To Sin By Silence When We Should Protest Makes Cowards Out Of Men (Women Too)!-Build The Resistance! Year Two

To Sin By Silence When We Should Protest Makes Cowards Out Of Men (Women Too)!-Build The Resistance!  

By Political Commentator Frank Jackman 

To Sin By Silence When We Should Protest Makes Cowards Out Of Men … (and I added women too)-lines from “Protest” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Usually when I want to grab a line or two from some poem it would more likely by from say Bertolt Brecht’s “To Those Born After,” Langston Hughes’ “Homage To John Brown” or Claude McKay’s “Let’s Us Die Like Men (and I would add women here again) and not some relatively obscure American poet but when the point is made so succinctly I could not resist using the damn thing as it disturbed my sleep one night    

Ella Wheeler Wilcox whatever her vices or virtues as an American working the ways of the late 19^th and early 20^th century had it exactly right-had a mantra that we need to live by these dark days on the American frontier (the frontier not Harvard Professor Turner’s old idea about the closing of the frontier once you hit the Pacific Ocean with all its consequences for a restless people ever since but the outer edge of civil society). We must continue to resist the Trump government with whatever resources we have. And whatever hubris we can gather in to keep us from the storm that has gathered right on our doorsteps.

Most of us didn’t want this fight, the older ones of us thinking that maybe we could pass on under conditions of an armed truce with the imperial government. But then the cold civil war descended on us and we had to pick sides, those of us who see the necessity of picking sides when bans are in place, when walls are being built and when the rich, no, hell no, the super-rich have literally stepped up to besieged every social program that our people need to face the next day. And act. Act to build the resistance which these days looks like it will need to be on the order of the French Resistance in World War II.

Do you really want to bend your head down when the deal, the hell train coming, goes down and your kids, if you have kids, your grandkids if you have grandkids, or just your own conscience asks you what did you when it was time to speak up. Remember Ella had it right, right as rain.

Here is Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After" if you need further reason-

I

To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

II

You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:

Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.

And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence. 

Bertolt Brecht

An Encore -He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind

An Encore -He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Jack Dawson was not sure when he had heard that the old long-bearded son of a bitch anarchist hell of a songwriter, hell of a story-teller Bruce “Utah” Phillips caught the westbound freight, caught that freight around 2007 he found out later a couple of years after he too had come off the bum this time from wife problems, divorce wife problems (that "westbound freight" by the way an expression from the hobo road to signify that a fellow traveler hobo, tramp, bum it did not matter then the distinctions that had seemed so important in the little class differences department when they were alive had passed on, had had his fill of train smoke and dreams and was ready  to face whatever there was to face up in hobo heaven, no, the big rock candy mountain that some old geezer had written on some hard ass night when dreams were all he had to keep him company). That “Utah” moniker not taken by happenstance since Phillips struggled through the wilds of Utah on his long journey, played with a group called the Utah Valley boys, put up with, got through a million pounds of Mormon craziness and, frankly, wrote an extraordinary number of songs in his career by etching through the lore as he found it from all kinds of Mormon sources, including some of the dark pages, the ranch war stuff, the water stuff not the polygamy stuff which was nobody's business except the parties involved of those latter day saints.

For those who do not know the language of the road, not the young and carefree road taken for a couple of months during summer vacation or even a Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac-type more serious expedition under the influence of On The Road (what other travelogue of sorts would get the blood flowing to head out into the vast American Western night) and then back to the grind but the serious hobo “jungle” road like Jack Dawson had been on for several years before he sobered up after he came back from ‘Nam, came back all twisted and turned when he got discharged from the Army back in 1971 and could not adjust to the “real world” of his Carver upbringing in the East and had wound up drifting, drifting out to the West, hitting California and when that didn’t work out sort of ambled back east on the slow freight route through Utah taking the westbound freight meant for him originally passing to the great beyond, passing to a better place, passing to hard rock candy mountain in some versions here on earth before Black River Shorty clued him in.

Of course everybody thinks that if you wind up in Utah the whole thing is Mormon, and a lot of it is, no question, but when Jack hit Salt Lake City he had run into a guy singing in a park. A guy singing folk music stuff, labor songs, travelling blues stuff, the staple of the genre, that he had remembered that Sam Lowell from Carver High, from the same class year as him, had been crazy for back in the days when he would take his date and Jack and his date over to Harvard Square and they would listen to guys like that guy in the park singing in coffeehouses. Jack had not been crazy about the music then and some of the stuff the guy was singing seemed odd now too, still made him grind his teeth.  but back then it either amounted to a cheap date, or the girl actually liked the stuff and so he went along with it.

