convicted of, of all things, the catch-all charge of sedition and conspiracy. Some things never change. Moreover, that prison term is why Debs had to run from prison in 1920.

I started out this exposition of Debs’ political trajectory under the sign of the Russian Revolution and here I come full circle. I have, I believe, highlighted the points that we honor Debs for and now to balance the wheel we need to discuss his shortcomings (which are also a reflection of the shortcomings of the internationalist socialist movement then, and now). The almost universal betrayal of its anti- war positions of the pre-war international social democracy, as organized in the Second International and led by the German Party, by its subordination to the war aims of its respective individual capitalist governments exposed a deep crevice in the theory and practice of the movement.

As the experiences of the Russian revolution pointed out it was no longer possible for reformists and revolutionaries to coexist in the same party. Literally, on more than one occasion, these formally connected tendencies were on opposite sides of the barricades when the social tensions of society exploded. It was not a pretty sight and called for a splitting and realignment of the revolutionary forces internationally. The organizational expression of this was the formation, in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, of the Communist International in 1919. Part of that process, in America, included a left-wing split (or purge depending on the source read) and the creation, at first, of two communist organizations. As the most authoritative left-wing socialist of the day one would have thought that Debs would have inclined to the communists. That was not to be the case as he stayed with the remnant of the American Socialist Party until his death in the late 1920’s.

No one would argue that the early communist movement in America was not filled with more than its share of political mistakes, wild boys and just plain weirdness but that is where the revolutionaries were in the 1920’s. And this brings us really to Debs’ ultimate problem as a socialist leader and why I made that statement above that he could not lead a proletarian revolution in America, assuming that he was his desire. Debs had a life-long aversion to political faction and in-fighting. I would agree, as any rational radical politician would, that faction and in-fighting are not virtuous in and of themselves and are a net drain on the tasks of propaganda, recruitment and united front actions that should drive left-wing political work. However, as critical turning points in the international socialist movement have shown, sometimes the tensions between the political appetites of supposed like-minded individuals cannot be contained in one organization. This question is most dramatically posed, of course, in a revolutionary period when the tensions are whittled down to choices for or against the revolution. One side of the barricade or the other.

That said, Debs’ personality, demeanor and ultimately his political program of trying to keep “big tent” socialist together tarnished his image as a socialist leader. Debs’ positions on convicts, women, and blacks, education, religion and government. Debs was no theorist, socialist or otherwise, and many of his positions would not pass muster among radicals today. I note his economic determinist argument that the black question is subsumed in the class question. I have discussed this question elsewhere and will not address it here. I would only note, for a socialist, his position is just flat out wrong. I also note that, outside his support for women’s suffrage and working women’s rights to equal pay his attitude toward women was strictly Victorian. As was his wishy-washy attitude toward religion. Eugene V. Debs, warts and all, nevertheless deserves a fair nod from history as the premier American socialist of the pre-World War I period.

On The 100th Anniversary Of The 1912 Presidential Election- From The Pen Of Early American Socialist Leader Eugene V. Debs-A Contrast Presented by Presidential Candidates of the Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Party

Click on the headline to link to the Eugene V. Debs Marxist Internet Archive website article listed in the headline..

Markin comment on this From The Pen Of Eugene V. Debs series:

The Political Evolution of Eugene V. Debs

For many reasons, the most important of which for our purposes here are the question of the nature of the revolutionary party and of revolutionary leadership, the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was a turning point in the international labor movement. In its aftermath, there was a definitive and I would argue, necessary split, between those leftists (and here I use that term generically to mean socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists and the like) who sought to reform the capitalist state from within and those who saw that it needed to be destroyed “root and branch” and new institutions established to create a more just society. This division today continues, in truncated form to be sure, to define the contours of the question. The heroic American pre- World War II socialist labor leader and icon, Eugene V. Debs, contained within his personal political trajectory all the contradictions of that split. As will be described below in more detail we honor Debs for his generosity of socialist spirit while at the same time underscoring that his profile is, in the final analysis, not that of something who could have led a proletarian revolution in the earlier part of the 20th century.

Debs was above all others except, perhaps, “Big Bill” Haywood in the pre-World War I movement. For details of why that was so and a strong biographic sketch it is still necessary to go Ray Ginger’s “The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs”. I will review that effort in this space at a later time. For now though let me give the highlights I found that every serious labor militant or every serious student of socialism needs to think through.

If history has told us anything over the past one hundred and fifty years plus of the organized labor movement it is that mere trade union consciousness under conditions of capitalist domination, while commendable and necessary, is merely the beginning of wisdom. By now several generations of labor militants have passed through the school of trade unionism with varying results; although precious few have gone beyond that to the class consciousness necessary to “turn the world upside down” to use an old expression from the 17th century English Revolution. In the late 19th when American capitalism was consolidating itself and moving onto its industrial phases the landscape was filled with pitched class battles between labor and capital.

One of those key battles in the 1890’s was led by one Eugene V. Debs and his American Railway Union against the mammoth rail giant, The Pullman Company. At that time the rails were the key mode of transportation in the bustling new industrial capitalist commerce. At that time, by his own reckoning, Debs saw the struggle from a merely trade unionist point of view, that is a specific localized economic struggle for better wages and conditions rather than taking on the capitalist system and its state. That strike was defeated and as a result Debs and others became “guests” of that state in a local jail in Illinois for six months or so. The key conclusion drawn from this ‘lesson’, for our purposes, was that Debs personally finally realized that the close connection between the capitalists and THEIR state (troops, media, jails, courts) was organic and needed to be addressed.

Development of working class political class consciousness comes in many ways; I know that from my own personal experiences running up against the capitalist state. For Debs this “up close and personal” confrontation with the capitalist drove him, reluctantly at first and with some reservations, to see the need for socialist solutions to the plight of the workingman (and women). In Debs’ case this involved an early infatuation with the ideas of cooperative commonwealths then popular among radicals as a way to basically provide a parallel alternative society away from capitalism. Well again, having gone thorough that same kind of process of conversion myself (in my case 'autonomous' urban communes, you know, the “hippie” experience of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s); Debs fairly quickly came to realize that an organized political response was necessary and he linked up his efforts with the emerging American Socialist Party.

