This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
An integrated crowd of dozens of anti-fascists, including anarchists and supporters of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), stopped the Ku Klux Klan’s “White Lives Matter” anti-immigrant provocation in Anaheim, California’s Pearson Park on February 27. From the start, the race terrorists were out for blood. A protester explained in a February 27 interview on YouTube that when protesters approached the Klansmen, the KKK pulled out weapons. One Klansman stabbed at anti-fascists with a pointed flagpole flying an American flag. Protesters defended themselves and drove off the Klan, but not before the KKKers had stabbed three protesters, sending them to the hospital.
The police, who had been “observing” from the far side of the park, came to escort Klansmen away and crack down on the protesters. Six Klansmen and seven protesters were arrested. The lawyer for three arrested protesters later reported that the cops broke the arm of one of his clients, noting that, in contrast, the police “are very polite and civil to these KKK guys, who have stabbed three people” (Los Angeles Times, 29 February). The arrested KKKers were quickly released on the pretense that they had acted in self-defense. Not so the anti-fascists, who were jailed for three days and threatened with bogus felony charges of assault with a deadly weapon—and elder abuse, because one of the Klan thugs was over 65 years old! One protester remains in jail on what police claim is an unrelated matter.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is pursuing an investigation to determine what charges to file against the anti-fascists. The Anaheim Police Department put a wanted poster on its Facebook page of a black man alleged to have kicked one of the fascists. The poster evokes the antebellum notices used in hunting down runaway slaves and is an incitement to racist vigilantism, listing the names and cities of residence of the arrested anti-KKK activists. It’s clear whose side the cops and the D.A. are on. The labor movement, the left and all the KKK’s intended victims must demand: Hands off the anti-fascist protesters!
In what might as well be a brief for the prosecution, Brian Levin, an ex-cop who runs the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, has been widely quoted vilifying the protesters. Levin, who says he attended the Klan rally to do research, boasts of single-handedly rescuing the “Grand Dragon” and grotesquely paints the race terrorists as victims. Just one day after the Klan attempted to rally in Anaheim, white supremacists in the L.A. County backwater of Lake Los Angeles attacked a group of Latinos with knives while screaming “Heil Hitler” and waving the Confederate flag. Nonetheless, the press has seized on Levin’s statements to smear the Anaheim anti-fascist protesters for supposedly promoting hate and violence.
In the same spirit, Anaheim’s Republican mayor Tom Tait, Democratic Party politicians, community groups and churches held a “peace walk” and candlelight vigil in Pearson Park on February 29. Condemning violence (by the protesters) and preaching tolerance (for the Klan), the rally represented an attempt to promote passivity in the face of Klan terror. A fascist watching the vigil clearly understood the message as he flaunted his “white power” and swastika tattoos. The same day, a Los Angeles Times editorial insisted that the fascists have a right to police protection and intoned, “We all have the right to ignore the antics of a fringe hate group.”
For working people and the oppressed to ignore white supremacist terror will allow the fascist threat to fester and grow, with more deadly consequences. The fascist vermin are race terrorists committed to exterminating blacks, Latinos, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals and other minorities. The true face of racist terror was shown in the massacre of nine black people in Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church last June. Following that slaughter, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which the gang that tried to rally in Anaheim is associated with, spearheaded a campaign against the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Capitol.
Today, the forces of the capitalist state are the main agents of violent repression against working people and the oppressed, though of course, the police have always been deeply intertwined with white supremacists. The Klan is waiting in the wings to be deployed as shock troops of capitalist reaction against the unions and oppressed when struggle breaks out. Klan and neo-Nazi groups have grown rapidly in the last year, emboldened by daily cop terror, massive deportations of immigrants and the anti-Muslim tirades of demagogues like Donald Trump.
Anaheim used to be overwhelmingly white with a population that included many from the South. Known as “Klanaheim,” the city retained many of the white-supremacist practices of the Jim Crow South. In the early 1920s, four of five City Council members and nine of ten police officers were Klan members. Klansmen patrolled the streets in robes and masks. Die-hard anti-Catholics, the Klan burned a large cross in front of St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church. In 1924, 30,000 people attended a KKK rally at what is now Pearson Park.
The population of Anaheim today is more than half Latino, including many unionized hotel and food workers. But race terror remains. Last year, the KKK flooded nearby communities with inflammatory fliers on Martin Luther King Day, and in 2003, an eight-foot cross was burned outside the home of a black man in Anaheim Hills. In November of that year, the fascists’ hatred for the organized working class was demonstrated when Nazi skinheads wielding baseball bats attacked a United Food and Commercial Workers union picket line in Laguna Niguel, Orange County. This attack underscores the common interests between the labor movement and oppressed minorities.
