This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Once Again-Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patty
Griffin’s "You Are Not Alone" In Mind
By Fritz Taylor
Sam Lowell didn’t know how the whirlwind hit him, how his
long affair with Laura Perkins had hit bottom, had made her leave their home
after so many years together (although “years together” unlike in prior
generations was not the glue that held most modern marriages, most modern
relationships together as Sam well knew from his own two failed marriages).
Didn’t know that his inability to put out the fire in his head as he called it
got rolled up into causing the break-up.
Frankly, after Laura had gone and he had that lonesome
nighttime to think about the whys and wherefores of how that whirlwind caught
him flat-footed, he should have known that things were wrong, had gone freaking
wrong and he didn’t have sense to pull back. But then that fire in his head
wouldn’t let think straight, wouldn’t let him see what was right before his
eyes-his inattention despite his assumption that he was attentive, his
undervaluing Laura’s positive affect on his homely life and he not being at
peace with himself had led to disaster.
Funny he thought one night, one night when the loss of Laura
had hit him hard and he decided to have a few glasses of wine to fight his
depression he had been several years before had been the one who said they
could not continue on acting as essentially roommates ( that reintroduction to
wine after a long period indifference to alcohol stemmed from a suggestion of
Laura’s that they have a weekly “wine date” to just sit around and talk, talk
foolish stuff or whatever was on their minds and he had bought into the idea
without an argument). He remembered the day exactly since he and Laura were
driving north up to Carlsbad on U.S. 5 from San Diego when Laura had made some off-hand
surly remark, or he took it as surly not a word associated in his mind with
fragile Laura, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He went off,
started talking about how they had drifted apart, how they were not connecting
anymore, and that things had to change or else they were headed for a
split.
What Laura did not know, or at least she did not say
anything about it at the time, although she said plenty later when the flame
hit the fan, was that Sam had been maneuvering his way around getting out of
the relationship since he had struck up what seemed to him a breath of fresh
air promising relationship with a fellow high school classmate, Melissa Loring,
whom he had run into on social media around their mutual interest in their
upcoming 50th class reunion from Riverdale High. In high school he
had attempted to make a play for her but was told by a confidante (who had his
own motives to give Sam disinformation) that she was “spoken for” something
that meant something in the working class culture of the “Acre” section of
Riverdale, and most of his friends had grown up with (only later to find out
that “hands off” business was honored in the breech more than the observance)
and so backed off. Melissa and he laughed when he told her that story and the
treachery of that ill-fated confidante when she told him that guy had “hit” on
her knowing very well she was not spoken for. In the end that budding reunion-driven
affair did not lead anyway since Sam had backed off (and Melissa too once she
saw the writing on the wall about Sam’s, what did he call it, soul-mate
relationship with Laura) but it was a close thing, a very close thing.
The price of peace after that Melissa upheaval was that
Laura, after having plenty to say about his treachery which he accepted without
grace but with the knowledge that something was seriously wrong with their
relationship, had insisted that they go into couples counselling which Sam was
in no position to deny although he was not much into the “touchy-feely” stuff
that idea implied in his mind. In the event Sam actually believed that the counselling
helped (it had been the source of that wine date idea and a few others that
seemed very practical to help break the routine of their lives) and that he was
being more responsive although he always had sneaking suspicion that Laura was
still burned up about the Melissa affair, believed that was one of the hidden
causes of this final break-up that was breaking his heart.
Things were at times rough-edged but they got some real
benefits and practical tips out of the experience (although Laura as they
talked through the final break-up felt that the counsellor had “favored” him as
a professional lawyer, a talker, over her as the quiet, reserved and fearful of
talking that had been instilled in her by an overbearing alcoholic father). So
they moved along made breakthroughs and had some defeats but Sam was committed
to the process one hundred percent once he got over his New Age touchy-feely
hang-up. Laura had always wanted to go to Paris and as part of the
reconciliation process they planned a Paris trip about a year into their
couples counselling. They had planned to see the museums they had so much about
and through Air B&B rented a garret for their week there. Everything went
well, went as well as could be expected given the vast travel and set-up and
they enjoyed each other’s company immensely during their time there.
However about a week after they got back Laura lowered the
boom on Sam for the first time, told him she wanted to leave (or for him to)
and was on the verge of leaving when she came up with the idea that he should
go to group counselling-or else He consented and amazed Laura with the speed
with which he found a group and began getting some help. (Sam said that the
couples counselling experience had opened him up more quickly and that he was
“under the gun” and knew he was, knew that the fire in his head had brought him
to another impasse.) That group experience, while not always directly
beneficial since he did not open himself up on many occasions and he had also seen
himself for a period as an “assistant” moderator to the professional
psychologist running the group. Had not taken advantage of the occasion until
as it turned out too late where he expressed his deepest feelings that he was
not at peace with himself, had not sought the needed rest of an aging man, was
filled with unresolved inner turmoil, and had not put out the fire in his
head.
Sam continued in the group for most of a year as he had
committed himself to do in his agreement with Laura when summer came and they
took their usual Maine seaside vacation. Again they had a great time. Then a
week or so later lowered the final boom (There
might be something to it if the reader gets the idea that Laura had some issues
around her own paths to happiness or unhappiness but this story is about the
fire in Sam’s head not Laura’s). She had determined that she would not back
down with her desire to leave this time. Said among other things that her
always fragile heath was being affected by the tensions of late in the
household and that she though Sam was part of the reason for those problems.
This cut Sam to the quick, began that process of self-examination in earnest
about the fire in his head
Sam tried for the month they still had left together before
she finally packed her bags and left to let her words about him not being at
peace with himself, not growing old gracefully, and that he should not have
spent so much time trying to please her in good ways, and some frankly silly ways
which he recognized once she pointed out the episodes that had upset her in the
recent past. He recognized that some of her points were valid, had something to
them. The kicker though was that she since her retirement Laura had tried to
find out who she was, what she was to do meaningfully with the rest of her
life, to find some spiritual balance, and to live more in the present. So a lot
of what anguished her about her own plight was exacerbated by Sam’s problems,
with his restlessness. Laura had always been close to the New Age remedies
being offered by the Cambridge crowd that lived and died by some such therapies.