Before World War I the major political model for politically organizing the working class was provided by the Marxist-dominated German Social Democratic Party. At that time, and in this period of pre-imperialist capitalist development, this was unquestionably the model to be followed. By way of explanation the key organizing principle of that organization, besides providing party discipline for united action, was to create a “big tent” party for the social transformation of society. Under that rubric the notion was to organize anyone and everyone, from socialist-feminists, socialist vegetarians, pacifists, municipal reformers, incipient trade union bureaucrats, hard core reformists, evolutionary socialists and- revolutionaries like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg who we honor to this day. The American Social Party that Debs joined exhibited all those tendencies (and some even more outlandish) of the German model. And as long as no great events acted to disrupt the “unity” of this amorphous formation the various tensions within the organization concerning reform or revolution were subdued for a time. Not forever though.

Various revolutionary tendencies within the workers’ movement have historically had opposing positions concerning parliamentary politics: what to do politically while waiting for the opportune moment to take political power. The controversy centered (and today centers around) whether to run for elective executive and/or legislative offices. Since World War I a very strong argument has developed that revolutionaries should not run for executive offices of the capitalist state on the principle that we do not want to be responsible for the running of the capitalist state. On the other hand running for legislative office under the principle of acting as “tribunes of the people” continues to have validity. The case of the German revolutionary social democrat Karl Liebknecht using his legislative office to denounce the German war effort DURING the war is a very high-level expression of that position. This question, arguably, was a little less clears in the pre-war period.

If Eugene V. Debs is remembered politically today it is probably for his five famous runs for the American presidency (one, in 1920, run from jail) from 1900 to 1920 (except 1916). Of those the most famous is the 1912 four- way fight (Teddy Roosevelt and his “Bull Moose” Party providing the fourth) in which he got almost a million votes and something like 5 percent of the vote- this is the high water mark of socialist electoral politics then and now. I would only mention that a strong argument could be made here for support of the idea of a revolutionary (and, at least until the early 1920’s Debs considered himself, subjectively, a revolutionary) running for executive office- the presidency- without violating political principle (of course, with the always present proviso that if elected he would refuse to serve). Certainly the issues to be fought around- the emerging American imperial presence in the world, the fierce wage struggles, the capitalist trustification and cartelization of industry, the complicity of the courts, the struggle for women’s right to vote, the struggle against the emerging anti- black Jim Crow regime in the South would make such a platform a useful propaganda tool. Especially since Debs was one of the premier socialist orators of the day, if perhaps too flowery and long-winded for today’s eye or ear.

As the American Socialist Party developed in the early 20th century, and grew by leaps and bounds in this period, a somewhat parallel development was occurring somewhat outside this basically parliamentary movement. In 1905, led by the revolutionary militant “Big Bill” Haywood and with an enthusiastic (then) Debs present probably the most famous mass militant labor organization in American history was formed, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies). As it name denotes this organization stood as, in effect, the nucleus of the industrial unionism that would win the day among the unorganized in the 1930’s with the efforts of the CIO. But it also was, as James P. Cannon an early IWW organizer noted in one of his books, the nucleus of a revolutionary political party. One of the reasons, among others, for its demise was that it never was able to resolve that contradiction between party and union. But that is an analysis for another day.

What is important to note here is that organization form fit in, very nicely indeed, with Debs’ notions of organizing the unorganized, the need for industrial unionization (as opposed to the prevailing narrow craft orientation of the Samuel Gompers-led AFL). Nevertheless Debs, to his credit, was no “dual unionist”, that is, committed to ignoring or going around the AFL and establishing “revolutionary” unions. This question of “boring from within” organized labor or “dual unions” continues to this day, and historically has been a very thorny question among militants faced with the bureaucratic inertia of the trade union bureaucracy. Debs came down on the side of the angels on this one (even if he later took unfavorable positions on IWW actions).

Although Debs is probably best known for his presidential runs (including that one from Atlanta prison in 1920 that I always enjoy seeing pictures of the one where he converses with his campaign staff in his cell) he really should be, if he is remembered for only one thing, remembered for his principled opposition to American war preparedness and eventual entry into World War I in 1917. Although it is unclear in my mind how much of Debs’ position stemmed from personal pacifism, how much from Hoosier isolationism (after all he was the quintessential Midwestern labor politician, having been raised in and lived all his life in Indiana) and how much was an anti-imperialist statement he nevertheless, of all major socialist spokesmen to speak nothing of major politicians in general , was virtually alone in his opposition when Woodrow Wilson pulled the hammer down and entered American forces into the European conflict.

That, my friends, should command respect from almost everyone, political friend or foe alike. Needless to say for his opposition he was eventually tried and convicted of, of all things, the catch-all charge of sedition and conspiracy. Some things never change. Moreover, that prison term is why Debs had to run from prison in 1920.

I started out this exposition of Debs’ political trajectory under the sign of the Russian Revolution and here I come full circle. I have, I believe, highlighted the points that we honor Debs for and now to balance the wheel we need to discuss his shortcomings (which are also a reflection of the shortcomings of the internationalist socialist movement then, and now). The almost universal betrayal of its anti- war positions of the pre-war international social democracy, as organized in the Second International and led by the German Party, by its subordination to the war aims of its respective individual capitalist governments exposed a deep crevice in the theory and practice of the movement.

As the experiences of the Russian revolution pointed out it was no longer possible for reformists and revolutionaries to coexist in the same party. Literally, on more than one occasion, these formally connected tendencies were on opposite sides of the barricades when the social tensions of society exploded. It was not a pretty sight and called for a splitting and realignment of the revolutionary forces internationally. The organizational expression of this was the formation, in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, of the Communist International in 1919. Part of that process, in America, included a left-wing split (or purge depending on the source read) and the creation, at first, of two communist organizations. As the most authoritative left-wing socialist of the day one would have thought that Debs would have inclined to the communists. That was not to be the case as he stayed with the remnant of the American Socialist Party until his death in the late 1920’s.

