This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Saturday, April 06, 2013
Dear Veterans for Peace Boston - Smedley Butler and Sammie's Way,
On behalf of the Boston May Day Committee (BMDC), I thank you for your
dedicated commitment to social and economic justice. In particular, we
thank you and appreciate your active participation, contribution, hard
work and continuous support of the BMDC.
This year, as you have
witnessed the administration continues to allow attacks on workers
regardless of their status, scandalous cuts to the budget and escalations to
current wars and provocative threats of new foreign engagement.
It
is crucial that we have a united People's voice to send a strong
message.
Again, thank you for your support and contributions to ensure a
successful International Workers Day rally.
Dorotea Manuela,
for
Boston May Day Committee
Human Rights are non-negotiable,
please sign online petition demanding that USA sign the United Nations
"Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers and Their
Families". Please go to www.bostonmayday.org
La lucha continua!
***From The Brothers Under The Bridge Series- Ramblin’ Jack’s Ramble
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:
In the first installment of this series of sketches space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town, California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”
The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and another down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.
After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.
The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.
Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch from 1979 fits this description, had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.
Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or got caught up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his whole blessed life pointed the other way. Ramblin’ Jack’s’ (John Higgins) story fit that description, the couldn’t handle part. He just kind of drifted around the West Coast (after spending a minute back home in the East, back in Hullsville near Boston) after he got out of the service, got caught up with some wrong gees, drank too much liquor, and did a little time and landed in the“jungle,” the one they set up in Westminster after being herded out of Compton by the cops. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Ramblin’s Jack’s sign was rambling, scrambling. ************* Ramblin’Jack woke up with a splitting headache, a desert dry mouth and no dough in his pocket from his three day toot, no, his third three day toot so make it nine days, maybe ten as he was only counting toots in threes. (For the gentile drinker, for the after five drinker, the martini cocktail and then something else to go on to drinker, play with the kids maybe, or heaven forbid the non-drinker, the non- alcoholic drinker, a toot was strictly drinking from, say when the bars opened, workingmen’s bars, until three days later, or whenever you or she ran out of money, and then maybe cadge a fresh bottle somehow and room sip some more, okay). Ramblin’Jack, Jack, hell, John Higgins, had had more than his share of toots since he got back to the “real” world, back from “Nam the year before, that 1971 year before and had decided, or maybe drifted into deciding was better, that he would “hang loose” for a while as he gathered himself together to face the rest of his life. And so the toots, the toots between bouts of work down at the docks, down at the Oakland docks, down at the warehouses, where a friend, a ‘Nam friend, Bill Henry, through his father, some middle level union official, got him work as a B man (no need to discuss what that is here since Jack was officially only slumming until he found himself), were how he amused himself. But it was taking its toll.
Toll-taking number one was that whether the docks were Jack’s life ambition or merely a way to pass the time while he adjusted to the real world he had taken too many days off and was very close (that ‘Nam friend’s father constantly defending him before the bosses close) to being put on indefinite suspension. Naturally dockworkers, fathers and sons, bent over backwards to help a veteran, more so when alcohol was involved since more than a few, fathers and sons, had had their own toot manias, their own toot dreams. But a new contract was coming up, the dock bosses were looking to unload as many B men as they could and were looking for any reason to cut down the manning crews, especially since cargo holds could be emptied a lot faster those days with fewer men and that was a simple fact of economic life on the West Coast docks (East Coast too but that was a different tradition). And see Jack had no other plan of action to fall back on so if he lost the job it was a big thing although he barely shrugged his shoulders when he was called on the carpet. (In fact immediately after the hearing he had gone out and gotten drunk although he did show up for work the next day but such things were, are dicey, dicey indeed).
Toll-taking number two was Leah, Leah Morris, his honey, his paramour, his, well, his woman, if anybody was asking. He had met her at a party one night over in Berkeley a couple of months after he had gotten back when he and some friends were asked by some anti-war activists interested in doing “G.I. anti-warwork” to come over and relate their war experiences. He didn’t want to do it, wasn’t that keen about relating some of the horrific things that he had seen happen over there, and was not sure what was motivating these people to in 1971 suddenly become interested in guys that they didn’t pay too much attention to before (at least that is what he thought, although he never heard of, or believed, that they had spit on vets, or stuff like that, calling them “baby killers,” but were rather just indifferent to a soldier’sfate as long as they didn’t have to go) but one guy said that there was plenty of booze (he found out later when he got more involved that the booze angle was a calculated action by the activists assuming that dangling plentiful booze in front of ex-G.I.s would roll them over) and girls, friendly girls, so he went. He didn’t actually speak that night (although he did later) since the minute (well maybe not the minute) their eyes, his and Leah’s, met something happened. Not a spark or anything like that but something .
Funny too since Leah was then a graduate student in some arcane branch of mathematics, who had previously “dropped out” in various “summer of love”drug, sex and rock and roll experiments a few years before , got tired of the yellow bus road, and was looking to add a stable political commitment to her new found academic resume. He wasn’t.She, moreover, after they introduced themselves to each other asked if he cared for a joint. Ramblin’ Jack, ah, John Higgins, was strictly a drinking man, had been since his youth in Hullsville back East (outside of Boston, about twenty miles away) and had previously had very strong opinions about dope-heads and hippies although ‘Nam, or really post ‘Nam in California had mellowed that a bit (he would try drugs later with Leah but if pressed he would still call himself a drinking man, a rambling , gambling, ambling drinking man, okay). And that was the rub with Leah. No, not the dope versus drinking thing, or maybe just a little but those damn toots when he would be gone for three days and then show up at her door looking like hell (and smelling of another woman although he always denied that, and she having had her share of affairs, had cheated on previous lovers, did not press that issue) and in need of fumigation, or something.
See Leah, now that the crest of the 1960s wave was passed (when it actually crested was, and is, the subject of reams of doctoral dissertations and other comments which has snow-balled into a veritable cottage industry by baby-boomers with time on their hands and their acolytes) wanted to settle down, wanted to get married, wanted to have that nine to five thing that she never wanted before. And Jack, although he never put it in so many words just wanted to drink, or whatever a drink meant to him.
