On The Anniversary Of OWS-From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-An Embryo For An Alternate Government-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- From The Pen Of Radical Journalist Joshua Lawrence Breslin-On Generals Without An Army?- A Re-Post

Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
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Markin comment October 1, 2011:

There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in the Occupy movement. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic, and frankly, bizarre and arcane, consensus process and relationships with the police who are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, the spirit of the movement, especially among the young and open-minded, is refreshing, its activists are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at various occupation sites. We can all learn something but in the meantime, and under all foreseeable conditions, we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
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As part a comment made in this space, dated October 20, 2011, I noted the following:

“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the “new world” we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”

A couple of the people that I have talked to were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea I posed that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work checks and balances form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)

I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one. In that sense previous historical models come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.

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Recently (see October 22, 2011 comment above) I noted the following while arguing for the General Assembly concept as a form of alternate government using historic examples like the Paris Commune (1871), the early soviets in Russia (1905 and 1917), and the early days of the antifascist militias in the Spanish Civil War (1936-37):

“However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.”

In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I have, occasionally, posted works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France. Other such examples have, and will be, posted as the occasion arises
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Peter Paul Markin comment:

A while back my longtime friend, Josh Breslin (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those old enough to recognize that name from half the alternative presses in this country, large and small, over the past forty years or so) sent me an e-mail the contents of which I have commented on in this space under the entry “General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale.” (See post below.)The substance of the piece was that Josh felt that the Occupy idea was ripe for the picking by those bourgeois political forces that were hovering around the movement lately looking like wolves ready to feast on an easy meal. Without going into detail here he also argued that there were some very Potemkin Village-like aspects of the Occupy Boston movement since the police raid on December 10th (2011) scattered the tribe. The most remarkable statement though, or at least the one which stuck in my mind after reading his e-mail, was his characterization of Occupy as “generals without an army.’’ That little twist has haunted me not a little since after some thought and some further investigation I find that statement to have some truth in it.

Now some readers of this post will dismiss the whole notion of generals, or at least the free-wheeling use of any military terms when speaking of the movement, out of hand. That would be unfortunate because that expression was merely a short-hand way for Josh to say what many people I have spoke to already sense. This “leaderless” movement has leaders, there is nothing wrong with leaders emerging if based on doing hard political work and winning authority, and that in a very important sense those fairly small numbers whose lives are now entwined with the Occupy movement are de facto leaders and that is just hard political realty. Period

And an equally hard fact is that through the thick and thin of committee meetings, working groups, “rump” General Assemblies (Josh’s word but there is also truth in that characterization as well) and other forms of actions (mainly small, very small) over the past period (and thus a mood that pre-dates the demise of Dewey Square) is that the Occupy movement has lost much steam. Some of this was, and should have been, expected. And perhaps with a better political focus here in Boston that may be turned around. But the hard-headed reality is that a lot of possibly very good cadres are spinning their wheels with no forces (or not many) behind them. Others are just doing what comes naturally, content to attend endless meetings, discuss endlessly, and let other hostile forces come in and pick those very good cadres clean. Ya, sometimes Josh Breslin is clueless on stuff but on this on he is preaching to the converted.
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General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale

Peter Paul Markin comment:

I had never seen my old friend Josh Breslin so irate (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those who know him under that moniker through his various commentary columns in all kind alternative press operations over the past forty years or so). Or rather more correctly I had never read anything of his that practically steamed off the page, the computer screen page that early Monday morning (December 19, 2011, let’s see the time stamp, oh yes, 5:14 AM, Ya early, definitely early for Josh) when I was casually perusing my daily e-mail delete slaughter-house. It seems that he had attended an Occupy Boston General Assembly (GA) meeting the night before over at the hallowed Community Church on Boylston Street (hallowed in leftist circles, I had first gone there long ago to attend a commemoration program for Sacco and Vanzetti). Since the police raid on the Occupy camp at Dewey Square in the early morning hours of December 11th the GAs have been assembling helter-skelter at various locations from the Parkman Bandstand on the Common to various sympathetic indoor as winter sets in locations, mainly churches, in order to keep some continuity during these unsettled times.

