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
***In Honor Of James Connelly On The
100th Anniversary Of The Easter Uprising-Commandant- Irish Citizens
Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916
A word on the Easter Uprising.
In the old Irish working-class
neighborhoods where I grew up the aborted Easter Uprising of 1916 was spoken of
in mythical hushed reverent tones as the key symbol of the modern Irish
liberation struggle from bloody England. The event itself provoked such
memories of heroic “boyos”(and “girlos”
not acknowledged) fighting to the end against great odds that a careful
analysis of what could, and could not be, learned from the mistakes made at the
time entered my head. That was then though in the glare of boyhood
infatuations. Now is the time for a more sober assessment.
The easy part of analyzing the Irish
Easter Uprising of 1916 is first and foremost the knowledge, in retrospect,
that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland, especially by the
“shawlies” in Dublin and the cities who received their sons’ military pay from
the Imperial British Army for service in the bloody trenches of Europe which
sustained them throughout the war. That factor and the relative ease with which
the uprising had been militarily defeated by the British forces send in main
force to crush it lead easily to the conclusion that the adventure was doomed
to failure. Still easier is to criticize the timing and the strategy and
tactics of the planned action and of the various actors, particularly in the
leadership’s underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any
opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. (Although, I think that frenzy
on Mother England’s part would be a point in the uprising’s favor under the
theory that England’s [or fill in the blank of your favorite later national
liberation struggle] woes were Ireland’s [or fill in the blank ditto on the
your favorite oppressed peoples struggle] opportunities.
The hard part is to draw any
positive lessons of that national liberation struggle experience for the
future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish
national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later,
including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in
their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were savagely committed
to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground
if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not part
of their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, cowardly British
Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor
Party leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that
James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British
militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and
others today is the same as then if somewhat attenuated- All British Troops
Out of Ireland.
In various readings on national
liberation struggles I have come across a theory that the Easter Uprising was
the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by
over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the
Uprising’s leaders only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause.
Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were
prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such
organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently
socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political
independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish
cultural hegemony. (“Let poets rule the land”).
As outlined in the famous
Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin,
Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the
order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a
left bourgeois republic. A formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 where
the working class momentarily took power or the Soviet Commune of 1917 which
lasted for a longer period did not figure in the political calculations at that
time. As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile
comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was
prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a
republic.
That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not
support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of
Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended
the uprising against those who derided the Easter rising for involving
bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is
in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned
by militants today, is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what
program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own experiences in
Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of
society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a
heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist
nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the
socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord in war as
a way to open the road to the class struggle merited support on that basis
alone. Chocky Ar La.
"James Connolly"
The man was all shot through that
came to day into the Barrack Square
And a soldier I, I am not proud to
say that we killed him there
They brought him from the prison
hospital and to see him in that chair
I swear his smile would, would far
more quickly call a man to prayer
Maybe, maybe I don't understand this
thing that makes these rebels die
Yet all men love freedom and the
spring clear in the sky
I wouldn't do this deed again for
all that I hold by
As I gazed down my rifle at his
breast but then, then a soldier I.
They say he was different, kindly
too apart from all the rest.
A lover of the poor-his wounds ill
dressed.
He faced us like a man who knew a
greater pain
Than blows or bullets ere the world
began: died he in vain
Ready, Present, and him just
smiling, Christ I felt my rifle shake
His wounds all open and around his
chair a pool of blood
And I swear his lips said,
"fire" before my rifle shot that cursed lead
And I, I was picked to kill a man
like that, James Connolly
A great crowd had gathered outside
of Kilmainham
Their heads all uncovered, they
knelt to the ground.
For inside that grim prison
Lay a great Irish soldier
His life for his country about to
lay down.
He went to his death like a true son
of Ireland
The firing party he bravely did face
Then the order rang out: Present
arms and fire
James Connolly fell into a
ready-made grave
The black flag was hoisted, the
cruel deed was over
Gone was the man who loved Ireland
so well
There was many a sad heart in Dublin
that morning
When they murdered James Connolly-.
the Irish rebel
"James Connolly"
Marchin' down O'Connell Street with
the Starry Plough on high
There goes the Citizen Army with
their fists raised in the sky
Leading them is a mighty man with a
mad rage in his eye
"My name is James Connolly - I
didn't come here to die
But to fight for the rights of the
working man
And the small farmer too
Protect the proletariat from the
bosses and their screws
So hold on to your rifles, boys, and
don't give up your dream
Of a Republic for the workin' class,
economic liberty"
Then Jem yelled out "Oh
Citizens, this system is a curse
An English boss is a monster, an
Irish one even worse
They'll never lock us out again and
here's the reason why
My name is James Connolly, I didn't
come here to die....."
And now we're in the GPO with the
bullets whizzin' by
With Pearse and Sean McDermott
biddin' each other goodbye
Up steps our citizen leader and
roars out to the sky
"My name is James Connolly, I
didn't come here to die...
Oh Lily, I don't want to die, we've
got so much to live for
And I know we're all goin' out to
get slaughtered, but I just can't take any more
Just the sight of one more child
screamin' from hunger in a Dublin slum
Or his mother slavin' 14 hours a day
for the scum
Who exploit her and take her youth
and throw it on a factory floor
Oh Lily, I just can't take any more
They've locked us out, they've
banned our unions, they even treat their animals better than us
No! It's far better to die like a
man on your feet than to live forever like some slave on your knees, Lilly
But don't let them wrap any green
flag around me
And for God's sake, don't let them
bury me in some field full of harps and shamrocks
And whatever you do, don't let them
make a martyr out of me
No! Rather raise the Starry Plough
on high, sing a song of freedom
Here's to you, Lily, the rights of
man and international revolution"
We fought them to a standstill while
the flames lit up the sky
'Til a bullet pierced our leader and
we gave up the fight
They shot him in Kilmainham jail but
they'll never stop his cry
My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to
die...."
