Break With The Two Parties Of Wall Street- A Cautionary Tale In The Age Of Bernie Sanders -Nevada Postscript

Break With The Two Parties Of Wall Street- A Cautionary Tale In The Age Of Bernie Sanders -Nevada Postscript 

Nevada Postscript-Frank Jackman

You already know, or you will know from the story below or from  those previous postscripts from Iowa and New Hampshire here that Sam Lowell has gone overboard about the supporting the Bernie Sanders Democratic Party Presidential nomination after years, many years, of calling for a break with that party (the Republicans don’t count in this universe, no reason since about 1864 to support them so no reason to call for a break with that organization except for symmetry) and the creation of a labor party to address the pressing issues of the working-class and other oppressed peoples.

You would also know from the above that immediately after the Iowa caucuses on February 1^st Sam had called up his old high school friend Bart Webber whom he is still in contact with and tried to talk him into going up to Manchester, New Hampshire the next day in order to go all out for Bernie (and to beat Hillary since an increasing part of his agitation was pure Clinton fatigue after over a quarter of a century of hearing that name and ten million lame excuses for whatever evil things they did personally, but more importantly, politically, especially that Hillary 2002 Senate vote for war in Iraq).

In the case he, they did so canvassing the Manchester neighborhoods that he had not been too since his days with the Eugene McCarthy campaign in blessed 1968 seeing these days the dwindling   Irish remnant which had because of their poor circumstances unable to leave the city as the new waves of immigrants came pouring in. Seeing too the dwindling French-Canadians who had come down generations ago from benighted Quebec to work in the now long gone mills along the Merrimack River. And added to the mix the Africans from all over that continent and the Caribs from all over that sea (all except the Syrians who desperately need to get out and would be a welcome addition to the town Sam thought). He, they had worked the telephones calling until late in the night those who might head Bernie’s way. They had been surprised how many numbers were cellphone numbers after the callees asked how they had gotten their numbers since there is no cellphone directory. Somebody in the campaign had the thing “wired” alright. They also on primary night were in the ballroom as they returns came in and Bernie had “kicked ass.” A good night although after a week in a Best Western motel both agreed that heading home that night was better than staying another day.       

Bart after Iowa had told Sam he was starting to think about Bernie a bit with all the hubbub but that he couldn’t take the time off to go when he was not sure that he still didn’t prefer the slogan-break from the Democrats this presidential season when it might do some good. The pressure from Sam and others, almost everybody he knew from peacenik veterans to left-liberals to hard-core socialists well to the left of anything Bernie was saying had been contacting him to finally get on board before “the train left the station.” He was wavering by the day and would have to make a decision soon in light of the upcoming Massachusetts primary on Super-Tuesday March 1^st since if he was going in he was not going to just vote but volunteer as Sam and Laura had done.  

In a minute I will get to the big news on Bart in light of the last minute Bernie surge in the Nevada caucus voting although he lost to Hillary and her labor union/Democratic party organization/Afro-American community coalition. The first group’s support is inexplicable since nobody I know knows of any reason for labor unions to support Hillary other than she was the presumed shoo-in candidate and they were desperate to keep a Democrat in the White House to at least insure vetoes when horrid anti-labor legislation gets to the Oval Office. Nobody otherwise had seen her at any pro-labor gatherings and certainly not supporting what few strike actions have occurred over the past several years. The second part was expected since after all Bernie has been an independent, an independent socialist no less to hear him and a lot of people who know better tell the woe-some tale and only grabbed the Democratic label to run for President in a more upscale milieu so party stalwarts depending on Clinton largesse fell in line. The third is troubling as we approach the South Carolina vote where Hillary should swamp Bernie since he has had no real rapport with the black community and Hillary through Bill mostly who was the first, and some say only black President, has that group sewed up.

The big news is that Bart Webber as we approach the Massachusetts primary on Super-Tuesday March 1^st has decided to join Sam and Laura in supporting Bernie. He is, as we speak, working the phone banks over in Charlestown cajoling people to get out and vote for Bernie to stop the expected Hillary barrage in many states that day (and the results from South Carolina). Here is Bart’s reasoning though. It is not like he all of a sudden saw Bernie as the “second coming” or anything like that but he sensed after Bernie NOT winning in Nevada to upset things that this Democratic Party nomination is now pretty much in the bag for Hillary. So like a lot of causes in Bart’s life (Sam’s too, Laura less so) he is again tilting after windmills. Nothing new there.          

As for Bradley Fox, who has come to this Bernie thing as a flash in the pan when the real deal goes down, he has not wavered from the “break from the Democrats” slogan that he had learned at the feet of that same Sam Lowell in sunnier days. How the mighty have fallen.         

New Hampshire Postscript-Frank Jackman

You already know from the story above the Post-Iowa Postscript that Sam Lowell had gone overboard about the supporting the Bernie Sanders Democratic Party Presidential nomination after years, many years, of calling for a break with that party (the Republicans don’t count in this universe, no reason since about 1864 to support them so no reason to call for a break with that organization except for symmetry) and the creation of a labor party to address the pressing issues of the working-class and other oppressed.

You also know that immediately after the Iowa caucuses on February 1^st he had called up his old high school friend Bart Webber whom he is still in contact with and tried to talk him into going up to Manchester, New Hampshire the next day in order to go all out for Bernie (and to beat Hillary since a n increasing part of his agitation was pure Clinton fatigue after over a quarter of a century of hearing that name and ten million lame excuses for whatever evil things they did personally, but more importantly, politically, especially that Hillary 2002 Senate vote for war in Iraq).

