****From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog-Viva La Quince Brigada

****From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog-Viva La Quince Brigada

Click below to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive blog page for all kinds of interesting information about that important historic grouping in the International Brigades that fought for our side, the side of the people in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

http://www.albavolunteer.org/category/blog/

Jackman comment:

This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. Viva La Quince Brigada!  
*******

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Sam Lowell knew in his blood-stained heart, his Vietnam War blood-stained heart that as much as he had come to hate and oppose that war as a participant, as an unwilling and unwitting tool of forces in the government who were clueless about ‘Nam, about people who had done them, and him no harm, about people with which he had no quarrel he could never go all the way in his opposition to wars. Although after the fact, after his service, he had spent a fair amount of time in the streets with fellow veterans trying to get the word out that a monster was on the loose, the American government, a government that had made him, made his war buddies nothing but savages, trying to work the anti-war veteran point of view which had some “cred” to all who would listen, half-listen anyway, he would never really be able to fully make himself a pacifist. Never make himself a solid almost biblical in the wilderness turning the other cheek man of peace for all seasons. Go the distance on some “Gandhi trip” as he called it talking to his old high school friend Bart Webber one night years later when they were mulling over the question of how far they were willing to go in the search for what the Quakers called the “peace witness.”  Not when in his head he knew there were causes, just causes that could not be resolved short of blood and iron if humankind was to roll the rock of progress up the hill a little, hell, to even get a little justice in this wicked old world. He favored not that “Gandhi trip” but an idea of some long-bearded robe sheet-clothed Jehovah all fire and brimstone come seeking vengeance against the night-takers until the world was gotten rid of night-takers. 

That is why Sam, despite his misgivings about the Vietnam War had never really opposed it personally via some application for conscientious objector status. Never saw himself as the friendly Quaker, Mennonite, Amish man of good cheer and no grudges. Never had been around such people when it counted as he was growing up although he had heard about their gentility and had seen it in action down in Pennsylvania Amish country. Even a serious attempt later after Vietnam had taken so much out of him, had depleted his abstract  hates, to become more Quakerly when he had had a Quaker girlfriend, Susan Rich, failed to his own hubris and sense that fixing even the small woes of the world required more fire that the “inner light.” (They would quarrel endlessly if civilly about such matters to no good end and they eventually kind of drifted apart once each realized that there was no longer enough glue holing them together.)

What Sam came to believe, or maybe believed all along and Vietnam and that lovely quiet Quaker girl just brought his notions to a head, was that his whole blessed life was stacked against such gentility. He asked himself, and asked Bart as well since they came from the same poor as church mice neighborhood although Bart had not faced the ultimate induction crisis since due to a severe childhood injury to his right leg he was declared by his friends and neighbors at the local draft board to be 4-F, unfit for military duty, where in his, their growing up ethos was their room for such thoughts having grown up in working class Carver. Carver a town where guys volunteered for military service in droves if for no other reason than to get out of the hick town, get away from being boggers, cranberry bog workers when Carver was something like the cranberry capital of the world or else accepted quietly and without rancor induction if drafted. He would have received no support, from family, friends, including Bart who held all the same support the government without question at the time and had only come around when their corner boy friend Jeff Mullins was killed in the Central Highlands and after Sam had come back to the “real” world to  give the real story of the murderous assault on human dignity he had taken part in, and neighbors. Neighbors who had, as he recalled to Bart, looked askance at him when in 1966 he had expressed some reservations about the carpet-bombing of Vietnam back to the Stone Age which was the effective policy of the military doctrine of the day. Sam frankly said to Bart that talking night that he would not have known even how to go about doing such a thing as filing an application for CO status. And if he had known under the conditions existing in 1966 to obtain CO status, although not a few years later when though court decisions and changes in draft board policy such applications were not denied out of hand except for historically recognized objectors, he would not have been granted that status since he had been raised a Catholic, a church organization which held to a just war theology rather than an absolute opposition to war like the Quakers and Mennonites, people who held such historic pacifist positions.

Although after Vietnam Sam went through a crisis on the question of war and peace in which he came to err on the “side of the angels” and he abandoned the Catholic Church and its version of the just war theory which seemed to more often, much more often than not, justify all of Caesar’s wars without fail, he still held to a secular version of that just war theory. When thinking about the matter of just wars then in the late 1960s and early 1970s the Spanish Civil War had come to mind since he had been something of a buff about that event as far back as freshman year in high school when he had written a term paper for a history class on the subject. In that desperate 1930s conflict which pre-figured World War III whose struggles enflamed his dreams he saw himself obviously fighting, arms in hand, whatever arms they had which at times were scanty, for the Republican side against the Nazi-backed Franco forces. He had dreamed as well that he would have, if he had been around then, signed up as a volunteer for the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades, the famous Abraham Lincolns who did heroic battle around the Jarama and in other tough spots when it counted.

