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, October 31, 2014
ELECTION
DAY, November
4:
One
Million Massachusetts Workers Need the Right to Earned Sick Time!
Raise
Up Massachusetts,which
is leading the campaign, writes:
Our
friends
at Massachusetts
Peace Action are
pitching in:
You
can join Massachusetts Peace Action's work on this effort
in several ways. 1) Volunteer for shifts at regional call centers in many towns
around the state using the state of the art HubDialer system, which guarantees
many contacts with voters. 2) Use your own phone and a computer at home to do a
shift using HubDialer (after simple web based training in using the system). 3)
Call from an old fashioned paper list. 4) Join door to door canvasses to reach
likely supporters. 5) Reach out to family, friends, co-workers and in your
community to those and ask them to sign a pledge a vote for Yes on 4.
And
DORCHESTER
PEOPLE FOR PEACE
is committed to turning out
at the polls for Question 4 on Election Day – and also for our local ballot
QUESTION 5 to say “we want to get big money out of our
politics!”
We
need your help on Election Day, November 4. Can you cover a morning or evening
shift (or both)? Can you work the same shift you worked in September? Would you
like a new time and place? Were you busy on Primary Day but can work Election
Day? Please email at sgbilodeau@gmail.com or call me at 617-504-1645 Here are
the ballot questions: 1. Earned Sick Time. Our ally, New
England United for Justice, has been working for the right to earned sick time
for all Massachusetts workers for seven years. In November it will be a binding
question on the ballot. Many people haven't heard about it but will support it
if we let them know.
2. Getting Big Money Out of Politics. Recent
Supreme Court decisions have allowed billionaires and corporations to spend
unlimited amounts in elections, treating corporations as ‘Persons’ with free
speech rights. To show that our elected officials that voters do not agree,
Sydney and Hayat led a drive that put a non-binding question on the ballot in
Dan Cullinane’s district. The ballot question calls for an amendment to the U.S.
Constitution to saying that corporations are not people and money is
not a form of speech – it must be regulated in political
campaigns.
The polling places are, in priority order with double
precincts and heavier-voting precincts first: Dorchester Academy (the
former Woodrow Wilson School), 18 Croftland St, Codman Hill (Ward 17, Precincts
4 and 11) Mildred Avenue School, Mildred Ave, Mattapan (Ward 17, Precinct 10
and Ward 18, Precinct 2) Lower Mills Library, Richmond St (Ward 17, Precincts
13 and 14) Groveland Community Room, Franklin Field (Ward 18, Precincts 1 and
4) Chittick School, 154 Ruskindale Road between Cummins Highway and River St
(Ward 18, Precincts 6 and 21) Adams Street Library, near Ashmont St (Ward 16,
Precinct 8) Florian Hall, 55 Hallet St (Ward 16, Precinct 11) Charles H.
Taylor School, 1060 Morton St (Ward 17, Precinct 12) Mattahunt School, 100
Hebron St (Ward 18, Precinct 3) Hassan Apartments, 705 River St (Ward 18,
Precinct 5)
The shifts are: 7-9 am, 5-8 pm (or 5-7 if you can't
stay the whole time)
Please
sign up now so
we can cover all these polling places. And thanks!
As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner
RUSSIA--AMERICA
A wind in the world! The dark departs;
The chains now rust that crushed men's flesh and bones,
Feet tread no more the mildewed prison stones,
And slavery is lifted from your hearts.
A wind in the world! O Company
Of darkened Russia, watching long in vain,
Now shall you see the cloud of Russia's pain
Go shrinking out across a summer sky.
A wind in the world! Our God shall be
In all the future left, no kingly doll
Decked out with dreadful sceptre, steel, and stole,
But walk the earth--a man, in Charity.
* * * * *
A wind in the world! And doubts are blown
To dust along, and the old stars come forth--
Stars of a creed to Pilgrim Fathers worth
A field of broken spears and flowers strown.
A wind in the world! Now truancy
From the true self is ended; to her part
Steadfast again she moves, and from her heart
A great America cries: Death to Tyranny!
A wind in the world! And we have come
Together, sea by sea; in all the lands
Vision doth move at last, and Freedom stands
With brightened wings, and smiles and beckons home!