Of late she had been doing what amounted to spiritual acupuncture which she claimed
had both released positive physical energies and had made her more aware of
what she did not want. Said Sam should look into the possibilities of that
therapy to help him find his way, help him whatever search was driving him to
distraction, and maybe, just maybe help put out in the fire in his head.
Sam had turned seventy earlier in the year we are
chronicling, an age unlike others which represented to him a certain definitive
milestone, a negative milestone (remembering the biblical three score and
twenty) in that his health had taken an unexpected turn for the worse. He had
always considered himself a healthy person but a whole series of pokings and
proddings by several doctors and their prescribed medications had sent him in a
tailspin. The cluster of medications had actually turned him a bit off-center,
had made him grumpy and distraught and he knew it, although that knowledge had
come too late once he decided to check out the value of the medications for
what ailed him. Got taken off a couple as counter-productive. Obviously with a
decline in health, the aging process, thoughts of his own mortality began to
plague him but rather than slowing him down and making him more reflective he
was driven in his writing and his political work to make sure he had a
worthwhile mark on this wicked old world as he expressed his fate one night to Jack Callahan
over a couple of drinks. So Laura and his two world were colliding and he was
clueless about the other one.
But sometimes even an old curmudgeon like Sam can learn a
few things in life. He did take Laura’s advice, too late for them but he did
take it, about seeing that spiritual acupuncturist (he had not been opposed to
acupuncture per se since for his aches and pains he had gone to one for a
number of years just not once claiming to lift a person’s spiritual
well-being). More importantly he had, also at Laura’s suggestion, taken up
meditation, a very hard task for him, very hard. So he for his own benefit at
last was trying to become at peace with himself, trying one last time to put
out the fire in his head.
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Richard Thompson performing "Put It There Pal".
CD Review
You? Me? Us?-Voltage Enhanced/Nude, 2 CD set, including lyrics booklet, Richard Thompson, Capitol Records, 1996
This review has also been used to review another Richard Thompson CD.
Recently in this space I went through a chronology of how I happened to come across certain musical selections to review. In that case it was tracing the roots of country blues through well-known old time country bluesman Charley Patton via Bob Dylan tribute, “High Water Everywhere” on his latest “Bootleg” volume. Here, the route to reviewing folk/rock lyricist and singer Richard Thompson, known back in the day as part of the well-thought of British folk group Fairport Convention, is a cover of his classic working class love song, “1952 Vincent Black Lightning’ covered, and covered very well, by American folksinger Greg Brown. But that is where the comparisons end. In the case of Dylan’s tribute I was able to review Patton’s early work very favorably. Here I am, frankly, stymied.
I was not particularly a fan of Fairport Convention back in the days, although anytime I heard them then (or now, when played on a local oldies folk radio program) I was always impressed by their harmonics. When I asked others about Richard Thompson as a solo artist I thought I was confronting the Second Coming with the profuseness of the praise for his work. And that is where the problem is. His lyrics, as “1952 Vincent” shows, are incredibly well thought out and richly evocative. (How about that combination, right?) However, his presentation, mainly the result of over-production, leaves me flat. So, I guess, and it will not be the first time this has happened, Google for Thompson’s lyrics and find out who covers his material. Here I will say that these songs really stick out- From “Voltage”- “She Steers By Lightning” and “Am I Wasting My Love On You?” From “ Nude”- “Burns Supper” and “Woods Of Darney”
Am I Wasting My Love On You? lyrics
Oh I can't get started, and I'm broken hearted
You smile so sweet but you're fast on your feet
Do you want me to catch you, or just get near?
Should I chase you forever? I think I got the idea
Am I wasting my love on you?
Am I wasting my love on you?
Am I wasting my love on you?
Must be better things I can do
Oh I went to a party, you were standing there
You looked so retiring with that fruit in your hair
I said "What gives?" and you said "I do"
And that was the last sense I ever got from you
Am I wasting my love on you?
Am I wasting my love on you?
Am I wasting my love on you?
Must be better things I can do
Well I'm wasting my love, wasting my love, wasting my love on you
Wasting my love, wasting my love, wasting my love on you
Am I wasting my love on you?
Am I wasting my love on you?
Am I wasting my love on you?
Must be better things I can do
I went to your house, and I drank your tea
We were getting very cosy on Greek philosophy
You chewed on my ear and when I begged for more
You went off to bed, barricaded the door
Am I wasting my love on you?
Am I wasting my love on you?
Am I wasting my love on you?
Must be better things I can do
Than wasting my love, wasting my love, wasting my love on you
Am I wasting my love, wasting my love, wasting my love on you
I'm wasting my love, wasting my love, wasting my love on you
Am I wasting my love, wasting my love, wasting my love on you
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Richard Thompson performing "Daddy's Going To Kill Me".
CD Review
Sweet Warrior, including lyrics booklet, Richard Thompson, Shout Factory, 2007
Recently in this space I went through a chronology of how I happened to come across certain musical selections to review. In that case it was tracing the roots of country blues through well-known old time country bluesman Charley Patton via Bob Dylan tribute, “High Water Everywhere” on his latest “Bootleg” volume. Here, the route to reviewing folk/rock lyricist and singer Richard Thompson, known back in the day as part of the well-thought of British folk group Fairport Convention, is a cover of his classic working class love song, “1952 Vincent Black Lightning’ covered, and covered very well, by American folksinger Greg Brown. But that is where the comparisons end. In the case of Dylan’s tribute I was able to review Patton’s early work very favorably. Here I am, frankly, stymied.