Sam knew from his readings that those organizations were controlled by the Communists of that age but while in high school he was as fervent an anti-communist as anybody in town he would give them a pass for the duration of the war, would have joined the united front even if he was not sure that he would have supported the “revolution and war” ideas expressed by those to the left of the Communists and Socialists, mostly Trotskyists and anarchists of one stripe or another. He was still bitter, always would be, when the U.S. under the liberal oligarch Roosevelt called for hands-off, for neutrality in the conflict and the British and French sat on their hands while Spain died a thousand deaths. It would not be until later when he had to deal with the American progeny of Joe Stalin in the anti-Vietnam War movement that he would come to curse Uncle Joe’s withdrawal of the International Brigades while there was still some fight left in the Republican forces. No, Sam would not have sat on his hands on that one.      

Later, several years later in the late 1970s when the turmoil which had beset America had settled down and an ebb tide had taken over in the land postponing to the indefinite future the question of whether a 1960s-type “new breeze” was going to come again, a time when he was beginning to make a small name for himself in the legal profession around the South Shore of Boston he developed a strong interest in the American Civil War, a strong interest in the importance of the Union victory and the abolition of slavery. This interest had been kick-started one day as a result of his going into Boston on a legal matter at the Suffolk County Courthouse on Beacon Hill and passing what was then a much neglected frieze of the heroic Colonel Robert Gould Shaw-led Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteers in front of the State House who did themselves proud down before Fort Wagner and later in 1865 would march into the citadel of the Confederacy Charleston, South Carolina singing the John Brown song.     

Sam had in high school based on admittedly sketchy information rather grudgingly admired that Captain John Brown, late of Harper’s Ferry, and the exploits of his small multi-racial band of brothers in trying to break the back of slavery by a military expedition to free the slave and create an insurrection. Once Sam delved into Civil War history, read more in depth about Brown and what history would have looked like if he had had a modicum of success Sam saw Brown as the Calvinist “avenging angel” high Jehovah scourge of the night-takers of his day. In short, that same thought that he had long held in his mind concerning the righteous agents of just wars like his Lincolns in Spain. [Interesting to Sam then the cosmic link of Brown in the 19^th century and the Lincolns in the 20^th as the epitome of American just causes revolving around key Civil War names.] While Sam held such thoughts about Brown and men of action like Brown in ante-bellum times who were not afraid to rankle feathers he admitted to himself that he would, unlike with the Internationals, not have very likely joined such an expedition. 

As Sam studied the military situations, the military strategy and tactics that one must invariable do to catch any idea of why men, brothers and cousins in many cases, would get their blood lusts rising so savagely, he did find himself drawn to the General William Tecumseh Sherman-led march through Georgia to the seas. A relentless organized march to break the will, break the communications, break the supply routes, to deny the Confederacy the capacity to produce much of anything. So in his imagination he could see himself as one of “Billy’s bummers” marching sore-footed through Georgia, making Jeff Davis squeal, making Robert E. Lee reach for the white flag. Make old Captain Brown a man ahead of his times. Yeah, Sam would not have sat on his hands on that freedom fight either.

Still Sam could never quite get that imagine of himself as a Lincoln Battalion rank and filer out of his mind, could never quite forget Pete Seeger’s version of Viva La Quince Brigada  heard long ago when he had listened to a folk radio station out of Boston as after a girl, a folkie girl he called her, recommended that he listen to the station if he wanted to get anywhere with her (which he did, listen to, and did get somewhere with her) and of the plight of the veterans of the Lincoln Battalion when the American government pulled the red scare Cold War hammer down on them as “commies.” Bart, a few years ago knowing of his interest, had asked Sam to write something for his grandson, Sean, who as fate would have it also was interested in the Spanish Civil War and was, in his turn, doing a term paper on it for his history class and wanted Sam to give Sean some personal reflections to aid his own understanding of the conflict as he wrote his paper. Not do the paper, no way, but give a feel for the need for blood and iron, and for men and women to be willing to lay down their heads as “pre-mature anti-fascists” in that conflict. Here is what Sam had to say:

Sean,

Your grandfather and my friend of many, many years going back to high school down there in Carver where we grew up asked me to give you a little leg up, a little flavor of what I thought about the Spanish Civil War since he knew that I was interested in the subject and that you were too. At least enough to decide to use that magnificent struggle as a subject worthy of your first serious term paper (the first of many I hope). A few years ago when I was writing a little something about the 70^th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War I wrote a short review of a book by Leon Trotsky about the possibilities of revolution, of successful revolution in Spain in those days. The book entitled THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39 (LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973) while written from an extreme left-wing position while Trotsky was in exile from the Soviet Union whose revolution of 1917 he was a central participant looks at lots of issues that might interest you as you prepare your paper. I know I got a lot out of it although personally I am not as sure as Trotsky was that a successful revolution could have held its ground given the international situation where Spain would be isolated from the rest of West Europe when the Nazis and Fascists were pulling their respective hammers down and the rest of Europe looked away while Spain died a thousand deaths.



“I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has some continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.

This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice.



Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.

Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basis for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations.”

I hope this little review gives you a couple of ideas to speculate on although you have to be careful with history in the alternative and only suggest the trends that were most probable not every possible “what if.”

