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
Friday, December 06, 2013
From The Marxist Archives- In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners And The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal- Fascism and Capitalist Crisis
James P.Cannon (center)-Founding leader of The International Labor Defense- a model for labor defense work in the 1920s and 1930s.
Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website for details about the Annual Holiday Appeal.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. ********
Workers Vanguard No. 1030
20 September 2013
TROTSKY
LENIN
Fascism and Capitalist Crisis
(Quote of the Week)
Feeding off of the grinding capitalist economic crisis in
Greece, the fascist Golden Dawn has launched a series of attacks on immigrants,
left organizations and trade unionists. The dire threat that fascism poses for
the working class and the oppressed was explained by Leon Trotsky in 1932 as
part of his call for proletarian united-front mobilizations to stop the Nazis in
their tracks—a program that retains full validity and urgency today in Greece
and elsewhere.
For the monopolistic bourgeoisie, the parliamentary and fascist
regimes represent only different vehicles of dominion; it has recourse to one or
the other, depending upon the historical conditions....
At the moment that the “normal” police and military resources of
the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer
suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium—the turn of the fascist regime
arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the
crazed petty bourgeoisie, and bands of the declassed and demoralized
lumpenproletariat; all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself
has brought to desperation and frenzy. From fascism the bourgeoisie demands a
thorough job; once it has resorted to methods of civil war, it insists on having
peace for a period of years. And the fascist agency, by utilizing the petty
bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by overwhelming all obstacles in its path, does
a thorough job. After fascism is victorious, finance capital gathers into its
hands, as in a vise of steel, directly and immediately, all the organs and
institutions of sovereignty, the executive, administrative, and educational
powers of the state: the entire state apparatus together with the army, the
municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and
the cooperatives. When a state turns fascist, it doesn’t only mean that the
forms and methods of government are changed in accordance with the patterns set
by Mussolini—the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role—but it
means, primarily and above all, that the workers’ organizations are annihilated;
that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of
administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which
serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein
precisely is the gist of fascism.
—Leon Trotsky, “What Next? Vital Questions for the German
Proletariat” (27 January 1932), printed in The Struggle Against Fascism in
Germany (Pathfinder, 1971)
***Out In the Be-Bop 1930s Swing Night- The Film Swing Kids -A Sketch
With Swing Kids, starring Christian Bales, 1993 in mind
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
... a new breeze came stirring through the land touching the young first as if such things were embedded in
some secret teen coda, some teen coda at least since teen became a separate
object of study, more likely befuddlement. To stretch those legs, to flash
those legs, to sway those hips. To in a word flash the new moves, the new swing
moves, learned from the Saturday afternoon matinee movies or from some visiting
cousin from New York hip to the latest scene. Not, I repeat, not the ones
learned at sixth grade Miss Prissy’s Saturday dance classes, those proper
foxtrots and waltzes like you were going to be invited to some cotillion, but
the ones that every mother, every girl mother warned her Susie against, to a
new sound coming out of the mist, coming to take the sting out of the want
years nights, and the brewing nights of the long knives too. And maybe take
Janie out into some dark starry night but we will leave that to your
imagination and Janie’s mother’s sweats. Coming out of New York, always New
York then, Minton’s, Jimmy’s, some other uptown clubs; Chicago, Chicago of the
big horns and that stream, that black stream heading north, following the
northern star, again, for jobs and to get the hell away from one Mister James
Crow; from Detroit, with blessed Detroit Slim and automobile sounds; and Kansas
City, the Missouri K.C. okay, the Bird land hatchery, the Prez’s big sexy sax
blow home. Jesus, no wonder that madman Hitler banned it, banned, what did he
call it, oh yeah, degenerate music, banned it along with dreams. Heil swing!
The sound of blessed swing, all big horns, big reeds, big,
well big band, replacing the dour Brother,
Can You Spare a Dime and its brethren ,
no, banishing such thoughts, casting them out with soup lines (and that
awful Friday Saint Vincent DePaul fish stew that even Jesus would have turned
down in favor of bread, wine and a listen to Benny’s Buddha Swings) casting that kind of hunger out for a moment, a
magical realistic moment, casting out ill-fitting, out of fashion, threadbare
(nice, huh) second-hand clothes (passed down from out- the- doorhobo brothers and sisters tramping this good
green earth looking for their place, or at least a job of work and money in
their newer threadbare [still nice] clothes), and casting aside from hunger
looks, that gaunt look of those who have their wanting habits on and no way to
do a thing about it.Banished, except
maybe for that tired weary urban pile refuge scrounger just then thinking that
for the sake of the three boys he might just have to kneel down and grab some
churchman’s letter, yeah things were still that tough. Banished with that
exception because after all was said and done it did not mean a thing, could
not possibly place you anywhere else but in squareville (my term, not theirs),
if you did not have that swing. To be as one with jitter-buggery if there was
(is) such a word (together, not buggery by itself, not in those days, not in
the public vocabulary anyway). And swing as it lost steam with all the boys,
all the swing boys, all oversea boys and the home- fire girls tired of dancing
two girl dancing, a fade echo of the cool age be-bop that was a-borning, making
everybody reach for that high white note floating out of Minton’s, Big Bill’s,
Jimmie’s, hell, even Olde Saco’s Starlight Ballroom before it breezed out in
the ocean air night, crashed into the tepid sea. Yeah, but before that swing, brother, swing.
***The
Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And
World War II
Dooley
Wilson’s As Time Goes By…
For
Prentice John Markin and Delores Maude Markin (nee Riley) who lived through it
all, survived it all, and never drew a blessed break…
*******
Peter
Paul Markin comment on this series:
Whether we liked it or not, whether we even knew what it
meant to our parents or not, or frankly, during that hellish growing up absurd
teenager time in the 1950s trying to figure out our places, if any, in the cold
war red scare world, if there was to be a world, and that was a close thing at
times, or whether we cared, music was as
dear a thing to them as to us, their sons and daughters, who were in the throes
of finding our own very different musical identities. As well, whether we knew
it or not, knew what sacred place the music of the late 1930s and 1940s, swing,
be-bop swing, be-bop flat-out, show tunes, you know jitter-bug stuff, and the
like held in their youthful hearts that was the music, their getting through
the tough times music, that went wafting through the house on the radio, on
record player, or for some the television, of many of those of us who
constitute the now graying fading generation of ‘68.
And some of us will pass to the beyond clueless as to what
our forebears were attuned to when they came of age in a world, a very
darkly-etched world, which they too had not created, and had no say in
creating. Above all a guy like that coalminer’s son, a coalminer himself, who
got as caught up in the music of his time as any New York City Jack or Jill and
who got busted out of the tumbled down tarpaper shacksdown in some Appalachia hills and hollows,
headed north, followed the northern star and never looked back and never knew
what hit him either.