No one would argue that the early communist movement in America was not filled with more than its share of political mistakes, wild boys and just plain weirdness but that is where the revolutionaries were in the 1920’s. And this brings us really to Debs’ ultimate problem as a socialist leader and why I made that statement above that he could not lead a proletarian revolution in America, assuming that he was his desire. Debs had a life-long aversion to political faction and in-fighting. I would agree, as any rational radical politician would, that faction and in-fighting are not virtuous in and of themselves and are a net drain on the tasks of propaganda, recruitment and united front actions that should drive left-wing political work. However, as critical turning points in the international socialist movement have shown, sometimes the tensions between the political appetites of supposed like-minded individuals cannot be contained in one organization. This question is most dramatically posed, of course, in a revolutionary period when the tensions are whittled down to choices for or against the revolution. One side of the barricade or the other.

That said, Debs’ personality, demeanor and ultimately his political program of trying to keep “big tent” socialist together tarnished his image as a socialist leader. Debs’ positions on convicts, women, and blacks, education, religion and government. Debs was no theorist, socialist or otherwise, and many of his positions would not pass muster among radicals today. I note his economic determinist argument that the black question is subsumed in the class question. I have discussed this question elsewhere and will not address it here. I would only note, for a socialist, his position is just flat out wrong. I also note that, outside his support for women’s suffrage and working women’s rights to equal pay his attitude toward women was strictly Victorian. As was his wishy-washy attitude toward religion. Eugene V. Debs, warts and all, nevertheless deserves a fair nod from history as the premier American socialist of the pre-World War I period.

*In The Age Of The "Robber Barons"- A Witty Literary Take On The American "Republic Of Letters"

Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia Entry For John Singer Sargent. His artwork, especially the portraits, seem to be a window that expressed the essence of this period.

Book Review

The Mauve Decade: American Life At The End Of The 19th Century, Thomas Beer, Carol and Graf Publishers, New York, 1926


Every once in a while one comes across a gem of book and is not quite sure what to do with it. That is the case with this gossip-laden, satirically biting literary book, “Mauve Decade”, that deals with the highs and lows of American culture in the last decade of the 19th century. You, know the time of the well-known "robber barons who until recently were the main villains in the on-going American saga. And they were! And their descendants, literally or not, still are!

As a matter of course I should explain that I picked this book up for the purpose, I thought, of taking a look at the period of the emergence of the American imperial presence that we continue to live with. I also was looking to round out the milieu in which the American labor movement was beginning to feel its oats. The period of the great trade union, and later Socialist Party leader, Eugene V. Debs-led Pullman Strike and other bloody labor battles that should have told even the most naïve militant that the struggle ahead was going to be long and arduous. Those 'robber barons" meant to keep their profits. That is the book I bargained for but I got something quite different.


What I got was one of the most obscure, but intrinsically interesting, takes on the American literary scene, the so-called ”Republic of Letters” movement that was being pushed at the time in order to create a separate and distinct American cultural haven. The author, writing in 1926 (at least that is when the book was published) is taking a broad look back at the 1890’s based on his own observations, the recollections of literary friends and those with some kind of ax to grind. Thomas Beer is not a name that I am familiar with either in my various reviews of American literary history or in any other capacity. I have not, at this point when this review is being written, taken the time to find out exactly who he was. That, I do not believe is necessary, in order appreciate what a little gem he has produced.

Most of the names that Beer drops, and there is a great deal of name-dropping in the book,, are very familiar to readers of this space-Mark Twain, William Cullen Bryant (these were the days when every other Brahmin used three names to beef up his or her resume), William Dean Howells, Charles Godkin, The James brothers-in short, the literary establishment, make that the Brahmin establishment, that coalesced after the Civil War and was entering, according to Beer, its decline. I will not argue that point here but merely point out that his style is to be droll and venomous as he lists the roll call of the famous that get recognition at the expense of his own favored authors.

Needless to say this book centers on the Boston/New York literary scene with a few passing remarks about the Westerners who would go on to create a very different type of literature. There are also many, many dry comments on the “Irish” problem, which is the fact that this ‘race’ has started to come into its own politically. Along the way Beer comments on the then new obscure and now long forgotten political scandals of the day, the literary sexual censorship that was being enforced by public officials and magazine/newspaper editors alike (I can only imagine what Beer would have made of the current wide open sexual references.), the fashions and watering holes of the rich and famous and their pet peeves. Wonderful stuff, all done in a rather arcane style that would not pass today’s rapid repartee standards. This guy knows how to skewer even from long distance. We can always appreciate a little of that no matter what generation we are in. Nice work, Thomas Beer.

*From The "In Defense Of Marxism" IMT Website-When the Socialist Party Was a Factor in US Politics: Lessons in Party Building - A Guest Commentary

*Click on the headline to link to the "In Defense Of Marxism" IMT Website for th entry-"When the Socialist Party Was a Factor in US Politics: Lessons in Party Building."

Markin comment:

This article hits the high points needed in any critique of the American Socialist Party in the old, pre-World War I days. Although it could have been, and should have been, sharper on the "above the battle" attitude of Eugene V. Debs when the natural factional struggles erupted over various questions. Especially on his failure to move left (and out) with the decisive political event of the 20th century, particularly the early part of the 20th century, the Russian October Revolution of 1917. I also did not get a sense in the article that, as Leon Trotsky noted on more than one occasion, the American SP was the perfect party for dentists. And Trotsky would have known, and known directly, having spend time here just prior to returning to Russia in 1917.
The Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With The Late B.B. King’s Lucille In Mind 


 


Here is the drill. Bart Webber had started out life, started out as a captive nation child listening to singers like Frank Sinatra who blew away all of the bobbysoxers of his mother’s generation before he pitter-pattered the Tin Pan Alley crowd, Bing Crosby, not the Bing of righteous Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? but White Christmas put to sleep stuff (and to his brother Bob and his Bobcats as well), the Inkspots spouting If I Didn’t Care and their trademark spoken verse on every song they touched, Miss Patti Page getting dreamy about local haunt Cape Cod, Miss Rosemary Clooney telling one and all to jump and come to her house, Miss Peggy Lee trying to get some no account man to do right, do right by his woman,    the Andrew Sisters yakking about their precious rums and cokes (soft drinks), the McGuire Sisters getting misty-eyed, the Dooley sisters dried-eyed, and all the big swing bands from the 1940s like Harry James, Tommy Dorsey (and his brother Jimmy who had his own band) as background music on the family radio in the 1950s which his mother always had on during the day to get her through her “golden age of working class prosperity and single official worker, dad, workaday daytime household world” and on Saturday night too when that dad, Prescott, joined in. Joined in so they could listen to Bill Marlin on local radio station WJDA and his Memory Lane show from seven to eleven where they could listen to the music that got them (and their generation) through the “from hunger” times of the 1930s Great Depression and then right on its heels when they slogged through (either in some watery European theater or the Pacific one take your pick) or anxiously waited at home for the other shoe to drop during World War II.