In thinking about the Trotsky review I also came back to some thoughts about the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades of workers and leftist militants who went from many countries to fight, and if necessary die to defend the Spanish Republic under assault from the Nazi-backed Franco forces which as a kid reading about their heroic if doomed exploits in Spain enflamed my imagination. I have added a short review I also did several years ago by Peter Carroll who probably knows more about the battalion than anybody else, anybody else now. The title of the book is THE ODYSSEY OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE: AMERICANS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, (Peter N. Carroll, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1994). As happens when a person reviews several books on the same general subject especially in the age of easy cut and paste I have used the introductory paragraph in several Spanish Civil War items I have reviewed and have eliminated them here:   




“…Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917. That calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Mr. Carroll’s book while not directly addressing that issue nevertheless demonstrates through the story of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion how the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and through it the policy of the Communist International in calling for international brigades to fight in Spain aided in the defeat of that promising revolution.

“Mr. Carroll chronicles anecdotally how individual militants were recruited, transported, fought and died as ‘premature anti-fascists’ in that struggle. No militant today, or ever, can deny the heroic qualities of the volunteers and their commitment to defeat fascism- the number one issue for militants of that generation-despite the fatal policy of the the various party leaderships. Such individuals were desperately needed then, as now, if revolutionary struggle is to succeed. However, to truly honor their sacrifice we must learn the lessons of that defeat through mistaken strategy as we fight today. Interestingly, as chronicled here, and elsewhere in the memoirs of some veterans, many of the surviving militants of that struggle continued to believe that it was necessary to defeat Franco first, and then fight for socialism. This was most dramatically evoked by the Lincolns' negative response to the Barcelona uprising of 1937-the last time a flat out fight for leadership of the revolution could have galvanized the demoralized workers and peasants for a desperate struggle against Franco.

“Probably the most important part of Mr. Carroll’s book is tracing the trials and tribulations of the volunteers after their withdrawal from Spain in late 1938. Their organization-the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade- was constantly harassed and monitored by the United States government for many years as a Communist 'front' group. Individuals also faced prosecution and discrimination for their past association with the Brigades. He also traces the aging and death of that cadre. In short, this book is a labor of love for the subjects of his treatment. Whatever else this writer certainly does not disagree with that purpose. If you want to read about what a heroic part of the vanguard of the international working class looked like in the 1930’s, look here. Viva la Quince Brigada!!”

From The Pen Of Assata Shakur-Left Overs-What Is Left

From The Pen Of Assata Shakur-Left Overs-What Is Left

Once Again On Howard Hughes-Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply (2016)- A Film Review

Once Again On Howard Hughes-Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply (2016)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Rules Don’t Apply, starring Warren Beatty, Lily Collins, Alden Ehrenreich, and a cast of many familiar faces from by-gone days, 2016    

Billionaires these days are a dime a dozen, well maybe not that cheap but they are relatively more common than fifty or sixty years ago when a billion dollars was more than just walking around money. And like today most of the serious billionaires kept a low profile. But a guy like Howard Hughes (and today a guy President-elect Trump) liked to keep his name before the public if not his face. That simply premise is what drives this Warren Beatty-directed and written story line in the film under review, Rules Don’t Apply, although one could argue that the presence of the huge figure of Hughes was just a cover for a classic romantic comedy about the on and off again romance of a couple of underlings in his organization with a little bit of drama about Hughes’ various financial doings and exploits thrown in. (By the way it had been a while since Beatty strutted his stuff in front of and behind the camera making himself AARP-worthy in the meantime-including the cover of their monthly magazine.)        

Let’s run out the string. In 1964 (who knows maybe earlier as well) there were serious rumors about Howard Hughes’ mental stability and his physical whereabouts (and of course if the former were true the fate of his companies whose stock prices would be seriously affected would come into play). The then notorious recluse was nowhere to be found and there was all kinds of speculation centered on a tell-all book published about Hughes, played by Warren Beatty himself here, and his condition. That is merely backdrop though to a flashback to 1958 and the start of his relationship with two underlings Frank (Alden Ehrenreich) who started out as a driver for his various “starlets” and who eventually became a trusted advisor and Maria (Lily Collins) a farm fresh beauty looking to make it in the bright lights of Hollywood and who had caught Hughes’ attention. 

Naturally Maria is bound and determined to meet Mister Hughes and become a star-if she had the metal. Of course Howard is mostly unavailable and hiding from something (maybe the ghost of his father who left him the original fortune that he built on). But Frank as driver and Maria as passenger are thrown together and everything point to some satin sheet time. Except the Hughes rule which did apply that no employees were to mingle with his “starlets.” Except that Frank was “married” to some hometown sweetie he grew up with. Except as well that Maria was a virgin incarnate. So for a while they played cat and mouse and finally when they do try to consummate their love there was some interference. 

