Ry Cooder - Seneca Square Dance (aka Waiting for the Federals) - 'The Lo...

Ry Cooder - Seneca Square Dance (aka Waiting for the Federals) - 'The Lo...

Dock Boggs - Country Blues

Levon Helm - Anna Lee - A Tribute

Levon Helm - Anna Lee - A Tribute

Tim Eriksen - Better Days Coming

James 'Sparky' Rucker - John Henry/Po' Boy

Frank Hutchison - Cannonball Blues

Tommy Jarrell - Greasy String

George Pegram - John Henry

Lester McFarland - K.C. Whistle Blues

Sara Ogan Gunning - Girl Of Constant Sorrow - Songcatcher II

Tim Eriksen, Riley Baugus - The Company Store

The Reel Time Travelers - Like A Song Bird That Has Fallen - Cold Mounta...

Jack White - Sittin' On Top Of The World - Cold Mountain Soundtrack

From The Archives- As The First Anniversary Of Charlottesville Approaches-We Are In A Cold Civil War In America-No Platform For Fascists-No Platform For Nazis Or KKK Either-Join And Built The People’s Resistance

From The Archives- As The First Anniversary Of Charlottesville Approaches-We Are In A Cold Civil War In America-No Platform For Fascists-No Platform For Nazis Or KKK Either-Join And Built The People’s Resistance  

By Frank Jackman

[I really hate to start a piece with a bracketed introduction, really a double bracketed introduction since I had to do the same when I introduced the original piece last year around this time in the wake of the events in Charlottesville down in Virginia, down in the college town of the University of Virginia. However given the nature of the subject, no, given the impeding urgency of the subject the heating up of the cold civil war in America, a phenomenon not seen in this country since the decade before Civil War which ended slavery only after a series of compromises proved illusionary to end the damn institution and the only way to resolve the situation was with arms in hand and its concurrent phenomenon the rise of the organized fascist movement, aided not a little by the rabid occupants of the White House and the rest of the governing apparatus we need to talk.

This heating up of the cold civil war is a phenomenon which I have been noting for maybe a decade, maybe a little less but certainly since the big Great Recession as the economists call it now in historical hindsight when many people’s live were hung out to dry, hung out big time which started toward avalanche toward the big break of the have-nots, or maybe have not enough toward the right after flirting with Barack Obama to no avail. During that time, say since 2011 when I reported heavily on the wisp of the will phantom Occupy movement in these pages (and in Progressive Nation now on-line but which I was one of the hard copy founders of back in the 1970s but which was subsequently bought to a writers collective), I have interviewed many of those who have not move forward, no, who have been left behind for no fault of their own and no reason that they can figure out why they lost out except that now they have a handle on the damn thing as victims of globalization, liberal cabal globalization.

Still in 2016 despite knowing, feeling this unsatisfied undercurrent I was as taken aback, as shocked, and plainly speaking as clueless as any other of the talking class, of the political pundits who are supposed to have a ide about what was what in the political arena. Worse on the second point, on that rise of the fascistic elements from their cubbyholes and warrens in backwoods America, was not that I was unaware of it, hell, I had done a whole series on militias, survivalists and others who had a morbid fear ignited by their race hatreds, by their hatred of Barack Obama despite their generally have no contact ever with black people and despite not living within fifty miles of any black communities, barrios, Asian enclaves or urban Jews. Jesus. What had, has me stumped in that after fifty years or more of political struggle, fifty years since I wrote my first term paper on fascist groups in America (think of the name George Lincoln Rockwell as the poster child of that movement back then) I have to go out on the streets and hold the bastards off. Below is a quick review and summary of the past year complete with that bracketed introduction, now second introduction, that I have threatened you with. Frank Jackman]              

Original Introduction

[Under the now not so new direction of site manager Greg Green who has made some mistakes and made some very right decisions as is usual for chief editors and assignment impresarios we writers, young and old, free-lance or staff, stringers or by-line worthy have been given the green light as part of our works to discuss how we got the assignment or any other material the reader may find interesting as back story. I will do so here in a review of what I have called the impeding cold civil war in American over the past period. Frank Jackman]  

Sometimes out in the political hustings you come across a piece of written propaganda which hits you exactly where you live. Expresses your sentiments better than you could on your own. That is the case with the small, inexpensive paper leaflet that I picked up, or was handed to me, at an anti-fascist demonstration last summer on the Boston Common which I was covering for this publication. I subsequently received the same copies at a few other anti-fascist rallies and stand-outs again not sure which I picked up and which were handed to me although that is of no import to the political message stated. This “pick-up” “handed” conundrum the result of the fact that I grab one way or another every piece of literature that I come across at any rallies or such events that I cover or take part in.        

