An Encore Salute To The Untold
Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- The Struggle For A Real Independence Day-A Five Point
Discussion Program
Greg Green, site manager
Introduction
[In early 2018, shortly after I had taken over
the reins as site manager at this on-line publication I “saw the light” and
bowed to the wisdom of a number of older writers who balked at my idea of
reaching younger and newer audiences by having them review films like Marvel/DC
Comics productions, write about various video games and books that would not
offend a flea unlike the flaming red books previously reviewed here centered on
the now aging 1960s baby-boomer demographic which had sustained the publication
through good times and bad as a hard copy and then on-line proposition. One
senior writer, who shall remain nameless in case some stray millennial sees
this introduction and spreads some viral social media hate campaign his way,
made the very telling observation that the younger set, his term, don’t read
film reviews or hard copy books as a rule and those hardy Generation of ’68
partisans who still support this publication in the transition from the old
Allan Jackson leadership to mine don’t give a fuck about comics, video games or
graphic novels. I stand humbled.
Not only stand humbled though but in
a valiant and seemingly successful attempt to stabilize this operation decided
to give an encore presentation to some of the most important series produced
and edited by Allan Jackson-without Allan. That too proved to be an error when
I had Frank Jackman introduce the first few sections of The Roots Is The Toots Rock And Roll series which Allan had sweated
his ass over to bring out over a couple of years. Writers, and not only senior
writers who had supported Allan in the vote of no confidence fight challenging
his leadership after he went overboard attempting to cash in on the hoopla over
the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love in
1967 but also my younger writer partisans, balked at this subterfuge. One
called it a travesty.
Backing off after finding Allan, not
an easy task since he had fled to the safer waters of the West looking for work
and had been rumored to be any place from Salt Lake City to some mountainous
last hippie commune in the hills of Northern California doing anything from
pimping as press agent for Mitt Romney’s U.S. Senate campaign in Utah to
running a whorehouse with Madame La Rue in Frisco or shacking up with drag
queen Miss Judy Garland in that same city, we brought Allan back to do the
introductions to the remaining sections. That we, me and the Editorial Board
established after Allan’s demise and as a guard against one-person rule, had
compromised on that gesture with the last of the series being the termination
of Allan’s association with the publication except possibly as an occasional
writer, a stringer really, when some nostalgia event needed some
attention.
That was the way things went and not
too badly when we finished up the series in the early summer of 2018. But that
is not the end of the Allan story. While looking through the on-line archives I
noticed that Allan had also seriously edited another 1960s-related series, the Sam and Ralph Stories, a series centered
on the trials and tribulations of two working-class guys who had been
radicalized in different ways by the 1960s upheavals and have never lost the
faith in what Allan called from Tennyson “seeking a newer world” would
resurface in this wicked old world, somebody’s term.
I once again attempted to make the
mistake of having someone else, in this case Josh Breslin, introduce the series
(after my introduction here) but the Editorial Board bucked me even before I
could set that idea in motion. I claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Allan
was probably out in Utah looking for some residual work for Mitt Romney now
that he is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator for Utah or running back
to Madame La Rue, an old flame, and that high- end whorehouse or hanging with
Miss Judy Garland at her successful drag queen tourist attraction cabaret. No
such luck since he was up in Maine working on a book about his life as an
editor. To be published in hard cop y by well-known Wheeler Press whenever he
gets the proofs done. So hereafter former editor and site manager Allan will
handle the introductions on this encore presentation of this excellent series.
Greg Green]
Allan Jackson, editor The Sam And Ralph Stories -New General Introduction
[As my replacement Greg Green, whom
I brought in from American Film Gazette
originally to handle the day to day site operations while I concentrated on
editing but who led a successful revolt against my regime based on the wishes
of the younger writers to as they said at the time not be slaves to the 1960s
upheavals a time which they only knew second or third hand, mentioned in his
general introduction above some of the series I initiated were/are worth an
encore presentation. The Sam and Ralph
Stories are one such series and as we go along I will try to describe why
this series was an important testament to an unheralded segment of the mass
movements of the 1960s-the radicalized white working- class kids who certainly
made up a significant component of the Vietnam War soldiery, some of who were
like Sam and Ralph forever after suspicious of every governmental war cry. Who also
somewhat belatedly got caught up in the second wave rock and roll revival which
emerged under the general slogan of “drug, sex and rock and roll” which
represented a vast sea change for attitudes about a lot of things that under
ordinary circumstances would have had them merely replicating their parents’
ethos and fate.
