*****The Latest From The "Fight For $15"It's High Time To Push Back-Push Back Hard-30 For 40 And “Fight For $15” Are The Slogans Of The Day.

*****The Latest From The "Fight For $15"It's High Time To Push Back-Push Back Hard-30 For 40 And “Fight For $15” Are The Slogans Of The Day.

Click below to link to the Fight For $15 website  for the latest national and international labor news, and of the efforts to counteract the massively one-sided class struggle against the international working class movement.

http://fightfor15.org/april15/

@timfranzen

http://fightfor15.org/april15/

 

Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton a couple of old-time radicals, old-time now in the early 2000s unlike in their youth not being the Great Depression labor radicals who had been their models after a fashion and who helped built the now seemingly moribund unions, (or unions now rather consciously led by union leaders who have no or only attenuated links to past militant labor actions like strikes, plant sit-downs, hot-cargo of struck goods, general strikes and such and would go into a dead faint if such actions were forced upon them and are so weakened as to be merely dues paying organizations forwarding monies to the Democratic “friends of labor” Party). They had come of political age as anti-war radicals from the hell-bent street in-your-face 1960s confrontations with the American beast during the Vietnam War reign of hell. Ralph from the hard-shell experience of having fought for the beast in the Central Highlands in that benighted country and who became disgusted with what he had done, his buddies had done, and his government had done to make animals out of them destroying simple peasants caught in a vicious cross-fire and Sam, having lost his closest high school hang around guy, Jeff Mullin, blown away in some unnamed field near some hamlet that he could not pronounce or spell correctly. The glue that brought them together, brought them together for a lifetime friendship and political comity (with some periods of statutory neglect to bring up families in Carver, Massachusetts and Troy, New York respectively) the ill-fated actions on May Day 1971 in Washington when they attempted along with several thousands of others to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war. All those efforts got them a few days detention in RFK stadium where they had met almost accidently and steel-strong bonds of brotherhood from then on.     

They had seen high times and ebbs, mostly ebbs once the 1960s waves receded before the dramatic events of 9/11 and more particularly the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 called off what they had termed the “armed truce” with the United States government over the previous couple of decades. So Ralph and Sam were beside themselves when the powder-puff uprising of the Occupy movement brought a fresh breeze to the tiny American left-wing landscape in the latter part of 2011.  That term “powder puff” not expressing the heft of the movement which was not inconsiderable for a couple of months especially in hotbeds like New York, Boston, L.A. and above all the flagship home away from home of radical politics, San Francisco but the fact that it disappeared almost before it got started giving up the huge long-term fight the movement was expected to wage to break the banks, break the corporate grip on the world and, try to seek “newer world”).

Ralph and Sam were not members in good standing of any labor unions, both having after their furtive anti-war street fights and the ebbing of the movement by about the mid-1970s returned to “normalcy,” Ralph having taken over his father’s electrical shop in Troy when his father retired and Sam had gone back to Carver to expand a print shop that he had started in the late 1960s that had been run by a hometown friend in his many absences. However having come from respectable working-class backgrounds in strictly working-class towns, Carver about thirty miles from Boston and the cranberry bog capital of the world and Ralph in Troy near where General Electric ruled the roost, had taken to heart the advice of their respective grandfathers about not forgetting those left behind, that an injury to one of their own in this wicked old world was an injury to all as the old Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) motto had it. Moreover despite their backing away from the street confrontations of their youth when that proved futile after a time as the Vietnam War finally wound down and yesterday’s big name radicals left for parts unknown they had always kept an inner longing for the “newer world,” the more equitable world where the people who actually made stuff and kept the wheels of society running and their down-pressed allies ruled.   

So Ralph and Sam would during most of the fall of 2011   travel down to the Wall Street “private” plaza (and site of many conflicts and stand-offs between the Occupy forces on the ground and then Mayor Blumberg and his itchy cops) which was the center of the movement on weekends, long weekends usually, to take part in the action after the long drought of such activity both for them personally and for their kind of politics. They were crestfallen to say the least when the thing exploded after Mayor Blumberg and the NYPD the police pulled down the hammer and forcibly disbanded the place (and other city administrations across the country and across the world and police departments doing likewise acting in some concert as it turned out once the dust settled and “freedom of information” acts were invoked to see what the bastards were up to).

Of more concern since they had already known about what the government could do when it decided to pull down the hammer having learned a painfully hard lesson on May Day 1971 and on a number of other occasions later when Ralph and Sam and their comrades decided to get “uppity” and been slapped down more than once although they at least had gone into those actions with their eyes wide open had been the reaction of the “leadership” in folding up the tents (literally and figuratively).

Thereafter the movement had imploded from its own contradictions, caught up not wanting to step on toes, to let everybody do their own thing, do their own identity politics which as they also painfully knew had done   much to defang the old movements, refusing out of hand cohering a collective leadership that might give some direction to the damn thing but also earnestly wanting to bring the monster down.

