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

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

By the American Left History blog staff

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

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was as high in the American labor force as it is just tentatively recovering from of late, although it is admittedly down from the Great Recession 2008 highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. Socially productive work not make-shift stuff although we would support an vast expansion of public works to fix the broken down infrastructure in need of serious and immediate repair. his is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.

The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions’ plans as a result of battles like the General Strike in San Francisco in the 1934, is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.

Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” –with the no reduction in pay proviso, although many low –end employers are even now under the “cover” of the flawed Obamacare reducing hours WITH loss of pay-so that to establish this work system as a norm it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy. Support the recent militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially acceptable wage in their Fight For 15.

Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.

Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of company-owned trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. The key here is to organize the truckers and distribution workers the place where the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of individual retail stores. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.

Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize.

Simple-No more defeats like in Wisconsin in 2011, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections like the unsuccessful one against Governor Scoot Walker in Wisconsin in the aftermath of the huge defeat of public workers in Wisconsin funds and talents which could have been used to reorganize the public workers for union struggles ahead. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008, 2012, and 2016 labor, organized labor, spent over well over 700 million dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between the rich and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus efforts rather than the serious labor organizing among low wage workers, the unorganized, the South and Wal-Mart the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement since they have been very generous with own paychecks. The old norm in need of revival is that the bureaucrats at all levels should receive no more than the pay of the average skilled worker they represent.    

The hard reality today is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. One of most egregious recent examples that we can recall- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks in the summer of 2011 when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor when the deal went down from Bush to Obama to Trump on down.

This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio (also think, think hard, about having to go that far back to get a positive example). That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections against individual reactionaries, like the Scoot-Walker recall effort in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle (and which was overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the number of unionized public workers has dwindled to a precious few).  

*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reached its final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we argued that we must recognize that we anti-warriors had failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in previously in Libya and now in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Chad and other proxy wars) continue now with a new stage against ISIS (Islamic State) in Iraq and other Middle East states we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before that fight is over. No War With North Korea, Iran! Out of Syria! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East! Stop The Bombing Campaigns! Defend The Palestinian People! And as always after 16 long years, since 2001 for the forgetful Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!  

U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off North Korea!- American (and world) imperialists have periodically ratcheted up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of North Korea and Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partners on this issue, Israel and Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea) in North Korea or Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of North Korea and Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and the Kim regime in North Korea in our own way in our own time.

U.S. Hands Off The World! And Keep Them Off!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.

Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that in 1915 in the heat of war and paid the price unlike other party leaders who were pledged to stop the war budgets and reneged on that promise by going to prison. The jailhouse the only play for an honest representative of the working class under those conditions. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now no new funding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea preparations, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get our drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.

*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs. Be clear Obamacare is not our program and has been shown to be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program against those like Trump and the majority of his Republican ilk r his who wish to dismantle it and leave millions once again uninsured and denied basic health benefits.  

Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!

This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle-class as well.

Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students from broken homes and minority homes in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget if you want to find the money quickly to do the job right), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.

Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion plus dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while low-cost aid has not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!

Stop housing foreclosures and aid underwater mortgages now! Although the worst of the 2008 crunch has abated there are still plenty of problems and so this demand is still timely if not desperately timely like in the recent past. Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble had also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.

Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. 

Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.

Build a workers’ party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to socialism, to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.

As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

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

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Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics

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

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

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

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

Preacher man, don't tell me,

Heaven is under the earth.

I know you don't know

What life is really worth.

It's not all that glitters is gold;

'Alf the story has never been told:

So now you see the light, eh!

Stand up for your rights. come on!

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

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

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

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

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

Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.

But if you know what life is worth,

You will look for yours on earth:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We know when we understand:

Almighty god is a living man.

You can fool some people sometimes,

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

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

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

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

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

Get up, stand up!

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

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

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

Get up, stand up! (... )

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally posted 10th February 2012

From The Veterans For Peace- The Twelve Days Of......The Struggle Against The Endless American Wars

From The Veterans For Peace- The Twelve Days Of......The Struggle Against The Endless American Wars  

From The Veterans For Peace- The Twelve Days Of......The Struggle Against The Endless American Wars-Some Books Of Interest

From The Veterans For Peace- The Twelve Days Of......The Struggle Against The Endless American Wars-Some Books Of Interest 

From The Living Archives Of Boston Veterans For Peace-They Ain't Your Grandfather's Veterans-By Site Manager Greg Green-The Life And Death Fight Against The Further Privatization Of The Veterans Administration Health System Which Will Harm The Prospects For All Eligible Veterans

