Commentary
This is the fifth and final story about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. This series got its start as a spin-off from a previous series in this space entitled History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family from my old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. The stories here go back to an earlier time and different location to that of the housing project where my family first started out. They are motivated by a search to find out the whys and wherefores of how consciousness of being poor gets implanted early in life. The poor really are different from you the reader. The what to do about it part I discuss, ad infinitum, elsewhere in this space.
As I write this final piece a line from a song is going through my head, Jerry Garcia’s Ripple-“There is a road, no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night” That idea of the road, as I will discuss below, very neatly sums up the situation here. Some of this tale is meant as obvious metaphor, other parts are the real deal. In any case here is the central axis of this story line. We are in series talking about growing up 1950’s. This is quintessentially the 'golden age' of the automobile in America. You know the vast possibilities of the open highway – the road-and the promise of adventure-fast and effortless.
The hard fact for the Markin family was that through most of this period we did not have that automobile to break out with. When we did this writer remembers mainly ‘clunkers’ with their inevitable breakdowns in odd and foreboding locations. But, mostly, we had no car. Even in a housing project there was a social dividing line between those with automobiles who could get out and those who were stuck. We were, forever it seems, dependent on the kindnesses of neighbors. Or, ususally, walking, public transportation in that isolated location then, as now, being haphazard. I learned to dread the weekly walk to get groceries, etc. Ouch, I can still feel those hot summer roads.
Okay, so you can now say that walking is good for you. Fair enough. But here is where the tale gets weird. I have mentioned on several other occasions another wealthy peninsula (detailed in the first tale – A Story of Two Peninsulas) that abutted the peninsula where my housing project was located. I have also mentioned that I had been stopped, young as I was, in that locale by the local constabulary who asked where I was from and what was my purpose in being there. Hell,all I wanted to do was to walk along the streets that paralleled the ocean there. The tip-off for the police, apparently, was that I had entered the area on foot (as opposed to having been driven there like ‘normal’ people, I suppose) and they took it from there. When cops start infringing on your right to walk in public space wherever and whenever you feel like then you know that you are in a very class bound society-at least in these neighborhoods. In short, I was guilty of walking while poor. Enough said.
What have I tried to present here? Clearly, not all class struggles are limited to the visible ones of the picket line or the barricade. Certainly the working class struggles that I have noted here fall well below the radar but they also point some hard facts about why we have so little working class political class-consciousness. Putting up with their class hatred of us, their social humiliation of us, the mere fact of being poor, of being constantly on the edge of violence, and of facing the hazards of life in a dysfunctional family that detailed in these stories are all impediments to political class consciousness. And that is before we even get to the streets. Remember though ‘there is a road, no simply highway’-the class struggle road.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Tales From The 'Hood- Growing Up Absurd
Commentary
This is the fourth of a short series of stories about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. This series got its start as a spin-off from a previous series in this space entitled History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family from my old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. The stories here go back to an earlier time and different location to that of the housing project where my family first started out. They are motivated by a search to find out the whys and wherefores of how consciousness of being poor gets implanted early. That the poor are really different from you the reader. The what to do about it part I discuss, ad infinitum, elsewhere in the blogosphere.
The previous tale in this series, A Piece of Cloth, about my less than heroic misadventures as an up and coming square dancer (apparently in preparation for an career on the Grand Ole Opry) sets the tone for this story. In that tale I was subjected to a poor working class mother’s rage for cutting up one of my precious few pairs of pants in order to impress a girl. I learned then, if more painfully than necessary, the hard lesson that the Markin family was poor, dirt poor, in this world.
Those kinds of incidents involving my mother and I (and my brothers, as well), although generally more severe and less amiably subject to public treatment than that bittersweet tale, were standard fare in the Markin household. Their type is, moreover, well documented in literature and the media and would be merely cumulative if discussed here. Only the reality is grimmer than anything portrayed in book or film. Not physically, there was thankfully little of that, but the psychological warfare was almost as devastating. Let me nevertheless try to put this thing in some perspective now, although Lord knows I was incapable of that as I was going through it.
I have mentioned elsewhere in this space some of the small details of my parent’s struggle for survival. (See archives for Hard Times In Babylon). I have also mentioned that their life profiles fit into a familiar pattern similar to others who survived the Great Depression of the 1930’s and fought or endured World War II. I still feel no need to go into great detail about that here. I however find that I need to mention that my mother married my serviceman father just out of high school and quickly became a teenage mother. Moreover, she had great difficulties with the births of my brothers and I. The bunch of us furthermore were only separated by a year or so each. In short, a handful.
Those facts along with my father’s continual and constant difficulties in holding onto the unskilled jobs that he was forced into meant a very, very tough existence for a woman who was something a princess (a working class one, to be sure-there is a different but a princess nevertheless) to her parents and brothers. The woman’s respond to her conditions was to be in a constant rage. It was not pleasant. We called it, among us boys, the Irish shaming routine. In short, what is apparent here is that the nuclear family structure was far too narrow a basis for her and us to survive under the circumstances. I survived. My brothers did not.
Sherry my invaluable ‘hood historian has related some of the same kind of stories to me about her family life except her family was larger, her mother died when she was a teenager and she found herself as the oldest girl taking care of the household. Others survivors of ‘the projects’ have related very similar stories, almost monotonously so. We need not even speak here of such things as the effects of alcoholism, and later drugs and other social maladies on this fragile nuclear family structure.
To be sure, even under socialism, it will take a massive reallocation of funds to right these kinds of situations. Moreover, and here is the hard part for many to understand today, rich or poor, the nuclear family structure is just too narrow a setting to free up the potential energies of humankind. It needs be replaced. Despite all the pains of growing up poor, despite all the dislocations of psyche that I have dealt with over lifetime to fight the good fight for socialism it has still been worthwhile if only for the promise that some future generation will not have to go through my childhood experiences. Although I will not live long enough to see the replacement of the nuclear family with something better and more attuned to human potentialities I am satisfied with that. On reviewing this piece I find that it was not really a story after all but one of my political screeds. However, remember that mother’s impotent rage against her fate. That is the story.
This is the fourth of a short series of stories about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. This series got its start as a spin-off from a previous series in this space entitled History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family from my old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. The stories here go back to an earlier time and different location to that of the housing project where my family first started out. They are motivated by a search to find out the whys and wherefores of how consciousness of being poor gets implanted early. That the poor are really different from you the reader. The what to do about it part I discuss, ad infinitum, elsewhere in the blogosphere.
The previous tale in this series, A Piece of Cloth, about my less than heroic misadventures as an up and coming square dancer (apparently in preparation for an career on the Grand Ole Opry) sets the tone for this story. In that tale I was subjected to a poor working class mother’s rage for cutting up one of my precious few pairs of pants in order to impress a girl. I learned then, if more painfully than necessary, the hard lesson that the Markin family was poor, dirt poor, in this world.
Those kinds of incidents involving my mother and I (and my brothers, as well), although generally more severe and less amiably subject to public treatment than that bittersweet tale, were standard fare in the Markin household. Their type is, moreover, well documented in literature and the media and would be merely cumulative if discussed here. Only the reality is grimmer than anything portrayed in book or film. Not physically, there was thankfully little of that, but the psychological warfare was almost as devastating. Let me nevertheless try to put this thing in some perspective now, although Lord knows I was incapable of that as I was going through it.
I have mentioned elsewhere in this space some of the small details of my parent’s struggle for survival. (See archives for Hard Times In Babylon). I have also mentioned that their life profiles fit into a familiar pattern similar to others who survived the Great Depression of the 1930’s and fought or endured World War II. I still feel no need to go into great detail about that here. I however find that I need to mention that my mother married my serviceman father just out of high school and quickly became a teenage mother. Moreover, she had great difficulties with the births of my brothers and I. The bunch of us furthermore were only separated by a year or so each. In short, a handful.
Those facts along with my father’s continual and constant difficulties in holding onto the unskilled jobs that he was forced into meant a very, very tough existence for a woman who was something a princess (a working class one, to be sure-there is a different but a princess nevertheless) to her parents and brothers. The woman’s respond to her conditions was to be in a constant rage. It was not pleasant. We called it, among us boys, the Irish shaming routine. In short, what is apparent here is that the nuclear family structure was far too narrow a basis for her and us to survive under the circumstances. I survived. My brothers did not.
Sherry my invaluable ‘hood historian has related some of the same kind of stories to me about her family life except her family was larger, her mother died when she was a teenager and she found herself as the oldest girl taking care of the household. Others survivors of ‘the projects’ have related very similar stories, almost monotonously so. We need not even speak here of such things as the effects of alcoholism, and later drugs and other social maladies on this fragile nuclear family structure.
To be sure, even under socialism, it will take a massive reallocation of funds to right these kinds of situations. Moreover, and here is the hard part for many to understand today, rich or poor, the nuclear family structure is just too narrow a setting to free up the potential energies of humankind. It needs be replaced. Despite all the pains of growing up poor, despite all the dislocations of psyche that I have dealt with over lifetime to fight the good fight for socialism it has still been worthwhile if only for the promise that some future generation will not have to go through my childhood experiences. Although I will not live long enough to see the replacement of the nuclear family with something better and more attuned to human potentialities I am satisfied with that. On reviewing this piece I find that it was not really a story after all but one of my political screeds. However, remember that mother’s impotent rage against her fate. That is the story.
Tales From The 'Hood- A Piece of Cloth
This is the third of a short series of stories about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. This series got its start as a spin-off from a previous series in this space entitled History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family from my old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. The stories here go back to an earlier time and different location to that of the housing project where my family first started out. They are motivated by a search to find out the whys and wherefores of how consciousness of being poor gets implanted early. The what to do about it part I discuss, ad infinitum, elsewhere in the blogosphere.
The question posed above concerning how working class consciousness gets instilled is important to know, especially for ‘politicos’ trying to organize working people so that labor can rule. So, how does one become conscious that one is poor, comes from a poor family, and lives in poor housing in a poor neighborhood when one is, say, ten years old, the time frame for the story I want to tell here? This requires some reflection because, without exterior prompts, it is not immediately obvious to a ten year old; at least it was not to this ten year old.
Is it the run down school that one goes to? Is it the garbage-strewn unkempt yards? Is it the constant screaming of kids, parents, or anyone who has a voice and wants someone in this sorry world to listen? Is it your father home on a workday because he has no work? Or is it that very much smaller portion of Christmas presents under the tree than one had wished for? Well, all of those things are certainly candidates but follow me here and I will tell you exactly how this writer learned the elemental social facts of life. Moreover, Sherry, my invaluable ‘hood historian for this series was there to witness my baptism of fire.
At some point in elementary school a boy is inevitably suppose to learn to do two intertwined socially-oriented skills- the basics of some kind of dancing and be paired off with, dare I say it, a girl in that activity. I can already hear your gasps, dear reader, as I present that scenario. In my case the dancing part turned out to be the basics of square dancing (go figure, for a city boy, right?). Not only did this clumsy young boy have to do the basic 'swing your partner’ but I also had to do it while I was paired, for this occasion, with a girl that I had a ‘crush’ on. That girl, moreover, was not from the ‘hood but from that other peninsula, the rich one, that formed the backdrop for the first story in this series- A Story of Two Peninsulas. I will not describe her, although I could do so even today, but let us leave it that her name was Rosalind. Enchanting name, right? Nothing special about the story so far though, right? Just your average one of the stages of coming of age story. I wish.
Well, the long and short of it was that we were practicing this square dancing to demonstrate our prowess before our parents in the school gym. Nothing unusual there either. After all there is no sense in doing this type of activity unless one can impress one’s parents. I forget all the details of the setup of the space for demonstration day and things like that but it was a big deal. To honor the occasion, as this was my big moment to impress Rosalind, I had, earlier in the day , cut up my dungarees to give myself an authentic square dancer look.
I thought I looked pretty good. That is until my mother saw what I had done to the pants. In a second she got up from her seat, marched over to me and started yelling about my disrespect for my father’s and her efforts to clothe me and about the fact that since I only had a couple of pairs of pants how could I do such a thing. In short, airing the family troubles in public for all to hear. That went on for what seemed like an eternity. Thereafter I was unceremoniously taken home and placed on restriction for a week. Needless to say my father heard about it when he got home, and I heard about it for weeks afterward. Needless to say I also blew my ‘chances’ with dear, sweet Rosalind.
Now is this a tale of the hard lessons of the class struggle that I am always more than willing to put in a word about? Surely, not. Is this a sad tale of young love thwarted by the vagaries of fate? Maybe. Is this a tale about respect for the little we had in my family? Perhaps. Was my mother, despite her rage, right? Well, yes. Did I learn something about being poor in the world? Damn right. That is the point. But, ah, Rosalind…
The question posed above concerning how working class consciousness gets instilled is important to know, especially for ‘politicos’ trying to organize working people so that labor can rule. So, how does one become conscious that one is poor, comes from a poor family, and lives in poor housing in a poor neighborhood when one is, say, ten years old, the time frame for the story I want to tell here? This requires some reflection because, without exterior prompts, it is not immediately obvious to a ten year old; at least it was not to this ten year old.
Is it the run down school that one goes to? Is it the garbage-strewn unkempt yards? Is it the constant screaming of kids, parents, or anyone who has a voice and wants someone in this sorry world to listen? Is it your father home on a workday because he has no work? Or is it that very much smaller portion of Christmas presents under the tree than one had wished for? Well, all of those things are certainly candidates but follow me here and I will tell you exactly how this writer learned the elemental social facts of life. Moreover, Sherry, my invaluable ‘hood historian for this series was there to witness my baptism of fire.
At some point in elementary school a boy is inevitably suppose to learn to do two intertwined socially-oriented skills- the basics of some kind of dancing and be paired off with, dare I say it, a girl in that activity. I can already hear your gasps, dear reader, as I present that scenario. In my case the dancing part turned out to be the basics of square dancing (go figure, for a city boy, right?). Not only did this clumsy young boy have to do the basic 'swing your partner’ but I also had to do it while I was paired, for this occasion, with a girl that I had a ‘crush’ on. That girl, moreover, was not from the ‘hood but from that other peninsula, the rich one, that formed the backdrop for the first story in this series- A Story of Two Peninsulas. I will not describe her, although I could do so even today, but let us leave it that her name was Rosalind. Enchanting name, right? Nothing special about the story so far though, right? Just your average one of the stages of coming of age story. I wish.
Well, the long and short of it was that we were practicing this square dancing to demonstrate our prowess before our parents in the school gym. Nothing unusual there either. After all there is no sense in doing this type of activity unless one can impress one’s parents. I forget all the details of the setup of the space for demonstration day and things like that but it was a big deal. To honor the occasion, as this was my big moment to impress Rosalind, I had, earlier in the day , cut up my dungarees to give myself an authentic square dancer look.
I thought I looked pretty good. That is until my mother saw what I had done to the pants. In a second she got up from her seat, marched over to me and started yelling about my disrespect for my father’s and her efforts to clothe me and about the fact that since I only had a couple of pairs of pants how could I do such a thing. In short, airing the family troubles in public for all to hear. That went on for what seemed like an eternity. Thereafter I was unceremoniously taken home and placed on restriction for a week. Needless to say my father heard about it when he got home, and I heard about it for weeks afterward. Needless to say I also blew my ‘chances’ with dear, sweet Rosalind.
Now is this a tale of the hard lessons of the class struggle that I am always more than willing to put in a word about? Surely, not. Is this a sad tale of young love thwarted by the vagaries of fate? Maybe. Is this a tale about respect for the little we had in my family? Perhaps. Was my mother, despite her rage, right? Well, yes. Did I learn something about being poor in the world? Damn right. That is the point. But, ah, Rosalind…
Tales From The 'Hood- "The Romance of the Gun"
Commentary
This is the second of a short series of stories about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. I spent my early childhood in an all-white public housing project that is the locale for the stories that form this series. My later childhood was spent in a poor all-white working class neighborhood filled with small, cramped single-family homes packed in closely together with little yards and few amenities. Places where one could almost hear one neighbor snoring in the night or another screaming, usually at anyone at anytime. And those were the good days.
In adulthood I have lived in poor white neighborhoods, mixed student neighborhoods, the black enclaves of Oakland, Detroit and Washington, D.C., and, back in the days, in an integrated urban commune (for those who do not know, that is a bunch of unrelated people living on the same premises by design). I have even, during the few times that I have had rich girlfriends, lived in the leafy suburbs. I now live in a middling working class neighborhood. In short, I have been all around the housing question. Today’s story from the ‘hood deals with the relationship between where you live and crime. More particularly the tolerance for the culture of crime, really, the 'romance' of crime, if you will, that is inherent in living down at the bottom of society. Make no mistake, my friends, that is indeed a dangerous place.