And that brings us to toll-taking number three, the real story behind those desert dry mouth mornings, those don’t care blues, that Leah fear (or better fear of Leah). Jack never said it, never said it out loud to anybody, not Leah, not‘Nam buddies (they had their own nightmare survivals to worry about), not the doctors over at the VA in Frisco that time but he had killed an innocent family, a family he knew was innocent, over in ’Nam one afternoon when Charlie Company was making a sweep through the villages up around Pleiku. And the reason that he knew they were innocent is because they were just sitting in their hooch having their noontime meal when his company came through. Jack heard something (anything, they were always hearing something) and he freaked, freaked thinking of another ambushand with an animal fear just started firing at that peaceful family. Sure he covered it up, said he saw half the North Vietnamese Army coming at him (as it turned out they were not within twenty miles of the place then and were in any case moving eastward away from the area ), and “thought” this crew was Charlie. The chain covered it up, case closed, sealed with seven seals. Except for one Ramblin’ Jack, John Higgins, every few nights he would dream, dream vividly about that afternoon, and when he did he needed, really needed, that booze, needed it bad.
One day Ramblin’ Jackwoke up, woke up in Leah’s bed, woke up after a bad dream, had a quick shot of whiskey, showered and walked out the door. Walked out leaving a short note telling Leah he was heading down to the high desert, was heading down Joshua Tree way to find himself…
Friday, April 05, 2013
***Out In The Film Noir Night- With The Film Adaptation Of Dashiell Hammett’sThe Maltese Falcon In Mind
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
My boss, Steve Sullivan, P.I. (which for those who have never needed such services stands for private investigator, what the snide of the world call gumshoes, private dicks, shamuses, peepers and worse, yah, those who have never needed those kinds of services can be snide but Steve for my money, as you will find out if you follow me while I give you the skinny on one such caper of his, is one of the best, one of the best in Frisco town, one of the best in the Golden state, one of the best around anywhere) had been in a fits and starts mood for the previous several months ever since he sent her over, the Wonderly dame I called her since that was the name that she gave when she knocked on our door and introduced herself, over to the big step-offfor the murder ofhis partner P.I, (and my late boss too) Mike Andrews.
See he got so caught up in her web, Wonderly ‘s web okay, wanted, wanted more than I had ever seen him want to, to get caught up so much in her web that he left a few professional distance things behind and fell for her, fell for a client, a woman about as bad as a man can and still stay standing. So, yes, the past few months had been hell around the office, or even around the building he had such a grouch on. He had even stopped calling me Angel, his pet name for me his personal secretary and office manager and he had always called me Angel for the five years I have worked for him so you know he had it bad. It was worse after the jury found murder one, premeditated murder with malice and everything else they could think of, and she thus faced the big step- off even if she was a woman, a beautiful woman if an evil woman I will give that.
He kept muttering about how he could have played it differently, could have kept his mouth shut, muttering about what was Mike Andrews to him anyway except a chiseling two-bit partner whom he had to pick up after more times than he could count, about how they, he and the Wonderly dame, could have gone off to sunny Mexico and forgotten the past, stuff like that, if she had been straight with him, straight with him for one minute, for ten seconds, not normal Steve Sullivan talk or soft stuff if you knew him. And it got so I couldn’t mention her name around him, couldn’t mention from minute one, no, ten seconds,after she stepped into our office my woman’s intuition said that she was nothing but a tramp and man-trap ( I already granted that she was beautiful so I won’t say that again) or else he might have done me in, sent me to the great beyond and she might then have some friendly company for the big step-off.
Hey, I was there through most of it, helped around the edges while it was going on (mainly as a gofer and as a confidante to her as per Steve’s request, although she was organicallyincapacity ofsuch confidences), tidied up some of the pieces after the fall (mainly holding his hand when he got depressed about her treatment by him) , and what I didn’t know about I got filled in by from my boyfriend who worked in the D.A.s office, and by the transcripts of the trial that Steve had me transcribe for her appeal (unbeknownst to her or the DAs office he paid for them himself through a third party. Keep that hush, please) so let me go through the paces here and you won’t be so in the dark about why Steve has been a mope about some fallen dame and why if you need such services as he provides he’s still your man.
About a year ago, yes, it was a year ago because the Germans had just run through France on the way to the Atlantic coast and I cried to think what would become of Paris now that the heathen Huns were there and it would never be the same as when Steve, Mike and I went there on a case, a big case, she came through the door and stood, stood proud as a peacock, asking for Mr. Andrews because she needed some detective help on a private matter. She gave the air of being a Mayfair swell, and she looked it, long, tall, slender figure as is the fashion these days (I was jealous of that figure, no question, but that did not distort my opinion of her really), a pillbox hat atop a well- coiffed head of long brown hair, blue eyes, and a dress not off the rack and a mink also not off the rack. And topped off by some delicious come hither gardenia perfume that cost some guy plenty, and probably got him very little for his generosity. So, yes, she had a certain look and a certain swagger like she was doing us a favor by showing up here. But as I told her that Mr. Andrews was not in but that Mr. Sullivan was I had a sense that something was wrong. No Mayfair swells needing some discrete detective work done showed up in our crumb-bum building , the Trimble Building, filled with repo men, dishonest insurances salesmen and failed doctors and dentists working on the shy, they had layers of help downtown, down on Market, to fill the bill. I thought for just a minute that she had probably looked up P.I.s in the telephone book and Mike’s name came up first. (Later after it was all over I wasn’t that far off on that surmise.) Also after looking a little closer at that fur, it hadn’t been cared for very well, hadn’t been put in storage when it should have been, and so that raised my suspicions a little, but I am only the hired help and so I showed her into Steve’s office.
The minute she walked through the door I could see he was gone over her just like that, that gardenia perfume whiff, or that sexy swagger, or something in her air threw him off. But Steve is a guy who to someone like Miss Wonderly (by the way, if you read about the case a while back and you are wondering why I am still calling her Wonderly like I said before that is the name she gave us. Of course after her arrest it came out that her name was really O’Shea, Brigette O’Shea, so when I say Wonderly that is who I mean, okay) plays his cards very close to the vest in front of others, especially other women, and so if you had observed the scene from the window’s edge you would not have known that in that instant he was going to take the case no matter how crazy her story and that he was going to be sharing a pillow or two with her. She might have sensed that too and pitched her story accordingly. In any case after I sensed the mood of the room, that I was an unnecessary third party , I left to do some typing.
