An Encore Salute To The Untold
Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- An American Peace-The Sam Eaton-Ralph
Morris Story
Greg Green, site manager
Introduction
[In early 2018, shortly after I had taken over
the reins as site manager at this on-line publication I “saw the light” and
bowed to the wisdom of a number of older writers who balked at my idea of
reaching younger and newer audiences by having them review films like Marvel/DC
Comics productions, write about various video games and books that would not
offend a flea unlike the flaming red books previously reviewed here centered on
the now aging 1960s baby-boomer demographic which had sustained the publication
through good times and bad as a hard copy and then on-line proposition. One
senior writer, who shall remain nameless in case some stray millennial sees
this introduction and spreads some viral social media hate campaign his way,
made the very telling observation that the younger set, his term, don’t read
film reviews or hard copy books as a rule and those hardy Generation of ’68
partisans who still support this publication in the transition from the old
Allan Jackson leadership to mine don’t give a fuck about comics, video games or
graphic novels. I stand humbled.
Not only stand humbled though but in
a valiant and seemingly successful attempt to stabilize this operation decided
to give an encore presentation to some of the most important series produced
and edited by Allan Jackson-without Allan. That too proved to be an error when
I had Frank Jackman introduce the first few sections of The Roots Is The Toots Rock And Roll series which Allan had sweated
his ass over to bring out over a couple of years. Writers, and not only senior
writers who had supported Allan in the vote of no confidence fight challenging
his leadership after he went overboard attempting to cash in on the hoopla over
the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love in
1967 but also my younger writer partisans, balked at this subterfuge. One
called it a travesty.
Backing off after finding Allan, not
an easy task since he had fled to the safer waters of the West looking for work
and had been rumored to be any place from Salt Lake City to some mountainous
last hippie commune in the hills of Northern California doing anything from
pimping as press agent for Mitt Romney’s U.S. Senate campaign in Utah to
running a whorehouse with Madame La Rue in Frisco or shacking up with drag
queen Miss Judy Garland in that same city, we brought Allan back to do the
introductions to the remaining sections. That we, me and the Editorial Board
established after Allan’s demise and as a guard against one-person rule, had
compromised on that gesture with the last of the series being the termination
of Allan’s association with the publication except possibly as an occasional
writer, a stringer really, when some nostalgia event needed some
attention.
That was the way things went and not
too badly when we finished up the series in the early summer of 2018. But that
is not the end of the Allan story. While looking through the on-line archives I
noticed that Allan had also seriously edited another 1960s-related series, the Sam and Ralph Stories, a series centered
on the trials and tribulations of two working-class guys who had been
radicalized in different ways by the 1960s upheavals and have never lost the
faith in what Allan called from Tennyson “seeking a newer world” would
resurface in this wicked old world, somebody’s term.
I once again attempted to make the
mistake of having someone else, in this case Josh Breslin, introduce the series
(after my introduction here) but the Editorial Board bucked me even before I
could set that idea in motion. I claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Allan
was probably out in Utah looking for some residual work for Mitt Romney now
that he is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator for Utah or running back
to Madame La Rue, an old flame, and that high- end whorehouse or hanging with
Miss Judy Garland at her successful drag queen tourist attraction cabaret. No
such luck since he was up in Maine working on a book about his life as an
editor. To be published in hard cop y by well-known Wheeler Press whenever he
gets the proofs done. So hereafter former editor and site manager Allan will
handle the introductions on this encore presentation of this excellent series.
