The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- With The Beatles performing When I'm Sixty-Four In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- With The Beatles performing When I'm Sixty-Four In Mind

A YouTube film clip of the Beatles performing When I'm Sixty-Four from the animated movie Yellow Submarine.

From The Archives Of Allan Jackson

Many of my fellows from the tail end of the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.

[You know I am not a religious man, haven’t’ been since I was a kid in the days before I went to the 8 o’clock Sunday Mass at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church for the sole purpose of sitting a few rows behind Chrissie McNamara and watch her ass (as did the late Peter Paul Markin unbeknownst to me until many years later). Of course I can say that now since Chrissie and I have been together through thick and thin since high school days. But despite my infidel ways today I rejoice. Today I say praise be or whatever they say when glad tidings are upon us. Greg Green, the current site manager and Sam Lowell, an old friend of Allan’s as I am, have finally worked out an arrangement concerning the question of true and full attribution for this series. As of the next installment the old site manager none other than the previously exiled to who knows where Allan Jackson who played midwife to this series over several years and will be forever linked to the ideas behind the theme will have both full attribution (a by-line) and the ability to create new introductions to each sketch if he is so inclined. The only limitation which all agreed makes sense is not to restart the civil war over last year’s internal fight and stick to whatever the theme of the sketch is.   

The “praise be” stems from the fact that after this final third party introduction I can go back to what I do best which is to sell cars, sell Toyotas, where I have built myself  up to be Mr. Toyota of Eastern Massachusetts (and Chrissie Mrs. Toyota don’t forget). Which means that I can go back to raising funds to keep this venture afloat which I do better that the occasional writings that I have done in the past and which I have been forced-marched into doing too frequently of late in defense of old friend Allan against an impossible stream of rumors since he was “purged” from his position early last year after losing a vote of no confidence and Greg was brought in full-time. With this last intro I will have done the best I could to sort out the rumors from the reality. This last defense may be the strangest of all having to defend a straight-up guy like Allan from the rumor that he was in San Francisco dating a “drag queen” posing as Judy Garland and living high off the hog on Russian Hill bonking the opium pipe and stoned all the time.    

Along the same lines was the rumor that he was running a high-class international whorehouse in Argentina with his old lover Madame La Rue catering to the strange whims of Asian businessmen. There were others, mostly along those silly same lines, but this one last one will suffice to give an idea of what was essentially a smear campaign against the man. Supposedly he was in Frisco dating a transvestite who was connected with the opium trade and he was living high off the hog on Russian Hill stoned to the gills all the time. What are you kidding.

Although I am a lapsed, very lapsed Catholic (just don’t tell Chrissie that since she is still a true believer and refuses to believe that the only reason I went to those endless Sunday Masses was to “sit behind her and watch her ass” even as she could believe that same fact about old Markin) I don’t swear much leaving that to my old friend and now “liberator” Sam Lowell but WTF on this drag queen Judy Garland opium den mandarin madness. Here is what I thought first when I heard this one thinking back to our high school days in the 1960s in hard scrabble macho “take no prisoners” days. Remember this is fifty years ago when every mothers, mothers like mine warned their sons to stay away from a place like Captain Kidd’s, an abandoned cruise ship down on Nantasket Beach where the “fags,” homos, drag queens and the like did their disgusting stuff” (even if we were not quite sure what they did or didn’t do until much later all we knew that it was guys with guys and guys acting like girls to put the most innocent spin on it).

One episode down in Provincetown, then as now a haven for all kinds of sexual proclivities will tell the tale, ashamedly now, but a true tale. The summer after high school graduation a bunch of us from North Adamsville, all guys, including Allan, decided that we would go to “P” town and roust the “fags” or whatever name we called them at any particular time (certainly not gays that was for, ah, gay people, happy). Of course we fortified ourselves with drink, mostly hard stuff, on the long trip down. Somebody knew where the drag queens performed and we went there with the idea of isolating one of them and beating the hell out of whoever we could entice. I think Markin who had a certain boyish look before he lost it all after a year in Vietnam which knocked the soul out of him was the “decoy” as things went as planned. Some guy came by and asked him if he wanted to go out in the back of the bar for something. He left with the guy and we followed. You know what happened next and like I say Allan and I, Sam too never really got over it even if we believed for a long time “fags” were less than human.

And that is kind of the point I want to make about this rumor. You can actually learn something in life, take a surprise or two also. Who would have thought that off of that youthful track record we were among the first to call for same-sex marriage equality in this publication and for a range of rights for the LGBTQ community in general. Who would have thought that we tried to move might and main to get Tran heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower and fellow soldier Chelsea (starting out as Bradley) Manning her freedom for several years before former President Obama did the right thing and pardoned her. Yeah, and we didn’t think anything of it.

Oh yeah, here is the real deal about Allan and that drag queen. Before Allan headed back east to Maine he stopped off at San Francisco to see an old friend from the neighborhood, one of the corner boys who as it turned out had a secret we never even suspected at the time. Only found out long after when I think Jimmy Jenkins was out in North Beach watching a drag queen show for kicks and somebody dressed like Judy Garland approached him and called his name. Jimmy, embarrassed to be seen there with his wife, couldn’t believe it was Timmy Riley. Jimmy brought back the news. So Allan’s visit was to our old friend Timmy Riley aka “Judy Garland” from the neighborhood who had had such a tough life not being who he/she was until San Francisco many years and bruises later. Allan had been slipping money her way for years. He was just looking in on his, our friend. Rumors, fucking rumors. Allan you are on your own now. Jack Callahan]     

************        

Many of my fellows from the tail end of the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.

When I'm Sixty-Four - The Beatles

When I get older, losing my hair,

Many years from now

Will you still be sending me the Valentine,

Birthday greetings, bottle of wine

If I stay out till quarter to three

Would you lock the door

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I'm sixty-four.

You'll be older too,

And if you say the word I could stay with you.

I could be handy mending a fuse

When your lights have gone

You can knit a sweater by the fireside

Sunday morning go for a ride

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,

Who could ask for more

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I'm sixty-four.

Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight,

if it's not too dear

We shall scrimp and save

Grandchildren on your knee

Vera, Chuck & Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line

Stating point of view

Indicate precisely what you mean to say

Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form,

Mine for evermore,

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I'm sixty-four.

*******

Ancient dreams, dreamed.

Yeah, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair kind of smiling, okay maybe just half-smiling. Frank (read: future Peter Paul and a million, more or less, other guys) had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and the then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair, also white. She may have been just another blonde, very blonde, frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled, yelled through the womb or some toddler’s crib maybe, at the screen for him to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end.

Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window “the projects” wait on better times, get a leg up, don’t get left behind in the dawning American streets paved with gold dream but for now just hang your hat dwelling, small, too small for three growing boys with hearty appetites and desires to match even then, warm, free-flow oil spigot warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother kinship sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching, relentlessly marching as he, that older brother, went off to foreign places, foreign elementary school reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic places and, he, the nose flattened against the window brother, is left to ponder his own place in those kind of places, those foreign-sounding places, when his time comes. If he has a time, has the time for the time of his time, in this red scare (but what knows he of red scare only brother scares), cold war, cold nose, dust particles floating aimlessly in the clogging still air night.

A cloudless day, a cloudless blasted eternal, infernal Korean War day, talk of peace, merciless truce peace and uncles coming home in the air, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, fields for slides and swings, diamonded baseball, no, friendlier softball fields the houses are too close, of gimps, glues, cooper-plated portraits of wildly-maned horses, of sweet shaded elms, starting, now that he too, that nose-flattened brother, has been to foreign places, strange boxed rooms filled with the wax and wane of learning, simple learning, in the time of his time, to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means that, and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes, but changes.

Nighttime fears, red-flagged Stalin-named fears, red bomb aimed right at my head unnamed shelter blast fears, named, vaguely named, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg hated stalinite jews killed fears, jews killed our catholic lord fears, and what did they do wrong to get the chair anyway fears against the cubed glass glistening flagless flag-pole rattling dark asphalt school yard night. Alone, and, and, alone with fears, and avoidance, clean, clear stand alone avoidance of old times sailors, tars, sailors’ homes AND deaths in barely readable fine- marked granite-grey lonely seaside graveyards looking out on ocean homelands and lost booty. Dead, and the idea of dead, the mystery of dead, and of sea sailor dead on mains, later stream thoughts of bitch proctoresses, some unnamed faraway crush teacher who crossed my path and such, in lonely what did he do wrong anyway prison cells, smoking, reading, writing of dinosaurs die and other laments. Dead.