Ralph and Sam in the aftermath, after things had settled down and they had time to think decided to put together a proposal, a program if you like, outlining some of the basic political tasks ahead to be led by somebody. Certainly not by them since radical politics, street politics is a young person’s game and they admittedly had gotten rather long in the tooth. Besides they had learned long ago, had talked about it over drinks at Jack Higgins’ Grille in Boston more than once in their periodic reunions when Ralph came to town, how each generation had to face its tasks in its own way so they would be content to be “elder” tribal leaders and provide whatever wisdom they could, if asked. 

Working under the drumbeat of Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up something of a “national anthem” for what went on among the better elements of Occupy are some points that any movement for social change has to address these days and fight for and about as well. Sam, more interested in writing than Ralph who liked to think more than write but who contributed his fair share of ideas to the “program,” wrote the material up and had it posted on various site which elicited a respectable amount of comment at the time. They also got into the old time spirit by participating in the latest up and coming struggle- the fight for a minimum wage of $15 an hour although even that seems paltry for the needs of today’s working people to move up in the world:      

 

From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-On Trotskyist Rudolf Klement-Honor His Memory

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- In Honor Of Rudolf Klement

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

*****Four Ways To Support Freedom For Chelsea Manning- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

*****Four Ways To Support Freedom For Chelsea Manning- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

 

 

 

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

The Struggle Continues …

Four  Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Chelsea  Manning

*Sign the public petition to President Obama – Sign online http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/chelseamanning  “President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning,” and make copies to share with friends and family!

You  can also call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) to demand that President Obama use his constitutional power under Article II, Section II to pardon Private Manning now.

*Start a stand -out, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, in your town square to publicize the pardon and clemency campaigns.  Contact the Private Manning SupportNetwork for help with materials and organizing tips https://www.chelseamanning.org/

*Contribute to the Private  Manning Defense Fund- now that the trial has finished funds are urgently needed for pardon campaign and for future military and civilian court appeals. The hard fact of the American legal system, military of civilian, is the more funds available the better the defense, especially in political prisoner cases like Private Manning’s. The government had unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Private Manning at trial. And used them as it will on any future legal proceedings. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to https://www.chelseamanning.org/

*Write letters of solidarity to Private Manning while she is serving her sentence. She wishes to be addressed as Chelsea and have feminine pronouns used when referring to her. Private Manning’s mailing address: Chelsea E. Manning, 89289, 1300 N. Warehouse Road, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-2304.

Private Manning cannot receive stamps or money in any form. Photos must be on copy paper. Along with “contraband,” “inflammatory material” is not allowed. Six page maximum.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30   

Markin comments (Winter 2014):   

There is no question now that Chelsea Manning’s trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that her case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity, including in the New York Times, a newspaper which while recoiling at the severity of the sentence in the immediate reaction did not question the justice of the conviction, and has several legal moves going from action to get the necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity (which the Army has stonewalled on and which even the New York Times has called for implementing) to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to Google Amnesty International and sign on to the online petition to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.                   

I attended some of the sessions of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial in the summer of 2013 and am often asked these days in speaking for her release about what she could expect from the various procedures going forward to try to “spring” her from the clutches of the American government, or as I say whenever I get the chance to “not leave our buddy behind” in the time-honored military parlance. I have usually answered depending on what stage her post-conviction case is in that her sentence was draconian by all standards for someone who did not, although they tried to pin this on her, “aid the enemy.” Certainly Judge Lind though she was being lenient with thirty-five years when the government wanted sixty (and originally much more before some of the counts were consolidated). The next step was to appeal, really now that I think about it, a pro forma appeal to the commanding general of the Washington, D.C. military district where the trial was held. There were plenty of grounds to reduce the sentence but General Buchanan backed up his trial judge in the winter of 2014. Leaving Chelsea supporters right now with only the prospect of a presidential pardon to fight for as the court appeals are put together which will take some time. This is how I put the matter at one meeting:

“No question since her trial, conviction, and draconian sentence of thirty-five years imposed by a vindictive American government heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning’s has fallen off the radar. The incessant news cycle which has a short life cycle covered her case sporadically, covered the verdict, covered the sentencing and with some snickers cover her announcement directly after the sentencing that she wanted to live as her true self, a woman. (A fact that her supporters were aware of prior to the announcement but agreed that the issue of her sexual identity should not get mixed up with her heroic actions during the pre-trial and trial periods.) Since then despite occasional public rallies and actions her case had tended, as most political prisoner cases do, to get caught up in the appeals process and that keeps it out of the limelight.”            