I was not particularly a fan of Fairport Convention back in the days, although anytime I heard them then (or now, when played on a local oldies folk radio program) I was always impressed by their harmonics. When I asked others about Richard Thompson as a solo artist I thought I was confronting the Second Coming with the profuseness of the praise for his work. And that is where the problem is. His lyrics, as “1952 Vincent” shows, are incredibly well thought out and richly evocative. (How about that combination, right?) However, his presentation, mainly the result of over-production, leaves me flat. So, I guess, and it will not be the first time this has happened, Google for Thompson’s lyrics and find out who covers his material. Here I will say that three songs really stick out- “Needle And Thread”, “She Sang Angels To Rest”, and “Sunset Song”.
Lyrics to Needle And Thread : (Richard Thompson)
I see young girls with old faces
I see good girls in bad places
I see plain girls in finery
And every one be the death of me
Needle and Thread, Needle and Thread
Hand me down my Needle and Thread
Hey Hey Hey
Hey Hey Hey
Going to thread up my needle and then
Gonna sew my soul back together again
Now pretty Caitlin she went too far
Shaking all she had at the topless bar
Right in the face of Ben and Bob
Put a little too much into the job
Now sweet Myfanwe she took a shine
Dumped me for Dai worked down the mine
I was a temp, Dai was a keeper
He knew how to dig that little bit deeper
Now Bonnie Jean meant everything
But she threw back my hard-earned ring
Said she had other men who dig her
She was holding out for something bigger
Lyrics to Johnny's Far Away : (Richard Thompson)
Johnny's joined a ceilidh band,
They're known quite well throughout the land, The Drones
The Drones are signed up on a cruise
While Tracey's laying in the booze back home
She's got herself another man, a smoothie
While the kids are in the front room watching movies
She's got him in a head lock, in an arm lock, in a jam
She says, I can't express myself with my old man
While Johnny's Far away on the Rolling, Rolling
Johnny's Far Away On The Rolling Sea
Johnny's cruising out to sea
And he believes in chastity - for some
The wealthy widows bill and coo
He fends off one or two, and then succumbs
As they're turning hard-a-port in the Bahamas
He's turning her right out of her pyjamas
He's turned her every which way to the rhythm of the sea
He says, I can't express myself with my old lady
While Johnny's Far away on the Rolling, Rolling
Johnny's Far Away On The Rolling Sea
Johnny's home, he opens up his door
While someone's sneaking out the back
And Tracey says, you look so poorly
Sores and all, you need to see the quack
She wipes the snot from off the kiddies' noses
He charms her with eleven battered roses
And by and by they get down to the job of man and wife
Back to the old comforts of the missionary life
While Johnny's Far away on the Rolling, Rolling
Johnny's Far Away On The Rolling Sea
Lyrics to Sunset Song : (Richard Thompson)
With you or without you, love,
I must be moving
Never meant to linger here so long
With you or without you,
Though it breaks my heart
To hear the Sunset Song
Wasn't that a time we had,
And bless you for it
But I'm a stranger here, I don't belong
The band's down on the jetty,
If you cup your ear
You'll hear the Sunset Song
You said, if I hold my breath
Dive down deep enough
I might grow fins
Seems to me I've held my breath
Held my breath to please you
Ever since
Early morning, that's the time
For fare-thee-wells
Slip out of the warm sheets and gone
But I want to hear it as I walk along
Hear the Sunset Song
In your waking, in your dreams,
I won't be martyred
On that cross where some say
I belong
Opinions are coffins, I'll just trust my feet
To find the Sunset Song
Every day I'll wear your memory
Like a favourite shirt upon my back
In the hallway, there's my suitcase
By the door, I never did unpack
With you or without you, love,
I must be moving
Never meant to linger here so long
With you or without you,
Though it breaks my heart
To hear the Sunset Song
*****Frank Jackman’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters of War In Mind
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Jack Callahan’s old friend from Sloan High School in Carver down in Southeastern Massachusetts Zack James (Zack short for Zachary not as is the fashion today to just name a baby Zack and be done with it) is an amateur writer and has been at it since he got out of high school. Found out that maybe by osmosis, something like that, the stuff Miss Enos taught him junior and senior years about literature and her favorite writers Hemingway, Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker to name a few, that she would entice the English class stuck with him with through college where although he majored in Political Science he was in thrall to the English literature courses that he snuck in to his schedule. Snuck in although Zack knew practically speaking he had a snowball’s chance in hell, an expression he had learned from Hemingway he thought,of making a career out of the literary life as a profession, would more likely wind driving a cab through dangerous midnight sections of town occasionally getting mugged for his night’s work. That Political Science major winding up producing about the same practical results as the literary life though. Stuck with him, savior stuck with him, through his tour of duty during the Vietnam War, and savior stayed with him through those tough years when he couldn’t quite get himself back to the “real” world after ‘Nam and let drugs and alcohol rule his life so that he wound up for some time as a “brother under the bridge” as Bruce Springsteen later put the situation in a song that he played continuously at times after he first heard it “Saigon, long gone…." Stuck with him after he recovered and started building up his sports supplies business, stuck with him through three happy/sad/savage/acrimonious “no go” marriages and a parcel of kids and child support.And was still sticking with him now that he had time to stretch out and write longer pieces, and beat away on the word processor a few million words on this and that.
Amateur writer meaning nothing more than that he liked to write and that writing was not his profession, that he did not depend on the pen for his livelihood(or rather more correctly these days not the pen but the word processor). That livelihood business was taken up running a small sports apparel store in a mall not far from Lexington (the Lexington of American revolutionary battles to give the correct own and state) where he now lived. Although he was not a professional writer his interest was such that he liked these days with Jimmy Shore, the famous ex-runner running the day to day operations of the store, to perform some of his written work in public at various “open mic” writing (and poetry) jams that have sprouted up in his area.
