As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I Continues -The Anti-War Resistance Builds –The Russian Revolution Breaks The Logjam

As The 100^th Anniversary Of World War I Continues -The Anti-War Resistance Builds –The Russian Revolution Breaks The Logjam    

The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an epic adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European and in some cases colonial youth from all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts (as foretold by the blood-letting in the American Civil War and the various “small” wars in Asia, Africa, and, uh, Europe in the mid to late 19^th century once war production on a mass scale followed in the train of other less lethal forms of  industrial production).

Also trampled underfoot in the opposing trenches, or rather thrown in the nearest trash bin of the their respective parliamentary buildings were the supposedly eternal pledges against war in defense of one’s own capitalist-imperialist  nation-state against the working masses and their allies of other countries by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations (Anarchists, Syndicalists and their various off-shoots)representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20^th century history. All those beautifully written statements and resolutions that clogged up the international conferences with feelings of solidarity were some much ill-fated wind once bullet one came out of gun one.

Other than isolated groups and individuals, mostly like Lenin and Trotsky in exile or jail, and mostly in the weaker lesser capitalistically developed countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove their manhood. (When the first international conference of anti-war socialists occurred in Switzerland in 1915, the famous Zimmerwald conference, one wag pointed out that they could all fit in one tram [bus].) Almost all parties assuming that the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everyone could go back to the eternal expressions of international working-class solidarity after the smoke had settled (and the simple white-crossed graves dug in the vast bone-crushed cemeteries that marked the nearby battle fields too numerous to mention). You see, and the logic is beautiful on this one, that big mail-drop of a Socialist International, was built for peace-time but once the cannons roared then the “big tent” needed to be folded for the duration. Jesus.  

Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the first months of the second year of the war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in the hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long because “Long Live The Communist International,”  a new revolutionary international, would become the slogan and later order of the day in the not distant future), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19^th century (including forbears Marx and Engels), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turned to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.  

Lenin also has a "peace" plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. (That by Christmas peace “scare” turned out to be a minute “truce” from below by English and German soldiers hungry for the old certainties banning the barbed wire and stinking trenches for a short reprieve in the trench fronts in France and played soccer before returning to drawn guns-a story made into song and which is today used as an example of what the lower ranks could do-if they would only turn the guns around. Damn those English and German soldiers never did turn the damn things around until too late and with not enough resolve and the whole world has suffered from that lack of resolve ever since.)

Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole trenches of Europe were already churning away in the first year as a death trap for the flower of the European youth.   

The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 20^th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.

The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.

A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s  prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries and not just them), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America “Big Bill” Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “Club Fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell),  were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.

Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. Even my old anti-war amigo from my hometown who after I got out of the American Army during the Vietnam War marched with me in countless rallies and parades trying to stop the madness got caught in the bogus information madness and supported Bush’s “paper war” although not paper for the benighted Iraqi masses ever since (and plenty of other “wise” heads from our generation of ’68 made that sea-change turn with him).

At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. “Be ready to fight” the operative words.

So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.                  

Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100^th anniversary of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.    

Leon Trotsky

At Brest-Litovsk

(May 1918)

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Delivered: May 1918
First Printing: 1920; by Louis Fraina
Source: TIA version based on What Is A Peace Programme?, pp.32-38, Lanka Samasamaja Publications, Colombo, Ceylon, June 1956. No copyright.
Originally reproduced from pp.348-354 of Louis C. Fraina’s The Proletarian Revolution in Russia.
Translation: Unkown.
Transcription/Mark-up for TIA: A. Lehrer/David Walters.

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TIA Editor’s Note:

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was negotiated with the Central Powers by Bolshevik War Commissar Leon Trotsky. The Treaty, which saw Russia withdraw from the war, was concluded on terms that were very unfavorable to the Bolshevik government which agreed to cede what are now Poland, the Baltic states and Belarus to Germany and Austria-Hungary and certain southern territories to the Ottoman Empire. Russia also agreed to recognize the independence of Finland and Ukraine. In this speech, Trotsky explains the need for Russia to withdraw from the war, the negotiations that led to the treaty and Bolshevik perspectives following its implementation.

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The Soviet Government of Russia must now not only build anew, but it must also close up the old accounts and up to a certain and rather high degree, pay the old debts: first, those of the war which has lasted three and a half years. This war furnished the touchstone of the economic strength of the warring countries. The fate of Russia, a poor and backward country, was, in a war of long duration, a foregone conclusion. In the mighty collisions of war apparatus the decision lay, in the last analysis, in the capacity of the country to adapt its industries to the needs of war, to transform the same in the shortest possible time and replace, in ever growing volume, engines of destruction that were used up with such rapidity in the course of this general butchery. Every country or almost every country, even the most backward, could at beginning of the war be in possession of the mightiest engines of destruction – or could import them. That was the case with all backward countries; even so in Russia. But war eats up quickly its dead capital and requires constant renewal. The war capacity of each and every country drawn into this world massacre could in truth be measured by its capacity to create anew and during the war cannons, projectiles and other war material.

