This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
"Passage at St. Augustine" Film Showings and Discussion, led by filmmaker Clennon L. King, and Civil Rights veteran Mimi Jones (at the Boston Public Library).
"Passage at St. Augustine" establishes America's Oldest City as home to the most violent Civil Rights campaign of the entire Movement. Viewers are transported back to this unlikely Florida tourist town to hear first-hand from civil rights foot soldiers, Klansmen, journalists, clergy, politicians and the like, who fought on the front lines of the 18-month battle that led directly to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Despite MLK and LBJ headlining the film's real-life cast, most come away asking why a campaign so pivotal appears to have been wiped from the hard drive of History.
Saturday, February 18, 2:30 – 4:00 p.m. at the Mattapan Branch.
Monday March 8, 6 – 8 p.m. at the Central Library in Copley Square. State Representative Byron Rushing will be part of the event's discussion.
Thursday, April 6, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.at the Dudley Branch.
Join us for the Global Network’s 25th anniversary Space Organizing Conference and Protest at the home of Redstone Arsenal and the Space & Missile Defense Command, also known as the ‘Pentagon of the South’.
The effort by the Pentagon to develop and deploy the next generation of Star Wars weapons will increase global instability and cost hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. The US Space Command has long maintained its mission is to create the technologies to ‘control and dominate’ space and the Earth below – ultimately on behalf of corporate interests.
This conference will allow citizens to learn more about these important issues and meet leaders from the growing international movements to Keep Space for Peace and Stop NATO expansion.
Fees
Registration for the conference will be on a sliding scale between $25-$75 (pay what you can best afford). Lunch and supper on April 8 are included in your registration fee. You can register online using the GN’s web site Donate Now button. http://www.space4peace.org/
We have reserved a block of rooms at the Springhill Suites Hotel (745 Constellation Place Dr) in downtown Huntsville for $99 per night (up to 4 persons per room). (Contact us for details on reserving hotel rooms.) The hotel has an airport shuttle from the Huntsville airport. The Lowe Mill conference location is five minutes from the hotel. Limited home hospitality will also be available on a first come, first served basis.
Speakers/Music (List in formation)
Judy Collins (Vine & Fig Tree, Alabama)
Bruce Gagnon (Global Network Coordinator, Maine)
Dr. Shreedhar Gautam (President, Global Network Chapter Kathmandu, Nepal)
Subrata Ghoshroy (Program in Science, Technology, and Society, MIT)
William Griffin (Veterans For Peace, Georgia)
Huntsville Feminist Chorus (Alabama)
Joy Johnson (Green Party of Madison County, Alabama)
Tarak Kauff (Veterans For Peace, New York)
Hyun Lee (Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea & Militarism in Asia & the Pacific, New York)
Tiara Rose Naputi (Chamorro diaspora from Guam, Assistant Professor, Dept of Communication, University of Colorado)
Agneta Norberg (Swedish Peace Council, Stockholm)
Yasuo Ogata (Co-chair World Conference against A & H Bombs and former Member of Parliament, Upper House, Japan)
Lindis Percy (Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases, England)
J. Narayana Rao (Global Network board member, India)
Mary Beth Sullivan (PeaceWorks, Maine)
Im Sun-bun (Farmer, Korean Women's Peasants Association, Seongju, South Korea)
Regis Tremblay (Filmmaker, Maine)
Dave Webb (Global Network Board Convener & Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, UK)
Lynda Williams (Physics faculty, Santa Rosa Junior College, California)
Loring Wirble (Citizens for Peace in Space, Colorado)
Col. Ann Wright (US Army retired, diplomat) * Keynote speaker
Conference Program
Friday, April 7
2:00 pm News Conference
4:00 – 5:30 Vigil at Redstone Arsenal/Marshall Space Flight Center – Gate 9 (Rideout Road, Exit 14 off Hwy 565)
6:00 Dinner at Las Parrillas Grill Mexican Restaurant (2713 Patton Rd SW, Exit 17 off Hwy 565)
8:00 Cash bar at hotel and film screening: Thirty Seconds to Midnight: The Final Wake-Up Call by Regis Tremblay
Saturday, April 8
8:30 – 9:00 am Registration at Flying Monkey Theatre (Lowe Mill, 2211 Seminole Dr, 2ndfloor)
9:00 – 9:30 am Welcome & Purpose of Conference
9:30 – 10:00 Presentation: The US Space Global Warfighting System & Global Network Responses
10:15 – 11:45 Plenary Panel I - A New Arms Race: Military Satellites, Drones, Prompt Global Strike, Military Space Plane, NSA Surveillance, & Mining the Sky
