Wisconsin Solidarity
Sunday, February 20, 2011
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50-State Mobilization to Save the American Dream
Saturday February 26, 2011
12-1 PM
In front of the Massachusetts State House
24 Beacon St.
Boston, MA 02108
Calling all students, teachers, union members, workers, patriots, public servants, unemployed folks, progressives, and people of conscience:
In Wisconsin and around our country, the American Dream is under fierce attack. Instead of creating jobs, Republicans are giving tax breaks to corporations and the very rich, and then cutting funding for education, police, emergency response and vital human services. The right to organize is on the chopping block. The American Dream is slipping out of reach for more and more Americans, and we have to fight back.
We call for emergency rallies in front of every statehouse this Saturday at noon to stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin. Demand an end to the attacks on workers' rights and public services across the country. Demand investment, to create decent jobs for the millions of people who desperately want to work. And demand that the rich and powerful pay their fair share.
We are all Wisconsin.
We are all Americans.
Endorsing organizations include: Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, AFL-CIO, SEIU, PCCC, Color of Change, CREDO Action, Democracy for America, Campaign for Community Change, National People's Action, TrueMajority, US Action, Progressive Majority, Courage Campaign, and Van Jones
Friday, February 25, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Latest From The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions' Struggle-Wis. troopers sent to find Democrats, no one home- Hands Off The Democratic Legislators!
Markin comment:
The story below tells the tale in the headline. Last week when the Wisconsin struggle first broke out I mentioned that we might need to send workers' defense guards to the Wisconsin borders to insure that the legislators are not "kidnapped" back into the state. I might not be so far off on that one after all. As I also said in that post we are living in strange time indeed when I am worrying, in the year 2011, about the safety and fate of Democratic legislators. So be it. Victory to the Wisconsin Public Workers Unions!
******
Wis. troopers sent to find Democrats, no one home
By TODD RICHMOND and SCOTT BAUER, AP
3 hours ago
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Teamsters President James Hoffa speaks at a rally in the state Capitol in Ma...
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MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin state troopers were dispatched Thursday to try to find at least one of the 14 Senate Democrats who have been on the run for eight days to delay a vote on Republican Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to strip collective bargaining rights from nearly all public employees.
Meanwhile, the state Assembly appeared close to voting on the union rights bill after two days of filibustering the measure with a blizzard of amendments. Democrats reached an early morning deal after 43 hours of debate to limit the number of remaining amendments and time spent on each.
Troopers went to multiple homes Thursday morning hoping to find at least one of the 14 Democrats, some of whom were rumored to have made short trips home to pick up clothes and other necessities before again fleeing the state. But they came up empty handed, Senate Sergeant at Arms Ted Blazel said.
"Every night we hear about some that are coming back home," said Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who hoped sending the move to send the troopers would pressure Democrats to return.
But Democratic Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who was in the Chicago area, said all 14 senators remained outside of Wisconsin and would not return until Walker was willing to compromise.
"It's not so much the Democrats holding things up, it's really a matter of Gov. Walker holding things up," Erpenbach said.
Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie issued a statement praising the Assembly for nearing a vote and renewing his call for Senate Democrats to come back.
Thousands of people have protested the bill for nine straight days, with hundreds spending the night on the Capitol's hard marble floor as the debate was broadcast on monitors in the rotunda. Many still were sleeping when the deal to only debate 38 more amendments, for no more than 10 minutes each, was announced shortly after 6 a.m. The timing of the agreement means the vote could come as soon as noon Thursday.
"We will strongly make our points, but understand you are limiting the voice of the public as you do this," said Democratic state Rep. Mark Pocan of Madison. "You can't dictate democracy. You are limiting the people's voice with this agreement this morning."
Democrats, who are in the minority, don't have the votes to stop the bill once the vote occurs.
Passage of the bill in the Assembly would be a major victory for Republicans and Walker, but the measure still must clear the Senate. Democrats there left town last week rather than vote on the bill, which has stymied efforts there to take it up.
The battle over labor rights has been heating up across the country, as new Republican majorities tackle budget woes in several states. The GOP efforts have sparked huge protests from unions and their supporters and led Democrats in Wisconsin and Indiana to flee their states to block measures.
Republicans in Ohio offered a small concession Wednesday, saying they would support allowing unionized state workers to collectively bargain on wages — but not for benefits, sick time, vacation or other conditions. Wisconsin's proposal also would allow most public workers to collectively bargain only for wages.
In Ohio, Republican Senate President Tom Niehaus denied protests have dented the GOP's resolve, saying lawmakers decided to make the change after listening to hours of testimony. He said he still believes the bill's core purpose — reining in spending by allowing governments more flexibility in dealing with their workers — is intact.
Senate Democratic Leader Capri Cafaro called the changes "window dressing." She said the entire bill should be scrapped.
"We can't grow Ohio's economy by destroying jobs and attacking the middle class," Cafaro said. "Public employees in Ohio didn't cause our budget problems and they shouldn't be blamed for something that's not their fault."
Wisconsin Democrats have echoed Cafaro for days, but Walker has refused to waver.
Walker reiterated Wednesday that public workers must make concessions to avoid thousands of government layoffs as the state grapples with a $137 million shortfall in its current budget and a projected $3.6 billion hole in the next two-year budget.
The marathon session in the Assembly was grand political theater, with exhausted lawmakers limping around the chamber, rubbing their eyes and yawning as Wednesday night dragged on.
Around midnight, Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, accused Democrats of putting on a show for the protesters. Democrats leapt up and started shouting.
"I'm sorry if democracy is a little inconvenient and you had to stay up two nights in a row," Pocan said. "Is this inconvenient? Hell, yeah! It's inconvenient. But we're going to be heard!"
The Ohio and Wisconsin bills both would strip public workers at all levels of their right to collectively bargain benefits, sick time, vacations and other work conditions. Wisconsin's measure exempts local police, firefighters and the State Patrol and still lets workers collectively bargain their wages as long as they are below inflation. It also would require public workers to pay more toward their pensions and health insurance. Ohio's bill, until Wednesday, would have barred negotiations on wages.
Ohio's measure sits in a Senate committee. No vote has been scheduled on the plan, but thousands of protesters have gathered at the Statehouse to demonstrate, just as in Wisconsin.
In Indiana, Democrats successfully killed a Republican bill that would have prohibited union membership from being a condition of employment by leaving the state on Tuesday. They remained in Illinois in hopes of derailing other parts of Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' agenda, including restrictions on teacher collective bargaining.
And in Oklahoma, a Republican-controlled state House committee on Wednesday narrowly approved legislation to repeal collective bargaining rights for municipal workers in that state's 13 largest cities.
___
Associated Press writers Ryan J. Foley in Madison and Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.
The Assembly deal was announced shortly after 6 a.m. while the troopers were sent after the Democrats at 7 a.m.
The story below tells the tale in the headline. Last week when the Wisconsin struggle first broke out I mentioned that we might need to send workers' defense guards to the Wisconsin borders to insure that the legislators are not "kidnapped" back into the state. I might not be so far off on that one after all. As I also said in that post we are living in strange time indeed when I am worrying, in the year 2011, about the safety and fate of Democratic legislators. So be it. Victory to the Wisconsin Public Workers Unions!
******
Wis. troopers sent to find Democrats, no one home
By TODD RICHMOND and SCOTT BAUER, AP
3 hours ago
Loading... Share No Thanks Must Read?Thank YouYes 185
Teamsters President James Hoffa speaks at a rally in the state Capitol in Ma...
Share |
Email Story Discuss Print
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin state troopers were dispatched Thursday to try to find at least one of the 14 Senate Democrats who have been on the run for eight days to delay a vote on Republican Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to strip collective bargaining rights from nearly all public employees.
Meanwhile, the state Assembly appeared close to voting on the union rights bill after two days of filibustering the measure with a blizzard of amendments. Democrats reached an early morning deal after 43 hours of debate to limit the number of remaining amendments and time spent on each.
Troopers went to multiple homes Thursday morning hoping to find at least one of the 14 Democrats, some of whom were rumored to have made short trips home to pick up clothes and other necessities before again fleeing the state. But they came up empty handed, Senate Sergeant at Arms Ted Blazel said.
"Every night we hear about some that are coming back home," said Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who hoped sending the move to send the troopers would pressure Democrats to return.
But Democratic Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who was in the Chicago area, said all 14 senators remained outside of Wisconsin and would not return until Walker was willing to compromise.
"It's not so much the Democrats holding things up, it's really a matter of Gov. Walker holding things up," Erpenbach said.
Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie issued a statement praising the Assembly for nearing a vote and renewing his call for Senate Democrats to come back.
Thousands of people have protested the bill for nine straight days, with hundreds spending the night on the Capitol's hard marble floor as the debate was broadcast on monitors in the rotunda. Many still were sleeping when the deal to only debate 38 more amendments, for no more than 10 minutes each, was announced shortly after 6 a.m. The timing of the agreement means the vote could come as soon as noon Thursday.
"We will strongly make our points, but understand you are limiting the voice of the public as you do this," said Democratic state Rep. Mark Pocan of Madison. "You can't dictate democracy. You are limiting the people's voice with this agreement this morning."
Democrats, who are in the minority, don't have the votes to stop the bill once the vote occurs.
Passage of the bill in the Assembly would be a major victory for Republicans and Walker, but the measure still must clear the Senate. Democrats there left town last week rather than vote on the bill, which has stymied efforts there to take it up.
The battle over labor rights has been heating up across the country, as new Republican majorities tackle budget woes in several states. The GOP efforts have sparked huge protests from unions and their supporters and led Democrats in Wisconsin and Indiana to flee their states to block measures.
Republicans in Ohio offered a small concession Wednesday, saying they would support allowing unionized state workers to collectively bargain on wages — but not for benefits, sick time, vacation or other conditions. Wisconsin's proposal also would allow most public workers to collectively bargain only for wages.
In Ohio, Republican Senate President Tom Niehaus denied protests have dented the GOP's resolve, saying lawmakers decided to make the change after listening to hours of testimony. He said he still believes the bill's core purpose — reining in spending by allowing governments more flexibility in dealing with their workers — is intact.
Senate Democratic Leader Capri Cafaro called the changes "window dressing." She said the entire bill should be scrapped.
"We can't grow Ohio's economy by destroying jobs and attacking the middle class," Cafaro said. "Public employees in Ohio didn't cause our budget problems and they shouldn't be blamed for something that's not their fault."
Wisconsin Democrats have echoed Cafaro for days, but Walker has refused to waver.
Walker reiterated Wednesday that public workers must make concessions to avoid thousands of government layoffs as the state grapples with a $137 million shortfall in its current budget and a projected $3.6 billion hole in the next two-year budget.
The marathon session in the Assembly was grand political theater, with exhausted lawmakers limping around the chamber, rubbing their eyes and yawning as Wednesday night dragged on.
Around midnight, Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, accused Democrats of putting on a show for the protesters. Democrats leapt up and started shouting.
"I'm sorry if democracy is a little inconvenient and you had to stay up two nights in a row," Pocan said. "Is this inconvenient? Hell, yeah! It's inconvenient. But we're going to be heard!"
The Ohio and Wisconsin bills both would strip public workers at all levels of their right to collectively bargain benefits, sick time, vacations and other work conditions. Wisconsin's measure exempts local police, firefighters and the State Patrol and still lets workers collectively bargain their wages as long as they are below inflation. It also would require public workers to pay more toward their pensions and health insurance. Ohio's bill, until Wednesday, would have barred negotiations on wages.
Ohio's measure sits in a Senate committee. No vote has been scheduled on the plan, but thousands of protesters have gathered at the Statehouse to demonstrate, just as in Wisconsin.
In Indiana, Democrats successfully killed a Republican bill that would have prohibited union membership from being a condition of employment by leaving the state on Tuesday. They remained in Illinois in hopes of derailing other parts of Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' agenda, including restrictions on teacher collective bargaining.
And in Oklahoma, a Republican-controlled state House committee on Wednesday narrowly approved legislation to repeal collective bargaining rights for municipal workers in that state's 13 largest cities.
___
Associated Press writers Ryan J. Foley in Madison and Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.
The Assembly deal was announced shortly after 6 a.m. while the troopers were sent after the Democrats at 7 a.m.
*Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- Jody Reynolds “Endless Sleep”- Billie’s, Billie From "The Projects", View
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Jody Reynolds performing the classic Endless Sleep.
Markin comment:
This is another tongue-in-cheek commentary, the back story if you like, in the occasional entries under this headline going back to the primordial youth time of the 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billie, William James Bradley, the mad hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood. Ya, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own. This song, Endless Sleep, came out at a time when I my family was beginning to start the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe. I was in my 24/7 reading at the local public library branch phase in lieu of being Billie’s accomplice on various, well, let’s call them capers just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. Still Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie I’m still pulling for you. Got it.
JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"
(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)
The night was black, rain fallin' down
Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around
Traced her footsteps down to the shore
‘fraid she's gone forever more
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?
Why did I leave her alone tonight?
That's why her footsteps ran into the sea
That's why my baby has gone from me.
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Ran in the water, heart full of fear
There in the breakers I saw her near
Reached for my darlin', held her to me
Stole her away from the angry sea
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“You took your baby from me away.
My heart cried out “she's mine to keep
I saved my baby from an endless sleep.
[Fade]
Endless sleep, endless sleep
*****
Billie back again, William James Bradley, if you didn’t know. Markin’s pal, Peter Paul Markin’s pal, from over the Adamsville Elementary School and the pope of rock lyrics down here in “the projects.” The Adamsville projects, if you don’t know. Markin, who I hadn’t seen for a while since he told me his family is going to move out of the projects and who has developed this big thing for the local library and books lately, came by the other day to breathe in the fresh air of my rock universe-adorned bedroom when we got to talking about this latest record, Endless Sleep, by Jody Reynolds. All the parents around here, at least the parents that care anyway, or those who have heard the lyrics screaming from their kid’s plug-in blaring radio (that’s why they invented transistor radios-so parents wouldn’t, or couldn’t, catch on to what we are listening to- smarten up is what I say to those kids still on plug-in mode, for christ’s sake) about the not so subtle suicide theme. Ya, like that is what every kid is going to do when the going gets a little tough in the love department. Take a jump in the ocean, and call one and all to join them. Come on, will ya. It's only a song. Besides what is really good about this one is that great back beat on the guitar and Jody Reynold’s cool clothes and sideburns. I wish to high heaven I had both.
But see the pope of rock lyrics, me, can’t just leave this song like that. I have to decode it for the teeny-boppers around here or they will be clueless, including big time book guy Markin. And that is really what is going to make the difference between us here. We had a battle royal over this one. See, Markin always wants to give big play to the “social” meaning of the song, whatever that is, you know where the thing sticks in society, at least teeny-bopper society. Ya, and Markin is also the “sensitive” guy, usually. Like pulling for the girl to get her guy back, or at least go back to her old boyfriend for some back-up love, in Eddie My Love. Or has a kind thing to say about the dumb cluck of a bimbo who went back to the railroad track-stuck car to get some cheapjack class ring in Teen Angel (although he agreed, agreed fully, that the dame was a dumb cluck on other grounds).
Here though I am the sensitive guy, if you can believe that. Here’s why. It seems that Markin has some kind of exception to the “social” rule when it comes to the ocean, to the sea, christ, probably to some scum pond for all I know as the scene for suicide attempts. Apparently he is in the throes of some King Neptune frenzy and took umbrage (his word, not mind I don’t go to the library much) at the idea that someone would desecrate the sea that way, our homeland the sea the way he put it. Like old Neptune hasn’t brought seventy-three types of hell on us with his hurricane tidal waves, his overflowing the seawalls, his flooding everything within three miles of the coast, or when he just throws his flotsam and jetsam (my words, from school, I like them) on the projects beaches whenever he gets fed up. So I have to defend this frail’s action, and gladly.