Over the past year or so Chelsea Manning has been honored and remembered by the Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade in Boston in such events as the VFP-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, the Memorial Day anti-war observance, the yearly Gay Pride Parade, the Rockport July 4^th parade, the VFP-led Veterans Day Peace Parade, and on December 17^th her birthday. We have marched with a banner calling for her freedom, distribute literature about her case and call on one and all to sign the pardon petitions. The banner has drawn applause and return shouts of “Free Chelsea.” The Smedley Butler Brigade continues to stand behind our sister. We will not leave her behind. We also urge everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to pardon Chelsea Manning

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30  

Additional Markin comment on his reasons for supporting Chelsea Manning:

I got my start in working with anti-war GIs back in the early 1970s after my own military service was over. After my own service I had felt a compelling need to fight the monster from the outside after basically fruitless and difficult efforts inside once I got “religion” on the war issue first-hand. That work included helping create a couple of GI coffeehouses near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down at Fort Dix in New Jersey in order for GIs to have a “friendly” space in which to think through what they wanted to do in relationship to the military.

Some wanted help to apply for the then tough to get discharge for conscientious objection. Tough because once inside the military, at least this was the way things went then, the military argued against the depth of the applying soldier’s convictions and tended to dismiss such applications out of hand. Only after a few civil court cases opened up the application process later when the courts ruled that the military was acting arbitrarily and capriciously in rejecting such applications out of hand did things open up a little in that channel. Others wanted to know their rights against what they were told by their officers and NCOs. But most, the great majority, many who had already served in hell-hole Vietnam, wanted a place, a non-military place, a non-GI club, where they could get away from the smell, taste, and macho talk of war.

Although there are still a few places where the remnants of coffeehouses exist like the classic Oleo Strut down at Fort Hood in Texas the wars of the past decade or so has produced no great GI resistance like against the Vietnam War when half the Army in America and Vietnam seemed to be in mutiny against their officers, against their ugly tasks of killing every “gook” who crossed their path for no known reason except hubris, and against the stifling of their rights as citizens. At one point no anti-war march was worthy of the name if it did not have a contingent of soldiers in uniform leading the thing. There are many reasons for this difference in attitude, mainly the kind of volunteer the military accepts but probably a greater factor is that back then was the dominance of the citizen-soldier, the draftee, in stirring things up, stirring things up inside as a reflection of what was going on out on the streets and on the campuses. I still firmly believe that in the final analysis you have to get to the “cannon fodder,” the grunts, the private soldier if you want to stop the incessant war machine. Since we are commemorating, if that is the right word the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I check out what happened, for example, on the Russian front when the desperate soldiers left the trenches during 1917 after they got fed up with the Czar, with the trenches, with the landlords, and the whole senseless mess.

Everyone who has the least bit of sympathy for the anti-war struggles of the past decade should admire what Chelsea Manning has done by her actions releasing that treasure trove of information about American atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. She has certainly paid the price for her convictions with a draconian sentence. It is hard to judge how history will record any particular heroic action like hers but if the last real case with which her action can be compared with is a guide, Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, she should find an honored spot. Moreover Chelsea took her actions while in the military which has its own peculiar justice system. Her action, unlike back in Vietnam War times, when the Army was half in mutiny was one of precious few this time out. Now that I think about she does not have to worry about her honored place in history. It is already assured. But just to be on the safe side let’s fight like hell for her freedom. We will not leave our sister Chelsea behind.              

 

Memorial Day Thoughts-A Speech Given A Smedley Butler Veterans For Peace Member At The Annual Memorial Day For Peace Commemoration In Boston May 30, 2016

Memorial Day Thoughts-A Speech Given A Smedley Butler Veterans For Peace Member At The Annual Memorial Day For Peace Commemoration In Boston May 30, 2016 

    

Those of you who know me and who have attended the Midnight Voices program that Veterans for Peace supports along with other organizations know that I periodically read some pieces about guys, mostly Vietnam veterans, guys from my generation who had a hard time coming back to the “real” world after “Nam.” Especially guys that I met when I was out in California after my own checkered military service. Guys whom Bruce Springsteen addressed in his powerful song-Brothers Under the Bridge. Most of the guys once they came to trust me, trust me as far as any guys could in that very here today, gone tomorrow world out under the bridges and along the railroad tracks of Southern California would want to talk about something, get something off their chests. Maybe it was about the war, maybe about some girl who sent them a Dear John letter which tore them up, and still did, maybe about the old neighborhood, especially if they were from the East and I might know about their town, maybe about buddies who got left behind in “Nam, whose names are now eternally etched in black marble down in Washington.

When I volunteered at our last VFP monthly meeting to be on the program today I knew I was going to be talking about one of those guys, talking about Phil Larkin, a guy from Carver down in cranberry bog country, down where the bogs provided work for generations of Larkins. Talk about him because the story he told me one night out in the Westminster railroad “jungle” while we were drinking cheap wine, cheap wine was all we had dough for fits in very nicely with what we are about here today. Phil, unlike a lot of veterans I met out West had had qualms about going into the service, had thought about jail, going to Canada, going underground you know the stuff a lot of guys from our time had to think through as we can under the threat of induction. He went in, went in when drafted and not before which he was very proud of, did the 11 Bravo route since cannon fodder was all they were looking for in late 1967, early 1968-later too. Took his physical beating, two purple hearts if I recall correctly, took his psychological beating which explained why he was drinking cheap wine with me out in some desolate railroad patch but that night he didn’t want to talk about himself but an uncle, no grand uncle, Frank O’Brian, whom when he said his name said it with a sneer. This guy, this grand uncle is why he wound up going into the service against his better instincts.                  