At that meeting the main order of business was a simple proposal submitted by the OB Socialist Caucus, a loose group of organizationally-affiliated and unaffiliated people who identify themselves with the socialist cause. The gist of the proposal was to make a forthright statement that Occupy Boston was to be clearly identified, more clearly identified than in any previous document, as independent of the main bourgeois parties, the Democrats in particular, and by implication was not to be a front or voting cattle bloc for any particular organized political operation ready to move in like hungry wolves looking for an easy meal. This proposal never reached a vote, a yea or nay vote, that night because it was “blocked” well before such a vote could be taken by, as Josh called it in his e-mail, the “Rump” assembly (see said e-mail posted below, well the gist of it anyway). The Rump being a minority of those eighty or so brethren in attendance that evening whose maneuver in the consensus-addled GA world stopped the proposal in its tracks. This series of events triggered in Josh some kind of previously well-hidden verbal explosion about the trends that he had witnessed developing in the movement, and that had disturbed him previously. Naturally he had to send his old compadre Peter Paul his bilious e-mail as the first step in his “campaign” to get things off his chest.

A little explanation is in order to gauge the seriousness of Josh’s maddened impulse and, as well, for why I have taken the time to write this little commentary up and pushed it forward. Josh and I go back a long way, back to the summer of love in San Francisco in 1967 when I was on Captain Crunch’s merry prankster magical mystery tour freedom bus and I met Josh, then going under the moniker “Prince Of Love,” on Russian Hill in that town. Ya, I know, we were just a little too self-important on changing the name changed the person thing but that was the way it was. I was, for a while, known as Be-Bop Benny, among other names.

Josh had, after just graduating from high school up in Olde Saco, Maine hitch-hiked across the country to see “what was happening.” We hit it off right away, probably because my being from North Adamsville here in Massachusetts we were the only New Englanders “on the bus,” even though I was a few years older. In any case our friendship survived through thick and thin, even despite his “stealing” my girl, Butterfly Swirl (okay, okay I will stop with the a. k. a’s), from right under my nose during the first few days we knew each other. Part of that thick and thin has been involvement in a long series of left-wing political struggles where we have not always seen eye to eye but have generally been “on the right of the angels.”

And that, roughly, brings us to the present. Along the way, for a number of reason that shall not detain us here, I increasingly came to socialist conclusions abut the nature of American society and the ways to change it. Josh, while always on the cutting edge of those same conclusions, never crossed over and has maintained a studied non-socialist radical position very similar to many that I have run into as the Occupy movement has gathered steam. As a paid political commentator for various publications Josh has always kept a certain skeptical distance from going overboard every time there is the slightest left breeze coming in over Boston Harbor. Until now.

As I have written elsewhere Josh, now retired, still likes to keep his hand in the mix and so has been working on a project that may turn into a book about the Occupy Boston experience. When he first he crossed the river from the wilds of Cambridge he held himself pretty aloof from the doings but soon became totally enmeshed in what was going on. I was, and still am, a lot more skeptical about where the winds are heading. Josh though spent some nights at Dewey Square and got involved in the camp life. He marched up and down the streets of Boston in every possible cause. He brought food and other goods to the site when he came over. He donated money and other resources to the efforts. He even told me that he washed dishes (once) to help out in the kitchen one day. And believe me in the old prankster days the Prince of Love was, well, too “important” to bow down and get his hands wet doing anything as lowly as dishes. So this new experiment (or rather a chance to make up for those youthful mistakes) really energized him.

So when Joshua Lawrence Breslin, on a darkened Monday morning, signals that something is wrong, something is politically wrong with the direction of the movement I listen up. And, perhaps, you should too.
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Below I have placed the substance of the e-mail that Josh Breslin sent to me that fateful Monday December 19th morning. This is my summarization of the document which was written by him in our usual “code” and with his usual excessive use of expletives to normal ears so that it would be not understandable to “outsiders.” In short I have edited it as best I could while retaining the political direction. If Josh doesn’t like it then he can, well, sue me. Ha ha. Or better, write his own damn translation. Peter Paul Markin.