So Jack, nothing better to do, sat in front of guy and listened. Listened more intently when the guy, who turned out to be Utah (who was using the moniker “Pirate Angel” then, as Jack was using "Daddy Two Cents"  reflecting his financial condition or close to it, monikers a good thing on the road just in case the law, bill-collectors or ex-wives were trying to reach you and you did not want to reached), told the few bums, tramps and hoboes who were the natural residents of the park that if they wanted to get sober, if they wanted to turn things around a little that they were welcome, no questions asked, at the Joe Hill House. (No questions asked was right but everybody was expected to at least not tear the place up, which some nevertheless tried to do.)


That Joe Hill whom the sobering up house was named after by the way was an old time immigrant anarchist who did something to rile the Latter Day Saints up because they threw he before a firing squad with no questions asked. Joe got the last line though, got it for eternity-“Don’t mourn (his death), organize!”                   

Jack, not knowing anybody, not being sober much, and maybe just a tad nostalgic for the old days when hearing bits of folk music was the least of his worries, went up to Utah and said he would appreciate the stay. And that was that. Although not quite “that was that” since Jack knew nothing about the guys who ran the place, didn’t know who Joe Hill was until later (although he suspected after he found out that Joe Hill had been a IWW organizer [Wobblie, Industrial Worker of the World] framed and executed in that very state of Utah that his old friend the late Peter Paul Markin who lived to have that kind of information in his head would have known. See this Joe Hill House unlike the Sallies (Salvation Army) where he would hustle a few days of peace was run by this Catholic Worker guy, Ammon Hennessey, who Utah told Jack had both sobered him up and made him some kind of anarchist although Jack was fuzzy on what that was all about.

So Jack for about the tenth time tried to sober up, liquor sober up this time out in the great desert (later it would be drugs, mainly cocaine which almost ripped his nose off he was so into it that he needed sobering up from). And it took, took for a while.        

Whatever had been eating at Jack kept fighting a battle inside of him and after a few months he was back on the bottle. But during that time at the Joe Hill House he got close to Utah, as close as he had gotten to anybody since ‘Nam, since his friendship with Jeff Crawford from up in Podunk Maine who saved his ass, and that of a couple of other guys in a nasty fire-fight when Charley (G.I. slang for the Viet Cong originally said in contempt but as the war dragged on in half-hearted admiration) decided he did indeed own the night in his own country. Got as close as he had to his corner boys like Sam Lowell from hometown Carver. Learned a lot about the lure of the road, of drink and drugs, of tough times (Utah had been in Korea) and he had felt bad after he fell off the wagon. But that was the way it was. 

Several years later after getting washed clean from liquor and drugs, at a time when Jack started to see that he needed to get back into the real world if he did not want to wind up like his last travelling companion, Denver Shorty, whom he found face down one morning on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge and had abandoned his body fast in order not to face the police report, he noticed that Utah was playing in a coffeehouse in Cambridge, a place called Passim’s which he found out had been taken over from the Club 47 where Sam had taken Jack a few times. So Jack and his new wife (his and her second marriages) stepped down into the cellar coffeehouse to listen up.


As Jack waited in the rest room area a door opened from the other side across the narrow passageway and who came out but Utah. As Jack started to grab his attention Utah blurred out “Daddy Two Cent, how the hell are you?” and talked for a few minutes. Later that night after the show they talked some more in the empty club before Utah said he had to leave to head back to Saratoga Springs in New York where he was to play at the Caffé Lena the next night.         

That was the last time that Jack saw Utah in person although he would keep up with his career as it moved along. Bought some records, later tapes, still later CDs just to help the brother out. In the age of the Internet he would sent occasional messages and Utah would reply. Then he heard Utah had taken very ill, heart trouble like he said long ago in the blaze of some midnight fire, would finally get the best of him. And then somewhat belatedly Jack found that Utah had passed on. The guy of all the guys he knew on the troubled hobo “jungle” road who knew what “starlight on the rails” meant to the wanderers he sang for had cashed his ticket. RIP, brother.