You know it really is unbelievable once you start to think about it how many of these songs don’t have people in them with names, real names, nicknames, anything to tag on them. Here it’s the same old thing. Markin would just blithely go on and makes up names but I’ll just give you the “skinny” without the Markin literary touches, okay. Rather than calling the girl every name in the book for disturbing the fishes or the plankton like Markin I am trying to see what happened here to drive her to such a rash action. Obviously they, the unnamed boy and girl, had an argument, alright a big argument if that satisfies you. What could it have been about? Markin, wise guy Markin, wants to make it some little thing like a missed date, or the guy didn't call or something. Maybe it was, but I think the poor girl was heartbroken about something bigger. Maybe boyfriend didn’t want to “go steady” or maybe he wasn’t ready to be her ever lovin’ one and only. Let me put it this way it was big, not Markin’s b.s. stuff.
Okay she went over the edge, no question, running down to the sea and jumping in. On a rainy night to boot. Hey she had it bad, whatever it was. But see old Neptune, Markin’s friend, maybe father for all I know, is taunting said boyfriend, saying he is taking his baby away. Well, frankly, and old wimpy Markin dismissed this out of hand, those are fighting words in the projects, and not just the projects either. And the girl, given the cold and what that does to you when you have been in too long is forced to taunt her lover boy, trying to bring him down too. This is the part I like though, although Markin would probably take umbrage (again), the boy friend is ready to reclaim his honey, come hell or high water. Ya, he’s taking his baby, and taking her no questions asked, back from that nasty relentless sea. Chalk one up for our side. Yes, Billie, William James Bradley, is happy, pleased, delighted and any other words you can find in the library that this story has a happy ending. Markin be damned.
Markin comment:
This is another tongue-in-cheek commentary, the back story if you like, in the occasional entries under this headline going back to the primordial youth time of the 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billie, William James Bradley, the mad hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood. Ya, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own. This song, Endless Sleep, came out at a time when I my family was beginning to start the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe. I was in my 24/7 reading at the local public library branch phase in lieu of being Billie’s accomplice on various, well, let’s call them capers just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. Still Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie I’m still pulling for you. Got it.
JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"
(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)
The night was black, rain fallin' down
Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around
Traced her footsteps down to the shore
‘fraid she's gone forever more
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?
Why did I leave her alone tonight?
That's why her footsteps ran into the sea
That's why my baby has gone from me.
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Ran in the water, heart full of fear
There in the breakers I saw her near
Reached for my darlin', held her to me
Stole her away from the angry sea
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“You took your baby from me away.
My heart cried out “she's mine to keep
I saved my baby from an endless sleep.
[Fade]
Endless sleep, endless sleep
*****
Billie back again, William James Bradley, if you didn’t know. Markin’s pal, Peter Paul Markin’s pal, from over the Adamsville Elementary School and the pope of rock lyrics down here in “the projects.” The Adamsville projects, if you don’t know. Markin, who I hadn’t seen for a while since he told me his family is going to move out of the projects and who has developed this big thing for the local library and books lately, came by the other day to breathe in the fresh air of my rock universe-adorned bedroom when we got to talking about this latest record, Endless Sleep, by Jody Reynolds. All the parents around here, at least the parents that care anyway, or those who have heard the lyrics screaming from their kid’s plug-in blaring radio (that’s why they invented transistor radios-so parents wouldn’t, or couldn’t, catch on to what we are listening to- smarten up is what I say to those kids still on plug-in mode, for christ’s sake) about the not so subtle suicide theme. Ya, like that is what every kid is going to do when the going gets a little tough in the love department. Take a jump in the ocean, and call one and all to join them. Come on, will ya. It's only a song. Besides what is really good about this one is that great back beat on the guitar and Jody Reynold’s cool clothes and sideburns. I wish to high heaven I had both.
But see the pope of rock lyrics, me, can’t just leave this song like that. I have to decode it for the teeny-boppers around here or they will be clueless, including big time book guy Markin. And that is really what is going to make the difference between us here. We had a battle royal over this one. See, Markin always wants to give big play to the “social” meaning of the song, whatever that is, you know where the thing sticks in society, at least teeny-bopper society. Ya, and Markin is also the “sensitive” guy, usually. Like pulling for the girl to get her guy back, or at least go back to her old boyfriend for some back-up love, in Eddie My Love. Or has a kind thing to say about the dumb cluck of a bimbo who went back to the railroad track-stuck car to get some cheapjack class ring in Teen Angel (although he agreed, agreed fully, that the dame was a dumb cluck on other grounds).
Here though I am the sensitive guy, if you can believe that. Here’s why. It seems that Markin has some kind of exception to the “social” rule when it comes to the ocean, to the sea, christ, probably to some scum pond for all I know as the scene for suicide attempts. Apparently he is in the throes of some King Neptune frenzy and took umbrage (his word, not mind I don’t go to the library much) at the idea that someone would desecrate the sea that way, our homeland the sea the way he put it. Like old Neptune hasn’t brought seventy-three types of hell on us with his hurricane tidal waves, his overflowing the seawalls, his flooding everything within three miles of the coast, or when he just throws his flotsam and jetsam (my words, from school, I like them) on the projects beaches whenever he gets fed up. So I have to defend this frail’s action, and gladly.
You know it really is unbelievable once you start to think about it how many of these songs don’t have people in them with names, real names, nicknames, anything to tag on them. Here it’s the same old thing. Markin would just blithely go on and makes up names but I’ll just give you the “skinny” without the Markin literary touches, okay. Rather than calling the girl every name in the book for disturbing the fishes or the plankton like Markin I am trying to see what happened here to drive her to such a rash action. Obviously they, the unnamed boy and girl, had an argument, alright a big argument if that satisfies you. What could it have been about? Markin, wise guy Markin, wants to make it some little thing like a missed date, or the guy didn't call or something. Maybe it was, but I think the poor girl was heartbroken about something bigger. Maybe boyfriend didn’t want to “go steady” or maybe he wasn’t ready to be her ever lovin’ one and only. Let me put it this way it was big, not Markin’s b.s. stuff.
Okay she went over the edge, no question, running down to the sea and jumping in. On a rainy night to boot. Hey she had it bad, whatever it was. But see old Neptune, Markin’s friend, maybe father for all I know, is taunting said boyfriend, saying he is taking his baby away. Well, frankly, and old wimpy Markin dismissed this out of hand, those are fighting words in the projects, and not just the projects either. And the girl, given the cold and what that does to you when you have been in too long is forced to taunt her lover boy, trying to bring him down too. This is the part I like though, although Markin would probably take umbrage (again), the boy friend is ready to reclaim his honey, come hell or high water. Ya, he’s taking his baby, and taking her no questions asked, back from that nasty relentless sea. Chalk one up for our side. Yes, Billie, William James Bradley, is happy, pleased, delighted and any other words you can find in the library that this story has a happy ending. Markin be damned.
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-James W. Ford- American Communist Party Vice-Presidential Candidate (1932, 1936, 1940)
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for James W. Ford.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February, and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February, and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
A Cold “Civil War” Is Brewing In The Land - In Solidarity With The Wisconsin Public Workers’ Unions Struggle- Reflections On Boston’s Labor Support Rally
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Indymedia entry for the rally held at the Massachusetts State House in Boston in support of the Wisconsin Public Workers’ Unions’ struggle to save collective bargaining on Tuesday February 22, 2011,
Markin comment:
Sometimes a rally, like many other events, is just a rally. For example, after a while the various anti-war rallies, their speakers, and their purposes (lately Iraq, Afghanistan, or both) have tended to be pro forma events, necessary but very much on a well-trodden subject that we leftist militants are not gaining ground on among the masses that we are trying to influence. On Tuesday February 22, 2011, at a rally held in front of the Massachusetts State House in Boston in support of the beleaguered and battling Wisconsin public workers unions, however, there was a refreshing and positive change.
On that day, on short notice, several hundred spirited union workers, public and private, and their supporters rallied on behalf of their brothers and sisters in Wisconsin. Of course, the now obligatory anti-union, anti-immigrant, anti-anti Tea Party movement sent a small force to suck up some bourgeois media attention (and got it out of all proportion to their numbers under some quaint theory of even-handed impartiality). I do not know, or remember, the names of every union that was represented but it was a cross-section of the labor movement in the Boston area, and the representatives were serious in their commitment and understanding that the class struggle, hell, the class war has just heated up several degrees even if they would not have been able to articulate it that way. Clearly understood though was that the lines were now drawn by this vanguard militant segment of the local labor movement.
Needless to say, lacking serious class-struggle traditions in this generation (and part of the last) there were many workers, young and old, in the crowd who had illusions in the good offices of the government, especially in the good offices of the Democratic Party occupants of that government. That was reflected in the speakers’ list chock full of Democratic Party office-holders, from Congressmen to locals, who had even the most attenuated relationship to the local labor movement, including no friend of labor Governor Deval Patrick fresh from a recent electoral win in heavily liberal Massachusetts. These illusions will, of necessity, begin to shake themselves out a bit as the class struggle gets even hotter but for today there is a militant base on which to draw around the struggle to preserve our unions, preserve the heart of a union, the collective-bargaining process (and, needless to say as well, the right to strike).
To give dramatic symbolism to the day’s efforts and to underline what is at stake, as well as highlight that cold “civil war” warning in the headline to today’s entry let me finish with this little observation seen in front of the State House. The Tea Party contingent set up their small operation, unknowingly I am sure, across Beacon Street in front of the now-famous Saint-Gaudens sculpture depicting the black soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Regiment (led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw)that did great service to the Union cause down in the South during the American Civil War, and who had the privilege of entering defeated and captured Charleston, South Carolina in 1865 to the words of “John Brown’s Body.” In order to counteract the effect of the heckling by the Tea Party advocates some young, stalwart craft union workers got up behind that cohort and used the sculpture as a standing ground to do their pro-union sloganeering work. While they also may not have known what the frieze represented as we head to the observance of the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War that scene should give one pause for reflection.
Markin comment:
Sometimes a rally, like many other events, is just a rally. For example, after a while the various anti-war rallies, their speakers, and their purposes (lately Iraq, Afghanistan, or both) have tended to be pro forma events, necessary but very much on a well-trodden subject that we leftist militants are not gaining ground on among the masses that we are trying to influence. On Tuesday February 22, 2011, at a rally held in front of the Massachusetts State House in Boston in support of the beleaguered and battling Wisconsin public workers unions, however, there was a refreshing and positive change.
On that day, on short notice, several hundred spirited union workers, public and private, and their supporters rallied on behalf of their brothers and sisters in Wisconsin. Of course, the now obligatory anti-union, anti-immigrant, anti-anti Tea Party movement sent a small force to suck up some bourgeois media attention (and got it out of all proportion to their numbers under some quaint theory of even-handed impartiality). I do not know, or remember, the names of every union that was represented but it was a cross-section of the labor movement in the Boston area, and the representatives were serious in their commitment and understanding that the class struggle, hell, the class war has just heated up several degrees even if they would not have been able to articulate it that way. Clearly understood though was that the lines were now drawn by this vanguard militant segment of the local labor movement.
Needless to say, lacking serious class-struggle traditions in this generation (and part of the last) there were many workers, young and old, in the crowd who had illusions in the good offices of the government, especially in the good offices of the Democratic Party occupants of that government. That was reflected in the speakers’ list chock full of Democratic Party office-holders, from Congressmen to locals, who had even the most attenuated relationship to the local labor movement, including no friend of labor Governor Deval Patrick fresh from a recent electoral win in heavily liberal Massachusetts. These illusions will, of necessity, begin to shake themselves out a bit as the class struggle gets even hotter but for today there is a militant base on which to draw around the struggle to preserve our unions, preserve the heart of a union, the collective-bargaining process (and, needless to say as well, the right to strike).
To give dramatic symbolism to the day’s efforts and to underline what is at stake, as well as highlight that cold “civil war” warning in the headline to today’s entry let me finish with this little observation seen in front of the State House. The Tea Party contingent set up their small operation, unknowingly I am sure, across Beacon Street in front of the now-famous Saint-Gaudens sculpture depicting the black soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Regiment (led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw)that did great service to the Union cause down in the South during the American Civil War, and who had the privilege of entering defeated and captured Charleston, South Carolina in 1865 to the words of “John Brown’s Body.” In order to counteract the effect of the heckling by the Tea Party advocates some young, stalwart craft union workers got up behind that cohort and used the sculpture as a standing ground to do their pro-union sloganeering work. While they also may not have known what the frieze represented as we head to the observance of the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War that scene should give one pause for reflection.
*On The 8th Anniversary of The Iraq War (Really 20th) A March 19th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets
Click on the headline to link to the Stop These Wars Website.
Markin comment:
In the lead up to the December 16, 2010 Veterans For Peace led-civil disobedience action in Washington, D. C. where 131 people were arrested (many of whom later had the charges against them dropped) I motivated my support for that action as described below in a blog entry that I am re-posting today. That same general motivation applies (with a caveat noted just below) as another Veterans For Peace-led planned civil disobedience action is scheduled for March 19th 2011, the 8th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War II. (Although as noted in the headline to this entry it really is the 20th year as the theme of the Catholic Worker-led demonstrations in Washington on January 15, 2011 made clear, correctly clear.)
I note here that while I support and will attend the March 19th actions (with as many of the local ad hoc anti-imperialist group that I belong to as can come that day) because they are very important symbolic actions on an important anti-war occasion I am worried, at least a little worried, that if we do not take more arrests (more than 131 that is) this action will be seen as a failure. Not by the media, of course, as they hardly paid attention on December 16th. Not the Bush I-Clinton-Bush II-Obama government, of course, they haven’t paid attention at all, ever. But militants, and potential militants, who will dismiss such actions out of hand and write off street actions as the work of cranky old men and women. In short, we do not want to get civil disobedience-itis any more than we wanted to keep doing those endless dwindling mass marches. So to do this right-All out in support of the Vets- All out to resist these wars- All out to end Obama’s Iraq and Afghan Wars.
********
December 1, 2010
A December 16th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets
On November 11, 2010, Veterans Day, I marched with a contingent of Veterans For Peace in the Boston Veterans Day parade and posted an entry in this space about my take on the event. (See, A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!, dated November 11, 2010). As part of that commentary I noted the following:
“Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.”
Now comes word (click on headline for similar March 19th action) that veterans are leading an action in Washington, D.C. on December 16, 2010 in front of the White House under the rubric of "Peace On Earth." There is no question that I, the anti-imperialist committee that I am a member of in Boston, any self-respecting radical or, hell, any self-respecting little old lady in tennis sneakers for that matter, could endorse this thing. If for no other reason that it begs, literally begs, Warmonger-In-Chief Obama (of the double troop escalations in Afghanistan with nobody holding a gun to his head remember) to “do the right thing.”
That said, the sentiment expressed above in that Veterans Day commentary still holds true. So I, and all I can gather to go with me, will be in Washington on December 16th. I will hold my nose in doing so, although not my tongue, trying to get my fellow vets to change course. In my hand I will hold this slogan-Obama- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! And I won’t be begging him about it, no way.
Markin comment:
In the lead up to the December 16, 2010 Veterans For Peace led-civil disobedience action in Washington, D. C. where 131 people were arrested (many of whom later had the charges against them dropped) I motivated my support for that action as described below in a blog entry that I am re-posting today. That same general motivation applies (with a caveat noted just below) as another Veterans For Peace-led planned civil disobedience action is scheduled for March 19th 2011, the 8th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War II. (Although as noted in the headline to this entry it really is the 20th year as the theme of the Catholic Worker-led demonstrations in Washington on January 15, 2011 made clear, correctly clear.)
I note here that while I support and will attend the March 19th actions (with as many of the local ad hoc anti-imperialist group that I belong to as can come that day) because they are very important symbolic actions on an important anti-war occasion I am worried, at least a little worried, that if we do not take more arrests (more than 131 that is) this action will be seen as a failure. Not by the media, of course, as they hardly paid attention on December 16th. Not the Bush I-Clinton-Bush II-Obama government, of course, they haven’t paid attention at all, ever. But militants, and potential militants, who will dismiss such actions out of hand and write off street actions as the work of cranky old men and women. In short, we do not want to get civil disobedience-itis any more than we wanted to keep doing those endless dwindling mass marches. So to do this right-All out in support of the Vets- All out to resist these wars- All out to end Obama’s Iraq and Afghan Wars.
