This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
On The 100th Annivesary (2017) -Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-"Year One of the Russian Revolution"-Victor Serge
Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin
Book Review
Year One of the Russian Revolution-Victor Serge I have read several books on subjects related to the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge and find that he is a well-informed insider on this subject although the novel rather than history writing is his stronger form of expressing his views. This book can be profitably read in conjunction with other better written left-wing interpretations of this period. Sukhanov's Notes on the Russian Revolution (for the February period), Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World come to mind.
The task Serge sets himself here is to look at the dramatic and eventually fateful events of first year of the Russian Revolution. Those included the Bolshevik seizure of power, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the struggle by the Bolsheviks against other left-wing tendencies in defining Soviet state policy, the fight to end Russian participation in World War I culminating in the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany and, most importantly, the beginnings of Civil War against the Whites. In short, he investigates all the issues that will ultimately undermine and cause the degeneration of what was the first successful socialist seizure of state power in history.
Serge's history is partisan history in the best sense of the word. It is rather silly at this late date to argue that historians must be detached from the subject of their investigations. All one asks is that a historian gets the facts for his or her analysis straight. And try to stay out of the way. Serge passes this test. Serge worked under the assumption that the strategic theory of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky was valid. That premise stated Russia as the weakest link in the capitalist system could act as the catalyst for revolution in the West and therefore shorten its road to socialism. The failure of that Western revolution, the subsequent hostile encirclement by the Western powers and the inevitable degeneration implicit in a revolution in an economically undeveloped country left to its own resources underlies the structure of his argument.
The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the defining event for the international labor movement during most of the 20th century. Serious militants and left -wing organizations took their stand based on their position on the so-called Russian Question. At that time the level of political class-consciousness in the international labor movement was quite high. Such consciousness does not exist today where the socialist program is seen as Utopian. However, notwithstanding the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92 and the essential elimination of the specific Russian Question as a factor in world politics anyone who wants learn some lessons from the heroic period of the Russian Revolution will find this book an informative place to start.
Click on the headline to link to the Socialist Alternative (CWI) website.
What Happened to Occupy?
Jun 27, 2012
By Greg Beiter, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587 Shop Steward, Seattle, WA (personal capacity)
SEATTLE--Groupings within the Occupy movement here in Seattle and around the country called for a May 1 "general strike" to protest wealth inequality and corporate dominance.
Over a thousand came out to demonstrate against the underlying logic of the capitalist system. However, midway through the day, some Black Bloc anarchist protesters smashed windows and clashed with police.
The methods used here by a few dozen anarchists contrast with how the Occupy movement operated in its beginnings last fall in New York City. By occupying Zuccotti Park near Wall Street to protest the massive wealth and power disparity in the U.S. and organizing mass marches, the movement attracted active support from workers and youth and the sympathy of tens of millions.
When videos of New York police pepper-spraying non-violent protesters went viral on the internet and were played repeatedly on TV news, Occupy protests spread across the country nearly overnight.
Despite the movement's rapid initial success, as a whole it has not been able to move beyond occupying public spaces. When local authorities broke up encampments, much of the momentum and direction of the movement was further dissipated.
Tens of thousands came out to protests and occupations. But millions more were radicalized by the movement's message and implicit criticism of capitalism. Unfortunately, Occupy today remains a shadow of its former self. This leaves those inspired to action left without an active movement to join to challenge corporate control over society.
It is important to ask: What went wrong? What can activists learn from this experience to build a more effective movement to challenge capitalism and corporate power in the future?
While Occupy was successful at bringing tens of thousands of young people and workers into action, many for their first protests ever, it was not able to mobilize the wider mass of the population - the tens of millions that opinion polls showed sympathized with the movement's message. Mass movements of millions protesting in the streets are what have brought about every progressive social change in U.S. history – from the right to organize a union to civil rights for African Americans.
Why demands are necessary for successful mass struggle
What could Occupy have done to mobilize its widespread sympathy? This was heavily debated amongst Occupy activists. The key question centered on the issue of demands.
Socialists and other activists within the movement argued from the beginning that to mobilize more working and young people into struggle, Occupy would have to adopt specific demands. Occupy needed to be seen as fighting to alleviate the problems that affect them. They could have done this by calling for taxing the rich to stop budget cuts to public services, for a massive public jobs program, and for student debt forgiveness, among other demands.
Unfortunately, some within the movement opposed the idea of unifying demands altogether. Some anarchists and anti-capitalist activists opposed demands that called for reforms within capitalism, arguing that consciousness within the movement was ahead of this.
While it's true that the consciousness of many activists within Occupy was more radical than the rest of society, the key goal of the movement should be to pull the millions sympathetic to the movement closer to it. During certain historical periods, consciousness can rapidly leap forward as millions radicalize under the impact of events. Occupy's sudden spread from New York City to hundreds of other cities was a small example. But a larger part of this process is the movement engaging with the broad masses of the population, those whose consciousness is moving towards the movement but who haven't yet moved into struggle.
Demands are a key tool for transforming passive sympathy into active support, turning a supporter into an activist. By showing people that the movement has taken up the issues that directly affect their lives and is fighting for them, millions more can be drawn into struggle.
A good example of this is the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and '70s. Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights leaders and organizations, for example, demanded an end to segregation and the creation of jobs in black communities as a way of pulling wider layers of sympathetic African American workers and youth into marches, protests, and sit-ins. Just protesting existing conditions wasn't enough to motivate them to make the sacrifices needed in order to enter into the struggle. They needed to hear what the movement was concretely fighting for, what it was demanding that would genuinely improve their daily lives.
Having slogans like "for the 99%" is useful, but that alone won't advance the movement if further demands don't explain how it will fight for the 99%. Recognizing this fact, sections of Occupy in certain areas have built effective struggles around concrete demands and specific attacks on working people. In Minneapolis and other cities, the Occupy Homes campaign has fought foreclosures and prevented banks and police from evicting struggling homeowners. This campaign has directly linked Occupy activists with working people and raised useful demands like reducing outstanding loan principles on "underwater" homes and calling for city- and state-wide moratoriums on home foreclosures.