That virgin status didn’t stop Maria from driving for the main chance-old Howard who really was at least in the film going off the deep end. The long and short of it was she and Howard had a one night stand- a one night stand that had Maria getting pregnant. And had her tearfully leaving Hollywood to go back to her normal life, maybe back to college. Meanwhile Frank, having brushed off his hometown sweetie also had been brushed off by Maria, and so he dedicated himself to moving up the food chain in the Hughes organization (an organization where you never knew from one moment to the next where you stood and so not for the faint-hearted dealing with the fickle Hughes). And trying to get Hughes interested in a middle income housing project he had dreams of putting together to make his own fortune.  

Then we flip back to 1964 and the mystery of where Hughes was and what his mental capacity was. He would pass that test with flying colors. But here is where the real deal comes in, the old boy meets girl story that had been thwarted for a while. Maria shows up, son in tow, to confront Howard with his progeny. But really to take up with Frank again if you ask me. Warren, nice use of the Howard Hughes legend to make your little romantic comedy. Yeah, he was a big figure and you were right to glide off of his charisma and mystery all boxed in a classic Hollywood boy meets girl go round. Worth watching-no question.         

*****Revelations -For Chelsea Manning And All The Military Resisters To America’s Endless Wars

*****Revelations -For Chelsea Manning And All The Military Resisters To America’s Endless Wars  

 

 

 

From The Sam Eaton-Ralph Morris Series

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Ralph Morris had always considered himself a straight-up guy. Straight up when he dealt with customers in his high-precision electrical shop in Troy, New York he had inherited from his father after he retired before he himself recently retired and turned it over to his youngest son, James, who would bring the operation into the 21^st century with the high tech equipment-driven  precision electrical work needs nowadays. Straight up when he confronted the trials and tribulations of parenthood and told the kids that due to his political obligations (of which more in a minute) he would be away and perhaps seem somewhat pre-occupied at times but he would answer any questions they had about anything as best he could. The kids in turn when characterizing their father to me, told me that he was hard-working, distant but had been straight up with them although those sentiments said in a wistful, wondering, wishing for more manner like there was something missing in the whole exchange and Ralph agreed when I mentioned that feeling to him that I was probably right but that he did the best he could.

Straight up after sowing his wild oats along with Sam Eaton, Pete Markin, Frankie Riley and a bunch of other guys from the working-class corners of the town they grew up in who dived into that 1960s counter-cultural moment and hit the roads, for a short time after the stress of eighteen months in the bush in Vietnam. Meaning sleeping with any young woman who would have him in those care-free days when they were all experimenting with new ways to deal with that fretting sexual issue and getting only slightly less confused that when they got all that god-awful and usually wrong information in the streets where most of them, for good or evil learned to separate their Ps and Qs. After which he promised his high school sweetheart, Lara Peters, who had waited for him to settle down to be her forever man. And straight up with what concerns us here his attitude toward his military service in the Army during the height of the Vietnam War where he did his time, did not cause waves while in the service but raised, and is still raising seven kinds of holy hell, once he became totally disillusioned with the war, with the military brass and with the American government (no “our government” in his vocabulary signifying that while he was still in love with his country he was not of its governance-his way of saying it is not mine) who did nothing but make thoughtless animals out of him and his buddies.            

Giving this “straight up” character business is important here because Ralph several years ago along with Sam Eaton, a non-Vietnam veteran having been exempted from military duty due to his  being the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters after his ne’er-do-well father died of a massive heart attack in 1965, joined a peace organization, Veterans For Peace (VFP), in order to work with others doing the same kind of work (Ralph as a veteran automatically a full member, Sam an associate member in the way membership works in that organization although both have full right to participate and discuss the aims and projects going forward) once they decided to push hard against “the endless wars of the American government” (both Ralph and Sam’s way of putting the matter).

Without going into greater detail Sam and Ralph had met down in Washington, D.C. on May Day 1971 when they with their respective groups (Sam with a radical collective from Cambridge and Ralph with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a predecessor organization of VFP) attempted to as the slogan went-“shut down the government if it did not shut down the war.” Unfortunately they failed but the several days they spent together in detention in RFK Stadium then being used as the main detention area cemented a life-time friendship, and a life-time commitment to work for peace. (Sam’s impetus the loss of his best corner boy high school friend, Jeff Mullins, killed in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1968 who begged him to tell everybody what was really going on with war if he did not make it back to tell them himself.)       

That brings us to the Ralph straight up part. He and Sam had worked closely with or been member of for several years in the 1970s of VVAW and other organizations to promote peace. But as the decade ended and the energies of the 1960s faded and ebbed they like many others went on with their lives, build up their businesses, had their families to consider and generally prospered. Oh sure, when warm bodies were needed for this or that good old cause they were there but until the fall of 2002 their actions were helter-skelter and of an ad hoc nature. Patch work they called it. Of course the hell-broth of the senseless, futile and about six other negative descriptions of that 2003 Iraq war disaster, disaster not so much for the American government (Sam and Ralph’s now familiar term) as for the Iraqi people and others under the cross-fires of the American military juggernaut (my term).