More than one sociological survey has noted the correlation between low income and high crime rates, although I note that they tend to come up short, very short on what to do about it. That is, however, a point for another time. More importantly now is this question-where, dear reader, is that correlation closer than in the housing projects- down there in the mean streets of America, the streets of busted dreams, or no dreams? My housing project did not start out as a haven for hoodlums. As I have mentioned it initially was a way station, due to the extreme housing shortage, for returning World War II veteran like my father. But, in the nature of things, as those who were going to make it in post-war society moved on and the rest of us were left behind that is the reputation that it started to develop well before it was converted to a subsidized low-income housing project in the 1960's. We had left by that point, but not without the scars.
In conversation with Sherry (my invaluable ‘hood historian for this series and elementary school classmate) I asked about the fate of a number of our classmates, mainly boys that I had hung around with. Without exaggerating their numbers to buttress my point here, it appears to me, from her very detailed knowledge of their fates that an extraordinary number of boyhood friends wound up serving prison sentences for aggravated crimes, or died from unnatural causes early as a result of that life. Sherry related a number of such cases in her own family, including one younger brother still imprisoned, through several generations, not without a sense of embarrassment. Down among the desperate working poor the line between respectability and the lure of the lumpen lifestyle is, indeed, a very, very close thing.
I further note that this is true, if a little less so, for the neighborhood where I came of political age. (See my History and Class Consciousness series for details of the fate of one such other family). I will, moreover, confess here that one of my own brothers spent considerable time in state prison for a laundry list of offenses, and another was in and out the county jails for many years for a host of petty crimes (mainly against property). My own brushes with the law have been for political offenses (except for one silly hitchhiking offense in Connecticut way back when, but you know how that state is) so those do not count. I guess that makes me the ‘good’ son just like Sherry was the good survivor. What gives here?
Part of the headline of this piece is titled “Romance of the Gun”, and with reason. The gun, whether I am using this term here as a metaphor for toughness and a lumpen existence or actual guns, was central to ‘the projects’ culture. Not that we young boys ever had one (as far as I know) but we knew older boys and men who did and did things with them. Things like gas station stickups, robbing taxis or the like. Those who were capable of that or, at least, had that reputation we looked up to, if not idolized (with a little fear thrown in). These things did not occur every day nor did they include police shoot-outs, drive-bys or anything dramatic but the thrill of learning about such exploits was palpable. It was like the air we breathed.
If imitation is a form of flattery then the lumpen existence of the older boys and men set the standard. The main thing was that they seemed to always have money in contrast to, let us say, my poor father who lived from check to check with hungry young mouths to feed and who constantly feared been laid off from the little work that he was able to obtain. No hero there for young boys, right? My brothers could not resist the draw of the lumpen life style and eventually were drawn into that life, as a way of life. But that is not where lumpen influence ended. Even for a ‘good’ boy like myself and some of the boys that I hung around with there were certain rituals to prove our ‘manhood’. This, inevitably entailed stealing things, at first from grocery stores, then department stores, and ultimately jewelry stores. I did it for a while but the glamour wore off soon enough and I retreated to the library and adventures of the mind. Some others, however, took it seriously and form part of the statistic of the ‘hood mentioned above but for me it was just too much work. But I was in the minority and took more than one physical beating for my nerdishness from the ‘boyos’. Still, those ‘hard boys’ were something to wonder at.
Well, I can end this story by trying to draw a few conclusions. One of the things that drew me to working to defend the Black Panthers (at the times when they would cooperate with white leftists) and later the Irish Republican Army (Provos) in the old days were the simple facts that they, as least the street cadre, were from their own ‘hoods like mine, knew the busted dream scheme of life by heart just as I did, and were not afraid to pick up the gun to defend themselves, if necessary. I did not need to glorify the lumpen proletariat as the vanguard. I did not need to read Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to theorize about the purifying nature of violence against the oppressor. I did not need to justify every idiotic criminal act as a revolutionary act. All I needed to do was remember those ‘hard boys’, including my brothers, from my youth and what happened to them without a political perspective. So much for the “romance of the gun”.
This is the second of a short series of stories about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. I spent my early childhood in an all-white public housing project that is the locale for the stories that form this series. My later childhood was spent in a poor all-white working class neighborhood filled with small, cramped single-family homes packed in closely together with little yards and few amenities. Places where one could almost hear one neighbor snoring in the night or another screaming, usually at anyone at anytime. And those were the good days.
In adulthood I have lived in poor white neighborhoods, mixed student neighborhoods, the black enclaves of Oakland, Detroit and Washington, D.C., and, back in the days, in an integrated urban commune (for those who do not know, that is a bunch of unrelated people living on the same premises by design). I have even, during the few times that I have had rich girlfriends, lived in the leafy suburbs. I now live in a middling working class neighborhood. In short, I have been all around the housing question. Today’s story from the ‘hood deals with the relationship between where you live and crime. More particularly the tolerance for the culture of crime, really, the 'romance' of crime, if you will, that is inherent in living down at the bottom of society. Make no mistake, my friends, that is indeed a dangerous place.
More than one sociological survey has noted the correlation between low income and high crime rates, although I note that they tend to come up short, very short on what to do about it. That is, however, a point for another time. More importantly now is this question-where, dear reader, is that correlation closer than in the housing projects- down there in the mean streets of America, the streets of busted dreams, or no dreams? My housing project did not start out as a haven for hoodlums. As I have mentioned it initially was a way station, due to the extreme housing shortage, for returning World War II veteran like my father. But, in the nature of things, as those who were going to make it in post-war society moved on and the rest of us were left behind that is the reputation that it started to develop well before it was converted to a subsidized low-income housing project in the 1960's. We had left by that point, but not without the scars.
In conversation with Sherry (my invaluable ‘hood historian for this series and elementary school classmate) I asked about the fate of a number of our classmates, mainly boys that I had hung around with. Without exaggerating their numbers to buttress my point here, it appears to me, from her very detailed knowledge of their fates that an extraordinary number of boyhood friends wound up serving prison sentences for aggravated crimes, or died from unnatural causes early as a result of that life. Sherry related a number of such cases in her own family, including one younger brother still imprisoned, through several generations, not without a sense of embarrassment. Down among the desperate working poor the line between respectability and the lure of the lumpen lifestyle is, indeed, a very, very close thing.
I further note that this is true, if a little less so, for the neighborhood where I came of political age. (See my History and Class Consciousness series for details of the fate of one such other family). I will, moreover, confess here that one of my own brothers spent considerable time in state prison for a laundry list of offenses, and another was in and out the county jails for many years for a host of petty crimes (mainly against property). My own brushes with the law have been for political offenses (except for one silly hitchhiking offense in Connecticut way back when, but you know how that state is) so those do not count. I guess that makes me the ‘good’ son just like Sherry was the good survivor. What gives here?
Part of the headline of this piece is titled “Romance of the Gun”, and with reason. The gun, whether I am using this term here as a metaphor for toughness and a lumpen existence or actual guns, was central to ‘the projects’ culture. Not that we young boys ever had one (as far as I know) but we knew older boys and men who did and did things with them. Things like gas station stickups, robbing taxis or the like. Those who were capable of that or, at least, had that reputation we looked up to, if not idolized (with a little fear thrown in). These things did not occur every day nor did they include police shoot-outs, drive-bys or anything dramatic but the thrill of learning about such exploits was palpable. It was like the air we breathed.
If imitation is a form of flattery then the lumpen existence of the older boys and men set the standard. The main thing was that they seemed to always have money in contrast to, let us say, my poor father who lived from check to check with hungry young mouths to feed and who constantly feared been laid off from the little work that he was able to obtain. No hero there for young boys, right? My brothers could not resist the draw of the lumpen life style and eventually were drawn into that life, as a way of life. But that is not where lumpen influence ended. Even for a ‘good’ boy like myself and some of the boys that I hung around with there were certain rituals to prove our ‘manhood’. This, inevitably entailed stealing things, at first from grocery stores, then department stores, and ultimately jewelry stores. I did it for a while but the glamour wore off soon enough and I retreated to the library and adventures of the mind. Some others, however, took it seriously and form part of the statistic of the ‘hood mentioned above but for me it was just too much work. But I was in the minority and took more than one physical beating for my nerdishness from the ‘boyos’. Still, those ‘hard boys’ were something to wonder at.
Well, I can end this story by trying to draw a few conclusions. One of the things that drew me to working to defend the Black Panthers (at the times when they would cooperate with white leftists) and later the Irish Republican Army (Provos) in the old days were the simple facts that they, as least the street cadre, were from their own ‘hoods like mine, knew the busted dream scheme of life by heart just as I did, and were not afraid to pick up the gun to defend themselves, if necessary. I did not need to glorify the lumpen proletariat as the vanguard. I did not need to read Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to theorize about the purifying nature of violence against the oppressor. I did not need to justify every idiotic criminal act as a revolutionary act. All I needed to do was remember those ‘hard boys’, including my brothers, from my youth and what happened to them without a political perspective. So much for the “romance of the gun”.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Tales From The 'Hood- A Story of Two Peninsulas
This a repost of the first story of this series that I have decided to run in consecutive order rather than as occasional commentaries.
Commentary
This is the first of a series of stories that I have previously introduced in this space (See Tales From the 'Hood- An Introduction)about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. This series got its start as a spin-off from a previous series in this space entitled History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga (hereafter H&C) that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family from my old working class neighborhood.
For the benefit of the two or three people in the blogosphere who do not know by now my own family started life in the housing projects, at that time not the notorious hell holes of crime and deprivation that they later became but still a mark of being low, very low, on the social ladder at a time when others were heading to the nirvana of the newly emerging outer suburbs. The housing project that I grew up in was originally meant to serve as a way station for returning veterans from World War II caught up in the post war housing shortage. Thus, we were actually the first tenants in our unit, although it did not take long for the place to seem old. Perhaps, needless to say as well this project was all white, reflecting the population of city at the time where it is located. Now it is about 20% minority, mainly Asian-American, reflecting the city's population change.
A recent trip back there in order to do research for this series revealed that the place is in something of a time warp. The original plot plan consisted of a few hundred four-unit two-floor apartment complexes, a departure from the ubiquitous later high-rise hellholes at least. It looks, structurally, almost the same as in the 1950’s except that it is dirtier, much less kept-up and I believe that the asphalt sidewalks and streets have not been repaved since our family left in the late 1950’s. A very visible police substation is the only apparent addition to the scene. That tells the tale.
This housing project is located on what was an isolated, abandoned piece of farmland on a peninsula that juts out into a bay and is across from various sea-going industrial activities. This complex of industrial sites and ocean-related activity mars the effect of being near the ocean here. Certainly no Arcadian scenes come to mind. Moreover, I recall that the smells and sounds from those activities were nauseating and annoying at times. A particularly pungent smell of some soap product filled the air on many a summer’s evening. Ships unloading provided the sound effects.
A narrow two-lane, now deeply pot-holed, road is the only way in or out of this location. Over fifty years later the nearest shopping center or even convenient store is still several miles away requiring an automobile or reliance on haphazard and apparently infrequent public transportation. In short, and I have asked people about this, one could live within shouting distance of the place and not know where it is. Does that sound like a familiar concept of public welfare social planning-out of sight, out of mind?
This is, in any case, where I passed my early childhood, including elementary school. The elementary school was, however, located not in the project but up that narrow road some distance away at the beginning of another peninsula. That other peninsula, with its unobstructed views of the open ocean and freedom from the sight and sound of those previously mentioned industrial complexes, had many sought after old money, old fashioned Victorian houses and a number of then recently constructed upscale colonial-type houses favored by the up and coming middle class of the fifties. The place might as well have been in another world. The school nevertheless, at least in the 1950’s, serviced the children of both peninsulas.
I might add here that I never had one friend from that other peninsula. Conversations with others, who also grew up in the housing project, concur with my observation. I can also relate a couple of stories of being stopped by the local constabulary, even at that young age, and asked where I was from and what I was doing there but the details of those episodes will wait for another time. You can see what is coming though, right?
This is as good a place as any to introduce my ‘hood historian Sherry. As part of my research for H&C I connected, by use of various resources including the Internet, with a number of people. One of them is Sherry who is the real narrator of these tales and is the source for many of the observations and physical details that fill out this series. Sherry and I went to elementary school together and she and her family, after my family left, stayed in the projects for almost thirty years so that she saw the place as it evolved from that previously mentioned way station to the classic ‘projects’ of media notoriety. She knows 'the projects'. Moreover, from what I have gathered so far, although she does not have a political bone in her body she wears her working class background on her face, in her personality and her whole manner. Not in abject defeat, however, but as a survivor. That too tells a tale.
As we reconnected the obvious place to start was a little trip down memory lane to old school days. Naturally, since I had an ulterior motive and have a fierce sense of class society, I wanted her opinion on the kids from the other peninsula. Sherry then related, in some detail, what she had to tell about her life in elementary school, not without a tear in her eyes even at this remove. She spend her whole time in that school being snubbed, insulted and, apparently, on more than one occasion physically threatened by the prissy girls from the other peninsula for her poor clothing, her poor manners and for being from 'the projects’. I will spare you the details here, although if you have seen any of the problematic working class ‘coming of age’ movies or suburban teenage cultural spoofs the episodes she related to me are the grim real life underlying premises behind those efforts. Moreover, she faced this barrage all the way through to high school graduation.
It was painful for her to retell her story, and as I said, not without a few tears. Moreover, it was hard for me to hear because, although I did not face that barrage then, I faced it later when my family moved to the other side of town and kids taunted me when they knew I was from ‘the projects’. Now were the snubs and hurts due to Sherry’s personality? Maybe. Is this a mere example of childhood’s gratuitous cruelty? Perhaps. Is this story the equivalent of the working class battles at their nastiest on the picket lines of a strike? Hell, no. But the next time someone tells you that there are no classes in this society remember this story. Then remember Sherry’s tears. Damn.
Commentary
This is the first of a series of stories that I have previously introduced in this space (See Tales From the 'Hood- An Introduction)about growing up in the 1950’s, the childhood period of the generation of ’68 and of my own. This series got its start as a spin-off from a previous series in this space entitled History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga (hereafter H&C) that came from a look back at the trials and tribulations of a family from my old working class neighborhood.
For the benefit of the two or three people in the blogosphere who do not know by now my own family started life in the housing projects, at that time not the notorious hell holes of crime and deprivation that they later became but still a mark of being low, very low, on the social ladder at a time when others were heading to the nirvana of the newly emerging outer suburbs. The housing project that I grew up in was originally meant to serve as a way station for returning veterans from World War II caught up in the post war housing shortage. Thus, we were actually the first tenants in our unit, although it did not take long for the place to seem old. Perhaps, needless to say as well this project was all white, reflecting the population of city at the time where it is located. Now it is about 20% minority, mainly Asian-American, reflecting the city's population change.
A recent trip back there in order to do research for this series revealed that the place is in something of a time warp. The original plot plan consisted of a few hundred four-unit two-floor apartment complexes, a departure from the ubiquitous later high-rise hellholes at least. It looks, structurally, almost the same as in the 1950’s except that it is dirtier, much less kept-up and I believe that the asphalt sidewalks and streets have not been repaved since our family left in the late 1950’s. A very visible police substation is the only apparent addition to the scene. That tells the tale.
This housing project is located on what was an isolated, abandoned piece of farmland on a peninsula that juts out into a bay and is across from various sea-going industrial activities. This complex of industrial sites and ocean-related activity mars the effect of being near the ocean here. Certainly no Arcadian scenes come to mind. Moreover, I recall that the smells and sounds from those activities were nauseating and annoying at times. A particularly pungent smell of some soap product filled the air on many a summer’s evening. Ships unloading provided the sound effects.
A narrow two-lane, now deeply pot-holed, road is the only way in or out of this location. Over fifty years later the nearest shopping center or even convenient store is still several miles away requiring an automobile or reliance on haphazard and apparently infrequent public transportation. In short, and I have asked people about this, one could live within shouting distance of the place and not know where it is. Does that sound like a familiar concept of public welfare social planning-out of sight, out of mind?
This is, in any case, where I passed my early childhood, including elementary school. The elementary school was, however, located not in the project but up that narrow road some distance away at the beginning of another peninsula. That other peninsula, with its unobstructed views of the open ocean and freedom from the sight and sound of those previously mentioned industrial complexes, had many sought after old money, old fashioned Victorian houses and a number of then recently constructed upscale colonial-type houses favored by the up and coming middle class of the fifties. The place might as well have been in another world. The school nevertheless, at least in the 1950’s, serviced the children of both peninsulas.