I headlined the beginning of this piece with the statement that we are in a cold civil war in this country, in America, and have been for a while, maybe the last twenty years at least but that fact has only been pushed in our faces bigtime since the age of Trump began where all the contradictions, all the divisions and all the cultural clashes have become part of the daily political battleground. There have been over the past year or so some important nodal points making that cold civil get at least momentarily hotter-one was horrendous Charlottesville which put all on notice that the divisions were deep and maybe had reached some boiling point. Make no mistake that Charlottesville was a “victory” for what passes as the Alt-Right, Nazi-Fascist-KKK-Militia combine which has been emboldened by the rise of the Trump reaction. Another was the recent nationwide student lead-high school student-led March for Our Lives demonstration, so you know this is something very different on the political horizon which was a “victory” for our side, for the people’s resistance which is important if we can keep up the momentum.  

One of the problems if you will of our side is that some people, a lot of people, many of whom have only recently come to political life have many mixed and confused feelings about what to do to stop the Alt-Right-Nazis-Fascist-KKK in their tracks. Have bought into at least partially the notion that these bastards have some “right” to free speech that we must respect. That we must expend political capital defending. “Forget that noise” as the late Pete Markin, a guy I grew up with and who gave me plenty of political insights said and would say today as well. We are private citizens and not governmental agents so have no obligation to defend such rights to free speech under any constitutional theory.

But the Constitution is only the bedrock of running a civil society. We the people of the resistance have to be clear that we do not support any right for the Alt-Right-Fascist-Nazi-KKK-Militia cabal to free speech to spew their genocidal, ethnic-cleansing, race war programs. And that, as history shows us, and everybody should read the history of the rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, is their calling card, their intention and we had better be clear that we have to nip that movement in the bud. Not only by confronting them across the police lines, police lines there to protect them and their so-called right to free speech since the police are governmental agents but to make sure they find not havens, no platforms, to spew their hateful messages. So yes so-called free speech issues take a very far back seat to the fight against the intentions of these monsters if we don’t stop them. Believe me they don’t give three-fifth of a damn about our free speech rights, will see us in hell first another sign we are in a cold civil war situation. More later.    

In Boston –The Latest Bash Back Boston-Stop The Fascists In Their Tracks November 18^th on Boston Common  

Frank Jackman comment:

I have mentioned on more than one occasion that we have been for a while in a state of cold civil war in America that has only had fuel to the fire added to it, make it tend toward a hot civil war, by the massive frauds, midnight rip-off actions, and general ignorance promoted by the Trump Administration. This rightly, and I think most thankfully, has gotten the previously moribund left, the bewildered and the oppressed up in arms enough to slowly begin a counter-attack against the night-takers from corrupt and venal right-wing bourgeois politicians like Trump and his ilk to the more dangerous extra-parliamentary forces-call them alt-right, fascist, KKK, etc. that have been unleashed-have been given fresh wind in their sails.

Not everything the left and its allies argue for in counter-attack either makes senses or provides a road forward in the anti-fascist struggle for example RefuseFascism has identified the Trump-Pence regime as fascist and to call for a parliamentary impeachment process to get rid of the bums. This Bash Back Boston grouping seems to be more militant but not quite sure that confrontation in itself without more gets us anyplace. I leave it an open question today. But for now as we sort things out, or as they get sorted for us which is as likely and has actually been the case over the past several months, let’s keep to the united front idea going until further notice. In short Saturday November 18^th in Boston be on the Boston Common to stop the Nazis, fascists and their ilk in their tracks whatever anti-fascist ideas you march under. 

           

In Boston Nov 4 -ResistFascism Rally Report From Allan Franklin

By Political Reporter Frank Jackman

[I have recently at Allan Jackson’s, the site administrator, request done a review of a lesser Humphrey Bogart movie Sirocco from the early 1950s because it had a political theme-or at least touched about what World War I wrought on the world beyond murder and mayhem in the trenches on all sides. Because I spent some time on that and a few other projects I missed a local event in Boston on the Boston Common on November 4^th sponsored by an organization called ResistFascism.org who were attempting to build some momentum to publicize an upcoming counter-demonstration against a thing called “Rally For The Republic,” a seemingly innocuous front name for a cohort of Nazis, Alt-Rights, KKK, White Supremacists, wacky Trump supporters and street thugs to be held at the Parkman Bandstand on November 18^th . The grouping had applied for but had been rejected for a permit to use that facility by the City of Boston but nevertheless intended to demonstrate that day for “free speech” rights or whatever other cover story they were pushing. The “call” for the rally itself told the real story that what they wanted was a street fight, especially targeting their nemeses the Anti-fa black-clad anarchists and Black Lives Matter.