Bart, thinking back on the situation felt long afterward that he would have been wrong if he said that Delores and Prescott should not have had their memory music after all of that but frankly that stuff then (and now although less so) made him  grind his teeth. But he, and his three brothers, were a captive audience then and so to this day he could sing off Rum and Coca Cola, Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree (the Glenn Miller version not the Andrew Sister’s) and Vera Lynn’s White Cliffs of Dover from memory. But that was not his music, okay. (Nor mine since we grew up in the same working class neighborhood in old Carver, the cranberry bog capital of the world, together and many nights in front of Hank’s Variety store we would steam about the hard fact that we could not turn that radio dial, or shut off that record player, under penalty of exile from Main Street.)     

Then of course since we are speaking about the 1950s came the great musical break-out, the age of classic rock and roll which Bart “dug” (his term since he more than the rest of us who hung around Jimmy Jack’s Clam Shack on Main Street [not the diner on Thornton Street, that would be later when the older guys moved on and we stepped up in their places in high school] was influenced by the remnant of the “beat” generation minute as it got refracted in Carver via his sneak trips to Harvard Square)   seriously dug to the point of dreaming his own jailbreak dreams about rock star futures (and girls hanging off every hand, yeah, mostly the girls part as time went on once he figured out his voice had broken around thirteen and that his off-key versions of the then current hits would not get him noticed on the mandatory American Bandstand ) but that Elvis-etched time too was just a bit soon for him, us, to be able to unlike Bart’s older brother, Prescott, call that stuff the music that he, I came of age to. Although the echoes of that time still run through his, our, minds as we recently proved yet again when we met in Boston at a ‘60s retro jukebox bar and could lip-synch  quote chapter and verse One Night With You (Elvis version, including the salacious One Night Of Sin original), Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry, of course), Let’s Have A Party ( the much underrated  Wanda Jackson), Be-Bop-a-Lula (Gene Vincent in the great one hit wonder night but what a hit), Bo Diddley (Bo, of course, who had long ago answered the question of who put the rock in rock and roll), Peggy Sue (too soon gone Buddy Holly) and a whole bunch more.   

The music that Bart really called his own though, and where we parted company since I could not abide, still can’t abide, that whiny music dealing mainly with death, thwarted love, and death, or did I say that, accompanied by, Jesus, banjos, mandos and harps, was the stuff from the folk minute of the 1960s which dovetailed with his, our coming of chronological, political and social age (the latter in the sense of recognizing, if not always acting on, the fact that there were others, kindred, out there beside us filled with angst, alienation and good will to seek solidarity with which neither of us tied up with knots with seven seals connected with until later after getting out of our dinky hometown of Carver and off into the big cities and campus towns where just at that moment there were kindred by the thousands with the same maladies and same desire to turn  the world upside down). By the way if you didn’t imbibe in the folk minute or were too young what I mean is the mountain tunes of the first generation of the Carter Family coming out of Clinch Mountain, Buell Kazell (from Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music times), Jimmy Rodgers the Texas yodeler who found fame at the same time as the Carters in old Podunk Bristol, Tennessee, the old country Child ballads (Northwest Europe old country collected by Child in Cambridge in the 1850s and taken up in that town again one hundred years later in some kind of act, conscious or unconscious, of historical affinity), the blue grass music (which grabbed Bart by the throat when Everett Lally, a college friend of his and member of the famed Lally Brothers blue grass band let him in on his treasure trove of music from that genre which he tried to interest me in one night before I cut him short although Everett was a cool guy, very cool for a guy from the hills and hollows of Appalachia), and the protest songs, songs against the madnesses of the times, nuclear war, brushfire war in places like Vietnam, against Mister James Crow’s midnight ways, against the barbaric death penalty, against a lot of what songwriter Malvina Reynolds called the “ticky-tack little cookie-cutter box” existences all of us were slated for if nothing else turned up by the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk and Phil Ochs. Bart said that while he was in college (Boston College, the Jesuit school which was letting even heathen Protestants in as long as the they did not try to start the Reformation, again) the latter songs (With God On Our Side, Blowin’ In The Wind, The Time They Are A-Changing, I Ain’t Marching No More, Universal Soldier and stuff like that) that drove a lot of his interest once he connected their work with the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene (and the adjacent hanging out at the Hayes-Bickford Cafeteria which he has written plenty about elsewhere and need not detain us her where he hung on poverty nights, meaning many nights).

Bart said a lot of the drive toward folk music was to get out from under the anti-rock and rock musical counter-revolution that he kept hearing on his transistor radio during that early 1960s period with pretty boy singers (Fabian, a bunch of guys named Bobby, the Everly Brothers) and vapid young female consumer-driven female singer stuff (oh, Sandra Dee, Brenda Lee, Patsy Cline, Leslie Gore say no more). I passed that time, which I agree was a tough time in the rock genre that drove our desires, playing my classic rock and roll records almost to death and worn down grooves and began to hear a certain murmur from down South and out in Chicago with a blues beat that I swear sounded like it came out of the backbeat of rock. Of course both of us being nothing but prime examples of those alienated teenagers whom the high-brow sociologists were fretting about, worried that we were heading toward nihilism and not sure what to do about it, worried about our toward going to hell in a handbasket, like our hurts and depressions were what ailed the candid world I would not have characterized that trend that way for it would take a few decades to see what was what. Then though the pretty boy and vapid girl music just gave me a headache.  Bart too although like I said we split ways as he sought to seek out roots music that he kept hearing in the coffeehouses and on the radio once he found a station (accidently) which featured such folk music and got intrigued by the sounds.