Black Lives Matter-The Late Class-War Prisoner Mondo we Langa's -"When It Gets To This Point"
Workers Vanguard No. 1086
25 March 2016
“When It Gets to This Point”
by Mondo we Langa
Michael Brown? I had never heard of him had never heard of anything he’d done before the news of his death came whoever he might have become whatever he might have achieved had he lived longer not been riddled lifeless by bullets from Darren Wilson’s gun and crumpled on the pavement of a ferguson street for more than four hours in the heat of that august day and before I’d never heard of Trayvon Martin had known nothing of who he was until I learned of his demise and cause of death a bullet to the chest George Zimmerman, the shooter a badge-less, pretend police with a pistol and fear of the darkness Trayvon’s darkness and after a while the pictures, the names, the circumstances run together like so much colored laundry in the wash that bleeds on whites
was it Eric Garner or Tamir Rice who was twelve but seen as twenty Hulk Hogan or The Hulk with demonic eyes it was said who shrank the cop in ferguson into a five-year-old who had to shoot just had to shoot and John Crawford the third in a walmart store aisle and air rifle in his hands he’d pick up from the shelf and held in the open in an open-carry state was it John or someone else killed supposedly by mistake in a dark stairwell I know Akai Gurley fell I hadn’t heard of him before nor of Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell prior to their killings which of these two took slugs in the greater number I don’t recall my mind is too encumbered with the names of so many more before and since
the frequent news reports of non-arrests, non-indictments, non-true bills and duplicitous presentations by “experts in the field” the consultants put out front to explain away that which is so often plain as day to coax and convince us that we’re the ones who can’t see straight and can’t hear clearly who are the ones replacing facts with spin to mislead and mystify as the beatings and the chokings and shootings of our boys and men by these wrong arms of the law proceed in orderly fashion before the sometimes sad sometimes angry faces of our uncertain our hesitant disbelief.
*****Victory To The Fast-Food Workers The Vanguard Of The Fight For $15......Fight For $15 Is Just A Beginning-All Labor Must Support Our Sisters And Brothers
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Frank Jackman had always ever since he was a kid down in Carver, a working class town formerly a shoe factory mecca about thirty miles south of Boston and later dotted with assorted small shops related to the shipbuilding trade, a very strong supporters of anything involving organized labor and organizing labor, anything that might push working people ahead. While it had taken it a long time, and some serious military service during the Vietnam War, his generation’s war, to get on the right side of the angels on the war issue and even more painfully and slowly on the woman’s liberation and gay rights issues, and he was still having a tough time with the transgender thing although the plight of heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower Army soldier Chelsea Manning had made it easier to express solidarity, he had always been a stand-up guy for unions and for working people. Maybe it was because his late father, Lawrence Jackman, had been born and raised in coal country down in Harlan County, Kentucky where knowing which side you were on, knowing that picket lines mean don’t cross, knowing that every scrap given by the bosses had been paid for in blood and so it was in his blood. Maybe though it was closer to the nub, closer to home, that the closing of the heavily unionized shoe factories which either headed down south or off-shore left slim leaving for those who did not follow them south, slim pickings for an uneducated man like his father trying to raise four daughters and son on hopes and dreams and not much else. Those hopes and dreams leaving his mother to work in the “mother’s don’t work” 1950s at a local donut shop filling donuts for chrissakes to help make ends meet so his was always aware of how close the different between work and no work was, and decent pay for decent work too. How ever he got “religion” on the question as a kid, and he suspected the answer was in the DNA, Frank was always at the ready when the latest labor struggles erupted, the latest recently being the sporadic uprisings amount fast-food workers and lowly-paid Walmart workers to earn a living wage.
One day in the late summer of 2014 he had picked up a leaflet from a young guy, a young guy who later identified himself as a field organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a union filled to the brim with low-end workers like janitors, nurses assistants, salespeople, and the like, passing them out at an anti-war rally (against the American escalations in Syria and Iraq) in downtown Boston. The leaflet after giving some useful information about how poorly fast-food worker were paid and how paltry the benefits, especially the lack of health insurance announced an upcoming “Fight for $15” action in Downtown Boston on September 4, 2014 at noon as part of a national struggle for economic justice and dignity for the our hard working sisters and brothers. He told the young organizer after expressing solidarity with the upcoming efforts that he would try to bring others to the event although being held during a workday would be hard for some to make the time.
In the event Frank brought about a dozen others with him. They and maybe fifty to one hundred others during the course of the event stood in solidarity for a couple of hours while a cohort of fast-food workers told their stories. And while another cohort of fast-food workers were sitting on the ground in protest prepared to commit civil disobedience by blocking the street to make their point. Several of them would eventually be arrested and taken away by the police later to be fined and released.