It’s good that the Anaheim protesters stopped the KKK rally on February 27. But, however courageous, small groups of protesters do not have the social weight to crush the fascist menace and often become targets of police and state repression. In contrast to the perspective of PLP and anti-fascist activists who reject mobilizing the organized labor movement, what is desperately needed are mass united-front actions centered on the power of the unions. In past years, the Spartacist League and our affiliated legal and social defense organization, the Partisan Defense Committee, have initiated united-front labor/black mobilizations to stop the fascists—in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York City and other cities. In addition to beating back the race terrorists, in the course of such mobilizations we strive to make the working class conscious of its own power and its historic mission to eradicate the capitalist system. Capitalist misery breeds fascism; only socialist revolution, under the leadership of a revolutionary workers party, can ultimately rid humanity of this scourge.
In
Honor Of The 145th Anniversary Of The Paris Commune –Jean-PaulRoget’s Fear
Jean-Paul Roget
frankly was exhausted after coming out of the three hour meeting of the
sectional committee of the Paris Commune that had just been declared a few days
previously and was desperately in need of organization now that the Theirs
government had fled to Versailles leaving the city to the “people.” And that
idea of organization, damn, the desperate need for organization, first and
foremost of the food supplies and military defense of the city against an
attack by either forces loyal to Theirs or from the dreaded Prussians who just
that moment had most of the capital surrounded and squeezed in was needed right
then. What had Jean-Paul exhausted was not the daunting tasks of organization in
front of him and his comrades, tough as they were, but that the three hour
meeting that had just finished produced not resolve and purpose but only reams
and reams of hot air.
Now that that people of Paris were masters of their own
house every dingbat orator, lawyer, crackpot radical and not a few dandiessaw their opportunity to wax and wane
endlessly about the beautiful struggle that had taken place, that a new day was
aborning ,and ill-witted material like that. Take Varlin, a Proudhonist who had
been, in the old days back in ’48 quite the radical figure, had been seemingly
on every barricade and who in the aftermath of the June Days bloodbath been
transported (exiled). This day however he felt the need, and felt it for hours,
to push the notion of artisan cooperatives at a time when Paris was losing that
segment of the population to the every-devouring factories that were in fact
more efficient in the production of goods. Moreover dear Varlin was captivated
by the notion that now that Theirs had fled (and good riddance) there was no
reason to pursue his troops and disband them as agents of potential counter-revolution.
Certainly Varlin had forgotten the harsh memories of ’48 but
he was not the worst offender against the urgency of the times. The old windbag
Capet, jesus, was he still alive thought Jean-Paul when he heard that name
announced from the podium,went on and
on about the glory days, the glory days of ’89 like life had stopped in that
blessed time. In the same vein (maybe vain) as well Dubois, an old time
working-class radical, a semi-follower of Marx from over in England, kept
harping on the need to take over the banks in order to financethe new affairs of the Commune.Jean-Paul himself merely a tanner, and a good
one, laughed when that idea was announced for where would he, or anyone else,
get the money for their daily personal and business needs. A couple ofother speakers went on and on as well about
how great the peoples’ needs were without however coming up with one solid
working idea. At least Jean-Paul had suggested setting a maximum on the price
of bread that could help the people but that was merely “taken under
advisement” And so ended a day, a fruitless day by Jean –Paul’s lights in the
life of the Commune…
SOUTH BOSTON— Yesterday, Veterans For Peace, VFP, held a silent protest at 524 East Broadway along the parade route.
The protestors met at the former address of the late Lieutenant Tony F. Flaherty U.S.N. Tony was the beloved member of Veterans For Peace who passed away peacefully in July 2015.
This year, Veterans For Peace had applied to walk in the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade but once again were denied by the Allied War Veterans Council. VFP’s unit was to be named as a Memorial Unit in honor of Tony.
“Tony was one of our most respected members,” said Al Johnson a member of VFP’s Executive Committee. “Tony is sorely missed by our members. It is shameful that the AWVC still denies veterans who have honorably served this country, and now work for peace, from participating in this parade.”
A Coast Guard sailer who broke ranks to come over and show his support. Photo: Boston Bulletin Reporter
Members of Veterans For Peace silently stood outside of the former home of Flaherty, in solemn protest as the parade passed by. They carried their VFP flags, American flags and signs for parade participants to see.
“It is shameful that the Allied War Veterans Council are once again disrespecting veterans on Saint Patrick’s Day. What are they afraid of? Our rejection is solely based on the fact that we work for Peace,” stated Pat Scanlon, event organizer for VFP. “This continues to be an embarrassment to the City of Boston and the Boston Police Department.”
“It is ironic that Tony Flaherty was best of friends with John ‘Wacko Hurley the long time Commander of AWVC. They were best men at each other’s weddings. Over the years they parted friendship, as their views on war and peace grew apart”, stated Scanlon. “How fitting it would have been to honor both men in this year’s parade with resolution of this long-standing conflict.”
The intransigence of the AWVC, their continued disrespecting of veterans and the embarrassment they bring upon the City of Boston should stop,” stated Al Johnson, member of the Executive Committee of the local VFP chapter. “The City of Boston should take back the management of the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, making it open and accessible to all, allowing all to be part of the historic celebration of the patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick, especially our veterans.”