Greg Green]
Allan Jackson, editor The Sam And Ralph Stories -New General Introduction
[As my replacement Greg Green, whom
I brought in from American Film Gazette
originally to handle the day to day site operations while I concentrated on
editing but who led a successful revolt against my regime based on the wishes
of the younger writers to as they said at the time not be slaves to the 1960s
upheavals a time which they only knew second or third hand, mentioned in his
general introduction above some of the series I initiated were/are worth an
encore presentation. The Sam and Ralph
Stories are one such series and as we go along I will try to describe why
this series was an important testament to an unheralded segment of the mass
movements of the 1960s-the radicalized white working- class kids who certainly
made up a significant component of the Vietnam War soldiery, some of who were
like Sam and Ralph forever after suspicious of every governmental war cry. Who also
somewhat belatedly got caught up in the second wave rock and roll revival which
emerged under the general slogan of “drug, sex and rock and roll” which
represented a vast sea change for attitudes about a lot of things that under
ordinary circumstances would have had them merely replicating their parents’
ethos and fate.
As I said I will describe that
transformation in future segment introductions but today since it is my “dime”
I want to once again clear up some misapprehensions about what has gone on over
the past year or so in the interest of informing the readership, as Greg Green
has staked his standing at this publication on doing to insure his own survival,
about what goes on behind the scenes in the publishing business. This would not
have been necessary after the big flap when Greg tried an “end around”
something that I and every other editor worth her or his salt have tried as
well and have somebody else, here commentator and my old high school friend
Frank Jackman, act as general introducer of The
Roots Is The Toots rock and roll
coming of age series that I believe is one of the best productions I have ever
worked on. That got writers, young and old, with me or against me, led by Sam
Lowell, another of my old high school friends, who had been the decisive vote
against me in the “vote of no confidence” which ended my regime up in arms. I
have forgiven Sam, and others, as I knew full well from the time I entered into
the business that at best it was a cutthroat survival of the fittest racket.
(Not only have I forgiven Sam but I am in his corner in his recent struggles
with young up and coming by-line writer Sarah Lemoyne who is being guided
through the shoals by another old high school friend Seth Garth as she attempts
to make her way up the film critic food chain, probably the most vicious
segment of the business where a thousand knives wait the unwary from so-called
fellow reviewers.) The upshot of that controversy was that Greg had to back off
and let me finish the introducing the series for which after all I had been
present at the creation.
That would have been the end of it
but once we successfully, and thankfully by Greg who gave me not only kudos
around the water cooler but a nice honorarium, concluded that series encore in
the early summer of 2018 he found another way to cut me. Going through the
archives of this publication to try to stabilize the readership after doing
some “holy goof” stuff like having serious writers, young and old, reviewing
films based on comic book characters, the latest in video games and graphic
novels with no success forgetting the cardinal rule of the post-Internet world
that the younger set get their information from other sources than old line
academic- driven websites and don’t read beyond their techie tools Greg found another
series, the one highlighted here, that intrigued him for an encore
presentation. This is where Greg proved only too human since he once again
attempted an “end around,” by having Josh Breslin, another old friend whom I
meet in the Summer of Love, 1967 out in San Francisco, introduce the series
citing my unavailability as the reason although paying attention to the fact
that I had sweated bullets over that one as well.
This time though the Editorial
Board, now headed by Sam Lowell, intervened even before Greg could approach
Josh for the assignment. This Ed Board was instituted after my departure to
insure the operation would not descend, Sam’s word actually, into the so-called
autocratic one-person rule that had been the norm under my regime. They told
Greg to call me back in on the encore project or to forget it. I would not have
put up with such a suggestion from an overriding Ed Board and would have
willingly bowed out if anybody had tried to undermine me that way. I can
understand fully Greg’s desire to cast me to the deeps, have done with me as in
my time I did as well knowing others in the food chain would see this as their
opportunity to move up.
That part I had no problem with,
told Greg exactly that. What bothered me was the continuing “urban legend”
about what I had done, where I had gone after that decisive vote of no
confidence. Greg continued, may continue today, to fuel the rumors that not only
after my initial demise but after finishing up the Roots Is The Toots series I had gone back out West to Utah of all
places to work for the Mormons, or to Frisco to hook up with my old flame
Madame La Rue running that high-end whorehouse I had staked her to in the old
days, or was running around with another old high school pal, Miss Judy
Garland, aka Timmy Riley the high priestess of the drag queen set out in that
same town whom I also helped stake to
his high-end tourist attraction cabaret. All nonsense, I was working on
my memoir up in Maine, up in Olde Saco where Josh grew up and which I fell in
love with when he first showed me his hometown and its ocean views.