They, having then fewer family and work responsibilities, got  the old time anti-war “religion” fires stoked in their brains once again to give one more big push against the machine before they passed on. They started working with VFP in various marches, vigils, civil disobedience actions and whatever other projects the organization was about (more recently the case of getting a presidential pardon and freedom for the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle –blower soldier Chelsea Manning sentenced to a thirty-five year sentence at Fort Leavenworth in 2013 for telling the truth about American atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan). Did that for a couple of years before they joined. And here is really where that straight up business comes into play. See they both had been around peace organizations enough to know that membership means certain obligation beyond paying dues and reading whatever materials an organization puts out-they did not want to be, had never been mere “paper members” So after that couple of years of working with VFP in about 2008 they joined up, joined up and have been active members ever since.       

Now that would be neither here nor there but Ralph had recently been thinking about stepping up his commitment even further by running for the Executive Committee of his local Mohawk Valley  chapter, the Kenny Johnson Chapter. (Sam as an associate member of his local chapter, the James Jencks Brigade is precluded as a non-veterans from holding such offices the only distinction between the two types of membership.) He ran and won a seat on the committee. But straight up again since he was committed to helping lead the organization locally and perhaps take another step up at some point he decided in 2015 to go to the National Convention in San Diego (the geographic location of that site a definitive draw for other reasons) and learn more about the overall workings of the organization and those most dedicated to its success.

So Ralph went and immersed himself in the details of what is going on with the national organization. More importantly he got to hear the details of how guys (and it is mostly guys reflecting the origins of the organization in 1985 a time when women were not encouraged to go into the service), mostly guys from his Vietnam War generation as the older World War II and Korea vets have begun to pass on and the Iraq and Afghan war vets who are still finding their “voice” came to join the organization. What amazed him was how many of the stories centered on various objections that his fellow members had developed while in whatever branch of the military they were in. Ralph had kept his “nose clean” despite his growing disenchantment with the war while serving his eighteen months in country. He had been by no means a gung-ho soldier although he had imbibed all the social and political attitudes of his working class background that he had been exposed to concerning doing military service, fighting evil commies and crushing anything that got in the way of the American government. He certainly was not a model soldier either but he went along, got along by getting along. These other guys didn’t.

One story stood out not because it was all that unusual in the organization but because Ralph had never run up against anything like it during his time of service from 1967-1970. Not in basic training, not in Advanced Infantry Training (AIT), not in Vietnam although he had heard stuff about disaffected soldiers toward the end of his enlistment. This guy, Frank Jefferson, he had met at one of the workshops on military resisters had told Ralph when he asked that he had served a year in an Army stockade for refusing to wear the uniform, refusing to do Army work of any kind. At least voluntarily.

The rough details of Frank’s story went like this. He had been drafted in late 1968 and was inducted into the Army in early 1969 having had no particular reason not to go in since while he was vaguely anti-war like most college students he was not a conscientious objector (and still doesn’t feel that way since he believes wars of national liberation and the like are just and supportable, especially those who are facing down the barrel of American imperialism), was not interested in going to jail like some guys, some draft resisters, from his generation who refused to be inducted and he did not even think about the option of Canada or some such exile. Moreover the ethos of his town, his family, his whole social circle was not one that would have welcomed resistance, would not have been understood as a sincere if different way of looking at the world. Add to that two guys had been killed in Vietnam from his neighborhood and the social pressure to conform was too great to buck even if he had had stronger convictions then. 

Three days, maybe less, after Frank was deposited at Fort Jackson in South Carolina in January, 1969 for basic training he knew he had made a great mistake, had had stronger anti-war feelings, maybe better anti-military feelings than he suspected and was heading for a fall. This was a period when draftees, those fewer and fewer men who were allowing themselves to be drafted, were being channeled toward the infantry, the “grunts,” the cannon-fodder (words he learned later but not known to him as he entered the Army) and that was his fate. He was trained as an 11 Bravo, killer soldier. Eventually he got orders to report to Fort Lewis in Washington for transport to Vietnam. On a short leave before he was requested to report Frank went back to Cambridge where he grew up and checked in with the Quakers which somebody had told him to do if he was going to challenge his fate in any way. The sympathetic counsellor in the basement of the Quaker Meeting House off Brattle Street advised him to put in a CO application at Fort Devens nearby. He did so, was turned down because as a Catholic and general moral and ethical considerations objector he did not qualify under the doctrine of that church. (And he still held to his “just war” position mentioned above). He tried to appeal that decision through military then civilian channels with help from a lawyer provided by the Quakers (really their American Friends Service Committee) although that was dicey at best.

Then, despite some counsel against such actions Frank had an epiphany, a day of reckoning, a day when he decided that enough was enough and showed up at parade field for the Monday morning report in civilian clothes carrying a “Bring The Troops Home” sign. Pandemonium ensued, he was man-handled by two beefy lifer-sergeants and taken to the Provost Marshall’s office for identification since the MPs were not sure whether he was not some hopped-up radical from nearby Boston who were starting to hold anti-war rallies in front of the Main Gate to the base. Once identified as a soldier he was thrown in the stockade. Eventually Frank was tried and sentenced to six month under a special court-martial for disobeying orders. He served the whole term (minus some days for good conduct). When he got out after during that stretch he continued to refuse to wear the uniform or do work. So back to the stockade and another special court-martial trial  getting another six months, again for disobeying lawful orders.