Yes they were crazy for the swing and sway of bespectacled Benny
Goodman blowing that clarinet like some angel- herald letting the world
know,if it did not know already, that
it did not mean a thing, could not possibly matter in the universe, if you did
not swing, with and without Miss (Ms.) Peggy Lee, better with, better with,
swaying slightly, lips moistened, swirling every guy in the place on Why Don’t You Do Right vowing he would
do just that for a smile and a chance at those slightly swaying hips. Mr. Harry
James with or without the orchestra , better with, blowing Gabriel’s horn,
knocking down walls, maybe Jericho, maybe just some Starlight Ballroom in
Kansas City blasting the joint with his You
Made Me Love You to the top of the charts. Elegant Duke Ellington with or
without Mr. Johnny Hodges blowing that sexy sax out into the ocean air night in
some Frisco club, blowing out to the Japan seas on Taking The ‘A’ Train. Tommy Dorsey all banded up if there is such a
word making eyes misty with I’ll Never
Smile Again. Jimmy Dorsey too with
his own aggregation wailing Tangerine that
had every high school girl throwing dreamy nickels and dimes into the jukebox, with
or without fanfare, Glenn Miller, with or without those damn glasses, taking
that Sentimental Journey before his
too soon last journey. Miss (Ms.) Billie Holiday, Lady Day, with or without the
blues, personal blues, strung out blues too, singing everybody else’s blues
away with that throaty thing she had, that meaningful pause, yeah, Lady Sings The Blues. Miss (Ms. Lena
Horne with or without stormy weather making grown men cry (women too) when she
reached that high note fretting about her long gone man, Jesus. Miss (Ms.) Margaret Whiting going for that Old Black Magic. Mr. Vaughn Monroe with
or without goalposts. Mr. Billy Eckstine, too. Mr. Frank Sinatra doing a
million songs fronting for the Dorseys and anybody who wanted to rise in that
swinging world, with or without a horde of bobbysoxers breaking down his doors,
putting everybody else to shame (and later too). The Inkspots, always with that
spoken refrain catch that nobody seemed to tire of, doing teary I’ll Get By or If I Didn’t Care. The Mills Brothers with or without those paper
dolls. The Andrews Sisters with or without rum in their Coca-Cola, The Dewdrops
with or without whatever they were doing with or without. Mr. Cole Porter, with
or without the boys, writing the bejesus out of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway
tunes. Mr. Irving Berlin with or without the flag, ditto Mr. Porter. And Mr.
George Gershwin with or without his brother, creating Summertime and a thousand other catchy tunes. Yeah, their survival
music.
We the generation of ’68, baby-boomers, decidedly not what
Tom Brokaw dubbed rightly or wrongly “ the greatest generation,”decidedly not your parents’ or grandparents’
(please, please do not say great-grandparents’ even if it is true) generation
could not bear to hear that music, could not bear to think anybody in the whole
universe would think that stuff was cool. Those of us who came of age,
biological, political and social age kicking, screaming and full of the
post-war new age teenage angst and alienation in the time of Jack Kennedy’s
Camelot were ready for a jail-break, a jail-break on all fronts and that
included from “their song” stuff. Their staid Eisenhower red scare cold war
stuff (he their organizer of victory, their gentile father Ike), hell, we knew
that the world was scary, knew it every time we were forced to go down into
some dank school basement and squat down, heads down too, hoping to high heaven
that the Russkies had not decided to go crazy and set off “the bomb,” many
bombs. And every righteous teenager had a nightmare that he or she they were
trapped in some fashionable family bunker and those loving parents had
thoughtfully brought their records down into the abyss to soothe their savage beasts
for the duration. Please, please, please if we must die then at least let’s go
out to Jerry Lee’s High School
Confidential.
We were moreover, some of us any way and I like to think the
best of us, driven by some makeshift dreams, ready to cross our own swords with
the night-takers of our time, and who, in the words of Camelot brother Bobby,
sweet ruthless Bobby of more than one shed tear, quoting from Alfred Lord
Tennyson, were “seeking a new world.” Those who took up the call to action heralded
by the new dispensation and slogged through that decade whether it was in the civil
rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle
to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture swirl before the hammer came
down were kindred. To the disapproval, anger, and fury of more than one parent
who had gladly slept through the Eisenhower times. And that hammer came down
quickly as the decade ended and the high white note that we searched for,
desperately searched for, drifted out into the ebbing tide. Gone. But enough
about us this series is about our immediate forbears (but please, please not
great grandparents) their uphill struggles to make their vision of the their newer
world, their struggles to satisfy their
hunger a little, to stop that gnawing want, and the music that in their
youththey dreamed by on cold winter
nights and hot summer days.
This is emphatically the music, the get by the tough times
in the cities, on the farms, out in the wide spaces, of the hard born generation
that survived the dust bowl all farms blown away when the winds gathered like
some ancient locust curse to cleanse the earth and leave, leave nothing except
silt and coughs. All land worthless no crops could stand the beating, the bankers
fearful that the croppers would just leave taking whatever was left and the
dusted crowd heading west with whatever was movable. They drifted west, west as
far as California if the old buggy held up and they had enough gas in the tank,
not knowing what some old time professor, from Harvard I think, knew about the
frontier that it had been swallowed up, been staked out long ago and too bad.
Not knowing as well what some old time Okie balladeer knew that if you did not
have the dough California was just another Okie/Arkie bust.
Survived empty bowls, empty plates, wondering where the next
meal would come from, many times, too many times from some Sally soup-line,
some praise the lord before thy shall eat soup-line. Survived that serious
hunger want that deprives a man, a woman, of dignity scratching for roots like
some porcine beast in some back alley lot, too weak to go on but too weak to
stop as well. Survived, if not west, then no sugar bowl city street urchin corner
boy hard times of the 1930s Great Depression, always with that vagrant foot up
against some brick-laid wall, killing time, killing some dreams,sleeping under soot-lined railroad trestles,
on splintered park benches newspapers for a pillow’s rest (one eye open for
swarming festering jack-rollers and club-wielding sadistic cops), and hard
bench bus stations (ditto jack-rollers and cops).Survive the time of the madness just then
beating the tom-toms of war and degradation coming from a hungry want-infested Europe
filled with venom, those drums heralding the time of the night-takers casting a
shadow over the darkened world, portending the plainsong of the time of the
long knives, outlawing dreams for the duration.