From reforms to system change
At the same time, one of the best features of Occupy was that it didn't focus on just one area of oppression or exploitation under capitalism, but called into question the entire system. Anarchists also played a useful role inside the movement by pointing out that capitalism was the root cause of most of the daily miseries of our society. They correctly argued for calling out and fighting capitalism itself, not just its symptoms.
However, our movement won't contribute to bringing about an end to capitalism by just declaring that we are against it. We need to raise demands that would massively benefit working and poor people, like heavy taxes on corporate profits and the rich to fund jobs and social programs, a single-payer healthcare system, nationalizing the banks, and investing in renewable energy. This would win over millions of supporters, who could be brought into active struggle for these reforms.
But even these basic progressive changes would be completely intolerable to corporate America, meaning that a consistent struggle for these demands will quickly be confronted with the need to fight the capitalist system itself. The illusion that capitalism can be reformed to be more humane must be shattered. Socialists have a key role to play by pointing out the ways that big business and the profit system function as the key obstacles to achieving the reforms sought by workers and youth and offering the alternative vision of a socialist society.
In terms of concrete strategy to win, this means declaring political independence from both parties of big business so as to continue to fight for demands on the basis of what working people need, not on the basis of what is “politically realistic” in Washington.
Unfortunately, most people don't just wake up one day and decide they're against capitalism and for a socialist alternative. It typically takes struggle and bitter experience. But the first step is drawing them into struggle, where they can see for themselves how the politicians, corporate chiefs, media, and police are not on their side. When confronted with a movement that challenges their power, those within the establishment either attack the movement or attempt to co-opt it for their own gain.
Again, on this count the Civil Rights movement provides valuable lessons. When the movement began in the 1950s and early '60s, most activists fought only for immediate reforms like an end to segregation and the Jim Crow laws in the South. But by the late '60s, after experiencing brutal repression, the assassination of leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, along with still being stuck in the worst jobs, schools, and neighborhoods, over a million black people drew revolutionary conclusions.
We can't just declare we're against capitalism and expect millions to instantly agree. We need to engage in a dialogue with communities on the issues facing them, distill people’s anger, hopes, and aspirations into fighting demands, and then explain what strategies and tactics we think will be necessary to achieve them. We as a movement need to build a bridge from existing consciousness to the need for an alternative to capitalism. This is why we need demands that advance mass consciousness towards the movement in steps, to draw in hundreds and thousands more into action.
If millions were mobilized into the streets, some of the more immediate demands could be won. This would embolden more to enter the struggle, as they drew the conclusion that mass movements can change society.
New and larger mass movements will emerge in the near future. Occupy will serve as an important point of reference for these movements, allowing activists to draw lessons on how to more effectively pull wider layers of working people into struggle.
However, you don't have to wait for the eruption of struggle in the future to influence what shape they will take. You can join Socialist Alternative today and help us build the movements we are involved in now in our schools, workplaces, and communities. A powerful socialist movement will help ensure that the lessons of past movements can be applied to put our struggles on a stronger footing.
Click on the headline to link to the Socialist Alternative (CWI) website.
Fight for a Socialist Society!
Jul 2, 2012
By Tony Wilsdon
Socialists are for massive investment in new jobs and for retooling the economy to both protect the environment and put all the unemployed back to work. Democratic planning by the majority of society could ensure that everyone has a good job and that the economy provides the products we need.
Every unemployed person is a wasted resource that could be productive in a new socialist economy and society. Full employment would provide a massive increase in wealth. This would allow U.S. society and the global economy to get out of its crisis and provide a living-wage job, decent housing, and quality health care for everyone.
By taking decision-making out of the hands of the owners of the huge energy companies and affiliated industries, socialist policies would be able to not only create tens of millions of new jobs but also transition the economy away from fossil fuels, which are threatening to destroy the planet as we know it.
Nothing short of a planned, full-scale overhaul of the methods by which our society’s goods are produced, distributed and powered will be sufficient to reverse the damage being done to the Earth under capitalism. In November 2009, Scientific American published “A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables,” showing it is possible to meet humanity’s energy needs from renewable sources.
Socialism is a very simple concept. It is the idea that ordinary working people can run their workplaces, schools, and society without bosses. Workers already make all the products, provide all the services, and distribute all the goods.
The capitalist elite hardly step into the workplace. Their social role has been to pick off the profits and to orchestrate their two corporate parties to ensure their needs are met and there is no challenge to their system. They hoard cash and find new ways to exploit us. Profits are made by exploiting workers and cutting corners to destroy the environment
The majority of working people – the working class – already runs this system. Our power is enormous if we are conscious of it. This country would stop without our labor. Our same labor can build a new and far better society, based not on profit but on mutual cooperation and democratic planning.
In a socialist society, a democratic plan would be drawn up by the majority of the population based on their needs. In that way, the needs and priorities of the people in society can be worked out. A national plan of production, with decision-making taking place at a local, regional, and national level, would then be drawn up to ensure that the economy is restructured to provide for these needs. It’s not a question of a lack of technical skill, as had plagued human societies in the past. We have the technical skill. It’s a question of power and how decisions are made.
In order to change our society, we need to take the wealth of the 500 largest corporations out of the hands of this elite 1% and put it into the hands of the majority of the population. Then we need to have a broad level of participation at a local, state, and national level by ordinary workers – not the millionaires who run our present government – to plan how we would administer this wealth to provide for the needs of the majority. That is genuine socialism.