In the case he, they did so canvassing the Manchester neighborhoods that he had not been too since his days with the Eugene McCarthy campaign in blessed 1968 seeing these days the dwindling   Irish remnant which had because of their poor circumstances unable to leave the city as the new waves of immigrants came pouring in. Seeing too the dwindling French-Canadians who had come down generations ago from benighted Quebec to work in the now long gone mills along the Merrimack River. And added to the mix the Africans from all over that continent and the Caribs from all over that sea (all except the Syrians who desperately need to get out and would be a welcome addition to the town Sam thought). He, they had worked the telephones calling until late in the night those who might head Bernie’s way. They had been surprised how many numbers were cellphone numbers after the callees asked how they had gotten their numbers since there is no cellphone directory. Somebody in the campaign had the thing “wired” alright. They also on primary night were in the ballroom as they returns came in and Bernie had “kicked ass.” A good night although after a week in a Best Western motel both agreed that heading home that night was better than staying another day.       

Bart after Iowa had told Sam he was starting to think about Bernie a bit with all the hubbub but that he couldn’t take the time off to go when he was not sure that he still didn’t prefer the slogan-break from the Democrats this presidential season when it might do some good. The pressure from Sam and others, almost everybody he knew from peacenik veterans to left-liberals to hard-core socialists well to the left of anything Bernie was saying had been contacting him to finally get on board before “the train left the station.” He was wavering by the day and would have to make a decision soon in light of the upcoming Massachusetts primary on Super-Tuesday March 1^st  since if he was going in he was not going to just vote but volunteer as Sam and Laura ha done.  As for Bradley Fox, who has come to this Bernie thing as a flash in the pan when the real deal goes down, he has not wavered from the “break from the Democrats” slogan that he had learned at the feet of that same Sam Lowell in sunnier days. How the mighty have fallen.         
 

Iowa Postscript-Frank Jackman

You already know from the above that Sam Lowell had gone overboard about the supporting the Bernie Sanders Democratic Party Presidential nomination after years, many years, of calling for a break with that party (the Republicans don’t count in this universe, no reason since about 1864 to support them so no reason to call for a break with that organization except for symmetry) and the creation of a labor party to address the pressing issues of the working-class and other oppressed. Immediately after the Iowa caucuses on February 1^st he called up his old high school friend Bart Webber whom he is still in contact with and tried to talk him into going up to Manchester, New Hampshire the next day with him and his longtime companion Laura Perkins to canvass for Bernie in that city in front of the upcoming February 9^th presidential primary. He told Bart that with the groundswell for Bernie in Iowa that he planned to go all out and stay in Manchester until the primary was over. Bart told him he was starting to think about Bernie a bit with all the hubbub but that he couldn’t take the time off to go when he was not sure that he still didn’t prefer the slogan-break from the Democrats this presidential season when it might do some good. As for Bradley Fox he had not wavered from the “break from the Democrats” slogan that he had learned at the feet of that same Sam Lowell in sunnier days. How the mighty have fallen.         

 
Break With The Two Parties Of Wall Street- A Cautionary Tale In The Age Of Bernie Sanders
By Frank Jackman

 Socialist Alternative Fall 2012

Bradley Fox had to laugh when he heard the news about Sam Lowell. Sam had told Bradley a few years ago, sometime in the early fall of 2012 amid the hurly-burly of that presidential election year, when they had first met at an anti-war rally on Boston Common after the very first rumblings of going to yet another war, this time in Syria, was uppermost on the Democrat Obama Administration’s mind that he continued to hold the Democratic Party responsible along with the Republicans for their continuing bi-partisan support for every war that comes along, every war opportunity as well it had seemed of late. Sam had said that while the Democrats “talk the talk” about avoiding war, or stopping the onslaught of the military budget as a drag on the possibilities of taking care of some serious domestic social questions when the deal goes down they en masse vote for the war budgets. The big general one, you know the six or seven hundred billion dollar one, AND the supplemental ones for operations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or wherever else they want to throw some mud. In short, they don’t as a party, as a capitalist party the way Sam had put it to Bradley that day “walk the walk.”

That pro-imperial policy by the Democrats meant that under no conditions could Sam support any Democratic Party candidate- at the federal level anyway. Had said to Bradley during the course of their conversation that had been his position at least since the early 1970s when he had gone through hell in the Army in his opposition to the Vietnam War and saw the Democrats as complicit as the Republicans when they did not make motions to cut off the Vietnam War budget requests. Consistent anyway on both side, Sam calling for “no” votes to the war budgets and the Democrats (with few exceptions) giving up the ghost with all arms and feet.  

That was then but this was now, now being 2016 and according to Bradley’s sense of things, and what he had supposed was Sam’s, yet another bummer of presidential campaign between Democrats and Republicans in America has begun to unfold. And guess who has since the first of the year been in the thick of the campaigning supporting Bernie Sanders as he makes a bid to be the Democratic Party candidate. Not as an Independent which would have given Sanders a nod for support but as a tried and true candidate right in the heart of the beast. Yes, one Samuel Lowell. So all that business about being anti-war, forcing whoever wanted his vote, or support, having to take the pledge to vote against the war budgets as a minimum step in the right direction was so much hot air when the deal went down.

Sam’s reasoning and the pressures of politics require a little explaining though in order that others who might be thinking of breaking their opposition to the Democrats (the myriad Republicans running helter-skelter are beyond the pale) might take a little pause before leaping into the abyss. That is the idea Bradley had in mind after he had heard the news from Bart Webber when he thought about how a stand-up anti-war guy like Sam could fall down like that. They, remember, had of all things met at an anti-war rally. Bradley, considerably younger than Sam, had only in 2012 begun to feel queasy about where this country was going, queasy too about the endless wars even under an administration of a guy who won the Nobel Peace Prize and when the war cries to get knee-deep into the Syrian Civil War began to be heard he had decided that he needed express public opposition to those efforts. He had heard through the Internet grapevine that a bunch of peace organizations like Peace Action, United for Justice and Peace, the Quakers and others were planning a rally for a Saturday in later September on the Common to express their opposition.    

