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An international network of men Newsletter September 2016
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We campaign to defend whistleblowers, prisoners and military refuseniks, for a society which invests in caring not killing!
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Historic Work Strike in US prisons
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Join us at TWT
Building the new movement from a grassroots women’s perspective
Monday 26 Sept 1-3pm
Sara Callaway, Women of Colour in the Global Women’s Strike ● Michael Kalmanovitz, Refusing to Kill ● Nina Lopez, Legal Action for Women ● Ariane Sacco, Queer Strike ●
Rebecca Talah, All African Women’s Group ● Aliya Yule, student from Preventing Prevent
Payday has been supporting the Jeremy for Labour Campaign
We also invite you to:
We should all be feminists
SAT 24, 4-6pm The Studio
Sex, Race, Nation…& Class. What divides us? What can unite us?
SAT 24, 6-8pm
Chamber Theatre
Come hear Selma James from the Global Women’s Strike and women speakers from organisations we work with.
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“This is a call to action against slavery in America,” organizers wrote in an announcement issued in April and circulated inside and outside prisons nationwide, and that sums up the strikers’ primary demand: an end to free prison labor.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, prisoners at federal facilities can make between 12 and 40 cents an hour for their work, while state prison rates can be higher or lower. In several states, including Texas and Arkansas,
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inmates are paid no wage for their labor.
The strike started on 9 September and spread to 24 states. “There are probably 20,000 prisoners on strike right now, at least, which is the biggest prison strike in history, but the information is really sketchy and spotty,” said Ben Turk, of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World union helping to coordinate the inmate-led initiative from the outside. Support!
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The 9 September was chosen because on 9 September 1971, prisoners took
over and shut down Attica, New York State’s most notorious prison. | |||||
NO TO THE DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE!
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On 10 September, pressed by ongoing protests, three federal agencies have blocked the construction of the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline “pending a thorough reconsideration of the process”. The struggle continues for thousands of people from over 200 Native Tribes who have joined the Standing Rock Sioux’s efforts to protect their lands. Sign the petition.
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DROP THE CHARGES - FREE CHELSEA MANNING!
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Free trans woman prisoner
Chelsea Manning!
Workshop at the
Anarchist bookfair
Sat 29 Oct – 5pm room LG52
Park View School West Green Road, London, N15 3QR
Organised by Queer Strike and Payday men’s network
As Chelsea Manning is appealing against her 35 year prison sentence, the US military wants to make an example of her to deter other whistleblowers and trans prisoners. Come and discuss how we can organise internationally to free her!
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On 13 September, trans woman whistleblower Chelsea Manning ended a 5-day hunger strike, after the U.S. military agreed to move forward with the recommended treatment for her gender dysphoria.
However, the Army is punishing her with 14 days solitary confinement for charges directly related to her suicide attempt.
Chelsea wrote: “I am not alone in my struggle. Suicide pervades the trans community. The risk among our trans siblings with no or inadequate treatment is staggering.”
If Chelsea receive this gender-reassignment surgery, she will be the first trans prisoner in the US to receive this treatment, setting a precedent that could benefit thousands of transgender inmates.
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SUPPORT JULIAN ASSANGE
On 17 October Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange will be questioned at the Ecuador embassy over rape allegation which has been used to try to extradite him to the US where he would be punished for blowing the whistle on war crimes and corruption..
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Invest in caring,
Not Trident!
The UK government plans to spend £205 billion to replace Trident nuclear submarine. Wouldn’t this money better spent on the NHS and other caring?
Jeremy Corbyn has put forward a Defence Diversification which aims to transform defence industry work into socially useful work.
On 26 November, a Conference will discuss the 1971 Lucas plan - an attempt of this company’s workers to put into practice this diversification.
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Support refugee mothers on hunger strike in Pennsylvania
In August, refugee mothers went on hunger strike at family detention centre in Pennsylvania to protest indefinite detention and the traumatic effects on their children who are with them. They wrote: “We are 22 mothers who have been detained at Berks Family Residential Center from 270 days to 365 days with children ages 2 to 16 years old, depriving them of having a normal life, knowing that we have prior traumas from our countries.” Send a message of support.
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REFUSING TO KILL – OR TO BE KILLED – IS NOT A CRIME!
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Monday, September 26, 2016
Historic Work Strike in US prisons
*The 1960s Folk Fringe- The Rise And Fall And Rise Of The Holy Modal Rounder
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of the trailer for "The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound To Lose".
DVD Review
The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound To Lose, The Holy Modal Rounders, Bad Bird Productions, 2007
Okay, let’s go through the geography of this seemingly endless review of folk revival of the 1960’s tour that I have been conducting over the past year or so. I have gone down the byways and back alleys of Bleeker Street. I have tipped my hat to McDougall Street and its “mayor” (the late Dave Van Ronk an interviewee in this work). I have been positively 4th Street more times that I can shake a stick at (Bob Dylan’s old haunts). So now, once again, I am looking at a group, the Holy Modal Rounders, whose core musicians Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, roamed those same few square blocks of lower Manhattan and made some off-hand (and off-the-wall) musical history in the early 1960’s. In this case, however, the DVD review of this film documentary poses a question, in the negative, mainly, about those who aspired to make their own niche in that world.
The name Holy Modal Rounder, exotic sounding as it was in my youthful novice days of late Sunday night listening to a local folk music show on the radio, was very familiar to me as an exemplar of what I would call “novelty” folk. Taking the standard Harry Smith (or John and Alan Lomax) American folk music songbook and placing their own twist on it, sometimes to fill out a missing aspect of a more traditional work, sometimes just working off their own humor or hubris. Later they would add a psychedelic rock-oriented embellishment to that basic musical approach. These adaptations has a long and honorable history in those genres, although I must admit that my own tastes did not run to that irreverent place, as far as folk music went. Thus, while I had heard of them and had a few laughs at some of their lyrics I was not particularly a fan. Thus, their subsequent fates, that form the substance of this documentary, were not known to me.