December 19, 2011, 5:14 AM to PeterPaulMarkin@yahoo.com:

Pee Pee, [The reader is hereby warned no to make anything out of this old-time nickname, old time going back to childhood North Adamsville working-class neighborhood days, or else.] You won’t believe what those arrogant airheads did last night at the so-called GA. I call it, and you can quote me on this, the “Rump” like back in Oliver Cromwell’s time when a bunch of cronies controlled everything, or else. They “blocked” the proposal to have a clear statement of independence from the damn Democrats (and Republicans too) but we know who really wants in on this movement.

What they did was get together enough people to block the thing even though with a simple majority it could have gotten through. So much for democracy. For once you are right on this blocking and consensus b.s. Now when Miss Betty [Elizabeth Warren] comes a-courting she will have a field day. You and I have disagreed on many things but keeping the bourgeois parties the hell away from our movement (except maybe to do “Jimmy Higgins” work putting up chairs or licking envelopes, stuff like that) has always been something that has united us ever since Chicago in 1968.

You should have heard the reasons given. Naturally the old chestnut- “we don’t want to alienate anyone” (anyone to the left of Genghis Khan, I guess). “It’s too negative.” Like the bourgeoisie gives a damn about negativity as long as they keep their moola and their power. “The statement we have already posted about transparency and independence is good enough” Like that flimsy one-size-fits-all statement has any political meaning at all. And it degenerated from there. I was so mad I had to walk out and get some fresh air.

I am far from giving up on this Occupy movement but in a lot of ways it really is like that guy, that homeless camper guy, I interviewed over at Dewey Square in early November when the weather got a little cold said. He said the place was a Potemkin Village. I thought he meant about people not staying there overnight. But now I think he meant the whole experiment. They, we, are generals without any army right now and nothing that is being done lately is calculated to break out from that situation. Were we this ruthlessly obtuse back in the days? I hope not- Josh
Postscript from Markin:

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.”
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!

*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

In Honor Of George Jackson And The Soledad Brothers As We Remember Attica- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!

In Honor Of George Jackson  And The Soledad Brothers As We Remember Attica- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

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Markin comment from June 8, 2011 entry:

From The Partisan Defense Committee "Class Struggle Defense" Archives- What Defense Policy for Revolutionaries?-"An Injury To One Is An Injury To All"

Markin comment:

The several documents presented in this compilation cover a wide range of issues that confront any serious left-wing class struggle defense organization committed to non-sectarian defense based on the old Wobblie (and maybe before the Wobblies, around the time of the Haymarket martyrs if an article that I have read lately is any indication) of “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Most of those issues have been adequately addressed in one form or another by the writers and/or editors of the documents.

There is one point, however, mentioned here that I would like to highlight a little more based on my own long- time experience with legal defense cases, work, given the dearth of more direct class-struggle issues, that has consumed much more of my political time (and that of others who I have spoken to on the matter) lately than I would have expected. That is the question of “hiding” the relationship between the defense organization and the political organization leading up the case, the question of front groups. Most of these radical legal cases from defense of the Panthers back in the 1960s to the latest death penalty cases start with some leftist organization’s impetus.

Those seeking to center their campaigns on beseeching hard-core liberal support (and some vital cash nexus that goes with seeking such support) will “hide’ their “parent” organizational affiliations and “pretend” the cause is a simple democratic one. The Stalinists of the Communist Party, after their short bout with “third period” purity in the late 1920s were past masters of this technique. The clearest example of this that I can give, and that radicals today might either remember or be somewhat familiar with, was the Angela Davis case in connection with her involvement with the Jonathan Jackson (George Jackson’s brother)/Sam Melville Brigade. Now Angela Davis was then, and now, a hard Stalinist and then a leading public member of the party. One would have thought that her party affiliation would have been front and center since everybody knew it anyway.

