AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

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, June 12, 2015

In Honor Of The Weavers' Ronnie Gilbert Who Passed Away At 88-Making Joyful Music- The Weavers Are In The House

Yes, Goodnight Irene, Goodnight-The Weavers' Ronnie Gilbert Passes At 88

Making Joyful Music- The Weavers Are In The House

from the American Left History blog

CD Review

The Weavers Greatest Hits, The Weavers, Vanguard Records, 1986

This review has been used for other work by The Weavers, including review of the PBS production, The 25th Anniversary Reunion of The Weavers. That documentary gives greater detail to the points that I have made below and includes more on the genesis, early successes and the ultimate fates and health of the various members of the group.

Okay, let’s have a show of hands. Who first heard learned the classic Lead Belly song “Goodnight, Irene” from his rendition of the song? Who from the group under review, The Weavers? Another try. How about “If I Had A Hammer”? Or the old Underground Railroad song “Follow The Drinking Gourd”? I suspect that I would get the same answer. And that is to the good. Sure, we have heard all the songs in this collection before by various artist like Pete Seeger as an individual on “Guantanamera”, Bob Dylan on “House Of The Rising Sun” , Tennessee Ernie Ford On “Sixteen Tons” or Woody Guthrie on “This Land Is Your Land” but we HEAR this music through the four distinctive voices of The Weavers. Thus the title of this entry- Making Joyful Music.

That said, this group morphed in the 1940’s from a grouping, The Almanac Singers, led by Pete Seeger, with occasional assistance from Woody Guthrie that performed in New York City and other locales for the labor movement and other left-wing causes. The rise to eminence I believe, however, came with the addition of the lovely strong voice of Ronnie Gilbert that gives a very different feel to the music in contrast to the Almanac Singers. As a group The Weavers made their mark with a stirring, very popular rendition of the Lead Belly classic mentioned above, “Goodnight, Irene”. Then the roof fell in. Between personal differences within the group and the pressure, extreme pressure, of the 1950’s anti-communist witch hunt in America that looked for “reds under every bed” and that dragged Pete Seeger in its wake the group fell off the radar for a while (in Seeger’s case a long while). Nevertheless this basic American folk music lives on in their voices and in this recording that sounds pretty good even today.

A few other songs from this collection also deserve note. The beautifully harmonic (and wild) “Wimoweh”; a nice version of “On Top Of Old Smokey”; a well done version of the currently very apt and appropriate Yip Harburg song “Brother Can You Spare A Dime”; and, as a finale “So Long It’s Been Good To Know You”. In the folk pantheon this group has a place of honor. Listen to this CD to find out why.

Goodnight Irene

Traditional Lyrics

Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight
Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene
I'll see you in my dreams
Last saturday night I got married

Me and my love settled down
Now me and my love are parted
I'm gonna take another stroll downtown

Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight
Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene
I'll see you in my dreams

Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in the town

Sometimes I have a great notion
To jump In the river and drown

Irene goodnight, Irene good night
Good night Irene, good night Irene
I'll see you in my dreams

Ramblin' stop your gamblin'
Stop stayin' out late at night
Go home to your wife and your family
Sit down by the fireside bright

Irene goodnight, Irene good night
Good night Irene, good night Irene
I'll see you in my dreams

Irene goodnight, Irene good night
Good night Irene, good night Irene
I'll see you in my dreams

IF I HAD A HAMMER (The Hammer Song)

words and music by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger

If I had a hammer
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening
All over this land
I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

If I had a bell
I'd ring it in the morning
I'd ring it in the evening
All over this land
I'd ring out danger
I'd ring out a warning
I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

If I had a song
I'd sing it in the morning
I'd sing it in the evening
All over this land
I'd sing out danger
I'd sing out a warning
I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

Well I've got a hammer
And I've got a bell
And I've got a song to sing
All over this land
It's the hammer of justice
It's the bell of freedom
It's the song about love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?

Gorney, Harburg

They used to tell me
I was building a dream.
And so I followed the mob
When there was earth to plow
Or guns to bear
I was always there
Right on the job.

They used to tell me
I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad
I made it run
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad
Now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower,
Now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits
Gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee doodle dee dum.
Half a million boots went sloggin' through hell
And I was the kid with the drum!