One of the things that I have tried to do in reviewing many of the more or less well known figures of the 1960s folk revival has been to ask a question about why others never dethroned the “king” and “queen” of the folk scene, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. In some cases it was purely a question of being lesser talents. Everyone with a guitar and knew three chords, had some cash or friends with cash (it disn't take much) and some wanderlust tried to get to New York in those days. In others it some personal quirk or idiosyncrasy. A fear of failure or success, some psychological problems, family responsibilities and the like. Or, as in many cases in the rock 'n' roll milieu, took the downward spiral into drugs and alcohol dependence. All creative endeavors are, unfortunately, littered with such cases. A weird combination of those factors drove Stampfel and Weber down.
The best part of this film, however, describe that demise but also their reemergence as grey eminences as the part of the revival of the folk revival in more recent times out on the lesser known 'cult' musical venues. Some of this material presented here is gripping concerning the destructiveness of the drug problems, the ‘recovery’ and the aftermath. But also about the commitment to the music. So if you were part of the 1960s folk/rock scene, or want to know about that Greenwich Village part of it, or if you are just interested in a cautionary tale about the pitfalls, personal and otherwise, in the way of musical success this is a good view.
"Romping Through The Swamp"
Lyrics to Romping Through The Swamp :
Throw away your pomp
Romping through the swamp
Romping through the swamp in the month of May
Wading through the slimy ooze
You can drive away your blues
Romping through the swamp
Toking on your womp
Lying in the swamp
Looking at the ways glaze haze can raise
You can be a muddy satyr
Wrestling with an alligator
Romping through the swamp
You can spend your time
Covered up in slime
Saying I love you to the rot and goo
Lurching through the quagmire
Head aflame with swamp fire
Romping through the swamp
Lyrics to Low Down Dog :
Don't you take me for no low down dog
Low down dog!
Don't you know I got my pride
I just want to walk beside you, baby
But you say
But you say
I must walk behind?
Well, I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
Who will keep your bed warm when I'm gone?
When I'm gone?
If you let the fire go out
Better know what you're about, my baby
But you say
But you say
My bed's warm enough?
Well I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
Who will mind the children when I'm gone?
When I'm gone?
When you want to get away
Who will take them out to play, my baby?
But you say
But you say
Kids are my whole life!
Well I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
Who will feed you peaches when I'm gone?
When I'm gone?
Your new lover may be cute
But will he bring home the fruit, my baby?
But you say
But you say
Peaches make me fat
Well I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
Don't you treat me like no Viet Cong!
Viet Cong!
Don't you know I'm from Da Nang
I just want to let it hang my baby
But you say
But you say
We gonna drop the bomb!
Well I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
Well, on a wagon traveling down your road!
Down the road!
Well, you say I'm just one more
That it really ain't a bore, my baby
But you say
But you say
Your road's worn and rough
Well I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
DVD Review
The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound To Lose, The Holy Modal Rounders, Bad Bird Productions, 2007
Okay, let’s go through the geography of this seemingly endless review of folk revival of the 1960’s tour that I have been conducting over the past year or so. I have gone down the byways and back alleys of Bleeker Street. I have tipped my hat to McDougall Street and its “mayor” (the late Dave Van Ronk an interviewee in this work). I have been positively 4th Street more times that I can shake a stick at (Bob Dylan’s old haunts). So now, once again, I am looking at a group, the Holy Modal Rounders, whose core musicians Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, roamed those same few square blocks of lower Manhattan and made some off-hand (and off-the-wall) musical history in the early 1960’s. In this case, however, the DVD review of this film documentary poses a question, in the negative, mainly, about those who aspired to make their own niche in that world.
The name Holy Modal Rounder, exotic sounding as it was in my youthful novice days of late Sunday night listening to a local folk music show on the radio, was very familiar to me as an exemplar of what I would call “novelty” folk. Taking the standard Harry Smith (or John and Alan Lomax) American folk music songbook and placing their own twist on it, sometimes to fill out a missing aspect of a more traditional work, sometimes just working off their own humor or hubris. Later they would add a psychedelic rock-oriented embellishment to that basic musical approach. These adaptations has a long and honorable history in those genres, although I must admit that my own tastes did not run to that irreverent place, as far as folk music went. Thus, while I had heard of them and had a few laughs at some of their lyrics I was not particularly a fan. Thus, their subsequent fates, that form the substance of this documentary, were not known to me.
One of the things that I have tried to do in reviewing many of the more or less well known figures of the 1960s folk revival has been to ask a question about why others never dethroned the “king” and “queen” of the folk scene, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. In some cases it was purely a question of being lesser talents. Everyone with a guitar and knew three chords, had some cash or friends with cash (it disn't take much) and some wanderlust tried to get to New York in those days. In others it some personal quirk or idiosyncrasy. A fear of failure or success, some psychological problems, family responsibilities and the like. Or, as in many cases in the rock 'n' roll milieu, took the downward spiral into drugs and alcohol dependence. All creative endeavors are, unfortunately, littered with such cases. A weird combination of those factors drove Stampfel and Weber down.
The best part of this film, however, describe that demise but also their reemergence as grey eminences as the part of the revival of the folk revival in more recent times out on the lesser known 'cult' musical venues. Some of this material presented here is gripping concerning the destructiveness of the drug problems, the ‘recovery’ and the aftermath. But also about the commitment to the music. So if you were part of the 1960s folk/rock scene, or want to know about that Greenwich Village part of it, or if you are just interested in a cautionary tale about the pitfalls, personal and otherwise, in the way of musical success this is a good view.