As I said I will describe that
transformation in future segment introductions but today since it is my “dime”
I want to once again clear up some misapprehensions about what has gone on over
the past year or so in the interest of informing the readership, as Greg Green
has staked his standing at this publication on doing to insure his own survival,
about what goes on behind the scenes in the publishing business. This would not
have been necessary after the big flap when Greg tried an “end around”
something that I and every other editor worth her or his salt have tried as
well and have somebody else, here commentator and my old high school friend
Frank Jackman, act as general introducer of The
Roots Is The Toots rock and roll
coming of age series that I believe is one of the best productions I have ever
worked on. That got writers, young and old, with me or against me, led by Sam
Lowell, another of my old high school friends, who had been the decisive vote
against me in the “vote of no confidence” which ended my regime up in arms. I
have forgiven Sam, and others, as I knew full well from the time I entered into
the business that at best it was a cutthroat survival of the fittest racket.
(Not only have I forgiven Sam but I am in his corner in his recent struggles
with young up and coming by-line writer Sarah Lemoyne who is being guided
through the shoals by another old high school friend Seth Garth as she attempts
to make her way up the film critic food chain, probably the most vicious
segment of the business where a thousand knives wait the unwary from so-called
fellow reviewers.) The upshot of that controversy was that Greg had to back off
and let me finish the introducing the series for which after all I had been
present at the creation.
That would have been the end of it
but once we successfully, and thankfully by Greg who gave me not only kudos
around the water cooler but a nice honorarium, concluded that series encore in
the early summer of 2018 he found another way to cut me. Going through the
archives of this publication to try to stabilize the readership after doing
some “holy goof” stuff like having serious writers, young and old, reviewing
films based on comic book characters, the latest in video games and graphic
novels with no success forgetting the cardinal rule of the post-Internet world
that the younger set get their information from other sources than old line
academic- driven websites and don’t read beyond their techie tools Greg found another
series, the one highlighted here, that intrigued him for an encore
presentation. This is where Greg proved only too human since he once again
attempted an “end around,” by having Josh Breslin, another old friend whom I
meet in the Summer of Love, 1967 out in San Francisco, introduce the series
citing my unavailability as the reason although paying attention to the fact
that I had sweated bullets over that one as well.
This time though the Editorial
Board, now headed by Sam Lowell, intervened even before Greg could approach
Josh for the assignment. This Ed Board was instituted after my departure to
insure the operation would not descend, Sam’s word actually, into the so-called
autocratic one-person rule that had been the norm under my regime. They told
Greg to call me back in on the encore project or to forget it. I would not have
put up with such a suggestion from an overriding Ed Board and would have
willingly bowed out if anybody had tried to undermine me that way. I can
understand fully Greg’s desire to cast me to the deeps, have done with me as in
my time I did as well knowing others in the food chain would see this as their
opportunity to move up.
That part I had no problem with,
told Greg exactly that. What bothered me was the continuing “urban legend”
about what I had done, where I had gone after that decisive vote of no
confidence. Greg continued, may continue today, to fuel the rumors that not only
after my initial demise but after finishing up the Roots Is The Toots series I had gone back out West to Utah of all
places to work for the Mormons, or to Frisco to hook up with my old flame
Madame La Rue running that high-end whorehouse I had staked her to in the old
days, or was running around with another old high school pal, Miss Judy
Garland, aka Timmy Riley the high priestess of the drag queen set out in that
same town whom I also helped stake to
his high-end tourist attraction cabaret. All nonsense, I was working on
my memoir up in Maine, up in Olde Saco where Josh grew up and which I fell in
love with when he first showed me his hometown and its ocean views.
If the reader can bear the weight of
this final reckoning let me clear the air on all three subjects on the
so-called Western trail. Before that though I admit, admit freely that despite
all the money I have made, editing, doing a million pieces under various
aliases and monikers, ballooning up 3000 word articles to 10,000 and having the
publishers fully pay despite the need for editing for the latter in the days
before the Guild when you worked by the word, accepting articles which I
clearly knew were just ripped of the AP feed and sending them along as gold I
had no dough, none when I was dethroned. Reason, perfectly sane reason,
although maybe not, three ex-wives with alimony blues and a parcel of kids, a
brood if you like who were in thrall to the college tuition vultures.
