Walking for peace through Maine

October 20, 2016 by Erin Place   Norway Advertiser Democrat

NORWAY — They don their walking shoes and continue walking with a purpose – to Stop the War$ on Mother Earth – and, more specifically, environmental issues affecting Maine and its inhabitants.

POUNDING THE PAVEMENT — Roughly 20 participants from the fifth annual Maine Peace Walk play drums, chant and wave flags in downtown Norway on Monday, Oct. 17, to spread their message of peace.

Roughly 20 participants in the fifth annual Maine Peace Walk make a noisy, yet peaceful entrance as they walk along Main Street in downtown Norway late afternoon Monday, Oct. 17. They bang on Japanese fan drums, chant, fly flags and carry signs as they spread their message of peace throughout the state. Their destination is the First Universalist Church of Norway, where church members welcome them with a potluck supper and a place to rest for the night.

The walk began on Oct. 11 at Indian Island to honor the Penobscot Nation’s “struggles for clean water,” according to Jason Rawn, who hails from the Lincolnville area. Outside the church he’s taken off his pair of Asics to give his feet a breather. They have a fresh hole in the side from the day’s journey, as they traveled from Augusta to Norway with 13.6 walking miles.

“These have over 1,000 miles for peace walks,” he says as he holds up his sneakers and smiles.

Rawn is with his new friend, 10-year-old Bailey Kawasaki, who lives in Washington state.

“We walked with the monks,” Bailey says as he sits among the plants in front of the church with Rawn. He’s referring to Buddhist monks and nuns from the Nipponzan Myohoji order. “We carried some banners. They’re long.”

Parked outside the white church is the red van with a silver dolphin mounted to the roof and a mural painted by walker and artist Russell Wray. The mural is new this year and depicts men and women, young and old, holding hands around a tree, with the canopy expanding to the edge of the canvas.

NO MORE WAR — The van traveling with the Maine Peace Walk is parked outside of the First Universalist Church of Norway with a mural sporting this year’s theme “Stop the War$ on Mother Earth.”

“We have the van for old people if they’re feet are hurting or they get tired,” Bailey says matter of factly.

Each year a different route across the Pine Tree State is chosen “based on different kinds of struggles,” Rawn says. The 2016 walk so far has brought the activists to Dexter to meet with Grandmothers Against the East/West Corridor in Dexter and a vigil outside of the Poland Springs bottling plant in Poland.

“We’re walking in solidarity with everyone who is concerned about our planet, about our Earth and all the destructive forces, including the military and the corporate, and concerns that aren’t protecting the environment,” says Katie Greenman of Orland, who’s sitting with a group of walkers behind the church in the parking lot as they take a load off.

Most of the walkers are from Maine, but there are others from New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Jules Orkin lives in New Jersey and says he’s not much of a talker, but he can carry the Veterans for Peace flag and has done so all across the United States, Europe and Japan.

“We’re an eclectic group,” smiles Ian Collins of Liberty.

Jun Yasuda is a Buddhist nun who’s walked across the U.S. at least eight times. She says Maine is a beautiful place. She gives a clever answer when asked why she walks.

“Why we have foot? Why not use it?” Yasuda says, adding the act of walking “is more prayer to me than just hiking.” “Human mission is taking care of this Earth. [It’s a] very important message for us. Our life comes from Earth.”

Bruce Gagnon, an walk organizer from Bath, says from inside the church the first Maine Peace Walk brought participants to Norway, where they were greeted with hospitality, which made a lasting impression on him.

“Norway was so welcoming that’s why we did some shuttling out here from Augusta just to get here,” Greenman confirms. “I think this church does a lot of social justice work.”

Gagnon says there’s another reason for the walk to travel to Norway. One of the goals this year is to bring the peace movement to rural communities – including Old Towne, Pittsfield and Unity – as most peace groups are centered in bigger metropolitan areas. As they travel across the rural parts of the state, they’ve seen plenty of Trump signs.

“The last three miles coming into town was a gridlock,” Gagnon says, adding they hand out plenty of fliers, receive donations and experience honking, waving and people flashing them peace signs. “It was exhilarating. This is supposed to be conservative Maine. … You can’t pigeon hole people. People are more multidimensional than what our political choices allow.”

PRAYERS FOR PEACE — The Rev. Fayre C. Stephenson, center with paper, leads participants of the Maine Peace Walk and members of the First Universalist of Norway in prayer for before the pot luck supper on Monday, Oct. 17. The walkers are taking their message of peace across the state.