See Frank O’Brian had served in World War I, had died shortly after the war from some wounds he received during the war. Because of that, and because he was one of the few guys from Carver who had died in that war he had a square up by the town hall named after him, had a plaque stating as much. You know the corners and squares of most cities and towns in most countries of the world have such memorials to their war dead, needless to say far too many.  Probably you I and pass five, ten every day without even recognizing them as such, except maybe today or on Armistice Day when some organization puts a flag or something to acknowledge those deaths.

But see that damn plaque was the final straw that got Phil into his olive drabs. Frank O’Brian was his Grandma Riley’s brother and when Phil tried to get counsel from that august, his word, old lady whom he loved dearly she tore into him said what would people think, what would her dead brother think if a Larkin/Riley/O’Brian son, a son of Carver did not do his duty. That ended any thought of Phil’s not going into the service. But you can see why he had that sneer on his face that night when he mentioned that uncle’s name. Maybe we should start naming the squares and corners of the world after those who would not serve in the military, the brave resisters who have languished in the prisons and stockades.  

Scenes From An Ordinary 1950s Life- Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow- Billie’s, Billie The Pope Of “The Projects” Night, View

Scenes From An Ordinary 1950s Life- Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow- Billie’s, Billie The Pope Of “The Projects” Night, View

 

A YouTube film clip of The Shirelles performing the classic Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?.

 

By Bart Webber:

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Lyrics

Carole King

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

 

Tonight you're mine completely,

You give your love so sweetly,

Tonight the light of love is in your eyes,

But will you love me tomorrow?

 

Is this a lasting treasure,

Or just a moment's pleasure,

Can I believe the magic of your sighs,

Will you still love me tomorrow?

 

Tonight with words unspoken,

You said that I'm the only one,

But will my heart be broken,

When the night (When the night)

Meets the morning sun.

 

I'd like to know that your love,

Is love I can be sure of,

So tell me now and I won't ask again,

Will you still love me tomorrow?

Will you still love me tomorrow?

 

 

Hey all, this is Bart Webber from the old neighborhood, the old cranberry bogs neighborhood of Carver down in Southeastern, Massachusetts, the world capital of that berry in the old days , the Acre neighborhood to be exact when all the “boggers” lived from time immemorial as they say. This is another one of those tongue-in-cheek commentaries that I have been running around thinking about lately as retirement looms directly ahead, retirement from the printing business that I started back in the 1960s and which I am now getting ready to turn over to my youngest son (the other two older boys are both computer whizzes and could give a tinker’s damn about the soon to be dinosaur extinct old-time Guttenberg press print according to them), the back story if you like, in the occasional sketches I have been producing of late going back to the primordial youth time of the mid to late 1950s with its bags full of classic, now classic then just rock and roll, rock songs for the ages.

 

Of course, any such efforts on my part to see how the cultural jail-break took root  down in the Acre have to include the views of one Billie Bradley, William James Bradley, the schoolboy mad-hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” Acre neighborhood. Yah, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days when after searing failures to be the next best thing after Elvis (really after Bo Diddley but in hard white enclave and consciously Northern-style racist bog country that would turn out to be a non-starter, no, would turn out to be hazardous to one’s health never mind one’s future) and the next dance-master general of the new rock dispensation he turned to the life of petty and subsequently hard crime, every kid, including his best friend, a guy named Peter Paul Markin, whom we all called just Markin back then but who would later be called the “Scribe” for obvious reasons, to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own. Yeah those were the days when like a poet I read once in high school, and English or is it British poet, said to be “young was very heaven.” (He, oh yeah, now I remember, Wordsworth, the Lakes poet, who was referring to his view of the French Revolution in the days before it got serious and blood was being let on all sides)     

 

Billie and Markin (an on occasion me when they were having a dispute like whether Elvis’ sneer was fake, stuff like that) personally spent many, many hours mainly up in his tiny bedroom, his rock heaven bedroom, walls plastered with posters of Elvis, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry and of every new teen heartthrob singer, heartthrob to the girls that is, around, every new record Billie could get his hands on, by hook or by crook ( a euphemism for the five finger discount, you know the “clip” that every guy, and some saucy girls, took at the rite of passage in the Acre when they had their “wanting habits” on and no dough to pay for the stuff), and neatly folded piles of clothing, also gathered by that same hook or by crook (“clipping” clothes a whole separate art form in itself and rated higher than merely grabbing some foolish cheapjack overpriced anyway rings to give away to some girl who could have given a fuck about some such trinket), appropriate to the king hell king of the schoolboy rock scene, the elementary school rock scene between about 1956 to 1960. Much of that time was spent discussing the “meaning” of various songs, especially their sexual implications, ah, their mystery of girls-finding-out-about worthiness. (What we didn’t know, even Billie, about the whole sex thing could fill volumes but we like our older brothers, and sisters too, learned what little we did know, and a lot of that was wrong we learned on the streets like everybody else. It certainly wasn’t from prudish parents or heaven forbid the priests at Sacred Heart, the main church servicing the Acre.)   

