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]     

****

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.

Pop-Up Reflections On The Poor People's Rally And March In Washington, D.C. on June 23, 2018

Pop-Up Reflections On The Poor People's Rally And March In Washington, D.C. on June 23, 2018

By Si Lannon

[This initial report, commentary is expected to be the first of several reports this year as the Poor People's Campaign unwinds. Additional reports through December 2018 will be added to the end of this entry as needed. Greg Green]  

Some stories get written on the fly in our business, the publishing business and it does not matter if it is on-line or the hardest of hard copy. The damn thing falls into somebody’s lap and sometimes it is yours-by default. Here is genesis on my coverage of the Poor People's Campaign rally and march down in Washington, D.C. on June 23^rd. I had originally been sent down to Washington by Greg Green our current site manager to do a story about the Cezanne Portrait exhibit at the National Gallery of Art (with a side trip to the small Saint Francis of Assisi exhibit and another of the work on display of Saul Steinberg both of which will be dealt with if I ever get around to actually writing about again after the curtain falls.

Bart Webber has already recently told in this publication the other part of this story, the other part of how I was waylaid even before I was able to write word one about the Cezanne story. Told about how, as is my wont, since I was in town anyway that I would check out to see what was happening at the National Portrait Gallery which is open later than the National Gallery and I figured to do the Cezanne project the next day, a Saturday. The story that developed by Bart out of that experience concerned seeing a remembrance painting of Roy Lichtenstein’s iconic Time magazine cover of Bobby Kennedy in the spring of 1968 which flipped me out when I spied it on the first floor. Got me to thinking about the late Peter Paul Markin who was crazy for Bobby and spent the spring of that year working his ass off for him. My reflections about Markin (always Scribe in the old days) which that night I conveyed to Bart Webber and Sam Lowell, two old friends of his as well and who work at this publication, got turned into that article about the million “might have beens” if Bobby had not been murdered and Markin had not subsequently wound up in hellhole Vietnam which did him no good, no good at all and led to an unsettling early grave. You would not believe the speed Bart was able to put that one together once it got through the grapevine about my “discovery” and others clamored to get their points in about much missed Scribe. It was almost as if some portent, some omen, some invisible hand was at play since nobody here had written word one of original work about the 50^th anniversary the effect of Bobby’s murder and had relied on previous sketches to commemorate the event since everybody was busy with some other project.         

Here is where it all ties together, where sainted Bobby and wanna-be saint Scribe are reunited in spirit anyway. That Saturday I was heading to the National Gallery early to beat the crowds. I usually take the Metro since from the hotel where I was staying it was infinitely easier to do so than taking a car, so the natural stop on that line, the Blue line, is the Smithsonian on the National Mall. As I exited the station heading the few blocks to the museum from there I noticed a huge white tent across from the Hirschhorn Museum and further down toward 7^th Street a stage complete with a couple of large screens flanking a stage and people milling around. I stopped at the tent to inquire about the event although on any given day you will see tents, usually white, strewn on the Mall for some event or other. It turned out that this was the headquarters for the Poor People’s Campaign during the week of actions they had planned in D.C. and was to culminate later that morning and afternoon in a rally there and a march to the Capitol several blocks away.

Once I understood what was going on, understood that this might be something to check out further, I made the connection. Make another stab at figuring out the invisible hand at work this weekend. This year was also the 50^th anniversary of the ill-fated original Poor People’s Campaign led by Martin Luther King before he was assassinated in April of that year and which was carried on in his memory through the summer of 1968. The central physical focus of the original efforts was the establishment of an encampment dubbed Resurrection City which had been highlighted by a large demonstration on June 23^rd of that year. Robert Kennedy had before his own assassination put his endorsement of the campaign as part of his political strategy to spark issues around race, poverty and above all the raging, futile war being waged in Southeast Asia then and which was sucking up resources which could have been used to help alleviate the poverty of those times, something still with us all these years later. ( I use Southeast Asia here although at the time we mostly thought it was Vietnam little did we know until later and only by other sources like Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers expose that Laos, Cambodia and who knows where else were bombed to perdition as well).I believe that Bobby had also visited the site and I know that his funeral train passed through the city. I thought about the situation and called Greg Green to ask if he wanted me to also cover this event along with the Cezanne assignment. Greg said by all means yes. Actually what Greg said was that if I had wanted to keep my nice art assignments I had better damn well (his expression) cover the event. Greg being a half generation younger that most older writers who go back to the hard copy editions of this publication did not have the 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Poor Peoples Campaign on his radar so he was as they say “covering his ass” (my expression).

The following are some reflections taken away from that experience.         