During the Parade, VFP’s messages were clear, “stop the exclusion of Veterans For Peace in the parade.”
Police Commissioner Bill Evans when he walked by and shook my hand said, “Next year Pat, next year.”
A number of Army, Navy and Coast Guard parade participants went over to the protestors and shook their hands in support. Scanlon said they received a lot of salutes and waves by veteran units and active duty units.
[From a News Release]
*****The Search For The Great Working-Class Love Song - With Richard Thompson’s Vincent Black Lightning, 1952 In Mind
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:
Several years ago, maybe about eight years now that I think about it, I did a series of sketches on guys, folk-singers, folk-rockers, rock-folkers or whatever you want to call those who weened us away from the stale Pablum rock in the early 1960s (Bobby Vee, Rydell, Darin, et. al, Sandra Dee, Brenda Lee, et. al) after the gold rush dried up in what is now called the classic age of rock and roll in the mid to late 1950s when Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy, Chuck, Bo and their kindred made us jump. (There were gals too like Wanda Jackson but mainly it was guys in those days.) I am referring of course to the savior folk minute of the early 1960 when a lot of guys with acoustic guitars, some self-made lyrics, or stuff from old Harry Smith Anthology times gave us a reprieve. That Harry Smith stuff, commercial music from back in the 1920s and 1930s saved many a weary folk-singer on a tough night when he or she had run out of ideas and yet the girls or guys were still transfixed and thus provided for a last few tunes.
(One old-time, now old-time folk-singer from the 1960s folk minute who is still performing at small clubs and coffeehouses that small dot the country still in places like Harvard Square, the Village, Ann Arbor, Joshua Tree out in California, Seattle, both Portlands and so on, small dots, made a gradation of folk-singer, male folk-singer expectations-if you knew three chords you could gather young straight long-haired women around you, four or five chords would help fill out your date book, a dozen chords and you could have whatever you wanted. Sounds about right about the times even if you didn’t play an instrument, or sing, but knew about two thousand arcane folk facts, although songs better. Any old-time women folksingers can add their recollections if they were similar.)
The series titled Not Bob Dylan centered on why those budding folkies like Tom Rush, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Jesse Winchester and the man under review Richard Thompson to name a few did not make the leap to be the “king of folk” that had been ceded by the media to Bob Dylan and then whatever happened to them once the folk minute went south after the combined assault of the British rock invasion (you know the yah, yah, Beatles, the no satisfaction Stones, the really got me Kinks, hell, even I’m Henry the Eighth Herman’s Hermits got serious play for a while), and the rise of acid rock put folk in the shade (you know the White Rabbit Alice in Wonderland Jefferson Airplane, the let’s keep trucking Dead, the this is the end Doors, The ripped Who, hell, even the aforementioned non-yah, yah Beatles and non-no satisfaction Stones got caught up in the acid-etched fray although not to their eternal musical playlist benefit nothing that would put then into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame anyway). I also did a series on Not Joan Baez, the “queen of the folk minute” asking that same question on the female side but here dealing with one Richard Thompson the male side of the question is what is of interest.
I did a couple of sketches on Richard Thompson back then, or rather sketches based on probably his most famous song, Vincent Black Lightning, 1952 which dove-tailed with some remembrances of my youth and my semi-outlaw front to the world in that working poor neighborhood where I grew up and the pervasive role that motorcycles played in that world. Additionally, in light of the way that a number of people whom I knew back then, classmates whom I reconnected on a class reunion website several years ago responded when I posed the question of what they thought was the great working-class love song since North Adamsville was definitely a working class town driven by that self-same ethos I wrote some other sketches driving home my selection of Thompson’s song as my choice.
Those later sketches about the world of motorcycles are what interest me here since Thompson gave up the “king of the hill” folk idea. See Thompson at various times packed it in, said he had no more spirit or some such and gave up the road, the music and the struggle to made that music, as least professionally. Took time to make a more religious bent to his life and other such doings. Not unlike a number of other performers from that period who tired of the road or got discouraged with the small crowds, or lost the folk spirit. Probably as many reasons as individuals to give them. Then Thompson, they, years later had an epiphany or something, got the juices flowing again and came back on the road. That fact is to the good for old time folk (and rock) aficionados like me.
What that fact of returning to the road by Thompson and a slew of others has meant is that my friend and I, (okay, okay my sweetie who prefers that I call her my soulmate but that is just between us so “friend”) now have many opportunities to see acts like Thompson’s Trio, his current band configuration, to see if we think they still “have it” (along with acts of those who never left the road like Bob Dylan who apparently is on an endless tour whether we want him to do so or not). That idea got started about a decade ago when we saw another come-back kid, Geoff Muldaur of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, solo, who had taken something twenty years off. He had it. So we started looking for whoever was left of the old folks acts (rock and blues too) to check out that question-unfortunately the actuarial tables took their toll before we could see some of them at least one last time like Dave Von Ronk.