Had the war solved the problem of the relative relation of forces in a very short time, then it would have been possible, theoretically at least, for Russia to maintain behind the trenches the position that might have meant victory. But the war dragged on too long. And that was not due to accident. The fact that international diplomacy had for the last fifty years worked in the direction of creating a so-called European ‘balance of power’, that is to say, a condition wherein the opposing forces were to be about evenly balanced, that fact alone – considered in the light of the power and wealth possessed by the modern bourgeois nations – would give the war a long-drawn-out character. And that, on the other hand, meant the exhaustion of such countries as were weaker, and, in an economic sense, less developed.
The strongest, in a military sense, proved to be Germany, due to the power of its industries and due also to the modest rational character of these industries side by side with a time-worn, anachronistic political system. It was shown that France, largely because of its petty bourgeois economy, had fallen behind Germany, and even so powerful a colonial empire as England, because of the more conservative and routine character of its industries, proved to be weaker in comparison with Germany. When history placed the Russian Revolution face to face with the question of negotiating peace we were not in doubt that we would have to settle the bill for the three and a half years of war – unless the power of the international revolutionary proletariat should decisively upset all calculations. We did not doubt that in German Imperialism we had to deal with an opponent thoroughly saturated with the consciousness of his colonial power, a power which in the course of this war, has come so plainly to the fore.
All those arguments of bourgeois cliques, to the effect that we would have been much stronger had we concluded the negotiations together with our allies for an indefinite time we should, above all things, have been able to continue the war in conjunction with them; but, as our country was weakened and exhausted, it was the continuation, not the termination of the war, that would have further weakened and exhausted it. And thus we would have been forced to quit sooner or later under conditions still more unfavourable to us. If, therefore, we stand today a weakened country, face to face with world imperialism, we surely have not been weakened because we have torn ourselves out of the fiery ring of war and out of the embrace of international war obligations – no, we have been weakened by the policies of Czarism and of the bourgeois classes, those policies which we have fought as a revolutionary party – before the war and during the war.
Do you remember, comrades, under what circumstances our delegation went direct from a session of the Third All-Russian Soviet Congress to Brest-Litovsk? At that time we rendered to you a report as to the state of negotiations and the demands of the enemy. These demands, as you will recollect, ran along the line of masked, or rather half-masked annexationist desires, an annexation of Lithuania, Courland, a part of Livonia, the islands of the Moon Sound, as well as a half-veiled contribution which, at that time, we estimated at from 6 to 8 and even 10 billion rubles. During a pause in the negotiations, which lasted about ten days, there developed in Austria a tremendous ferment and labour strikes broke forth. These strikes signified the first recognition of our method of conducting the peace negotiations, the first recognition we received from the proletariat of the central powers about the annexationist demands of German militarism. As against that, how silly appear the claims of the bourgeois press that we had required two months to negotiate with Kuhlmann in order to find out that German Imperialism was imposing robber conditions. No, we knew that from the very start. By means of the “pourparlers” with the representatives of German Imperialism, we endeavoured to find a means to strengthen those forces that oppose German Imperialism. We did not promise to perform miracles but we claimed that the road we were following was the only road left to a revolutionary democracy to secure for itself the possibility of future development.
Complaint might be made that the proletariat of other countries, more especially that of the Central Powers, moved too slowly along the road of the revolutionary struggle – true enough. The tempo of its development must be considered altogether too slow – but, nevertheless, in Austria-Hungary a movement began that spread over the entire country and which was a different echo of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.
When I left here, we were saying that we had no reason to suppose that this strike wave would wash away the militarism of Austria and Germany. Had we been so convinced we would, of course, gladly have made the promise that certain persons expected we should make, namely, that under no circumstances would we make a separate peace with Germany. I said then that we could not make such a promise. That would have meant to assume the task of overcoming German militarism. We do not possess the secret of accomplishing such a victory. And since we could not obligate ourselves to change in a short time the relative position of international forces, we declared, openly and honestly, that a revolutionary government may under certain conditions be compelled to accept the annexationist peace. The decline of such a government would have to begin at the moment it would try to hide before its own people the predatory character of such a peace – not because it might be compelled, in the course of such a struggle, to accept such a peace.
At the same time, we pointed out that we were going to Brest-Litovsk for the continuance of the peace negotiations under conditions which were becoming better for ourselves but worse for our enemies. We observed the movement in Austria-Hungary and there was much to indicate – for that is what the Social Democratic deputies in the Reichstag had reference to – that Germany too was on the eve of such events. Filled with this hope, we departed. And even during the first days of our nest stay at Brest, a radiogram via Vilna brought us the first news that in Berlin a tremendous strike movement had broken out, which, just as that of Austria-Hungary, was directly connected with the conduct of the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. But, as is often the case in accordance with the dialectics of the class struggle, the very dimensions of this proletarian movement – never seen in Germany before – compelled a closing of the ranks of the propertied classes and forced them to ever greater implacability. The German ruling class is saturated with a sufficiently strong instinct of self-preservation to realize clearly that any concessions made under the conditions it found itself in and pressed by the masses of its own people – that any, even partial, concessions would spell capitulation to the spirit of the revolution. And it was for this reason that Kuhlmann, during the first period of uncertainty, purposely delayed negotiations, either by not holding any sessions at all or by wasting time, when they were held, with purely secondary and formal questions. But as soon as the strike was liquidated, when he knew that his masters were no longer in danger of their lives, he again assumed the tone of complete self-possession and redoubled aggressiveness.
