Wednesday, October 18, 2017

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-You’re On The Bus, Or Off The Bus- An Ode To Aging Hippies- Ken Kesey’s “The Further Inquiry”

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-You’re On The Bus, Or Off The Bus- An Ode To Aging Hippies- Ken Kesey’s “The Further Inquiry”




Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American novelist and 'mad monk', Ken Kesey.

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James


To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes,  I know that the actual term “beat” was first used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis)
Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my oldest brother Alex who was washed clean in the Summer of Love, 1967 but must have known the edges of Jack’s time since he was in high school when real beat exploded on the scene in Jack-filled 1957, they called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all Jack’s kid stuff high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the poet princely mean streets of New York, Chi town, Mecca beckoning North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps (and the fleas were real no time for metaphor down in the bowels where the cowboy junkies drowse in endless sleeps, raggedy winos toothless suck dry the dregs and hipster con men prey on whoever floats down), half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and groundling cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).

I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers, connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to trash those connection when the acolytes and bandit hangers-on  came calling looking for the “word.” So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands).
Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back which has caused more riffs and bad words than I want to yell about here).             

Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine and so only an honorary corner boy after hitching up with the Scribe out on a Russian Hill dope-filled park), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright event, just mentioned.  Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker, what did Jack call his generation’s such, oh yeah, holy goofs,   who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before 1967 (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or dismissed out of hand, what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie  and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.

But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s travel adventure book which had caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain, desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.    

Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end down some dusty Jack-strewn road in Mexico cocaine deal blues. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some   hot chick’s pants any way they could as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law back then when the coppers were just waiting for corner boy capers to explode nay Friday or Saturday night, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.

What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as silk Frankie now also like Alex a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.

The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Bob Dylan above all else.) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)

Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll in about three weeks. So it was through the Scribe via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.           



Book Review

The Further Inquiry, Ken Kesey, Viking Press, New York, 1990


In a recent DVD review of the late Dennis Hopper’s role as a fugitive radical in the 1990 comedy on the subject of the 1960s counter-culture, Flashback, I noted, no I exclaimed, no I shouted out that I was not to blame for this reach back but that the reader should blame it on Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters (including “beatnik” holdover/ bus driver Neal Cassady). Or blame it on a recent re-read of Tom Wolfe’s classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test that pays “homage” to Kesey, his Pranksters, their psychedelically-painted bus "Further", and their various adventures and misadventures. Or, better, blame it on Jack Kerouac and that self-same central character Cassady (as Dean Moriarty) for his On The Road. The same sentiment can serve here in reviewing Ken Kesey’s concept book on the occasion of the 25th anniversary (1989) of the famous coast to coast (West to East, if you can believe that) bus ride/drug trip/self-awareness adventure/madcap escape that Tom Wolfe chronicled in the above-mentioned novel.

I used the words "concept book" here in exactly the right sense. Kesey, although having apparently exhausted himself in the literary field after his early successes with One Flew Over The Cukoo’s Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion still had enough savvy in him to come up with an appropriate way to celebrate his most well-known adventure. The book is set up in the form of a trial transcript. Wait a minute who is on trial at this late date? Ken Kesey, for cooking up the perhaps ill-advised adventure, or on some belatedly-revealed drug charge? No. The WASP West Coast college students out on a romp who formed the core of the Merry Pranksters finally get their comeuppance from the neo-con counter-revolutionaries ? No. Here is the funny part. It’s the bus driver, stupid-Neal Cassady-the refugee from the “beat" generation, and one of the "fathers" of the 1960s cultural uprising. And what is the charge (or charges)? Well, the modern day version of “corrupting the youth.” That makes sense, right? He should have pleaded guilty, very guilty, and be done with it.

Along the way on this "bus ride" we get plenty of "contrite" testimony about the evil genie out of the bottle Cassady, heart-rending tales about the spell he put on those “innocent” young people, about his non-stop spiel, and about his fantastic, if just slightly unorthodox, driving habits. We also get plenty of testimony in his defense, as well. And all of this is accompanied by over one hundred photographs from the old “family” album, including many, many photos of the arch-villain Cassady himself. Just a point here though. You should read Wolfe’s book before you try to read this one-this is strictly for aficionados of the “beat” and “hippie” cultural movements.