Fortunately that civilian lawyer provided by the Quakers (and who had grudgingly since he did not agree with Frank’s way of making a statement while other legal remedies were available been his lawyer at both trials) had brought the CO denial case to the Federal Court in Boston on a writ of habeas corpus and the judge ruled that the Army had acted wrongly in denying the application. A few weeks later he was released with an honorable discharge as a CO, one of the first in that category in the military. Frank said with a twinkle in his eye that if that legal relief had not cut the process short he still might forty plus years later be doing yet another six month sentence. So that was his story and there were probably others like him whose stories went untold during that turbulent time when the Army was near mutiny in America and Vietnam (the jails as Long Binh, LBJ for short, were then always full with miscreant soldiers).

Ralph said to himself after hearing the Jefferson story, yeah, these are the brethren I can work with. Guys like Jefferson really won’t fold under pressure when the American government tries to pull the hammer down on political dissent. Yeah, that’s right Ralph.          

*****Pleasure and Piety-The Story Of Perseus And Andromeda-With The Dutch Painter Joachim Wtewael In Mind

*****Pleasure and Piety-The Story Of Perseus And Andromeda-With The Dutch Painter Joachim Wtewael In Mind

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

No question Jack Callahan was tired unto death of being Mr. Toyota of Eastern Massachusetts (and a couple of times being Mr. New England Toyota when he ripped up the 1998 and 2000 Camry record book just like he had when he was the star running back of the 1967 State Class B football champions at his alma mater, North Adamsville High, his rushing records mostly still intact to this day even against a guy in the 1980s who went on to play professional ball for the Steelers). Tired of hustling cars after almost forty years in the business once he could not play football anymore when he had hurt his knee so bad against Boston College when he played for State U that even the starving for recruits (read “grunts,” cannon-fodder and you are not far from the truth) Army gave him a pass. Jack had grown utterly tired of having to spent every waking hour (and some sleeping hours to) worrying about monthly quotas, about whether his sales staff was “pulling his chain” when number crunch time came and he had to finagle the books to keep the whole fucking operation (Jack’s term) running. And tired of hearing Mrs. Toyota Chrissie (nee McNamara), his high school sweetheart nagging him about turning the reins over to somebody else and let them live a little. Not good company policy but a heart-felt cry from the deep.  (Yeah, for every Mr. there has to be a Mrs., or Ms., so recognized officially by the company and in these days of same-sex marriage the Mrs. could be replaced by another Mr. or visa versa for the female version of the marriage arrangement and nobody would bat an eye since gays, lesbians, trans-genders, bi-sexuals, queers, and whatever other sexual orientations there are buy cars, need transportation to get on with their lives and it might as well be in a safe as a bug in a rug Toyota).

No, if that is what you are thinking, neither Jack nor Chrissie are tired of each other, looking to play the field or any other of the things they had heard that happen to some 60-somethings once the kids leave, once the nest goes empty, or once they recognize their own mortality and flip out to do all the lampshade on the head things they have avoided as inappropriate when they were rising above their parents’ station and hoping to push the kids even further up the hill.

To the contrary Chrissie has always been, is, Jack’s rock and visa versa and that core truth has been the basis of their relationship ever since sophomore year in high school. Since the day, night really, when smart-as-a-whip Chrissie decided that she had had enough of Saturday afternoon falling leaves granite grey skies hero football player Jack taking his peeks at her (and she at him) and not doing a damn thing about it and had gone to Salducci’s Pizza Parlor where Jack hung out with his corner boys on Friday nights goofing off and planted herself in Jack’s lap. Even at the 40^th class reunion a few years back Jimmy Jenkins, another corner boy, remembered that long ago night vividly and made everybody at the reunion once again aware of the situation because the look in Chrissie face then said that it would take the whole football team to get her off Jack’s lap. And Frankie Riley, the self-proclaimed but undisputed king of the corner boy night, chimed in and said that the look on Jack’s face said that it would take the whole football team, throw in the junior varsity and the water boys too, to get Chrissie off his lap.

Yeah, it was that way for both of them. They were solid but Chrissie just wanted to get out from under the grind, go a few places that were not company-tainted, go get some culture (pronounced cultuah or something like that in Boston). So one week, for a few days, Jack agreed to go to Washington to visit the art museums and the like. Just the two of them, just for the pleasure of looking at some paintings that have withstood the test of time and fashion.

On a nice spring day for Washington before the cherry blossoms faded Jack and Chrissie could be seen walking arm in arm with a little skip in their step toward the Seventh Avenue entrance to the National Museum of Art. Now you might think that a guy like Jack, a former jock, a former corner boy (or maybe not so former when the surviving members of the Salducci’s Pizza Parlor crew get together and toss down a few at friendly Jack’s Grille in Cambridge where Jimmy Jenkins lives), not much of a student, and a guy who earned his dough hustling cars would give a rat’s ass about art (Jack’s expression carried over from corner boy times when if you did not give a damn about something that was the expression de jus). But you would be wrong because you would not have factored in the effect that the late Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boy Peter Paul Markin dubbed “The Scribe” by Frankie Riley and everybody else picked it up had on Jack Callahan (and the others as well if the truth be known).