This “open mic” business was a familiar concept to Jack from the days back in the 1960s when he would go to such events in the coffeehouses around Harvard Square and Beacon Hill to hear amateur folk-singers perfect their acts and try to be recognized as the new voice of their generation, or something like that. For “no singing voice, no musical ear” Jack those were basically cheap date nights if the girl he was with was into folk music. The way most of the "open mics" although they probably called them talent searches then, worked was each performer would sign up to do one, two, maybe three songs depending on how long the list of those wishing to perform happened to be (the places where each performer kicked in a couple of bucks in order to play usually had shorter lists). These singers usually performed in the period in front of the night’s feature who very well might have been somebody who a few weeks before had been noticed by the owner during a pervious "open mic" and asked to do a set of six to sixteen songs depending on the night and the length of the list of players in front of him or her. The featured performer played, unlike the "open mic" people, for the “basket” (maybe a hat) passed around the crowd in the audience and that was the night’s “pay.” A tough racket for those starting out like all such endeavors. The attrition rate was pretty high after the folk minute died down with arrival of other genre like folk rock, heavy rock, and acid rock although you still see a few old folkies around the Square or playing the separate “open mic” folk circuit that also ran through church coffeehouses just like these writing jams.
Jack was not surprised then when Zack told him he would like him to come to hear him perform one of his works at the monthly third Thursday “open mic” at the Congregational Church in Arlington the next town over from Lexington. Zack told Jack that that night he was going to perform something he had written and thought on about Frank Jackman, about what had happened to Frank when he was in the Army during Vietnam War times.
Jack knew almost automatically what Zack was going to do, he would somehow use Bob Dylan’s Masters of War lyrics as part of his presentation. Jack and Zack ( a Vietnam veteran who got “religion” on the anti-war issue while he in the Army and became a fervent anti-war guy after that experience despite his personal problems) had met Frank in 1971 when they were doing some anti-war work among the soldiers at Fort Devens out in Ayer about forty miles west of Boston. Frank had gotten out of the Army several months before and since he was from Nashua in the southern part of New Hampshire not far from Devens and had heard about the G.I. coffeehouse, The Morning Report, where Jack and Zack were working as volunteers he had decided to volunteer to help out as well. Now Frank was a quiet guy, quieter than Jack and Zack anyway, but one night he had told his Army story to a small group of volunteers gathered in the main room of the coffeehouse as they were planning to distribute Daniel Ellsberg’s sensational whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various spots around the base (including as it turned out inside the fort itself with one copy landing on the commanding general’s desk for good measure). He wanted to tell this story since he wanted to explain why he would not be able to go with them if they went inside the gates at Fort Devens.
Jack knew Zack was going to tell Frank’s story so he told Frank he would be there since he had not heard the song or Frank’s story in a long while and had forgotten parts of it. Moreover Zack wanted Jack there for moral support since this night other than the recitation of the lyrics he was going to speak off the cuff rather than his usual reading from some prepared paper.
That night Zack was already in the hall talking to the organizer, Eli Walsh, you may have heard of him since he has written some searing poems about his time in three tours Iraq. Jack felt right at home in this basement section of the church and he probably could have walked around blind-folded since the writing jams were on almost exactly the same model as the old folkie “open mics.” A table as you entered to pay your admission this night three dollars (although the tradition is that no one is turned away for lack of funds) with a kindly woman asking if you intended to perform and direct you to the sign-up sheet if so. Another smaller table with various cookies, snacks, soda, water and glasses for those who wished to have such goodies, and who were asked to leave a donation in the jar on that table if possible. The set-up in the hall this night included a small stage where the performers would present their material slightly above the audience. On the stage a lectern for those who wished to use that for physical support or to read their work from and the ubiquitous simple battery-powered sound system complete with microphone. For the audience a bevy of chairs, mostly mismatched, mostly having seen plenty of use, and mostly uncomfortable. After paying his admission fee he went over to Zack to let him know he was in the audience. Zack told him he was number seven on the list so not to wander too far once the session had begun.
This is the way Zack told the story and why Jack knew there would be some reference to Bob Dylan’s Masters of War that night:
Hi everybody my name is Zack James and I am glad that you all came out this cold night to hear Preston Borden present his moving war poetry and the rest of us to reflect on the main subject of this month’s writing jam-the endless wars that the American government under whatever regime of late has dragged us into, us kicking and screaming to little avail. I want to thank Eli as always for setting this event up every month and for his own thoughtful war poetry. [Some polite applause.] But enough for thanks and all that because tonight I want to recite a poem, well, not really a poem, but lyrics to a song, to a Bob Dylan song, Masters of War, so it might very well be considered a poem in some sense.
You know sometimes, a lot of times, a song, lyrics, a poem for that matter bring back certain associations. You know some song you heard on the radio when you went on your first date, your first dance, your first kiss, stuff like that which is forever etched in your memory and evokes that moment every time you hear it thereafter. Now how this Dylan song came back to me recently is a story in itself.
You remember Eli back in October when we went up to Maine to help the Maine Veterans for Peace on their yearly peace walk that I ran into Susan Rich, the Quaker gal we met up in Freeport who walked with us that day to Portland. [Eli shouted out “yes.”] I had not seen Susan in about forty years before that day, hadn’t seen her since the times we had worked together building up support for anti-war G.I.s out at the Morning Report coffeehouse in Ayer outside Fort Devens up on Route 2 about thirty miles from here. That’s when we met Frank Jackman who is the real subject of my presentation tonight since he is the one who I think about when I think about that song, think about his story and how that song relates to it.
Funny as many Dylan songs as I knew Masters of War, written by Dylan in 1963 I had never heard until 1971. Never heard the lyrics until I met Frank out at Fort Devens where after I was discharged from the Army that year I went to do some volunteer anti-war G.I. work at the coffeehouse outside the base in Army town Ayer. Frank too was a volunteer, had heard about the place somehow I forget how, who had grown up in Nashua up in southern New Hampshire and after he was discharged from the Army down at Fort Dix in New Jersey came to volunteer just like me and my old friend Jack Callahan who is sitting in the audience tonight. Now Frank was a quiet guy didn’t talk much about his military service but he made the anti-war soldiers who hung out there at night and on weekends feel at ease. One night thought he felt some urge to tell his story, tell why he thought it was unwise for him to participate in an anti-war action we were planning around the base. We were going to pass out copies of Daniel Ellsberg’s explosive whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various location around the fort and as it turned out on the base. The reason that Frank had balked at the prospect of going into the fort was that as part of his discharge paperwork was attached a statement that he was never to go on a military installation again. We all were startled by that remark, right Jack? [Jack nods agreement.]