And, more importantly, that those Communist Party members working on this important campaign would have identified themselves proudly with their fellow comrade. Well, I guess you cannot teach an old dog new tricks as the worn-out adage goes. At least a Stalinist old dog. One meeting that I went to concerning her defense had about fifty people in attendance. Some liberals, known to me. Some unaffiliated radicals, also known to me. And the rest CPers. Except, if you were not politically savvy you would not have known that last fact because not one CPer, not one identified him or herself as such. Oh sure there were representatives from the Croatian Anti-Fascist League, The League For International Peace, Mothers for Peace and the like. Yes, you guessed it all CPers. And to what end? You see, maybe the liberals could be fooled, or wanted to be, and maybe even a few radicals who believe in some “family of the left” notion of politics, as well. But when the deal goes down the bourgeoisie is not fooled, not by a long shot. And then not only are you defending one comrade but the whole organization. So learn a new trick, okay?

Note:

An additional twist on the CP's catering to the liberals in the Angela Davis case was that they left class-war prisoner Ruchell McGee, Ms. Davis' co-defendant, to basically fend for himself. His profile would not have gone down as well with such elements enamored with celebrity Davis. I also note that forty years later I am still calling for Ruchell McGee's freedom as part of my June Class-War Prisoners series. Enough said.

As We Come Up To The World War I Armistice Day That War “To End All War”- Yeah, No Question War Is Hell-With Peter Weir’s Film “Gallipoli” In Mind

As We Come Up To The World War I Armistice Day That War “To End All War”- Yeah, No Question War Is Hell-With Peter Weir’s Film “Gallipoli” In Mind 

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

As the readers of this site may know I recently have retired, maybe semi-retired is a better way to put it, from the day to day, week to week grind of reviewing film old and young as I just hit my sixty-fifth year. That stepping aside to let Sandy Salmon take his paces on a regular basis did not mean that I would be going completely silent as I intended to, and told the site administrator Greg Green as much, to do an occasional film review and general commentary. This is one of those general commentary times. What has me exercised is Sandy’s recent review of Australian director Peter Weir’s World War I classic Gallipoli starring Mark Lee and Mel Gibson. I take no issue with Sandy since he did a fine job. What caught my attention was Sandy’s comment about Archie’s, the role played by Mark Lee, fervent desire to join his fellow Aussies on Gallipoli peninsula as a patriotic duty and a manly adventure. When I did my own review of the film back in 1981 when the film first came out I make a number of comments about my own military experiences and those of some of the guys I hung around with in high school who had to make some decisions about what to do about the war of our generation, the Vietnam War of the decade of the 1960s. 

While the action of the Australian young men itching to get into the “action” of World War I preceded us by fifty years a lot of the same ideas were hanging our old-time working- class neighborhood in Vietnam War times. (World War I’s ending, “the war that was to end all wars” which turned out to be terribly off the mark, which by the way we are commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the fourth and mercifully last year of this year ending with the Armistice on November 11, 1918 at 11:11 AM- how is that for symbolism. Less symbolic is the American turn of the day into a generic veterans day back in the 1950s which some veterans, including me, are trying to have returned to the original purpose of the day-stopping wars in their tracks.) More than a few guys like Jim Leary and Freddie Lewis from the old Acre neighborhood were like Archie ready, willing and able to go fight the “red menace,” tip the dominoes our way a big selling point at the time but totally absurd in the end, do their patriotic duty take your pick of reasons. Maybe in Freddie’s case to get out of the hostile household that he grew up in and maybe Jim like Archie for a little for the adventure, to prove something about the questions he had about his manhood. I did not pick those two names out accidently for those names now are permanently etched on that hallowed black granite wall down in Washington that brings tears to my eyes old as I am every time I go there.

(The most recent time Memorial Day, 2018 to mark the fiftieth year of mourning for Jim who was one of the corner boys, was a real piece of work and, take your pick, enlisted voluntarily or did so under judicial guidance-that being ordered forthwith to the military or five years jailtime for some armed robbery they grabbed him on-He told me he would rather take his chances against the “gooks”  than be a lifer’s “girlfriend” in stir. Yeah, that is exactly the way he put it, the way he put his choice. Wrong move but who is to fault his decision despite 50 years of mourning over his lost youth-and mine. Freddie was just a quiet kid from my street who had a terrible home life and no great prospects so he joined up thinking that those lying bastard recruiting sergeants were for real when they told him he would get training in electronics which he was interested in-that was the “come on” but in no front lines Vietnam that turned him into a dog soldier infantryman whatever else he did-damn the bastards.)