That brings us back to Richard Thompson. Recently we got a chance to see him in a cabaret setting with tables and good views from every position, at least on in the orchestra section, at the Wilbur Theater in Boston with his trio, a big brush drummer and an all-around side guitar player (and other instruments like the mando). Thompson broke the performance up into two parts, a solo set of six or seven numbers highlighted by Vincent Black Lightning, and Dimming Of The Day which were fine. The second part based on a new album and a bunch of his well-known rock standards left us shaking our heads. Maybe the room could not handle that much sound, although David Bromberg’s five piece band handled it well a couple of weeks before, or maybe it was the melodically sameness of the songs and the same delivery voice and style but we were frankly disappointed and not disappointed to leave at the encore. Most tunes didn’t resonant although a few in all honesty did but we walked out of the theater with our hands in our pockets. No thumbs up or down based on that first old time set. However, damn it, Bob Dylan does not have to move over, now.
Which brings us to a later sketch I did based on Brother Thompson’s glorious Vincent Black Lightning. When I got home I began to revise that piece which I have included below.
Mimi’s Glance, Circa 1963
Mimi Murphy knew two things, she needed to keep moving, and she was tired, tired as hell of moving, of the need, of the self-impose need, to keep moving ever since that incident five years before, back in 1958, with her seems like an eternity ago sweet long gone motorcycle boy, her “walking daddy,” Pretty James Preston, although he as long as she had known him never walked a step when his “baby,” his bike was within arm’s length. I knew this information, knew this information practically first hand because the usually polite but loner Mimi Murphy had told me her thoughts and the story that went with it one night after she had finished a tough on the feet night working as a cashier at concession stand the Olde Saco Drive-In Theater out on Route One in Olde Saco, Maine.
That night, early morning really, she had passed me going up to her room with a bottle of high-end Scotch, Haig& Haig, showing its label from a brown bag in her hand while I was going down the stairs in the rooming house we lived in on Water Street in Ocean City, a few miles from Olde Saco. A number of people, including Mimi and me, were camped out there in temporary room quarters after the last of the summer touristas had decamped and headed back to New York, or wherever they came from. The cheap off-season rent and the short stay-until-the-next-summer-crowd-showed-up requiring no lease drew us there. Most residents, mostly young and seemingly unattached to any family or work life kept to themselves, private drinkers or druggies (probably not grass since I never smelled the stuff which I had a nose for from youthful smoke-filled dreams while I was there so coke, opium, speed, maybe horse although I saw no obvious needle marks on arms or cold turkey screams either), a couple of low profile good looking young hustling girls, probably just graduating from amateur status and still not jaded “tarts” as my father used to call them, who didn’t bring their work home, guys maybe just out of the service, or between jobs, and so on. I had seen a couple of guys, young guys with horny looks in their eyes, maybe an idea of making a play, making passes at Mimi but thought nothing of it since they also targeted the hustling girls too.
Since I had never bothered Mimi, meaning made a pass at her, she must have sensed that being contemporaries, she was twenty-one then and I twenty-two, that maybe she could unburden her travails on a fellow wayward traveler. That no making a pass business by the way due to the fact that slender, no, skinny and flat-chested Irish red-heads with faraway looks like Mimi with no, no apparent, warm bed desires, that year and in those days not being my type after tumbledown broken-hearted youthful years of trying to coax their Irish Catholic rosary bead novena favors to no avail over in the old Little Dublin neighborhood around the Acre in Olde Saco.
Whatever she sensed and she was pretty closed-mouth about it when I asked her later she was right about my ability to hear the woes of another wanderer without hassles, and she did as she invited me up into her room with no come hither look (unlike those pretty hustling girls who made a profession of the “come hither look” and gave me a try-out which after proving futile turned into small courtesy smiles when we passed each other). But she showed no fear, no apparent fear, anyway.
After a couple of drinks, maybe three, of that dreamboat scotch that died easy going down she loosened up, taking her shoes off before sitting down on the couch across from me. For the interested I had been down on my uppers for a while and was drinking strictly rotgut low-shelf liquor store wines and barroom half empty glass left-overs so that stuff was manna from heaven I can still taste now but that is my story and not Mimi’s so I will move on. Here is the gist of what she had to say as I remember it that night:
She started out giving her facts of life facts like that she had grown up around this Podunk town outside of Boston, Adamsville Junction, and had come from a pretty pious Roman Catholic Irish family that had hopes that she (or one of her three younger sisters, but mainly she) might “have the vocation,” meaning be willing, for the Lord, to prison cloister herself up in some nunnery to ease the family’s way into heaven, or some such idea. And she had bought into the idea from about age seven to about fourteen by being the best student, boy or girl, in catechism class on Sunday, queen of the novenas, and pure stuff like that in church and the smartest girl in, successively, Adamsville South Elementary School, Adamsville Central Junior High, and the sophomore class at Adamsville Junction High School.
