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Monday, November 30, 2015
For New October Revolutions!-Remember The Russian Revolution Of 1917
A View From The Left -Don't Let Them Use Paris As A Pretext For War! -Hands Off The Paris Protesters
A View From The Left -Don't Let Them Use Paris As A Pretext For War!
To Be Young Was Very Heaven-Bob Dylan’s Don’t Look Back
To Be Young
Was Very Heaven-Bob Dylan’s Don’t Look Back
DVD Review
Don’t Look Back, starring Bob Dylan and others
from the faded 1960s folk minute, directed by D.A. Pennebaker, 1967
Long before
Bob Dylan began his seemingly endless touring and the equally endless
production of bootleg material now numbering twelve units with the recent
latest outpouring he could be seen warts and all on a very good documentary by
D.A. Pennebaker, 1967s Don’t Look Back (that
“don’t look back” good advice for everybody and advice which Dylan has taken
with a vengeance). The specific subject matter here is his famous 1965 tour of
England at just that point where he was attempting to finally break out of the
acoustic folkie guitar syndrome and become what he probably always wanted to be,
a rocker. (And getting booed from at the concert hall by folkie purists who wanted
their version of Bob Dylan, the protest guy, but he unfazed just kept bopping that
electric guitar.)
The thread
that unites old and young Dylan is that brashness and distain for glitter and more
importantly that serious distance that he placed between himself, the press and
other media (there is great footage of him pulling the hammer down on some austere
music critic who wanted to box him in with all kinds of silly questions-to
which he promptly gave very silly answers-touche) and his fans and just go
about the business of being an entertainer. This is a man who has bid the “voice
of his generation” business goodbye by then although not everybody got the message
(maybe because he didn’t post it in Variety
or some such publication) and between his electric guitar, his motorcycle accident
and his seclusion for several years down in Woodstock he went out of the public
limelight except through some of the greatest songs of his prolific career.
So this documentary
is a very welcome backdrop to the iconic career of Mr. Dylan (although I note
that word “iconic” is well-worn out by now by a media blitz usage which has everything
more than three minutes old vying for icon status). A film though that leaves
one still wondering about the enigmatic Mr. Dylan (“enigmatic” my choice to replace
iconic as the flavor of the month), leaves me wondering about where he was heading.
We know now because he has said so if for no other reason but also because he
has those ten million far-flung concerts in venues from converted bowling alleys
to large concert halls that he saw himself as a troubadour, as an entertainer. And
while he now seems moodier and less engaged back then you could practically touch
the charisma coming off the stage when he was on his game.
Of course
the trials and tribulations of Bob Dylan are not the only items on display
here. We get to see the look of a performer when he or she is backstage or back
at the endless hotel rooms. How Dylan practiced and how he wrote lyrics when
they just jumped from the typewriter. Got to see him interact with other performers
like the up and coming Donovan and the already established Joan Baez (whom he was
barely interacting with at that point as they were drifting in different directions,
or rather he was drifting in whatever direction he was drifting in). The most
revealing information though was a scene in which he was singing along with
Baez and Bob Neuwirth some Hank Williams stuff. Amazing. We now know after over
fifty years of songs, original and covers, that Mr. Dylan is deeply immersed in
the American songbook from Woody Guthrie to Frank Sinatra but who knew then how
much he esteemed all those influences. If you are a baby-boomer see this one now
to prove that when we were very young back then we were in very heaven and for
those younger to know what it was like when men and women played folk/folk
rock/rock music for keeps.
The Latest From The “Veterans For Peace” Facebook Page-Gear Up For The Winter 2016 Anti-War Season
The Latest From The “Veterans For Peace” Facebook Page-Gear Up For The Winter 2016 Anti-War Season-All U.S. Troops Out Of Afghanistan Now!-Not Another War In Iraq! Stop The Bombing Raids-Hands Off Ukraine! Hands Off The World!
Click below to link to the Veterans For Peace Facebook page for the latest news on what anti-war front the organization is working on.http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Veterans-For-Peace/49422026153
Late one night in 2014 Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton had been sitting at a bar in Boston, Jack Higgin’s Grille, down a few streets from the financial district toward Quincy Market talking about various experiences, political experiences in their lives as they were wont to do these days since they were both mostly retired. Ralph having turned over the day to day operation of his specialty electronics shop in Troy, New York to his youngest son as he in his turn had taken over from his father Ralph, Sr. when he had retired in 1991 (the eldest son, Ralph III, had opted for a career as a software engineer for General Electric still a force in the local economy although not nearly as powerful as when Ralph was young and it had been the largest private employer in the Tri-City area) and Sam had sold off his small print shop business in Carver down about thirty miles south of Boston to a large copying company when he had finally seen a few years before the writing on the wall that the day of the small specialty print shop specializing in silk-screening and other odd job methods of reproduction was done for in the computerized color world.
So they had time for remembrances back to the days in the early 1970s when they had first met and had caught the tail-end of the big splash 1960s political and social explosion that stirred significant elements of their generation, “the generation of ’68” so-called by Sam’s friend from New York City Fritz Jasper although neither of them had been involved in any of the cataclysmic events that had occurred in America (and the world) that year. Sam had that year fitfully been trying to start his own small printing business after working for a few years for Mr. Snyder the premier printer in town and he was knee-deep in trying to mop up on the silk-screen craze for posters and tee shirts and had even hired his old friend from high school Jack Callahan who had gone to the Massachusetts School of Art as his chief silk-screen designer, and later when he moved off the dime politically his acting manager as well. Ralph’s excuse was simpler, simplicity itself for he was knee-deep in the big muddy in the Central Highlands of Vietnam trying to keep body and soul together against that damn Charlie who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Occasionally over the years Ralph would come to Boston on trips at Sam’s invitation and they almost always would go have a few at Jack Higgin’s during his stay talking mainly family matters before Ralph would head back to Troy and his family but more frequently of late they would go back over the ground of their youth, would go over more that ground more than one time to see if something they could have done, or something they did not do, would have made a difference when the “counter-revolution,” when the conservative push-back reared its head, when the cultural wars began in earnest with the ebbing of that big good night 1960s explosion. Sam would return the favor by going out to Albany, or more frequently to Saratoga Springs where he, they could see who from the old days, Utah Phillips before he passed away, Rosalie Sorrels before she left the road, Ronnie Gilbert and Pete Seeger before they passed but you get the picture, the old folk minute of the early 1960s that Sam had been very interested in when he started to hang around Cambridge later in that decade, were still alive enough to be playing at the famous coffeehouse still going from the 1960s, the Café Lena, although minus founder Lena for quite a while now. Sam had never lost the bug, never lost that longing for the lost folk minute that in his mind connected in with him hanging around the Hayes-Bickford in Harvard Square on lonesome weekends nights seeing what was to be seen. Sam had dragged Ralph, who despite living on about less than an hour away had never heard of the Café Lena since he had been tuned to the AM stations playing the awful stuff that got air time after the classic period of rock went into decline and before rock became acid-tinged, along with him and he had developed a pretty fair appreciation for the music as well.
The conversation that night in 2014 got going after the usual few whiskey and sodas used to fortify them for the night talkfest had begun to take effect had been pushed in the direction of what ever happened to that socialist vision that had driven some of their early radical political work together (in the old days both of them in these midnight gabfest would have fortified themselves with in succession grass, cocaine, speed and watch the sun come up and still be talking. These days about midnight would be the end point, maybe earlier.). The specific reason for that question coming up that night had been that Sam had asked Ralph a few weeks before to write up a little remembrance of when he had first heard the socialist-anarchist-communist-radical labor militant international working class anthem, the Internationale, for Fritz Jasper’s blog, American Protest Music.