Say don't you remember?
They called me Al.
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember?
I'm your pal.
Say buddy, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits,
Ah, gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee doodle dee dum!
Half a million boots went sloggin' through hell
And I was the kid with the drum!

Oh, say don't you remember?
They called me Al.
It was Al all the time.
Say, don't you remember?
I'm your pal.
Buddy, can you spare a dime?

©1958, 1962 (renewed), 1986 (renewed)
TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

Yes, Goodnight Irene, Goodnight-The Weavers' Ronnie Gilbert Passes At 88

Channeling The Grateful Dead Minus…

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

No I was never a “deadhead,” never would have accepted that designation in any case if somebody tried to lay that moniker on me although in the old days, the days of the 1960s mad dash to seek a newer world that got trashed about seven million ways before the deal went down and “the authorities,” as my mother used to say when speaking of the ruling class or its agents, pulled the hammer down and soured a whole generation, no, make that three generations now since they are still furiously trying to keep us in lock-down mode, I went out in San Francisco by the moniker Prince of Love. But that was strictly among the brethren, those who were, literally, my mates on the yellow brick road converted school bus which a group of us called home for a couple of years as we went up and down the coast looking for the heart of Saturday night, looking for the great blue-pink American West night, hell, maybe just looking to turn the world upside down and see if that was any better than the gruel that was on tap, was being force-fed to us for no known reason.

No, as well, I never went to one of their sold-out stoned out concerts which was something of a ceremonial rite of passage for those who did consider themselves “Dead Heads” and insisted that each and every time out they eat so much acid, smoke so many reefers, swallow some many bennies just like the very first time they hear the Dead in order to get that same guitar rush. And taking something from sports figures and their superstitions wear the same outfit each time to be washed clean by the Dead magic (of course those who never gave up the tradition had pretty threadbare outfits before Jerry went over the top, went to see the “fixer” man to get well one more time, one time too many). So like I say despite the voodoo stuff I have any number of friends who were/are ardent fans and they seem to be, well, normal, normal except in those flashback moments where they see “colors, man, colors,” would have “far out” experiences when they would/will get ready for a Dead concert. (Remind me to tell you sometime about a friend of mine from back in Carver, a town about thirty miles south of Boston, who to give you an idea of the tenor of the times back then went from a foul-mouthed corner boy, actually using that moniker, he said it turned the girls on, to “Far-Out Phil” when he came West to join us.) So even the best of them would succumb until the wheels kind of fall off….for a while.

But here is my take on the Dead just to keep things in perspective, just to keep things right. I, after a couple of years on the road out there, and maybe not directly in the inner circle of the hippie/drug/literary scene but close enough to get tangled up in the new dispensation I like to look at the connections, the West Coast connections, where a lot of the energy of the 1960s got its start or if started elsewhere got magnified there. Draw the lines, if you will, from the wild boy alienated, there is no other word that says it so well, bikers over in Oakland and the edges of other working-class towns, mostly white, mostly with some kind of Okie/Arkie background roaring up the streets of Squaresville in search of the village daughters and putting the fear in the average citizen who thought Attila the Hun’s kin had descended, but remember that alienated part that is the hook-in, hot rod after midnight “chicken run” runners out in the valleys, alienated too but with a little dough and some swag and a hell-bend desire to go fast, go very fast, if for no other reason than to breakout of valley ennui (although they would punch somebody out, fag bait somebody if they ever used such a word in their presence if they knew what it meant) and surfer boys, coast boys and with a little more laid back approach in search of the perfect wave (read: Nirvana), maybe not quite so alienated because of that golden tan blonde dish sitting on the beach waiting to see if Sir Galahad finds the holy grail, to the “beat” guys Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg and friends running across America just to keep running, writing up a storm, wenching, whoring , pimping, white blue-eyed hipsters “speaking” be-bop to a jaded world, to sainted Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters (and our Captain Crunch, leader of our own merry prankster psychedelic bus), the Hell’s Angels (bad dudes, bad dudes , no question), Fillmore with strobe light beams creating dreams, et. al and you have the skeleton for what went on then, right or wrong. Wasn’t that a time, yes, wasn’t that a time. And the Dead were right in the mix.

From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free Albert Woodfox-Free All The Class War Prisoners

From The Partisan Defense Committee- Free The Ailing Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!