Part of that search, my part but I dragged Bart along a little when I played to his roots interests after he found out that some of the country blues music would get some play on that folk music station, a big search over the long haul, was to get deeply immersed in the blues, mainly at first country blues and later the city, you know, Chicago blues. Those country guys though intrigued me once they were “discovered” down south in little towns plying away in the fields or some such work and were brought up to Newport to enflame a new generation of aficionados. The likes of Son House the mad man preacher-sinner man, Skip James with that falsetto voice singing out about how he would rather be the devil than to be that woman’s man, Bukka White (sweating blood and salt on that National Steel on Aberdeen Mississippi Woman and Panama Limited of course Creole Belle candy man Mississippi John Hurt.

But those guys basically stayed in the South went about their local business and vanished from big view until they were “discovered” by folk aficionados who headed south looking for, well, looking for roots, looking for something to hang onto  and it took a younger generation like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the guy whose photograph graces this sketch, the late B.B. King, to move north, to follow the northern star to the big industrial cities (with a stop at Memphis going up river) to put some electric juice in those old guitars and chase my blues away just by playing like they too had made their own pacts with the devil. And made a lot of angst and alienation just a shade more bearable.  

B.B. King was by no means my first choice among electrified bluesmen, Muddy Waters and in a big way Howlin’ Wolf got closer to the nut for me, got closer to that feeling that the blues could set me free when I was, well, blue, could keep me upright when some woman was two-timing me, or worst was driving me crazy with her “do this and do that” just for the sake of seeing who was in charge, could chase away some bad dreams when the deal went down. Gave off an almost sanctified sense of time and place, after a hard juke joint or Chicago tavern Saturday night and you showed up kind of scruffy for church early Sunday morning hoping against hope that the service would be short. B.B. might not have been my number one but he stretched a big part of that arc. Praise be.

***The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- American Socialist Workers Party Leader James P.Cannon-On Eugene V. Debs And The Idea Of The Party Of The Whole Working Class

Click on the headline to link to a James P. Cannon Internet Archives online copy of On Eugene V. Debs And The Idea Of The Party Of The Whole Working Class

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

The Night Murray Pulled The Plug-With Pete Seeger In Mind


The Night Murray Pulled The Plug-With Pete Seeger In Mind 

 
 
Danny Ross was a born contrarian, young as he was to take on such burden along with his studies as a college student, or what would pass for such a person until a more contentious one came along. You know the kind of person who if you say an orange he has to say an apple if you ask for a preference even if all his life he had oranges and hated the very sound of apple. Better and this was pure since he was enrolled as a biology major if you said some scientific study had shown that pomegranates helped stop lesions he would site some obscure study by some half-baked researcher, a study that had been proven to be bunk, about how that same fruit caused cancerous growths. Yeah, pure Danny.

And that contrariness extended beyond purely personal preferences and scientific niceties. Listen to this. Danny, despite his obtuseness showing that he had the minimal social skills to survive in this wicked old world when he would let them shine, had this very pretty, smart, sympathetic and convivial girlfriend, Dora Denny whom he had met in Washington Square Park on one afternoon while listening to folk music of which he, she, they were very interested in at the time when it was beginning to blossom out of some Greenwich Village exotica in the early 1960s. Dora had just picked up the interest through listening to WMNC, a station which was beginning to mix up some folk programs along with its basic rock and roll formal but Danny as was his wont when he got enthusiastic about anything had become something of an aficionado. Aficionado meaning for Danny that if you say you liked the Weavers version of Goodnight, Irene as Dora did then Danny would almost compulsively tell you that Leadbelly’s version was infinitely better, cleaner, more nuanced, more mournful or whatever he was feeling at that time to oppose your proposition. But you can never tell about the influences of romance because Dora, remember she is the sympathetic, convivial type, thought Danny was being cute when he said that to her that first afternoon.

Dora at the time of this story had graduated a couple of years before from high school in New York City, the esteemed Hunter College School in Manhattan where she had gone to school along with her friend Josie Davis who would then go as an undergraduate to Wisconsin while Dora stayed in the city to attend NYU. Dora couldn’t remember whether Josie was a sophomore or a junior at Wisconsin since she had taken some time off to “find herself” read; get over an affair with a budding folk singer, Todd Whiting, whom she had met when she had gone to Washington Square one summer vacation Saturday afternoon. You might you might have heard of Todd Whiting, you can still get his records on Amazon or at places like Sandy’s in Cambridge, since he was something of a hot coffeehouse act out in the Frisco scene before the acid-etched rock of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors took the town over by a storm in the summer of love, 1967. Josie had met Todd, had met and fallen for hard for him while she was still in high school, hell, he was only nineteen but things moved fast in the 1960s, after he had dedicated a song, Angel In The Mercy Night, to her after another friend, Frida Hoffman had introduced her to him one Saturday afternoon. Todd eventually left Manhattan for the West Coast after the on and off long distance affair with Josie had run its course to in turn “find himself” which he had apparently done with that local success he achieved out west. (Josie had selected, if you are interested about the why of that long distance romance that was bound to expire, Wisconsin like a lot of other New York City and Long Island kids just because it was not either of those locales, that it was far from the homes which were driving them, and not just them, crazy.)     

This is where Danny and his odd-ball ways came in. Josie who had been close close friends with Dora, closer than with Frida at one point, since they both were seriously into English Literature, complete  with capitalization of the L to show how serious they were. One day after she had been seeing Todd a few times Josie took Dora over to Todd’s apartment to hear him do his rendition of Angel In The Mercy Night that song which he had dedicated to her that fatal day at Washington Square and which he was to perform that next Saturday night when he was the feature at Murry’s Coffeehouse across for the Gaslight in the Village. (Everybody was almost forced to use that “Murry’s Coffeehouse across from the Gaslight” designation for Murry’s or he got his feelings hurt since his business, his coffeehouse success depended for a long time on grabbing the overflow from sold-out shows at the Gaslight to come in and listen to the new talent that performed three songs and out at the “open mics” he presented at his place).

