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When The King Of Rock And
Roll Held Forth In The Acre Section Of North Adamsville -And Made It Stick-In
Honor Of The Generation Of ’68-Or Those Who Graced Wild Child Part Of It -On
That Old Hill-Billy Father Moment
By Zack James
[Zack James has been on an
assignment covering the various 50th anniversary commemorations of
the year 1968 (and a few in 1967 and for the future 1969 which is to his mind
something of a watershed year rather than his brother Alex and friends
“generation of ‘68” designation they have wrapped themselves around) and
therefore has not graced these pages for a while. Going through his paces on
those assignments Zack realized that he was out of joint with his own
generation, having been born in 1958 and therefore too young to have been
present at the creation of what is now called, at least in the
demographical-etched commercials, the classic age of rock and roll. Too young
too for any sense of what a jailbreak that time was and a shortly later period
which Seth Garth who was deep into the genre has called the ‘folk minute
breeze” that ran rampart through the land say in the early 1960s. Too young as
well to have been “washed clean,” not my term but Si Lannon’s since I am also
too young to have been aware of the import by the second wave of rock, the acid
rock period. Hell, this is enough of an introduction to re-introducing the
legendary writer here. Lets’ leave it as Zack is back and let him go through
his paces. Greg Green, site manager]
Alex James was the king of
rock and roll. Of course he was not really the king, the king being Elvis and
no last name needed at least for the bulk of those who will read what I call a
“think piece,” a piece about what all the commemorations of events a million
years ago, or it like a million years ago even mentioning 50 or 60 year
anniversaries, mean. What Alex was though was the conduit for my own musical
experiences which have left me as a stepchild to fiveimportant musical moments, the birth of rock
and roll in the 1950s, the quick prairie fire called the “folk minute of the
early 1960s and the resurgence with a vengeance of rock in the mid-1960s which
for brevity’s sake call “acid” rock, along the way and intersecting that big
three came a closeted “country outlaw moment” initiated by father time Hank
Williams and carried through with vengeance by singers like Willie Nelson,
Townes Van Zandt, and Waylon Jennings, and Muddy Waters and friends blues as
the glue that bound what others who write here, Sam Lowell, in particular calls
the Generation of ’68- a seminal year in many ways which I have been exploring
for this and other publications. I am well placed to do since I was over a
decade too young to have been washed over by the movements. But that step-child
still sticks and one Alex James is the reason why.
This needs a short
explanation. As should be apparent Alex James is my brother, my oldest brother,
born in 1946 which means a lot in the chronology of what follows. My oldest
brother as well in a family with seven children, five boys and two twin girls,
me being the youngest of all born in 1958. As importantly this clan grew up in
the dirt- poor working- class Acre, as in local lore Hell’s Acre, section of
North Adamsville where my mother, under better circumstances, grew up and
remained after marrying her World War II Marine my father from dirt poor
Appalachia which will also become somewhat important later. To say we lacked
for many of the things that others in that now seen “golden age” of American
prosperity would be an understatement and forms the backdrop of how Alex kept
himself somewhat sane with music although we didn’t even have a record player
(the now ancient although retro revival way to hear music then) and he was
forced when at home to “fight” for the family radio to get in touch with what
was going on, what the late Pete Markin his best friend back then called “the
great jailbreak.”
A little about Alex’s
trajectory is important too. He was a charter member along with the late
Markin, Si Lannon, Sam Lowell, Seth Garth and Allan Jackson, the later four
connected with this publication in various ways since its hard copy start in
the 1970s, of the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys. These guys, and maybe it
reflected their time and milieu, hung out at Tonio’s for the simple reason they
never had money, or not enough, and while they were not above various acts of
larceny and burglary mostly they hung around there to listen to the music
coming out of Tonio’s to die for jukebox. That jukebox came alive in maybe
1955, 1956 when they first heard Elvis (and maybe others as well but Alex
always insisted that he was the first to “discover” Elvis in his crowd.)