If the reader can bear the weight of
this final reckoning let me clear the air on all three subjects on the
so-called Western trail. Before that though I admit, admit freely that despite
all the money I have made, editing, doing a million pieces under various
aliases and monikers, ballooning up 3000 word articles to 10,000 and having the
publishers fully pay despite the need for editing for the latter in the days
before the Guild when you worked by the word, accepting articles which I
clearly knew were just ripped of the AP feed and sending them along as gold I
had no dough, none when I was dethroned. Reason, perfectly sane reason,
although maybe not, three ex-wives with alimony blues and a parcel of kids, a
brood if you like who were in thrall to the college tuition vultures.
Tapped out in the East for a lot of
reasons I did head west the first time looking for work. Landed in Utah when I
ran out of dough, and did, DID, try to get a job on the Salt Lake Star and would have had it too except two things somebody
there, some friend of Mitt Romney, heard I was looking for work and nixed the
whole thing once they read the articles I had written mocking Mitt and his
white underwear world as Massachusetts governor and 2012 presidential candidate.
So it was with bitter irony when I heard that Greg had retailed the
preposterous idea that I would now seek a job shilling for dear white undie
Mitt as press agent in his run for the open Utah United States Senate seat.
Here is where everybody should gasp though at the whole Utah fantasy-these
Mormons stick close together, probably ingrained in them from Joseph Smith
days, and don’t hire goddam atheists and radicals, don’t hire outside the
religion if they can help it. You probably had to have slept with one of Joseph
Smith’s or Brigham Young’s wives to even get one foot in the door. Done.
The helping Madame La Rue, real name
of no interest or need to mention,
running her high-end exclusive whorehouse out in Half Moon Bay at least
had some credence since I had staked her to some dough to get started after the
downfall of the 1960s sent her back to her real world, the world of a high
class hooker who was slumming with “hippies” for a while when it looked like our
dreams were going to be deterred in in the ebbtide. We had been hot and heavy
lovers, although never married except on some hazed drug-fogged concert night
when I think Josh Breslin “married” us and sent us on a “honeymoon” with a
fistful of cocaine. Down on dough I hit her up for some which she gave gladly,
said it was interest on the “loan: she never repaid and let me stay at her place
for a while until I had to move on. Done
The whole drag queen idea tells me
that whoever started this damn lie knew nothing about my growing up days and
had either seen me in The Totem, Timmy Riley’s aka Miss Judy Garland’s drinking
with a few drag queen who worked and drew the wrong conclusions or was out to
slander and libel me for some other nefarious reason. See Miss Judy Garland is
the very successful drag queen and gay man Timmy Riley from the old
neighborhood who fled to Frisco when he could no longer hide his sexual
identity and preferences. To our great shock since Timmy had been the out-front
gay-basher of our crowd, our working-class corner boy gay-bashing crowd. I had
lent, after getting religion rather late on the LGBTQ question, Timmy the money
to buy his first drag queen cabaret on Bay Street and Timmy was kind enough to
stake me to some money and a roof before I decided I had to head back East.
Done.
But enough about me. This is about two other working- class guys,
Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris, met along life’s road one from Carver about fifty
miles away from where Seth, Sam, Timmy and a bunch of other guys grew up and
learned the “normal” working-class ethos-and broke, tentatively at times, from
that same straitjacket and from Troy, New York. Funny Troy, Carver, North
Adamsville, and Josh’s old mill town Olde Saco all down-in-the-mouth working
class towns still produced in exceptional times a clot of guys who got caught
up in the turmoil of their times-and lived to tell the tale. I am proud to
introduce this encore presentation and will have plenty more to say about Sam
and Ralph in future segments.]
