From The Archives- The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- Out In The Seals Rock Inn Frisco Town Night –Take Two

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- Out In The Seals Rock Inn Frisco Town Night –Take Two 

Funny he, Adam Evans, thought, a little sweaty and overheated from the turned too high thermostat put on earlier to ward off the open- eyed chill of the room, as he laid in his toss and turn early morning Seals Rock Inn, San Francisco bed, the rain pouring down in buckets, literally buckets, at his unprotected door, the winds were howling against that same door, and the nearby sea was lashing up its fury, how many times the sea stormy night, the sea fury tempest day, the, well, the mighty storm anytime, had played a part in his life. He was under no circumstances, as he cleared his mind for a think back, a think back that was occupying his thoughts more and more of late, trying to work himself into a lather over some metaphorical essence between the storms that life had bestowed on him and the raging night storm within hearing distance. No way, too simple. Rather he was just joy searching for all those sea-driven times, times when a storm, a furious storm like this night or maybe just an average ordinary vanilla storm passing through and complete in an hour made him think of his relationship with his homeland the sea and with its time for reflection. And so on that toss and turn bed he thought.

Funny, although not humorously funny like his nymph tryst with Terry that he had just finish thinking about, or ironically funny like his bonding with the sea from birth that got him started on this think, but kind of sad sack funny how he and Diana had met, met in Harvard Square in the summer of love, 1967 (check it out on Wikipedia for the San Francisco version of that same year but basically, in both cases although more flagrantly in ’Frisco, it was the winds blowing the right way for once when make love not war, make something, make your dreams come true with sex, drugs, music had its minute, has its soon faded minute via self –imposed hubris and the death-dealing, fag-hating, nigger-hating, women-hating, self-hating bad guys with the guns and the dough leading, and still leading, a vicious counter-attack), she from Podunk Mid-West (Davenport out in the Iowas if you need to know) far from ocean waters, but thrilled by the prospect of meeting an ocean boy (okay, okay man, twenty- three, she twenty-one)who actually had been there, to the ocean that is.

Oh yah, how they met in that Harvard Square good night for the curious, simplicity itself (his version), she was sitting about half way across the room, the cafeteria room, the old Hayes-Bickford awful dish- water coffee out of necessarily sturdy ceramic mugs , runny eggs, steamy to perdition everything else room, although the food and its conditions was not why you hung out there, just up from the old Harvard Square subway stop (and no longer there, long gone and missed, nor is that subway stop the end of the Red Line), if that name helps (and it did , did help that is, if you had any pretensions to some folkie literary career, some be-bop blessed poet life, or just wanted to rub elbows with what might be the next big thing after that folk minute expired of a British invasion of sexed-up moppets and wet dream bad boys and poetry died of T.S. Eliot and rarified air, or, maybe just a two in the morning coffee, hard pressed sudsy coffee, but coffee, enough to keep a seat in the place, after a tough night at the local gin mills, and hadn’t caught anybody’s attention), sitting by herself, writing furiously, on some yellow notepad, and she looked up. He, just that moment looked up as well (although he had taken about six previous peeks in her direction but she ignored them, studiously ignored, with her furious pen), and smiled at her. And she gave him a whimsical, no a melt smile, a smile to think about eternities over, about maybe chasing some windmills about, about, about walking right over and asking about the meaning of, well, that smile. And he did, and she did, she told him that is. And in the telling, told him, that she had half seen (her version) him peeking and wondered about it.

All this peeking, half- peeking(her version, remember) , got him a seat at her table, and her a cup of awful coffee and a couple of hours, where are you from, what do you like, what is the meaning of existence and what the hell are you writing so furiously about at two o’clock on Sunday morning. And one thing led to another and eventually the sea came in, although, damn age against he couldn’t for the life of him remember how that subject came up, except maybe something triggered when she mentioned Iowa, and he said please don’t bury me there but near some seaside bluff, or something.

And what did she look like, for the male reader in need of such detail, especially since she was sitting alone writing furiously at two in the morning, maybe she was, ah, ah, a dog. Nah, she was kind of slender, but not skinny, slender in that fresh as sweet cream Midwestern corn-fed way that started to happen after the womenfolk, not prairie fire pioneer women any longer, had been properly fed for a couple of generations after those hard Okie/Arkie push on days of eating chalk dust and car smoke trailing dreams. With the long de riguer freshly- ironed (really, after the Joan Baez fashion or just some college girl fad) brown hair pulled back from her face (otherwise she would have constantly had to interrupt her furious writing to keep it out of her face as she wrote). And a pleasing face, bright blue eyes, good nose, and nice lips, kissable lips. Nice legs from what he could see when he went over. But who was he kidding, it was that whimsical, no, melt, smile, that smile that spoke of eternities, although what it spoke of at two in the morning was gentle breezes, soft pillows, of that Midwestern what you see is what you get and what you get, well, you better hang on, and hang on tight, and be ready to take some adversity, to keep around that smile. But that was later, later really, when he had figured it out better about why he tossed and turned all that night (really morning) and that smile thought would not let him be.

Memory bank of their first time up in ocean’s kingdom, the next day actually she was so anxious to see the ocean, or maybe anxious to see it with him, they talked about it being that way too but let’s just memory call it her anxiety, the rugged cross salvation rocks that make up Perkin’s Cove in southern Maine, up there by Ogunquit. There are stories to be told of his own previous meetings with Mother Perkin’s but this is Diana’ s story and those stories, his stories, involved other women, other treacheries, other immense treacheries, and other angel-sized delights too. That day thought she flipped out, flipped out at the immensity of it, of the majestic swells (and of her swaying, gently, but rhythmically to the rise and fall of each wave) of the closeness of a nature that she, she of wind- swept wheat oceans, of broken-back bracero wet back labor to bring in the crop, of fights against every form of land injury, dust, bugs, fire, drought had not dreamed of. And as if under some mystic spell, or some cornfield ocean mistake, she actually plunged fully-clothed (not having been told of the need for a swimsuit since the ocean itself was the play, the hugeness of it, the looking longingly back to primordial times of it, the reflection in the changings winds of it), in to the ocean at that spot where there is just enough room if the tide is right, just ebbing enough to create a sand bar to do so (today there is no problem getting down there as the Cove trustees have provided a helpful stairs, concrete-reinforced, against old time lumber steps breakaway and lost in some snarled sea) and promptly was almost carried out by a riptide. 