Tapped out in the East for a lot of
reasons I did head west the first time looking for work. Landed in Utah when I
ran out of dough, and did, DID, try to get a job on the Salt Lake Star and would have had it too except two things somebody
there, some friend of Mitt Romney, heard I was looking for work and nixed the
whole thing once they read the articles I had written mocking Mitt and his
white underwear world as Massachusetts governor and 2012 presidential candidate.
So it was with bitter irony when I heard that Greg had retailed the
preposterous idea that I would now seek a job shilling for dear white undie
Mitt as press agent in his run for the open Utah United States Senate seat.
Here is where everybody should gasp though at the whole Utah fantasy-these
Mormons stick close together, probably ingrained in them from Joseph Smith
days, and don’t hire goddam atheists and radicals, don’t hire outside the
religion if they can help it. You probably had to have slept with one of Joseph
Smith’s or Brigham Young’s wives to even get one foot in the door. Done.
The helping Madame La Rue, real name
of no interest or need to mention,
running her high-end exclusive whorehouse out in Half Moon Bay at least
had some credence since I had staked her to some dough to get started after the
downfall of the 1960s sent her back to her real world, the world of a high
class hooker who was slumming with “hippies” for a while when it looked like our
dreams were going to be deterred in in the ebbtide. We had been hot and heavy
lovers, although never married except on some hazed drug-fogged concert night
when I think Josh Breslin “married” us and sent us on a “honeymoon” with a
fistful of cocaine. Down on dough I hit her up for some which she gave gladly,
said it was interest on the “loan: she never repaid and let me stay at her place
for a while until I had to move on. Done
The whole drag queen idea tells me
that whoever started this damn lie knew nothing about my growing up days and
had either seen me in The Totem, Timmy Riley’s aka Miss Judy Garland’s drinking
with a few drag queen who worked and drew the wrong conclusions or was out to
slander and libel me for some other nefarious reason. See Miss Judy Garland is
the very successful drag queen and gay man Timmy Riley from the old
neighborhood who fled to Frisco when he could no longer hide his sexual
identity and preferences. To our great shock since Timmy had been the out-front
gay-basher of our crowd, our working-class corner boy gay-bashing crowd. I had
lent, after getting religion rather late on the LGBTQ question, Timmy the money
to buy his first drag queen cabaret on Bay Street and Timmy was kind enough to
stake me to some money and a roof before I decided I had to head back East.
Done.
But enough about me. This is about two other working- class guys,
Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris, met along life’s road one from Carver about fifty
miles away from where Seth, Sam, Timmy and a bunch of other guys grew up and
learned the “normal” working-class ethos-and broke, tentatively at times, from
that same straitjacket and from Troy, New York. Funny Troy, Carver, North
Adamsville, and Josh’s old mill town Olde Saco all down-in-the-mouth working
class towns still produced in exceptional times a clot of guys who got caught
up in the turmoil of their times-and lived to tell the tale. I am proud to
introduce this encore presentation and will have plenty more to say about Sam
and Ralph in future segments.]
Allan Jackson Introduction To Sam
and Ralph-The Wild Boys of Cambridge When Cambridge Was Jammed Full Of Wild
Girls And Boys
[Some guys from the old days, from
the old growing up poor in the working-class Acre section of North Adamsville,
I still have contact with over fifty years later. Guys like Seth Garth who is
now in a “battle” along with his new protégé Sarah Lemoyne who looks for all
the world to be an up and coming contributor to this publication against his,
and my, old time friend Sam Lowell who promised me he would retire, especially
after he provided the key last and decisive vote when the younger writers rose
up against my editorship and forced me to retire. Forced me West seeking
another job to keep myself solvent causing all kinds of rumors and fairy tales
to enter the world which only muddied up the already murky waters. Other guys
like beautiful Si Lannon and generous benefactor to this publication Jack
Callahan also come to mind. Of course the elephant in the room has always been,
and probably always will be, one Peter Paul Markin, who taught us many things
before his sadly untimely demise caused by his own hubris many years ago. I
honored his memory for years using his name as my moniker in various publishing
efforts and will detail the genesis of that decision in the memoir of my time
in the publishing industry which I am working on and expect to complete by next
year.