**********
Allan
Jackson’s Encore Introduction to An
American Peace
[It
will probably amaze the reader somewhat to see the interconnectedness of the
lives of a small clot of writers and political activists who have more or less,
these aging days somewhat less, through their lives and this publication (early
on in its hard copy version and now the on-line version via the saving graces
of the Internet) stuck together for almost fifty years now and still are
“fighting the good fight.” First the seemingly implausible connection between
Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris detailed below. Then the connection between them and
me. Through me to a bunch of guys that I grew up with in North Adamsville like
Seth Garth, Si Lannon, Frank Jackman and the late Peter Paul Markin, the latter
the father we never knew to borrow from Jack Kerouac, all names familiar to
long-time readers. And through that late Markin to Josh Breslin. The common
denominator, the thing that glued us, glues us together is either active
military service during the Vietnam War, or active opposition to the fucking
war (as I have mentioned before the “fucking” the only way I can mentioned the
subject of the war even now). More than that though was some kind of permanent
opposition to American military designs from then until the war clouds today
over Iran, North Korea, China not to mention active wars in places like
Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria if you can believe how long they have been going
on.
That
opposition I believe was solidified, carved in stone if you will, by the anti-war
events of May Day, 1971 which all of us were one way or another involved with
and in the aftermath of that military defeat of our side the serious study of
what the hell makes an effective political opposition to war and viable
strategies to bring a little rough social justice to this world. Most of the
stories in this series have been written or dictated by either Sam or Ralph but
this one is from the pen of Josh Breslin who brings a little third-party light
to why they still cling to the visions of their young adulthood. Beyond that I
have either already commented on their respective “conversions” or they have in
passing so I have nothing better to add to Josh’s take.]
**********
An
American Peace-The Sam Eaton-Ralph Morris Story
From The Pen Of Josh Breslin
Back in the early 1970s after they had
worked out between themselves, as best they could given their previous distain
and/or ignorance of the history of the American left, of the international
workers movement in particular which some elements in the anti-Vietnam movement
were fitfully beginning to investigate, the rudiments of what had gone wrong
with the May Day 1971 actions in Washington, D.C. Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris
began some serious study of leftist literature from an earlier time, from back
earlier in the century. Those May Day anti-Vietnam War actions which they had
originally enthusiastically participated in (especially Ralph since this had
been his first big anti-war action in Washington in which he had been in an
affinity group with some fellow veterans), ill-conceived as they in the end
turned out to be, centered on the proposition that if the American government
would not close down the damn blood-sucking war then they, those thousands that
participated in the actions, would close down the government. All Sam, Ralph
and those thousands of others got for their efforts was a round-up into the
bastinado, picked off like ducks in a shooting gallery even before they could
get close to the targets like the White House, Pentagon, Capitol, and
Department of Justice to name a few they were attempting to shut down.
Sam had been picked off early in the
round-up on Pennsylvania Avenue as his group, mainly college students from
Boston University and George Washington University and an array of young
radicals from the streets of Cambridge and New York (his “affinity group” for
the action) had been on their way to “capture” the White House (the cops and
soldiers had blocked the way about five blocks before and were rounding up
anybody who looked like they might be a protestor, or wanted to be under the
old military principle of “shoot first and let God separate out the guilty from
the innocent”). Sam, no novice at civil disobedience or street actions, had
been appalled at the ease with which they were rounded even though at the last
affinity group meeting he had voiced a mild criticism about the plan to
“capture” the citadel of American imperialism without some kind of massed armed
army but his reasoning was dismissed out of hand by some of the more itchy
street kids.