Building up a pretty list of those wants on cold nights,
name them, food, shelter, sex, two- bits in the pocket, name those hungers,
success, dignity, not having to struggle against the want night. Building that
phantom list while among tree-lined Hudson River “hobo jungle” riverside fires
stoked by fugitives, brethren, the fellahin of the world, upstream from the
clogged city, upstream from clogged city prying eyes and prickly cops, cities clogged
with broken dreams, or worse of late no dreams, and not enough food to go
around, not enough work either and that ate at him, her more that the food
hungers. Down in dusty arroyos, parched, no water, no agua aqui senor, lo
siento, as they, the bracero brethren, passed the water jug between them and
pointed him west, west you cannot stay here gringo, no way. Under forsaken silver-plated
bridges, steel beams to rest a weary head, rolled blanket for his pillow,
trying to keep the winds at bay. Survived
god knows how by taking the nearest freight west, some smoke and dreams
freight, sleeping on some straw-scratched floor, plugging ears with napkins to
drown out the rattling rails and deep sleep snores. Taking Southern Pacific,
Union Pacific, B&O, Illinois Central, Penn Central, Empire State, Boston
and Maine, or one of a million trunk lines to go out, and young as he was,
desperate as he was, penniless as he was, search for, well, search for…
Searching for something that was not triple- decker bodies,
three to a room sharing some scraggly blanket, an old worn out pillow for rest,
the faint smell of oatmeal, twenty days in a row oatmeal, oatmeal with.., being
cooked in the next room meaning no Pa work, meaning one jump, maybe not even
that, ahead of the sullen dreaded bastard rent- collector (the landlords do not
dare come in person so they hired the task out), meaning the sheriff, his damn
auction, and the streets were closing in. (What did the Sheriff care that all
meager life-times possessions were street-ward bound he was paid by the item
tossed.) Bodies, brothers and sisters, enough to lose count, piled high,
cold-water flat high, that damn cold water splash signifying how low things
have gotten, not even hot water for the weekly bath, with a common commode for
the whole floor and brown-stained sink.
Later moving down the scale, down to the lower depths as
some Russian writer called them in a book of that name, a rooming house room
for the same number of bodies, smudged prison-paned window looking out onto the
air- shaft, dark, dark with despair, no air but some fetid foul breeze from the
basement furnace, the very, very faint odor of oatmeal, thinned out even
further, who knows how many days in a row, from Ma’s make-shift hot plate on
its last legs.Hell, call it what it was
a flop house stinking of perspiration and low-shelf whiskeys and wines. Stinking
of winos and riffraff in the hallways howling at the moon all night and
jack-rollers preying on whoever was witless enough to walk into his lair. All
around shadows, moonlight shadows, moonless night shadows the times when the
midnight sifters plied their trade and snuck in, snuck in these damn one room
hells looking for anything, anything to pawn, anything to feed that junk habit
that had them in its grip. Ma, yelling at the kids, jesus, at the kids, milling
around the room, that why didn’t they, the jack-rollers, the midnight sifters,
the junkies, and the twisted sister street tricks (whores she called them when
the kids got older and knew what that word meant) go uptown and bother the
Mayfair swells who had dough and leave respectable people alone.
Others had it worse, tumbled down shack, window pane-less
some wax paper taped to hold off the winds and rains coming from the north,
tarpaper siding leaving exposed wood to rot and provide homes for fugitive
termites and vermin, roof tiles falling leaving poorly patched spots where the
spring rains would wash through, wash through to the six buckets which were
placed beneath the patches to hold off collapse, a lean-to ready to fall to the
first wind, the first red wind, an ill wind, a land wind the old sailors, old
tars called it and maybe they were right, coming out of the mountains and
swooping down the hills and hollows, ready to fall to the first downpour rain,
washed away.
Cold water flat, flop house room, tumbled-down shack, leave
them behind, get out on the open road, blow the stinks off, get that bindle
stick together, a cup, a plate, spoon, a comb just in case you are in a town,
some matches, keep dry matches, a pouch of Bull Durham and papers, maybe some
change all wrapped in a handkerchief, the worldly possessions of the fellahin,
the fugitive, the hobo, the tramp and the bum, grab that slow moving freight
before she picks up steam, watch out for the “bulls” and search for the great
promised American night that had been tattered by world events, and greed.
Survived the Hoovervilles, the world come down to the great
cardboard siding, tin can cartons, discarded boxes, found in some orphan
street, dilapidated, to serve as buffer against the hard winter winds, the
spring rains and that damn relentless summer heat. Tin can roof thundering
sounds at every light rain, slap-dash jerry-built camp explosions along rivers.
Mighty rivers like the Missouri and Mississippi and no account ones, trickle down
ones, like the Elko and the Dearborn that no longer gushed ramparts. Survived down
in hard rock- infested ravines filled with brambles, snakes, gnarly insects
ready to do battle once some fugitive arm or leg was exposed. Survived under
railroad trestles, the clanking freight trains above, what did Shakespeare call
it, yes, murdering sleep, and murdering dreams too. No wonder some guy, some
hobo philosopher-king, and don’t laugh there were such fellows, along with
broken-down stockbrokers, wreaked high financiers, ex-movie moguls, unemployed
cabbies, unemployable union organizers, out-of-work workers of all types,
families attached, and habitual malingerers trying to weather another day
without working, said that life, his life anyway, and maybe their lives, were
nothing but train smoke and wishful thinking. Hell, he, that guy, didn’t know
the half of it, didn’t know that life could get much coarser out on the great
Wilderness Road.
Tossed, hither and yon, cold- water flats, flop-houses,
tarpaper shacks, then the great outdoors, what did that guy call it, that
writer guy, I forget his name, called it probably from his cozy fire-placed
study, fully nourished from the look of his pipe-smoking face on the back
jacket of his latest pot-boiler, oh yeah, the romance of the road. Tossed
around about six million different ways, name each one instead of counting
sheep at night, murdered sleep. But it all came down to this, to the rivers,
ravines, trestled-bridges, when the banks, yeah, the banks, the usual suspects,
and rightly so from all the evidence, robbed people of their shacks, their
cottages, their farm houses, their smokeless back forty dreams, and left them
with nothing but the romance of the road. Even that smug pipe-filled writer,
Jesus, what was his name, should pause to wonder. Yah, those bastards robbed
them, picked them clean, as an old-time balladeer, a free-wheeling,
song-writing red, a commie, hell, nothing but a Russkie-loving home-grown
Bolshevik in the days when in some quarters, say, Frisco town, Akron,
Minneapolis, blessed shut-down Flint, lion Detroit, hog-butcher to the world
Chi town, smelter to the world Pittsburgh, sailing under that banner was a
badge of honor, or just another fist in the struggle, welcome brother, welcome
sister, we need all the hands, no, all the clenched fists we can get, said at
the time not with a gun but with a fountain pen, but still robbed them. Cleaned
them out, to get lost on that Wilderness Road, that trail of one thousand tears
leading west.