I am proud to have had the chance to
keep so many friendships from the old neighborhoods days as I am a man who puts
a great deal into things like loyalty and camaraderie. Of course those
relationships do not exhaust the number of long friendships and close working
relationships. Josh Breslin met in the Summer of Love, 1967, Zack James,
youngest brother of my closest friend in high Alex, and Lance Lawrence come
readily to mind. Then there are guys, I am only talking guys today as I will
deal with gals in an up-coming introductory segment, like fellow Vietnam
veteran Ralph Morris from over in Troy, New York whom I met I believe down in
Washington, D.C. in 1971 a few weeks before we, Vietnam Veterans Against The
War (VVAW), did our part to try to shut down the government to shut down the
war on May Day -and failed. Guys like his friend Sam Eaton from Carver about
fifty miles from North Adamsville, not a
veteran since he was exempted from the draft as the sole support of his mother
and four sisters after his father passed away suddenly of a heart attack, whom Ralph
“met” after both had been arrested in those May Day actions in “jail” at the
RFK football stadium. They, Sam and Ralph, and I have stayed in contact over
the years and have worked on many political projects mostly against war
together.
That
brings me to the idea behind having Sam and Ralph as the central characters in
a series I helped plan around the story- and fate- of some working- class
radicals who for the most part had kept the faith, had not retreated to self,
had not given up the mist of change we were struggling for in those halcyon and
heady 1960s upheaval days. At the cost of over-generalization the thing that
united the North Adamsville remnant, including me, guys like Josh Breslin and
guys like Sam and Ralph was our working-class backgrounds. While the road to
new understandings of the ways of the world were different we all arrived at
some similar conclusions and since then have seen no reason to dramatically
change them if in the aging process we are less able to stir the old energies. Have
been ready to “pass the torch” for a while. The stories of the old North
Adamsville corner boys had by 2012 or so been done to death as had the stories
centered on other working-class guys like Josh Breslin from places like Olde
Saco up in Maine and so the natural place to turn was the long-time relationship
between Sam and Ralph. Things seemed right in the universe doing the series
then-and now with this encore.]
Allan Jackson’s Encore Introduction
to “An Ex-American Soldier’s Story”
Some generations are
driven by events that have world historic importance-Pearl Harbor, December 7,
1941 the day of infamy according to President Franklin Roosevelt, maybe not so
to others but that is for the historian to decipher and 9/11 2001 come readily
to mind. For the Generation of ’68 Peter Paul Markin’s designation for the
generation, or the best part of it that rose up to try and slay the dragon of
the Vietnam War that fateful April 30, 1975 when with a puff of air the North
Vietnamese Regulars and the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front waltzed int
to Saigon, now rightfully Ho Chi Minh City after the great national liberation
leader, after a 10,000 day world, the bloodiest and most bloodthirsty part the
American invasion from say 1964 to that well-known photograph of the evacuation
of the U.S. Embassy by helicopter of the last remnant of the America hubris in
the area.
Not everybody,
soldier or civilian saw, sees that day as cause for some serious contemplation,
reflection about the borders of hubris. Some soldiers, some fellow soldiers,
and this is what I want to make sure I get clear in this introduction did their
duty as they saw it, came home and as best as they could got back to the real world, that was probably
a majority of the roughly two million military personnel who served in that
conflict. Another segment, smaller and more troubled never did get back to the
“real” world. Drugs, physical maladies, mental problems, and just getting back
the nine to five world they had expected to inhabit proved too much. Guys like
the guys who famously became the “brothers under the bridge” that I wrote about
for the East Bay Other after I had
come back from Vietnam and had had my own troubles getting back into that real
world. The epitome, the personal known to me epitome of that soldier though was
Peter Paul Markin, whose moniker I used for a number of years to honor my
fallen hometown neighborhood friend and brother who taught me, us many things
before he went under and who had done okay for a while but just couldn’t get
rid of the demons in his head, what Seth Garth, using a line from a Patty
Griffin song “put out the fire in your head” used to say.