And that night the heroic, our kind of heroic, Frank Jackman told us about the hows and whys of his Army experience. Frank had been drafted like a ton of guys back then, like me, and had allowed himself to be drafted in 1968 at the age of nineteen not being vociferously anti-war and not being aware then of the option of not taking the subsequent induction. After about three week down at Fort Dix, the main basic training facility for trainees coming from the Northeast then, he knew two things-he had made a serious mistake by allowing himself to be drafted and come hell or high water he was not going to fight against people he had no quarrel with in Vietnam. Of course the rigors of basic training and being away from home, away from anybody who could help him do he knew not what then kept him quiet and just waiting. Once basic was over and he got his Advanced Infantry Training assignment also at Fort Dix which was to be an infantryman at a time when old Uncle Sam only wanted infantrymen in the rice paddles and jungles of Vietnam things came to a head.
After a few weeks in AIT he got a three day weekend pass which allowed him to go legally off the base and he used that time to come up to Boston, or really Cambridge because what he was looking for was help to file an conscientious objector application and he knew the Quakers were historically the ones who would know about going about that process. That is ironically where Susan Rich comes in again, although indirectly this time, since Frank went to the Meeting House on Brattle Street where they were doing draft and G.I. resistance counseling and Susan was a member of that Meeting although she had never met him at that time. He was advised by one of the Quaker counselors that he could submit a C.O. application in the military, which he had previously not been sure was possible since nobody told anybody anything about that in the military, when he got back to Fort Dix but just then, although they were better later, the odds were stacked against him since he had already accepted induction. So he went back, put in his application, took a lot of crap from the lifers and officers in his company after that and little support, mainly indifference, from his fellow trainees. He still had to go through the training, the infantry training though and although he had taken M-16 rifle training in basic he almost balked at continuing to fire weapons especially when it came to machine guns. He didn’t balk but in the end that was not a big deal since fairly shortly after that his C.O. application was rejected although almost all those who interviewed him in the process though he was “sincere” in his beliefs. That point becomes important later.
Frank, although he knew his chances of being discharged as a C.O. were slim since he had based his application on his Catholic upbringing and more general moral and ethical grounds. The Catholic Church which unlike Quakers and Mennonites and the like who were absolutely against war held to a just war theory, Vietnam being mainly a just war in the Catholic hierarchy’s opinion. But Frank was sincere, more importantly, he was determined to not got to war despite his hawkish family and his hometown friends’, some who had already served, served in Vietnam too, scorn and lack of support. So he went back up to Cambridge on another three day pass to get some advice, which he actually didn’t take in the end or rather only partially took up which had been to get a lawyer they would recommend and fight the C.O. denial in Federal court even though that was also still a long shot then.
Frank checked with the lawyer alright, Steve Brady, who had been radicalized by the war and was offering his services on a sliding scale basis to G.I.s since he also had the added virtue of having been in the JAG in the military and so knew some of the ropes of the military legal system, and legal action was taken but Frank was one of those old time avenging Jehovah types like John Brown or one of those guys and despite being a Catholic rather than a high holy Protestant which is the usual denomination for avenging angels decided to actively resist the military. And did it in fairly simple way when you think about it. One Monday morning when the whole of AIT was on the parade field for their weekly morning report ceremony Frank came out of his barracks with his civilian clothes on and carrying a handmade sign which read “Bring the Troops Home Now!” That sign was simply but his life got a lot more complicated after that. In the immediate sense that meant he was pulled down on the ground by two lifer sergeants and brought to the Provost Marshal’s office since they were not sure that some dippy-hippie from near-by New York City might be pulling a stunt. When they found out that he was a soldier they threw him into solitary in the stockade.
For his offenses Frank was given a special court-martial which meant he faced six month maximum sentence which a panel of officers at his court-martial ultimately sentenced him to after a seven day trial which Steve Brady did his best to try to make into an anti-war platform but given the limitation of courts for such actions was only partially successful. After that six months was up minus some good time Frank was assigned to a special dead-beat unit waiting further action either by the military or in the federal district court in New Jersey. Still in high Jehovah form the next Monday morning after he was released he went out to that same parade field in civilian clothes carrying another homemade sign “Bring The Troops Home Now!” and he was again manhandled by another pair of lifer sergeants and this time thrown directly into solitary in the stockade since they knew who they were dealing with by then. And again he was given a special court-martial and duly sentenced by another panel of military officers to the six months maximum.
Frank admitted at that point he was in a little despair at the notion that he might have to keep doing the same action over and over again for eternity. Well he wound up serving almost all of that second sex month sentence but then he got a break. That is where listening to the Quakers a little to get legal advice did help. See what Steve Brady, like I said an ex-World War II Army JAG officer turned anti-war activist lawyer, did was take the rejection of his C.O. application to Federal District Court in New Jersey on a writ of habeas corpus arguing that since all Army interviewers agreed Frank was “sincere” that it had been arbitrary and capricious of the Army to turn down his application. And given that the United States Supreme Court and some lower court decisions had by then had expanded who could be considered a C.O. beyond the historically recognized groupings and creeds the cranky judge in the lower court case agreed and granted that writ of habeas corpus. Frank was let out with an honorable discharge, ironically therefore entitled to all veteran’s benefits but with the stipulation that he never go onto a military base again under penalty of arrest and trial. Whether that could be enforced as a matter of course he said he did not want to test since he was hardily sick of military bases in any case.
So where does Bob Dylan’s Masters of War come into the picture. Well as you know, or should know every prisoner, every convicted prisoner, has the right to make a statement in his or her defense during the trial or at the sentencing phase. Frank at both his court-martials rose up and recited Bob Dylan’s Masters of War for the record. So for all eternity, or a while anyway, in some secret recess of the Army archives (and of the federal courts too) there is that defiant statement of a real hero of the Vietnam War. Nice right?