Survived the soup kitchens hungers, the gnawing can’t wait
in the endless waiting line for scraps, dreaming of some by-gone steak or dish
of ice cream, and always that hunger, not the stomach hunger although that was
ever present, but the hunger that hurts a man, hurts his pride, hurts a woman’s
too, hurts when he, they have to stick their hands out, stick them out and not
know why. Not know why a year before the sun was shining, they had dreams of
living in that little house, a cottage really, ending their patterned days
there, and now had shutter dreams of living in that cold-water flat, the
flop-house room, the tar-paper shack forever turning their mouths to ashes. Not
knowing why Bill up the street, Jack down the road, Leroy across the way was
working, worrying but working, while his two hands were idle, and a million
human things still needed to be fixed, to be built, to be created. And she
cried a tear on those hands to see how his ignorance of what made the world go
round ate at him, ate at his beautiful heart.
Planning the fruitless day, fruitless since he was born to
work, took pride in work, had worked since twelve to help a struggling family
even in good times,planning around dark
hour Sally breakfasts don’t be late, six to nine, but with sermon and song
attached, mission stuff in heat-soaked rooms, men smelling of unwashed men, and
drink (quick drink, an eye-opener they called it in the shelter,before entry and hence a strong smell of
cheap rotgut). Planning around city hall hand-out lunches eaten on park benches
or lawns, peanut butter sandwiches, slapped slap-dash together with a pint box
of milk and an apple, maybe. Worse, worse by far the nightly Saint Vincent
DePaul suppers, soup, bread, some canned vegetable, something they called meat
but was in dispute, lukewarm coffee. Such a feast had only, only if you could
prove you were truly destitute with a letter from some churchman, a Catholic
churchman, like Protestants, Jews, Seventh-Day Adventist, Quakers, Shakers,
Devil-worshippers, Jainists, Buddhists, Moslems, and every other kind of
fellahin religionists were not hungry just then, and, in addition to the
religious test, under some terrible penalty, you had to say that you had
searched for work that day. A hard dollar, a hard dollar indeed.
Jesus, out of work for another day, another in a long line
of days, long line of Sally, City Hall, Saint Vincent DePaul hand-out days,with
three hungry growing kids to feed, boys, wouldn’t you know it,kids, boys, who, what did they call what
kids did then, oh yeah, eat them out of house and home. A wife, a precious
wife, sickly, sickly from boys too close together, sickly from her own delicate
frame,sick unto death of the not having,
not having for the boys, their boys, he thought. Making, she making, sick or
not, their meager savings, their dole hand -out, their occasional relative
money gift, stretch beyond endurance with the weekly bill envelopes always
shorting some irate collector. Damn, little work waiting for anybody that day,
that day when all hell broke loose and the economy tanked again, stocks
tumbled, again, and guys were jumping out high buildings left and right, other guys
were trying to scrape every dime they could gather in order to not go under and
face the high building windows, still other guys were getting tossed out of
work, and other desperate guys who were thinking about buying guns and taking
what they could take, and take it fast at least that is what it said in the Boston Globe he found on the ground and
read while he waited once again in the damn soup line (ditto the reportage in The New
York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco
Examiner if anybody was asking). They, the newspapers, said that there was
too much around, too many cars, houses, too much wheat, cotton, oil, too many
record-players, whatever, Jesus, too much, too many, and he with nothing for
those kids, those eat them out of house and home boys, nothing and he was too
proud just then to ask for some damn letter to give to those Vincent DePaul
hard-hearts.
And that day not him, not him yet, not him with a sickly
wife worrying unto death over bill envelopes, not him with three hungry boys
conceived too closely together, not him who was without steady work and glad to
get what he got when he got it and could shake off the damn charity soup-lines
for a time, could thumb his nose at those Vincent DePaul hard-hearts, but
others. Others who read more that the Boston
Globe (and the dittos)and who were
dreaming of that full head of steam day to come, the day to even things up a
little for a mess that they had not made, in places like big auto Flint eyeing
those lines and thinking how to shut them down from the inside, out in waterfront
Frisco town thinking that in order to make the water bosses cry that they might
have to shut the whole place down, out in rubber Akron thinking of maybe even
bringing the unemployed, guys like him, to stop the scabbing, guys,
steel-sweated guys out in hog butcher to the world prairie Chicago thinking of
one big union, hell, even in boondock small trucker Minneapolis thinking of
bringing in the wives, sisters, and sweethearts, the whole sweated, misbegotten
fellahin world for one big push,
Yeah, they dreamed a lot, in places like bayside Frisco
town,mid-America Akron, trucker
Minneapolis, Chi town name your industry, clanky Flint and motor city Detroit,
places like Harlan, Birmingham, Los Angeles too, seemed like half the whole
fellahinwas dreaming then, and some
guys and gals, some stand-up guys and gals were scheming too, talking it up, were
not going quietly into the rubbish can of history, dreaming of that day when
the score would get evened, evened a little, and a man (and where I say man I
say woman too, women who like they used to say in China hold up half the sky),
could hold his head up a little, could at least bring bread, maybe some fruits
and vegetables, to those three hungry growing kids, those boys who were eating
him out of house and home, who didn’t understand the finer point of world
economics, just hunger. Stomach hunger not that hunger that gnawed at him,
there would be time enough for that for them. Until then, until he decides to
not go quietly into the rubbish can of history though, he is left shifting the
scroungings of the trash piles of the urban glut, the discard of the haves, the
have- nots throw nothing away. On other horizons, Omaha, Grand Junction,
Topeka, Davenport, Neola, Muskogee,places where the corn and wheat grow tall, taller than a man, the
brethren curse the rural fallow fields, curse the jack-robber banks, and curse
the weather, but curse most of all having to pack up and head, head anywhere, anywhere
but the here, and search, search like that brother on that urban glut pile for
a way to curbthat gnawinghungry that cried out in the night-want, want
that is all.
