A Few Notes On The Poor Peoples Campaign Of 1968 As Food For Thought As We Prepare From The Second And Hopefully Final Campaign in 2018

A Few Notes On The Poor Peoples Campaign Of 1968 As Food For Thought As We Prepare From The Second And Hopefully Final Campaign in 2018

By Seth Garth

Some readers may know that Si Lannon, who usually does film and art exhibitions reviews in this publication (and book reviews at the American Literary Digest some of which find their way into this publication by reciprocal agreement), back on June 23^rd of this year had an assignment in Washington, D.C. to write an article on the Cezanne Portraits exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. On his way to do that assignment, on that Saturday June 23^rd when he exited the Smithsonian Metro stop on National Mall to walk over to the 7^th Street entrance to the Gallery building Si noticed a large white tent and further down toward 7^th Street proper a large stage flanked by two huge screens and huge banners proclaiming that this was the site of the Poor People’s Campaign, hereafter PPC. When he stopped off at the tent he found out from one young activist who was busy painting slogans on posters for the day’s event that the day was the culmination of several weeks of local state capital actions throughout the country highlighting issues like homelessness, immigration and the war economy. All as they adversely affect the great unacknowledged poor masses in this country who have mainly been the victims of the growing gap between the rich and poor. The 23^rd was basically a wake-up call to the federal government and an organizing focus for the PPC cadre who will be working hard over the long haul to achieve some of the goals of the campaign. That morning and afternoon would be highlighted by a rally with the inevitable speakers and a march toward the Capitol several blocks down the Mall.     

Once Si knew what was happening and knowing that a fair number of readers and certainly a fair number of writers at this publication remember the original ill-fated Poor People’s Campaign from 1968 which was short-circuited by the murders Doctor Martin Luther King who originally organized the event and Robert Kennedy who was running for President that year and had endorsed the ideas of the campaign and had visited the encampment set up in that summer before his death he called up site manager Greg Green to see if he wanted Si to cover that event. Greg although about a half generation younger that the average person who would remember that event jumped on it with both hands. Told Si to not worry about the Cezanne exhibit and do a piece on the event, Which he did a good job on and had been posted on this site in late June.  

That would not be the end of the PPC coverage though once Si had done his report. Greg, curious about the original PPC, looked for writers here that might have some information and insights about what happened, or didn’t happen, in 1968 and maybe why. As it turned out the only person who had paid much attention to the event was I. I had actually visited the encampment in the summer of 1968 before I received that dreaded draft notice from “my friends and neighbors” which is the way they introduced themselves at the draft board in Adamsville. I made it clear to Greg that I had not been an activist, a participant but had been down for a different reason, a non-political reason, which is North Adamsville corner boy speak back then meant seeing some young woman. Be that as it may Greg assigned me the piece. I make no great claims about being some kind of PPC scholar but only offer some observation which may alert the current audience to what is happening.     

[This truly belongs as an aside but I could not resist making the point that in the amateur political organizing business some things never change. I refer to Si’s asking what was happening on June 23^rd to a young activist who was painting slogans on poster board. I can remember many a night, many an after midnight night, high on some drug of the month, working with a small group of other young activists painting slogans on poster board for some demonstration or other. That is the same part. What nobody, nobody in their right minds does today is take said posters or leaflets and using old-fashioned wallpaper paste put them up on telephone poles and on wall also after midnight to avoid the coppers, and probably high on the drug of the month then too] Seth Garth  

A Few Notes On The Poor Peoples Campaign Of 1968 As Food For Thought As We Prepare From The Second And Hopefully Final Campaign in 2018

[As many of you know this is the 50^th anniversary of the original Poor Peoples Campaign of 1968. Over the past several months to a year various individuals and organizations have organized around many of those original themes of bringing the poor into some kind of equality in this society. Over the next several weeks there will be weekly actions here locally and a mass rally in Washington around specific grievances. Smedley is knee-deep in the local planning so to give some thoughts about the original campaign is what our May GM discussion period is about. Since we have a big agenda I have written some notes so that we can go to the discussion part directly and save some time. These notes will also be in hard copy at the GM. Al Johnson]

As a long ago philosopher pointed out those who do not remember history are condemned to relive it. That point is what drives this discussion about what happened to the first Poor Peoples Campaign in 1968. It does not pretend to be all-inclusive nor more than one person’s take on those times and that event.

At the most general level the original PPC was a dramatic defeat for the struggles of the poor and oppressed of this country. To understand some of the reasons behind that defeat beyond the murder of the prime mover of the campaign Doctor King will help us to push forward. In a sense the PPC was poorly timed since 1968 as many of us older activists know was a hell-bent year with the Tet offensive finally showing Americans we could not “win” in Vietnam, the refusal of the sitting president, LBJ, to run again, the two assassinations of iconic progressive figures in King and Bobby Kennedy who were in their respective ways driving forces behind the campaign, the turmoil in the streets here and internationally with the May Days in France and the chaos and horror of the Democratic Convention in the summer of that year. So the PPC had to fight for breathe against those more dramatic events and got pushed to the side rather easily especially after King’s murder and some inner turmoil and in-fighting among the leadership.

The PPC was ill-timed and ill-starred in another way. Frankly the heroic black civil rights struggle down South which brought about massive increases in voting rights and some other positive benefits did not after 1965 put much of a dent in the oppression of black people and other minorities around housing, jobs, education, healthcare and the like. With the Vietnam War sucking the life out of Lyndon Johnson’s modern day version of “forty acres and a mule” the war on poverty at a governmental level fell apart. Liberals, governmental and private citizens, began the long retreat away from governmental attempts to alleviate poverty which continues to this day witness the demise of the social welfare programs started under the Clinton administration. Moreover a reaction set in around the question of race when the cities started burning up as a result of the denial of legitimate grievances by the black community and its allies in other minority communities.

