*****From The Archives-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government

*****From The Archives-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman (updated January 2016):

As we enter another "bummer" of an election year the notes below from the archives of Labor History seem to be timely if not for this election cycle then as thoughts to drive our  up hill work forward. The sentiments expressed below except the dates of delivery and events characterized could have been written in the year 2016 without blinking an eye. That is not good, not good at all. Read on.  
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These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.

I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
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The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers’ government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]

For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.

That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.

Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when classic capitalism began to become the driving economic norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.

Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.

The most unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really came with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).

Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)

So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).

America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America, are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.

Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.

[A reference back to the American Communist Party’s work in the 1920s may be informative here. As mentioned above there was some confusion, no, a lot of confusion back then about building a labor party base on workers and farmers, a two -class party. While the demands of both groups may in some cases overlap farmers, except for farm hands, are small capitalists on the land. We need a program for such potential allies, petty bourgeois allies, but their demands are subordinate to labor’s in a workers’ party program. Fast forward to today and it is entirely possible, especially in light of the recent Occupy experiences, that some vague popular frontist trans-class movement might develop like the Labor Non-Partisan League that the labor skates put forward in the 1930s as a catch basin for all kinds of political tendencies. We, of course, would work in such formations fighting for a revolutionary perspective but this is not what we advocate for now.]


In 2014 AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.

And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.

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Stop Letting The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access

Stop Letting The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access

 

 Frank Jackman comment:

 

One of the great struggles on college campuses during the height of the struggle against the Vietnam War back in the 1960s aside from trying to close down that war outright was the effort to get the various ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps, I think that is right way to say it) programs off campus. In a number of important campuses that effort was successful, although there has been back-sliding going on since the Vietnam War ended and like any reform is subject to constant attention or the bastards will sneak something in the back door.

        

To the extent that reintroduction of ROTC on college campuses has been thwarted that back door approach has been a two-pronged attack by the military branches to get their quota of recruits for their all-volunteer military services in the high schools. First to make very enticing offers to cash-strapped public school systems in order to introduce ROTC, junior version, particularly but not exclusively, urban high schools (for example almost all public high schools in Boston have some ROTC service branch in their buildings). Secondly to gain almost unlimited widespread access to high school student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do their nasty work. Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of the high schools and military recruiters out as well.          

Running The Roads-With Bruce Springsteen’s Racing In The Streets In Mind

Running The Roads-With Bruce Springsteen’s Racing In The Streets In Mind 

 

By Seth Garth

 

Nobody knew exactly how Stu Stewart acquired his knowledge and love of fixing up automobiles, taking basic scrap heaps and making them run to the sun, making them the gods’ own chariots, but he was the “max daddy” king hell king of the 1950s golden age of the automobile night around Fritz Taylor’s old working-class neighborhood, the Acre section of Gloversville. Stu, a few years older than most of the guys who hung around with Fritz at Vinny’s Variety Store over on Millard Street, was strictly a “loner,”  a guy whom Fritz would make the other guys laugh at with his imitation of Stu’s Western  slowpoke cowboy walk, really an amble, with his tight ass jeans, his package of unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes complete with matches tucked inside the cellophane, his shit-kicker engineer boots that maybe if Fritz thought about it was the cause of that bramble amble walk, and his whip-chain hanging from his back pocket for all the world, the teenage world, the small shops and offices of downtown world, and the copper world too to see.

Hold up though Fritz only did that imitation when Stu was not around and the coast was clear for Fritz’s freaking skit. Reason: if Stu had ever found out what Fritz was up to, despite the age differences (16 to 22), despite the size and toughness differences, and despite his professed desire to only use that whip-chain for show Stu would have made mincemeat out of Fritz’s silly ass teenage face. The reader does not believe this? Ask Red Riley from over on Sagamore Street, a tough guy who had actually done a stretch at Joven Boys’ Reformatory and learned to be tough or would have wound up being somebody’s honey boy, who said something negative about Stu’s latest honey (girl, okay) and wound up needing twenty-seven stitches quick in the emergency room or he would have died when Stu wailed that whip-chain across his face one night. And Stu, well, Stu just walked away like he had swatted a fly or something. Red took his beating like a man, never said word one to the cops when they came by, a well-thought out tradition in the Acre where the cops were no man’s friends.          