Ralph and his affinity group of Vietnam
veterans and their supporters were rounded-up on Massachusetts Avenue heading
toward the Pentagon (they had had no plans to capture that five-sided building,
at least they were unlike Sam’s group not that naïve, just surround the place like
had occurred in an anti-war action in 1967 which has been detailed in Norman
Mailer’s prize-winning book Armies Of The
Night). Ralph new to the anti-war action scene in Washington thought
nothing of the merits of lack of merits of the planned action and “occupation”
since it had been made clear at the last affinity meeting the night before that
the march to the lion’s den of American military might by returned mentally and
physically wounded and angry soldiers had its own symbolic value. Still the
cops and National Guard soldiers rounded them up just like all the other
hippies, street radicals, Quakers, shakers and midnight fakirs. (Ralph had
sneered at the National Guard soldiers as “weekend warriors” who desperately
clung to their status of having enough pull to avoid being drafted or enlisting
in the real Army)
For a time RFK (Robert F. Kennedy)
Stadium, the home of the Washington Redskins football team, was the main
holding area for those arrested and detained before the numbers detained
overwhelmed the facility. The irony of being held in a stadium named after the
martyred late President’s younger brother and lightening rod for almost all
anti-war and “newer world” political dissent before he was assassinated in the
bloody summer of 1968 and in a place where football, a sport associated in many
radical minds with all that was wrong with the American system, was lost on Sam
and Ralph at the time and it was only later, many decades later, as they were
sitting in a bar in Boston across from the JFK Federal Building on one of their
periodic reunions when Ralph was in town that Sam had picked up that
connection. The cops and soldiers probably never saw the irony, never.
Sam, from Carver in Massachusetts, who
had been a late convert to the anti-war movement in 1969 after his closest high
school friend, the guy who he hung around the corner at Jimmy Jack’s Diner on
Main Street with, Jeff Mullin, had been blown away in some jungle town in the
Central Highlands (a town that he to this day could not properly spell or
say) was like many late converts to a
cause a “true believer,” had taken part in many acts of civil disobedience at
draft boards, including the one in hometown Carver, federal buildings, military
recruitment stations and military bases. From an indifference, no that’s not
right, from a mildly patriotic average young American citizen that you could
find by the score hanging around Mom and Pop variety stores, pizza parlors,
diners, and bowling alleys in the early 1960s, he had become a long-haired
bearded “hippie anti-warrior.” Not too long in either hair or beard though by
the standards of “youth nation” of the day since he was running a small print
shop in Carver in order to support his mother and four younger sisters after
his father had passed away suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1965 which
exempted him from military service. (At first he was self-conscious about
sitting at draft boards and recruiting stations as a result of that exemption
until one austere Quaker lady told him every body counted in the struggle
against war and to not let that other stuff bother him.) Not too short either
since those “squares” were either poor bastards who got tagged by the military
and had to wear their hair short an appearance which stuck out in towns like
Cambridge, Ann Arbor, Berkeley and L.A. when the anti-war movement started
embracing the increasingly frustrated and anti-war soldiers that they were beginning to run across or, worse,
cops before they got “hip” to the idea that guys wearing short hair, no beard,
looked like they had just taken a bath, and wore plaid short-sleeved shirts and
chinos might as well have a bulls-eye target on their backs surveilling the
counter-cultural crowd.
Ralph, from Troy, New York, had been
working in his father’s highly specialized skilled electrical shop which had
major orders from General Electric the big employer in the area when he got his
draft notice and had decided to enlist in the Army in order to avoid being an
11B, an infantryman, a grunt, “cannon fodder,” although he would not have known
to call it that at the time, that would come later. He had expected to go into
something which he knew something about in the electrical field at least that
is what the recruiting sergeant in Albany had “promised” him. (He would not
forget that “promise” lesson for later, much later, in the lead-up to the Iraq
War in 2002 he would stand at recruiting stations trying to tell young
prospects not to believe the lies the well-paid and well-versed recruiters told
them.) But in the year 1967 (and 1968 too since he had extended his tour six
months to get out of the service a little early) what the military needed in
Vietnam whatever else they might have needed was “cannon fodder,” guys to go
out into the bushes and kill commies. Simple as that. And that was what Ralph
Morris, a mildly patriotic average young American citizen, no that is not
right, a very patriotic average young American citizen that you could also find
by the score hanging around Mom and Pop variety stores, pizza parlors, diners,
and bowling alleys in the early 1960s, did. But see he got “religion” up there
in Pleiku, up there in the Central Highlands, up there in the stinking sweating
bush and so when he had been discharged from the Army in late 1969 he was in a
rage against the machine. Sure he had gone almost immediately back to the grind
of his father’s electrical shop but he was out of place just then, out of
sorts, needed to find an outlet for his anger at what he had done, what had
happened to buddies very close to him, what buddies had done to the peasants
who had done nothing to them but be “in the wrong place at the wrong time in
their own fucking country” (Ralph’s term), and how the military had made them
animals, nothing less. (Ralph after his father retired would take over the
electric shop business on his own in 1991 and would thereafter give it to his
son, Ralph III to take over after he retired in 2011.)