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch
1:15 – 2:30 Plenary Panel II – Asia-Pacific Pivot: Resistance to Missile Offense Radars & Interceptors
2:45 – 4:00 Plenary Panel III – Global Network Leader Reports from around the World
4:15 – 5:45 Plenary Panel IV – Alternative Vision: Transforming a War Economy to a Peace Economy - Organizing Strategies & Movement Building during the Trump Administration
6:00 – 8:00 Supper Program – Keynote Speakers & Music (Col. Ann Wright & Huntsville Feminist Chorus)
Sunday, April 9
10:00 am – Noon Visit Space & Rocket Center Museum (Exit 15 off Hwy 565)
Sponsors (List in formation)
Gainesville Iguana (Florida)
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
Greater Brunswick (Maine) PeaceWorks
Green Party of Madison County (Alabama)
Maine Natural Guard
Nashville (TN) Greenlands
North Alabama Peace Network
Selma (Alabama) Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation
Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea & Militarism in Asia & the Pacific
US Peace Council
Veterans For Peace Chapter 99, Asheville, NC
Veterans For Peace, Savannah (Georgia) Chapter 170
We're pleased to let you know about this upcoming event in Jamaica Plain, "Why Congress Should Start an Impeachment Investigation Now of President Donald Trump." RootsAction is co-sponsoring this important gathering with several groups including Free Speech For People, our partner in the Impeach Donald Trump Now campaign, which has already gained more than 875,000 signers nationwide.
The event will feature a conversation with John Bonifaz, co-founder and president of Free Speech For People. Please see his letter below and let others know about this exciting event. Best wishes,
The RootsAction.org Team The nation is now witnessing a massive corruption of the presidency, far worse than Watergate. By refusing to divest fully from his business interests, President Trump has been in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution from the moment he took the oath of office. The President is not above the law. We will not allow President Trump to profit from the presidency at the expense of our democracy.
I hope you will join me on Thursday, March 2, in Jamaica Plain to learn more about our campaign at impeachdonaldtrumpnow.org and how you can get involved in this fight for our Constitution and our democracy. I will be speaking and taking questions that evening from 7pm to 9pm at the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain.
In Massachusetts-Veterans Know Your Rights And Benefits-A Handbook
By Political Commentator Frank Jackman
Nowadays as the Veterans Administration is increasingly talked about
as being ripe for privatization by the Republican-controlled Congress and The
Dump The Trump Administration. Talked about by people who are unlike us not veterans
for the most part we need to be aware of all the benefits that the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts provides in addition to VA benefits. Also local governments as
well. The Commonwealth has put out this handy little handbook which contains a
lot of information that even I was not aware of so check it out.
I have been a supporter of Veterans for Peace for a long time and
while we are concerned out in the streets with the struggle against war and
other social issues we are also concerned that all veterans whether they agree
or hot-temperature disagree with us get all the benefits to which they are
entitled. And knowledge of those benefits and rights is the start of the
process. Read on.
Out
In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The
Ten-Point Program- Four- A Home Of One's Own
Lettie Morse had been sitting on the rim of the world.Lettie , all of eighteen, and sweet child-
mother of three young children (ages, if you can believe this, and you will
once the facts become known, two girls four and three and a boy, one) was just
that moment sheltered against the rawness of life, if just for that moment,
over at that Sally ‘s Harbor Lights safe house (Salvation Army for those not in
need of their facilities and only familiar with their operations at
supermarkets and the like ringing bells and seeking dollars at Christmas) in
the deep South End section ofBoston
over by Blackstone Park.And like all
such citizens caught up on the rim of the world Lettie had a story, and a dream
too. Not a long story, not at eighteen, and not when one is on the rim of the
world when just getting by from one day to the next, hell, just one step in
front of you to the next, took up your hours, and not the stuff of story, or
parable either.