Our negotiations were complicated by the participation of the Kiev Rada. [1] We did not report this last time. The delegation of the Kiev Rada appeared at the moment when the Rada did not have in the Ukraine a fairly strong organization and when the outcome of the struggle could not yet be foretold. At this very movement we made to the Rada an official proposition to enter with us into an agreement and, as the foremost condition of such an agreement, we stipulated: that this Rada declare Kaledin and Kornilov counter-revolutionists and that it should not hinder us in fighting both. The delegation of the Kiev Rada arrived at Brest at a time when we hoped to attain our agreement with them and with the enemy. We declared to them that, so long as they were recognized by the people of the Ukraine, we regarded it as possible to admit them as independent participants in the negotiations. But the more events developed in Russia and the Ukraine, the more the antagonism between the people of the Ukraine and the Rada became manifest, all the greater issues became the willingness of the Rada to close with the Governments of the Central Powers the first Brest treaty of peace, and if need be, to enlist the services of German militarism for purposes of intervention to the internal affairs of the Russian Republic in order to sustain the Rada against the Russian Revolution.
On February 9, we learned that the negotiations carried on behind our backs between the Rada and the Central Powers had led to the signing of a peace treaty. February 9 is the birthday of King Leopold of Bavaria and, as is customary in monarchial countries, the consummation of the solemn, historic act – whether with the consent of the Kiev Rada, I do not know – had been set for that day. General Hoffmann fired the salute in honour of Leopold of Bavaria – after he had asked the consent of the Kiev delegation, because, after the signing of the Peace Treaty, Brest-Litovsk passed over to the Ukraine. Events, however, took such a course that when General Hoffmann asked the Kiev Rada’s permission to fire the salute, the Rada, granting them Brest-Litovsk, did not have much more of a territory left. Upon the strength of dispatches received from Petrograd, we informed the delegations of the Central Powers, officially, that the Kiev Rada no longer existed – a circumstance not without serious bearing upon the further course of peace negotiations.
We proposed to Count Czernin that he send representatives to the Ukraine, accompanied by our officers, so as to convince himself whether the “party of the second part” – the Kiev Rada – did or did not exist. It looked as though Czernin was willing to acquiesce: but when we submitted to him the question: does this mean that the treaty with the Kiev delegation will not be signed until your representatives return? – he was overcome by doubt and offered to inquire of Kuhlmann. After such inquiry he transmitted to us a negative answer. That was on February 8 – on February 9 they had to have a signed treaty: that permitted no delay. Not only because of the birthday of King Leopold of Bavaria but for a much weightier reason which Kuhlmann had doubtlessly made clear to Czernin: “If we now send our representatives to the Ukraine, they may find, indeed, that the Rada no longer exists, in which case we would have to deal with an All-Russian delegation and that would make worse our chances in the negotiations.” The Austrian delegation told us: “Abandon the position of pure principle, put the question on a practicable basis and then the German delegation will be reasonable ... It is not possible for Germany to continue the war for the sake of the Moon Sound Islands if you present your demand in concrete form.
We answered: “Very well, we are willing to test the conciliatoriness of your colleagues of the German delegation. Thus far we have negotiated about the right of self-determination of the Lithuanians, Poles, Livonians, Letts, Estonians and others, and we ascertained that with all these there was no room for self-determination. Now we want to see what is your attitude towards the self-determination of still another people, that of Russia, and what are your intentions and plans of military-strategic character hidden behind your occupation of the Moon Sound Islands. For the Moon Sound Islands, as part of the independent Estonian republic or as the property of the federated Russian Republic, have a defensive importance. In the hands of Germany, however, they assume an offensive value and will menace the very life centre of our country and, more especially, of Petrograd.” But General Hoffmann was unwilling to make the slightest concession.
Then came the hour of decision. We could not declare war. We were too weak. The army had lost internal cohesion. For the salvation of our country and in order to overcome the process of disintegration, we were forced to re-establish the inner connection of the working-masses. This psychological bond can be created by way of common productive effort in the fields, in the factories, and in the workshops. We must bring the working masses, so long subjected to the terrible sufferings and catastrophe trials of the war, back to their acres and factories where they can again find themselves in their labour and enable us to build up internal discipline. This is the only way out for a country that must now do penance for the sins of Czarism and of the bourgeoisie. We are forced to give up this war and to lead the army out of this slaughter. But we do declare at the same time and in the face of German militarism: the peace you have forced upon us is a peace of force and robbery. We shall not permit that you, diplomatic gentlemen, can say to the German workers: “You have called our demands conquests and annexations, but see: we bring to you, under these same demands, the signature of the Russian Revolution!” – Yes, we are weak; we can not now conduct a war, but we possess sufficient revolutionary force to prove that we shall not, voluntarily, place our signatures under a treaty that you write with your sword upon the bodies of living people. We refused our signatures! – I believe, comrades, that we acted rightly.
Comrades! I shall not claim that an attack upon us by Germany is impossible – such an assertion would be too risky if we visualize the power of the imperialist party in Germany. I believe, however, that the position we have taken in this question has made attack more difficult for German militarism. But if Germany does attack nevertheless? As regards that, all we can say is this: If in our country, exhausted and in desperate condition that we are, it is possible to spur the courage of the revolutionary and vital elements, if with us the struggle for the protection of our Revolution and of the arena of the Revolution is possible – then it is so only because of the situation that has now been created, possible as the result of our exit form the war and our refusal to sign the treaty of peace.