 

Then there were guys like me and Jack Callahan, fallen Pete Markin who didn’t want to go into the military, didn’t want to enlist like Jim and Freddie but who having no real reason not to go when our local draft boards, our friends and neighbors if you are old enough to remember, sent “the letter” requesting our services did go and survived. The main reason that we did not want to go, at least at the time, not later when we got a serious idea of what war was about, was that doing military duty kind of cramped our style, would put a crimp in our drinking, doping, and grabbing every girl who was not nailed down. Later Pete and I got religion, realized that the other options like draft refusal which might have meant jail or fleeing to Canada were probably better options. But we were like Archie and Frank in Gallipoli working class kids even though we had all been college students as well. (Markin, hell, the Scribe which is what we all called him from about junior high school once our leader Frankie Riley dubbed him with that moniker after having spewed out a ton of words of praise on Frankie’s behalf, had made his own fatal decision when he dropped out of Boston University in his sophomore year to pursue the dream inherent the Summer of Love, 1967. That in those hellish man-eating days in Vietnam made him prime “cannon-fodder” a word we did not know then but damn well learned later. When the Scribe finished his Vietnam duty he decided not to return to school since ‘Nam had taught him all he needed to know. Again, who was to fault his judgment then-even though he would too soon fall down to drugs and his own hubris and an early grave-a still mourned early grave.)

When in our past was there even a notion of not going when the military called, of abandoning the old life in America for who knows what in Canada. We did what we did with what made sense to us at the time even if we were dead-ass wrong.         

And then of course there is a story like Frank Jackman’s who grew up in a neighborhood even down lower on the social scale than ours, grew up in “the projects,” the notorious projects which our parents would threaten us with if we didn’t stop being a serious drain on the family’s resources. Frank somehow was a college guy too and like us “accepted” induction although he had more qualms about what the heck was going on in Vietnam and about being a soldier. But like us he also accepted induction because he could see no other road out. This is where the story changes up though. Frank almost immediately upon getting to basic training knew that he had made a mistake-had no business in a uniform. And by hook or by crook he did something about it, especially once he got orders for Vietnam. The “hook” part was that through a serious of actions which I don’t need to detail here he wound up doing a little over a year in an Army stockade for refusing to go to Vietnam. Brave man.  The “crook” part was also through a series of actions which need not detain us now, mostly through the civilian courts, he was discharged, discharged from the stockade, honorably discharged as a conscientious objector.           

Archie, Frank and their Aussie comrades only started to get an idea, a real idea about the horrors of war when they were in the trenches in front of the Turks also entrenched on Gallipoli peninsula and being mowed down like some many blades of grass. Archie and most of the crew that joined up with him were among those blades of grass. It was at the point where Archie was steeling himself to go over the top of the trenches after two previous waved had been mowed down and then being cut down by the Turkish machine-gun firing that I realized how brave Frank Jackman’s actions were in retrospect.

Grease Monkey’s Sonata-Mickey Rooney’s “Quicksand” (1950)-A Film Review

Grease Monkey’s Sonata-Mickey Rooney’s “Quicksand” (1950)-A Film Review

DVD Review 

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

[This is a DVD that I found of all places in a “for sale” bin of discontinued material at the Cambridge Public Library several weeks ago. This while my transition to emeritus and the ending of the grind of film reviewing under deadlines and Sandy Salmon my replacement on the day to day work was in progress. I had offered the film for Sandy to review knowing (and hoping) from long friendship and competition (mostly friendly as among most film reviewers outside of New York City) that he didn’t give what we called in the old neighborhood where I grew up a “rat’s ass” about reviewing a 1950s film noir. So here I am again in the saddle for a minute.) 