 

Although in early 1959 Markin’s family was beginning to start the process of moving out of the projects to a run-down shack of a house in Muddy Bottom even lower on the neighborhood scale that the Acre if you could believe that the only virtue, a small one being that they would “own,” along with the bank, their own house. More importantly, Markin had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe, after figuring out that the life of petty crime was much harder to deal with that reading books to find out two million facts which he had settled into one summer after a few run-ins with the law over a couple of “clips,” he would still wander back to the old neighborhood until mid-1960 just to hear Billie’s take on whatever music was interesting him at the time.

 

These commentaries, these Billie commentaries, are Markin’s recollections of his and Billie’s conversations on the song lyrics in this series. But Markin was not relying on memory alone. During this period he would use his father’s tape recorder, by today’s standard his big old reel to reel monstrosity of a tape recorder, to record Billie’s covers of the then current hit songs (for those who have not read previously of Billie’s “heroics” he was a pretty good budding rock singer at the time) and their conversations of those song meanings that we fretted about for hours.

 

About twenty years ago long after Markin had gone face down in his own hail of bullets down in Mexico after a dope deal he was either trying to broker with some mal hombres from some budding cartel or, more likely, giving the residual “wanting habits” that haunted us all for many years whether we liked books or not stealing the “product” I was helping his late mother clear out the attic of that shack of a house over on Muddy Bottom in order to sell it  after Mr. Markin had passed away I found those tapes among the possessions Markin had left behind. Mrs. Markin having no earthly use for them passed them on to me as tanks for my help in cleaning the place up. I, painstakingly, have had those reels transcribed so that many of these commentaries will be the actual words (somewhat edited, of course) that appear in these sketches. That said, Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie, in jail or in jail-break I’m still pulling for you. Got it.

 

Here’s what Billie had to say about the lyrics to the classic girl sex dilemma song Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow that we all went wild over but which baffled a bunch of twelve and thirteen year old boys who were trying to figure out what that girl was worried about. Yeah, that’s the way it was:

 

Billie back again, William James Bradley, if you didn’t know. Markin’s pal, Peter Paul Markin’s pal, from over the Myles Standish Elementary School and the pope of rock lyrics down here in “the projects, ” the Acre projects where I was born, my father was born and my grandfather came to when he was a young man. The Carver projects, the place where all the boggers live, the people who keep cranberries on the Thanksgiving plates every year if you don’t know. Markin, who I hadn’t seen for a while since he moved “uptown” to the Muddy Bottom a place even lower on the human living scene that the Acre according to my parents, came by the other day. Even we guys from the Acre wouldn’t be caught dead in Muddy Bottom, wouldn’t let a guy from there into our circle at school, well, except Markin because he had to go there or live on the streets, something he was willing to do for a while rather moving from the Acre. So he came by the other day to breathe in the fresh air of the old neighborhood and we got to talking about this latest record, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? by the Shirelles. They are hot.

Fair’s fair right, so I’ll give you Markin’s, Peter Paul’s, take on the lyrics, so I can come crashing down on his silly pipe dream ideas. By the way if you don’t know, and he will tell you this himself if he is honest, he was behind, way behind, in figuring out girls, and their girlish charms. I had to practically tell him everything he knows.

 

I’ll let you know how I found out, found out true later. Where did I learn it? Hell like everybody else from the older kids, the older guys, and my older sisters too if you can believe that. So I know a lot, or at least enough to keep old Peter Paul from being a total goofball. Still, see, he thinks the main thing is that the girl in the song here is worried about her reputation because she has just given in, in a moment of passion, to her boyfriend, it’s way too late to turn back and yet she is having second thoughts, second thought regrets, about it, and about what he will think of her and whether it will get around that she “does it.”

 

Yah, she “does it,” I will give Markin that much, now officially certified a woman, or at least acting like a woman can act, that is what my sister Donna says, and from the feel of the song, probably in some back seat of some “boss” convertible, a Chevy I hope. Her guy, some under-the-hood day and night guy making that baby, his real baby, hum against the in-stock store-bought standards of his father’s car, his old fogy father’s car. She was breathless weeks ago when her Chevy guy came up gunning that beast behind her walking home from school and said “Hop in.” And she did without a minute’s hesitation, had been saying rosaries and novenas that Mister Chevy would stop her in her tracks before she went over to his place and made a fool of herself, now she's the queen bee of the high school Adventure Car-Hop night. Sitting in that front seat just the right distance away to show everybody, every walking girl in town what she had, and how easy it was that she had it. All the other girls, friend or foe, frantic at her fortune and ready to leap, girls’ “lav” leap, all over her come Monday morning finely-tuned grapevine gossip time. So the “tonight” of the song was paying back time, car- hop queen bee paying back time, time to make Mr. Chevy glad he stopped behind her that day a week before. No turning back.