So Fritz knew exactly when and to whom to show his classic imitation. Mostly though everybody, Fritz included, hushed up when Stu came cruising by Vinny’s to start his night’s work. And if the night was a Friday or a Saturday then that night’s work would start by Stu coming by to select a “sidekick” for the evening, a guy who would act as “starter” for the inevitable “chicken run” which would end the night (or really the next morning’s dawn). See Stu in his youth time had been just another guy hanging around Vinny’s, waiting, well, waiting for something but if nothing else than to be old enough to ride a “boss” car around so that he could pick up a “sidekick” at Vinny’s like Hacksaw Jackson did before Stu took over the franchise after Hacksaw had picked him a few times. Stu was only continuing in Hacksaw’s footsteps and so every young guy too young to have wheels of his own, an inability to put a “boss” car together out of a scrap heap or too poor to have a father front for the price of one, Fritz in that latter category, would come to attention waiting for Stu’s nod that signified he would be the sidekick that evening.

(The nod Fritz would realize later was really another side of coming of age, of manhood age in the Acre. Early on guys would greet each other with fulsome hugs as a sign of boy solidarity. Later it would be some short verbal greeting like “What’s up, Jimmy boy.” But as a boy came to manhood his demeanor changed, because almost unconsciously sullen and unresponsive taking a page from Marlon Brando’s or James Dean’s playbook as if words rather than the “nod” were unauthentic by then. This “nod” thing by the way was not all-encompassing, was reserved for guys who you thought were “cool,”  guys who you might not hang with but knew in some capacity enough to make that social distinction. No nod, worse no nod from gods with boss cars like Stu was the kiss of death if you had any aspirations to lead an adventuresome life in the Acre. Strangely when Fritz was in the Army during hellhole Vietnam War time that same nod served that same purpose and it was there that he learned that nod was something of a universal coda among working-class male youth of the day.)      

The only other question on any given night was which one of about six different cars Stu would show up in. Maybe better which parts of the one of those six cars he showed up in would still be intact since he was a born tinkerer, was forever amp-ing up every car. One night Fritz was picked, had received the nod (which unlike in his silly imitation of Stu he took with silent glee as was expected or he would not have made it to the car door before Stu took off) so he knew the full story of what went on in an average Stu night.   

You would never find Stu cruising around aimlessly during the day since as far as anybody knew he held a day job down at the shipyard which was the lifeline of the town’s economy where he was an ace mechanic refitting worn out engines and such. But come dusk around his trailer where he lived, a place he had been brought up in before his mother split with some guy one night and hadn’t been heard from since and he just kind of stayed anyway, you could hear whatever car he had decided to ride that night getting revved up to perdition. Fritz’s night was the night of the two-toned (red and white) ’57 Chevy which even then was a car that young guys were ready to die for, would be the car they wished their fathers would pass on to them but usually wound up being traded in for some new model like a so-so 1960 Chevy or 1961 Dodge something.

Once Fritz opened the door and sat down Stu was off, was off to his first run through around the town and then out a few miles toward the ocean at Adamsville Beach to see what was cooking to see if there were any unattached honeys out there to spice up Stu’s evening. (It could, as rumor had it, have been attached honeys as well since at least once such Jane saw Stu, saw Stu’s car really and abandoned her guy since Stu was whatever his reputation with the women only a fair looking guy, just average so it had to be the car that the girls were dreaming about riding around with Stu in and were willing to give whatever he wanted as part of the price of being seen in the boss car of the town. That was Fritz’s take on the matter both before and after his first sidekick night as the guys around Vinny’s speculated on Stu’s appeal.) On the first pass no action, nada, so they headed to the Dew Drop Drive-In, the gathering spot for youth nation in the area.

There things heated up considerable since the “Dew” was the spot where guys with cars with or without dates, guys and gals without cars went to have a quick snack before the night’s exertions. It was there that Stu spotted Sandy, Sandy McGuire, nothing but a fox, who was a senior at the high school and who every guy around had dreams about even Fritz although he knew she was out of his league. Sandy was sitting on one of the picnic tables Mister Mooney, the owner of the Dew Drop, had put on back of the drive-in in the summer so that the kids would not be blocking the door as respectable people, meaning people there for a dinner and not some car-hop provided tray astride their car, could get inside to folk down their dough for a serious feed. Sandy sitting, as usual at that early time of night, talking to the three or four girls that she had come over to the drive-in restaurant with in somebody’s father’s car.           

Fritz swore the following was true, and to this day he swears that it happened just like that on the occasions when he has gathered in with some old corner boys who hung around Vinny’s and they speak in almost reverend terms about a cowboy grease monkey like Stu. Strangely reverent since they had had mostly successful professional careers or like Fritz been skilled tradesmen, he a small shop owner in the printing trade. Stu stopped his Chevy a few feet from the picnic tables and without saying a thing, remember Fritz swore to this, he simply pointed his finger at Sandy and drew it toward him. A minute later Sandy, also not saying anything, gathered up her sweater brought against any night chill and purse and headed toward Stu and the car. Sandy got into the car through the driver’s side and planted herself in the middle (in those days before seemingly universal bucket seats you could get three across the front seat if necessary), and Fritz took “shot-gun.” It took a few minutes after Stu started the car up for anybody to talk, talk above the radio which was playing some rock and roll song by Chuck Berry as they rode down Lemon Street which told Fritz they were heading back to Adamsville Beach. Then Sandy who looked almost as good up close as she did from a distance with a nice clear face and long brown hair, long slender body and nice legs and who smelled, well, smelled like jasmine or something, asked Stu about how he had put the car together, the “boss” car she said with a certain excitement in her voice.       