Not to belabor the point the idea of a gathering momentum rally on the 4^th sounded like a good idea and so I detached my associate at the on-line Progressive America, Allan Franklin, to go check out and report back on the event. My premise for even bothering him with the assignment was that the literature associated with the event, including a full- page ad in the New York Times by ResistFascism made it appear like it was going to be a prelude similar to the massive 40, 000 plus counter-rally in Boston also held on August 19^th also at the Parkman Bandstand. As Allan will report that was not the case, not by a long shot although this resurgent fascist (and their sundry allies) menace needs to be combatted and combatted with massive counter-demonstrations to make them go back into their rat holes or wherever they hang out. To “crush them in the egg” as an old-time militant antifascist once told me who had been close to the Socialist Workers Party in the 1930s when James Cannon had told an audience in New York City that he had heard their chief, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, use that expression for the tasks ahead against the Nazi-night-takers. (That militant had at that time been instrumental through his union in bringing out a mass of working people to surround Madison Square Garden in that city when the fascist thugs tried to get a toehold there so I am sure he had the Trotsky remark on good authority.)

Allan, and I had agreed, had expected to take his notes and make a “think piece” story to be published here and at Progressive America. Subsequently we have decided to merely publish his somewhat edited notes which gives as much flavor to the event as it deserved.

Frank Jackman]              

[In the event the November 18^th “rally” drew about fifty to one hundred demonstrators and a counter-rally of about one thousand to fifteen hundred mainly Anti-fa, Black Lives Matter and Veterans for Peace militants. Curiously except for a couple of people that Allan had recognized from the November 4^th rally selling newspapers and passing out leaflets there was no identifiable presence by this ResistFascism operation on the Common at least. From their literature they had planned a rally at Copley Square about one half mile away from the Common although it might as well have been ten thousand miles away as far as visibly confronting the fascist menace that day. Frank Jackman]    

*****

Frank- Here are my observations about the ResistFascism rally that took place at the Parkman Bandstand on November 4, 2017 which we, you and I, have had many e-mail and phone conversations about with the organizers who wanted us to publicize the thing and cover it extensively. Also between us about our approach to a group we knew very little about except their literature and their persistent at the time and that unlike the paltry sums most leftist operations can gather these days they must have had an “angel” to be able to put a full page ad in the New York Times.

I showed up at the advertised spot, the Parkman Bandstand, about 3:30 for the 4:00 event at which time there were maybe twenty people gathered while the organizers were putting up signs and stocking a table with literature. (At first I thought I had the wrong spot not having been on the Common in years and figuring that maybe it was to be at the Park Street MBTA station entrance one of the historic protest spots on the Common that I knew from previous events but after asking if this was the right place of a person milling around I found I was indeed at the right spot.) After finding I was in the right place I knew almost immediately that this event was going to be far smaller than it was hyped up to be and which the organizers hounded us to publicize extensively beforehand and provide plenty of coverage for on the day of the event.

I did meet Steve, whom you told me you had plenty of contact via e-mail and cellphone with when he noticed my press tag and we talked for a bit. He continued to badger me about covering the November 18^th event they were planning at Copley Square. I told him frankly I did not see how a rally in Copley when the fascists were going to be on the Common a half mile away made sense, made a statement to the scumbags, made a statement about effectively resisting fascism as advertised. He demurred at that point and told me he had to help set up. This Steve seemed like a nice guy of the old school 1960s organizer sort that I have run into a lot in New York and out in San Francisco lately who under current adverse conditions are keeping up the good fight as best they can in an age when the social media technology and the subsequent generations’ organizing style have down-graded the old time ways of putting together protest rallies out in the real mean streets.

I sensed and somebody I talked to later knowledgeable about the leftist remnant still around the Cambridge/Boston milieu that this operation was an off-shoot of the old “Not In My Name” grouping from Iraq War 2003 days which was organized by an old-time cultist Maoist who didn’t hear he, Mao, died or something. It definitely had that liberal democratic feel especially around the main villains of the piece in their literature Trump/Pence and the urgent need to impeach them as if that would create the “newer world” you and the older guys I know are always harping back to when stuff like this comes up and you get all misty-eyed about the huge X number of people who came to some event against war, racism, capitalism, whatever about fifty years ago.     

  

The rally itself when I left about 5:30 never had more than one hundred people and that is perhaps generous considering the number of student journalists and other such curious student types who apparently were assigned by their professors to do coverage as a class assignment. The usual run of  general curiosity seekers who peek around the edges of such events getting confirmation for their distant hometown fears that Boston is some Red Moscow of the East Coast and making note never to send their kids to school in the town listening to the usual speakers preaching to the choir about that war, racism, sexism you and your crowd are always talking about how you almost had turned the corner on that stuff but you underestimated the forces of counter-attack arraigned against you and have been on the run ever since. Of course this included the usual Kumbaya folk music that is supposed to stir the crowd to a revolutionary pitch by evoking Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and who knows who else singing about the magic wand of getting rid of oppression. All in a regular left event day’s schedule.