********
December 1, 2010
A December 16th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets
On November 11, 2010, Veterans Day, I marched with a contingent of Veterans For Peace in the Boston Veterans Day parade and posted an entry in this space about my take on the event. (See, A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!, dated November 11, 2010). As part of that commentary I noted the following:
“Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.”
Now comes word (click on headline for similar March 19th action) that veterans are leading an action in Washington, D.C. on December 16, 2010 in front of the White House under the rubric of "Peace On Earth." There is no question that I, the anti-imperialist committee that I am a member of in Boston, any self-respecting radical or, hell, any self-respecting little old lady in tennis sneakers for that matter, could endorse this thing. If for no other reason that it begs, literally begs, Warmonger-In-Chief Obama (of the double troop escalations in Afghanistan with nobody holding a gun to his head remember) to “do the right thing.”
That said, the sentiment expressed above in that Veterans Day commentary still holds true. So I, and all I can gather to go with me, will be in Washington on December 16th. I will hold my nose in doing so, although not my tongue, trying to get my fellow vets to change course. In my hand I will hold this slogan-Obama- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! And I won’t be begging him about it, no way.
On The Theory Of “The Most Oppressed Are The Most Revolutionary”- A Short Note
Markin comment:
As Bob Mandel pointed out in the article posted today, February 23, 2011, Lessons Of The Anti-War Movement: A Trade-Union Militant Speaks On The New Left, youth vanguardism was rampant in the New Left as the student movement began to swing dramatically leftward. I was fully in tune with that sentiment, at least for a while. What I was not tuned into, and as he also mentioned, was the other strong current coming out of the New Left, especially from those elements reacting to those of us who were starting, gropingly, to reach out to the working class was the notion that the “most oppressed were the most revolutionary.”
And the reason for my skepticism was not some esoteric theory but pure fact. I came from a segment of that milieu as it came to be in post World War II America- the working poor, the chronically unemployed, the unskilled day workers, and those drifters, grifters and midnight sifters, as my school days friend Frankie used to say, who fed off their misery. In short, the lumpen proletariat. These segments need a revolution; desperately need a revolution but their life circumstances almost preclude political action unless some bigger turmoils are occurring in society. A lot of the New Left glorification stemmed, frankly, from ignorance of the ways of life down at the very edges of society. And "Third-World-ist" book romance with Franz Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth and a movie like Battle Of Algiers. I have written previously on the latter and will do a review in the future on Fanon’s work.
No question down at the edges of society that the substance of Hobbes’ observation of life being “short, nasty and brutish,” holds true, as a matter of pure survival if nothing else. The “war” of all against all takes concrete form there either by fear of the takers, or fear of the consequences of not being a taker. Either way the bonds of social solidarity are indeed very tenuous. I will give a very concrete example from my own life so that we can dispense with any prettification of this theory. I, in my very early teens, hung around with a bunch of guys, guys a few years older, from “the projects” where I lived who were into “jack-rolling.” For those not in the know about this activity it is very simple. Take one dark alley, or other isolated place, stand in the shadows or some other out of the way place with a Billy club–like stick (or other blunt instrument) and wait on some likely (usually an old or otherwise helpless person) and when your “target” comes by either threaten or actually use that club to subdue the victim, taking their money or whatever valuables with you. Nice, right? I was, given my youth, the look-out, or set-up guy. I didn’t do it for long, the lure of the library made more sense at some point. As for those other guys, some went to jail for other more serious offenses, some were killed down in Mexico in a drug deal that went wrong, and at least one died in a police shoot out. Needless to say no Bolsheviks came out of that crew. And this, my friends, from other stories that I have heard later, was not all that different when you changed the faces to black or brown.
As Bob Mandel pointed out in the article posted today, February 23, 2011, Lessons Of The Anti-War Movement: A Trade-Union Militant Speaks On The New Left, youth vanguardism was rampant in the New Left as the student movement began to swing dramatically leftward. I was fully in tune with that sentiment, at least for a while. What I was not tuned into, and as he also mentioned, was the other strong current coming out of the New Left, especially from those elements reacting to those of us who were starting, gropingly, to reach out to the working class was the notion that the “most oppressed were the most revolutionary.”
And the reason for my skepticism was not some esoteric theory but pure fact. I came from a segment of that milieu as it came to be in post World War II America- the working poor, the chronically unemployed, the unskilled day workers, and those drifters, grifters and midnight sifters, as my school days friend Frankie used to say, who fed off their misery. In short, the lumpen proletariat. These segments need a revolution; desperately need a revolution but their life circumstances almost preclude political action unless some bigger turmoils are occurring in society. A lot of the New Left glorification stemmed, frankly, from ignorance of the ways of life down at the very edges of society. And "Third-World-ist" book romance with Franz Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth and a movie like Battle Of Algiers. I have written previously on the latter and will do a review in the future on Fanon’s work.
No question down at the edges of society that the substance of Hobbes’ observation of life being “short, nasty and brutish,” holds true, as a matter of pure survival if nothing else. The “war” of all against all takes concrete form there either by fear of the takers, or fear of the consequences of not being a taker. Either way the bonds of social solidarity are indeed very tenuous. I will give a very concrete example from my own life so that we can dispense with any prettification of this theory. I, in my very early teens, hung around with a bunch of guys, guys a few years older, from “the projects” where I lived who were into “jack-rolling.” For those not in the know about this activity it is very simple. Take one dark alley, or other isolated place, stand in the shadows or some other out of the way place with a Billy club–like stick (or other blunt instrument) and wait on some likely (usually an old or otherwise helpless person) and when your “target” comes by either threaten or actually use that club to subdue the victim, taking their money or whatever valuables with you. Nice, right? I was, given my youth, the look-out, or set-up guy. I didn’t do it for long, the lure of the library made more sense at some point. As for those other guys, some went to jail for other more serious offenses, some were killed down in Mexico in a drug deal that went wrong, and at least one died in a police shoot out. Needless to say no Bolsheviks came out of that crew. And this, my friends, from other stories that I have heard later, was not all that different when you changed the faces to black or brown.
*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-Lessons Of The Anti-War Movement (Vietnam War): A Militant Trade-Union Leader Speaks On The New Left (1980)
Markin comment:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
*************
Markin comment on this article
This article is place here mainly to give a flavor of the times (early 1970s) when every self-respecting extra-parliamentary leftist was struggling to find the road to the working class. There were plenty of groups, committees, leagues, tendencies and what not to the left of the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party (both dismissed almost out of hand as too tame for revolutionary hearts based on practical experience in running up against them in the process of trying to break with the Democrats and other so-called progressives as a preclude to bringing THEIR, the Democrats, house down). The speaker’s general comments, and specific insights, could have been written by me, or any number of leftist militants, back then as we struggled to break out of the youth vanguard milieu and learn a couple of things about revolutionary politics
As Bob Mandel pointed out in this article, youth vanguardism was rampant in the New Left as the student movement began to swing dramatically leftward. I was fully in tune with that sentiment, at least for a while. What I was not tuned into, and as he also mentioned here, was the other strong current coming out of the New Left, especially from those elements reacting to those of us who were starting, gropingly, to reach out to the working class was the notion that the “most oppressed were the most revolutionary.” And the reason was not some esoteric theory but pure fact.
I came from a segment of that milieu as it was left behind in post World War II America- the working poor, the chronically unemployed, the unskilled day workers, and those drifters, grifters and midnight sifters, as my school days friend Frankie used to say, who fed off their misery. In short, the lumpen proletariat parasites. These segments need a revolution; desperately need a revolution but their life circumstances almost preclude political action unless some bigger turmoils are occurring in society. A lot of the New Left glorification stemmed, frankly, from ignorance of the ways of life down at the very edges of society. And "Third-World-ist" book romance with Franz Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth and a movie like Battle Of Algiers. I have written previously on the latter and will do a review in the future on Fanon’s work.
********
From Young Spartacus, May 1980, Lessons Of The Anti-War Movement (Vietnam War): A Militant Trade-Union Leader Speaks On The New Left.
We print below an edited text of the talk given by Bob Mandel at a Spartacus Youth League forum entitled "No to the Draft! Down with Carter's Anti-Soviet War Drive!" held March 7 at Stanford University.
Mandel was an early civil rights organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later became a prominent Bay Area anti-Vietnam War activist. In 1967 he helped organize "Stop the Draft Week," a successful—if short-lived—street action to shut down the Army Induction Center in Oakland, California. For his leading role in this action, Mandel was tried (and acquitted) along with six others in the "Oakland 7" conspiracy trial.
Shortly thereafter Mandel became an active member of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). He is currently a member of the General Executive Board of ILWU Local 6 in the Bay Area and a leader of the Militant Caucus, a class-struggle opposition within the union. Last month Mandel was convenor of the April 19 Committee Against Nazis, which organized a 1,200-strong mobilization of labor and minorities in San Francisco to stop the Nazis from celebrating Hitler's birthday.
Many leaders of the student struggles of the 60s and early 70s passed through the Democratic Party on their way out of politics. Others adopted China as the "socialist fatherland," and are today abject apologists for the anti-Soviet U.S.-China alliance and enemies of world revolution. The tragedy of the New Left is that so many who at one time despised the racist imperialism of the United States failed to find the revolutionary program to guide the oppressed in overthrowing that system.
Mandel's remarks are a guide for today's young militants who wish to
avoid the mistakes of the New Left, which led to an accommodation to U.S. imperialism. To find the road to revolution, one must examine the Trotskyist program. It is only the Spartacist League and its youth section,
the Spartacus Youth League, which fights to implement that program.
**************
In one very major sense, the new anti-draft movement is different from the New Left. I remember, when in 1965 Johnson rigged the Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify bombing North Vietnam, that 3,000 people marched through the streets of San Francisco and ran an NLF (National Liberation Front) flag up on the Federal Building flagpole. Almost from the beginning the New Left had a very clear side.
Now the New Left came out of a series of experiences domestically. There had been the civil rights sit-ins beginning in 1960 in Greensboro, and an educational process had gone on. People initially started off involved in these struggles believing that reform could be effected within the context of capitalism. And the first Kennedy administration consciously played into that illusion. In fact, Kennedy gave money to the SNCC civil rights workers to do voter registration to bolster the illusion that if you vote Democratic things will improve in the U.S. And initially SNCC believed that. But in 1964 an organization called the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which had been organized by the left wing of the student civil rights movement, came to the Democratic Party convention and was simply rudely swept off the floor, and all the old white racists were seated in toto. People's eyes began to open.
It took the New Left a hell of a long time to draw the conclusion that the Democrats were bankrupt, and most of the New Left didn't. That's why the left today in the U.S. is very small. So I want to go through some of the mistakes that the New Left made and some of the New Left's history.
New Left Rejects History
The central mistake is that it rejected history, and it said that the old politics, the politics of the American CP (Communist Party), the question of what the Soviet Union is, what China is and what Cuba is, were irrelevant. It just closed the book, decided to start all over again, and it kept feeling its way along. So you start with militant non-violence with SNCC and the MFDP, then black power.
What "Stop the Draft Week" in 1967 represented in the largely white student
milieu was a conscious break from non-violence. We split with Joan Baez and David Harris. The first day of "Stop the Draft Week" they sat in at the induction center and made their moral protest; there were about 150 people. The second to fifth days of "Stop the Draft Week" 3,000 and then 10,000 students and some young workers and blacks from the city of Oakland fought the cops. We were going to show working-class kids in this country that they didn't have to burn their draft cards and set themselves up or go to jail, but that somebody was actually going to fight to stop the draft. Now, it was illusory. What can 3,000 or 10,000 students do? They can riot, but they sure as hell can't bring down state power. They couldn't even bring down state power in one city. But what it represented was a significant empirical lurch to the left: enough of this sitting down and saying, "Drag me off and put me in jail and then I can't do anything anymore."
At the same time that "Stop the Draft Week" was going on, Huey Newton was shot and the Panthers became nationally known. 1968 brought the Chicago demonstrations around the Democratic Party convention and the new element there was that black and white GIs at Fort Hood and Fort Carson rebelled and refused to go on riot duty in Chicago. Cops beating students wasn't so new, but that rebellion was new.
New Left and the Democratic Party
The anti-draft movement became consciously anti-imperialist in that period and started talking not about bad U.S. policy, but that there was some¬thing endemic in the capitalist system which had led to the Vietnam War. One of the real hallmarks of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in those days— when students in Berkeley were talking about anti-imperialism and the nature of the capitalist system—was telling people to link up with Vance Hartke, link up with the liberals in the Democratic Party, that it can be cleaned up and American capitalism can be reformed. They were trying to construct what is called a popular front, an alliance between leftist and working-class forces and capitalist forces.
1971 was the peak of the mass demonstrations. That was the year the 10,000 hippies and SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) members went to Washington to shut down the govern¬ment, and the government simply moved in and picked them all up and locked them up. They had no social power and the U.S. government, intent on maintaining its imperial empire, was not about to let 10,000 hippies of 10,000 people with Viet Cong flags disrupt its central government. You began to have splits from 1969 to 1971, splits all over the place in the left, as people groped for new solutions, because they kept coming up against their powerlessness.
So on the one extreme you had the Weathermen going underground and bombing the Capitol, and on the other extreme—and this is far and away the most significant, it was the death of the New Left—you had the McGovern campaign with literally tens of thousands of students who had been very active in the struggles against the war going back into the Democratic Party in the hope that the party that had sponsored the war in the first place would somehow clean up its act. And central in people going back into the Democratic Party was the SWP with their line that there weren't class questions posed in Vietnam: it was not the workers and peasants vs. the landlords and U.S. imperialism, it was simply a question of should American boys be killed. So under a socialist guise, it's the Tom Hayden line of today and it was the line of the various "doves" of those days: American boys shouldn't be killed; let's bring the troops home now. And the question that the New Left was groping toward was that imperialism isn't a policy. Imperialism is, as Lenin said a longtime ago, a phase of capitalist development—the international extension of markets, the dominance of finance capital. It's part of the growth of the capitalist system.
Destruction of the Black Panthers
Another key thing that happened was that as large parts of the antiwar movement went into the Democratic Party, the Black Panther Party was being annihilated and was also going back into the Democratic Party, having tried to substitute a heroic handful of black kids for mass working-class struggles. They went up against the police in city after city; they went up against the federal police and they were murdered systematically.
Now one of the key things in the defeat of the Panthers was that the left consciously hid its politics. The left had this theory that the most oppressed were the most revolutionary. Remember that the New Left had been inspired by the civil rights struggles in the South and by the Black Panthers. It looked around and saw that most important fights were being fought by blacks primarily so that there was a certain reflex reaction that blacks were by definition the most revolutionary.
A lot of the New Left simply did not know history. But there were parts of the left, like the CP and the SWP, that very much did know it. Unlike the Spartacist League (SL), they refused to criticize in a comradely way. They contributed to the defeat and destruction of the Panthers by not saying, "Look, we sympathize with what you are doing, but the power in the U .S. is in the factories, in those sections of the working class which are already in interracial unions and which already have some basic sense of solidarity of workers against bosses."
So, for instance, when 1 worked in General Motors in 1970, there was a Black Panther Party caucus in GM. They had about a dozen cadre and 200 to 300 active supporters. If, when the cops framed up Newton or Bobby Seale or murdered Bobby Button in Oakland, the Panther caucus (which had large
support among the white workers in the plant) had shut the plant down to demand cops out or to demand a political strike against the frame-up trials, that would have been power. That would have cost the American bourgeoisie millions of dollars and worried them about the fact that the working class in its organized forms was beginning to come into play.
New Left Turns to the Workers
You had at this same time whole sections of the left turning to the, but turning very empirically. The New Left was influenced by the 1968 general strike in France, which came within a hair's breadth of toppling the capitalist government. There was also a strike wave in the U.S. from 1969 to 1971. So, in 1970 the postal workers went out in an unprecedented strike, and the National Guard was brought in to break that strike. Essentially for the same reasons, Teamsters went out in the Midwest. For about a week and a half the news every night on TV would have scenes of National Guard convoys escorting scab trucks—the stuff that we all saw a little bit of during the miners strike in 1978—and there would be the Teamsters up in the hills shooting at the scab trucks.