Fritz wasn’t sure what to make of what Sandy was talking about since it was one thing for guys even sixteen year old guys like him to go crazy over boss cars it was another for girls to do so. Then Fritz asked Sandy how she knew so much about cars and through that question why she took up Stu’s silent offer to “take a ride.” Sandy laughed and said boys and men for that matter were not the only ones who got excited over cars, and that everybody knew that the number one “max daddy” in town was Stu and that she knew at some point Stu would hone in on her (she didn’t use that word according to Fritz but that was the idea). Oh boy, Fritz thought right then this was going to be like taking candy from a baby for Stu (although he too didn’t use that term but that was the idea). By the time they got Adamsville Beach Sandy was talking excitedly a mile a minute over the radio about the car, school, her home life and what her so-called boyfriend Matt, football Matt would think of her riding with Stu in his souped-up dream Chevy. Yes, this would be like taking candy from a baby as Fritz would find out later when he would have heart to heart talks with girls and they would tell him that they talked a lot when they were getting sexually aroused but were not sure what to do about the situation.

Stu quickly parked the car down the far end of the beach, the Seal Rock end known locally for eons as the lovers’ lane of the area and parents and children should keep away, far away after about dusk, actually probably should stay away in the daytime too just in case some randy couple decided they could not wait until the sun went down, and asked Sandy with a bit of leer if she wanted to go for a walk. She hesitated for a minute then said yes. He didn’t ask Fritz to tag along so Fritz knew the deal was going down, the “do the do,” the local term for having sex learned from a song heard by Howlin’ Wolf on the radio, was in progress. About a half hour Stu with a slight grin on his face and Sandy not looking particularly disheveled like he had seen some girls once they “went for a walk”  down to Seal Rock resurfaced and got in the car. Fritz who had been sitting on the seawall about fifty yards away followed suit.

After depositing Sandy back at the Dew Drop into the hands of her girlfriends about eleven o’clock Stu told Fritz they were now ready for real action, ready to scour the highways that led to Adamsville Beach to see who wanted to take on the max daddy in a “chicken run” and maybe “win” some girl away from the sucker who only was riding with whoever was the king of the hill and have some real fun, ready get down on the “do the do.” Fritz kind of timidly asked Stu whether he and Sandy had done the deed, had had sexual intercourse. Stu laughed and told him that he would learn something about girls like Sandy if he listened to what he said. He had asked Sandy if she wanted to “do the do” over on a secluded area of Seal Rock. She hesitated, said she was not sure, didn’t want that boyfriend Matt, the football player to find out she had been having sexual intercourse with him. Stu, knowing the ways of such “good girls” looking for minute kicks suggested she give him a blow job, you know suck his dick. They walked a little further behind some bushes and Sandy without hesitation pulled down the zipper of his jeans, put her sweater on the ground and got down on her knees and did her work. Good work, very good work Stu said for a “good” girl.

Here was the lesson Stu thought Fritz should learn. He was sure that he would get some action out of Sandy just the way she was talking up a storm in the car probably nervously wondering what she would be expected to do. The problem which Stu was not sure about was that big bull of a football player Matt who might be tougher than him, might see red despite his whip-chain and so he proposed that blow job scenario. And she hopped to it seeing that she would not have to do the other deed. Good girls like Sandy grabbed that opportunity, liked the idea of an off-hand blow job that would not create any sexual danger of pregnancy and would not get around school so they could keep their good reputations. Stu also said that from now on any time he wanted a quick blow job she would be bound to oblige him. Beautiful. But the beautiful thing for Fritz having been part of the scene that night was that Sandy would also have to go down on him if he asked her to avoid any talk around school. (Fritz said would take Stu’s advice a few months later and mention what he wanted and expected from Sandy one night at the Dew Drop and while she was not that happy about it, remember this was Fritz talking, she obliged him in the woods in back of the Dew Drop. A couple of times later as well before she left at the end of summer for college a few states over. Make of that what you will.)                 

Stu said while good girls like Sandy were an easy way to have quick sex and he admitted that she had skills in the oral sex department, sucked his dick completely dry and swallowed the whole load when he erupted, probably grabbed her skills from fending off a million guys who were looking for something more with a few licks to show she was a sport and not some ice queen virgin he was still up for something more from some boss car driver’s slut. So they was looking for some “chicken run” action. (Guys around the Acre were glad to get a blow job just like any other guys but they, and the girls too, didn’t see oral as the same as regular missionary-style intercourse so nobody really bothered to call any girl “easy” or a slut on that basis.)   

