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
CLID Statement On 33 Arrestees At Saturday Boston Anti-Fascist Rally-Drop The Charges!
THE COMMITTEE FOR INTERNATIONAL LABOR DEFENSE
____________________________
The Committee for International Labor Defensejoins with our sisters and brothers of Black Lives Matter Boston and Cambridge, to call on the Boston Municipal Court, Mayor Marty Walsh, District Attorney Dan Conley, and Police Commissioner William Evans, to drop all charges stemming from the unlawful arrest and detainment of 33 protesters on Saturday, August 19, 2017, at the “Fight Supremacy” rally on Boston Common.
Many of the protesters were unnecessarily injured by police during the confrontations and arrests. All those arrested were charged with crimes ranging from disorderly conduct to assault, for holding their ground against fascism and white supremacy in the southeast quadrant of Boston Common and surrounding areas.
The Committee for International Labor Defenseis aware that the arrestees face court appearances on August 21, 22 and 23, to determine their fate, and we are closely monitoring each of their cases. The Committee squarely and publicly holds the City of Boston accountable for the health and safety of every one of these political prisoners, including the minor who is only 15 years of age.
The Committee for International Labor Defensedemands the immediate release of the Boston 33, dismissal of all legal charges, and withdrawal of all fines and penalties for which the Court may hold them liable. Their arrest was unjust and a violation of the democratic right to protest that is fundamental to the U.S. constitution and US history. No one should be arrested for standing against racism and racist violence.FREE THE BOSTON 33 NOW!"
We are mindful that on this day, exactly 90 years ago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ruthlessly electrocuted two working class political prisoners namedNicola SaccoandBartolomeo Vanzetti,during a time of similar unrest.We will not allow those crimes to be repeated.
The Committee for International Labor Defensecalls on our brothers and sisters in the labor movement to show solidarity with all 33 of these political prisoners in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti, one of International Labor Defense’s very first cases.The capitalist bosses and their repressive state apparatus have changed little since 1927, as we can see through these attacks on working class protesters.
The Committee for International Labor Defense (CILD) aims to bring together labor organizations worldwide to organize mass defense in cases important to the cause of workers and all oppressed.
We seek to build on the past achievements of the working class to revive International Labor Defense. The original ILD (1925-46) mobilized worldwide campaigns in political and legal defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro Boys, Cuban sugar workers, sharecroppers in the US South, and many more cases.
The ILD took a side, in solidarity with the struggles of workers, oppressed, and other socially marginalized people. The ILD defended movements, organizations, and individuals with whose political views it did not necessarily agree.
While supporting legal efforts, the ILD understood that the law, courts, prisons, and police exist to protect the ruling class. To paraphrase one of the founding members of the original ILD, “We place all our faith in the masses, and none in the ‘justice’ of the courts or other tribunals.”
In the process of recruiting labor organizations worldwide to rebuild the ILD, the CILD will take up international, domestic and local defense cases, in line with its capacity.
On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 8:34 AM, Eric Brooks<rico49@gmail.com>wrote:
A final comment for consideration: It might help build the CILD to add a website URL and email address where people can contact CILD to the statement so that if it is printed and handed out it stands alone. At the top you could say: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Committee for International Labor Defense URL…
Last night President Trump announced that he intends to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan by some unknown amount and to allow our military to define the rules of engagement. Translate, more destruction and civilian deaths.
We are fighting a war of our choosing for reasons that are unclear. (Clearly, we are not defending the homeland.) We are spending billions on a war that has no end, and the only ones profiting from it are the companies which produce the weapons. The Russians in the 80’s were smart enough to admit defeat and go home after more than eight years of fighting.
Remember Vietnam and the cry from the military if only they had more troops we could win the war. Trump is following that line. Afghanistan as Vietnam is unwinnable.
Remember Trump originally questioned this war. Now he is going along with the military. We need to stop this escalation. The damage we are doing has to come to an end.
Please call your congressman and senators to vote against any more monies for this war and actually to defund it!
We are also scheduling an emergency standout at Park St. this Saturday between 12 and 1. Please come with signs!