The elephant in the room though and fifty years of myth creation around the hallowed name of Doctor King cannot cover the fact up that he as a leader of the black community had lost some authority by pre-Vietnam speech 1967, has been upended by more militant blacks from various vocal anti-integrationist black nationalists to the upfront romantic if doomed Black Panthers. Think about the evolution of the previously intergrated SNCC once black power became a widespread slogan, especially among the young non-churched types. King was the number one symbol of black integration when the moods in the black community was heading elsewhere. Those of us in the military in those days got a taste of that in off-hours when there was very little interaction between the races. King through his belated and now famous anti-Vietnam War speech and his support of the sanitation workers in Memphis was making something of a “comeback” and the PPC was to be at least the symbolic way to get his agenda back on the front pages.

This political, social and personal backdrop does not take away from what was attempted, and what was necessary given the other factors particularly the retreat by the liberals from advocacy of many social programs and the hostility of others to even dealing with the poverty problem any longer. A look at the PPC program tells us that much. It also highlights not only the social reality of the times but that like the heroic struggle for formal civils rights the poor and oppressed were going to have to fight for the better housing, healthcare, education and the like since few others were committed to their cause. The need for the poor and oppressed to lead and fight for what they need which never really happened in 1968 and is the wave of the future of the current campaigns really is the only long-term way forward in order to break the cycle of poverty and the pathologies that gut-level struggle for survival engenders. Something which grouping up in the projects I was personally painfully aware of as a kid.

A few nuts and bolts facts about the 1968 PPC will show that many of the same issues still need addressing, some of the same organizing tactics are in play as well from multiracial, multicultural meetings of poor people and their advocates which the ruling class in its constant strategy of “divide and conquer” hates to see to some programmatic demands. In March of 1968 many poverty-centered organizations like the National Welfare Rights Organization and the Southern Regional Council joined with Doctor King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in Atlantic to forge a common program to fight on. To list the three major demands today seems utopian (and way underestimating the money that would be needed today) but still necessary to fight around:

·        $30 billion annual appropriation for a real war on poverty

·        Congressional passage of full employment and guaranteed income legislation [a guaranteed annual wage]

·        Construction of 500,000 low-cost housing units per year until slums were eliminated

To highlight these demands the campaign would be divided into three phases, the first to create a permitted shanty town of several thousand people which came to be called Resurrection City on the National Mall, the second to begin protest demonstrations and mass non-violent civil disobedience actions and third to take actions to generate mass arrests like those which brought national attention to the plight of blacks in the South around voting rights. The latter two phases are the touchstone of the 2018 campaign as well.

To bring people to Washington several “caravans” were organized from all regions of the country to meet in June of 1968 with a big solidarity rally which brought some 50, 000 people to D.C. to join the estimated 3000 that were “residing” on the Mall.  

Bayard Rustin put forth a proposal for an “Economic Bill of Rights” for Solidarity Day that called for the federal government to most of which still are the wave of the future:

Recommit to the Full Employment Act of 1946 and legislate the immediate creation of at least one million socially useful career jobs in public service, adopt the pending housing and urban development act of 1968, repeal the 90th Congress’s punitive welfare restrictions in the 1967 Social Security Act, extend to all farm workers the right–guaranteed under the National Labor Relations Act–to organize agricultural labor unions, and restore budget cuts for bilingual education, Head Start, summer jobs, Economic Opportunity Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Acts

I have addressed some of the problems and social conditions which helped undermine that first campaign and others can add more from their recollections of the times including the question of post-King murder leadership and in-fighting. Hopefully the latter will not be an issue in the new movement.      

There are some differences in the current campaign from that of 1968 that I think are worth noting as we gear up the campaign. First, if we are to be successful this time, real poor people and members of oppressed communities will have to take leadership roles, make their mistakes and learn from them. Just like we did, do. Our role is one of support to see that such leadership emerges which I believe was a real short-coming of the “professional” organizer from Doctor King on down model in 1968. Second we are “demanding” similar programs to those of 1968 but not “begging” the government to implement as some criticized the 1968 campaign for doing. Lastly, and unfortunately, there are several more issues that the 1968 campaign did not have to address as forcefully like an end to mass black and Latino incarceration and the war on drugs which has decimated communities of color and sapped it of a young, mostly male, leadership component.       

A Thoroughly Modern Romance-Ingrid Bergman And Cary Grant’s “Indiscreet” (1958)-A Snap Film Review

A Thoroughly Modern Romance-Ingrid Bergman And Cary Grant’s “Indiscreet” (1958)-A Snap Film Review   

DVD Review

By Associate Film Editor Austin Riley

Indiscreet, starring Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, 1958    

Everybody knows, or should know, at least those who have been to the cinema enough times that half of what passes for plotlines in many stories is the old boy meets girl (or reverse it if you like) trope .That notion has held together more lame (and more beautiful) films than the most cynical producers could dream of in a million years. It all depends on how the whole thing is carried off. With a sledge-hammer or as in the film under review, Indiscreet, with some style. Of course adding to the style factor is having a suave and dashing older Cary Grant, last seen in this space trying to steal half the jewels on the French Rivera (or was it Monaco I will have ask my editor Sandy Salmon about that since he did the review) to impress and win the heart of fetching Grace Kelly in To Catch A Thief . And to receive those manly attentions Ingrid Bergman last seen in this space torn between her duty to liberation fighter Victor Lazlo and her passion for hard-nosed café owner  Rick in Casablanca. (I think that is right I will have to ask film critic emeritus Sam Lowell about that one since he did the original review on that one.)