Endless walks, endless one way sea street water rat-infested fear seawall walks, rocks, shells, ocean water-logged debris strewn every which way, fetid marsh smells, swaying grasses in light breezes to the right, mephitic swamps oozing mud splat stinks to the left making hard the way, the path, the symbolic life path okay, to uptown drug stores, some forgotten chain-name drug store, passing perfumes, lacquers, counter drugs, ailments cured, hurts fixed and all under a dollar, trinkets ten cents baubles, gee-gads, strictly gee-gads, grabbing, two-handed grabbing, heist-stolen valentines, a metaphor in the making, ribbon and bow ruby-red valentine night bushel, signed, hot blood-signed, weary-feet signed, if only she, about five candidates she, later called two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-head, sticks all, no womanly shape to tear a boy-man up, would give a look his way, his look, his newly acquired state of the minute Elvis-imitation look, on endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash inside his head would be quiet. Man emerging out of the ooze, and hope.

Walks, endless waiting bus stop, old late, forever late, story of a young boy’s life late, diesel-fueled, choking fumed non-stop bus stop walks, no golden age car for jet moves in American Dream wide-fin , high tech automatic drive nights, walks, walks up crooked cheap, low-rent, fifty-year no fix rutted pavement streets, deeply gouged, one-lane snow-drift hassles, you get the picture, pass trees are green, coded, secretly coded even fifty street rutted years later, endless trees are green super-secret-coded except for face blush waiting, waiting against boyish infinite time, infinite first blush of innocent manhood, boyhood times, gone now. For what? For one look, one look, and not a quick no-nonsense, no dice look, no time for ragamuffin boys either that would elude him, elude him forever. Such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots. And no dance, no coded trees are green dance, either, no high school confidential (hell elementary school either, man), handy man, breathless, Jerry Lee freak-out, at least no potato sack stick dance with coded name trees are green brunette. That will come, that will come. But when?

City square, no trespass, no standing, standing, low-slung granite buildings everywhere, granite steps leading to granite doors leading to granite gee-gad counters, hated, no name hated, low-head hated, waiting slyly, standing back on heels, going in furtively, coming out ditto, presto coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carat, no russkie Sputnik panel glitter for his efforts such is the way of young lumped-up crime, no value, no look, just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark, dark night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dream make no more sense that this bodily theft.

A bridge too far, an unarched, unsteeled, unspanned, unnerved bridge too far. One speed bicycle boy, dungarees rolled up against dog bites and geared meshes, churning through endless heated, sweated, no handkerchief streets, names, all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea, names. Twelve-year old hard churned miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old drifter, grifter, midnight shifter petty larceny friends, that’s all it was, petty and maybe larceny, hard against the named ships, hard against the named seas, hard against the named fishes, hard against the named fauna, hard against the unnamed angst, hard against those changes that kind of hit one sideways all at once like some mack the knife smack devilish thing

Lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, maybe later, just some junior league dream fuss though, some future cheerleader football dame though, some sweated night pasty crust and I, too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic cheerleader windows. Such is the new decade a-borning, a-borning but not for me, no jack swagger, or bobby goof as they run the table on old tricky dick or some tired imitation of him. Me, I’ll take exotics, or lindos, if they every cross my path, my lonely only path

Sweated dust bowl nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic cheerleader glance nights but something else, something not endless walked about, something done, or with the promise of done, for something inside, for some sense of worth in the this moldy white tee shirt, mildewy white shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, Chuck Taylor sneakers pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval, watch tick in hand, looking, looking I guess for immortality, immortality even then. Later, in bobby darin times or percy faith times, who knows, sitting, sitting high against the lion-guarded pyramid statute front door dream, common dreams, common tokyo dreams, all gone asunder, all gone asunder, on this curious fact, no wind, Irish or otherwise. Stopped short. Who would have figured that one?

Main street walked, main street public telephone booth cheap talk walked searching for some Diana greek goddess wholesale on the atlantic streets. Diana, blonde Diana, cashmere-sweatered, white tennis –shoed Diana, million later Dianas although not with tennis shoes, really gym shoes fit for old ladies to do their rant, their lonely rant against the wind. Seeking, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turns out; nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, a small-time after school soda split sit at the counter Doc’s drugstore date, or slice of pizza and a coke date at Balducci’s with a few nickels juke boxed in playing our song, our future song, a Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall song, and dreams of I Want To Wanted sifting the hot afternoon air, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of local lore car parked submarine races and mysteries unfurled, ah, to dream, no more than to dream, walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on senior errands. No way, no way and then red-face, alas, red-faced no known even forty years later. Wow.

Multi-colored jacket worn, red and black, black and red, some combination reflecting old time glories, or promises of glory, cigarette, Winston small-filtered, natch, no romantic Bogie tobacco-lipped unfiltered, hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee, if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Move out the act onto Boston fresh-mown streets. Finally, that one minute, no not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of the fame game, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss on non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson learned, very tough. And not yet twenty.

Drunk, whisky drunk, whisky rotgut whisky drunk, in some bayside, altantic bayside, not childhood atlantic bayside though, no way, no shawlie way, bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish, although who could have known that then. Who could have know that tet, lyndon, bobby, hubert, tricky dick war-circus all hell broke loose thing then, or wanted to.

Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no on hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, no earthy good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession. The days of rage, rage against the light, and then the glimmer of the light.

The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black Madonna of a night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, not Winston filter-tipped seductions, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little. Free at last but with a very, very sneaking feeling that this is a road less traveled for reason, and not for ancient robert frost to guide you… Just look at blooded Kent State, or better, blooded Jackson State. Christ.

Bloodless bloodied streets, may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.

Chill chili nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Calais’, Monktons, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas’ flats, golden-gated bridges, malibus, Joshua Trees, pueblos, embarcaderos, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern wall. And enough of short-wave radio beam tricky dick slaughters south of the border in deep fall nights. Enough, okay.

He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle. He said it in 1848, he said it in 1917, he said it in 1973. Whee, an old guy, huh.

Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored antic newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.

A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million time in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night stands, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Ya that seems right, right against the oil-beggared time, right.

Lashed against the high end double seawall, bearded, slightly graying against the forlorn time, a vision in white not enough to keep the wolves of time away, the wolves of feckless petty larceny times reappear, reappear with a vengeance against the super-rational night sky and big globs of ancient hurts fester against some unknown enemy, unnamed, or hiding out in a canyon under an assumed name. Then night, the promise of night, a night run up some seawall laden streets, some Grenada night or maybe Lebanon sky boom night, and thoughts of finite, sweet flinty finite haunt his dreams, haunt his sleep. Wrong number, brother. Ya, wrong number, as usual.

White truce flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more war-weary dastardly fight against Persian gulf oil-driven time, against a bigger opponent, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other he said struggle, struggle. Ya, easy for you to say.

Desperately clutching his new white flags, his 9/11 white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this is no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say, oh yes, struggle.

One more battle, one more, please one more, one fight against the greed tea party night. He chains himself, well not really chains, but more like ties himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief. Another guy does the same, except he uses some plastic hand-cuff-like stuff. A couple of women just stand there, hard against that ebony fence, can you believe it, just stand there. More, milling around, disorderly in a way, someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene is complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knows, knows for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora whom he needed to worry about, and that his child dream was a different thing altogether. But who, just a child, could have known that then.

*The Latest From The "Citizen Soldier" Website- Troops Out Now!

Click on the headline to link to the "Citizen Soldier" Website for an update on their activities.

Markin Comment:

Remember that the short way home for us, as we continue to struggle valiantly if somewhat alone- build anti-war soldiers and sailors soldarity committees now!

March Is Women's History Month-Something about “Red” Emma- The Anarchist Emma Goldman-In Lieu Of A Biography-Maybe

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the anarchist Emma Goldman


Sometimes in reviewing a political biography of some capitalist hanger-on such as Bill Clinton it is simply a matter of dismissing a known and deadly political opponent and so heaping scorn up that person is part of the territory. For others, allegedly in the socialist tradition, like the old theoretical leader of the pre-World War I German social democracy Karl Kautsky, who provide reformist rather than revolutionary solutions to the pressing issues of the day that also tends to be true. However, with an enigmatic figure like the anarcho-communist "Red" Emma Goldman it is harder to do the political savaging job that is necessary but distasteful.