I did notice that on a hand-out leaflet ResistFascism was advertising marching in a veteran’s peace parade on the 11^th, on Veterans Day and giving our starting time and place. I urged all the people I met to join that march that day since we are very familiar with and support the efforts of the main sponsor Veterans for Peace although I think you told me they were trying to reclaim the original purpose of the day by calling it Armistice Day since Sam Lowell, Fritz Taylor and I think Allan Jackson are Vietnam-era veterans, right.          

There were a few minor heavy verbal confrontations between protesters and a few Alt-right people who showed up obviously to do “recon” and size up what was what knowing they could get a row going by spitting out their garbage in a small environment. One from Salisbury, a young Iraq War veteran who portrayed himself as only interested in a dialogue with the left, told me he was an organizer for the so-called Alt-right rally on the 18^th. When I asked him about the rally “call” which we had culled from Facebook being inflammatory, calling for a street fight like you said after you read the Facebook announcement, he said just like the far left they had their crazy far right who wanted to stir things up. Take that for what it is worth, although one thing I have noticed about this newer breed of whatever you want to call these modern fascists is that that they are a bit slicker than the old guys who used to breath fire and damnation against the generic left, n----rs, gays, women and “commies” without blinking at eye. They are more media savvy and couch things in terms like “free speech,” “oppression,” “railing against the elites” and the like. Off the top of my head I think we have to treat them at least in the post-Charlottesville era where they showed some unsavory savvy and skills as being as smart as us in this war of words and images.    

Not much heated argument although a woman started yelling about those NFL players who went down on their knees during the national anthem before their football games and got into an argument with an Anti-fa who seemed very much the angry young man masked and dressed in Johnny Cash black of course.  A Veteran for Peace guy whom I think you know, at least he said he knew you, was able to calm her down a bit and she left. (I told him that I had been urging people I talked to during this time to join the Veterans Day peace march which would be starting near this section of the Common and he corrected me by calling it Armistice Day so I guess they are serious about reclaiming the day, or at least the name.      

All and all a waste of time and I told Jeff whom you had also assigned to this story to do interviews and take some photos and who was heading down to meet me to go home. Stuff might have happened after I left but I don’t think so. I am glad we had a hands-off with this R-F group although if they show up with any forces on the 11^th for that Veterans for Peace march let’s see what they have to offer. 

I felt sorry for you and Allan since you were inundated by phone calls and e-mails for stuff that seemed like a big deal and was all smoke and dreams. We have to help save your time and energy for the big stuff not this Mickey Mouse stuff so we better screen this stuff better.

Deep In The Heart Of Cold War II-Chris Pine and Kevin Costner’s “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014)-A Film Review

 Deep In The Heart Of Cold War II-Chris Pine and Kevin Costner’s “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Kenny Jacobs

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, starring Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Kiera Knightley, 2014

[At the end of my last film review the 1989 version of Batman starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson (with Kim Basinger as eye candy and Batman aka Bruce Wayne aide) I noted that I was heartily sick of having to repeat older writer Phil Larkin’s by now almost patented but tired expression WTF to express some level of  displeasure. WFT apparently not enough though since I am once again stuck, maybe deeply stuck with another one of these turkey sequel action films, in this case fifth rendition, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, an idea whatever its original virtue which is now played out, now tired.     

  

Frankly I had expected after joining Phil in the belly-aching crowd that was central to that piece to be off this so-called action adventure stuff. Belly-aching plus a little fringe review at the end which Phil has become something of a past master at doing. Expected to be reviewing some old time black and white film from the 1940s or 1950s like Humphrey Bogart’s The Maltese Falcon which I had noticed was on site manager Greg Green’s assignment list. Those oldies my preferred reviews young as I am and new to the site as well for reasons explained elsewhere and as a result of having done a well-recognized good job on the first couple I did before that dog of a Batman review.

Those reviews seemingly were my undoing since Phil felt that as an older writer, as somebody who had actually seen the films when he was a wide-eyed kid spending ill-spent Saturday afternoon matinee Strand Theater growing up town double feature complete with small bucket of popcorn spread out to last the distance, he should have dibs on those properties. That was the routine in the old days when his growing up buddy, and for all I know movie companion, Allan Jackson the now deposed and exiled somewhere, I think Utah, former site manager gave him whatever assignment he hankered after. Not so with the new more democratic regime geared more to the younger writers and seeking to reclaim the lost younger audiences who have drifted away from this site established by Greg and the newly-installed Editorial Board set-up by him in the wake of the Jackson purge.          

That was how things were supposed to be until Phil started his

f--king campaign against his having to do these silly action adventures, especially when it got to be worn-out nothing but greed-head sequel time. Against me in particular, a kid, a “teacher’s pet” he called me. And it worked as I had to exchange reviews with him with him now doing Bogie’s Across The Pacific which could be easily parlayed into a double-header with the super-classic The Maltese Falcon as the real prize. Phil will probably get that assignment as well. That is the genesis of my relief campaign outlined in that dreadful Batman movie review which backfired in my face because no matter how much venom I threw at the thing Greg, backed up by what is increasingly looking like his toady Ed Board, told me personally that he liked the job I did on that one. WTF.        