From The Living Archives Of Boston Veterans For Peace-They Ain't Your Grandfather's Veterans-By Site Manager Greg Green-The Life And Death Fight Against The Further Privatization Of The Veterans Administration Health System Which Will Harm The Prospects For All Eligible Veterans     

     

[Ralph Morris who has lived in Troy, New York most of his life, been raised there and raised his own family there, went to war, the bloody, horrendous Vietnam War which he has made plain many times he will never live down, never get over what he did, what he saw others do, and most importantly for the long haul, what his evil government did with no remorse to people in that benighted country with whom he had no quarrel never was much for organizations, joining organizations when he was young until he came upon a group formed in the fire of the Vietnam War protests -Vietnam Veteran Against the War (VVAW) which he joined after watching a contingent of them pass by in silent march protesting the war in downtown Albany one fall afternoon. Somebody in that contingent with a microphone called out to any veterans observing the march who had had enough of war, had felt like that did to “fall in” (an old army term well if bitterly remembered). He did and has never looked back although for the past many years his affiliation has been with a subsequent anti-war veterans’ group Veterans for Peace.  

Sam Eaton, who has lived in Carver, Massachusetts, most of his life, been raised there and raised his own family there, and did not go to war. Did not go for the simple reason that due to a severe childhood accident which left him limping severely thereafter he was declared no fit for military duty, 4-F the term the local draft board used. He too had not been much for organizations, joining organizations when he was young. That is until his best friend from high school, Jeff Mullins, died in hell-hole Vietnam and before he had died asked Sam that if anything happened to him to let the world that he had done things, had seen others do things, and most importantly for the long haul, what his evil government did with no remorse to people in that benighted country with whom he had no quarrel. As part of honoring Jeff’s request after Sam found out about his death he was like a whirling dervish joining one anti-war action after another, joining one ad hoc group, each more radical than the previous one as the war ground away, ground all rational approach vapid, let nothing left but to go left, until the fateful day when he met Ralph down in Washington, D.C.

That was when both in their respective collectives, Ralph in VVAW and Sam in Cambridge Red Front, were collectively attempting one last desperate effort to end the war by closing down the government if it would not shut down the war. All they got for their efforts were tear gas, police batons, arrest bracelets and a trip to the bastinado which was the floor of Robert F. Kennedy stadium which is where they would meet after Sam noticed Ralph’s VVAW pin and told him about Jeff and his request. That experience would form a lasting friendship including several years ago Sam joining Ralph’s Veterans for Peace as a supporter, an active supporter still trying to honor his long- gone friend’s request and memory.

No one least of all either of them would claim they were organizing geniuses, far from it but over the years they participated, maybe even helped organize many anti-war events. One day their friend, Josh Breslin, who writes a by-line at this publication, and who is also a veteran asked them to send some of events they had participated in here to form a sort of living archives of the few remaining activist groupings in this country, in America who are still waging the struggle for peace.

Periodically, since we are something of a clearing house and historic memory for leftist activities, we will put their archival experiences into our archives. As mentioned above Sam and Ralph “met” each other down in Washington, D.C. during the May Day anti-war demonstrations of 1971 when out of desperation clots of anti-war radicals, veterans and civilians alike, tried unsuccessfully to shut down the government if it would not shut down the war. They “met,” their in forever quotation marks not mine, on the floor of Robert F. Kennedy football stadium after they had been arrested along with members of their respective collectives, Ralph’s VVAW and Sam’s Red Front Brigade after getting nothing but tear gas, police batons and a ride in the paddy wagon for their efforts. What they were doing, what for each of the them, according to Josh Breslin who met them shortly after they got “sprung,” also then a member of VVAW and also arrested but had been held in a D.C. city jail, were their first acts of civil disobedience. The first of a long time of such actions which is the lead in to the archival material presented in this piece.

Josh, who introduced the pair to me several years ago when I first came on board to manage the day to day operations of this publication after Allan Jackson, aging and ready to retire, brought me on board for that purpose so he could work on where the publication was heading. He mentioned the Washington action as their calling card although then, in 1971, I was about a decade too young to have realized what they were doing and how important it was for their future political trajectories, their political commitments to “fight the monster,” their term, on the questions of war and peace and other social issues. Not have realized, not having done any such actions how important civil disobedience, or the threat of such actions was, is to their political perspectives.

By the way, as Josh was at pains under pressure from Ralph and Sam, to report to me that May Day action was not the first attempt by either man to “get arrested,” to “put their bodies on the line” as Sam articulated it to me one night when we were putting this piece together. May Day was just the first time when the cops, National Guard, Regular Army was willing, with a vengeance, to take them up on the offer. Both men had tried repeatedly to get arrested “sitting down” at their respective local draft boards in Carver and Troy in order to warn off young men on signing up for the draft. Maybe it was the nature of the times but the local police would not arrest them.]