Frank, when he reflected on the day’s events later, was pretty elated as he told his old friend Josh Breslin whom he had called up in Maine to tell him what had happened that day. Josh had also grown up in a factory town, a textile town, Olde Saco, and had been to many such support events himself and before he retired had as a free-lance writer written up lots of labor stories. The key ingredient that impressed Josh in Frank’s description had been how many young serious black and Latino workers had participated in the actions. Later than night when Frank reflected further on the situation he broke out in a smile as he was writing up his summary of his take on the events. There would be people pass off the torch to when guys like him and Josh were no longer around. He had been afraid that would not happen after the long drought doldrums in the class struggle of the previous few decades. Here is what else he had to say:
No question in this wicked old world that those at the bottom are “the forgotten ones,” “los olvidados,” those who a writer who had worked among them had long ago correctly described as the world fellahin, the ones who never get ahead. This day we are talking about working people, people working and working hard for eight, nine, ten dollars an hour. Maybe working two jobs to make ends meet since a lot of times these McJobs, these Wal-Mart jobs do not come with forty hours of work attached but whatever some cost-cutting manager deems right to keep them on a string and keep them from qualifying for certain benefits that do not kick in with “part-time” work. And lately taking advantage of cover from Obamacare keeping the hours below the threshold necessary to kick in health insurance and other benefits. Yes, the forgotten people.
But let’s do the math here figuring on forty hours and figuring on say ten dollars an hour. That‘s four hundred a week times fifty weeks (okay so I am rounding off for estimate purposes here too since most of these jobs do not have vacation time figured in).That’s twenty thousand a year. Okay so just figure any kind of decent apartment in the Boston area where I am writing this-say one thousand a month. That’s twelve thousand a year. So the other eight thousand is for everything else. No way can that be done. And if you had listened to the young and not so young fast-food workers, the working mothers, the working older brothers taking care of younger siblings, workers trying to go to school to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty you would understand the truth of that statement. And the stories went on and on along that line all during the action.
Confession: it has been a very long time since I have had to scrimp and scrim to make ends meet, to get the rent in, to keep those damn bill-collectors away from my door, to beg the utility companies to not shut off those necessary services. But I have been there, no question. Growing up working class town poor, the only difference on the economic question was that it was all poor whites unlike today’s crowd. Also for many years living from hand to mouth before things got steady. I did not like it then and I do not like the idea of it now. I am here to say even the “Fight for $15” is not enough, but it is a start. And I whole-heartedly support the struggle of my sisters and brothers for a little economic justice in this wicked old world. And any reader who might read this-would you work for these slave wages? I think not. So show your solidarity and get out and support the fast-food and Wal-Mart workers in their just struggles.
Organize Wal-Mart! Organize the fast food workers! Union! Union!
*****Victory To The Fast-Food Workers The Vanguard Of The Fight For $15......Fight For $15 Is Just A Beginning-All Labor Must Support Our Sisters And Brothers
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Frank Jackman had always ever since he was a kid down in Carver, a working class town formerly a shoe factory mecca about thirty miles south of Boston and later dotted with assorted small shops related to the shipbuilding trade, a very strong supporters of anything involving organized labor and organizing labor, anything that might push working people ahead. While it had taken it a long time, and some serious military service during the Vietnam War, his generation’s war, to get on the right side of the angels on the war issue and even more painfully and slowly on the woman’s liberation and gay rights issues, and he was still having a tough time with the transgender thing although the plight of heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower Army soldier Chelsea Manning had made it easier to express solidarity, he had always been a stand-up guy for unions and for working people. Maybe it was because his late father, Lawrence Jackman, had been born and raised in coal country down in Harlan County, Kentucky where knowing which side you were on, knowing that picket lines mean don’t cross, knowing that every scrap given by the bosses had been paid for in blood and so it was in his blood. Maybe though it was closer to the nub, closer to home, that the closing of the heavily unionized shoe factories which either headed down south or off-shore left slim leaving for those who did not follow them south, slim pickings for an uneducated man like his father trying to raise four daughters and son on hopes and dreams and not much else. Those hopes and dreams leaving his mother to work in the “mother’s don’t work” 1950s at a local donut shop filling donuts for chrissakes to help make ends meet so his was always aware of how close the different between work and no work was, and decent pay for decent work too. How ever he got “religion” on the question as a kid, and he suspected the answer was in the DNA, Frank was always at the ready when the latest labor struggles erupted, the latest recently being the sporadic uprisings amount fast-food workers and lowly-paid Walmart workers to earn a living wage.
One day in the late summer of 2014 he had picked up a leaflet from a young guy, a young guy who later identified himself as a field organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a union filled to the brim with low-end workers like janitors, nurses assistants, salespeople, and the like, passing them out at an anti-war rally (against the American escalations in Syria and Iraq) in downtown Boston. The leaflet after giving some useful information about how poorly fast-food worker were paid and how paltry the benefits, especially the lack of health insurance announced an upcoming “Fight for $15” action in Downtown Boston on September 4, 2014 at noon as part of a national struggle for economic justice and dignity for the our hard working sisters and brothers. He told the young organizer after expressing solidarity with the upcoming efforts that he would try to bring others to the event although being held during a workday would be hard for some to make the time.
In the event Frank brought about a dozen others with him. They and maybe fifty to one hundred others during the course of the event stood in solidarity for a couple of hours while a cohort of fast-food workers told their stories. And while another cohort of fast-food workers were sitting on the ground in protest prepared to commit civil disobedience by blocking the street to make their point. Several of them would eventually be arrested and taken away by the police later to be fined and released.