See Lettie, sweet child-mother Lettie, considered herself,
and was considered by friend and family alike to be, how to put it kindly, an
ugly duckling (although motherhood became her as she held forth black
Madonna-like in facing that one step after the next day), the runt of the
litter of seven children when Vernon and Eleanor Morse (yes, named after the
former First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt, for her kindnesses towardthe Negro people) when they had come up from
Clarksville down in the Mississippi delta after hearing that Boston was the
“land of milk and honey” and had landed smack dab in the recently constructed
Columbia Point Housing Project over by the waters of Dorchester Bay. As so whether
that was a wise or foolish decision (probably wise given hellhole Mister James
Crow Mississippi goddam) the “projects” was where Lettie came of age, came of
age fast, too fast.
She would not speak of her troubles adjusting, adjusting as
best she could, to northern urban life, bunched up in a shared small corner
room with two other pretty sisters slightly older, of the slow heavy as
molasses drawl she inherited from her maternal grandmother and which drew howls
of laughter at the junior high school that serviced the projects, or of the
cruel ugly duckling taunts from boys (and a wayward girl or two). Like a lot of
not pretty girls (and maybe pretty girls too but that is best left for another
story, today we are on the rim of the world with black Madonna Lettie) she
substituted being sexually available to the boys for anything else she might
have felt. And they, as boys will, when the midnight whistle blows and they
hear of some “easy piece” had their way with her, and then left her, left her
that first time, well not exactly empty- handed, but with child, one of them
anyway, and hence Christine .
Things went along okay for a while in that “projects”Morse home, she making room for her baby in
her shared room, but Lettie, got a little restless as young girls will, and a
boy, a not from the projects boy, took an interest in her. What she did not
know was that he was selling reefer like crazy to the kids over near Uphams
Corner (a school nearby the central point of sales) and eventually got busted,
busted flat and sent away to reform school for a while. However, not leaving
her empty-handed and thus Shana. That episode broke the camel’s back in the
Morse household as fragile as it was. Lettie was unceremoniously told to pack
her bags and she did. And so with two small children, no money, no home and no
prospects she hit the streets, the mean streets. Lettie said to tell you no
matter how bad things get, no matter how rough you think life is stay away from
Mister’s streets, from his trick streets, from his walking daddy hustler’s
streets, from his pimp daddy streets. She learned that lesson the hard way
although she was not left empty-handed and hence Robert, father unknown, maybe
unknowable.
So things kind of went downhill from there for a while, as
Lettie tried to keep her little family together, tried to get off the streets,
tried to get off the rim of the world, and so she landed at the Sally’ssafe house. She would stay there as long as
it took for that promised apartment in the Orchard Park Housing Authority to
come through. And that thought, the thought ofgetting off the rim of the world, that thought of fixing up a home, a
home to keep her children safe, a home of her own kept her focused…
The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as
follows:[39][40]
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black
Community.
We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to
determine our destiny.
2. We want full employment for our people.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give
every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white
American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of
production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so
that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and
give a high standard of living.
3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are
demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two
mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder
of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be
distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in
Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million
Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million
black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our
black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives
so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing
for its people.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this
decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history
and our role in the present-day society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a
knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position
in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.
We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military
service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not
fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are
being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect
ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist
military, by whatever means necessary.
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.
We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing
black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community
from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore
believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.
8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and
city prisons and jails.
We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and
prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a
jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by
the Constitution of the United States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so
that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a
person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental,
historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select
a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have
been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the
"average reasoning man" of the black community.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.
And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to
be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will
be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black
people as to their national destiny.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such
principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate
that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design
to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty,
to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future
security.