Before the pot luck supper commences, members of the Maine Peace Walk and First Universalist Church gather in a circle and hold hands. The Rev. Fayre C. Stephenson addresses the group in front of her before leading them in prayer.

“We Unitarian Universalists join you in your concern about the many different wars being waged on Mother Earth, ranging from over-fishing, deforestation and human-caused extinctions to climate disruption and endless war,” she says.

“Tonight’s gathering is proof that we are not alone when we affirm and promote a world community of peace, justice and sustainable living. And so, I say thank you for journeying to us.”

At 22, Kevin Brooks of Old Towne is fresh out of college and one of the youngest walkers there. He’s trying to figure out what he’s doing with his life and in doing so, has created friendships.

“I’ve made a friend on this walk. I’ve made many more who are here tonight,” he says, as he motions to the group around him.

All the food has been donated to the walkers, as are sleeping spaces in churches, schools and in people’s homes.

“I’ve been eating better on this walk than I do at home,” Brooks laughs.

“We couldn’t do any of this without the support of the communities along the way,” Greenman adds.

And Gagnon wants to extend his thanks to everyone who’s helped them along the way.

“I can’t tell ya how good it feels when you’ve got tired feet, you haven’t been sleeping well, you haven’t had a shower in a couple of days and people are so welcoming. Really it is very, very moving and we say, ‘Thank you,’” Gagnon says.

Then it’s time to dig into the homemade grub since the walkers need their sustenance as their journey takes them to Lewiston on Tuesday, Oct. 18.

eplace@sunmediagroup.net

5^th Maine Peace Walk itinerary

Day 1: Tuesday, Oct. 11, Penobscot Nation on Indian Island

Day 2: Wednesday, Oct. 12, Indian Island to Dexter

Day 3: Thursday, Oct. 13, Dexter to Pittsfield

Day 4: Friday, Oct. 14, Pittsfield to Unity

Day 5: Saturday, Oct. 15, Unity to Waterville

Day 6: Sunday, Oct. 16, Waterville to Augusta

Day 7: Monday, Oct. 17, Augusta to Norway

Day 8: Tuesday, Oct. 18, Norway to Lewiston

Day 9: Wednesday, Oct. 19, Lewiston to Brunswick

Day 10: Thursday, Oct. 20, day off in Brunswick

Day 11: Friday, Oct. 21, Brunswick to Freeport

Day 12: Saturday, Oct. 22, Freeport to Portland

Day 13: Sunday, Oct. 23, Portland to Saco

Day 14: Monday, Oct 24, Saco to Kennebunk

Day 15: Tuesday, Oct. 25, Kennebunk to York Beach

Day 16: Wednesday, Oct. 26, York to Kittery Naval Shipyard

3 p.m. village gate protest vigil

For more information, visit http://vfpmaine.org/.

Iyad Burnat­: Bil’in and The Nonviolent Resistance

Iyad Burnat­: Bil’in and The Nonviolent Resistance

Iyad Burnat­
will be in Boston

Tuesday, November 1  7:00 PM at Encuentro 5
9A Hamilton Place, Boston (near Park St. T Station)

 to speak about his ­­­new book

Bil’in and The Nonviolent Resistance

Iyad Burnat is the coordinator for the Popular Committee in Bil'in, Palestine. For 10 years, Iyad and the Popular Committee of this small village have held weekly non-violent demonstrations against the confiscation of their land. They have repeatedly been met with violence by the Israeli military. Iyad is coming to the Boston area to describe what life is like under Israeli occupation, his village's ongoing struggle for justice and freedom, and what inspires him to continue non-violent resistance.

Iyad is the winner of the 2015 James Lawson Award for Achievement bestowed by the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict during its summer institute at Tufts University.
Sponsored by United for Peace with Justice: http://justicewithpeace.org 617-383-4857 https://www.facebook.com/justicewithpeace
Cosponsors: Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia; Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine; American Friends Service Committee; Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights; Friends of Sabeel - New England Chapter; Interfaith   Peace- Builders; Jewish Voice for Peace, Boston
Downloadable Flyer (PDF, .6Mbytes)

Upcoming Events: 

The Right to Boycott: Defending BDS	Saturday, October 29, 2016 - 10:00am	Central Square Library	Cambridge
Iyad Burnat: Bil'in and the Nonviolent Resistance	Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - 7:00pm	Encuentro 5	Boston
The Next Four Years: Building Our Movements in Dangerous Times	Saturday, December 3, 2016 - 9:00am	Simmons College, Paresky Conference Center	Boston