As she unwound this part of her story I could see where that part was not all that different from what I had encountered in my French-Canadian (mother, nee LeBlanc) Roman Catholic neighborhood over in the Acre in Olde Saco. I could also see, as she loosened up further with an additional drink, that, although she wasn’t beautiful, certain kinds of guys would find her very attractive and would want to get close to her, if she let them. Just the kind of gal I used to go for before I took the pledge against Irish girls with far-away looks, and maybe red hair too.
About age fourteen thought after she had gotten her “friend” (her period for those who may be befuddled by this old time term) and started thinking, thinking hard about boys, or rather seeing that they, some of them, were thinking about her and not novenas and textbooks her either she started to get “the itch.” That itch that is the right of passage for every guy on his way to manhood. And girl on her way to womanhood as it turned out but which in the Irish Roman Catholic Adamsville Junction Murphy family neighborhood was kept as a big, dark secret from boys and girls alike.
Around that time, to the consternation of her nun blessed family, she starting dating Jimmy Clancy, a son of the neighborhood and a guy who was attracted to her because she was, well, pure and smart. She never said whether Jimmy had the itch, or if he did how bad, because what she made a point out of was that being Jimmy’s girl while nice, especially when they would go over Adamsville Beach and do a little off-hand petting and watching the ocean, did not cure her itch, not even close. This went on for a couple of years until she was sixteen and really frustrated, not by Jimmy so much as by the taboos and restrictions that had been placed on her life in her straight-jacket household, school and town. (Welcome to the club, sister, your story is legion) No question she was ready to break out, she just didn’t know how.
Then in late 1957 Pretty James Preston came roaring into town. Pretty James, who despite the name, was a tough motorcycle wild boy, man really about twenty-one, who had all, okay most all, of the girls, good girls and bad, wishing and dreaming, maybe having more than a few restless sweaty nights, about riding on back of that strange motorcycle he rode (a Vincent Black Lightning, a bike made in England which would put any Harley hog to shame from rev number one when I looked for information about the beast later, stolen, not by Pretty James but by third parties, from some English with dough guy and transported to America where he got it somehow, the details were very vague about where he got it, not from her, him) and being Pretty James’ girl. One day, as he passed by on his chopper going full-throttle up Hancock Street, Mimi too got the Pretty James itch.
But see it was not like you could just and throw yourself at Pretty James that was not the way he worked, no way. One girl, one girl from a good family who had her sent away after the episode, tried that and was left about thirty miles away, half-naked, after she thought she had made the right moves and was laughed at by Pretty James as he took off with her expensive blouse and skirt flying off his handle-bars as he left her there unmolested but unhinged. That episode went like wildfire through the town, through the Monday morning before school girls’ lav what happened, or didn’t happen, over the weekend talkfest first of all.
No Pretty James’ way was to take, take what he saw, once he saw something worth taking and that was that. Mimi figured she was no dice. Then one night when she and Jimmy Clancy were sitting by the seawall down at the Seal Rock end of the beach starting to do their little “light petting” routine Pretty James came roaring up on his hellish machine and just sat there in front of the pair, saying nothing. But saying everything. Mimi didn’t say a word to Jimmy but just started walking over to the cycle, straddled her legs over back seat saddle and off they went into the night. Later that night her itch was cured, or rather cured for the first time.
Pouring another drink Mimi sighed poor Pretty James and his needs, no his obsessions with that silly motorcycle, that English devil’s machine, that Vincent Black Lightning that caused him more anguish than she did. And she had given him plenty to think about as well before the end. How she tried to get him to settle down a little, just a little, but what was a sixteen-year old girl, pretty new to the love game, totally new, new but not complaining to the sex game, and his well-worn little tricks to get her in the mood, and make her forget the settle down thing. Until the next time she thought about it and brought it up.
Maybe, if you were from around Adamsville way, or maybe just Boston, you had heard about Pretty James, Pretty James Preston and his daring exploits back in about 1957 and 1958. Those got a lot of play in the newspapers for months before the end. Before that bank job, the one where as Mimi said Pretty James used to say all the time, he “cashed his check.” Yes, the big Granite City National Bank branch in Braintree heist that he tried to pull all by himself, with Mimi as stooge look-out. She had set him up for that heist, or so she thought. No, she didn’t ask him to do it but she got him thinking, thinking about settling down just a little and if that was to happen he needed a big score, not the penny ante gas station and mom and pop variety store robberies that kept them in, as he also used to say, “coffee and cakes” but a big payday and then off to Mexico, maybe down Sonora way, and a buy into the respectable and growing drug trade.