I might add here that I never had one friend from that other peninsula. Conversations with others, who also grew up in the housing project, concur with my observation. I can also relate a couple of stories of being stopped by the local constabulary, even at that young age, and asked where I was from and what I was doing there but the details of those episodes will wait for another time. You can see what is coming though, right?
This is as good a place as any to introduce my ‘hood historian Sherry. As part of my research for H&C I connected, by use of various resources including the Internet, with a number of people. One of them is Sherry who is the real narrator of these tales and is the source for many of the observations and physical details that fill out this series. Sherry and I went to elementary school together and she and her family, after my family left, stayed in the projects for almost thirty years so that she saw the place as it evolved from that previously mentioned way station to the classic ‘projects’ of media notoriety. She knows 'the projects'. Moreover, from what I have gathered so far, although she does not have a political bone in her body she wears her working class background on her face, in her personality and her whole manner. Not in abject defeat, however, but as a survivor. That too tells a tale.
As we reconnected the obvious place to start was a little trip down memory lane to old school days. Naturally, since I had an ulterior motive and have a fierce sense of class society, I wanted her opinion on the kids from the other peninsula. Sherry then related, in some detail, what she had to tell about her life in elementary school, not without a tear in her eyes even at this remove. She spend her whole time in that school being snubbed, insulted and, apparently, on more than one occasion physically threatened by the prissy girls from the other peninsula for her poor clothing, her poor manners and for being from 'the projects’. I will spare you the details here, although if you have seen any of the problematic working class ‘coming of age’ movies or suburban teenage cultural spoofs the episodes she related to me are the grim real life underlying premises behind those efforts. Moreover, she faced this barrage all the way through to high school graduation.
It was painful for her to retell her story, and as I said, not without a few tears. Moreover, it was hard for me to hear because, although I did not face that barrage then, I faced it later when my family moved to the other side of town and kids taunted me when they knew I was from ‘the projects’. Now were the snubs and hurts due to Sherry’s personality? Maybe. Is this a mere example of childhood’s gratuitous cruelty? Perhaps. Is this story the equivalent of the working class battles at their nastiest on the picket lines of a strike? Hell, no. But the next time someone tells you that there are no classes in this society remember this story. Then remember Sherry’s tears. Damn.
Tales From The 'Hood- An Introduction
Commentary
I am reposting this introduction here as the start to a consecutive presentation of the stories that I will to tell. Originally I intended to make them occasional pieces but I think they work better as a consecutive series.
This entry announces what promises to be the start of another short series of commentaries like my recently completed History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga (hereafter H&C). Those who followed that story (see archives) know that I have been, for a whole number of reasons both personal and political, on the trail of my roots, including trips to the old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. There through various methods, including extensive use of the Internet, I was able to track down a couple of guys from the old neighborhood whose family story had gripped me and whose personal stories I presented as part of that series.
As an unintended result of that research I have also come in contact with some helpful old high school classmates. One such helpful person, a class officer, asked me to answer some questions that her committee is putting together for our class, the Class of 1964. have posted some of the more pertinent answers here, although this is getting to be a seemingly endless task as the more questions I answer the more they keep sending me. Such is life. But, now I have uncovered more information about my roots coming from an earlier period.
I mentioned in H&C that my family had started life in a housing project with all that implied, then and now. By the beauties of the Internet I have now come in contact with someone who remembers me (or rather my brother- she was sweet on him in elementary school), lived in that housing project during our stay there and for many, many year after my family left, and saw its transformation from a way station for returning World War II veterans to a classic ‘den of iniquity’ as portrayed in media accounts, She has agreed to be my ‘hood historian for this series. Moreover she has brothers, sisters, children and grandchildren who have memories from that place.
If thing work out this could very well be a slice of life series on the trials and tribulations of members of the marginally working poor, a section of the working class with which I am very familiar. And from my vantage point can produce a study, with all its inherent limitations, of the decline and disintegration of working class political consciousness in America since World War II. In H&C that played out one way with a section of the class that is slightly above the one that will be featured here. That saga did not paint a pretty political picture. Nor will, I fear, this one. But, damn, why shouldn’t these people have their stories told, warts and all.
Again, like H&C, this series will really narrate a very prosaic working class set of stories. I will, however, organize these stories differently because now I know what I am looking for and each story will be able to stand on its own. In H&C the story as it unfolded piecemeal, frankly, got out of control and I do not believe that when I put all the parts together at the end that it had the power that I wanted it to have, and that it did have as it unfolded.
That said, if this time last year somebody asked me if I would be doing a series like I would have said they were crazy. I then wanted to discuss the finer theoretical points of organizing for withdrawal from Iraq or building a workers party. But now this is like finding the philosopher’s stone. This is the real deal down at the base of society.
I am now preparing the first story that will deal with how this poor woman Sherry, my ‘hood historian, was humiliated by other students at our elementary school for the mere fact of being from ‘the projects’. This writer is painfully aware of that type of humiliation as he faced the same thing later when he moved to the neighborhood featured in H&C. Again, will there be political lessons to be learned? I do not believe so, directly. However, real stories about the fate of the working class down at the base can help explain the very real retardants to working class political consciousness that we face as we try to organize here in America. I can quote socialist principles, chapter and verse, elsewhere in this space. These stories desperately need to be told here.
I am reposting this introduction here as the start to a consecutive presentation of the stories that I will to tell. Originally I intended to make them occasional pieces but I think they work better as a consecutive series.
This entry announces what promises to be the start of another short series of commentaries like my recently completed History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga (hereafter H&C). Those who followed that story (see archives) know that I have been, for a whole number of reasons both personal and political, on the trail of my roots, including trips to the old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. There through various methods, including extensive use of the Internet, I was able to track down a couple of guys from the old neighborhood whose family story had gripped me and whose personal stories I presented as part of that series.
As an unintended result of that research I have also come in contact with some helpful old high school classmates. One such helpful person, a class officer, asked me to answer some questions that her committee is putting together for our class, the Class of 1964. have posted some of the more pertinent answers here, although this is getting to be a seemingly endless task as the more questions I answer the more they keep sending me. Such is life. But, now I have uncovered more information about my roots coming from an earlier period.
I mentioned in H&C that my family had started life in a housing project with all that implied, then and now. By the beauties of the Internet I have now come in contact with someone who remembers me (or rather my brother- she was sweet on him in elementary school), lived in that housing project during our stay there and for many, many year after my family left, and saw its transformation from a way station for returning World War II veterans to a classic ‘den of iniquity’ as portrayed in media accounts, She has agreed to be my ‘hood historian for this series. Moreover she has brothers, sisters, children and grandchildren who have memories from that place.
If thing work out this could very well be a slice of life series on the trials and tribulations of members of the marginally working poor, a section of the working class with which I am very familiar. And from my vantage point can produce a study, with all its inherent limitations, of the decline and disintegration of working class political consciousness in America since World War II. In H&C that played out one way with a section of the class that is slightly above the one that will be featured here. That saga did not paint a pretty political picture. Nor will, I fear, this one. But, damn, why shouldn’t these people have their stories told, warts and all.
Again, like H&C, this series will really narrate a very prosaic working class set of stories. I will, however, organize these stories differently because now I know what I am looking for and each story will be able to stand on its own. In H&C the story as it unfolded piecemeal, frankly, got out of control and I do not believe that when I put all the parts together at the end that it had the power that I wanted it to have, and that it did have as it unfolded.
That said, if this time last year somebody asked me if I would be doing a series like I would have said they were crazy. I then wanted to discuss the finer theoretical points of organizing for withdrawal from Iraq or building a workers party. But now this is like finding the philosopher’s stone. This is the real deal down at the base of society.
I am now preparing the first story that will deal with how this poor woman Sherry, my ‘hood historian, was humiliated by other students at our elementary school for the mere fact of being from ‘the projects’. This writer is painfully aware of that type of humiliation as he faced the same thing later when he moved to the neighborhood featured in H&C. Again, will there be political lessons to be learned? I do not believe so, directly. However, real stories about the fate of the working class down at the base can help explain the very real retardants to working class political consciousness that we face as we try to organize here in America. I can quote socialist principles, chapter and verse, elsewhere in this space. These stories desperately need to be told here.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
THE BLACK-ROBED ANGELS OF DEATH RIDE AGAIN
COMMENTARY
ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY NOW!
The United States Supreme Court has just handed down (on April 16, 2008) it latest death penalty-related decision, in this case concerning the mechanics of its application. In a 7-2 decision (with reasoning being all over the place as seven different opinions have been reported) the Court held that the three-stage lethal injection used by Kentucky (and other states) is not cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution. No real surprise there because, as I have noted before, this court, filled as it is with original intent constitutional theorists, still has not decided whether drawing and quartering is unconstitutional. I am sure that they do not believe that it is torturous.
In another piece of news on the death penalty front the court also heard arguments that same day on whether child rape is a capital offense and therefore can constitutionally be subject to the death penalty. I would be surprised (but only a little) if the court expanded the number of crimes legitimately subject to the death penalty at this point.
That said, what I really want to discuss here is Associate Supreme Court Justice John Paul Steven’s commentary (and that is all it is legally because it was not germane to the decision in the case) in his separate opinion (in which he supported the constitutionality of the lethal injection application) that he believed that the death penalty itself is unconstitutional. This is the first time in a long time that a sitting justice of the Supreme Court has taken such a position. And that, my friends, is to the good. Here, however, is my problem with all this. What is he going to do about it?
I remember several years ago liberal anti-death penalty advocates fell all over themselves in honoring former Associate Justice Harry Blackmon when he came out against the death penalty. Of course, that was after he had retired so it did not do one death row inmate one damn bit of good. Is this the case here with Stevens? It does make a legal/technical different for the possible fates of current individual inmates. More to the point this development permits me a chance to restate what we should be fighting for-not in the courts (or not solely in the courts) but in the streets. We do not recognize the state’s right to take a life, for the guilty or the innocent. Abolish the death penalty now!
ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY NOW!
The United States Supreme Court has just handed down (on April 16, 2008) it latest death penalty-related decision, in this case concerning the mechanics of its application. In a 7-2 decision (with reasoning being all over the place as seven different opinions have been reported) the Court held that the three-stage lethal injection used by Kentucky (and other states) is not cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution. No real surprise there because, as I have noted before, this court, filled as it is with original intent constitutional theorists, still has not decided whether drawing and quartering is unconstitutional. I am sure that they do not believe that it is torturous.
In another piece of news on the death penalty front the court also heard arguments that same day on whether child rape is a capital offense and therefore can constitutionally be subject to the death penalty. I would be surprised (but only a little) if the court expanded the number of crimes legitimately subject to the death penalty at this point.
That said, what I really want to discuss here is Associate Supreme Court Justice John Paul Steven’s commentary (and that is all it is legally because it was not germane to the decision in the case) in his separate opinion (in which he supported the constitutionality of the lethal injection application) that he believed that the death penalty itself is unconstitutional. This is the first time in a long time that a sitting justice of the Supreme Court has taken such a position. And that, my friends, is to the good. Here, however, is my problem with all this. What is he going to do about it?
I remember several years ago liberal anti-death penalty advocates fell all over themselves in honoring former Associate Justice Harry Blackmon when he came out against the death penalty. Of course, that was after he had retired so it did not do one death row inmate one damn bit of good. Is this the case here with Stevens? It does make a legal/technical different for the possible fates of current individual inmates. More to the point this development permits me a chance to restate what we should be fighting for-not in the courts (or not solely in the courts) but in the streets. We do not recognize the state’s right to take a life, for the guilty or the innocent. Abolish the death penalty now!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
*The Russian Revolution in Red and Black- Once Again on Kronstadt
Click on title to link to YouTube footage of the Russian Revolution. Click on from there for other examples.
DVD REVIEW
The Russian Revolution in Color, 2007
The sailors of the Baltic Fleet stationed at Kronstadt on the entrance way to Petrograd played a vanguard and heroic role in the various stages leading up to, and including, the October revolution in Russia in 1917. The sailors of the Baltic Fleet played a vanguard and heroic role in defending that revolution on the many fronts of the three-year Civil War against the Whites. According to the premise of this docudrama, tinged as it is in anarchist and anti-communist colors, the Kronstadt sailors also played a vanguard role in defending the premises of that revolution in their uprising against the seemingly power-crazed Bolsheviks in 1921.
That is where Bolshevik sympathizers, including this writer, part company with the creators of this work on the virtues, especially the political virtues, of the sailors. And it is, whether viewed tragically or not, also the point of departure for those who saw the necessity of defending the Bolshevik experiment, arms in hand, as it lay prostrate after years of civil war and those who later, mainly from their cozy armchairs, made this the definitive point of the degeneration of the revolution of 1917. Moreover, apparently until the end of times someone, somewhere, in some cozy armchair, is going to pose the question of the Kronstadt uprising of 1921 as the defining moment in the process of degeneration of the Russian revolution. I, like the exiled Bolshevik Left-Oppositionist Leon Trotsky, ask the simple question- why? For what purpose? (See archives article entitled Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt, written by Trotsky in 1938).
This two-part docudrama (The Fight For Freedom and Civil War) adequately highlights the social facts that made the Baltic sailors play an important role in the various stages of the revolution during 1917. Their skill levels, their camaraderie and their ties to the peasantry and working class back home made them a lynch pin for all kinds of actions planned by the Bolsheviks once the sailors were won to the need for decisive actions. In fact, as the docudrama points out, at a couple of points-the April and July Days they were ahead of the curve of the revolution. Moreover, the sailors played a decisive role in the actual physical overthrow of the Provisional Government in October and later the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. Throughout the period, however, one should recognize that they did not act as an independent revolutionary factor but acted, for the most part, as agents of a civilian revolutionary party- Lenin’s Bolsheviks.
Needless to say when the storm cloud of civil war raised its head with the uprising of the Czech Legion and the intervention of the united imperialist powers the Kronstadt sailors were at their posts, especially at the critical moments in front of Kazan. They laid down their heads on all the civil war fronts, as well. I should note here that the pen name that I use in this space, Markin, is to honor one of those heroic sailors who laid down his head on one of the many fronts being contested by the Red and White Armies. It is also rather germane to note here that the bulk of the cadre sailors from 1917 either shared Markin’s fate, took administrative jobs with the Bolshevik government of otherwise provided service to the revolution. The upshot, of all this, is to point out, as Trotsky did, that those sailors who rose against the Bolsheviks in 1921 were not the same cadre that performed heroic service earlier.
That view has been contested, and is contested here by some of the inevitable ‘talking heads’ that are interspersed between various action segments. And that is the rub. As pointed out up above the creators of this film have their own axes to grind. So we get the inevitable diabolical Lenin and the Bolsheviks as the personification of evil, all hungry bureaucrats ready to pounce on any political opposition. In short, the traditional anarchist/anti-communist litany that we have heard for the past 90 years. Here, however, beyond the specific chronology of the Kronstadt uprising itself (and the point Trotsky was trying to make in his 1938 article mentioned above) is the key question of when the revolution degenerated (the whys and what to do about it we will leave for another time).
I would argue that if 1921 is the point of qualitative degeneration (and therefore the point that a third revolution is necessary) then the whole Bolshevik experiment was wrong from the beginning, including the heroic role of the Baltic sailors. That means, and here we have the benefit of hindsight such as it is, that the working class is organically incapable of making a working class revolution to implement socialism. I do not subscribe to that opinion but that should send those who are stuck intellectually imprisoned in Kronstadt 1921 cause for pause.
DVD REVIEW
The Russian Revolution in Color, 2007
The sailors of the Baltic Fleet stationed at Kronstadt on the entrance way to Petrograd played a vanguard and heroic role in the various stages leading up to, and including, the October revolution in Russia in 1917. The sailors of the Baltic Fleet played a vanguard and heroic role in defending that revolution on the many fronts of the three-year Civil War against the Whites. According to the premise of this docudrama, tinged as it is in anarchist and anti-communist colors, the Kronstadt sailors also played a vanguard role in defending the premises of that revolution in their uprising against the seemingly power-crazed Bolsheviks in 1921.
That is where Bolshevik sympathizers, including this writer, part company with the creators of this work on the virtues, especially the political virtues, of the sailors. And it is, whether viewed tragically or not, also the point of departure for those who saw the necessity of defending the Bolshevik experiment, arms in hand, as it lay prostrate after years of civil war and those who later, mainly from their cozy armchairs, made this the definitive point of the degeneration of the revolution of 1917. Moreover, apparently until the end of times someone, somewhere, in some cozy armchair, is going to pose the question of the Kronstadt uprising of 1921 as the defining moment in the process of degeneration of the Russian revolution. I, like the exiled Bolshevik Left-Oppositionist Leon Trotsky, ask the simple question- why? For what purpose? (See archives article entitled Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt, written by Trotsky in 1938).