Happy, Happy Birthday
Karl Marx, On The 200th Anniversary Of His Birth-Some Thoughts
A link to NPR’s
Christopher Lydon’s Open Source 2018 program on the meaning of Karl Marx in
the 21st century on the 200th anniversary of his birth:
http://radioopensource.org/marx-at-200/
By Seth Garth
Normally Frank Jackman
would be the natural person to do his take on the name, the role, the legacy of
one German revolutionary exiled to London after the revolutions of 1848 faded
away, Karl Marx, on the 200th anniversary of his birth in 1818. And Frank
at first fought me a little, said he had grabbed a bunch of Marx’s books and
pamphlets like the Communist Manifesto
and the abridged Das Capital abetted by his friend and colleague Engels’ The Peasant Wars In Germany and Scientific Socialism. No question heavy
lifting, heavy reading which our respective youths would have been read until
early in the morning page turners but now would seemingly act as a sedative, a
sleep aid, at least for me since Frank said it had made him more alert although
agreeing that the works were not “read until early in the morning page
turners.” Frank’s argument to me at least for his grabbing the assignment was
that he had of the two of us been more influenced by Marx’s works and programs and
had actually been a supporter of the old time Trotskyist organization the
Socialist Workers Party for a while back in the early 1970s after he got out of
the Vietnam blood bath American army and was ready to “storm heaven” (his
words) to right the wrongs of this wicked old world (my words grabbed via Sam
Lowell take) and as well had been doing leftwing commentary since Hector was a
pup (somebody unknown’s expression).
Frank then went chapter
and verse at me with what he remembered (both from long ago and the recent
re-readings) about how he had all his life, all his early life looking for
something, some movement to move him, to move us who grew up with him poor as
church mice, maybe poorer to a more just world. Had made me laugh, since on
some of the stuff I have been right alongside him, when he mentioned the old
Student Union for World Goals which a bunch of us had put together in high
school. A grouping with a program that was inundated with all the
anti-communist, red scare, Cold War platitudes we could find. We basically were
a little to the left of Ike, Grandpa Ike, Dwight D. Eisenhower who was
President of the United States (POTUS in twitter-speak) in our youth filled
with bauble about the virtues of capitalism, although I think we would have
been hard pressed to make that word connection and probably said something like
prosperity which we had garnered very little of in the now remembered golden
age of the 1950s.
Then as the thaw came,
or as people, young people mostly broke the spell of the red scare Cold War
night, after we have sown our oats out in the Summer of Love, 1967 and saw some
writing on the wall that we were ‘raw meat” for the draft come college
graduation day getting hopped up about Robert Kennedy’s ill-fated, ill-starred
bid for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination in 1968. I already
mentioned the Army experiences which did both of us in for a while but which
frankly drove Frank outside bourgeois politics (he had expected that he would
tie his wagon to Robert Kennedy and when that idea fell apart with Kennedy’s
assassination offering Hubert H. Humphrey his services against the main villain
of the ear Richard M. Nixon in the expectation that he would ride that train
out of the draft and/or begin the road to a nice sinecure via Democratic Party
politics). I am not sure if he began serious reading on Marx in the Army or not
but when he got out in 1971 he certainly was doing the “read until the early
morning” routine. I grabbed some of his tidbits, associated with some of the
radical circles in Cambridge he started to frequent, went down the line with
him in Washington on May Day, 1971 where we both got busted but soon after
withdrew a bit from both him and serious leftwing politics. I was crazy, still
am, for films, for seeking some kind of career as a film critic and so spent
more of my time in the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square than protesting on
Boston Common. He can address sometime his own withdrawal from left-wing
organizational politics and moving on to journalism, political commentary on
his own dime.
That is enough of the
political justification for Frank’s fighting me on this assignment. Frank,
however, took the unusual step, for him anyway, of mentioning his being pissed
off about losing the Marx assignment and mentioned it to site manager Greg
Green. The guy who gives out the assignment and who has had more than one
person, me included, scratching their heads both in the assignments they have
gotten of late or like Frank not have gotten. Whatever Frank laid out for Greg he
had both of us come in to his office to discuss the issue. You know as much as
you need to about Franks’ “cred.”
My frame of reference and
what amounted to the winning argument was that I had been Peter Paul Markin’s
closest friend in high school. Markin, forever known as Scribe for the obvious
reason that he always carried a notebook and pen or pencil in his shirt pocket
AND always, always had two thousand facts ready to throw at anybody who would
listen, mainly girls, which drove more that one of our corner boy crowd to
threaten grievous bodily is the real primary source for whatever we knew about
Karl Marx before we went crazy later and started to seriously read the stuff. So
I knew the details of how Frank, Frankie Riley, Jimmy Jenkins, Si Lannon and
maybe a couple of others first heard about the name and ideas of one Karl Marx
and who would later act on them a little. This is where I was a little ahead of
Frank knowing that Greg, after taking over as site manager when Allan Jackson
was purged from that position, was interested much more in “”human interest”
stories than the “tiresome” (his words) esoteric left-wing jargon that he knew
Frank would meandering into, no, would get in knee deep.
(For the record some of
the other guys who hung around with Scribe and the rest of us like Ricky Rizzo
and Dave Whiting, both who would lay their heads down in hellhole Vietnam and wound
up on the town monument and Washington black granite, Red Riley and even Frank
Jackman when he was hopped up on that Student Union thing almost lynched him
when he started talking favorably about Karl Marx and the idea of red
revolution in those dead ass red scare Cold War nights. All they wanted to hear
about was whatever intelligence Scribe had on some girl they were interested in
of which he somehow almost incongruously had been plenty of information about or
what his next plan was for the “midnight creep” which I assume needs no further
explanation except he planned the capers but no way would Frankie Riley or the
rest of us let him lead the expeditions-hell we would still be in jail.)