Why? Ms. Goldman came out of that tradition of pre-World War I life-style anarchism (made fashionable in the New York Greenwich Village milieu of the time) where her politics, to the extent that political carping is politics, placed her somewhere on the side of the angels. However, the total effect of her career as an anarchist propagandist and sometime agitator shows very little as a contribution to radical history.

Obviously anyone associated with the fiery German anarchist Johann Most is by any measure going to have trouble with the government at some point in their lives. Most was Goldman's lover and first teacher of the principles of “propaganda by the deed” anarchism. For those readers not familiar with that tendency the core of the politics is that exemplary actions, not excluding martyrdom, by individual heroic revolutionaries are supposed to act as the catalyst to move the masses. In short, these are the politics of shoot first and ask questions later. As a tactic within a revolutionary period it may make some sense but as a strategy to put masses in motion, no. Empathically no.

Her own life provides the case for the negative aspects of this theory. At the time of the famous bloody Homestead Steel strike in the 1890's here in America Ms. Goldman's lifelong companion and fellow anarchist of the deed, Alexander Berkman, decided that to enhance the fierce class struggle the assassination of one Henry Frick, no innocent in the strike for the company side, would serve as a symbol in order to intensify the struggle of capital against labor. Needless to say, although Mr. Berkman was successful, in part, in his attempt both Mr. Frick and the Homestead plant were back in business forthwith. For his pains Berkman received a long jail sentence.

The most troubling aspect of Ms. Goldman's career is her relationship to the Bolshevik Revolution. Let us be clear, as readers of this space may be painfully aware, there were problems in that revolution from which, given the course of history in the 20th century, the Soviet Union was never able to recover. However, from Ms. Goldman's descriptions of the problems seen in her short stay in the Soviet Union just after the revolutionary takeover in 1917 one would have to assume that, like most aspects of her life, this was just one more issue to walk away from. She thereafter for the remainder of her life became an opponent of that regime. Some pre-World War I anarchists were able to see the important historic situation with the creation of the Soviet state and were drawn to the Communist International. Others used that flawed experiment as a reason to, in essence, reconcile themselves to the bourgeois order. This is patently Ms. Goldman's case. Nowhere is that position, and that tension, more blatantly spelled out that in Spain in 1936.

Spain, 1936 is the political cutting edge, the dividing line, for all kinds of political tendencies, right and left. While we will allow the rightists to stew in their own juices the various positions on the left in the cauldron of revolution graphically illustrate the roadblocks to revolution that allowed fascism, Spanish style, to gain an undeserved military victory and ruin the political perspectives for at least two generations of Spanish militants. The classic anarchist position is to deny the centrality of conquering the state (and the old ruling governmental, social, cultural and economic apparatuses). Somehow it is to be morphed away but who knows what. Yes, that is the theory but on the hard ground of Spain that was not the reality as the main anarchist federation FAI/CNT gave political support to the bourgeois republican government and accepted seats in that government. These same elements went on to play a part in disarming the 1937 Barcelona uprising that could have sparked a new revolutionary outburst on the disheartened workers and peasants. So much for anarchist practice in the clutch. Ms. Goldman spent no little ink defending the actions of her comrades in Spain. Wrong on the Soviet Union and Spain, on the side of the angels on women's issues and the need to fight capitalism. In short, all over the political map when it came to strategy. Yes, Ms. Goldman was, and her defenders today are, political opponents but this writer does not relish the fact.

From The Left-Wing Archives- The Campaign to Free Angela Davis and Ruchell Magee (1970-1972)

The Campaign to Free Angela Davis and Ruchell Magee

By SOL STERN

an Rafael, Calif. -- The drive to the Marin County Hall of Justice is north out of San Francisco on Highway 101, over the Golden Gate Bridge and through a widening peninsula of rolling green hills and sun-speckled canyons. To the east is a curving bayshore studded with yacht harbors, houseboat communities and tiny tourist towns with mellow sounding names like Tiburon and Belvedere. To the west, beyond a magnificent stand of giant redwoods, is the beginning of 100 miles of the most beautiful Pacific coastline in the state.

Marin County is a commuters' paradise that measures up to every travel magazine's stereotype of California good living. The average family income is $13,000, and the rich WASP Republicans who are in the majority seem to get along with the hippies who have settled there in increasing numbers. There is only one tiny black ghetto (in Marin City) and, on the whole, county residents have been spared the urban violence of the past decade.

One reminder of the agonies they have escaped is San Quentin, the oldest, biggest and most notorious facility in the bloody battleground that is the state prison system. Quentin is hidden away in an isolated cove overlooking the bay--an eyesore that might be ignored, except that the county is responsible for administering justice when there is any violation of state law within the prison's walls. And so in recent years an ever longer parade of inmates has been trucked north several miles for court appearances at the sumptuous Marin Civic Center, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed structure surrounded by lagoons and water cascades and bright, orange blossomed Clivia beds. The Hall of Justice, housing the courtrooms and the county jail, is an incredible caterpillar-like structure, with a pagoda-style roof, spanning two hills. In this blue and gold judicial Shangri-La reality-- nineteen-seventies American-style--finally caught up with Marin County.

On Aug. 7 last year, Jonathan Jackson, a tall, thin black youth from Pasadena walked into one of the circular, walnut-paneled courtrooms carrying three guns underneath his coat. In the middle of the proceedings he stood up, brandishing his weapons, and shouted, "O.K., this is it! Everyone freeze!" Jackson gave the weapons to the defendant, James McClain, who was on trial for a prison stabbing at Quentin, and two other inmates, William Christmas and Ruchell Magee, who were there as witnesses for McClain. Together they rounded up Judge Harold J. Haley, the D.A. and three jurors as hostages, and marched the five whites out of the courthouse to an adjacent parking lot. They piled into a yellow van and started moving in the direction of Highway 101, but before they could get out of the parking lot, a gun battle erupted. When the smoke had cleared, the judge, Jonathan Jackson and two of the Quentin inmates were dead; Ruchell Magee, the D.A. and one of the jurors lay seriously wounded.

The "Marin shootout" stunned just about everyone in the Bay Area. Civic leaders in the county demanded that the state hold all future trials of convicts behind San Quentin's walls. Security was tightened not only in Marin but in all Bay Area courts, as frantic officials speculated about more armed attempts by revolutionaries to free prisoners. (Most Bay Area radicals regarded the escape attempt as a revolutionary act.) Later, despite all the additional security, the Marin Hall of Justice was bombed by the revolutionary underground.

A few days after the shooting, Judge Haley was eulogized at a gentle funeral in San Rafael. Jonathan Jackson and William Christmas received a "revolutionary funeral" at a black church in Oakland, their coffins draped with the Black Panther flag and surrounded by an honor guard of leather-jacketed Panthers. In the streets outside, 3,000 black and white revolutionaries raised their fists in salute as they stood before loudspeakers, listening to Huey Newton's eulogy:

"Our comrades Jonathan Jackson and William A. Christmas have taught us a revolutionary lesson. They have intensified the struggle and placed it on a higher level.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but action is supreme. Comrades Jonathan Jackson and William A. Christmas have made the ultimate sacrifice. They have given the revolution their lives."

In the next issue of the Panther newspaper, Berkeley revolutionary Tom Hayden offer this fantasy:

"A revolutionary funeral guarantees that guerrilla ghosts will haunt the reactionaries, reminding them of their guilt, until warriors among the living take their ultimate revenge."

In the months that followed, attention in the radical community shifted toward Angela Davis, whom the state had charged with supplying the weapons that young Jackson had brought into court. Later, a county grand jury returned an indictment against her, formally specifying counts of kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy. When partial grand jury minutes were released, some of the state's evidence was disclosed: Witnesses had testified that Angela had purchased the guns, the last one several days before Aug. 7. The state also made much of an allegation that she had been working closely with Jackson, who was a member of the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee. Jonathan's real brother, George, is one of the three blacks known as the Soledad "brothers," who are awaiting trial for murder of a guard at Soledad prison. The state alleged that the purpose of the Aug. 7 action was to use the hostages to free the men.

Maintaining the Angela is totally innocent, her lawyers have argued that the state has presented no evidence of her involvement in any conspiracy, and that the open purchase of guns, for which she had to sign her name, could not possibly be the act of anyone with a criminal intent.