One of the contingents of the National Guard that was used to try to break that Teamsters strike was the contingent that went over to Kent State in 1970 and massacred the students who were protesting the bombing of Cambodia. And there was a lesson there: that the students had no social power. Students can play an important role. Students carry ideas, students historically have been catalysts, students historically have played important roles in building revolutionary parties; but you shut a university down, so what? It is a symbolic act; it can have certain political impact. But if the National Guard had turned around and shot four or five or ten Teamsters in the Midwest, then the U.S. government faced the possibility of a nationwide strike of Teamsters in protest. And, there is the obvious link-up: the troops are shooting the Vietnamese in Vietnam, the troops are shooting blacks in the ghettos, and the troops are shooting striking workers. Well, what's going on here?
So there was an enormous opening for the left, and unfortunately, most of the left went into the labor movement in a very touchy-feely fashion. Maybe that's not doing it justice. Most of the left went in with the same prejudices that it carried. There's a connection here. In 1969 SDS split into two camps, and then one of those camps split a lot more.
One of those camps was Progressive Labor (PL)/SDS. The other was the Weathermen and all the Maoist groups which developed. The theory of the Weathermen was that the American working class, and centrally its white component, is a labor aristocracy which is hopelessly backward, hopelessly racist and which can never be won to revolutionary politics. Therefore: "forget about them, we're going to go underground, we'll be the Third World army in the cities and we'll blow up this and that and the other thing." Their lack of belief that the workers could be won to revolutionary politics was symmetrical with everybody who went into the Democratic Party, because going into the Democratic Party was essentially a statement that there is no other route for the working class in the U.S. except through the dominant capitalist parties.
PL/SDS said that the workers could be won to revolutionary politics, but PL had a lot of the same intellectual baggage. So it went into the labor movement thinking that workers were dumb, workers were bought off and that workers could not be educated. Therefore PL tended to jump back and forth. So that on the one hand, it had a very leftist impulse; on the other hand, it had a theory that you had to accommodate to existing consciousness. For instance, on the woman question, PL opposed free abortion on demand because male chauvinism is rather rampant in American society and PL simply accommodated to that backwardness.
Then there was another side to it. PL opposed both open admissions and free college education. When this was raised in a successful student strike at the City College of New York, PL opposed it because it decided that workers would be bought off if their kids could go to college. Now, what kind of crap is that? What lies there is the basic assumption that you better suffer a lot or you'll never be a revolutionary. It is the same old "the most oppressed are the most revolutionary." In fact, the most oppressed are very often the most backward.
The second half of the SDS split in 1969 was the Revolutionary YouthMovement, a bloc of the terrorist Weathermen and assorted Maoists which rapidly splintered into a myriad of competing groups. All the Maoist groupings went through the same thing. One has to examine, in any given instance like Afghanistan, what are the forces at work, which side should you be on- and draw essential conclusions. What was wrong with the New Left was that it had no program to run on. When people vote for us they know they are voting against the capitalist system and against the Democratic Party, for the workers running their own government.
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
*************
Markin comment on this article
This article is place here mainly to give a flavor of the times (early 1970s) when every self-respecting extra-parliamentary leftist was struggling to find the road to the working class. There were plenty of groups, committees, leagues, tendencies and what not to the left of the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party (both dismissed almost out of hand as too tame for revolutionary hearts based on practical experience in running up against them in the process of trying to break with the Democrats and other so-called progressives as a preclude to bringing THEIR, the Democrats, house down). The speaker’s general comments, and specific insights, could have been written by me, or any number of leftist militants, back then as we struggled to break out of the youth vanguard milieu and learn a couple of things about revolutionary politics
As Bob Mandel pointed out in this article, youth vanguardism was rampant in the New Left as the student movement began to swing dramatically leftward. I was fully in tune with that sentiment, at least for a while. What I was not tuned into, and as he also mentioned here, was the other strong current coming out of the New Left, especially from those elements reacting to those of us who were starting, gropingly, to reach out to the working class was the notion that the “most oppressed were the most revolutionary.” And the reason was not some esoteric theory but pure fact.
I came from a segment of that milieu as it was left behind in post World War II America- the working poor, the chronically unemployed, the unskilled day workers, and those drifters, grifters and midnight sifters, as my school days friend Frankie used to say, who fed off their misery. In short, the lumpen proletariat parasites. These segments need a revolution; desperately need a revolution but their life circumstances almost preclude political action unless some bigger turmoils are occurring in society. A lot of the New Left glorification stemmed, frankly, from ignorance of the ways of life down at the very edges of society. And "Third-World-ist" book romance with Franz Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth and a movie like Battle Of Algiers. I have written previously on the latter and will do a review in the future on Fanon’s work.
********
From Young Spartacus, May 1980, Lessons Of The Anti-War Movement (Vietnam War): A Militant Trade-Union Leader Speaks On The New Left.
We print below an edited text of the talk given by Bob Mandel at a Spartacus Youth League forum entitled "No to the Draft! Down with Carter's Anti-Soviet War Drive!" held March 7 at Stanford University.
Mandel was an early civil rights organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later became a prominent Bay Area anti-Vietnam War activist. In 1967 he helped organize "Stop the Draft Week," a successful—if short-lived—street action to shut down the Army Induction Center in Oakland, California. For his leading role in this action, Mandel was tried (and acquitted) along with six others in the "Oakland 7" conspiracy trial.
Shortly thereafter Mandel became an active member of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). He is currently a member of the General Executive Board of ILWU Local 6 in the Bay Area and a leader of the Militant Caucus, a class-struggle opposition within the union. Last month Mandel was convenor of the April 19 Committee Against Nazis, which organized a 1,200-strong mobilization of labor and minorities in San Francisco to stop the Nazis from celebrating Hitler's birthday.
Many leaders of the student struggles of the 60s and early 70s passed through the Democratic Party on their way out of politics. Others adopted China as the "socialist fatherland," and are today abject apologists for the anti-Soviet U.S.-China alliance and enemies of world revolution. The tragedy of the New Left is that so many who at one time despised the racist imperialism of the United States failed to find the revolutionary program to guide the oppressed in overthrowing that system.
Mandel's remarks are a guide for today's young militants who wish to
avoid the mistakes of the New Left, which led to an accommodation to U.S. imperialism. To find the road to revolution, one must examine the Trotskyist program. It is only the Spartacist League and its youth section,
the Spartacus Youth League, which fights to implement that program.
**************
In one very major sense, the new anti-draft movement is different from the New Left. I remember, when in 1965 Johnson rigged the Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify bombing North Vietnam, that 3,000 people marched through the streets of San Francisco and ran an NLF (National Liberation Front) flag up on the Federal Building flagpole. Almost from the beginning the New Left had a very clear side.
Now the New Left came out of a series of experiences domestically. There had been the civil rights sit-ins beginning in 1960 in Greensboro, and an educational process had gone on. People initially started off involved in these struggles believing that reform could be effected within the context of capitalism. And the first Kennedy administration consciously played into that illusion. In fact, Kennedy gave money to the SNCC civil rights workers to do voter registration to bolster the illusion that if you vote Democratic things will improve in the U.S. And initially SNCC believed that. But in 1964 an organization called the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which had been organized by the left wing of the student civil rights movement, came to the Democratic Party convention and was simply rudely swept off the floor, and all the old white racists were seated in toto. People's eyes began to open.
It took the New Left a hell of a long time to draw the conclusion that the Democrats were bankrupt, and most of the New Left didn't. That's why the left today in the U.S. is very small. So I want to go through some of the mistakes that the New Left made and some of the New Left's history.
New Left Rejects History
The central mistake is that it rejected history, and it said that the old politics, the politics of the American CP (Communist Party), the question of what the Soviet Union is, what China is and what Cuba is, were irrelevant. It just closed the book, decided to start all over again, and it kept feeling its way along. So you start with militant non-violence with SNCC and the MFDP, then black power.
What "Stop the Draft Week" in 1967 represented in the largely white student
milieu was a conscious break from non-violence. We split with Joan Baez and David Harris. The first day of "Stop the Draft Week" they sat in at the induction center and made their moral protest; there were about 150 people. The second to fifth days of "Stop the Draft Week" 3,000 and then 10,000 students and some young workers and blacks from the city of Oakland fought the cops. We were going to show working-class kids in this country that they didn't have to burn their draft cards and set themselves up or go to jail, but that somebody was actually going to fight to stop the draft. Now, it was illusory. What can 3,000 or 10,000 students do? They can riot, but they sure as hell can't bring down state power. They couldn't even bring down state power in one city. But what it represented was a significant empirical lurch to the left: enough of this sitting down and saying, "Drag me off and put me in jail and then I can't do anything anymore."
At the same time that "Stop the Draft Week" was going on, Huey Newton was shot and the Panthers became nationally known. 1968 brought the Chicago demonstrations around the Democratic Party convention and the new element there was that black and white GIs at Fort Hood and Fort Carson rebelled and refused to go on riot duty in Chicago. Cops beating students wasn't so new, but that rebellion was new.
New Left and the Democratic Party
The anti-draft movement became consciously anti-imperialist in that period and started talking not about bad U.S. policy, but that there was some¬thing endemic in the capitalist system which had led to the Vietnam War. One of the real hallmarks of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in those days— when students in Berkeley were talking about anti-imperialism and the nature of the capitalist system—was telling people to link up with Vance Hartke, link up with the liberals in the Democratic Party, that it can be cleaned up and American capitalism can be reformed. They were trying to construct what is called a popular front, an alliance between leftist and working-class forces and capitalist forces.
1971 was the peak of the mass demonstrations. That was the year the 10,000 hippies and SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) members went to Washington to shut down the govern¬ment, and the government simply moved in and picked them all up and locked them up. They had no social power and the U.S. government, intent on maintaining its imperial empire, was not about to let 10,000 hippies of 10,000 people with Viet Cong flags disrupt its central government. You began to have splits from 1969 to 1971, splits all over the place in the left, as people groped for new solutions, because they kept coming up against their powerlessness.
So on the one extreme you had the Weathermen going underground and bombing the Capitol, and on the other extreme—and this is far and away the most significant, it was the death of the New Left—you had the McGovern campaign with literally tens of thousands of students who had been very active in the struggles against the war going back into the Democratic Party in the hope that the party that had sponsored the war in the first place would somehow clean up its act. And central in people going back into the Democratic Party was the SWP with their line that there weren't class questions posed in Vietnam: it was not the workers and peasants vs. the landlords and U.S. imperialism, it was simply a question of should American boys be killed. So under a socialist guise, it's the Tom Hayden line of today and it was the line of the various "doves" of those days: American boys shouldn't be killed; let's bring the troops home now. And the question that the New Left was groping toward was that imperialism isn't a policy. Imperialism is, as Lenin said a longtime ago, a phase of capitalist development—the international extension of markets, the dominance of finance capital. It's part of the growth of the capitalist system.
Destruction of the Black Panthers
Another key thing that happened was that as large parts of the antiwar movement went into the Democratic Party, the Black Panther Party was being annihilated and was also going back into the Democratic Party, having tried to substitute a heroic handful of black kids for mass working-class struggles. They went up against the police in city after city; they went up against the federal police and they were murdered systematically.
Now one of the key things in the defeat of the Panthers was that the left consciously hid its politics. The left had this theory that the most oppressed were the most revolutionary. Remember that the New Left had been inspired by the civil rights struggles in the South and by the Black Panthers. It looked around and saw that most important fights were being fought by blacks primarily so that there was a certain reflex reaction that blacks were by definition the most revolutionary.
A lot of the New Left simply did not know history. But there were parts of the left, like the CP and the SWP, that very much did know it. Unlike the Spartacist League (SL), they refused to criticize in a comradely way. They contributed to the defeat and destruction of the Panthers by not saying, "Look, we sympathize with what you are doing, but the power in the U .S. is in the factories, in those sections of the working class which are already in interracial unions and which already have some basic sense of solidarity of workers against bosses."
So, for instance, when 1 worked in General Motors in 1970, there was a Black Panther Party caucus in GM. They had about a dozen cadre and 200 to 300 active supporters. If, when the cops framed up Newton or Bobby Seale or murdered Bobby Button in Oakland, the Panther caucus (which had large
support among the white workers in the plant) had shut the plant down to demand cops out or to demand a political strike against the frame-up trials, that would have been power. That would have cost the American bourgeoisie millions of dollars and worried them about the fact that the working class in its organized forms was beginning to come into play.
New Left Turns to the Workers
You had at this same time whole sections of the left turning to the, but turning very empirically. The New Left was influenced by the 1968 general strike in France, which came within a hair's breadth of toppling the capitalist government. There was also a strike wave in the U.S. from 1969 to 1971. So, in 1970 the postal workers went out in an unprecedented strike, and the National Guard was brought in to break that strike. Essentially for the same reasons, Teamsters went out in the Midwest. For about a week and a half the news every night on TV would have scenes of National Guard convoys escorting scab trucks—the stuff that we all saw a little bit of during the miners strike in 1978—and there would be the Teamsters up in the hills shooting at the scab trucks.
One of the contingents of the National Guard that was used to try to break that Teamsters strike was the contingent that went over to Kent State in 1970 and massacred the students who were protesting the bombing of Cambodia. And there was a lesson there: that the students had no social power. Students can play an important role. Students carry ideas, students historically have been catalysts, students historically have played important roles in building revolutionary parties; but you shut a university down, so what? It is a symbolic act; it can have certain political impact. But if the National Guard had turned around and shot four or five or ten Teamsters in the Midwest, then the U.S. government faced the possibility of a nationwide strike of Teamsters in protest. And, there is the obvious link-up: the troops are shooting the Vietnamese in Vietnam, the troops are shooting blacks in the ghettos, and the troops are shooting striking workers. Well, what's going on here?
So there was an enormous opening for the left, and unfortunately, most of the left went into the labor movement in a very touchy-feely fashion. Maybe that's not doing it justice. Most of the left went in with the same prejudices that it carried. There's a connection here. In 1969 SDS split into two camps, and then one of those camps split a lot more.
One of those camps was Progressive Labor (PL)/SDS. The other was the Weathermen and all the Maoist groups which developed. The theory of the Weathermen was that the American working class, and centrally its white component, is a labor aristocracy which is hopelessly backward, hopelessly racist and which can never be won to revolutionary politics. Therefore: "forget about them, we're going to go underground, we'll be the Third World army in the cities and we'll blow up this and that and the other thing." Their lack of belief that the workers could be won to revolutionary politics was symmetrical with everybody who went into the Democratic Party, because going into the Democratic Party was essentially a statement that there is no other route for the working class in the U.S. except through the dominant capitalist parties.
PL/SDS said that the workers could be won to revolutionary politics, but PL had a lot of the same intellectual baggage. So it went into the labor movement thinking that workers were dumb, workers were bought off and that workers could not be educated. Therefore PL tended to jump back and forth. So that on the one hand, it had a very leftist impulse; on the other hand, it had a theory that you had to accommodate to existing consciousness. For instance, on the woman question, PL opposed free abortion on demand because male chauvinism is rather rampant in American society and PL simply accommodated to that backwardness.
Then there was another side to it. PL opposed both open admissions and free college education. When this was raised in a successful student strike at the City College of New York, PL opposed it because it decided that workers would be bought off if their kids could go to college. Now, what kind of crap is that? What lies there is the basic assumption that you better suffer a lot or you'll never be a revolutionary. It is the same old "the most oppressed are the most revolutionary." In fact, the most oppressed are very often the most backward.
The second half of the SDS split in 1969 was the Revolutionary YouthMovement, a bloc of the terrorist Weathermen and assorted Maoists which rapidly splintered into a myriad of competing groups. All the Maoist groupings went through the same thing. One has to examine, in any given instance like Afghanistan, what are the forces at work, which side should you be on- and draw essential conclusions. What was wrong with the New Left was that it had no program to run on. When people vote for us they know they are voting against the capitalist system and against the Democratic Party, for the workers running their own government.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Massachusetts is Wisconsin Public Employee Unions Country- Boston, Massachusetts State House Rally, Tuesday February 22, 2011,4:00-6:00PM –The Lines Are Draw-All Out In Support Of The Wisconsin Public Employee Unions-Hands Off All Our Public Employee Unions!