Commentary by Peter Paul Markin Recently, as part of a search for a pair of missing brothers from the neighborhood of my youth detailed in this space in the commentary Markin Takes A Turn As Neighborhood Historian, I contacted various members of my high school class, the Class of 1964, whom I knew, or through investigation, found out were still in the area and might be able to help. In conversations with a couple of them I found out about the fate of a number of former friends. One of the people I interviewed as a result happened to be a class officer and requested that I write a little resume of what I had been doing the past forty some odd years for the class record. I have spent a fair among of ink in this space pointing out that I am part of the generation of ’68. I say that with no regrets whatsoever. I am, however, also part of the Class of 1964 that formed a solid core of the ‘68'ers. That is a different proposition, especially coming from a very, very working class high school that at the time had no minorities-none. The closest we came to that (pardon the silly joke from my youth), this being a heavily Irish area, was to have let a few Italians come in. The span of four years from 1964 to 1968 was not just a time of change but a virtual sea change for me. Below is the short commentary (edited somewhat to omit some local and family references). The Class of 1964 I am now a proud member of the class of 1964, a class that started in 1960 with the hopes of a fresh breeze with the Kennedy Administration and its short-lived Camelot. Now in 2008 it looks like a new breeze like that of our youth might be blowing once again. For the kids’s sake I hope so. I would also note that I, along with many of you, are also part of the generation of ’68, a generation that raised some hell with the way things were done in this country. We lost that fight but some values remain from those times. All of this is by way of a preface to what I have been doing since high school. Needless to say I got caught up in the politics of the time, civil rights, the fight against the Vietnam War, Bobby Kennedy’s ill-fated campaign, SDS-type organizations, the anti-war fight for the soul of the American Army and later other left-wing political causes. Ah, those were the days. I also did my share of time as a counter- cultural devotee, a ‘hippie’ living in various communal situations. You know the anthem-drugs, sex, rock and roll. Ah, those also were the days, as well. Then, in some ways unfortunately, I had to grow up. I have for the past thirty years been working as an educator. Along the way I had a mid-life crisis (you KNOW what that was) and went to back to school and got yet another degree. (Here I included some information about my family, etc.) …. Reading this little resume over I think I like the first part with the politics and the alternate lifestyle the best. I will say once again, ah, those were the days.
*Once Again, Out In The Be-Bop Night-See Jack Run- The Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Elections of 1960, A 50th Anniversary, Of Sorts
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/08/jfk-election-50-photos_n_780421.html Click on the headline to link to a Huffington Post entry on the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's victory in the 1960 American Presidential Elections. Markin comment: A few weeks ago I mentioned, in an entry that amounted to a nostalgic 1960s Boston kid time trip down political memory lane, the following that links in with this entry posted under the sign of the 50th anniversary of Jack Kennedy’s presidential election victory election over one Richard Milhous Nixon, the arch-political villain of the age: “During the course of the afternoon that event (the Patrick campaign event), and the particular locale where it was staged, brought back a flood of memories of my first serious organized political actions in 1960 when, as a lad of fourteen, I set out to “save the world.” And my soul, or so I thought at the time, as well. That was the campaign of our own, Jack Kennedy, as he ran for president against the nefarious sitting Vice President, one Richard Milhous Nixon. In the course of that long ago campaign he gave one of his most stirring speeches not far from where I stood on this Saturday (near the Hynes Center). Although gathering troops (read: high school and college students) for that speech was not my first public political action of that year, a small SANE-sponsored demonstration against nuclear proliferation further up the same street was but I did not help to organize that one, the Kennedy campaign was the first one that hinted that I might, against all good sense, become a serious political junkie. Ya, I know, every mother warns their sons (then and now) and daughters (now) against such foolhardiness but what can you do. And, mercifully, I am still at it. And have wound up on the right side of the angels, to boot. The funny thing about those triggered remembrances is that as far removed from bourgeois politics as I have been for about the last forty years I noticed many young politicos doing their youthful thing just as I did back then; passing out leaflets, holding banners, rousing the crowd, making extemporaneous little soapbox speeches, arguing with an occasional right wing Tea Party advocate, and making themselves hoarse in the process. In short, exhibiting all the skills (except the techno-savvy computer indoor stuff you do these days before such rallies) of a street organizer from any age, including communist street organizers. Now if those young organizers only had the extra-parliamentary left-wing politics to merge with those organizational skills. In short, come over to the side of the angels. But that is where we come back to old Jack Kennedy and that 1960 campaign. Who would have thought that a kid, me, who started out walking door to door stuffing Jack Kennedy literature in every available door in 1960 but who turned off that road long ago would be saying thanks, Jack. Thanks for teaching me those political skills.” And not just that thanks for heralding the break-out, or at least the attempted break-out of my 1960s generation from the Eisenhower-Nixon cold war death trap. See, at the time of the great attempted break-out from the confines of bourgeois society and the tracked career path all kinds of people seemed like they could be allies, and Jack Kennedy seemed a kindred spirit. I will not even mention Bobby, that one still brings a little tear to my eye. But enough of nostalgia we still have to fight to seek that newer world, to hear that high white note before everything comes crashing down on us. ******* Below is an American Left History blog entry, dated, Thursday, August 23, 2007, entitled ON COMING OF POLITICAL AGE-Norman Mailer's The Presidential Papers to give a little flavor to the above commentary. Thursday, August 23, 2007
ON COMING OF POLITICAL AGE-Norman Mailer's "The Presidential Papers"
Click on the headline to link to a "The New York Times" obituary for American writer Norman Mailer article, dated November 10, 2007.