From The American Left History Archives-Reflections On May Day 2015

From The Pen Of Fritz Jasper

The following was a short presentation by Bart Webber to his fellow members of the Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace in Boston at a monthly meeting of that organization when during a discussion of whether to support the local May Day events in the Boston, an afternoon rally on Boston Common and a later in the day march and rally of immigrant communities, a number of members pleaded ignorance about the beginnings of the May Day traditions in America. Brother Webber was delegated by the Chapter Coordinator to do some research and give the report.

****

Most of us older vets in VFP when we think of May Day, officially known as International Workers’ Day, probably think back to the times in our younger years when that day was associated with the Soviet Union showing off its military hardware in Red Square. Many may not realize that although May Day has never been an official American labor holiday, a day when working people celebrate international solidarity as workers, that tradition actually started in America in 1886 as result of some serious labor agitation and actions by the organized labor movement of the time struggling for the eight hour work day. There is a certain irony today that in many working class and poor households where both parents work or work two, or more, jobs that demand for an eight-hour day is still in play. The labor actions, strikes, rallies and demonstrations started in 1886 later got picked up by the organized international socialist and anarchist organizations and still later the communists and their off-shoots who carried on that tradition.

The start though was on May 1, 1886 when more than 300,000 workers in some 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. In Chicago, a key center in the struggle for the 8-hour day and home to many labor militants, socialists and homegrown anarchists agitators 40,000 went out on strike.

The story of the Haymarket Martyrs which is closely associated with the establishment of May Day resulted from the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on Tuesday May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an eight hour day and in reaction to the killing of several workers the previous day by the police. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they acted to disperse the public meeting. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians.

In the internationally publicized legal proceedings that followed, eight anarchists were convicted of conspiracy, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, and Oscar Neebe. The evidence provided by the prosecution at court was that one of the defendants may have built the bomb, although no evidence was elicited that any defendant on trial had thrown it. Seven were sentenced to death and one to a term of 15 years in prison. The other four were hanged on November 11, 1887. (Those still alive and in jail had their sentences commuted in 1893 by a later Illinois governor.)

May 1^st was chosen to be International Workers' Day in order to commemorate the May 4, 1886 Haymarket events in Chicago. In 1889 at a meeting of the first congress of the Second International in Paris a resolution was voted on calling for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891.

Although May Day was never officially a labor holiday in America for many years after the 1880s in various working class cities or cities with substantial histories of left-wing activity, rallies, marches or other events usually led by left-wing organizations, socialists, communists and anarchists have occurred. For many years up through the mid-1940s New York City had large marches through the streets of the city but with the Cold War and the red scare which older members are all too familiar with these events were either broken up or were discontinued in public. Today in America only in places like San Francisco does the organized labor movement at least honor the day by a commemoration.

Several years ago, around 2006, May Day for a short period, reflecting a different labor tradition in Latin countries and elsewhere the day symbolized for the immigrant community the struggle for citizenship and witnessed many large demonstrations. That tradition in much attenuated form now still exists in the Latino communities in places like East Boston, Chelsea and Everett. As for a more specifically left-wing celebration, involving socialists, communists and anarchists as I and some other members who attended witnessed last week on Boston Common, only the remnants of those organizations around town still keep the tradition alive.

Someday We’ll Meet Again In Sunnier Times- Leslie Bank’s Cottage To Let

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Cottage To Let, starring Leslie Banks, Alistair Sims, John Mills, 1941

No question the Nazi advances on Europe and England during the late 1930s and onward provoked many dreams of far off sunnier days as again the men, mainly, went off to war again for the second time in a generation, and the womenfolk were left behind to fret and help do war preparation work wishing to high heaven that they would indeed meet again some sunnier day as the old Vera Lynn standard had it. And those sunnier days, as this year’s commemoration ceremonies of the Allied victories over the Nazis and their followers, including trained spies and fifth columnists, did come. But it was a near thing as the Nazis tried to move might and main to even up the score in areas where they were deficient. Those attempts to short-cut their way to victory by espionage and fifth columnist work is the subject of the somewhat tongue in cheek and stiff upper lip film under review Cottage To Let.

Here is how the thing played out. Barrington (played by an eccentric Leslie Bank) a great inventor of militarily useful gadgets who insisted on working at home on his Scottish estate had some of his inventions copied, copied quickly by the Nazis. That raised a “red flag” in English military intelligence circles, especially when they got wind that the Germans had sent a spy in to do some nefarious work. That spy (played by John Mills) posing as a wounded English fly boy Lieutenant Perry had a mission to grab Barrington and scoot him out to Berlin or some such cozy place.