One day Greg took me into his office and explained like I didn’t know from nothing what this film reviewing assignment procedure was all about, what he was carrying over from his many years first at the hard copy American Film Gazette and later when it switched over to an on-line version. Greg mentioned, and this astounded me, that he had looked at the Gazette archives and noted that over the many years of its hard copy and on-line existence that over forty thousand film reviews had been published. He was not sure how many writers had been involved in that process but he guessed at least one hundred when he had been around the operation. Although the Gazette took advertisements for current movies with few exceptions it did not, he did not assign, reviewers for current films. What the assignment board looked like was usually a hodge-podge of films related to some genre that was surfacing or resurfacing or some actor who had maybe passed away, or had rebooted his or her career, or some particular quirk of the time. Writers would, to increase their range, get a mix of assignments.   

Greg stated that frankly he was bringing that same routine over to this site with the caveat that this would include not only films but books, music, culture, politics, social commentary, the whole wider purpose of the site. He noted that although this site had only produced maybe a couple of thousand film reviews, another figure which astounded me, that apparently Jackson had the same attitude although he had centered the reviews on older films and documentaries. (Something I am told that the younger writers chaffed at and which was central to their grievances which brought Jackson low.) Greg assured me that I would eventually get my fair share of good material to write about. With that I accepted this turkey of an assignment and have temporarily called a halt to my belly-aching campaign. Kenny Jacobs]       

*********

Guys, writers, so maybe gals too although I don’t know many who took the Cold War into the winter night genre seriously, must have been gnashing their teeth when the ex-Soviet Union went down in flames around 1991 and 1991. (I have no first- hand experience since I was born in 1992.) Guys like Britisher Le Carre with his George Smiley series and here American Tom Clancy, or at least in theory Tom Clancy since this dog of film, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit , the fifth in the film series is merely based on the character of Jack Ryan and not something Clancy actually wrote. That gives you an exact idea of how lame this whole greed-head production is, how tired even the most fervent devotee of the genre must be to wade through this mush. Yeah, those guys must be have been crying in their beer once the very real tensions of a bi-polar world complete with serious nuclear weaponry in the balance (still around in the USA and Russia but less threatening right now in those quarters) turned into the still current uni-polar world dominated by American military power with not much to stop it.    

That post-Soviet faded tension is reflected in the hardly stellar plotline of this film once the mighty USSR was reduced to mere Russia size and less of a threat to American world order (which may be taking another curve of late with the Trump America First era but the film pre-dates that situation). Jack, dear good guy clean Jack, played by Chris Pine, after 9/11 signed up like a lot of guys in America to do serious damage to Islamic fundamentalists in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Jack took his beating in the former though and crippled up left the military for what would be a career on Wall Street based on his vast education in economic. The CIA though in the person of Tom Harper, played by visibly aging Kevin Costner, gets him to do some covert actions, to check for any dramatic changes in the world financial markets. Worked as a closed mouth “mole” until needed.

Our Jack does yeoman’s work for a while on the Street until  

some nefarious Russians, no longer able to wield their former military might have decided that melting down the world financial markets will restore some prestige to Mother Russia. Thus the chase in on. Jack a crackerjack trend spotter sees what those nefarious Russians are up to and takes action including the inevitable car chase/stand-off which entails a car bomb headed toward Wall Street. Surprise, surprise that car winds up in the East River without Jack of course and with the Russian plot crushed in the embryo. A little eye candy, sympatico by Kiera Knightley as Jack’s longtime live-in girlfriend gives the inevitable boy meets girl romantic twist a run. Sorry for my language but I have to say it- WTF.   

Down And Out In The City Of Angels-Danny Glover And Mel Gibson’s “Lethal Weapon 3” (1992)-A Film Review

Down And Out In The City Of Angels-Danny Glover And Mel Gibson’s “Lethal Weapon 3” (1992)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Kenny Jacobs

[This time unlike in my last review in this space when I did a nice job, according to site manager Greg Green, on Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn’s 1938 Bringing Up Baby now seen as a minor classic directed by Howard Hawks  I really can mimic old-time reviewer Phil Larkin’s now seemingly patented WFT. Why? Well it seems that the biggest way that you can get the attention of Greg and the Editorial Board (which Phil has lambasted to hell as Greg’s toadies but who are all working writers and so I take umbrage at his remarks that they are nothing but his voting fodder) is by belly-aching enough about the pick of assignments. At least that worked for Phil as mild-mannered and demur (if you can use that word describing a man) Greg Green bowed down to the onslaught and “switched” reviews with me now doing the one under review, Lethal Weapon 3, and Phil taking my justly earned plum assignment on the minor Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet classic Across the Pacific. I was going to use my take on that review as a lead-in to another film by this trio the major classic film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade-led The Maltese Falcon.