He saved her, saved her good that day. Saved her with every ounce of energy he had to take her like some lonesome sailor saving his shipmate, save just to be saving, saving from the sea for a time anyway, or better, saving like the guy, that long gone daddy, who did or said some fool thing to his woman and she flipped out and make a death pact with old King Neptune (and wouldn’t you know want to bring long gone daddy along for the ride) from that song Endless Sleep by Jody Reynolds. But get this, and get it from him straight just in case you might have heard it from her. That day she was so sexed-up, there is no other way to say it, and there shouldn’t be, what with the first look ocean swells and her swaying , and her getting dunked good (with wet clothes and a slight feverish chill), and her being so appreciative of him saving her (the way she put it, his version anyway, was that save, that unthinking save, meant that whatever might come that she knew, knew after one day, and knew she was not wrong, that he would not forsake her for some trivial) that she wanted to have sex with him right there, right in the cove. (In those days there was a little spot that he knew, a little spot off a rutted dirt path that was then not well known, was unmarked , and was protected by rows of shrubbery so there was no problem about “doing the do” there and frankly that thought got him sexed-up too. Today there are so many touristas per square inch in high season and that old rutted path now paved so that the act would be impossible. It would have to wait hard winter and frozen asses, if that same scenario came up again.)

Here’s the thing thought she, Diana, from the sticks, from the Iowa fresh-mown fields, new to Harvard Square summer of love and Boston college scene school didn’t take birth control pills or have any other form of protection that day, although she was fairly sexually experienced (some wheat field farmer boy and then the usual assortment of colleges guys, some honest, some, well, one- night stands). And he, he not expecting to be a savior sailor that day carried no protection, hell, condoms (and, truth, his circle, the guys anyway, and really the girls knowing what the guys expected too, left it up to their partners to protect themselves. Barbarians, okay). So before they could hit the bushes, before they could lose themselves in the stormy throes of love he had to run up (yes, he ran, so you knew he was sexed-up too) to Doc’s Drugstore (no longer there, since Doc passed away many years ago and his sons became lawyers and not pharmacists) on U.S. 1 right in the center of Ogunquit. And red- faced purchased their “rubbers” (and wouldn’t you know there was some young smirky high school sales girl behind the counter when he paid for his purchase, jesus, with that knowing look of I know what you are up, mister). So as the sun started blue –pink setting in the west and to the sound, the symphony really, of those swells clanging on those rugged cross rocks they made love for the first time, not beautiful sultry night pillow love in some high-end hotel (like later), or fearfully (fearful that her prudish dorm roommate would bust in on them) in her dorm room but fiercely, fiercely like those ocean waves crashing mercilessly to shore. The time for exotic, genteel, gentle love-making (“making it,” out of some be-bop hipster lexicon their want to way of expressing that desire) would could later, later intermingled with the seventeen differences and sixteen almost reconciliations.

Funny too in that same sad sack love way they early on had vowed, secular vowed (no, not that Perkin’s Cove love day, sex is easier to agree to, to make and unmake than vows, religious, secular, or blasphemous), that they would not, like their parents fight over every stupid thing.. That night in her dorm room after that full day of activity they stayed up half the night (hell with a little benny that wasn’t hard, and perhaps they stayed up all night, and although her roommate never showed that night they did not, his version, did not make love) remembering his Velcro Ma wars and, as she related that night and many night after, her Baptist father repent sinners weird wars. He related in detail his various wars, wars to the death that left him with no option, no he option except to leave the family house and strike it on his own, on his summer of love terms if possible, since he had sensed that wind that storm swell coming for a while and was as ready as any “hippie” (quaint term, although he did not, and never did, consider himself a hippie but rather traced his summer of love yearnings to beat times, to be-bop boys and girls with shaded eyes and existential desires). She related in detail her devil father, with seven prayer books in all his hands on Sunday and a thwarted creep up to her room every other day, and of his bend bracero hatred short-changing the wages of the wetbacks who came via train smoke and dreams to bring in the crop (or have the complaisant county sheriff kick them out wage-less, or with so many deductions for cheap- jack low rent shack barely held together against the fury of prairie winds room and board, food just shy of some Sally (Salvation Army) hand out in some desolate back street town (and Adam knew of such foods, and of kindly thanks yous but that was give away food not sweated labor food) that it made the same thing. Justified of course by some chapter and verse about the heathens (Catholic heathens and he, the father , still fighting those 16^th century religious wars out on prairie America and, and, winning against hard luck ,move on to the next shack and hand-out worthy food harvest stop, endlessly), and their sorrows .

And they didn’t , didn’t act like their parents, their he and she parents, that summer of love, that overblown ,frantic , wind-changing summer of love, when they sensed that high tide rolling in, hell, more than sensed it, could taste it, taste in the their off-hand love bouts not reserved for downy billows (and he glad, glad as hell, that she, his little temptress she, had freely offered herself to him up on those rugged cross rocks so that he, when he needed a reason, coaxed her to some landlocked bushes, or some river, some up river ,Charles River, of course hide-out and she, slightly blushing, maybe, with the thought of it, followed along),taste it is the sweet wines handmade in some friend experiment , hey try this (and experiment yogurts, ice cream, dough bread, and on and on, too) , taste it in the tea, ganga, herb, hemp smoke curling through their lungs and moment peace, or later, benny high to keep sleep from their eyes on the hitchhike road, or later too, sweet cousin cocaine, cheap, cheap as hell, and exotic to snuffed noses to take away the minute blues creeping in, taste it in the new way that their brethren, that small crowd (after all not everybody got caught up in the summer of love minute, some went jungle-fighting, some went wall street back-biting, some went plain old ordinary nine to five- routining, some went same old same, old love and marriage and here come X and Y with a baby carriage , and mortgages , and saving for junior’s college and ,and, and…, offered this and that, free, this and that help, this and that can I have this free, taste it in, well, if you don’t want to do that, hell, don’t and not face Ma, or kin, or professional wrath (or she father fire and brimstone), taste it out in those friendly streets, no not Milk Street, not Wall Street, not the Loop, but Commonwealth Avenue, Haight Street, Division Street, many Village streets, many Brattle streets, many Taos streets, Venice Beach streets, all the clots that make the connections, the oneness of it all, the grandness of it all, the free of it all.