For Rosalie Sorrels- From The Pen Of Frank Jackman- To That Old Wobblie Troubadour- Utah Phillips – A Tribute –“Singing Through The Hard Times”

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go-Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

CD Review

Singing Through The Hard Times: A Tribute To Utah Phillips, various artists, 2009

…he came like wind, like rain. He came like an old time biblical prophet, all white-bearded, all flannel-shirted, all denim-panted, all work booted, came out of the heartland like so many prophets in the American land, spreading the common word, the word that has been around for a long time but was in need of updating and in need of some righteous gentle anger, to a new age, an age that knew not of old time struggles in this land, the old boss and worker struggles, the old downtrodden struggles, that dotted our common history. He spoke in a manly voice, a deep voice, no shame, although perhaps out of fashion in a world that sought quietude, sought quietude when action was the order of the day.

You could see him sing and tell his off-the-cuff stories in all the big little clubs, the quaint coffeehouses after they fell out of fashion, places like Club Passim, The Sparrow, Mickey’s, The Viking , The Joe Hill House out in the valleys of Utah, and above all second home base Café Lena out there in the foothills of the Adirondacks, out in Saratoga, where he and Rosalie Sorrels lit up the joint (the place, not what you think, come on now) for many years. You could see him too, and here is where he was kindred, out there in the public square fighting the good fight, fighting against the multiple angers of the day, fighting, struggling any place or time a brother was down on his luck, or a sister was in need. Some of the things he spoke of were, well, weird, weird to a chastened world, some too was old time Wobblie out of fashion stuff too when moral suasion fell flat against moloch in a rigged-up world but all who took the time to think could see a kindred in that wandering old- time troubadour.

And he sang songs in no particular order, no chronological or subject matter order anyway, of all kinds of things that he had observed, heard about, delved into, or just struck him as song or story worthy. Like? Well, what don’t we start with the struggle against the hard times a theme that dominated his life, personally, emotionally and politically. I have already spoken of that kindred spirit so I need not belabor that point here but it needed saying else half his life’s work, the part about humankind’s common miseries and what to do about them, would make no sense. He spoke too of, well, love or maybe better lost love since most of his songs speak of remembrance , of old time flames, of roads not taken, and of love lost to that wandering road that he ambled on, a tough road for love to blossom (although maybe not for speaking about lost love, maybe just right for that sentiment). He spoke too of the beauty of this country if we could just keep the greedy at bay, the rolling hills, the ocean of wheat and corn plains, the foam-flecked white-waved seas, the high breathe mountains and of protecting them against the greedy night that has descended on the American landscape, and was (is) ready to make the place a huge parking lot. He spoke of cities, cities entered into stealthily, hobo stealthily, coming off some ancient travel road, maybe Route 66, of skid row, of Sallys and soup lines, of second-hand always second hand, and of the vanishing flop houses that saved more than one wandering minstrel as the city closed itself off to the odd and misbegotten.

He spoke against the bosses, against the big bosses, the little bosses trying to be big bosses, and those who wanted to emulate them, or live in their reflected glory, and of those who didn’t. All above he spoke of the kindred hoboes, tramps, bums, the lost and forsaken, or the just wanderlust folk not hard-wired to settler society, and in need of the warrior wide open spaces to breathe, breathe a little. Spoke of their endless wander, bindle-bound, of the endless rails, of the endless jungles (slang for their, ah, residences, okay), of their olio-broth stews, camp fires, cheap Tokay and Thunderbird wines, their angers and flare-ups, their flame-reflected dream of their phantom girl Phoebe Snows, and long ago home memories, and, and, their lonesome side of the road deaths, unclaimed and unmourned.

…yes, he came like wind, like rain and hence this fitting tribute to the old curmudgeon Wobblie troubadour.