Now in those days “boss” car guys didn’t pay attention to some kind of newspaper reports or radio or television broadcasts to find out who was the king of the “chicken run” night like those outlets would be anything but clueless about such subterranean doings but learned who was who out on the backroads late at night. That was why Stu was driving like god’s own angel to see who was also driving those deserted causeway roads at the near end of Adamsville Beach where by day families would throng to cool off from the heat but by the late hour would have totally abandoned the area to the night-takers, to the wild cowboys who had more guts than brains (as Fritz would figure it out later but then he was crazy for the rush of going fast in a “boss” car). Up the road about two miles away from the beach and the entrance to the causeway he found his meat, found what he was looking for a guy in a home-made hot rod that used to be, parts anyway, a 1949 Hudson but which looked that night like a hell-mobile.          

Stu had heard about Lonnie Devine, about that souped-up Hudson and how old Lonnie from Riverdale, several towns away heading west toward the inland towns, had taken down Jimmy Jason a guy whom he had barely beaten the year before when he had a 1953 Dodge souped-up. Had heard too that he had a wild, unpredictable girl riding with him, Laura something. So Stu approached Lonnie’s vehicle and gave him the “nod” (this “nod” an extension of the corner bot nod mentioned before granted to “chicken run” foes known or unknown). That nod signifying that he, Stu wished to run the roads, see what was what. Lonnie answered with his nod and the game was on.    

This “chicken run” is what Fritz or any other sidekick was brought on board by Stu for, to either act as starter or to ride the ride and tell him instantly where the opponent was so he did not have to look right or left. This night Fritz would ride the ride since Laura on the flip of the coin was declared the “starter.” Well, you know there is no story, no story that Fritz would find worthy of telling fifty some years later like some earnest schoolboy if Stu had lost so you know that he won. Blew that Hudson away by a couple of hundred yards. That was not the important part though for him that night. Nor was the fact that Laura, after Lonnie’s defeat at the hands of on Stu Stewart, coolly walked over to Stu’s Chevy and just as coolly sat down in that front seat right next to Stu and began fiddling with the radio dial to get some new rock and roll station in Boston. Nor was the fact that as Stu related to him later he had his way, his “do the do” way with Laura who turned out to be twenty times more skilled at “real” sex than Sandy was at oral sex. No, what was important when the deal went down and Stu had a serious sex partner Fritz was left at the seawall on the nearside of Adamsville Beach find his own way home at two in the morning. Blessed are those who run the roads racing in the streets.                    

A View From The Left-Build A Movement For Full Rights For All Immigrants!

A View From The Left-Build A Movement For Full Rights For All Immigrants!

Frank Jackman comment:

Usually when I post something from some other source, mostly articles and other materials that may be of interest to the radical public that I am trying to address I place the words “ A View From The Left” in the headline and let the subject of the article speak for itself, or let the writer speak for him or herself without further comment whether I agree with the gist of what is said or not. After all I can write my own piece if some pressing issue is at hand. Occasionally, and the sentiments expressed in this article is one such time, I can stand in solidarity with the remarks made. I do so here.     

*****The Latest From The Cindy Sheehan Blog

*****The Latest From The Cindy Sheehan Blog

 

http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/

A link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.

Frank Jackman comment:

I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. And an on-going fetish for her running for office whatever seems to be worth looking at. In 2014 it was the Governor's race in California. Other years it has been for President and for Congress. That Congressional race made sense because it was against Congresswoman and U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who at one time was a darling of the liberals and maybe still is. But electioneering while necessary and maybe useful is not enough. So while her politics and strategy are not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times they do provide enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left, the parliamentary left, to which she is appealing.

One though should always remember, despite our political differences, Ms. Sheehan's heroic action in going down to hell-hole Crawford, Texas to confront one President George W. Bush in 2005 when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize in 2002-2003 after we had millions in the streets for a few minutes and not much after when it would have counted. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.

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Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

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Another note from Frank Jackman  

There are many ways in which people get “religion” about the issues of war and peace, about the struggle to oppose the imperial adventures of the American government.  Learn that it is our duty to oppose those decisions as people who are “in the heart of the beast” as the late revolutionary Che Guevara who knew about the imperial menace both in life and death declared long ago. My own personal “getting religion” and those who I have worked with in such organizations as Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) and later Veterans For Peace (VFP) came from a direct confrontation with the American military establishment either during or after our service. Those were hard confrontations with the reality of the beast back in those days and it is no accident that those who confronted the beasts directly then are still active today. Remain active as a whole new threat to world peace emanates from Washington into the Middle East highlighted by the air wars in Syria and Iraq and the now new lease on life in Afghanistan.     