They, they made the kindness, the everyday kindness of it, the simple air-filled big balloon kindness of it like some Peter Max cartoonish figure, and when they filled that balloon with enough kindness and against the sluttiness remarks of high Catholic Ma disapproving of heathens (see not all bigots were out in the prairie wheat field strung out on the lord and, wheat profits) and she Pa disapproving of hippie (never was , beat, beat, yes) they married , justice of the peace high wind Perkin’s Cove consummated married, she all garlanded up like some Botticelli doll model picture (Botticelli’s mistress, his whore, from what they had heard, and she blushed at that knowledge), flowered, flowing garment, free hair in the wind and he some black robe throw around , and feasting, feasting on those rugged cross rocks . Too much.

And for as long as they could see some new breeze blowing that they felt part of they were kind to each other (and others, of course). Then the winds of change shifted, and like the tides the ebbs set in, maybe not obvious at first, maybe not that first series of defeats, that Loop madness in ’68, that first bust for some ill-gotten dope and some fool snitch to save his ass from stir turned on him, some brethren (he hated snitch, the very word snitch, from that time down in that rolling barrel slope in the water episode as a kid with his older brother, and he didn’t snitch on his older brother now name etched in black marble in Washington along with other old neighborhood names), that first Connecticut highway hitchhike bust as they headed to D.C. for one more vain and futile attempt to stop the generation’s damn war, that several hour wait in Madison for some magnificent Volkswagen bus to stop and get them from point C to point D on their journey to this very storm- driven San Francisco spot (a few blocks up over in North Beach the old beat blocks, Haight Street hippie having turned into a free-fire zone, that” no that is six dollars for those candles , not free anymore brother” sea-change, and the decline of kindness, first casualty their own kindnesses, their own big balloon kindnesses more less frequently evoked, more tired from too much work, more “sorrybut I have a headache ,”he too, and less thoughts about trysts in hidden bushes, or downy billows for that matter. Worse, worse still, he went his way, and she went hers, trying to make it (no longer their “make it” signal to chart love’s love time) in the world, hell, nine to five routining it but it was the kindnesses, those big ball kindnesses that went (and that they both spoke of marriage counselor spoke of missing), and seventeen differences, substantial differences, and sixteen almost reconciliations, they grew older and apart, and…

She left him for another man, another non-sea driven man, a man who hated the outdoors, hated the thought of the ocean (he grew up in lobstertown Maine and had his fill of oceans, of fierce winds, of rubber hip boots, and of rugged cross rocks thank you, she told him non-ocean man had told her) when she called it seventeen times was enough quits after they had spent a couple of months up in that storm-ravaged Maine cottage that he insisted they go to reconcile after the last difference bout where she, quote, was tired as hell of the sea, of the wind, of the stuff that the wind did to her sensitive skin ( big old sadness at that remark by him for he never said, kindness, said anything about that, or never said he could stop the ravages of time), and, and, tired of him playing out some old man of the seas, some man against nature thing with her in his train, unquote. Yah, she up and left him. Damn, and he had had thoughts of eternity, of always being around that smile, that quizzical smile, or the possibility of that smile, that he first latched onto that first Harvard Square night when he had smiled at her across the room, and she had smiled that smile right between his eyes at him.

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- When The Music’s Over-On The Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- When The Music’s Over-On The  Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death

Classic Rock : 1968: Shakin’ All Over, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989

Scene: Brought to mind by a the cover art on this CD of a Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night.

Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some yellow bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or some place like that) was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, even hanging around with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising. Ya, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do. Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, autumns of drugs, winters of discontent, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim runner’s frame could not afford.

Moreover, now the chickens were coming home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though (his temperature rose every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually even now) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” he decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.

What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Peter Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.

Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Ruby although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message). Josh, throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. He got surprised one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.

What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace, mad Bessie Smith, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all Piece Of My Heart.

Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting work at the Monterrey Pop Festival each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl, ya just a wisp of a girl, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster. Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. What a night, what a blues singer.

Just now though Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that look in her that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August and still be okay but he had better grab Ruby now while he could.

Good Night, Irene Indeed-In Honor Of Folk Legend Leadbelly

Good Night, Irene Indeed-In Honor Of Folk Legend Leadbelly

No question Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter [maybe sic]) along with Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Pete Seeger and the Weavers were the talent, the folk talent, that we who passed through that now glorious folk minute of the early 1960s owed a debt to for keeping the music alive, keeping us suppled with tunes, popular tunes in their time, until those songwriters from our own time gathered voice and lyrics. So any efforts to preserve what guys like the Leadbelly put together are entirely welcome in this quarter.


Clink on the link below to hear about the latest efforts to play homage to one of the forebears of the folk revival.

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2015/02/27/lead-belly-valerie-june-folk-music-blues-smithsonian

Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Woody Guthrie's "Pastures Of Plenty"

Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Woody Guthrie's "Pastures Of Plenty"

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.


PASTURES OF PLENTY
by Woody Guthrie


It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road
Out of your Dust Bowl and Westward we rolled
And your deserts were hot and your mountains were cold

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind

California, Arizona, I harvest your crops
Well its North up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table your light sparkling wine

Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters run down
Every state in the Union us migrants have been
We'll work in this fight and we'll fight till we win

It's always we rambled, that river and I
All along your green valley, I will work till I die
My land I'll defend with my life if need be
Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free

Copyright Ludlow Music, Inc.
@America @patriotic @work
recorded on Woody's Greatest Songs

In Defense Of The Russian October Revolution-Understanding The British Leftist Blog-Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

In Defense Of The Russian October Revolution-Understanding The British Leftist Blog-Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

Click below to link to the Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism blog  

http://histomatist.blogspot.com/

Frank Jackman comment:

While from the tenor of the articles, leftist authors featured, and other items promoted it is not clear to me that this British-centered blog is faithful to any sense of historical materialism that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky would recognize I am always more than willing to "steal" material from the site. Or investigate leads provided there for material of interest to the radical public-whatever that seemingly dwindling public in need of timely re-enforcements make be looking which lately now that we are deep into an age of serious night-takers, not that they were not there before, had been for the last forty plus years ever since they came hell-bent from out of paradise’s lost battles to raise hell on earth with what amounted to mostly gentle angry people seem to be coming out of the woodwork in the seemingly end tiems days we are be muscled through.