And what a story she told, a story that would have made a novelist lick his chops or a Hollywood re-write man drool, and told, before she was done, about six different ways. She played the old lost- younger- sister- unknowingly- needing- protection- from- an- older-sister- because- some- dead-beat guy- looking- to- live on- easy- street batted his eyes at her, at her and her dough. This guy, this Thursby guy, was a tough hombre, a guy so suspicious and worried about the other shoe falling on his schemes that he put newspaper around his bed so nobody would sneak up on him we found out later, and so Miss Wonderly needed some heavy help to even the score up and get the younger sister out of a jam, and back to some okie Podunk town and far away from big city grifters. So the lay was that someone, as it turned out fatefully for him, Mike, who came in while Steve and the Wonderly dame were doing their little tango, and being nothing but a skirt-chaser offered himself up as the heavy work guy to save the fair damsel. As you know if you read the papers then, or read about the trial, or just heard recently that Miss Wonderly’s appeal was turned down and she was on count-down, that Mike took three slugs from a rooty-toot-toot 44 face-down the night he was supposed to muscle Thursby into laying off that so-called younger sister. (Wonderly had a sister, a sister working some Hong Kong high-end whorehouse who hadn’t seen her sister in years, and didn’t want to.)This Thursby was killed that same night by other parties unknown at the time but Mike took the face-down fall strictly on Miss Wonderly’s account. Poor Mike.
This is where Steve really started to show his stuff though. Like I said Mike was a drain on the operation. ( I know that was true from the money end he was always cadging petty cash stuff for this and that ,mainly his women and their wanting habits. ) Moreover Steve had to pick up too many pieces and so, frankly, they did not get along toward the end. But this is where Steve was a pro. He figured that come hell or high water he had to avenge Mike’s death (little did he know, or suspect, then the source) if only for purely defensive purposes, for the good of the profession. So he turned into a bulldog to find out why wonderful Wonderly had hired them, what was her real game.
And so he put the squeeze on her not the way you or I would with a few generous slaps and maybe a couple of twists but by seducing her, by getting her on those pillows that he had in his eyes the first minute he saw her come through his door. She tumbled to him for her own reasons, and maybe too because, unlike some of the clowns she had worked with, or even Mike, rest his soul, Steve looked like he could, and could in fact, take a punch or slug for her, and because while Steve is not handsome, Hollywood handsome, he has a certain something, something primordial , that women (including me although he never gave me a tumble even at the beginning when I was all flirty eyes with him , and with Mike too) are drawn too. Steve’s problem was that he got to like the pillow talk even when things got dicey with her. But that was later, later when everything came apart. That first tumble night though she told him what was what, or part of what was what. (Steve complained to me then, and like I said even after he had sent her over, that if she just came out straight with her story, instead of in small half-truth pieces they could have worked something out. Yah, she had him hooked, hooked as bad as a woman can get her hooks into a man.)
It seemed that Miss Wonderly had been working in a run-of- the- mill Hong Kong whorehouse (not the one her sister worked in) and ran into a john,Thursby, who had a connection to some valuable jade jewelry that would fetch a pretty penny on the open market because of its rarity, and once she got her claws into him, he decided to cut her in for part of his share. The problem was that many parties, or at least one other serious party, had a line on the goods and was ready to move heaven and earth to get there first. Thursby got there first, although not directly. Since he was known around as a hard guy and a guy who liked jewels he had a confederate bring the goods stateside on a tramp steamer. That was why one and all, including a guy she called only Mister Big (who turned out to be a British national named Sydney Greenfield , or maybe Greenstreet) were now hard-faced in Frisco town. Since Thursby was dead, probably, no, surely, at the hands of Mister Big, and she had the information about the whereabouts of the jewels she needed help, and needed Steve to be her partner and they could run off to sunny Mexico with the vast profits once the material was sold. He bought that story, and bought into the partnership until it started to fall apart almost at once.
See the Wonderly dame was not totally on the level on that story since she had been an operative of Mister Big’s in Hong Kong and she had set Thrusby up for a fall when they hit Frisco. Nice work on her part , from a purely professional angle, although strictly speaking she couldn’t be held for the Thursby murder and the D.A. never pressed the issue. So Wonderly figured that if she wanted to stay alive or at least to get her fingers on some dough she needed to parlay with Mister Big and try to sell him the jewels and be done with it. That is where Steve’s brawn came in. He was the intermediary for all these negotiations and took a few hits on the head before they, Mister Big and his confederates, saw reason. And things would have worked out for Wonderly and Steve if she hadn’t overplayed her hand.
See through a police pal on the homicide squad Steve found out that the gun that shot Mike to pieces was a 38, a woman’s gun really, and when Wonderly got tired of negotiating she pulled out that caliber gun on Mister Big to force the dough issue. Wrong move, totally wrong move. So Steve, wised up, wised up to the fact that only his Brigette could have shot Mike. Then he got on his high-horse, disarmed the lot, and called the police. Well not exactly called the police on all parties, just Mister Big and his confederates for starters. He still wasn’t sure on the dame, not sure if he could send her over. He begged her to tell him she had done the deed to Mike, had set him up for the big face down and shot him dead, but she refused to plead. Somehow she expected Steve to love her no matter what, why or where. He almost bit, almost got intoxicated by that perfume and pillow talk dream he had been fogged in by like some foolish schoolboy. He weighted the balance though, thought it could have his name on those bullets that warm Frisco night and it didn’t add up to anything healthy for him. He would always have to look over his shoulder when she was in the room, worse when she was not. She had to fall, and she did fall, fall to the stuff of dreams.
And Steve hadn’t been right since. Until this morning, this morning when Miss Sarah Miles came into the front office needing some private detective work done. And this Miss Miles made that Wonderly dame look like some cheap street whore. Steve had his door slightly ajar when she walked in so he could hear our conversation, and more importantly, see her. He called out, “See her in, Angel, see her in”…
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
***SAM ADAMS-MAN OF THE REVOLUTION
BOOK REVIEW
One of the seeming paradoxes of the American Revolution is that, unlike later revolutions, the issues in dispute, centrally the question of taxation without representation, appear from this distance to have been resolvable by essentially parliamentary means until very late in the conflict. This is reflected in the attitudes and political maneuverings of the members of the various colonial leaderships, Samuel Adams included. Unlike the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution there were apparently few conscious revolutionaries ready to take drastic action to gain independence until events forced their hands. Moreover, unlike those revolutions which were more or less predicted by substantial numbers of the people involved based on a whole series of social, political and economic factors the situation in America did not on the surface cry out for such a resolution. However, like those governments the various pre-revolutionary British governments and particularly the person of George III clung to their prerogatives beyond all reason. That is the unifying factor between all three revolutions.