And he almost, almost, got away clean that fatal day, that day when she stood across the street, an extra forty-five in her purse just in case he needed it for a final getaway. She never having handled a gun mush less fired one was scared stiff it might go off in that purse although she Pretty James had her in such a state that she would have emptied the damn thing if it would have done any good. But he never made it out the bank door. Some rum brave security guard tried to uphold the honor of his profession and started shooting nicking Pretty James in the shoulder. Pretty James responded with a few quick blasts and felled the copper. That action though slowed down the escape enough for the real coppers to respond and blow Pretty James away. Dead, DOA, done. Her, with a tear, sweet boy Pretty James.
According to the newspapers a tall, slender red-headed girl about sixteen had been seen across the street from the bank just waiting, waiting according to the witness, nervously. The witness had turned her head when she heard the shots from the bank and when she looked back the red-headed girl was gone. And Mimi was gone, maybe an accessory to felony murder or worst charge hanging over her young head, and long gone before the day was out. She grabbed the first bus out of Braintree headed to Boston where eventually she wound up holed up in a high-end whorehouse doing tricks to make some moving on dough. (She mentioned some funny things about that stay, which was not so bad at the time when she needed dough bad, and about strange things guys, young and old, wanted her to do but I will leave that stuff out here.)
And she had been moving ever since, moving and eternally hate moving. Now, for the past few months, she had been working nights as a cashier in the refreshment stand at Olde Saco Drive-In to get another stake to keep moving. She had been tempted, a couple of times, to do a little moon-lighting in a Portland whorehouse that a woman she had worked with at her last job, Fenner’s Department Store, where she modeled clothes for the rich ladies, had told her about to get a quick stake but she was almost as eternally tired at that prospect as in moving once again.
And so Mimi Murphy, a few drinks of high-shelf scotch to fortify her told her story, told it true I think, mostly. A couple of days later I saw her through my room’s window with a suitcase in hand looking for all the world like someone getting ready to move on, move on to be a loner again after maybe an indiscrete airing of her linen in public. Thinking back on it now I wish, I truly wish, that I had been more into slender, no skinny, red-headed Irish girls with faraway looks that season and maybe she would not have had to keep moving, eternally moving.
ARTIST: Richard Thompson
TITLE: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like
Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme
And he pulled her on behind
And down to Box Hill they did ride
/ A - - - D - / - - - - A - / : / E - D A /
/ E - D A - / Bm - D - / - - - - A - - - /
Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man
I've fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine
Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22
And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride
Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae
For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside
Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside
When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride
Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do
They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
Sam Eaton, once he got “religion” on the questions of war and peace after a close high school friend in Carver was killed in the jungles of Vietnam in 1968, and Ralph Morris, once he had served in Vietnam after having become totally disenchanted with the war effort and had been discharged back to Troy, New York in 1970 were both very interested in left-wing anti-war politics, in studying about how previous generations fought against the highly-charged war blood lust currents that periodically burned over the American landscape.
Sam, exempt from the military draft since he was the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters after his father had passed away suddenly of a heart attack in 1965, who had been prior to his friend Jeff Mullin’s death been very political in a conventional way but somewhat indifferent to the war blazing all around him in this country as well as in Vietnam and Ralph who was as gung-ho as any naïve young soldier before the “shit hit the fan” (his expression) when he went into Vietnam had met down in Washington, D.C.
Had met under frankly odd circumstances, circumstances which kind of came with the times when people who ordinarily would not run into each other did so as they came to oppose the war in Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, home of the Washington Redskins football team after they had been arrested in different incidents during the May Day 1971 actions. The idea behind those actions by those like Sam and Ralph who were enraged by the continuation of the war was to attempt to close down the government if it did not close down the war. For their efforts, Sam trying to help close down Massachusetts Avenue a main thoroughfare and Ralph at an action at the White House (which his group never got close to), along with thousands of others were placed in the bastinado for several days without much food or shelter and without the quick release demanded by law for such minor infractions (in the event they had actually just walked out of a side exit one day and nobody stopped them, some kind of poetic justice, since law enforcement was totally overworked out on the streets). They had met in some forlorn line when Ralph noticed that Sam had a Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) button on his lapel and had asked him whether he was a member. Sam told him why he was a supporter of VVAW after Ralph told him he was a member and had taken part in a couple of actions on the streets that made people freeze in their tracks when they saw the long lines of anti-war veterans, some on crutches and others in wheelchairs silently marching as was a tactic of the time. That meeting in any case formed a lifelong friendship as Ralph recently had mentioned to Sam when they met for one of their periodic Boston meetings when Ralph came to town.
That May Day event more than any other of the actions which they had participated in during those years was pivotal in bringing them to an understanding that if you were going to take on the government then you had better have more than a few thousand committed souls with you and better be better prepared, damn better, when the “shit hits the fan” (again Ralph’s expression). So they both started to hit the books, to read old time left-wing Socialist and Communist literature to get a fix on things that went wrong with May Day (although Ralph admitted he was not much of a reader of such materials he did plod through the stuff and still remembered a fair amount of it). They would talk about what they had read between themselves and even began to attend study classes provided by a collective in Cambridge (the Red Book collective some of whose members are still around Cambridge although not "red" but aging faculty members at local colleges if anybody is asking) where both young men were staying for the summer of 1972.