Bradley, not used to public demonstrations of his political views (then), was a little leery as he emerged from the depth of the Park Street subway station where there were about fifty people milling around, carrying signs mostly anti-war signs against the continuing wars in various spots in the Middle East. He had not expected a huge crowd, hadn’t since about 2002 when the war drums for Iraq had started and millions, not including him then, had marched in the streets of the world in a desperate attempt to stop a bloody senseless war there but he had been intimidated by the smallness of the rally a bit. Also by the flotsam and jetsam that pass through that historic protest area on their ways to other business or as with the homeless just hanging out. Then a guy wearing a Veterans For Peace shirt, carrying a VFP dove-emblemed flag swirling in the wind, a Socialist Alternative button on his jacket and a small stack of leaflets came up to him and asked if he was there for the demonstration. He had said “yes.”              

That was Bradley’s introduction to one Sam Lowell, although that would not be their last meeting, not by a longshot. That day though Sam had presented some important ideas to Bradley about the nature of American society, about how almost all the establishment power structure went along with the endless wars and that it was the wars among other things inherent in the inequities of the capitalist system that led to the bloodshed and led to not getting lots of more positive things done. Bradley listened with some interest because some of what Sam had to say were things that had been upsetting him of late. The fact that Sam was an actual veteran didn’t hurt either, the voice from those who served carried weight with him (although when he found out the details of Sam’s story later he had more admiration for anti-war veterans who didn’t fold). Then Sam passed Bradley a leaflet (see about) which took him aback for a moment.

The headline-“Break with the two parties of Wall Street” confused him. See Bradley had for the four pervious election cycles since he had come of voting age had voted for the Democratic candidate for President, saw that as his only option and something he had been proud of in 2008 when he cast a vote for the first black President. He had asked Sam what that meant, asked him who he would be voting for. That day Sam gave him a short explanation since he had other responsibilities day around organizing the rally about why he had broken with the two parties. Had mentioned as well why as a small gesture in the right direction he knew he would be voting for the Green Party candidate-Jill Stein. He also told Sam that the organization he supported (although he said he was not yet a member) Socialist Alternative was doing the same thing.

Sam also suggested that if Bradley wanted to know more about why he (and SA) were not voting for the Democrats (for Obama) he would be happy to meet with him and discuss that matter. Bradley gave Sam his e-mail address and Sam a few days later followed up with an e-mail inviting him to meet at his convenience. As for the rally he had been glad that he had gone, glad that he had made that small public anti-war gesture and seriously thought about meeting up with Sam.                  

A couple of weeks later Sam and Bradley met at the Blackbird Café where Sam went through his paces after Bradley had asked about Sam’s political history and about why he refused to vote for the Democrats against the beastly Republicans and why his vote for the Green Party was not wasted energy. Sam had said that he had grown up in a working-class family with very strong ties to the Democrats going back to the FDR era and that he himself had after college expected to pursue a career in politics through the Democratic Party. Had as late as 1968 been a crazed Bobby Kennedy supporter campaigning for him all over the country and after he was assassinated went to work on the Humphrey campaign (also all over the country). Reason: a classic one, a “lesser evil” one if you wanted to know the truth-one Richard M Nixon who was the number one bad ass politician that everybody rightly feared would be elected and continue the Vietnam War forever. Of course Hubert Humphrey been neck-deep in the machinations of the Lyndon Johnson escalations of the war but Sam had not seen things that way-then.   

In 1969 Sam had been drafted into the Army and that event had changed everything. He had allowed himself to be inducted which he found out after a very few days of basic training was a mistake. All the signs were that he was being trained for nothing else but to kill “commies” in Vietnam. No go. He had no quarrel with Vietnamese peasants among other reasons. Without going into all the details Sam when he had gotten orders for Vietnam after completion of Advanced Infantry Training (and that training signified only one thing because Uncle Sam only needed, desperately needed, grunts, foot soldiers, cannon-fodder in one place that year-Vietnam) decided to refuse to go. He wound up spending the better part of the next two years in the stockade, or waiting to go into the stockade, although he finally got out with an honorable discharge ordered by the federal district court in New Jersey where he was being held in detention at Fort Dix. That critical experience, and the reflection that after all the Democrats, his previously beloved Democrats had been neck-deep in the escalations as well as Nixon, was the initial crack. Further reading, thinking, association with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, associations with various independent socialist types and later in the 1980s Veterans for Peace flushed out the other reasons for breaking with the Democrats (the Republican wing of the two parties of Wall Street was so much hot air since he would then, and now, never consider supporting that group of heartless bastards).          

Sam and Bradley went back and forth that day for a couple of hours and Sam suggested that if Bradley was looking for more information that Socialist Alternative had study groups which he could join and learn more about their perspective. Bradley had attended several classes before he decided that while he would continue to be a public anti-war activist (and other issues too like the death penalty, the fight for a higher minimum wage, stopping immigrant deportations and the like) that he preferred not to belong to any organization since with three growing kids he would not have the time necessary to devote whole-heartedly to the cause. He did later run into Sam (and others as well since it is a very small cadre of those who are interested in fighting injustices in the public square these days) at many events and went out of his way to attend VFP-sponsored events.      