Although I did not going kicking and screaming about having to do a review on this film unlike with a documentary about Janis Joplin when I erroneously confessed to Sandy that I did not know who she was since I knew who both of the actors here were I still felt that a 1950s film when I had not even been born was a stretch. A stretch because after watching the thing under today’s social and moral standards I do not understand the indiscreet part-the supposed illicit love affair between two consenting adults. What was the big deal these type of affairs are like rainwater today. Sandy assured me that such affairs had to be discreet back then especially in high society since divorce (and accompanying alimony) was a hard nut to crack.   

But style is what really drives this romantic comedy from the first minute Phillip, Cary’s role, steps into Anna’s, Ingrid part, apartment to change clothes before a speech he is to give. Anna, unlucky in love of late, was easy pickings for the jut-jagged suave Phillip. And so after very few preliminaries they become lovers. There is one little problem though which twists around the plot a bit. Phillip is married, very married, meaning he cannot get a divorce from that scorned wife. Can’t even when Anna puts a full-court press on to get him to the altar. Except that little problem is not really a problem since in a reverse of what usually happens which is the man says he is single when he is really married just to get at the unsuspecting woman Phillip is not married, very not married meaning he can get married. When Anna finds out all bets are off as she plots her revenge. Almost off that is. Yeah, a boy meets girl vehicle but it’s all how you pull it off.        

Once Again Out In The Summer Of Love, 1967- “Buddha Swings-Jack Kerouac Wings”

Once Again Out In The Summer Of Love, 1967- “Buddha Swings-Jack Kerouac Wings”  

By Jeffrey Thorne

Beat down (not to be mistaken for abuse, child abuse or anything like that against up against it mothers and distant fathers but just poor, bedraggled poor, “wanting habit” as the Scribe would have coming jointly out of their respective Acres).  Beat around (check beat down except just hanging around luckless, shoeless, waiting for somebody else’s shoe to drop). Beat sound (hell easier to figure, listen to the swish of the sticks battling the pots and pans, some out of Africa our mother riff culled into cool be-bop be-bop and all that jazz away from big swing and into the big blast air). Beat to the ground (luckless fellahins stashed away in back room closets, gambling, washing endless dishes, what did some wit call it-diving for pearls, losing always losing, losing worst when blood-lust bullies take the law into their own hands).

Fuck it, fuck explanation since everybody will get it wrong just like the guys back in the Acre could never figure what was bothering the guy, what made him jump. Fuck it Jack just jumped into it, into its sea, into it misty sea, foghorn blasting some jazz-like moan, from his beautified beatified skull, maybe thinking of youthful skull behind some bushes or out on some back road highway jumping the bones of some friend’s one and only, that is pure speculation though. But really and truly Jack man, Jean-bon in old times jumped from some river of life, mill town life like a million guys before him and now in foreign lands a million guys after him, the river flowing to steam up some engine to grind the fabric that will clothe the world. Ha, like we who come naked into this holy coil can take solace from that low catholic trip it took him, and not just him but lots of others who broke the square habit at least for a time, for the youth duration. Damn beatitude in the end when all the shouting was over and Jack in some drunken grave under a pile of suffering dirt (the Buddha in him cried out as it did for that guy down in Sonora before they found him in some hideous back alley unnamed and unloved, maybe un-nameable if there is such a word) Why couldn’t he have listened to that guy out in Frisco town, the guy, a kid really, maybe sixteen set up in a too big older brother 1940s zoot suit, a wisp of beard which could not be shaven so wisp, eyes glazed on dope , on love on the high, on the low, who all nervous on bennie nevertheless blew that high white note that was in his DNA, provided by grandma, mother left for parts unknown, father shiva blew town with some chick who had a stash and gave her gash, to like everything else out to the fucking China seas. But that was at the end. That was when the music was over, when it no longer made sense. At the beginning hell no said Jack.

The world wasn’t big enough to hold all his desperations, keep them in check, keep those wanting habits every poor boy has inside him talk about DNA. Even rama jamma Buddha didn’t have no cure for that except maybe some jimson and jetsam and mystical balm for a shattered world. Like I say that was at the end though. At the beginning our boy took off as fast as he could from that mill town river and never looked back (except to take the dust off his shoes and bow down before our Lady of the River when luck ran out, the booze ran out, hell, the sweet tea sticks ran out and all of beat solace ran to catholic rivers, yeah I know capital C but those were the breaks, the end knotted up in some rat hole, some mother-forgotten rat hole and no more joy, stick either). Took it on the lam, went west east south north (I think on that last direction maybe back to the homeland, back to the stinking big river up north that some earlier Jack, some Jacques, crossed to get to that fucking mill river, Jesus, looking for the holy grail, looking for about six ways to get out of that beat down, beat around, beat sound, beat to the ground bitch stuff. Took up with some fat fast mad secular monk with crazed mom and sweet word poet father, not father William Blake but worldly father, who spouted stuff about negro streets (and angel-headed hipsters like we didn’t know he hung around Time Square Joe and Nemo’s midnight coffees looking for queers, con artists and hustlers, always hustlers, crazies (in and out of the asylums of the mind) and Moloch devouring the land (make no mistake ancient and evil dressed in grey flannel suits and quoting stock prices into those same China seas as that benny-suckled kid blowing that high white Frisco note), the land of milk and honey, rama rama, went to the mat (secret love in more ways than one with that loose bastard who couldn’t keep his mouth shut or cock in his pants -and that was that-for a time). No, not then that street wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with the language and ladies’ pocketbooks or that highbrow junkie hanging around New Orleans looking for quick fixes although they qualified if it came to that.