Quickly that formed the backdrop of what Alex listened to for a few years until
the genre spent a few years sagging with vanilla songs and beats. That same
Markin, who the guys here have written about and I won’t, was the guy who
turned Alex on to folk music via his desperate trips to Harvard Square up in
Cambridge when he needed to get out of the hellish family household he dwelled
in. The third prong of the musical triad was also initiated by Markin who made
what everybody claims was a fatal mistake dropping out of Boston University in
his sophomore year in 1967 to follow his dream, to “find” himself, to go west
to San Francisco for what would be called the Summer of Love where he learned
about the emerging acid rock scene (drugs, sex and rock and roll being one
mantra). He dragged everybody, including Alex if you can believe this since he
would subsequently come back and go to law school and become the staid
successful lawyer he is today, out there with him for varying periods of time.
(The fateful mistake on the part of Markin stemming from him dropping out at
the wrong time, the escalation of the war in Vietnam subjecting him later to
the draft and hell-hole Vietnam service while more than the others unhinged him
and his dream.) The blues part came as mentioned as a component of the folk
minute, part of the new wave rock revival and on its own. The country outlaw
connections bears separate mention these days.
That’s Alex’s story-line.
My intersection with Alex’s musical trip was that one day after he had come
back from a hard night at law school (he lived at home, worked during the day
at some law firmas somekind of lacky, and went to law school nights
studying the rest of the time) he went to his room and began playing a whole
bunch of music starting I think with Bill Haley and the Comet’s Rock Around The Clock and kept playing
stuff for a long time. Loudly. Too loudly for me to get to sleep and I went and
knocked on his door to get him quiet down. When he opened the door he had on
his record playerJerry Lee Lewis’s High School Confidential. I flipped out.
I know I must have heard Alex playing this stuff earlier, but it was kind of a
blank before. Background music just like Mother’s listening to 1940s stuff on
her precious ancient RCA radio in the kitchen. What happened then, what got me
mesmerized as a twelve- year old was that this music “spoke” to me, spoke to my
own unformed and unarticulated alienation. I had not been particularly
interested in music, music mostly heard and sung in the obligatory junior high
school music class, but this was different, this got my hormonal horrors in
gear. I stayed in Alex’s room listening half the night as he told me above when
he had first heard such and such a song.
Although the age gap
between Alex and I was formidable, he was out the door originally even before I
knew him since at that point we were the only two in the house all the others
in college or on their own he became something of a mentor to me on the ins and
out of rock and roll once I showed an interest. From that night on it was not
just a question of say, why Jailhouse
Rock should be in the big American Songbook but would tell me about who or
what had influenced rock and roll. He was the first to tell me about what had
happened in Memphis with a guy named Sam Phillips and his Sun Record label
which minted an extraordinary number of hits by guys like Elvis, Warren Smith,
Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee. When I became curious about how the sound got going,
why my hands got clammy when I heard the music and I would start tapping my
toes he went chapter and verse on me. Like some god-awful preacher quoting how
Ike Turner, under a different name, may really have been the granddaddy of rock
with his Rocket 88 and how obscure
guys like Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner and Willie Lomax and their big bop
rhythm and blues was one key element. Another stuff from guys like Hack Devine,
Warren Smith and Lenny Larson who took the country flavor and melted it down to
its essence. Got rid of the shlock. Alex though did surprise me with the thing
he thought got our toes tapping-these guys, Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Buddy
Holly and a whole slew of what I would later call good old boys took their
country roots not the Grand Ole Opry stuff but the stuff they played at the red
barn dances down in the hills and hollows come Saturday night and mixed it with
some good old fashion religion stuff learned through bare-foot Baptists or from
the black churches and created their “jailbreak” music.
One night Alex startled me while
we were listening to an old Louvain Brothers song, I forget which one, when he
said “daddy’s music” meaning that our father who had come from down in deep
down in the mud Appalachia had put the stuff in our genes. He didn’t call it
DNA I don’t’ think he knew the term and I certainly didn’t but that was the
idea. I resisted the idea then, and for a long time after but sisters and
brothers look at the selections that accompany this so-called think piece the
whole thing is clear now. I, we are our father’s sons after all. Alex knew that
early on I only grabbed the idea lately-too late since our father he has been
gone a long time now.