This two-part docudrama (The Fight For Freedom and Civil War) adequately highlights the social facts that made the Baltic sailors play an important role in the various stages of the revolution during 1917. Their skill levels, their camaraderie and their ties to the peasantry and working class back home made them a lynch pin for all kinds of actions planned by the Bolsheviks once the sailors were won to the need for decisive actions. In fact, as the docudrama points out, at a couple of points-the April and July Days they were ahead of the curve of the revolution. Moreover, the sailors played a decisive role in the actual physical overthrow of the Provisional Government in October and later the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. Throughout the period, however, one should recognize that they did not act as an independent revolutionary factor but acted, for the most part, as agents of a civilian revolutionary party- Lenin’s Bolsheviks.
Needless to say when the storm cloud of civil war raised its head with the uprising of the Czech Legion and the intervention of the united imperialist powers the Kronstadt sailors were at their posts, especially at the critical moments in front of Kazan. They laid down their heads on all the civil war fronts, as well. I should note here that the pen name that I use in this space, Markin, is to honor one of those heroic sailors who laid down his head on one of the many fronts being contested by the Red and White Armies. It is also rather germane to note here that the bulk of the cadre sailors from 1917 either shared Markin’s fate, took administrative jobs with the Bolshevik government of otherwise provided service to the revolution. The upshot, of all this, is to point out, as Trotsky did, that those sailors who rose against the Bolsheviks in 1921 were not the same cadre that performed heroic service earlier.
That view has been contested, and is contested here by some of the inevitable ‘talking heads’ that are interspersed between various action segments. And that is the rub. As pointed out up above the creators of this film have their own axes to grind. So we get the inevitable diabolical Lenin and the Bolsheviks as the personification of evil, all hungry bureaucrats ready to pounce on any political opposition. In short, the traditional anarchist/anti-communist litany that we have heard for the past 90 years. Here, however, beyond the specific chronology of the Kronstadt uprising itself (and the point Trotsky was trying to make in his 1938 article mentioned above) is the key question of when the revolution degenerated (the whys and what to do about it we will leave for another time).
I would argue that if 1921 is the point of qualitative degeneration (and therefore the point that a third revolution is necessary) then the whole Bolshevik experiment was wrong from the beginning, including the heroic role of the Baltic sailors. That means, and here we have the benefit of hindsight such as it is, that the working class is organically incapable of making a working class revolution to implement socialism. I do not subscribe to that opinion but that should send those who are stuck intellectually imprisoned in Kronstadt 1921 cause for pause.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
*An Open Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal Supporters-A Personal Commentary
Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.
Commentary
The Partisan Defense Committee has passed "An Open Letter to All Supporters of Mumia‘s Freedom" to this writer. Check links to the right under Partisan Defense Committee to read the letter (or click on title). Those few who might not know of the torturous legal battles to free this innocent man can find further information at the above-mentioned Partisan Defense site. I make my own comments below.
Normally I pass information about the case of political prisoner Mumia abu-Jamal on without much comment because the case speaks for itself. The case has been front and center in international labor defense struggles for over two decades. However, in light of the adverse ruling by a majority of a federal Third Circuit Court of Appeal panel in March 2008 that affirmed Mumia’s 1982 conviction for first-degree murder of a police officer and left the only issue for decision that of resentencing to either reinstate his original death sentence or keep him imprisoned for life without parole I have some things to say about this fight.
Occasionally, in the heat of political battle some fights ensue around strategy that after the smoke has cleared, upon reflection, leave one with more sorrow than anger. Not so today. Today I am mad. Am I mad about the irrational decision by the majority of the Third Circuit panel in Mumia’s case? Yes, but when one has seen enough of these cases over a lifetime then one realizes that, as the late sardonic comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, in the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
What has got me steamed is the obvious bankruptcy of the strategy, if one can use this term, of centering Mumia’s case on the question of a new trial in order to get the ‘masses’- meaning basically parliamentary liberal types interested in supporting the case. This by people who allegedly KNOW better. The bankruptcy of this strategy, its effects on Mumia’s case and the bewildered response of those who pedaled it as good coin is detailed in the above-mentioned Open Letter. Read it.
Today, in reaction to the Third Circuit court’s decision, everyone and their brother and sister are now calling for Mumia’s freedom. At a point where he is between a rock and a hard place. However, it did not have to be that way. Mumia was innocent in 1982 and he did not stop being innocent at any point along this long road. Freedom for Mumia was (and is) the correct slogan in the case. A long line of political criminal cases, starting in this country with that of the Haymarket Martyrs if not before, confirms that simple wisdom. Those who consciously pedaled this weak ‘new trial’ strategy as a get rich quick scheme now have seen the chickens come home to roost. And Mumia pays the price.
I would point out two factors that made a ‘retrial’ strategy in the case of an innocent man particularly Pollyanna-ish for those honest militants who really believed that Mumia’s case was merely a matter of the American justice system being abused and therefore some court would rectify this situation if enough legal resources were in place. First, it is illusory that somehow, as exemplified in this case, a higher court system would remedy this egregious wrong. Long ago I remember a lawyer, I believe that it might have been the late radical lawyer Conrad Lynn no stranger to political defense work, telling a group of us doing defense work for the Black Panthers, that all these judges belong to the same union. They do not upset each other’s work except under extreme duress.
Second, and this is where the ‘wisdom’ of the reformists about reaching the ‘masses’ by a stagest theory of defense work (fight for retrial first, then freedom) turns in on them. As witness the list of names of those who have signed the Partisan Defense Committee’s call for Mumia’s freedom, excepting professional liberals and their hangers –on, those interested in Mumia’s case (or any leftwing political defense case) will sign on just as easily for freedom as retrial. Thus, opportunism does not pay, even in the short haul. That said, Free Mumia- say it loud, say it proud.
Commentary
The Partisan Defense Committee has passed "An Open Letter to All Supporters of Mumia‘s Freedom" to this writer. Check links to the right under Partisan Defense Committee to read the letter (or click on title). Those few who might not know of the torturous legal battles to free this innocent man can find further information at the above-mentioned Partisan Defense site. I make my own comments below.
Normally I pass information about the case of political prisoner Mumia abu-Jamal on without much comment because the case speaks for itself. The case has been front and center in international labor defense struggles for over two decades. However, in light of the adverse ruling by a majority of a federal Third Circuit Court of Appeal panel in March 2008 that affirmed Mumia’s 1982 conviction for first-degree murder of a police officer and left the only issue for decision that of resentencing to either reinstate his original death sentence or keep him imprisoned for life without parole I have some things to say about this fight.
Occasionally, in the heat of political battle some fights ensue around strategy that after the smoke has cleared, upon reflection, leave one with more sorrow than anger. Not so today. Today I am mad. Am I mad about the irrational decision by the majority of the Third Circuit panel in Mumia’s case? Yes, but when one has seen enough of these cases over a lifetime then one realizes that, as the late sardonic comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, in the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
What has got me steamed is the obvious bankruptcy of the strategy, if one can use this term, of centering Mumia’s case on the question of a new trial in order to get the ‘masses’- meaning basically parliamentary liberal types interested in supporting the case. This by people who allegedly KNOW better. The bankruptcy of this strategy, its effects on Mumia’s case and the bewildered response of those who pedaled it as good coin is detailed in the above-mentioned Open Letter. Read it.
Today, in reaction to the Third Circuit court’s decision, everyone and their brother and sister are now calling for Mumia’s freedom. At a point where he is between a rock and a hard place. However, it did not have to be that way. Mumia was innocent in 1982 and he did not stop being innocent at any point along this long road. Freedom for Mumia was (and is) the correct slogan in the case. A long line of political criminal cases, starting in this country with that of the Haymarket Martyrs if not before, confirms that simple wisdom. Those who consciously pedaled this weak ‘new trial’ strategy as a get rich quick scheme now have seen the chickens come home to roost. And Mumia pays the price.
I would point out two factors that made a ‘retrial’ strategy in the case of an innocent man particularly Pollyanna-ish for those honest militants who really believed that Mumia’s case was merely a matter of the American justice system being abused and therefore some court would rectify this situation if enough legal resources were in place. First, it is illusory that somehow, as exemplified in this case, a higher court system would remedy this egregious wrong. Long ago I remember a lawyer, I believe that it might have been the late radical lawyer Conrad Lynn no stranger to political defense work, telling a group of us doing defense work for the Black Panthers, that all these judges belong to the same union. They do not upset each other’s work except under extreme duress.
Second, and this is where the ‘wisdom’ of the reformists about reaching the ‘masses’ by a stagest theory of defense work (fight for retrial first, then freedom) turns in on them. As witness the list of names of those who have signed the Partisan Defense Committee’s call for Mumia’s freedom, excepting professional liberals and their hangers –on, those interested in Mumia’s case (or any leftwing political defense case) will sign on just as easily for freedom as retrial. Thus, opportunism does not pay, even in the short haul. That said, Free Mumia- say it loud, say it proud.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
On the 33rd Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon
This is a repost of an entry from last year. With the recent Congressional hearings on the situation in Iraq involving today's General Westmorland-General Petreaus-and today's Ambassador Bunker-Ambassador Crocker a look at a previous act of American hubris is in order.
BOOK REVIEW
APRIL 30TH MARKS THE 33ND ANNIVERSARY OF THE MILITARY VICTORY OF THE NORTH VIETNAMESE ARMY/ SOUTH VIETNAMESE NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY
VIETNAM –A HISTORY, STANLEY KARNOW, PENQUIN BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1983
As the current Bush Administration-directed quagmire continues in Iraq it is rather timely to look at the previously bout of American imperialist madness in Vietnam if only in order to demonstrate the similar mindsets, then and now, of the American political establishment and their hangers-on. This book, unintentionally I am sure, is a prima facie argument, against those who see Iraq (or saw Vietnam) as merely an erroneous policy of the American government that can be ‘fixed’ by a change to a more rational imperialist policy guided by a different elite. Undeniably there are many differences between the current war and the struggle in Vietnam. Not the least of which is that in Vietnam there was a Communist-led insurgency that leftists throughout the world could identify with and were duty-bound to support. No such situation exists in Iraq today where, seemingly, from the little we know about the murky politics of the parties there militant leftists can support individual anti-imperialist actions as they occur but stand away, way away from the religious sectarian struggle for different versions of a fundamentalist Islamic state that the various parties are apparently fighting for.
Stanley Karnow’s well-informed study of the long history of struggle in Vietnam against outsiders, near and far, is a more than adequate primer about the history and the political issues, from the American side at least, as they came to a head in Vietnam in the early 1960’s. This work was produced in conjunction with a Public Broadcasting System documentary in 1983 so that if one wants to take the time to get a better grasp of the situation as it unfolded the combination of the literary and visual presentations will make one an ‘armchair expert’ on the subject. A glossary of, by now, unfamiliar names of secondary players and chronology of events is helpful as are some very good photographs that lead into each chapter
This book is the work of a long time journalist who covered Southeast Asia from the 1950’s until at least the early 1980’s when he went back after the war was over and interviewed various survivors from both sides as well as key political players. Although over twenty years has passed since the book’s publication it appears to me that he has covered all the essential elements of the dispute as well as the wrangling, again mainly on the American side , of policy makers big and small. While everyone should look at more recent material that material appears to me to be essentially more specialized analysis of the general themes presented in Karnow’s book. Or are the inevitably self-serving memoirs by those, like former Secretary of War Robert McNamara, looking to refurbish their images for the historical record. Karnow’s book has the added virtue of having been written just long enough after the end of the war that memories, faulty as they are in any case, were still fresh but with enough time in between for some introspection.
The first part of Karnow’s book deals with the long history of the Vietnamese as a people in their various provincial enclaves, or as a national entity, to be independent of the many other powers in the region who wanted to subjugate them, particularly China. The book also pays detailed attention to the fight among the European colonial powers for dominance in the region culminating in the decisive victory for control by France in the 1800’s. That domination by a Western imperialist power, ultimately defeated by the same Communist and nationalist forces that were to defeat the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies, sets the stage for the huge role that the United States would come to play from the time of the French defeat in 1954 until their own defeat a couple of decades later. This section is important to read because the premises of the French about their adversary became, in almost cookie-cutter fashion, the same premises that drove American policy. And to similar ends.
The bulk of the book and the central story line, however, is a study of the hubris of American imperialist policy-makers in attempting to define their powers, prerogatives and interests in the post-World War II period. The sub-title of the book, which the current inhabitants of the Bush Administration obviously have not read and in any case would willfully misunderstand, is how not to subordinate primary interests to momentary secondary interests in the scramble to preserve the empire.
Apparently, common sense and simple rationality are in short supply when one goes inside the Washington Beltway. Taking into account the differences in personality among the three main villains of the piece- Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon- the similarities of response and need to defend some sense of honor, American honor, are amazingly similar, individual rhetoric aside. There thus can be little wonder the North Vietnamese went about their business of revolution and independence pretty much according to their plans and with little regard to ‘subtleties’ in American diplomacy. But, read the book and judge for yourselves. Do not be surprised if something feels awfully, awfully familiar.
BOOK REVIEW
APRIL 30TH MARKS THE 33ND ANNIVERSARY OF THE MILITARY VICTORY OF THE NORTH VIETNAMESE ARMY/ SOUTH VIETNAMESE NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY
VIETNAM –A HISTORY, STANLEY KARNOW, PENQUIN BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1983
As the current Bush Administration-directed quagmire continues in Iraq it is rather timely to look at the previously bout of American imperialist madness in Vietnam if only in order to demonstrate the similar mindsets, then and now, of the American political establishment and their hangers-on. This book, unintentionally I am sure, is a prima facie argument, against those who see Iraq (or saw Vietnam) as merely an erroneous policy of the American government that can be ‘fixed’ by a change to a more rational imperialist policy guided by a different elite. Undeniably there are many differences between the current war and the struggle in Vietnam. Not the least of which is that in Vietnam there was a Communist-led insurgency that leftists throughout the world could identify with and were duty-bound to support. No such situation exists in Iraq today where, seemingly, from the little we know about the murky politics of the parties there militant leftists can support individual anti-imperialist actions as they occur but stand away, way away from the religious sectarian struggle for different versions of a fundamentalist Islamic state that the various parties are apparently fighting for.
Stanley Karnow’s well-informed study of the long history of struggle in Vietnam against outsiders, near and far, is a more than adequate primer about the history and the political issues, from the American side at least, as they came to a head in Vietnam in the early 1960’s. This work was produced in conjunction with a Public Broadcasting System documentary in 1983 so that if one wants to take the time to get a better grasp of the situation as it unfolded the combination of the literary and visual presentations will make one an ‘armchair expert’ on the subject. A glossary of, by now, unfamiliar names of secondary players and chronology of events is helpful as are some very good photographs that lead into each chapter
This book is the work of a long time journalist who covered Southeast Asia from the 1950’s until at least the early 1980’s when he went back after the war was over and interviewed various survivors from both sides as well as key political players. Although over twenty years has passed since the book’s publication it appears to me that he has covered all the essential elements of the dispute as well as the wrangling, again mainly on the American side , of policy makers big and small. While everyone should look at more recent material that material appears to me to be essentially more specialized analysis of the general themes presented in Karnow’s book. Or are the inevitably self-serving memoirs by those, like former Secretary of War Robert McNamara, looking to refurbish their images for the historical record. Karnow’s book has the added virtue of having been written just long enough after the end of the war that memories, faulty as they are in any case, were still fresh but with enough time in between for some introspection.
The first part of Karnow’s book deals with the long history of the Vietnamese as a people in their various provincial enclaves, or as a national entity, to be independent of the many other powers in the region who wanted to subjugate them, particularly China. The book also pays detailed attention to the fight among the European colonial powers for dominance in the region culminating in the decisive victory for control by France in the 1800’s. That domination by a Western imperialist power, ultimately defeated by the same Communist and nationalist forces that were to defeat the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies, sets the stage for the huge role that the United States would come to play from the time of the French defeat in 1954 until their own defeat a couple of decades later. This section is important to read because the premises of the French about their adversary became, in almost cookie-cutter fashion, the same premises that drove American policy. And to similar ends.
The bulk of the book and the central story line, however, is a study of the hubris of American imperialist policy-makers in attempting to define their powers, prerogatives and interests in the post-World War II period. The sub-title of the book, which the current inhabitants of the Bush Administration obviously have not read and in any case would willfully misunderstand, is how not to subordinate primary interests to momentary secondary interests in the scramble to preserve the empire.