For a time no question since the pull of fast fat monks could wear off fast under the sun of boze, booze, bennies and grand simon jimson ladies. Took his hat off and let the world slip in-thought maybe the way was the way. Startled guys like desolation angels and dharma bums into thinking they could do what had never been done like some lead pipe cinch. Ran up the mountain (no Prometheus Adonis more likely who was to know) to place incense in the fatted calf body singing, singing, singing some cross between the stations of the cross and plastic nirvana (just to be cute, cute as a nine thieves). Saw Siva run the river gauntlet and leave satiated beyond compare, saw Rama too walking down Post Street in his nightshirt.

Then fame got in his way, somebody bought into his million word notebook thoughts wanderings this is poor boy long time waiting wanting habits Jack we are talking about remember in case you have lost the drift. Make him surly and brazen wondering why the hell if fame was fame didn’t it jump out at him when he started on his Calvary Road road(and it was such a road breaking from deep incense and Adam and Eve free falls so much for free will, started out in dirty sneakers and crusted blue jeans, and when he jumped out of his skull and fled that mountebank river town. Funny no more Harvard hipsters and Columbia ranters and raspers or Denver Adonis. Now fools and jesters following his every move, hiding in bushes and make that fat monk look like some holy fool, like a goof (again remember please not that street-wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with language and ladies’ pocketbooks). Ah, sullen lost planet life.         

How was he to know, how was Jack to blessed know that his illegitimate children, not child, children would abandon their flea-etched sins only a short time later, hang out their own signs, reach for their own suns, reach with thumbs furled, and follow the pied piper. Follow the brethren saint mad man with the wooly beard and the incense announcing his arrival at the table singing, singing, singing and it wasn’t hosannas but some odd unspoken tune which ripped across the land for a while. Defying that man in the grey suit (defying mother and father got to dust and never figured out). Drew magnetic forces around themselves and expected the kingdom to last until end times. Hah, Jack could have given them the word on that little mistake. I am the light Jack thought and then he faded from the scene into utter darkness those unwashed, unloved, unspoken for illegitimate children to lay waste to the desert for forty years. Jesus         

Notes From The “Tin Cup” Underground- The Marquee Match-Up-The Battle Of The Titans

Notes From The “Tin Cup” Underground- The Marquee Match-Up-The Battle Of The Titans

By Si Lannon

[I have mentioned on more than one occasion that although sports, sports media, sports mania are a large representation of the American historical experience and therefore worthy of some note that generally we have tried to shy away from that subject on this site. Shied away understanding that there is no dearth of material on the subject elsewhere and certainly in the mass media. Occasionally we have reviewed the work of literary sportswriters, or literary figures who have written about sports like Damon Runyon (horse-racing) and Ring Lardner (baseball, especially the classic American summer pastime You Know Me, Al series) but that had much more to do with character development, mood and backdrop. The one serious attempt several years ago to have the well-known college game handicapper Shelly Newman cover a few college football seasons were sort of preempted once the NCAAA gurus finally adopted a semi-playoff format and took some of the fun, according to Shelly, out of weekly picking what he thought were the top 25 college football teams (and with it the all-important betting point spread). Given the formulas for inclusion in the Final Four selected at the end of the season the whole thing was weighted toward leagues with play-offs and many good teams like the SEC and Big Ten a lot of the suspense evaporated. (The SEC’s Alabama who have had a virtual lock on the mystical national title the past several years also dampened Shelly’s ardor for meeting those weekly deadlines inherent in covering such a diffuse cluster of games-and point spreads.)         

Earlier this year Si Lannon, who otherwise is a pretty solid citizen and good reviewer of books and films here and at the American Film Gazette, proposed to do a few pieces on golf. It turned out beneath that solid exterior and calm demeanor was a maniac for playing this arcane and time-consuming game with its fistful of rules which don’t make sense to the average layperson, at least to me when I tried to get a handle on why Si would get up at five in the morning to play at six on weekends when the rest of the world was either just going to bed or had a few hours left before hitting the skids. So yes Si is an avid fan and devotee of hitting small dimpled white balls with funny logos who never did anybody any harm into lakes, ponds, trees, sand traps and other devilish locations as far as I know. Each calumny with its own set of penalties and procedures for getting the ball back in play and down to the goal-to the green-in order to put that little white ball into a man-made hole, the old tin cup he called it, in finely trimmed and contoured grass that also never hurt anybody.    

Now Si is a guy who does not ask many favors and so against my better judgement I let him do a short piece on the subject. His choice was not some big time tournament like the U.S. Open which I might have appreciated some coverage on. Just to get a feel for who plays this game at the highest level these days when even I know that the well-advertised Tiger Woods no longer is the king of the hill of the sport. No, his choice a local, local to him, amateur golf tournament at his golf club, Frog Pond Golf Course, where he wanted to cover something called the club net four-ball club championship. Si can explain exactly what that format is for the clueless which included me until he told me about what that meant in the golf world vocabulary which apparently hasn’t changed since about the time of golf fanatic Charles I in England. Before he lost his head. (Not over golf but weightier matters like the “divine right of kings” idea he was working under and for which he paid with his life).     