Note

1. Ukrainian Parliament, then held by the bourgeoisie. – Ed. 

In Boston May 8th -Fight For $15 And Paid Family Medical Leave-Fight As If Your Life Depended On It !

In Boston May 8th -Fight For $15 And Paid Family Medical Leave-Fight As If Your Life Depended On It !

An Encore-Yes, You Had Better Shake, Rattle And Roll That Thing-With Big Joe Turner In Mind

An Encore-Yes, You Had Better Shake, Rattle And Roll That Thing-With Big Joe Turner In Mind 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

In the old days, the old days when the songs were just starting to be weaned off of the old time religion gospel high heaven savior thing you know to testify, to consider yourself "saved" and had come down in the mud of speaking of hard, hard drinking, hard lovin’ maybe with your best gal's friend if it came right down to the core, maybe flipping the bird on you and running around all flouncy with your best friend, maybe some hard-hearted "do this do that" woman on your mind, yeah, the old birth of  the blues days, the blue being nothing but a good woman or man on your mind anyway, around the turn of the 20^th century and you can check this out if you want to and not take my word for it a black guy, a rascally black guy of no known home, a drifter, maybe a hobo for all I know, and who knows what else named Joe Turner held forth among the folk. Old Joe would come around the share-cropper down South neighborhoods and steal whatever was not nailed down, including your woman, which depending on how you were feeling might be a blessing and if you in a spooning mod might be a curse on that bastard's head. Then Joe Turner would leave and move on to the next settlement and go about his plundering ways. Oh sure like lots of blues and old country music as it got passed on in the oral traditions there were as many versions of the saga as there were singers everybody adding their own touch. But it was always old Joe Turner doing the sinning and scratching for whatever he could scratch for. 

But for the most part the story line about old ne’er-do-well Joe Turner rang very similar over time. So Joe Turner got his grizzly self put into song out in the Saturday juke joints out in places like the Mississippi Delta where more legends were formed than you could shake a stick, got sanctified once old  Willie’s liquor, white lightning home-made liquor got to working, and some guy, maybe not the best singer if you asked around but a guy who could put words together to tell a story, a blues story, and that guy with a scratch guitar would put some verses together and the crowd would egg him on. Make the tale taller as the night went until everybody petered out and that song was left for the next guy to embellish.

By most accounts old Joe was bad man, a very bad man, bad mojo man, bad medicine as the folk call what ails but can't be fixed just short of as bad as Mister’s plantation foremen where those juke joint listeners worked sunup to sundown six days a week or just short as bad as the enforcers of Mister James Crow’s go here, not there, do this not that, move here not there laws seven days a week. Yeah, Joe was bad alright once he got his wanting habits on, although I have heard at least one recording from the Lomaxes who went all over the South in the 1930s and 1940s trying to record everything they could out in the back country where Joe Turner was something like a combination Santa Claus and Robin Hood. Hell, maybe he was and some guy who lost his woman to wily Joe just got sore and bad mouthed him. Passed that bad mouth on and the next guy who lost his woman to somebody pinned on Joe, Joe Turner, yeah it was that old rascal that did her in. Stranger things have happened.

In any case the Joe Turner, make that Big Joe, Turner I want to mention here as far as I know only stole the show when he got up on the bandstand and played the role of “godfather” of rock and roll. Yeah, that is what I want to talk about, about how one song, and specifically the place of Big Joe and one song, Shake Rattle and Roll in the rock pantheon. No question Big Joe and his snapping beat has a place in the history of rhythm and blues which is one of the musical forbear strands of rock and roll. The question is whether Shake is also the first serious effort to define rock and roll. If you look at the YouTube version of Big Joe be-bopping away with his guitar player doing some flinty stuff and that sax player searching for that high white note and Big Joe snapping away being  very suggestive about who should shake and what she should shake you can make a very strong case for that place. Add in that Bill Haley, Jerry Lee, and Elvis among others in the rock pantheon covered the song successfully and that would seem to clinch the matter.      

In 2004, the fiftieth anniversary of the debut of Shake by Big Joe, there had been considerable talk and writing again as there is on such occasions by some knowledgeable rock critics about whether Shake was the foundational song of rock. That controversy brought back to my mind the arguments that me and my corner boys who hung out in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver, a town about thirty miles south of Boston, had on some nothing better to do Friday nights during high school (meaning girl-less, dough-less or both nights). I was the primary guy who argued for Big Joe and Shake giving that be-bop guitar and that wailing sexy sax work as my reasoning while Jimmy Jenkins swore that Ike Turner’s frantic piano-driven and screeching sax Rocket 88 (done under an alias of the Delta Cats apparently for contract reasons a not uncommon practice when something good came up but you would not have been able to do it under the label you were contracted to) was the be-bop beginning and Sam Lowell, odd-ball Sam Lowell dug deep into his record collection, really his parents' record collection which was filled mainly with folk music and the blues edge played off that to find Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall. And the other corner boys like our leader Frankie Riley lined up accordingly (nobody else came up with any others so it was those three).

Funny thing Frankie and most everybody else except I think Fritz Taylor who sided with Jimmy Jenkins sided with me and Big Joe. The funny part being that several years ago with the advent of YouTube I started to listen to the old stuff as it became available on-line and now I firmly believe that Ike’s Rocket 88 beats out Shake for the honor of the be-bop daddy of rock and roll. As for the old time Joe Turner, done come and gone, well, he will have to wait in line like the rest of us. What do you think of that?

In Honor Of International Workers’ Day- May Day 2018 -Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People?-Frank Jackman’s War-Take Two

In Honor Of International Workers’ Day- May Day 2018 -Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People?-Frank Jackman’s War-Take Two 

From The American Left History Blog Archives –May Day 1971

Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all I know, every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums, aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let- her-rip cosmic brakeman Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some Iowa/Kansas wheat field night fantasy this trip.

No this trip was not about securing some cultural enclave in post-war America (post-World War II so as not to confuse the reader) in break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute, absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we, I, am ready. On that dusty road ready.