Where Have The Girls Gone- When Young Women’s Voices Ruled the Airwaves Before The British Rock Invasion, Circa 1964- With Ruby And The Romantics' "Our Day Will Come" In Mind

Where Have The Girls Gone- When Young Women’s Voices Ruled the Airwaves Before The British Rock Invasion, Circa 1964- With Ruby And The Romantics' "Our Day Will Come" In Mind

By Sam Lowell

This is the second installment (the first dated January 13, 2018) set as an introduction to the history of the American Left History blog. I am, as pointed out before one of the few people, more importantly one of the few writers, who has taken part in almost all of the key junctures in this forty something year attempt to address the unwritten history of the poor and oppressed in America and the world. That includes the latest flare-up which has brought about a new regime, partially with my help, so I am well-placed to tell the tale. As part of the “truce” arranged with current site manager Greg Green I will tell the story and will elicit comments from a couple of other Editorial Board members. The first installment dealt with the genesis of this blog with predecessors going back to the late 1960s when a number of the older writers still standing came on board, many through long friendships with the previous site manager going back to high school days, including myself.  Today I will deal with the old hard copy version of ALH and the transfer due to economic necessary of going on-line at the beginning of the century.           

**********

With the seed money we were able to gather after the sale of Progressive Nation we put together the hard copy version of ALH. We, as well, got a big financial boost from our old high school friend and great running back for the North Adamsville Red Raiders, Jack Callahan,  who now is Mr. Toyota of Eastern Massachusetts and has sold a million cars based on his charming ways (and that of Mrs. Toyota, Chrissie McNamara, his forever high school sweetheart whom he is still married too unlike the rest of us who have at least two marriages per person, a ton of kids, and two tons of college tuitions which are still being paid for or only recently extinguished).  Our idea, really Allan’s idea, no again, really way back when Markin’s idea was to do in a journalistic way what Boston University professor the late Howard Zinn did with his book The People’s History of the United States which is to say look under the rocks, the crevices, the off-beat places in the American experience. Tell the story that doesn’t make the mainstream media, or didn’t for a long time certainly in the time of Reagan’s time in the 1980s when everybody but us it seemed was keeping his or her head down.

So in a funny way we were running against the stream, having only a small steady dedicated readership and writing staff made up of guys I have already mentioned and who readers will know including Josh Brelin from up in Maine who we treated like one of our own. That last statement is important because what happened (and might be the real genesis of what brought about Allan’s downfall) was that for financial reasons, emotional reasons, and a certain tendency on the part of all those involved to get wrapped up in a nostalgia trip back the halcyon days of the 1960s when you couldn’t walk a block in most cities and college towns without running into fellow kindred spirits, some cause bringing people to the streets, and a feeling that the new breeze that Markin had talked endlessly about from high school days on was going to happen almost by default. We were going to turn the world upside down and for keeps.

Obviously at the height of the Reagan era (1980-1992 throwing the first Bush, number 41 in the succession, into the mix) and beyond for a while that was a very tough dollar to pull off as the years going by would develop a divide between the old-time “hippie” base and the generation turning into two generations who were off in a different direction, could as I mentioned in the recent internal wrangling “give a f- - k” about the 1960s except maybe the dope and cool fashions now somewhat revived in a retro movement. For years though Allan and the rest of us were in a running battle over where to go and still deal with our basic mission which is still on the masthead of this blog. Allan would wax and wane with that deep tendency to drift back to the 1960s and cover stuff like all the folk movement stuff when the folk minute (almost literally) was in bloom.

Against a reality, against the real world where except Bob Dylan, and even that would be suspect, nobody knew any of the folk singers and the spirit that drove Allan and me as well, probably everybody but Si Lannon who to this day cringes whenever anybody mentions a guy like faded folksinger Erick Saint Jean whom we thought would be the next Dylan. Spent much cyber-ink of stuff like film noir which was all the rage in college town 1960s film festival retrospectives, Bogie, Robert Mitchum, the French “New Wave.” And deeply into reviewing and commenting on books and the politics of the times which had clearly faded into the dust and that even our older readership got tired of hearing about since they had drifted out of politics seeing the whole thing as a “bummer” to use a 1960s-etched expression or had drifted rightward to the party of the possible-the Democrats. They definitely did not want to hear about the finer points of the Russian Revolution, the Stalin-Trotsky fist fight, or the food fight among American radicals toward the end of the 1960s and early 1970s.                

Every once in a while we would change course a bit, would get more into contemporary politics, move onto the newer versions on the musical scene, review more current books and films but there was something missing. Something that the younger writers in the recent dispute hollered about endlessly when asked to write about the 1960s 24/7/365 when Allan finally went off the deep end for good in the summer of 2017. Having to endlessly write about the Summer of Love, 1967 which set up the explosion that brought everything to a head. Having to write about stuff they were clueless about which is what we were feeling when we confronted the changes in the 1990s. Even then Allan would try an end around and force everybody like he did last year with Alden Riley to write stuff as “punishment” for not knowing every single piece of arcana from the 1960s even if was about, oh I don’t know, plastic surgery, something weird like that.