Sam had noted that Ralph had with a certain sorrow stated that he no longer had occasion to sing the song. Moreover one of the reasons for that absence was that despite his and Sam’s continued “good old cause” left-wing political activism socialism as a solution to humankind’s impasses was deeply out of favor (that activism as Ralph mentioned to Sam on more than one occasion these days considerably shortened from the old frenzied 24/7 desperate struggles around trying unsuccessfully end the Vietnam War from the American side by getting the government to stop the damn thing although the Vietnamese liberation forces in the end and at great cost had had no trouble doing so).
People, intellectuals and working stiffs alike, no longer for the most part had that socialist vision goal that had driven several generations, or the best parts of those generations, since the mid-19th century to put their efforts into, did not have that goal on their radar, didn’t see a way out of the malaise through that route. Had moreover backed off considerably from that prospective since the demise of the Soviet Union and its satellites in the early 1990s if not before despite the obvious failure of capitalism to any longer put a dent in the vast inequalities and injustices, their suffered inequalities and injustices, in the world. Sam had had to agree to that sad statement, had had to agree that they, in effect, too had abandoned that goal in their own lives for all practical purposes even though they had been driven by that vision for a while once they got “religion” in the old days in the early 1970s, once they saw that the anti-war struggle that animated their first efforts was not going to get the war-makers to stop making war.
Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was growing older and more reflective, maybe it was that Ralph’s comments had stirred up some sense of guilt for losing the hard edge of their youthful dreams but that night Sam wanted to press the issue of what that socialist prospective meant, what they thought it was all about (both agreed in passing, almost as an afterthought that what had happened, what passed for socialism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere was NOT what they were dreaming of although they gave third world liberation struggles against imperialism like in Vietnam dependent on Soviet aid plenty of wiggle room to make mistakes and still retain their support).
Both men during the course of their conversation commented on the fact that no way, no way in hell, if it had not been for the explosive events of the 1960s, of the war and later a bunch of social issue questions, mainly third world liberation struggles internationally and the black liberation question at home they would not even be having the conversation they were having (both also chuckling a little at using the old time terms, especially the use of “struggle” and “question,” for example the black, gay, woman question since lately they had noticed that younger activists no longer spoke in such terms but used more ephemeral “white privilege,” “patriarchy,” “gender” terms reflecting the identity politics that have been in fashion for a long time, since the ebb flow of the 1960s).
No, nothing in the sweet young lives of Samuel Eaton to the Carver cranberry bog capital of world in Carver (then) working-class born (his father a “bogger” himself when they needed extra help) and Ralph Morris, Junior to the Troy General Electric plants-dominated working- class born would have in say 1967, maybe later, projected that almost fifty years later they would be fitfully and regretfully speaking about the their visions of socialism and it demise as a world driving force for social change.
Ralph and Sam had imbibed all the standard identifiable working-class prejudices against reds, some of those prejudices more widespread among the general population of the times, you know, like the big red scare Cold War “your mommy is a commie, turn her in,” “the Russians are coming get under the desk and hold onto your head,” anybody to the left of Grandpa Ike, maybe even him, communist dupes of Joe Stalin and his progeny who pulled the strings from Moscow and made everybody jumpy; against blacks (Ralph had stood there right next to his father, Ralph, Sr., when he led the physical opposition to blacks moving into the Tappan Street section of town and had nothing, along with his corner boys at Van Patten’s Drugstore, but the “n” word to call black people, sometimes to their faces and Sam’s father was not much better, a southerner from hillbilly country down in Appalachia who had been stationed in Hingham at the end of World War II and stayed, who never could until his dying breathe call blacks anything but the “n” word); against gays and lesbians (Ralph and his boys mercilessly fag and dyke baiting them whenever the guys and he went to Saratoga Springs where those creeps spent their summers doing whatever nasty things they did to each other and Sam likewise down in Provincetown with his boys, he helping, beating up some poor guy in a back alley after one of them had made a fake pass at the guy, Jesus; against uppity woman, servile, domestic child-producing women like their good old mothers and sisters and wanna-bes were okay as were “easy” girls ready to toot their whistles, attitudes which they had only gotten beaten out of them when they ran into their respective future wives who had both been influenced by the women’s liberation movement although truth to tell they were not especially political, but rather artistic. Native Americans didn’t even rate a nod since they were not on the radar, were written off in any case as fodder for cowboys and soldiers in blue. But mainly they had been red, white and blue American patriotic guys who really did have ice picks in their eyes for anybody who thought they would like to tread on old Uncle Sam (who had been “invented” around Ralph’s hometown way).
And a lot of that good old cause for Ralph since about 2010 had been through working with a later manifestation of VVAW – Veterans for Peace (VFP) which as Ralph will describe below is what has enhanced his political profile. Sam had also joined the group after Ralph beat him down about it. (VFP has a category of supporters called associates who have all the rights of membership except a decisive vote on the issues before the body when their votes would determine the outcome. Here is how Ralph “connected” with VFP in Boston of all places on one of his trips to see Sam:
Back on Veterans Day 2010 I happened to be at the Boston Common heading toward Jack Higgin’s Grille, the one on Charles Street not the one near Quincy Market, to meet Sam in a location just off the downtown section when I came across some white flags, maybe twenty, waving in the distance over near when Charles Street intersects Beacon Street (the main street of the famous Beacon Hill section of Boston). Since I was heading that way I decided to check out what those flags were all about. Upon investigation I found that the white flags also contained in black outline a peace dove symbol and the words Veterans for Peace. Yah, sign me up, my kind of guys and gals. So, to make a long story short, I marched with the contingent that year in their spot behind, and not part of, the official parade sponsored by the city (the reason for that separation will be described in more detail below) and have marched each year since, including this year. [2014] Previously in promoting and commemorating this peace event I have recycled my sketch from 2010 out of laziness, hubris, or the basic sameness of the yearly event. I have updated that sketch a bit here to reflect on this year’s event.
**********
Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, and socialist causes in my long political life. Some large, many small but both necessary. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have, like I have, “switched” over to the other side, have gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace and what to do about it, have exposed the better angels of their nature after the long hard thrust of war and preparations for war have lost their allure, and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system in America has embarked upon.
From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days (the days when even guys like the present Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry had to march in the streets to allay their angers and hurts) I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them out of the barracks, off the bases, and into the streets as happened a little as the Vietnam War moved relentlessly onward) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, don’t do a bookish analysis, complete with footnotes, of the imperial system and their cog part in it, but they are kindred spirits.
Now normally in Boston, and in most places, a Veterans Day parade means a bunch of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) or American Legion-types taking time off from drinking at their post bars (the infamous “battle of the barstool,” no, battles) and donning the old overstuffed moth-eaten uniform and heading out on to Main Street to be waved at, and cheered on, by like-minded, thankful citizens. And of course that happened in 2010 (and this year) as well. What also happened in Boston this year as in 2010 (and other years but I had not been involved in prior marches) was that the Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace (VFP) organized an anti-war march as part of their Armistice Day (“Veterans Day”) program. Said march to be held at the same place and time as the official one, one o’clock in the afternoon in downtown Boston near the Common.
Prior to 2010 there had been a certain amount of trouble, although I am not sure that it came to blows, between the two groups. (I have only heard third-hand reports on previous events so all I know is that there were some heated disputes) You know the "super-patriots" vs. “commie symps” thing that has been going on as long as there have been ex-soldiers (and others), maybe before, who have differed from the bourgeois parties’ pro-war line. In any case the way this impasse had been resolved previously, and the way the parameters were set in 2010 and this year as well, was that the VFP took up the rear of the official parade, and took up the rear in an obvious way. Separated that year, if you can believe this, from the main body of the official parade by a medical emergency truck. This year by a phalanx of Boston Police motorcycle cops. Nice, right? Something of the old "I’ll take my ball and bat and go home" by the "officials" was in the air on that one on every occasion.
