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
The East Bay Chapter of Veterans for Peace is co-sponsoring a forum on
U.S. - RUSSIA RELATIONS
Where are we headed?
Saturday, March 11, 2017 - 1-5 pm
Orinda Community Center, 28 Orinda Way, Orinda CA
Mt. Diablo Peace & Justice Center and the Center for Citizen Initiatives presents
A SPECIAL FORUM ON A VITAL ISSUE
U.S. - RUSSIA RELATIONS
Where are we headed?
Russia Reality Check: Myths vs Facts What are the Dangers of Demonizing Russia? The New Cold War and Looming NeoMcCarthyism WHY WE MUST OPPOSE KREMLIN BAITING
KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
Ray McGovern (former CIA analyst and Presidential briefer)
PANELISTS:
Andrei Tsygankov, Professor and author, SFSU Sharon Tennison, Founder, Center for Citizen Initiatives Bernard Casey, former President, Kiev Chamber of Commerce Marjorie Cohn, Prof and author, former pres of National Lawyers Guild Norman Solomon, journalist, media critic, author and activist
NOTE: Our next East Bay Chapter meeting will be on the Third Saturday, March 18, to allow our members to march in the VFP contingent of the St Patricks Day Parade in SF on March 11, 2017.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Block the Deployment of Ground Troops in Syria Washington, D.C. – Today, following news that President Trump has deployed marine troops to Syria, Congresswoman Barbara Lee introduced a bipartisan bill that would prohibit the expansion of United States combat troops into Syria. Congresswoman Barbara Lee released the following statement upon the introduction of H.R. 1473, The Prohibit Expansion of U.S. Combat Troops into Syria Act: “For more than fifteen years, the U.S. has been engaged in an ever-expanding war in the Middle East. President Trump’s deployment of combat troops in Syria is the latest front in this endless war. In 2001, I was the lone member of Congress to vote against handing President Bush a blank check for war. Fifteen years later, this Authorization for the Use of Military Force is still being used to justify military actions around the globe, including this new deployment into Syria. “I strongly object to the White House’s decision to unilaterally place U.S. boots on the ground in Syria. President Trump’s action today shows the consequences of allowing military escalation to persist without Congressional oversight. We simply cannot allow this blank check to remain on the books. The Constitution is clear: Congress must debate, vote and authorize the use of military force in matters of war and peace. “The bill I am introducing today prohibits the Department of Defense from funding any attempt by the Administration to expand our presence in Syria by putting U.S. combat boots on the ground. It is our constitutional duty as Members of Congress to place a check on the Executive Branch in matters of war and peace. We owe it to our brave service members to live up to our constitutional duty. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in preventing this president from sending our troops into yet another unchecked, ill-advised war without a full and robust debate from Congress.” The text of the bill can be found here.
Trump's Global Policies: Russia, the world and implications for the peace movement
When: Thursday, March 23, 2017, 7:00 am to 9:00 am
Where: Friends Meeting House • 5 Longfellow Park • Cambridge
presentation by Mark Solomon followed by discussion
The bizarre Russian controversy complete with charges of influencing the presidential election has diverted attention from the existential dangers of Trump's foreign policy. Trump and his right wing advisor Steven Bannon are pushing an aggressive "America First" policy driven by near unimaginably destructive nuclear weapons. There is increasing danger of conflict and war with China and North Korea that could result in massive destruction.
This presentation will analyze the political and strategic influences underlying Trump's global policies and will look at how the projected "reset" with Russia relates to those global objectives. It will also consider the dangers inherent in liberal and centrist efforts to foment a new cold war with Russia. All of these pressing threats need the immediate attention and action by peace activists.
Mark Solomon is professor of history emeritus at Simmons College and a former national co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.
PEÑA REBELDE Join us at encuentro5 on Saturday, March 11, 2017 at 7:pm in commemoration and celebration of International Women their contributions, struggles and resistance against oppression! 9A Hamilton Pl. across from Park St. T station (Green and Red lines)
The earliest International Women’s Day (IWD) observed in the *USNA was in 1909 in New York in commemoration of the International Ladies Garment Workers strike of 1908. IWD (March 8) is a global day commemorating and celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women as well as their heroism and leadership in liberation and workers’ movements. However, over a century later (2017) in the most advanced industrial nation USNA, working women still do not receive “equal pay for equal work”.