Then there were the
Ralph Morris-types who came back ready to smite dragons, and is still ready to
do so, ready to take on all comers who want to get this country into yet
another war and who as a sidebar has fought under various banners for social
justice ever since. I met Ralph down in Washington in the spring of 1971 when
he, I, was red hot to express his outrage at the murderous actions of his
government against people with which he had no quarrel. We were linked up with other ex G.I.s in
various actions as veterans, as guys who knew and saw things up close and
personal and ready to do something, maybe give up our lives if it came to that
to stop the fucking war (that is still the only way I can describe it with the
“fucking” in front). Ralph knew the war
was fucked, knew it in his bones but it took the actual experience of going to
sort things out. Sure he had his problems coming home but he stayed the course.
A guy like Ralph would not have been as happy, if that is the way to put such a
thing, as the North Vietnamese Regulars and the South Vietnamese Liberation
fighters to have the damn war finished in 1975 but every year he, we reflect on
the day and are proud of our small part in helping try to stop the thing from
going on forever.]
Allan Jackson’s Encore Introduction To “The Struggle
For A Real Independence Day-A Five Point Discussion Program”
I think that anybody who has read An American Ex-Soldier’s Story about how
his Vietnam War experience influenced Ralph Morris directly and Sam Eaton
indirectly will understand that for those like this pair who took their
“conversion” to anti-war and social justice struggles from out of working class
indifference or even hostility seriously would expect them to have some programmatic
points to guide them. Especially after having been exposed to the hot house
atmosphere around Cambridge in the early 1970s when you were nothing but fodder
for others’ plans if you did not have one of your own to present to the
so-called “unwashed masses.” Which turned out to be, unfortunately, mostly
fellow Cambridge radicals as times passed and later as most of them went back
to the academia, back to business or the professions which they assumed were
their God-given rights after toying around with revolution for the best two
years or so of their lives not even that dwindle.
So Ralph and
Sam honed away on program, worked with a ton of ad hoc groups some so remote in
time and influence to have been forgotten by even Frank Jackman and he
specialized in commenting on such groups for many years, and waited. When
Occupy turned up to give a momentary ray of hope they were “all in” and were
many writers associated with this publication at the time who helped finance
their “expeditions” to New York City and elsewhere. That is all I need to say
as prologue as the rest, the program, while in need of some specific tweaking
and updating pretty much could be a viable left-wing alternative program to
those around the extreme left-wing of the Democratic Party.
**********
An Injury To
One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The
Oppressed Must Rule!
********
Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton a couple of old-time radicals, old-time now not
being the Great Depression labor radicals who had been their models after a
fashion and who helped built the now seemingly moribund unions but anti-war
radicals from the hell-bent street in-your-face 1960s confrontations with the
American beast during the Vietnam War reign of hell were beside themselves when
the powder-puff uprising of the Occupy movement brought a fresh breeze to the
tiny American left-wing landscape in the latter part of 2011. (That term “powder puff” not expressing the
heft of the movement but the fact that it disappeared almost before it got
started giving up the huge long-term fight it was expected to wage to break the
banks, break the corporate grip on the world and, try to seek “newer world”).
Although Ralph and Sam were not members in good standing of any labor unions,
both having after their furtive anti-war street fights and the ebbing of the
movement by about the mid-1970s returned to “normalcy.” Ralph having taken over
his father’s electrical shop in Troy, New York when he retired. Sam had gone
back to Carver to expand a print shop that he had started in the late 1960s,
but having come from respectable working-class backgrounds in strictly
working-class towns, Carver about thirty miles from Boston and the cranberry
bog capital of the world and Ralph in Troy near where General Electric ruled
the roost, and had taken to heart the advice of their respective grandfathers
about not forgetting those left behind, that an injury to one of their own in
this wicked old world was an injury to all as the old Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW, Wobblies) motto had it. Moreover despite their backing away from
the street confrontations of their youth when that proved futile after a time
as the Vietnam War finally wound down and yesterday’s big name radicals left
for parts unknown they had always kept an inner longing for the “newer world,”
the more equitable world where the people who actually made stuff and kept the
wheels of society running and their down-pressed allies ruled.