That said, Samuel Adams, by hook or by crook, stands heads above the other colonial leaders in pressing the fight against the Crown to the end. He, unlike others in the various colonial leaderships, did not waiver when it became clear that nothing short of independence would resolve the conflict. From the time of the fight against the Stamp Act through the fight over the quartering of British troops in Boston to the ramifications of the Boston Massacre, the Townsend Acts, the Tea Party, the creation of the committees of correspondence to the call for the Continental Congress his name, thought and pen are linked to the struggles, particularly the struggles in Massachusetts, a pivotal locale of the colonial struggles. Moreover, again unlike other leaders, he was throughout the controversies connected with the plebian masses through the Sons of Liberty. Thus, without exaggeration he can truly be called a tribune of the people. That he has been placed on a lesser level in the pantheon of revolutionary heroes has more to do with how and who writes history than in the measure of the importance of his role in the Revolution.
One can make a strong argument that Adams’s organizational skills were critical to the successful union of the colonies into a unitary fighting force against the Crown. His committees of correspondence which he initiated in Massachusettsas a means for dispensing information, producing propaganda and cohering a collective leadership for that colony and which he was instrumental in expanding to the other colonies led to the Continental Congress and thereafter to its call for aDeclaration of Independence. No he did not have a big role in the Declaration itself nor did he play a national role in the revolutionary struggle but one can clearly see his imprint on the thinking (and doing) of the times. The American Revolution was carried out by big men doing a big job. Sam Adams was a big man. If a closet Tory like his cousin John Adams has, due to recent biographical publicity, emerged as a bigger icon in the revolutionary galaxy then Sam Adams’s certainly needs to be reevaluated. Read more.
***The Wheels Of Capitalism In Its Swaddling Clothes- Fernand Braudel’s View
Book Review
The Wheels Of Commerce-Civilization & Capitalism:15th-18th Century, Fernand Braudel, Harper&Row, New York 1979
Karl Marx, the 19th century revolutionary socialist and dissector of the underpinnings of the capitalist mode of production, is most famous for his inflammatory pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, a programmatic outline of, and rationale for, the socialist reconstruction of society beyond the current capitalist market system. Not as well known, and certainly not as widely read, was his equally important Das Capital that, painstaking, gives a historical analysis of the rise of capitalism based on the appropriation of surplus value by private owners. Where Marx worked in broad strokes to lay out his theory relying mainly on (and polemizing against) bourgeois economists the work under review, the second volume of a three volume study of the evolution of capitalism, Fernand Braudel’s Wheels of Commerce, fills in the spaces left by Marx’s work. Although Braundel, of necessity, tips his hat to Marx’s insights his work does not depend on a Marxist historical materialist concept of history, at least consciously, although in its total effect it is certainly comparable with that interpretation of history.
Braudel digs deep into the infrastructure of medieval society to trace the roots of capitalism to the increased widespread commerce that the rise of rudimentary production of surplus goods permitted. He highlights, rightly I think, the important role of fairs, other lesser adjunct forms of commercial endeavor like peddling and shop keeping, and the rise of fortunately located (near rivers, the ocean, along accessible roadways) cities committed full-time to creating a market for surplus goods being produced in the those cities, on the land and, most importantly, in far-off places. Naturally, such activity as the creation of markets kept creating demand for more and varied products making more expansive (and expensive) journeys necessary. The opening of wide-flung trade routes, over land and on the seas, exploited by merchant-adventurers (in the widest sense of that term) thereafter became practical, if still highly risky, for those committed to those activities.
Needless to say in a densely written six hundred page volume the number of examples of commercial endeavors (some presented in more than in one context) that Braudel highlights is beyond anything a short review could do justice to. A quick outline here will have to suffice. The already noted rise of a merchant class ready to do business over great stretches and under trying circumstances; the still controversial basis for the rise of a distinct capitalist ethic that drove the markets(think Max Weber and the Protestant ethic); the importance of double bookkeeping of accounts and the introduction of bills of exchange to facilitate payment; the exploitation of vast colonial areas for minerals and other natural resources such as gold and silver used as physical value in every day market exchanges; the rise and fall of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism based on the gold and silver mines and slave trade; the successive rises of the Dutch and English colonialisms based on that slave trade and control of the sea lanes; the rise of joint-stock companies and other forms of collective capitalist ventures; the introduction of a stock exchange to place value on those enterprises; the increased role of a national state in the emergence of capitalism as defender of private property, as purchaser of goods, and insurer of last resort against hard times; the shifts in class status away from feudal norms and rise in class consciousness in society; and, the applicability of the capitalism to non-European societies such as Japan, and non-Christian cultures such as Islam.
Just to outline some of the topics as I have just done will give one a sense that this is an important work (and act as an impetus to read volume one and three) for those who want to get the feel of what the dawn of capitalism looked like. And for those who want to move beyond capitalism a very good companion to that not widely read Das Capital of Marx.
***From The Archives-On The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birthday-Homage To The Outsider- Some Of The Work Of Playwright Tennessee Williams
Friday, June 10, 2011
On The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birthday-Homage To The Outsider-Some Of The Work Of Playwright Tennessee Williams
From the American Left History Blog- Thursday, January 15, 2009
Homage To The Outsider- The Work Of Playwright Tennessee Williams
Play/DVD Reviews
Enough Mendacity To Sink A Ship
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955
The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review
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Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller as America’s finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams’ extensive and detailed directing instructions).
That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level, like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.
“Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” is a prime example of the contradiction that a radical commentator is placed in. The themes of duplicity, latent homosexuality, adultery and dysfunctional families topped off by more than enough mendacity to sink a ship are the stuff of social drama that NEED to be addressed as outcomes in the modern capitalist cultural sphere. However, in the end nothing really gets resolved truthfully here. Old 1950’s-style All-American boy Brick, the ‘great white hope’ of the family, may or may not sober up after the ‘lost’ of his dear friend and fellow football player, Skipper. Saucy and sexy wife Maggie (the cat) may or may not really get pregnant by Brick and save the family heritage for him, or die trying. The only certainty, despite all that above-mentioned mendacity, is that Big Daddy is going to die and that 28,000 acres of the finest land in the Delta is going to need new management, either Brick, brother Goober (along with his scheming wife and their ‘lovely brood’ of children) or some upstart. Off of these possible outcomes, however, I would not get too worked up about the final outcome.
In the movie version, done in the 1950’s as well, which starred the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman as Brick and a fetching Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie the question of Brick’s possible homosexual relationship with Skipper is far more muted than in the play. The implicit question seems to concern Brick’s fading youth, his search for perfect meaning to life in Mississippi and that one’s existential crisis can be eliminated by reliance on the bottle. The relationship between the dying Big Daddy and his ever suffering wife, Big Mama, is less dastardly than in the play as well. The scheming Goober and wife and family and those ‘lovely’ children, however, run true to form. My sense of the movie, unlike the deeper issues of the play, is that a few therapy sessions would put old Brick back on the right track. The play was far less hopeful in that regard.
The Fickle Bird Of Youth
The Sweet Bird Of Youth, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959
“Sweet Bird Of Youth” is another case in point. Not for the first time, a seemingly 1950s style All- American boy, Chance, who has left his hometown, his home town girl and his roots behind to drift in that endless spiral toward fame- Hollywood and the movies, naturally- comes back to claim what is his by right. On this little hometown reunion Chance is in the service of one aging and fretful actress who has her own issues with that elusive ‘bird of youth.’On his return to town it appears that Chance has stirred up a hornet’s nest with the local political establishment in the person of one red-neck preacher turned politician in order to better do “god’s work”, old Tom Findley. The object of this dispute is one Heavenly Findley, old Ton’s daughter and Chance’s left behind paramour who is now the subject of some scandal (due to the amorphously stated need for female-related medical treatment, an abortion, due to Chance’s irresponsibility). Along the way we get to see how political power is distributed in a small Southern town as well as the inevitable tempting of the fates by Chance in order to win the ‘brass ring’ before it is too late (apparently somewhere over thirty, by my reckoning). At play’s end though, where he is between a rock and a hard place, Chance may not get the chance to be Chance at thirty. Oh, that fickle bird of youth. Still, Chance, go for it.
In the movie version the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman, a classic example of a 1950’s All-American boy type (among his other acting talents), as the movie star ‘wannabe’ and Geraldine Page as the aging actress recreated their stage performances although with a greater screen presence for Ms. Page. Moreover, Chance’s strivings to reconnect with Heavenly are more central to the plot. More importantly, the endings differ in that, despite some mauling by Tom Findley’s boys Chance takes my advice from the play version and runs, with Heavenly, just as far and as fast as his now aging legs can carry him.
Waiting For A Sign
The Rose Tattoo, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959
“The Rose Tattoo” is a little different look at the family. Although the geography of the play is still the American South this play is not peopled with Williams’ usually WASP-ish characters but rather a little conclave of immigrant Italians who have somehow made a beachhead in the Gulf Coast area. The central character is a previously abandoned but now widowed Italian seamstress trying to survive, mainly through her hopes for her daughter, on her wits, her memories of youth, her integrity and her fierce instinct to survive in alien territory. A philandering husband, the obsessive subject of her adoration, a daughter trying to learn to fly on her own in the love game, and an incidental encounter with a fellow, younger Italian truck driver come together to give her the sign she needs to start over. Maybe. This play, more than most of Williams’efforts, depends on the strength of the dialogue and not the plot line. That is what gives its dramatic edge as Williams explores yet another tangled up dream gone awry story.
In the movie version, the role of the young Italian truck driver as played by Burt Lancaster and the seamstress as played by the fabulous Anna Magnini is more central to the unfolding story from the beginning. The dramatic tensions between this pair and the ‘waiting for a sign’ by the seamstress are still fairly similar. It is however Lancaster’s enhanced role that really makes this a visual treat and gives one hope that this new family ‘aborning’ can survive.
Take A Walk On The Wild Side
Orpheus Descending, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955
On reading “Orpheus Descending”, Williams’ take on the old Greek legend in modern garb I was struck by the similarity in the character of the Orpheus figure, Val ,and Nelson Algren’s Dove Linkhorn in “ A Walk On The Wild Side.”Both are loners, outsiders, have checkered pasts and are ready for anything from deep romantic love to murder and mayhem. And because they are capacity of that range of emotions and reactions they are also as capable of getting burned by a complacent society that does not take kindly to those that it cannot control. Val drifts into town, gets a job at a store owned by the enigmatic Lady and then the wheels begin to turn and to deal out his fate. Could he have stopped and turned away? Although that is a question that drives many dramatic efforts it is not always resolvable in a play- or in life. Lady’s terminally ill husband lurks in the background with nothing to lose, once the romantic sparks start to fly. I do not understand why this play was not more successful in its earlier manifestations as was pointed out in the introduction, especially as this is a culture that has made space, if only grudgingly, for the outsider to tempt the fates if only symbolically.
The Sweet Bird Of Youth Gone Awry
Suddenly Last Summer, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955
“Suddenly Last Summer is an odd little beauty of a play. Odd in that the appetites of the main (unseen in the play) character Sebastian seem to be both beyond the pale and obsessive. Odd, also that his protective monster of a mother is determined to keep the truth about her “genius” son from the world even after his ‘untimely’ death ……last summer. As if to add fuel to the fire of an already bizarre tale of exploitation, sexual and otherwise, Sebastian’s beautiful lure of a cousin used as bait for Sebastian’s appetites is to be permanently taken out of the picture in order to keep this world beautiful. Nobody believes the sordid tale she has to tell about dear cousin Sebastian. The play ends with the ‘hope’ that there may actually be someone to believe the girl’s story before she becomes one more sacrifice to ‘beauty’ in the world. Frankly, old Sebastian got what was coming to him over in the islands.