_John Galsworthy_
Thu,
Oct 02, 2014 11:36 AM
Help Massachusetts Peace Action support the Yes on 4 -- Raise Up Massachusetts campaign,
because...
One Million
Massachusetts Workers Need the Right to Earned Sick Time!
On November 4, Massachusetts voters can vote Yes on 4to allow workers to take sick
time without losing their jobs.
The business
interests who prevented the earned paid sick days bills from passing the
legislature are poised to spend millions in ad campaigns designed to confuse the
issue. Raise Up Massachusetts plans to contact tens of thousands of less
frequent voters who are likely to directly benefit, to expand the electorate and
clarify any confusion. You can
join Massachusetts Peace Action's work on this effort in several ways. 1)
Volunteer for shifts at regional call centers in many towns around the state
using the state of the art HubDialer system, which guarantees many contacts with
voters. 2) Use your own phone and a computer at home to do a shift using
HubDialer (after simple web based training in using the system). 3) Call from
an old fashioned paper list. 4) Join door to door canvasses to reach likely
supporters. 5) Reach out to family, friends, co-workers and in your community
to those and ask them to sign a pledge a vote for Yes on 4. Please click here to join in the Raise Up Campaign
by volunteering for a shift making calls or reaching out to your friends,
neighbors, and family in support ofYES on
4-- the ballot question establishing earned paid sick
days. Raise Up Massachusetts is fighting
to ensure earned sick time for workers across the
state.For nearly 1
million workers in Massachusetts, staying home to care for themselves or a sick
child could mean losing their job. The ability for workers to care and provide
for themselves and family members should be a right, not a privilege, and now is
the time to make it a reality for working families. Click here to volunteer for one or more shifts contacting voters
or to get YES on 4
committments in your community.as part of our Peace Action team.
Read more about our Yes on 4
campaign here!
In solidarity, John Ratliff Massachusetts Peace
Action Economic Justice Coordinator
November 4th is not the end of 15 Now in Boston or New England. We
are continuing to fight for working people to receive a real living wage of $15
with new, exciting campaigns in the new year! Get in touch to get
involved.
The 10th Suffolk
State Rep District has the ability to make history next Tuesday, November 4th.
By voting 'Yes' on Ballot Question 5 - for a $15 an hour minimum wage,
the 10th Suffolk will be standing up for all working people in Boston, the state
of Massachusetts and the US in saying that we want a real living wage for all
workers.
Ballot Question 5 is an advisory question that can serve as a
referendum on not just the minimum wage but on the need for substantial changes
in living standards for working people. A strong showing for a 'Yes'
vote can serve as a building block for future movements in the city and state
that emphasize the needs of working people over corporate
profits
To make the strongest campaign for $15/hr, we need your
help in the ballot box but also at the polls. Please contact us if you
are able to help build the movement by standing out at polling stations
throughout the district next Tuesday.
We've got an opportunity
to make a historic impact for the Fight for 15 movement. Let's do
it!
Get one of these
fantastic yard signs to show your support
today!
Upcoming Events
Build 15 at the
Polls!
November
4th
All
Day
Join
the Vote Yes on 5 campaign at the polling stations on
election day November 4th. Stay all day and talk to folks about why they should
support $15/hr or just take a shift!
The 10th Suffolk State Representative District, comprising West
Roxbury, South Brookline and Roslindale, has a unique opportunity to make an
impact for a $15/hr minimum wage in Boston.
On November 4th, the 10th Suffolk will have the historic
opportunity to vote 'Yes' on an advisory ballot question to support the adoption
of a $15 an hour minimum wage.
A strong 'Yes' vote would have a major impact on the
discussion around and campaign to fight for $15 and other issues facing working
people in Boston. The 10th Suffolk has the ability to be at the
forefront of this.
Join us on Saturday, October 18th, to come out and
discuss with your neighbors how to make the strongest possible impact for $15 in
the district. We need as many supporters and volunteers as possible to make this
reality!
But the twentieth century (and now extending into the
twenty-first) besides bringing fellahin uprisings and democratic veneers was
preeminently the “age of the cash nexus” as well and that little problem of
entailed estates, social or legal, and mortgaged to the hilt princely residences
required more that some nodding acquaintance with fellow blue-bloods before selling
the family silverware for one last blast before the streets. All of this by way of introducing a stellar
British example of the wayward proper gentry left adrift in the twentieth
century (and extending into the twenty-first for the progeny), Johnny A., (no
full last name needed as his is emblematic of the breed), and his self-imposed financial
problems in the film under review, Suspicion.