Apparently, common sense and simple rationality are in short supply when one goes inside the Washington Beltway. Taking into account the differences in personality among the three main villains of the piece- Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon- the similarities of response and need to defend some sense of honor, American honor, are amazingly similar, individual rhetoric aside. There thus can be little wonder the North Vietnamese went about their business of revolution and independence pretty much according to their plans and with little regard to ‘subtleties’ in American diplomacy. But, read the book and judge for yourselves. Do not be surprised if something feels awfully, awfully familiar.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
A Crockah Petreaus in the Morning- and the Afternoon too, Part II
Commentary
Immediate Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops from Iraq!
Well, I do not know about you, fellow readers, but I definitely got a sense of being in a time warp with yesterday's, April 8, 2008, Senate Committee hearings. While it did not have the drama of those of last fall it had the same old actors from central casting, General Petreaus and Ambassador Crockah, eh, Crocker. And the story they had to tell had a very familiar ring. When all is said and done the situation will be almost exactly the same as it was in January 2007 when both the military ‘surge’ strategy took off and the Democrats took over control of Congress on a note of high expectancy about ending the war. A little over six months later and we could have just as well turned on the tapes or read the transcripts from last fall’s hearings.
That said, there is not need to say much more here except this- this writer last year screamed, shouted and got himself into a lather when he stated that the troops would not be coming home before the Bush Administration expired its last breathe. Yesterday we got out faces rubbed in that harsh fact. Moreover, from the prospective of a new administration on January 20, 2009, of whatever stripe, it does not appear that, left to their timetables, that there will be troop withdrawal before 2010. I say start talking to your young children and your grandchildren about the nature of war because it looks like they may need to know something about it before American imperialism hightails it out of Iraq. In the meantime we fight, and fight hard, around the slogan- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops And Their Mercenaries From Iraq! Damn.
Immediate Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops from Iraq!
Well, I do not know about you, fellow readers, but I definitely got a sense of being in a time warp with yesterday's, April 8, 2008, Senate Committee hearings. While it did not have the drama of those of last fall it had the same old actors from central casting, General Petreaus and Ambassador Crockah, eh, Crocker. And the story they had to tell had a very familiar ring. When all is said and done the situation will be almost exactly the same as it was in January 2007 when both the military ‘surge’ strategy took off and the Democrats took over control of Congress on a note of high expectancy about ending the war. A little over six months later and we could have just as well turned on the tapes or read the transcripts from last fall’s hearings.
That said, there is not need to say much more here except this- this writer last year screamed, shouted and got himself into a lather when he stated that the troops would not be coming home before the Bush Administration expired its last breathe. Yesterday we got out faces rubbed in that harsh fact. Moreover, from the prospective of a new administration on January 20, 2009, of whatever stripe, it does not appear that, left to their timetables, that there will be troop withdrawal before 2010. I say start talking to your young children and your grandchildren about the nature of war because it looks like they may need to know something about it before American imperialism hightails it out of Iraq. In the meantime we fight, and fight hard, around the slogan- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops And Their Mercenaries From Iraq! Damn.
Monday, April 07, 2008
The Hour Of The Wolf
DVD REVIEW
Howlin' Wolf, The London Sessions, 1971
One of my first exposures to the world of Chicago-style blues, after a steady diet of country-style Delta blues, was the Rolling Stones’ version of the Willie Dixon classic Little Red Rooster back in the early 1960’s. I thought that was a song to beat all songs and it had nothing to do its allegorical nature, you know, about sex. What, moreover, capped it for me the fact that it was originally banned in Boston- from the radio airwaves of the times. Naturally that made this teenager want to hear it even more.
All this is by way of saying-yes; the Stones did a great version of that song but if you really want it heard then you must go to the master- Howlin' Wolf. That big gravelly-voiced man who, in still pictures that I have seen of him as well as film seems to be inhaling the microphone, lets it all hang out as he struts his stuff on that number. In Do the Do, Little Red Rooster, Killing Floor and on and on the Wolf sweats, bleeds, sucks up the whiskey, has another one for good measure and gets down on his knees, sometimes literally, to belt out the blues.
In this two-disc set of Howlin' Wolf classics some of those Stones did exactly what I mentioned above-went to the source. Listen in to the dialogue when the Wolf tells these trained, experienced musicians how to do the do here on Little Red Rooster. And they are all ears. That says it all. Moreover, the musical excitement builds as song after song gets you in a true blues mood. This is all about sex, about whiskey, about hardworking weeks to get to fun-loving Saturday nights. Yes, the hour of the Wolf is just before the dawn. Get this masterwork. You will not regret it.
Howlin' Wolf, The London Sessions, 1971
One of my first exposures to the world of Chicago-style blues, after a steady diet of country-style Delta blues, was the Rolling Stones’ version of the Willie Dixon classic Little Red Rooster back in the early 1960’s. I thought that was a song to beat all songs and it had nothing to do its allegorical nature, you know, about sex. What, moreover, capped it for me the fact that it was originally banned in Boston- from the radio airwaves of the times. Naturally that made this teenager want to hear it even more.
All this is by way of saying-yes; the Stones did a great version of that song but if you really want it heard then you must go to the master- Howlin' Wolf. That big gravelly-voiced man who, in still pictures that I have seen of him as well as film seems to be inhaling the microphone, lets it all hang out as he struts his stuff on that number. In Do the Do, Little Red Rooster, Killing Floor and on and on the Wolf sweats, bleeds, sucks up the whiskey, has another one for good measure and gets down on his knees, sometimes literally, to belt out the blues.
In this two-disc set of Howlin' Wolf classics some of those Stones did exactly what I mentioned above-went to the source. Listen in to the dialogue when the Wolf tells these trained, experienced musicians how to do the do here on Little Red Rooster. And they are all ears. That says it all. Moreover, the musical excitement builds as song after song gets you in a true blues mood. This is all about sex, about whiskey, about hardworking weeks to get to fun-loving Saturday nights. Yes, the hour of the Wolf is just before the dawn. Get this masterwork. You will not regret it.
On the 40th Anniversary Year of the Vietnamese Tet Offensive And The 33rd Anniversary Day Of The Fall Of Ho Chi Minh City (Then Saigon)-TET- A Book Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Tet Offensive of 1968.
Book Review
This Year Marks the 45th Anniversary of the Tet Offensive of 1968 and also this month marks the 38th Anniversary of the fall of Saigon in 1975. Two victories for our side.
TET!, Don Ordorfer, Putnam, New York, 1971
A new edition of this book was published in 2001 with, I believe, a new introduction by the author. I am using the old edition for my own political purposes. I will read the new introduction at some point and add comment at that time.
Recently I was listening to Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio and the subject concerned formation of political consciousness. One of the callers identified himself as an ardent 1960’s anti-Vietnam War protester and self-styled ‘hippie’ who in 1984 ‘got religion’ and saw the error of his ways. The formative point of this new found wisdom was a documentary on the Public Broadcast System (PBS) that indicated to him that the Tet Offensive of 1968 has not been a military victory for the North Vietnamese/South Vietnamese Liberation Front forces (hereafter NVA/NLF). Somehow along the way he had assumed, based, he said, on information from Walter Cronkite that it was a military victory. Well, this writer then as now, as we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of that event, can confirm for that caller that, indeed, Tet was not a NVA/NLF military victory. Here is the point, however, military victory or not, it was certainly a political victory for those NVA/NLF forces. In modern conditions, sometimes, political victories are more important that military ones. The book under review, whatever else it shortcomings might be, confirms this view.
Is this book the best one on the history of the Tet offensive? Probably not. However it has the virtue of having been written a short time after this major political event. Thus, although it is not the "first draft of history" it is close enough for our purposes. The drawback here is that it was written while the war was still going on so that the relationship between Tet 1968, Tet 1972 and then the final military victory in 1975 does not give the event its full impact in the overall scheme of NVA/NLF strategy and American/South Vietnamese counter-strategy.
The author hits all the high points of this decisive several month period from about the summer of 1967 when the NVA/NLF decided to make a major push against the South to Tet itself and its immediate aftermath. The author starts off his book with a description of the famous NLF raid on the American embassy, goes on to the discuss the strategic aims of the North Vietnamese and the American response to it, the personal saga of one Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the in-fighting in the old Cold war national security establishment about the proper American response and then the results and aftermath of the offensive.
Reading history with a purpose, in short, to learn some lessons is sometimes a chancy thing. Here that purpose can be encapsulated in the following few words- to draw the lessons of history of the Vietnam War in order to apply them to the opposition struggle against the Iraq war. Yes, the differences between Vietnam and Iraq, in the final analysis are probably greater than the similarities however the American hubris that led Lyndon Johnson to escalation in Vietnam and George W. Bush to occupation in Iraq is still in operation. In the end the author draws the conclusion that history will eventually draw on Tet 1968, and that today's American leaders seem to be willfully ignoring- in modern military warfare the political question is the question. From the NVA/NLF side that entailed heavy and dramatic losses but I would argue that their decision to probe American military and political resolve was essentially correct. Read on.
Book Review
This Year Marks the 45th Anniversary of the Tet Offensive of 1968 and also this month marks the 38th Anniversary of the fall of Saigon in 1975. Two victories for our side.
TET!, Don Ordorfer, Putnam, New York, 1971
A new edition of this book was published in 2001 with, I believe, a new introduction by the author. I am using the old edition for my own political purposes. I will read the new introduction at some point and add comment at that time.
Recently I was listening to Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio and the subject concerned formation of political consciousness. One of the callers identified himself as an ardent 1960’s anti-Vietnam War protester and self-styled ‘hippie’ who in 1984 ‘got religion’ and saw the error of his ways. The formative point of this new found wisdom was a documentary on the Public Broadcast System (PBS) that indicated to him that the Tet Offensive of 1968 has not been a military victory for the North Vietnamese/South Vietnamese Liberation Front forces (hereafter NVA/NLF). Somehow along the way he had assumed, based, he said, on information from Walter Cronkite that it was a military victory. Well, this writer then as now, as we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of that event, can confirm for that caller that, indeed, Tet was not a NVA/NLF military victory. Here is the point, however, military victory or not, it was certainly a political victory for those NVA/NLF forces. In modern conditions, sometimes, political victories are more important that military ones. The book under review, whatever else it shortcomings might be, confirms this view.
Is this book the best one on the history of the Tet offensive? Probably not. However it has the virtue of having been written a short time after this major political event. Thus, although it is not the "first draft of history" it is close enough for our purposes. The drawback here is that it was written while the war was still going on so that the relationship between Tet 1968, Tet 1972 and then the final military victory in 1975 does not give the event its full impact in the overall scheme of NVA/NLF strategy and American/South Vietnamese counter-strategy.
The author hits all the high points of this decisive several month period from about the summer of 1967 when the NVA/NLF decided to make a major push against the South to Tet itself and its immediate aftermath. The author starts off his book with a description of the famous NLF raid on the American embassy, goes on to the discuss the strategic aims of the North Vietnamese and the American response to it, the personal saga of one Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the in-fighting in the old Cold war national security establishment about the proper American response and then the results and aftermath of the offensive.
Reading history with a purpose, in short, to learn some lessons is sometimes a chancy thing. Here that purpose can be encapsulated in the following few words- to draw the lessons of history of the Vietnam War in order to apply them to the opposition struggle against the Iraq war. Yes, the differences between Vietnam and Iraq, in the final analysis are probably greater than the similarities however the American hubris that led Lyndon Johnson to escalation in Vietnam and George W. Bush to occupation in Iraq is still in operation. In the end the author draws the conclusion that history will eventually draw on Tet 1968, and that today's American leaders seem to be willfully ignoring- in modern military warfare the political question is the question. From the NVA/NLF side that entailed heavy and dramatic losses but I would argue that their decision to probe American military and political resolve was essentially correct. Read on.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
***IMPORTANT MUMIA ABU JAMAL UPDATE-FREE MUMIA
Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.
Commentary
The legendary social commentator and stand up comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction.
The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be.
Go to the Partisan Defense Committee link at the right side of this commentary (or click on title) to get a statement on the meaning of this outcome and information about future actions on Mumia’s behalf. For now-Free Mumia! Free all the class-war prisoners!
Commentary
The legendary social commentator and stand up comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction.
The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be.
Go to the Partisan Defense Committee link at the right side of this commentary (or click on title) to get a statement on the meaning of this outcome and information about future actions on Mumia’s behalf. For now-Free Mumia! Free all the class-war prisoners!
Radical Reconstruction: The Second Civil War
DVD REVIEW
Reconstruction: The Second Civil War, Two Parts Revolution and Reaction, PBS, 2004
Back in the days of my personal ‘pre-history’ the Reconstruction period directly after the American Civil War ended in 1865 was cast as the time of the scalawags, carpetbaggers, Black Codes and ultimately after a determined fight by the ‘right’ people in the South ‘redemption’. In short a time of shame in the American experience and, at least implicitly, a racist slap at blacks and their supporters. Well so much for that nonsense.
There certainly was plenty that went wrong during radical reconstruction in the South but the conventional high school history textbooks never got into the whole story. Nor did they want to. The whole story is that until fairly recently this radical reconstruction period was the most democratic period in the South in American history, for white and black alike. Previously, I have written some book reviews on this subject that led me to this documentary. This documentary goes a long way toward a better visual understanding of what went on in that period.
The first part of the Radical Reconstruction era was dominated by three basic plans that are described here in some detail; the aborted Lincoln ‘soft’ union indivisible efforts; the Johnson ‘soft’ redemption plans; and, the radical Republican ‘scorched earth’ policy toward the South. In the end none of these plans was pursued strongly enough to insure that enhanced black rights gained through legislation would lead to enlightened citizenship. The documentary presents detailed critiques of all these plans and some insights about the social and cultural mores of the country at the time that do not make for a pretty picture.
The producers spend some time trying to demystify what the radical reconstruction governments did and did not do. This is done in the usual ‘even-handed’ approach of PBS documentaries by the use of various individual life stories-a former slave, ex-Yankee officer and a woman plantation owner. That there were scandalous activities and more than enough corrupt politicians to go around goes without saying. However like most myths there is a snowball effect about how bad things really were that obliterates the very real advances for black (and some poor whites) like public education, improved roads and increased state facilities that were anathema to the planting class that formerly ruled the South.
The second part of the documentary deals with the conservative counter-revolution in order to overthrow the radical governments culminating in the well-known Compromise of 1877. The actions of that Southern rabble, rich and poor whites alike, formed in militias and other para-military operations like the Klan is certainly not pretty. Moreover it took about a century and a ‘cold’ civil war during the 1960’s to even minimally right that situation (a battle that continues to this day). For those that need an in depth, definitive study of this subject you must turn to the master Eric Foner (who is also one of the ‘talking heads’, another PBS standard practice, on screen) and his monumental Reconstruction, 1863-1877. However, if you want a shorter but nevertheless informative visual overview of Reconstruction this is your first stop.
Reconstruction: The Second Civil War, Two Parts Revolution and Reaction, PBS, 2004
Back in the days of my personal ‘pre-history’ the Reconstruction period directly after the American Civil War ended in 1865 was cast as the time of the scalawags, carpetbaggers, Black Codes and ultimately after a determined fight by the ‘right’ people in the South ‘redemption’. In short a time of shame in the American experience and, at least implicitly, a racist slap at blacks and their supporters. Well so much for that nonsense.
There certainly was plenty that went wrong during radical reconstruction in the South but the conventional high school history textbooks never got into the whole story. Nor did they want to. The whole story is that until fairly recently this radical reconstruction period was the most democratic period in the South in American history, for white and black alike. Previously, I have written some book reviews on this subject that led me to this documentary. This documentary goes a long way toward a better visual understanding of what went on in that period.
The first part of the Radical Reconstruction era was dominated by three basic plans that are described here in some detail; the aborted Lincoln ‘soft’ union indivisible efforts; the Johnson ‘soft’ redemption plans; and, the radical Republican ‘scorched earth’ policy toward the South. In the end none of these plans was pursued strongly enough to insure that enhanced black rights gained through legislation would lead to enlightened citizenship. The documentary presents detailed critiques of all these plans and some insights about the social and cultural mores of the country at the time that do not make for a pretty picture.
The producers spend some time trying to demystify what the radical reconstruction governments did and did not do. This is done in the usual ‘even-handed’ approach of PBS documentaries by the use of various individual life stories-a former slave, ex-Yankee officer and a woman plantation owner. That there were scandalous activities and more than enough corrupt politicians to go around goes without saying. However like most myths there is a snowball effect about how bad things really were that obliterates the very real advances for black (and some poor whites) like public education, improved roads and increased state facilities that were anathema to the planting class that formerly ruled the South.