 

I hope, I really hope, they “did the deed” down by the seashore, over by whatever local version of secluded “no married adults need enter” Plymouth Cove, big old moon out, big old laughing moon, waves splashing against the rocks and against the sounds of the night, the sounds of the be-bop moaning and groaning night. Call me a romantic but at least I hope that is where she gave “it” up. Or, maybe, away from coastal shoreline possibilities if you lived with Dorothy in Kansas it was at some secluded lovers’ lane mountain top, tree-lined, dirt road, away from the city noise, some be-bop music playing on the car radio, just to keep those mountain fears away, motor humming against the autumn chill and the creaking sun ready to devour that last mountain top and face the day, and to face the music.

 

But see that’s where Markin has got it all wrong, all wrong on two counts, because even if Chevy guy’s two-timing her, or spreading the “news” about his conquest, or even that hellish girls’ lav whirlwind inferno is not really what’s bothering her. Markin has got this starry-eyed thing, and I think it is from hanging around, or being around, all those straight lace no-go Catholic girls we go to school and church with, who do actually worry about their reputations, at least for public consumption. That is why high Catholic that I am, just like old Markin, I don’t go within twenty yards of those, well, teasers. Yah, teasers but that’s a story for another time, because right now we have only time for women, or girls who act like women.

 

What’s bothering moonstruck song girl, number one, is that she likes it, she liked doing it with the Chevy guy, and is worried that she’ll go crazy every time a boy gets within an arm’s length of her. She “heard” that once a girl starts “doing it” they can’t help themselves and are marks, easy marks, for every guy who gives them the eye. Jesus, where did she ever get that idea. Must have been out in the streets, although I personally never heard such an idea when I was asking around. This is what I heard, well, not from the street but from my sister Donna, she said it was okay, natural even, for girls to like sex. If the moment was right, and maybe the guy too. It wasn’t some Propagation of the Faith, do-your-sex-duty to multiply thing we heard in church. Hell, Donna said she liked it too, and believe me, old Donna doesn’t like much if you listen to her long enough. So moonstruck girl don’t worry.

 

But number two you do have to worry about, although I don’t know what you can do about it now. I never did ask Donna about that part. About getting pregnant. Yah, the dreaded word for girls and guys alike when you were just trying to have a little fun, just liking it. Now everything your mother told you about “bad” girls, about leaving school, about shot-gun weddings, or about having to go to “Aunt Bessie’s” for a few months, flood her memories and as the sun comes up there is momentary panic. Like I say I don’t know what you can do. I don’t know the medical part of the thing. But Peter Paul, leave it to Peter Paul, who knows diddley about sex (except what I tell him) says do you know about “rubbers.” And he got all in a lather telling me that there is some new pill coming out, and coming out soon, so you don’t have to worry. [The blessed Pill, hail science-Bart.]  This “rubbers” stuff from a guy was practically missed the first time he kissed a girl. That take a pill and everything is alright is just because the goof reads Newsweek and Time and not because he actually knows what makes a girl tick and why. But if he is right, and I ain’t saying he is, then check it out and then you can still like “doing it.” And not worry.

*Norman Mailer's Search for the Great American Novel-"The Deer Park"

Click on the headline to link to a "The New York Times" obituary for American writer Norman Mailer article, dated November 10, 2007.

BOOK REVIEW

The Deer Park, Norman Mailer, Abacus, 1988

At one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that Norman Mailer wrote. In his prime he held out promise to match Hemingway as the pre-eminent male American prose writer. Mailer certainly had the ambition, ego and skill to do so. In his inevitable search to write the great American novel, at least for his generation, I do not believe, that he was successful. The Deer Park is an early attempt to tackle that goal and while there are flashes of brilliance there is far too much self-consciousness on making a great American novel. That most dramatically got reflected in the tinniness of his characters, male and female, and reduced the book to a fairly ordinary look at a slice of the American pie.

Certainly the subject matter of the novel is an almost surefire way to get attention. Put Hollywood-types in 'exile' in the desert, add wayward movie stars, starlets and wannabes, and a male lead character who is not sure what he wants to be but is sure that the stars shine for him somewhere and you have the makings of a great American novel. Throw in, almost obligatory for a `fifties' novel and for a self-described leftist like Mailer , the tensions surrounding the `red scare', Hollywood- style, and the cultural clamp down that imposed on American society and one should be onto something. But, strangely, Mailer gets bogged down in the sexual escapades of the main characters and never gets to the heart of the real question that the novel poses- How the hell does one safeguard his or her creative expression without selling out to every conceivable pressure that comes along? It did not work, but nice try Norman.

*A Norman Mailer Slugfest- "Pieces And Pontifications"

Click on the headline to link to a "The New York Times" obituary for American writer Norman Mailer article, dated November 10, 2007.

BOOK REVIEW

Pieces and Pontifications, Norman Mailer, Little Brown, 1988

This review was originally written in the summer of 2007 before Mr. Mailer's recent death. Nothing needs to be changed here on that account.