Now Markin came to a bad end down in Mexico back in the 1970s when the “wanting habits” hanging over him from his poverty-stricken youth got the best of him over a busted drug deal the details of which never were made clear by the authorities there except to warn everybody off. But in his corner boy days, the sunnier days of the 1960s when he/they thought a new breeze was coming to open things up even for poor ass corner boys he was the fountain of knowledge for about two thousand arcane facts that made him smart in that circle. His whole point then, or most of it, was to use such information to try to impress every girl who would stand still long enough to hear him out (and a few did and not just nerdy girls either). And Markin took Jack up as a special case, as a guy who was going to college for the wrong reasons, to just play football and make State U famous, when he should be imbibing some culture and make everybody really look up to him  (on that culture thing you already know how they pronounce it around Boston). Yeah, you can see even then Markin had his quirky side since half the world could give a rat’s ass about culture however you pronounced it.

So Markin and Jack would go up to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on the QT and look at the masterworks of all the civilizations who put paint to canvas (or chisel to marble or whatever they used to leave a record that they existed and had dreams of eternity too). And Jack loved it (on the QT of course). Loved it too later when Chrissie and he would go to museums like the Getty or Metropolitan on days when they were not attending some Toyota regional or national conference. So Jack had actually been looking forward to the experience since he had not been in the building for about thirty years. Especially wanted to see the Impressionists that he had always been fascinated by.

After getting by the mandatory security check Jack and Chrissie noticed that there was special exhibition by a Flemish painter, a painter named Joachim Wteweal (that is how he thought the name was spelled when he later told Frankie Riley about the experience) neither had ever heard of but the brochure advertising the exhibition looked promising with a photograph of a painting showing a rich palette of colors somewhat unusual for Flemish painters who tended toward the darker sober colors of the wheel. So they headed to the far end of the building on the second floor where the exhibition was staged.

Some of the paintings by Wteweal were in the tradition of the Dutch school, you know portraits of the senile burgers of the country who felt a need to show their greedy little faces to posterity. Some were the nature and food scenes that those self-same burgers loved to show in their houses.  And some were the drawn from Greek and Roman myths always a welcome subject after centuries of holy-shrine Mother and Virgin or death of Christ stuff that was getting to be pretty thin gruel for the better educated and free-spirited artists who survived the Renaissance and the Reformation without facing the lord high executioner or the Inquisition.  It was an example of the latter, a painting from Greek mythology about Perseus rescuing Andromeda that mesmerized Jack that day, had him thinking about what Markin would have said about it and also how it fit in with everything about his growing up times. Maybe too why it took his love Chrissie something like a personal civil war to get him to confess how he felt about her that Salducci’s Friday night.

Naturally it was not until later that Jack found out by looking it up on Wikipedia what the story behind the painting was about. About how Andromeda had offended the gods, or her parents had going on and on about how beautiful she was, and the handmaidens to the gods took a nutty. Thereafter as “penance” Andromeda was chained, chained naked, according to every account (and every painting done on the subject since Wteweal was hardly the first or only painting who saw something exciting in the myth to draw on) to be left on the barren forsaken shoreline some place for a sea monster to have for lunch or whatever sea monsters do with human sacrifices (nothing good from the human skulls which litter the ground beneath Andromeda’s feet). Of course no beauty, whether she upsets some old hags or some other beauty in mythology or modern novels or in Hollywood is going to be lunch for some ugly mist-breathing sea monster. That is where Perseus comes to the rescue and of course slays the dragon. And unchains the fair Andromeda, perhaps. They naturally live happily ever after producing something like seven sons and a couple of daughters so they had a very active sex life. In the end Andromeda got to be immortal and got a constellation in the night skies named after her (and some funky NASA project too so her fame was not fleeting after fifteen minutes).

Jack admitted that at the time he saw the painting none of that latter information entered into his fascination about Andromeda and her chains. What struck him was the whole idea that in the 16^th century artists working for some patron (or patroness) felt comfortable enough to paint a frontal female nude showing all her private parts when until fairly recently such nudes were considered pornography or worse (that worse being some make-shift S&M thing with the chains and the devilish sea monster lurking about). Could show her in that condition for what could only have been meant for a private collector. So a mixture of awe, childhood modesty, some perverse sexual thoughts and some “what would Markin say” got all mixed in that day. He returned to the painting several times and even Chrissie who knew what a modest guy he was around women, although not in her bed once they got around to that shortly after that lap episode at Salducci’s, whispered in his ear that he was a “dirty old man.”