Here is what had those bloated military officers on Frank’s court-martial board seeing red and ready to swing him from the highest gallow, yeah, swing him high.
Masters Of War-Bob Dylan
Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin’ But build to destroy You play with my world Like it’s your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion As young people’s blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud
You’ve thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain’t worth the blood That runs in your veins
How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I’m young You might say I’m unlearned But there’s one thing I know Though I’m younger than you Even Jesus would never Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die And your death’ll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I’ll watch while you’re lowered Down to your deathbed And I’ll stand o’er your grave ’Til I’m sure that you’re dead
Honor An Historic Leader Of The American Abolitionist Movement-John Brown Late Of Harper's Ferry
Chapter Four To “defeat Satan and his legions” in Kansas
John Brown Jr., 1860
Owen Brown
John Brown in Kansas, ca. 1856
Salmon Brown
Oliver Brown
Unless otherwise noted, all images are from the Boyd B. Stutler Collection
In the midst of their outrage over the Anthony Burns case, abolitionists were faced with the prospects of slavery spreading across the nation. On May 30, 1854, the United States Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, creating the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. In a controversial measure, however, the act also repealed the portion of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Purchase Territory north of the 36°30’ parallel (the southern boundary of Missouri), except in Missouri itself. Under the provisions of the 1854 act, the question of whether either new territory was slave or free would be determined by popular sovereignty. A few slaves were brought to the Nebraska Territory, and it was not until 1861 that slavery was banned there, but the issue was not as contentious in Nebraska as it proved to be in Kansas.
Emigrants from North and South began pouring into Kansas as soon as the territory was opened for settlement, hoping to sway the outcome of the slavery question. Pro-slavery elements immediately crossed the border with Missouri, settling the easternmost parts of Kansas. In the North, anti-slavery groups likewise were ready to move into Kansas through means such as the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, created in April 1854 in anticipation of passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. At the same time, farmers from the old Northwest Territory states, suffering through a drought, saw economic opportunity on the prairie. Five of John Brown’s sons—John Jr., Jason, Owen, Frederick, and Salmon—decided to move from Ohio to Kansas in the summer of 1854. In the spring of 1855, they arrived in Kansas and settled near North Middle Creek, a tributary of the Marais des Cygnes, in the east-central part of the territory, near the border with Missouri. John and Jason, both married, brought their families with them, Jason and his wife Ellen losing their son Austin, who succumbed to cholera, on the journey.
Kansas, 1854-1857. Source: John Bach McMaster, A History of the People of the United States (New York: D. Appleton, 1914)
Shortly after their arrival in Kansas, the younger John Brown wrote his father asking that he get them weapons with which to oppose an armed and organized pro-slavery element. John Brown had been preparing to move his family back to North Elba, which took place in late spring 1855, but he quickly turned his attention to Kansas. After attending a convention of radical political abolitionists in Syracuse, New York, in late June, at which he requested assistance for the Kansas fight, Brown and son-in-law Henry Thompson left for Illinois, where he met up with son Oliver. Bringing guns, knives, and broadswords, the three arrived at the Brown sons’ claims in Kansas in October 1855.
By then, a pro-slavery legislature elected with the help of Missourians who crossed the border and voted illegally had passed laws based on Missouri statutes, which included harsh penalties for slavery’s opponents. Refusing to recognize this legislature, free-state settlers made plans to write their own constitution, and John Brown Jr. and at least one of his brothers—Frederick—participated in the free-state gatherings. Both pro- and anti-slavery meetings continued through the end of the year, one of the more important being a constitutional convention at Topeka in late October. Delegates adopted a free-state constitution and a provision excluding blacks.
"If the govanor that has been apointed in Reeders place excepts the oface and admits the present Legislature of Kansas to be a legal one then war will ensue and that soon. . . . I think that before another year comes around this country will be in open insurection I mean Kansas." - Salmon Brown, letter to Mother and Family, August 20, 1855, Boyd B. Stutler Collection
Lawrence, Kansas Territory
The murder of free-state proponent Charles Dow on November 21 by Frank Coleman, a proslavery supporter, aroused the countryside on both sides of the slavery issue and led to a series of events that escalated tensions. Pro-slavery forces massed south of Lawrence at the end of the month, leading townspeople, reinforced by free-state men from other parts of Kansas, to prepare for attack. John Brown, with four sons—Jason and Oliver did not go, arrived at Lawrence on December 7, and Brown was made captain of the Liberty Guards in the First Brigade of Kansas Volunteers. But negotiations to end the crisis were already underway between Charles Robinson and James H. Lane for the free-state group and Gov. Wilson Shannon for the proslavery forces. On December 8, they signed a treaty to end the Wakarusa War and avert further bloodshed.
*****Where Have All The Flowers Gone- With Legendary Folk-Singer Pete Seeger In Mind
A while back, a few months ago now I think I mentioned in a sketch about how I came to learn about the music of Woody Guthrie I noted that it was hard to pin just exactly when I first heard his music since it pre-dated my coming to the folk minute of the 1960s where the name Woody Guthrie had been imprinted on lots of work by the then “new breed” protest/social commentary troubadour folk singers like Bob Dylan (who actually spent time in Woody’s hospital room with him when he first came East from Hibbing out of Dinktown in Minneapolis and wrote an early paean called Song To Woody on his first or second album), Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (who made a very nice career out of being a true Woody acolyte and had expected Dylan who had subsequently moved on, moved very far on to more lyrical work to do the same), and Stubby Tatum, probably the truest acolyte since he was instrumental in putting a lot of Woody’s unpublished poems and art work out for public inspection and specialized in Woody songs, first around Harvard Square and then wherever he could get a gig, which to say the least were not among the most well know or well thought out of Woody’s works. After some thought I pinpointed the first time I heard a Woody song to a seventh grade music class, Mr. Dasher’s class whom we innocently then called Dasher the Flasher just for rhyming purposes but which with today’s sensibilities about the young would not play very well and would probably have him up before some board of inquiry just because a bunch of moody, alienated hormonally-crazed seventh graders were into a rhyming fad that lasted until the next fad a few weeks or months later, when he in an effort to have us appreciate various genre of the world music songbook made us learn Woody’s This Land Is Your Land. Little did we know until a few years later when some former student confronted him about why we were made to learn all those silly songs he made us memorize and he told that student that he had done so in order to, fruitlessly as it turned out, break us from our undying devotion to rock and roll, you know, Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Wanda, Brenda, Bo, Buddy, the Big Bopper and every single doo wop group, male or female. If anybody wants to create a board of inquiry over that Mister Dasher indiscretion complete with a jury of still irate "rock and roll will never die" aficionados you have my support.