In the movie version, the stories that have to be told verbally in the play get told as flashbacks as well. Katherine Hepburn is in high dudgeon as Sebastian’s mother and ‘keeper of the flame’. Montgomery Clift is a more sober, somber and searcher for the truth psychiatrist than the one in the play and Elizabeth Taylor is the beautiful lure cousin is a mass of confusions whose memories of last summer have to be erased ….some way. Old Sebastian and his twisted sense of life and his place in history is still a guy who had it coming to him. Well, he did, didn’t he?
Out In The Be-Bop Night- With Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side In Mind
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
She, Casey Fleet she, was in a tizzy, was as nervous as a kitten, maybe more so after all what does a kitten, or a cat for that matter have to be nervous about, as she prepared to go to the microphone for her first big number, her first big time “open mic” and a new career, maybe. This open mic idea had been around for a long time and many clubs, bars and other venues on say a slow Monday night to fill up the time would sponsor a sing out, a comedy night, a quiz night, a whatever night to fill the time (and draw some additional customers in on that same slow night, the ones who still had pocket change left from the week-end or had listen to mother’s, some mother’s advice and not come away from that weekend with three heads, two of them splitting). Arnie Shaw had been sponsoring one such open mic at his downtown (downtown Boston if anyone was asking) Carousel Club for a few months and it had started to catch on as a place to work off the rough spots of your act before a friendly crowd. And with Arnie’s connections (and “connections”, wink, wink, if you understand) in show biz if thing went right then there was the new career. Leslie Tinsel (stage name obviously, real name Leslie Swartz) had just been signed to a few weeks down at Atlantic City and so Casey decided she too should take the plunge, get out of the work-a-day racket (she had a mind-numbing job on a construction crew where she ached every night after work from the day’s dusty dirty exertions but the pay was good and so there it was) and soar with the eagles. And she had decided to do a cover of Judy Garland’s version of Yip Harberg’s Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Still she was nervous, nervous as a kitten.
The build-up to the nervous had all started a few hours earlier when her gown, her precious gown that she had spent one hundred dollars on had not been ready at the tailor’s. She had needed a few things altered (mainly, don’t tell, some added padding in the breast area and a letting out at the hips) and so she had got behind in her “routine.” (She had developed this idea of a routine when someone told her that Bette Midler, yes, addle-brained Bette, swore she could not survive for one minute without doing the same routine before every performance and that idea had worked well before for Casey before her very first small “gig” at the open mic night at the LaLa Club over in Revere.) That routine included a long warm bath while she calmly shaved her legs and underarms (jobs that she usually “butchered” with plenty of red wounds to show for it when she rushed). Then a quick scotch, no chaser, to settle the nerves.
Then Casey did about seven things with her hair until she got it got just right after the inevitable why have some women been cursed with long stringy hair that would not bent to their will. (Tonight she had added a couple of attachments, okay, okay wig pieces to give it a fuller look. She hoped it didn’t look too outlandish and that the boys liked it, and liked that she took time to look nice for them, the dears.) And then the final preps for the dress (gown tonight, remember) usually a quick press with the iron, put on some nylons (with garters for luck, she had heard that Judy had done the same thing before she went on) and shoes and she was done. She followed that routine to the letter this night although with less time she had to cut that bath time short and had a small nick on her calf to show for it. Well it would be dark. While she waited for Kenneth, her friend, her friend from work, a big husky guy all man, and, no, nothing more, nothing more than friends, but he understood her , understood why she was like she was and so friends.
Finally he arrived, on time, old Kenneth always on time but no time for her, and as they headed to the club she started doing her voice exercises in the car. Damn tonight her voice sounded like some husky Lizabeth Scott from the old 1950s films that she adorned. Yes, Lizabeth with that sultry husky voice in some smoked-filled room glasses clanging , that no nonsense-taking from any guy voice and some guy in some corner waiting for her to finish so he could start, start being fresh with her, and seeing that he was her guy she let him do some nonsense. Ah. But that voice was no good, no good at all for Judy’s song and so she was once again nervous as a kitten, maybe more so.
When they got to the Carousel Club the placed was full for a Monday night, mostly with performers and their friends but full. And an extreme number of the performers were dressed to the nines with flamingo this, feathers hanging over them, and tiara that’s as well. This might have been an open call on Broadway for all the glitter with each performer trying to outshine (out-dress) the other. She signed up, the performance order here was first come, first served and she was number twelve on the list so she had about an hour to wait. She decided to have a scotch or two to try and get rid of that Lizabeth voice. Tried to get it Judy mellow. She bought one for Kenneth as well and they sat at a table. She did not remember some of the songs of the performers before her but Hello, Dolly, Cabaret, and Night and Day she thought. But what did come to mind was that Jimmy, Jimmy whom she had met at the LaLa Club came over and made eyes at her and her heart fluttered. He said he liked her gown, liked its fullness, and all of that and she was glad, glad as hell, she had shaved and bathed because things might get interesting later, and won’t he be nicely surprised she hoped. As for the song, her performance, she couldn’t shake that Lizabeth voice and Somewhere Over The Rainbow still belonged to Judy. And so she would come back next week with something better, and maybe on Jimmy’s arm, if it turns out that he is into girls like her…
After a 1953 CIO-led strike in Port Arthur, Texas Gov. Allan Shivers, here shown addressing a campaign rally in Austin, led a move to make membership in the Communist Party illegal. Image from AlternativeHistory.com.
The hidden history of Texas
Part 12: 1940-1953/1 -- Union growth followed by backlash against collective bargaining.
[This is the first section of Part 12 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]
Between 1939 and 1953 the percentage of non-agricultural workers in Texas who were members of labor unions increased from 10.3 to 16.8 percent; and 375,000 workers in Texas were labor union members by 1953. Between 1941 and 1945, CIO-affiliated labor unions “gained nearly 40,000 members in 4 years,” according to F. Ray Marshall’s Labor in the South. The same book also recalled:
Membership expansion occurred in petroleum refining, and in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where, in 1945, the CIO claimed 25,000 new members in one year. Important victories there included the organization of the huge North American Aviation Company to the UAW, the Armour plant by the packinghouse workers, Conroe Manufacturing by the ACWA, and several steel fabricators by the steelworkers. PWOC Local 54 and storehandlers’ Local 59 acquired bargaining rights under a master agreement with Armour. During the war [World War II], the packinghouse workers’ strength in Texas was confined largely to this plant.