Bradley also took to heart what Sam had said about the two parties of Wall Street although he never really got used to that way of putting it and did not vote for President in the 2012 election cycle (he could not see the gesture of voting for the Green Party as anything but a futile gesture). He had not planned and continues to plan not to vote for President in the 2016 election cycle, although he sorely wished that Bernie Sanders had decided on an independent candidacy so he could work for him.    

As for Sam, Bradley after he had heard that Sam was working for Sanders in New Hampshire canvassing voters in that state (as was Socialist Alternative which was also neck-deep in that campaign), decided to go to Park Street Station where a weekly anti-war rally is held every Saturday (and has been since something like 1998) and where he expected to find Sam standing with his VFP flag. And he was there. When Bradley asked him what in the world had changed about the Democratic Party of Wall Street since the last election cycle he said “that is where the kids are, that is who we who are older have to get to, hell, Bernie is the only game in town, the only one who will stand up to the beasts.”  Yeah, Bradley thought “that was then but this is now” as he remembered that final paragraph from that leaflet that he still had in his home office desk drawer.  (See above and read and weep.)     

 

 

*****Present At The Creation-The Penguins’ Earth Angel (1955)

*****Present At The Creation-The Penguins’ Earth Angel (1955)

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Deep in the dark red scare Cold War night, still brewing then even after Uncle Joe fell down in his Red Square drunken stupor spilling potato-etched Vodka all over the Central Committee, the Politburo, or his raggedy-ass cronies who were to pick up the pieces after he breathed his last, one night and never came back, so yeah still brewing after Uncle Joe kissed off in his vast red earth, still brewing as a child remembered in dark back of school dreams about Soviet nightmares, worried about the whether those heathens (later to find out that Miss Todd who first made him and his classmates aware of the scorched red earth menace had been wrong that they were atheists not heathen, a very different thing, but she wanted to make us think they were in need of some high Catholic missionary work and so heathen)under Uncle Joe wondering how the Russkie kids got through it, and still brewing too when Miss Winot in her pristine glory told each and every one of her fourth grade charges, us, that come that Russkie madness, come the Apocalypse, come the big bad ass mega-bombs that each and every one of her charges shall come that thundering god-awful air raid siren call duck, quickly and quietly, under his or her desk and then place his or his hands, also quickly and quietly, one over the other on the top of his or her head, a small breeze was coming to the land (of course being pristine and proper she did not dig down deep to titillate us with such terms as “big bad ass” but let’s face it that is what she meant, and maybe in the teachers' room or some night out in the moonless moors she sued such terms you never know).

Maybe nobody saw it coming although the more I think about the matter somebody, some bodies knew something, not those supposedly in the know about such times, those who are supposed to catch the breezes before they move beyond their power to curtail them, guys in the government who keep an eagle eye on such things, or professors endlessly prattling on about some idea about what the muck of society has turned into due to their not catching that breeze that was coming across their faces like some North wind. 

No those guys, no way they are usually good at the wrap-up. The what it all meant par after the furies were over. Here is what I am talking about when I talk about guys who know what to know, and how to play it to their advantages. Take guys like my older brother Franklin and his friends, Benny, sometimes called "the Knife" and Jimmy, who was called just Jimmy, who were playing some be-bop  stuff up in his room. Ma refused to let Franklin play his songs on the family record player down center stage in the living room or flip the dial on the kitchen radio away from her tunes of the roaring 1940s, her and my father’s coming of age time, so up his room like some mad monk doing who knows what because I was busy worrying about riding bicycles or something. Not girls or dances stuff like that no way. Here’s the real tip-off though he and his boys would go out Friday nights to Jack Slack’s bowling alleys not to bowl, although that was the cover story to questioning mothers, but to hang around Freddie O’Toole’s car complete with turned on amped up radio (station unknown then by me but later identified as WMEX out of Boston and stull in existence the last I heard, including a few hour segment on Saturday replaying the old Arnie "Woo-Woo" Ginsberg shows that drove us wild and drive us to learn about the social customs around drive-in movies and drive-in restaurants when thinking about girls time did come) and dance, dance with girls, get it, to stuff like Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 (a great song tribute to a great automobile which nobody in our neighborhood could come close to affording so hard-working but poorly paid fathers' were reduced to cheapjack Fords and Plymouths, not cool), and guys who even today I don’t know the names of even with YouTube giving everybody with every kind of musical inclination a blast to the past ticket.

Here's something outside the neighborhood just to show it was hard-ass Franklin Webber who was hip to all things rock. So how about the times we, the family, would go up to Boston for some Catholic thing filled with incense and high Latin everybody mumbling prayers for forgiveness, when they did nothing to be forgiven for, into the South End at Holy Cross Cathedral and smack across from the church was the later famous Red Hat Club where guys were blasting away at pianos, on guitars and on big ass sexy saxes and it was not the big band sound my folks listened to or cool, cool be-bop jazz either that drove the "beat" night but music from jump street, etched in the back of my brain because remember I’m still fussing over bikes and stuff like that and not worrying about guys hitting the high white note. Or how about every time we went down Massachusetts Avenue in Boston as the sun went down, the “Negro” part before you hit Huntington Avenue at Symphony Hall (an area that Malcolm X knew well a decade before when he was nothing but a cat hustling the midnight creep with some white girls into kicks and larcenies) and we stopped at the ten billion lights on Mass Ave and all you would hear is this bouncing beat coming from taverns, from the old time townhouse apartments and black guys dressed “to the nines,” all flash dancing on the streets with dressed “to the nines” good-looking black girls. Memory bank.           