Others, including Frank
Jackman, have now seemingly endlessly gone over the effect Scribe had on them a
little later when the turbulent 1960s we all got caught up in, blew a gasket,
in the Summer of Love, 1967 as the culmination of what he also had been talking
about for years on those lonely forlorn weekend nights when we hung around good
guy Tonio’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs” in the growing up Acre section of North
Adamsville. What most of the guys did not know, or did not want to know, was
that a little of what Scribe was thinking at the time, was that maybe Karl Marx
might be proven to be right, might have been onto something when he spoke about
the working classes, us, getting a big jump ahead in the world once things
turned upside down. He held those views pretty closely then, especially when he was
practically red-baited into silence by those guys who were even more hung up,
as was Scribe in many ways, on the new normal American negative propaganda
about Russia, Communism, and Karl Marx. Nobody, this from later Scribe once he
flamed red, was born a radical, a revolutionary, and certainly not a Marxist
but certain conditions, among them being as poor as church mice, gave a clue to
where some people might go. The intellectuals, although Scribe did not call
them that, would come to their Marxism more through books and rational thought
than as prime victims of the usually one-sided class struggle of the rich
against the poor. That was about as far as Scribe would go, wanted to go,
because in many ways, although maybe a little less fulsomely, he wanted to go
the same bourgeois politics path as Frank in politics.
Like I say Scribe
described to some of us a glimmer, a faux Marxist primer, then in high school,
not at all thought out like it would be by him or us later in the late 1960s
and early 1970s when we got back respectively from our tours to the “real”
world from ‘Nam and knew we had been fucked over by our government. That the
“reds” in Vietnam were poor folk, peasants, with whom we had no quarrel. But
that was later.
Here is a better example
of the glimmer Scribe shined on us back in the day. I remember one night, it
had to be one high school night given the teacher and class he was descripting,
Scribe had told me that he had had to stay after school one day for Mr.
Donovan, the World History teacher
and football coach which tells you what he was about, when Scribe had given a
surly answer about some question Mr. Donovan had asked. That surliness coming
from two sources, one Donovan having members of the class endlessly reading
aloud the freaking book boring everybody within a mile of the room and that he
really believed he already knew more about history than Donovan and so was
personally bored as well. The question had not been about Marxism but something
else and during that afternoon detention Donovan had asked him if he was a
“Bolshevik.” Scribe recoiled in horror he said knowing that to say yes would
get him in some trouble (probably more after school time at least) and for the
simple fact that he could not say truthfully whatever teen angst and alienation
he was feeling was driven by that kind of understanding of the world-then.
What this history
teacher confrontation did do was get Scribe looking again, and this tells as
much about him as any other anecdote, at his dog-eared copy of Karl Marx’s (and
his co-thinker and financial “angel” Friedrich Engels) classic statement of his
views The Communist Manifesto to
confirm whether he was a “Marxist,” “Communist,” whatever and he came away from
that re-reading knowing that he was not one of those guys, a red. That was the
kind of guy Scribe was when he was confronted with something he didn’t
understand. The rest of us would have said “fuck it” and let it go at that or
have challenged old Donovan with a spurious “yeah, what about it.” Maybe some
silly remark like “better red than dead” or “my mommy is a commie,” expressions
making the rounds in that dead air time.
So this little sketch
really is a “human interest” story and not all that much about Marx in any
political sense and that is also why I think that Greg bought my argument over
Frank’s. Whatever Marx, Marxism, hell, just general radical non-parliamentary
socialism held for the 19th devotees (and bloodthirsty enemies too)
extending into the greater part of the 20th century fell down, went
to ground, with the demise of the Soviet Union back in 1991-92, and whatever intellectual
curiosity Marx and Marxism held fell down too so other than as an exotic
utopian scheme today there is no reason to go chapter and verse on the details
of what Marx was programmatically projecting.
To finish up on this sketch
though I should like to mention the way Scribe, which again will tell something
about the mad monk when he was in his flower, got his copy of the Manifesto back when he was fourteen or
fifteen. He had heard for some source, maybe some “beat” over in Harvard Square
when he used to go there after a particularly bad day in the mother wars, it
was a cool document or something, who knows with Scribe was kind of strange. He
couldn’t find the book in either the school or town libraries for the simple
fact that neither had the document nor did when he inquired they want to have
it in circulation. Yeah it was that kind of time. A friendly young librarian
suggested that he try the Government Printing Office which might have a copy if
somebody in Congress (like the red-baiter par excellence Senator Joseph
McCarthy) or some governmental agency had ordered it printed for whatever
reason as part of an investigation or just to put it in the record for some
reason. He got the address in Washington and the GPO sent back a brochure with
their publications for sale. And there it was. He ordered a copy and a few
weeks alter it came in the mail. Here’s the funnier part, funnier that the
government providing copies on the cheap (or maybe free I forget what he said on
that point) of such a notorious document the document had been placed on the
publication list because it was part of the record for the raucous House
Un-American Activities Committee meeting in San Francisco in 1960 when they
were practically run out of town by protestors as the Cold War began to thaw in
certain places. Of course that was a recollection by Scribe later when we were
deep into the Summer of Love out in that very town and he had asked some older
people what that protest was all about.
Yeah, Scribe was a piece
of work and he would eventually drag some of us along with him in his good days
like the Summer of Love and later after Vietnam time running around with
radical students in Cambridge when checking out Mark and Marxism was all the
rage. Like I said old Marx has had his up and downs, has taken his beatings but
some things Scribe said he said and which we later read about like the poor getting
a better shake because they provided the value provided by their cheap labor were
spot on. Worse, in a way when I looked, re-read, for this assignment some of
the stuff reads like it could have been written today. How about that.
Click on the headline to link to the Socialist Alternative (CWI) website.