Frank, when he reflected on the day’s events later, was pretty elated as he told his old friend Josh Breslin whom he had called up in Maine to tell him what had happened that day. Josh had also grown up in a factory town, a textile town, Olde Saco, and had been to many such support events himself and before he retired had as a free-lance writer written up lots of labor stories. The key ingredient that impressed Josh in Frank’s description had been how many young serious black and Latino workers had participated in the actions. Later than night when Frank reflected further on the situation he broke out in a smile as he was writing up his summary of his take on the events. There would be people pass off the torch to when guys like him and Josh were no longer around. He had been afraid that would not happen after the long drought doldrums in the class struggle of the previous few decades. Here is what else he had to say:
No question in this wicked old world that those at the bottom are “the forgotten ones,” “los olvidados,” those who a writer who had worked among them had long ago correctly described as the world fellahin, the ones who never get ahead. This day we are talking about working people, people working and working hard for eight, nine, ten dollars an hour. Maybe working two jobs to make ends meet since a lot of times these McJobs, these Wal-Mart jobs do not come with forty hours of work attached but whatever some cost-cutting manager deems right to keep them on a string and keep them from qualifying for certain benefits that do not kick in with “part-time” work. And lately taking advantage of cover from Obamacare keeping the hours below the threshold necessary to kick in health insurance and other benefits. Yes, the forgotten people.
But let’s do the math here figuring on forty hours and figuring on say ten dollars an hour. That‘s four hundred a week times fifty weeks (okay so I am rounding off for estimate purposes here too since most of these jobs do not have vacation time figured in).That’s twenty thousand a year. Okay so just figure any kind of decent apartment in the Boston area where I am writing this-say one thousand a month. That’s twelve thousand a year. So the other eight thousand is for everything else. No way can that be done. And if you had listened to the young and not so young fast-food workers, the working mothers, the working older brothers taking care of younger siblings, workers trying to go to school to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty you would understand the truth of that statement. And the stories went on and on along that line all during the action.
Confession: it has been a very long time since I have had to scrimp and scrim to make ends meet, to get the rent in, to keep those damn bill-collectors away from my door, to beg the utility companies to not shut off those necessary services. But I have been there, no question. Growing up working class town poor, the only difference on the economic question was that it was all poor whites unlike today’s crowd. Also for many years living from hand to mouth before things got steady. I did not like it then and I do not like the idea of it now. I am here to say even the “Fight for $15” is not enough, but it is a start. And I whole-heartedly support the struggle of my sisters and brothers for a little economic justice in this wicked old world. And any reader who might read this-would you work for these slave wages? I think not. So show your solidarity and get out and support the fast-food and Wal-Mart workers in their just struggles.
Organize Wal-Mart! Organize the fast food workers! Union! Union!
*****John Brown’s Body Lies A Moldering In The Grave-With The Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment In Mind.
Every time I pass the frieze honoring the heroic Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment across from the State House on Beacon Street in Boston, a unit that fought in the American Civil War, a war which we have just finished commemorating the 150th anniversary of its formal ending (April 1865) I am struck by one figure who I will discuss in a minute. For those who do not know the 54th Regiment the unit had been recruited and made up of all volunteers, former slaves, freedmen, maybe a current fugitive slave snuck in there, those were such times for such unheralded personal valor, the recruitment a task that the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, himself an ex-slave had been central in promoting (including two of his sons). All knew, or soon became aware that if they did not fight to the finish they would not be treated as prisoners of war but captured chattel subject to re-enslavement or death.The regiment fought with ferocious valor before Fort Wagner down in South Carolina and other hot spots where an armed black man, in uniform or out, brought red flashes of deep venom, if venom is red, but hellfire hatred in any case to the Southern plantation owners and their hangers-on (that armed black men acting in self-defense of themselves and theirs still bringing hellfire hatred among some whites to this day, no question).
I almost automatically focus in on that old hard-bitten grizzled erect bearded soldier who is just beneath the head of the horse being ridden by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the white commander of the regiment who from a family of ardent abolitionists fell with his men before Fort Wagner and was buried with them, an honor. (See above) I do not know the details of the model Saint-Gauden’s used when he worked that section (I am sure that specific information can be found although it is not necessary to this sketch) but as I grow older I appreciate that old man soldier even more, as old men are supposed to leave the arduous duty of fighting for just causes, arms in hand, to the young.
I like to think that that old grizzled brother who aside from color looks like me when he heard the call from Massachusetts wherever he was, maybe had read about the plea in some abolitionist newspaper, had maybe even gotten the message from Frederick Douglass himself through his newspaper, The North Star, calling Sable Brother to Arms or on out the stump once Lincoln unleashed him to recruit his black brothers for whatever reason although depleting Union ranks reduced by bloody fight after bloody fight as is the nature of civil war when the societal norms are brokenas was at least one cause, he picked up stakes leaving some small farm or trade and family behind and volunteered forthwith. Maybe he had been born, like Douglass, in slavery and somehow, manumission, flight, something, following the Northern Star, got to the North. Maybe learned a skill, a useful skill, got a little education to be able to read and write and advance himself and had in his own way prospered.
But something was gnawing at him, something about the times, something about tow-headed white farm boys, all awkward and ignorant from the heartland of the Midwest, sullen Irish and other ethnic immigrants from the cities where it turned out the streets were not paved with gold and so took the bounty for Army duty, took some draft-dodger’s place for pay, hell, even high-blown Harvard boys were being armed to defend the Union (and the endless names of the fallen and endless battles sites on Memorial Hall at Harvard a graphic testament to that solemn sense of duty then). And more frequently as the days and months passed about the increasing number of white folk who hated, hated with a red-hot passion, slavery and if that passion meant anything what was he a strong black man going to do about it, do about breaking the hundreds of years chains. Maybe he still had kindred under the yolk down South in some sweated plantation, poorly fed, ill-treated, left to fester and die when not productive anymore, the women, young and old subject to Mister’s lustful appetites and he had to do something.