Even before the shootout, Angela Davis was a popular figure among radical blacks and whites because of her forthright stand on the issue of her membership in the Communist party and her subsequent confrontation with the Reagan administration. She was fired from her position as a philosophy instructor at U.C.L.A. in 1969 after she admitted her party affiliation. After Aug. 7, when she went underground and made the F.B.I.'s most- wanted list, she became almost a legendary figure to the left. Radical households displayed posters which said, "Angela is welcome here."

In the meantime, 31-year-old Ruchell Magee recovered from his wounds and was taken back to San Quentin where he had already spent the last seven years of his life. A seventh-grade dropout from rural Louisiana, Magee had been sent up for a 1963 Los Angeles robbery-kidnapping conviction resulting from a typical ghetto hassle over a $10 marijuana transaction that ended with guns being pulled. No one was hurt but, unfortunately for Magee, the scuffle with another man involved took place in a moving car so that technically a kidnapping charge could be added--with a one-year-to-life sentence. He has been fighting the conviction ever since, claiming it was a frame-up, but now he was charged with the murder of Judge Haley, which for a convicted felon like Magee carries a mandatory death penalty. Magee was literally dragged, shackled and chained, into several pretrial hearings at San Quentin last fall. But at the time local radicals paid little attention to him.

With Angela Davis back in California, the Marin Civic Center is again an international news center, but the country-club setting has become more militarized. To get into the court building you must submit to a thorough pat-down body search, as well as pass through an electronic metal detector. Upstairs, in front of the courtroom where pretrial hearings take place, there is another metal detector and another thorough search. All spectators must sign in and show identification. Reporters are required to have their pictures taken and are fingerprinted. The hallway outside the courtroom is filled with a dozen armed sheriff'' deputies, as well as several plainclothesmen.

Miss Davis is held in a two-cell area of the county jail, adjacent to the courtroom but isolated from other county prisoners. Magee is brought in from San Quentin for the numerous hearings. Reporters and TV crews from all over the world pop in for a hearing now and then, as they wait for the big trial to get going. They come mostly to see about Angela, but inevitably their attention becomes riveted on "the other defendant," as he used to be called by the local reporters.

Magee is an accomplished jailhouse lawyer who practically learned to read in the prison law library. The hand-written petitions he has filed in his own behalf, with their raw grammar but punctilious attention to cases and precedents, have managed to get several judges removed from the case, and he has almost by himself tied up the case for six months--despite the fact that the court has refused to allow him officially to act as his own counsel on the basis of prison-administered tests which show he has an I.Q. of 78.

During the first months of the case, reporters were fond of comparing him, invidiously, to his renowned codefendant. How ironic, they suggested in their stories, that this uneducated, violent con should wind up in the same courtroom as the beautiful, talented professor.

The reporters are now taking Magee more seriously, though there are, no doubt, serious contrasts to be drawn. At the hearings, she walks in briskly, trailing her matrons behind her, and turns, very tall and regal, to give spectators the clenched-fist salute. She wears bright mini-dresses, and in the soft lights reflecting off the hand-rubbed walnut furniture (made by state prison inmates), she glows with a tawny, imperious beauty. At her table she sits upright and attentive, conferring animatedly with her lawyers, her dignity hardly bruised by six months in jail.

Magee comes in shackled, walking slowly in a prison gait and escorted on each arm by guards who chain him to his chair, which is chained to the floor. Dressed in a formless gray prison jacket, he is short and sullen--the blackest man in the court. He hardly has a word for his numerous court-appointed lawyers. He sits sprawled in his chair, his head cocked to tone side, seemingly taking in the proceedings out of the corner of one eye, insisting on his right to speak for himself.

A small defense group, consisting mostly of blacks with a few white radicals, has recently been organized to work with him, but so fare it has been ineffectual and without funds. He fights essentially alone, using only his painfully gathered knowledge of the legal systems and the notoriety of the case to get his message out: that he is innocent because he was imprisoned illegally in the first place, that he has been kept a "slave" for seven years and that what happened on Aug. 7 was, in his words, a "slave rebellion" to remove the conditions of his bondage.

Angela's lawyers are taking a different tack and their resources are more impressive. No less than six experienced, talented lawyers, several investigators and researchers and legal clerks are working on a defense that one of the lawyers estimates may cost up to half a million dollars.

Even more important, she has an unprecedented political campaign being waged for her release all over the world. It is not to belittle the seriousness of her situation to say that she has the best-organized, most broad-based defense effort in the recent history of radical political trials--more potent that that afforded to any of the Panther leaders or the Chicago Seven.

Much of the strength of the campaign is due to the considerable resources which the Communist party, U.S.A., still alive and kicking after many lean years, is putting into the struggle. And, as one Bay Area radical put it: "If there's one thing the C.P. does well, it's organizing a legal defense."

On Oct. 15, 1970, two days after Angela Davis was captured by F.B.I. agents in a New York City motel, a press conference was called in Los Angeles by the Communist party to announce that it was going to build "the largest, broadest, most all-encompassing people's movement the country has ever seen to free our comrade, Angela Davis-- political prisoner." The speaker was Franklin Alexander, a close friend of Angela's and chairman of the party's all-black Che-Lumumba Club. The National United Committee to Free Angela Davis was formed shortly thereafter, with Alexander and Fania Davis Jordan, Angela's 23-year-old younger sister, as national coordinators.

According to Alexander, there are now 60 fully functioning local committees in operation around the country. The national committee staff coordinates the work of the local committees, supplies them with literature, posters and speakers, and, in conjunction with the legal staff, sets the over-all political-legal strategy. The national staff also worries about money, and right now it is looking for a full-time fundraiser. So far, without really trying very hard, it has raised--and spent--more than $30,000 for the political work of the committee, but the estimate is that as the trial runs it course it will need up to 10 times that amount (excluding strictly legal costs). Full-time committee staff members (there are seven now) drew salaries of $75 per week each.

The money that pays the salaries and other expenses comes in steadily from a variety of sources: from people on traditionally liberal mailing lists who have been sent letters; from collection cans set up outside supermarkets; from spontaneous, unsolicited donations, such as the $10,000 recently given by an affiliate of the United Presbyterian Church, and from the profits of extravaganzas such as the birthday celebration for Angela attended by about 5,000 people at the Manhattan Center in New York last February, with the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as speaker.

When people call and ask what they can do to help, local committees will often suggest that they have fund-raising parties in their houses. A recent successful and typical example was the dinner party thrown by a young couple living in the Berkeley hills. About a hundred people showed up, most of them white, middle-class liberals. They enjoyed a modest buffet dinner, watched a belly dancer named Sabah perform and listened to a committee staff member answer questions about the case. When it was over, the committee had collected around $300.

The committee is about to open a suite of offices in downtown San Francisco, but in the meantime the members operate out of a large, rambling redwood house in an integrated neighborhood in southwest Berkeley--a kind of political commune, since most of them live there as well. The house is owned by Roscoe Proctor, a black longshoreman and veteran Communist functionary, who has been working in New York on party business. Party dignitaries such as General Secretary Gus Ahall have often stayed at the Proctor house during their visits to the Bay Area. It is an open, informal place, full of dogs and neighborhood kids who come in to listen to soul music on the hi-fi. In the spacious living room, decorated with Soviet posters, the committee has held marathon staff meetings with the lawyers.

Often the discussions are punctuated by the crying of the baby that was recently born to Angela's sister, Fania, who has had to take something of a maternity leave from her hectic cross-country speaking tours for the committee. Fania looks so much like her sister that when she gets up on a platform to speak, some people actually believe they are seeing Angela. Politically, she also seems to be following her sister's footsteps. She worked with the Black Panther party in San Diego until, she says, "it was just about wiped out"; she has picked sugar cane in Cuba as a member of the "Venceremos Brigade," and when she came back from there last fall, she threw herself completely into the work of the committee. Now she says, "I am in almost total agreement with my sister's politics."

A frequent visitor to the house is Fania's mother, Mrs. Sally Davis, who will soon be taking a leave from her teaching job in a Birmingham, Ala., grade school to spend all her time working with the committee. She has already traveled extensively, speaking mostly in black communities. Other members of the family have done the same, including Angela's brothers, Ben, a 25-year-old defensive back for the Cleveland Browns football teams, and Reginald, who is 20 and a student at Defiance College in Ohio. Fania says that even her father, who runs a gas station in Birmingham and was initially reluctant to get involved politically, has begun to do some speaking.