In the event this year’s march went off as usual for both parties, as we waited behind the motorcycle cordon for the “officials” to pass by. While waiting I noticed that while the anti-war contingent was about the same size as it has been for the past few years that I have participated, filled out with other peace activists from Quakers and shakers to ranters and chanters and ant-drone folk (strolling along with a mobile replica of a drone to make their point nicely), all angelic, or at least all also on the right side of the angels, the VFP component looked a little smaller. This reflecting the inevitable aging, can’t make the walk, reality that VFP like myriad peace and social justice-oriented organizations are now peopled, alarmingly so, mainly by older activists who cut their teeth in the struggles of the 1960s (or earlier).
Equally as alarming was the sight of more of my Vietnam era veterans using canes, walkers and other aids to either walk the parade or to get around and listen to the program at the end of the march at the Samuel Adams Park at Fanuiel Hall. The hopeful sign though was an increased number of Iraq (Iraq II, 2003) and Afghanistan veterans who have had enough time to reflect on their war experiences and made a decision to come over to the side of the angels.
One such veteran spoke from platform, as did veterans from World War II, the Korean and Vietnam War eras, as well as a speakers, young speakers and proud from the Iraq and Afghan war zones, who sang, read their poets, or read their prose pieces to flush out the event. And to say that a new generation of anti-war soldiers will take the torch, take it and go forward as the older generations fades away.
But here is where there is a certain amount of rough plebeian justice, a small dose for those on the side of the angels, in this wicked old world. In order to form up, and this was done knowingly by VFP organizers in 2010 and this year well, the official marchers, the bands and battalions that make up such a march, had to “run the gauntlet” of dove emblem-emblazoned VFP banners waving frantically directly in front of their faces as they passed by. Moreover, although we again this year formed the caboose of this thing the crowds along the parade route actually waited for us after the official paraders had marched by and waved, clapped, and flashed the ubiquitous peace sign at our procession from the sidelines. Be still my heart.
That response just provides another example of the "street cred” that ex-soldiers have on the anti-war question. Now, if there is to be any really serious justice in the world, if only these fellow vets would go beyond then “bring the troops home” and pacific vigil tactics and embrace- immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied Troops from everywhere, embrace a more studied response to the nature of war policy “in the belly of the beast” then we could maybe start to get somewhere out on those streets. But today, like at that first white flag sighting in 2010 I was very glad to be fighting for our peaceful more social future among those who know first-hand about the dark side of the American experience. No question.
Click below to link to the Veterans For Peace Facebook page for the latest news on what anti-war front the organization is working on.http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Veterans-For-Peace/49422026153
Late one night in 2014 Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton had been sitting at a bar in Boston, Jack Higgin’s Grille, down a few streets from the financial district toward Quincy Market talking about various experiences, political experiences in their lives as they were wont to do these days since they were both mostly retired. Ralph having turned over the day to day operation of his specialty electronics shop in Troy, New York to his youngest son as he in his turn had taken over from his father Ralph, Sr. when he had retired in 1991 (the eldest son, Ralph III, had opted for a career as a software engineer for General Electric still a force in the local economy although not nearly as powerful as when Ralph was young and it had been the largest private employer in the Tri-City area) and Sam had sold off his small print shop business in Carver down about thirty miles south of Boston to a large copying company when he had finally seen a few years before the writing on the wall that the day of the small specialty print shop specializing in silk-screening and other odd job methods of reproduction was done for in the computerized color world.
So they had time for remembrances back to the days in the early 1970s when they had first met and had caught the tail-end of the big splash 1960s political and social explosion that stirred significant elements of their generation, “the generation of ’68” so-called by Sam’s friend from New York City Fritz Jasper although neither of them had been involved in any of the cataclysmic events that had occurred in America (and the world) that year. Sam had that year fitfully been trying to start his own small printing business after working for a few years for Mr. Snyder the premier printer in town and he was knee-deep in trying to mop up on the silk-screen craze for posters and tee shirts and had even hired his old friend from high school Jack Callahan who had gone to the Massachusetts School of Art as his chief silk-screen designer, and later when he moved off the dime politically his acting manager as well. Ralph’s excuse was simpler, simplicity itself for he was knee-deep in the big muddy in the Central Highlands of Vietnam trying to keep body and soul together against that damn Charlie who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Occasionally over the years Ralph would come to Boston on trips at Sam’s invitation and they almost always would go have a few at Jack Higgin’s during his stay talking mainly family matters before Ralph would head back to Troy and his family but more frequently of late they would go back over the ground of their youth, would go over more that ground more than one time to see if something they could have done, or something they did not do, would have made a difference when the “counter-revolution,” when the conservative push-back reared its head, when the cultural wars began in earnest with the ebbing of that big good night 1960s explosion. Sam would return the favor by going out to Albany, or more frequently to Saratoga Springs where he, they could see who from the old days, Utah Phillips before he passed away, Rosalie Sorrels before she left the road, Ronnie Gilbert and Pete Seeger before they passed but you get the picture, the old folk minute of the early 1960s that Sam had been very interested in when he started to hang around Cambridge later in that decade, were still alive enough to be playing at the famous coffeehouse still going from the 1960s, the Café Lena, although minus founder Lena for quite a while now. Sam had never lost the bug, never lost that longing for the lost folk minute that in his mind connected in with him hanging around the Hayes-Bickford in Harvard Square on lonesome weekends nights seeing what was to be seen. Sam had dragged Ralph, who despite living on about less than an hour away had never heard of the Café Lena since he had been tuned to the AM stations playing the awful stuff that got air time after the classic period of rock went into decline and before rock became acid-tinged, along with him and he had developed a pretty fair appreciation for the music as well.
The conversation that night in 2014 got going after the usual few whiskey and sodas used to fortify them for the night talkfest had begun to take effect had been pushed in the direction of what ever happened to that socialist vision that had driven some of their early radical political work together (in the old days both of them in these midnight gabfest would have fortified themselves with in succession grass, cocaine, speed and watch the sun come up and still be talking. These days about midnight would be the end point, maybe earlier.). The specific reason for that question coming up that night had been that Sam had asked Ralph a few weeks before to write up a little remembrance of when he had first heard the socialist-anarchist-communist-radical labor militant international working class anthem, the Internationale, for Fritz Jasper’s blog, American Protest Music.
Sam had noted that Ralph had with a certain sorrow stated that he no longer had occasion to sing the song. Moreover one of the reasons for that absence was that despite his and Sam’s continued “good old cause” left-wing political activism socialism as a solution to humankind’s impasses was deeply out of favor (that activism as Ralph mentioned to Sam on more than one occasion these days considerably shortened from the old frenzied 24/7 desperate struggles around trying unsuccessfully end the Vietnam War from the American side by getting the government to stop the damn thing although the Vietnamese liberation forces in the end and at great cost had had no trouble doing so).
People, intellectuals and working stiffs alike, no longer for the most part had that socialist vision goal that had driven several generations, or the best parts of those generations, since the mid-19th century to put their efforts into, did not have that goal on their radar, didn’t see a way out of the malaise through that route. Had moreover backed off considerably from that prospective since the demise of the Soviet Union and its satellites in the early 1990s if not before despite the obvious failure of capitalism to any longer put a dent in the vast inequalities and injustices, their suffered inequalities and injustices, in the world. Sam had had to agree to that sad statement, had had to agree that they, in effect, too had abandoned that goal in their own lives for all practical purposes even though they had been driven by that vision for a while once they got “religion” in the old days in the early 1970s, once they saw that the anti-war struggle that animated their first efforts was not going to get the war-makers to stop making war.
Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was growing older and more reflective, maybe it was that Ralph’s comments had stirred up some sense of guilt for losing the hard edge of their youthful dreams but that night Sam wanted to press the issue of what that socialist prospective meant, what they thought it was all about (both agreed in passing, almost as an afterthought that what had happened, what passed for socialism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere was NOT what they were dreaming of although they gave third world liberation struggles against imperialism like in Vietnam dependent on Soviet aid plenty of wiggle room to make mistakes and still retain their support).
Both men during the course of their conversation commented on the fact that no way, no way in hell, if it had not been for the explosive events of the 1960s, of the war and later a bunch of social issue questions, mainly third world liberation struggles internationally and the black liberation question at home they would not even be having the conversation they were having (both also chuckling a little at using the old time terms, especially the use of “struggle” and “question,” for example the black, gay, woman question since lately they had noticed that younger activists no longer spoke in such terms but used more ephemeral “white privilege,” “patriarchy,” “gender” terms reflecting the identity politics that have been in fashion for a long time, since the ebb flow of the 1960s).
No, nothing in the sweet young lives of Samuel Eaton to the Carver cranberry bog capital of world in Carver (then) working-class born (his father a “bogger” himself when they needed extra help) and Ralph Morris, Junior to the Troy General Electric plants-dominated working- class born would have in say 1967, maybe later, projected that almost fifty years later they would be fitfully and regretfully speaking about the their visions of socialism and it demise as a world driving force for social change.
Ralph and Sam had imbibed all the standard identifiable working-class prejudices against reds, some of those prejudices more widespread among the general population of the times, you know, like the big red scare Cold War “your mommy is a commie, turn her in,” “the Russians are coming get under the desk and hold onto your head,” anybody to the left of Grandpa Ike, maybe even him, communist dupes of Joe Stalin and his progeny who pulled the strings from Moscow and made everybody jumpy; against blacks (Ralph had stood there right next to his father, Ralph, Sr., when he led the physical opposition to blacks moving into the Tappan Street section of town and had nothing, along with his corner boys at Van Patten’s Drugstore, but the “n” word to call black people, sometimes to their faces and Sam’s father was not much better, a southerner from hillbilly country down in Appalachia who had been stationed in Hingham at the end of World War II and stayed, who never could until his dying breathe call blacks anything but the “n” word); against gays and lesbians (Ralph and his boys mercilessly fag and dyke baiting them whenever the guys and he went to Saratoga Springs where those creeps spent their summers doing whatever nasty things they did to each other and Sam likewise down in Provincetown with his boys, he helping, beating up some poor guy in a back alley after one of them had made a fake pass at the guy, Jesus; against uppity woman, servile, domestic child-producing women like their good old mothers and sisters and wanna-bes were okay as were “easy” girls ready to toot their whistles, attitudes which they had only gotten beaten out of them when they ran into their respective future wives who had both been influenced by the women’s liberation movement although truth to tell they were not especially political, but rather artistic. Native Americans didn’t even rate a nod since they were not on the radar, were written off in any case as fodder for cowboys and soldiers in blue. But mainly they had been red, white and blue American patriotic guys who really did have ice picks in their eyes for anybody who thought they would like to tread on old Uncle Sam (who had been “invented” around Ralph’s hometown way).
See Ralph, Sam too for that matter, had joined the anti-war movement for personal reasons at first which had to do a lot with ending the war in Vietnam and not a lot about “changing the whole freaking world” (Ralph’s term). Certainly not creeping around the fringes of socialism before the 1960s ebbed and they had to look to the long haul to pursue their political dreams. Ralph’s story was a little bit amazing that way, see, he had served in the military, served in the Army, in Vietnam, had been drafted in early 1967 while he was working in his father’s electrical shop and to avoid being “cannon fodder” as anybody could see what was happening to every “drafted as infantry guy” he had enlisted (three years against the draft’s two) with the expectation of getting something in the electrical field as a job, something useful. But in 1967, 1968 what Uncle needed, desperately needed as General Westmoreland called for more troops, was more “grunts” to flush out Charlie and so Ralph wound up with a unit in the Central Highlands, up in the bush trying to kill every commie he could get his hands on just like the General wanted. He had extended his tour to eighteen months to get out a little early from his enlistment not so much that he was gung-ho but because he had become fed up with what the war had done to him, what he had had to do to survive, what his buddies had had to do to survive and what the American government had turned them all into, nothing but animals, nothing more, as he told everybody who would listen. When he was discharged in late 1969 he wound up joining the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), the main anti-war veterans group at the time. Such a move by Ralph and thousands of other soldiers who had served in ‘Nam a real indication even today of how unpopular that war was when the guys who had fought the damn thing arms in hand, mostly guys then, rose up against the slaughter, taking part in a lot of their actions around Albany and New York City mainly.
Here is the way Ralph told Sam in 1971 about how he came in contact with VVAW while they had plenty of time to talk when they were being detained in RFK Stadium after being arrested in a May Day demonstration. One day in 1970 Ralph was taking a high compression motor to Albany to a customer and had parked the shop truck on Van Dyke Street near Russell Sage College. Coming down the line, silent, silent as the grave he thought later, were a ragtag bunch of guys in mismatched (on purpose he found out later) military uniforms carrying individual signs but with a big banner in front calling for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam and signing the banner with the name of the organization-Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). That was all, and all that was needed. Nobody on those still patriotic, mostly government worker, streets called them commies or anything like that but you could tell some guys in white collars who never came close to a gun, except maybe to kill animals or something defenseless really wanted to. One veteran as they came nearer to Ralph shouted out for any veterans to join them, to tell the world what they knew first-hand about what was going on in Vietnam. Yeah, that shout-out was all Ralph needed he said, all he needed to join his “band of brothers.”
Sam as he recalled how he and Ralph had met in Washington had remembered that Ralph had first noticed that he was wearing a VVAW supporter button and Ralph had asked if he had been in ‘Nam. Sam, a little sheepishly, explained that he had been exempted from military duty since he was the sole support for his mother and four younger sisters after his father had passed away of a massive heart attack in 1965. (He had gone to work in Mister Snyder’s print shop where he had learned enough about the printing business to later open his own shop which he kept afloat somehow during the late 1960s with Jack Callahan’s help and which became his career after he settled down when the 1960s ebbed and people started heading back to “normal.”) He then told Ralph the reason that he had joined the anti-war movement after years of relative indifference since he was not involved in the war effort had been that his closest high school friend, Jeff Mullins, had been blown away in the Central Highlands and that had made him question what was going on. Jeff, like them had been as red, white and blue as any guy, had written him when he was in Vietnam that he thought that the place, the situation that he found himself in was more than he bargained for, and that if he didn’t make it back for Sam to tell people, everybody he could what was really going on. Then with just a few months to go Jeff was blown away near some village that Sam could not spell or pronounce correctly even all these many years later. Jeff had not only been Sam’s best friend but was as straight a guy as you could meet, and had gotten Sam out of more than a few scrapes, a few illegal scrapes that could have got him before some judge. So that was how Sam got “religion,” not through some intellectual or rational argument about the theories of war, just wars or “your country right or wrong wars,” but because his friend had been blown away, blown away for no good reason as far as that went.