Note: The volatile figure of Neal Cassady was central to Jack Kerouac’s On The Road (as Dean Moriarty, and as Cody Pomeroy in Visions of Cody, a similar exposition). Although Neal is central to this book, a reading of Wolfe’s book places his role in a much more secondary position- something of a highly energetic, fast-talking grand old man of the “beat” generation teaching the youth “the ropes” and passing the “break the mold” bug to a new generation. That seems about right. Kerouac will be remembered as long as youth yearn for the open road, literally or spiritually. Kesey, to a lesser extent, will hold that same position. Neal Cassady will be remembered mainly for being the guy, an important guy, who glued everything together.

Finally, off of a reading of Cassady’s “testimony” here, which is somewhat painful to read at this far remove, is more incoherent drug-induced ranting than “hipness”, or wisdom for the ages. A reading of any single page of Kerouac (or Kesey, for that matter) will provide much more insight into that period. Some of the other “testimony” of the other “witnesses” reads rather obtusely as well. But hell, these guys (Kerouac, Kesey, Ginsberg, et al.) went looking for, and got, their authentic "All-American" drugstore cowboy/untutored plebeian philosopher king/jack-of-all trades/ manly sex symbol for the post-World War II world, warts and all. Neal Cassady was his name.

On Becoming Jane- With “The Jane Austen Book Club” (2007)-A Film Review

On Becoming Jane- With “The Jane Austen Book Club” (2007)-A Film Review




DVD Review

By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon  

The Jane Austen Book Club, starring Kathy Baker , Maria Bello, based on tehe novel of the same name which in turn is loosley based on the characters in Austen's six major novels, 2007  

Recently in reviewing a couple of song and dance films in two separate reviews which I titled “Gene Kelly And Free Astaire Go  Mano a Mano” I led off with a tale of woe story about the strange ways that film critics, hell any critics, any writers if it came to that get their assignments. In that particular case my general editor, the usually genial Pete Markin, had after grabbing Kelly’s An American In Paris and Astaire’s Shall We Dance for the sole purpose of seeing which man was the max daddy male popular music dancer in all recorded history he had waylaid me at the Monday morning water cooler with an explosive confession that he no longer thought durable Fred Astaire deserved the title. My response in short, after all this review is about venerable sweet pea Jane Austen she of the million word romance novels which have gotten umpteen numbers of female generation through the blahs of young maidenhood, was that he perhaps, just perhaps had spent too much time on the hash pipe of late. In any case as those who have read the pieces know that he has paid dearly in taunting words from me for his treason-and error. 

As this duel within a duel unfolded (the duel between Markin and me inside the Kelly-Astaire tiff for the clueless) at least one reader was looking for other examples of the way that poor film critics are abused and forced to write, well, write stuff that assures that they will have a one way ticket to the gates of hell when they leave this mortal coil. I gave her this Markin gem. A few months ago, through a friend, he got all wound up in the celebration of the Summer of Love, 1967 and having himself participated in that wild and wooly drug, sex and rock and roll time ordered me and my esteemed associate film editor Alden Riley to write a stuff about the music (“acid: rock), films and documentaries of the times. After reviewing the famous D.A Pennebaker documentary about the first Monterey International Pops Festival in 1967 also out in California where Janis Joplin among others made their first big splashes I asked the much younger Alden what he thought of Janis Joplin. He responded that he had never heard of her. Somehow the ear to the ground Markin heard about this egregious travesty and ordered Alden, over my serious objections, to review a Joplin documentary Little Girl Blues.So that is another way.


But not everything is odd-ball editorial or putative marching orders on the question of how we reviewers come up with ideas for subjects for review. And that brings us back to Jane Austen world, to the film under review, The Jane Austen Book Club, and how I have started a “run” on reviewing the film adaptations of a number of her novels and other literary pieces. Let me get this clear when I was a kid, when I was young, 1960s young, say in high school back in down in the poor River Bottom section of Riverdale in New Jersey where I grew up I would not have voluntarily touched a Jane Austen book for love nor money. (Well maybe for love as I do now remember that I let one foxy young thing I was pining over talk to me endlessly one afternoon over sodas at Doc’s Drugstore while I was trying to listen to the jukebox as she prattled on about Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.) You see in those days in our neighborhood among the street wise guys those were strictly “girl’s books” and not anything called great literature or anything for rough-hewn larcenous guys to look at. So time passed without having dipped into the Austen well until recently I happened to see this DVD in the local library and thought that it was maybe directly about dear Jane and I could learn something about her on the cheap without having to read all that great literature. Well, as I will discuss below, this film is using Miss Austen as a “cover” to explore and exploit the plots of her novels for today’s still romantically ambiguous world although I am sure she would not mind. What is important is that I have now started that “run” through the film adaptations of her major works (the six major novels which pace the action in this film). That would not have happened I am sure if I had gone to the fiction section of that same library looking for something to read.           