The Davis children were raised on "Dynamite Hill" in Bull Connor's Birmingham; they knew the four black girls killed in the bombing of a church there in 1963. Political struggle is familiar to them. "My mother was very active in her time and for her age," says Fania. "She was very involved in the desegregation struggle in Birmingham, and she instilled in all of us a sense of dignity and human worth. I can remember times when she would go downtown and some white man would call her 'Sally'--and she really reacted! That influenced us."

And, says Fania, there isn't too much difference between the struggles in Birmingham and Marin County. "People's politics are constantly changing as they confront reality. I would say my brothers' and parents' beliefs are coming closed to Angela's as they work in her behalf."

The committee dynamo is 30-year-old Franklin Alexander, who has been working for the Communist party for 12 years. Alexander's sister is Charlene Mitchell, a high-ranking American Communist who was the party's candidate for President in 1968. He was, for a time, national chairman of the Du Boise Clubs and later devoted much of his time in Los Angeles to the Communist Che-Lumumba Club, which, with its all-black membership, seems to contradict the party's opposition to black nationalism and separatism. Padding around barefoot in the upstairs of the Proctor house recently, the tall, muscular Alexander interrupted a phone call long enough to explain:

"It was the view of the party when we created the Che-Lumumba Club four years ago that in this moment of history there was need for an all-black collective in the party to operate in the black community. It was a period when nationalist sentiment among our people couldn't be ignored and required a black confrontation with our problems."

It was Alexander and his wife, Kendra, who recruited Angela Davis into the club, at a time when she was still active in the Black Panthers. Her decision to join the Communist party was the result of considerable experience. As an undergraduate at Brandeis University, she spent a year at the Sorbonne in Paris and got to know Algerian nationalist students. Later she did graduate work in philosophy in West Germany, and became active in the League of Socialist German Students, a counterpart of the S.D.S. Then there were her two years in San Diego studying with the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. In San Diego, she came into contact with the Panthers, and later two of her friends in the organization were killed on the U.C.L.A. campus. Of her final conversion to Communism, she once wrote:

"My decision to join the Communist party emanated from my belief that the only true path of liberation for Black people is the one that leads toward a complete overthrow of the capitalist class in this country. . . . Convinced of the need to employ Marxist-Leninist principles in the struggle for liberation, I joined the Che-Lumumba Club, which is a militant, all-Black collective of the Communist party in Los Angeles committed to the task of rendering Marxism-Leninism relevant to Black people. . . ."

In the same vein, the committee to free Angela today looks to the black community for its main sources of support. That there is mass sentiment to be tapped is indicated by a recent Louis Harris poll taken among blacks in Los Angeles; 80 per cent of those questioned believed that Angela Davis could not get a fair trial.

The committee has an almost exclusively black leadership. "That is a conscious policy," says Alexander. "It's our view that there must be an organized, black-community base in this campaign. Angela is a symbol first and foremost to black people and their struggles. The organization of the black community around the issue of political prisoners is essential to victory."

The search for a chief trial lawyer with a proper black image for Angela took the committee to Howard Moore, a 39-year-old Atlantan who has defended Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael, and represented Julian Bond (Moore's brother-in-law) in his successful battle to be seated in the Georgia legislature.

Moore is a lanky, distinguished-looking man with a graying Afro and a Vandyke beard who can be, alternately, aristocratic and hip. Working with him as co-counsel is 26-year- old Margaret Burnham, a black who is an old grade-school classmate of Angela's from Birmingham. Four other local San Francisco lawyers--all white--with a wealth of criminal and constitutional experience have assisted them in various stages of pretrial work, in legal research and investigation. But Moore and Miss Burnham make it emphatically clear that blacks will be calling the signals.

"I would hate to see Angela, a beautiful black woman, having a white defense," says Moore. "She's going to get a black defense." Later, he elaborates on the meaning of a "black defense":

"Look, I have tried many cases before red-neck juries. When the jury knows you are committed and you are a true adversary, they respond in a positive manner. Especially when you deal openly and up front [frankly] with the question of racism. White people know they are racists, and if you conduct yourself in a manner in which you try to hide the fact that you know it, they don't respect you. You can't deal honestly with the kind of jury we're going to get unless you deal frontally with the question of racism. And that's what we're going to do."

Both the lawyers are particularly touchy about the role of the party in the defense, but Margaret Burnham meets reporters' questions on this issue head on:

"The party is playing a major role. Angela is a member and it is incumbent on the party to come to her defense. I say that because we want to be up front about it. There is no 'infiltration' in the case--they are there."

There are, of course, thousands of people who are supporting Angela Davis for their own reasons. The committee has a long, truly impressive list of support from such prominent blacks as Coretta King, Ralph Abernathy, and Aretha Franklin, who offered to post Angela's bail (if it were not granted) ". . .not because I believe in Communism but because she is a black woman and she wants freedom for black people." Organizations supporting Angela range from the Urban League to the Black Panthers. But it is clear that the Communist party people on the committee are making the key decisions about how this broad front is to be used in the legal battle.

Furthermore, according to Alexander, several top party functionaries, including Charlene Mitchell and National Chairman Henry Winston, as well as the entire Legal Defense Commission of the party, are working full time on the case. And all of this, concedes Alexander, is not too bad for the party's health:

"It has put the party in a position in which it is moving in wider areas that it has in the past. I would say the party has been strengthened."

The party's connections seem even more significant in the Free Angela demonstrations overseas. There isn't a day that goes by without the committee receiving word of some demonstration, protest or petition somewhere in the world. Here is a sampling from the committee's files:

In Ceylon, a three-day vigil by 2,500 women in front of the American embassy; in Sydney, Australia, a march by 700 women; a telegram demanding Angela's freedom signed by the entire cast and crew of the film "Z," including Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, director Costa Gavras and composer Mikis Theodorakis.

Sometimes, it is too much to handle. "We have received 100,000 pieces of mail from East Germany alone," sighs Rob Baker, the long-haired publicity director who is the only white on the national staff. "They're lying around in hundreds of mail bags unopened-- because we don't have a big enough staff to do the work."

Communist party-oriented mass organizations such as the Women's International Democratic Federation, with headquarters in East Berlin, have set up Free Angela committees in scores of countries. In the committee files is a letter from the World Federation of Democratic Youth, based in Budapest, telling the committee that "huge solidarity actions were and are undertaken by all our member organizations in support of Angela Davis."

"In some countries--in Italy, for instance--the party has taken a heavy responsibility," says Baker. "They have printed up thousand of postcards for people to send to Angela, with copies to Reagan, or Hoover, or Nixon. On the other hand, we get things like a letter from a woman who runs a coffee shop in Utrecht and wants to print up thousands of copies of Angela's statement to the court. I would say it is a mixture of party support and nonparty support in every country."

But what does the slogan "Free Angela" mean when it is carried in a demonstration in Sydney or East Berlin? Does the committee think such pressure might result in her being freed without a trial?

"Well," says Margaret Burnham, "we mean it literally. It is a bogus prosecution. The prosecution is a fraud. If she didn't have the color or politics that Angela has she would be free. Since she is going to be prosecuted, though, she should have a fair trial."

Howard Moore amplifies this: "She is in the clutches of the law. A trial is inevitable. She is being tried for her life. Given the deep-seated racial hatred and the political nature of the trial, the only way she can be freed is to bring enough pressure to insure that she has a fair trial. The outside pressure forces them to be more scrupulous. It is salutary."

The committee was given a considerable lift by the recent decision in Connecticut to drop the charges against Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, and the acquittal of the Panther 13 in New York City. "They were significant victories," said an elated Howard Moore recently. "They were victories for all people who are struggling around political trials such as the one we have here." When I asked Moore what specific lessons might be learned from those trials, he stressed the importance of getting a large number of blacks on the jury:

"We are going to raise the question of the national status of blacks in the courtroom. When we say that Angela should be judged by her peers, we mean by other blacks. What was significant and critical about the New Haven and New York cases was the number of blacks on the jury. It prevented the prosecutor from making openly racist appeals in court and it prevented white jurors from making racist arguments in the jury room."

Because of the small number of blacks in Marin County the lawyers are seriously thinking about requesting a change of venue to another county where they might be guaranteed a large percentage of blacks on the jury panel. "If we can get Angela a jury of her peers," says Moore confidently, " the question of the outcome of this trial doesn't even have to be guessed at."

Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty has publicly suggested that Angela Davis be deported to Algeria, while Los Angeles County Supervisor Warren Dorn has said that she "should be sent back to Russia, the country that she loves." Such traditional Red-baiting the committee was prepared for. What really has them shaking their heads is the flak they have been getting from the left.