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Kudos to Doug Straw and a tip of the hat to Pat Scully for today’s Bedford VA stand-out morning and afternoon

Thanks to Doug Straw as well for being the organizing spirit behind today’s second VA stand-out and first at the Bedford VA in our campaign to save the VA and prevent further privatization. Many leaflets were handed out to the passing cars at the four stop intersection near the facility and many thumbs up and honks by passing motorists who were heading into the VA to work or for appointments. 

Thanks to Pat Scully, well for being Pat Scully, passing out leaflets like seven dervishes, and taking care of having a righteous and wind-worthy banner complete with poles made up.

Thanks to the divine Jon Neil  who acted as “host” for these events for his helpful knowledge of the Bedford facility.

I only made the morning stand-out but thanks to Winston who came at an ungodly hour from Dorchester to do his part.(Dan Lane also from the sunny hills of Dorchester was to make the afternoon trek so thanks to him as well), David Sneed  (maybe sic) who is doing double duty today going to the Newton office of Congressman Joe Kennedy to get him on the Save the VA bandwagon (I think Doug is going as well) and welcome new face from the Navy Nathan Lador.  

Somebody can add thanks to whoever showed up for the afternoon stand-out.

I think that given today’s reception and the logistics that we concentrate on Bedford in our publicity efforts but we can discuss that at Monday’s General Meeting. Later Ralph Morris

Once Again- When The Capitalist World Was Young-With Dutch And Flemish Paintings In Mind

Once Again- When The Capitalist World Was Young-With Dutch And Flemish Paintings In Mind

By Brad Fox, Jr.

They say that Allan Jackson, a guy who grew up in North Adamsville south of Boston and a guy who as the neighborhood guys he used to hang out with used to say was “from hunger”  which seems self-explanatory, was kind of weird about stuff like politics and art. Stuff that seemed weird to me anyway when it got explained to me by my father, same name as me and hence junior, one night when he decided that I needed one, a drink or two, and, two, to be straightened out about Allan. Straightened out meaning that he would do his royal highness imperative thing with me which he has done with me since I was a kid when he thought I had something, sometimes anything wrong.       

Dad’s authority for the straightening out was that he was one of the guys who knew Allan in those “from hunger” days back in the 1960s when the whole neighborhood, including the Fox family, was wedded to that same condition. He felt since he had already straightened me out ad infinitum on the Fox family “from hunger” story when I was about eight he could skip that and run Allan’s story. I have to tell you though that Bradley Fox, Senior pulled himself up from under by the bootstraps and went on to run a couple of small high tech specialty plants which were contracted to Raytheon to make materials for their various very lucrative defense contracts and while he sold off those businesses when he retired Raytheon is still working off the public teat with those lucrative, very lucrative defense contracts. I also have to tell you that except for a couple of months out in San Francisco in 1967 when the Summer of Love for his generation was in full bloom at a time when his whole crowd was guilt-tripped into going out West by a mad man guy they hung around with whom Dad always called Scribe he went straight-arrow from high school to college (two years), marriage, kids, a decent and “not from hunger” life passed on to his kids and then that fairly recent retirement.

That combination strong work ethic and straight arrow family man would characterize most of his hang-out youthful crowd with the big exception of Scribe. And Allan who followed him for a while anyway before Scribe got too weird, got catch up with a cocaine addiction and fell down, was helped falling down by two straight bullets in Mexico back in the 1970 in circumstances Dad would not talk about, won’t talk about even now since he says it hurts him too much to think about Scribe’s fate, a fate that except for a few happy turns might have befallen him. So the “Allan following Scribe” part consisted of essentially two things-a visceral hatred of current day capitalism partially derived through an old-fashioned now somewhat obsolete except for academics Marxism, you know, greedy capitalist (my father to a certain extent although he was not, is not,  greedy) versus downtrodden workers AND a love of painting from the early days of capitalism-when it was beginning to come full bloom in places like London, Amsterdam and Antwerp-painters like Rembrandt, Hals, Ruebens.    

Dad said it was hard to say when Scribe and therefore Allan got into radical politics since no way in high school when they all formed lasting bonds did those guys have such ideas. They would have been run out of town, would emphatically not have been hanging around Harry’s Variety Store with Dad and the other guys spouting “commie” rag stuff in those Cold War beat the Russians to a pulp days. What they all cared about, what they all talked about was cars, not having cars the fate of most of them during high school, girls, and either not having them of how to get into their pants, Dad’s expression not mine, booze, and how to get somebody old enough to “buy” for them, and endlessly rock and roll music, and how to use that hot rock and roll to get a girl into a car, get her softened up with booze and in the mood to do what he called “do the do” which I think is pretty self-explanatory as well. So maybe girls was all they really cared about in the end and the other stuff was just talk to talk. One way or another Scribe and his ardent follower, his “girl” some of the guys would say just to do a little “fag” baiting long before even guys like Dad got hip that being gay was okay, that they were not the devils incarnate, were as hyped to the chasing girls scene as all the others. 