So some guys knew, gals too don’t forget after all they had to dig the beat, dig the guys who dug the beat, the beat of  out of some Africa breeze mixed with forbidden sweated Southern lusts if the thing was going to work out. And it wasn’t all dead-ass “white negro” hipsters either eulogized by Norman Mailer (or maybe mocked you never knew with him but he sensed something was in the breeze even if he was tied more closely to an earlier sensibility) or break-out “beats” tired of the cool cold jazz that was turning in on itself, getting too technical and losing the search for the high white note or lumpens of all descriptions who whiled away the nights searching their radio dials for something that they while away the nights searching their radio dials for something that they could swing to while reefer high or codeine low.

If you, via hail YouTube, look at the Jacks and Jills dancing up a storm in the 1950s say on American Bandstand they mostly look like very proper well-dressed middle class kids who are trying to break out of the cookie-cutter existence they found themselves in but they still looked  pretty well-fed and well-heeled so yeah, some guys and gals and it wasn’t always who you might suspect like Franklin, white hipsters, black saints, and sexy sax players that got hip, got that back-beat and those piano riffs etched into their brains.

Maybe though the guys in the White House were too busy worrying about what Uncle Joe’s progeny were doing out in the missile silos of Minsk, maybe the professional television talkers on Meet The Press wanted to discuss the latest turn in national and international politics for a candid world to hear and missed what was happening out in the cookie-cutter neighborhoods, and maybe the academic sociologists and professional criminologists were too wrapped up in figuring out why Marlon Brando was sulking in his corner boy kingdom (and wreaking havoc on a fearful small town world when he and the boys broke out), why  Johnny Spain had that “shiv” ready to do murder and mayhem to the next midnight passer-by, and why well-groomed and fed James Dean was brooding in the “golden age” land of plenty but the breeze was coming.

(And you could add in the same brother Franklin who as I was worrying about bikes, not the two pedal kid powered but some bad ass Vincent Black Lightning kind, getting “from hunger” to get a Brando bike, a varoom bike, so this girl, Wendy, from school, would take his bait, a girl that my mother fretted was from the wrong side of town, her way of saying Wendy was a tramp and maybe she was although she was nice to me when Franklin brought her around still she was as smart as hell once I found out about her school and home life a few years later after she, they, Wendy and Franklin, had left town on some big ass Norton but that is after the creation so I will let it go for now.)               

And then it came, came to us in our turn, came like some Kansas whirlwind, came like the ocean churning up the big waves crashing to a defenseless shoreline, came if the truth be known like the “second coming” long predicted and not just by mad man poet Yeats and his Easter, 1916 mind proclaiming a terrible beauty is born, and the brethren, us,  were waiting, waiting like we had been waiting all our short spell lives. Came in a funny form, or rather ironically funny forms, as it turned out.

Came one time, came big as 1954 turned to 1955 and a guy, get this, dressed not in sackcloth or hair-shirt but in a sport’s jacket, a Robert Hall sport’s jacket from the "off the rack" look of it when he and the boys were “from hunger,” playing for coffee and crullers before on the low life circuit, a little on the heavy side with a little boy’s regular curl in his hair and blasted the whole blessed world to smithereens. Blasted every living breathing teenager, boy or girl, out of his or her lethargy, got the blood flowing. The guy Bill Haley, goddam an old lounge lizard band guy who decided to move the beat forward from cool ass be-bop jazz and sweet romance popular music and make everybody, every kid jump, yeah Big Bill Haley and his Comets, the song Rock Around The Clock.         

Came as things turned to a little more hep cat too, came all duck walk and sex moves, feet moving faster than Bill could ever do, came out of Saint Loo, came out with a crazy beat. Came out in suit and tie all swagger. Came out with a big baby girl guitar that twisted up the chords something fierce and declared to the candid world, us, that Maybelline was his woman. But get this, because what did we know of “color” back then when we lived in an all-white Irish Catholic neighborhoods and since we heard what we heard of rock and roll mostly on the radio we were shocked when we found out the first time that he was a “Negro” to use the polite parlance of the times not always used in the house, the neighborhood, the town, a black man making us go to “jump street.” And we bought into it, bought into the beat, and joined him in saying to Mister Beethoven that you and your brethren best move over because there is a new sheriff in town.   

Came sometimes in slo-mo, hey remember this rock and roll idea was as an ice-breaker with a beat you didn’t  have to dance close to with your partner and get all tied up in knots forgetting when to twirl, when to whirl, when to do a split but kind of free form for the guys (or gals, but mainly guys) with two left feet like me could survive, maybe not survive the big one if the Russkies decided to go over the top with the bomb, but that school dance and for your free-form efforts maybe that she your eyeballs were getting sore over would consent to the last chance  last dance that you waited around for in case she was so impressed she might want to go with you some place later. But before that “some place later” you had to negotiate and the only way to do was to bust up a slow one, a dreamy one to get her in the mood and hence people have been singing songs from time immemorial to get people in the mood, this time Earth Angel would do the trick. Do the trick as long as you navigated those toes of hers, left her with two feet and standing. Dance slow, very slow brother.   

Here is the funny thing, funny since we were present at the creation, present in spite of every command uttered by Miss Winot against it, declaring the music worse than that Russkie threat if you believed her (a few kids, girls mainly, did whether to suck up to her since she would take their entreaties and suck ups seriously although boys were strictly “no go” and I know having spent many a missed sunny afternoon doing some silly “punishment” for her since she was impervious to my sly charms).We were just too young to deeply imbibe the full measure of what we were hearing. See this music, music we started calling rock and roll once somebody gave it a name (super DJ impresario Alan Freed as we found out later after we had already become “children of rock and roll”) was meant, was blessedly meant to be danced to which meant in that boy-girl age we who didn’t even like the opposite sex as things stood then were just hanging by our thumbs.