It first came into the open last Jan. 23 when the Black Panther paper published a statement by Eldridge Cleaver from Algiers. Cleaver made the startling charge that the Free Angela movement was started by the "Communist party in collusion with the U.S. fascists," in order to divert attention, resources and support away from the trial of Bobby Seale in New Haven. Cleaver's accusation was easily turned aside by the committee, but the extravagance of it all obscured an ideological rift of substance about how to defend "political prisoners."

The Panthers, at that time, were publicly despairing of the efficacy of fighting in the courts. Their model still seemed to be the Marin type of "revolutionary violence"--and if you had to be in court you should present a "revolutionary" defense. The Communist party, on the other hand, believe in the mobilizing broad, united-front support groups and legalistic defenses.

The most public aspects of the controversy died quickly. After the Newton-Cleaver split, the Oakland-based Panthers began to retrench and rebuild their shattered alliances in the black community. Huey Newton publicly affirmed the Black Panther party's support for Angela Davis and her defense committee.

What lingers is an undercurrent of suspicion, particularly among white radicals, about the motives and politics of the committee. Much of this centers on the committee's relationship, or lack of it, to Ruchell Magee. He, after all, is the lone living symbol of Aug. 7, which the committee seems to want people to forget--even though Angela herself has praised the courthouse shootout as "an insurrectionary act."

Speaking of the committee's official coolness toward Magee, a young radical lawyer said, "How much of this is the ideology of the C.P. and their political line of the united front, and how much she approves of, I don't know. I have a feeling she is more radical than that. But they certainly give you a strong feeling that they are going to steer clear of Magee."

Such feelings are fed by every reported instance of friction in the courtroom between Magee and the Davis lawyers. He has, several times, denounced them openly in court for failing to support some of his motions. On one occasion, he managed to disqualify a judge, just as her lawyers were getting ready to argue substantive pretrial motions. Their annoyance with him was obvious. Outside the courtroom one of her attorneys commented on "the irony of this unlettered man," raising such complicated legal points. At a National Lawyers Guild meeting at which Margaret Burnham was speaking about the case, someone in the audience asked why the committee wasn't doing more for Magee. Alan Brodsky, another of Angela's lawyers, started to reply by reminding the audience that Angela is innocent. Afterward, he explained that he did not mean to imply that Magee was guilty, but some people felt damage had been done to Magee.

Sandra Close, a local radical journalist who has taken an interest in the Magee case, is convinced that incidents such as this one reflect a widespread attitude. "The whole idea that has been pervasive throughout this case is that Magee is finished, that his goose is cooked and he is going to the gas chamber," she says. "That has enabled people to put the priorities on Angela Davis. No one in that courtroom is on his side. He stands alone. He isn't a celebrity. He represents poor people who have to get by on their instincts and their cunning--who, when they are trapped and backed into a corner, like he is, have to learn, on their own, how to survive. If there had been no Angela case, no one would have cared if Magee was guilty or innocent."

The committee, sensitive to the increasing criticism, has been going to considerable lengths of late to express solidarity with Magee. In court, the lawyers support his motions more frequently. In a recent regional conference of West Coast defense committees, national publicity director Baker made a speech in which he said, "We must recognize that Ruchell has educated all of us"; he spoke about the necessity of expanding the narrow defense of Angela into a broader movement to defend prisoners such as Magee. So far, thought, this has not happened. The Magee committee functions without any material support from the Davis committee. It is clear that the broad base of support for Angela would be undercut to some extent if there were a "United Committee to Free Angela Davis and Ruchell Magee."

A good deal of the friction has to do simply with the objective differences in their respective current legal predicaments. Since Magee is already on a life sentence, he is desperately flailing about, using every legal maneuver he can think of to dramatize his plight. He is in no hurry. The Davis attorneys, in contrast, obviously want the proceedings expedited at this stage. Their client has been kept in solitary confinement for six months without even having had her substantive pretrial motions heard yet.

That is why the committee made a strategic decision several months ago to focus on a broad political campaign to secure bail. A petition addressed to the California Supreme Court, on which they still hope to get a million signatures, is circulating around the country. The petition compares her case with that of Lieut. William Calley, pointing out that although she has never been convicted of any crime (or even arrested prior to the current case), she is "held under punitive conditions of detention while awaiting trial, and Lieut. William Calley, a felon convicted of the premeditated murder of more than a score of Vietnamese civilians, is released to his own quarters while appealing that conviction."

A major role in the bail campaign was played by David Poindexter, the "mystery man" who was arrested with Miss Davis in New York and subsequently acquitted in Federal District Court of aiding and abetting her flight. Poindexter went on a major speaking tour in the Midwest and the East. Organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League and the California Federation of Teachers came out in favor of bail.

With Angela out on the streets, many of the ambiguities about the case might be resolved, and the conflict with Magee could be tempered. She would be free, presumably, to speak out, and would be in a better position to help Magee if that is her inclination, as many people believe it still is. The lawyers could afford to take a little more relaxed attitude toward the pretrial process and thus to Magee's own efforts. She would also be an enormous asset in rallying more mass support to the defense.

When a bail hearing was finally held in early June before Judge Richard E. Arnason, the latest judge in the case, the defense presented stacks of petitions and several bound volumes of resolutions and statements favoring bail from countless labor groups and prominent individuals. Arnason seemed sympathetic to the lawyers' arguments and their hopes were high. Later, the county Probation Department also strongly recommended bail for Angela. But on June 15, the judge ruled against her release, indicating he did not think there was a risk of flight but that the law prohibited bail in her case. He also stayed all further state proceedings until Magee's petitions for removal to the Federal courts were disposed of. Thus, no one is even talking about a trial date yet.

Davis committee members and supporters were visibly disappointed as they came out of the court. An angry Franklin Alexander told a quickly assembled press conference that this was no the end of the effort to get bail. The lawyers were going to appeal but, more importantly, said Alexander--to shouts of "Right on!"--"the only place justice is going to come from is the streets. Ours was a method of bringing together the legal and mass struggle," he explained. "But the scales are unbalanced now, and we're going to have to go into the streets in Sacramento to see that justice is done."

Sol Stern is a freelance writer and a contributing editor of Ramparts magazine.

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*From The "In Defense Of Marxism" Website- "Women's Struggle And Class Struggle"- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to the "In Defense Of Marxism" Website for the above-titled article, dated March 8, 2010, in honor of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day.

Markin comment:

Anytime one can get a literate, thoughtful analysis of one of our important international workers' holidays then one should, as here, take full advantage of it. We will fight out the political differences of the way forward for the women's liberation struggle, if any, along the way.

*From The Pen Of Friedrich Engels- His 1891 Introduction To Karl Marx's Defense Of The Paris Commune- "The Civil War In France"

Click on the headline to link a "Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels Internet Archive" online copy of Engels'1891 "Introduction to the Civil War In France", Karl Marx's impassioned defense of the Paris Commune- while and after it was going on. Hats off!

From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-Honor The Women Of The Paris Commune

Click on the headline to link to a “Wikipedia” entry for the Paris Commune.

March Is Women’s History Month

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1984 issue of "Women and Revolution" that has some historical interest- for old "new leftists", perhaps. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during this Women's History Month.

******

International Women's Day 1984
In Honor of the Women of the Paris Commune

This year on International Women's Day, March 8, we salute the revolutionary women of the 1871 Paris Commune, whose fierce dedication to fighting for the workers' Commune inspired Marx to propose creating women's sections of the First International. At the 19September 1871 session of the First International Conference a motion, made by Marx, was passed stating: "The Conference recommends the formation of female branches among the working class. It is, however, understood that this resolution does not at all interfere with the existence or formation of branches composed of both sexes" (The General Council of the First International 1870-1871, Minutes).

e Paris Commune was the first modern workers revolution in history, because in Paris for the first time in the world the proletariat not only demonstrated its unquenchable determination to "storm the heavens" and wipe out its exploitation, but proved that it was capable of seizing power, creating new organs of power and ruling society in its own interests. Though they were ultimately crushed after holding out heroically for ten weeks against the counterrevolution¬ary forces of all Europe, the Paris Communards have inspired generations of revolutionaries. And it was the proletarian women of Paris who were among the most fiery and determined fighters for the new world they were creating, as the following excerpts from contemporary reports demonstrate (taken from a collection of documents titled The Communards of Paris, 1871, edited by Stewart Edwards):

Meeting of a women's club: About two hundred women and girls were present; most of the latter were smoking cigarettes, and the reader will guess to what social class they belonged. The Chairwoman, whose name we could not find out, was about twenty-five and still quite pretty; she wore a wide red belt to which two pistols were attached. The other women on the committee also sported the inevitable red belt but with only one pistol....