Dad figured that what probably happened to turn them around was their getting drafted and sent to Vietnam (neither events at the same time but close together) and when they returned they were very different in ways Dad couldn’t explain but different mainly because neither man wanted to talk about the stuff they saw, did, or saw others do in what they would always call “Nam. So they started hanging around with college guys and gals, maybe others too, all young and bright-eyed over in Cambridge the other side of Boston. Started going to things called study groups and such. The long and short of it was before long they were longed-haired, bearded hippie-looking guys just like a million other guys around Boston at the time Dad said. Getting arrested for this and that, stuff called civil disobedience not robberies or mayhem or anything like it. Kept talking about class struggle, kicking the bosses’ asses, decaying capitalism, imperialism all the stuff you read about in a Government class and then let drop like a lead balloon after an exam. That lasted like I said until Scribe fell down and Allan went back to school on the G.I. Bill.    

The craving for Dutch and Flemish painting Dad said was easier to explain, at least he thought so. It seemed like this Allan was a holy goof, a wacko to me in our old neighborhood terms out in the leafy suburbs. Dad said, and this is the way Allan explained it to him so take it for what its worth since you know I think it is the uttering of a holy goof. According to this Marxist schematic even though now capitalism (now now or fifty years ago now it doesn’t matter since it is still around) has turned in on itself, has lost its energy, has become a brake on serious human progress that was not always the case. In the early days when it was giving feudalism the boot it was what they called “progressive,” meaning it was better than feudalism and so did things then that could be supported in historical terms by latter day radicals. Okay, Allan, whatever you say.

Here’s where I think it really gets weird, art, all the cultural expressions, get reflected in the emerging new system of organizing society so when Rembrandt say painted those prosperous dour-looking merchants, town burghers, and shop owners (and their wives, also dour, see above. usually in separate portraits showing that had enough real money to pay for two expensive paintings or else couldn’t stand being in the same room together for the long sittings) he was reflecting the bright light times of this new system that would wind up dominating the world. According to Dad Allan and another guy went, I think he said, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Allan where he flipped out over these odd-ball portrait or domestic scene paintings in the 16^th and 17^th century Dutch-Flemish section. Said, and Dad quoted this, that was when capitalism was young and fresh and you could feel it in almost every painting. Also said while the stuff wouldn’t pass art muster today it was like catnip back then. Like I said a holy goof. And if you don’t believe me go, if you are near a major museum which would have such art, and check it out for yourself because young or old, Rembrandt or not, this stuff is old hat as far as I am concerned.      

Jean Ritchie - The Little Sparrow-The First Lady Of The Mountains-The First Lady Of The Hills And Hollows Wind-Swept Saturday Night Red Barn Dance-So Long, Jean Ritchie-A Belated RIP Zack James Earlier in the year (2018) I did an extended series on the role that my oldest brother, Alex, straight Alex not Alexander as you might expect, played on my early musical development growing up in the 1970s. He, as many of the older writers who either started this publication back in the mid-1970s or were grafted onto the staff by former site manager/editor Allan Jackson have done, cut his teeth on, or as he put it recently when commenting on the series, he was “present at the creation” of rock and roll, now called the classic age, the 1950s and early 1960s. The series was originally supposed to deal solely with that influence channeled through him. The was before a feeling of late that other unarticulated influences based on what Alex taught me had some say in the matter. When we were discussing that feeling one night, along with a general discussion about the various threads which contributed to the genre, Alex pulled me up short when he mentioned how “our father’s music, mountain music, hillbilly music,” had played a role in the development of rock and roll. Had also contributed to the emergence of the folk scene in the early 1960s which Alex had also taken a small part in through his best friend, Peter Paul Markin, who was crazy for the stuff and was always sneaking over to Harvard Square, sometimes with Alex in tow, on weekend nights. According to Alex, again via Markin, people, young people, some of them anyway, were looking for authentic music, roots music, traditional music. In this case music that came over from the British Isles maybe Europe and planted itself down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia especially. There was a convergence of “academic” interest by certain college types along with a desire to learn some new music by poring through the music down in the hills and hollows. Alex’s remarks, his placing my unarticulated feelings in a context connected to our father got me permission from the site manager, currently Greg Green, to extend that rock and roll series to see what fit in and what didn’t from mountain music. My scurrying around looking for material got me looking straight at the music of Jean Ritchie far from rock and roll but close, very close to our father’s roots music. Something in her voice, in her lyrics, in her mournful playing of the dulcimer “spoke” to me, connected me with my father and where he had come from not matter that we had been very distance from each other long before he passed away. I had heard her music before when I went through my own period of interest in folk music in the early 1980s at a time when I had had what Alex has called my “outlaw country moment” when guys like Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt and gals like Jessie Logan and Emmy Lou Harris got me interested in that genre. Along the way I explored a few other sub-groups like Tex-Mex, Western Swing with Bob Wills and Milton Brown and bluegrass with the likes of Earl Monroe and Kitty Diamond. Songs from the mountains too. So yes as Alex intuited I, we, had via some strange transplanting of DNA had turned out to be our father’s sons, had the hills and hollows, the Saturday red barn dance complete with fiddles and mandos, maybe a sweet dulcimer, hidden in some recesses of our brains ready to come out, come out too late for us to thank him, but come out nevertheless. Which finally brings us back to why I am writing this secular elegy to Jean Ritchie. Somehow, despite paying close attention to the passing of various authors, writers, film people and singers and song-writers in this space dedicated ‘keeping the torch burning” the passing of Jean Ritchie got short shrift at the time. I make slight amends here.