Then the call came, Governor Andrews of Massachusetts was raising a “sable” armed regiment (Douglass’ word) to be headed by a volunteer Harvard boy urged on by his high abolitionist parents, Colonel Shaw, the question of black military leadership of their own to be left to another day, another day long in the future as it turned out but what was he to know of that, and he shut down his small shop or farm, said good-bye to kin and neighbors and went to Boston to join freedom’s fight. I wonder if my old bearded soldier fell before Fort Wagner fight down in heated rebel country, or maybe fell in some other engagement less famous but just as important to the concept of disciplined armed black men fighting freedom’s fight. I like to think though that the grizzled old man used every bit of wit and skill he had and survived to march into Charleston, South Carolina, the fire-breathing heart of the Confederacy, then subdued at the end of war with his fellows in the 54th stepping off to the tune of John Brown’s Body Lies A-Moldering In The Grave. A fitting tribute to Captain Brown and his band of brother, black and white, at Harper’s Ferry fight and to an old grizzled bearded soldier’s honor.
A
Twice-Told Tale-With Katrina The Girl With The Sparkling Eyes In Mind
By
Zack James
Hey,
Phil Larkin, P.I. private eye to you here to give you the low-done on my lawyer
friend (and a guy I have worked for on a contract basis for several years), Tim
Clary, who has as usual let himself get in way over his head with a dame, a
young dame too, boot who has been leading him by the nose (or another more private
part if you ask me) for a few months now. Usually I like to make some commentary
but here I will just let him bask in his glory since apparently this time, this
one last time as the dame, Katrina, has said right along he has finally got
everything right-Good luck brother-and forget about “last time” with this one:
Sweetie-
some days it is great to be a lawyer, to actual help somebody, to help a damsel
in distress, you okay, and today is one of them. Yeah, to actually help somebody
without having to crush somebody else which is the usual case in our
adversarial legal system where in court one side wins and the other side loses
most of the time. Most days are like
that, dog eat dog, not at all like they tried to play with your head with in
law school about justice being blind and everybody is equal under the law.
And
it is not just the court system that is screwed up but I remember back when I
was doing more criminal cases starting out like a lot of young hungry lawyers looking
to get a start in the business and some guy, usually they were guys, was in
court on a drug charge, maybe trafficking, maybe possession of too much dope to
not be prosecuted like for kilos or something who would get up on the stand and
act all innocent (like I told him to do) and the prosecutor starts talking
about a couple of prior convictions for the same offenses that had been “continued
without a finding” (meaning they would go away if the guy kept his nose,
literally his nose in cocaine cases, clean for a period long enough to say he
was rehabilitated). Of course he never told me that little piece of information
when I had asked him about “priors” so naturally I looked like a fool when I
went to the bench and asked for some kind of plea bargain rather than the “not
guilty” I was looking for. Or the time a guy in all honesty (he was a little
simple-minded but not as much as he pretended) thought he had some kind of
constitutional right to have a pistol in his hand when he displayed it in a
7/11 store in Dracut and the clerk, scared out of her mind, though it was an
armed robbery as she handed over the money. It was, the guy had about six
“priors,” for various armed and unarmed robberies. Had a million cases like that.
Hell
later the civil case clients would still goof with me sometimes like when I did
a few divorce cases before I gave that up as too scary once I realized that I
would rather defend the low-rent criminals who at least were half honest when they
would lie, male or female it didn’t matter, about why they wanted a divorce.
Worse when it came to dividing up the property. Christ they fought tooth and
nail over a television set or some foolish piece of furniture. I won’t even go
into the “civil wars” when there were lawsuits between two unrelated parties
about ownership of land, or chattels. Worse when there were personal injury
cases (although “win or lose” I made good money on those cases I will admit)
and one party would almost ask the judge for the death penalty beside money
damages in the case for some car dent or whiplash back deal. Jesus.
You
will appreciate this one. I have to chuckle every time I think about Harry’s
case, or rather cases. Harry was from up your way, up in Bedford if I recall,
who had a small printing business in Lowell over on Merrimack Street by the
river in the Taylor Building (now converted to condos at some outrageous price
just because they had a river view but they were poorly constructed and I
wouldn’t live in one if you paid me). He was always coming to me to “negotiate”
with some customer who was not paying his or her bills. One time a big customer,
an independent book publisher, got behind on his payments, had as it turned out
made a bunch of bad decisions about what books would sell in the consumers’
market, and got so far behind in his bills that Harry took him to court,
rightfully so. When Harry got up on the stand to say his piece he, on his own,
started talking about putting the poor guy in now non-existent debtor’s prison
like something out of Charles Dickens’ Great
Expectations which you probably read in school.Like Harry had never heard of bankruptcy laws
(that the guy finally had to go to which was sad in a way because he had in his
younger days published some very good if not exactly best-seller books which is
always worthwhile). When I asked you about your situation in the hospital and whether
you could leave or were being held before you explained everything to my satisfaction
I thought of you as a Harry’s case for real.
You
know even this big deal case from Washington I am working on now that I keep
telling you I am busy on is a “one side wins, the other side loses” situation
(except me because I am getting paid, paid a lot, or I should say I shall get
paid a lot since I am working by the hour on the thing and so not dependent on
winning like in some cases I have had, some cases when I put a lot of time in
and got nothing for it when the client lost). It is about land, or really land
use which people come to me about since I won a case a while back, a big case
in Massachusetts, on appeal about who owned the land. Not a big case like the U.S.