In a sense the military service confrontation form of “getting religion” on the issues of war and peace is easy to understand given the horrendous nature of modern warfare and its massive weapons overkill and disregard for “collateral damage.” Less easy to see is the radicalization of older women, mothers, mothers of soldiers like Cindy Sheehan in reaction to the senseless death of their loved ones. As pointed out above whatever political differences we have I will always hold Ms. Sheehan’s heroic actions in confronting one George W. Bush then President of the United States and the “yes man” for the war in Iraq started in 2003 (the various aspects of the Iraq saga have to be dated since otherwise confusion prevails) in high regard. She took him on down in red neck Texas asking a simple question-“if there were no weapons of mass destruction, not even close, why did my son die in vain?” Naturally no sufficient answer ever came from him to her. There she was a lonely symbol of the almost then non-existent anti-war movement. And then she started, as this blog of hers testifies to, to put the dots together, “got religion,” got to understand what Che meant long ago about that special duty radicals and revolutionaries have “in the heart of the beast.” And she too like those hoary military veterans I mentioned is still plugging away at the task.      

*****Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

*****Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities, those that he thought would bring some small honor to his name, that he would rather not forget, things that defined his life, gave him that “fifteen minutes of fame,” if only to himself and his, that everybody kept talking about that everyone deserved before they departed this life. That “fifteen minutes of fame” business which he thought had been uttered by the Pop-artist Andy Warhol in one of his prankster moments, one of his New York high society put-downs, was fine by him even if it had been the result of some small honor thing.

The subject of that small honor done in the spurt of his youth that had defined a lot of what came later is what got him thinking one sunny afternoon in September about five years ago as he waited for the seasons to turn almost before his eyes about the times around 1964, around the time that he graduated from North Adamsville High School, around the time that he realized that the big breeze jail-break that he had kind of been waiting for was about to bust out over the land, over America. (His world view did not encompass the entire world or what was the same thing the young nations part of that view but later after making plenty of international connections from here and there he could have said he was waiting for that breeze to bust out over the world.)

It was not like Edward was some kind of soothsayer, like some big think tank thinker paid well to keep tabs on social trends for those in charge so they didn’t get waylaid like they did with the “rebel without a cause” and “beat” phenomena or anything like that back then, like could read tea leaves or tarot cards like some latter day Madame La Rue who actually did read his future once down at the Gloversville Fair when she had come to that location with her daughter, Gypsy Anne, one hot August week when he was about twelve. Madame that day read that he was made for big events. The big event that he was interested in just then was winning a doll, a stuffed animal or something like that for dark-haired, dark-eyed just starting to fill out  Gypsy Anne at the Skee game which he was an expert at. (For those clueless about Skee, have forgotten or have never spent their illicit around carnivals, small time circuses, or penny-ante amusement parks, the game is simplicity itself once you get the hang of it and play about 10,000 hours’ worth of games you roll small balls, which come down a chute one you pay your dough, or credit/debit card the way they have the machines worked now a days, and you roll them like in bowling up to a target area like in archery and try to get a ton of points which gives you strips of coupons to win a prize depending on high your score is, and what you want. Like I say, simple.) And Edward did win her a stuffed animal, a big one, and got a very big long wet kiss for his heroics (and “copped a little feel” from that starting to fill out shape of hers and he finally solved, no, he solved for that one minute that budding girls turned to women were as interested in sex, or at least being “felt up” as the other guys around Harry’s Variety Store had told him  they were if approached the right way) down by the beach when she gave her best twelve year old “come hither” look, not the last time he would be snagged by that look by her or any other women later. No way though that tarot reading when he was twelve left an impression, left him with that vague feeling about the big breeze coming, not then when the hormones drove his big thoughts, and not for a long while.

That big breeze blowing through the land thing had not been Edward’s idea anyway, not his originally although he swore by it once he thought about the possibilities of breaking out of Podunk North Adamsville, but came from “the Scribe,” the late Peter Paul Markin, a corner boy at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys on Thornton Street where he occasionally hung out in high school since he had been childhood friends with the leader of that crowd, Frankie Riley, who read books and newspapers a lot and would go on and on about the thing on lonesome Friday nights when all the guys were waiting, well, just waiting for something to happen in woebegone North Adamsville where the town mainly went to sleep by ten, or eleven on Friday and Saturday night when Jack Slack’s closed late (for the younger set, Doc’s Drugstore, the place where he and Frankie hung in their younger days as well, the place where they all first heard rock and roll played loud on Doc’s jukebox by the soda fountain, every night was nine o’clock at night just when things were getting interesting as the shadows had time to spank vivid boy imaginations and you wonder, well, maybe not you, but parents wondered why their kids were ready to take the first hitchhike or hitch a freight train ride out of that “one-horse town” (an expression courtesy of the grandmothers of the town, at least the ones he knew, mostly Irish grandmothers with corn beef and cabbage boiling on their cast-iron stoves and smirks on their faces, if grandmothers could have smirks over anything, about how dear the price of everything was if you could get it a very big problem, including Edward’s Anna Riley, where he first heard the words).