As you could expect off of this lack of focus drained individual writers, we lost Sal Rizzo, Danny Shea, Henry Sullivan to the ennui, to hubris and lack of candor. Lost a lot of money too, a lot of Jack Callahan’s dough although he was always too much of a good guy to complain (and would tell us “I will just sell more Toyotas”). So we had to when we saw an opportunity to keep going with an on-line publication we did. That would cut expenses dramatically (and Jack would say I don’t have to carry such a large car inventory now) not needing a large office, paper costs and such. We also, or rather Allan came to a big decision which we rubber-stamped, a very big decision once we did transfer to an all on-line operation-bringing in new blood, bringing in younger writers with the original idea to get a more current take on the American political, cultural, social experience. It was a tricky proposition since the older core, including me and Allan, were worried that bringing in more professionally trained writers which is the norm these days since nobody can get anywhere without some kind of Iowa Writers Workshop pedigree would run circles around us. They, I, could not see then that this was necessary, In the end we, Allan, squandered that talent by the straight-jacket maneuvers mentioned earlier driving them to write second-rate stuff just to fill space and fill Allan’s ego when crunch time came.

I was going to finish up this second installment by discussing our first new writer, the now long gone, Jesse Perrier, yes, that Jesse Perrier, who went on to write that slew of crime novels that you see in every airport kiosk, but I will wait and introduce him in the third installment when I discuss the first few years of ALH on-line. More later.     

       

A YouTube film clip of Ruby & The Romantics performing the classic, Our Day Will Come.

Our day will come
And we'll have everything.
We'll share the joy
Falling in love can bring.

No one can tell me
That I'm too young to know (young to know)
I love you so (love you so)
And you love me.

Our day will come
If we just wait a while.
No tears for us -
Think love and wear a smile.

Our dreams have magic
Because we'll always stay
In love this way
Our day will come.
(Our day will come; our day will come.)

[Break]

Our dreams have magic
Because we'll always stay
In love this way.
Our day will come.
Our day will come.

 
As I mentioned in a review of a two-volume set of, for lack of a better term, girl doo wop some of the songs which overlapped in a six volume series, I have, of late, been running back over some rock material that formed my coming of age listening music (on that ubiquitous, and very personal, iPod, oops, battery-driven transistor radio that kept those snooping parents out in the dark, clueless, and that was just fine, all agreed including eventually the parents who saw the whole thing was harmful after a bout with the “devil’s music” nonsense we kids had to put up with), and that of my generation, the generation of ’68. Naturally one had to pay homage to the blues influences from the likes of Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton, and Big Joe Turner. And, of course, the rockabilly influences from Elvis, Carl Perkins, Wanda Jackson, and Jerry Lee Lewis on. Additionally, I have spent some time on the male side of the doo wop be-bop Saturday night led by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers on Why Do Fools Fall In Love? (a good question, right, which I spent three marriages with all the trimming trying to figure out ,unsuccessfully). I noted there that I had not done much with the female side of the doo wop night, the great ‘girl’ groups that had their heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s before the British invasion, among other things, changed our tastes in popular music. I would expand that observation here to include girls’ voices generally. As there, I make some amends for that omission here.

As I also noted in that earlier review one problem with the girl groups, and now with these generic girl vocals for a guy, me, a serious rock guy, me, was that the lyrics for many of the girl group songs, frankly, did not “speak to me.” After all how much empathy could a young ragamuffin of boy brought up on the wrong side of the tracks like this writer have for a girl who breaks a guy’s heart after leading him on, yes, leading him on, just because her big bruiser of a boyfriend is coming back and she needs some excuse to brush the heartbroken lad off in the Angels' My Boyfriend’s Back. Or some lucky guy, some lucky Sunday guy, maybe, who breathlessly catches the eye of the singer in the Shirelles' I Met Him On Sunday from a guy who, dateless Saturday night, was hunched over some misbegotten book, some study book, on Sunday feeling all dejected. And how about this, some two, or maybe, three-timing gal who berated her ever-loving boyfriend because she needs a good talking to, or worst, a now socially incorrect, very incorrect and rightly so, "beating" in Joanie Sommers’ Johnny Get Angry.