Quicksand, starring Mickey Rooney, Jeanne Cagney, Peter Lorre, Barbara Bates, directed by Irving Pichel yet another Hollywood figure blacklisted in the red scare Cold War night when the powers- to-be in Tinsel-town and their cowardly hangers-on took a dive on funny little things like constitutional rights-and peoples’ livelihoods, 1950  

Forgot the film noir aspect of the film under review, Mickey Rooney’s Quicksand, although only now is this minor classic noir and probably Mickey’s best performance against type (he spent his early career as the “ah, shucks” cinematic version of Andy Hardy of that classic series of young adult books) being recognized as such. This plotline is strictly from Sister Cecelia’s, maybe Sister Mary Rose’s, or maybe Sister Delores’, hell, maybe all of them, lessons from Sunday school at old Saint Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church in mu old home town. The lesson: once you go down the slippery slope of sin (and probably crime as here was the same thing in their imaginations) then there is a serious rollover effect, serious consequences. Yeah, and obviously Mickey’s character Danny, the lowly grease monkey, you know, auto mechanic either didn’t pay attention or was absent those Sundays when whoever was running the Sunday school operation where he worshipped was holding forth about that very prospect. No question, he uncorked every possible evil as he went down the road to perdition.        

Funny from a first look at Danny he didn’t look like a guy who would wind up doing from one to ten in some California penal colony once the dust settled. But then you didn’t know then what steered him down the garden path. Of course then we didn’t know that he would run smack daub into a low rent femme fatale, Vera, played by Jeanne Cagney, who was serving them off the arm at a hash house where the local grease monkeys filled their lunch buckets and he made the fatal mistake of dating her up (a mistake as well since she was too tall for him, maybe too blond as well). Once you know all he was doing was trying to move might and main to get her down among the downy billows then all his fevered actions made a kind of off-hand sense as every guy, including this reviewer, has had first-hand experience with if he goes for the femmes. (Frankly this Vera didn’t have the look of steam-infested career waitress, looked more like a bar girl or a roper on a scam but you never know what has a gal serving them off the arm).

Okay here is what the slippery slope looked like if you follow along (and suspense disbelief as well). It seemed after making that hot date for that very night Danny was cash-shy, needed some dough to carry some weight with Vera. Everybody was tapped out so, and remember, this is where he falls down, gets ready to take the big step-off if he doesn’t catch a break, he grabbed a measly twenty buck from the skinflint larcenous auto boss’s till. Just an overnight loan. No problem because some guy who owned him more than twenty would cover him the next day and that hot date would be worth it he could tell. Problem: the boss’s accountant showed up early the next day for some other reason so he would need to cover the twenty bucks fast. He can’t get the dough to cover so naturally he gets the fever-driven bright idea that if he goes and buys an expensive watch on credit for a hundred bucks (remember this is before cash-back credit cards could have saved his butt even they were charging usurious rates) and then hocked it for thirty bucks.

That idea worked well enough for Danny in the short term, got him a reprieve from the boss’s accountant although just barely and with a very jaundiced eye but then the next hurdle showed up at the garage-the dreaded “repo” man. Seems that in California in those days you didn’t actually own, couldn’t own, an item on credit until it was fully paid for, now too if I am not mistaken. The repo man gave him twenty four hours to ante up the C-note or he was going to stir for grand larceny. What to do, desperately what to do since a hundred bucks was way out of his league on such short notice. Simple, our Danny boy bops a drunk carrying plenty of dough on the head in darkened parking lot (let’s call that one assault and battery in the night time and armed robbery, okay and you get an idea that Danny’s wheels have gotten well off the track). He is in the clear now, his miseries are over as he handed the repo man his piece. Of course Danny is just a misbegotten grease monkey and not some kind of career criminal so when he flashes fifty dollar bills Vera’s way she knows he is the guy who bopped the well-known drunk. Worse, the guy she used to work for at the local penny arcade who seemingly still has a thing for her, Nick, a seedy guy no question, played by the lovely Peter Lorre, knows he grabbed the dough. Has the handkerchief he used as a mask doing the robbery. Nick’s price for keeping quiet-a new car from the auto shop. Or else.                