For more information (617) 922-5744
¡Únase a la Peña del encuentro5 para conmemorar y celebrar el día Internacional de la mujer sus contribuciones, luchas y resistencia contra la opresión! 9A Hamilton Pl. Frente a la estación de Park St. T (líneas verde y roja)
El primer Día Internacional de la Mujer (IWD) observado en USNA (estados unidos de norte america) fue en 1909 en Nueva York en conmemoración de la huelga de los Trabajadores y su sindicato International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union ( ILGWU ) de 1908. IWD (8 de marzo) es un día global conmemorativo y celebrando las contribuciones sociales, económicas, culturales y Los logros políticos de las mujeres, así como su heroísmo y liderazgo en los movimientos obreros y de liberación. Sin embargo, más de un siglo después (2017) en la nación industrial más avanzada de USNA, las mujeres trabajadoras aún no reciben "salario igual por trabajo igual".
For more information/ Para mas información (617) 922-5744
The Nighttime Is The ….-Fritz Lang’s Film Adaptation Of Clifford Odets’ “Clash By Night” (1952)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Sandy Salmon
[Recently in this space we announced with the review of 1956’s Giant that that was the first film review by long time film critic Sam Lowell using the honorific emeritus- in short he had decided to put himself out to pasture. He will still provide his reviews but will no longer be the primary, or as in earlier times, the sole film critic here.
For now we will go with several reviewers starting with Sandy Salmon whose has had a by-line for years in the American Film Gazette. Good luck Sandy-Peter Paul Markin]
Clash By Night, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, Marilyn Monroe, directed by Fritz Lang, from the play by Clifford Odets, 1952
Sometimes a little gem of a film, a black and white film from the 1950s like the one under review here, Clash by Night, just kind of sneaks up on you. Frankly in all the years I have been reviewing films I was totally unaware of this beauty although I admit that unlike other reviewers I have never been that enamored of the film noir genre and so missing it probably was not that serious a sin of omission. But if you think about the matter a bit when you put a serious star like Barbara Stanwyck (she of that ankle bracelet shot coming down the stairs in Billy Wilder’s screen adaptation of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity which was enough to hook Walter, a convenient insurance salesman, and lead him down the garden path, lead him to a couple of well-placed slugs in the gut too), gruff Paul Douglas, 1950s handsome Robert Ryan, and upcoming world icon Marilyn Monroe with top rank noir director Fritz Lang (think The Big Heat where Glenn Ford takes down a whole corrupt operation almost single-handedly) and a screenplay based on a hot shot playwright Clifford Odets (he of Golden Boy and Waiting For Lefty) you are bound to produce a great cinematic effort. Plus place the whole thing in olden days post-World War II Monterey out in California when that town produced oodles of sardines-and John Steinbeck- and there you are.
The strongest part of this effort is the emotions that the interplay between the various lead players bring out in a story line that is frankly about ordinary people, their ordinary dreams, and their extraordinary passions and predilections. Those emotions get carried forth, create the clash of the title, in some of the strongest dialogue that I have seen produced in film about the travails of people who are pretty lost in their own small world. Let me explain that idea via a look at the plot-line something I have been doing more recently with older films that I have reviewed.
Mae, played by Ms. Stanwyck, has come home to working class Monterey after having been out in the big wide world and gotten her younger dreams crushed. She is now world weary and wary. She returns to her small family home where her brother, a commercial fisherman, remember old-time Monterey was the sardine capital of the world, is enthralled by Peggy, played by Marilyn Monroe, who is a lot more forgiving about the fate of a lost sister than he brother who nevertheless lets her stay. While keeping a low profile as something of a home body her brother’s boat captain, Jerry, played by gruff and throaty Paul Douglas, a regular stiff comes a-courting. After a while, succumbing to a strong desire to have somebody take care of her, to be settled she accepts Jerry’s offer of marriage. Even in accepting Jerry’s proposal though she warned him that she was spoiled goods.
Things go along for a while with Jerry and Mae, about a year, during which they have a child, a baby girl, but Mae begins to get the wanderlust, begins to get antsy around the very ordinary and plebian Jerry. Enter Earl, or rather re-enter Earl, Jerry’s friend, who had been interested in Mae from day one when Jerry introduced them. He, in the meantime, was now divorced and takes dead aim at Mae. And she takes the bait, falls hard for the fast-talking cynical Earl. They plan for Mae to fly the coop with the baby and a new life. Not so fast though once they confront Jerry with their affair, with his being cuckolded. This is where the dialogue gets right down to basics. Mae gives Jerry what’s what about her and Earl, about her needs. Jerry, blinders off, builds up a head of steam and in another scene almost kills Earl before he realized what he was doing.