And reviewing the material in that volume gave me the same flash-back feeling I felt listening to the girl doo wop sounds. I will give similar examples of that teen boy alienation for this CD set, and this approach drove the reviews of all six of these volumes in the series. I won’t even go into such novelty silly songs as the title self-explanatory My Boy Lollipop by Barbie Gaye; the teen angst hidden behind the lyrics to Bobby's Girl by Marcie Blane; or, the dreamy, wistful blandness of A Thousand Stars by Kathy Young & The Innocents that would have set any self-respecting boy’s, or girl’s, teeth on edge. And prayed, prayed out loud and to heaven that the batteries in that transcendent transistor would burn to hell before having to continue sustained listening to such, well, such… and I will leave it at that. I will rather concentrate on serious stuff like the admittedly great harmonics on Our Day Will Come by Ruby & The Romantics that I actually, secretly, liked but I had no one to relate it to, no our to worry about that day, or any day, or Tonight You Belong To Me by Patience & Prudence that I didn’t like secretly or openly but gave me that same teen angst feeling of having no one, no girl one, belonging to, me.

And while today it might be regarded as something of a pre-feminist feminist anthem for younger women, You Don't Own Me by Lesley Gore, was meaningless for a guy who didn’t have girl to own, or not own, to fret over her independent streak, or not. Moreover, since I was never, at least I never heard otherwise, that I was some damsel in distress’ pining away boy next store The Boy Next Door by The Secrets was wrapped with seven seals. And while I had many a silent, lonely, midnight waiting by the phone night how could Cry Baby by The Bonnie Sisters, Lonely Blue Nights by Rosie & The Originals, and Lonely Nights by The Hearts give me comfort when even Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry hard-rockin’ the night away could not console me, and take away that blue heart I carried like a badge, a badge of almost monastic honor. Almost.

So you get the idea, this stuff could not “speak to me.” Now you understand, right? Except, surprise, surprise foolish, behind the eight- ball, know-nothing youthful guy had it all wrong and should have been listening, and listening like crazy, to these lyrics because, brothers and sisters, they held the key to what was what about what was on girls’ minds back in the day, and maybe now a little too, and if I could have decoded this I would have had, well, the beginning of knowledge, girl knowledge. Damn. But that is one of the virtues, and maybe the only virtue of age. Yah, and also get this- you had better get your do-lang, do-lang, your shoop, shoop, and your best be-bop, be-bop into that good night voice out and sing along to the lyrics here. This, fellow baby-boomers, was our teen angst, teen alienation, teen love youth and now this stuff sounds great.

And from girls even.

NationofChange January 17, 2018 No foreign bases: Challenging the footprint of US empire

NationofChange

January 17, 2018

No foreign bases: Challenging the footprint of US empire

The United States cannot be a moral or ethical country until it faces up to the realities of U.S. empire and the destruction it causes around the world.

 

Kevin Zeeze and Margaret Flowers / Op-Ed

 

The United States cannot be a moral or ethical country until it faces up to the realities of U.S. empire and the destruction it causes around the world. The U.S. undermines governments (including democracies), kills millions of people, causes mass migrations of people fleeing their homes, communities and countries and produces vast environmental damage.

A new coalition, The Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases, held its inaugural event January 12-14, 2018 at the University of Baltimore in Maryland. The meeting was framed by a Unity Statement that brought together numerous peace and justice organizations. The basis for unity was:

“U.S. foreign military bases are the principal instruments of imperial global domination and environmental damage through wars of aggression and occupation, and that the closure of U.S. foreign military bases is one of the first necessary steps toward a just, peaceful and sustainable world.”

You can endorse the statement here.

US foreign military bases as of 2015. Image Credit: BaseNation.us

Responsibility to end global empire of bases

Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace and the vice presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2016 opened the conference, describing the responsibility of the people of the United States (USians) to protect the world from U.S. aggression. He argued:

“The only logical, principled and strategic response to this question is citizens of the empire must reject their imperial privileges and join in opposing ruling elites exploiting labor and plundering the Earth. To do that, however, requires breaking with the intoxicating allure of cross-class, bi-partisan ‘white identity politics.’”