Oh yes, since this film does not
hinge on some left-wing sociological analysis and has the imprimatur of Sir
(belatedly Sir) Alfred Hitchcock, a director known for mudding the waters with
some off-hand intrigue and suspense before resolving all doubts, has the smell
of murder in the air, murder most foul if certain imaginations are allowed to
get the better of the situation.
Here’s why we can speak candidly of murder, murder most
foul. Our boy Johnny A. (played to a tee by Cary Grant who seems to have been
born to fill such ruined high bred, good fellow well met, gentry cinematic
roles), all good breeding and manners was a sporting man, a serious sporting
man who had run out of possibilities with the known gentry but who still had
those nagging problems of owing every Tom, Dick, and Harry around. And one of
those Tom, Dick, and Harrys is his friendly bookie who is looking for his dough
when Johnny boy’s nags ran out. See he figured that if Johnny had won he would
have to have paid out so fair is fair. And Johnny is smart enough to see that
if he wants to live another day to make that surefire bet that will get him on
easy street that he must agree with such a proverbial thought.
So what is a hard-pressed man about town to do? Well here was
Johnny’s scam (guys like Johnny spent many a sleepless night working out the
details of such plans rather than face the prospect of gainful employment which
would lead to nightmares). Or what looks to an untrained eye like an easy scam He
“hit” on this dowdy spinsterly rural gentlewoman, Lina (played by Joan
Fontaine, who as the film progresses remarkably loses that dowdiness, loses it
all the way to an Oscar), who also has plenty of breeding, very good manners
and, some dough, although as a 1940s woman she is not expected to use her
obvious intelligence beyond the knitting table. Oh yes she is also looking for
a man to sweep her away (although she did not know it). See Johnny, all bluster
and sweet sweep her off her feet moves, figured to marry her and live off of
her largess like any proper squire. Which he did, both swept her off her feet
and married her. Nice work Johnny and good luck on easy street.
Well not quite. The problem was Lina’s father, a gentleman
of the old school, who had insured Lina’s spinsterly future by keeping her on a
short leash, a yearly allowance and not any real dough. And once he passed on
later in the film, to show one final kick in the shins distain for Lina’s choice
of husband, he left Lina with a thimble full of good thoughts but no dough.
Oops, Johnny.
Once Johnny figured out the score (after running up the
bills on the expectation of fatherly largess) he of course decided to go to
work, nothing too heavy maybe managing some well- established estate, and make
something of himself. Make a crestfallen Lina proud. Hold on, have you been
reading this plotline, Johnny was a sport not a worker bee and so the only work
he was doing, his only gainful employment, was scratching away at every scheme
he could figure out to keep the creditors from the door, or worse. And that is
where murder, murder most foul, really where suspicion of such deeds comes in.
A series of events unfolds which look very much like somebody is being set up
for murder, murder by the book if you want to know, and that somebody is Lina. At
least as Johnny grows distant, as untoward things begin to happen that is what Lina
believed her fate to be.
That series of unexplained coincidences from the mysterious death
of Johnny’s partner in a real estate scheme just before it was to be completed by
a party, or parties unknown, to those various suspense-building untoward things
happening to Lina drives the last part of the film. Remember too Johnny was a
sport, a con man, a flimflam man and not built for murder. Know this as well, if
you can believe this about sporting Johnny, in the end, despite his financial
problems and whatever drove him to pull his scams on her he actually loved his
Lina. Go figure, right.
On The 155th Anniversary Of The
Heroic Captain John Brown-Led Fight For Black Liberation At Harper’s Ferry-Josh Breslin’s Dream
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
I remember a few years ago my friend and I,
Josh Breslin, from the old working- class neighborhoods of North Adamsville, a
town south of Boston, were discussing the historical events that helped form
our political understandings back in the early 1960 since we were, and are,
both political men driven by historical examples as much as by the minutia of organizing
principles. And while we have diverged on many of the influences since then as we
have a fair degree of differences on the way to change the world and what
agencies can do that (basically working within the current political system or
moving over to the base of society and organizing from the ground up within or
outside of the system depending on circumstance) we both agreed whole-heartedly
that one of our early heroes was old Captain John Brown and his heroic efforts
with his small integrated band of men at Harper’s Ferry down in what is now
West Virginia but the just Virginia, a slave-holders stronghold. As we
discussed the matter more fully we found we were hard pressed to explain what
first captured our attention and agreed that then would have not had the
political sense then to call Brown’s actions heroic although we both understood
that what he did was necessary.