As old friend Sam Lowell liked to change-up say when he tired of saying “here’s the play” in a review here is the “skinny” of this film adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler’s 2004 book of the same name which has added itself to the Jane Austen explosion of the past decade or so when she has become the epitome of the wise woman on all things romantic (and of duplicity, greed, squalor and self-serving place-holding). One of the characters decided she wanted to start a book club based on a reading per month of Jane Austen’s six major novels. She corrals one way or another five others, four women and a man, in various condition or romance or romance-lite (or un-romance in one case) for a monthly take turns swirl through the Austen playlist. As the film unfolds we find that the collective of captive readers in the club have problems or circumstances which parallel the various themes in Austen’s books-infidelity, boredom, ennui, marital neglect, lust, disinterest in sex, philandering and other gems from the pantheon. A nice literary device on author Fowler’s part as the various character try to navigate around their desires and their fates. 

In the end Austen medicine (not applicable to herself I hear since she was unmarried although once briefly engaged) is the balm for all wounds, or most wounds as a neglected housewife school teacher attracted to a young student in her class reconciles with her formerly boorish sports-addicted husband. The leader-founder of the pack trots off to her seventh marriage (wouldn’t just living together be better at least a bevy of lawyers would not get rich off the proceedings). A strictly single gal and a pining for her guy get together after a film-long series of ups and downs, mostly downs. A middle-aged wife with a philandering husband get back together after a cold civil war in the household. The only one not requited, as least not that I could see, was the kind of madcap lesbian daughter of that middle-aged women with the philandering husband problem. Maybe if you follow the staid, proper if comic Austen you could not deal with the “sin that dare not speak its name” in a positive manner in early 19th century England at least in polite society and so that lesbian daughter, madcap or not, could find no trace in an Austen plot.               


The Folkie Rank And File-An Interview With 1960s Folkie Loudon Wainwright

The Folkie Rank And File-An Interview With 1960s Folkie Loudon Wainwright  

Comment by Josh Breslin

I was somewhat of a late-comer to the folk revival scene of the early 1960s having missed that early segment completely while I was growing up in Olde Saco, Maine away from the big centers of the movement like Harvard Square in Cambridge, The Village in NYC, Old Town in Chicago, and North Beach in Frisco town. I did not pick up the folk habit until 1967, the Summer of Love, when I went out to Frisco town to see what it was all about and met fellow New Englander Peter Paul Markin, always called Scribe by his friends on Russian Hill and he took me in on the Captain Crunch caravan that he was part of. (I suppose it does not matter now but my introduction to the Scribe was going up to this long-haired bearded guy and asking him for a joint. He gave a huge one to me and the rest is history until his untimely early death under mysterious circumstances.)    


The Scribe had been a folkie fan since his early high school days going over to Harvard Square and soaking in whatever there was to soak in. Of course by 1967 the main stream of the revival had run out of steam and so I got most of what I know second-hand. In the case of the folkie that I am creating a link for here of an interview he did on the Terry Gross interview  show Fresh Air of NPR discussing his latest memoir it was really third-hand. The third-hand part is through a discovery of the McGarrigle Sister, Anna and the late Kate, the latter who was married to Wainwright for a time and had two children with him, one the well-known Rufus Wainwright. As usual when I get into something I like to see where it leads (a trait I picked up from the Scribe who really did try to learn every possible fact of any possible use for any possible purpose). Knowing of the McGarrigle-Wainwright connection I checked out his eclectic folk work. I can’t say I was a strong supporter of his work but there were some interesting things he did. Let him tell you via the interview some of the highlights.


http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2017/09/06/548788469/fresh-air-for-sept-6-2017-loudon-wainwright-iii 

On The 150th Anniversary Of Marx's "Das Capital"(1867)-Economic Crisis: Karl Marx Was Right-Guest Commentary

On The 150th Anniversary Of Marx's "Das Capital"(1867)-Economic Crisis: Karl Marx Was Right-Guest Commentary





Guest Commentary

Workers Vanguard No. 937
22 May 2009


New Spartacist Pamphlet

Economic Crisis: Karl Marx Was Right


We reprint below the introduction to the just-released Spartacist pamphlet, Capitalist Anarchy and the Immiseration of the Working Class.