Apparently as I have completed this summer's reading list I am `running the table' on Norman Mailer's work (see all reviews). As I recently noted in this space while reviewing Norman Mailer's The Presidential Papers at one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that he wrote. In his prime he held out promise to match Hemingway as the pre-eminent male American prose writer. Mailer certainly had the ambition, ego and skill to do so. Although he wrote several good novels in his time, like The Deer Park and An American Dream, I believe that his journalistic work, as he himself might partially admit, especially his political, social and philosophical musings are what will insure his place in the literary pantheon. With that in mind I have re-read his work under review here. This group of essays, musings, insights, rantings, ravings and attempts to understand this sorry, seemingly forsaken world only confirm my above-mentioned belief.

Pieces and Pontifications is a nice grab bag that includes early work but mainly centers on the 1970's - after the hubris, anxieties, fears and hopes of the turbulent 1960's, of which Mailer was a prime reporter, had run its course. Here we have some sardonic reflections on the ever expanding cosmos of television, Mailer's use of it, its use of Mailer including his famous `tiff' with Gore Vidal; the inevitable squabbling and /or dueling over the women's liberation issues of the time that seem rather tame in retrospect; a well thought out review of Last Tango In Paris and its place in the cinematic pantheon; and, other miscellaneous work of the premier American existential traveler of that time. Also offered are some insights into what Mailer, as a literary man, was trying to do in various novels.

In an age when seemingly every, even third-rate, writer has been the subject of `complete collectionitis' this book has that feel except here we have a first-rate writer. Okay, then let us cut to the chase. Must one read this book to getting a feel for Mailer and his style? No. One must read Armies of the Night, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, and An American Dream. But if you are a Mailer `junkie' or wannabe this is right up your alley.

A View From The Left-Greek Trotskyists Launch Newspaper

Workers Vanguard No. 1089	6 May 2016

Greek Trotskyists Launch Newspaper

We are proud to announce the publication of the first issue of The Bolshevik, newspaper of the Trotskyist Group of Greece, section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). The launching of The Bolshevik is a modest but important step in the consolidation of a Greek section of the ICL, whose banner was first planted in Greece in November 2004 with the TGG’s founding. A regular press, even of limited frequency, is essential to our purpose: to cohere the nucleus of a revolutionary vanguard party of the kind that V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks forged to lead the working class to power in the 1917 Russian Revolution.

With Greece mired in a deepgoing economic crisis, the new paper will give the TGG an instrument for intervention in the struggles of the exploited and oppressed. Previously, our Greek comrades had issued multiple pieces under the Spartacist masthead. These included Greek translations of articles on the class nature of the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers state and our fight for women’s liberation through socialist revolution. TGG comrades also wrote key articles on developments in Greece, underlining our opposition to the imperialist European Union (EU) and to the bourgeois Syriza party and pointing to the need for a workers party to fight for working-class rule. Many of these articles have been reprinted in Workers Vanguard and other publications of the ICL.

The name The Bolshevik was chosen to stress the continuity of consistent Trotskyism, represented in Greece by the TGG, with the political program that animated the October Revolution. This purpose is mirrored by the insignia on the masthead: the worker’s hammer and peasant’s sickle, overlaid by the number “4.” The hammer and sickle was the symbol of the Soviet state that emerged from the Bolshevik Revolution. The four symbolizes our fight to reforge the Fourth International, founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938 to continue the fight for world revolution in the face of the Stalinized Communist International’s betrayals.

Unlike elsewhere in Europe, the Stalinist Greek Communist Party (KKE) remains a mass reformist party with major influence and roots in the working class. In contrast to the various Stalinophobic fake Trotskyists, the TGG does not ignore the KKE, but strives to win its base to genuine communism. With sharp polemics against the class-collaborationist illusions pushed by the KKE and our other opponents, The Bolshevik promises to be a vital tool to this end.

The first issue contains three substantial articles. The front page addresses the need for a revolutionary leadership of the working class in Greece and is combined with a reprint of the “Enough!” call initiated by the TGG in July 2015 (printed in English translation in WV No. 1072, 7 August 2015). At the time that statement was issued, the working masses had just voted down more EU imperialist-dictated austerity in a national referendum. This result showed that workers were eager to fight. The expectation by many working people that the ruling Syriza party would get a better deal from the EU was quickly shattered when Syriza agreed to new starvation terms. Rather than lead workers in militant struggle against the EU at this crucial moment, the KKE leadership echoed the imperialist fear campaign that Greece exiting the euro and EU would be a catastrophe. The Bolshevik article notes:

“It was in the context of this opening for the working class to come forward in struggle that the Trotskyist Group of Greece issued the 17 July call.... It was a call on the workers of Greece and their allies to build workers committees of action to repudiate Syriza’s capitulation to the banks and EU by fighting to get out of the euro and EU and for demands that address the burning needs of the workers and the oppressed. These demands necessarily transcend what is ‘possible’ under capitalism, pointing to the need for a government that will act in the interests of the working people and be subordinated to them. We called for common class struggle of Greek, German and other European workers together against all the EU imperialists! We sought to strike a flint to ignite proletarian struggle.”