In thinking about Woody the obvious subsequent question of when I first heard the late Pete Seeger sing, a man who acted as the transmission belt between generations, I came up against that same quandary since I know I didn’t associate him with the first time, the first wave of performers, I heard as I connected with the emerging folk minute of the early 1960s. That folk minute start which I do clearly remember the details of got going one Sunday night when tired of the vanilla rock and roll music that was being play in the fall of 1962 on the Boston stations I began flipping the small dial on my transistor radio settling in on this startling gravelly voice which sounded like some old-time mountain man, some old time Jehovah cometh Calvinist avenging angel, singing Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (who turned outto be folk historian and seminal folk revival figure Dave Von Ronk, who as far as I know later from his politics had no particular religious bent,if any, but who sure sounded like he was heralding the second coming). I listened to a few more songs on what turned out to be a folk music program put on every Sunday evening between seven and nine at the request of some college kids in the area who were going crazy for roots music according to the DJ.
After thinking about it for a while I realized that I had heard Pete not in solo performance but when he was with The Weavers and they made a hit out of the old Lead Belly tune, Good Night, Irene (a song that in the true oral tradition has many versions and depending on the pedigree fewer or more verses, Lead Belly’s being comparatively short). In those days, in the early 1950s I think, the Weavers were trying to break into the popular music sphere and were proceeding very well until the Cold War night descended upon them and they, or individual members including Pete were tarred with the red scare brush.
Still you cannot keep a good man down, a man with a flame-throwing banjo, with folk music DNA in his blood since he was the son of the well-known folk musicologist Charles Seeger who along with the father and son Lomaxesdid so much to record the old time roots music out on location in the hills and hollows of the South, and with something to say to those who were interested in looking back into the roots of American music before it got commercialized (although now much of that early commercial music makes up the key folk anthology put together by Harry Smith and which every self-respecting folkie performer in the early 1960s treated like a bible). Pete put a lot of it together, a lot of interests. Got the young interested in going back to the time when old cowboys would sing themselves to sleep around the camp fire out in the prairies, when sweat hard-working black share-croppers and plantation workers down South would get out a Saturday jug and head to the juke joint to chase the blues away, and when the people of the hills and hollows down in Appalachia would Saturday night get out the jug and run over to Bill Preston’s old seen better days red-painted barn and dance that last dance waltz to that weeping mountain fiddle.
Stuff like that, lots of stuff like that to fill out the American songbook. But Pete also put his pen to paper to write some searing contemporary lyrics just like those “new breed” protest folk singers he helped nurture and probably the most famous to come out of that period, asking a very good question then, a question still be asked now if more desperately than even then, Where Have All The Flowers Gone.Now a new generation looks like it too is ready to pick up the torch after the long “night of the long knives” we have faced since those days. The music is there to greet them in their new titanic struggles.
*****From #Un-Occupied Boston-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions!
Leon Trotsky -Lessons Of The Paris Commune-Listen Up
Defend The Working Class! Take The Offensive! - A Five Point Program For Discussion Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
Ralph Morris and Sam Lowell a couple of old-time radicals, old-time now not being the Great Depression labor radicals who had been their models after a fashion and who helped built the now seemingly moribund unions but anti-war radicals from the hell-bent street in-your-face 1960s confrontations with the American beast during the Vietnam War reign of hell were beside themselves when the powder-puff uprising of the Occupy movement brought a fresh breeze to the tiny American left-wing landscape in the latter part of 2011. (That term “powder puff” not expressing the heft of the movement but the fact that it disappeared almost before it got started giving up the huge long-term fight it was expected to wage to break the banks, break the corporate grip on the world and, try to seek “newer world”). Although Ralph and Sam were not members in good standing of any labor unions, both having after their furtive anti-war street fights and the ebbing of the movement by about the mid-1970s returned to “normalcy.” Ralph having gone back to work in his father's electrical shop in Troy, New York and which he took over when Ralph, Senior retired and Sam had gone back to Carver to expand a print shop that he had started in the late 1960s after serving an apprenticeship with the main printer in town before he went out on his own. Having come from respectable working-class backgrounds in strictly working-class towns though, Carver about thirty miles from Boston and the cranberry bog capital of the world and Ralph in Troy near where General Electric ruled the roost, they had taken to heart the advice of their respective grandfathers about not forgetting those left behind, that an injury to one of their own in this wicked old world was an injury to all as the old Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) motto had it. Moreover despite their backing away from the street confrontations of their youth when that proved futile after a time, especially after May Day 1971 where they first met in the bastinado at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium after being arrested with their respective collectives and where they got a full dose what the American imperial state could when it pulled the hammer down on dissent, as the Vietnam War finally wound down and yesterday’s big name radicals left for parts unknown they had always kept an inner longing for the “newer world,” the more equitable world where the people who actually made stuff and kept the wheels of society running and their down-pressed allies ruled.