Dora after hearing the song deemed it very good, very good as an example of what the new folksingers she had been hearing of late should be doing instead of just covering old traditional songs from God knows where about people who seemed to be clueless about doing anything but killing, boozing, and having worthless romantic relationships. Todd’s song she said spoke to the new wave folk listeners like her. And she told Todd so, and he told her to come hear him Saturday at Murry’s with Josie. She said she would try except she had a date with a guy, Danny, who she wasn’t sure had enough money to cover expenses. Jesus, Todd thought then and as he mentioned to Josie later, the guy couldn’t cover a couple of coffees and a shared pastry, and a couple of bucks for the “basket” to keep him and his date in Murry’s seats, the cheapest of cheap dates none cheaper that just hanging around the Hayes-Bickford across from the Square watching the weird mixture of winos, rummies, con men, drifters, low profile poets, mad monk writers and flipped-out singers buzz around.           

As it turned out Danny, a financially struggling student at New York University since his father worked for the railroads dying then and so not many weeks with fulltime work, and hence the reason behind the “no dough” status somehow pulled enough money to take Dora to the show. (He had borrowed the money from his older sister who had forced him to baby-sit her two children while she and hubby went to the movies downtown for a few hours relief in return.)

The way the show, the “open mic” nights worked at Murry’s Coffeehouse (I will dispense with the “across from the Gaslight” since you already know the reason for that designation), the way they still work now if you are near any of the fading remaining folk centers still around and kicking with the greying population who have not heard the news that the folk minute had passed a while ago, was that performers would sign up as they came in to sing one, maybe two depending on the number of performers, for an hour or so and then the featured performer (the person those two coffee and a shared pastry people were really there for) would come out to do two sets and close the joint. Things went well enough for the “open mic” section and then Todd came on to do the first of his two sets. This first set was all the classics, the old time traditional stuff folk audiences expected to hear. Tom Dooley, East Virginia, Cuckoo Bird stuff like that. Pretty well received. The second set Todd came out and sat on the stool placed on the small stage which some performers used and began to fiddle with his guitar. What he was doing was plugging his guitar into an amplifier in order to get more sound out of the instrument although nobody could see the amplifier from the front of the house. Then he started playing Angel In The Mercy Night with the amplifier on. Sounded good from what both Josie and Dora said later, later after the new world was crushed.

See Murry went crazy when he heard what he thought was going to be some rock and roll song when the decibel level went way up as Todd started Angel, was some rock and roll song what with the amplification, and had gone in back of Todd and pulled the plug so he never finished his song in that manner. Murry made it clear that Todd, or any entertainer, had to play acoustic or else forget Murry’s, go to Coney Island and weep sounds on the corners or something. So Todd finished up that night playing his usual acoustic guitar. Weird night. Here is the not so weird part though Danny born like all of them to the sound of the rock and roll night sided with Murry, sided with old time impresario maybe grew up with Duke Ellington or Frank Sinatra bop Murry against Dora, Josie and from the startled applause after Todd finished  Angel most of the rest of the audience. Said folk music was only worthy of that designation when the juice was off. Jesus.      

 

Friday, October 30, 2015

In Maine October 31-Peace Delegation to Attempt to Enter BIW 'Christening' Ceremony to Deliver Letter to Elected Officials

In Maine October 31-Peace Delegation to Attempt to Enter BIW 'Christening' Ceremony to Deliver Letter to Elected Officials

 

October 31 in Bath

 

 

For Immediate Release

 

 

 

Representatives from various peace groups will attempt to enter the scheduled BIW ‘Christening’ ceremony of a new Aegis destroyer on Saturday, October 31 with a letter addressed to Maine’s elected officials who will be present at the event to give their ‘blessings’ to another expensive and destabilizing warship.

 

The groups will hold a legal rally on the corner of Washington and Hinckley Streets in Bath from 9:00 am to noon with speakers and music.  Near the end of the event they will send a delegation from the rally to attempt to enter the shipyard in order to deliver an “Open Letter to Maine Elected Officials” who will be speaking at the event.

 

The letter will include the following:

 

On this day another Navy Aegis destroyer is being ‘christened’ at Bath Iron Works and many of Maine’s elected officials will be present to give their official blessings.  These very expensive warships are outfitted with offensive cruise missiles and so-called ‘missile defense’ interceptors that in fact are key elements in Pentagon first-strike attack planning.  The Aegis warship program is not about defending our nation but in fact these ships are being used to provocatively encircle the coasts of China and Russia.

Under the former Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia these ‘missile defense’ interceptors were outlawed because they were highly destabilizing to world peace – they gave one side a clear advantage and an incentive to attack first.  In 2002 Washington unilaterally pulled out of the ABM Treaty which has only resulted in a new arms race.

Today many of our elected officials will talk about the jobs that come from building warships at BIW.  What they won’t say is that the Navy ship building budget is unsustainable and that very soon the nation will hit the economic wall as aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and destroyers are all over budget.  In fact studies done by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Economics Department have long shown that military spending is the worst way to create jobs – military production is capital intensive.  That means we get fewer jobs building weapons for endless war than any other job creation program.  The studies also reveal that if commuter rail systems were built at BIW we’d nearly double the jobs – something every politicians should be demanding.

We do have a serious problem today and that is to immediately deal with climate change and the growing acidification of the Gulf of Maine.  Increasing, due to warming oceans, the lobsters and other fish are moving further north to colder temperatures.  That means Maine’s fishing industry will be hit hard.  If Maine is to survive economically we need a crash program to reduce our carbon footprint on the planet.  Building rail systems, solar, wind turbines and tidal power systems would create more jobs and help us deal with the coming reality of climate change.

It is morally wrong for the US to think it can control the world.  The idea that the US is an ‘exceptional’ nation, better than the rest of the world, must give way to a humility where we see our place in the world as one nation amongst many.  We don’t have a right to control and dominate the world on behalf of corporate interests.