Ten Reasons Why Progressives Should Not Vote for Obama
June 21, 2012
By Anh Tran, Seattle, Washington
Despite the tremendous hope placed in Barack Obama by millions of people, a glimpse at his first term reveals that he is unwilling to stand up for the interests of the millions because of his ties to the millionaires, big business, and capitalism. Here are ten reasons Obama does not deserve your vote in 2012: Wall Street and Corporate America fund Obama’s campaigns. His top contributors in 2008 were the same big banks guilty of causing the housing crisis. He awarded these nearly 80% of his donors with senior-level government jobs (telegraph.co.uk, 6/2011). Obama bailed out Wall Street… The bailouts amounted to more than $16 trillion (therawstory.com, 10/2010). Since then, corporate profits accounted for 88% of economic growth and have now exceeded pre-recession profit levels. ...Not working people, students, or homeowners. Under Obama, the gap between workers’ wages and corporate profits climbed to its highest point since right before the Great Depression (politifact.com, 8/2011), the number of Americans living in poverty increased to 46 million - a 50-year high (LA Times, 9/2011), the total student debt topped $1 trillion (Wall Street Journal, 3/2012), and home foreclosures are projected to rise to 1.5 million (LA Times, 10/2011). Obama failed to stop massive cuts to education and public services. His 2011 bipartisan budget deal represented the largest drop ever in U.S. domestic spending, including slashing $493 million from Pell Grants and billions more from education, health, and labor (www.scpr.org, 4/12/2011). Obama allowed insurance and pharmaceutical companies to dictate the terms of the Affordable Care Act. Instead of sweeping away the for-profit insurance companies that dominate the dysfunctional health care system, he handed them millions of new customers with a government mandate requiring everyone to buy insurance plans. He even scrapped the public option, despite it having the support of 61% of Americans (CNN, 10/2009). Obama has continued Bush’s war policies. He ended “combat operations” in Iraq based on Bush’s timeline, yet he maintains a significant presence through 9,500 private contractors and 3,000 troops. He also increased funding for military spending, escalated the disastrous war in Afghanistan, and intensified drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Obama has continued attacks on civil liberties. He signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite military detention of anyone, anywhere, without charge or trial, including U.S. citizens. He punished more government employee whistle-blowers than any previous president, reauthorized Bush’s Patriot Act, personally oversees a secret kill list that has included U.S. citizens, failed to close Guantanamo Bay, and allows the continuation of the domestic surveillance program against Muslim-Americans. Obama has deported more immigrants than any other president in any two-year period. He expanded E-Verify, further militarized the U.S.-Mexican border, and utilized the highly flawed “Secure Communities” program as a key part of his crackdown on undocumented immigrants (Reuters, 9/2011). Obama has prioritized the interests of Corporate America and oil companies over the environment. Obama failed to deliver meaningful action on global climate change at the Copenhagen and Durbin summits. He opened the Arctic and the East Coast to offshore drilling, expanded fossil fuel production and fracking, provided loans to build the first nuclear power plant in 30 years, and welcomed the beginning of construction on the Keystone XL pipeline. Even as the first African American president, Obama has failed to address the social and economic situation of people of color. African American unemployment increased more than other racial groups under Obama (guardian.co.uk, 10/2011). African American unemployment stands at 13.6% and Latino unemployment at 11%, compared to white unemployment at 7.4% (CNN, 5/2012). Meanwhile, Obama continues to fund the failed “War on Drugs” while doing nothing to address the mass incarceration of African Americans.
Those urban locales were
certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that
hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and
some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena
Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some
of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from
the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and
still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips
(although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing
about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels
who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of
83.
Yeah, came barreling
like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a
different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist
Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better
be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo
un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted
westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some
fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A
tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe
Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons
of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and
maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce
down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when
your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a
go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A
different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than
lost loves and longings.
Rosalie Sorrels could
write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the
social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and
gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw
Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic
Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was
billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel
road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the
memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great
civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at
collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am
aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me
at those moments)
Rosalie Sorrels as one
would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent
death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill
(and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the
blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always
remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old
Devil Time that night-yeah, give me one more chance, one
more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and
thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP
Rosalie Sorrels
STARLIGHT ON THE RAILS
(Bruce Phillips)
I can hear the whistle blowing
High and lonesome as can be
Outside the rain is softly falling
Tonight its falling just for me
Looking back along the road I've traveled
The miles can tell a million tales
Each year is like some rolling freight train
And cold as starlight on the rails
I think about a wife and family
My home and all the things it means
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams
A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time
A man who spends his life just rambling
Is like a song without a rhyme
Copyright Strike Music
@train @lonesome
**********
“Hey, Boston Blarney, lend me a dollar so I can go into Gallup and get some Bull Durham and, and, a little something for the head,” yelled out San Antonio Slim over the din of the seemingly endless line of Southern Pacific freight trains running by just then, no more than a hundred yards from the arroyo “jungle” camp that Boston Blarney had stumbled into coming off the hitchhike highway, the Interstate 40 hitchhike highway, a few days before. Pretending that he could no hear over the din Boston Blarney feigned ignorance of the request and went about washing up the last of the dishes, really just tin pans to pile the food on, metal soup cans for washing it down, and “stolen” plastic utensils to put that food to mouth, stolen for those enthralled by the lore of the road, from the local McDonald’s hamburger joint. Like that corporation was going to put out an all points bulletin for the thieves, although maybe they would if they knew it was headed to the confines of the local hobo (bum, tramp, someone told him once of the hierarchical distinctions but they seemed to be distinctions without a difference when he heard them) jungle.
That washing up chore fell to Boston Blarney as the “new boy” in camp and before he had even gotten his bedroll off his sorely-tried back coming off that hard dust Interstate 40 hitchhike road, it was made abundantly clear by the lord of the manor, the mayor of the jungle, Juke Duke, that he was more than welcome to stay for a while, more than welcome to share a portion of the unnameable stew (unnameable, if for no other reason than there were so many unknown ingredients in the mix that to name it would require an act of congress, a regular hobo confab, to do so, so nameless it is), and more than welcome to spread his bedroll under the conforms of the jungle night sky but that he was now, officially, to hold the honorific; chief bottle washer.
So Boston Blarney washes away, and stacks, haphazardly stacks as befits the ramshackle nature of the place, the makeshift dinnerware in a cardboard box to await the next meal as a now slightly perturbed Slim comes closer, along with his bindle buddy, Bender Ben, to repeat the request in that same loud voice, although the last Southern Pacific train is a mere echo in the distance darkening Western night and a regular voiced-request would have been enough, enough for Boston Blarney. This though is the minute that Boston Blarney has been dreading ever since he got into camp, the touch for dough minute. Now see Boston Blarney, hell, William Bradley, Billy Bradley to his friends, on the road, and off. That Boston Blarney thing was put on him by Joe-Boy Jim the first night in camp when Joe-Boy, who was from Maine, from Maine about a million years ago from the look of him, noticed Billy’s Boston accent and his map of Ireland looks and, as is the simple course of things in the jungle that name is now Billy’s forever moniker to the moniker-obsessed residents of the Gallup, New Mexico, ya, that's one of those square states out in the West, jungle, although don’t go looking for a postal code for it, the camp may not be there by the time you figure that out.