Yeah, was meant to be danced to at “petting parties” in dank family room basements by barely teenage boys and girls. Was meant to be danced to at teenage dance clubs where everybody was getting caught up on learning the newest dance moves and the latest “cool” outfits to go along with that new freedom. Was meant to serve as a backdrop at Doc’s Drugstore’s soda fountain where Doc had installed a jukebox complete with all the latest tunes as boys and girls shared a Coke sipping slowly with two straws hanging out in one frosted glass. Was meant to be listened to by corner boys at Jack Slack’s bowling alley where Jack eventually had set up a small dance floor so kids could dance while waiting for lanes to open (otherwise everybody would be still dancing out in front of O’Toole’s “boss” car complete with amped-up radio not to Jack’s profit). Was meant to be listened to as the sun went down in the west at the local drive-in restaurant while the hamburgers and fries were cooking and everybody was waiting for darkness to fall so the real night could begin, the night of dancing in dark corners and exploring the mysteries of the universe, or at least the mysteries of Miss Sarah Brown.  Was even meant to be listened to on fugitive transistor radios in the that secluded off-limits to adults and little kids (us) where teens, boys and girls, mixed and matched in the drive-in movie night (and would stutter some nonsense to questioning parents who wanted to know the plot of the movies- what movies, Ma).              

Yeah, we were just a little too young even if we can legitimately claim to have been present at the creation. But we will catch up, catch up with a vengeance.

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Seven –To Defend One’s Own

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Seven –To Defend One’s Own  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All hell was breaking loose in Mississippi in 1964 after they found those boys, those civil rights worker boys over in some ditch in Philadelphia (hell was breaking out before and after too but that year got everybody’s attention North and South, abolitionist and redneck, because a  showdown was coming no question). Even Jacob Block knew some hard-ass stuff was coming down as isolated as he was from white folks (and other black folk too) on his poor excuse of a share crop farm about fifty miles outside of Hattiesburg. As he thought about it afterwards, after all hell had broken loose in his little world and its environs, he should have known it would come to that, come to a confrontation with Mister, or Mister’s rednecks acting in his name. Hell, his great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Ezra Bond, had jumped his plantation over near Savannah, Georgia, to walk down and join Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s 2^nd South Carolina Volunteers and raise some hell with the boys in grey. And later some cousin had been lynched right in broad daylight down near Biloxi, a big feisty rabid white crowd watching on, watching on with glee from what he had heard just because that cousin had tried, shotgun in hand, to defense his woman when some white rascal got his lust habits on. Yes, he should have known, known it was in the blood that when the deal went down he had to do something, had to defend his own, his sweet Martha, and the little ones.                      

Jacob did not know how he had first found out they were coming, about the redneck rampage, maybe something overheard in Otis Junction when he went to get his monthly provisions, maybe from somebody at the Lord’s Worship Baptist Church over in Oxbridge that time he went for Jim Jackson’s daughter’s wedding. But no question either that they were coming, coming to throw the worst fear into every last “nigger” (their term, always their term even when directly speaking to a negro, just one more way to put the black man behind the eight ball) within one hundred miles of Hattiesburg once they heard that some blacks were going right to the farms to get other blacks, farmers and small town dwellers alike, to register to vote, to exercise their American-given right to have a say in things. He had never voted, never cared if he voted, and never even really tried once he had gotten wise to Mister Jim Crow and his ways even though he could, mother taught, read and write as well as any white man in the county, hell, maybe in the state of Mississippi. He wanted no trouble, wanted no part of Mister, no part of confronting Mister Jim Crow and just wanted to be left alone. And that was that.     

That was that until he heard about those Philadelphia boys, and until he had heard that they had, that white trash that had been put up to it by Mister and his damn White Citizens Councils, burned down Jack Lewis’ place, his beautiful little shack that he had spent half a life time trying to fix up, when he decided to lead his fellow church people to Hattiesburg to register to vote. Jacob still did not care whether he voted or not, registered or not, but since he was, the way things were going, to be targeted anyway just for being black, poor and nothing but a sharecropper well that was enough. Enough to get him and a few fellows, young bucks, sons of farmers he had met over the years although he did not know them or their sons well, and get ready to defend their land, come hell or high water, defend the land like some avenging angels arms in hand like they were heeding some ghost call from that old black abolitionist rabble-rouser Frederick Douglass with his call “to arms, sable warriors, to arms, the hour is at hand” to fight for freedom one more time. 

Yah, it had come to that, come to simple black manhood time, time to either keep that lifetime head bent down, or walk on two black feet. And when it came to that showdown they were ready as Ebby Johnson’s son, William, a veteran of Korea, showed them how to use their shotguns to effect. And that knowledge came in handy one night, one night when they heard that a gang of whites was heading up Traversville Road about ten miles from Jacob’s land in three cars shooting and slowly setting fires at random and watching their handiwork. Probably drunk too Jacob (and William) figured. So they set an ambush around Tyler Road, dark, with high ground and easy escape. And that night, whether it ever got recorded, reported, or noted, a small cadre of black men, black avenging angels (no niggers, nigras, or even negroes now) sent a fusillade of shotgun fire down at the three cars coming up that black night Mississippi road. And, you know, no marauding rednecks ever came within twenty miles of Jacob Block’s land again. And while he never took the time to register to vote when that became easier later he was always at pains to tell  everybody he knew that one sweaty fearful night he had  done all the voting he needed to do…         

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]

 

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

 

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

 

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

 

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

 

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

 

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

 

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

 

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

 

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

 

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

 

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

 

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

 

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

 

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

 

We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Black Musicians' Poltical Protest-Honor The "Godmother" Nina Simone-Mississipppi Goddam

Black Musicians' Political Protest-Honor The "Godmother" Nina Simone-Mississippi Goddam

Yeah, you can talk about your Beyoncé and Kendrick but remember who paid the price back in the day as Mister Whitey took offense when Nina Simone ripped the lip off of what everybody was thinking-thinking in silence. Yeah Mississippi Goddam… and Alabama too.