It seems some of his regular six in the morning golf partners (so immediately suspect in my book since this reeked of some sort of sect or cult like Druids or Maypole denizens which I made clear to him) were involved in the tournament and so he had a rooting interest in the play. He moreover had predicted that the two two-person teams (therefore four-ball since each participant flails his own ball) which he friends had partnered in had reached the finals of the championship and would be slated to go head to head on in that final. Si begged, well, asked if he could a follow up on that first article to finish up in style. I was skeptical but told him to cover the “event” and write something up and if I liked it I would make sure it was posted. I did and here it is but I hope this satisfies Si’s golf craziness and he gets back to writing real film and book stuff about the American saga-Pete Markin]     

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A Note From Si Lannon

[As my editor Pete Markin mentioned in his introduction to this piece, an introduction that may turn out to have been as long as this piece itself, I will explain, roughly explain, what the format for this net four-ball tournament is about which even he, a non-believer, could understand under constant repetition. Mercifully, mercifully to me as well as the average reader who knows of my film and book reviews, I will not except in spots discuss the arcane rules that govern seemingly every conceivable situation in golf here but just the outlines for the clueless and curious. Most readers may know about the high end of the sport, the pros, the PGA, or have seen major tournaments like the Masters or U.S. Open on television almost all of which are four day affairs in which the golfer with the lowest score for the four days wins (and these days wins a ton of money). But that is the elite, the top. The top players in an average golf club who in any case are far below that elite level are not plentiful enough to have such a tournament based on straight up stroke play. The spread between abilities is too great to make such competition fair so other formats have been created for those who want to compete against other golfers at the club level. Hence the annual club net team four-ball championship which I am covering in this piece.              

This way this type of tournament plays out is that as many interested two-person teams who enter play a qualifying round in order to reduce the field to sixteen teams. That qualifying round is based on the sixteen lowest team scores of best-ball golf. Best ball is based on handicaps. (This is where I lost Pete Markin and was the source of much repetition as he was incredulous about the whole system.) For example if both team members get a five on a hole which is a par four then then would be one over par on their gross score. But if one (or either) player has a handicap stroke on that hole then they would have a net score of four-par. That is the score that counts and so on through the eighteen holes of golf which constitute a round. Handicaps are based on the premise that two people with different abilities could play each other on a relatively equal playing field if the better golfer gave the other golfer some strokes to give that person a fighting chance of winning. Handicaps are based on a complicated formula of the average of several recent rounds of golf and I need not go further than that for an explanation.     

The sixteen qualifying teams then play elimination rounds to get a champion. In the first round (what in NCAA basketball championships would be the “sweet sixteen”) the top eight ranked teams play the lower eight teams in reverse order. For example the lowest qualifying team number one plays the highest qualifying team number sixteen and so on. The surviving eight then play a second round (the NCAA elite eight), the surviving four (the NCAA Final Four)a third round and the last two teams standing play a fourth round for the championship. This is where the vagaries of the format came into play when I predicted my friends the teams of Frenchie Robert and Caz Casey and Sand-Bagger Jackson and Kenny Lou would as they actually did do meet in the finals. The former team had been the top seed and the latter team number ten. If the Jackson-Lou team had been seeded eighth or less then no way could the two teams meet in the finals since they would play each other in an earlier round. As it turned out each pair fairly easily went through their earlier rounds so the final would provide bragging rights and side bet cash for the winning team for the rest of the season-and maybe beyond.   

The final as it turned out was held on a granite gray late September morning and the two pairs, Frenchie and Caz, Sand-Bagger and Kenny seemed to be primed to do battle, to do the clash of titans as advertised in the headline.  To give a little color to the proceedings I should mention that Frenchie, the redoubtable Frenchman a generation out of Quebec is the best golfer of the four and intensely competitive ( best meaning he has the lowest handicap which means that he got no stokes to help him against the other guys). Caz is a wily Irishman who has now safely gotten his brood of kids past the college albatross around his neck had only taken up the game the previous couple of years and so had the highest handicap (meaning he gets more strokes on certain holes than the others which could help his teammate considerable if he played well-which he did). This team was considered by the assorted touts hanging in the clubhouse bar the “young upstarts” since they had only been playing as a team for a couple of years and had not won a major championship. Sand-Bagger as his designation indicates is an old geezer, older than me, who has been playing in these events seemingly forever and is always grousing about how he should have more strokes (as he takes our money at the end of the golf round more often than not). Kenny is a diminutive Chinese who can be the best player in the world one day and a rank amateur the next. When this pair is on though it is like a perfect storm. Around the clubhouse bar, among those gadflys and barflies who populate every club not a few who have fallen under the wheel to this tandem, they are the “veterans” as their names on various plaques testify to. So this one set up as a David and Goliath affair.            

This is the way Jack Jones, the Frog Pond gadfly and barfly-in-chief put it tongue in cheek in a memo tacked onto the message board in the club’s men’s locker room:

“The Moon is in the Seventh House. The usually sleepy hamlet of Huron Village will be inundated with a motley crew of people and vehicles early tomorrow morning after procuring the hottest ticket in town for the improbable match-up of the upstart newcomers the redoubtable, whatever that means, Frenchie Roberts the brash transport from up Quebec way and his erstwhile partner the mysteriously named Caz Casey against the rags to riches bloodied and hardscrabble veterans Sand-Bagger Jackson and his wily long-time partner Kenny Lou for the coveted Frog Pond Four-Ball Net Championship.   

“Upon hearing of the pairing after Frenchie and Caz had vanquished their third round opponents while travelling back to his hometown to pick up his recalcitrant high school son, recalcitrant since despite constant pleading the young man has taken up the much more civilized sport of tennis, the mercurial Mr. Lou when the AP caught to him simply stated “We will take no prisoners.”

“The more sagacious Sand-Bagger has been quoted by Reuters as saying-“We are just happy to be in the tournament after last year’s failure to qualify and look forward to facing this unknown pair of upstarts for the biggest prize of all. We are pleased to be able to be pitted against a couple of young up and coming players who will give us all we can handle although the fate sisters would seem to favor that long hitting pair. It will take everything we know to have a chance against these stroke-strewn opponents. We will just play one hole at a time and see what happens”          

“More to the point Sand-Bagger was quoted as saying that he and Mr. Lou had won many championships and much prize money but that the really important thing was to win that side bet of one hundred dollars per man for bragging rights the rest of the season.”   