The Committee for International Labor Defense joins with our sisters and brothers of Black Lives Matter Boston and Cambridge, to call on the Boston Municipal Court, Mayor Marty Walsh, District Attorney Dan Conley, and Police Commissioner William Evans, to drop all charges stemming from the unlawful arrest and detainment of about 30 protesters on Saturday, August 19, 2017, at the “Fight Supremacy” rally on Boston Common.
Many of the protesters were unnecessarily injured by police during the confrontations and arrests. All those arrested were charged with crimes ranging from disorderly conduct to assault, for holding their ground against fascism and white supremacy in the southeast quadrant of Boston Common and surrounding areas.
The Committee for International Labor Defense is aware that the arrestees face court appearances on August 21, 22 and 23, to determine their fate, and we are closely monitoring each of their cases. The Committee squarely and publicly holds the City of Boston accountable for the health and safety of every one of these political prisoners, including the minor who is only 15 years of age.
The Committee for International Labor Defense demands the immediate release of the Boston 33, dismissal of all legal charges, and withdrawal of all fines and penalties for which the Court may hold them liable. Their arrest was unjust and a violation of the democratic right to protest that is fundamental to the U.S. constitution and US history. No one should be arrested for standing against racism and racist violence.
FREE THE BOSTON 33 NOW!
We are mindful that on this day, exactly 90 years ago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ruthlessly electrocuted two working class political prisoners named Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, during a time of similar unrest. We will not allow those crimes to be repeated.
The Committee for International Labor Defense calls on our brothers and sisters in the labor movement to show solidarity these working class political prisoners in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti, one of International Labor Defense’s very first cases. The capitalist bosses and their repressive state apparatus have changed little since 1927, as we can see through these attacks on working class protesters.
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967- Before The Gonzo Wave Receded- The Life and Work Of Hunter Thompson
Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia's Entry For Hunter S. Thompson. Beware Of This Source For Doctor Gonzo Information. I Think He Has His Mojo Working to Disrupt Entries.
DVD REVIEWS
Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Doctor Hunter Thompson, Hunter Thompson and various commentators, Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2007
Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self defense, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution and would reject such a designation we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.
That said, the DVD under review, complete with the “talking head” commentaries by those who knew him like his hard-pressed wife and ex-wife, Professor Douglas Brinkley and Jann Warner (of “Rolling Stone”) and pertinent readings from his works by the likes of Johnny Depp is both a valentine to his memory and a rather full exposition of his most creative years from the late 1960’s to the mid-1970’s. From his success with the still worthy book “The Hell’s Angels” about the West Coast outlaw bikers, which took him to the dark side of the counter-culture of the 1960’s, to “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas”, which took him to the dark side of the American dream, to “Fear and Loathing on Campaign Trail 1972” with his companion the “Brown Buffalo” , Oscar Acosta, which took him to the dark side of American politics he fearlessly (some would say recklessly) skewered one and all in the fight for new cultural values.
I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself or wanted to been seen as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968 being just enough older to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu. His earlier writings show that effect. His work from South America in the early 1960's, for example, is almost straight journalism. His later best stuff was on a different order of magnitude. Only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. As with all journalists and in the end that was his forte, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the pressure of time lines and for mass circulation media these pieces show an uneven quality. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others will have to push on further.
One should note that ‘gonzo’ journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within himself/herself as an actor in the story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in other disciplines like history and political science is that somehow one must be ‘objective’. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best, and those are mainly his early works highlighted here, that was Hunter’s way.
As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that this was a period of particular importance which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States and all- around political chameleon. Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick him when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the ‘dark side’ of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary political hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson’s work. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Damn, the 2008 campaign, despite the hoopla, was boring without your knife. Watch this DVD. And then read his books.
Coming Of Age In World War II-Torn America- With The Film "Summer Of 1942" (1971) In Mind
By Commentator Fritz Taylor
Seth Garth, the once well-known free-lance music critic for many of the big music and specialty publications that have come and gone over the years since he first put pen to paper some forty years ago, including the long gone alternative press where he got his start and first breaks, had been thinking about the old days a lot recently. (Literally had put pen to paper, forget beauties of the world processor then, as Jacob Stein said that he had recalled as he kicked and screamed when he was asked to produce material on a typewriter in the old days rather than his beloved yellow legal pads. He only relented as Jacob also recalled when some editor told him that his hero Hemingway was crazy to rattle the typewriter to get his precious words out.) Seth had been, having the luxury of semi-retired status, also doing a run through of films via the good graces of Netflix that he had first seen when he was a youngster sitting in the dark every week for the double feature Saturday matinee complete with box of stale popcorn or snuck in candy bars at the old Strand Theater in his hometown of Riverdale, a town a few dozen miles from Boston. Or else films that due to publication commitments that he had not run through when they came out in the 1970s in the days when he was determined to catch the wave of being a music critic and missed many of those films, left them by the wayside.