Click on link to an NPR On Point discussion of black musicians’ political protest songs that have raised a stir lately and remember the “godmother”  

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/02/19/beyonce-kendrick-lamar-black-lives-matter

In New York City-In Honor Of Black History Month-Black History And The Class Struggle

In New York City-In Honor Of Black History Month-Black History And The Class Struggle

A View From The Left-WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

The U.S. Military Suffers from “Affluenza”

The word “affluenza” is much in vogue. Lately, it’s been linked to a Texas teenager, Ethan Couch, who in 2013 killed four people in a car accident while driving drunk… Is there one that suffers from the institutional version of affluenza (however fuzzy or imprecise that word may be) so much that it has had immense difficulty shouldering the blame for its failures and wrongdoing?  The answer is hidden in plain sight: the U.S. military. Unlike Couch, however, that military has never faced trial or probation; it hasn’t felt the need to abscond to Mexico or been forcibly returned to the homeland to face the music… To cite a point of comparison, in 2015, federal funding for the departments of education, interior, and transportation maxed out at $95 billion -- combined! Not only is the military our favored son by a country mile: it’s our Prodigal Son, and nothing satisfies “him.” He’s still asking for more (and his Republican uncles are clearly ready to turn over to him whatever’s left of the family savings, lock, stock, and barrel)… An institutional report card with so many deficits and failures, a record of deportment that has led to death and mayhem, should not be ignored. The military must be called to account.  How? By cutting its allowance.   More

 

Welcome to the United States of Flint

“I know if I was a parent up there, I would be beside myself if my kids’ health could be at risk,” said President Obama on a recent trip to Michigan.  “Up there” was Flint, a rusting industrial city in the grip of a “water crisis” brought on by a government austerity scheme…  President Obama would have good reason to worry if his kids lived in Flint.  But the city’s children are hardly the only ones threatened by this public health crisis.  There’s a lead crisis for children in Baltimore, Maryland, Herculaneum, Missouri, Sebring, Ohio, and even the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., and that’s just to begin a list.  State reports suggest, for instance, that "18 cities in Pennsylvania and 11 in New Jersey may have an even higher share of children with dangerously elevated levels of lead than does Flint." Today, scientists agree that there is no safe level of lead for children and at least half of American children have some of this neurotoxin in their blood.  The CDC is especially concerned about the more than 500,000 American children who have substantial amounts of lead in their bodies. Over the past century, an untold number have had their IQs reduced, their school performances limited, their behaviors altered, and their neurological development undermined.     More

 

GOP Candidates Compete Over Who Will Commit Most War Crimes Once Elected

At a rally in New Hampshire on Monday night, Donald Trump was criticizing Ted Cruz for having insufficiently endorsed torture – Cruz had said two nights earlier that he would bring back waterboarding, but not “in any sort of widespread use” – when someone in the audience yelled out that Cruz was a “pussy”. Trump, in faux outrage, reprimanded the supporter, repeating the allegation for the assembled crowd: “She said he’s a pussy. That’s terrible. Terrible.”    The spectacle of one Republican presidential candidate being identified by another as a “pussy” for failing to sufficiently endorse an archetypal form of torture exemplifies the moral state of the current race for the GOP nomination.   More

 

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

U.S. and Russia Announce Plan for Humanitarian Aid and a Cease-Fire in Syria

Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, announced that they had agreed on the delivery over the next few days of desperately needed aid to besieged Syrian cities, to be followed by a “cessation of hostilities” within a week on the way to a more formal cease-fire. “We have agreed to implement a nationwide cessation of hostilities in one week’s time,” Mr. Kerry said early Friday morning, after all-day meetings. “That is ambitious.” … If executed, the agreement, forged by the International Syria Support Group, would mark the first sustained and formally declared halt to fighting in Syria since the civil war began in 2011, early in the Arab uprisings. But even a formal cease-fire would be partial — it excludes the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and the Nusra Front, both designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations — and highly fragile.   More

 

Will US, Russia be able to turn 'words on paper' into action in Syria?

With attention in Munich focused on rapidly producing concrete humanitarian deliverables and a reduction in violence in Syria, ambitions receded for a near-term resumption of the intra-Syrian political talks in Geneva . For now, that might suit both the Syrian opposition, currently pushed back on its heels, and the Damascus government, emboldened by its recent military gains, backed by Russian airstrikes. A permanent end to hostilities, however, would not come without an eventual political resolution, Kerry asserted… The next days will be a “good testing time,” de Mistura said. “Are the Syrian people going to see these outcomes? Then they will believe in future conferences, and they believe in their own future. And the ISSG has shown that they are ready to commit themselves.” There were signs, however, that the Syrian opposition, as well as some of its regional backers, were prepared to improve its position should the attempt at a truce break down, an event that is not difficult to imagine.   More

 

In snub to Turkey, US says Syria’s PYD is not a terror group

"We do not recognize the [Democratic Union Party] PYD as a terrorist organization. We recognize Turks do," US State Department spokesman John Kirby told a daily press briefing this week. The remarks are expected to come as a surprise to Ankara, who asked Washington to choose sides: either Turkey or the PYD.  The PYD is the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). US officials say its armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), is the most effective partner on the ground in the fight against ISIL in northern Syria. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the European Union.  Kirby said Turkey's concerns over the Syrian Kurdish militants are not new and that both allies continue to hold consultations on the matter. The public split between Washington and Ankara on the status of the PYD was so serious that Kirby went to great lengths to reiterate that Turkey and the US are good friends.   More