Click on the headline to link to an announcement of a labor-centered rally at the Massachusetts State House on Tuesday February 22, 2011 in support of the beleaguered Wisconsin State Public Employee Unions.
Markin comment:
Sometimes politics, our working class-oriented politics, is a no-brainer. This occasion is one of those times. The lines are drawn very visibly now with the yahoos of the Tea Party movement entering the fray. “Which side are you on?” is the question of the hour. All out in support of the Wisconsin Public Employee Unions!
*******
Repost from American Left History
Friday, February 18, 2011
Victory To The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions!- Hands Off The Unions! -Hands Off The Democratic Legislators
Markin comment:
I suppose we all knew that it would come to this. Probably the last serious bastion of organized labor-the public employees unions are starting to face the onslaught of governmental attempts to break those collective bargaining agreements, crying budgetary crisis- the heart of any union operation. With the demise of the industrial unions (representing less than ten percent cent of the workforce in the wake of the deindustrialization of America) the public employee union became the obvious target in the bosses' relentless struggle to break any collective working agreements. Wisconsin, as all sides agree, is the tip of the iceberg and will be closely watched by other states (and the federal government).
On the question of the Democratic legislators who have left the state (at least as of today, February 18, 2011), to avoid voting on the proposals. While it is unusual for those of us who consider themselves communist labor militants to demand hands off for this crowd under normal circumstances in this case we are duty-bound to defend their action. Stay the hell out of Wisconsin until this blows over. A good idea would be to put workers on the borders to make sure the State Police don't try to force them back. Okay. Strange times that we live in, strange indeed.
Markin comment:
Sometimes politics, our working class-oriented politics, is a no-brainer. This occasion is one of those times. The lines are drawn very visibly now with the yahoos of the Tea Party movement entering the fray. “Which side are you on?” is the question of the hour. All out in support of the Wisconsin Public Employee Unions!
*******
Repost from American Left History
Friday, February 18, 2011
Victory To The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions!- Hands Off The Unions! -Hands Off The Democratic Legislators
Markin comment:
I suppose we all knew that it would come to this. Probably the last serious bastion of organized labor-the public employees unions are starting to face the onslaught of governmental attempts to break those collective bargaining agreements, crying budgetary crisis- the heart of any union operation. With the demise of the industrial unions (representing less than ten percent cent of the workforce in the wake of the deindustrialization of America) the public employee union became the obvious target in the bosses' relentless struggle to break any collective working agreements. Wisconsin, as all sides agree, is the tip of the iceberg and will be closely watched by other states (and the federal government).
On the question of the Democratic legislators who have left the state (at least as of today, February 18, 2011), to avoid voting on the proposals. While it is unusual for those of us who consider themselves communist labor militants to demand hands off for this crowd under normal circumstances in this case we are duty-bound to defend their action. Stay the hell out of Wisconsin until this blows over. A good idea would be to put workers on the borders to make sure the State Police don't try to force them back. Okay. Strange times that we live in, strange indeed.
Playwright's Corner- Eugene O'Neill's "The Emperor Jones"
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_Jones
Markin comment:
This entry provides a little background information for the play (and movie) that helped, along with Othello, define Paul Robeson as the epitome of the strong black man, a man for every racist, and every Uncle Tom, to fear. Period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_Jones
Markin comment:
This entry provides a little background information for the play (and movie) that helped, along with Othello, define Paul Robeson as the epitome of the strong black man, a man for every racist, and every Uncle Tom, to fear. Period.
*Films to While Away The Class Struggle by-“Old Man River Keeps Rolling Along”-The Work Of Paul Robeson
Click on the title to link to an American Left History blog entry of a book reviewing the life of Paul Robeson as background for this film review>
February Is Black History Month
Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin
DVD Review
Portrait Of An Artist, Paul Robeson, The Criterion Collection, 2007
Paul Robeson’s name can be found in many places in this space for his extraordinary (untutored) vocal talents singing songs of freedom, of the struggle for human dignity and for artistic effect (Emperor Jones, etc.). The most famous, or from a leftist perspective, infamous use of that instrument was the Peekskill (New York) concert of 1949 where he, his fellow progressives, including Communist Party members and sympathizers, literally had to fight off the fascistic locals in the throes of the post-World War II Cold War “red scare” that dominated my childhood and many others from my generation of ’68.
But that skill hardly ends the list of talents that Paul Robeson used in his life: scholar, All-American football player (at one point denied that honor because of his politics0, folklorist, actor, and, most importantly, political activist round out the main features. This Criterion Collection series of four discs concentrates on his film career (and other short biographic and memory pieces) especially the early work where he had to play groveling, simple-minded blacks and did so against type (his ever present black and proud type). I will give a short summary below to show the range of his work, although his real role as Shakespeare’s Othello, done on the stage, is by all accounts, his definitive work, as is, to my mind Emperor Jones for his film work.
That said, Paul Robeson, and I were political opponents on the left. Whether he was a member or just a sympathizer of the Stalinized Communist Party (or to use a quaint work form the old Cold War days, fellow-traveler) he nevertheless, if one looks closely at his speeches and comments stayed very close to the American Communist Party "party line" of the times (whatever that was, or rather whatever Moscow called for), including the ritualistic denunciation of Trotskyites as counter-revolutionaries, etc. He, however, was an eloquent spokesman for blacks here in America and internationally, a speaker against the Cold War madness, and a fighter for national liberation and anti-colonial struggles a kindred spirit. Moreover, unlike others, including poet Langston Hughes and novelist Richard Wright no “turncoat” and held his ground despite its effect on his career, his ability to earn a living, and his ability to leave America. Thus, he, along with the anarchist Emma Goldman, is one of those contradictory political characters from the past that I have a “soft” spot for. Paul Robeson’s voice and presence, in any case, with this comprehensive retrospective (and others) will always be there. I wish, wish like hell, he could have been with us when the deal went down and communists had to choose between Stalinism and Trotskyism.
********
Emperor Jones, a classic Robeson performance is the main feature of the first disc. It is almost painful to watch this brilliant Eugene O’Neill play brought to the screen in 1933 for its language (the ‘n’ word), it depiction of blacks, in the cities and the jungle as servile or loony, and merely the white man’s fodder and for its primitive cinematic effects. But Paul Robeson IS Emperor Jones. No amount of fool talk, bad dialogue, didactic scripting can take away the power of his performance, foolishly tempting the fates, and the white man, or not. This is a powerful black man, period. His singing, especially of Water Boy, of course, needs no comment from me.
The other part of this disc is a sequence short piece on his life and times, as well as the effect hat he had on then up-and-coming young black actors and singers like James Earl Jones and Ruby Dee. This is a good short biographic sketch, although I find it hard to believe that throughout the various comments the fact of his association with the American Communist Party is no mentioned by anyone or I did not hear it mentioned by the narrator once. Robeson is characterized as merely a black social activist. This is a disservice to his memory, and a form of historical distortion that I have found elsewhere (notably in a Howard Zinn tribute documentary done by Matt Damon).The American Communist Party, our left-wing political enemy or not, was part of the working class movement in this country, at some points an important part, and to deny that is to deny our left-wing history. No, this falsification by omission will not do.
February Is Black History Month
Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin
DVD Review
Portrait Of An Artist, Paul Robeson, The Criterion Collection, 2007
Paul Robeson’s name can be found in many places in this space for his extraordinary (untutored) vocal talents singing songs of freedom, of the struggle for human dignity and for artistic effect (Emperor Jones, etc.). The most famous, or from a leftist perspective, infamous use of that instrument was the Peekskill (New York) concert of 1949 where he, his fellow progressives, including Communist Party members and sympathizers, literally had to fight off the fascistic locals in the throes of the post-World War II Cold War “red scare” that dominated my childhood and many others from my generation of ’68.
But that skill hardly ends the list of talents that Paul Robeson used in his life: scholar, All-American football player (at one point denied that honor because of his politics0, folklorist, actor, and, most importantly, political activist round out the main features. This Criterion Collection series of four discs concentrates on his film career (and other short biographic and memory pieces) especially the early work where he had to play groveling, simple-minded blacks and did so against type (his ever present black and proud type). I will give a short summary below to show the range of his work, although his real role as Shakespeare’s Othello, done on the stage, is by all accounts, his definitive work, as is, to my mind Emperor Jones for his film work.
That said, Paul Robeson, and I were political opponents on the left. Whether he was a member or just a sympathizer of the Stalinized Communist Party (or to use a quaint work form the old Cold War days, fellow-traveler) he nevertheless, if one looks closely at his speeches and comments stayed very close to the American Communist Party "party line" of the times (whatever that was, or rather whatever Moscow called for), including the ritualistic denunciation of Trotskyites as counter-revolutionaries, etc. He, however, was an eloquent spokesman for blacks here in America and internationally, a speaker against the Cold War madness, and a fighter for national liberation and anti-colonial struggles a kindred spirit. Moreover, unlike others, including poet Langston Hughes and novelist Richard Wright no “turncoat” and held his ground despite its effect on his career, his ability to earn a living, and his ability to leave America. Thus, he, along with the anarchist Emma Goldman, is one of those contradictory political characters from the past that I have a “soft” spot for. Paul Robeson’s voice and presence, in any case, with this comprehensive retrospective (and others) will always be there. I wish, wish like hell, he could have been with us when the deal went down and communists had to choose between Stalinism and Trotskyism.
********
Emperor Jones, a classic Robeson performance is the main feature of the first disc. It is almost painful to watch this brilliant Eugene O’Neill play brought to the screen in 1933 for its language (the ‘n’ word), it depiction of blacks, in the cities and the jungle as servile or loony, and merely the white man’s fodder and for its primitive cinematic effects. But Paul Robeson IS Emperor Jones. No amount of fool talk, bad dialogue, didactic scripting can take away the power of his performance, foolishly tempting the fates, and the white man, or not. This is a powerful black man, period. His singing, especially of Water Boy, of course, needs no comment from me.
The other part of this disc is a sequence short piece on his life and times, as well as the effect hat he had on then up-and-coming young black actors and singers like James Earl Jones and Ruby Dee. This is a good short biographic sketch, although I find it hard to believe that throughout the various comments the fact of his association with the American Communist Party is no mentioned by anyone or I did not hear it mentioned by the narrator once. Robeson is characterized as merely a black social activist. This is a disservice to his memory, and a form of historical distortion that I have found elsewhere (notably in a Howard Zinn tribute documentary done by Matt Damon).The American Communist Party, our left-wing political enemy or not, was part of the working class movement in this country, at some points an important part, and to deny that is to deny our left-wing history. No, this falsification by omission will not do.
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-Paul Robeson
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Paul Robeson.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February, and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February, and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
From The "Renegade Eye" Blog- In Defense Of Marxism- "Revolutionary Aftershocks" -The Middle East At Glance
Markin comment:
The key question as posed here in this article is the question of questions, the formations and leadership of a revolutionary communist parties that fights for workers and peasants government (and students too, okay). And to build that party while the revolutionary wave is on the upswing. Such moments do not last forever as we have seen before, including in Barcelona in 1936.
Revolutionary Aftershocks
Written by Alan Woods
Monday, 21 February 2011
In nature an earthquake is followed by aftershocks. These can be as catastrophic in their effects as the original explosion. What we are now witnessing is the same phenomenon in terms of society and politics. The revolutionary earthquake in Egypt and Tunisia has sent seismic shocks to the most distant parts of the Arab speaking world. Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Djibouti -- the list is growing longer, not by the day but by the hour.
February 19, Bahrain. Photo: Al Jazeera EnglishIn Bahrain, which is next to both Iran and Saudi Arabia, the desperate attempt of the monarchy to crush the mass movement in blood has failed. The revolutionary people showed immense courage in the face of the bullets of the regime's hired mercenaries. As a result the authorities were forced to retreat and withdraw the thugs in uniform, allowing the masses to retake possession of Pearl Square, which has now become the centre of gravity for the uprising, like Tahrir Square in Cairo.
The upheavals in Bahrain also represents a potential fuse that can ignite a powder keg in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, where there is also a large Shiia minority and an increasingly disaffected population.
The crisis is already beginning to affect the reactionary Saudi regime. Last week the Mufti of Saudi Arabia warned the ruling clique that unless they carried out urgent reforms to improve the living standards of the Saudi people they could face overthrow like the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. In an unprecedented statement, he criticised the royal family for its extravagance, contrasting it with the poverty of the masses.
It is impossible to understate the importance of this development, since the entire Saudi regime is based on an understanding between the House of Saud and the clergy. A split between them would be a clear harbinger of a revolutionary crisis in this bastion of reaction in the Middle East and the broader Islamic world. It is something that sends shivers up the spine of the US imperialists.
In Iran also there are indications that the mass movement is reviving. There are clear signs of splits in the regime and in the state upon which it rests. According to a document received by The Telegraph, several lower ranking commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (a professional militia counting 120,000) have signed a document stating that they do not want to shoot on demonstrators. As we have pointed out in Marxist.com, if this document is correct, it marks a very important milestone in the development of the Iranian revolution.
Febraury 21, Bahrain. Photo: Mahmood Al-YousifThe hypocrisy of the imperialists knows no bounds. On the one hand they are obliged to make noises in public expressing their profound sympathy with the pro-democracy movement. But in reality they have backed every reactionary regime in the region, including Bahrain, which is home to the Fifth Fleet, the main US naval force in the Middle East. The British and Americans have armed these regimes for decades against their own populations. The tear gas and rubber bullets and other symbols of western democratic civilization used on the protesters in Pearl Square come from Britain, where the government is currently “reconsidering” its policy on arms sales to places like Bahrain and Libya.
Iraq
For all their economic and military might, the US imperialists are powerless to intervene directly against the revolution. They have already burnt their fingers badly in Iraq. Nine years, hundreds of thousands killed and maimed, and billions of dollars later, Iraq is no closer to “democracy” and “freedom” than when GW Bush toppled the US' former ally in Baghdad. Ironically, the debt incurred during this adventure has laid the foundations for mass unrest in the US itself. Despite this draining of blood and treasure, the US still does not and cannot control Iraq. By contrast, mass mobilizations and the entry of the organized working class has resulted in the overthrow of two dictators, with more to follow. This exposes the lie by the imperialists that only they can bring “civilization” to the “backwards” peoples of the region, which was, lest we forget, the cradle of human civilization.
17 February, Sulaymaniyah. Photo: Karzan KadoziThe revolutionary wave sweeping the region shows that once the masses are mobilized, no force on earth can stop them. Not even the mighty Mubarak could survive. If it can happen in Egypt, it can happen anywhere. Now, in Kurdish Iraq, mass unrest has erupted, threatening the shaky edifice put in place by the imperialists as they try to cut their losses while maintaining influence over the country's affairs – and oil.
Tunisia
In Tunisia tens of thousands marched over the weekend in the main cities against the Gannouchi government and demanding the immediate convening of a Constituent Assembly. “The Tunisian revolution is not over yet” was the common message of these demonstrations. The largest of these demonstrations took place in the capital Tunis on Sunday February 20, where tens of thousands marched to the government building shouting slogans like “Leave – Degage” and “We don't want the friends of Ben Ali”. Most media sources tried to minimise the size of this protest, but Reuters journalists who were present put the number in attendace at a massive 40,000. This video clearly shows there were at least tens of thousands present (Video ). Similar marches took place in Sfax (Video ), Kairouan (Video ), Bizerte (Video ), Monastir and other cities with thousands demonstrating.
Despite heavy police presence and the army firing on the air, the protestors
Libya
The revolutionary wave has reached its latest and bloodiest point of influx in Libya, where the situation has now reached white heat. Sandwiched between Tunisia and Egypt, many commentators (and Gadaffi himself!) imagined Libya could somehow avoid the general conflagration. According to the latest reports the uprising has spread from eastern Libya to the capital of Tripoli. Last night heavy gunfire was heard in central Tripoli and other districts. Al Jazeera puts the number of people killed in Tripoli at 61. Other unconfirmed reports say protesters attacked the headquarters of Al-Jamahiriya Two television and Al-Shababia as well as other government buildings in Tripoli overnight.