More. See all roads head south as we, my girlfriend of the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or dream wish and my sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted, okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your “type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some forlorn rear view mirror.

Yah, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more, too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down to D.C. for what many of us figure will be the last, finally, push back against the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching television and the news, but THEY, and you knew (know) who they were (are), had their antennae out too, they KNEW we were coming, even high-ball fixed (or whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style (and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad as Ct, nothing except Arizona is). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy (remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance sometime).

The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe, better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, thought about it later in lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really, and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms this jailbird was ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day 1971.

And not just any massed presence like the then familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention too anymore except the organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter, would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat. Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody mentioned them out loud in my presence and I was at every meeting, high or low. Moreover I had my ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. I, rightly or wrongly, silly me thought “cop.”

So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment around DuPont Circle (I think) but it may have been further up off 14th Street, Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys from old revolutions and so, well, discounted to early rise (or early stay up cigarette chain-smoking and coffee slurping to keep the juices flowing). Out into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded, coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere, bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam, naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum, beat, beat like gongs, defeated.

Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all, was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested, two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.

And, as I was being led away by one of D.C.’s finest, I turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with the strategy that day and I had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before, that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous sister, forgive me. (Not so anonymous actually since I saw her many times later in Boston, almost would have traded in lust for her but I was still painted Botticelli-bewitched and so I, we, let the moment passed, and worked on about six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later. I saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)

Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart road tramp acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, I was longing for the hot, dusty, truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.

********

Frank Jackman awoken from his light sleep with a start. Someone, a blurry figure, had placed a blanket, an Army blanket of all things, over him as he had sat dozing in front of the small campfire that was doing double-duty keeping the refugees in front of it warm. He shook himself awake, awake as anybody who had not slept in over twenty-four hours could be with only this cat nap to relief his sleepiness. He then began to think about the long chain of events that had brought him down to Washington in this late spring of 1971 after having been released from the Army stockade only a couple of  months before. Then he remembered the events he had begun to recount before he dozed off earlier. Let’s pick his story up from there.

No question one Private Francis Alan Jackman, US5034567859, with fresh orders for Fort Lewis, Washington in transit to RVN (Vietnam) was in a world of confusion in the summer of 1969. While he had not been a vociferous opponent of the war he had acquired definite views, had gotten “religion” on the subject, that he would not let himself be used as cannon fodder for a war that he deep-down opposed. Being a kid from a working-class neighborhood in his hometown of North Adamsville where guys, when called to military service kicking and screaming or not, went. So Frank had no model for oppositional behavior. In a panic he had heard from some source that he had now forgotten that the Quakers over in Cambridge had information and services for those who were opposed to the war (or rather in the case, all wars).He knew the Quakers but also knew that he was not one of them having been brought up a Roman Catholic with its ill-defined “just war theory,” meaning in practice supporting whatever war the state was up to, at least that was what he had constantly heard from the pulpit and on the street.        

      

After some counselling of his options, including a veiled option to go AWOL (absent without leave) for a period in order to be dropped from the rolls out in Fort Lewis, Frank ran through what he would wind up doing. And he pretty much kept to the Quaker- offered script for the first part of his odyssey. He found himself AWOL for a long enough period to have been dropped from the rolls (he was in communication with a Replacement Company clerk out there) so that when he turned himself in that he was able to go to nearby Fort Devens for any future action. He went through the formal military conscientious objector application finally being turned down for the very simple reason that according to military standards an applicant must come from a religious background that held all wars immoral and not just some unjust. He was thus place back in line to be reassigned to Fort Lewis for transit to Vietnam.

One of the other options presented to Frank was to seek legal redress through the federal courts once his CO application was turned down as he and the military counsellors in Cambridge assumed would happen.

This track involved seeking a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court of Massachusetts on the basis that the military’s decision in his case was arbitrary and capricious in light of a civilian CO case (the Welch decision) where the Supreme Court ruled that other ethical and non-traditional anti-war religious expressions could be considered by the authorities. One day soon after his rejection he went Cambridge to seek that option by hiring a “movement”-friendly lawyer who knew the ins and outs of this procedure. An option exercised that saved his life as it turned out since a judge in Boston agreed to hear the case and placed a restraining order on the military authorities at Fort Devens from moving him from the jurisdiction of the court. Since he had become something of an on base rabble-rouser the military authorities had tried to hustle him off base under guard. The restraining order arrived in just a nick of time (about two hours before they were closing in to round him up he had heard later from a friendly clerk in the Provost Marshall’s office.)

With the fire beginning to blaze brightly against the coming dark of night Frank, hungry from not having eaten for a several hours and tired of thinking about all those legal steps he had taken that would only interest a legal aficionado, went looking for something to eat…  

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Chapel Of Love In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Chapel Of Love In Mind

A YouTube film clip of the Dixie Cups performing their 1960s classic (who brought the house down with this number about 15 or 20 years ago at the Newport Folk festival of all places to show an example of a song with staying power Chapel Of Love

By Allan Jackson

[I don’t know if this burst of energy, of political energy among the younger set around the issues of gun violence and sexual harassment in America and those similarly situation in ignitable France where they are looking for some say in their academic and social lives very similar to the May days in 1968 will herald a searching for a “newer world” as we called it back in the 1960s but I like the chances. A chance once again to “turn the world upside down”-and make it stick this time-make the night-takers go to ground-finally. I don’t know if there is some kid, some kids down in Parkland, Florida, Kansas City, Missouri, Ann Arbor, Michigan, who will live and breathe the fresh air coming, will drag the rest of their generation along but in our time, the time of the Generation of ’68 which takes its name from the massive events including those Paris days that person had a name. The late Peter Paul Markin who could not go the distance but set the spark, the prairie fire he called it one time after his hero revolutionary abolitionist John Brown out in bloody, bleeding Kansas back before the start of the American Civil War.