At first Sam had worked with Quakers and other pacifist types because he knew they were in Cambridge where he found himself hanging out more and more trying to connect with the happenings that were splitting his generation to hell and back. They got him doing acts of civil disobedience at draft boards, including the Carver Draft Board on Allan Road the place where Jeff had been drafted from (and which created no little turmoil and threats among the Eaton’s neighbors who were still plenty patriotic at that point, his mother and sisters took some of the fire as well), military bases and recruiting stations to try to get the word out to kids who might get hoodwinked in joining up in the slaughter. As the war dragged on though he started going to Cambridge meetings where more radical elements were trying to figure out actions that might stop the damn war cold and that appealed to him more than the “assuming the government was rational and would listen to reason” protest actions of those “gentile little old ladies in tennis sneakers.”
1971 though, May Day 1971 to be exact is, where these two stories, two very different stories with the same theme joined together. Sam at that point in 1971 was like Ralph just trying to get the war ended, maybe help out the Panthers a little but before May Day had no grandiose ideas about changing the “whole freaking world.” Sam had gone down to Washington with a group of Cambridge radicals and “reds” to do what he could to shut down the war under the slogan-“if the government does not shut down the war, we will shut down the government.” Ralph had come down with a contingent of ex-veterans and supporters from Albany for that same purpose. Sam and Ralph had as a result met on the bizarre football field at RFK Stadium which was the main holding area for the thousands of people arrested that day (and throughout the week)
So May Day was a watershed for both men, both men having before May Day sensed that more drastic action was necessary to “tame the American imperial monster” (Sam’s term picked up from The Real Paper, an alternative newspaper he had picked up at a street newsstand in Cambridge) and had come away from that experience, that disaster, with the understanding that even to end the war would take much more, and many more people, than they had previously expected. Ralph, in particular, had been carried away with the notion that what he and his fellow veterans who were going to try to symbolically close down the Pentagon were doing as veterans would cause the government pause, would make them think twice about any retaliation to guys who had served and seen it all. Ralph got “smart” on that one fast when the National Guard which was defending the Pentagon, or part of it that day, treated them like any Chicago cops at the Democratic Party Convention in 1968, treated them like cops did to any SDS-ers anywhere, and like anybody else who raised their voices against governmental policy in the streets.
Ralph told Sam while in captivity that he still worked in his father’s shop for a while but their relationship was icy (and would be for a long time after that although in 1991 when Ralph, Senior retired Ralph took over the business). He would take part in whatever actions he could around the area (and down in New York City a couple of times when they called for re-enforcements to make a big splash).
Ralph has like he said joined with a group of VVAW-ers and supporters for an action down in Washington, D.C. The idea, which would sound kind of strange today in a different time when there is very little overt anti-war activity against the current crop of endless wars but also shows how desperate they were to end that damn war, was to on May Day shut down the government if it did not shut down the war. Their task, as part of the bigger scheme, since they were to form up as a total veterans and supporters contingent was to symbolically shut down the Pentagon. Wild right, but see the figuring was that they, the government, would not dare to arrest vets and they figured (“they” meaning all those who planned the events and went along with the plan) the government would treat it somewhat like the big civilian action at the Pentagon in 1967 which Norman Mailer won a literary prize writing a book about, Armies of the Night. Silly them.
They after the fall-out from that event were thus searching for a better way to handle things, a better way to make an impact because those few days of detention in D.C. that they had jointly suffered not only started what would be a lifelong personal friendship but an on-going conversation between them over the next several years about how to bring about the greater social change they sensed was needed before one could even think about stopping wars and stuff like that. (The story in short of how they got out of RFK after a few days was pretty straight forward. Since law enforcement was so strapped that week somebody had noticed and passed the word along that some of the side exits in the stadium were not guarded and so they had just walked out and got out of town fast, very fast, hitchhiking back north to Carver, and Ralph later to Troy). Hence the push by Sam toward the study groups led by “red collectives” that were sprouting up then peopled by others who had the same kind of questions which they would join, unjoin and work with, or not work with over the next few years before both men sensed the tide of the rolling 1960s had ebbed.
Old time high school thoughts even with the cross-fire hells of burned down Vietnam villages melted into the back of his brain crossed his mind when Ralph thought of Marx, Lenin (he, they, were not familiar with Trotsky except he had “bought it” down in Mexico with an icepick from some assassin), Joe Stalin, Red Square, Moscow and commie dupes. Sam had not been far behind in his own youthful prejudices as he told Ralph one night after a class and they were tossing down a few at Jack’s in Cambridge before heading home to the commune where Sam was staying.
Ralph had gone out of his way to note in that blog entry for Fritz that before he got “religion” on the anti-war and later social justice issues he held as many anti-communist prejudices as anybody else in Troy, New York where he hailed from, not excluding his rabidly right-wing father who never really believed until his dying days in 2005 that the United States had lost the war in Vietnam. Ralph had realized that all the propaganda he had been fed was like the wind and his realization of that had made him a very angry young man when he got out of the Army in late 1969. He tried to talk to his father about it but Ralph, Senior was hung up in a combination “good war, World War II, his war where America saved international civilization from the Nazis and Nips (his father’s term since he fought in the Pacific with the Marines) and “my country, right or wrong.” All Ralph, Senior really wanted Ralph to do was get back to the shop and help him fill those goddam GE defense contract orders. And he did it, for a while.
Ralph had also expressed his feelings of trepidation when after a lot of things went south on the social justice front with damn little to show for all the arrests, deaths, and social cataclysm he and Sam had gotten into a study group in Cambridge run by a “Red October Collective” which focused on studying “Che” Guevara and the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky after an introduction to the Marxist classics. Sam who was living in that commune in Cambridge at the time, the summer of 1972, had invited Ralph to come over from Troy to spent the summer in the study group trying to find out what had gone wrong (and what they had gotten right too, as Sam told him not to forget), why they were spinning their wheels trying to change the world for the better just then and to think about new strategies and tactics for the next big break-out of social activism. At the end of each meeting they would sing the Internationale before the group broke up. At first Ralph had a hard time with the idea of singing a “commie” song (he didn’t put it that way but he might as well have according to Sam) unlike something like John Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance, songs like that. As he, they got immersed in the group Ralph lightened up and would sing along if not with gusto then without a snicker.
That same apprehensive attitude had prevailed when after about three meetings they began to study what the group leader, Jeremy, called classic Marxism, the line from Marx and Engels to Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
At the beginning some of Ralph’s old habits kind of held him back, you know the anti-red stuff, Cold War enemy stuff, just like at first he had had trouble despite all he knew about calling for victory to the Viet Cong (who in-country they called “Charlie” in derision although after Tet 1968 with much more respect when Charlie came at them and kept coming despite high losses). But Ralph got over it, got in the swing.
The Marxism did not come easy, the theory part, maybe for Ralph a little more than Sam who had taken junior college night classes to bolster the small print shop he had built from nothing after Mister Snyder moved his operation to Quincy to be nearer his main client, State Street Bank and Trust (although for long periods his old Carver friend, Jack Callahan, managed the place when Sam was off on his campaigns). They got that the working-class, their class, should rule and be done with inequalities of all kinds but the idea of a revolution, or more importantly, a working class party which was on everybody’s mind in those days to lead that revolution seemed, well, utopian. The economic theory behind Marxism, that impossible to read Das Capital and historical materialism as a philosophy were books sealed with seven seals for them both. Nevertheless for a few years, say until 1975, 1976 when the tide really had ebbed for anybody who wanted to see they hung around with the local “reds,” mostly those interested in third world liberation struggles and political prisoner defense work. Those were really the earnest “socialist years” although if you had asked them for a model of what their socialism looked like they probably would have pointed to Cuba which seemed fresher than the stodgy old Soviet Union with their Brezhnev bureaucrats.