One day in 1970, maybe 1971 he had gone
to Albany on a job for his father and while on State Street he had seen a group
of guys in deliberately mismatched military garb marching in the streets
without talking, silent which was amazing in itself from what he had previously
seen of such anti-war marches and just carrying a big sign-Vietnam Veterans
Against The War (VVAW) and nobody stopped them, no cops, nobody, nobody yelled
“commie” either or a lot of other macho stuff that he and his hang out guys
used to do in Troy when some peaceniks held peace vigils in the square around
1965 or so. The civilian on-lookers held their tongues that day although Ralph
knew that the whole area, including most of his family, still retained a lot of
residual pro-war feeling just because America was fighting somewhere for
something. He parked his father’s truck and walked over to the march just to
watch at first. Some guy in a tattered Marine mismatched uniform wearing Chuck
Taylor sneakers in the march called out to the crowd for anybody who had served
in Vietnam, served in the military to join them, to help send a message to the
brass, to their ex-bosses, that the madness must stop, shouting out their
military affiliation as they did so. Ralph almost automatically blurred
out-“First Air Cav” and walked right into the street. There were other First
Air Cav guys there that day so he was among kindred. So yeah, Ralph after that
“baptism” did a lot of actions with VVAW and with “civilian” collectives who
were planning more dramatic actions in the Albany area. Ralph always would say
later that if it hadn’t been for getting “religion” on the war issue and doing
all those political actions then he would have gone crazy, would have wound up
like a lot of guys he would see later at the VA, guys he would see out in the
cardboard box for a home streets, and would not until this day have supported
in any way he could, although lately not physically since his knee replacement,
those who had the audacity to still march for the “good old cause” against the
war-mongers when the reared their bastardly heads.
This is the back story of a
relationship that has lasted until this day, an unlikely relationship in normal
times and places but in that cauldron of the early 1970s when the young, even the
not so very young, were trying to make heads or tails out of what was happening
in a world they did not create, and were not asked about there were plenty of
such stories, although most did not outlast that search for the newer world
when the high tide of the 1960s ebbed in the mid-1970s. Sam and Ralph’s story
had started when Ralph had noticed while milling around the football field
waiting for something to happen, waiting to be released, that Sam had a VVAW
button on his shirt and since he did not recognize Sam from any previous VVAW
actions had asked if he was a member of the organization and where. Sam told
him the story of his friend Jeff Mullin and of his change of heart about the
war, and about doing something about ending the damn thing.
That strange introduction while in
“jail” got them talking, talking well into the first night of their captivity
when they found they had many things in common coming from deeply entrenched
working-class cultures. (You already know about Troy and the GE effect. Carver
is something like the cranberry bog capital of the world even today although
the large producers dominate the market unlike when Sam was a kid and the small
Finnish growers dominated the market and town life. The town moreover has
turned into something of a bedroom community for the high-tech industry that
dots U.S. 495.)