The second part of the documentary deals with the conservative counter-revolution in order to overthrow the radical governments culminating in the well-known Compromise of 1877. The actions of that Southern rabble, rich and poor whites alike, formed in militias and other para-military operations like the Klan is certainly not pretty. Moreover it took about a century and a ‘cold’ civil war during the 1960’s to even minimally right that situation (a battle that continues to this day). For those that need an in depth, definitive study of this subject you must turn to the master Eric Foner (who is also one of the ‘talking heads’, another PBS standard practice, on screen) and his monumental Reconstruction, 1863-1877. However, if you want a shorter but nevertheless informative visual overview of Reconstruction this is your first stop.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Tales From The 'Hood- An Introduction
Commentary
This entry announces what promises to be the start of another short series of commentaries like my recently completed History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga (hereafter H&C). Those who followed that story (see archives) know that I have been, for a whole number of reasons both personal and political, on the trail of my roots, including trips to the old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. There through various methods, including extensive use of the Internet, I was able to track down a couple of guys from the old neighborhood whose family story had gripped me and whose personal stories I presented as part of that series.
As an unintended result of that research I have also come in contact with some helpful old high school classmates. One such helpful person, a class officer, asked me to answer some questions that her committee is putting together for our class, the Class of 1964.I have posted some of the more pertinent answers here, although this is getting to be a seemingly endless task as the more questions I answer the more they keep sending me. Such is life. But, now I have uncovered more information about my roots coming from an earlier period.
I mentioned in H&C that my family had started life in a housing project with all that implied, then and now. By the beauties of the Internet I have now come in contact with someone who remembers me (or rather my brother- she was sweet on him in elementary school), lived in that housing project during our stay there and for many, many year after my family left, and saw its transformation from a way station for returning World War II veterans to a classic ‘den of iniquity’ as portrayed in media accounts. She has agreed to be my ‘hood historian for this series. Moreover she has brothers, sisters, children and grandchildren who have memories from that place.
If thing work out this could very well be a slice of life series on the trials and tribulations of members of the marginally working poor, a section of the working class with which I am very familiar. And from my political vantage point can produce a study, with all its inherent limitations, of the decline and disintegration of working class political consciousness in America since World War II. In H&C that played out one way with a section of the class that is slightly above the one that will be featured here. That saga did not paint a pretty political picture. Nor will, I fear, this one. But, damn, why shouldn’t these people have their stories told, warts and all.
Again, like with H&C, this series will really narrate a very prosaic working class set of stories. I will, however, organize these stories differently because now I know what I am looking for and each story will be able to stand on its own. In H&C the story as it unfolded piecemeal, frankly, got out of control and I do not believe that when I put all the parts together at the end that it had the power that I wanted it to have, and that it did have as it unfolded.
That said, if this time last year somebody asked me if I would be doing a series like this I would have said they were crazy. I then wanted to discuss the finer theoretical points of organizing for withdrawal from Iraq or building a workers party. But now this is like finding the philosopher’s stone. This is the real deal down at the base of society.
I am now preparing the first story that will deal with how this poor woman Sherry, my ‘hood historian, was humiliated by other students at our elementary school for the mere fact of being from ‘the projects’. This writer is painfully aware of that type of humiliation as he faced the same thing later when he moved to the neighborhood featured in H&C. Again, will there be political lessons to be learned? I do not believe so, directly. However, real stories about the fate of the working class down at the base can help explain the very real retardants to working class political consciousness that we face as we try to organize here in America. I can quote socialist principles, chapter and verse, elsewhere in this space. These stories desperately need to be told here.
This entry announces what promises to be the start of another short series of commentaries like my recently completed History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga (hereafter H&C). Those who followed that story (see archives) know that I have been, for a whole number of reasons both personal and political, on the trail of my roots, including trips to the old working class neighborhood where I came of political age. There through various methods, including extensive use of the Internet, I was able to track down a couple of guys from the old neighborhood whose family story had gripped me and whose personal stories I presented as part of that series.
As an unintended result of that research I have also come in contact with some helpful old high school classmates. One such helpful person, a class officer, asked me to answer some questions that her committee is putting together for our class, the Class of 1964.I have posted some of the more pertinent answers here, although this is getting to be a seemingly endless task as the more questions I answer the more they keep sending me. Such is life. But, now I have uncovered more information about my roots coming from an earlier period.
I mentioned in H&C that my family had started life in a housing project with all that implied, then and now. By the beauties of the Internet I have now come in contact with someone who remembers me (or rather my brother- she was sweet on him in elementary school), lived in that housing project during our stay there and for many, many year after my family left, and saw its transformation from a way station for returning World War II veterans to a classic ‘den of iniquity’ as portrayed in media accounts. She has agreed to be my ‘hood historian for this series. Moreover she has brothers, sisters, children and grandchildren who have memories from that place.
If thing work out this could very well be a slice of life series on the trials and tribulations of members of the marginally working poor, a section of the working class with which I am very familiar. And from my political vantage point can produce a study, with all its inherent limitations, of the decline and disintegration of working class political consciousness in America since World War II. In H&C that played out one way with a section of the class that is slightly above the one that will be featured here. That saga did not paint a pretty political picture. Nor will, I fear, this one. But, damn, why shouldn’t these people have their stories told, warts and all.
Again, like with H&C, this series will really narrate a very prosaic working class set of stories. I will, however, organize these stories differently because now I know what I am looking for and each story will be able to stand on its own. In H&C the story as it unfolded piecemeal, frankly, got out of control and I do not believe that when I put all the parts together at the end that it had the power that I wanted it to have, and that it did have as it unfolded.
That said, if this time last year somebody asked me if I would be doing a series like this I would have said they were crazy. I then wanted to discuss the finer theoretical points of organizing for withdrawal from Iraq or building a workers party. But now this is like finding the philosopher’s stone. This is the real deal down at the base of society.
I am now preparing the first story that will deal with how this poor woman Sherry, my ‘hood historian, was humiliated by other students at our elementary school for the mere fact of being from ‘the projects’. This writer is painfully aware of that type of humiliation as he faced the same thing later when he moved to the neighborhood featured in H&C. Again, will there be political lessons to be learned? I do not believe so, directly. However, real stories about the fate of the working class down at the base can help explain the very real retardants to working class political consciousness that we face as we try to organize here in America. I can quote socialist principles, chapter and verse, elsewhere in this space. These stories desperately need to be told here.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Once Again, A Short Note on Iraq- "Cut and Run Now"
Commentary
Well, we have just passed the commemoration of five years of war in Iraq. We have also, sadly, passed the 4000 mark of those American soldiers killed there. Now comes news that the civil war has flared up again in Baghdad and Basra. This time from a different source, the Madhi Army. My friends this is serious. If there are any serious, disciplined militia fighters in Iraq it is this group. Several months ago I warned that come spring we would see the real ‘fruits’ of the military surge of the past year that was to make everything ‘nice’. Well, the bandage seemingly has lost its adhesion. Plan as if all hell is going to break loose. It probably will.
I mentioned last week in commemorating the 5th Anniversary of the Iraq invasion that I was momentarily just a little fatigued by our failure, that is the anti-war movement's failure, to force an immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. You can forget that fatigue factor now. All out into the streets under this slogan- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All American/Allied Troops And Their Mercenaries From Iraq!! - “Cut and Run Now”
Well, we have just passed the commemoration of five years of war in Iraq. We have also, sadly, passed the 4000 mark of those American soldiers killed there. Now comes news that the civil war has flared up again in Baghdad and Basra. This time from a different source, the Madhi Army. My friends this is serious. If there are any serious, disciplined militia fighters in Iraq it is this group. Several months ago I warned that come spring we would see the real ‘fruits’ of the military surge of the past year that was to make everything ‘nice’. Well, the bandage seemingly has lost its adhesion. Plan as if all hell is going to break loose. It probably will.
I mentioned last week in commemorating the 5th Anniversary of the Iraq invasion that I was momentarily just a little fatigued by our failure, that is the anti-war movement's failure, to force an immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. You can forget that fatigue factor now. All out into the streets under this slogan- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All American/Allied Troops And Their Mercenaries From Iraq!! - “Cut and Run Now”
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
*A Short Look At The American Civil War- Professor David's View
Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Confederacy President Jefferson Davis.
BOOK REVIEW
APRIL IS THE 147TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE START OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR- HONOR THE UNION SOLDIERS- WHITE AND BLACK
Why the North Won The Civil War, Donald Herbert David, Simon and Schuster, New York,
1962, 1996
I have used this space over the past couple of years to commemorate many events important in working class history, leftist history and just plain democratic history (hey, that is our heritage too). My idea, as explained in my profile, is to try to transmit to the younger generation of leftist militants a sense of the rich, if many times misunderstood, history of our movement. With that in mind, I have noticed recently that while I have spilled a certain amount of justifiable ink on honoring John Brown and his band at Harpers Ferry and on the personage of Abraham Lincoln, also justifiable, I have not spent nearly enough time on some of the other great issues of the Civil War period itself. I begin to rectify that error here. And it is an error. A lot of what the United States have become in the world, for good or evil, stems from the events of that period.
Some of the books that I review in this space as I introduce subjects that I think will be of interest are those that first got me interested in the subject. Thus, the books tend to have older copyright dates and, in many cases, have been superseded by more recent (and generally, better) work on the subject. But I still see value in them as a starting point. That is the case here. I distinctly remember, after having gone through the basics of the American Civil War in my high school history class, going out to buy this book in order to better understand the question posed by the title of this book- why did the North win the Civil War? Although this book does not directly address some of the reasons that I would give now for why the North succeeded it nevertheless gave some, to me, provocative thoughts about the issues then.
This short book is a result of a conference held in the late 1950’s at Gettysburg, in preparation for celebrating the Civil War Centennial, which discussed various historical points of view as to the basis for the Northern victory. Now there have been innumerable books on every conceivable aspect of the Civil War, from songs to sewing, so by this year 2008 so it is hard to say that this book sticks out. However this book represented the best thinking of the last generation of Civil War scholars on the general trends of the times.
The subjects delved into-Northern and Southern economics, generalmanship, diplomacy, effects of war- weariness, and Southern character defects have all been expanded on since. But here is a place to start an outline of the subject. This book also helps to understand one of the positive consequences of the Northern victory-the consolidation of a unitary trans-continental state. Of course, readers, let us keep our eyes on the prize- the real import of studying about the Civil War is to see how the great social issue of that day-the abolition of slavery got fought out to the finish.
BOOK REVIEW
APRIL IS THE 147TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE START OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR- HONOR THE UNION SOLDIERS- WHITE AND BLACK
Why the North Won The Civil War, Donald Herbert David, Simon and Schuster, New York,
1962, 1996
I have used this space over the past couple of years to commemorate many events important in working class history, leftist history and just plain democratic history (hey, that is our heritage too). My idea, as explained in my profile, is to try to transmit to the younger generation of leftist militants a sense of the rich, if many times misunderstood, history of our movement. With that in mind, I have noticed recently that while I have spilled a certain amount of justifiable ink on honoring John Brown and his band at Harpers Ferry and on the personage of Abraham Lincoln, also justifiable, I have not spent nearly enough time on some of the other great issues of the Civil War period itself. I begin to rectify that error here. And it is an error. A lot of what the United States have become in the world, for good or evil, stems from the events of that period.
Some of the books that I review in this space as I introduce subjects that I think will be of interest are those that first got me interested in the subject. Thus, the books tend to have older copyright dates and, in many cases, have been superseded by more recent (and generally, better) work on the subject. But I still see value in them as a starting point. That is the case here. I distinctly remember, after having gone through the basics of the American Civil War in my high school history class, going out to buy this book in order to better understand the question posed by the title of this book- why did the North win the Civil War? Although this book does not directly address some of the reasons that I would give now for why the North succeeded it nevertheless gave some, to me, provocative thoughts about the issues then.
This short book is a result of a conference held in the late 1950’s at Gettysburg, in preparation for celebrating the Civil War Centennial, which discussed various historical points of view as to the basis for the Northern victory. Now there have been innumerable books on every conceivable aspect of the Civil War, from songs to sewing, so by this year 2008 so it is hard to say that this book sticks out. However this book represented the best thinking of the last generation of Civil War scholars on the general trends of the times.
The subjects delved into-Northern and Southern economics, generalmanship, diplomacy, effects of war- weariness, and Southern character defects have all been expanded on since. But here is a place to start an outline of the subject. This book also helps to understand one of the positive consequences of the Northern victory-the consolidation of a unitary trans-continental state. Of course, readers, let us keep our eyes on the prize- the real import of studying about the Civil War is to see how the great social issue of that day-the abolition of slavery got fought out to the finish.
Monday, March 24, 2008
*History and Class Consciousness- A Working Class Saga
Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive copy of his 1923 article "Habit And Custom" that, I think, helps explain the mountains we have to move in order to create that socialist future that humankind so desperately needs.
This saga began life almost a year ago as a short, supposedly one time, commentary about a childhood friend from my old working class neighborhood who I found out had passed away several years ago in a state mental hospital after a life long battle with his inner demons. At a basic level the story of the family and its destruction drew hold of me and I began to investigate, along with a neighborhood woman (who is cited in the story as the neighborhood historian), the fates of the other members of the family. I have edited the five stories that make up the saga to avoid the repetitions inherent in presenting each story individually as it unfolded but have left the bodies essentially as presented. Nevertheless it is a little jagged in spots. Needless to say I continue to stand by the ‘political’ lessons to be drawn. Read on.
Story #1- An Uncounted Casualty Of War
This space is usually devoted to ‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is necessary. Let me tell the tale.
Recently I returned, while on some unrelated business in the area, to the neighborhood where I grew up. The neighborhood is one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950's, my parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder.
While there I happened upon an old neighbor who recognized me despite the fact that I had not seen her for at least thirty years. Since she had grown up and lived there continuously, taking over the family house, I inquired about the fate of various people that I had grown up with. She, as is usually the case in such circumstances, had a wealth of information but one story in particular cut me to the quick. I asked about a boy named Kenny who was a couple of years younger than I was but who I was very close to until my teenage years. Kenny used to tag along with my crowd until, as teenagers will do, we made it clear that he was no longer welcome being ‘too young’ to hang around with us older boys. Sound familiar.
The long and the short of it is that he found other friends of his own age to hang with, one in particular, from down the street named Jimmy. I had only a nodding acquaintance with both thereafter. As happened more often than not during the 1960’s in working class neighborhoods all over the country, especially with kids who were not academically inclined, when Jimmy came of age he faced the draft or the alternative of ‘volunteering’ for military service. He enlisted. Kenny, for a number of valid medical reasons, was 4-F (unqualified for military service). Of course, you know what is coming. Jimmy was sent to Vietnam where he was killed in 1968 at the age of 20. His name is one of the 58,000 plus that are etched on that Vietnam Memorial Wall down in Washington. His story ends there. Unfortunately, Kenny’s just begins.
Kenny took Jimmy’s death hard. Harder than one can even imagine. The early details are rather sketchy but they may have involved illegal drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the street. At some point he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. I make no pretense of having adequate knowledge about the causes of mental illnesses but someone I trust has told me that such a traumatic event as Jimmy’s death can trigger the condition in young adults. In any case, the institutionalizations inevitably began. And later the halfway houses, and all the other forms of control for those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.
Certainly not a happy story. Perhaps, aside from the specific details, not even an unusual one in modern times. Nevertheless I now count Kenny as one of the uncounted casualties of war. Along with those physically wounded soldiers who can back from Vietnam service unable to cope with their own demons and sought solace in drugs and alcohol. And those, who for other reasons, could no adjust and found themselves on the streets, in the half way shelters or the V. A. hospitals. And also those grieving parents and other loved ones whose lives were shattered and broken by the lost of their children. There is no wall in Washington for them. But, maybe there should be. As for poor Kenny from the old neighborhood. Rest in Peace.
Story#2- The Working Class Buries One of Its Own
In the 20th century January was traditionally the month to honor fallen working class leaders such as Lenin, Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. That tradition still goes on, however, more in the European working class movement than here. January can and should, however, also be a time to honor other working class people, those down at the base, as well. Over the last year I have posted a couple of such stories (See Hard Times in Babylon and An Uncounted Casualty of War in the May 2007 archives.) Here in its proper place is another about a fallen daughter of the class who died this January.
In An Uncounted Casualty of War (hereafter, Uncounted), written last May, I noted that I had then recently returned to the old working class neighborhood where I grew up. Maybe it is age, maybe it is memory, maybe it is the need at this late date to gain a sense of roots but that return has haunted me ever since. I have gone back a couple of times since then to hear more of what had happened to those in the old neighborhood from a woman who continues to live there and had related the above story to me. This one is about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny's (the subject of the Uncounted commentary) mother Margaret. Read it and weep.