The following point was on the agenda: "How is society to be reformed?"... Next came a mattress-maker of the Rue Saint-Lazare who undertook to demonstrate that God did not exist and that the education of children should be reformed.

"What silly women we are to send our children to catechism classes! Why bother, since religion is a comedy staged by man and God does not exist? If he did he would not let me talk like this. Either that or he's a coward!"...

Her place was taken by a little old woman....

"My dear childre," she said in a wavering voice, "all this is so much hot air. What we need today is action. You have men—well then, make them follow the right track, get them to do their duty. What we must do is put our backs into it. We must strike mercilessly at those who are undermining the Commune. All men must be made to co-operate or be shot. Make a start and you will see!"

—Report of a meeting in the women's club of the Trinite Church, 12 May 1871, abridged.

The Times [of London] describes a [Paris] women's club: We entered the building without knocking, and found ourselves in a filthy room reeking with evil odours and crowded with women and children of every age. Most of them appeared to belong to the lowest order of society, and wore loose untidy jackets, with white frilled caps upon their heads.... None took much notice of us at first, being too much occupied with the oratory of a fine-looking young woman with streaming black hair and flashing eyes, who dilated upon the rights of women amid ejaculations, and shakings of the head, and approving pinches of snuff from the occupants of the benches near us. "Men are laches [cowardly bastards]," she cried; "they call themselves the masters of creation, and are a set of dolts. They complain of being made to fight, and are always grumbling over their woes—let them go and join the craven band at Versailles, and we will defend the city ourselves. We have petroleum, and we have hatchets and strong hearts, and are as capable of bearing fatigue as they. We will man the barricades, and show them that we will be no longer trodden down by them. Such as still wish to fight may do so side by side with us. Women of Paris, to the front!"... The next speaker seemed tolerably respectable, wearing a decent black gown and bonnet, but her discourse was as rambling and inconsistent as that of her predecessor at the tribune. "We are simple women," she began, "but not made of weaker stuff than our grandmothers of '93. Let us not cause their shades to blush for us, but be up and doing, as they would be were they living now. We have duties to perform. If necessary we will fight with the best of them and defend the barricades...." Encouraged by the applause which had followed her thus far, she now degenerated into rant, attacking the priesthood generally and the confessional, mimicking the actions used at mass amid the laughter and bravoes of the throng. One old lady became ecstatic, and continued digging me violently in the back with her elbow..,. "Ah, the priests!" murmured another from under the heavy frills of her cap, a lady of a serious turn of mind.... "Those priests! I have seen them too closely, la canaille [rabble]!"

—Report by the Paris correspondent of The Times of London of a women's meeting: The
Times, 6 May 1871, abridged.

********

Those sharp jabs in the back that so discomfited the bourgeois gentlemen of The Times were but one small token of the throwing off of centuries of subjugation by the awakened women workers, who knew themselves to be for the first time actually making history. Of all the measures the Commune took in its ten weeks of existence—including getting rid of the hated police and standing army and keeping the citizenry in arms, opening education to all and forcing the State-enriched Church back into a purely private role, establishing that all the members of the Commune government would be paid only workingmen's wage; and be subject to recall at anytime, beginning plans foiworkers' cooperatives to run the factories—its most signal achievement was its own existence, the world's first working-class government; as Marx said, "the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour" (The Civil War in France).

In summing up the fundamental lessons of the Paris Commune 20 years later, Frederick Engels emphasized the key question of the state: "From the very outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine—

"The state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap.

"Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentle¬men, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (Introduction to The Civil War in France, 1891).

The embattled Parisian workers, men and women alike, threw their whole hearts into the work of creating the new workers' society—many have commented on the exhilarating, almost festive, air the Commune had as it prepared for its battle to the death with reaction. Against the old world at Versailles of "antiquated shams and accumulated lies," was counterposed, as Marx noted, "fighting, working, thinking Paris, electrified by the enthusiasm of historical initiative, full of heroic reality." The Parisian paper Pere Duchene (originally the paper of the left Jacobins), in its slangy fashion
-here are some excerpts caught this indomitable spirit-from Edwards.

Pere Duchene editorial on girls' education dated "20 germinal, an 79" (19 April 1871): Yes, it's a true fact, Pere Duchene has become the father of a daughter and a healthy one at that, who will turn into a right strapping wench with ruddy cheeks and a twinkle in her eye!

He's as proud as a fucking peacock! And as he starts to write his rag today he calls on all good citizens to bring up their children properly, like Pere Duchene's daughter. It's not as if he's gone all toffee-nosed, but Pere Duchene is sure of one thing: the girl is going to get a bloody good education and God knows that's important!

If you only knew, citizens, how much the Revolution depends on women, then you'd really open your eyes to girls' education. And you wouldn't leave them like they've been up to now, in ignorance!

Fuck it! In a good Republic maybe we ought to be even more careful of girls' education than of boys'!...

Christ! The cops of Versailles who are busy bombard¬ing Paris and firing their bloody shells right the way up the Champs-Elysees—they must have had a hell of a bad upbringing! Their mothers can't have been Citizens, that's for sure!

As for Pere Duchene's daughter, she'll see to it her children are better brought up than that; when she's grown up Pere Duchene will have got lots of dough together selling his furnaces so he can let her have a bloody nice dowry and give her away to a good bugger, a worker and a patriot, before the citizens of the Commune!

Long live the Social Revolution!

********

Yes, long live the Social Revolution! And we, when it comes, intend to be no less worthyof our revolutionary grandmothers and great-grandmothers than were the women of the Paris Commune. •

*From The Pen Of Rosa Luxemburg- On The 1902 Martinique Volcano- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to a "Workers Vanguard" entry, dated February 26, 2010, from Rosa Luxemburg concerning the then imperialist powers response to an earlier natural disaster on Martinique, in light of the current natural disaster that wreaked havoc in Haiti.

Markin comment:

I will always, and happily read anything, any time, and from any source that was written by Rosa Luxemburg- the Rose of the Revolution. Especially when, as here, it hits the nail on the head about the imperialists' crocodile tears over some natural disaster.


On The 100^th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-


By Frank Jackman

History in the conditional, what might have happened if this or that thing, event, person had swerved this much or that, is always a tricky proposition. Tricky as reflected in this piece’s commemorative headline. Rosa Luxemburg the acknowledged theoretical wizard of the German Social-Democratic Party, the numero uno party of the Second, Socialist International, which was the logical organization to initiate the socialist revolution before World War II and Karl Liebknecht, the hellfire and brimstone propagandist and public speaker of that same party were assassinated in separate locale on the orders of the then ruling self-same Social-Democratic Party. The chasm between the Social-Democratic leaders trying to save Germany for “Western Civilization” in the wake of the “uncivilized” socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 had grown that wide that it was as if they were on two different planets, and maybe they were.

(By the way I am almost embarrassed to mention the term “socialist revolution” these days when people, especially young people, would be clueless as to what I was talking about or would think that this concept was so hopelessly old-fashioned that it would meet the same blank stares. Let me assure you that back in the day, yes, that back in the day, many a youth had that very term on the tips of their tongues. Could palpably feel it in the air. Hell, just ask your parents, or grandparents.)

Okay here is the conditional and maybe think about it before you dismiss the idea out of hand if only because the whole scheme is very much in the conditional. Rosa and Karl, among others made almost every mistake in the book before and during the Spartacist uprising in some of the main German cities in late 1918 after the German defeat in the war. Their biggest mistake before the uprising was sticking with the Social Democrats, as a left wing, when that party had turned at best reformist and eminently not a vehicle for the socialist revolution, or even a half-assed democratic “revolution” which is what they got with the overthrow of the Kaiser. They broke too late, and subsequently too late from a slightly more left-wing Independent Socialist Party which had split from the S-D when that party became the leading war party in Germany for all intents and purposes and the working class was raising its collective head and asking why. 