And it was as advertised a battle royal as both teams brought “game” to the vaunted showdown. I won’t bore regular readers with the play by play, hole by hole details except to say from personal experience tensions ran high on the first tee box even against long-time buddies, maybe especially against longtime buddies, and continued throughout the match as emotions ran up and down depending on the results of each hole until the end somewhere on the course hopefully not before the regulation eighteenth hole. Frenchie and Caz came out strong based on Caz playing out of his shoes that day. They were soon two holes up meaning they had won two more than their opponent (although that two up lead would be their highest lead of the day as Sand-Bagger and Kenny battled back to “stop the bleeding,” allow the young upstarts to get no further up on them). But the day belonged to the veterans on Kenny playing way out of his shoes although they did not seal the deal until the eighteenth hole when Kenny sank a ten foot birdie putt to end the game. Based on the level of play that day Sand-Bagger and Kenny had had their second lowest collective score ever. And Frenchie and Caz were only one stroke more. So yeah, as Sand-Bagger said in jest as they were waiting to tee off on the first tee this was a “friendly game to the death.” Enough said.          

[In the interest of full disclosure the reason I was able to cover this event was that my teammate, Rags Johnson, and I failed to qualify-did not make the cut a subject we will hear no end of from this year’s finalists. We had actually won this same tournament last year which also shows the vagaries of golf-Si Lannon]  

From The Archives- As The First Anniversary Of Charlottesville Approaches-We Are In A Cold Civil War In America-No Platform For Fascists-No Platform For Nazis Or KKK Either-Join And Built The People’s Resistance

From The Archives- As The First Anniversary Of Charlottesville Approaches-We Are In A Cold Civil War In America-No Platform For Fascists-No Platform For Nazis Or KKK Either-Join And Built The People’s Resistance  

By Frank Jackman

[I really hate to start a piece with a bracketed introduction, really a double bracketed introduction since I had to do the same when I introduced the original piece last year around this time in the wake of the events in Charlottesville down in Virginia, down in the college town of the University of Virginia. However given the nature of the subject, no, given the impeding urgency of the subject the heating up of the cold civil war in America, a phenomenon not seen in this country since the decade before Civil War which ended slavery only after a series of compromises proved illusionary to end the damn institution and the only way to resolve the situation was with arms in hand and its concurrent phenomenon the rise of the organized fascist movement, aided not a little by the rabid occupants of the White House and the rest of the governing apparatus we need to talk.

This heating up of the cold civil war is a phenomenon which I have been noting for maybe a decade, maybe a little less but certainly since the big Great Recession as the economists call it now in historical hindsight when many people’s live were hung out to dry, hung out big time which started toward avalanche toward the big break of the have-nots, or maybe have not enough toward the right after flirting with Barack Obama to no avail. During that time, say since 2011 when I reported heavily on the wisp of the will phantom Occupy movement in these pages (and in Progressive Nation now on-line but which I was one of the hard copy founders of back in the 1970s but which was subsequently bought to a writers collective), I have interviewed many of those who have not move forward, no, who have been left behind for no fault of their own and no reason that they can figure out why they lost out except that now they have a handle on the damn thing as victims of globalization, liberal cabal globalization.

Still in 2016 despite knowing, feeling this unsatisfied undercurrent I was as taken aback, as shocked, and plainly speaking as clueless as any other of the talking class, of the political pundits who are supposed to have a ide about what was what in the political arena. Worse on the second point, on that rise of the fascistic elements from their cubbyholes and warrens in backwoods America, was not that I was unaware of it, hell, I had done a whole series on militias, survivalists and others who had a morbid fear ignited by their race hatreds, by their hatred of Barack Obama despite their generally have no contact ever with black people and despite not living within fifty miles of any black communities, barrios, Asian enclaves or urban Jews. Jesus. What had, has me stumped in that after fifty years or more of political struggle, fifty years since I wrote my first term paper on fascist groups in America (think of the name George Lincoln Rockwell as the poster child of that movement back then) I have to go out on the streets and hold the bastards off. Below is a quick review and summary of the past year complete with that bracketed introduction, now second introduction, that I have threatened you with. Frank Jackman]              

Original Introduction

[Under the now not so new direction of site manager Greg Green who has made some mistakes and made some very right decisions as is usual for chief editors and assignment impresarios we writers, young and old, free-lance or staff, stringers or by-line worthy have been given the green light as part of our works to discuss how we got the assignment or any other material the reader may find interesting as back story. I will do so here in a review of what I have called the impeding cold civil war in American over the past period. Frank Jackman]  

Sometimes out in the political hustings you come across a piece of written propaganda which hits you exactly where you live. Expresses your sentiments better than you could on your own. That is the case with the small, inexpensive paper leaflet that I picked up, or was handed to me, at an anti-fascist demonstration last summer on the Boston Common which I was covering for this publication. I subsequently received the same copies at a few other anti-fascist rallies and stand-outs again not sure which I picked up and which were handed to me although that is of no import to the political message stated. This “pick-up” “handed” conundrum the result of the fact that I grab one way or another every piece of literature that I come across at any rallies or such events that I cover or take part in.        

I headlined the beginning of this piece with the statement that we are in a cold civil war in this country, in America, and have been for a while, maybe the last twenty years at least but that fact has only been pushed in our faces bigtime since the age of Trump began where all the contradictions, all the divisions and all the cultural clashes have become part of the daily political battleground. There have been over the past year or so some important nodal points making that cold civil get at least momentarily hotter-one was horrendous Charlottesville which put all on notice that the divisions were deep and maybe had reached some boiling point. Make no mistake that Charlottesville was a “victory” for what passes as the Alt-Right, Nazi-Fascist-KKK-Militia combine which has been emboldened by the rise of the Trump reaction. Another was the recent nationwide student lead-high school student-led March for Our Lives demonstration, so you know this is something very different on the political horizon which was a “victory” for our side, for the people’s resistance which is important if we can keep up the momentum.  