"Romping Through The Swamp"
Lyrics to Romping Through The Swamp :
Throw away your pomp
Romping through the swamp
Romping through the swamp in the month of May
Wading through the slimy ooze
You can drive away your blues
Romping through the swamp
Toking on your womp
Lying in the swamp
Looking at the ways glaze haze can raise
You can be a muddy satyr
Wrestling with an alligator
Romping through the swamp
You can spend your time
Covered up in slime
Saying I love you to the rot and goo
Lurching through the quagmire
Head aflame with swamp fire
Romping through the swamp
Lyrics to Low Down Dog :
Don't you take me for no low down dog
Low down dog!
Don't you know I got my pride
I just want to walk beside you, baby
But you say
But you say
I must walk behind?
Well, I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
Who will keep your bed warm when I'm gone?
When I'm gone?
If you let the fire go out
Better know what you're about, my baby
But you say
But you say
My bed's warm enough?
Well I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
Who will mind the children when I'm gone?
When I'm gone?
When you want to get away
Who will take them out to play, my baby?
But you say
But you say
Kids are my whole life!
Well I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
Who will feed you peaches when I'm gone?
When I'm gone?
Your new lover may be cute
But will he bring home the fruit, my baby?
But you say
But you say
Peaches make me fat
Well I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
Don't you treat me like no Viet Cong!
Viet Cong!
Don't you know I'm from Da Nang
I just want to let it hang my baby
But you say
But you say
We gonna drop the bomb!
Well I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
Well, on a wagon traveling down your road!
Down the road!
Well, you say I'm just one more
That it really ain't a bore, my baby
But you say
But you say
Your road's worn and rough
Well I ain't holding still for none of that stuff!
*****President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!-The Struggle Continues ….We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind
*****President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!-The Struggle Continues ….We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Updated-September 2015
A while back, maybe a year or so ago, I was asked by a fellow member of Veterans For Peace at a monthly meeting in Cambridge about the status of the case of Chelsea Manning since he knew that I had been seriously involved with publicizing her case and he had not heard much about the case since she had been convicted in August 2013 (on some twenty counts including several Espionage Act counts, the Act itself, as it relates to Chelsea and its constitutionality will be the basis for one of her issues on appeal) and sentenced by Judge Lind to thirty-five years imprisonment to be served at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. (She had already been held for three years before trial, the subject of another appeals issue and as of May 2015 had served five years altogether thus far and will be formally eligible for parole in the not too distant future although usually the first parole decision is negative).
That had also been the time immediately after the sentencing when Private Manning announced to the world her sexual identity and turned from Bradley to Chelsea. The question of her sexual identity was a situation than some of us already had known about while respecting Private Manning’s, Chelsea’s, and those of her ardent supporters at Courage to Resist and elsewhere the subject of her sexual identity was kept in the background so the reasons she was being tried would not be muddled and for which she was savagely fighting in her defense would not be warped by the mainstream media into some kind of identity politics circus.
I had responded to my fellow member that, as usual in such super-charged cases involving political prisoners, and there is no question that Private Manning is one despite the fact that every United States Attorney-General including the one in charge during her trial claims that there are no such prisoners in American jails only law-breakers, once the media glare of the trial and sentencing is over the case usually falls by the wayside into the media vacuum while the appellate process proceed on over the next several years.
At that point I informed him of the details that I did know. Chelsea immediately after sentencing had been put in the normal isolation before being put in with the general population at Fort Leavenworth. She seemed to be adjusting according to her trial defense lawyer to the pall of prison life as best she could. Later she had gone to a Kansas civil court to have her name changed from Bradley to Chelsea Elizabeth which the judge granted although the Army for a period insisted that mail be sent to her under her former male Bradley name. Her request for hormone therapies to help reflect her sexual identity had either been denied or the process stonewalled despite the Army’s own medical and psychiatric personnel stating in court that she was entitled to such measures.
At the beginning of 2014 the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington, General Buchanan, who had the authority to grant clemency on the sentence part of the case, despite the unusual severity of the sentence, had denied Chelsea any relief from the onerous sentence imposed by Judge Lind.
Locally on Veterans Day 2013, the first such event after her sentencing we had honored Chelsea at the annual VFP Armistice Day program and in December 2013 held a stand-out celebrating Chelsea’s birthday (as we did in December 2014 and will do again this December of 2015). Most important of the information I gave my fellow VFPer was that Chelsea’s case going forward to the Army appellate process was being handled by nationally renowned lawyer Nancy Hollander and her associate Vincent Ward. Thus the case was in the long drawn out legal phase that does not generally get much coverage except by those interested in the case like well-known Vietnam era Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, various progressive groups which either nominated or rewarded her with their prizes, and the organization that has steadfastly continued to handle her case’s publicity and raising financial aid for her appeal, Courage to Resist (an organization dedicated to publicizing the cases of other military resisters as well).
At our February 2015 monthly meeting that same VFPer asked me if it was true that as he had heard the Army, or the Department of Defense, had ordered Chelsea’s hormone therapy treatments to begin. I informed him after a long battle, including an ACLU suit ordering such relief, that information was true and she had started her treatments a month previously. I also informed him that the Army had thus far refused her request to have an appropriate length woman’s hair-do. On the legal front the case was still being reviewed for issues to be presented which could overturn the lower court decision in the Army Court Of Criminal Appeals by the lawyers and the actual writing of the appeal was upcoming (expected in the Winter, 2016) . A seemingly small but very important victory on that front was that after the seemingly inevitable stonewalling on every issue the Army had agreed to use feminine or neutral pronoun in any documentation concerning Private Manning’s case. The lawyers had in June 2014 also been successful in avoiding the attempt by the Department of Defense to place Chelsea in a civil facility as they tried to foist their “problem” elsewhere.