More Peace and Justice Events.    How to Submit Events
 

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**** A MODEST PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS FOR THE 2016....2018....2020....2022.... ELECTIONS (Updated)

**** A MODEST PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS FOR THE 2016....2018....2020....2022.... ELECTIONS (Updated)

****From The American Left History Blog Archives (2008) - On American Political Discourse

 

Markin comment:

In 2007-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the then blossoming American presidential campaign, a changing of the guard election on the Democratic side, since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, “in my face” obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those few "talking heads, professional conmen and ersatz political crazies that your mother warned you against, repeatedly warned you against," who really believed, who had talked themselves into, had a vested interest in touting that it would be a watershed election. That grim reality despite the hoopla, heavy cash and organizing of the thing, was that once again that election would essentially be a technician’s election, you know for armchair strategists and those who like to, for example, figure out how the Congressional race in the 26^th District in Texas will impact the balance of power in the U.S. House. (I confess that early on in my life that kind of thing intrigued me too until I got “religion” and worried more about real live issues and political programs which might actually help push the rock of human progress uphill a little further than wonk-ish concerns.)    

The subsequent “sleep-walk” four years of the Obama presidency, the non-watershed by anybody’s measurement 2012 American presidential election campaign, the banal mid-term elections of 2014 recently passed and the unending maelstrom of world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators (those "talking heads, professional conmen, and conwomen, and political mentioned above) go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the seemingly endless wars that have plagued my old age and that of my progeny, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers’ party that fights for a workers government. More than enough to do, right?  

Part of my “alternative” offering back then in 2008 to the same old, same of the electoral cycle was a proposition that the labor movement and its supporters rather than spent another dime on what even a child could now see was a waste of good dues money on supporting this or that bourgeois candidate instead run our own independent labor candidates for appropriate offices in what for now would be exemplary campaigns. To that end I motivated my pitch with a few reasons and the outline of a program. Today as the non-watershed 2016 elections looms in our faces even before we have devoured the fact of the horrendous 2014 elections and subsequent plethora of Demo-Repub presidential candidates who can barely keep a straight face in public I offer an updated version of that program and the urgency to get out independent labor candidates.  
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1. FIGHT FOR THE IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST NOW (OR BETTER YET, YESTERDAY)! U.S. HANDS OFF THE WORLD! VOTE NO ON THE WAR BUDGET!

The never-ending and apparently soon to be resurrected, with or without “boots on the ground” quagmire in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East (Palestine, Iran, Syria you name it) is the fault line of American politics today. Every bourgeois politician has to have his or her feet put to the fire on this one. Not on some flimsy ‘sense of the Congress’ softball motion for withdrawal next, year, in two years, or (my favorite) when the situation is “stable.” Moreover, on the parliamentary level the only real vote that matters is the vote on the war budget. All the rest is fluff. Militant labor candidates should make a point of trying to enter Congressional contests where there are so-called known anti-war Democrats or Republicans (an oxymoron, I believe) running to make that programmatic contrast vivid.

But, one of those "talking heads, etc." might argue, that would split the ‘progressive’ forces. Grow up, please! That argument has grown stale since it was first put forth in the “popular front” days of the 1930’s. If you want to end the wars fight for this "no funding" position on the war budget. Otherwise the same people (yah, those progressive Democrats) who unanimously voted for the last war budget and are reliably foaming at the bit to vote for the next one (or in the same vein authorized millions for Israel’s 2014 massacre in Gaza bought and paid for with U.S. aid) get a free ride on the cheap. By rights this is our issue. Let us take it back.

2. FIGHT FOR A LIVING WAGE AND WORKING CONDITIONS-UNIVERSAL FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL.

It is a ‘no-brainer’ that no individual, much less families, can live on the minimum wage of $7/hr. (or proposed $10/hr). What planet do these politicians live on? We need an immediate fight for a living wage, full employment and decent working conditions. A step in the right direction and a fight that should be supported and funded is the recent “Fight for $15” campaign spearheaded by organized labor and some leftist groups. We need universal free health care for all. End of story. (Although Obamacare is inadequate and filled with pitfalls it must be defended against those who wish, including fully-insured at public expense Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress and the Senate to dismantle the whole thing and leave millions without insurance again.) The organized labor movement must get off its knees and fight to organize Wal-Mart and the South. A boycott of Wal-Mart is not enough. A successful organizing drive will, like in the 1930s, go a long way to turning the conditions of labor and unionization around from its abysmal current status.