Here is where that big breeze twelve million word description thing Markin was talking about intersected with that unspoken trend for Edward (unknown and unspoken since the corner at Jack Slacks’ did not have a resident professional academic sociologist in residence to guide them since those “hired guns” were still hung up on solving the juvenile delinquency problem and so as usual well behind the curve  and Markin, the Scribe as smart as he was, was picking his stuff up strictly from newspapers and magazines who were always way also behind the trends until the next big thing hit them in the face). Edward’s take on the musical twists and turns back then is where he had something the kids at North Adamsville High would comment on, would ask him about to see which way the winds were blowing, would put their nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukeboxes to hear based on his recommendations.

Even Markin deferred to him on this one, on his musical sense, the beat or the “kicks” as he called then although he, Markin, would horn in, or try to, on the glory by giving every imaginable arcane fact about some record’s history, roots, whatever which would put everybody to sleep, they just wanted to heard the “beat” for crying out loud. Edward did have to chuckle though when he thought about the way, the main way, that Markin worked the jukebox scene since he was strictly from poverty, from the projects, poorer even than Edward’s people and that was going some if you saw the ramshackle shack of a house that he and his four older brothers grew up in. The Scribe used to con some lonely-heart girl who maybe had just broken up with her boyfriend, maybe had been dateless for a while, or was just silly enough to listen to him into playing what he wanted to hear based on what Edward had told him. But he was smooth in his way since he would draw a bee-line to the girl who just put her quarter in for her three selection on Jack Slack’s jukebox (Doc’s, sweet and kindly saint Doc whose place was a bee-hive after school for that very reason , had five for a quarter if you can believe that). He would become her “advisor,” and as the number one guy who knew every piece of teenage grapevine news in the town and whom everybody therefore deferred on that intelligence so he would let her “pick” the first selection, usually some sentimental lost love thing she could get weepy over, the second selection would be maybe some “oldie but goodie,” Breathless or At The Hop, which everybody still wanted to hear, and then on number three, the girl all out of ideas Markin would tout whatever song had caught his ear. Jesus, Markin was a piece of work. Too bad he had to end the way he did down in Mexico now lying in some unmarked grave in some town’s potter’s field back in the mid-1970s which guys from the old town were still moaning over.

That was Markin on the fringes but see Edward’s senses were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll in the early 1960s where he sensed what he called silly “bubble gum” music (what high priest Markin called something like the “musical counter-revolution” but he was always putting stuff in political bull form like that) that had passed for rock.  Which, go figure, the girls liked, or liked the look of the guys singing the tunes, guys with flipped hair and dimples like Fabian and Bobby Rydell but was strictly nowhere with Edward. The breeze Edward felt was going to bury that stuff under an avalanche of sounds going back to Elvis, and where Elvis got his stuff from like Lonnie Johnson and the R&B and black electric blues guys, the rockabilly hungry white boys, and forward to something else, something with more guitars all amped to big ass speakers that were just coming along to bring in the new dispensation.

More importantly since the issue of jailbreaks and sea changes were in the air Edward was the very first kid to grasp what would later be called “the folk minute of the early 1960s,” and not just by Markin when he wrote stuff about that time later before his sorry end. Everybody would eventually hone in on Dylan and Baez, dubbed the “king and queen” of the moment by the mass media always in a frenzy to anoint and label things that they had belatedly found about out about and run into the ground.  But when folk tunes started showing up on the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner over on Latham Street where the college guys hung and where families went to a cheap filling dinner to give Ma a break from the supper meal preparations it was guys like the Kingston Trio, the Lettermen, and the Lamplighters who got the play after school and some other girls, not the “bubble gum” girls went crazy over the stuff when Edward made recommendations.

He had caught the folk moment almost by accident late one Sunday night when he picked up a station from New York City and heard Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie songs being played, stuff that Mr. Dasher his seventh grade music teacher had played in class to broaden youthful minds, meaning trying to break the Elvis-driven rock and roll habit. So that musical sense combined with his ever present sense that things could be better in this wicked old world drilled into him by his kindly old grandmother, that Anna Riley with her boiling kettles and smirks mentioned before,   who was an old devotee of the Catholic Worker movement kind of drove his aspirations (and Markin’s harping with the political and so-called historical slant triggered by his own grandmother’s devotion to the Catholic Worker movement added in). But at first it really was the music that had been the cutting edge of what followed later, followed until about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land.