The First Lady Of The Mountains-The First Lady Of The Hills And Hollows Wind-Swept Saturday Night Red Barn Dance-So Long, Jean Ritchie-A Belated RIP

Zack James

Earlier in bthe year (2018) I did an extended series on the role that my oldest brother, Alex, straight Alex not Alexander as you might expect, played on my early
musical development growing up in the 1970s. He, as many of the older writers who either started this publication back in the mid-1970s or were grafted onto the staff by former site manager/editor Allan Jackson have done, cut his teeth
on, or as he put it recently when commenting on the series, he was “present at the creation” of rock and roll, now called the classic age, the 1950s and early 1960s. The series was originally supposed to deal solely with that influence
channeled through him. The was before a feeling of late that other unarticulated influences based on what Alex taught me had some say in the matter. When we were discussing that feeling one night, along with a general discussion about the various threads which contributed to the genre, Alex
pulled me up short when he mentioned how “our father’s music, mountain music, hillbilly music,” had played a role in the development of rock and roll. Had also contributed to the emergence of the folk scene in the early 1960s which
Alex had also taken a small part in through his best friend, Peter Paul Markin, who was crazy for the stuff and was always sneaking over to Harvard Square, sometimes
with Alex in tow, on weekend nights. 

According to Alex, again via Markin, people, young people, some of them anyway, were looking for authentic music, roots music, traditional music. In this case music that
came over from the British Isles maybe Europe and planted itself down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia especially. There was a convergence of  “academic” interest by certain college types along with a desire to learn some new music by poring through the music down in the hills and hollows. Alex’s remarks, his placing my unarticulated feelings in a context connected to our father got me permission from the site manager, currently Greg Green, to extend that
rock and roll series to see what fit in and what didn’t from mountain music. My scurrying around looking for material got me looking straight at the music of Jean Ritchie far from rock and roll but close, very close to our father’s roots
music.

Something in her voice, in her lyrics, in her mournful playing of the dulcimer “spoke” to me, connected me with my father and where he had come from not matter that we
had been very distance from each other long before he passed away. I had heard her music before when I went through my own period of interest in folk music in
the early 1980s at a time when I had had what Alex has called my “outlaw country moment” when guys like Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt and gals like Jessie Logan and Emmy Lou Harris got me interested in that genre. Along the way I explored a few other sub-groups like Tex-Mex, Western Swing with Bob Wills and Milton Brown and bluegrass with the likes of Earl Monroe and Kitty Diamond. Songs from the mountains too.

So yes as Alex intuited I, we, had via some strange transplanting of DNA had turned out to be our father’s sons, had the hills and hollows, the Saturday red barn dance complete with fiddles and mandos, maybe a sweet dulcimer,  hidden in some recesses of our brains ready to come out, come out too late for us to thank him, but come out nevertheless. Which finally brings us back to why I am writing this secular elegy to Jean Ritchie. Somehow, despite paying close attention to the passing of various authors, writers, film people and singers and song-writers in this space dedicated ‘keeping the torch burning” the passing of Jean Ritchie got short shrift at the time. I make slight amends here.