Sam and Ralph were especially intrigued by the work that left-wing political organizations did in recruiting young people to the cause, a task that would have made it far easier for them to get involved if such organizations had existed in their respective growing up towns of Carver, Massachusetts and Troy, New York. So for a while they were all abuzz with thoughts of the Socialist and Communist youth organizations, especially when they read about Spain the 1930s and the key role left-wing youth played there and on the battle fronts. Although both would slide away from 24/7 type politics that had driven them early in the decade later in the decade as the aura of 1960s confrontation faded back into “normalcy” and they began careers and families they for a time considered themselves “left-wing youth,” maybe even communist youth although that designation was a tough dollar to swallow given their backgrounds.
During that period Sam, more of a writer than Ralph, wrote up some materials about their experiences. He more recently in the age of the Internet got involved with a blog, American Socialist History, which was accumulating stories about anything related to socialist youth in the 1960s and Sam had written another short piece for that publication. Here is what he had to say:
“One of the declared purposes of this blog is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past, spotty and incomplete as they may be, here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-socialist and communist wing. And particularly how to draw the young into the struggle. Historically these lessons would be centrally derived from the revolutions of 1848 in Europe, especially in France, the Paris Commune of 1871, and most vividly under the impact of the Lenin and Trotsky-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, a world historic achievement for the international working class whose subsequent demise was of necessity a world-historic defeat for that same class. To that end I have made commentaries and provided some archival works in this space in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over.
More importantly, for the long haul, and unfortunately given that same spotty and incomplete past the long haul is what appears to be the time frame that this old militant will have to concede that we need to think about, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common socialist future. An education that masses of previous generations of youth undertook gladly but which now is reduced to a precious few. That is, beside the question of numbers, in any case no small or easy task given the differences of generations (the missing transmission generation problem between the generation of ’68 who tried unsuccessfully to turn the world upside down and failed, the missing “in between” generation raised on Reagan rations and today’s desperate youth in need of all kinds of help); differences of political milieus worked in (another missing link situation with the attenuation of the links to the old mass socialist and communist organizations decimated by the red scare Cold War 1950s "night of the long knives" through the new old New Left of the 1960s and little notable organizational connections since); differences of social structure to work around (the serious erosion of the industrial working class in America, the rise of the white collar service sector, the now organically chronically unemployed, and the rise of the technocrats); and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses (today’s computer, cellphone, and social networking savvy youth using those assets as tools for organizing).
There is no question that back in my youth in the 1960s I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available on-line at the press of a button today. When I developed political consciousness very early on in my youth, albeit a liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.
As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically worrying more about a possible cushy career on the backstairs of politics. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I vaguely knew they were around from my readings but not in my area. In any case the aura of the red scare was still around so it is a toss-up if I had known about those groups that I would have contacted them.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me on-line and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a left-wing youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become radicals with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
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Third Congress of the Communist International
The Communist International and the Communist Youth Movement
Source: Theses Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congress of the Third International, translated by Alix Holt and Barbara Holland. Ink Links 1980;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
12 July 1921
1 The young socialist movement came into existence as a result of the steadily increasing capitalist exploitation of young workers and also of the growth of bourgeois militarism. The movement was a reaction against attempts to poison the minds of young workers with bourgeois nationalist ideology and against the tendency of most of the social-democratic parties and the trade unions to neglect the economic, political and cultural demands of young workers.
In most countries the social-democratic parties and the unions, which were growing increasingly opportunist and revisionist, took no part in establishing young socialist organisations, and in certain countries they even opposed the creation of a youth movement. The reformist social-democratic parties and trade unions saw the independent revolutionary socialist youth organisations as a serious threat to their opportunist policies. They sought to introduce a bureaucratic control over the youth organisations and destroy their independence, thus stifling the movement, changing its character and adapting it to social-democratic politics.
2 As a result of the imperialist war and the positions taken towards it by social democracy almost everywhere, the contradictions between the social-democratic parties and the international revolutionary organisations inevitably grew and eventually led to open conflict. The living conditions of young workers sharply deteriorated; there was mobilisation and military service on the one hand, and, on the other, the increasing exploitation in the munitions industries and militarisation of civilian life. The most class-conscious young socialists opposed the war and the nationalist propaganda. They dissociated themselves from the social-democratic parties and undertook independent political activity (the International Youth Conferences at Berne in 1915 and Jena in 1916).
In their struggle against the war, the young socialist organisations were supported by the most dedicated revolutionary groups and became an important focus for the revolutionary forces. In most countries no revolutionary parties existed and the youth organisations took over their role; they became independent political organisations and acted as the vanguard in the revolutionary struggle.