The People’s Conference Centre where the General People’s Congress (parliament) meets was set on fire, and police stations and other government buildings were also attacked, ransacked and set on fire. This is now a full-blown armed insurrection. Clashes have been going on between the protesters and security forces in eastern cities of the country and in Benghazi in particular, where opposition to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is most intense. But this has spread to the south and wets of the country and to Tripoli itself.
The protests in Tripoli were not pacified but intensified following a televised speech by Gaddafi' s son Seif al-Islam. He promised political, social and economic reforms and said that the killing of demonstrators was a “mistake”, but described the protesters as drunks and drug addicts following orders from foreigners. He promised a conference on constitutional reforms within two days and said Libyans should "forget oil and petrol" and prepare themselves for occupation by "the West" and 40 years of civil war if they failed to agree.
The younger Gaddafi attempted to draw a contrast between the situation in Libya with the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia: “Libya is different, if there is disturbance it will split into several states,” he said. But the same things were said before about Egypt, which was said to be different to Tunisia and therefore immune to revolutionary contagion. Events soon exposed the hollowness of these assertions. There were no pyramids in Tunisia and there are none in Libya. But there is mass discontent in all these countries, which is seeking a way out. The harder it is repressed, the more violent will be the explosion when it finally breaks through.
The speech implied that the army and national guard would crack down on “seditious elements” spreading unrest: “You can say we want democracy and rights, we can talk about it, we should have talked about it before. It's this or war. Instead of crying over 200 deaths, we will cry over hundreds of thousands of deaths.
“We will fight to the last minute, until the last bullet,” Gaddafi said. But the question is: for whom is the last bullet reserved?
Civil War
Saif Gaddafi admitted that some military bases, tanks and weapons had been seized and acknowledged that the army, under stress, opened fire on crowds because it was not used to controlling demonstrations.
Witnesses in Libya have reported that some cities, especially in the east, which is perceived as less loyal to Moammar Gaddafi, have fallen completely into the hands of civilians and protesters. After the speech, the protesters in the street began chanting slogans against Seif al-Islam as well as his father.
There have been reports of army defections in Benghazi and Al Bayda in eastern Libya from February 20, and now spreading unrest to Tripoli on Feb. 21, This suggest that the regime is losing its grip on the the situation.
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, said Saif Gaddafi's speech appeared “desperate”.
“It sounded like a desperate speech by a desperate son of a dictator who's trying to use blackmail on the Libyan people by threatening that he could turn the country into a bloodbath,” Bishara said.
“That is very dangerous coming from someone who doesn't even hold an official role in Libya -- so in so many ways, this could be the beginning of a nightmare scenario for Libya if a despotic leader puts his son on air in order to warn his people of a bloodbath if they don't listen to the orders or the dictates of a dictators.”
If the Libyan regime tries to cling to power by force it may end up like the regime of Ceaucescu in Romania. Such a prospect is a nightmare scenario for the imperialists and their puppet regimes everywhere. The latest reports indicate that the Libyan air force and navy are firing on rebellious military installations and even civilians. It would now appear that open civil war has erupted as Gaddafi desperately clings to power, but it is a gamble he may well not win.
Wherever one looks, the whole vast expanse of North Africa and the Middle East is in flames. Regimes which were regarded as stable and unassailable only two months ago, are being rocked to their foundations. The Arab masses who were described in contemptuous terms by bourgeois commentators, as passive, ignorant and apathetic, have emerged as the most revolutionary force on the planet. This is a major turning point not only in the history of this region but in world history.
The Bible says “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first”. Those who for so long regarded themselves as the “vanguard” have shown themselves to be completely unprepared and out of step with the real movement of the working class and the youth. Those who were “advanced” have turned out to be the most backward and retrograde elements in the equation. And those who were supposed to be “backward”, now stand in the front line. Thus it is, thus it always was.
In 1917, during the Russian Revolution, Lenin said that the working class is more revolutionary than the most revolutionary party. The events of 1917 proved him to be correct. On the streets of Cairo, Teheran, and Manama, history is being repeated. The revolutionary instincts of the masses have carried the movement forward despite all obstacles. They have brushed aside bullets and truncheons as a man swats a mosquito. The only thing that is lacking here, that guaranteed the final victory in 1917, is the presence of a genuine revolutionary party and leadership.
What is astonishing is the extraordinary degree of revolutionary maturity shown by the workers and youth of these countries. With no party, no real leadership, no preconceived plan of action, they have achieved miracles. They bring to mind the marvelous movement of the workers of Barcelona, who in 1936, armed with just sticks, knives, and old hunting rifles, stormed the barracks and smashed the fascist counterrevolution. They bring to mind the Paris Commune, which in the words of Marx, “stormed heaven”.
It is impossible to predict with accuracy how the revolution will develop. This will depend on a number of factors, both objective and subjective. But in the absence of genuine revolutionary leadership, it is inevitable that the revolution will be prolonged in time. There will inevitably be ups and downs, ebbs and flows, periods of euphoria followed by disappointment, defeats, and even periods of reaction. But it will be impossible to reestablish anything resembling stability as long as the capitalist system exists. One regime of crisis will follow another.
February 11, Tahrir Square. Photo: Ramy RaoofThe most important thing, however, is that the revolution has begun. It is impossible to turn the clock back in any of these countries. And through all the stormy events that are unfolding and will unfold over a period of months and even years, the working class and the youth will learn. They will learn which parties and leaders have betrayed them and which can be trusted. In the end, they will come to understand that the only way forward is a radical break with the past and the complete elimination, not just of this or that leader or regime, but of a fundamentally unjust system of society.
The overthrow of Ben Ali and Mubarak was the work of the revolutionary masses, and in particular the working class and the youth. These are the only genuinely revolutionary forces in society. There can be no solution to the problems of these countries unless and until the working class takes power into its own hands and expropriates the wealth of the oligarchy and imperialism.
When the present wave of fighting is over, when the clouds of teargas and gunpowder is lifted, the workers and youth will look around and see that they are not alone. The revolutionary movement has gone beyond all the artificial frontiers established by imperialism in the past, frontiers that cut across all natural boundaries and divide the living body of the peoples. The power of imperialism over the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East is based on this criminal division. To overcome it is essential if the peoples are ever to achieve their freedom and raise themselves to their true height.
The instinct of the masses is to spread the revolution. It is spreading and will spread further. This poses the question of the unity of the peoples of the region. The only way to achieve this is through a Socialist Federation of the North Africa and the Middle East, not as a utopian and distant aim, but as a burning and urgent necessity.
•Long live the Revolution!
•Down with capitalism and imperialism!
•Workers of the world unite!
The key question as posed here in this article is the question of questions, the formations and leadership of a revolutionary communist parties that fights for workers and peasants government (and students too, okay). And to build that party while the revolutionary wave is on the upswing. Such moments do not last forever as we have seen before, including in Barcelona in 1936.
Revolutionary Aftershocks
Written by Alan Woods
Monday, 21 February 2011
In nature an earthquake is followed by aftershocks. These can be as catastrophic in their effects as the original explosion. What we are now witnessing is the same phenomenon in terms of society and politics. The revolutionary earthquake in Egypt and Tunisia has sent seismic shocks to the most distant parts of the Arab speaking world. Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Djibouti -- the list is growing longer, not by the day but by the hour.
February 19, Bahrain. Photo: Al Jazeera EnglishIn Bahrain, which is next to both Iran and Saudi Arabia, the desperate attempt of the monarchy to crush the mass movement in blood has failed. The revolutionary people showed immense courage in the face of the bullets of the regime's hired mercenaries. As a result the authorities were forced to retreat and withdraw the thugs in uniform, allowing the masses to retake possession of Pearl Square, which has now become the centre of gravity for the uprising, like Tahrir Square in Cairo.
The upheavals in Bahrain also represents a potential fuse that can ignite a powder keg in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, where there is also a large Shiia minority and an increasingly disaffected population.
The crisis is already beginning to affect the reactionary Saudi regime. Last week the Mufti of Saudi Arabia warned the ruling clique that unless they carried out urgent reforms to improve the living standards of the Saudi people they could face overthrow like the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. In an unprecedented statement, he criticised the royal family for its extravagance, contrasting it with the poverty of the masses.
It is impossible to understate the importance of this development, since the entire Saudi regime is based on an understanding between the House of Saud and the clergy. A split between them would be a clear harbinger of a revolutionary crisis in this bastion of reaction in the Middle East and the broader Islamic world. It is something that sends shivers up the spine of the US imperialists.
In Iran also there are indications that the mass movement is reviving. There are clear signs of splits in the regime and in the state upon which it rests. According to a document received by The Telegraph, several lower ranking commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (a professional militia counting 120,000) have signed a document stating that they do not want to shoot on demonstrators. As we have pointed out in Marxist.com, if this document is correct, it marks a very important milestone in the development of the Iranian revolution.
Febraury 21, Bahrain. Photo: Mahmood Al-YousifThe hypocrisy of the imperialists knows no bounds. On the one hand they are obliged to make noises in public expressing their profound sympathy with the pro-democracy movement. But in reality they have backed every reactionary regime in the region, including Bahrain, which is home to the Fifth Fleet, the main US naval force in the Middle East. The British and Americans have armed these regimes for decades against their own populations. The tear gas and rubber bullets and other symbols of western democratic civilization used on the protesters in Pearl Square come from Britain, where the government is currently “reconsidering” its policy on arms sales to places like Bahrain and Libya.
Iraq
For all their economic and military might, the US imperialists are powerless to intervene directly against the revolution. They have already burnt their fingers badly in Iraq. Nine years, hundreds of thousands killed and maimed, and billions of dollars later, Iraq is no closer to “democracy” and “freedom” than when GW Bush toppled the US' former ally in Baghdad. Ironically, the debt incurred during this adventure has laid the foundations for mass unrest in the US itself. Despite this draining of blood and treasure, the US still does not and cannot control Iraq. By contrast, mass mobilizations and the entry of the organized working class has resulted in the overthrow of two dictators, with more to follow. This exposes the lie by the imperialists that only they can bring “civilization” to the “backwards” peoples of the region, which was, lest we forget, the cradle of human civilization.
17 February, Sulaymaniyah. Photo: Karzan KadoziThe revolutionary wave sweeping the region shows that once the masses are mobilized, no force on earth can stop them. Not even the mighty Mubarak could survive. If it can happen in Egypt, it can happen anywhere. Now, in Kurdish Iraq, mass unrest has erupted, threatening the shaky edifice put in place by the imperialists as they try to cut their losses while maintaining influence over the country's affairs – and oil.
Tunisia
In Tunisia tens of thousands marched over the weekend in the main cities against the Gannouchi government and demanding the immediate convening of a Constituent Assembly. “The Tunisian revolution is not over yet” was the common message of these demonstrations. The largest of these demonstrations took place in the capital Tunis on Sunday February 20, where tens of thousands marched to the government building shouting slogans like “Leave – Degage” and “We don't want the friends of Ben Ali”. Most media sources tried to minimise the size of this protest, but Reuters journalists who were present put the number in attendace at a massive 40,000. This video clearly shows there were at least tens of thousands present (Video ). Similar marches took place in Sfax (Video ), Kairouan (Video ), Bizerte (Video ), Monastir and other cities with thousands demonstrating.
Despite heavy police presence and the army firing on the air, the protestors
Libya
The revolutionary wave has reached its latest and bloodiest point of influx in Libya, where the situation has now reached white heat. Sandwiched between Tunisia and Egypt, many commentators (and Gadaffi himself!) imagined Libya could somehow avoid the general conflagration. According to the latest reports the uprising has spread from eastern Libya to the capital of Tripoli. Last night heavy gunfire was heard in central Tripoli and other districts. Al Jazeera puts the number of people killed in Tripoli at 61. Other unconfirmed reports say protesters attacked the headquarters of Al-Jamahiriya Two television and Al-Shababia as well as other government buildings in Tripoli overnight.
The People’s Conference Centre where the General People’s Congress (parliament) meets was set on fire, and police stations and other government buildings were also attacked, ransacked and set on fire. This is now a full-blown armed insurrection. Clashes have been going on between the protesters and security forces in eastern cities of the country and in Benghazi in particular, where opposition to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is most intense. But this has spread to the south and wets of the country and to Tripoli itself.
The protests in Tripoli were not pacified but intensified following a televised speech by Gaddafi' s son Seif al-Islam. He promised political, social and economic reforms and said that the killing of demonstrators was a “mistake”, but described the protesters as drunks and drug addicts following orders from foreigners. He promised a conference on constitutional reforms within two days and said Libyans should "forget oil and petrol" and prepare themselves for occupation by "the West" and 40 years of civil war if they failed to agree.
The younger Gaddafi attempted to draw a contrast between the situation in Libya with the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia: “Libya is different, if there is disturbance it will split into several states,” he said. But the same things were said before about Egypt, which was said to be different to Tunisia and therefore immune to revolutionary contagion. Events soon exposed the hollowness of these assertions. There were no pyramids in Tunisia and there are none in Libya. But there is mass discontent in all these countries, which is seeking a way out. The harder it is repressed, the more violent will be the explosion when it finally breaks through.
The speech implied that the army and national guard would crack down on “seditious elements” spreading unrest: “You can say we want democracy and rights, we can talk about it, we should have talked about it before. It's this or war. Instead of crying over 200 deaths, we will cry over hundreds of thousands of deaths.
“We will fight to the last minute, until the last bullet,” Gaddafi said. But the question is: for whom is the last bullet reserved?
Civil War
Saif Gaddafi admitted that some military bases, tanks and weapons had been seized and acknowledged that the army, under stress, opened fire on crowds because it was not used to controlling demonstrations.
Witnesses in Libya have reported that some cities, especially in the east, which is perceived as less loyal to Moammar Gaddafi, have fallen completely into the hands of civilians and protesters. After the speech, the protesters in the street began chanting slogans against Seif al-Islam as well as his father.
There have been reports of army defections in Benghazi and Al Bayda in eastern Libya from February 20, and now spreading unrest to Tripoli on Feb. 21, This suggest that the regime is losing its grip on the the situation.
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, said Saif Gaddafi's speech appeared “desperate”.
“It sounded like a desperate speech by a desperate son of a dictator who's trying to use blackmail on the Libyan people by threatening that he could turn the country into a bloodbath,” Bishara said.
“That is very dangerous coming from someone who doesn't even hold an official role in Libya -- so in so many ways, this could be the beginning of a nightmare scenario for Libya if a despotic leader puts his son on air in order to warn his people of a bloodbath if they don't listen to the orders or the dictates of a dictators.”
If the Libyan regime tries to cling to power by force it may end up like the regime of Ceaucescu in Romania. Such a prospect is a nightmare scenario for the imperialists and their puppet regimes everywhere. The latest reports indicate that the Libyan air force and navy are firing on rebellious military installations and even civilians. It would now appear that open civil war has erupted as Gaddafi desperately clings to power, but it is a gamble he may well not win.
Wherever one looks, the whole vast expanse of North Africa and the Middle East is in flames. Regimes which were regarded as stable and unassailable only two months ago, are being rocked to their foundations. The Arab masses who were described in contemptuous terms by bourgeois commentators, as passive, ignorant and apathetic, have emerged as the most revolutionary force on the planet. This is a major turning point not only in the history of this region but in world history.
The Bible says “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first”. Those who for so long regarded themselves as the “vanguard” have shown themselves to be completely unprepared and out of step with the real movement of the working class and the youth. Those who were “advanced” have turned out to be the most backward and retrograde elements in the equation. And those who were supposed to be “backward”, now stand in the front line. Thus it is, thus it always was.
In 1917, during the Russian Revolution, Lenin said that the working class is more revolutionary than the most revolutionary party. The events of 1917 proved him to be correct. On the streets of Cairo, Teheran, and Manama, history is being repeated. The revolutionary instincts of the masses have carried the movement forward despite all obstacles. They have brushed aside bullets and truncheons as a man swats a mosquito. The only thing that is lacking here, that guaranteed the final victory in 1917, is the presence of a genuine revolutionary party and leadership.