From The Archives Of “American Left History”-An Analysis And A Summing Up After His First Year By Site Manager Greg Green

From The Archives Of “American Left History”-An Analysis And A Summing Up After His First Year By Site Manager Greg Green

November 14, 2018 marked the first anniversary of my officially becoming site manager at this publication and in acknowledgement of that tight touch first year I started going back to the archives here from the time this publication went to totally on-line existence due to financial considerations in 2006. (Previously from its inception in 1974 it had been hard copy for many years and then in the early 2000s was both hard copy and on-line before turning solely to on-line publication.) This first year has been hard starting with the residue of the “water-cooler fist fight” started by some of the younger writers who balked at the incessant coverage of the 1960s, highlighted in 2017 by the 50^th anniversary commemorations of the Summer of Love, 1967 ordered by previous site manager Allan Jackson. 

They had not even been born, had had to consult in many cases parents and the older writers here when Allan assigned them say a review of the Jefferson Airplane rock band which dominated the San Francisco scene at the height of the 1960s. That balking led to a decisive vote of “no confidence” requested by the “youth cabal” in the Jackson regime and replacement by me. You can read all about the various “takes” on the situation in these very archives from the fall of 2017 on if you can stand it. If you want to know if Allan was “purged,” “sent into exile,” variously ran a whorehouse in San Francisco with old flame Madame LaRue or shacked up with a drag queen named Miss Judy Garland or sold out to the Mormons to get a press agent job with the Mitt Romney for Senate campaign after he left here it is all there. I, having been brought in by Allan from American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations as he concentrated on “the big picture” stayed on the sidelines, didn’t have a vote in any case since I was only on “probation.”        

A lot of the rocky road I faced was of my own making early on since to make my mark, and to look toward the future I came up with what even I now see as a silly idea of trying to reach a younger demographic (than the 1960s devotees who have sustained this publication since its founding). I went on a crash program of having writers, young and old, do reviews of Marvel/DC cinematic comic book characters, graphic novels, hip-hop, techno music and such. The blow-back came fast and furious by young and old writers alike and so the Editorial Board that had been put in place in the wake of Allan’s departure called a halt to that direction. A lot of the reasons why I am presenting the archival material along with this piece is both to see where we can go from here that makes sense to the Ed Board and through that body the cohort of writers who grace this publication and which deals with the reality of a fading demographic as the “Generation of ’68” passes on. Additionally, like every publication hard copy or on-line, we receive much material we can’t or won’t use although that too falls into the archives so here is a chance to give that material a “second life.”    

**********

When one, me, glanced through the archives I was struck almost immediately that the ghost of Peter Paul Markin hovers over this publication and won’t give up, at least it appears until the older writers who knew him, who caught the fresh breeze he had early on in 1960s predicted was on its way and acted with him on it pass on. At least one, Sam Lowell, who had known Markin from elementary school days  (they always call him the Scribe among themselves , a corner boy nickname, moniker they gave him for always writing something down on the tattered notepad he carried in his out of fashion plaid shirts along with some wizened pencil but I will stick with Markin to avoid confusion ) has been working his ass off since the founding to link Markin to the purpose of this publication-the preservation of the memories of the political, social, economic and cultural movements that animated their times, that “Generation of’ 68” that caught Allan Jackson short when he tried to single-handedly revive the times out of some serious hubris, earlier and later movements which linked into that time.

A lot of “water cooler” talk, first heard by me from Laura Perkins, Sam’s long-time companion and a recent and welcome addition to the writers’ stable here, was that the whole idea of a then hard copy publication had been hatched in one last desperate effort to save Markin’s sagging life by letting him write reviews, music, film, books, cultural events which they would “piggyback” onto. Stuff they all were in varying degrees good at. It was not to be, as looking at a small memorial book in Markin’s honor put together by younger writer Zack James in the summer of 2017 at the urging of his oldest brother Alex, another close Markin friend, after he had come back from viewing a Summer of Love, 1967 exhibition at the de Young Museum out in San Francisco graphically illustrated. There, almost to a man, and it was a man’s recollections memoir, Markin’s corner boys from the growing up Acre section of North Adamsville and a few others like Josh Breslin met along the way, comment on Markin’s deterioration, his increasing addition to cocaine when that became the drug of the month among the “hip” in the mid-1970s. Sam commented that Markin, and to a certain extent the other Acre corner boys as well including himself, never got over their military experiences in Vietnam and maybe a bigger push his from hunger “wanting” habits from growing up dirt poor down in the mud of society. I won’t go into the details, such as they are since everybody who has tried was warned off so the details are to say the least sketchy, of Markin’s end except he now is down in some potters’ field plot in Sonora, Mexico after having been murdered in some dirty dusty back road over what is still presumed to have been a busted drug deal Markin was trying to put together to get on “easy street” once he saw what was good about the 1960s fading before his very eyes.         