This reality conflicts with one of the excuses the U.S. uses to engage in war — so-called ‘humanitarian wars’, which are based on the dubious legal claim that the US has a “responsibility to protect.” The United States is viewed as “the greatest threat to peace in the world today” by people around the world.  Thus, “USians” need to organize to protect the world from the United States.

U.S. empire is not only a threat to world peace and stability but also a threat to the United States. Chalmers Johnson, who wrote a series of books on empire, warned in his 2004 book, “The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic,” that there were four “sorrows” the United States would suffer. In the 14 years since they have all come true:

“If present trends continue, four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative impact guarantees that the United States will cease to bear any resemblance to the country once outlined in our Constitution. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a growing reliance on weapons of mass destruction among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second, there will be a loss of democracy and constitutional rights as the presidency fully eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from an “executive branch” of government into something more like a Pentagonized presidency. Third, an already well-shredded principle of truthfulness will increasingly be replaced by a system of propaganda, disinformation, and glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there will be bankruptcy, as we pour our economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchange the education, health, and safety of our fellow citizens.”

The footprint of U.S. empire are what Chalmers Johnson called an “empire of bases.” David Vine, the author of  Base Nation,put U.S. empire in context by describing 800 U.S. bases in 80 countries and U.S. military personnel in more than 170 countries. Bases range from so-called Lily Pad Bases of hundreds of troops to town-sized bases of tens of thousands of troops and their families. He noted many bases have schools and they do not need to worry about heating or air conditioning, unlike schools in Baltimore where parents bought space heaters to keep children warm and where schools were closed due to lack of heat.

The contrast between Baltimore schools and military base schools is one example of many of the heavy price “USians” pay for the military. Vine reported that $150 billion is spent annually to keep U.S. troops on bases abroad and that even a Lily Pad base could cost $1 billion. More is spent on foreign military bases than on any agency of the federal government, other than the Pentagon and Veterans Administration.

The Pentagon is not transparent about the number of US foreign bases it manages or their cost. They usually publish a Base Structure Report but have not done so in several years. The Pentagon only reports 701 bases, but researchers have found many, even significant bases, not included in their list of bases.

According to the No Foreign Bases Coalition:

“95% of all foreign military bases in the world are U.S. bases. In addition, [there are] 19 Naval air carriers (and 15 more planned), each as part of a Carrier Strike Group, composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft — each of which can be considered a floating military base.”

The military footprint of the United States shows it is the largest empire in world history. In our interview with historian Alfred McCoy, author of “In The Shadows of the American Century,” he describes how some of the key characteristics of U.S. empire are secrecy and covert actions. This are some of the reasons why it is rare to ever hear U.S. empire discussed in the corporate media or by politicians. McCoy told us this was true for some other empires too, and that it is often not until the empire begins to falter that their existence becomes part of the political dialogue.

Strategies for closing U.S. foreign military bases

David Vine described an unprecedented opportunity to close bases abroad, to do so we need to build a bigger movement. We also need to elevate the national dialogue about U.S. Empire and develop a national consensus to end it.

Vine pointed to Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric about pulling back from U.S. involvement abroad and focusing on the necessities at home as indicative of the mood of the country. In fact, a recent survey found that “78 percent of Democrats, 64.5 percent of Republicans, and 68.8 percent of independents supported restraining military action overseas.”

McCoy argued that after the globalization of President Barack Obama, which included the Asian Pivot and  efforts to pass major trade agreements, in particular the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), created a backlash desire to focus on “America First.” Both trade agreements, the TPP and TTIP, failed as a result of a political shift in the country, in part created by grassroots movements.

McCoy describes Obama as one of three “Grandmasters of the Great Game” (the other two being Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, and Elihu Root, former Secretary of War and Secretary of State at the beginning of the 20th Century) who excelled in being strategic on behalf of U.S. empire. In addition to trade agreements and the Asian Pivot, Obama built on the intelligence apparatus of the George W. Bush era. Even though Obama was a “grandmaster,” he did not slow the weakening of U.S. empire. McCoy sees the inability to account for the unpredictable complexities of U.S. and global political developments as a common weakness of empire strategists.