Now here are the Boston Blarney facts of life, jungled-up facts of life is that no way is he going to be able to beg off that requested dollar with some lame excuse about being broke, broke broke.(I will use this moniker throughout just in case anybody, anybody Billy does not want to have know his whereabouts, is looking for him. In any case that moniker is better, much better, than the Silly Willy nickname that he carried with him through most of his public school career put on his by some now nameless girl when rhyming simon nicknames where all the rage back in seventh grade.) See everybody knows that San Antonio Slim, who belies his moniker by being about five feet, six inches tall and by weighing in at about two hundred and sixty, maybe, two-seventy so he either must have gotten that name a long time ago, or there is some other story behind its origins, has no dough, no way to get dough, and no way to be holding out on anyone for dough for the simple reason that he has not left the camp in a month so he is a brother in need. Boston Blarney is another case though, even if he is just off the hitchhike highway road, his clothes still look kind of fresh, his looks look kind of fresh (being young and not having dipped deeply in the alcohol bins, for one thing) and so no one, not Slim anyway, is going to buy a broke, broke story.
The problem, the problem Boston Blarney already knows is going to be a problem is that if he gives Slim the dollar straight up every other ‘bo, bum, tramp, and maybe even some self-respecting citizens are going to put the touch on him. He learned, learned the hard way that it does not take long to be broke, broke on the road by freely giving dough to every roadster Tom, Dick, and Harry you run into. “Here, all I have is fifty cents, until my ship comes in,” says Boston Blarney and Slim, along with his “enforcer”, Bender Ben, seem pleased to get that, like that is how much they probably figured they could get anyway. Blarney also knows that he was not the first stop in the touch game otherwise old hard-hand veteran Slim would have bitten harder.
Well, that’s over, for now Blarney says to himself softly out loud, a habit of the single file hitchhike road time when one begins to talk, softly or loudly, to oneself to while away the long side of the road hours when you are stuck between exits in places like Omaha or Davenport on the long trek west. And just as softly to himself he starts to recount where his has been, where he hasn’t been, and the whys of each situation as he unrolls his bedroll to face another night out in the brisk, brisk even for a New England hearty and hale regular brisk boy, great west star-less October night. First things first though, no way would he have hit the road this time, this time after a couple of years off the road, if THAT man, that evil man, that devil deal-making man, one Richard Milhous Nixon, common criminal, had not just vacated, a couple of months back, the Presidency of the United States and had still been in office. After that event, after that hell-raising many months of hubris though, it seemed safe, safe as anything could be in these weird times, to get on with your life. Still, every once in a while, when he was in a city or town, big or small, large enough to have sidewalk newspaper vending machines he would check, no, double check to see if the monster had, perhaps, “risen” again. But Blarney’ luck had held since he took off from Boston in late August on his latest trip west in search of ...
Suddenly, he yelled out, no cried out, “Joyel.” Who was he kidding. Sure getting rid of “Tricky Dick” was part of it, but the pure truth was woman trouble like he didn’t know that from the minute he stepped on to the truck depot at the entrance to the Massachusetts Turnpike at Cambridge and hailed down his first truck. And you knew it too, if you knew Billy Bradley. And if it wasn’t woman trouble, it could have been, would have been, should have been, use the imperative is always woman trouble, unless it was just Billy hubris. Nah, it was woman trouble, chapter and verse. Chapter twenty-seven, verse one, always verse one. And that verse one for Joyel, lately, had been when are we going to settle down from this nomadic existence. And that Joyel drumbeat was getting more insistent since things like the end of the intense American involvement in Vietnam, the demise of one common criminal Richard Milhous Nixon, and the ebbing, yes, face it, the ebbing of the energy for that newer world everybody around them was starting to feel and had decided to scurry back to graduate school, to parents’ home, or to marriage just like in the old days, parent old days.
Blarney needed to think it through, or if not think it through then to at least see if he still had the hitchhike road in him. The plan was to get west (always west, always west, America west) to the Pacific Ocean and see if that old magic wanderlust still held him in its thrall. So with old time hitchhike bedroll washed, basics wrapped within, some dollars (fewer that old Slim would have suspected, if he had suspected much) in his pocket, some longing for Joyel in his heart, honestly, and some longing that he could no speak of, not right that minute anyway, he wandered to that Cambridge destiny point. His plan with the late start, late hitchhike start anyway, was to head to Chicago (a many times run, almost a no thought post-rookie run at one point) then head south fast from there to avoid the erratic rockymountainhigh early winter blast and white-out blocked-in problems. Once south he wanted to pick up Interstate 40 somewhere in Texas or New Mexico and then, basically because it mostly parallels that route “ride the rails,” the Southern Pacific rails into Los Angeles from wherever he could pick up a freight. Although he never previously had much luck with this blessed, folkloric, mystical, old-timey, Wobblie (Industrial Workers of the World, IWW) method of travel a couple of guys, gypsy davey kind of guys, not Wobblie guys, told him about it and that drove part of his manic west desire this time.