We call on all of Maine’s elected officials to find the courage to stand up and represent the future generation’s desire for life on our Mother Earth.  Our children and grandchildren cannot survive by us building more destroyers for endless war.  We need a future that is sustainable, practical and peaceful.  We don’t believe that Christ, the Prince of Peace, would come here and give his blessing to more war and violence.

 

This October 31 peace rally at BIW comes just one week after the conclusion of the 16-day Maine Walk for Peace: Pentagon’s Impact on the Oceans that began in Ellsworth, Maine and followed US Hwy 1 South to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  Along the way suppers were held each night in a different community and people were invited to come to BIW to protest the ‘Christening’ of another Navy destroyer on October 31.  Along the journey thousands of people directly witnessed the walking protest that called for an end to the militarization of the oceans.  The public was overwhelmingly supportive of the walk that also demanded the conversion of the weapons industry to sustainable production so that we can deal with our real problem – climate change.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein will be one of the speakers at the BIW protest rally.

The October 31 rally is being sponsored by: Midcoast PeaceWorks; Smilin’ Trees Disarmament Farm; CodePink Maine; and the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

Join Us-Protesters plan to enter Maine at Bath shipyard during christening

Join Us-Protesters plan to enter Maine at Bath  shipyard during christening

Protesters plan to enter Maine shipyard during christening



Posted Oct. 27, 2015, at 10:56 a.m.
Last modified Oct. 27, 2015, at 1:19 p.m.
BATH, Maine — With an estimated 3,000 people expected to gather at Bath Iron Works on Saturday to watch the christening of the 35th Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer built by the shipyard, peace protesters plan to use the event to condemn military spending and send a message to Maine’s political leaders.
Members of Midcoast Peace Works, CodePink Maine and other organizations will hold a rally near the shipyard, then send a “peace delegation” to attempt to enter the yard and deliver a letter to Sen. Susan Collins, Sen. Angus King, Rep. Chellie Pingree and Rep. Bruce Poliquin, who are expected to attend the ceremony, according to BIW spokesman Matt Wickenheiser.
Gen. Robert B. Neller, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Sean Stackley and Vice Adm. Robin Braun, chief of the Navy Reserve and commander of the Navy Reserve Force, are also scheduled to speak Saturday.
The DDG 115 destroyer is named for Sgt. Rafael Peralta, a rifleman in the U.S. Marine Corps who was killed in action on Nov. 15, 2004, in Fallujah, Iraq.
Beginning at 10 a.m., protesters will rally at the corner of Washington and Hinckley streets, according to a release from Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. At the end of the event, they will send “a delegation” to attempt to enter the shipyard to deliver “An Open Letter to Maine Elected Officials.”
In the letter, protesters argue that “very expensive warships are outfitted with offensive cruise missiles and so-called ‘missile defense’ interceptors that in fact are key elements in Pentagon first-strike attack planning. The Aegis warship program is not about defending our nation, but in fact these ships are being used to provocatively encircle the coasts of China and Russia.”
The letter states that while elected officials will likely speak Saturday about the jobs created by building “warships” at BIW, “what they won’t say is that the Navy shipbuilding budget is unsustainable and that very soon the nation will hit the economic wall as aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and destroyers are all over budget.”
Peace vigils and anti-war demonstrators outside the shipyard during christenings are the norm, but it’s rare for protests to occur inside the yard. In February 1997, excommunicated Catholic priest Philip Berrigan and five other protesters were arrested after they entered the yard and poured blood on the USS Sullivans.
The christening is open to the public, but in order to attend the event, civilians must pass through a security check at a shipyard gate. Bath Police Lt. Robert Savary said Tuesday that protesters wouldn’t be allowed through if they are noticed. If they do get into the yard, police will issue a lawful order to leave, and if they don’t, the protesters could be charged with trespassing.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had any major issues,” he said.

The Day They Pulled The Plug-With Pete Seeger In Mind


The Day They Pulled The Plug-With Pete Seeger In Mind 
 
Danny Ross was a born contrarian, or what would pass for such a person until a more contentious one came along. You don’t believe me then listen to this. Danny had this very pretty, smart, sympathetic and convivial girlfriend, Dora Denny. Dora at the time of this story had gone to school in New York City, the esteemed Hunter College School in Manhattan and had graduated the same year, 1966, as her friend Josie Davis who was then an undergraduate at Wisconsin. Danny couldn’t remember whether Josie was a sophomore or a junior at Wisconsin since she had taken some time off to “find herself” read; get over an affair with a buffing folk singer, Todd Whiting, you might have heard of him since he was something of a hot coffeehouse act out in the Frisco scene before the acid-etched rock took the town over by a storm in the summer of love, 1967. Josie had met Todd during one summer break at Washington Square Park near New York University. Had met and fallen for hard while she was still in high school, hell he was only nineteen but things moved fast in the 1960s, after he dedicated a song, Angel In The Mercy Night, to her after another friend, Frida Hoffman had introduced her to him one Saturday afternoon. Todd left Manhattan for the West Coast to in turn “find himself” which he had apparently done with that local success he achieved out west.   
This is where Danny and his odd-ball ways comes in. Josie who had been close close friends with Dora, closer than with Frida at one point, since they both were seriously into English Literature, complete  with capitalization of the L to show how serious they were. One day after she had been seeing Todd a few times Josie took Dora over to Todd’s apartment to hear him do his rendition of Angel In The Mercy Night that song which he had dedicated to her that fatal day at Washington Square and which he was to perform that night at Murry’s Coffeehouse across for the Gaslight in the Village. (Everybody was almost forced to use that “Murry’s Coffeehouse across from the Gaslight” designation for Murry’s or he got his feeling hurt since his business, his coffeehouse success depended for a long time on grabbing the overflow from sold-out shows at the Gaslight to come in and listen to the new talent that performed three songs and out at the “open mics” he presented at his place).
Dora after hearing the song deemed it very good, very good as an example of what the new folksingers should be doing instead of just covering old traditional songs from God knows where about people who seemed to be clueless about doing anything but killing, boozing, and having worthless romantic relationships. Todd’s song spoke to the new wave folk listeners. And she told Todd so, and he told her to come hear him Saturday at Murry’s with Josie. She said she would try except she had a date with a guy, Danny, who she wasn’t sure had enough money to cover expenses. Jesus, Todd thought then and as he mentioned to Josie later, the guy couldn’t cover a couple of coffees and a shared pastry, and a couple of bucks for the “basket” to keep he and his date in the seats, the cheapest of cheap dates none cheaper that just hanging around the Hayes-Bickford watching the weird mixture of winos, rummies, con men, drifters, low profile poets, mad monk writers and flipped-out singers.          
As it turned out Danny, who was a struggling New York University student and hence the reason behind the “no dough” status somehow pulled enough money to take Dora to the show. Things went well enough for the “open mic” section and then Todd came on to do the first of his two sets. This first set was all the classics, the old time traditional stuff folk audiences expected to hear. Tom Dooley, East Virginia, Cuckoo Bird stuff like that. Pretty well received. The second set Todd came out and sat on the stool placed on the small stage which some performers used and began to fiddle with his guitar. What he was doing was plugging his guitar into an amplifier in order to get more sound out of the instrument although nobody could see the amplifier from the front of the house. Then he started playing Angel In The Mercy Night with the amplifier on. Sounded good from what both Josie and Dora said later, later after the new world was crushed.
See Murry went crazy when he heard what he thought was going to be some rock and roll song, was some rock and roll song what with the amplification, and had gone in back of Todd and pulled the plug so he never finished his song in that style. Murry made it clear that Todd, or any entertainer had to play acoustic or else forget Murry’s, go to Coney Island and weep sounds on the corners or something. So Todd finished up that night playing his usual acoustic guitar. Here is the weird thing Danny born like all of them to the sound of the rock and roll night sided with Murry, sided with Murry against Dora, Josie and from the startled applause most of the rest of the audience. Said folk music was only worthy of that designation when the juice was off. Jesus.      