As I also mentioned in Uncounted in my teens I had lost track of Kenny who as he reached maturity took the death of a friend who died in Vietnam very hard. Harder than one can even imagine. The early details are rather sketchy but they may have involved drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the street. At some point Kenny was diagnosed as schizophrenic. The institutionalizations inevitably began. And later the halfway houses and all the other forms of control for those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.
Needless to say Kenny’s problems were well beyond his mother and father’s ability to comprehend or control. His father, like mine, had limited education and meager work prospects. In short, there were no private resources for Kenny and he and they were thus consigned to public institutionalization schemes. The shame of this, among other things, led to his father’s early death many, many years ago. His mother, strong Irish Catholic working class woman that she was, shouldered the burden by herself until Kenny’s death. The private and public horrors and humiliations that such care entailed must have taken a toll on her most of us could not stand. Apparently in the end it got to her as well as she let her physical appearance go down, became more reclusive and turned in on herself reverting in conversation to dwelling on happier times as a young married woman in the mid-1940’s.
Kenny’s woes, however, as I recently found out were only part of this sad story. Kenny had two older brothers whom I did not really know well because they were not around. Part of that reason was they were in and out of trouble or one sort or another. My neighborhood historian related to me that at some point both sons had dropped out of sight and had not been seen by their mother for over thirty years. They are presumed to be dead or that is the story Margaret told my historian. In any case, since Kenny’s death Margaret’s health, or really her will to live went down hill fairly rapidly. Late last year she was finally placed in a nursing home where she died this month. Only a very few attended her funeral and her memory is probably forgotten by all except my historian friend and myself in this poor commentary.
I am a working class political person. That is the great legacy that my parents left me, intentionally or not. Are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, but I swear that when we build the new society that this country and this world needs we will not let the Kennys of the world be shunted off to the side. And we will not let the Margarets of the world, our working class mothers, die alone and forgotten. As for Kenny and Margaret may they rest in peace.
Story# 3-History and Class Consciousness
Despite the highly theoretical sounding title of this commentary this is really a part of the very prosaic working class story that I have written about in several earlier commentaries in this space. This is the third part of what now has turned into a trilogy of the fate of a working class family from my old neighborhood. Let me continue the tale.
As I related in Uncounted and reemphasized in Working Class my own family started life in the housing projects, at that time not the notorious hell holes of crime and deprivation that they later became but still a mark of being low, very low, on the social ladder at a time when others were heading to the Valhalla of the newly emerging suburbs. By clawing and scratching my parents saved enough money to buy an extremely modest single-family house. The house was in a neighborhood that was, and is, one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950’s, my parents and others including Kenny’s parents, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. That is where I met Kenny and through him his family, including his mother Margaret and his father James. She seemed like a nice woman although I never got to know her well. His father is just a distant, vague memory.
Needless to say Kenny’s problems were well beyond his mother and father’s ability to comprehend or control. His father, like mine, had a limited education, few marketable skills and meager work prospects. They were always, as many workingmen in the neighborhood were, on the edge-last hired, first fired when an economic downturn came. Thus, there were no private resources for Kenny and he and they were thus consigned to public institutionalization schemes. The shame of this, among other things, led to his father’s early death many, many years ago in the mid-1980’s. This is where James’s story comes into focus.
Kenny’s woes, as I found out this January, were only part of this sad story about the fate of Margaret and James's sons. Kenny had two older brothers, James, Jr. and Francis, whom I did not really know well because they were not around. Part of the reason for that was they were in and out of trouble or one sort or another and were not around the neighborhood much. My neighborhood historian mentioned in January that at some point both sons had dropped out of sight and had not been seen by their mother for over thirty years. They are presumed to be dead or that is the story Margaret told my historian. If I have time at some point I may try to track down what happened to them and then we will have a five-part story. At that point I will surely need the literary resources of someone like James T. Farrell in his Studs Lonigan trilogy for guidance.
For now, however, let me continue with James’s fate. My historian friend told me that James and my father when they were young married men were very, very close buddies, something that I was totally unaware of. Thick as thieves, as the old adage goes. Apparently they liked to go drinking together, when they could afford it. Nothing startling there. I do find it odd though that a South Boston-raised Irishman and my father, a Kentucky-raised hillbilly, hit it off. However, as James lost control over the behavior of his sons he became more morose and more introverted. At this point their long friendship faded away.
James, apparently, was like many an Irish father. His sons, good or bad, were his world. Hell, they were his sons and that was all that mattered. They were to be forgiven virtually anything except the bringing of shame on the household. I know the intricacies and absurdities of that shame culture from my own Irish mother. The boys in their various ways nevertheless did bring shame to the household. Kenny we know about. It is hard to tell but from what my historian related to me for James, Jr. and Francis there were bouts of petty and latter grand thievery and other troubles with the law. She was vague in her recollections here although crimes, great and small, were not uncommon in the neighborhood. The old ironic saying in the neighborhood that a man’s son was destined to be either a thief or a priest ran truer here than one might have thought.
Well, the long and short of it is that James started to have severe physical problems, particularly heart problems and had trouble holding a steady job. In the end the shock of his sons' disappearances without a word literally broke his heart. Anything, but not abandonment. His end, as my historian related the details, was not pretty and he suffered greatly.
As I said in Working Class I am a working class politician. That is the great legacy that my parents left me, intentionally or not. As I have asked previously at this point in relating the other parts of the story -are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, I do not think so but this family’s saga of turning in on itself in the absence of some greater purpose and solution goes a long way to explaining why down at the base of society we have never had as much as nibble of independent working class political consciousness expressed in this country. That, my friends, is why this saga can aptly be entitled history and class-consciousness, but let us put them in small letters. As for Kenny, Margaret and James may they rest in peace.
Story#4- Markin Takes A Turn As Neighborhood Historian
Despite the somewhat academic- sounding title of this commentary this is really a part of the very prosaic working class story that I have written about previously in several earlier commentaries in this space. This is the fourth part of what, as I will explain in the next paragraph, now has now turned into a five part saga of the fate of a family from the old working class neighborhood that I grew up in. Let me continue that tale.
In part three of this story, History and Class Consciousness (hereafter, History), about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny’s father I mentioned that if I had time I would try to find out the fates of his two long missing older brothers, James, Jr. and Francis, who had not been heard from by the family in over thirty years. My invaluable neighborhood historian had related to me that Kenny’s recently deceased mother, Margaret, had assumed they were dead, or that is what she told my historian. I have become so intrigued by this family’s story that I have made time to dig deeper into it. Now I know, or will soon know, both their fates. They, in any case, are not dead.
In detecting information about the whereabouts of the two brothers did I need to be a super sleuth? No. Did I need to spend hours poring over documents? No. I have in this space, on more than one occasion, railed against the information superhighway as a substitute for political organizing but for finding public records that lead one to missing people it cannot be beat. That source, and using the old telephone did yeoman’s service here. I have thus now found the brothers, or at least the whereabouts of the oldest one James, Jr. whom I have already interviewed and who has promised me in his cryptic way to lead me to his younger brother Francis. Francis’s story will be detailed in a separate commentary after I interview him.
I found James, Jr. (hereafter, just James) living alone in seedy, rundown rooming house in a transitional Boston neighborhood. Strangely, he was more than willing to talk to me about his life and family although he was only vaguely aware of my family, except that he remembered that I was somewhat political. His story, in general outline, is not an unfamiliar one, at least not to me.
Early on James got into petty crime and then more serious crime. As a teenager during the early part of the Vietnam War era, after dropping out of school despite having previously been something of an honors student, he got into enough trouble that he was given a choice by the court system to ‘volunteer’ for military duty or go to jail. He took the military service, for a while. Given orders to Vietnam, he went AWOL not for any political reason but just, as he said, “because”. Later, after time in a military stockade and a civilian jail (for other, unrelated acts) James got ‘religion’-that is he figured the percentages of keeping up his then current ‘lifestyle’ did not add up to a long and happy life.
Based on that street wisdom James became a drifter, grifter and midnight sifter (his words) but stayed on the legal side of the line. The inevitable failed marriages, lost jobs and financial problems as a result of such a lifestyle followed, in their seemingly monotonously natural course. This harsh lifestyle, moreover, ultimately wore down his psychological capacities and at some point he was diagnosed as clinically depressed, unable to hold a steady job and was put on welfare. He has subsisted at various times on day labor wages, welfare of one sort or another, and handouts ever since. That pretty much sums up the balance of his life for our purposes here.
Now, about the question that must be on the reader’s mind, as it surely was on mine. What in James’s biography warrants going underground from one’s family for over thirty years? The answer James gave-shame. James just flat out got tired of taking a psychological beating every time his mother Margaret berated him in his early youth for some seemingly trivial mistake. To not have to deal with that, as he started to get into real trouble, James just walked away from his family. His rationale was that if they did not know about it then he was doing them a favor. Strange reasoning, perhaps. However, I too know, and perhaps you do also, the wrath of an Irish mother when she gets into the shaming ritual. I faced that more than one time myself. It is not pretty. And I consider my mother something of a saint! James may have stayed away too long and, in the end, broke his father’s heart, but I found nothing inherently absurd about his response. We all face our demons in our own particular ways.
I make no claims that James's is a typical working class story. It is not. Nor is this a typical working class family saga. But there are just enough of the pathologies that I have over a lifetime of observation noted about working class existence to make the story serve my purpose. It can serve as a descriptive, if not, cautionary tale about the plight of working people in modern American society. Think about it that way, if you will.
I commented, off-handedly, in History that at a point where I had been successful in locating the two older brothers I would I will surely need the literary talents of someone like James T. Farrell in his Studs Lonigan trilogy for guidance. That has proven, thus far, to not be necessary as this is a most ordinary story. What this story really calls for is the skills of someone like the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, or better yet a Lenin, to try to analyze and to generalize how a couple of fairly smart working class kids like James and his brother turned the wrong way and in the end turned inward rather than become class fighters. It needs an appraisal of how the transmission belt of working class political consciousness that broke down in our fathers’ generation (the so-called “greatest generation” that survived the Great Depression and fought World War II) remained broken in the baby-boomer generation (our generation, the generation of ’68). There is thus something of a ‘lost’ political generation after ours that is not there to give guidance now that today’s youth look like they, at least some of them, are ready to ‘storm heaven’.
As I have said in the previous commentaries on this story I am a working class politician. That is the great legacy that my parents left me, intentionally or not. As I have asked previously in relating the other parts of the story -are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, I do not think so but this family’s saga of turning in on itself in the absence of some greater purpose and solution goes a long way to explaining why down at the base of society we have never had as much as nibble of independent working class political consciousness expressed in this country. Think about that.
Story#5-And the tin pan bended.. and the story ended
The title of this commentary takes its name from what turned out to be the late folksinger and folk historian Dave Van Ronk’s last album. This seems as an appropriate last title as any for the twists and turns of this series. Despite Van Ronk’s alliterative title this is really part of the very prosaic working class story that I have written about in several earlier commentaries in this space. This is the fifth and final part of what, as I will relate in the next paragraph, has now turned into a saga of the fate of a working class family from my old neighborhood. Let me finish the tale.
In part three of this story, History and Class Consciousness (hereafter, History), about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny’s father I mentioned that if I had time I would try to find out the fates of his two long missing older brothers, James and Francis, who had not been heard from by the family in over thirty years. I had become so intrigued by this family’s story that I have made time to dig deeper into it.
During my interview with James he was somewhat mysterious in his agreement to get me in touch with Francis. I thus expected that Francis’s story would be similar (or even more depressing than his). That was entirely not the case. Apparently Francis is to be considered the 'success' of the family. I mentioned in the last part that I found James to be smart, if more on the street side than academically. Well, Francis seemed to have traversed both sides. I interviewed him in a law office in Boston, his law office.
Somewhere along the way Francis figured out faster than James and with somewhat more determination that unless your heart is totally into it a life of crime just takes too much energy. But here is the odd part. He had total recall of me as a kid, including my politics. He even remembered something that I had not-he was my captain in canvassing for John F. Kennedy for President in 1960. I am not sworn to secrecy and I checked out the information independently so that I can add that today he is a fairly influential, if not widely known, member of the Massachusetts Democratic Party establishment.
That poses two questions. The first and obvious one, that I also posed when I interviewed James, is one that must be on the reader’s mind, as it surely was on mine. What in this biographic sketch warrants going underground from one’s family for over thirty years? Francis answered that unless he got a fresh, totally fresh, start that he would have wound up like his brother James. Fair enough. Moreover he just flat out got tired of taking a psychological beating every time his mother, Margaret, berated him in his early youth for some seemingly trivial mistake.
To not have to deal with that as Francis started to get into real trouble he just walked away from his family. His rationale, like his brother's was that if they did not know about it then he was doing them a favor. Strange reasoning, perhaps. However, I know, and perhaps you do also, the wrath of an Irish mother when she gets into the shaming ritual. I faced that more than one time myself. It is not pretty. Francis may have stayed away too long and, in the end, coldly broke his father’s heart, but there is nothing absurd about his response. We all face our demons in our own particular ways.
The second question is why, if he were so politically knowledgeable and alienated, did he become, from my political perspective, a class traitor. As mentioned above Francis knew that I had gone ‘commie’ so that was no big deal to him but here is where the cautionary tale for working class kids comes in- he saw his best chance of advancement for himself by working his way up the Democratic Party hierarchy. This, my friends, is ultimately the problem we have to deal with if we are ever to get our own workers party with some bite. The Francis types that clutter the American political landscape can be had but not until we have leverage.
I commented, off-handedly, in History that at a point where I had been successful in locating the two older brothers I would I will surely need the literary talents of someone like James T. Farrell in his Studs Lonigan trilogy for guidance. That has proven to not be necessary as this is a most ordinary story. What this story really calls for is the skills of someone like the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, or better yet a Lenin, to try to analyze and to generalize how a couple of fairly smart working class kids turned the wrong way and in the end turned inward rather than become class fighters.
It, further, needs an appraisal of how the transmission belt of working class political consciousness that broke down in our fathers’ generation (the so-called “greatest generation” that survived the Great Depression and fought World War II) remains broken in the baby-boomer generation (their and my generation, the generation of ’68). There is thus something of a ‘lost’ generation that is not there now that today’s youth look like they are ready to ‘storm heaven’. We better act on this question.
As I have said in the previous commentaries on this story I am a working class politician. That is the great legacy that my parents left me, intentionally or not. As I have asked previously in relating the other parts of the story -are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, I do not think so but this family’s saga of turning in on itself in the absence of some greater purpose and solution goes a long way to explaining why down at the base of society we have for a long time never had as much as nibble of independent working class political consciousness expressed in this country.
This saga began life almost a year ago as a short, supposedly one time, commentary about a childhood friend from my old working class neighborhood who I found out had passed away several years ago in a state mental hospital after a life long battle with his inner demons. At a basic level the story of the family and its destruction drew hold of me and I began to investigate, along with a neighborhood woman (who is cited in the story as the neighborhood historian), the fates of the other members of the family. I have edited the five stories that make up the saga to avoid the repetitions inherent in presenting each story individually as it unfolded but have left the bodies essentially as presented. Nevertheless it is a little jagged in spots. Needless to say I continue to stand by the ‘political’ lessons to be drawn. Read on.
Story #1- An Uncounted Casualty Of War
This space is usually devoted to ‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is necessary. Let me tell the tale.
Recently I returned, while on some unrelated business in the area, to the neighborhood where I grew up. The neighborhood is one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950's, my parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder.
While there I happened upon an old neighbor who recognized me despite the fact that I had not seen her for at least thirty years. Since she had grown up and lived there continuously, taking over the family house, I inquired about the fate of various people that I had grown up with. She, as is usually the case in such circumstances, had a wealth of information but one story in particular cut me to the quick. I asked about a boy named Kenny who was a couple of years younger than I was but who I was very close to until my teenage years. Kenny used to tag along with my crowd until, as teenagers will do, we made it clear that he was no longer welcome being ‘too young’ to hang around with us older boys. Sound familiar.
The long and the short of it is that he found other friends of his own age to hang with, one in particular, from down the street named Jimmy. I had only a nodding acquaintance with both thereafter. As happened more often than not during the 1960’s in working class neighborhoods all over the country, especially with kids who were not academically inclined, when Jimmy came of age he faced the draft or the alternative of ‘volunteering’ for military service. He enlisted. Kenny, for a number of valid medical reasons, was 4-F (unqualified for military service). Of course, you know what is coming. Jimmy was sent to Vietnam where he was killed in 1968 at the age of 20. His name is one of the 58,000 plus that are etched on that Vietnam Memorial Wall down in Washington. His story ends there. Unfortunately, Kenny’s just begins.