Like in a lot of other things that happen without explanation I don’t believe in resurrection meaning in the context of the Poor People's Campaign, hereafter PPC, trying to jumpstart something like the war on poverty which is what this is all about based on something that happened 50 years ago and that was unsuccessful then seemed anachronistic. Seemed doom to failure as it had previously in  the muddy summer of 1968 once Doctor King’s hand was not there to guide the thing and use his huge authority not only in the black and among other minorities but among white liberals who to this day see him as the guy who could have led his people out of bondage-and assuaged  their guilt for falling down in the struggle after his demise. His authority unlike his successors, and from what I could see on stage this June day, could have pushed things forward. Even then there was no guarantee given the political climate that anything would happen. I confess after looking around, talking to some activists, a few who I recognized from other contexts, other political campaigns I have covered, hearing the endless speeches and trying to decipher what the road forward would look like since everybody emphasized, correctly emphasized that this would only be the start of a long uphill struggle, went into coverage of this event with something of a jaded eye. Whatever  I agree with in principle, whatever I    believe must be done about the vast social and economic inequalities in this country, and internationally.

Nothing said or heard that day has led me to believe that my original assessment was wrong, although this is one time I hope I am. The portents, that invisible hand I seem to have grown committed to using as a metaphor for these strange and worrisome times don’t head that way though. Here is a quick rundown of what the PPC had been up to the previous forty days as they called it, maybe reflecting some forty days in the wilderness although I could not get any rank and file activists to buy into that scenario, in what they have called their “call for a national moral revival.” Such a theme is always tricky and always capable of misintereptation, mainly since it is usually other-worldly Christian evangelicals and bare-bones religious folk who call, usually from the right political perspective or from outside politics, for moral revival. Usually eschewing the worldly poverty problems around them and waiting upon the Lord, and you know who that Lord is.

What the PPC, headed by Revered Barber from North Carolina and others who had been planning this project for several years, wanted to do was highlight the poverty situation and offer remedies. Organize the poor to organize themselves the way one youth activist put it. Saying as well, and I took this as an omen as well, that if it is not done from the bottom up as opposed to most efforts which are lead by middle class professional people on some salvation of their souls mission then once again the thing would be coopted and doomed to failure. Good point.   

In order to drum up support locally and nationally the PPC had the previous five weeks centered their actions, including acts of civil disobedience, on the state capitals each week presenting a different broad issue like homelessness or the war economy and the way those affect the poor, those down at the bottom of the barrel in society. After those five weeks of gathering from what I could tell, and what was noticeable in the crowd I saw at the Mall, a middle class professional cadre with a sprinkling of union activists to further the work, to get to the poor so they can organize themselves they would gather in Washington to see what they had wrought. From my observations of who was in the crowd that day, unlike what I remember and have seen photographs of the original encampment, with a few exceptions this was not the poor masses coming to act as avenging angels against their oppressors. Which made, makes me wonder about that portentous statement that young enthused activist made to me in all candor and which was seconded by a couple of other young people around him who nodded their heads in agreement.

If Sam Lowell or Seth Garth, maybe even Bart Webber although he is not given to straying away from straight reportage, were writing this they would say this was a situation where you “rounded up the usual suspects,” saw people who had been around these issues going back to the 1960s. Frank Jackman would have call it preaching to the choir” if you want another way to say it. These people were good in their time, hell, a bunch of us worked with them when the world was new and were still all sparkling eyes and dewy too, but we have a generational “passing the torch” problem between today’s youth and the generation after ours who came of age under the aegis of Ronald Reagan. The old ways of organizing, the very heavy reliance after all this time and all the times we have been showed nothing but ashes and brimstone of voting as the main organizational tool for change, does not bode well for this PPC program.      

And not so strangely given the moral imperative behind the movement the crowd was treated to such preaching in a literal sense both by the speakers who has some religious or quasi-religious take on the situation and by the “feel” of the event, the feeling that it was a revival meeting of some sort with people being exhorted to join up, to get out there in the mud and organize, to get “religion” as the late Markin used to say once he came back from Vietnam about the issues of war and peace.

The several thousand in attendance and/or who marched to the Capitol were thus treated to this eerie spectacle. But here is where things got a little awry. Got as confused as they did in the 1960s when strategy, basically voting for a regime or going down in the mud for fundamental social change were the two main poles of attraction. Put people, thoughtful people in different camps. The 23rd of June was an almost chemically pure example of that old dilemma-in one place-hell, in one speaker at times. On the one hand speakers, including prime leader Reverend Barber who knew how to work the crowd into a revival spirit no question, spoke of “revolution” which I assumed was meant in the traditional sense like the original American or French revolutions. In the next breath, and this was truest when the Reverend Jessie Jackson brought in for the occasion, a former King aide and later a Democratic Party presidential candidate himself, spent his every word talking about heading to the ballot box come November. Now revolution and voting are by no means mutually exclusive, but I got a very queasy feeling I had been here before, had been cajoled into doing the same old, same old. And you wonder why I am a little eye-jaded about the future prospects of this campaign.