So it looks like this place is starting to be run the way that I am told since I don’t know directly I am a new kid on the block the same way when the old site manager the now justly deposed and exiled out in Utah, Nevada, Siberia some place like that Allan Jackson ran the show. Basically cry big enough crocodile tears and Uncle Greg will chase your blues away whether you are capable of doing the job or not. Which off of Phil’s last review of the 1989 version of Batman starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson is certainly in question. That is the one where Phil went off on popcorn-fattened and sugar-high soda filled young kids, their gullible parents, me as Greg’s goddam teacher’s pet which is all wrong, theater owners filling kids with fattening popcorn and cavity-producing sodas, Marvel comic screenwriters who couldn’t figure out a reasonable plot if they found one on the street, Captain America as a brainless twit, the Hulk as nothing but a ballooned-up mutant, Thor as nothing but a beauty queen, Ironman as a highly paid flunky and I don’t know what else since I stopped reading the thing when I knew there would be conveniently no plot summary. Hell Phil even took a swipe at eye candy Black Widow.

Guess what he wrote about three lines of real review. For that the bastard gets a minor Bogie plum on the way to the big Bogie one which I am sure he will argue for as I would to do the pair as a combo. So now you know why a young guy like me trying to break into the film reviewing business to prove to my parents that all that money they spent on college and graduate school wasn’t wasted is saying WTF. I won’t say I am a team player yet but I will soldier on as the older writers like to say all the time when they are behind deadline. Kenny Jacobs]             

*********

Funny after all I said about lame Phil Larkin above in the turf wars for good assignments I have to agree with him that these modern action films really are predictable. Really hard, if you want to know,   

to get a handle on since, again kudos to Phil, the plotline was done by some kid in elementary school whose father just happened to be the credited screenwriter on the leaden balloon. Harder still (and why I was going to go big on that Across The Pacific/The Maltese Falcon combination) why except for pure studio/theater owner greed and to fill production space these formula films have X number of sequels in this case three when the original idea if decent could not sustain further ramming. In the end all this one has going for it is a kind of play on the old older/younger buddy films from the likes of  Robert Redford and Paul Newman in vehicles like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. What the latter-day-saint moneybags producers forget is that those two stars were backed-up by scripts definitely not written by some credited screenwriter’s child.         

Since I am right now behind the eight ball with Greg and his esteemed Editorial Board sucking wind on this pig of a film I had better follow the old Sam Lowell commandment and write a decent plotline summary if I ever expect to see the light of day again.

To keep the hoary tradition alive here is the “skinny” whatever that means. Our worldly and wary seen it all City of Angels coppers, and buddies from all appearances, older sensible cop Roger, played by Danny Glover, and younger but more rash cop Martin, played by pretty boy Mel Gibson, are in deep doo-doo after failed bomb caper. Working the demoted streets they run into the proverbial street gangs and their armament, high-grade stuff not some junkie’s Saturday night special. Stuff that as it turns out can’t be purchased at Wal-Mart’s. Stuff that could only come from police confiscations. So this is strictly an inside job. Strictly rogue cop, or better ex-cop stuff.        

Things get heavy when Roger has to take down some dope-addled black kid with nothing but semi-automatic weaponry firing back at him in single shot mode. Christ taking down a kid, a friend of his son’s, and him, this is a weak sister sub-plot him, days away from a well-deserved retirement. So Roger and Martin bear down, get everybody they know involved in shaking the palm trees, do some dirty cop work to get info that might in post-Michael Brown, Black Lives Matter time, not get a very positive reception. So after the standard rough stuff, the standard million car chases going the wrong way on death Los Angeles super-highways, the standard drawn out shoot-out between unequal forces, they the unequal side,  they take down that rogue ex-cop. Take him down good. Guess what after this caper old Roger has some wind still in his sails and will not retire for a while. Just in case there had to be a Lethal Weapon 4 segue.

By the way what is not so weak sister in this mix is the usual dance around between pretty boy Martin and Laura, the woman copper running the Internal Affairs investigation, played by fetching Rene Russo. She is female-wise Martin’s twin and before you can close your eyes they are going round and round under the sheets. She, out in the streets though, gives as good as she gets taking a few for the cause. What I am wondering is why not let good old boy Roger retire and let Martin and Laura go buddy-buddy. I hope to high heaven this is enough to get me back in good graces. I am tired of running Phil’s tired WFT.    