One night at Jack’s Pub, his watering hole hang-out over in Riverdale that he increasingly frequented on his forays back to his old hometown to see if he could “channel” the past by being physically present on the old sacred soil (although not the Strand long ago turned into a condominium complex), Seth had mentioned to Brad Fox, an old friend from high school days who went through many of the experiences with him, that he had just reviewed a film, Summer of 1942, for Sal Davis the editor of Cinema Now who was looking for copy to fill a space quickly. The film which had been released in 1971 about coming of age, coming of sexual age during the early years of World War II. The big point he made to Brad, who had told Seth that he had seen the film when it came out but did not remember the details except that this foxy older woman played by Jennifer O’Neil had “robbed the cradle” and bedded a teenage boy, swore the film could have been about their generation, the generation of 1968 as easily as that of 1942.
Seth had mentioned, before giving Brad the details that he had missed about the film, he had started his review speculating on the fact that each generation goes through its “coming of age” period somewhat differently. “Coming of age” in this context meaning after Brad had been unclear about what aspect of the term Seth meant, meaning the beginning of the treacherous process of understanding all the sexual changes and commotions once you got to puberty. He said he had taken the one he, and Brad, had known about personally of coming of age in the early 1960s in the age of the “Pill,” of technology-driven space exploration and of some new as yet unspoken and undiscovered social breeze coming to shake up a lot of the old values, to turn the world upside down, from their parents’ generation.
Seth said he had tried to contrast that with the one before theirs, the one represented in the film about the coming of age of their parents’ generation. The generation that on one edge, the older edge went through the whole trauma of the Great Depression that brought barren days to the land and of slogging World War II and at the other edge, the younger edge, missing the trauma of war and its particular stamp on those who survived went on to form the alienated youth who turned “beat,” rode homespun hot rods to perdition, grabbed a La Jolla perfect wave surf board, revved up Hell’s Angels/Devil’s Disciples hellish motorcycles to scare all the squares and come under the immediate spell of jailbreak rock and roll.
The funny thing at least on the basis of a viewing of the film on the question of dealing with sex, sexual knowledge and experiences there was a very familiar (and funny) sense that their parents who, at least in their case and the case of their growing up friends, went through the same hoops-with about the same sense of forlorn misunderstanding. (Of course in talking about parents and their sexual desire both Seth and Brad admitted they would have had a hard time linking up their own respective parents with sexual desire but their own kids if asked would probably say the same thing about them.)
Brad mentioned that his memory wasn’t so good of late and that although while they were talking he had been trying to dredge up some more facts about the movie other than the one he had mentioned earlier in the conversation about that sexy older woman “cradle robber” making Seth laugh that whatever the taboos were about intergenerational sex they both would have given their eye-teeth if some world-wise fox had come across their paths. Seth then went on to give Brad a rough outline of how the film had played out.
He told Brad that his habit of late was after viewing a film, particularly a film that he was being paid good dollars to produce a review on, was to go on-line and look up what somebody had to say about the film on Wikipedia. Wistfully stated that service was something he wished had been around earlier in his career which would have saved him a lot of time in the library or looking at the archives of various publications of the time and allow him under the constant press of deadlines to be able to write better thought out copy. (Although remember he was still groping with freaking yellow legal pads.) The story line of the film had been based on the essentially true-to-life experiences of a Hollywood screen-writer Hermie Raucher (played by Gary Grimes), coming of age 15, and his two companions, gregarious Oscy and studious Benji, known as “the Three Terrors,” three virginal teenage boys, who were slumming in the year 1942 at the beautiful but desolate end of an island retreat in the first summer of the American direct involvement in the Pacific and European wars after the Japanese bombings of Pearl Harbor. (The island had been Nantucket Island in the book published after the movie but had been filmed off desolate Mendocino of blessed memory in California). They like a million other virginal boys of that age during war or peacetime were driven each in their own way by the notion of sexual experimentation and conquest and so the chase was on.