On the political front Chelsea continued to receive awards, and after a fierce battle in 2013 was finally in 2014 made an honorary grand marshal of the very important GLBTQ Pride Parade in San Francisco (and had a contingent supporting her freedom again in the 2015 parade). Recently she has been given status as a contributor to the Guardian newspaper, a newspaper that was central to the fight by fellow whistle-blower Edward Snowden, where her first contribution was a very appropriate piece on what the fate of the notorious CIA torturers should be, having herself faced such torture down in Quantico adding to the poignancy of that suggestion. More recently she has written articles about the dire situation in the Middle East and the American government’s inability to learn any lessons from history and a call on the military to stop the practice of denying transgender people the right to serve. (Not everybody agrees with her positon in the transgender community or the VFP but she is out there in front with it.)
[Maybe most important of all in this social networking, social media, texting world of the young (mostly) Chelsea has a twitter account- @xychelsea
Locally over the past two year we have marched for Chelsea in the Boston Pride Parade, commemorated her fourth year in prison last May [2014] and the fifth this year with a vigil, honored her again on Armistice Day 2014, celebrated her 27th birthday in December with a rally (as we did this past December for her 28th birthday).
More recently big campaigns by Courage To Resist and the Press Freedom Foundation have almost raised the $200, 000 needed (maybe more by now) to give her legal team adequate resources during her appeals process (first step, after looking over the one hundred plus volumes of her pre-trial and trial hearings, the Army Court Of Criminal Appeal)
Recently although in this case more ominously and more threateningly Chelsea has been charged and convicted of several prison infractions (among them having a copy of the now famous Vanity Fair with Caitlyn, formerly Bruce, Jenner’s photograph on the cover) which could affect her parole status and other considerations going forward.
We have continued to urge one and all to sign the on-line Amnesty International petition asking President Obama to grant an immediate pardon as well as asking that those with the means sent financial contributions to Courage To Resist to help with her legal expenses.
After I got home that night of the meeting I began thinking that a lot has happened over the past couple of years in the Chelsea Manning case and that I should made what I know more generally available to more than my local VFPers. I do so here, and gladly. Just one more example of our fervent belief that as we have said all along in Veterans for Peace and elsewhere- we will not leave our sister behind… More later.
****The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-The Cause That Passes Through The Prison Walls-With The Old International Labor Defense in Mind
****The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-The Cause That Passes Through The Prison Walls-With The Old International Labor Defense in Mind
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Sam Eaton had to laugh when he heard the news, the news live and in person on cable news by the current Attorney-General of the United States (no names needed since this is the position of every one of those guys, and now gals when primed by curious reporters who if they have done their homework already know the answer) that there are “no political prisoners in the United States prison systems, certainly not the federal systems and as far as is known not in the states either.” And on some level, not on the level of candid truth but some level lower than that, the A-G in question (and all previous A-Gs) is right since every prisoner, every political prisoner is behind bars for some “crime” against society’s norms. Take the case of Chelsea Manning (known until her thirty-five year sentencing to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas for multiple conviction against military and federal law as Bradley Manning thereafter as Chelsea in case there is any confusion about who we are talking about) which was the case the A-G in question was referring to in that newspeak commentary. Private Manning, is the heroic Army soldier who blew the whistle to Wiki-leaks on the atrocities committed by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan and the duplicity of the Hillary Clinton-run State Department even before Benghazi. The charges against Chelsea were “crimes,” you know “stealing” government files and “committing” acts of espionage but her motivation had nothing to do with crime, at least crimes that working people and leftists need worry about. Her leaks were a breath of fresh air in counter-point to the “slam-dunk’ mentality that has pervaded both the Bush II and Obama administrations. But Chelsea is nevertheless a political prisoner with a capital “P.”
Sam had to laugh again about the nefarious and spurious doing of the American justice machine (thoughts on that “machine” bringing to Sam’s mind the words of sardonic comic Lenny Bruce, a man not unfamiliar with that system and in his own way a political prisoner as well about how “in the hall of justice the only justice is in the halls-nicely said, Brother, nicely said) when a few nights after this newscast he was sitting in Jack’s, the long-time radical hang-out bar in Harvard Square which he frequented, talking to Ralph Morris who had come to town on one of his periodic visits from his home in Troy, New York about what he had heard that other night. And this was not mere idle talk between that pair because the whole Easton-Morris friendship had its start when they were political prisoners of a sort back on May Day 1971 when they had met on the floor of RFK Stadium in Washington for the “crime” of disorderly conduct and creating a public nuisance when they and thousands of others tried to shut down the American government if it did not shut down the Vietnam War which they were desperately for their own reasons trying to stop. So, yes, they were “criminals,” maybe just petty criminals by the standards of the charges but no way in hell had they hitchhiked from Cambridge and Albany, New York respectively (and wherever else those thousands came from and how they got there) to “walk in the streets” of D.C. for the hell of it, to litter the boulevards with leaflets let, to thumb their noses at the government, or the like. Sam and Ralph that day had been political prisoners with a small “P” nevertheless. (They would later do some actions in solidarity with the Black Panthers, with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and with the African National Congress in South Africa which would “win” them their capital “Ps.”)
All of this old-timey bar talk had a purpose though (they by the way were no strangers to strong drink as part of their political camaraderie from early on in their working-class lives but now they drank high-shelf stuff delivered by Jimmy the bartender rather than that rotgut low-shelf, no-shelf Thunderbird wine and Southern Comfort which got them through their no dough youths). Or rather two purposes. First, Ralph had come to town to join Sam in the annual Sacco and Vanzetti commemoration in honor of the two anarchist political prisoners who had been railroaded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to their executions on August 23, 1927. Troy and most other places in the nation and the world paid have paid no particular attention to such events but in Boston the scene of the crimes against the two immigrant anarchists there had been a generally on-going commemoration since the 1920s, although not always on in the streets like the past several years. Over their long and hard fought battles around prisoners’ rights which formed a majority of the work they had done over the years, in good times and bad, Sam and Ralph made sure that they attended this commemoration.