3. FIGHT THE ATTACKS ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT.

Down with the Death Penalty! Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants who make it here! Stop the Deportations! For the Separation of Church and State! Defend abortion rights! Full public funding of education! Stop the ‘war on drugs’, basically a war on blacks and minority youth-decriminalize drugs! Defend and free political prisoners like Chelsea Manning, Mumia and Albert Woodfolk! This list of demands hardly exhausts the “culture war” issues we defend. It is hard to believe that over 200 years after the American Revolution and the French Revolution we are fighting desperately to preserve many of the same principles that militants fought for in those revolutions. But, so be it.

4. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS PARTY.

The Donkeys, Elephants and Greens have had their chance. Now is the time to fight for our own party and for the interests of our own class, the working class. Any campaigns by independent labor militants must highlight this point. And any campaigns can also become the nucleus of a workers’ party network until we get strong enough to form at least a small party. None of these other parties, and I mean none, are working in the interests of working people and their allies. The following great lesson of politics today must be hammered home. Break with the Democrats, Republicans and Greens!

5. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS AND XYZ GOVERNMENT.

We need our own form of government. In the old days the bourgeois republic was a progressive form of government. Not so any more. That form of government ran out of steam about one hundred years ago and has been choking human process since then. We need a Workers Republic. We need a government based on workers councils with a ministry (I do not dare say commissariat in case any stray anarchists or red scare-born anti-communists are reading this) responsible to it. Let us face it if we really want to get any of the good and necessary things listed above accomplished we are not going to get it with the current form of government.

Why the XYZ part? What does that mean? No, it is not part of an algebra lesson. What it reflects is that while society is made up mainly of workers (of one sort or another) there are other classes (and parts of classes) in society that we seek as allies and who could benefit from a workers government. Examples- small independent contractors, intellectuals, the dwindling number of small farmers, and some professionals like dentists. Yah, I like the idea of a workers and dentists government after many years in the dentist chair. The point is you have got to fight for it.

Obviously any campaign based on this program will be an exemplary propaganda campaign for the foreseeable future. But we have to start now. Continuing to support or not challenging the bourgeois parties does us no good now. That is for sure. While bourgeois electoral laws do not favor independent candidacies and make things difficult write-in campaigns are possible.
**********

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, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force, although it is admittedly down from the Great Recession highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. 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, 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 when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.

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. 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. 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 economy. 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 workers the place where the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of retail stores. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, 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. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 and 2012  ( I don't know the 2014 number) 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 and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back like with the recent UAW contract 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.

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. The most egregious recent example that I can recall- 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.

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 in Wisconsin against the reactionary fool Governor Walker , as substitutes for class struggle (and which was overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the number of unionized public workers there 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, I argued 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 (Islamic State) in Iraq and Syria 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 these fights are over. Not Another War In Iraq!  Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East! Stop The Bombing Campaign! Defend The Palestinian People-End The Blockade of Gaza. And as always since 2001 Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!  

U.S. Hands Off Iran! Stop Bombing Syria!- American (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 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 me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalist 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, 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 by going to prison unlike other party leaders who were pledged to stop the war budgets but who capitulated to the bloody Kaiser. The only play for an honest representative of the working class under those conditions was to face imprisonment rather than vote for the war budgets. 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 my 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 like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, 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 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 from the military budget and the bank bail-out money 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 in 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!

ROLL UP YOUR SHEEVES! GET THOSE ELECTION BALLOT PETITIONS SIGNED! PRINT OUT THE LEAFLETS! PAINT THOSE BANNERS! GET READY TO SHAKE HANDS AND KISS BABIES

********

News Flash: A. F. Markin Will Not Run For President In 2016    

From The American Left History Blog-June 2015

“Apparently Mister Markin is the only politician in America, or at least in the Democratic or Republican Party, who has not thrown his or her hat, or tried to throw his or her hat,  into the ring this election cycle for a chance at the brass ring, or Hillary Rodham Clinton’s big target. He must be a rare bird.”-John Stewart, WDJA News

When asked about endorsing Hilary Rodham Clinton for President A.F. Markin, at his press conference in New York City announcing his decision where he had just announced that he would not run for the office this cycle, quoted one of his favorite old time bluesman, a man who had many problems with, wine, women and song-“I’d rather be with the devil than to be that woman’s man.” Enough said.       