Click on the headline to link to a "The New York Times" obituary for American writer Norman Mailer article, dated November 10, 2007.
COMMENTARY/BOOK REVIEW
THE PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS, NORMAN MAILER, VIKING, 1963
At one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that Norman Mailer wrote. In his prime he held out promise to match Hemingway as the preeminent male American prose writer of the 20th century. Mailer certainly has the ambition, ego and skill to do so. Although he wrote several good novels, like The Deer Park, in his time I believe that his journalistic work, as he himself might partially admit, especially his political, social and philosophical musings are what will insure his place in the literary pantheon. With that in mind I recently re-read his work on the 1960 political campaign-the one that pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard M. Nixon- that is the center of the book under review. There are other essays in this work, some of merely passing topical value, but what remains of interest today is a very perceptive analysis of the forces at work in that pivotal election. Theodore White won his spurs breaking down the mechanics of the campaign and made a niche for himself with The Making of a President, 1960. Mailer in a few pithy articles gave the overview of the personalities and the stakes involved for the America of that time.
I have been, by hook or by crook, interested in politics from an early age. Names like the Rosenbergs, Joseph McCarthy, Khrushchev and organizations like Americans for Democratic Action and the like were familiar to me if not fully understood then. I came of political age with the 1960 presidential campaign. Mailer addresses the malaise of American political life during the stodgy Eisenhower years that created the opening for change-and Kennedy and his superb organization happily rushed in. These chances, as a cursory perusal of the last 40 odd years of bourgeois presidential politics makes painfully clear, do not come often. The funny thing is that during most of 1960 I was actually ‘Madly for Adlai’, that is I preferred Adlai Stevenson the twice defeated previous Democratic candidate, but when the deal went down at the advanced age of 14 I walked door to door talking up Kennedy. Of course, in Massachusetts that was not a big deal but I still recall today that I had a very strong sense I did not want to be left out of the new age ‘aborning’. That, my friends, in a small way is the start of that slippery road to the ‘lesser evil’ practice that dominates American politics and a habit that took me a fairly long time to break.
Mailer has some very cutting, but true, remarks about the kind of people who populate the political milieu down at the base of bourgeois politics, those who make it to the political conventions. Except that today they are better dressed and more media savvy nothing has changed. Why? Bourgeois politics, not being based on any fidelity to program except as a throwaway, is all about winning (and fighting to keep on winning). This does not bring out the better angels of our nature. For those old enough to remember that little spark of youth that urged us on to seek that newer world and for those too young to have acquired knowledge of anything but the myth Mailer’s little book makes for interesting and well-written reading.
Once Again- Who Killed John
F. Kennedy?-Oliver Stone’s “JFK” (1991)-A Film Review…and more
DVD Review
JFK, starring Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison, Tommy Lee Jones as Clay Shaw, Sissy Spacek as Garrision's greatly put upon wife, Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald, directed by Oliver Stone, 1991
By Political Commentator
Frank Jackman
[Usually Sam Lowell writes
the movie reviews for this site but Frank Jackman who is a little older than
Sam and had not only been alive to witness the horrible events of November,
1963 but moreover as a teenager had scoured his North Adamsville neighborhood
on behalf of one of his own, one of the Irish, felt a need to put his two cents
worth in after viewing the film under review. Sam will probably once he
actually looks at the film under the prodding of Frank, write his own take on
the question. Peter Paul Markin]
At one time the question of
who killed President John F. Kennedy on that bad November day in 1963 was
something of a cottage industry among those who did not buy into the admittedly
rushed conclusions of the Warren Commission that was ordered to come to some
conclusions in the wake of many unanswered questions by his successor, Lyndon
Baines Johnson, in order to assuage the shell-shocked American people. In some
circles, circles like that around New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison whose
investigation of the matter is the subject of Oliver Stone’s take on the
subject in his award-winning JFK,
that report only added fuel to the fire of those nagging unanswered questions.
Especially by those who could not believe on the public facts of the case that
a lone gunman, something of a loser and misbegotten, Lee Harvey Oswald could
have done the deed alone. And while that cottage industry has faded somewhat as
those who were avidly pursuing their theories have passed on or nothing has
come up since then to finally allow them to find their “smoking gun” there will
always been a place for such speculation as long as some people like to cling
to conspiracy theories of history-or politics.