Supreme Court case in Miranda, the
give you your rights case, or Lawrence,
the gay civil rights case, but a big land use case that lawyers still refer to
when they have what are called “adverse possession” cases. What that means in
laymen’s terms is that one guy used land for a long time, over twenty years,
thinking it was his but on the land deed it was really another guy’s. That
other guy showed no proof of active ownership so the first guy got possession.
What was important to the first guy, my guy, was that he have that land to sell
because a huge condo developer wanted the land but only if he could have all of
it undisputed. That is what the D.C. case is all about but the land use size is
much bigger, the developer wants to put 160 condos/townhouses up but needs a
disputed strip for a street between sections. Without that-no go.
But
enough of these law court “war stories” let’s get to why you should be happy
that I feel good to be a lawyer today. Last night I was talking to my
accountant about your situation, about the blizzard of e-mails we had sent back
and forth earlier in the day in order to made a plan to move forward and get
you out of “jail,” about what had been happening to you over the past couple of
weeks since you paid off that late insurance premium on your mother’s life
insurance policy. See I need his authorization from the law office accounts,
especially for a large sum like $2100. I have been keeping him “out of the
loop” on those bank transfer things that didn’t work because they were being
drawn off my credit cards which he doesn’t have control over (meaning he
doesn’t have to authorize use although he does need the monthly statements for
tax purposes, Christ, he always as you know wants some damn receipt for every
little thing).
By
the way when I told him about the failed bank transfers from my bank, Bank of
America (hereafter B of A), to your bank, Banco de Or, especially from Xoom which
he uses all the time and likes and which you said you were not in favor of
using he had the problem solves in a jiffy. That paperwork BOD (Banco de Oro)
wanted you to sign was because you had a savings account and not a checking
account. According to him there was no way Xoom or Bank of America (I mean B of
A) could transfer money from my bank account to yours because you didn’t have a
routing number. So what that local branch of BOD (Banco de Ora, okay) would
have wanted from you if you could have contacted them was to sign off on
paperwork to allow international bank transfers into your savings account. That
was all.
But
that wasn’t the reason he, my accountant, called me, although while I had him
the line I told him about your situation. You know about you being in the
hospital for stomach ulcers since you had not been eating, or had been fasting
for some reason, I don’t remember off-hand which it was, the former I think,
but basically not taking care of yourself because you had no dough to live on
until you cashed in on the $45,000 (sorry I don’t know how many pesos,
Philippine pesos that was, about 2,000,000 if I remember the conversion rate
correctly) insurance policy we had paid the premium on. That you had gone to
the hospital, taken I think by your brother and two cousins, Rufus, no, Ricky,
and Jonathan the night before you were supposed to get the big insurance pay-out
you were entitled too. Damn getting sick just when you were going to get financially
well. (Did you ever tell me your brother’s name I know he is a student and is
about seventeen, right?). They had taken you to the same hospital, Saint Tomas,
where your mother had been taken to before she passed away and which we had had
to buy off for $800 USD (United States dollars, 35,000 pesos right) in medical
bills before they would let you give her a proper burial.
My
accountant asked about which wing of the hospital you were being held at, the low-rent
charity ward or the “plush suites,” his terms since he knew the hospital from
trips to Manila on business, and I told him because we had pieced off the place
in your mother’s case with that 800
clams (35,000 pesos clams) before they let you be treated with the Mayfair
swells, you know the upper crust, in the nicer section (his saying “being held
at” like you were a prisoner which is as you know I thought until just
yesterday when you straightened me out and so I did the same for him about your
wanting to do everything by the book, legally).
Like
I said the real reason my accountant called was because he had received an
e-mail by some parish priest from that Quinpo (sorry if I misspelt it) church
your mother belonged to thanking me for sending the five years Mass Card who
although not familiar with your mother’s name, didn’t know her from Adam or Eve
from what my accountant said, was pleased that I had thought of her, one of
God’s children,and that of course on
her death anniversary day they would do their duty to her by saying a Mass in
her name. (I gave February 27th as her death date since that was the
day you left I think and if that is not right then that will still count for
her as her remembrance time anyway.) Of course you know I only did that out of
respect for you (and indirectly your brother whose name I don’t know, is it
Angel, maybe you did tell me). I have mentioned my feelings as an old-time
sinner myself about the Church before and I don’t want to get started on that
because that is not what this message to you is about. About great news not
ancient Catholic childhood mental wounds that have never properly healed. But
just be aware that as for your mother somebody is looking out for her when you
are away elsewhere.
Of
course since I have known my accountant for a long time and except when he goes
crazy over receipts and invoices he and I get along, and he has after all kept
me out of trouble, out of serious trouble anyway, he felt free to make his
usual “pussy-whipped” comment after I told him about your sad ass tale and your
various post insurance premium- related capers. You remember I hope that e-mail
I sent you one time about his comment about “thinking with cock, not my brain,”
in dealing with you once he saw how pretty you were and how nice too. Here is a
copy just in case you forgot what with your other worries and stuff:
“Hi Sweetie-hope things are going
well with you-thanks for the revealing photos of you. They certainly had my
woodie getting hard just thinking about those beautiful tits of yours (“Woodie”
that’s your word for cock right-I remember you calling it that once time when
we were talking before you left for the Philippines). Of course I would have to
have a closer inspection, a much closer inspection in order to confirm how nice
they are.