3 With the establishment of the Communist International and, in some countries, of Communist Parties, the role of the revolutionary youth organisations changes. Young workers, because of their economic position and because of their psychological make-up, are more easily won to Communist ideas and are quicker to show enthusiasm for revolutionary struggle than adult workers. Nevertheless, the youth movement relinquishes to the Communist Parties its vanguard role of organising independent activity and providing political leadership. The further existence of Young Communist organisations as politically independent and leading organisations would mean that two Communist Parties existed, in competition with one another and differing only in the age of their membership.
4 At the present time the role of the Young Communist movement is to organise the mass of young workers, educate them in the ideas of Communism, and draw them into the struggle for the Communist revolution.
The Communist youth organisations can no longer limit themselves to working in small propaganda circles. They must win the broad masses of workers by conducting a permanent campaign of agitation, using the newest methods. In conjunction with the Communist Parties and the trade unions, they must organise the economic struggle.
The new tasks of the Communist youth organisations require that their educational work be extended and intensified. The members of the youth movement receive their Communist education on the one hand through active participation in all revolutionary struggles and on the other through a study of Marxist theory.
Another important task facing the Young Communist organisations in the immediate future is to break the hold of centrist and social-patriotic ideas on young workers and free the movement from the influences of the social-democratic officials and youth leaders. At the same time, the Young Communist organisations must do everything they can to ‘rejuvenate’ the Communist Parties by parting with their older members, who then join the adult Parties.
The Young Communist organisations participate in the discussion of all political questions, help build the Communist Parties and take part in all revolutionary activity and struggle. This is the main difference between them and the youth sections of the centrist and socialist unions.
5 The relations between the Young Communist organisations and the Communist Party are fundamentally different from those between the revolutionary young socialist organisations and the social-democratic parties. In the common struggle to hasten the proletarian revolution, the greatest unity and strictest centralisation are essential. Political leadership at the international level must belong to the Communist International and at the national level to the respective national sections.
It is the duty of the Young Communist organisations to follow this political leadership (its programme, tactics and political directives) and merge with the general revolutionary front. The Communist Parties are at different stages of development and therefore the Executive Committee of the Communist International and the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International should apply this principle in accordance with the circumstances obtaining in each particular case.
The Young Communist movement has begun to organise its members according to the principle of strict centralisation and in its relations with the Communist International – the leader and bearer of the proletarian revolution – it will be governed by an iron discipline. All political and tactical questions are discussed in the ranks of the Communist youth organisation, which then takes a position and works in the Communist Party of its country in accordance with the resolutions passed by the Party, in no circumstance working against them.
If the Communist youth organisation has serious differences with the Communist Party, it has the right to appeal to the Executive Committee of the Communist International.
Loss of political independence in no way implies loss of the organisational independence which is so essential for political education.
Strong centralisation and effective unity are essential for the successful advancement of the revolutionary struggle, and therefore, in those countries where historical development has left the youth dependent upon the Party, the dependence should be preserved; differences between the two bodies are decided by the EC of the Communist International and the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International.
6 One of the most immediate and most important tasks of the Young Communist organisations is to fight the belief in political independence inherited from the period when the youth organisations enjoyed absolute autonomy, and which is still subscribed to by some members. The press and organisational apparatus of the Young Communist movement must be used to educate young workers to be responsible and active members of a united Communist Party.
At the present time the Communist youth organisations are beginning to attract increasing numbers of young workers and are developing into mass organisations; it is therefore important that they give the greatest possible time and effort to education.
7 Close co-operation between the Young Communist organisations and the Communist Parties in political work must be reflected in close organisational links. It is essential that each organisation should at all times be represented at all levels of the other organisation (from the central Party organs and district, regional and local organisations down to the cells of Communist groups and the trade unions) and particularly at all conferences and congresses.
In this way the Communist Parties will be able to exert a permanent influence on the movement and encourage political activity, while the youth organisations, in their turn, can influence the Party.
8 The relations established between the Communist Youth International and the Communist International are even closer than those between the individual Parties and their youth organisations. The Communist Youth International has to provide the Communist youth movement with a centralised leadership, offer moral and material support to individual unions, form Young Communist organisations where none has existed and publicise the Communist youth movement and its programme. The Communist Youth International is a section of the Communist International and, as such, is bound by the decisions of its congresses and its Central Committee. The Communist Youth International conducts its work within the framework of these decisions and thus passes on the political line of the Communist International to all its sections. A well-developed system of reciprocal representation and close and constant co-operation guarantees that the Communist Youth International will make gains in all the spheres of its activity (leadership, agitation, organisation and the work of strengthening and supporting the Communist youth organisations).
Click on the headline to link to a "Boston Sunday Globe" article, dated March 21, 2010, which details the relationship between Haiti and American during the revolutionary period.
Markin comments:
The political conclusions drawn by Ted Widmer in this article, as is to be expected, are off but the quick, detailed overview of the importance of Haiti a couple of centuries ago to the American revolution is a worthy point to make.