This is the “pivot.” Jerry takes the baby on his boat. Mae suddenly realizes that the baby means more to her than Earl who as it turned out didn’t give a rat’s ass about the child. Having been once bitten though when Mae goes to Jerry to seek reconciliation he is lukewarm but as she turns to leave he relents. Maybe they can work things out, or at least that is the look on Mae’s face when she is brought back into the fold at the end of the film. You really have to see this film to get a sense of the raw emotions on display, and on the contrary feelings each character has about his or her place in the sun. Nicely done Fritz and crew, nicely done.
In
Honor Of Women’s History Month – Poet Jesse Baxter’s In Pharaoh Times
In Pharaoh Times
Isis, daughter of Isis major, mother- wife-sister of the
human sun god
Awoke, awoke with a start weary from brother couplings; and
stray poppy laden abandoned copulations
Configurations only a deacon priest filled with signs and
amulets could fathom, or some racked court astrologer
To face the stone-breaking day, a day filled to the brim,
overflowing, with portents
Arisen, washed, fragranced, headed to the balcony to observe
unseen and to be observed seen beneath the cloudless skies
Out in the ocean sea of whirling sand, out in the endless chiseled
stone sun blazing day; her sea visage on down heads, eyes averted
Hittites, Gilts, Samians, Cretans, Nubians, Babylonians all
conquered all down heads and averted eyes
Out on the ocean see, a lone sable warrior defeated,
defeated with down head and upward eye disturbed the blistering heat day
Isis, daughter of Isis major, mother-wife-sister-child of the
human sun king shrinks back in fear, fear time has come
That black will devour Nubian and rise, rise
Yes, rise in Pharaoh times
Jesse Baxter had never been so angry in his young black and be
damned life as he had been at his, well, let’s call her his lady friend, even
though strictly speaking she was more than a lady friend and the term had lost some
of its urgency in the rush to proclaim a new estate for women which included
cutting down to size such terms but lady friend for private consumption, Louise
Crawford, since he was not sure whether girlfriend in the intricate
relationship networks of the 1960s in quirky old Greenwich Village in the
depths of trail-blazing New Jack City was an appropriate designation for their
newly flowered relationship. Jesse a budding poet, a very hopeful poet who had
just begun to get noticed in that rarified Village air had become one of Louise
Crawford ‘s, ah, “conquests” on her way to tastingall that the Bohemian night offered (not
quite “beat,”that had become passé by
then and not quite “hip” as in hippie that would become the fashion later in
the decade so bohemian, meaning out on the cultural outer edge, would do, would
do as long as Jesse thought such a term was appropriate).
We should take note of that budding poet business since David
Logan, the influenicial critic for Poetry
Today, the bible of the trade, among others had proclaimed Jesse the cleanest
voice around since Langston Hughes put pen to paper. But see just then no young
black poet (or any kind of cultural artist for that matter) wanted to be compared
to any old Tom-ish figure who went “white” when the deal went down, didn’t want
to incur LeRoi Jones soon to return to his Africa nameand his ilk’s wrath much less exile Jimmy
Baldwin’s. Needed to show that he could tell Mister Whitey to take himself and his
cultural apparatus that was a yoke on his or blackness to go to hell with his
brethren down among the Mister James Crow brethren. Above all did not want to
be tarred with some hokey David Logan Poetry Today-funded by one of the Lowells,
not real poet Robert’s branch by the textile one, brush as the great “white”
hope to assuage liberal guilt or whatever guilt needed assuaging after four
hundred years of letting the rednecks have their way. So paint one Jesse Baxter
officially as an angry black artists who was going to tell the world what was what
and be damned straight about it too.