Markin, forever known as Scribe for his habit of carrying a small pocket-sized notebook and pencil to write down the two million facts that would come into his head was unique in our growing town of the Acre section of North Adamsville because he was literally the only one in our crowd, our corner boy crowd, who saw in any outline what was coming down the road. We used to laugh at him for years every time he would start his harangue and we would have to cut him short or else he would suffer serious bodily harm from those corner boys who didn’t want to hear such bullshit, wanted to worry about girls, dates, cars, dough and real teenage stuff. Went on and on until 1967 when during the Summer of Love all of us who were still standing (we had lost a couple of guys to bloody Vietnam by then) we all became true believers and those who lasted, outlasted poor bedraggled prophet Scribe, pretty much stayed the course as tough as it got as the years passed by.

The sketch below speaks directly to what Scribe was getting at, how kids, a few at first then by the gallons, started shedding their old skins and started to try to change the world. Of course that change had to be filtered through a change of musical appreciations as well as the other stuff and like that other stuff the change in musical appreciations was sometimes behind what was in people’s heads, what they wanted to hear. The case of the three composite subjects below, based on real young people who did head toward the danger, who did head south when the clarion call came for whites to support the black civil rights struggle down there can stand in for the mood of times. The mood Scribe and others like him helped create.   

****

There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities that he would rather not forget, things that defined his life, gave him that fifteen minutes of fame, if only to himself and his, that everybody kept talking about that everyone deserved before they departed this life. That is what got him thinking one sunny afternoon in September about five years ago as he waited for the seasons to turn almost before his eyes about the times around 1964, around the time that he graduated from North Adamsville High School, around the time that he realized that the big breeze jail-break that he had kind of been waiting for was about to bust out over the land, over America. It was not like he was some kind of soothsayer, could read tea leaves or tarot cards like some latter day Madame La Rue who actually did read his future once down at the Gloversville Fair, read that he was made for big events anything like that back then. No way although that tarot reading when he was twelve left an impression for a while.

Edward’s take on the musical twists and turns back then is where he had something the kids at North Adamsville High would comment on, would ask him about to see which way the winds were blowing, would put their nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukeboxes to hear. See his senses were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll in the early 1960s where he sensed what he called silly “bubble gum” music that had passed for rock (and which the girls liked, or liked the look of the guys singing the tunes) was going to be buried under an avalanche of sounds going back to Elvis and forward to something else, something with more guitars all amped to bring in the new dispensation. 

More importantly since the issue of jailbreaks and sea changes were in the air he was the very first kid to grasp what would later be called the folk minute of the early 1960s (which when the tunes, not Dylan and Baez at first but guys like the Kingston Trio started playing on the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner after school some other girls, not the “bubble gum” girls went crazy over). So that musical sense combined with his ever present sense that things could be better in this wicked old world drilled into him by his kindly old grandmother who was an old devotee of the Catholic Worker movement kind of drove his aspirations. But at first it really was the music that had been the cutting edge of what followed later, followed until about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land.

That fascination with music had occupied Edward’s mind since he had been about ten and had received a transistor radio for his birthday and out of curiosity decided to turn the dial to AM radio channels other that WJDA which his parents, may they rest in peace, certainly rest in peace from his incessant clamoring for rock and roll records and later folk albums, concert tickets, radio listening time on the big family radio in the living room, had on constantly and which drove him crazy. Drove him crazy because that music, well, frankly that music, the music of the Doris Days, the Peggy Lees, The Rosemary Clooneys, the various corny sister acts like the Andrews Sisters, the Frank Sinatras, the Vaughn Monroes, the Dick Haynes and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise, no, in order to end the family civil war, they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.

One night, one late night in 1955, 1956 when Edward was fiddling with the dial he heard this sound out of Cleveland, Ohio, a little fuzzy but audible playing this be-bop sound, not jazz although it had horns, not rhythm and blues although sort of, but a new beat driven by some wild guitar by a guy named Warren Smith who was singing about his Ruby, his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby who only was available apparently to dance the night away. And she didn’t seem to care whether she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Edward Rowley, something he could not quite articulate then call her woman, call her Ruby and you will not be far off. And so with that as a pedigree Edward became one of the town’s most knowledgeable devotees of the new sound. Problem was that new sound, as happens frequently in music, got a little stale as time went on, as the original artists who captured his imagination faded from view one way or another and new guys, guys with nice Bobby this and Bobby that names, Patsy this and Brenda that names sang songs under the umbrella name rock and roll that his mother could love. Songs that could have easily fit into that WJDA box that his parents had been stuck in since about World War II.