The big mistake during the uprising was not taking enough protective cover, not keeping the leadership safe, keeping out of sight like Lenin had in Finland when things were dicey in 1917 Russia and fell easy prey to the Freikorps assassins. Here is the conditional, and as always it can be expanded to some nth degree if you let things get out of hand. What if, as in Russia, Rosa and Karl had broken from that rotten (for socialism) S-D organization and had a more firmly entrenched cadre with some experience in independent existence. What if the Spartacists had protected their acknowledged leaders better. There might have been a different trajectory for the aborted and failed German left-wing revolutionary opportunities over the next several years, there certainly would have been better leadership and perhaps, just perhaps the Nazi onslaught might have been stillborn, might have left Munich 1923 as their “heroic” and last moment.  

Instead we have a still sad 100^th anniversary of the assassination of two great international socialist fighters who headed to the danger not away always worthy of a nod and me left having to face those blank stares who are looking for way forward but might as well be on a different planet-from me. 

In Honor Of Women’s History Month – Poet Jesse Baxter’s In Pharaoh Times

In Honor Of Women’s History Month – Poet Jesse Baxter’s In Pharaoh Times

In Pharaoh Times

Isis, daughter of Isis major, mother- wife-sister of the human sun god

Awoke, awoke with a start weary from brother couplings; and stray poppy laden abandoned copulations

Configurations only a deacon priest filled with signs and amulets could fathom, or some racked court astrologer

To face the stone-breaking day, a day filled to the brim, overflowing, with portents

Arisen, washed, fragranced, headed to the balcony to observe unseen and to be observed seen beneath the cloudless skies      

Out in the ocean sea of whirling sand, out in the endless chiseled stone sun blazing day; her sea visage on down heads, eyes averted

Hittites, Gilts, Samians, Cretans, Nubians, Babylonians all conquered all down heads and averted eyes

Out on the ocean see, a lone sable warrior defeated, defeated with down head and upward eye disturbed the blistering heat day

Isis, daughter of Isis major, mother-wife-sister-child of the human sun king   shrinks back in fear, fear time has come

That black will devour Nubian and rise, rise

Yes, rise in Pharaoh times       

Jesse Baxter had never been so angry in his young black and be damned life as he had been at his, well, let’s call her his lady friend, even though strictly speaking she was more than a lady friend and the term had lost some of its urgency in the rush to proclaim a new estate for women which included cutting down to size such terms but lady friend for private consumption, Louise Crawford, since he was not sure whether girlfriend in the intricate relationship networks of the 1960s in quirky old Greenwich Village in the depths of trail-blazing New Jack City was an appropriate designation for their newly flowered relationship. Jesse a budding poet, a very hopeful poet who had just begun to get noticed in that rarified Village air had become one of Louise Crawford ‘s, ah, “conquests” on her way to tasting  all that the Bohemian night offered (not quite “beat,”  that had become passé by then and not quite “hip” as in hippie that would become the fashion later in the decade so bohemian, meaning out on the cultural outer edge, would do, would do as long as Jesse thought such a term was appropriate).

We should take note of that budding poet business since David Logan, the influenicial critic for Poetry Today, the bible of the trade, among others had proclaimed Jesse the cleanest voice around since Langston Hughes put pen to paper. But see just then no young black poet (or any kind of cultural artist for that matter) wanted to be compared to any old Tom-ish figure who went “white” when the deal went down, didn’t want to incur LeRoi Jones soon to return to his Africa name  and his ilk’s wrath much less exile Jimmy Baldwin’s. Needed to show that he could tell Mister Whitey to take himself and his cultural apparatus that was a yoke on his or blackness to go to hell with his brethren down among the Mister James Crow brethren. Above all did not want to be tarred with some hokey David Logan Poetry Today-funded by one of the Lowells, not real poet Robert’s branch by the textile one, brush as the great “white” hope to assuage liberal guilt or whatever guilt needed assuaging after four hundred years of letting the rednecks have their way. So paint one Jesse Baxter officially as an angry black artists who was going to tell the world what was what and be damned straight about it too.      

Here’s the funny little contradiction, the little blind spot white spot in which Jesse was hardly alone. Jesse had seen Louise around the Village several times at the trendy art shows (the first of the Soho-Warhol doings away from the “official” modernist art of the Village and MoMa),  upbeat coffeehouses beginning to emerge from “beat” poetry and jazz scenes to retro folk revival stuff where he was able to get still get play because he had been befriended by Dave Von Ronk who was the father figure of that revival, and at a few loft parties large enough to get lost in without having met everybody or anyone, if that was what one wanted. He had heard of her “exploits,” exploits tramping through the budding literati but had only become acquainted with Louise through her “old” lover, Jose, Jose Guzman, the surrealist-influenced painter who was beginning to make a splash for himself in the up and coming art galleries emerging over in that nearby Soho previously mentioned (emerging as much because the penniless young artists were priced out of the Village once the suburban kids with father’s dough started renting dig in that hip locale. And either she had tired of Jose (possible once he tried one of his forever Picasso-Dali painterly tirades) or he had tired of her (more probable since Jose was thrown off right from the beginning by her “bourgeois “command manner and her overweening need to seem like a white hipster under every circumstance although she was quote, Jose, quote, square, unquote but a good tumble, a very good tumble under the sheets) and so one night she had hit on Jesse at a coffeehouse, Mike’s across from the Gaslight where he was reading and that was that. (Strangely in the folk mythology Mike Greenleaf the owner of Mike’s had actually in the late 1950s gone with several other NYU students to “discover” the old bluesmen like John Hurt, Bukka White, Skip James, guys like that who then came up and played the Gaslight and Geddes since the small Mike-style coffeehouses couldn’t afford the gaff and so the homeless poets, black and beat, or both found refuge there.)   

But enough of small talk and back to Jesse’s rage. At one up-scale party held on Riverside Drive among the culturati, or what passed for such in downtrodden New York,  as they had become an “item” Louise had introduced Jesse as the “greatest Negro poet since Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance.” Jesse was not put off by the comparison with the great Hughes, no way, that would come later under the influence of black protest poets like Jones and the ever-hovering presence of Baldwin, he accepted that designation with a certain sense of honor, although qualified a bit by the different rhythm that motivated Langston’s words, be-bop jazz, and his own Bo Diddley /Chuck Berry-etched  “child of rock and roll” beat running in his head. What he was put off by was that “negro”  designation, a term of derision just then in his universe as young blacks, especially young black men, were moving away from the negro Doctor King thing and toward that Malcolm freedom term, black, black as night, black is beautiful. Jesus, hadn’t she read his To Malcolm –Black Warrior Prince. (Apparently one of the virtues of tramping through the literati was an understanding that there was no actual need to read, look, hear, anything that your new “conquest” had written, drawn or sung. In the case of Louise she had made something of an art form out of that fact once confessing to Jesse that she had only actually read, and re-read, his Louise Love In Quiet Time written by him after some silly spat since she was the subject. His other work she had somebody summarize for her. Jesus, again.) 

And it was not like Louise Crawford, yes, that Crawford, the scion-ess [sic] of the Wall Street Crawfords who had (have) been piling up dough and gouging profits since the start of the republic, was not attuned to the changes going on underneath bourgeois society just then but was her way to “own” him, own him like in olden times. While he was too much the gentile son of W.E.B. Dubois’ “talented tenth” (his parents both school teachers down in hometown Trenton who however needed to scrimp and safe to put him through Howard University) to make a scene at that party latter in the cab home to her place in the Village (as the well-tipped taxi driver could testify to, if necessary). Jesse lashed into her with all the fury a budding poet and belittled black man could muster.

In short, he would not be “owned” by some white bread woman who was just “cruising” the cultural and ethnic out-riggings before going back to marry some son of some sorry family friend stockbroker and live on Riverside Drive and summer in the Hamptons and all the rest while he struggled to create his words, his black soul-saturated word .

The harangue continued up into her loft and then Jesse ran out of steam a little (he had had a little too much of high-shelf liquors and of hits on the bong pipe to last forever in that state). Louise called for a truce, said she was sorry, sorry for being a square, and called him to her bed, pretty please to her bed. He, between the buzz in his head from the stimulants and the realization that she was good in bed, if nothing else, followed. And that night they made those sheets sweat with their juices. After they were depleted Jesse thought to himself that Louise might be just slumming but he would take a ticket and stay for the ride and fell asleep. Louise on the other hand, got up and went to the window to look out at her city, lit a cigarette and pondered some of Jesse’s words, pondered them for a while and got just a little bit fearful for her future as she went back to her bed and lay down next to the sleeping Jesse.

Later when he awakened just before dawn Jesse wrote his edgy poem In Pharaoh Times partially to contain the edges of his left-over rage and partially to take his distance from a daughter of Isis…

And hence this Women’s History Month contribution.