That chase had been on at two levels. The rather pedestrian one of seeking out young girls of their own age to see what shook out of the sexual tree and Hermie’s almost mystical search for “meaningful” love in the person of an older foxy woman, Dorothy, played by Jennifer O’Neil, who had been a young war bride staying on the island after her husband headed off to war. The “own age” part, funny in parts, driven mostly by pal Oscy’s overweening desire to “get laid” with a blonde temptress whom he finally got his wish with on night at the secluded end of the beach with his most experienced partner. On that occasion Hermie was shut out of any desire he had to do the same with her friend who was as bewildered by sex as he was.
The “older woman” (in our circles she would have been a “cradle-robbing” older woman although she was only 22) notion of love is what drove him the moment he has set eyes on her when the trio was spying on her and her husband in their cozy cottage so he was “saving” himself for her. And after a series of innocent (and some goofy) encounters with Dorothy one night, after she has just found out that her husband had been killed in the war, she bedded him (there is no other honest way to put the matter). That was that though, for when Hermie subsequently went back to the cottage she had left the island and left him a more solemn young man.
Having given Brad those details Seth mentioned that those were the main lines that got played out but what had made this film more than of ordinary interest to him was the whole lead-up, the whole “foreplay” if you will of the desire of the trio to be doing something about getting out of that dreaded virgin status. Said all the guys were fearful of being tagged with the “homo” tag and didn’t Brad remember how vicious teenage guys could be about the “manhood” question. Before he could go further Brad mentioned how when they were fourteen or fifteen he could not remember when how all the guys from around the corner that they hung on, including Seth used to “fag” bait him because he had refused to kiss Sarah Langley at a “petting” party and had actually run out of the house where the party was being held he had been so embarrassed.
At the time he had been sweet on Jenny Price who had been at the party although nobody was aware of that situation. Nothing ever came of that desire and so he had spent some time living down the “fag” tag until he found Sandy Lee in junior year and she took him out of that status since she was something of a fox herself. Although nobody thought anything of calling another guy a “fag” as masculine craziness about sex and sexual identity erupted nobody seriously thought that the guys were gay or anything like that it was just a separation expression. Who knows who at the time really wasn’t interested in girls, wasn’t into “getting in their pants” although Seth speculated that some guys around the block must have since not a few guys lived at home with their mothers and were not seen with woman companions. Nowadays nobody would think twice about it although the usual baiting in school and among the jocks would still go on given the unchanged nature of certain heterosexual young males. Seth mentioned that he could not believe the pressure to “lose your virginity” that all the guys suffered through, although he admitted that it also took him a long time, long after the Christopher Street riots in the Village that began the serious modern gay rights movement to stop his calling gays “fags.” Not until his eyes were opened up when gay musicians and actors whom he interviewed and assumed were straight came out of the “closet.”
Seth had laughed at the very realistic scenes when Hermie and Oscy picked up a couple of girls at the movie theater (playing Bette Davis and Paul Henried in Dark Voyage, a film that he actually had reviewed when it came out in a film retrospective at the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square for the old Avatar alternative newspaper). The scene which showed the guys “feeling up,” or trying to, had been amazing with Oscy grabbing his just met girl almost from minute one and Hermie, missing the mark thinking his girl’s shoulder was her breast. Jesus. Brad laughed but reminded Seth that no way would that kind of thing have happened in their days since everybody, or almost everybody knew the drill at the Strand Theater Saturday matinee double-header or Saturday night date it did not matter. Some ancient tradition, hell, maybe going back to 1942 for all anybody knew about the original of the practice made it clear that those who sat in the orchestra were not going to “make out.” If they were in the balcony then whatever went on, went on from “feeling up” to blow jobs went on. It was solely a question of asking your date where she wanted to sit. That sealed the deal, and in many cases, too many, meant a last date.