One of the problems if you will of our side is that some people, a lot of people, many of whom have only recently come to political life have many mixed and confused feelings about what to do to stop the Alt-Right-Nazis-Fascist-KKK in their tracks. Have bought into at least partially the notion that these bastards have some “right” to free speech that we must respect. That we must expend political capital defending. “Forget that noise” as the late Pete Markin, a guy I grew up with and who gave me plenty of political insights said and would say today as well. We are private citizens and not governmental agents so have no obligation to defend such rights to free speech under any constitutional theory.

But the Constitution is only the bedrock of running a civil society. We the people of the resistance have to be clear that we do not support any right for the Alt-Right-Fascist-Nazi-KKK-Militia cabal to free speech to spew their genocidal, ethnic-cleansing, race war programs. And that, as history shows us, and everybody should read the history of the rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, is their calling card, their intention and we had better be clear that we have to nip that movement in the bud. Not only by confronting them across the police lines, police lines there to protect them and their so-called right to free speech since the police are governmental agents but to make sure they find not havens, no platforms, to spew their hateful messages. So yes so-called free speech issues take a very far back seat to the fight against the intentions of these monsters if we don’t stop them. Believe me they don’t give three-fifth of a damn about our free speech rights, will see us in hell first another sign we are in a cold civil war situation. More later.    

In Boston –The Latest Bash Back Boston-Stop The Fascists In Their Tracks November 18^th on Boston Common  

Frank Jackman comment:

I have mentioned on more than one occasion that we have been for a while in a state of cold civil war in America that has only had fuel to the fire added to it, make it tend toward a hot civil war, by the massive frauds, midnight rip-off actions, and general ignorance promoted by the Trump Administration. This rightly, and I think most thankfully, has gotten the previously moribund left, the bewildered and the oppressed up in arms enough to slowly begin a counter-attack against the night-takers from corrupt and venal right-wing bourgeois politicians like Trump and his ilk to the more dangerous extra-parliamentary forces-call them alt-right, fascist, KKK, etc. that have been unleashed-have been given fresh wind in their sails.

Not everything the left and its allies argue for in counter-attack either makes senses or provides a road forward in the anti-fascist struggle for example RefuseFascism has identified the Trump-Pence regime as fascist and to call for a parliamentary impeachment process to get rid of the bums. This Bash Back Boston grouping seems to be more militant but not quite sure that confrontation in itself without more gets us anyplace. I leave it an open question today. But for now as we sort things out, or as they get sorted for us which is as likely and has actually been the case over the past several months, let’s keep to the united front idea going until further notice. In short Saturday November 18^th in Boston be on the Boston Common to stop the Nazis, fascists and their ilk in their tracks whatever anti-fascist ideas you march under. 

           

In Boston Nov 4 -ResistFascism Rally Report From Allan Franklin

By Political Reporter Frank Jackman

[I have recently at Allan Jackson’s, the site administrator, request done a review of a lesser Humphrey Bogart movie Sirocco from the early 1950s because it had a political theme-or at least touched about what World War I wrought on the world beyond murder and mayhem in the trenches on all sides. Because I spent some time on that and a few other projects I missed a local event in Boston on the Boston Common on November 4^th sponsored by an organization called ResistFascism.org who were attempting to build some momentum to publicize an upcoming counter-demonstration against a thing called “Rally For The Republic,” a seemingly innocuous front name for a cohort of Nazis, Alt-Rights, KKK, White Supremacists, wacky Trump supporters and street thugs to be held at the Parkman Bandstand on November 18^th . The grouping had applied for but had been rejected for a permit to use that facility by the City of Boston but nevertheless intended to demonstrate that day for “free speech” rights or whatever other cover story they were pushing. The “call” for the rally itself told the real story that what they wanted was a street fight, especially targeting their nemeses the Anti-fa black-clad anarchists and Black Lives Matter.

Not to belabor the point the idea of a gathering momentum rally on the 4^th sounded like a good idea and so I detached my associate at the on-line Progressive America, Allan Franklin, to go check out and report back on the event. My premise for even bothering him with the assignment was that the literature associated with the event, including a full- page ad in the New York Times by ResistFascism made it appear like it was going to be a prelude similar to the massive 40, 000 plus counter-rally in Boston also held on August 19^th also at the Parkman Bandstand. As Allan will report that was not the case, not by a long shot although this resurgent fascist (and their sundry allies) menace needs to be combatted and combatted with massive counter-demonstrations to make them go back into their rat holes or wherever they hang out. To “crush them in the egg” as an old-time militant antifascist once told me who had been close to the Socialist Workers Party in the 1930s when James Cannon had told an audience in New York City that he had heard their chief, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, use that expression for the tasks ahead against the Nazi-night-takers. (That militant had at that time been instrumental through his union in bringing out a mass of working people to surround Madison Square Garden in that city when the fascist thugs tried to get a toehold there so I am sure he had the Trotsky remark on good authority.)

Allan, and I had agreed, had expected to take his notes and make a “think piece” story to be published here and at Progressive America. Subsequently we have decided to merely publish his somewhat edited notes which gives as much flavor to the event as it deserved.

Frank Jackman]              

[In the event the November 18^th “rally” drew about fifty to one hundred demonstrators and a counter-rally of about one thousand to fifteen hundred mainly Anti-fa, Black Lives Matter and Veterans for Peace militants. Curiously except for a couple of people that Allan had recognized from the November 4^th rally selling newspapers and passing out leaflets there was no identifiable presence by this ResistFascism operation on the Common at least. From their literature they had planned a rally at Copley Square about one half mile away from the Common although it might as well have been ten thousand miles away as far as visibly confronting the fascist menace that day. Frank Jackman]    

*****

Frank- Here are my observations about the ResistFascism rally that took place at the Parkman Bandstand on November 4, 2017 which we, you and I, have had many e-mail and phone conversations about with the organizers who wanted us to publicize the thing and cover it extensively. Also between us about our approach to a group we knew very little about except their literature and their persistent at the time and that unlike the paltry sums most leftist operations can gather these days they must have had an “angel” to be able to put a full page ad in the New York Times.