Survived too the look, the look of those, the what did FDR
(Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the young, or forgetful) call them, oh yeah, the
economic royalists, today’s 1%, the rack-renters, the coupon-clippers, the
guys, as one of their number from an earlier generation, the openly cutthroat
robber barons of unblessed memory, said, who hired one half of the working
class to fight the other. Survived the look, if they could have seen that
controlled furious look like the maids and manservants who attended to their
toilet saw it, especially after a hard night at the club, or soiree. Saw the
look of those who in their fortified towers, their Xanadus, their Dearborns, their
Lake Shore Drives, their Beacon Hills, their Upper East Sides, their Nob Hills,
and a few other spots, tittered that not everybody was built to survive to be the
fittest. That crowd, and let’s name names, a few anyway, Ford, General Motors,
Firestone, U.S. Steel, the Vanderbilts, The Spragues, the Alexanders, the
Morgans, The Goldmans, the Harrimans and their agents (always agents, always a
nest full of agents, always a layer to shield them from life’s blows) fought
tooth and nail against the little guy trying to break bread. Fought that
brother, that little guy, that guy we know was scrounging the refuge piles, out
there pounding the mean streets too proud to ask for a letter, Jesus, a letter
for some leftover food, before he got “religion” about what was what in the
land of “milk and honey.”
A land where they, the swells, hah, the Mayfair swells of
the novels, wreaked havoc on that farmer out in the dust bowl now travelling
some road, some road west knowing that the East was barred up, egging him on to
some hot dusty bracero labor field picking, maybe “hire” him on as a scab
against those uppity cityboys. Yes, they fought every guy trying to get out from under that
cardboard, tar paper, windowless soup kitchen world along with a hell of a lot
of comrades, yes, comrades, not Russkie comrades although reds were thick in
those battles, took their lumps in Frisco, Flint, Akron and Minneapolis, hell,
any place where a righteous people were rising, kindred in the struggle to put
that survival of the fittest noise on the back-burner of human history. To
stand up andtake collective action to
put things right, hell, made the bosses cry bloody murder when they shut down
their factories, shut them down cold until some puny penny justice was eked
out.
Just so they could lift their fellahin heads a little out of
the mire of human existence. And maybe just maybe make that poor unknowingly
mean-street walking city brother, the one with the three growing boys eating
him out of house and home, scrounging on the urban refuge piles, fretting away
his time worrying about the next meal, the next roof, thinking maybe he should
take that scab job being offered although every instinct said no, and that
sweated farm boy with a parcel of kids heading forlornly west ready to grab
even bracero work to keep the wolves at bay although his every instinct said no
as well, think twice about helping those Mayfair swells.
Survived all the hell that betook many in those days but
took time out too, maybe not our hero wandering refuge piles in defense of his
three boys, but time out if young perhaps. As if such things were embedded in
some secret teen coda, some teen coda at least since teen became a separate
object of study, more likely befuddlement. To stretch those legs, to flash
those legs, to sway those hips. To in a word flash the new moves, the new swing
moves, learned from the Saturday afternoon matinee movies or from some visiting
cousin from New York hip to the latest scene. Not, I repeat, not the ones
learned at sixth grade Miss Prissy’s Saturday dance classes, those proper
foxtrots and waltzes like you were going to be invited to some cotillion, but
the ones that every mother, every girl mother warned her Susie against, to a
new sound coming out of the mist, coming to take the sting out of the want
years nights, and the brewing nights of the long knives too. And maybe take
Janie out into some dark starry night but we will leave that to your
imagination and Janie’s mother’s sweats. Coming out of New York, always New
York then, Minton’s, Jimmy’s, some other uptown clubs; Chicago, Chicago of the
big horns and that stream, that black stream heading north, following the
northern star, again, for jobs and to get the hell away from one Mister James
Crow; from Detroit, with blessed Detroit Slim and automobile sounds; and Kansas
City, the Missouri K.C. okay, the Bird land hatchery, the Prez’s big sexy sax
blow home. Jesus, no wonder that madman Hitler banned it, banned, what did he
call it, oh yeah, degenerate music, banned it along with dreams. Heil swing!
The sound of blessed swing, all big horns, big reeds, big,
well big band, replacing the dour Brother,
Can You Spare a Dime and its brethren ,
no, banishing such thoughts, casting them out with soup lines (and that
awful Friday Saint Vincent DePaul fish stew that even Jesus would have turned
down in favor of bread, wine and a listen to Benny’s Buddha Swings) casting that kind of hunger out for a moment, a
magical realistic moment, casting out ill-fitting, out of fashion, threadbare
(nice, huh) second-hand clothes (passed down from out- the- doorhobo brothers and sisters tramping this good
green earth looking for their place, or at least a job of work and money in
their newer threadbare [still nice] clothes), and casting aside from hunger
looks, that gaunt look of those who have their wanting habits on and no way to
do a thing about it.Banished, except
maybe for that tired weary urban pile refuge scroungers just then thinking that
for the sake of the three boys he might just have to kneel down and grab some
churchman’s letter, yeah things were still that tough. Banished with that
exception because after all was said and done it did not mean a thing, could
not possibly place you anywhere else but in squareville (my term, not theirs),
if you did not have that swing. To be as one with jitter-buggery if there was
(is) such a word (together, not buggery by itself, not in those days, not in
the public vocabulary anyway). And swing as it lost steam with all the boys,
all the swing boys, all oversea boys and the home- fire girls tired of dancing
two girl dancing, a fade echo of the cool age be-bop that was a-borning, making
everybody reach for that high white note floating out of Minton’s, Big Bill’s,
Jimmie’s, hell, even Olde Saco’s Starlight Ballroom before it breezed out in
the ocean air night, crashed into the tepid sea. Yeah.
Survived, as if there was no time to breathe in new fresh
airs, new be-bop tunes, new dance moves, to slog from want hungers to the time
of the gun in World War II.A time when
the night-takers, those dark forces, those who craved the revenge night of the
long knives for some supposed ill, took giant steps in Europe and Asia trying
to make that same little guy, Brit, Frenchie, Chinaman, Filipino, God’s
American, and half the races and nationalities on this good green earth cry
uncle. Even our heroic urban pile dweller with his three boys underfoot now was
eager to show what he was made of, was ready to forsake that sickly wife and
those beastly kids, to put a couple of things right if they would just make
sure the kids were fed. No go, too old, too tired from a decade of hungers.
Yeah those night-takers were ready to make the little guy buckle under, take
it, take their stuff without a squawk. It took a bit, took a little shock, to
get those war juices flowing, to get whole populations to forget about the
blood-letting that had gone on before when the flower of Europe, when the older
brothers and fathers the generation before, had taken their numbers when they
were called and died like dogs in gas-filled trenches, along barbed wire
fences, behind random artillery shell, and half the known diseases of the
earth.