The Day They Pulled The Plug-With Pete Seeger In Mind


The Day They Pulled The Plug-With Pete Seeger In Mind 

 



Danny Ross was a born contrarian, or what would pass for such a person until a more contentious one came along. You don’t believe me then listen to this. Danny had this very pretty, smart, sympathetic and convivial girlfriend, Dora Denny. Dora at the time of this story had gone to school in New York City, the esteemed Hunter College School in Manhattan and had graduated the same year, 1966, as her friend Josie Davis who was then an undergraduate at Wisconsin. Danny couldn’t remember whether Josie was a sophomore or a junior at Wisconsin since she had taken some time off to “find herself” read; get over an affair with a buffing folk singer, Todd Whiting, you might have heard of him since he was something of a hot coffeehouse act out in the Frisco scene before the acid-etched rock took the town over by a storm in the summer of love, 1967. Josie had met Todd during one summer break at Washington Square Park near New York University. Had met and fallen for hard while she was still in high school, hell he was only nineteen but things moved fast in the 1960s, after he dedicated a song, Angel In The Mercy Night, to her after another friend, Frida Hoffman had introduced her to him one Saturday afternoon. Todd left Manhattan for the West Coast to in turn “find himself” which he had apparently done with that local success he achieved out west.   

This is where Danny and his odd-ball ways comes in. Josie who had been close close friends with Dora, closer than with Frida at one point, since they both were seriously into English Literature, complete  with capitalization of the L to show how serious they were. One day after she had been seeing Todd a few times Josie took Dora over to Todd’s apartment to hear him do his rendition of Angel In The Mercy Night that song which he had dedicated to her that fatal day at Washington Square and which he was to perform that night at Murry’s Coffeehouse across for the Gaslight in the Village. (Everybody was almost forced to use that “Murry’s Coffeehouse across from the Gaslight” designation for Murry’s or he got his feeling hurt since his business, his coffeehouse success depended for a long time on grabbing the overflow from sold-out shows at the Gaslight to come in and listen to the new talent that performed three songs and out at the “open mics” he presented at his place).

Dora after hearing the song deemed it very good, very good as an example of what the new folksingers should be doing instead of just covering old traditional songs from God knows where about people who seemed to be clueless about doing anything but killing, boozing, and having worthless romantic relationships. Todd’s song spoke to the new wave folk listeners. And she told Todd so, and he told her to come hear him Saturday at Murry’s with Josie. She said she would try except she had a date with a guy, Danny, who she wasn’t sure had enough money to cover expenses. Jesus, Todd thought then and as he mentioned to Josie later, the guy couldn’t cover a couple of coffees and a shared pastry, and a couple of bucks for the “basket” to keep he and his date in the seats, the cheapest of cheap dates none cheaper that just hanging around the Hayes-Bickford watching the weird mixture of winos, rummies, con men, drifters, low profile poets, mad monk writers and flipped-out singers.          

As it turned out Danny, who was a struggling New York University student and hence the reason behind the “no dough” status somehow pulled enough money to take Dora to the show. Things went well enough for the “open mic” section and then Todd came on to do the first of his two sets. This first set was all the classics, the old time traditional stuff folk audiences expected to hear. Tom Dooley, East Virginia, Cuckoo Bird stuff like that. Pretty well received. The second set Todd came out and sat on the stool placed on the small stage which some performers used and began to fiddle with his guitar. What he was doing was plugging his guitar into an amplifier in order to get more sound out of the instrument although nobody could see the amplifier from the front of the house. Then he started playing Angel In The Mercy Night with the amplifier on. Sounded good from what both Josie and Dora said later, later after the new world was crushed.

See Murry went crazy when he heard what he thought was going to be some rock and roll song, was some rock and roll song what with the amplification, and had gone in back of Todd and pulled the plug so he never finished his song in that style. Murry made it clear that Todd, or any entertainer had to play acoustic or else forget Murry’s, go to Coney Island and weep sounds on the corners or something. So Todd finished up that night playing his usual acoustic guitar. Here is the weird thing Danny born like all of them to the sound of the rock and roll night sided with Murry, sided with Murry against Dora, Josie and from the startled applause most of the rest of the audience. Said folk music was only worthy of that designation when the juice was off. Jesus.