That fascination with music had occupied Edward’s mind since he had been about ten and had received a transistor radio for his birthday and out of curiosity decided to turn the dial to AM radio channels other that WJDA which his parents, may they rest in peace, certainly rest in peace from his incessant clamoring for rock and roll records and later folk albums, concert tickets, radio listening time on the big family radio in the living room, had on constantly and which drove him crazy. Drove him crazy because that music, well, frankly that music, the music of the Doris Days, the Peggy Lees, The Rosemary Clooneys, the various corny sister acts like the Andrews Sisters, the Frank Sinatras, the Vaughn Monroes, the Dick Haynes and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise, no, in order to end the family civil war, they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.

One night, one late night in 1955, 1956 when Edward was fiddling with the dial he heard this sound out of Cleveland, Ohio, a little fuzzy but audible playing this be-bop sound, not jazz although it had horns, not rhythm and blues although sort of, but a new beat driven by some wild guitar by a guy named Warren Smith who was singing about his Ruby, his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby who only was available apparently to dance the night away. And she didn’t seem to care whether she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Edward Rowley, something he could not quite articulate then call her woman, call her Ruby and you will not be far off. And so with that as a pedigree Edward became one of the town’s most knowledgeable devotees of the new sound.

Problem was that new sound, as happens frequently in music, got a little stale as time went on, as the original artists who captured his imagination faded from view one way or another and new guys, guys with nice Bobby this and Bobby that names, Patsy this and Brenda that names sang songs under the umbrella name rock and roll that his mother could love. Songs that could have easily fit into that WJDA box that his parents had been stuck in since about World War II.

So Edward was anxious for a new sound to go along with his feeling tired of the same old, same old stuff that had been hanging around in the American night since the damn nuclear hot flashes red scare Cold War started way before he had a clue about what that was all about. It had started with the music and then he got caught later in high school up with a guy in school, Daryl Wallace, a hipster, or that is what he called himself, a guy who liked “kicks” although being in high school in North Adamsville far from New York City, far from San Francisco, damn, far from Boston what those “kicks” were or what he or Edward would do about getting those “kicks” never was made clear. But they played it out in a hokey way and for a while they were the town, really high school, “beatniks.”  So Edward had had his short faux “beat” phase complete with flannel shirts, black chino pants, sunglasses, and a black beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home in his bedroom closet once he found out after his parents had seen and heard Jack Kerouac reading from the last page of On The Road on the Steve Allen Show that they had severely disapproved of the man, the movement and anything that smacked of the “beat” and a beret always associated with French bohemians and foreignness would have had them seeing “red”). And for a while Daryl and Edward played that out until Daryl moved away (at least that was the story that went around but there was a persistent rumor for a time that Mr. Wallace had dragooned Daryl into some military school in California in any case that disappearance from the town was the last he ever heard from his “beat” brother).

Then came 1964 and  Edward was fervently waiting for something to happen, for something to come out of the emptiness that he was feeling just as things started moving again with the emergence of the Beatles and the Stones as a harbinger of what was coming.

That is where Edward had been psychologically when his mother first began to harass him about his hair. Although the hair thing like the beret was just the symbol of clash that Edward knew was coming and knew also that now that he was older that he was going to be able to handle differently that when he was a kid.  Here is what one episode of the battle sounded like:                   

“Isn’t that hair of yours a little long Mr. Edward Rowley, Junior,” clucked Mrs. Edward Rowley, Senior, “You had better get it cut before your father gets back from his job working on repairing that ship up in Maine, if you know what is good for you.” That mothers’-song was being endlessly repeated in North Adamsville households (and not just those households either but in places like Carver, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Ann Arbor, Manhattan, Cambridge any place where guys were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing hair a little longer than boys’ regular was the flash point) ever since the British invasion had brought longer hair into style (and a little less so, beards, that was later when guys got old enough to grow one without looking wispy, had taken a look at what their Victorian great-grandfathers grew and though it was “cool.” Cool along with new mishmash clothing and new age monikers to be called by.)

Of course when one was thinking about the British invasion in the year 1964 one was not thinking about the American Revolution or the War of 1812 but the Beatles. And while their music has taken 1964 teen world by a storm, a welcome storm after the long mainly musical counter-revolution since Elvis, Bo, Jerry Lee and Chuck ruled the rock night and had disappeared without a trace, the 1964 parent world was getting up in arms.