What is astonishing is the extraordinary degree of revolutionary maturity shown by the workers and youth of these countries. With no party, no real leadership, no preconceived plan of action, they have achieved miracles. They bring to mind the marvelous movement of the workers of Barcelona, who in 1936, armed with just sticks, knives, and old hunting rifles, stormed the barracks and smashed the fascist counterrevolution. They bring to mind the Paris Commune, which in the words of Marx, “stormed heaven”.
It is impossible to predict with accuracy how the revolution will develop. This will depend on a number of factors, both objective and subjective. But in the absence of genuine revolutionary leadership, it is inevitable that the revolution will be prolonged in time. There will inevitably be ups and downs, ebbs and flows, periods of euphoria followed by disappointment, defeats, and even periods of reaction. But it will be impossible to reestablish anything resembling stability as long as the capitalist system exists. One regime of crisis will follow another.
February 11, Tahrir Square. Photo: Ramy RaoofThe most important thing, however, is that the revolution has begun. It is impossible to turn the clock back in any of these countries. And through all the stormy events that are unfolding and will unfold over a period of months and even years, the working class and the youth will learn. They will learn which parties and leaders have betrayed them and which can be trusted. In the end, they will come to understand that the only way forward is a radical break with the past and the complete elimination, not just of this or that leader or regime, but of a fundamentally unjust system of society.
The overthrow of Ben Ali and Mubarak was the work of the revolutionary masses, and in particular the working class and the youth. These are the only genuinely revolutionary forces in society. There can be no solution to the problems of these countries unless and until the working class takes power into its own hands and expropriates the wealth of the oligarchy and imperialism.
When the present wave of fighting is over, when the clouds of teargas and gunpowder is lifted, the workers and youth will look around and see that they are not alone. The revolutionary movement has gone beyond all the artificial frontiers established by imperialism in the past, frontiers that cut across all natural boundaries and divide the living body of the peoples. The power of imperialism over the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East is based on this criminal division. To overcome it is essential if the peoples are ever to achieve their freedom and raise themselves to their true height.
The instinct of the masses is to spread the revolution. It is spreading and will spread further. This poses the question of the unity of the peoples of the region. The only way to achieve this is through a Socialist Federation of the North Africa and the Middle East, not as a utopian and distant aim, but as a burning and urgent necessity.
•Long live the Revolution!
•Down with capitalism and imperialism!
•Workers of the world unite!
The Latest From The San Francisco Eight Defense Committee
Click on the headline ot link to The San Francisco Eight Defense Committee log for the latest news.
Markin comment:
The San Francisco Eight Defense Committee-Free Francisco Torres
Markin comment:
The San Francisco Eight Defense Committee-Free Francisco Torres
Monday, February 21, 2011
From The Rag Blog -BOOKS / Jonah Raskin : John McMillian's 'Smoking Typewriters'
Markin comment:
In the 1960s there was a phethora of alternative (non-political party established)newspapers that flourished for various lenghts of time. Their undoing was that central split between those who wanted to retreat to some backwater cultural revolution and those who saw the need to fight the front-facing political battles against the imperial state. In short the battle of the dope bong and pick up the gun. With the demise of the political struggle came the demise of the alternative (non-party) newspaper. No question.
******
BOOKS / Jonah Raskin : John McMillian's 'Smoking Typewriters'
John McMillian, author of Smoking Typewriters, will appear at BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar Blvd, Austin, at 7 p.m., Friday, Feb. 25, 2011, for a reading and signing of his book about the Sixties underground press. John will also be our special guest at a Rag Blog Happy Hour, Friday, Feb. 25, 5-7 p.m., at Maria's Taco Xpress, 2529 S. Lamar Blvd., Austin. The public is welcome. And John McMillian will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, March 4, 2011, 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP 91.7FM in Austin, and streamed live on the internet.
The curious case of the 1960s papers:
John McMillian's Smoking Typewriters
By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / February 21, 2011
[Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, by John McMillian (Oxford University Press, Feb. 17, 2011); Hardcover; 276 pp.; $27.95]
Art Kunkin was born into a Jewish family in New York in 1928. A brainy kid, he attended Bronx High School of Science, became a follower of Leon Trotsky, moved to Southern California, and recreated himself in the burgeoning bohemian world of Venice.
He would probably not be remembered today and he would certainly not appear in John McMillian’s Smoking Typewriters were it not for the fact that he founded the L.A. Free Press -- the Freep -- and became one of the curious fathers of the underground newspapers of the 1960s.
McMillian writes about Kunkin and the Freep near the very start of his new book in which he tells his version of the 1960s through the eyes and ears of its loud, colorful, unconventional papers such as the Freep, Rat, The Seed, The Great Speckled Bird, The Barb, The Rag, and many others with equally provocative names.
Smoking Typewriters provides a fast-moving narrative about the birth, the death, and the second life of the newspapers that were spawned by the upheavals of the 1960s and that were also spurred on by those upheavals. Part agitprop in a radical American tradition that went back at least as far as the 1930s, and part agitpop in the unique style of the 1960s, papers such as The Barb, The Seed, and Rat sparked the rebellion of a generation, even as they reported the latest news, gossip, and rumors from the barricades, the communes, the rock concerts, and the on-going spectacle of the streets.
Austin SDS leader George Vizard, later murdered under questionable circumstances, peddles an early issue of The Rag on The Drag near the University of Texas campus in 1966. At left is his wife, Mariann. (Mariann -- who changed her last name to Wizard -- is now a contributing editor at The Rag Blog.) Image courtesy of Thorne Dreyer, from the photo section of Smoking Typewriters / Oxford Press.
One of the early papers McMillian discusses in depth is Austin’s Rag, the first underground paper in the South. The Rag, now reborn as The Rag Blog, was a model for many papers that would come later, he says, because it was the first to emerge directly out of a radical community, the first to be run collectively, and the first to merge the hippie and New Left cultures.
McMillian puts readers in the cockpit of the era. He conjures up the radical style, the exuberant mood, and the bravado -- no mean feat given the fact that he wasn’t there to live it himself. An historian, he looks back at the era with the benefit of hindsight and with a certain detachment, too, that enables him to tell the story without aiming to grind obvious ideological axes.
He focuses attention on Los Angeles, Austin, and East Lansing, Michigan, as well as on Chicago and New York, and makes it clear that the 1960s as a state of mind and as a way of being in the world, took place everywhere in the United States.
To write his book, McMillian interviewed many of the pivotal figures from that time -- both men and women -- who wrote for and edited the underground newspapers, such as Harvey Wasserman, Allen Young, John Holmstrom, Thorne Dreyer, Alice Embree, Ray Mungo, Sheila Ryan, and others. In Smoking Typewriters he looks at the sexual politics of the papers, and at the tangled, complex relationships between men and women as they played themselves out in newspaper offices.
Smoking Typewriters takes readers from the early days of SDS, through the rise of the anti-war movement, to the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont in 1969 that has often been described as the culminating event of the decade. Ten pages of photos from the 1960s put faces to the names mentioned in the book.
There’s a brief, last chapter that looks at trends in alternative media since 1969, and an afterward that touches on zines, blogs, and bloggers, and in which McMillian predicts that, “we are going to see a collapsing of private space and a diffusion of power around knowledge and information.” For those who would like to dig deeper into the subject, there’s also an extensive bibliography and more than 50-pages of footnotes
LNS) is McMillian’s privileging of SDS and the New Left. SDS was obviously influential; New Leftists changed life on college campuses. I was an SDS member and a New Leftist myself. But I was also a hippie, and a member of the counterculture, and from where I stood the underground newspapers were as much a product of the hippie counterculture as they were of SDS and the New Left.
Thorne Dreyer, now editor of The Rag Blog, and the late Victoria Smith, shown at the offices of Space City! in Houston in 1970. Image from the photo section of John McMillian's Smoking Typewriters, Oxford Press.
McMillian gives more emphasis to the overtly political figures of the era, and to the ideological nature of the papers, and minimizes aspects of the cultural revolution of the 1960s. In some ways, the evidence provided in the book goes counter to McMillian’s own argument. So, for example, he offers a pithy quotation from Abbie Hoffman, one of the founders of the Yippies, who said of the underground press “It is a visible manifestation of an alternative culture. It helps to create a national identity.”
Granted, McMillian discusses nomenclature such as “New Left,” “hippies,” and “politicos” in the introduction to his book. He might have taken the discussion to a deeper level and provided more insight. Still, his book will be appreciated by both ex-New Leftists and ex-hippies because it looks again at the push and pull that took place between those who followed Marx, Mao, and Lenin, and those who followed Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and the Beatles.
Moreover, as McMillian recognizes, there was no clear-cut schism between the hippies and the politicos. So, for example, he offers a useful comment about those two seminal 1960s figures, Marshall Bloom and Ray Mungo, the founders of LNS: “They were a curious duo, dope smoking, hip, full of far-out incredulousness, yet terribly concerned about Vietnam, the urban crisis and politics. ”
In the 1960s, we were all -- if I may speak for a whole generation -- very curious in the sense that we were an odd and unpredictable mix of cultures, values, and identities, especially in the eyes of the Joneses who just couldn’t keep up. As Bob Dylan put it, “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?”
The writers for the underground press, as McMillian shows, not only knew what was happening, but also provided maps and blueprints for others who wanted to join the happenings, the be-ins, the love-ins, the sit-ins, and the whole spectacle of the cultural revolution.
[Jonah Raskin is the author of For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman, and Out of the Whale: Growing up in the American Left. He teaches at Sonoma State University.
Also see Anis Shivani's excellent review from the Feb. 20, 2011, Austin American Statesman: Pressing for change: John McMillian's 'Smoking Typewriters' charts history of underground newspapers.
The Rag Blog
Posted by thorne dreyer at 9:15 AM
In the 1960s there was a phethora of alternative (non-political party established)newspapers that flourished for various lenghts of time. Their undoing was that central split between those who wanted to retreat to some backwater cultural revolution and those who saw the need to fight the front-facing political battles against the imperial state. In short the battle of the dope bong and pick up the gun. With the demise of the political struggle came the demise of the alternative (non-party) newspaper. No question.
******
BOOKS / Jonah Raskin : John McMillian's 'Smoking Typewriters'
John McMillian, author of Smoking Typewriters, will appear at BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar Blvd, Austin, at 7 p.m., Friday, Feb. 25, 2011, for a reading and signing of his book about the Sixties underground press. John will also be our special guest at a Rag Blog Happy Hour, Friday, Feb. 25, 5-7 p.m., at Maria's Taco Xpress, 2529 S. Lamar Blvd., Austin. The public is welcome. And John McMillian will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, March 4, 2011, 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP 91.7FM in Austin, and streamed live on the internet.
The curious case of the 1960s papers:
John McMillian's Smoking Typewriters
By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / February 21, 2011
[Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, by John McMillian (Oxford University Press, Feb. 17, 2011); Hardcover; 276 pp.; $27.95]
Art Kunkin was born into a Jewish family in New York in 1928. A brainy kid, he attended Bronx High School of Science, became a follower of Leon Trotsky, moved to Southern California, and recreated himself in the burgeoning bohemian world of Venice.
He would probably not be remembered today and he would certainly not appear in John McMillian’s Smoking Typewriters were it not for the fact that he founded the L.A. Free Press -- the Freep -- and became one of the curious fathers of the underground newspapers of the 1960s.
McMillian writes about Kunkin and the Freep near the very start of his new book in which he tells his version of the 1960s through the eyes and ears of its loud, colorful, unconventional papers such as the Freep, Rat, The Seed, The Great Speckled Bird, The Barb, The Rag, and many others with equally provocative names.
Smoking Typewriters provides a fast-moving narrative about the birth, the death, and the second life of the newspapers that were spawned by the upheavals of the 1960s and that were also spurred on by those upheavals. Part agitprop in a radical American tradition that went back at least as far as the 1930s, and part agitpop in the unique style of the 1960s, papers such as The Barb, The Seed, and Rat sparked the rebellion of a generation, even as they reported the latest news, gossip, and rumors from the barricades, the communes, the rock concerts, and the on-going spectacle of the streets.
Austin SDS leader George Vizard, later murdered under questionable circumstances, peddles an early issue of The Rag on The Drag near the University of Texas campus in 1966. At left is his wife, Mariann. (Mariann -- who changed her last name to Wizard -- is now a contributing editor at The Rag Blog.) Image courtesy of Thorne Dreyer, from the photo section of Smoking Typewriters / Oxford Press.
One of the early papers McMillian discusses in depth is Austin’s Rag, the first underground paper in the South. The Rag, now reborn as The Rag Blog, was a model for many papers that would come later, he says, because it was the first to emerge directly out of a radical community, the first to be run collectively, and the first to merge the hippie and New Left cultures.
McMillian puts readers in the cockpit of the era. He conjures up the radical style, the exuberant mood, and the bravado -- no mean feat given the fact that he wasn’t there to live it himself. An historian, he looks back at the era with the benefit of hindsight and with a certain detachment, too, that enables him to tell the story without aiming to grind obvious ideological axes.
He focuses attention on Los Angeles, Austin, and East Lansing, Michigan, as well as on Chicago and New York, and makes it clear that the 1960s as a state of mind and as a way of being in the world, took place everywhere in the United States.
To write his book, McMillian interviewed many of the pivotal figures from that time -- both men and women -- who wrote for and edited the underground newspapers, such as Harvey Wasserman, Allen Young, John Holmstrom, Thorne Dreyer, Alice Embree, Ray Mungo, Sheila Ryan, and others. In Smoking Typewriters he looks at the sexual politics of the papers, and at the tangled, complex relationships between men and women as they played themselves out in newspaper offices.
Smoking Typewriters takes readers from the early days of SDS, through the rise of the anti-war movement, to the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont in 1969 that has often been described as the culminating event of the decade. Ten pages of photos from the 1960s put faces to the names mentioned in the book.
There’s a brief, last chapter that looks at trends in alternative media since 1969, and an afterward that touches on zines, blogs, and bloggers, and in which McMillian predicts that, “we are going to see a collapsing of private space and a diffusion of power around knowledge and information.” For those who would like to dig deeper into the subject, there’s also an extensive bibliography and more than 50-pages of footnotes
LNS) is McMillian’s privileging of SDS and the New Left. SDS was obviously influential; New Leftists changed life on college campuses. I was an SDS member and a New Leftist myself. But I was also a hippie, and a member of the counterculture, and from where I stood the underground newspapers were as much a product of the hippie counterculture as they were of SDS and the New Left.
Thorne Dreyer, now editor of The Rag Blog, and the late Victoria Smith, shown at the offices of Space City! in Houston in 1970. Image from the photo section of John McMillian's Smoking Typewriters, Oxford Press.
McMillian gives more emphasis to the overtly political figures of the era, and to the ideological nature of the papers, and minimizes aspects of the cultural revolution of the 1960s. In some ways, the evidence provided in the book goes counter to McMillian’s own argument. So, for example, he offers a pithy quotation from Abbie Hoffman, one of the founders of the Yippies, who said of the underground press “It is a visible manifestation of an alternative culture. It helps to create a national identity.”
Granted, McMillian discusses nomenclature such as “New Left,” “hippies,” and “politicos” in the introduction to his book. He might have taken the discussion to a deeper level and provided more insight. Still, his book will be appreciated by both ex-New Leftists and ex-hippies because it looks again at the push and pull that took place between those who followed Marx, Mao, and Lenin, and those who followed Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and the Beatles.
Moreover, as McMillian recognizes, there was no clear-cut schism between the hippies and the politicos. So, for example, he offers a useful comment about those two seminal 1960s figures, Marshall Bloom and Ray Mungo, the founders of LNS: “They were a curious duo, dope smoking, hip, full of far-out incredulousness, yet terribly concerned about Vietnam, the urban crisis and politics. ”
In the 1960s, we were all -- if I may speak for a whole generation -- very curious in the sense that we were an odd and unpredictable mix of cultures, values, and identities, especially in the eyes of the Joneses who just couldn’t keep up. As Bob Dylan put it, “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?”