The anarchy and brutality of the capitalist system has been revealed again in a global economic crisis, which threatens to reach the proportions of the Great Depression. As millions are thrown out of work, as massive numbers of foreclosures throw people out of their homes, as hunger stalks the poor, black people and other minorities, the sick and vulnerable, the U.S. has seen a bitter winter of deprivation. The impact of this crisis extends far beyond the U.S., threatening the lives and livelihoods of the working class and oppressed internationally. It is left to revolutionary Marxists both to explain the roots of the current crisis and to provide the program necessary to put an end to this barbaric, irrational system through the emancipation of the proletariat and establishment of its class rule, thus laying the basis for the construction of a socialist planned economy as a transition to a classless, egalitarian and harmonious society on a global scale. That is the purpose of this pamphlet, composed of articles previously published in Workers Vanguard.

Leon Trotsky’s The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (also known as the Transitional Program), adopted as the basic programmatic document of the founding conference of the Fourth International in September 1938, is particularly relevant and urgent today. The political situation of the late 1930s and that of the post-Soviet world in which we live today are quite different, to be sure. But Trotsky’s declaration that “under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the impoverished life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism” could have been written about conditions in Detroit and elsewhere today. The same is the case with the call in the Transitional Program that: “The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists, which to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crises, the disorganization of the monetary system, and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all” (emphasis in original). Such transitional demands, as Trotsky wrote, stemmed “from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class” and unalterably led “to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.”

Against the tried and failed stratagems pushed by liberals and fake socialists—from the Keynesian project of “benevolent” intervention by the capitalist state to the British Labour Party’s bourgeois nationalizations in the post-World War II period—we Marxists understand that no amount of tinkering with the existing system can wrench it into serving the needs of the proletariat and the oppressed. The 1997-98 Workers Vanguard series “Wall Street and the War Against Labor,” reprinted here, takes this up in the U.S. context. It also deals with the labor movement in the U.S. and the roots of its historic economic militancy and political backwardness—a backwardness due not least to the continuing oppression of black people as a race-color caste, integrated into the industrial proletariat but at the same time forcibly segregated at the bottom of society.

The more recent articles reprinted in this pamphlet put forward our revolutionary program against those who purvey illusions in the Democratic Party and its current Obama administration as well as for class-struggle opposition to the pro-capitalist trade-union bureaucracy. Part and parcel of such a struggle is a fight against nationalist, chauvinist protectionism, anti-immigrant racism and the anti-Communist poison spread by the union tops against those states where capitalism has been overthrown, centrally China but also the other deformed workers states of North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam. Our program is that of unconditional military defense of those states against imperialist attack and internal counterrevolution and for proletarian political revolution to replace the nationalist bureaucratic regimes that undermine their defense. Our model remains that of the victorious October Revolution of 1917 led by Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolshevik Party. For class against class! For new October Revolutions

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access-What Every Young Woman Should Know

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access-What Every Young Woman Should Know 










 


 Frank Jackman comment:


 


One of the great struggles on college campuses during the height of the struggle against the Vietnam War back in the 1960s aside from trying to close down that war outright was the effort to get the various ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps, I think that is right way to say it) programs off campus. In a number of important campuses that effort was successful, although there has been back-sliding going on since the Vietnam War ended and like any successful anti-war or progressive action short of changing the way governments we could support do business is subject to constant attention or the bastards will sneak something in the back door.


        


To the extent that reintroduction of ROTC on college campuses has been thwarted, a very good anti-war action indeed which had made it just a smidgen harder to run ram shot over the world, that back door approach has been a two-pronged attack by the military branches to get their quota of recruits for their all-volunteer military services in the high schools. First to make very enticing offers to cash-strapped public school systems in order to introduce ROTC, junior version, particularly but not exclusively, urban high schools (for example almost all public high schools in Boston have some ROTC service branch in their buildings with instructors partially funded by the Defense Department and with union membership right and conditions a situation which should be opposed by teachers’ union members).