I showed up at the advertised spot, the Parkman Bandstand, about 3:30 for the 4:00 event at which time there were maybe twenty people gathered while the organizers were putting up signs and stocking a table with literature. (At first I thought I had the wrong spot not having been on the Common in years and figuring that maybe it was to be at the Park Street MBTA station entrance one of the historic protest spots on the Common that I knew from previous events but after asking if this was the right place of a person milling around I found I was indeed at the right spot.) After finding I was in the right place I knew almost immediately that this event was going to be far smaller than it was hyped up to be and which the organizers hounded us to publicize extensively beforehand and provide plenty of coverage for on the day of the event.

I did meet Steve, whom you told me you had plenty of contact via e-mail and cellphone with when he noticed my press tag and we talked for a bit. He continued to badger me about covering the November 18^th event they were planning at Copley Square. I told him frankly I did not see how a rally in Copley when the fascists were going to be on the Common a half mile away made sense, made a statement to the scumbags, made a statement about effectively resisting fascism as advertised. He demurred at that point and told me he had to help set up. This Steve seemed like a nice guy of the old school 1960s organizer sort that I have run into a lot in New York and out in San Francisco lately who under current adverse conditions are keeping up the good fight as best they can in an age when the social media technology and the subsequent generations’ organizing style have down-graded the old time ways of putting together protest rallies out in the real mean streets.

I sensed and somebody I talked to later knowledgeable about the leftist remnant still around the Cambridge/Boston milieu that this operation was an off-shoot of the old “Not In My Name” grouping from Iraq War 2003 days which was organized by an old-time cultist Maoist who didn’t hear he, Mao, died or something. It definitely had that liberal democratic feel especially around the main villains of the piece in their literature Trump/Pence and the urgent need to impeach them as if that would create the “newer world” you and the older guys I know are always harping back to when stuff like this comes up and you get all misty-eyed about the huge X number of people who came to some event against war, racism, capitalism, whatever about fifty years ago.     

  

The rally itself when I left about 5:30 never had more than one hundred people and that is perhaps generous considering the number of student journalists and other such curious student types who apparently were assigned by their professors to do coverage as a class assignment. The usual run of  general curiosity seekers who peek around the edges of such events getting confirmation for their distant hometown fears that Boston is some Red Moscow of the East Coast and making note never to send their kids to school in the town listening to the usual speakers preaching to the choir about that war, racism, sexism you and your crowd are always talking about how you almost had turned the corner on that stuff but you underestimated the forces of counter-attack arraigned against you and have been on the run ever since. Of course this included the usual Kumbaya folk music that is supposed to stir the crowd to a revolutionary pitch by evoking Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and who knows who else singing about the magic wand of getting rid of oppression. All in a regular left event day’s schedule.

I did notice that on a hand-out leaflet ResistFascism was advertising marching in a veteran’s peace parade on the 11^th, on Veterans Day and giving our starting time and place. I urged all the people I met to join that march that day since we are very familiar with and support the efforts of the main sponsor Veterans for Peace although I think you told me they were trying to reclaim the original purpose of the day by calling it Armistice Day since Sam Lowell, Fritz Taylor and I think Allan Jackson are Vietnam-era veterans, right.          

There were a few minor heavy verbal confrontations between protesters and a few Alt-right people who showed up obviously to do “recon” and size up what was what knowing they could get a row going by spitting out their garbage in a small environment. One from Salisbury, a young Iraq War veteran who portrayed himself as only interested in a dialogue with the left, told me he was an organizer for the so-called Alt-right rally on the 18^th. When I asked him about the rally “call” which we had culled from Facebook being inflammatory, calling for a street fight like you said after you read the Facebook announcement, he said just like the far left they had their crazy far right who wanted to stir things up. Take that for what it is worth, although one thing I have noticed about this newer breed of whatever you want to call these modern fascists is that that they are a bit slicker than the old guys who used to breath fire and damnation against the generic left, n----rs, gays, women and “commies” without blinking at eye. They are more media savvy and couch things in terms like “free speech,” “oppression,” “railing against the elites” and the like. Off the top of my head I think we have to treat them at least in the post-Charlottesville era where they showed some unsavory savvy and skills as being as smart as us in this war of words and images.    

Not much heated argument although a woman started yelling about those NFL players who went down on their knees during the national anthem before their football games and got into an argument with an Anti-fa who seemed very much the angry young man masked and dressed in Johnny Cash black of course.  A Veteran for Peace guy whom I think you know, at least he said he knew you, was able to calm her down a bit and she left. (I told him that I had been urging people I talked to during this time to join the Veterans Day peace march which would be starting near this section of the Common and he corrected me by calling it Armistice Day so I guess they are serious about reclaiming the day, or at least the name.      

All and all a waste of time and I told Jeff whom you had also assigned to this story to do interviews and take some photos and who was heading down to meet me to go home. Stuff might have happened after I left but I don’t think so. I am glad we had a hands-off with this R-F group although if they show up with any forces on the 11^th for that Veterans for Peace march let’s see what they have to offer. 

I felt sorry for you and Allan since you were inundated by phone calls and e-mails for stuff that seemed like a big deal and was all smoke and dreams. We have to help save your time and energy for the big stuff not this Mickey Mouse stuff so we better screen this stuff better.