The second event that brought Ralph to town was a conference to be held in Boston to see about reviving the old International Labor Defense (ILD), the 1920s Communist International (CI)-initiated political prisoner defense organization which coincidentally had cut its teeth when founded in 1925 on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Under the circumstances over the past quarter of a century plus for the international working class not so much reviving it exactly as in the old days since the organization had gone out of business in 1946 a few years after Joe Stalin over in Russia had liquidated the Communist International as part of some Soviet foreign policy sop to his allies in World War II (the CI had pretty much gone out of the business of directing international revolution well before than anyway) but reviving the spirit that drove it in its best days around the Sacco and Vanzetti case, the Angelo Herndon case, a bunch of other lesser well known labor cases like that of Tom Mooney and assorted IWWers (Industrial Workers of the World, Wobblies) and most famously the Scottsboro Boys case in the 1930s.
In those days as Sam had mentioned while talking to Ralph at Jack’s since he had been looking up information about the old ILD, what it did and how it was organized (and how much the old American Communist Party/CI controlled the operation in its sunnier days) the ILD had had no problem living up to the idea of a non-sectarian labor defense organization that took on the tough cases, the political cases and tried to garner union and progressive support in America and internationally through the CI to free the class-war prisoners behind the walls. Sam and Ralph had been involved in many cases of political prisoners on the seemingly endlessly dwindling left, especially black liberation fighters and labor organizers but those operations usually concerned a specific political prisoner (like the Manning case) or were run as campaigns by particular organizations which tended to “protect” their turf, protect their unique relationship with their poster child political prisoner.
While both Sam and Ralph had been snake-bitten a few times when somebody called a conference only to find out that the operation was being built to “protect turf” or using the campaign as an organizational recruiting tool (Sam mentioned that someone should tell such organizations and individuals with ideas like that to give pause since the recruitment rate, or better the retention rate of such projects after a while is abysmal) they liked the call for this one which included a bunch of small leftist organizations and some independent labor organizers and unions. Whether absent an international organization with the resources of the old CI a new ILD could catch fire is problematic. There in any case with the downward pressure of social flare-ups likely in the near future certainly is a need for such an organization. Ralph made Sam laugh as they finished their last high-shelf whisky that night by saying –“Hell there aren’t any political prisoners, I have it on the authority of the U.S. A-G.” But just in case those A-Gs were being less than candid they agreed that they would show up bright and early for the meeting the next morning.
The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support The Soldiers Project
The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support The Soldiers Project
By Frank Jackman
The late Peter Paul Markin had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace the hard way. Had before that baptism accepted half-knowingly (his term) against his better judgment induction into the Army when his “friends and neighbors” at his local draft board in North Adamsville called him up for military service back in hard-shell hell-hole Vietnam War days when the country was coming asunder, was bleeding from all pores around 1968. Markin had had some qualms about going into the service not only because the reasoning given by the government and its civilian hangers-on for the tremendous waste of human and material resources had long seemed preposterous but because he had an abstract idea that war was bad, bad for individuals, bad for countries, bad for civilization in the late 20th century. Was a half-assed pacifist if he had though deeply about the question, which he had not.
But everything in his blessed forsaken scatter-shot life pushed and pushed hard against his joining the ranks of the draft resisters whom he would hear about and see every day then as he passed on his truck route which allowed him to pay his way through college the Boston sanctuary for that cohort, the Arlington Street Church. Markin had assumed that since he was not a Quaker, Shaker, Mennonite, Brethren of the Common Life adherent but rather a bloody high-nosed Roman Catholic with their slimy “just war” theory that seemed to justify every American war courtesy of their leading American Cardinal, France Spellman, that he could not qualify for conscientious objector status on that basis. And at the time that he entered the Army that was probably true even if he had attempted to do so. Later, as happened with his friend, Jack Callahan, he could at least made the case based on the common Catholic upbringing. Right then though he was not a total objector to war but only of what he saw in front of him, the unjustness of the Vietnam War.
That was not the least of his situation though. That half-knowingly mentioned above had been overridden by his whole college Joe lifestyle where he was more interested in sex, drink, and rock and roll (the drugs would not come until later), more interested in bedding women than thinking through what he half-knew would be his fate once he graduated from college as the war slowly dragged on and his number was coming up. Moreover there was not one damn thing in his background that would have given pause about his future course. A son of the working-class, really even lower than that the working poor a notch below, there was nobody if he had bothered to seek some support for resistance who would have done so. Certainly not his quiet but proud ex-World War II Marine father, not his mother whose brother was a rising career Army senior NCO, not his older brothers who had signed up as a way to get out of hell-hole North Adamsville, and certainly not his friends from high school half of whom had enlisted and a couple from his street who had been killed in action over there. So no way was an Acre boy with the years of Acre mentality cast like iron in his head about servicing if called going to tip the cart that way toward straight out resistance.