The conference was divided into regions of the world (with the exception of one session on the impact of military bases on the environment and health). There will be reports and videos published on each section of the conference on the No Foreign Bases webpage. One common denominator around the world is opposition to U.S. military bases. According to the Unity Statement of the coalition:

“Many individual national coalitions — for example, Okinawa, Italy, Jeju Island Korea, Diego Garcia, Cyprus, Greece, and Germany — are demanding closure of bases on their territory. The base that the U.S. has illegally occupied the longest, for over a century, is Guantánamo Bay, whose existence constitutes an imposition of the empire and a violation of International Law. Since 1959 the government and people of Cuba have demanded that the government of the U.S. return the Guantánamo territory to Cuba.”

One important strategy for success is for U.S. activists to work in cooperation with people around the world who want U.S. military bases to be closed and for the U.S. military to leave their country. Attendees at the conference had traveled to South Korea, Okinawa and other places to protest in solidarity with U.S. activists.

Another strategy that many in the conference urged was the need for education about U.S. imperialism and to tie U.S. militarism abroad with militarized police at home. Similarly, the reality of the U.S. military focusing on black and brown countries abroad highlights a white supremacy philosophy that  infects foreign policy and domestic policy. Members of the No U.S. Foreign Bases coalition also engage in domestic efforts for racial and environmental justice.

Further, the no bases coalition highlights the environmental and health damage caused by foreign and domestic military bases. As the Unity Statement notes, “military bases are the largest users of fossil fuel in the world, heavily contributing to environmental degradation.” Pat Elder and David Swanson described the degradation in and around the Potomac River, writing:

“The Pentagon’s impact on the river on whose bank it sits is not simply the diffuse impact of global warming and rising oceans contributed to by the U.S. military’s massive oil consumption. The U.S. military also directly poisons the Potomac River in more ways than almost anyone would imagine.”

People can find information about the environmental damage being done by the military in their community on the Bombs in Your Backward webpage. World Beyond War held a conference on War and the Environment in 2017. You can view video and summaries from the conference on their site.

Next steps

The conference attendees decided on some next steps. A national day of action against foreign military bases is being planned for February 23, the anniversary of the U.S. seizing Guantanamo Bay, Cuba through a “perpetual lease” that began in 1903. Activists are encouraged to plan local actions. If you plan an event, contact info@popularresistance.org and we’ll post it on the events page. The demands will include closing the base and prison in Guantanamo, returning the land to Cuba and ending the U.S. blockade.

The conference also decided to hold a conference outside of the United States in one of the countries where the U.S. has a foreign military base within the next year. People from some countries were not allowed to attend the inaugural conference this weekend.

And, the coordinating committee will reach out to other peace and justice groups to select a date and place for a national mass action against U.S. wars. This will be organized as quickly as possible because the threat of more wars is high.

This is a key moment for the antiwar movement in the U.S. to make itself more visible and to demand the closure of U.S. foreign bases. In this report on living in a post-primacy world, even the Pentagon recognizes what many commentators are seeing — the U.S. empire is fading. One great risk as the empire ends is more wars as the U.S. tries to hang on to global hegemony. We must oppose war and work for the least damaging end of empire.

Indeed, if the US becomes a cooperative member of the global community, rather than being a dominator, it would be a positive transition. Imagine how much better it would be for everyone in the world if the U.S. collaborated on addressing the climate crisis in a serious way, obeyed international law and invested in positive programs to solve the many crises we face at home and abroad.

During the Baltimore conference, World Beyond War sponsored a billboard nearby that read, “3% of U.S. military spending could end starvation on earth.” Imagine what a peace budget could look like. The U.S. could invest in domestic necessities including rebuilding infrastructure, a cleaner and safer public transportation system, education, housing and health care. The U.S. could provide aid to other countries to repair the damage it has caused. Members of the U.S. military could transition into a civilian jobs program that applies their expertise to programs of social uplift.

It is imperative that as the U.S. Empire falls, we organize for a smooth transition to a world that is better for everyone. The work of the new coalition to end U.S. foreign military bases is a strong start.

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Kevin Zeese is an American political activist who has been a leader in the drug policy reform and peace movements and in efforts to ensure a voter verified paper audit trail.

Margaret Flowers, M.D., is a Maryland pediatrician seeking the Green Party nomination for the US Senate. She is co-director of PopularResistance.org and a board adviser to Physicians for a National Health Program and is on the Leadership Council of the Maryland Health Care Is a Human Right campaign.