The CIO had 115 locals in Texas in March 1944, the most numerous of which were: autoworkers, 8 locals; oil workers, 30 locals; and steelworkers, with 12 locals. The textile workers had only two locals in Texas in 1944...
By the 1942 convention, the oil workers’ organization committee had achieved significant results. The most important victory was the Texas Company at Port Arthur... In March 1942, the OWIU won an election at the Southport refinery in Texas City... It also signed up 84 percent of the workers at Standard of New Jersey’s Humble refinery at Baytown, Texas...
The UCAPAWA (Canning, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers)’s strongest base in Texas was in Houston, where it had 5 contracts covering over 600 Negro and Mexican-American workers, organized by March 1942. UCAPAWA contracts in Houston covered about 150 employees at the Houston Millinery Company and 400 Negro and Spanish-speaking workers in 4 cotton companies, three of which were owned by the Anderson Clayton company... In addition, UCAPAWA had locals among pecan workers at San Antonio, spinach workers at Mathis, and cannery workers at Sugarland…UCAPAWA…organized fruit and vegetable workers in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where its contracts covered 1,000 employees during peak seasons.
As Randolph Campbell’s Gone To Texas observed, “under the auspices of the National War Labor Board,” Texas labor movement “organizers unionized more of the state’s industries by 1945...” And during World War II, “workers at Shell in Pasadena, Texas” even “struck spontaneously” in June 1943 “to secure the reinstatement of a discharged union member,” according to Labor in the South; and there was also a strike by workers at a B.F. Goodrich plant in Texas in February 1944.
The white corporate power structure in Texas (and its ultra-conservative, white supremacist Texas political establishment in Austin) apparently then began to feel that this growing militancy and level of unionization of workers in Texas threatened both its class interests and its ability to continue to economically exploit and politically dominate most people who lived in Texas.
So after the CIO organized plant after plant across Texas in 1946-47,” the Texas “legislature responded in early 1947 by passing a right-to-work law that prohibited requiring union membership as a condition of employment,” according to Gone To Texas, and “the legislature also passed other anti-union laws, including one that prohibited pickets at strikes from being within 50 feet of each other or the entrance of the plant being picketed.”
Public employees in Texas were also denied the right to bargain collectively in 1947. And following a 1953 CIO-led strike in Port Arthur, the then-Democratic Texas Governor Allan Shivers even “called a special session of the legislature in the spring of 1954, which passed a bill making membership in the Communist Party a felony punishable by a fine of $20,000 and 20 years in the penitentiary,” according to the same book.
Coincidentally, according to Ronnie Dugger’s The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson, in Texas “the program of lobbying against labor was carried forward and financed largely by allies of Lyndon Johnson.” As The Politician recalled:
The public did not know about an even more significant business convert to Johnson, anti-union contractor Herman Brown who, with his brother George, ran the contracting and engineering firm of Brown & Root... A stream of gifts from the Browns to the Johnsons can be traced through the decade starting in 1940... Lyndon was Brown & Root’s kept politician...
By 1947 Brown & Root was so powerful in Texas it led a many-aspected campaign against unions which made Texas one of the most anti-union states in the Union and the only major industrial state that had a law prohibiting workers from voting to be all-union... The Brown brothers were largely responsible for the enactment from 1947 on, of the state’s anti-union laws.
War Department or Department of Defense contractors like Brown & Root apparently made a lot of money during World War II and the Korean War of the early 1950s from the U.S. government contracts that were thrown their way. But at the same time, “22,022 Texans died or suffered fatal wounds in battle” during World War II and “the Texas Division suffered one of the highest casualty rates of any in the Army -- 3,717 killed, 12,685 wounded, and 3,064 missing in action,” according to Going To Texas.
In addition, “the 19th Division, a Texas unit... suffered nearly 18,500 casualties, including 2,963 killed, many of the deaths coming in close fighting in the hedgerow country of Normandy,” according to the same book. And around 1,800 people from Texas were also killed in action after the Democratic Truman Administration decided to intervene militarily on the side of the right-wing Syngman Rhee dictatorship during the civil war in Korea .
Of the 750,000 people from Texas who served in the U.S. military during World War II, about 88,000 were African-Americans from Texas and about 12,000 were women from Texas; and “Texas, which had 5 percent of the nation’s population, provided 7 percent of those who served,” with most Texans serving in the army and air force and “about one-quarter” serving in the navy, marines and coast guard, according to Going To Texas.
[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]
***Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
I have noted on several previous occasions (including in an article in the April 2012 “Boston Occupier, Number 7”) that due to the recent absence of serious left-wing political struggle (prior to the events at Occupy Boston in Dewey Square from October to December 2011anyway) that our tasks for May Day 2012 in Boston centered on reviving the international working class tradition beyond the limited observance by revolutionaries, radicals and, in recent years, immigrants. This effort would thus not be a one event, one year but require a number of years and that this year’s efforts was just a start. We have made that start.
The important thing this year was to bring Boston in line with the international movement, to have leftist militants and others see our struggles here as part of an international struggle even if our actions were, for now, more symbolic and educational than powerful blows at the imperial system. I believe, despite the bad weather and consequently smaller than anticipated numbers on May Day 2012, we achieved that aim. Through months of hard outreach, especially over the past several weeks as the day approached, we put out much propaganda and information about the events through the various media with which we have access. The message of this May Day, a day without the 99%, got a full hearing by people from the unions, immigrant communities, student milieu and other sectors like the women’s movement and GLBQT community.The connections and contacts made are valuable for our further efforts.
Some participants that spoke to me on May Day (and others who had expressed the same concerns on earlier occasions) believed that we had “bitten off more than we could chew,” by having an all-day series of events.While I am certainly open to hear criticism on the start time of the day’s events (7:00AM does stretch the imagination for night-owlish militants) the idea of several events starting with that early Financial District Block Party and continuing on with the 11:00 AM Anti-Capitalist March which fed into the noontime rally at Boston City Hall Plaza and then switching over to the immigrant community marches and rally capped off that evening by the sober, solemn and visually impression “Death Of Capitalism” funeral procession still seems right to me. Given our task –introducing (really re-introducing) May Day to a wider Boston audience we needed to provide a number of times and events where people could, consciously, contribute to the day’s celebration. Maybe some year our side will be able to call for a one event May Day mass rally (or better a general strike) but that is music for the future.