Media Flash: A. F. Markin, long time anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist activist and the evil genius behind the blog American Left History, has announced today that under no conditions will he be a candidate for President of the United States in 2016. In prior election cycles he has run for the office as an Independent Social-Democrat (2004) and after nomination on the Green Wave Party ticket in 2008 (although he waged an opportunistic low-level campaign because according to one campaign worker he did not want to ruin then Senator Barack Obama’s chances at the White House expecting some kind of job offer for doing so. To once again prove that opportunism does not pay, especially for so-called principled socialists like him and Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont, he was never offered any position in that administration). In 2012 he got “religion” and sat out the campaign not because of any thought of ruining the chances of that “miserable sell-out bastard Obama” (Markin’s words) but because he had read an obscure document based on the tenets of the Communist International (Vladimir Lenin’s old-time operation to create world revolution established in 1919 and which went out of business in 1943 on Stalin's orders) in a left-wing socialist newspaper which stated that socialists should not seek, not even run for, the executive offices (President, Governor, sheriff) of what they called the “bourgeois capitalist state.” Chastised, thoroughly chastised by that obscure odd-ball reference he is again sitting the 2016 election cycle out.     

At the press conference held in New York City’s Best Eastern Hotel making the announcement Markin, paraphrasing the great 19th century Northern Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman (hero of “Billy’s bummers' traipsing through Georgia and its environs and scourge of the rebels) stated that “if drafted I will not run and if elected I will not serve” in that post. He, however, did not rule out the possibility of running for some legislative office like the United States Senate or U.S. House of Representatives. –Josh Breslin, Portland Free Press
A.F. Markin commentary on the American Politics Today website expanding on his decision not to run (originally posted on the American Left History blog on June 6, 2015):      

“I know that the long suffering readers of this blog have been waiting breathlessly for me to announce my intentions for the presidential campaign of 2016. Wait a minute! What kind of madness is this on my part to impose on readers who I am sure are still recovering from the shell-shock of that seemingly endless and mendacious 2012 presidential campaign. Well… Okay, as usual I want to, for good or ill, make a little point about running for the executive offices of the bourgeois state now that I have gotten ‘religion’ about the necessary of radicals and revolutionaries, even garden variety socialists like me, NOT to do so. I think this point can really be driven home today now that we have a ‘progressive’ Democratic president, one Barack Obama, as a foil.

I have detailed elsewhere the controversy and checkered history in the international workers movement, and especially in the Communist International in its heroic days in the early 1920's, surrounding the question of whether radicals and revolutionaries, on principle, should run for these executive offices of the bourgeois state. I need not repeat that argument here. (See June 2008 Archives, "If Drafted I Will Not Run, If Elected I Will Not Serve-Revolutionaries and Running For Executive Offices," American Left History blog, dated June 15, 2008). I have also noted there the trajectory of my own conversion to the position of opposition to such runs.

Previously I had seen such electoral efforts as good propaganda tools and/or basically harmless attempts to intersect political reality at times when the electorate is tuned in. Always under the assumption made clear during the campaign that, of course, if elected one would not assume the office.

In any case, I admit to a previously rather cavalier attitude toward the whole question, even as I began to see the wisdom of opposition. But having gone through the recent presidential campaign and, more importantly, the inauguration and installation of a ‘progressive’ black man to the highest office attainable under the imperium I have begun to wipe that smirk off my face.

Why? I have hardly been unaware throughout my leftist political career that Social Democratic and Communist (Stalinist/Maoist varieties especially) Party politicians have, individually or in popular front alliances with capitalist parties, wreaked havoc on working people while administrating the bourgeois state. I have, in particular, spent a good part of my political career fighting against the notion of popular front strategies as they have been forged in the past, disastrously in places like Spain during the Civil War in the 1930s and Chile in 1973 or less disastrously in France in the 1980s. However this question of the realities of running the imperial state in America really hit home with the coming into office of Barack Obama.

Certainly, Obama did not have, and in the course of such things could not have any qualms about administering the bourgeois state, even if such toilsome work contradicted his most basic principles. Assuming, for the sake of argument here, that Obama is not the worst bourgeois politician, progressive or not, that has come down the pike. Already, in a few short weeks in office, he has escalated the troop levels in Afghanistan. He is most earnestly committed to bailing out the financial heart of the imperial system, at the long term expense of working people. Where is the room for that vaunted ‘progressive’ designation in all of this? Oh yes he has is against torture and illegal torture centers. That, dear readers might have passed for progressive action- in the 17th century. Jesus, is there no end to this madness in taking grandstanding kudos for stuff that Voltaire would have dismissed out of hand. So the next time someone asks you to run for President of the United States (or governor of a state or mayor of a city) take the Markin pledge - Just say NO!