Brad’s reminder of the old “policy” reminded Seth of the time that he was crazy for Rosalind Green in junior high, they had gotten along well, had been a couple of chatterboxes in English class about books by a bunch of foreign guys to show they were “hip.” One day after a few weeks after all this “foreplay” Seth had finally asked her to a Saturday matinee (the usual strategy for a girl you were not sure would accept your date in the dangerous nighttime) and she accepted. When after paying for their tickets and hitting the refreshment stand for popcorn and sodas he asked her where she wanted to sit she had answered “silly, of course the balcony why else would I have come with you.” Bingo. Of such events decent youthful memories are made. Brad on the other hand spent many hours in the orchestra section once he latched onto Betsy Binstock (whom he had eventually married and was still married to happily he always made sure to note) who was “saving” whatever she was saving for marriage. Okay, too-now.
Seth quickly mentioned the scene, the awkward scene, where Hermie was helping Dorothy with storing some packages and he got sexually excited, okay, okay, got an erection, by her off-hand helping hand touch since neither man wanted to talk about those nighttime wandering hands that came down when they got an erection. Nor did he spent much time on the scene where the three friends “discover” what sexual intercourse is all about through the good graces of Benji’s mother’s medical books since that scene rang false in their old neighborhood where sexual information was passed from older brother or sister to younger, a lot of it wrong, very wrong when the girl had to go out of town to see “Aunt Emily” (she was pregnant) in other words right out on the streets. Nobody back in 1942, or 1962 expected uptight parents who were assumed to probably not have had sex to give any serious information except some twaddle about the birds and the bees. And of course the fumbling by the numbers (off-screen) when Oscy has his first sexual experience with the girl he had picked up at the movies. That scene had been a little over the top and as reticent about talking about sex as parents were guys and gals might give an inkling about what they were doing behind the bushes but a “free show” was off the charts.
The best scene of all though and it really showed the difference between then and now when the younger generations can grab condoms off the shelf at any drugstore or in some places right in schoolhouse restrooms (formerly “lav’s”) and who might not quite appreciate enough the scene where Hermie tried to buy “rubbers” at the local village drugstore from the jaded disbelieving druggist. Brad automatically remembered that scene once Seth recalled it. Remembered too, as he told a disbelieving Seth that night, his own confusion when he was in junior high and had found some condoms in a bottom bathroom drawer in his family house when he was looking for some band-aids. Had asked a kid at school, actually had shown a kid at school one and the kid had said they were like balloons you fill them with water and throw them at somebody. It was not until high school and he had begun his own sexual explorations (obviously not with ever-loving Betsy) that he found out their real purpose and blushed silently about his parents’ sexual practices. Hence another example of the very general understanding about the young that their own parents never had sex. Whatever else being a youth today may be about in terms of trauma at least there is a hell of a lot of good information hanging out there on the Internet for the young to inquire into with embarrassment.
Yeah, Seth gave Brad the word as they finished up that last round of drinks and began to head to their respective homes -watch this film and remember your own, either sex, torturous rumbling around coming to terms with sex.
Love, Oh Careless,
Love-With Diane Keaton and Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” In Mind
DVD Review
By Associate Editor
Alden Riley
Annie Hall, starring
Diane Keaton, Woody Allen,
It is funny how some
film assignments I get from my boss,
Sandy Salmon, come into
being. I mentioned in a recent review of the classic female vs. male clash of
wills and style George Cukor’s Adam’s Rib
starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy that he wished me to watch such
strong independent lead women’s roles from the 1930s and 1940s to prove out his
thesis that female actors such as Hepburn were able to turn in great
performances with style and panache without appearing to be man-eaters. Or not
too much anyway in contrast to many female-driven leads today where to avoid
such designations the
story-line has to bend
over backwards cutting the heart out of such efforts. I had mentioned that in my
review of the current Wonder Woman as
an example and that one phrase started Sandy’s wheels rolling.
The genesis of the film
under review, Woody Allen’s masterly romantic comedy Annie Hall is very different. It is based on two factors, the first
stemming from a BBC radio news broadcast that Sandy heard on his way to work
one day about a survey that had been done naming the 150 greatest comedy films
of all times. Annie Hall had been
named number three on that list. The second my answer that I had never seen the
film, had no particular interest in Woody Allen’s logjam of films after having
seen a few from his early 2000s production (except Blue Jasmine but that was carried by the performance of Cate
Blanchett more than Woody’s plotline and dialogue), and tended away from
reviewing romantic comedies. Naturally that put fury red in Allen devotee
Sandy’s eyes (that “devotee” status which in turn he had gotten from his film
critic friend Sam Lowell, former film editor here, when they were both at the American Film Gazette).