And not just about hair styles either. But about midnight trips on the clanking subway to Harvard Square coffeehouses to hear, to hear if you can believe this, folk music, mountain music, harp music or whatever performed by long-haired (male or female), long-bearded (male), blue jean–wearing (both), sandal-wearing (both), well, for lack of a better name “beatniks” (parents, as usual, being well behind the curve on teen cultural movements since by 1964 “beat”  except on silly television shows and by “wise” social commenters who could have been “Ike” brothers and sisters, was yesterday’s news).

Mrs. Rowley would constantly harp about “why couldn’t Edward be like he was when he listened to Bobby Vinton and his Mr. Lonely or that lovely-voiced Roy Orbison and his It’s Over and other nice songs on the local teen radio station, WMEX (he hated that name Eddie by the way, Eddie was also what everybody called his father so you can figure out why he hated the moniker just then). Now it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a cranky-voiced guy named Bob Dylan that has his attention. And that damn Judy Jackson with her short skirt and her, well her… looks” (Mrs. Rowley like every mother in the post-Pill world refusing to use the “s” word, a throw-back to their girlish days when their mothers did not use such a word either and so everybody learned about sex is some strange osmotic out in the streets, in the school lavs, and from older almost as clueless older brothers and sisters just like now.)     

Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up anyway, she let out what was really bothering her about her Eddie’s behavior, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And you and that damn Peter Markin, who used to be so nice when all you boys hung around together at Jimmy Jack’s Diner [Edward: corner boys, Ma, that is what we were and at Jack Slack’s alleys not Jimmy Jack’s that was for the jukebox and for checking out the girls who were putting dough in that jukebox] and I at least knew you were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If your father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as you are. Worse though, worse than worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving North Adamsville, defenseless against the communists with your talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone and stuck with your idea of forming a band that would play nice songs that make kids feel good like Gale Garnet’s We’ll Sing In The Sunshine or that pretty Negro girl Dionne Warwick and Her Walk On By instead of getting everybody upset."

And since Mrs. Rowley, Alice, to the neighbors had mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Edward’s flame and according to Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talk, Judy’s talk they had “done the deed” and you can figure out what the deed was let’s hear what was going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Edward was wearing his hair longer was because Judy thought it was “sexy” and so that talk of doing the deed may well have been true if there were any sceptics. Hear this:      

“Young lady, that dress is too short for you to wear in public, take it off, burn it for all I care, and put on another one or you are not going out of this house,” barked Mrs. James Jackson, echoing a sentiment that many worried North Adamsville mothers were feeling (and not just those mothers either but in places like Gloversville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where gals were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing their skirts a little longer than mid-calf was the flash point) about their daughters dressing too provocatively and practically telling the boys, well practically telling them you know what as she suppressed the “s” word that was forming in her head. She too working up a high horse head of steam continued, "And that Eddie [“Edward, Ma,” Judy keep repeating every time Mrs. Jackson, Dorothy to the neighbors, said Eddie], and his new found friends like Peter Markin taking you to those strange coffeehouses in Harvard Square with all the unwashed, untamed, unemployed “beatniks” instead of the high school dances on Saturday night. And that endless talk about the n-----s down South, about get books for the ignorant to read and other trash talk about how they are equal to us, and your father better not hear you talk like that, not at the dinner table since he has to work around them and their smells and ignorance over in that factory in Dorchester.  And don’t start with that Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch of them and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."

Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Markin were sitting in the Club Nana in Harvard Square sipping coffee, maybe pecking at the one brownie between them, and listening to a local wanna-be folk singing strumming his stuff (who turned out to be none other than Eric Von Schmidt whose Joshua Gone Barbados and a couple of other songs would become folk staples and classics). Beside them cartons of books that they are sorting to be taken along with them when they head south this summer after graduation exercises at North Adamsville High School are completed in June. (By the way Peter’s parents were only slightly less irate about their son’s activities and used the word “Negro” when they were referring to black people, black people they wished their son definitely not to get involved with were only slightly less behind the times than Mrs. Rowley and Mrs. Jackson and so requires no separate screed by Mrs. Markin. See Peter did not mention word one about what he was, or was not, doing and thus spared himself the anguish that Edward and Judy put themselves through trying to “relate” to their parents, their mothers really since fathers were some vague threatened presence in the background in those households.)

They, trying to hold back their excitement have already been to some training sessions at the NAACP office over on Massachusetts Avenue in the Roxbury section of Boston and have purchased their tickets for the Greyhound bus as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet others who will be heading south down to Mississippi goddam and Alabama goddam on a chartered bus. But get this Peter turned to Edward and said, “Have you heard that song, Popsicles and Icicles by the Mermaids, it has got great melodic sense.” Edward made a very severe off-putting “no way” face. Yes, we are still in the time just before the sea change after which even Peter will chuckle about “bubble gum” music. Good luck though, young travelers, good luck.