After a couple of days in the bastinado
waiting for the in- no-hurry cops to do some paperwork Sam and Ralph hungry,
thirsty, needing a shower after suffering through the Washington humidity heard
that people were finding ways of getting out to the streets through some unguarded
side exits. They decided to surreptitiously attempt an “escape” which proved
successful and they immediately headed through a bunch of the letter, number and
state streets on the Washington city grid toward Connecticut Avenue heading
toward Silver Springs trying to hitchhike out of the city. A couple of days
later having obtained a ride through from Trenton, New Jersey to Providence,
Rhode Island they headed to Sam’s mother’s place in Carver. Ralph stayed there
a few days before heading back home to Troy. They had agreed that they would
keep in contact and try to figure out what the hell went wrong in Washington
that week. After making some connections through some radicals Sam knew in
Cambridge went to live in a commune over by Inman Square (cheap rent, cheap
living and doable since the last of Sam’s sisters had finished high school and
he had another friend from the Jimmy Jack’s Diner corner boys days, Johnnie
Callahan, running the print shop, a print shop business that he would return to
seriously once the high tide of the 1960s ebbed, after he started a family, and
which he sold to a third party after he retired in 2012).
Sam had asked Ralph to come stay with
him for the summer and try to figure out that gnarly problem of the way forward
to a more effective way to stop the goddam wars. Ralph did, although his father
was furious since he needed his help on a big GE contract for the Defense
Department but Ralph was having none of that. (Ralph and his father eventually
reconciled but that was a long process over several years and much argument which
need not detain us here except to say that the damn war blew many household
apart, for good or evil.)
So in the summer of 1971 Sam and Ralph
began to read that old time literature, although Ralph admitted he was not much
of a reader and some of the stuff was way over his head, Sam’s too. Mostly they
read socialist and communist literature, a little of the old IWW (Wobblie)
stuff since they both were enthrall to the exploits of the likes of Big Bill
Haywood out West during the heyday of the miners’ union struggles which seemed
to dominate the politics of that earlier time. They had even for a time joined
a loose study group sponsored by one of the myriad “red collectives” that had
sprung up like weeds in the Cambridge area. Both thought it ironic at the time,
and others who were questioning the direction the “movement” was heading in,
stated the same thing when they were in the study groups, that before that time
in the heyday of their anti-war activity everybody dismissed the old white guys
(a term not in common use then like now) like Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and their
progeny as irrelevant. Now everybody was glued to the books.
It was from that time that Sam and
Ralph got a better appreciation of a lot of the events, places, and
personalities from the old time radicals. Events like the start of May Day in
1886 as an international working class holiday which they had been clueless
about despite the May Day actions, the
Russian Revolutions, the Paris Commune, the Chinese Revolutions, August 1914 as
a watershed against war, the Communist International, those aforementioned
radicals Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, adding in Mao, Che, Fidel, Ho whose names were
on everybody’s tongue (and on posters in every bedroom) even if the reason for
that was not known. Most surprising of all were the American radicals like
Haywood, Browder, Cannon, Foster, and others who nobody then, or almost nobody
cared to know about at all.
As they learned more information about
past American movements Sam, the more interested writer of such pieces began to
write appreciations of past events, places and personalities. His first effort
was to write something about the commemoration of the 3 Ls (Lenin, Luxemburg,
and Liebknecht) started by the Communist International back in the 1920s in
January 1972, the first two names that he knew from a history class in night
school junior college and the third not at all. After that he wrote various
pieces like the one below about the early days of the Communist International
which intrigued him no end although he could not picture such an organization
working in 1972 not with the political climate and not with the question of
what Leon Trotsky, one of the founders, called the degeneration of that
organization (leftists have seemingly always posed their positions as
questions; the women question, the black question, the party question, the
Russian question, the Comintern question, and so on so Sam decided to stick
with the old time usage.) Here is what he had to say then which he had recently
freshly updated to include comments after reading a then recently published
book by Trotsky about the early days of the Communist International. Sam told
Ralph after he had read the thing through and had been asked if he was still a
“true believer” said a lot of the points piece he would still stand by today:
[The commentary on a book Leon
Trotsky’s History of the Russian
Revolution is readily available at the Leon
Trotsky Internet Archives and not reproduced here in the encore
presentation. AJ]