  

Honor An Historic Leader Of The American Abolitionist Movement-John Brown Late Of Harper's Ferry

Honor An Historic Leader Of The American Abolitionist Movement-John Brown Late Of Harper's Ferry  

 

Chapter Six
The Eastern Connection

Unless otherwise noted, all images are from the Boyd B. Stutler Collection

John Brown, 1857

Free State Kansas Fund certificate Early in January 1857, John Brown arrived in Boston seeking support for his anti-slavery efforts. New England, in particular Massachusetts, was home to some of the most prominent abolitionists of the era—Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Lydia Maria Child, Henry David Thoreau, Abby Kelley and Stephen S. Foster, and Amos A. Lawrence, to name a few—and several hundred abolition organizations. The Massachusetts State Kansas Aid Committee, organized in 1856, was one of several committees formed during the Kansas Territorial period to raise funds for the free-state cause. The committee immediately authorized Brown to take possession of 200 Sharps rifles and ammunition that were stored in Iowa. Later in the month in Albany, New York, the National Kansas Committee also authorized funds for Brown.

Kansas Aid Committee flier

It was during this trip that John Brown met the New Englanders whose names would be connected with his efforts as the “Secret Six.” Brown had already met New Yorker Gerrit Smith a decade earlier when he purchased land at North Elba. Of the other five, Brown met Frank Sanborn, secretary of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee, early in January 1857. Sanborn quickly became an ardent supporter of Brown, introducing him to other committee members and prominent Bostonians and arranging for his appearance before the Massachusetts legislature. George Luther Stearns was chairman of the committee, and Samuel Gridley Howe (husband of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” lyricist Julia Ward Howe) was a member. Sanborn also arranged for Brown to meet abolitionists Theodore Parker and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The last two had openly opposed the arrest of fugitive slave Anthony Burns in 1854, and Higginson helped lead a failed rescue attempt that resulted in the death of a deputy.

Gerrit Smith

Frank B. Sanborn

George Luther Stearns

Samuel Gridley Howe

Theodore Parker

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Despite meeting such prominent abolitionists, John Brown’s trip to New England failed to produce the financial backing he sought. On February 18, 1857, he appeared before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature in hopes of obtaining an appropriation, but the effort failed. Throughout the early months of the year, Brown appealed for support during speaking appearances in towns throughout New England. He also appealed for support via the press, writing “To the Friends of Freedom” to the New York Tribune in March. Yet, while he received numerous pledges of support, very little actual cash was placed in his hands. Then, in April the National Kansas Committee, faced with declining income, withdrew its financial pledge to Brown. Ironically, it was during Brown's New England fund-raising trip that the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Dred Scott case, alarming opponents of slavery's expansion that the country was moving toward nationalization of slavery.

John Brown was so disappointed in the results of his fund-raising efforts that shortly before leaving Massachusetts in late April he penned “Old Browns Farewell to the Plymouth Rocks; Bunker Hill, Monuments; Charter Oaks; and Uncle Toms Cabbins.” He also was disappointed by news from his wife that his sons did not want to continue fighting. In addition, the "U. S. Hounds" had been looking for him, and he went into hiding for a short period before travelling to North Elba. After two weeks with his family, he headed west with his son Owen, arriving in early August at Tabor, Iowa.

“I have only to say as regards the resolution of the boys to "learn & practice war no more"; that it was not at my solicitation that they engaged in it at the first: & that while I may perhaps feel no more love of the business than they do; still I think there may be possibly in their day that which is more to be dreaded: if such things do not now exist.” – Letter, John Brown to Mary Ann Brown, March 31, 1857, Boyd B. Stutler Collection

Primary Documents:

State Aid for Kansas, 1856
Letter, George L. Stearns to John Brown, January 8, 1857
Speech, John Brown to Massachusetts Legislature committee, February 18, 1857 (part)
Letter, John Brown to New York Tribune, March 4, 1857 (from Sanborn, Life and Letters)
Letter, John Brown to Mary Ann Brown, March 31, 1857
"Old Browns Farewell," April 1857
Resolutions, Massachusetts State Kansas Aid Committee, April 15, 1857
Letter, George L. Stearns to John Brown, April 15, 1857
Letter, John Brown to John Brown Jr., April 15, 1857
Report, Massachusetts State Kansas Aid Committee, September 1858
Testimony of Samuel G. Howe to Senate Select Committee, 1860
Testimony of George L. Stearns to Senate Select Committee, 1860

Secondary Sources:

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