Of late the site of necessity had taken to publicizing more activist events particularly around the struggle to defend the Palestinian people in Gaza against the Zionist onslaught, the endless and unfathomable civil war in Syria, the slaughter Saudi is imposing on Yemen and a thousand other brush-fire wars civil, and uncivil. That is to be commended. However, in the main, this site continues to promote the endless conferences on socialism, Marxism, and Trotskyism that apparently are catnip to those on the left in Britain all the while touting the latest mythical "left" labor leader who is willing to speak anywhere to the left of the Genghis Klan (although I hesitate to involve his name as barbarian since he too has his defenders who argue that cleaning out cesspool of Asia and heading west had a progressive character-you have to love the intellectuals of the academy for this kind of “defense” is like catnip to them. I continue to stand willing with the original comment above about "stealing" material from the site though.      

No question since the demise of the Soviet Union as a flawed but vital counter-weight to world imperialism and the rise of the basically one-superpower world socialism, communism as poles of attraction except in spots (like South Africa or Greece and the edges of other places in Europe) to the working and oppressed masses of the world has taken a serious hit. Have become seen something of “utopian” schemes by labor militants in the world despite the desperate situations today in many parts of the world, including America and Great Britain, Great Britain in the equivocal age of Brexit, which cry out to high heaven for socialist solutions.

As the weight of that demise has set in there has been a corresponding demise in the level of programmatic and theoretical understandings by those who still espouse the cause. The events and works by socialist commentators emphasized by this Histomat blog amply demonstrates the proposition that in the post- Soviet period (if not before) there has been a dramatic tendency to throw out all the experiences since the Russian Revolution of 1917 and try to begin anew as if that event never occurred. Unfortunately meaning generally to go back to pre-World War I theories of revolutionary organization (and in some cases to forgo the necessity of revolution at all as if capitalism were now the highest permanent condition of humankind). The main organizational form to face the scrap heap is Lenin’s theory, a theory many times honored more in the breech than in the observance, of the “vanguard party” of conscious revolutionary intellectuals and advanced workers working as full-time professionals as revolutionaries.           

The clearest example of this is the revival of certain pre-World War I (a war to sever all pre-war illusions for those who could see right in front of themselves) theorists like the “Pope of Marxism,” Karl Kautsky, although interestingly not back to Marx and Engels of the post-1848 period when they argued for something very much like Lenin’s concept in the wake of the defeats of the working class and it allies in the 1848 struggles. A main organizational concept of Kautsky’s German Social-Democratic of which he was a leading theorist was the “party of the whole class,” a concept which denied, or muted the differences in the working class movement in the interest of numbers (numbers of votes in parliamentary elections really) that would somehow be worked out in the course of the revolution. Well life itself, with many, many examples, had shown how worthless that type of organization was when the deal went down. When a revolutionary situation popped up as recently in Greece for example. There are, granted, many new concepts necessary in the 21^st century to reach the masses in order to revive the socialist message with the new technology, the new urgency, and the new allies necessary to fight for socialism but the threadbare theory of the “party of the whole class” is not one of them.        

Additional Jackman comment:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after having “tasted” about fifty other theories which did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power, hell, they/we couldn’t even bring down the milk toast university administrations never mind the armed to the teeth imperial state) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes those of us who proudly claim a leftist mantel different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

The Best Laid Plans Always Go Awry- With The 1946 Film Adaptation of James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice” In Mind

The Best Laid Plans Always Go Awry- With The 1946 Film Adaptation of James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice” In Mind   

By Si Landon

[The following “confession” was found in Martha Ames’ effects at the time of her death some twenty years after the mysterious death by his own hand of Leon Ames, a District Attorney in Los Angeles County out in California. From the markings Martha had had the document for many years and had kept the whole affair quiet out of what knows what reason. Maybe sorrow, maybe anger that another woman, a tramp, had captured his imagination, maybe revenge that his “confession” would never see the light of day while she had anything to do about it and her sudden death by heart attack had cut across her purpose. The only clue to what had happened back then was a comment made to her daughter, Emily, that Leon was always a sucker for that jasmine scent, a scent she had used herself to capture his attention when they were young. Si Landon]  

*******

Now that Frank Chambers is safely out of the way, now that last night at midnight he had the life squeezed out of him, suffocated in his own gas-driven vomit courtesy of the great State of California, and me, Leon Ames, the guy who prosecuted the case of California v. Frank Chambers I can tell whoever finds this little confession now or a hundred years from now what really happened. Why Frank had to take the gas for a crime he did not commit. A crime he had sworn on seven stacked bibles that he did not commit but I was able to convince a select hand-picked jury that an accident was actually a devious murder plan. And it was except not by Frank, not by a longshot but Father Lally who administered the last rite of his church, Frank’s church, the Roman Catholic one that forgives all sinners in the end and gives then a half way decent shot at heaven told me that at the end Frank, soft-headed Frank figured he got what he deserved. What did Father Lally say he called it, oh yeah, divine retribution for his other sin. That “divine retribution” was Father Lally’s way of putting the matter to a heathen Protestant but I knew better, a lot better. It was nothing but Leon Ames retribution, or maybe covering up is a better way to put it.