Of course everybody in America
in those days, like in earlier times Pearl Harbor and later times 9/11, knew exactly
where they were when they heard the news of the assassination of JFK. I had
been in a classroom at North Adamsville High when the headmaster came on the P.A.
system to tell us the shocking news that one of our own, our poster boy
Irishman even if he was chandelier, had been killed down in heathen redneck Dallas.
I took it personally pretty hard for a while but I moved on between unattached girls,
college, military service, more girls, women, who I wound marrying and having
children with and trying to keep body and soul together for a while. Then one
day some years after 1991 the year Stone’s film came out I was at a library and
noticed a DVD on display with the title The Men Who Killed Kennedy from 1988. The title implying,
as is usual in this case, more than one killer alone perked my latent interest since
although I was aware of the various theories afloat, most notably Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgement which was the “godfather”
of the genre I still figured that the nefarious Oswald did the deed on his own
hook. I grabbed that DVD with both hands and subsequently read or viewed most
of the material in English on the subject. That was the time when I initially looked
at Stone’s film to see where he was going with his theory honing in especially on
Garrison’s work which did actually bring somebody, Clay Shaw, if unsuccessfully,
before a court.
I had written a short
review of that original film The Men Who Killed
Kennedy some of which I have reread after recently re-watching JFK, no mean task at three and a half hours, and can stand for my take on Stone’s take on the Garrison investigation. Below are
some points the two films have in common notwithstanding that Stone, as on other
occasions, has used a great deal of cinematic license to produce a commercial film.
“Those of us who are
interested in history often come across situations where we have to defend the
notion that there are conspiracies in history but not all history is a
conspiracy. In modern times, with the earlier example of Pearl Harbor and the possible
future exception of 9/11, the ‘mystery’ of the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy in November 1963 has played into the hands of those who see history
merely as a conspiracy. I have read more than my fair share of books on the
subject, most recently the late Norman Mailer’s book on Oswald, and here I
review a documentary, The Men Who Killed
Kennedy from 1988 that, in essence, merely adds fuel to the fire of that
controversy. At this remove however I think it is clear that the conspiracy-
mongers have had their day on the subject and have come up short. Not through
lack of trying, though. (Of course their rejoinder courtesy of the late newsman
Daniel Schorr is that the conspiracy was so well planned that even fifty plus
years later it still holds water-everybody kept quiet.)
“Given my leftward
political trajectory since the time of the assassination one would think that I
would be amenable to some theory of high-level governmental, corporate or
criminal conspiracy. As a teenager I campaigned for Kennedy in 1960. I was
shocked and dismayed by his murder, throwing away a political notebook that I
kept and swearing off politics forever. That resolve obviously did not last
long. I am, moreover, more than willing to believe that governmental officials,
corporate officers and criminal masterminds are willing to do anything to keep
their positions of power. I could especially believe the theory that then Vice-President
Johnson and his minions had a hand in the plot. Hell given Johnson’s nasty
political sense in his rise to national prominence he could have done the whole
deal. However, it just does not wash here. Part of the problem is there are
just too many theories to fit the facts.
“The real problem with the
various conspiracy theories is that they ask us to suspend disbelieve for their
theories even greater than the botched up job that the Warren Commission
provided. These theories inevitably work between the lines of that report. I think the classic example
in this documentary, that can stand for my opinion in general, is when one of
the conspiracy theorists very calmly states his propositions about how the
Warren Report botched things and then, as calmly cites four possible groups of
conspirators who could have done the deed, anti-Castro Cubans, disgruntled CIA
rogue elements, disgruntled militarists and Mafia-types. Well that narrows the
field considerably, doesn’t it? Stone’s film falls into that same crack since in the
course of three and one half hours every theory that I am aware of even to the
various characters the theories relied on got a airing.
“But here is the kicker- I
am convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was capable of doing the murder by himself,
that he did it and that he stands before history as having done it. Grand
conspiracy theories that deny the role of the individual in history do so in
this case for no apparent reason. That ‘theory’ may not be sexy enough for some
but Oswald should have his fifteen minutes of infamy. Unless someone produces
the ‘smoking gun’ missing in all other theories-in short, a real named person
(or persons) who did the deed let us leave it at that. Garrison tried and
failed with the possible CIA connection through the trial of Clay Shaw who
actually was, as the end notes point out was working for the CIA in 1963-although
that does not mean he was a conspirator-post facto. A very interesting and well-produced film
though.