I have not gone through the hard copy archives and I am not sure I will get a chance to since they are located in New York City and I am not sure when I will be able to spent at least a week looking through them, dusting off old year volumes and other materials so I will let it rip in no particular order but what comes to mind about what has been written, political clearing house advertised, and commemorated in this space as I have ventured to gather what the heck has gone on here for the past decade plus of the on-line work. The overarching comment though is that patchwork quilt or not it has stayed pretty close to what it had in the masthead stated it intended to do-without much, or too much bloodshed.    

You can tell, number-wise and number of pages that 2006 was a year when the financial crunch which necessitated the complete switch-over to on-line publication really was a wrenching process. The pieces are too-heavily weighted toward book, film, music reviews and an overlay of political commentary when Frank Jackman had to take a part-time job working at National Commentary. I can disclose here that many of the writers, guys like Si Lannon, Seth Garth, Fritz Taylor, even Josh Breslin were “moonlighting” when I ran things over at American Film Gazette which despite its’ name reviewed all kind of things including consumer products (not my decision but that was that). Or they were submitting the reviews they wrote here for free (no money in any case) and then submitting them over to me for cold hard cash. I was going to say they were double-dipping but that would imply they were being paid here for their work which generally was hit or miss. I did not know the financial situation here although I was glad to have the reviews whatever was happening here. Paid my cash and got my due.

I am not exactly sure when the shift toward lots of personal pieces about the 1960s and reviews of earlier books, films music connected with those times became a serious trend under the former head, Allan Jackson, but you can see by browsing the archives that 2006 is definite trend-setter. Not only that but once again by virtue of “water-cooler” gossip shifting slightly that way grabbed a spike in readership and more revenue. So Allan, who later, who in 2017 would be skewered for his 24/7/365 nostalgia blanket coverage, made a good decision then to move away from reviews of more contemporary cultural events. Interestingly he got into a “pissing” contest when he had Si Lannon, sorry Si if I am mistaken, do a series of 1960s folksingers who were “not Bob Dylan,” did not go on to what has become a never-ending concert tour schedule and career but moved elsewhere or kept their ambitions low when the so-called folk minute passed by and it did not look like they could survive on the thin gruel left. I heard that there was almost an insurrection with say Seth Garth wondering why his old sidekick folksinger/songwriter Erick Saint Jean was not highlighted (meaning what didn’t he get that assignment to explain why Erick went on to a successful art career rather than grind out the dimes and donuts coffeehouse circuit rapidly fading away in the acid rock night). Half these guys, according to Sam, hated folk music when, guess who, Markin is right, started going to Harvard Square on the low to get the hell out of his horrible homelife and really only accidently gravitated to the coffeehouse when guys and gals he would meet late at night at the Hayes-Bickford told him that was where the action was. Not the H-B itself though which was for winos and con men, maybe a hang-out for a while after the coffeehouses closed down and you still were trying to figure out what was what with some girl you wanted to take down to the Charles River to see what was really what.

From what I can gather Markin was a guy who was all in or forget it so once he had some dough, some dough when the guy caddied for some swanks at some country club to get dough to meet the cover charge, grab some coffee, grab a date’s bill and throw some money in the basket for the performer whose life depended on those proceeds then tried to get everybody in. Seth Garth to this day cannot stand the Dylan voice, cannot stand the silly lyrics about lost loves and doing bodily harm if some dish did not reciprocate your devotion and you dunked her in say the Ohio River. Be that as it may I noticed a definite spike in sales and ad revenue when that series ran since Allan must have highlighted every guy who could handle three chords and some basic melody-guys like Lemon Lewis and Ben Amos, guys who about three people have heard of. He had though as Sam loves to say a “hook” no question as even people who never heard the singers took interest in where they landed, if they landed. Maybe this says it better than anything else Allan decided to run the distaff side, okay, woman of folk playing off of the anointed queen, anointed at least in the tabloids, Joan Baez.       

It is hard to say what will drive the nuts and bolts of a publication but I think I can see something like a clear line when Allan decided to do “nostalgia” and let the writers he had at the time who were all, I think all, veterans of the 1960s or like beautiful Zack James were influenced by older brother Alex who was knee-down into that period which created some stability for the publication in the post-2006 period. That Bob Dylan-Joan Baez spike got the ball rolling even further back to the time of classic rock and roll and all that meant to the veteran writers who sucked up the air with their recollections and received plenty of attention (and a couple of awards) for their work. How much of it was to gather in their regrets about Markin and how much was natural going back to the music you grew up with which never really leaves you is hard to say but the spike in interest of the old Acre section of North Adamsville where most of the action takes place is interesting.