Maybe he should have, at least according to guys he met in college like Brad Fox and Fritz Tylor, or guys who he met on the hitchhike road going west like Josh Breslin and Captain Crunch (his moniker not real name which Josh could not remember). The way they heard the story from Markin after he got out of the Army, after he had done his hell-hole thirteen months in Vietnam as an infantryman, twice wounded, and after he had come back to the “real” world was that on about the third day in basis training down in Fort Jackson in South Carolina he knew that he had made a mistake by accepting induction. But maybe there was some fate-driven reason, maybe as he received training as an infantryman and he and a group of other trainees talked about but did not refuse to take machine-gun training, maybe once he received orders for Vietnam and maybe once he got “in-country” he sensed that something had gone wrong in his short, sweet life but he never attempted to get any help, put in any applications, sought any relief from what was to finally crack him. That, despite tons of barracks anti-war blather on his part from Fort Jackson to Danang.
Here’s the reason though why the late Peter Paul Markin’s story accompanies this information about G.I. rights even for those who nowadays enter the military voluntarily, as voluntarily as any such decision can be without direct governmental coercion. Markin, and this part is from Josh Breslin the guy he was closest to toward the end, the guy who had last seen him in the States before that fateful trip to Mexico, to Sonora when it all fell apart one day, had a very difficult time coming back to what all the returnees called the “real” world after Vietnam service. Had drifted to drug, sex and rock and roll out on the West Coast where Josh had first met him in San Francisco until he tired of that, had started to have some bad nights.
Despite the bad nights though he did have a real talent for writing, for journalism. Got caught up in writing a series about what would be later called the “brothers under the bridge” about guys like him down in Southern California who could not adjust to the real world after ‘Nam and had tried to keep body and soul together by banding together in the arroyos, along the railroad tracks and under the bridges and creating what would today be called a “safe space.”
Markin’s demons though were never far from the surface. Got worse when he sensed that the great wash that had come over the land during the counter-cultural 1960s that he had just caught the tail-end had run its course, had hit ebb tide. Then in the mid-1970s to relieve whatever inner pains were disturbing him he immersed himself in the cocaine culture that was just rearing its head in the States. That addiction would lead him into the drug trade, would eventually lead him as if by the fateful numbers to sunny Mexico, to lovely Sonora way where he met his end. Josh never found out all the details about Markin’s end although a few friends had raised money to send a detective down to investigate. Apparently Markin got mixed up with some local bad boys in the drug trade. Tried to cut corners, or cut into their market. One day he was found in a dusty back street with two slugs in his head. He lies down there in some unknown potter’s field mourned, moaned and missed until this very day.
Hats Off To 50 for The North Adamsville Class Of ’61- Ouch!-With The Catholic Workers’ Dorothy Day In Mind
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing his teen tear-jerker, Teen Angel to set the mood for this post.
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:
Recently I have been getting a stream of “guestbook” and “add to friends” visits from members of the North Adamsville Class of 1961 at my profile page here. I am not altogether sure why this is so since the members of this class would have been preparing to go out the door and entering the “New Frontier” (although that word was not widely in usage at the time even though we all were, at least those of us who had a strain of Kennedy Irish Catholic brethren in us and they were legion in this old suburban Boston working-class stronghold, charter members) while I was entering the sophomore class at North from Adamsville Central Junior High (now Middle School). The only thing that I can think of, off-hand, which connects us, is that those members and I are marking the same year anniversaries, their 50th anniversary graduation from North and my 50th from one of the feeder junior high schools.
Moreover I am befuddled by the get on my bandwagon response from those lofty and fear-inducing now senior seniors since back in day, back in the real light of day back in the day, those of us who entered North in 1961 were seen as, used as, or forgotten as mere sophomores and therefore subject to the whims of any upperclassmen (or women) who needed a convenient mat to wipe their shoes on, literally at times. Now I am not one to harbor a grudge, not a fifty years later grudge anyway, but here are a few things that make me wonder if maybe those now senior seniors are not a bit, well, forgetful.
On Day One, at freshman/sophomore orientation (some students had entered North in 1960 from another junior high school that only had room for seventh and eighth-graders and then pushed them out in the hard, cruel high school social world, “the bigs,” before their time, their knowing what was what real world time), it was made very clear to us freshmen/sophomores by said seniors who “guided” us around the school that we were only, boys or girls as the case may have been, to use certain “designated” lavatories under penalties of extreme harassment, abuse, and possible physical duress. Needless to say the second floor boys’ lav, the one that was out back, had several huge windows to release the smoke from quick between classes cigarettes, and was the repository of local folklore about who was “hot,” who was not, and, most importantly, importantly to the seniors anyway, who was “doing it,” or could be coaxed into “doing it.” Of course that meant the subject was girls in all those categories of hotness and doing-ness and no freshmen/sophomore wimp boys need apply.
This I do know. I will never forget the time one Homer Bigelow, by mistake no question, because Homer was just stupid enough to do this, walked into the second floor boys’ lav on some dismal Monday morning before school when the talk was heated about who "did," or did not do what, or some other lies or half-lies over the weekend, just to “take a leak.” Two minutes later, maybe less, one Homer Bigelow, Class of 1964, was “escorted” by Jack Winn and Bill Callahan, Class of 1961, minus his pants (in other words, in his underwear) through the second floor corridor, down the back stairway and out in the frosty November day for his troubles. Of course, when some twerp named Joe Reilly, Class of 1967, tried that same stunt, tried using the second floor boys’ lav stunt that is, a few years later one Francis X. Riley and one Peter Paul Markin, both members in good standing of the Class of 1964, “escorted" said victim minus his pants (in other words, in his underwear) out that same second floor corridor and down that same back stairway and out into the not so cold April morning (see we were more “humane” than those savage ‘61ers).