See, coming up in a mainly Irish working-class
neighborhood we were always aware, made particularly aware by grandfathers who
had kindred over there in those days, of that heroic struggle in Easter 1916 that
was the precursor to the long sought national liberation of Ireland from the
bloody British. So when we first studied, or heard about John Brown we
instinctively saw that same kind of struggle. Both of us also agreed that we
had had back then very strong feelings about the wrongness of slavery, a
wretched system going back to Pharaoh’s time if not before, although Josh was
more ambivalent about the fate of black people after Civil War freedom than I
was since there was in his household a stronger current of anti-black feeling
around the civil rights work down south in those days than in mine. (Strangely
my father, who was nothing but a corn liquor, fast car, ex-coal miner good old
boy from down in Kentucky was more sympathetic to that struggle that Josh’s
Irish grandfather whom Josh could never get to call black people anything
better than “nigras.” At least we got my father to say “Negro.” Jesus.)
A couple of week after that conversation Josh
called me up from California one night where he was attending a professional
conference near San Jose and told me that he forgot to tell me about what he
called a “dream” he had had as a kid concerning his admiration for John Brown. Of
course that “dream” stuff was just Josh’s way of saying that he had sketched
out a few thoughts that he wanted to share with me (and which will undoubtedly
find their into a commentaryor review
or something because very little of Josh’s “dream” stuff fails to go to ink or cyberspace).
Some of it is now hazy in my mind since the hour was late here in the East, and
some of it probably was really based on stuff we had learned later about the
Brown expedition like how Boston Brahmins and high abolitionists like George
Stearns secretly funded the operation or Brown’s attempts to get Fredrick
Douglass and Harriet Tubman on board (neither name which we would have known
very much about then), and some of the stuff was probably a little goofy since
it involved Josh in some hero worship. Since he will inevitably write something
on his own he can make any corrections to what I put down here himself. Know
this though whenever I hear the name John Brown mentioned lately I think about
Josh’s telephone call and about how the “old man” has held our esteem for so
long. Here is what I jotted down, edited of course, after that
conversation:
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and
was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harper’s Ferry. I would
say that was in about the sixth grade when I went to the library and read about
Abraham Lincoln before he became president and how he didn’t like what John
Brown did because he knew that that action was going to drive the South crazy
and upset the delicate balance that was holding the Union together. Frank
though thinks it was the seventh grade when we were learning about the slavery
issues as part of the 100th anniversary of the start of the American
Civil War and his name came up as a “wild man” out of some Jehovah Calvinist
burning bush dream who was single-handedly trying to abolish slavery with that
uprising. Was ready to “light the spark” to put out the terrible scourge of
slavery in the land with some spilled blood. That slavery business, if you can
believe this really bothered both of us, especially when we went to a museum
that showed the treatment of slaves and the implements used to enforce that
condition down South. And I remember one time going to the Museum of Fine Arts
and saw how old Pharaoh used his slaves to build those damn pyramids to
immortalize himself. Yeah, the hell with slavery, any kind.