And so after Pearl, after that other shoe dropped on a
candid world, a now candid world that
could no longer afford to look the other way, could not afford to do like they
had done in Spain and let the “premature anti-fascists” hang in the wind, could
not afford to keep heads firmly in the sand, Johnnie, Jimmie, Paulie, Jesus,
even Paulie, Benny too, all the guys from the old neighborhood, the corner
boys, the guys who hung out at Jeb’s Pool Hall, Nick’s Variety, Jake’s Diner,
The Regent Theater, the guys who hung around the Rexall Drugstore too, hands in
their pockets, one knee to the wall just like those who came before and like
those who would come after in the alienated teen night of the 1950s, the wild
boys, the boys who then would be rebels without a cause, guys trying to rub
nickels together to play some jitter-buggery thing, guys who had it tough
growing up hard in those bad Depression days, took their numbers and fell in
line.
Guys from the wheat fields, Kansas, Iowa, you know places
where they grow wheat, guys fresh from some Saturday night dance, some country
square thing, all shy and with calloused hands, eyeing, eyeing to perdition
some virginal Betty or Sue. Guys too from the coal slags, deep down in hill
country, down in the hollows away from public notice, some rumble down shack to
rest their heads, full of backwoods home liquor, blackened fingernails, never
ever fully clean once the coal got them, Saturday night front porch fiddlings. All
mixed together in that citizens’ army carrying an M-1 on the shoulder in Europe
or the Pacific. Leaving all those Susies, Lauras, Betties, and dark-haired
Rebeccas too waiting at home hoping to high heaven that some wayward gun had
not carried off sweetheart Johnnie, Jimmy, Leroy, Manuel, Paulie, or young
Benny.Jesus not young Benny. Not the
runt of the corner boy litter, not our Benny. Not Benny whose sax -playing had
just started drawing attention when his number was called, more importantly had
the girlsswooning and swaying a little
bit when he hit that high white note taking notice, and also probably taking his number
too.
Not carried off as well that sweet farm fresh boy with the
sly grin who never did get up the courage to ask her to dance or anything else
but she swore if he came back in one piece he would get from her whatever he
wanted, and gladly. Not carried off that coal-dust young man with those
jet-black eyes, and fingers, that young kindred of that dusty urban refuge
scrounger too old to serve, too young to be out of work with those three
strapping boys. Not taken off that boy from his mountain winds and some skinny
gal, dressed in skimpy calico, waiting before the General Store hoping that the
day’s casualty list was empty of his beautiful name.
Survived the endless lines of boys heading off East and
West, heading off to right some wrongs, at least that is what the guys in
charge said, put a big dent in the style of the night-takers, the guys who
wanted to cut up the world into two or three pieces, and that was that, cutting
the little guy, making the little guys like it, making them take it or else.
Some of those little guys, after Pearl for sure, although some more astute,
politicalor footloose guys had become
“premature anti-fascists” over in blood-drenched Spain beforehand, could hardly wait to get to the recruiting
office, hardly wait to go mano y mano with the night-takers and their illicit
dreams.
So they, went gladly from the farms, the factories and the
mines, many to never look back, never to farm, to run a production line, or to
dig from the earth but make new lives in the great urban glut the place our
urban refuge scrounger was trying to break out off, or lay down their heads in
some god forsaken piece of dirt, or some watery abyss. Others, well, others
were hanging back waiting to be drafted by their friends and neighbors at the
local draft board, hanging back just a little to think things over, to see if
maybe they could be better used on the home front, scared okay (as if the
quick-step volunteers were not afraid, or should have been) but who gave a good
accounting of themselves when their number came up. They too had large numbers
lying their heads down on some crusty island atoll, some washed-up beach, some
fallen down bridge. Still others were head over heels they were exempt, 4-F,
bad feet, you see. Somebody had to keep the home fires, had to keep Jodie’s
womenfolk happy.
All, all except that last crew, the dodgers found in every
war,who got to sit a home with Susie,
Laura, Betty and even odd-ball Rebecca were constantly waiting for the other
shoe to drop, for their ships to sail or their planes to fly. Had spent the time
hanging in some old time corner boy drugstore, Doc’s, Rexall, name your
drugstore name, just like when they were kids (a mere few weeks before),
talking the talk like they used to do to kill time, maybe sitting two by two
(two uniforms, two girls if anybody was asking) at the soda fountain playing
that newly installed jukebox until the nickels ran out. Listened to funny
banana boat songs, rum and coca cola songs, sitting under the apple tree songs,
songs to forget about the work ahead abroad, and just some flat-out
jitter-bugging stuff, frothy stuff in order to get a minute’s reprieve from
thoughts of the journey ahead.
Listened too to dreamy, sentimental songs, Always, I Don’t Want To Set The World On
Fire, Sentimental Journey, songs that spoke of true love, their true love
that would outlast the ages, would carrying them through that life together if
they could ever keep those damn night-takers at bay, songs about faraway
places, We’ll Meet Again, Til Then,
songs that spoke of future sorrows, future partings, future returnings (always
implying though that maybe there would be no return), future sacrifices, future
morale-builders, songs about keeping lamp- lights burning, songs to give meaning
to that personal sacrifice, to keep the womenfolk, to keep her from fretting
her life away waiting for that dreaded other drop, songs about making a better
world out of the fire and brimstone sacrifice before them.
Songs to make the best out of the situation about Johnnie,
Jimmie and the gang actually returning, returning whole, and putting a big dent
in their dreams, that small white house with the white picket fence (maybe
needing a little painting, maybe they could do that together), kids, maybe a
new car once in a while you know the stuff that keeps average joes alive in
sullen foxholes, sea-sick troop transports, freezing cargo planes, keeps them
good and alive. Hell, songs, White Cliffs
Of Dover songs, about maybe the damn wars would be over sooner rather than
later. Listened, drawing closer, getting all, uh, moony-eyed, and as old Doc,
or some woe-begotten soda jerk, some high school kid, wet behind the ears, with
that white paper service cap at some obscure angle and now smudged white jacket
implying that he was in the service too, told them to leave he was closing up
they held out for one last tune. Then, well-fortified with swoony feelings they
made for the beach, if near a beach, the pond, if near a pond, the back forty, if
near the back forty, the hills, you know, or whatever passed for a lovers’ lane
in their locale and with the echo of those songs as background, well, do I have
to draw you a map, what do you think they did, why do you think they call us
baby-boomers.