After that time while they would periodically read the left press and participate any time somebody, some group needed bodies for a rally, demonstration, some street action they would be there in their respective hometowns that they both eventually filtered back to. Then 2002 came and the endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and seemingly a million other places drove them to drop their “armed truce” (Sam’s term picked up by Ralph) with society and return to the streets , return with an almost youthful vengeance. They would see young people at the rallies hocking their little Marxist papers, maybe buy one to read a home but that flame that had caused them to join study groups, to work with Marxist-oriented “red collectives,” to read books that were hard to fathom had passed, had passed just as socialism as a way to end humankind’s impasses had fallen out of favor once the Soviet Union and its satellites had gone up in a puff of smoke. Sam thought one time that maybe those earnest kids with their wafer-thin newspapers will study the classics and make more sense out of them than Sam and Ralph could. As for Sam and Ralph they would now just keep showing up to support the “good old cause.”
And a lot of that good old cause for Ralph since about 2010 had been through working with a later manifestation of VVAW – Veterans for Peace (VFP) which as Ralph will describe below is what has enhanced his political profile. Sam had also joined the group after Ralph beat him down about it. (VFP has a category of supporters called associates who have all the rights of membership except a decisive vote on the issues before the body when their votes would determine the outcome. Here is how Ralph “connected” with VFP in Boston of all places on one of his trips to see Sam:
Back on Veterans Day 2010 I happened to be at the Boston Common heading toward Jack Higgin’s Grille, the one on Charles Street not the one near Quincy Market, to meet Sam in a location just off the downtown section when I came across some white flags, maybe twenty, waving in the distance over near when Charles Street intersects Beacon Street (the main street of the famous Beacon Hill section of Boston). Since I was heading that way I decided to check out what those flags were all about. Upon investigation I found that the white flags also contained in black outline a peace dove symbol and the words Veterans for Peace. Yah, sign me up, my kind of guys and gals. So, to make a long story short, I marched with the contingent that year in their spot behind, and not part of, the official parade sponsored by the city (the reason for that separation will be described in more detail below) and have marched each year since, including this year. [2014] Previously in promoting and commemorating this peace event I have recycled my sketch from 2010 out of laziness, hubris, or the basic sameness of the yearly event. I have updated that sketch a bit here to reflect on this year’s event.
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Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, and socialist causes in my long political life. Some large, many small but both necessary. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have, like I have, “switched” over to the other side, have gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace and what to do about it, have exposed the better angels of their nature after the long hard thrust of war and preparations for war have lost their allure, and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system in America has embarked upon.
From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days (the days when even guys like the present Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry had to march in the streets to allay their angers and hurts) I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them out of the barracks, off the bases, and into the streets as happened a little as the Vietnam War moved relentlessly onward) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, don’t do a bookish analysis, complete with footnotes, of the imperial system and their cog part in it, but they are kindred spirits.
Now normally in Boston, and in most places, a Veterans Day parade means a bunch of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) or American Legion-types taking time off from drinking at their post bars (the infamous “battle of the barstool,” no, battles) and donning the old overstuffed moth-eaten uniform and heading out on to Main Street to be waved at, and cheered on, by like-minded, thankful citizens. And of course that happened in 2010 (and this year) as well. What also happened in Boston this year as in 2010 (and other years but I had not been involved in prior marches) was that the Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace (VFP) organized an anti-war march as part of their Armistice Day (“Veterans Day”) program. Said march to be held at the same place and time as the official one, one o’clock in the afternoon in downtown Boston near the Common.
Prior to 2010 there had been a certain amount of trouble, although I am not sure that it came to blows, between the two groups. (I have only heard third-hand reports on previous events so all I know is that there were some heated disputes) You know the "super-patriots" vs. “commie symps” thing that has been going on as long as there have been ex-soldiers (and others), maybe before, who have differed from the bourgeois parties’ pro-war line. In any case the way this impasse had been resolved previously, and the way the parameters were set in 2010 and this year as well, was that the VFP took up the rear of the official parade, and took up the rear in an obvious way. Separated that year, if you can believe this, from the main body of the official parade by a medical emergency truck. This year by a phalanx of Boston Police motorcycle cops. Nice, right? Something of the old "I’ll take my ball and bat and go home" by the "officials" was in the air on that one on every occasion.
In the event this year’s march went off as usual for both parties, as we waited behind the motorcycle cordon for the “officials” to pass by. While waiting I noticed that while the anti-war contingent was about the same size as it has been for the past few years that I have participated, filled out with other peace activists from Quakers and shakers to ranters and chanters and ant-drone folk (strolling along with a mobile replica of a drone to make their point nicely), all angelic, or at least all also on the right side of the angels, the VFP component looked a little smaller. This reflecting the inevitable aging, can’t make the walk, reality that VFP like myriad peace and social justice-oriented organizations are now peopled, alarmingly so, mainly by older activists who cut their teeth in the struggles of the 1960s (or earlier).
Equally as alarming was the sight of more of my Vietnam era veterans using canes, walkers and other aids to either walk the parade or to get around and listen to the program at the end of the march at the Samuel Adams Park at Fanuiel Hall. The hopeful sign though was an increased number of Iraq (Iraq II, 2003) and Afghanistan veterans who have had enough time to reflect on their war experiences and made a decision to come over to the side of the angels.
One such veteran spoke from platform, as did veterans from World War II, the Korean and Vietnam War eras, as well as a speakers, young speakers and proud from the Iraq and Afghan war zones, who sang, read their poets, or read their prose pieces to flush out the event. And to say that a new generation of anti-war soldiers will take the torch, take it and go forward as the older generations fades away.
But here is where there is a certain amount of rough plebeian justice, a small dose for those on the side of the angels, in this wicked old world. In order to form up, and this was done knowingly by VFP organizers in 2010 and this year well, the official marchers, the bands and battalions that make up such a march, had to “run the gauntlet” of dove emblem-emblazoned VFP banners waving frantically directly in front of their faces as they passed by. Moreover, although we again this year formed the caboose of this thing the crowds along the parade route actually waited for us after the official paraders had marched by and waved, clapped, and flashed the ubiquitous peace sign at our procession from the sidelines. Be still my heart.
That response just provides another example of the "street cred” that ex-soldiers have on the anti-war question. Now, if there is to be any really serious justice in the world, if only these fellow vets would go beyond then “bring the troops home” and pacific vigil tactics and embrace- immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied Troops from everywhere, embrace a more studied response to the nature of war policy “in the belly of the beast” then we could maybe start to get somewhere out on those streets. But today, like at that first white flag sighting in 2010 I was very glad to be fighting for our peaceful more social future among those who know first-hand about the dark side of the American experience. No question.
As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I Enters Its Second Year-The Anti-War Resistance Begins-Liebknecht's May Day, 1916, Speech
As The 100th
Anniversary Of World War I Enters Its Second Year-The Anti-War Resistance
Begins-Liebknecht's May Day, 1916, Speech
-
The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War
before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers
and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense
of “pride” in having participated in such an epic adventure even if it did mow
down the flower of European youth from all classes) from the massive military
armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and
elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the
world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the
industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts (as foretold by the
blood-letting in the American Civil War and the various “small” wars in Asia,
Africa, and, uh, Europe in the mid to late 19th century once war
production on a mass scale followed in the train of other industrial
production). Also trampled underfoot in the opposing trenches, or rather thrown
in the nearest trash bin of the their respective parliamentary buildings were
the supposedly eternal pledges against war in defense of one’s own
capitalist-imperialist nation-state
against the working masses and their allies of other countries by most of the
Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations (Anarchists,
Syndicalists and their various off-shoots)representing the historic interest of
the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and
their hangers-on in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20th
century history. All those beautifully written statements and resolutions that
clogged up the international conferences with feelings of solidarity were some
much ill-fated wind once bullet one came out of gun one.