So here I am grinding it
out on this one. Pleasantly grinding it out on a film that still seems fresh
today some thirty plus years after its premier. As my companion who was
watching the film with me said “it has aged well.” Agreed. I am not sure where
I would put it in the pantheon of cinematic great comedies but it certainly
belongs among the low numbers, no question about that.
Of course as with many
Woody Allen vehicles the art is in the dialogue and wit and not so much the
plotline. At the time of production Woody was well known for his New York
Jewish kid comic routine in many such film efforts. Annie Hall is in line with that persona from the neurotic self-effacing
guy who can’t seem to “get it” about romance after two failed marriages to two
bright star Jewish women and starts out once again on the roady road to love-to
romance. Although this time with a classic WASP woman from Wisconsin Annie Hall
of the title played by then paramour Diane Keaton as an aspiring nightclub
performer (check out her stand-up performance of It Seems Like Old Times which brought a tear to the eye of my
viewing companion). Still Woody can’t seem to get the hang of modern romance
and he loses Annie not only to another man but to another coast-the dreaded
enemy Left Coast-LA. The film is rounded out with every important New York
intellectual referential tidbit from the period. Sandy said he howled when
Woody made a cutting comment to his second wife about two New York-based
high-end intellectual publications of the day- Commentary and Dissent
saying they had merged into a new magazine Dysentery.
Sandy said “ouch” but I was, maybe not being from New York or old enough to
remember those publication was non-plussed by that one although many of the other
references were very funny.
Like I said I can for
once agree with Sandy and also can truthfully say I was not be put off by yet
another “have to do” Sandy assignment this time. This film deserves its low
number on the greatest comedy list.
The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *Defeated, But Unbowed-The Writings Of Leon Trotsky, 1932
Google the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for a copy of an article, "German Bonapartism", from the pen of Leon Trotsky for 1932, the period of the book reviewed below. BOOK REVIEWS If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky’s writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky’s political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles inside the Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader. After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin’s tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can easily count, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds. The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to nought. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of the heroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky’s. Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920’s. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky’s unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, in large part militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky. I WILL ADD TO THIS SERIES AS I REREAD OR ACQUIRE THE OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES. HERE GOES FOR NOW. THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1932, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973 As to the 1932 volume this reviewer recommends a careful reading of the following articles: The Left Opposition and the Right Opposition (a polemic against the tendency of his comrades to try to form a bloc with the defeated remnants of the Bukharinite Right Opposition in the Russian Party and internationally); International and National Questions (an important analysis of the question of the national to self-determination in the age of imperialism); Hands Off Rosa Luxemburg! (a spirited defense of that great revolutionary whom the Stalinists were trying eliminate from the revolutionary pantheon for her various political differences from the Bolsheviks); Peasant War in China and the Proletariat (a analysis of the Chinese Revolution after the defeat in the cities in 1927 and the subsequent drive to awaken the peasant masses to revolution as Japan began its imperialist siege); and, the Declaration to the Antiwar Congress in Amsterdam (a rather nice polemic against the muddle-headedness of depending on pacifists to stop the impending war everyone knew was coming).
The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support G.I. Voice
By Frank Jackman
The late Peter Paul Markin had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace the hard way. Had before that baptism accepted half-knowingly (his term) against his better judgment induction into the Army when his “friends and neighbors” at his local draft board in North Adamsville called him up for military service back in hard-shell hell-hole Vietnam War days when the country was coming asunder, was bleeding from all pores around 1968. Markin had had some qualms about going into the service not only because the reasoning given by the government and its civilian hangers-on for the tremendous waste of human and material resources had long seemed preposterous but because he had an abstract idea that war was bad, bad for individuals, bad for countries, bad for civilization in the late 20th century. Was a half-assed pacifist if he had though deeply about the question, which he had not.