  

There’s more, believe there is more in this Dante-like descend into hell. Danny grabs the car alright and thinks he is back on easy street and can now enjoy his new honey in quiet, maybe get under the sheets with her finally. Nope, that larcenous auto shop boss has his own scam. He accused Danny of stealing the car (he also accused others in the shop of the same crime in order to blackmail them). His price for keeping quiet three thou for a two thousand blue book car. Jesus. That is where the quick-thinking hustling Vera comes in to save his bacon, maybe. Seems that Nick besides running that seaside arcade does some business in cashing checks for guys-a low rent operation that is still with us unfortunately. She knows where Nick keeps the dough and it is not in a bank. So Danny goes and grabs the dough, hey who would have thought, thirty-six hundred. Now he is only easy street and can get back to the serious business of running around with that femme Vera.

Forget it. Vera, who was a drifter from hunger just like Danny, had her big eyes on a mink coat and while Danny was off doing something she bought the coat for the cash she was holding for him. Eighteen hundred bucks, her half of the heist according to her thinking, and not a bad price when you think about in the days when women craved mink and it wasn’t politically incorrect, very politically correct to wear fur. Danny went crazy and finally saw she was little more than a bent whore. But that left Danny short with his boss. He went to the boss with his eighteen hundred-take it or leave it. The boss took it naturally since he was a larcenous character. Except that was a stall-he was holding out for three thou and was calling the coppers when Danny freaked out and strangled him. Murder, one, the big step off at the Q no doubt. Grabbed his gun too on the way out knowing he was nothing but a desperado now, an outlaw. All for a twenty buck deal to go around with a floozy.            

Things looked grim, very grim as he was going on the lam to Mexico, or someplace very far away from California. This is where we get a little sneak redemption. See Danny had thrown over a nice girl, Helen, played by Barbara Bates, who would have been right up his alley if he was Andy Hardy but he had been in throes to that damn femme. The thing was this Helen was still carrying the torch for him, carrying that flame despite knowing that he was in a heck of a lot of trouble. Yeah, true love which he finally realizes he could have held onto for dear life. She would share his fate whatever happened. So people are like that, thankfully, thankfully for Danny. He tries to talk her out of going with hi but no use. As they try to blow town his damn automobile blows a gasket. So he is back in the bright idea business. He, they will, at gunpoint stop a car on the highway and force the driver to take them away to Mexico. So add on hijacking, kidnapping and who knows what else to the total. And who knows what Helen will get for being his sidekick on this part of the descent.

Then Danny, Helen draw a convenient little break. The guy they kidnapped was a non-plussed lawyer who asked for the whole story. Asked as well whether that auto shop boss was really dead which would have been a tough dollar to get around for what started out as a twenty dollar petty larceny case. As it turned out that auto shop boss was not dead but had just been unconscious. Free, free at last. Well not quite. There was too much of a mess to get him off scot free  so he would be doing that one to ten. Guess who will be waiting for him coming out stir? But wouldn’t Danny have been better off having listened to Sister Cecelia, Sister Mary Rose, Sister Delores, hell, maybe all three of them, about the slippery slope of sin. If you are a noir fan and can find this one take a look.           

For The Frontline Defenders Of The Working Class!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”-Build The Resistance-A Program

For The Frontline Defenders Of The Working Class!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”-Build The Resistance-A Program  

By the American Left History blog staff

[Sometimes and the period we are in of late, over the last several years, a period of cold civil war in the United States, is one of those times, we have to come up with some programmatic statements in order to help the process of clarification about the immediate and future tasks of the Left.  To what the later Peter Paul Markin, forever known as the Scribe, called in his old hard-core working class growing up neighborhood days “seeking the newer world” which he unfortunately by his untimely early death was not able to help create although for a while he tried, tried like hell to do in his best days and which a number of us, his old comrades both from corner boy days and later have been trying to continue. The following is a draft, and only a draft, of what we collectively have come up with to help orient the newfound and promising Resistance that has sprung up in the era of one Donald J. Trump, his henchmen and his hangers-on to reverse the one-sided class war we have been on the brunt side of and of the cultural wars we have been fighting rear-guard action against for about the last forty years. Josh Breslin for the American Left History blog staff. ]   

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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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, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was as high in the American labor force as it is just tentatively recovering from of late, although it is admittedly down from the Great Recession 2008 highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. Socially productive work not make-shift stuff although we would support an vast expansion of public works to fix the broken down infrastructure in need of serious and immediate repair. his 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’ plans as a result of battles like the General Strike in San Francisco in the 1934, 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 when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.