Alex had the advantage of
being the oldest son of a man who also had grown up as the oldest son in his
family brood of I think eleven. (Since I, we never met any of them when my
father came North to stay for good after being discharged from the Marine as
hard Pacific War military service, I can’t say much about that aspect of why my
father doted on his oldest son.) That meant a lot, meant that Dad confided as
much as a quiet, sullen hard-pressed man could or would confide in a youngster.
All I know is that sitting down at the bottom of the food chain (I will laugh “clothes
chain” too as the recipient of every older brother, sister too when I was too
young to complain or comprehend set of ragamuffin clothing) he was so distant
that we might well have been just passing strangers. Alex, for example, knew
that Dad had been in a country music trio which worked the Ohio River circuit,
that river dividing Ohio and Kentucky up north far from hometown Hazard, yes,
that Hazard of legend and song whenever anybody speaks of the hardscrabble days
of the coal mine civil wars that went on down there before the war, before
World War II. I don’t know what instrument he played although I do know that he
had a guitar tucked under his bed that he would play when he had a freaking
minute in the days when he was able to get work.
That night Alex also
mentioned something that hit home once he mentioned it. He said that Dad who
tinkered a little fixing radios, a skill learned from who knows where although
apparently his skill level was not enough to get him a job in that industry,
figured out a way to get WAXE out of I think Wheeling, West Virginia which
would play old country stuff 24/7 and that he would always have that station on
in the background when he was doing something. Had stopped doing that at some
point before I recognized the country-etched sound but Alex said he was
spoon-fed on some of the stuff, citing Warren Smith and Smiley Jamison
particularly, as his personal entre into the country roots of one aspect of the
rock and roll craze. Said further that he was not all that shocked when say
Elvis’s It’s All Right Mama went off
the charts since he could sense that country beat up-tempo a little from what
Smith had been fooling around with, Carl Perkins too he said. They were what he
called “good old boys” who were happy as hell that they had enough musical
skills at the right time so they didn’t have to stick around the farm or work
in some hardware store in some small town down South.
Here is the real shocker,
well maybe not shocker, but the thing that made Alex’s initial so-called DNA
thought make sense. When Alex was maybe six or seven Dad would be playing
something on the guitar, just fooling around when he started playing Hank Williams’
mournful lost love Cold, Cold Heart.
Alex couldn’t believe his ears and asked Dad to play it again. He would for
years after all the way to high school when Dad had the guitar out and he was
around request that Dad play that tune. I probably heard the song too. So,
yeah, maybe that DNA business is not so far off. And maybe, just maybe, over
fifty years later we are still our father’s sons. Thanks, Dad.
The selection posted here
culled from the merciful YouTube network thus represents one of the key pieces
of music that drove the denizens of the Generation of ’68 and their
stepchildren. And maybe now their grandchildren.
[Alex and I had our ups and
downs over the years and as befits a lawyer and journalist our paths seldom
passed except for occasional political things where we were on the same
wavelength like with the defense of Army whistle-blower Chelsea Manning
(formerly Bradley). Indicative though of our closeness despite distance in 2017
when Alex had a full head of steam up about putting together a collective
corner boy memoir in honor of the late Markin after a business trip to San
Francisco where he went to a museum exhibition featuring the seminal Summer of
Love, 1967 he contacted me for the writing, editing and making sure of the production
values.]
Honor Native American Heritage Month In Real Way- Damn It- President Trump Pardon Native American Leader Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Prison!
Statement by the Committee For International Labor Defense Now that the bid by Amnesty International and others nationally and internationally seeking to get former President Barack Obama to pardon Leonard Peltier have gone for nought we supporters are between a rockand a hard place. The denial notice was for very flimsy reasons despite the fact that even the prosecutor does not know who killed those two FBI agents in a firefight at Pine Ridge. Hell it could have been friendly forces who knows sometimes in a war zone, and that was exactly what that situation was, who knows. (For a current example of another war zone on Native lands check the story on what the various local,state, federal and mercenary forces brought in by the pipe line company at Standing Rock. One false move, provoked or not, would have ended in a bloodbath according to a well-respected Vietnam veteran who along with a few thousand other vets showed up to defend the lands and water and thought he was in the Central Highlands again.) All we know is that Brother Peltier has spent forty some years behind bars and has a slew of medical problems which would have let Obama pardon just on compassionate grounds. He didn't. Don't expect, we almost have to laugh even saying such a thing, one Donald J.Trump, POTUS, and maybe off to jail himself to pardon Leonard Peltier before his term of office is up. Still Leonard Peltier along with Mumia Abu-Jamal and now Reality Leigh Winner are America's best known political prisoners and need to be supported and freed. To that end we in Boston have committed ourselves to as best we are able to continue ot keep the Peltier case in the public eye by holding periodic vigils calling for his pardon and freedom. We call on all Leonard Peltier supporters to keep his name before the public. Free Leonard Peltier-He Must Not Die In Prison
************* Latest Leaflet
We demand freedom for Leonard Peltier!