But of course a British war film in released in 1941 is not going to let any nasty Nazis take away one of England’s own and so military intelligence sends in a counter-spy Dimble (played simpleton smart by Alastair Sims) to foil their plans. Perry does grab Barrington but by Dimble’s nifty infiltration work they find out where Barrington is being hidden and the gig was up. Impostor Perry in the end went to his just rewards. And that was one little step to those sunnier days Ms. Lynn sang about. The plot line has been done before, and since, and the antics were a little over the top for such a serious subject so it is hard to recommend anybody seeing this one except to see how the British made such films work for the war efforts in those benighted days.

The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left

Click below to link to The Rag Blog

http://www.theragblog.com/

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from the days that I now call the “Generation Of ‘68,” we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. 1968 being a watershed year for lots of things from Tet in Vietnam bringing home the reality of the lost war to the American bourgeois political upheavals that led to Chicago hell in the summer and the May events in Paris which showed the limits that a student-based vision of the "newer world" we sought.

That last, the student-based vision of the world got us into more trouble than expected when we confronted the bourgeois order straight-up and they came back on us with a vengeance. There must have been about eighty million ideas around like "students" were the new working class, the "red university that would be the central organizing axis of the new dispensation, and in the hubristic nature of youth we just fell in on ourselves as the obvious vanguard since that is what youth, youth in America had always done (that frame of reference, short-sighted as usual was based on the many youth, heroic youth who stood down the House Un-American Committee (HUAC) in San Francisco, and shouldered the weight in the anti-nuclear, civil rights and early anti-Vietnam War movements. But, and here is where the May Days in Paris is instructive, never really threatened to shut down the government or any of its policies by its actions despite nation-wide strikes on most campuses toward the end. A few, a relatively few, did learn other forces were necessary to mobilize if we were to beat down the old order but that was too late, the ebb had carried the day and most of the forces that were animated by the upheavals of the 1960s walked away learning no real lessons about what was necessary to really "turn the world upside down."

Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on who survived the 1950s red scare or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who survived the red scare and the Stalinists had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us. Yes, we young stalwart in-your-face- rebels were going to re-invent the world we had not made and we needed no old fogies to put a damper on our efforts. See we were going to re-invent that world without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads the minute the American government felt the least bit threatened. (Chicago 1968, Kent State 1970 and for me personally May Day 1971 when we without anywhere near adequate forces or much of a strategy were going to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war stand as signposts to those failures.) Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists.
Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time New Left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s young left-wing militants.

***************
A Frank Jackman comment (2014):

Recently I wrote a short piece in a left-wing political blog centered on the need for revolutionary intellectuals to take their rightful place on the active left, on the people’s side, and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines (or wherever they were hiding out). One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement a few years back, the continuing failed efforts to stop the incessant American war machine, and the lack of serious and righteous response to the beating that the working classes and oppressed in this country (and internationally) have taken from the ruling class and their hangers-on a certain stock-taking was in order. A stock-taking at first centered on those young radical and revolutionaries that I had run into in the various campsites and had talked to on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and discouraged when their utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of regret from the masses.

I noted there, and the point is germane here as I try to place the remnant of old New Left represented by the contributors in The Rag Blog in perspective, that is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory which I mentioned in the article still holds true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working-class specific questions play in world politics (the national question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated), special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

That said I have also made a note that some of theories from the old days, now being re-tread by some of the old New Left denizens of this blog as if nothing had changed since the 1960s, made me think that making the revolution the old-fashioned Marxist working class way is the beginning of wisdom. In the interest of full disclosure though back in the day I was as likely as anybody to adhere to all kinds of new theories (mainly because the old theories being old must be irrelevant, a notion that was widespread then) but life, political life, itself has already made its judgments on the worth of those theories for pulling humankind ahead. The class struggle exists, although in a very one-sided manner right now, one-sided on their side not ours, and any theory, any plan worth its salt, worth the righteous oppressed rising up against it should reflect that and at its core the teachings of Marx and his progeny still make sense.
A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past.