Rounding out the contents of The Bolshevik is the back-page article on our struggle against capitalist counterrevolution in Germany in 1989-90 and a reprint of “Thermidor in the Family” from Trotsky’s book The Revolution Betrayed (1936). The former is a reprint of a forum given on the tenth anniversary of the ICL’s fight against capitalist counterrevolution in East Germany, together with an introduction polemicizing against Greek left groups for their refusal to defend the Soviet Union and other deformed workers states. The latter is packaged with a polemic against the KKE for upholding the reactionary institution of the family, as shown by its opposition to civil partnership and the right to adopt for gays. The polemic is reprinted on page 2.

The TGG press is a new vehicle for introducing radical youth and militant workers, along with immigrants and other oppressed layers, to a Marxist program. We encourage readers with Greek-language capacity to subscribe. A subscription costs $2 for four issues and can be obtained by writing to the address: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116.

A Slice Of The 21st Century Workplace Life-Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro’s The Intern

A Slice Of The 21^st Century Workplace Life-Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro’s The Intern     

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

The Intern, Anne Hathaway, Robert De Niro, 2015  

 

A while back I mentioned in reviewing a lesser Barbara Stanwyck film vehicle My Reputation which addressed the issue of the social strictures surrounding the romantic life of a high society widowed matron that such subject matter would seem strange, weird in today’s more liberated social milieu. Probably, aside from the problem of the film being too melodramatic for today’s audiences, the film couldn’t have been produced today in the same format. Not true with the film under review, The Intern, a semi-comic look at the “life” of an Internet start-up and of its prime mover and shaker, Jules, played by fetching Anne Hathaway who started the thing from scratch like a lot of such operations these days, going either to billionaire-hood or flat broke.        

Here is how the demographics and social commentary played out in this one, how we get a look at the old style work culture and the new buzz buzz fly away office culture getting formed and settled in the 21^st century new age of globalization, part two. Jules, who started her e-commerce fashion apparel business on the fly, went from her kitchen to a renovated brick and mortar building in Brooklyn (of course Brooklyn that is the new wave place in New Jack City now that the serious billionaires have priced everybody else out of Manhattan) “agreed” to a good publicity hiring of senior citizen interns to bridge some gaps between the generations. (That idea of interns of any kind fairly new in the business world and a source of plenty of cheap mostly unpaid labor.)      

Up steps personable Ben, played by Robert De Niro, a veteran of the old style business world made graphically clear by his former profession as an executive in a firm that printed phonebooks which even a generation of ‘68 guy like me gave up years ago and seem to have been relegated to the junk-heap along with, well, telephone booths even if once in a while when the old cellphone dies such a refuge booth could be very helpful. He is assigned to workaholic, speak fast or get off the track, no time for (1) interns, (2) old guys, (3) and the hired help in general Jules, of course. Naturally as well he was/is an old organizational man, a gofer if need be but he brings lots of wisdom to Jules once he breaks the ice, makes himself, old commerce or e-commerce invaluable as an advisor to her.     

Get this though despite the “no glass ceiling can keep me down” shoulder to the wheel, push forward Jules persona she is married and a mother of a sweet young girl who is being cared for by a stay-at home father. (Who ever heard of such a category- stay-at-home father in my father’s generation-or mine, usually if he was stay at home he was a bum or a drifter not a fit father.) Naturally there are going to be problems there to be resolved. The biggest problem though, the one that really drove the second half of the film is the news that start from scratch up until all hours fretting over every detail Jules was going to be taken out of her CEO position by the venture capitalist investors who see her as stretched too thin (and not eating being too thin although I don’t they gave a damn about that but certainly Ben did).     

So along the way in this one (aside from the inevitable Hollywood throw in of a marriage crisis with stay at home dad “cheating” on Jules with one of the traditional stay-at home Moms, go figure) we get a very good look at the new open space office culture (hustle hard in front of those Apple computers and get massage by a fetching masseuse), the whims of venture capitalists, the tough life of a working executive Mom, and the residue of the old office culture which somehow didn’t seem so old. Here’s what I was wondering after viewing this one though. In let’s say 2066 will somebody looking at this film think that same thing about 2016 high tech office culture I thought about the weird social mores shown in Barbara Stanwyck’s My Reputation mentioned above.  

Poet's Corner- On Memorial Day For Peace-War And Remembrance

Poet's Corner- On Memorial Day For Peace-War And Remembrance 

 

Not all war poetry can stand the test of literary greatness or longevity but it is almost all very poignant and to the point

 

Poet's Corner- On Memorial Day For Peace-War And Remembrance

Poet's Corner- On Memorial Day For Peace-War And Remembrance 

 

Not all war poetry can stand the test of literary greatness or longevity but it is almost all very poignant and to the point