I think I am right thought about when I first heard about
the “old man” because I know I loved Lincoln, loved to read about him, loved
that back then we celebrated his birthday, February 12th, and we got
the day off from school. Loved that Lincoln was basically forced at the governmental
level to implement Brown’s program to root out slavery once the deal went down
and he was merciless about its extermination once he got “religion” on the
matter. Of course neither I nor Frank would have articulated our thoughts that
way then but we knew “Massa Lincoln” was on the right side of the angels in his
work as much as he hated to burn down the South in the process. But there was
no other way to get the damn issue resolved and I think that is what he learned
from the Captain whether he gave credit to the man or not. By the way this I do
know that while we celebrated Lincoln’s birthday in the North as the great
emancipator and Union-saver Frank once told me a story about one of his cousins
down south and how when he mentioned that he had Lincoln’s birthday off that
cousin said “we don’t celebrate that
man’s birthday down here,’’ in such a way that Frank began to understand
that maybe the Civil War was not over. That some people had not gotten the word)
I knew other stuff back then too which added to my feel for
the Brown legend. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a
prior existence as John Brown’s Body,
a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they
bravely headed south. Funny but back then I was totally unaware of the role of
the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first black regiment raised
although with white officers when Father Abraham gave the word, whose survivors
and replacements marched into Charleston, South Carolina, the heart and soul of
the Confederacy, after the bloody Civil War to the tune of John Brown’s Body. That must have been a righteous day. Not so
righteous though and reflecting a very narrow view of history that we were
taught back then kind of fudging the very serious differences back in Civil War
times even in high abolitionist Boston was not knowing thing number one about
Augustus Saint-Gauden’s commemorative frieze honoring the men of the 54th
right across from the State House which I passed frequently when I went on to
Boston Common.
I was then, however, other than aware of the general
narrative of Brown’s exploits and a couple of songs and poems neither familiar
with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much
about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the ante
bellum struggle against slavery of which he represented the extreme activist
left-wing. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior
military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery.
Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong
bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was
executed I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the
turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in
the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Some 150 years after his
death I am proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown. [And I am too,
brother!-Frank]
If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth,
of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge
of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only
conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As various biographies point
out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early
service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves
northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery
propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery
elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the
‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on
Harper’s Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by
those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day
apologists for the institution about his so-called ‘madness’. This is a
political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.
For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly,
it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. Like them without
warts and with a discernible thrust from early adulthood that leads to some
heroic action. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would
hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in
any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions
in Kansas (concerning allegations of the murder of some pro-slavery elements
under his direction) have also clouded his image. However if one looks at
Kansas as the start of the Civil War then all the horrible possibilities under
the heat of battle mitigate some of that incident although not excusing it
anymore that we would today with American soldiers in places like Afghanistan
and Iraq busting down doors and shooting first. However, when the deal went
down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no
other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the
occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call
him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great
historical figures shows that they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they
make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.
Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy
for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter
of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness
of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination
of slave revolt modeled after the Maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s
earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerilla warfare of the ‘third
world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years
later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that
had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually
uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs. The execution of
the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the
book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point
that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by
other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists,
including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with
connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at
Harper’s Ferry.
What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a
true Calvinist “avenging angel” in the struggle against slavery and more
importantly acted on that belief. (Strange, or maybe not so strange now, both
Frank and I who grew up upright Roman Catholics gravitated toward those
photographs of Brown with his long unkempt beard as some latter day Jehovah and
I remember Frank had a photo on the wall in his room with just such a
photograph from I think a detail of the big mural in the State House in
Kansas.) In short Brownwas committed to bring justice to the black
masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It
is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well
as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist sense of pre-determination that he would
not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements
never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement
led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported Brown and kept
his memory alive in hard times. In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the
Old Testament prophet. This old time prophet animating spirit is not one that
animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand today the
depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if
not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at
Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a
combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind
that picture of him.
By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of
brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were
killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed,
including Brown. He prophetic words upon
the scaffold about purging the evil of slavery in blood proved too true. But
that demeanor in the face of defeat was very appealing to me back then.I have learned since that these results, the
imprisonments or executions are almost inevitable when one takes up a
revolutionary struggle against the old order if one is not victorious. One need
only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in
1871 when that experience was crushed in blood after heroic resistance. One can
fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others
bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar with
now there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the
defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that
galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by
history.
Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political
mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize
important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant
Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on
Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that
his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or
gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and
others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy
that led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same
incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming
American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be
revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political
implications.
From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black
liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately
successful reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s
actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no
program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American
constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone.
Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political
freedom. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the
reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities
changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time.
Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown,
and of his friend Frederick Douglass.