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-The Culturati’s Corner

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the hide-bound Academy filled with its rules, or be damned, spoke the pious words of peace, brotherhood and the affinity of all humankind when there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society in its squalor, it creation of generations of short, nasty, brutish lives just like the philosophers predicted and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress, humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, putting another man to ground or laying their own heads down for some imperial mission.

They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as they marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss his high tea. Jesus what a blasted night that Great War time was.

And as the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, artists, beautiful artists like Fernand Leger who could no longer push the envelope of representative art because it had been twisted by the rubble of war, by the crashing big guns, by the hubris of commanders and commanded and he turned to new form, tubes, cubes, prisms, anything but battered humankind in its every rusts and lusts, all bright and intersecting once he got the mustard gas out of his system, once he had done his patria duty, like speaking of mustard gas old worn out John Singer Sargent of the three name WASPs forgetting Boston Brahmin society ladies in decollage, forgetting ancient world religious murals hanging atop Boston museum and spewing trench warfare and the blind leading the blind out of no man’s land, out of the devil’s claws, like Umberto Boccioni, all swirls, curves, dashes, and dangling guns as the endless charges endlessly charge, like Gustav Klimt and his endlessly detailed gold dust opulent Asiatic dreams filled with lovely matrons and high symbolism and blessed Eve women to fill the night, Adam’s night after they fled the garden, like Joan Miro and his infernal boxes, circles, spats, eyes, dibs, dabs, vaginas, and blots forever suspended in deep space for a candid world to fret through, fret through a long career, and like poor maddened rising like a phoenix in the Spartacist uprising George Grosz puncturing the nasty bourgeoisie, the big bourgeoisie the ones with the real dough and their overfed dreams stuffed with sausage, and from the bloated military and their fat-assed generals stuff with howitzers and rocket shells, like Picasso, yeah, Picasso taking the shape out of recognized human existence and reconfiguring the forms, the mesh of form to fit the new hard order, like, Braque, if only because if you put the yolk on Picasso you have to tie him to the tether too.

And do not forget when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it turned out sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Anthony Jalil Bottom,

http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html

A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Marie Jeanette Mason

I Hear The Voice Of My Arky Angel-Once Again-With Angel Iris Dement In Mind

SWEET FORGIVENESS (Iris DeMent)
(c) 1992 Songs of Iris/Forerunner Music, Inc. ASCAP

Sweet forgiveness, that's what you give to me

when you hold me close and you say "That's all over"

You don't go looking back,

you don't hold the cards to stack,

you mean what you say.

Sweet forgiveness, you help me see

I'm not near as bad as I sometimes appear to be

When you hold me close and say

"That's all over, and I still love you"

There's no way that I could make up for those angry words I said

Sometimes it gets to hurting and the pain goes to my head

Sweet forgiveness, dear God above

I say we all deserve a taste of this kind of love

Someone who'll hold our hand,

and whisper "I understand, and I still love you"

AFTER YOU'RE GONE (Iris DeMent)

There'll be laughter even after you're gone

I'll find reasons to face that empty dawn

'cause I've memorized each line in your face

and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me

I'll miss you, oh how I'll miss you

I'll dream of you and I'll cry a million tears

but the sorrow will pass and the one thing that will last

is the love that you've given to me

There'll be laughter even after you're gone

I'll find reason and I'll face that empty dawn

'cause I've memorized each line in your face

and not even death could ever erase the story they tell to me

Every once in a while I have to tussle, go one on one with the angels, or a single angel is maybe a better way to put it. No, not the heavenly ones or the ones who burden your shoulders when you have a troubled heart but every once in a while I need a shot of my Arky angel, Iris Dement. Now while I don’t want to get into a dissertation about the thing, you know, that old medieval Thomist argument about how many angels can fit on the end of a needle or get into playing sided in the struggle between pliant god-like angels and defiant devil-like angels in the battles in the heavens over who would rule the universe that the great revolutionary English poet from the time of the English revolution of blessed memory, John Milton, when he got seriously exercised over that notion in Paradise Lost I do believe we our faced, vocally faced with someone who could go mano y mano with whoever wants to enter into the lists against her.