It must have been exciting, separate, hard-scrabble, cagey in those days when each guy, and it was all guys in those days, the girls, young women were kind of appendages, important appendages but appendages nevertheless reflecting not only that coming of age awkwardness but a kind of unwritten law established by Markin who was trying even then, even in high school to emulate the “beats” the guys who came up the line just before them and who were popular figures like Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg even as the “beats” were in retreat. (Seth Garth told me that Markin never mentioned those guys when they were out in the corner boy night but he was reading their stuff, including pretty openly gay Ginsberg which would have closed the door if he had mentioned that to the boyos.) These guys from nowhere had a certain routine, a certain laundry- list of things they talked about, adventures they got into (including the always veiled mention of certain burglaries to get dough which was one way they did it). Rock and roll, music, music that spoke to that generation perhaps more than any earlier one and certainly more than in my own generation one generation removed from the classic days of the genre.

No question these guys lived and died for the music, hanging out not by chance at a pizza parlor where the owner had installed a jukebox with all the latest hits to draw the kids in-and he did. Taking the boys in because if boys were hanging around then girls, the ones with money, the ones who came in and played the machine would come by too. Nice move but also the source of many interesting stories about how the guys would con the girls to play music they, the guys wanted to hear. Conned them, the girls out of other stuff too if you believe half of what memories they have decided to share knowing from my own experiences in a very different environment that lying was a matter of honor on the question of sexual conquests. The funniest part is that for all his leadership, so-called, his intelligence about what was going on in school, with girls with, guys who had girlfriends, more importantly, girls with boyfriends, invaluable intelligence no question and would make any such person if he or she had existed in my crowd a leader, never really had dates with Acre or North Adamsville girls when he was a corner boy. He would find companionship in Harvard Square or some such place but not at home.         

As anybody with eyes can see, even with the temporary disaster of the “dumbing down” action I initiated and blew off when the deal went down this past year has been heavy with political material, some additional art material and a big push on commemorating 100^th anniversary the last year of the horrendous World War I and the armistice which put everything on hold as it turned out. Since I agree that we are essentially in the middle of a cold civil war which may very likely turn hot before our eyes we will be amping up our political coverage anchored by award-winning Frank Jackman interspersed with additional art and poetry reviews to augment the films, music and book reviews the reader is already familiar with and will hopefully appreciate with our stable of younger writers taking the lead.      

Veterans For Peace Stands In Solidarity with Central American Asylum Seekers by Gerry Condon

Veterans For Peace Stands In Solidarity with Central American Asylum Seekers by Gerry Condon

Members of San Diego Veterans For Peace marched to the border with Tijuana, Mexico on Sunday, November 25, as part of a San Diego coalition expressing solidarity with and support for thousands of Central American asylum seekers.

VFP members were on both sides of the border and joined in with a march of asylum seekers on the Mexican side. So we had a good look at the crisis which was contrived by the Trump administration to make it look like there was indeed an "invasion" of "criminals" and "terrorists."

A perfectly peaceful march turned into chaos when the legal entry point to where the asylum seekers were headed was closed off by Mexican authorities, presumably at the request of Homeland Security. When some marchers then surged toward the border wall, Customs and Border Protection (CPB) officers wasted no time in firing multiple CS (tear gas) canisters across the border into Mexico, causing great chaos as mothers fled with their choking children. As if on cue, U.S. authorities then totally shut down the busiest border crossing in North America, an exercise they had been practicing during the week. Soon Marine helicopters were landing on the railroad tracks next to the border, and Marines, apparently armed, were dis-engorging along the border fence. At the same time, 300 Army soldiers with shields and clubs stood menacingly behind CPB officers.

In the meantime, rains and a shortage of food and shelter for the asylum seekers in Tijuana are turning an already difficult into a serious humanitarian crisis. As many as one-third of the 6,000 or so asylum seekers are suffering from respiratory and other illnesses. Mexico's federal government has provided no aid, and the mayor of Tijuana says that the city can provide little further assistance.

NGO's on both sides of the border are doing what they can to help, but so far their efforts are insufficient. The Unified U.S. Deported Veterans chapter of Veterans For Peace has also been helping asylum seekers who are camped out at the border, only about a half-block from their office. The Deported Veterans have experience with this, as they have helped previous caravans of asylum seekers as well. They are supplying food, water, blankets, and now seek to provide much needed tarps. San Diego VFP is helping out with this. Ultimately, they would like to provide backpacks filled with essential items.

Most needed are dollars, which can be used to purchase essential items in Mexico.

You can donate directly through a special link on the VFP website. Just indicate that your donation is for the asylum seekers.

Read Gerry's Entire Report