They say Jim Farrell, the Postmaster General of the United States, is going to eliminate the service to save some dough and I guess wear and tear on the postman who delivers the mail by having them just deliver the mail and move on instead of ringing doorbells expecting somebody to answer and if they don’t to ring the damn bell again. This is the way we called a thing and it had nothing to do with divine retribution around my old neighborhood, around the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles, when we were kids and we always said when something happened, usually some petty larceny, or car-jacking, it was after all a rough neighborhood I grew up in, and then got nailed for say truancy or some other crime that “the postman always rings twice.” Some guy, a crime writer named Cain, pretty good too, used that for the title of his book I remember once when I saw a copy in the library but that was long after I gave up the petty criminal life and went to college and then law school before eventually being elected a local D.A. in sprawling Los Angeles County. I had to laugh when I thought about it in the middle of the night last night when something woke me up that first Lana, then Frank, and now I had heard that damn postman ringing twice.

See I was the guy behind the whole plot, the whole scheme for me and Lana to get rid of her husband, an old geezer named Cecil Kellaway, a guy who ran the Dew Drop Inn out on the Pacific Coast Highway above Point Magoo as you start hitting the beautiful and scenic beach spots. Cecil was not a bad guy but cheap and, more importantly looked like he would live to a ripe old age. Cecil had picked up Lana, Lana Turner, as least that was the name she used when Cecil picked her up in some gin mill in Santa Monica when she was working as a B-girl and when he offered to take her away from that life she grabbed the deal with all arms. A safe port in stormy weather since she had nothing better going on, had been on her uppers too long to argue the point. That Lana Turner moniker she told me one time she had picked up from reading one of those Hollywood gossip magazines and seen a candid photograph of the actress of the same name and though she looked like that film star. Another time she told me that some guy she had picked up (and jack-rolled) had called her Lana Turner as part of his come on and she liked it enough to hold onto it for dear life. That was the name on the marriage license that Nick had framed in the living room of their house which was adjacent and connected to the diner. (It would turn out once court proceedings started that her real name was Cora Smith from Omaha, Nebraska via the school of hard knocks). That Lana Turner look-a-like was true enough. Blond as blond hair real enough with maybe a few touches as befitted a corn-fed Midwestern girl, big blue eyes that could devour you or scorn you and maybe both at the same time, a nice shape in all the right places, which showed to great effect when she wore those tight cashmere sweaters she was addicted to when she wasn’t wearing that tight waitress’ uniform when she was serving them off the arm at the Dew Drop, and nicely-turned legs and ankles. The whole package. And the morals and conscience of a sewer rat.

But I didn’t care, didn’t give a damn if she had morals or conscience or anything once I got a look at her one day when I was driving up the Pacific Coast Highway investigating a case that was coming up for trial and tired and hungry from the trip decided to stop when I saw a big Eats sign up ahead. She had that tight uniform on that day and every nerve in my body tingled as she provocatively served me my meatloaf dinner. I would not learn until later, later after that jasmine scent she wore drove me to distraction and I couldn’t think of anything but being with her that she was organically incapable of doing anything without that come hither look when a man was within fifty yards of her. It took many generations of breeding to get her to that fine-tuned sexual being that drove me, and Frank, crazy. Apparently not Cecil since he used her like a dishrag. 

That was the start of my downfall, the first time that I thought about that postman ringing twice. I would go up there several more times, telling my wife back in Ventura that I had a big case that needed my personal attention and since she was used to me going on extended trips I got away with it, still to this day she doesn’t have a clue that I was sleeping in some out of the way motel with Lana half the time I went up north. At first Lana cold-shouldered me, was pleasant but distance. Cecil on the other hand was tickled pink that a big-time Los Angeles County D.A. was frequenting his establishment, said it gave the place some class. One day when Cecil was out back in their house I flat-out asked her to go to dinner with me. Without a missed step she said yes. Asked, no told, Cecil that I had asked her to dinner like it was to some big time political event. He said sure. No problem. From that moment on pure evil, murder, murder most foul was all I could think of for one Cecil Kellaway. Done.

Done too was any pretense by Lana that she cared anything at all for Cecil, told me before I even had formulated my plan fully that she wanted to be rid of Cecil, that she wanted to run the diner on her own or maybe start a gin mill on the premises, make it a roadhouse with all the booze, gambling, whores and boys anybody wanted. I would be the cover for all the action. I told her Cecil had to go, and that I had a plan to do him in. Was she in or out? In a thousand percent was the way she put it. A few days later right in the diner I laid out the plan I had schemed up while Cecil was on the grill flipping hamburgers. We needed a third guy, some drifter, some guy who was on the bum but who still had a hard on for women (some bums, hoboes, tramps between the booze and dope and living the life don’t give a damn about women except in some drunken dream thinking of their Phoebe Snow, that’s what they called it anyway from what guys in the drunk tank told me when I first started out and the booze got to them so they saw some image of some fresh looking gal from long ago who had turned them over).

She had to persuade Cecil to hire the guy to work the gas station part of the business. I knew that would be no problem once she got her claws into him, or dangled the idea of increased profits from auto repair work in front of him. (In the end it would be the profits and not her claws that won him over). I would find the guy even if it took some time as I expected it to, the fall guy as it would turn out, whom Lana would make a play for and get him so bothered by her that he would easily come to the same conclusion that I had. Murder, murder most foul. Cecil was doomed. Lana was non-plussed by the plan, thought it over for about one minute and agreed that it had to be done. The only qualm she had was how she was going to get off a murder rap if she was part of the conspiracy to murder Cecil. I told her I had that worked out but let’s get the guy first because that would determine which way we went with it. Then coyly Lana, as if to get me all heated up, said she would probably have to sleep with the guy, have him all knotted up in her sex if he was going to fall for what he would think was her, their plan. Said just as coyly that she would be thinking of me while she was doing whatever the fall guy wanted with her. That burned me up alright but I had already assumed she would have to do whatever kinky sex things she knew, and she knew plenty, to get him to tumble but I was so far gone on her that it was a small price to pay to have her all to myself when everything was settled.

Finding a guy who fit what we needed was a lot harder than even I thought it would be. I knew a bunch of guys, Bigsy Small, the con man who I had sent up three times for various scams, Nick at Night the burglar, Tiny Tim the second story man, to name a few, all good-looking guys who would have licked their chops and done whatever Lana asked but they were too closely associated with me to do us any good. Young rummies, bums, hoboes, tramps even after the war years were hard to find and moreover as I pointed out already getting them hopped up on a dame as opposed to some H or Johnny Walker Red would be a hard sell.