That music, this survival music, Harry James, Benny, the
Dorsey boys, Bing, Frank, the Mills Brothers, the Inkspots, and on and on wafted
(nice word, huh) through the air coming from a large console radio, the prized
possession centered in the small square living room of my growing up house amid
the squalor of falling roof tiles, a broken window or two patched up with
cardboard and tape, a front door that would not shut, rooms with second-hand
sofas, mattresses, chairs, desks, tables, mildewy towels, corroded sinks,
barely serviceable bathtubs, andwoe-begotten
stuffed pillows smelling of mothballs. My broken down, needs a new roof, random
shingles on the ground as proof, cracked windows stuffed with paper and held
with masking tape in need of panes, no proof needed, overgrown lawn in need of
cutting of a shack (there is literally no other way to describe it, then or in
its current condition) of a too small, much too small for four growing boys and
two parents, house. The no room to breathe, no space but shared space, the from
hunger look of all the denizens, the stink of my father’s war wounds that would
not heal, the stink of too many people in too small a house, excuse me shack.
The noise, damn the noise from the nearby railroad, putting paid to wrong side of
the tracks-dom worst of all. Jesus.
That wrong side of the tracks shack of a house surrounded by
other houses, shack houses, too small to fit big Irish Catholic- sized families
with stony-eyed dreams. Small dreams of Johnny or Jimmy getting on the force
(cops, okay), and Lorrie and Pamela getting those secure City Hall jobs in the
steno pool until some bright prospect came by and threw a ring at them but in
the meantime shack life, and small faded dreams. Funny, no, ironic but these
tumbled-down shacks which seemingly would fall with a first serious wind represented
in some frankly weird form (but what knew I of such unnamed weirdness then I
just cried out in some fit of angst, cried out against that railroad noise, and
that sour smell of sweat) the great good desire of those warriors, and almost
to a man they had served, and their war brides who had waited, had fretted
while waiting, to latch onto a piece of golden age America.
And take their struggle survival music from Doc’s jukebox,
from the Starlight Ballroom, from WDJA, with them as if to validate their sweet
memory dreams, their youthful innocence before the guys got caught up, caught
up close and personal, in the ugliness of war, the things they would not speak
of unto the grave, and the gals not asking, not asking for all the money in the
world but sensing that he, they, had changed, had lost some youthful thing. That
radio, that priceless radio console taking pride of place, as if a lifesaver,
literally, tuned to local station WDJA in North Adamsville, the memory station
for those World War II warriors and their war brides, those who made it back.
Some wizard radio station manager knowing his, probably his in those days,
demographics, spinned those 1940s platters exclusively, as well as aimed the
ubiquitous advertisement at that crowd. Cars, sofas, beds, shaving gear, soap,
department store sales, all the basics for the growing families spawned (nice,
huh) by those warriors and brides.
My harried mother, harried like all the neighborhood large
brood mothers, harried by the bleak wanting prospects of the day with four
growing boys and not enough, not enough food, not enough, well, just not enough
and leave it at that. Maybe bewildered is a better expression for her plight,
for her wartime young marriage adventure not wanting to be left with only a
memory of my father if things went wrong in the Pacific. And so she took to turning
the radio on to start her day, hoping that Paper
Dolls, I’ll Get By, or dreamy Tangerine
would chase her immediate sorrows away. Yeah, a quick boost of their songs
was called for, their spring youth meeting at some USO dance songs before he
shipped out. Those songsembedded deep in memory, wistful young memory,
or so it seemed as she hummed away the day, used the music as background on her
appointed household rounds. And whether she won or lost the day’s bout with not
enough, with some ill-winded message from some bill due, seemingly always some
four boy hurt, some bad father work news, the list of her daily sorrows and
trepidations could have stretched to infinity she perked up, swayed even to
those tunes.
That stuff, that mother dream stuff, that piano/drum-driven
stuff with some torch-singer, Peggy Lee, Helen Morgan, Margaret Whiting, maybe
even a sneak Billie thrown in bleeding all over the floor drove me crazy
thenSome she bleeding with the pain
ofher thwarted loves, her man hurts,
her wanderings in search of something in this funny old world, her waitings,
waiting for the good times, waiting in line for the rations, waiting, waiting
alone mind you, for her man to come home, come home whole from some place whose
name she could not pronounce, they should have called it the waiting generation,
just flat-out drove me crazy then. Mush stuff at a time when I was craving the
big break-out rock and roll sounds I kept hearing every time I went and played
the jukebox at Doc’s Drugstore over on Walker Street down near the beach (not
the old torn down Doc’s of their generation over on Billings Road if that is
what you are thinking). As far as I know Doc (the son of their Doc), knowing
his demographics as well as that radio executive at WDJA, did not, I repeat,
did not, stock that stuff that, uh, mush for his rock-crazed after school soda
fountain crowd, probably stocked nothing, mercifully before about 1955. Funny
thing though while I am still a child of rock and roll this so-called mushy
stuff sounds pretty good to these ears now long after my parents and those who
performed this music have passed on. Go figure.
3
presentations on west coast by attorney David Coombs
Cambridge Bethlehem People to People Project presents an exhibit of
photographic portraits by Phyllis Bretholtz and excerpts from interviews with
twenty Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans living, working or studying in
Cambridge concerning the formation of their identities based upon personal
experience, that of their families, and the complex legacy of their Palestinian
background. Reception: Thursday, December 5, 2013, 6-8 pm Panel discussion on December 12, 2013, 7-9 pm "Palestinian
Identity: Reflections on home and exile, memories and aspirations"
featuring exhibit interviewees Nidal Al-Azraq, Sa'ed Atshan, Salma Abu
Ayyash, , Leila Farsakh, Sami Herbawi, Layla Hijab-Cable Film screening
and discussion on January 9, 2014, 7- 9 PM "Degrees of Incarceration"
(60 minutes) with filmmakers and exhibition interviewees Nidal al-Azraq and
Amahl Bishara and "Just a Child" (10 minutes) with film maker Mohammad Al-Azza
about the toll of youth imprisonment in Bethlehem
Occupy Boston Announcement
Dear All,
In August, Insomnia Cookies unlawfully fired 4
workers who went on strike. All four joined the Industrial Workers of the World.
The strikers' demands included $15/hr, health-care, and that the company
not interfere with union organizing. Insomnia employees were earning
sub-minimum wages, some making deliveries on their own bikes until 3 a.m. or
later, under pressure to ride unsafely. The NLRB* has issued a Complaint against
Insomnia for the illegal firings of the IWW strikers, and has set a Hearing
date. After a four month campaign by the IWW, Insomnia workers now have more
opportunities to take breaks. However the company continues to pay below minimum
wage, and does not provide Workers' Comp benefits, blaming bike delivery workers
if they get hurt in traffic. A fifth IWW member was fired last month, after
disclosing his union affiliation to his manager. Let's expose Insomnia's
union-busting and support fast food workers under
attack!