 


Secondly, thwarted at the college level for officer corps trainees they have just gone to younger and more impressible youth, since they have gained almost unlimited widespread access to high school student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do their nasty work. Not only do the recruiters who are graded on quota system and are under pressure produce X number of recruits or they could wind doing sentry guard duty in Kabul or Bagdad get that access where they have sold many young potential military personnel many false bills of goods but in many spots anti-war veterans and other who would provide a different perspective have been banned or otherwise harassed in their efforts.  


 


Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of the high schools-military recruiters out as well! Let anti-war ex-soldiers, sailors, Marines and airpersons have their say.         






From Protest to Resistance: On the 50th Anniversary of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon

  • October 20-21 Event

    Learn more and register to attend this event in Washington, DC

    From Protest to Resistance:

    On the 50th Anniversary of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon

    The October 1967 March on the Pentagon was a landmark event in the history of the US peace movement. Not only was it one of the largest gatherings to oppose the Vietnam War up to that time, it was also notable for its escalation of tactics from protest to mass resistance. Over 600 activists were arrested on October 21 in both planned and spontaneous acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, signaling a new strategy for anti-war organizing. Interaction between protestors and soldiers lay the groundwork for both confrontation and engagement.

    During twenty-four hours in Washington, DC, we will remember and reflect on the significance of that action and the overall impact of the peace movement on ending the Vietnam War, as well as on lessons for today‘s resistance.

    FRIDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 20 - 5-7 PM
    Gather at the Pentagon for a commemorative vigil on US responsibility for the legacies of war: land mines, unexploded ordnance, Agent Orange, forced relocations of rural people, and on the struggles of veterans.

    Featured will be Peter Yarrow of the legendary folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, performers at the 1967 rally at the Lincoln Memorial, draft resisters whose cards were turned into the Justice Department on the same date fifty years ago, and advocates of taking responsibility for war legacies.
     
    SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21 – ALL DAY
    An all-day gathering at the Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, in four sessions:
     
    1) Understanding the Historical Context
    What was happening in Vietnam and in the peace movement; public opinion about the war; in the White House; in the Pentagon; and internationally;

    2) Recalling the Event
    The many moving parts of the demonstration, from the rally at the Lincoln Memorial and the counterculture's "levitation" of the Pentagon, to the sit in on the steps and detention at Occoquan; what actually took place and who was there; an opportunity to share personal experiences. *

    3) The Impact of the Pentagon March and the Antiwar Movement
    The effect of the 1967 march and of a multi-faceted peace movement on the war and on US politics, culture and society; the emergence of a GI movement and its relation to civilian activists.

    4) The PBS Series and Unlearned Lessons
    The 18 hour documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick is creating a new national memory of the war. Did it get the history right and give fair treatment to the role of the anti-war movement of civilians, serving military and veterans? What lessons were conveyed for current and future US military conflicts and opposition to them?

    Post Gathering Commemorative Walk to Vietnam Veterans Wall
    After the conference, we'll conclude with a walk from the church to the nearby Vietnam Wall and Lincoln Memorial, paying tribute to all who were victims of a tragically unnecessary war.

    We hope you will come and help spread the word about this history rich and moving program. Be sure to contact us as soon as possible if you were part of, or strongly affected by, October 21, 1967, so we can incorporate your experience in the commemoration.

    * Daniel Ellsberg will share his experience by video of beginning the day in the peace march and ending it at his office in the Pentagon watching the occupation of the steps alongside Secretary of Defense McNamara.
     
    EVENT SPONSORS

    The event is organized by the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee (VPCC).

    Co-sponsors for the event include: Partnerships for International Strategies in Asia (PISA) of George Washington University, Historians for Peace and Democracy, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars/Critical Asian Studies, Fund for Reconciliation and Development, Veterans For Peace, and The Norman Mailer Society.

    REGISTER FOR THE EVENT

    Everyone is welcome to attend.

    Cost for the two-day event is $25
    + $10 for lunch on Saturday

    Click below to register on New York Charities site.
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