Then the solution came up all by itself one day. One Francis Chambers, Frank, whom I picked up hitchhiking on the Pacific Coast Highway around Malibu and who fit the build perfectly. An ex-soldier on the bum, like a lot of guys who once they got off the regular nine to five trip they were slated for by the war, got footloose and itching to move on, move on to something. Good looking guy even if shabbily dressed just off doing bracero work bringing in the harvest in the Imperial Valley. Along the way we got talking and he told me few things, some of them I knew were lies, which for me just then was manna from heaven, and few things like he had been in a mechanized division over in Europe which had my head spinning. He was heading to Frisco via Big Sur and Carmel where he knew guys and I told him I could take him as far as Point Magoo maybe a little farther. Yeah, a little farther.

A couple of hours later we were at the diner and I had a plan ready. A plan aided by the smell of Cecil’s stew which hit Frank for a loop and I could tell that he hadn’t had a square meal in a while. I offered to buy him one but he said he had dough. While I was filling up at the gas pumps Cecil came out to greet me and that is when I sprung my “motor troubles” spiel. Frank immediately took the bait, I opened the hood, and Frank told me in front of Cecil that I needed my valves looked at, and soon. Cecil asked Frank if he was looking for a job. He said no-then. After he got into the diner and seated at the counter with the look of food hunger on his face Lana came out from the kitchen and I could hear him smack his lips. That was all it took, all it took even when I told him Lana was Cecil’s wife. He did a double-take but must have figured that like him she had some story, some tale of woe that they would discuss under the sheets. Hooked.

Lana did her part to a tee. Once Cecil bought into the idea that Frank’s skills were a money maker for him he treated Frank almost like a son he was so afraid that Frank would leave him in the lurch. When I would come around and make small talk with Lana he would ask her what gives, and she would answer that we were up and up friends just like I was with Cecil. Then she put the chill on him after that first couple of provocative moves when she would serve him diner in the back of the house kitchen. One time he half-grabbed and asked what gives, she couldn’t love that has been Cecil. She dismissed him with some bullshit about Cecil being her life-saver, a guy who took her out of the sewer, and get this, she was not going to give that up for some two-bit stranger who might be gone tomorrow. Yeah, she was a beaut. After that all she would do is give sly meaningful peeks and then turn her head and continue the deep freeze. She could tell, remember those generations of breeding, that genes stuff, he was gone on her and had to make her move after a couple of weeks or he really would fly the coop. One day, no night, as they were closing up, Nick was away with his drinking buddies from the VFW hall, Lana asked Frank to help her with a faulty lightbulb (it was just loose but that was because she had turned it a couple of times for her purposes). They got so close Frank couldn’t help himself and Lana just kind of leaned into him. Bang.

They quickly closed the diner shut out the lights and headed to his room in back of the garage. Down into the cotton sheets they did go with Lana giving Frank the full works about how she couldn’t stop herself from giving herself to Frank and had been cold to see if it was the real thing. She said it was. For the next couple of weeks whenever Cecil was out, one night they had actually hit the sheets right after Cecil went to bed Lana telling Frank that she couldn’t wait. All the while Lana could see something was eating at him, I could tell it too and so one night Frank laid out his problems, begged her to run away to Frisco town with him. Get a divorce from Cecil and they could get married and do whatever they wanted.  Lana sitting right next to him on the bed half naked said Cecil would never give her a divorce and would cheapskate on other stuff spent his last nickel to hunt them down. So no go. No soap.

That only got Frank more in a lather and a few days later he sprung his plan on her. Cecil had to be gotten rid of and he had a plan that would make it look like an accident. Then they would be free. Lana fake thought a moment and then rushed into Frank’s arms and said could it really be done. No even a moment’s hesitation that she was agreeing to kill her husband. Cool as a cucumber was the way she explained her play to me later. Well you know Cecil Kellaway is long dead so you know that they finally gave him the big sent-off although they actually botched the thing the first time. She was supposed to bop him on the head one night when he came home drunk and make a play like he had been a victim of some robbery gone bad. Well as she went to bop him the drunken fool slipped on his greasy diner floor and wound up in the hospital for a couple of weeks. She and Frank made no pretenses that they weren’t shacking up while he was away but that only made the play sounder, drew Frank tighter to Lana’s skirt when I thought about it later although I was plenty heated up that they were screwing for an extra few weeks on my time.

The next time out they were successful. Or Lana was since the play was to grab Cecil when he was in another drunken stupor and decided that he just needed to take a bath to wash away his sins or something. It had been a hot sultry night like we get in Southern California even few weeks and besides washing those sins clean Cecil had the fan next to him. Frank had expertly frayed the wires and so when old Cecil reached for it with those shaky hands of his he got the biggest jolt of his life. Took out the power of half the houses in that section of the Pacific Coast Highway.

Naturally as a friend of Cecil’s and as a vigilant D.A. I had to make sure that this “accident” after the first one wasn’t some kind of dastardly deed. I went at it tooth and prongs or rather I had my first Assistant D.A. Lou Reed pay extra attention to this case, cleared his case load so he could work solely on the case once Cecil’s friends and customers started their little campaign against Lana and Frank who after a very brief period of “mourning” were seen looking very contented. Lou got enough evidence, with my help, to bring Lana and Frank in for questioning and eventually Lou got indictments on the pair for murder, murder one. They were going to hang for their crimes if justice was to be satisfied. That is where my plan that I had kept from Lana came into play. I had intentionally not told her what I had up my sleeve for fear that she would spill the plan to Frank some hot steamy cotton sheets night to show him how clever she was to get out from under. Also I wanted her to play her part as expertly as possible and with a little doubt in her mind once things heated up and her sweet ass was on the line that would go a long way to effectuating my plan.   