Needless to say, as occurs almost any time you have many events and a certain need to have them coordinated, there were some problems from
technical stuff like mic set-ups to someone forgetting something important, or not showing at the right time, etc. Growing pains. Nevertheless all the scheduled events happened, we had minimum hassles from the police, and a couple of events really stick out as exemplars for future May Days. The Anti-Capitalist March from Copley Square, mainly in a downpour, led by many young militants and which fed into the noontime City Hall rally was spirited and gave me hope that someday (someday soon, I hope) we are going to bring this imperial monster down. The already mentioned funeral procession was an extremely creative (and oft-forgotten by us) alternative way to get our message across outside the “normal” ham-handed, jack-booted politicalscreed.
Finally, a word or two on organization. The Occupy-May Day Coalition personnel base was too small, way too small even for our limited goals. We need outreach early (early next year) to get enough organizer-type people on board to push forward. More broadly on outreach I believe, and partially this was a function of being too small an organizing center, we spent too much time“preaching to the choir”-going to events, talking to people already politically convinced , talking among ourselves rather than get out into the broader political milieu. For next year (which will not be an election year) we really need union and community people (especially people of color) to “smooth” the way for us. We never got that one (although we want more than one ultimately) respected middle-level still militant union official or community organizer that people, working people, listen to and who would listen to us with his or her nod. Radical or bourgeois politics, down at the base, you still need the people that the people listen to. Forward to May Day 2013.
[Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr. (George Gund Foundation Imprint in African American Studies) (2013: University of California Press); 560 pp; $34.95.]
Once again, it’s Black History Month in the United States. Since the inception of this celebration, its meaning has unfortunately been diminished as the myth of post-racialism becomes gospel, even though it shares none of a gospel’s truths. In schools and libraries, well-meaning teachers and library workers create displays, bring in speakers, and teach lessons on the history of African-Americans. All too often, this means a look at the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., a discussion of the Emancipation Proclamation, and maybe a lesson about Rosa Parks. Only rarely, do students and library patrons get a look beyond these conventional topics that are usually taught in a manner that highlights white America’s tolerance and sense of fair play.
This is why books like the recently released Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party are so important. They remove the pretense that the Black liberation movement in the United States was something everyone except the KKK and its allies supported. Books like this tell the truth. Blacks Against Empire does so concisely, engagingly, and honestly.
Black Against Empire is a political history that is simultaneously objective and radical. Despite the efforts of historians to obfuscate and obliterate the party from history, describing it as a hate group and gun-obsessed when mentioning it at all, the fact is the Panthers' legacy is unique and important to not only the history of Black America, but to the history of the entire United States. It is best described in the words of Mumia Abu Jamal: "We didn't preach to the people, we worked with them."
The relationship between the primarily white New Left and the Panthers is explored in a fair-minded and realistic manner, as is the relationship between the Panthers and other Third World revolutionary organizations, both in the United States and around the world. The authors expand the narrative of the movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam, showing clearly the early involvement of black organizations, especially that of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). It was this organization that actually began resisting the draft, months before the predominantly white anti-war movement.
Furthermore, as the authors make clear, opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam was one of the Black Panthers' fundamental positions.
Like most revolutionary organizations the Panthers struggled with issues of gender and sexuality. While the participation of men in the breakfast programs sensitized them to the realities of child-rearing and associated aspects of human life (think of the film Salt of the Earth, when the women replace men on the picket lines and the men take over household tasks forcing them to see the relationship of domestic tasks to the capitalist dynamic), the living situations of many Panthers reinforced traditional gender roles.
Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., the authors of Black Against Empire, have written a comprehensive and compelling history of the Black Panther Party. As close to complete as one text can possibly be, it is the book I would recommend to anyone wanting to read just one book about the Black Panthers. The book concludes with a chapter speculating as to why the Black Panthers developed when they did, why they commanded the support they did, and why their influence waned so quickly.
Of course, the role of the government counterinsurgency program called COINTELPRO is discussed; the frame-ups, misinformation, jacketing, and murders. In light of current concerns about domestic “terrorists," one wonders if the Panthers would be considered drone assassination targets under the current Justice Department guidelines if they were around today?
Other reasons provided by the authors for the Panthers’ demise borrow from the Italian Antonio Gramsci's thoughts on revolutionary movements and end up asking more questions than they answer.
Long Distance Revolutionary
Back to Mumia Abu Jamal. One of the youngest Panthers in the nation, he continued his revolutionary activism and reportage long after the Black Panthers had become history. Indeed, his post-Panther trajectory could serve as a microcosm of many leftist revolutionaries who came of age during the Panthers' heyday.
He didn’t give up his radicalism while pursuing a career after the Party. Because of this, he ended up paying for his history and his refusal to compromise. He continues paying even today. For those who have forgotten (or never paid attention), Mumia has been on Pennsylvania’s death row for more than two decades. Accused and convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman in a prosecution involving the sketchiest of evidence and numerous prosecutorial and judicial missteps, Mumia’s life and situation is the subject of a new feature film titled Long Distance Revolutionary.
When I was helping organize antiwar activities in the late 1990s and the 2000s, I learned that many of the younger radicals I was working with came to their politics after learning of Mumia's case. Thanks in no small part to his eloquence and the support of popular musicians like Rage Against the Machine, these young people saw through the intense desire of the State to keep Jamal in prison and kill him. This understanding opened their eyes to the realities of the system and made them radical.
As the film shows, this trajectory is similar to Jamal's. Mumia is a political prisoner. The Panthers were a political organization. The story of both is a story that needs to be heard. The film is part biography, part commentary from supporters and Jamal himself, and part drama. The sum of these parts is a film that provokes and entertains.
The Black Panthers were bold. The Black Panthers were smart. The Black Panthers were anti-imperialists. The Black Panthers were revolutionaries. This book and this film remind us of that. They also remind us that this world, this nation, could use something with the Panthers' appeal and power now. Read this book, ask your library to buy it; watch this film.
Black history isn't just for black people. It's for everyone who wants to understand the history of the United States.