Other than isolated groups and individuals, mostly like
Lenin and Trotsky in exile or jail, and mostly in the weaker lesser
capitalistically developed countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of
most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting
stations to “do their duty” and prove their manhood. (When the first
international conference of anti-war socialists occurred in Switzerland in 1915
one wag pointed out that they could all fit in one tram [bus].) Almost all
parties assuming that the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everyone
could go back to the eternal expressions of international working-class
solidarity after the smoke had settled (and the simple white-crossed graves
dug). You see, and the logic is beautiful on this one, that big mail-drop of a Socialist
International, was built for peace-time but once the cannon roared then the
“big tent” needed to be folded for the duration. Jesus.
Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the first
months of the second year of the war although shrouded in obscurity early in
the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a
necessary nom de guerre in the hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to
send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s
NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian
Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the
Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not
for long because “Long Live The Communist International,” a new revolutionary international, would
become the order of the day in the not distant future), architect of the theory
of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in
Russia and Europe in the 19th century (including forbears Marx and
Engels), and author of an important, important to the future communist world
perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the
ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term
progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive
against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its
opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a
drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the
establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as
1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death
trap for the flower of the European youth.
Lenin also has a "peace"
plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate
eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done
from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the
beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international
working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first
year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be
good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing
would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those
beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. (That by Christmas peace
“scare” turned out to be a minute “truce” from below by English and German
soldiers hungry for the old certainties banning the barbed wire and stinking
trenches for a short reprieve in the trench fronts in France and played soccer
before returning to drawn guns-a story made into song and which is today used
as an example of what the lower ranks could do-if they would only turn the guns
around. Damn those English and German soldiers never did turn the damn things
around until too late and with not enough resolve and the whole world has
suffered from that lack of resolve ever since.)
Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn
the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the
war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced
thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole
trenches of Europe were already churning away in the first year as a death trap
for the flower of the European youth.
The ability to inflict industrial-sized
slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the
American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their
way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one
nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 20th
century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow
exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war
carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only
the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and
range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by
the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race
to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried
to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain
a big hold in the Asia seas.
The deeply disturbing submarine warfare
wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other
such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred
years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers
and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched
fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or
nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt
before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went
into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do
anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international
conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement
which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.
A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the
party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war
budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the
workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in
the Kaiser’s prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg
( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and
Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being
on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of
left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and
here in America “Big Bill” Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee
to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of
his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V.
Debs (who also went to jail, “Club Fed” for speaking the truth about American
war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920
out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell),
were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of
honor in this space.
Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations
centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist
governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were
committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in
our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and
awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most
governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. Even my old
anti-war amigo from my hometown who after I got out of the American Army during
the Vietnam War marched with me in countless rallies and parades trying to stop
the madness got caught in the bogus information madness and supported Bush’s “paper
war” although not paper for the benighted Iraqi masses ever since (and plenty
of other “wise” heads from our generation of ’68 made that sea-change turn with
him).
At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11
when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to
be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a
little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to
begin the anti-war fight another day. “Be ready to fight” the operative words.
So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality
in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including
the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not
listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not
too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass
mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody
trenches and death.
Over the next period as we continue the
long night of the 100th anniversary of World War I and beyond I will
under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions
from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked
like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were
fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places
like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over
the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the
battlefields.
Liebknecht's May Day, 1916, Speech
Delivered at the Potsdamerplatz, Berlin, May 1, 1916
(Report by one present at the demonstration) BERLIN, May 1. Very early in the morning, with three other comrades, I reached Hortensienstrasse, where Comrade Liebknecht lives. We enter No. 14, climb up the stairs, ring his bell. Comrade Liebknecht opens the door himself. He is thin, his hair looks unusually black and his face is deathly pale. He walks like a dead man, walking with grim steps. He leaves us and soon returns with his wife; she is a Russian. She nods welcome to us all. Suddenly a terrible fear comes to me. No one has spoken a word, yet we all feel that we are in the presence of a supreme moment. From Comrade Liebknecht's grim silence we judge that he is about to hurl prudence to the four winds and defy the Government.
He hands out, one to each of us, a copy of the speech which he will deliver. So far not one word has been spoken. While we are hurriedly reading his speech, which is to be delivered within a few hours, he remarks, "I have several thousand of these printed."
We have finished reading the prospectus which will make history and send him to prison. Then we go into conference. We have been with him just an hour. We leave him.
Shortly after 2 P.M. of the same May day, I have taken a hasty lunch at the Central Hotel. As I near the door I hear the footsteps of the great multitudes. As far as I can see, all the streets and side streets are full of surging, silently moving human beings; all moving in the direction where the May Day demonstration is to take place. These are men and women, mostly women. The men among them are mostly over fifty. Suddenly it becomes apparent to me that there are more children in the crowds than men and women together. As they march I notice that I cannot see one in the crowd who has a smile on her or his face. Along the route no one is cheering them. I had never seen such immense crowds in the streets of Berlin. Not even during the Agadir crisis had the streets of Berlin held such multitudes. The crowds move as though they are part of a funeral procession. They are all sad, very sad. I recognize a group of comrades in the crowd. I rush in and join them. Mund halten (keep your mouth shut) is the unwritten rule, and every one seems to observe it strictly.
Some one has turned the head of the procession into Unter den Linden. We do not know why; very few of us have noticed it, anyhow. We suddenly see a platoon of mounted guards dashing through the crowd, but they are riding on the sidewalk. The part of the procession that had been marching on the sidewalk rushes to the middle of the street in order to escape being trampled upon by the mounted guards. Another group of mounted guards rides past hurriedly, and still another follows. The people in the procession all about me do not seem to notice them. Not even a whisper one hears. On reaching the palace grounds I see in the distance five persons. From their elbows up they tower over the heads of the multitude surrounding them. I leave my friends and elbow my way through the thick crowd. I explain my impolite advance on the ground that I am a reporter on a party (Socialist) paper. I finally reach the spot where Comrade Liebknecht and other comrades are standing. The crowds are close where they are standing, and I cannot make out whether they are standing on a raised platform or in a motor car. I am about twenty or twenty-five feet from the doctor.
Suddenly one of the comrades near Dr. Liebknecht raises his hand and at once proceeds to speak. The multitude is anxious to hear him. Every one is sounding "Hush" in order to obtain silence and thus making more noise. Dr. Liebknecht uncovers his head; some one near by offers to relieve him of his hat. Deathly silence reigns all about the grounds. The interior of a cathedral cannot be more silent. The doctor begins: "Comrades and friends." They start to cheer him. He holds up his hand forbiddingly, then he resumes: "Some years ago a witty Socialist observed that in Prussia we Germans have three cardinal rights, which are: we can be soldiers, we can pay taxes and we can keep our tongues between our teeth. The Socialist who made this observation made it with a grim humor, but to-day the humor of it must be disconnected from it – it is all too grim. Especially in these days this observation is too true. To-day we are sharing these three great Prussian State privileges in full. Every German citizen is given the full privilege to carry a rifle in any manner. Even the Boy Scout has been incited to play the ridiculous role of a soldier. They have thus planted the spirit of hate deep in his youthful soul. Meanwhile the old Landsturmer is forced to perform forced labor in invaded countries, in spite of the fact that under the laws of the Imperial Constitution he cannot be called out for any other purpose than for the defense of the Fatherland.