Here is the beauty of the law, Anglo-American law anyway, once they try you for a crime and you get off then they can’t try and convict you again for that same crime. You might know what it is called, you know double jeopardy. It works equally according to blind lady justice for the guilty and innocent in the interest of finality of judgment. My plan was to bring the pair to trial on murder one which like any other crime requires a degree of certainty of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to gain a verdict. I knew that Lou did not have enough hard evidence in hand to convict but I kept badgering him to go to trial with what he had using the excuse that the voters were looking for some action on our part. Furthermore at trial I made sure that we had a jury packed with men, older men who would not mind looking at Lana even in a plain jane suit, hair up and no makeup. I got that jury nine men, all over forty, and three women who would have convicted Mary, you know, Jesus’ mother. To add some further protection I made sure that our star expert witness, the old rum-pot Sid Lance, who in his day was the best guy around if you wanted a conviction, to testify that those frayed wires could have been just worn out. Giving those eye-googling men a reason to acquit Lana and Frank. When the “not guilty” verdict, the postman’s first ring came in I could hardly work up enough energy to show distain for the verdict. I let Lou face the reporters alone pleading a headache that would not go away. 

The jailbirds free they went back to the diner and started making plans to turn the place into a road house figuring to draw attention from people who were interested in the seamy side of life and had a certain amount of confidence in those who got off scot-free on a murder one conviction. That was according to our plan to keep Frank around until Lana and I fled to parts unknown with some money I had from my wife’s trust and she now from Cecil’s life insurance. We would figure out the rest later when we were safely away.

Then the roof fell in. Then my world went awry, went to hell. Frank after a hard day’s work building a patio next to the diner for those who wanted dinner before they got soaked at the gambling tables, taken to heaven by some bent whore, or jack-rolled for drinks told Lana that they should go for a drive to the ocean down by Malibu where the waves were spectacular at that time of year. He had been drinking whisky and Lana had had a few too before they left. On that hard curve stretch after Oxnard they went off the road and down the hill to the ocean. As fate would have it Lana was killed instantly, a broken neck. Frank said he thought as they were tumbling down the hill that he heard her talking about the postman calling again but that may have just been Frank bullshit, Frank’s lies. Frank came out without a scratch which in the end was his misdoing.

I was in a rage. All my plans had gone up in smoke and the idea that I would have to finish my days with a wife whom I could barely stand to be in the same room with drove me to distraction. Frank would pay for his life with his life. As you know double jeopardy prevented Frank from being convicted on that Cecil murder but I made sure, double sure that he was done in for on the Lana murder. That is right. I went after him with a vengeance and brought back Sid Lance to “prove” conclusively before that same kind of male dominated jury that the brake linings had been worked on. My angle was that Frank had gotten greedy after their acquittal and wanted everything for himself. Guilty, guilty as charged after about three hours’ deliberation. Frank was going to smell some funny gas in the big sent-off. Funny he didn’t even bother to wage a big appeal because as he told Father Lally that few hours before death stood at his door he heard that postman’s second ring. And now so have I.                                                                                                                       

The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free All Class-War Prisoners-Free All The Anti-Fascist Resisters!

A View From The American Left - Waco 1993 Government Mass Murder

Workers Vanguard No. 1132	20 April 2018

Waco 1993

Government Mass Murder

“This is not an assault.” Twenty-five years ago, that was the lie blaring over government loudspeakers as the FBI and the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) carried out its plan to obliterate the Branch Davidians, an integrated group that formed as a breakaway from the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Orchestrated and overseen at the highest levels of the Clinton administration, the 19 April 1993 assault outside Waco, Texas, engulfed the Branch Davidians’ Mount Carmel commune in an inferno that killed over 80 people, including some two dozen children.

The sole “crime” of religious leader David Koresh and his followers was being an obscure religious sect that insisted on being able to practice its faith and bear arms—two rights supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution. In executing the attack, the armed agents of the ruling class intended to send a message to all: defiance of authority will be met with death. And of those who managed to make it out alive, nine were railroaded to prison on various trumped-up charges.

The government tried to justify mass murder by selling the lie that Branch Davidians were hell-bent on mass suicide and had started the deadly fire themselves. A massive cover-up and web of falsehoods were spun through subsequent “investigations” and whitewashing reports. But mountains of video footage and witness testimony, including by the few survivors, showed that the truly deranged actors were the FBI and ATF—overseen by Attorney General Janet Reno and President Bill Clinton—who went in guns blazing against a small fringe group that wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

On that infamous morning, combat tanks rammed and wrecked the walls of the Branch Davidians’ complex, drenching the interior with lethal and flammable CS gas (the same used by the U.S. military in Vietnam), while trapping its inhabitants inside and preventing entry to firefighters and medical personnel. For over seven weeks prior to the April 19 offensive, Koresh and his supporters had been under siege by an array of heavily armed police forces while the Feds “negotiated.”

Part of the state’s barbaric tactics was engaging in psychological warfare: high-intensity floodlights blazed into the complex all night, while huge loudspeakers played Nancy Sinatra songs, Tibetan monks chanting, and the squeals of rabbits being slaughtered. Water and electricity were cut off as well as contact with the outside world. The Branch Davidians relied on unfurling makeshift banners to communicate to the world, including, “F.B.I. broke negotiations. We want press” and “Rodney King—We Understand.”

The drive behind the siege was to exact revenge for a failed February 28 assault during which ATF agents and National Guard helicopters surrounded Mount Carmel to arrest Koresh on false charges of possessing illegal weapons. During the raid, four federal agents and six Davidians were killed and several wounded, including Koresh, who was shot. Like just about any God-fearing resident of Texas who would blow someone away for trying to break down their door, the Branch Davidians exercised their right to defend themselves against the ATF assault.

The Waco massacre was the bloody signature of the Clinton years, just as for the Reagan years it was the 1985 massacre of MOVE: a mostly black back-to-nature commune known for denouncing “the system” and promoting armed self-defense. Alongside the ATF and FBI, the Philadelphia cops bombed MOVE’s home, killing eleven members, including five children, and burning down an entire black neighborhood. The carnage in both cases was preceded by media campaigns slandering the group under siege as a violent “cult” and was followed by the government punishing the few survivors. In fact, all three members of the Treasury department inquiry that whitewashed the Waco atrocity had been involved in the execution or cover-up of the MOVE massacre.