Native American activist Leonard Peltier has spent over 40 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was one of the people convicted of killing 2 FBI agents in a shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Reservation on June 26, 1975. The others who were convicted with him have long since been released. Prosecutors and federal agents manufactured evidence against him (including the so-called “murder weapon”); hid proof of his innocence; presented false testimony obtained through torturous interrogation techniques; ignored court orders; and lied to the jury.
In spite of his unjust imprisonment and terrible personal situation, being old and sick and likely to die in jail, he writes every year to the participants at the National Day of Mourning, which is held by Natives in Plymouth, MA in place of Thanksgiving, offering wishes for the earth and all those present and gratitude for the support he receives. To read some of his statements, go to UAINE.org (United American Indians of New England). That is also a good site for info about the National Day of Mourning and the campaign against Columbus Day and in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day.
Sometimes people claim that the US does not have political prisoners, but Leonard Peltier has been in prison for a very long time and even the FBI admits that they do not know who killed those FBI agents. If Leonard Peltier dies in prison, it will be one of the worst miscarriages of justice in this country’s long history of injustice.
For more info and to sign a petition demanding hearings on the Pine Ridge “Reign of Terror” and COINTELPRO, a counter-intelligence program conducted against activists including Native groups, go to WhoIsLeonardPeltier.info.
Write to Leonard Peltier at Leonard Peltier, #89637-132, USP Coleman 1, P O Box 1033, Coleman, FL 33521. Prisoners really appreciate mail, even from people they don’t know. Cards and letters are always welcome.
This rally is organized by the Committee for Int’l Labor Defense, CForILD@gmail.com, InternationalLaborDefense.org.
In Harvard Square Cambridge, Ma Tuesday December 19th 5 PM to 6 PM The Committee For International Labor Defense (labor donated)
Free Native American Leader Leonard Peltier-Free “The Voice Of the Voiceless” Mumia Abu Jamal-Free Russian Interference Whistle-Blower Reality Leigh Winner-Hands Off Whistle-Blower Edward Snowden and all our political prisoners from this year’s anti-fascist struggles.
Holidays are tough times for political prisoners- join us to show your support from outside the wall for those inside the walls so that they know they do not stand alone.
********
Today the Committee for International Labor Defense (CILD) follows in the tradition of the International Labor Defense, established by the early Communist Party to mobilize labor and progressive-centered protest to free leftist political prisoners. An especially important tradition during the holiday season for those inside the prisons and their families.
Every political prisoner we honor today had the instinct and inner strength to rebel against the injustices which were there for all to see. They knew that if they fought those injustices in the face of governmental repression the prisons were part of the price they might have to pay for standing up for what they believed in.
The political prisoners of today, just as those in previous periods of history, are representatives of the most courageous and advanced section of the oppressed. They are individuals of particular audacity and ability who have stood out conspicuously as leaders and militants, and have thereby incurred the hatred of the oppressors.
As James Cannon one of the founders of the ILD said in The Cause That Passes Through a Prison- “The class-war prisoners are stronger than all the jails and jailers and judges. They rise triumphant over all their enemies and oppressors. Confined in prison, covered with ignominy, branded as criminals, they are not defeated. They are destined to triumph...”
This stand-out is organized by the Committee for Int’l Labor Defense, CForILD@gmail.com, InternationalLaborDefense.org.
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 23rd
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 23rd when he exited the Smithsonian Metro stop on National Mall
to walk over to the 7th Street entrance to the Gallery building Si
noticed a large white tent and further down toward 7th 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 23rd
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 23rd 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 50th 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.