Now that the business stuff is over
let me tell you a story about why I was asking for revealing photos of you.
During this last insurance premium go-round my accountant said I was thinking with
“my cock and not my brain” in dealing with you what with all the zigzags we
went through.He didn’t exactly put it
that way but you know how guys talk about good-looking women and their desire
for themwhat he meant was that I was
pussy-whipped, “cyber-pussy-whipped” by you because every little request by you
for anything and I was calling him up day and night to see if it could be done
without getting into trouble. That got me to thinking back to the previous
photos that you had sent me of you before you went away. I was thinking that if
I was pussy-whipped (which you and I know I am not but rather just trying to
help a damsel in distress and will in the future too if necessary and we will
work out some kind of thing that will be okay for both of us so we are on the
same page) then I might as well have a look at the pussy I am being whipped by.
Sometime when you get a chance I would not a little photo like that. This would
be just between us but I would be able to laugh every time he went on and on about
stuff like that. You could do that for me sweetie I hope.
As usual when I have gone to
Washington I always get behind and so I have been working today to get caught
up on an interesting case I will tell you about sometime. I also jogged this
morning before the rain started here. If you can believe this and this is no
April Fools’ joke tomorrow and the day after (Sunday and Monday here) it is
supposed to snow-not much but what the heck it is April. I am also finishing up
an interesting novel by Ernest Hemingway-do you know who he is-or remember
reading anything by him in high school-about Paris in the 1920s during the Jazz
Age. I would like to go Paris this year in the fall so I am reading stuff like
that to get motivated to go –Of course Paris is a place you don’t want to go
alone if you know what I mean.
I often think about what you are
reading about, what you are doing over there while you are waiting for your
fortunes to change. Tell me some stuff like that, what kind of food do they have
there, did you go any place of interest. You know stuff like that so we can
“reconnect”
I have learned the basics of sexting
(oops) texting but it takes me a long time to put a message together. I haven’t
got all the symbols and shorthand down. As you can tell it is much easier (and
faster) for me to write a bunch of stuff in an e-mail-Let me hear from you and
what you are up to and remember I will continue to be your amigo as things go
forward-Later.”
Then I sent another e-mail which went like
this:
“Hi
sweetie- thanks for note- I sent you a note about sending your photos to g-mail
address but that can wait until you have a phone-Will you have a phone before
you leave the Philippines or wait until you get back to America. I sure
would like to have a voice to put with that lovely face. I hope you don't
mind me being a little sexy with you- all I know is that “woodie” was pretty
hard when I saw those photos-kind of got hard just like that but I am sure you
know that would happen when I saw them and I hope you are glad about it-I don't
think you do mind about the little sexy stuff but everything I say is just
between us-
As far as my accountant goes if he
had seen those photos of you and the ones you sent before he would have
the same reaction I did. Then who would be cyber-pussy-whipped. He's a good guy
and like I said he has kept me out of trouble for a while and so that is good
but he would never understand why I like a nice younger woman like you
and have gone out of my way to help you even though we haven't met in
person. But accountants are like that-never take a risk because it
might throw their balance sheets off. You know the only sheets I am
worrying about taking off-I hope.
It’s funny when you say you would never let me
down because all through this business stuff whatever was going on I
think in the back of my mind I had a feeling you would not, you just seemed to
be that way. Maybe it was our both growing up kind of poor, kind of from
the wrong side of the tracks as they say that made me feel that way. We can
take about that some other time but we should talk about it.
I didn't quite understand about the
"constructing church" you were talking about-is that in Paris? I
don't remember hearing about that or seeing it the times I have gone
there. Have you ever been to Paris?
You know you might know that guy Hemingway
although not his name did you ever read about a story called the Old Man and the Sea where this old-time
Cuban fisherman is out by himself and sees a huge fish that will put him
on easy street if he can catch it and bring it back to port and sells it. He
catches the fish but along the way back to port about seven things happen
and when he gets to port there is nothing to sell, the fish is nothing but
bones. So much for easy street…”
You had such a great response-remember. If not
here’s the way that went:
“Hello babe thank you so much
again I’m glad you like my photos! I know Woodie will like it too xoxoxo! Don't
mind your accountant once we meet in person we will both show him and laugh in
him for calling you that way! I know you're not that kind of guy he's just
bitter because you will be with a fine lady and he won't! I appreciated all
your good deeds for me babe and i promise I will never let you down! Speaking of
down I can show you my down stairs of course but right after I get a phone with
camera xoxo! Lol really? No I don't know that person but I love to read what
you been writing! We will both go to the place I wanted so much and see the
still constructing church together!! I've been reading a lot of space lately
just bunch of random facts about universe and galaxy! I have never been to any
nice place here since I don’t have money yet I have been eating more of Philippine
foods and I kind of like it its call tinolang manok and pork sisig! Lol I’m
glad you learning how to text if you can you can shoot me one sometimes and I
will reply back! I only have less than 10$ to survive the week and I hope I can
get the money by this coming week or next week once I do I will let you know
and will keeping you update of my comeback! I miss talking stuff like this with
you!”