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. 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. 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 economy. 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 workers the place where the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of individual retail stores. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, 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 like the unsuccessful one against Governor Scoot Walker in Wisconsin in the aftermath of the huge defeat of public workers in Wisconsin funds and talents which could have been used to reorganize the public workers for union struggles ahead. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008, 2012, and 2016 labor, organized labor, spent over well over 700 million dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between the rich and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus efforts rather than the serious labor organizing among low wage workers, the unorganized, the South and Wal-Mart the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” 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 since they have been very generous with own paychecks. The old norm in need of revival is that the bureaucrats at all levels should receive no more than the pay of the average skilled worker they represent.    

The hard reality today 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 of most egregious recent examples that we can recall- 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 when the deal went down from Bush to Obama to Trump on 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 (also think, think hard, about having to go that far back to get a positive example). That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections against individual reactionaries, like the Scoot-Walker recall effort in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle (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 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 previously in Libya and now in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Chad and other proxy wars) continue now with a new stage against ISIS (Islamic State) in Iraq and other Middle East states 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. No War With North Korea, Iran! Out of Syria! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East! Stop The Bombing Campaigns! Defend The Palestinian People! And as always after 16 long years, since 2001 for the forgetful Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!  

U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off North Korea!- 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 North Korea and Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partners on this issue, Israel and Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea) in North Korea or Iran 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 North Korea and Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and the Kim regime in North Korea 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, 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 and reneged on that promise by going to prison. The jailhouse 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, North Korea preparations, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get our 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 like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, 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 been shown to be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program against those like Trump and the majority of his Republican ilk r his 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 from the military budget 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 plus 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 in 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 2008 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 had 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 socialism, 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!

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Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Preacher man, don't tell me,

Heaven is under the earth.

I know you don't know

What life is really worth.

It's not all that glitters is gold;

'Alf the story has never been told:

So now you see the light, eh!

Stand up for your rights. come on!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Most people think, Great god will come from the skies,

Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.

But if you know what life is worth,

You will look for yours on earth:

And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!

Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )

Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )

Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )

Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )

Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )

Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )

We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -

Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.

We know when we understand:

Almighty god is a living man.

You can fool some people sometimes,

But you can't fool all the people all the time.

So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),

We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )

So you better: Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )

Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )

Get up, stand up!

Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )

Get up, stand up! (... )

Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )

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A special word about Bob Marley whose song above inspired us to update and present out programmatic ideas:

We Don’t Want Your Ism-Skism Thing- Dreadlocks Delight- “One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley And The Wailers”- A CD Review

One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley And The Wailers, Bob Marley And The Wailers, UTV Records, 2001

Admit it, back in the late seventies and early eighties we all had our reggae minutes, at least a minute anyway. And the center of that minute, almost of necessity, had to be a run-in with the world of Bob Marley and the Wailers, probably I Shot The Sheriff. Some of us stuck with that music and moved on to its step-child be-bop, hip-hop when that moved on the scene. Others like me just took it as a world music cultural moment and put the records (you know records, those black vinyl things, right?) away after a while. And that was that.

Well not quite. A few year back, back in 2011 the Occupy movement, the people risen, had done a very funny musical thing, at least funny to my ears when I heard it. They, along with the old labor song, Solidarity Forever, and, of course Brother Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land , had resurrected Bob Marley’s up-from-under fight song, Get Up, Stand Up to fortify the sisters and brothers against the American imperial monster beating down on all of us and most directly under the police baton and tear gas canister. And that seems, somehow, eminently right in the monster age of one Donald J. Trump, his henchman, and his hangers-on. More germane here it has gotten me to dust off those old records and give Brother Marley another hear. And you should too if you have been remiss of late with such great songs as (aside from those mentioned already) No Woman, No Cry, Jamming, One Love/People Get Ready (ya, the old Chambers Brother tune), and Buffalo Soldier. And stand up and fight too.

Originally posted 10th February 2012