I used to fervently believe that if Douglass had come on
board as Brown had urged the chances for success would have been greater, at
least more blacks (mostly free blacks and not plantation blacks for obvious
reasons) and more radical whites who could have been mobilized as a result of
all of the events of the 1850s especially the struggle against the Fugitive
Slave Act and the struggle against the imposition of slavery in Kansas. Now I
am not so sure that Douglass’ acceptance would have qualitatively changed the
outcome. He went on to do yeoman’s work during the Civil War articulating the
left black perspective and organizing those black regiments that shifted the
outcome of the war at a decisive point. In any case honor the memory of old
Captain John Brown and his heroic band at Harper’s Ferry.
November
11-16:National
days of action against the new US wars in the Middle East. Watch for
details.
Tuesday,
November 11
Armistice
/ Veterans Day Parade and Vigil
We will gather
between 12:00 pm (noon) and 12:30 pm on the corner of Charles and
Beacon Streets. 1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow
the same route then we will continue to Faneuil Hall for our Armistice /
Veterans Day for Peace Event.
Parade at noon;
rally 3:00 pm
Faneuil Hall •
Boston
Attention Veterans
& Peace Activists
Please Join
Veterans For Peace and The Leftist
Marching Band for Armistice / Veterans Day Peace Parade and Peace
Event
Houses of Worship
throughout Massachusetts will Ring Bells for Peace at 11:00 am, November
11th
Armistice Day /
Veterans Parade for Peace & Faneuil Hall Peace Event
Veterans for
Peace will proudly walk
behind the first parade on Armistice / Veterans Day in Boston. We honor and
celebrate the original intention for Armistice Day – a Day of Peace.
Veterans from
different eras will recite original works of Poetry, Prose and Song
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BOMBING
AND BIGOTRY:
The
Wars Abroad, the Wars at Home
Martin
Luther King: “The
bombs that are falling [overseas] are exploding in our cities”
We encourage you to
please sign one of these two petitions and share widely among friends and
supporters!
The
Targeting of Young Blacks By Law Enforcement
While
the election of Barack Obama as president may have seemed to some to herald a
new era in American race relations, the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri, and Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, made clear that one of the
venerable flash points in race relations—the police (or in the case of Sanford,
self-appointed police) killings of young black men—is very much still with us.
Discriminatory police treatment of African Americans remains one of the hardiest
perennials in American life, as the “stop-and-frisk” tactic that New York’s
police force employed against young blacks until just last year made clear.
More
L.A.
confrontation highlights relationship between Zionism and anti-black
racism
On
18 October 2014, a self-professed “racist” pro-Israel counter-protester at a Block the Boat action in Los Angeles told black Palestinian
solidarity activist and radio personality Margaret Prescod to “take your Ebola
a*s and get out.” …That Zionists are open about their racism is not surprising.
Their support for the ethnocratic state of Israel is doubtless, at least in
part, motivated by this racism. As journalist Rania Khalek has noted, Zionism “enable[s] Israel’s genocidal
ambitions” by normalizing this racism within an ethnoreligious-supremacist
political philosophy. Zionism’s hyper-nationalism inspires egregious stereotypes
that lead to the demonization and subsequent dehumanization of entire peoples.
The same racist (il)logic that leads to the generalization of all Palestinians
as “terrorists” leads to seeing all people of African descent as having Ebola…
Racist Zionist protesters like these remind one that the
Palestinian solidarity movement is a fundamentally anti-racist movement.
More
Upcoming Events
Build 15 at the
Polls!
November
4th
All
Day
Join
the Vote Yes on 5 campaign at the polling stations on
election day November 4th. Stay all day and talk to folks about why they should
support $15/hr or just take a shift!
The 10th Suffolk State Representative District, comprising West
Roxbury, South Brookline and Roslindale, has a unique opportunity to make an
impact for a $15/hr minimum wage in Boston.
On November 4th, the 10th Suffolk will have the historic
opportunity to vote 'Yes' on an advisory ballot question to support the adoption
of a $15 an hour minimum wage.
A strong 'Yes' vote would have a major impact on the
discussion around and campaign to fight for $15 and other issues facing working
people in Boston. The 10th Suffolk has the ability to be at the
forefront of this.
Join us on Saturday, October 18th, to come out and
discuss with your neighbors how to make the strongest possible impact for $15 in
the district. We need as many supporters and volunteers as possible to make this
reality!
Please click here to join in the Raise Up Campaign
by volunteering for a shift making calls or reaching out to your friends,
neighbors, and family in support of 