Immediately after Mount Carmel was burned to the ground, the Spartacist League organized protest demonstrations in several cities. We picketed federal government offices with signs including, “We Will Not Forget: MOVE Massacre, Desert Slaughter in Iraq, Waco Holocaust.” From the outset of the state’s vendetta, our defense of the Branch Davidians was unambiguous. In a protest letter to Clinton early in the siege, the Partisan Defense Committee—a legal and social defense organization associated with the SL—demanded that all troops, tanks, police and federal agents be removed from the area and pointed out: “We think you would do well to take the advice of the newly elected President Lincoln, who when asked what he proposed to do about the polygamous Mormons replied, ‘I propose to let them alone’.”

Reno’s twisted rationale for killing the children was to “save” them from Koresh, who was demonized as a gun-crazed, sadistic polygamist and child abuser. In a letter to the PDC by Bob Buck, a West Virginia steel worker railroaded to prison for defending his union during a bitter 1991-92 strike, he rightly noted: “They were so damned concerned for the children they unleashed an armed assault on the house they lived in and filled it full of bullet holes...gassed them, and ultimately burned them to death. Ain’t America great. I’m glad Mrs. Reno isn’t concerned about me.”

In fact, the year before the raid, Child Protective Services investigated and found no evidence of abuse at Mount Carmel. Children evacuated during the siege were interviewed by social workers, who found them to be “healthy, happy, well adjusted, well educated.” After the raid, Reno herself admitted that the lurid stories of “ongoing child abuse” were “inaccurate.” Breaking through the government’s brazen lies, which the liberals dutifully echoed, we remarked: “Child abuse, guns, cultism—these are all cynical pretexts which have nothing to do with what happened on the morning of 19 April 1993. An authoritarian religious commune is not how most of us would choose to live our lives, but it’s none of the state’s business” (“Waco and the White House: First the Massacre, Now the Lies,” WV No. 575, 7 May 1993).

As Dick Reavis, author of The Ashes of Waco, repeatedly pointed out, the bulk of the ATF’s search warrant was about child abuse and statutory rape, even though the agency’s jurisdiction is over guns, not sexual offenses. In terms of those gun charges, the Branch Davidians had nothing to hide and Koresh had previously even invited the ATF to go inside and inspect his weapons! At least one of the Branch Davidians was a licensed federal firearms dealer, and the group operated a retail gun business, attending gun shows and storing inventory in order to secure an income from secondhand firearms upgrades.

What lay at the core of the government’s crusade was the push for stricter restraints on the right to bear arms, an opening shot for the newly elected “tough on crime” Clinton administration. The essence of gun control is this: the rulers are determined to maintain a monopoly of violence for themselves and their state, while deciding who are the “good” gun owners vs. the “bad.” It’s a way to leave the poor, minorities and working people defenseless and enforce conformity and submission. Waco proves that the U.S. government will go to any length to disarm the population, even if it has to kill them.

The Truth Behind the Lies

The recent six-part miniseries Waco on the Paramount Network is a compelling and honest portrayal of the Branch Davidians during the 51-day siege. Waco survivor David Thibodeau was instrumental in bringing much of the story to life based on his book, Waco: A Survivor’s Story, and acted as one of the show’s consultants. The series illustrates how those living in Mount Carmel were multiracial and multinational, representing people from all over the world who agreed on Koresh’s spiritual interpretation of the Bible. As the effective documentary footage in Waco: The Rules of Engagement (1997) also shows, the Branch Davidians were not the sociopaths painted by the press; they were simply devout individuals who, like many others, believed in a prophet—theirs happened to be David Koresh.

In one scene in the miniseries, a Dallas radio host, Ron Engelman (who was a lonely voice of support in the media during the actual siege) interviews a professor who aptly points out that the word “cult” is a way to denigrate somebody else’s tightly knit religious group: “The early Christians, by our definition, belonged to a cult.” Koresh’s followers were hardly brainwashed or coerced. His second-in-command, Steve Schneider, had been working toward a doctorate degree in theology. Another top aide was Wayne Martin, one of the earliest black men to graduate from Harvard Law School. Martin and four of his children were all burned alive in the government’s attack.

The Waco miniseries opens with the events at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, which transpired six months before the February raid. There, under “shoot on sight” orders, the Feds carried out a murderous operation against the family of white-supremacist Randy Weaver. Of concern was not that Weaver was a fascist, but rather that he had sold two sawed-off shotguns to an ATF informer in a sting operation. The ATF, as well as other federal agencies, was involved in the shootout on Weaver’s property, where both his 14-year-old son and his wife were killed.

In the wake of the botched Ruby Ridge operation, the ATF hoped to reap a publicity bonanza from a successful raid against the Branch Davidians. The capitalist state, which requires force to maintain its power over the population, brooks no challenge to its authority. A fanatical FBI commander in the miniseries captured this, pointing out that there are 5,000 people to every member of law enforcement: “You know how we keep order with those odds? Because they believe we’re more powerful than we are. We project strength and the people believe in that strength.” The Waco series, while sympathetically exposing the truth behind the siege and massacre, fails to place blame for the attack where it belongs: at the pinnacle of power in Washington, D.C.

Shamefully, most of the reformist left alibied the Democratic Party administration by either turning a blind eye to the atrocity or joining in retelling the government’s fabrications. While it “condemned” the “government-orchestrated massacre,” the International Socialist Organization (ISO) avoided the question of gun control and implied that the Branch Davidians brought the slaughter on themselves by depicting them as an “armed religious cult” that “would consider either mass suicide or taking a final stand as its options for ending the siege” (Socialist Worker, May 1993). To this day, the ISO paints the group as right-wing extremists.

The flames that consumed a racially integrated group of over 80 men, women and children in Waco illuminate once again the basic truth that the capitalist state is the enemy of the working class and oppressed. As communists committed to the fight for socialist revolution to eradicate this oppressive capitalist system, we intend to sear the government bombings and mass murder of MOVE and the Branch Davidians into the memory of the working class.