Here’s the funny little contradiction, the little blind spot
white spot in which Jesse was hardly alone. Jesse had seen Louise around the
Village several times at the trendy art shows (the first of the Soho-Warhol
doings away from the “official” modernist art of the Village and MoMa), upbeat coffeehouses beginning to emerge from
“beat” poetry and jazz scenes to retro folk revival stuff where he was able to
get still get play because he had been befriended by Dave Von Ronk who was the
father figure of that revival, and at a few loft parties large enough to get
lost in without having met everybody or anyone, if that was what one wanted. He
had heard of her “exploits,” exploits tramping through the budding literati but
had only become acquainted with Louise through her “old” lover, Jose, Jose
Guzman, the surrealist-influenced painter who was beginning to make a splash
for himself in the up and coming art galleries emerging over in that nearby
Soho previously mentioned (emerging as much because the penniless young artists
were priced out of the Village once the suburban kids with father’s dough
started renting dig in that hip locale. And either she had tired of Jose (possible
once he tried one of his forever Picasso-Dali painterly tirades) or he had tired
of her (more probable since Jose was thrown off right from the beginning by her
“bourgeois “command manner and her overweening need to seem like a white
hipster under every circumstance although she was quote, Jose, quote, square,
unquote but a good tumble, a very good tumble under the sheets) and so one night
she had hit on Jesse at a coffeehouse, Mike’s across from the Gaslight where he
was reading and that was that. (Strangely in the folk mythology Mike Greenleaf
the owner of Mike’s had actually in the late 1950s gone with several other NYU
students to “discover” the old bluesmen like John Hurt, Bukka White, Skip James,
guys like that who then came up and played the Gaslight and Geddes since the small
Mike-style coffeehouses couldn’t afford the gaff and so the homeless poets,
black and beat, or both found refuge there.)
But enough of small talk and back to Jesse’s rage. At one
up-scale party held on Riverside Drive among the culturati, or what passed for
such in downtrodden New York, as they
had become an “item” Louise had introduced Jesse as the “greatest Negro poet
since Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance.” Jesse was not put off by the
comparison with the great Hughes, no way, that would come later under the
influence of black protest poets like Jones and the ever-hovering presence of
Baldwin, he accepted that designation with a certain sense of honor, although
qualified a bit by the different rhythm that motivated Langston’s words, be-bop
jazz, and his own Bo Diddley /Chuck Berry-etched“child of rock and roll” beat running in his
head. What he was put off by was that “negro”designation, a term of derision just then in his universe as young
blacks, especially young black men, were moving away from the negro Doctor King
thing and toward that Malcolm freedom term, black, black as night, black is
beautiful. Jesus, hadn’t she read his To
Malcolm –Black Warrior Prince. (Apparently one of the virtues of tramping
through the literati was an understanding that there was no actual need to
read, look, hear, anything that your new “conquest” had written, drawn or sung.
In the case of Louise she had made something of an art form out of that fact
once confessing to Jesse that she had only actually read, and re-read, his Louise Love In Quiet Time written by him
after some silly spat since she was the subject. His other work she had
somebody summarize for her. Jesus, again.)
And it was not like Louise Crawford, yes, that Crawford, the
scion-ess [sic] of the Wall Street Crawfords who had (have) been piling up
dough and gouging profits since the start of the republic, was not attuned to
the changes going on underneath bourgeois society just then but was her way to
“own” him, own him like in olden times. While he was too much the gentile son of
W.E.B. Dubois’ “talented tenth” (his parents both school teachers down in
hometown Trenton who however needed to scrimp and safe to put him through
Howard University) to make a scene at that party latter in the cab home to her
place in the Village (as the well-tipped taxi driver could testify to, if
necessary). Jesse lashed into her with all the fury a budding poet and
belittled black man could muster.
In short, he would not be “owned” by some white bread woman
who was just “cruising” the cultural and ethnic out-riggings before going back
to marry some son of some sorry family friend stockbroker and live on Riverside
Drive and summer in the Hamptons and all the rest while he struggled to create
his words, his black soul-saturated word .
The harangue continued up into her loft and then Jesse ran
out of steam a little (he had had a little too much of high-shelf liquors and of
hits on the bong pipe to last forever in that state). Louise called for a
truce, said she was sorry, sorry for being a square, and called him to her bed,
pretty please to her bed. He, between the buzz in his head from the stimulants and
the realization that she was good in bed, if nothing else, followed. And that
night they made those sheets sweat with their juices. After they were depleted
Jesse thought to himself that Louise might be just slumming but he would take a
ticket and stay for the ride and fell asleep. Louise on the other hand, got up
and went to the window to look out at her city, lit a cigarette and pondered
some of Jesse’s words, pondered them for a while and got just a little bit
fearful for her future as she went back to her bed and lay down next to the
sleeping Jesse.
Later when he awakened just before dawn Jesse wrote his edgy
poem In Pharaoh Times partially to
contain the edges of his left-over rage and partially to take his distance from
a daughter of Isis…
And hence this Women’s History Month contribution.