But everything in his blessed forsaken scatter-shot life pushed and pushed hard against his joining the ranks of the draft resisters at the Boston sanctuary for that cohort, the Arlington Street Church, whom he would hear about and see every day then as he passed on his truck route which allowed him to pay his way through college. Markin had assumed that since he was not a Quaker, Shaker, Mennonite, Brethren of the Common Life adherent but rather a bloody high-nosed Roman Catholic with their slimy “just war” theory that seemed to justify every American war courtesy of their leading American Cardinal, France Spellman, that he could not qualify for conscientious objector status on that basis. And at the time that he entered the Army that was probably true even if he had attempted to do so. Later, as happened with his friend, Jack Callahan, he could at least made the case based on the common Catholic upbringing. Right then though he was not a total objector to war but only of what he saw in front of him, the unjustness of the Vietnam War.
That was not the least of his situation though. That half-knowingly mentioned above had been overridden by his whole college Joe lifestyle where he was more interested in sex, drink, and rock and roll (the drugs would not come until later), more interested in bedding women than thinking through what he half-knew would be his fate once he graduated from college as the war slowly dragged on and his number was coming up. Moreover there was not one damn thing in his background that would have given pause about his future course. A son of the working-class, really even lower than that the working poor a notch below, there was nobody if he had bothered to seek some support for resistance who would have done so. Certainly not his quiet but proud ex-World War II Marine father, not his mother whose brother was a rising career Army senior NCO, not his older brothers who had signed up as a way to get out of hell-hole North Adamsville, and certainly not his friends from high school half of whom had enlisted and a couple from his street who had been killed in action over there. So no way was an Acre boy with the years of Acre mentality cast like iron in his head about servicing if called going to tip the cart that way toward straight out resistance.
Maybe he should have, at least according to guys he met in college like Brad Fox and Fritz Taylor, or guys who he met on the hitchhike road going west like Josh Breslin and Captain Crunch (his moniker not real name which Josh could not remember). The way they heard the story from Markin after he got out of the Army, after he had done his hell-hole thirteen months in Vietnam as an infantryman, twice wounded, and after he had come back to the “real” world was that on about the third day in basis training down in Fort Jackson in South Carolina he knew that he had made a mistake by accepting induction. But maybe there was some fate-driven reason, maybe as he received training as an infantryman and he and a group of other trainees talked about but did not refuse to take machine-gun training, maybe once he received orders for Vietnam and maybe once he got “in-country” he sensed that something had gone wrong in his short, sweet life but he never attempted to get any help, put in any applications, sought any relief from what was to finally crack him. That, despite tons of barracks anti-war blather on his part from Fort Jackson to Danang.
Here’s the reason though why the late Peter Paul Markin’s story accompanies this information about G.I. rights even for those who nowadays enter the military voluntarily, as voluntarily as any such decision can be without direct governmental coercion. Markin, and this part is from Josh Breslin the guy he was closest to toward the end, the guy who had last seen him in the States before that fateful trip to Mexico, to Sonora when it all fell apart one day, had a very difficult time coming back to what all the returnees called the “real” world after Vietnam service. Had drifted to drug, sex and rock and roll out on the West Coast where Josh had first met him in San Francisco until he tired of that, had started to have some bad nights.
Despite the bad nights though he did have a real talent for writing, for journalism. Got caught up in writing a series about what would be later called the “brothers under the bridge” about guys like him down in Southern California who could not adjust to the real world after ‘Nam and had tried to keep body and soul together by banding together in the arroyos, along the railroad tracks and under the bridges and creating what would today be called a “safe space.”
Markin’s demons though were never far from the surface. Got worse when he sensed that the great wash that had come over the land during the counter-cultural 1960s that he had just caught the tail-end had run its course, had hit ebb tide. Then in the mid-1970s to relieve whatever inner pains were disturbing him he immersed himself in the cocaine culture that was just rearing its head in the States. That addiction would lead him into the drug trade, would eventually lead him as if by the fateful numbers to sunny Mexico, to lovely Sonora way where he met his end. Josh never found out all the details about Markin’s end although a few friends had raised money to send a detective down to investigate. Apparently Markin got mixed up with some local bad boys in the drug trade. Tried to cut corners, or cut into their market. One day he was found in a dusty back street with two slugs in his head. He lies down there in some unknown potter’s field mourned, moaned and missed until this very day.
Oh what might have been if he had sought out help in attempting to work out the better angels of his nature before all hell broke loose around his too futile head.