And, christ, the senior girls were worst. See, the tradition, meaning that the practice went on so far back nobody remembered when it started, was that they, junior and senior girls, had their own special “lounge” to “make their faces,” or whatever the term was in use then to look school day schoolgirl beautiful and get the guys so tongue-tied and “hopped-up” that, of course, the guys would jump at the chance to take them out on weekend dates and spend dough (allowance dough, or hard shoulder-to-the-wheel working part-time dough, it did not matter as long as it was there to be spent). Of course, just like the guys the place was useful for a quick “puff” (strictly tobacco cigarettes in those days, I think) out those huge back hall windows, and, most importantly, on Monday mornings for who was “cute” (read: sexy), who was not, who tried every trick in the book to get who to “do it,” who did or didn’t, and other assorted lies and half-lies.
Naturally, in a school with a few hundred students, some girl, some non-junior or senior girl, in this case Penny Smith, by mistake I am sure because Penny was nothing but a whiz at Math and English, walked in one morning (I don’t remember the day of the week and that is not important here because, as I found out later, the girls talked every morning before school about who was cute, and who was not, not just on Monday morning) because she desperately needed to use the bathroom. No problem, Penny. Except that poor Penny, Class of 1964 Math and English whiz or not, was locked into a bathroom stall for most of the day before someone took pity on her and let her out. No guy would ever do anything so cruel. Needless to say when Penny’s day came and some unsuspecting underclass woman, Bessie Kiley, made a similar “error” Penny became the “high sheriff" of the bathroom stalls and locked her in. I think, and someone can refresh my memory on this, Bessie was in that stall all day and only got out when the janitress was cleaning up at the end of the day.
I won’t even go into the details of the other “off-limits” first floor boys’ lav where the “bikies, bad-ass corner boys, and their slutty “mamas” hung out across from the woodworking shop (christ, let’s call it a mens’ lav-some of those guys were maybe twenty-somethings, or maybe were getting ready to go on Social Security or something like that). The hoary story there was even regular-guy second floor corner boy seniors and flinty girls’ lounge girls didn’t go near that place, period. The legend was that once, in the dead-of-nights early 1950s some square boy, or anyway no be-bop boy, tried to go in, again to “take a leak” and for his efforts got thrown through one of those wood-working shop windows for his troubles.
But rigid class segregation on the bathroom question was maybe the least of it. At every school dance, whether you were cute or not for a boy, schoolgirl beautiful or not for a girl, we did all the leg work to get the place in order for the big Saturday night school dance and then were not invited. Well not invited until junior year when, of course, every thing was different. Or at the Thanksgiving rally we were used as the "platform” on which the football team stood, literally. (There was a sophomore exception here for exceptional sophomore football players a couple of them who, as we later found out with a couple of winning seasons, could “eat” most of the senior boys for lunch, maybe even a couple of those bad-ass corner boys down in wood-working).
Ya, I could spill the beans on plenty of injustices, including when a couple of guys, maybe non-Irish Protestant guys for all I know, but definitely 1961 seniors, waylaid me and threw me in the showers in the boys’ gym locker room just because they heard that I had gone to a nuclear disarmament demonstration (a small one, by the way) on Boston Common sponsored by the Catholic Worker movement (you know, Dorothy Day and the social gospel message that appealed to me then and that I have written about elsewhere). They called me a Bolshevik and they damn well knew I wasn’t one, then. They said Coach Doyle (the football coach) sent them.But see, that was then and now we are all together under the big Raider red tent oneness. At least long enough to wish the North Adamsville Class of 1961 well, except maybe those crazy guys who threw me in the showers.
....and a trip down memory lane.
MARK DINNING lyrics - Teen Angel
(Jean Surrey & Red Surrey)
Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh
That fateful night the car was stalled
upon the railroad track
I pulled you out and we were safe
but you went running back
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
What was it you were looking for
that took your life that night
They said they found my high school ring
clutched in your fingers tight
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone
They've taken you away.
I'll never kiss your lips again
They buried you today
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:
Recently I have been getting a stream of “guestbook” and “add to friends” visits from members of the North Adamsville Class of 1961 at my profile page here. I am not altogether sure why this is so since the members of this class would have been preparing to go out the door and entering the “New Frontier” (although that word was not widely in usage at the time even though we all were, at least those of us who had a strain of Kennedy Irish Catholic brethren in us and they were legion in this old suburban Boston working-class stronghold, charter members) while I was entering the sophomore class at North from Adamsville Central Junior High (now Middle School). The only thing that I can think of, off-hand, which connects us, is that those members and I are marking the same year anniversaries, their 50th anniversary graduation from North and my 50th from one of the feeder junior high schools.
Moreover I am befuddled by the get on my bandwagon response from those lofty and fear-inducing now senior seniors since back in day, back in the real light of day back in the day, those of us who entered North in 1961 were seen as, used as, or forgotten as mere sophomores and therefore subject to the whims of any upperclassmen (or women) who needed a convenient mat to wipe their shoes on, literally at times. Now I am not one to harbor a grudge, not a fifty years later grudge anyway, but here are a few things that make me wonder if maybe those now senior seniors are not a bit, well, forgetful.
On Day One, at freshman/sophomore orientation (some students had entered North in 1960 from another junior high school that only had room for seventh and eighth-graders and then pushed them out in the hard, cruel high school social world, “the bigs,” before their time, their knowing what was what real world time), it was made very clear to us freshmen/sophomores by said seniors who “guided” us around the school that we were only, boys or girls as the case may have been, to use certain “designated” lavatories under penalties of extreme harassment, abuse, and possible physical duress. Needless to say the second floor boys’ lav, the one that was out back, had several huge windows to release the smoke from quick between classes cigarettes, and was the repository of local folklore about who was “hot,” who was not, and, most importantly, importantly to the seniors anyway, who was “doing it,” or could be coaxed into “doing it.” Of course that meant the subject was girls in all those categories of hotness and doing-ness and no freshmen/sophomore wimp boys need apply.