As he eased himself down inside his homemade bedroll ready for the night, ready in case tomorrow is the day west, the day west that every jungle camp grapevine keeps yakking about until you get tired of hearing about it and are just happy to wait in non-knowledge, but ready, he started thinking things out like he always did before the sleep of the just knocked him out. Yes sir, chuckling, just waiting for the ride the rails west day that he had been waiting the past several days and which the jungle denizens, with their years of arcane intricate knowledge, useful travel knowledge said “could be any day now,” caught him reminiscing about the past few weeks and, truth to tell, started to see, see a little where Joyel was coming from, the point that she was incessantly trying to make about there now being a sea-change in the way they (meaning him and her, as well as humanity in general) had to look at things if they were to survive. But, see if she had only, only not screamed about it in those twenty-seven different ways she had of analyzing everything, he might have listened, listened a little. Because whatever else she might have, or have not been, sweet old Joyel, was a lightening rod for every trend, every social and political trend that had come down the left-wing path over the past decade or so.
Having grown up in New York City she had imbibed the folk protest music movement early in the Village, had been out front in the civil rights and anti-war struggle early, very early (long before Billy had). She had gone “street” left when others were still willing to half-way (or more) with LBJ, or later, all the way with Bobby Kennedy (as Billy had). So if she was sounding some kind of retreat then it was not just that she was tired (although that might be part of it) but that she “sensed” an “evil” wind of hard times and apathy were ahead. She was signaling, and this is where they had their screaming matches, that the retreat was the prelude to recognition that we had been defeated, no mauled, as she put in one such match.
So, as Billy steadily got drowsier from having taken too many rays in the long hard sun day and was now fading nicely under the cooling western night he started connecting the dots, or at least some dots, as he thought about the hitchhike road of the past several weeks. He, worst, started to see omens where before he just took them as the luck of the road, the tough hitchhike roads. Like how hard it was to get that first ride out of Boston, Cambridge really, at the entrance to the Massachusetts Turnpike down by the Charles River where many trucks, many cross-country traveling trucks begin their journey from a huge depot after being loaded up from some railroad siding and a couple of years ago all you had to do was ask where the trucker was heading, whether he wanted company, and if yes you were off. Otherwise on to the next truck, and success. Now, on his very first speak to, the trucker told him, told him in no uncertain terms, that while he could sure use the “hippie” boy‘s company (made him think of his own son) on the road to Chicago the company (and, as Billy found out later, really the insurance company) had made it plain, adamantly plain that no “passengers” were allowed in the vehicle under penalty of immediate firing. And with that hefty mortgage, two kids in college, and a wife who liked to spent money that settled the issue. But good luck hippie boy, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
He finally got his ride, to Cleveland, but from there to Chicago it was nothing but short, suspicious rides by odd-ball guys, including one whose intent was sexual and who when rebuffed left Billy off in Podunk, Indiana, late at night and with no prospects of being seen by truck or car traffic until daybreak. Oh ya, and one guy, one serious guy, wanted to know if anybody had told him, told sweet-souled Billy Bradley, that he looked a lot like Charles Manson (and in fact there was a little resemblance as he himself noticed later after taking a well-deserved, and needed, bath, although about half the guys in America, and who knows maybe the world in those days, looked a little like Charles Manson, except for those eyes, those evil eyes that spoke of some singularity of purpose, not good).
And thinking about that guy’s comment, a good guy actually, who knew a lot about the old time “beats” (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and had met mad man saint Gregory Corso in New York City), and for old times sake had picked Billy up got Billy thinking about a strange event back in Cambridge about a year before. Although he and Joyel had lived together, off and on, for several years there were periods, one of those chapter twenty-seven, verse one periods when they needed to get away from each other for one reason or another. That had been one of those times. So, as was the usual routine, he looked in the Real Paper for some kind of opening in a communal setting (in short, cheap rent, divided chores, and plenty of partying, or whatever, especially that whatever part). One ad he noticed, one Cambridge-based ad looked very interesting. He called the number, spoke to one person who handed him off to the woman who was handling the roommate situation and after a description of the situation, of the house, and of the people then residing there was told, told nonchalantly, to send his resume for their inspection. Resume, Cambridge, a commune, a resume. Christ! He went crazy at first, but then realized that it was after all Cambridge and you never know about some of those types. He quickly found a very convivial communal situation, a non-resume-seeking communal situation thank you, in down and out Brighton just across the river from hallowed Cambridge but at more than one of those whatever parties that came with this commune he never failed to tell this story, and get gales of laughter in response.
But that was then. And here is where connecting the dots and omens came together. On the road, as in politics, you make a lot of quick friends who give you numbers, telephones numbers, address numbers, whatever numbers, in case you are stuck, or need something, etc. A smart hitchhiker will keep those numbers safely and securely on him for an emergency, or just for a lark. One night Billy got stuck, stuck bad in Moline and called up a number, a number for a commune, he had been given, given just a few weeks before by a road friend, a young guy who gave his name as Injun Joe whom he had traveled with for a couple of days. He called the number, told of his plight and received the following answer- “What’s Injun Joe’s last name, where did you meet him, where do know him from?” Not thinking anything of it Billy said he didn’t know Injun Joe’s last name and described the circumstances that he met Injun Joe under. No sale, no soap, no-go came the reply. Apparently, according to the voice over the telephone, they knew Injun Joe, liked him, but the commune had been “ripped” off recently by “guests” and so unless you had been vetted by the FBI, or some other governmental agency, no dice. That voice did tell Billy to try the Salvation Army or Traveler’s Aid. Thanks, brother. Ya, so Joyel was not totally off the wall, not totally at all.
And then in that micro-second before sound sleep set in Billy went on the counter-offensive. What about those few good days in Austin when a girl he met, an ordinary cheer-leader, two fingers raised Longhorn Texas girl, who was looking to break-out of that debutante Texas thing, let him crash on her floor (that is the way Billy wants that little story told anyway). Or when that Volkswagen bus, that blessed Volkswagen bus stopped for him just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in, as Thomas Wolfe called them, one of the square western states that he now still finds himself imprisoned in, and it was like old times until they got to Red Rock where they wanted to camp for a while (hell, they were probably still there but he needed to move on, move on ocean west).