So Ralph and Sam would during most of the fall of 2011 meet in Springfield and travel down to the Wall Street plaza which was the center of the movement on weekends, long weekends usually, to take part in the action after the long drought of such activity for them personally and for their kind of eclectic left-wing politics (they had gotten more active in the wake of Bush-led Iraq invasion of 2003 when the seemingly endless wars first took hold of day to day American foreign policy but nowhere near the 24/7 efforts back in the Vietnam days when every minute seemed to desperately count against the monster). They were crestfallen to say the least when the movement exploded (or maybe better imploded, turned in on itself and wound up after a couple of years being just another cheap vehicle for left Democratic Party politicians on the make) after the then reigning mayor and the NYPD pulled down the hammer and forcibly disbanded the place (and other city administrations across the country and across the world and police departments did likewise in what was determined later when it was too late that had been coordinated efforts across the board to shut everything down, shut it down tight). Of more concern at the time since unlike the good-hearted but naïve younger people since they had already known from too many uneven battles (remember that May Day 1971 baptism of fire) about what the government could do when it decided to pull down the hammer was in the aftermath when the movement imploded from its own contradictions, caught up not wanting to step on anybody's toes in the movement no matter how hare-brained the scheme or just plain recycled ideas that had not worked in the 1960s and had even less chance now that the state had even more weapons at its disposal, to let everybody do their own thing with or without some kind of coordinated plan that would make the thing more productive, do their own identity politics, you know gays can only speak of gay oppression straights keep out, women can only speak of women's oppression men, gay or straight keep out, blacks can only speak of black oppression, white males and females, gay or straight keep out and so on, defending their particular turf as furiously as any old-time Tammany Hall political hack, which did much to defang the old movements, refusing out of hand cohering a collective leadership that might give some direction to the damn thing but also earnestly wanting to bring the monster down.
Ralph and Sam in the aftermath, after things had settled down and they had time to think decided to put together a proposal, a program if you like, outlining some of the basic political tasks ahead to be led by somebody. Certainly not by them since radical politics, street politics is a young person’s game and they admittedly had gotten rather long in the tooth. Besides they had learned long ago, had talked about it even over drinks at Jack Higgin’s Grille more than once, how each generation will face its tasks in its own way so they would be content to be “elder” tribal leaders and provide whatever wisdom they could, if asked. Here working under the drumbeat of Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up something of a “national anthem” for what went on among the better elements of Occupy are some points that any movement for social change has to address these days and fight for and about as well.
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
***Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, those who have just plain quit looking for work and critically those who are working jobs beneath their skill levels was this high in the American labor force, although it is admittedly down from the Great Recession of 2008-09 highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around to all who want and need it. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.
The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions when the union-run hiring hall ruled supreme in manning the jobs is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling, where, and at what skill level, and equitably divide up current work.
Here is the beauty of the scheme, what makes it such a powerful propaganda tool-without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” –with the no reduction in pay proviso, although many low –end employers are even now under the “cover” of the flawed Obamacare reducing hours WITH loss of pay-so that to establish this work system as a norm it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.
Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce and less in the formerly pivotal private industries like auto production. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. (Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, the North American auto industry employed almost a million workers but only a third or less are unionized whereas in the old days the industry was union tight.)
The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American service-orientedeconomy. Everyone should support the recent militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially acceptable wage in their Fight For $15.
Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.
Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of company-owned trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. The key here is to organize the truckers and distribution center workers, the place where the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of individual retail stores and victimizations of local union organizers. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone, probably Bart Webber in his more thoughtful moments, once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant mainstay of the run to the bottom capitalist ethos. Well, as to the latter point that’s a thought.
Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more defeats like in Wisconsin in 2011, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections either. Defeat all “right to work” legislation. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.
*** Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray, the very strayRepublican) candidates. In 2008 and 2012 labor, organized labor, spent over 450 million dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between the rich, make that the very rich but don’t forgot to include them on the fringes of the one percent and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus fruitless efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea presented, an old idea going back to the initial formation of the working class in America, in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor” and the Republicans are the 666 beasts but the Obama administration does not take a back seat to the elephants on this one. The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement. They always have their hands out.
The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. One egregious example from the recent past from around the time of the Occupy movement where some of tried to link up the labor movement with the political uprising- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks in the summer of 2011 when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down when the deal goes down.
This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections against individual reactionaries, like Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle when some form of general strike was required to break the anti-union backs (and which was overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the number of unionized public workers has dwindled to a precious few).
***End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reached its final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we argued, Sam more than I did since he had been closer to the initial stage if the opposition that we must recognize that we anti-warriors had failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other proxy wars) continue now with a new stage against ISIS (common moniker for the Islamic State) in Iraq we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before that fight is over. Not Another War In Iraq! Stop The Bombings In Syria, Iraq, Yemen! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East Especially To Israel and Saudi Arabia! Defend The Palestinian People-End The Blockade of Gaza-Israel Out Of The Occupied Territories. And as always since 2001 Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of Every Single U.S./Allied Troops (And The Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!
U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off Syria!- Despite a certain respite recently during the Iran nuclear arms talksAmerican (and world) imperialists have periodically ratcheted up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner on this issue, Israel) in Iran and Syria is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe us we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran in our own way in our own time.
U.S. Hands Off The World! And Keep Them Off!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, like Saudi Arabia and France over the recent period have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.
Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that in 1915 in the heat of war and paid the price unlike other party leaders who were pledged to stop the war budgets by going to prison. The only play for an honest representative of the working class under those conditions. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now no new funding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get the drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.
***Fight for a social agenda for working people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states whatever political disagreements we may have with the Cuban leadership like Cuba, and whatever their other internal political problems caused in no small part the fifty plus year U.S. blockade, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs. Be clear Obamacare is not our program and has already been shown to be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program against those who wish to dismantle it and leave millions once again uninsured and denied basic health benefits.
Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!
This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle-class as well.
Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students from broken homes and minority homes in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take a big chuck from the bloated military budget and the bank bail-out money, things like that, if you want to find the money quickly to do the job right), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.
Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while low-cost aid has not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast into some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!
Stop housing foreclosures and aid underwater mortgages now! Although the worst of the crunch has abated there are still plenty of problems and so this demand is still timely if not desperately timely like in the recent past. Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.
***We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.
Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.
Build a workers’ party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):
“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