We'll meet this Friday (12/6), starting at 7
pm, at Insomnia Cookies' Boston location, 708 Comm Ave (BU East stop on the
Green Line's B Train) to picket the store, and let the community know the truth
about the company. A short video featuring Insomnia workers explaining why they
went on strike and joined the union is here. You
can also read more about the campaign for justice at Insomnia Cookies on the
Boston IWW's blog. Please also
consider donating to the Insomnia Cookies Workers' Strike Fund. If you use Facebook, please share the event for this picket.
In nearly seven decades spent fighting for freedom and equality, Nelson
Mandela inspired and challenged the world to stand up for others. As word of
Mandela's death spread, current and former presidents, athletes and
entertainers, and people around the world spoke about the life and legacy of the
former South African leader.
From Harlem to Hollywood, Paris to Beijing, people hailed Mandela's
indomitable courage in the face of adversity as an inspiration for all. In a
testament to his universal appeal, political leaders of various stripes joined
critics and activists in paying tribute to Mandela as a heroic force for peace
and reconciliation.
Some knew Mandela personally while many only knew him from afar, but they
shared how they drew inspiration from his strength and looked to live his
message of continuing the struggle against social injustice and for human
rights.
———
"He no longer belongs to us. He belongs to the ages," said President Barack
Obama, who shares with Mandela the distinction of being his nation's first black
president.
———
Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said the world had lost "a visionary
leader, a courageous voice for justice and a clear moral compass." Both Annan
and Archbishop Desmond Tutu were part of Mandela's group of statesmen known as
The Elders.
"God was so good to us in South Africa by giving us Nelson Mandela to be our
president at a crucial moment in our history," Tutu said. "He inspired us to
walk the path of forgiveness and reconciliation and so South Africa did not go
up in flames."
———
President Xi Jinping of China, which supported apartheid's opponents
throughout the Cold War, praised Mandela's victory in the anti-apartheid
struggle and his contribution to "the cause of human progress."
For Chinese rights activists, Mandela's death served as a reminder that one
of their own symbols of freedom, Nobel Peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, remained
imprisoned by Chinese authorities. "This moment magnifies how evil the current
regime is," Beijing activist Hu Jia said.
———
" As we remember his triumphs, let us, in his memory, not just reflect on how
far we've come, but on how far we have to go," said the U.S. actor Morgan
Freeman, who portrayed Mandela in the 2009 film, "Invictus."
———
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose efforts to open up his country
helped lead to the end of the Cold War, said Mandela "told me several times that
our perestroika in the USSR had helped his country a lot to get rid of
apartheid."
"He did a lot for humankind, and memory of him will live not only in his
country, but across the world," Gorbachev said in comments carried by the
Interfax news agency.
In Kiev, where Ukrainians have gathered for anti-government demonstrations
around-the-clock for the past week, protesters took a moment to recall Mandela's
legacy.
"He had many troubles in his life. He was in prison, but he was waiting and
he achieved what he wanted," protester Alena Pivovar said. "We have the same
situation now. We have some barriers, but we have to pass them."
———
"Nelson Mandela set the standard for all revolutionaries past, present, and
future: have a righteous cause, fight with dignity, and win with grace," said
actor and E Street band guitarist Steven Van Zandt, who in 1985 recruited
performers to record "Sun City," an anti-apartheid album.
———
The United Nation's top human rights official, Navi Pillay — a South African
who was once a defense lawyer for anti-apartheid activists — said Mandela "was
perhaps the greatest moral leader of our time."
Pillay recalled how Mandela's release from prison triggered a "thirst for
revenge" among his supporters but that he emphasized forgiveness over vengeance.
"He told us to throw our spears and guns into the sea," Pillay said. "He showed
us that a better future depended on reconciliation, not revenge."
———
In Haiti, a Caribbean nation that became the world's first black republic in
1804 through a successful slave revolt, Mandela symbolized the struggle for
black equality.
"Mandela is not only the father of democracy in South Africa, but is also a
symbol of democracy," said Haitian President Michel Martelly. "And like any
symbol, he is not dead. He is present in all of us and guides us by his
lifestyle, his courage and faith in the true struggle for equality."
———
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awarded the 1993 peace prize to Mandela
and F.W. de Klerk, called Mandela "one of the greatest names in the long history
of the Nobel Peace Prize."
"His work presents a message also today to all those who bear responsibility
for apparently unresolvable conflicts: Even the most bitter of conflicts can be
solved by peaceful means," the committee said.
Myanmar pro-democracy leader and fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San
Suu Kyi hailed a "great human being who raised the standard of humanity ... He
also made us understand that we can change the world."
———
Spiritual leaders joined the homage.
In New Delhi, the Dalai Lama urged believers to "develop determination and
... enthusiasm to carry his spirit."
From the Vatican, Pope Francis paid " tribute to the steadfast commitment
shown by Nelson Mandela in promoting the human dignity of all the nation's
citizens and in forging a new South Africa built on the firm foundations of
non-violence, reconciliation and truth."
———
In New York City's Harlem neighborhood, artist Franco Gaskin, 85, stood
before a mural featuring Mandela he had painted on a storefront gate almost 20
years ago. He remembered a Mandela visit there in 1990. "It was dynamic,
everyone was so electrified to see him in Harlem," Gaskin said. "I idolized him
so much. He leaves a legacy that all of us should follow."
———
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh compared Mandela to his country's own
icon for the struggle for freedom, independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi.
"A giant among men has passed away. This is as much India's loss as South
Africa's. He was a true Gandhian. His life and work will remain a source of
eternal inspiration for generations to come."
———
Israeli President Shimon Peres said Mandela was a "builder of bridges of
peace and dialogue" who changed the course of history, while Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu praised his moral leadership.
"He was never haughty," Netanyahu said. "He worked to heal rifts within South
African society and succeeded in preventing outbreaks of racial hatred."
———
At the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Ky., on display is a photograph of
the U.S. boxing great with Mandela, their hands clenched into fists as if
they're boxing.
"He made us realize, we are our brother's keeper and that our brothers come
in all colors," Ali said. "He was a man whose heart, soul and spirit could not
be contained or restrained by racial and economic injustices, metal bars or the
burden of hate and revenge."
———
Associated Press reporters Svetlana Kozlenko in Kiev, Ukraine, Ian Deitch in
Jerusalem, Ashok Sharma in New Delhi, Kristen Gelineau in Sydney, Aye Aye Win in
Yangon, Myanmar, Julie Pace in Washington, Jake Pearson in New York, Cassandra
Vinograd in London, David Koop in Mexico City, Bruce Schreiner in Lexington,
Kentucky, Sara Burnett in Chicago and Andrea Rodriguez in Havana contributed to
this report.
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