So Ralph and
Sam would during most of the falloff 2011
travel down to the Wall Street plaza which was the center of the
movement on weekends, long weekends usually, to take part in the action after
the long drought of such activity both for them personally and for their kind
of politics. They were crestfallen to say the least when the thing exploded
after the then reigning mayor and the NYPD the police pulled down the hammer
and forcibly disbanded the place (and other city administrations across the
country and across the world and police departments doing likewise). Of more
concern since they had already known about what the government could do when it
decided to pull down the hammer was thereafter when the movement imploded from
its own contradictions, caught up not wanting to step on toes, to let everybody
do their own thing, do their own identity politics which did much to defang the
old movements, refusing out of hand attempting to cohere a collective
leadership that might give some direction to the damn thing but also earnestly
wanting to bring the monster down.
Ralph and Sam
in the aftermath, after things had settled down and they had time to think
decided to put together a proposal, a program if you like, outlining some of
the basic political tasks ahead to be led by somebody. Certainly not by them
since radical politics, street politics is a young person’s game and they
admittedly had gotten rather long in the tooth. Besides they had learned long
ago, had talked about it even over drinks at Jack Higgin’s Grille more than
once, how each generation will face its tasks in its own way so they would be
content to be “elder” tribal leaders and provide whatever wisdom they could, if
asked. Here working under the drumbeat of Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up something of a “national anthem” for what went on
among the better elements of Occupy are some points that any movement for
social change has to address these days and fight for and about as well.
A Five-Point
Program As Talking Points
***Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor
movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that
unemployment, under-employment, those who have just plain quit looking for work
and critically those who are working jobs beneath their skill levels was this
high in the American labor force, although it is admittedly down from the Great
Recession of 2008-09 highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula
to spread the available work around to all who want and need it. This is no
mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable
distribution of available work.
The basic scheme, as was the case with the
early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions when the union-run hiring
hall ruled supreme in manning the jobs is that the work would be divided up
through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its
capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This
would be a simpler task now than when it was first proposed in the 1930s with
the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via
computers, target jobs that need filling, where, and at what skill level, and equitably divide up current work.
Here is the beauty of the scheme, what makes
it such a powerful propaganda tool-without the key capitalist necessity of
keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be
used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather
than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must
admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such
thing as to implement “30 for 40” –with the no reduction in pay proviso,
although many low –end employers are even now under the “cover” of the flawed
Obamacare reducing hours WITH loss of pay-so that to establish this work system
as a norm it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers
government to implement this demand.
Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now
that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in
America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce and less
in the formerly pivotal private industries like auto production. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the
old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new
plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive
amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to
globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. (Strangely, or maybe not
so strangely, the North American auto industry employed almost a million
workers but only a third or less are unionized whereas in the old days the
industry was union tight.)
The other sector that desperately need to be
organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries,
hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a
dominant aspect of the American service-oriented economy. Everyone should support the recent
militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service
unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially
acceptable wage in their Fight For $15.
Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area,
where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places
cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form
the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is
obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from
continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international
commonwealth of workers’ governments. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.
Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of company-owned
trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the
springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel
lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. The key here is to organize
the truckers and distribution center workers, the place where the whole thing
comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of individual
retail stores and victimizations of local union organizers. To give an idea of
how hard this task might be though someone, probably Bart Webber in his more
thoughtful moments, once argued that it
would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant
mainstay of the run to the bottom capitalist ethos. Well, as to the latter
point that’s a thought.
Defend the right of public and private
workers to unionize. Simple-No more
defeats like in Wisconsin in 2011, no more attacks on collective bargaining the
hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts
or bourgeois recall elections either. Defeat all “right to work” legislation.
Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.
*** Defend the independence of the working
classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray, the very stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 and 2012
labor, organized labor, spent over 450 million dollars respectively trying to
elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results
speak for themselves as the gap between the rich, make that the very rich but
don’t forgot to include them on the fringes of the one percent and poor has
risen even more in this period. For those bogus fruitless efforts the labor
skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea presented, an old idea
going back to the initial formation of the working class in America, in those
elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor” and the
Republicans are the 666 beasts but the Obama administration does not take a
back seat to the elephants on this one. The past period of cuts-backs,
cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who
is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor
skates at the top of the movement. They always have their hands out.