But Red Rock was more than old time hippie community, including passing the dope freely. Red Rock was where he met Running Bear Smith, who claimed to be a full Apache but who knows(and where did the Smith part come in). Now Running Bear was full of mystery, full of old-time stories about the pride of the dog soldiers, about his ancestors, about the fight against the ravages and greed of the white man. And about the shamanic ceremonial that he learned from his grandfather (his father had been killed, killed in some undisclosed manner when he was very young, about three), about dancing with the spirits of by-gone days, and dancing he added, or Billy added, under the influence of communion wafer peyote buttons. Several days ago, or rather nights, just a few days before he encamped in this broken down jungle Running Bear and he had “walked with the ‘Thunder Gods,’” as Running Bear described it. Billy described it somewhat differently, after the buttons took effect and Running Bear stoked the camp fire with additional wood to make a great blazing flame that jumped off the wall of the cavern adjacent to where they were camping out. The shadows of the flames made “pictures” on the cavern walls, pictures that told a story, told Billy a story that one man could fight off many demons, could count later on many friends coming to his aid, and that the demons could be vanquished. Was that the flame story or the buttons, or Billy’s retort to Joyel? All he knew was that Running Bear’s “magic” was too strong for him and he began “smelling” the ocean some several hundred miles away. Time to leave, time to get to Gallup down the road, and the hobo jungle wait for the ride on the rails.
Just then, just as he was closing accounts on the past several weeks by remembering his reactions on entering this ill-disposed jungle that was in no way like the friendly, brotherly, sisterly Volkswagen encampment at Red Rock old-time stew ball “Wyoming Coyote” yelled, yelled almost in his ear, although Billy knew that he was not yelling at him personally, but that the Southern Pacific was coming through at 4:00AM. The Southern Pacific going clear through to Los Angeles. Billy’s heart pounded. Here he was on the last leg of his journey west, he would be in L.A. by tomorrow night, or early the next morning at the latest. But the heart-pounding was also caused by fear, fear of that run to catch that moving freight train boxcar just right or else maybe fall by the wayside.
This was no abstract fear, some childhood mother-said-no fear, but real enough. On the way down from Chicago, after being enthralled by the gypsy davies talk of “riding the rails” he had decide that he needed to try it out first in order to make sure that he could do it, do it right when a train was moving. Sure he had caught a few trains before but that was always in the yards, with the trains stationary, and anyway as a child of the automobile age, unlike most of the denizens of the jungle he was more comfortable on the hitchhike road than the railroad. So, as practice, he had tried to catch an Illinois Central out of Decatur about a half-mile out just as the train started to pick up steam but before it got under full steam and was not catchable. He ran for it, almost didn’t make it, and cursed, cursed like hell those coffin nails that he smoked, and swore to give them up. So he was afraid, righteously afraid, as he fell asleep.
At 3:30AM someone jolted Billy out of his sleep. He woke with a start fearing someone was trying to rob him, or worst, much worst in a grimy jungle camp trying to sexually assault him, some toothless, piss-panted old drunken geezer catch up in some memory fog. Damn, it was only San Antonio Slim shaking him to wake him up for the Southern Pacific coming, just in case it came a little early, although according to the jungle lore it came on time, with maybe a minute or so off either way. Billy asked for a cigarette and Slim rolled him a choice Bull Durham so smartly that Billy blinked before he realized what Slim had produced. He lit up, inhaled the harsh cigarette smoke deeply, and started to put his gear quickly in order, and give himself a little toilet as well. Suddenly Slim yelled out get ready, apparently he could hear the trains coming down the tracks from several miles away. Nice skill.
The few men (maybe seven or eight) who were heading west that night (not, by the way, Slim he was waiting on a Phoenix local, or something like that maybe, thought Billy, a Valhalla local) started jogging toward the tracks, the tracks no more than one hundred yards from the jungle. The moon, hidden for most of the night under cloud cover, made an appearance as the sound of the trains clicking on the steel track got louder. Billy stopped for a second, pulled something from his back pocket, a small weather-beaten picture of Joyel and him taken in Malibu a few years before in sunnier days, and pressed it into his left hand. He could now see the long-lined train silhouetted against the moonlit desert sands. He started running a little more quickly as the train approached and as he looked for an open boxcar. He found one, grabbed on to its side for all he was worth with one hand then the other and yanked himself onto the floor rolling over a couple of times as he did so. Once he settled in he again unclasped his left hand and looked, looked intensely and at length, at the now crumbled and weather-beaten picture focusing on Joyel’s image. And had Joyel thoughts, hard-headed Joyel thoughts in his head “riding the rails” on the way to the city of angels.
On June 26th employees of Wayfair, the Boston-based online furniture store, walked out of work to protest the company's sale of $200,000 in furniture to federal detention facilities for child migrants. Less than 2 days after the initial call, 500 Wayfair workers joined the action in Copley Square, supported by thousands of allied activists. Organizers of the walkout, will talk about how the action was planned and the next steps in a corporate campaign to demand justice from Wayfair. The forum will be held Wednesday, July 24 7pm at Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church, 1555 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge. Sponsored by Boston DSA, the Tech Workers Coalition, and Massachusetts Peace Action.
Speakers will include:
Josh Behrens, Boston DSA: Shut down the concentration camps!
Rachel Dougherty, Wayfair: How we organized
Alexis Goodfellow, Wayfair: The evolution of our movement
Tom Brown, Wayfair: Repercussions and post walkout culture
Maddie Howard, Boston DSA and Wayfair: The lessons for opposing Trump
Sponsors: Cambridge DSA, Massachusetts Peace Action, DSA Immigration working group, DSA Labor working group, Tech Workers Coalition
Massachusetts Peace Action has formed a Latin America/ Immigrant Rights Working Group. We seek to foreground the constant U.S. interventions, sanctions, the drug war, and arms sales in Latin America which are main causes of the refugee crisis. Can you help? The group had its first meeting this past Monday, June 15th and will hold another soon. To join us, please reply at info@masspeaceaction.org or call 617-354-2169.
Yours for peace and justice,
Brian Garvey Organizer
Visit our website to learn more about joining the organization or donating to Massachusetts Peace Action!
We thank you for the financial support that makes this work possible.