 

Senator Wonders How Much Longer U.S. Will Blindly Support Saudi Arabia

On Capitol Hill, where a majority of lawmakers voted to scupper the deal, there is a push to reassert the U.S.’s unwavering commitment to Saudi security -- even in instances where it isn’t necessarily in the best interests of the U.S.  "In the wake of the Iran nuclear agreement, there are many in Congress who would have the United States double down in our support for the Saudi side of this fight in places like Yemen and Syria, simply because Saudi Arabia is our named friend, and Iran is our named enemy,” Murphy said Friday.   The view Murphy described has a host of supporters in Washington, from scholars at Saudi-funded research institutions like the Arab Gulf States Institute to some of Obama's top aides and Murphy's colleagues.  Obama's State Department has approved billions in various military sales to Saudi Arabia since the Iran deal wrapped up, including $11 billion in warships and over $1 billion in new bombs. Though it is not explicitly stated, observers see the Obama administration’s efforts to shore up the Saudi military and continued support for the disastrous war in Yemen as a tacit trade-off for the kingdom's accepting the nuclear deal.   More

 

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There is so much propagandistic coverage of Syria that it is hard for even well-meaning peace activists to sort things out.  Here are two articles from a point of view rarely encountered in the mainstream press.  The first is from a British correspondent – with impeccable mainstream credentials –reporting from Aleppo. 

 

A Syrian acquaintance from Aleppo, now living in Boston,  wrote: “If you want to know what is really happening in Aleppo and was barely reported on any media, I would say please take the time & read this long yet important article. This is the story I know & I keep telling everyone. The two men whose names were mentioned  in the article are people I know & I can say they are telling the truth (though they have different political views, but the reality is something they can disagree on).

 

“Same stories I keep hearing from all my friends & family back in Aleppo. Even from those people who fled the Rebel-held areas as they refused to join them. They are now staying in Government areas... not only because they support the government (they might not but of course they also don't support those other people who they can't tell from where they came & what they want), but because these are the areas where they can live a "normal life" without being forced to carry a weapon against the other side.  I just wanted to confirm that what I & everyone else read in this article is true. As I have experienced it before I came here, & my family has & still experiencing it everyday for the last almost four years.”

 

The second article is from a Syrian government (i.e. Assad regime) spokeswoman.  One should treat it with caution, obviously. But why are Syrian “rebels” quoted endlessly in the MSM news but we are never invited to hear what the Syrian government has to say?

 

JOURNEY TO ALEPPO: How the war ripped Syria's biggest city apart

At the start of 2012, by which time much of Damascus was at war, the Aleppan business community says it was targeted in a series of assassinations and killings. Political and religious leaders say they were threatened with death or torture unless they went across to the rebels.  “We knew we were being targeted,” says Fares Shehabi, head of Aleppo’s chamber of industry. “We knew what was coming. We sent a message for the army to be sent to Aleppo.” The request was ignored.  On 5 July of that year an armed convoy - the Brigade of Tawheed, an Islamist group that has previously praised Nusra - rolled into ancient Aleppo. It dispersed, burnt down police stations, set up road blocks.  Within a few weeks, the rebel brigades had taken over most of the city. “At first we thought they were Syrians,” said Shehabi. “But after a few weeks we got reports about foreigners. Fighters from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Saudi, Iraq, Eqypt.”  “This was not regime change, it was invasion. And why was it taking a religious theme? Why does it have a beard? We are not ready to replace a secular society with a religious one.”    More

 

The Rise of ISIS and Other Extremist Groups: the role of the West and Regional Powers

The Syrian government’s immediate response to the protests, despite the violent incidents at the very onset of events, was reconciliatory, as some of the demonstrators had genuine demands. On 24 March 2011, the Syrian leadership convened a long and important meeting in an effort to contain what seemed to be a looming crisis. I was asked to hold a press conference in order to acknowledge, in the name of the leadership, the people’s legitimate demands and to announce decisions and measures that addressed most of these demands.  On that day, I announced to the Syrian people the lifting of emergency laws, in place since 1963, and a comprehensive reform package that would lead to further political freedoms, a multi-party law, and the drafting of a new constitution for Syria. Next day, people told me that they out to have dinner celebrating Syria averting a looming crisis. A feeling of relief prevailed all over the country due to the leadership’s quick response to the demands… This conciliatory approach, however, was met with much worse intransigence by those who claimed to represent the Syrian people and was by then occupying much of the airtime on Al-Jazeera and al-Arabyia. These two channels played an inciting role, encouraging people to protest and rebel against the Syrian government, and they constituted the primary source for news about Syria to all Western media outlets.   More

 

The U.S. Military Bombs in the Twenty-First Century

It’s probably accurate to say that in the course of one disappointment or disaster after another from Afghanistan to Libya, Somalia to Iraq, Yemen to Pakistan, the U.S. military never actually lost an encounter on the battlefield.  But nowhere was it truly triumphant on the battlefield either, not in a way that turned out to mean anything.  Nowhere, in fact, did a military move of any sort truly pay off in the long run… what politician in present-day Washington would have the nerve to suggest the obvious?  Isn’t it finally time to pull the U.S. military back from the Greater Middle East and put an end to our disastrous temptation to intervene ever more destructively in ever more repetitious ways in that region?  That would, of course, mean, among other things, dismantling the vast structure of military bases Washington has built up across the Persian Gulf and the rest of the Greater Middle East.  Maybe it’s time to adopt some version of Senator Aiken’s mythical strategy. Maybe Washington should bluntly declare not victory, but defeat, and bring the U.S. military home.    More