Okay, Jack confessed that might have been part of it but a lot of it was about that Catholic upbringing that they all had been brought up on which skewered what they thought about sex, or thought that they thought. Here is how bad it was one time. The class in seventh grade when Jack first met Markin went on a field trip to the Museum of Science in Boston and while there they came across an exhibition of  female figure showing all her parts (nude in other words). Jack couldn’t look at the figure, grew red in the face when Markin noticed he refused to look at her. Then Markin with his two thousand facts (a few wrong on this occasion) proceeded to tell Jack all about the female anatomy in scientific terms things which previously were left to schoolyard terminology (cunt, pussy, boobs, ass, tits and so on) without knowing what that all represented. So some things don’t change so much (although Chrissie who had an older married sister who she confided in didn’t let that condition go on for long) but that day Jack had the sneaking suspicion that the painter Wteweal really was painting the scene for his own pleasure. And he wished, wished to high heaven that the Protestant Reformation had been more successful. Yeah, Markin would have agreed with that sentiment.                                                

 

In Boston-Sun Dec 11 4pm Eva Bartlett Eyewitness Report from Aleppo - Hands Off Syria Coalition, No War on Syria

Sun Dec 11 4pm Eva Bartlett Eyewitness Report from Aleppo - Hands Off Syria Coalition, No War on Syria

 

8:55 AM

David Roldeviabostonunac

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Hands Off Syria Coalition presents

WHAT'S AHEAD FOR THE WAR ON SYRIA

Latest Eyewitness Report from Aleppo

Organized by the Syrian American Forum [SAF]  http://www.syrianamericanforum.org/

Keynote speaker: Eva Bartlett, Independent Canadian journalist who has travelled to Syria 8 times and was in Aleppo in November. 

"It's not a civil war - This is a war ON Syria"

Support Syria against a war that is funded, armed and planned by western powers and their regional allies.

Also hear from Syrian speakers from the Syrian American Forum

Time: 4pm - Sunday, December 11, 2016

Location: St. Matthew's Syrian Orthodox Church, 149 Park St., West Roxbury, MA 02132

Info at http://handsoffsyriacoalition.net

UNAC is a founding member of Hands Off Syria Coalition

Eva Bartlett's website: https://ingaza.wordpress.com 

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*A Practical Note on Class Struggle Defense-A Personal Note

Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.


Commentary

This comment originally was placed as a note on a "Defend the Evergreen State College" blog dated June 7, 2008. I think that the that note I made there about an aspect of class struggle defense can be of general use to the radical public and so have reposted it here as a separate blog.

A Lesson For The Unwary



As I have explained before this site is, among others things, committed to trying to pass on some of the lessons of the international labor movement and other struggles of the oppressed. Sometimes that takes the form a review of someone else’s struggles, now or in the past. Sometimes it takes the form of personal comment, many times on some sin of omission or commission from which the writer has ‘learned’ something. This situation with the struggling students out in Evergreen State College in Washington brings up just such a situation. Some of the students there are in deep legal trouble over some incidents that occurred last winter. The details can be found in the article above or by going to their website which I have listed.

Here is a little nugget about what not to do when writing in to the authorities in defense of fellow militants. I will leave out names of persons, places and organizations on the off-hand chance that the government may still want to make something of it. The cases of the ex-Black Panthers of the San Francisco 8 this past year graphically bring that thought to mind.

Many years ago, back in the early 1970’s, I, at the urging of some defense organization (not the Partisan Defense Committee because it was not around then) urged me to write to a Midwestern prosecutor on behalf of a well-known defendant in a criminal case. There were a range of charges alleged, some serious, some not. Moreover, I had personally worked on a few occasions with this person. However, here is the sticking point. That defendant’s politics (black nationalism mixed with anarchism) had drifted far from mine (drifting toward Marxism).

Despite those differences, as I had been committed ever since my youthful liberal days to the old labor slogan- ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ I duly sent off my letter. (I believe that I also made a donation but do not hold me to that.) Of course the letter spoke of the injustice of the charges, the implication of a frame-up and the need to free the defendant immediately. So far, so good. But then I got on my high horse and started to berate the obvious limitations of the defendant’s political perspective and that while not accusing him of being a counter-revolutionary I might have well have. Here is the kicker. At trial the prosecutor, in his own screwy way tried to make something of it to- on the basis of something I wrote – put the defendant's political views outside the realm of rational politics and therefore to validate the need to incarcerate him. The defendant eventually got off on all counts-the frame actually was on- but that is not the point.

The point though is why was I, in essence, telling an agent of the bourgeois state- a state that I, moreover, was in the process of seeing needed to be changed fundamentally- of the disputes within the working class movement. The gap between us (the defendant and I) and that state was far greater than the differences between us. A chasm. I latter mentioned this story to an old communist who is the source for this piece of wisdom that I have just imparted to you about the class divide here. He further stated that the state did not have political defendants put on trial because of their bad leftist politics but because they represented some kind of perceived threat to that state.

So when you write letters of support to the authorities in Washington, or elsewhere, just state your outrage at the injustice of the charges, your solidarity with the defendants, the call for their freedom and leave it at that. Then come back here and talk about the political shortcomings of the defendants’ political positions. See my May 1968, Student Power and the Working Class, for example.