This I do know. I will never forget the time one Homer Bigelow, by mistake no question, because Homer was just stupid enough to do this, walked into the second floor boys’ lav on some dismal Monday morning before school when the talk was heated about who "did," or did not do what, or some other lies or half-lies over the weekend, just to “take a leak.” Two minutes later, maybe less, one Homer Bigelow, Class of 1964, was “escorted” by Jack Winn and Bill Callahan, Class of 1961, minus his pants (in other words, in his underwear) through the second floor corridor, down the back stairway and out in the frosty November day for his troubles. Of course, when some twerp named Joe Reilly, Class of 1967, tried that same stunt, tried using the second floor boys’ lav stunt that is, a few years later one Francis X. Riley and one Peter Paul Markin, both members in good standing of the Class of 1964, “escorted" said victim minus his pants (in other words, in his underwear) out that same second floor corridor and down that same back stairway and out into the not so cold April morning (see we were more “humane” than those savage ‘61ers).
And, christ, the senior girls were worst. See, the tradition, meaning that the practice went on so far back nobody remembered when it started, was that they, junior and senior girls, had their own special “lounge” to “make their faces,” or whatever the term was in use then to look school day schoolgirl beautiful and get the guys so tongue-tied and “hopped-up” that, of course, the guys would jump at the chance to take them out on weekend dates and spend dough (allowance dough, or hard shoulder-to-the-wheel working part-time dough, it did not matter as long as it was there to be spent). Of course, just like the guys the place was useful for a quick “puff” (strictly tobacco cigarettes in those days, I think) out those huge back hall windows, and, most importantly, on Monday mornings for who was “cute” (read: sexy), who was not, who tried every trick in the book to get who to “do it,” who did or didn’t, and other assorted lies and half-lies.
Naturally, in a school with a few hundred students, some girl, some non-junior or senior girl, in this case Penny Smith, by mistake I am sure because Penny was nothing but a whiz at Math and English, walked in one morning (I don’t remember the day of the week and that is not important here because, as I found out later, the girls talked every morning before school about who was cute, and who was not, not just on Monday morning) because she desperately needed to use the bathroom. No problem, Penny. Except that poor Penny, Class of 1964 Math and English whiz or not, was locked into a bathroom stall for most of the day before someone took pity on her and let her out. No guy would ever do anything so cruel. Needless to say when Penny’s day came and some unsuspecting underclass woman, Bessie Kiley, made a similar “error” Penny became the “high sheriff" of the bathroom stalls and locked her in. I think, and someone can refresh my memory on this, Bessie was in that stall all day and only got out when the janitress was cleaning up at the end of the day.
I won’t even go into the details of the other “off-limits” first floor boys’ lav where the “bikies, bad-ass corner boys, and their slutty “mamas” hung out across from the woodworking shop (christ, let’s call it a mens’ lav-some of those guys were maybe twenty-somethings, or maybe were getting ready to go on Social Security or something like that). The hoary story there was even regular-guy second floor corner boy seniors and flinty girls’ lounge girls didn’t go near that place, period. The legend was that once, in the dead-of-nights early 1950s some square boy, or anyway no be-bop boy, tried to go in, again to “take a leak” and for his efforts got thrown through one of those wood-working shop windows for his troubles.
But rigid class segregation on the bathroom question was maybe the least of it. At every school dance, whether you were cute or not for a boy, schoolgirl beautiful or not for a girl, we did all the leg work to get the place in order for the big Saturday night school dance and then were not invited. Well not invited until junior year when, of course, every thing was different. Or at the Thanksgiving rally we were used as the "platform” on which the football team stood, literally. (There was a sophomore exception here for exceptional sophomore football players a couple of them who, as we later found out with a couple of winning seasons, could “eat” most of the senior boys for lunch, maybe even a couple of those bad-ass corner boys down in wood-working).
Ya, I could spill the beans on plenty of injustices, including when a couple of guys, maybe non-Irish Protestant guys for all I know, but definitely 1961 seniors, waylaid me and threw me in the showers in the boys’ gym locker room just because they heard that I had gone to a nuclear disarmament demonstration (a small one, by the way) on Boston Common sponsored by the Catholic Worker movement (you know, Dorothy Day and the social gospel message that appealed to me then and that I have written about elsewhere). They called me a Bolshevik and they damn well knew I wasn’t one, then. They said Coach Doyle (the football coach) sent them.But see, that was then and now we are all together under the big Raider red tent oneness. At least long enough to wish the North Adamsville Class of 1961 well, except maybe those crazy guys who threw me in the showers.
....and a trip down memory lane.
MARK DINNING lyrics - Teen Angel
(Jean Surrey & Red Surrey)
Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh
That fateful night the car was stalled
upon the railroad track
I pulled you out and we were safe
but you went running back
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
What was it you were looking for
that took your life that night
They said they found my high school ring
clutched in your fingers tight
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone
They've taken you away.
I'll never kiss your lips again
They buried you today
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Stop Continuing To Let 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 successful anti-war or progressive action short of changing
the way governments we could support do business 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, a very good anti-war action indeed
which had made it just a smidgen harder to run ram shot over the world, 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 with instructors
partially funded by the Defense Department and with union membership right and
conditions a situation which should be opposed by teachers’ union members).
Secondly, thwarted at the college level
for officer corps trainees they have just gone to younger and more impressible
youth, since they have gained almost unlimited widespread access to high school
student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do
their nasty work. Not only do the recruiters who are graded on quota system and
are under pressure produce X number of recruits or they could wind doing sentry
guard duty in Kabul or Bagdad get that access where they have sold many young
potential military personnel many false bills of goods but in many spots
anti-war veterans and other who would provide a different perspective have been
banned or otherwise harassed in their efforts.
Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of
the high schools-military recruiters out as well! Let anti-war ex-soldiers,
sailors, Marines and airpersons have their say.
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