Remember too how my accountant
went crazy looking for that Sun Life insurance premium invoice or there was
going to be hell for me to pay (and you bailed me out by sending the copy which
was hard for you do to do when you were hospital and which I haven’t forgotten
about, believe me I haven’t forgotten). Here’s a refresher:
“Desperate situation-HELP
Sweetie this is why the situation is
desperate and I need your help. I, you maybe, we, are in trouble about that
money I loaned you out of my pocket to pay your insurance premium of $1000 or
whatever it was. I told my accountant who handles both the law office and my
personal financial accounts about my sending you the WU money transfer and when
I told him I had lent you from my pocket (what he called “behind his back”) he
flipped out-again. Said didn’t I realize that lending the dough for the
insurance premiums on top of paying the medical bills and funeral expenses made
it look like I had an interest in the insurance money. Make it look like I was
in with you on the insurance deal since I am the guy who sent the WU money
transfers. In any case lawyers involved with client’s (that was the way the
previous medical and funeral expenses went on the books in the law office ) is
a big no-no-not legal, not ethical and he will be forced to report that to the
Massachusetts Board Of Bar Overseers-the people who make sure lawyers don’t do
stuff like that. Where you could be in trouble is that you knew I was a lawyer,
knew the money for the medical expenses and funeral expenses and that first
time I tried to send you the insurance money where I made a mistake on the
name-remember was coming from a lawyer.
He is not going to lose HIS job or
get in trouble with the CPA (Certified Public Accountants) guys who license him
so I need to get that damn insurance receipt and fast to show that I just
loaned you the money to help you out. Otherwise he will be forced to turn his
information over to the Bar Overseers and who knows what will happen. They do
not like and there are plenty of cases about it seeing lawyers even looking
like they are benefitting from third-party (you) insurance claim. I need to
keep my license clean in order to practice law (and help you in the future when
you get back to America and your nursing career or whatever else you want to
do.
So sweetie can you please, please,
please find another computer place there must be more than one in Manila to
scan that receipt and send it quickly-very quickly. You can do that sweetie
right-I have stood by you and done the best I could by you but now, right now,
I need you to help me out.
After that is done, after we can show
that the insurance premium money was just a personal loan, then everything will
look right and I can help you with the other stuff like the rent and all and it
will just be personal and all right. You can do that for me sweetie-yes. After
we get this behind us then I will help you to the best of my ability. And you
know that’s true because I have a track record of helping you that you can
depend on.
Right now though nothing else matters
but that receipt so let’s get to that. My lawyer said I shouldn’t even be
communicating with you except to ask for the receipt but I felt I had to tell
what I was up against so you would know how serious the situation is. I will
abide by what he says though-no communication- until I get that receipt- I will
be glad when this is behind us-su amigo”
All of this rehashing of e-mails has
a purpose though, a purpose that will make you realize what a good guy my
accountant really is, how much you and I owe him, and why I am happy to be a
lawyer today. I mentioned to my accountant as we were talking last night that because
you were, in effect, under house arrest you couldn’t leave the hospital under penalty
of arrest and incarceration in a real slammer (jail) and so couldn’t get to
your bank to take care of that international money transfer issue that I mentioned
above that he had solved for us by cluing us in about what BOD (Banco de Oro)
wanted from you. Also that your relationship with Sun Life was thwarted when
you got sick the night before you were to complete the deal and couldn’t get
over to their offices to get your hands on what I then thought was an insurance
check you could deposit in your BOD (Banco de Oro) savings account. After you had
told me that Sun Life only deals in cash pay-outs on insurance policies, even large
ones like $45,000 USD (United States dollars and about 2,000, 000 Philippine
pesos) I told him the same thing, Told him that was why you couldn’t draw the dough
out since you had to go there in person. That because you were in gaol (jail) and
nneeded my help for one last time to pay off your jailers (they really are when
you think about it since you, trying to act legally, can’t leave except under severe
penalty). Needed me to sent you $2100 USD (United States dollars, around 9000
or 10,000 pesos right?) via Moneygram
in care or your cousin Rickey, no, Jonathan, Jonathan Mateo because Rickey had
either lost his driver’s license or had failed to renew it (that’s right isn’t
it, lost it for speeding or something-did he, Ricky, ever get it back).
That’s when my accountant “flipped”
out but also came back to earth and “saved” us. He told me and I quote, “ What
are you crazy, didn’t you know that Moneygram
had been involved in settling a big fraud
claims case a few months ago where they had let scammers use their site for illegal
actions?” I said no, and that I wasn’t until recently in dealing with you up to
speed on all this electronic money transfer stuff. He answered, “I wouldn’t use
Moneygram in a million years.” Period.
When he settled down, after I asked
him, pretty please, asked him how was I to help you if that avenue was closed off,
he, once again came up with the solution. Here is where it is good to know a
few people in key places. See he, as you might expect of a business accountant who
works for lawyers, deals with insurance companies all the time, so he knows,
Sam Larkin, the Vice-President for International Affairs at Sun Life in America,
which Sun Life in the Philippines is a subsidiary of. My accountant called Sam
this morning and told him my/your/our story. No problem. Sam has ordered an
agent in the Philippines, Tomas Ramos, to go to your hospital Monday or any day
you want if Monday is no good and on giving him your insurance policy and
premium invoice do whatever you need done. If you want cash or a check, done. Sam
suggested a check because $45, 000 USD (United States dollars, or what did I
say before a couple of million Philippines pesos) is a lot of money to be
carrying around the Philippines these days and he is right I think from what
you have said about going out at night or just being around that dangerous drug-infested
neighborhood you lived in with the batos hanging out right on that street you
live on. If you need a ride to your bank, done. Anything you need just tell me
what day and what time you want Tomas to come and take care of business and it
is done.
So you can see why I like being a
lawyer today. You win, I win, Angel (I think) wins, Jonathan and Ricky
win.My accountant, a good guy right,
wins. Great news.