A Few Notes On The Poor Peoples Campaign Of 1968 As Food For Thought As We Prepare From The Second And Hopefully Final Campaign in 2018

A Few Notes On The Poor Peoples Campaign Of 1968 As Food For Thought As We Prepare From The Second And Hopefully Final Campaign in 2018

By Seth Garth

Some readers may know that Si Lannon, who usually does film and art exhibitions reviews in this publication (and book reviews at the American Literary Digest some of which find their way into this publication by reciprocal agreement), back on June 23^rd of this year had an assignment in Washington, D.C. to write an article on the Cezanne Portraits exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. On his way to do that assignment, on that Saturday June 23^rd when he exited the Smithsonian Metro stop on National Mall to walk over to the 7^th Street entrance to the Gallery building Si noticed a large white tent and further down toward 7^th Street proper a large stage flanked by two huge screens and huge banners proclaiming that this was the site of the Poor People’s Campaign, hereafter PPC. When he stopped off at the tent he found out from one young activist who was busy painting slogans on posters for the day’s event that the day was the culmination of several weeks of local state capital actions throughout the country highlighting issues like homelessness, immigration and the war economy. All as they adversely affect the great unacknowledged poor masses in this country who have mainly been the victims of the growing gap between the rich and poor. The 23^rd was basically a wake-up call to the federal government and an organizing focus for the PPC cadre who will be working hard over the long haul to achieve some of the goals of the campaign. That morning and afternoon would be highlighted by a rally with the inevitable speakers and a march toward the Capitol several blocks down the Mall.     

Once Si knew what was happening and knowing that a fair number of readers and certainly a fair number of writers at this publication remember the original ill-fated Poor People’s Campaign from 1968 which was short-circuited by the murders Doctor Martin Luther King who originally organized the event and Robert Kennedy who was running for President that year and had endorsed the ideas of the campaign and had visited the encampment set up in that summer before his death he called up site manager Greg Green to see if he wanted Si to cover that event. Greg although about a half generation younger that the average person who would remember that event jumped on it with both hands. Told Si to not worry about the Cezanne exhibit and do a piece on the event, Which he did a good job on and had been posted on this site in late June.  

That would not be the end of the PPC coverage though once Si had done his report. Greg, curious about the original PPC, looked for writers here that might have some information and insights about what happened, or didn’t happen, in 1968 and maybe why. As it turned out the only person who had paid much attention to the event was I. I had actually visited the encampment in the summer of 1968 before I received that dreaded draft notice from “my friends and neighbors” which is the way they introduced themselves at the draft board in Adamsville. I made it clear to Greg that I had not been an activist, a participant but had been down for a different reason, a non-political reason, which is North Adamsville corner boy speak back then meant seeing some young woman. Be that as it may Greg assigned me the piece. I make no great claims about being some kind of PPC scholar but only offer some observation which may alert the current audience to what is happening.     

[This truly belongs as an aside but I could not resist making the point that in the amateur political organizing business some things never change. I refer to Si’s asking what was happening on June 23^rd to a young activist who was painting slogans on poster board. I can remember many a night, many an after midnight night, high on some drug of the month, working with a small group of other young activists painting slogans on poster board for some demonstration or other. That is the same part. What nobody, nobody in their right minds does today is take said posters or leaflets and using old-fashioned wallpaper paste put them up on telephone poles and on wall also after midnight to avoid the coppers, and probably high on the drug of the month then too] Seth Garth  

A Few Notes On The Poor Peoples Campaign Of 1968 As Food For Thought As We Prepare From The Second And Hopefully Final Campaign in 2018

[As many of you know this is the 50^th anniversary of the original Poor Peoples Campaign of 1968. Over the past several months to a year various individuals and organizations have organized around many of those original themes of bringing the poor into some kind of equality in this society. Over the next several weeks there will be weekly actions here locally and a mass rally in Washington around specific grievances. Smedley is knee-deep in the local planning so to give some thoughts about the original campaign is what our May GM discussion period is about. Since we have a big agenda I have written some notes so that we can go to the discussion part directly and save some time. These notes will also be in hard copy at the GM. Al Johnson]

As a long ago philosopher pointed out those who do not remember history are condemned to relive it. That point is what drives this discussion about what happened to the first Poor Peoples Campaign in 1968. It does not pretend to be all-inclusive nor more than one person’s take on those times and that event.

At the most general level the original PPC was a dramatic defeat for the struggles of the poor and oppressed of this country. To understand some of the reasons behind that defeat beyond the murder of the prime mover of the campaign Doctor King will help us to push forward. In a sense the PPC was poorly timed since 1968 as many of us older activists know was a hell-bent year with the Tet offensive finally showing Americans we could not “win” in Vietnam, the refusal of the sitting president, LBJ, to run again, the two assassinations of iconic progressive figures in King and Bobby Kennedy who were in their respective ways driving forces behind the campaign, the turmoil in the streets here and internationally with the May Days in France and the chaos and horror of the Democratic Convention in the summer of that year. So the PPC had to fight for breathe against those more dramatic events and got pushed to the side rather easily especially after King’s murder and some inner turmoil and in-fighting among the leadership.