So Edward was anxious for a new sound to go along with his feeling tired of the same old, same old stuff that had been hanging around in the American night since the damn nuclear hot flashes red scare Cold War started way before he had a clue about what that was all about. It had started with the music and then he got caught later in high school up with a guy in school, Daryl Wallace, a hipster, or that is what he called himself, a guy who liked “kicks” although being in high school in North Adamsville far from New York City, far from San Francisco, damn, far from Boston what those “kicks” were or what he or Eddie would do about getting those “kicks” never was made clear. But they played it out in a hokey way and for a while they were the town, really high school, “beatniks.”  So Eddie had had his short faux “beat” phase complete with flannel shirts, black chino pants, sunglasses, and a black beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home in his bedroom closet once he found out after his parents had seen and heard Jack Kerouac reading from the last page of On The Road on the Steve Allen Show that they severely disapproved on the man, the movement and anything that smacked of the “beat” and a beret always associated with French bohemians and foreignness would have had them seeing “red”). And for a while Daryl and Eddie played that out until Daryl moved away (at least that was the story that went around but there was a persistent rumor for a time that Mr. Wallace had dragooned Daryl into some military school in California in any case that disappearance from the town was the last he ever heard from his “beat” brother). Then came 1964 and  Eddie was fervently waiting for something to happen, for something to come out of the emptiness that he was feeling just as things started moving again with the emergence of the Beatles and the Stones as a harbinger of what was coming. 

That is where Eddie had been psychologically when his mother first began to harass him about his hair. Although the hair thing like the beret was just the symbol of clash that Eddie knew was coming and knew also that now that he was older that he was going to be able to handle differently that when he was a kid.  Here is what one episode of the battle sounded like:                   

“Isn’t that hair of yours a little long Mr. Edward Rowley, Junior,” clucked Mrs. Edward Rowley, Senior, “You had better get it cut before your father gets back from his conference trip, if you know what is good for you.” That mothers’-song was being endlessly repeated in North Adamsville households (and not just those households either but in places like North Adamsville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where guys were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing hair a little longer than boys’ regular was the flash point) ever since the British invasion had brought longer hair into style (and a little less so, beards, that was later when guys got old enough to grow one without looking wispy, had taken a look at what their Victorian great-grandfathers grew and though it was “cool.” Cool along with new mishmash clothing and new age monikers to be called by.).

Of course when one was thinking about the British invasion in the year 1964 one was not thinking about the American Revolution or the War of 1812 but the Beatles. And while their music has taken 1964 teen world by a storm, a welcome storm after the long mainly musical counter-revolution since Elvis, Bo, Jerry Lee and Chuck ruled the rock night and had disappeared without a trace, the 1964 parent world was getting up in arms.

And not just about hair styles either. But about midnight trips on the clanking subway to Harvard Square coffeehouses to hear, to hear if you can believe this, folk music, mountain music, harp music or whatever performed by long-haired (male or female), long-bearded (male), blue jean–wearing (both), sandal-wearing (both), well, for lack of a better name “beatniks” (parents, as usual, being well behind the curve on teen cultural movements since by 1964 “beat”  except on silly television shows and “wise” social commentary who could have been “Ike” brothers and sisters, was yesterday’s news).

Mrs. Rowley would constantly harp about “why couldn’t Eddie be like he was when he listened to Bobby Vinton and his Mr. Lonely or that lovely-voiced Roy Orbison and his It’s Over and other nice songs on the local teen radio station, WMEX (he hated that name Eddie by the way, Eddie was also what everybody called his father so you can figure out why he hated the moniker just then). Now it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a cranky-voiced guy named Bob Dylan that has his attention. And that damn Judy Jackson with her short skirt and her, well her… looks” (Mrs. Rowley like every mother in the post-Pill world refusing to use the “s” word, a throw-back to their girlish days when their mothers did not use such a word.)     

Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up anyway, she let out what was really bothering her about her Eddie’s behavior, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And you and that damn Peter Dawson, who used to be so nice when all you boys hung around together at Jimmy Jacks’ Diner [Edward: corner boys, Ma, that is what we were] and I at least knew you were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If your father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as you are. Worst though, worst that worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving North Adamsville, defenseless against the communists with your talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone and stuck with your idea of forming a band that would play nice songs that make kids feel good like Gale Garnet’s We’ll Sing In The Sunshine or that pretty Negro girl Dionne Warwick and Her Walk On By instead of getting everybody upset."

And since Mrs. Rowley, Alice, to the neighbors had mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Edward’s flame and according to Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talk, Judy’s talk they had “done the deed” and you can figure out what the deed was let’s hear what was going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Edward was wearing his hair longer was because Judy thought it was “sexy” and so that talk of doing the deed may well have been true if there were any sceptics. Hear this:      

“Young lady, that dress is too short for you to wear in public, take it off, burn it for all I care, and put on another one or you are not going out of this house,” barked Mrs. James Jackson, echoing a sentiment that many worried North Adamsville mothers were feeling (and not just those mothers either but in places like Gloversville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where gals were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing their skirts a little longer than mid-calf was the flash point) about their daughters dressing too provocatively and practically telling the boys, well practically telling them you know what as she suppressed the “s” word that was forming in her head. She too working up a high horse head of steam continued, "And that Eddie [“Edward, Ma,” Judy keep repeating every time Mrs. Jackson, Dorothy to the neighbors, said Eddie], and his new found friends like Peter Dawson taking you to those strange coffeehouses in Harvard Square with all the unwashed, untamed, unemployed “beatniks” instead of the high school dances on Saturday night. And that endless talk about the n-----s down South, about get books for the ignorant to read and other trash talk about how they are equal to us, and your father better not hear you talk like that, not at the dinner table since has to work around them and their smells and ignorance over in that factory in Dorchester.  And don’t start with that Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch of them and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."

Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Dawson were sitting in the Club Nana in Harvard Square sipping coffee, maybe pecking at the one brownie between, and listening to a local wanna-be folk singing strumming his stuff (who turned out to be none other than Eric Von Schmidt). Beside them cartons of books that they are sorting to be taken along with them when head South this summer after graduation exercises at North Adamsville High School are completed in June. (By the way Peter’s parents were only slightly less irate about their son’s activities and used the word “Negro” when they were referring to black people, black people they wished their son definitely not to get involved with were only slightly less behind the times than Mrs. Rowley and Mrs. Jackson and so requires no separate screed by Mrs. Dawson. See Peter did not mention word one about what he was, or was not, doing and thus spared himself the anguish that Edward and Judy put themselves through trying to “relate” to their parents, their mothers really since fathers were some vague threatened presence in the background in those households.)

They, trying to hold back their excitement have already been to some training sessions at the NAACP office over on Massachusetts Avenue in the Roxbury section of Boston and have purchased their tickets for the Greyhound bus as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet others who will be heading south on a chartered bus. But get this Pete turned to Edward and said, “Have you heard that song, Popsicles and Icicles by the Mermaids, it has got great melodic sense.” Yes, we are still just before the sea change after which even Peter will chuckle about “bubble gum” music. Good luck though, young travelers, good luck.

In Honor Of International Workers’ Day- May Day 2018 -Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People?-Frank Jackman’s War-Take One

In Honor Of International Workers’ Day- May Day 2018 -Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People?-Frank Jackman’s War-Take One 

From The American Left History Blog Archives –May Day 1971

Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all I know, every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums, aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let- her-rip cosmic brakeman Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some Iowa/Kansas wheat field night fantasy this trip.

No this trip was not about securing some cultural enclave in post-war America (post-World War II so as not to confuse the reader) in break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute, absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we, I, am ready. On that dusty road ready.

More. See all roads head south as we, my girlfriend of the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or dream wish and my sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted, okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your “type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some forlorn rear view mirror.

Yah, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more, too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down to D.C. for what many of us figure will be the last, finally, push back against the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching television and the news, but THEY, and you knew (know) who they were (are), had their antennae out too, they KNEW we were coming, even high-ball fixed (or whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style (and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad as Ct, nothing except Arizona is). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy (remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance sometime).

The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe, better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, thought about it later in lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really, and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms this jailbird was ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day 1971.

And not just any massed presence like the then familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention too anymore except the organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter, would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat. Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody mentioned them out loud in my presence and I was at every meeting, high or low. Moreover I had my ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. I, rightly or wrongly, silly me thought “cop.”

So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment around DuPont Circle (I think) but it may have been further up off 14th Street, Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys from old revolutions and so, well, discounted to early rise (or early stay up cigarette chain-smoking and coffee slurping to keep the juices flowing). Out into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded, coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere, bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam, naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum, beat, beat like gongs, defeated.

Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all, was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested, two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.

And, as I was being led away by one of D.C.’s finest, I turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with the strategy that day and I had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before, that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous sister, forgive me. (Not so anonymous actually since I saw her many times later in Boston, almost would have traded in lust for her but I was still painted Botticelli-bewitched and so I, we, let the moment passed, and worked on about six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later. I saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)

Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart road tramp acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, I was longing for the hot, dusty, truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.

********

Frank Jackman wandered across the National Mall, the D.C. National Mall for those who have not been to that locale, the locale where the Washington Monument is, that early April 30^th 1971 evening trying to keep warm against the unseasonable late April chill that was pressing down on the day. Wandered and found a space, a spot, a closed in spot where several people had begun to start a small fire away from the din of the massive crowds who had earlier in the day filled the space with their singed yearnings for peace leaving a less massive crowd ready to battle on the next day, May Day, against the whole freaking government. Frank needed to figure out where he stood on that proposition, needed to figure out if he could take more jail time just then. 

And that was no academic question as Frank thought back to just a few months before when he had finally under judicial edict been released from the Fort Devens stockade as a military conscientious objector after almost a collective year in jail. And that was his dilemma doing more jail time, although he was not altogether sure of the effectiveness of the proposed action either. But just that chilled evening he was in a memory mood, a mood to flash back a little and reflect on his own previous small contribution to the struggle against the Vietnam War.

He thought first and foremost about what a fool he had been to even allow himself to be drafted in the Army in the first place. While he had not been particularly vocal about his opposition to the war having been, frankly, caught up more with the idea of wine, women and song as befit many a college student lying in wait on the campuses of this country in order to pray that the war would be over before he graduated and his healthy body number was called. In any case he was drafted by his friends and neighborhoods in North Adamsville (as they so quaintly put it on his draft notice) and he was inducted in January, 1969 (after the heavy military action by the North Vietnamese in TET 1968, and the heavy political action in America throughout that year ahd changed the war mood significantly).       

From about day three after he had been shipped to the replacement center (nice army term) at Fort Jackson down in South Carolina Frank realized that he had made a grievous mistake and should have refused induction, or something. That only became clearer as he trudged through basic training and then was given his MOS, his job, 11 Bravo, infantryman, grunt in the common parlance, cannon fodder as he would later describe it after he got wised up politically. What was clear from that designation was that he was going to be trained to be doing hard fighting, and just then that hard fighting was only being done en masse in the jungles of Vietnam. That infantry training by the way was done down in high rebellion country (American Civil War rebellion) at Fort McClellan in Alabama. Although he (and a few other Yankees) gave the command fits about possibly refusing to fire machine guns he held his own consul until he could get to friendly ground after he received his orders to proceed to Fort Lewis in Washington State for transport to Vietnam.

At that point Frank became a little tired of thinking since he had been up about twenty-four hours straight and so he nodded off for a bit…