"As for his second privilege – his right to pay taxes – in this respect the German citizen is, up to the present time, far ahead of his brothers in foreign lands whom he is engaged in exterminating. And yet more privileges of this kind are awaiting him in the days to come – after the end of the war. The high taxes which the German people have so far paid are insignificant compared to the great burdens which they must carry after the war, and for which their masters are daily preparing them with such touching delicacy of patriotic sentiment through the medium of the official press.
"The new Germany has the unquestionable right to hold its tongue between its teeth. Recently our official press has been flooded by authoritative and pharisaic exhortations to soldiers' wives that they must, for God's sake, not complain so much about the scarcity of food. Keep your mouth shut tight when hungry. Keep your mouth shut tight when your children are hungry, keep your mouth shut when your children want milk, keep your mouth shut when your children cry for bread, keep your mouth shut and write no letters to the front."
Outside of Germany these phrases might sound like the stock phrases of a professional agitator, but not so in Germany, at least not in those days. I carefully watched for the effect of these remarks all about me, and I saw no dry eyes.
Amid tense silence the doctor continued: "In a recent issue the mouthpiece of the Pharisees, the "Muenchener Neueste Nachrichten," complains thus (reading from a clipping)
" 'Our soldiers do not always receive from their dear ones at home the best encouragement to hold on. A soldier on furlough who, before obtaining leave, had performed for his Fatherland unflinchingly, went through many hardships with good humor, but after a visit home returned to the front with a sad face, worrying day and night about his dear ones and the pretended scarcity at home.'
" 'Pretended' scarcity certainly is palatable, especially when one is reminded of the fact that our police is weighing the bread, that butter is out of the market, that fat, meat and margarine have reached a price that is beyond the probable reach of the workingman!
"Another well-nourished Pharisee exhorts in the columns of the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung by asking, 'Where is scarcity to be found?' and no doubt after having partaken of a good dinner he preaches with these words: 'We must teach ourselves at home how to manage to get along in our homes with as little as possible. But of course in large families with children the small earnings of the breadwinner being now totally absent, this sum must be replaced by the creation of a relief fund so that there may not be any serious want.' Exactly, but under no circumstances must the people complain of hunger. It annoys the soldier terribly and cripples his fighting power. Therefore do not write complaining letters to the front. In other words, you wives of soldiers, hide the truth from your husbands; in fact, lie to them. "The old proverb says, `The mouth speaketh out of the fullness of the heart,' and if her children's stomach is empty it is hard for the wife not to mention to her far-away soldier husband that it is hard to provide for his children with food while he is offering his life for his country. But if it is not found possible for your masters to prevail upon you to 'keep your tongue between your teeth,' then they resort to a more practical means. They have a very simple means of stopping these annoying complaints. The Prussian censor is now supervising these letters of wives at home to their husbands at the front. They simply do not allow this objectionable correspondence to go through. Poor and unfortunate German soldier! He deserves pity! At the command of the militarist Government he has gone into the enemy country, and at the command of the Government he must steal from other nations. He is required to perform difficult services. The sufferings that he endures are past description. About him everywhere shells and bombs sow death and destruction. His wife and children at home are suffering want and hardship; she looks about her and finds her children crying for bread. She is desperate, but she must not appeal or complain to any one. She must hold her tongue and suffer inwardly. But how can she silence her children? She must not even share the sympathy of her husband at the front, because that cripples her soldier husband's fighting powers. Her soldier husband must `hold on' and 'steal' in the land of her neighbors. He must hold on and 'suffer' because the capitalists, the hurrah patriots and the armor-plate kings have willed it so. Every one must keep his or her tongue between the teeth, for the war profiteers must make money out of the want and misery of the wives and their husband soldiers at the front.
"By a lie the German workingman was forced into the war, and by like lies they expect to induce him to go on with war!" A mighty shout went up from a thousand throats – "Hurrah for Liebknecht." Liebknecht raised his hand for silence. Then steadily, though knowing the cost, he said: "Do not shout for me, shout rather 'We will have no more war. We will have peace – now!' "
Scarcely had he finished speaking when, as if by magic, a tremendous tumult arose. Near the spot where the doctor and his friends had been standing the crowds surged back and forth. The great multitudes in the palace grounds had the appearance of an immense sea whose surface was every inch covered with human heads, those of men and women. The children became terrified. The shouts of the grown-ups and the terrified shrieks of the children added vehemence to the scene. The next moment I see Comrade Liebknecht pulled down from the stand. His friends also follow. Then I see fists raised. I suddenly discover that the jostling of the crowds about me has carried me further away from the spot where a riot is in progress. I again elbow my way toward where the doctor and his companions have been pulled down from the stand. I had made some progress when suddenly I find myself being swept backward by a huge human wave.
In spite of my wish to see what is going on behind me I am being carried away further and further. Several hundred thousand panic-stricken souls are rushing towards the streets and avenues that lead to the grounds. The scene is frightful. Every one is shouting. I steal a glimpse of the spot which is now the center of the sudden panic. I gasp with fright. I see numberless mounted soldiers with large black whips in their hands lashing the crowds. Their mounts are so close to the struggling and frightened men and women, yea, even children, that it is a miracle that thousands are not pinned to the ground. I cannot tell whether they are killed or whether they fainted. But there are many of them. I myself was forced to step over several persons. I tried to lift up a body, but in the next moment I was carried away. . . .
May Day evening. Twenty-five or thirty meet secretly at the home of a comrade in ---------- street. We all know what the report is. Herr Doctor is arrested. We are all sad, very sad. We have met to exchange views as to what step to take next. Every one is laboring with heavy thoughts within himself. The silence is sickening. With the exception of four the men who come together to exchange views are all soldiers in the active army. Not all of them are privates. We have spent the entire night, sometimes in heavy silence and again in deliberation. It is decided that we ---------- ---------- ----------. Are the German workingmen thinking? Their present thoughts are tragic. They hurt.
In Cambridge- An Invitation from United for Justice with Peace- Time to Pull the Peace Movement Together: What can we do?
An Invitation from United for Justice with Peace- Time to Pull the Peace Movement Together: What can we do?
Wednesday, December 2 at the Mass. Peace Action
Office
Basement: First Church Cambridge 11 Garden Street
7:00pm: Join the Campaign to End the U.S.-Saudi alliance
Basement: First Church Cambridge 11 Garden Street
7:00pm: Join the Campaign to End the U.S.-Saudi alliance
7:30pm:
Plan Candlelight vigil at 5:30 on “Human Rights Day” (December 10 on Boston
Common) to oppose war escalation in Syria and to support the settlement of
Syrian refugees in the U.S.
8pm – 9pm:
Re-launch the Peace Action Mideast Working Group
On the very night of the Paris massacres,
Medea Benjamin came to Boston to show us how the U.S. Saudi Alliance is a key
reason for the instability and terror being visited upon the Middle East and
South Asia by western wars and devastating weapons, by murderous sectarian
groups, by repressive governments and by U.S. and Saudi bombing campaigns. She
urged us to participate in the new national campaign (started by Code Pink,
Peace Action, and other groups) to break up this destructive alliance as a step
toward Peace in the Area. (http://www.saudius.org)
U.S.
and other foreign military interventions and massive military assistance and
arms sales turned the area into a tinder box. And Saudi creation of an extensive
infrastructure breeding violent sectarian movements everywhere has lit the fuse.
In addition Human Rights Day offers us the opportunity to
raise our voices in support of the human rights of Syrian refugees and against
war escalation in response to the Paris bombings. Mass. Peace Action and UJP are
jointly sponsoring this action.
Finally,
Mass. Peace Action sees the need for a working group to address these
multi-pronged wars and human tragedies in a more coherent manner through the
creation of a Mideast working group.
Please join us Wednesday night at the Mass. Peace Action
Office, starting at 7pm
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