The hard reality is that the labor skates,
not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other
way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid
the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. One
egregious example from the recent past from around the time of the Occupy
movement where some of tried to link up the labor movement with the political
uprising- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks in the
summer of 2011 when they had the company on the run and the subsequent
announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have
worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the
1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war.
The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments for
bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor
from Obama on down when the deal goes down.
This does not mean not using union dues for
political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than
ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized,
organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think,
for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union
recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and
other resources should go. And not on recall elections against individual
reactionaries, like Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, as substitutes for
class struggle when some form of general strike was required to break the
anti-union backs (and which was overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the
number of unionized public workers has dwindled to a precious few).
***End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied
troops in Iraq reached its final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of
non-mercenary forces anyway, we argued, Sam more than I did since he had been
closer to the initial stage if the opposition that we must recognize that we
anti-warriors had failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that
withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early
2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind
the scenes, as in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other proxy wars) continue now
with a new stage against ISIS (common moniker for the Islamic State) in Iraq we
had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we
are to have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before
that fight is over. Not Another War In Iraq! Stop The Bombings In Syria,
Iraq, Yemen! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East Especially To Israel
and Saudi Arabia! Defend The Palestinian People-End The Blockade of Gaza-Israel
Out Of The Occupied Territories. And as always since 2001 Immediate,
Unconditional Withdrawal Of Every Single U.S./Allied Troops (And The
Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!
U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off Syria!- Despite a certain respite recently during the Iran
nuclear arms talks American (and world)
imperialists have periodically ratcheted up their propaganda war (right now)
and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust
has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have
even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as
we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for
the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the
Americans (and their junior partner on this issue, Israel) in Iran and Syria is
not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the
“belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention
but for defense of Iran. We will, believe us we will, deal with the mullahs,
the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran in our own
way in our own time.
U.S. Hands Off The World! And Keep Them
Off!- With the number of “hot spots”
that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, like
Saudi Arabia and France over the recent period have their hands on in this
wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.
Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny,
Not One Person For The Wars! Honor
World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just
that in 1915 in the heat of war and paid the price unlike other party leaders
who were pledged to stop the war budgets by going to prison. The only play for
an honest representative of the working class under those conditions. The
litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war
budgets (let’s see, right now no new funding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get the drift). Then that big
leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would
be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military
money. Well….okay.
***Fight for a social agenda for working
people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any
rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is
the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of
the prime concerns of workers states whatever political disagreements we may
have with the Cuban leadership like Cuba, and whatever their other internal
political problems caused in no small part the fifty plus year U.S. blockade,
has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to
the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all.
Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have,
until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their
programs. Be clear Obamacare is not our program and has already been shown to
be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program against
those who wish to dismantle it and leave millions once again uninsured and
denied basic health benefits.
Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under
student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!
This would again be a no-brainer in any
rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a
society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society
together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many
working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the
middle-class as well.
Moreover the whole higher educational system
is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family
lives leaving many deserving students from broken homes and minority homes in
the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them
around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take a big chuck
from the bloated military budget and the bank bail-out money, things like that,
if you want to find the money quickly to do the job right), get rid of the top
heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let
students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a
democratic basis.
Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt
is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is
counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while
low-cost aid has not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly
educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society,
desperately needs is going to be cast into some form of indentured servitude to
the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let
the banks take a “hit” for a change!
Stop housing foreclosures and aid
underwater mortgages now! Although
the worst of the crunch has abated there are still plenty of problems and so
this demand is still timely if not desperately timely like in the recent past.
Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe,
clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of
the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing
crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also
burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot
application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.
***We created the wealth, let’s take it
back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory
of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the
capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways
the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a
system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against
feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite
and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this
system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push
them out fast, they will muddle through, again.
Take the struggle for our daily bread off the
historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we
face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system
is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the
struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it
with more co-operative human endeavors.
Build a workers’ party that fights for a
workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things
mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political
power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political
party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the
people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us
nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to
the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On
Socialist Man” (1966):
“We do not maintain that socialism is going
to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first
instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can
resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic
tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism
and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still
be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better
equipped than we are to cope even with these.”
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the
oppressed must rule!