The PPC was ill-timed and ill-starred in another way. Frankly the heroic black civil rights struggle down South which brought about massive increases in voting rights and some other positive benefits did not after 1965 put much of a dent in the oppression of black people and other minorities around housing, jobs, education, healthcare and the like. With the Vietnam War sucking the life out of Lyndon Johnson’s modern day version of “forty acres and a mule” the war on poverty at a governmental level fell apart. Liberals, governmental and private citizens, began the long retreat away from governmental attempts to alleviate poverty which continues to this day witness the demise of the social welfare programs started under the Clinton administration. Moreover a reaction set in around the question of race when the cities started burning up as a result of the denial of legitimate grievances by the black community and its allies in other minority communities.

The elephant in the room though and fifty years of myth creation around the hallowed name of Doctor King cannot cover the fact up that he as a leader of the black community had lost some authority by pre-Vietnam speech 1967, has been upended by more militant blacks from various vocal anti-integrationist black nationalists to the upfront romantic if doomed Black Panthers. Think about the evolution of the previously intergrated SNCC once black power became a widespread slogan, especially among the young non-churched types. King was the number one symbol of black integration when the moods in the black community was heading elsewhere. Those of us in the military in those days got a taste of that in off-hours when there was very little interaction between the races. King through his belated and now famous anti-Vietnam War speech and his support of the sanitation workers in Memphis was making something of a “comeback” and the PPC was to be at least the symbolic way to get his agenda back on the front pages.

This political, social and personal backdrop does not take away from what was attempted, and what was necessary given the other factors particularly the retreat by the liberals from advocacy of many social programs and the hostility of others to even dealing with the poverty problem any longer. A look at the PPC program tells us that much. It also highlights not only the social reality of the times but that like the heroic struggle for formal civils rights the poor and oppressed were going to have to fight for the better housing, healthcare, education and the like since few others were committed to their cause. The need for the poor and oppressed to lead and fight for what they need which never really happened in 1968 and is the wave of the future of the current campaigns really is the only long-term way forward in order to break the cycle of poverty and the pathologies that gut-level struggle for survival engenders. Something which grouping up in the projects I was personally painfully aware of as a kid.

A few nuts and bolts facts about the 1968 PPC will show that many of the same issues still need addressing, some of the same organizing tactics are in play as well from multiracial, multicultural meetings of poor people and their advocates which the ruling class in its constant strategy of “divide and conquer” hates to see to some programmatic demands. In March of 1968 many poverty-centered organizations like the National Welfare Rights Organization and the Southern Regional Council joined with Doctor King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in Atlantic to forge a common program to fight on. To list the three major demands today seems utopian (and way underestimating the money that would be needed today) but still necessary to fight around:

·        $30 billion annual appropriation for a real war on poverty

·        Congressional passage of full employment and guaranteed income legislation [a guaranteed annual wage]

·        Construction of 500,000 low-cost housing units per year until slums were eliminated

To highlight these demands the campaign would be divided into three phases, the first to create a permitted shanty town of several thousand people which came to be called Resurrection City on the National Mall, the second to begin protest demonstrations and mass non-violent civil disobedience actions and third to take actions to generate mass arrests like those which brought national attention to the plight of blacks in the South around voting rights. The latter two phases are the touchstone of the 2018 campaign as well.

To bring people to Washington several “caravans” were organized from all regions of the country to meet in June of 1968 with a big solidarity rally which brought some 50, 000 people to D.C. to join the estimated 3000 that were “residing” on the Mall.  

Bayard Rustin put forth a proposal for an “Economic Bill of Rights” for Solidarity Day that called for the federal government to most of which still are the wave of the future:

Recommit to the Full Employment Act of 1946 and legislate the immediate creation of at least one million socially useful career jobs in public service, adopt the pending housing and urban development act of 1968, repeal the 90th Congress’s punitive welfare restrictions in the 1967 Social Security Act, extend to all farm workers the right–guaranteed under the National Labor Relations Act–to organize agricultural labor unions, and restore budget cuts for bilingual education, Head Start, summer jobs, Economic Opportunity Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Acts

I have addressed some of the problems and social conditions which helped undermine that first campaign and others can add more from their recollections of the times including the question of post-King murder leadership and in-fighting. Hopefully the latter will not be an issue in the new movement.      

There are some differences in the current campaign from that of 1968 that I think are worth noting as we gear up the campaign. First, if we are to be successful this time, real poor people and members of oppressed communities will have to take leadership roles, make their mistakes and learn from them. Just like we did, do. Our role is one of support to see that such leadership emerges which I believe was a real short-coming of the “professional” organizer from Doctor King on down model in 1968. Second we are “demanding” similar programs to those of 1968 but not “begging” the government to implement as some criticized the 1968 campaign for doing. Lastly, and unfortunately, there are several more issues that the 1968 campaign did not have to address as forcefully like an end to mass black and Latino incarceration and the war on drugs which has decimated communities of color and sapped it of a young, mostly male, leadership component.