Yes, and I know too that that “angel” thing has been played out much too much in the world music scene, the popular music scene, you know rock and roll in the old days and now mainly hip-hop what with in my day every kind of angel from some over the top earth angel that had some guy all swooning, Johnny Angel who just couldn’t keep one girl happy but had to play the field, going to the distaff side (nice old-fashioned word, right) some honkey-tonk angel who was lured into the night life by her own hubris, Hank’s morbid angel of death that seemed to hover over his every move until the big crash out, and my favorite, no question, teen angel, some, I don’t know how else to say it, some bimbo whose boyfriend’s car got stuck on a railroad track, the boyfriend got her out and yet she went running back, running back to get his two-bit class ring, a ring that he had probably given to half the girls in school before her, and did not come out alive, RIP, sister, RIP. No, I will take my Arky angel, take her with a little sinning on the side if you can believe there is any autobiographical edge to some of the songs, take her with a little forlorn lilt in her voice, take her since she has seen the seedy side of life. Yeah, that is how I like my angels.

Every once in a while when I am blue, not a Billie Holiday blue, the blues down in the depths when you have to just hear her, flower in hair, maybe junked up, maybe clean, hell, it did not matter, when she hit her stride, and she “spoke” you out of your miseries, but maybe just a passing blue I need to hear a voice that if there was an angel heaven voice she would be the one I would want to hear.

I first heard Iris DeMent doing a cover of a folksinger-songwriter Greg Brown tribute to Jimmy Rodgers, the old time Texas yodeler discovered around same time as the original Carter Family in the late 1920s, on his tribute album, Driftless. I then looked for her solo albums and for the most part was blown away by the power of Iris’ voice, her piano accompaniment and her lyrics (which are contained in the liner notes of her various albums, read them, please). It is hard to type her style. Is it folk? Is it Country Pop? Is it semi-torch songstress? Well, whatever it maybe that Arky angel is a listening treat, especially if you are in a sentimental mood.

Naturally when I find some talent that “speaks” to me I grab everything they sing, write, paint, or act I can find. In Iris’ case there is not a lot of recorded work, with the recent addition of Sing The Delta just four albums although she had done many back-ups or harmonies with other artists most notably John Prine. Still what has been recorded blew me away (and will blow you away), especially as an old Vietnam War era veteran her There is a Wall in Washington about the guys who found themselves on the Vietnam Memorial probably one of the best anti-war songs you will ever hear. That memorial containing names very close to me, to my heart and I shed a tear each time I even go near the memorial when I am in D.C. It is fairly easy to write a Give Peace a Chance or Where Have All the Flowers Gone? sings-song type of anti-war song. It is another to capture the pathos of what happened to too many families when we were unable to stop that war. The streets of my old-time growing up neighborhood are filled with memories of guys I knew, guys who didn’t make it back, guys who couldn’t adjust coming back to the “real world” and wound up in flop houses, half-way houses, and along railroad “jungle” camps and guys who could not get over not going into the service to experience the decisive event of our generation.

Other songs that have drawn my attention like When My Morning Comes hit home with all the baggage working class kids have about their inferiority when they screw up in this world. Walking Home Alone evokes all the humor, bathos, pathos and sheer exhilaration of saying one was able to survive, and not badly, after growing up poor, Arky poor amid the riches of America. (That may be the “connection” as I grew up through my father coal country Hazard, Kentucky poor.)

Frankly, and I admit this publicly in this space, I love Ms. Iris Dement. Not personally, of course, but through her voice, her lyrics and her musical presence. This “confession” may seem rather startling coming from a guy who in this space is as likely here to go on and on about Bolsheviks, ‘Che’, Leon Trotsky, high communist theory and the like. Especially, as well given Iris’ seemingly simple quasi- religious themes and commitment to paying homage to her rural background in song. All such discrepancies though go out the window here. Why?

Well, for one, this old radical got a lump in his throat the first time he heard her voice. Okay, that happens sometimes-once- but why did he have the same reaction on the fifth and twelfth hearings? Explain that. I can easily enough. If, on the very, very remotest chance, there is a heaven then I know one of the choir members. Enough said. By the way give a listen to Out Of The Fire and Mornin’ Glory. Then you too will be in love with Ms. Iris Dement.

Iris, here is my proposal, once again. If you get tired of fishing the U.P., or wherever, with Mr. Greg Brown, get bored with his endless twaddle about old Iowa farms or going on and on about Grandma's fruit cellar just whistle. Better yet just yodel like you did on Jimmie Rodgers Going Home on that Driftless CD.

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