The writers for the underground press, as McMillian shows, not only knew what was happening, but also provided maps and blueprints for others who wanted to join the happenings, the be-ins, the love-ins, the sit-ins, and the whole spectacle of the cultural revolution.
[Jonah Raskin is the author of For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman, and Out of the Whale: Growing up in the American Left. He teaches at Sonoma State University.
Also see Anis Shivani's excellent review from the Feb. 20, 2011, Austin American Statesman: Pressing for change: John McMillian's 'Smoking Typewriters' charts history of underground newspapers.
The Rag Blog
Posted by thorne dreyer at 9:15 AM
*The Confessions Of Nat Turner- Novelist William Styron's View
On The Anniversary Of The Nat Turner-Led Slave Insurrection-The Confessions Of Nat Turner- Novelist William Styron's View
BOOK REVIEW/COMMENTARY
FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Directly below is a review (January 29,2007)of William Styron's book (originally written in 1967) "The Confessions Of Nat Turner", an imaginative literary treatment (for the most part) of the justly famous 1831 slave rebellion led by the heroic Turner and his band of fellow slaves. The fall-out from that event (Turner's revolt) had not been the subject (to my knowledge) of such a literary treatment previously and the fall out from that latter event(the subsequent all-around open season furor over Styron's take on the matter from black nationalist, pro-segregationist and other sources)was not, I believe, anticipated by him at the time. I am reposting the original review because in essentials I continue to stand by the main political (and literary) points made there. I have added a few other points below that repost as I have thought about this book recently.
From The Archives: January 29, 2007
"THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER, WILLIAM STYRON,VINTAGE PRESS, NEW YORK, 2004
I came of political age during the civil rights struggle here in America in the early 1960's. Part and parcel with that awakening struggle came an increased interest in the roots of the black struggle, especially in slavery times. Such intellectuals as Herbert Apteker, the Genoveses, the Foners, Harold Cruise, James Baldwin, John Hope Franklin and others, black and white, were very interested in exploring or discovering a black resistance to the conditions of slavery not apparent on any then general reading of the black experience in America. This is the place where the recently deceased William Styron and his novelistic interpretation of one aspect of that struggle- Nat Turner's Virginia slave rebellion enters the fray.
No Styron is not politically correct in his appreciation of Turner or his followers. Nor are latter day Southern whites and their sympathizers who have recoiled in horror at what expansion of Turner's rebellion might have meant for the `peculiar institution'. But being politically correct, etc. now or historically is beside the point. Slavery was brutal. Slavery brutalized whole generations of black people for a very long time. If one expected nature's noblemen and women to come out of such a process, one would certainly be very sadly mistaken. That the white beneficiaries of this system were brutalized is a given. Human progress has come about through fits and starts, not a seamless curve onward and upward. Nevertheless all our sympathies are with Nat and his fellow rebels.
Moreover, here are some things to think about if you are not worried about your political correctness status. Outside of John Brown at Harper's Ferry Turner's rebellion represented the highest achievement of resistance to the white slaveholders in the early 19th century. Although the fight was not pretty on either side every progressive today should stand in historical solidarity with that fight. Then one will understand not only that oppression oppresses but also that the military conditions for a successful rebellion for isolated blacks in pre- Civil War American were slim. The later incorporation of 200,000 black soldiers and sailors among the Northern forces in the Civil War are a very, very profound argument that once off the plantation blacks were as capable of bravery, courage and honor as any other American. As difficult as it is, if you do not have access to the original chronicles of the Turner uprising, read this book to get a flavor of how hard the struggle for the abolition of slavery in this country was going to be."
February 4, 2009
In rereading the above review I feel that although I made the right political points that one can take from this essentially literary treatment of the person of the black preacher/ craftsman and intellectual Nat Turner by a seemingly sympathetic white writer writing over a century later in the heat of the turmoil over what direction the previously integrationist civil rights movement of the early 1960’s was headed I think I failed to give enough weight to the particulars of Turner’s leadership qualities. Although most of Stryon’s dialogue and descriptive narrative is, as he stated in his introduction, purely literary conjecture the portrait that emerges of a revolutionary black leader does not seem to be that far from some “truth”. As the careers of the later black liberation fighters John Brown and Frederick Douglass (and I might add what we know about the earlier slave general, Spartacus) also demonstrated, in the matter of revolutionary leadership the ‘norms’ of political acumen are of a different magnitude. That is a point I wish to expand on here.
Styron has done credible job of setting the framework for Nat Turner’s emergence as a leader of a slave rebellion. Precocious as a child, Turner strived to learn to read and write, by hook or by crook, in a culture that enacted laws (the infamous Black Codes) to prevent such an occurrence. In fact, even among sympathetic whites there was a feeling that Turner was unusual and that his ability to read and write was an exceptional experience. In short, as W.E.B. Dubois later put it in another context, Turner was one of the “talented tenth”. Moreover, Turner’s personal existence as a trained craftsman, self-taught preacher and one with time and opportunity to become a budding slave general would seem to conform to a historical pattern about the way plebeian leaderships are formed. Contrary to intuitive reasoning the most oppressed are not necessarily the most revolutionary (proven here by the betrayal by fellow slaves and by history a million times in a million ways). Some can be lead to see their plight. But they, initially at least must be led by the Nat Turners of the world. That, my friends, is where the ‘lessons’ of Styron’s book apply today. We better get busy.
BOOK REVIEW/COMMENTARY
FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Directly below is a review (January 29,2007)of William Styron's book (originally written in 1967) "The Confessions Of Nat Turner", an imaginative literary treatment (for the most part) of the justly famous 1831 slave rebellion led by the heroic Turner and his band of fellow slaves. The fall-out from that event (Turner's revolt) had not been the subject (to my knowledge) of such a literary treatment previously and the fall out from that latter event(the subsequent all-around open season furor over Styron's take on the matter from black nationalist, pro-segregationist and other sources)was not, I believe, anticipated by him at the time. I am reposting the original review because in essentials I continue to stand by the main political (and literary) points made there. I have added a few other points below that repost as I have thought about this book recently.
From The Archives: January 29, 2007
"THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER, WILLIAM STYRON,VINTAGE PRESS, NEW YORK, 2004
I came of political age during the civil rights struggle here in America in the early 1960's. Part and parcel with that awakening struggle came an increased interest in the roots of the black struggle, especially in slavery times. Such intellectuals as Herbert Apteker, the Genoveses, the Foners, Harold Cruise, James Baldwin, John Hope Franklin and others, black and white, were very interested in exploring or discovering a black resistance to the conditions of slavery not apparent on any then general reading of the black experience in America. This is the place where the recently deceased William Styron and his novelistic interpretation of one aspect of that struggle- Nat Turner's Virginia slave rebellion enters the fray.
No Styron is not politically correct in his appreciation of Turner or his followers. Nor are latter day Southern whites and their sympathizers who have recoiled in horror at what expansion of Turner's rebellion might have meant for the `peculiar institution'. But being politically correct, etc. now or historically is beside the point. Slavery was brutal. Slavery brutalized whole generations of black people for a very long time. If one expected nature's noblemen and women to come out of such a process, one would certainly be very sadly mistaken. That the white beneficiaries of this system were brutalized is a given. Human progress has come about through fits and starts, not a seamless curve onward and upward. Nevertheless all our sympathies are with Nat and his fellow rebels.
Moreover, here are some things to think about if you are not worried about your political correctness status. Outside of John Brown at Harper's Ferry Turner's rebellion represented the highest achievement of resistance to the white slaveholders in the early 19th century. Although the fight was not pretty on either side every progressive today should stand in historical solidarity with that fight. Then one will understand not only that oppression oppresses but also that the military conditions for a successful rebellion for isolated blacks in pre- Civil War American were slim. The later incorporation of 200,000 black soldiers and sailors among the Northern forces in the Civil War are a very, very profound argument that once off the plantation blacks were as capable of bravery, courage and honor as any other American. As difficult as it is, if you do not have access to the original chronicles of the Turner uprising, read this book to get a flavor of how hard the struggle for the abolition of slavery in this country was going to be."
February 4, 2009
In rereading the above review I feel that although I made the right political points that one can take from this essentially literary treatment of the person of the black preacher/ craftsman and intellectual Nat Turner by a seemingly sympathetic white writer writing over a century later in the heat of the turmoil over what direction the previously integrationist civil rights movement of the early 1960’s was headed I think I failed to give enough weight to the particulars of Turner’s leadership qualities. Although most of Stryon’s dialogue and descriptive narrative is, as he stated in his introduction, purely literary conjecture the portrait that emerges of a revolutionary black leader does not seem to be that far from some “truth”. As the careers of the later black liberation fighters John Brown and Frederick Douglass (and I might add what we know about the earlier slave general, Spartacus) also demonstrated, in the matter of revolutionary leadership the ‘norms’ of political acumen are of a different magnitude. That is a point I wish to expand on here.
Styron has done credible job of setting the framework for Nat Turner’s emergence as a leader of a slave rebellion. Precocious as a child, Turner strived to learn to read and write, by hook or by crook, in a culture that enacted laws (the infamous Black Codes) to prevent such an occurrence. In fact, even among sympathetic whites there was a feeling that Turner was unusual and that his ability to read and write was an exceptional experience. In short, as W.E.B. Dubois later put it in another context, Turner was one of the “talented tenth”. Moreover, Turner’s personal existence as a trained craftsman, self-taught preacher and one with time and opportunity to become a budding slave general would seem to conform to a historical pattern about the way plebeian leaderships are formed. Contrary to intuitive reasoning the most oppressed are not necessarily the most revolutionary (proven here by the betrayal by fellow slaves and by history a million times in a million ways). Some can be lead to see their plight. But they, initially at least must be led by the Nat Turners of the world. That, my friends, is where the ‘lessons’ of Styron’s book apply today. We better get busy.
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Nat Turner
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Nat Turner
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
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February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
********
Massachusetts is Wisconsin Public Employee Unions Country- Boston, Massachusetts State House Rally, Tuesday February 22, 2011,4:00-6:00PM –The Lines Are Draw-All Out In Support Of The Wisconsin Public Employee Unions-Hands Off All Our Public Employee Unions!
Click on the headline to link to an announcement of a labor rally at the Massachusetts State House on Tuesday February 22, 2011 in support of the beleaguered Wisconsin State Public Employee Unions.
Markin comment:
Sometimes politics, our working class-oriented politics, is a no-brainer. This occasion is one of those times. The lines are drawn very visibly now with the yahoos of the Tea Party movement entering the fray. “Which side are you on?” is the question of the hour. All out in support of the Wisconsin Public Employee Unions!
*******
Repost from American Left History
Friday, February 18, 2011
Victory To The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions!- Hands Off The Unions! -Hands Off The Democratic Legislators
Markin comment:
I suppose we all knew that it would come to this. Probably the last serious bastion of organized labor-the public employees unions are starting to face the onslaught of governmental attempts to break those collective bargaining agreements, crying budgetary crisis- the heart of any union operation. With the demise of the industrial unions (representing less than ten percent cent of the workforce in the wake of the deindustrialization of America) the public employee union became the obvious target in the bosses' relentless struggle to break any collective working agreements. Wisconsin, as all sides agree, is the tip of the iceberg and will be closely watched by other states (and the federal government).
On the question of the Democratic legislators who have left the state (at least as of today, February 18, 2011), to avoid voting on the proposals. While it is unusual for those of us who consider themselves communist labor militants to demand hands off for this crowd under normal circumstances in this case we are duty-bound to defend their action. Stay the hell out of Wisconsin until this blows over. A good idea would be to put workers on the borders to make sure the State Police don't try to force them back. Okay. Strange times that we live in, strange indeed.
Markin comment:
Sometimes politics, our working class-oriented politics, is a no-brainer. This occasion is one of those times. The lines are drawn very visibly now with the yahoos of the Tea Party movement entering the fray. “Which side are you on?” is the question of the hour. All out in support of the Wisconsin Public Employee Unions!
*******
Repost from American Left History
Friday, February 18, 2011
Victory To The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions!- Hands Off The Unions! -Hands Off The Democratic Legislators
Markin comment:
I suppose we all knew that it would come to this. Probably the last serious bastion of organized labor-the public employees unions are starting to face the onslaught of governmental attempts to break those collective bargaining agreements, crying budgetary crisis- the heart of any union operation. With the demise of the industrial unions (representing less than ten percent cent of the workforce in the wake of the deindustrialization of America) the public employee union became the obvious target in the bosses' relentless struggle to break any collective working agreements. Wisconsin, as all sides agree, is the tip of the iceberg and will be closely watched by other states (and the federal government).
On the question of the Democratic legislators who have left the state (at least as of today, February 18, 2011), to avoid voting on the proposals. While it is unusual for those of us who consider themselves communist labor militants to demand hands off for this crowd under normal circumstances in this case we are duty-bound to defend their action. Stay the hell out of Wisconsin until this blows over. A good idea would be to put workers on the borders to make sure the State Police don't try to force them back. Okay. Strange times that we live in, strange indeed.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Massachusetts is Wisconsin Public Employee Unions Country- Boston, Massachusetts State House Rally, Tuesday February 22, 2011,4:00-6:00PM –The Lines Are Draw-All Out In Support Of The Wisconsin Public Employee Unions-Hands Off All Our Public Employee Unions!
Click on the headline to link to an announcement of a labor-centered rally at the Massachusetts State House on Tuesday February 22, 2011 in support of the beleaguered Wisconsin State Public Employee Unions.
Markin comment:
Sometimes politics, our working class-oriented politics, is a no-brainer. This occasion is one of those times. The lines are drawn very visibly now with the yahoos of the Tea Party movement entering the fray. “Which side are you on?” is the question of the hour. All out in support of the Wisconsin Public Employee Unions!
*******
Repost from American Left History
Friday, February 18, 2011
Victory To The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions!- Hands Off The Unions! -Hands Off The Democratic Legislators
Markin comment:
I suppose we all knew that it would come to this. Probably the last serious bastion of organized labor-the public employees unions are starting to face the onslaught of governmental attempts to break those collective bargaining agreements, crying budgetary crisis- the heart of any union operation. With the demise of the industrial unions (representing less than ten percent cent of the workforce in the wake of the deindustrialization of America) the public employee union became the obvious target in the bosses' relentless struggle to break any collective working agreements. Wisconsin, as all sides agree, is the tip of the iceberg and will be closely watched by other states (and the federal government).
On the question of the Democratic legislators who have left the state (at least as of today, February 18, 2011), to avoid voting on the proposals. While it is unusual for those of us who consider themselves communist labor militants to demand hands off for this crowd under normal circumstances in this case we are duty-bound to defend their action. Stay the hell out of Wisconsin until this blows over. A good idea would be to put workers on the borders to make sure the State Police don't try to force them back. Okay. Strange times that we live in, strange indeed.
Markin comment:
Sometimes politics, our working class-oriented politics, is a no-brainer. This occasion is one of those times. The lines are drawn very visibly now with the yahoos of the Tea Party movement entering the fray. “Which side are you on?” is the question of the hour. All out in support of the Wisconsin Public Employee Unions!
*******
Repost from American Left History
Friday, February 18, 2011
Victory To The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions!- Hands Off The Unions! -Hands Off The Democratic Legislators
Markin comment:
I suppose we all knew that it would come to this. Probably the last serious bastion of organized labor-the public employees unions are starting to face the onslaught of governmental attempts to break those collective bargaining agreements, crying budgetary crisis- the heart of any union operation. With the demise of the industrial unions (representing less than ten percent cent of the workforce in the wake of the deindustrialization of America) the public employee union became the obvious target in the bosses' relentless struggle to break any collective working agreements. Wisconsin, as all sides agree, is the tip of the iceberg and will be closely watched by other states (and the federal government).
On the question of the Democratic legislators who have left the state (at least as of today, February 18, 2011), to avoid voting on the proposals. While it is unusual for those of us who consider themselves communist labor militants to demand hands off for this crowd under normal circumstances in this case we are duty-bound to defend their action. Stay the hell out of Wisconsin until this blows over. A good idea would be to put workers on the borders to make sure the State Police don't try to force them back. Okay. Strange times that we live in, strange indeed.
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