Kenny took Jimmy’s death hard. Harder than one can even imagine. The early details are rather sketchy but they may have involved illegal drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the street. At some point he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. I make no pretense of having adequate knowledge about the causes of mental illnesses but someone I trust has told me that such a traumatic event as Jimmy’s death can trigger the condition in young adults. In any case, the institutionalizations inevitably began. And later the halfway houses, and all the other forms of control for those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.
Certainly not a happy story. Perhaps, aside from the specific details, not even an unusual one in modern times. Nevertheless I now count Kenny as one of the uncounted casualties of war. Along with those physically wounded soldiers who can back from Vietnam service unable to cope with their own demons and sought solace in drugs and alcohol. And those, who for other reasons, could no adjust and found themselves on the streets, in the half way shelters or the V. A. hospitals. And also those grieving parents and other loved ones whose lives were shattered and broken by the lost of their children. There is no wall in Washington for them. But, maybe there should be. As for poor Kenny from the old neighborhood. Rest in Peace.
Story#2- The Working Class Buries One of Its Own
In the 20th century January was traditionally the month to honor fallen working class leaders such as Lenin, Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. That tradition still goes on, however, more in the European working class movement than here. January can and should, however, also be a time to honor other working class people, those down at the base, as well. Over the last year I have posted a couple of such stories (See Hard Times in Babylon and An Uncounted Casualty of War in the May 2007 archives.) Here in its proper place is another about a fallen daughter of the class who died this January.
In An Uncounted Casualty of War (hereafter, Uncounted), written last May, I noted that I had then recently returned to the old working class neighborhood where I grew up. Maybe it is age, maybe it is memory, maybe it is the need at this late date to gain a sense of roots but that return has haunted me ever since. I have gone back a couple of times since then to hear more of what had happened to those in the old neighborhood from a woman who continues to live there and had related the above story to me. This one is about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny's (the subject of the Uncounted commentary) mother Margaret. Read it and weep.
As I also mentioned in Uncounted in my teens I had lost track of Kenny who as he reached maturity took the death of a friend who died in Vietnam very hard. Harder than one can even imagine. The early details are rather sketchy but they may have involved drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the street. At some point Kenny was diagnosed as schizophrenic. The institutionalizations inevitably began. And later the halfway houses and all the other forms of control for those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.
Needless to say Kenny’s problems were well beyond his mother and father’s ability to comprehend or control. His father, like mine, had limited education and meager work prospects. In short, there were no private resources for Kenny and he and they were thus consigned to public institutionalization schemes. The shame of this, among other things, led to his father’s early death many, many years ago. His mother, strong Irish Catholic working class woman that she was, shouldered the burden by herself until Kenny’s death. The private and public horrors and humiliations that such care entailed must have taken a toll on her most of us could not stand. Apparently in the end it got to her as well as she let her physical appearance go down, became more reclusive and turned in on herself reverting in conversation to dwelling on happier times as a young married woman in the mid-1940’s.
Kenny’s woes, however, as I recently found out were only part of this sad story. Kenny had two older brothers whom I did not really know well because they were not around. Part of that reason was they were in and out of trouble or one sort or another. My neighborhood historian related to me that at some point both sons had dropped out of sight and had not been seen by their mother for over thirty years. They are presumed to be dead or that is the story Margaret told my historian. In any case, since Kenny’s death Margaret’s health, or really her will to live went down hill fairly rapidly. Late last year she was finally placed in a nursing home where she died this month. Only a very few attended her funeral and her memory is probably forgotten by all except my historian friend and myself in this poor commentary.
I am a working class political person. That is the great legacy that my parents left me, intentionally or not. Are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, but I swear that when we build the new society that this country and this world needs we will not let the Kennys of the world be shunted off to the side. And we will not let the Margarets of the world, our working class mothers, die alone and forgotten. As for Kenny and Margaret may they rest in peace.
Story# 3-History and Class Consciousness
Despite the highly theoretical sounding title of this commentary this is really a part of the very prosaic working class story that I have written about in several earlier commentaries in this space. This is the third part of what now has turned into a trilogy of the fate of a working class family from my old neighborhood. Let me continue the tale.
As I related in Uncounted and reemphasized in Working Class my own family started life in the housing projects, at that time not the notorious hell holes of crime and deprivation that they later became but still a mark of being low, very low, on the social ladder at a time when others were heading to the Valhalla of the newly emerging suburbs. By clawing and scratching my parents saved enough money to buy an extremely modest single-family house. The house was in a neighborhood that was, and is, one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950’s, my parents and others including Kenny’s parents, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. That is where I met Kenny and through him his family, including his mother Margaret and his father James. She seemed like a nice woman although I never got to know her well. His father is just a distant, vague memory.
Needless to say Kenny’s problems were well beyond his mother and father’s ability to comprehend or control. His father, like mine, had a limited education, few marketable skills and meager work prospects. They were always, as many workingmen in the neighborhood were, on the edge-last hired, first fired when an economic downturn came. Thus, there were no private resources for Kenny and he and they were thus consigned to public institutionalization schemes. The shame of this, among other things, led to his father’s early death many, many years ago in the mid-1980’s. This is where James’s story comes into focus.
Kenny’s woes, as I found out this January, were only part of this sad story about the fate of Margaret and James's sons. Kenny had two older brothers, James, Jr. and Francis, whom I did not really know well because they were not around. Part of the reason for that was they were in and out of trouble or one sort or another and were not around the neighborhood much. My neighborhood historian mentioned in January that at some point both sons had dropped out of sight and had not been seen by their mother for over thirty years. They are presumed to be dead or that is the story Margaret told my historian. If I have time at some point I may try to track down what happened to them and then we will have a five-part story. At that point I will surely need the literary resources of someone like James T. Farrell in his Studs Lonigan trilogy for guidance.
For now, however, let me continue with James’s fate. My historian friend told me that James and my father when they were young married men were very, very close buddies, something that I was totally unaware of. Thick as thieves, as the old adage goes. Apparently they liked to go drinking together, when they could afford it. Nothing startling there. I do find it odd though that a South Boston-raised Irishman and my father, a Kentucky-raised hillbilly, hit it off. However, as James lost control over the behavior of his sons he became more morose and more introverted. At this point their long friendship faded away.
James, apparently, was like many an Irish father. His sons, good or bad, were his world. Hell, they were his sons and that was all that mattered. They were to be forgiven virtually anything except the bringing of shame on the household. I know the intricacies and absurdities of that shame culture from my own Irish mother. The boys in their various ways nevertheless did bring shame to the household. Kenny we know about. It is hard to tell but from what my historian related to me for James, Jr. and Francis there were bouts of petty and latter grand thievery and other troubles with the law. She was vague in her recollections here although crimes, great and small, were not uncommon in the neighborhood. The old ironic saying in the neighborhood that a man’s son was destined to be either a thief or a priest ran truer here than one might have thought.
Well, the long and short of it is that James started to have severe physical problems, particularly heart problems and had trouble holding a steady job. In the end the shock of his sons' disappearances without a word literally broke his heart. Anything, but not abandonment. His end, as my historian related the details, was not pretty and he suffered greatly.
As I said in Working Class I am a working class politician. That is the great legacy that my parents left me, intentionally or not. As I have asked previously at this point in relating the other parts of the story -are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, I do not think so but this family’s saga of turning in on itself in the absence of some greater purpose and solution goes a long way to explaining why down at the base of society we have never had as much as nibble of independent working class political consciousness expressed in this country. That, my friends, is why this saga can aptly be entitled history and class-consciousness, but let us put them in small letters. As for Kenny, Margaret and James may they rest in peace.
Story#4- Markin Takes A Turn As Neighborhood Historian
Despite the somewhat academic- sounding title of this commentary this is really a part of the very prosaic working class story that I have written about previously in several earlier commentaries in this space. This is the fourth part of what, as I will explain in the next paragraph, now has now turned into a five part saga of the fate of a family from the old working class neighborhood that I grew up in. Let me continue that tale.
In part three of this story, History and Class Consciousness (hereafter, History), about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny’s father I mentioned that if I had time I would try to find out the fates of his two long missing older brothers, James, Jr. and Francis, who had not been heard from by the family in over thirty years. My invaluable neighborhood historian had related to me that Kenny’s recently deceased mother, Margaret, had assumed they were dead, or that is what she told my historian. I have become so intrigued by this family’s story that I have made time to dig deeper into it. Now I know, or will soon know, both their fates. They, in any case, are not dead.
In detecting information about the whereabouts of the two brothers did I need to be a super sleuth? No. Did I need to spend hours poring over documents? No. I have in this space, on more than one occasion, railed against the information superhighway as a substitute for political organizing but for finding public records that lead one to missing people it cannot be beat. That source, and using the old telephone did yeoman’s service here. I have thus now found the brothers, or at least the whereabouts of the oldest one James, Jr. whom I have already interviewed and who has promised me in his cryptic way to lead me to his younger brother Francis. Francis’s story will be detailed in a separate commentary after I interview him.
I found James, Jr. (hereafter, just James) living alone in seedy, rundown rooming house in a transitional Boston neighborhood. Strangely, he was more than willing to talk to me about his life and family although he was only vaguely aware of my family, except that he remembered that I was somewhat political. His story, in general outline, is not an unfamiliar one, at least not to me.
Early on James got into petty crime and then more serious crime. As a teenager during the early part of the Vietnam War era, after dropping out of school despite having previously been something of an honors student, he got into enough trouble that he was given a choice by the court system to ‘volunteer’ for military duty or go to jail. He took the military service, for a while. Given orders to Vietnam, he went AWOL not for any political reason but just, as he said, “because”. Later, after time in a military stockade and a civilian jail (for other, unrelated acts) James got ‘religion’-that is he figured the percentages of keeping up his then current ‘lifestyle’ did not add up to a long and happy life.
Based on that street wisdom James became a drifter, grifter and midnight sifter (his words) but stayed on the legal side of the line. The inevitable failed marriages, lost jobs and financial problems as a result of such a lifestyle followed, in their seemingly monotonously natural course. This harsh lifestyle, moreover, ultimately wore down his psychological capacities and at some point he was diagnosed as clinically depressed, unable to hold a steady job and was put on welfare. He has subsisted at various times on day labor wages, welfare of one sort or another, and handouts ever since. That pretty much sums up the balance of his life for our purposes here.
Now, about the question that must be on the reader’s mind, as it surely was on mine. What in James’s biography warrants going underground from one’s family for over thirty years? The answer James gave-shame. James just flat out got tired of taking a psychological beating every time his mother Margaret berated him in his early youth for some seemingly trivial mistake. To not have to deal with that, as he started to get into real trouble, James just walked away from his family. His rationale was that if they did not know about it then he was doing them a favor. Strange reasoning, perhaps. However, I too know, and perhaps you do also, the wrath of an Irish mother when she gets into the shaming ritual. I faced that more than one time myself. It is not pretty. And I consider my mother something of a saint! James may have stayed away too long and, in the end, broke his father’s heart, but I found nothing inherently absurd about his response. We all face our demons in our own particular ways.
I make no claims that James's is a typical working class story. It is not. Nor is this a typical working class family saga. But there are just enough of the pathologies that I have over a lifetime of observation noted about working class existence to make the story serve my purpose. It can serve as a descriptive, if not, cautionary tale about the plight of working people in modern American society. Think about it that way, if you will.
I commented, off-handedly, in History that at a point where I had been successful in locating the two older brothers I would I will surely need the literary talents of someone like James T. Farrell in his Studs Lonigan trilogy for guidance. That has proven, thus far, to not be necessary as this is a most ordinary story. What this story really calls for is the skills of someone like the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, or better yet a Lenin, to try to analyze and to generalize how a couple of fairly smart working class kids like James and his brother turned the wrong way and in the end turned inward rather than become class fighters. It needs an appraisal of how the transmission belt of working class political consciousness that broke down in our fathers’ generation (the so-called “greatest generation” that survived the Great Depression and fought World War II) remained broken in the baby-boomer generation (our generation, the generation of ’68). There is thus something of a ‘lost’ political generation after ours that is not there to give guidance now that today’s youth look like they, at least some of them, are ready to ‘storm heaven’.
As I have said in the previous commentaries on this story I am a working class politician. That is the great legacy that my parents left me, intentionally or not. As I have asked previously in relating the other parts of the story -are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, I do not think so but this family’s saga of turning in on itself in the absence of some greater purpose and solution goes a long way to explaining why down at the base of society we have never had as much as nibble of independent working class political consciousness expressed in this country. Think about that.
Story#5-And the tin pan bended.. and the story ended
The title of this commentary takes its name from what turned out to be the late folksinger and folk historian Dave Van Ronk’s last album. This seems as an appropriate last title as any for the twists and turns of this series. Despite Van Ronk’s alliterative title this is really part of the very prosaic working class story that I have written about in several earlier commentaries in this space. This is the fifth and final part of what, as I will relate in the next paragraph, has now turned into a saga of the fate of a working class family from my old neighborhood. Let me finish the tale.
In part three of this story, History and Class Consciousness (hereafter, History), about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny’s father I mentioned that if I had time I would try to find out the fates of his two long missing older brothers, James and Francis, who had not been heard from by the family in over thirty years. I had become so intrigued by this family’s story that I have made time to dig deeper into it.
During my interview with James he was somewhat mysterious in his agreement to get me in touch with Francis. I thus expected that Francis’s story would be similar (or even more depressing than his). That was entirely not the case. Apparently Francis is to be considered the 'success' of the family. I mentioned in the last part that I found James to be smart, if more on the street side than academically. Well, Francis seemed to have traversed both sides. I interviewed him in a law office in Boston, his law office.
Somewhere along the way Francis figured out faster than James and with somewhat more determination that unless your heart is totally into it a life of crime just takes too much energy. But here is the odd part. He had total recall of me as a kid, including my politics. He even remembered something that I had not-he was my captain in canvassing for John F. Kennedy for President in 1960. I am not sworn to secrecy and I checked out the information independently so that I can add that today he is a fairly influential, if not widely known, member of the Massachusetts Democratic Party establishment.
That poses two questions. The first and obvious one, that I also posed when I interviewed James, is one that must be on the reader’s mind, as it surely was on mine. What in this biographic sketch warrants going underground from one’s family for over thirty years? Francis answered that unless he got a fresh, totally fresh, start that he would have wound up like his brother James. Fair enough. Moreover he just flat out got tired of taking a psychological beating every time his mother, Margaret, berated him in his early youth for some seemingly trivial mistake.
To not have to deal with that as Francis started to get into real trouble he just walked away from his family. His rationale, like his brother's was that if they did not know about it then he was doing them a favor. Strange reasoning, perhaps. However, I know, and perhaps you do also, the wrath of an Irish mother when she gets into the shaming ritual. I faced that more than one time myself. It is not pretty. Francis may have stayed away too long and, in the end, coldly broke his father’s heart, but there is nothing absurd about his response. We all face our demons in our own particular ways.
The second question is why, if he were so politically knowledgeable and alienated, did he become, from my political perspective, a class traitor. As mentioned above Francis knew that I had gone ‘commie’ so that was no big deal to him but here is where the cautionary tale for working class kids comes in- he saw his best chance of advancement for himself by working his way up the Democratic Party hierarchy. This, my friends, is ultimately the problem we have to deal with if we are ever to get our own workers party with some bite. The Francis types that clutter the American political landscape can be had but not until we have leverage.
I commented, off-handedly, in History that at a point where I had been successful in locating the two older brothers I would I will surely need the literary talents of someone like James T. Farrell in his Studs Lonigan trilogy for guidance. That has proven to not be necessary as this is a most ordinary story. What this story really calls for is the skills of someone like the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, or better yet a Lenin, to try to analyze and to generalize how a couple of fairly smart working class kids turned the wrong way and in the end turned inward rather than become class fighters.
It, further, needs an appraisal of how the transmission belt of working class political consciousness that broke down in our fathers’ generation (the so-called “greatest generation” that survived the Great Depression and fought World War II) remains broken in the baby-boomer generation (their and my generation, the generation of ’68). There is thus something of a ‘lost’ generation that is not there now that today’s youth look like they are ready to ‘storm heaven’. We better act on this question.
As I have said in the previous commentaries on this story I am a working class politician. That is the great legacy that my parents left me, intentionally or not. As I have asked previously in relating the other parts of the story -are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, I do not think so but this family’s saga of turning in on itself in the absence of some greater purpose and solution goes a long way to explaining why down at the base of society we have for a long time never had as much as nibble of independent working class political consciousness expressed in this country.
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