This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Friday, December 20, 2019
Buy The Ticket-Take The Ride-The
Trials And Tribulations Of Scoping The 2020 Democratic Party Nomination-Part
By Allan Jackson
As long as I have been in politics,
interested in politics which is a very long time now it never fails to hit me
on the impeachment process (Fall 2019) of one Donald J. Trump, POSTUS who by
any standard of decency or hygiene should have been shown the door a long time
ago. But the rages against the night over that one are not what has me exercised
today. Especially since once the process gets to the Senate floor it is given the
actual political configuration dead on arrival, DOA, in every sense of that expression.
No what has me exercised in light of the political reality of the day is how the
issue of impeachment and acquittal will lay out to Trump’s unearned advantage.
More pressingly how it will affect the configuration going into 2020. This
after having recently spent an afternoon in the wiles of New Hampshire stirring
up the pot for Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont who at this point (unlike a
couple of months ago) has a track to the Democratic Party nomination if things
work out for him early in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.
From what I can gather
after one afternoon (and some other time not in New Hampshire but courtesy of
modern technology calling voters in the state from home) is that impeachment
business among the somewhat culled working lists is more a spectacle for the
pros than a living, breathing concern of those out in the hinterland. But that
could cut both ways. As far as I know every Democratic presidential candidate
has come out one way or another for impeachment, including Senator Sanders, so
that will color politics going forward if not now then come fall general
election time. That is probably all that subject is worth at this time but stay
tuned.
What is really intriguing
is the play in New Hampshire and nationally this fall as candidates jockey for position.
I am the first to admit that in early October I thought Senator Sander’s
chances due to health and a trend toward other candidates, particularly the
rising star of Senator Elizabeth Warren as former Vice President Joseph Biden’s
star was fading was at best stalled. Since then with his recovery and with a
crucial endorsement and major rally in Queens with rising super-star AOC things
have turned somewhat, turned for the better. Strangely, if thankfully, during that
period the Senator Warren star has fallen somewhat. Fallen mainly over fudging
the issues around Medicare for All but in general not convincing people that
she will not, or would not, cave in to muddled maybe someday pie in the sky medical
care issues favored by the Democratic Party establishment. Perhaps the biggest
if most expensive political lesson she has had to learn in her short political
career.
It really comes down to
the question of trust, and maybe time too. Senator Sanders has been touting his
social and political agenda for the past forty years-and people have finally
caught up to him. He did not cut corners when he was virtually alone out in the
wilderness and he has not now when he has a whole freaking movement at his back
to raise holy hell. Yeah, it comes down to trust, a commodity in short supply
in the political universe these days. That and a certain amount of undefinable
courage to fight the fight against the greed-heads, the con men, the ever
present bag men and the corner cutters. That is the sense that I get talking to
people in the hills of old New Hampshire about Senator Sanders whether they support
him or not. You can hardly get anybody to disagree that he will not fight like
seven dervishes once he hits the White House running. Forward to victory in the
New Hampshire come February 11, 2020.
Rumbling And A-Tumbling On
Campaign Trail 2020-The Mysteries Of Presidential Politics Unfurled
By Allan Jackson
Anybody serious about
politics, meaning me in the first instance, will if they play the game long
enough find that they have twisted and turned in the winds more than once. Take
this 2020 Presidential election cycle. Normally I would, along with many friends,
cover the race without getting our hands dirty. From the sidelines. This age of
Trump though has most of us worried that the Republic cannot stand another four
years of this madness. If Trump wins reelection, meaning that he will be
totally untethered from anything not having to run again then people like me,
left-wing people will be facing the bastinado come Inauguration Day 2012, or find
ourselves running up in the hills somewhere.
To forestall that possibility,
either possibility actually, a number of
us in January met to decide not whether we would cover the campaign but how deeply
we would invest in some candidate whom we thought could beat Trump and save us
from that bastinado/head for the hills scenario. On its face that idea might
not seem surprising since millions of citizens take a crack at politics every
four by participating in the presidential sweepstakes. But not us. We, the group
that formed the committee in Boston to work some campaign have all been involved
in more left-wing political causes that you could shake a stick at, all the
time for most of the past fifty years or so (or in the case of Frank Jackman
now sixty years). We are the remnant of the Generation of ’68 who abhorred the
idea of getting bogged down in elections for individual candidates with
blah-blah programs soon forgotten when the power boys roll their dice. We would
particularly scoff at somebody like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for, as
socialist in good-standing, even thinking about running for elective office. Be
as we said and still say more often than not part of the problem not the
solution.
But we live in troubled times,
a time when we feel the Republic, that beautiful old ragged institution that we
would all prefer to work under is in danger from forces well beyond whatever
one Donald J. Trump can unleash. And hence that early January 2019 meeting to
decide who to support with cash, time and energy in 2020. The meeting itself was
made up of veterans, including veterans now peace workers, old-time civil
rights advocates, a sprinkle of students, mostly bogged down with college debt,
community organizers and activists and the like. The key was that each invitee
had been, was, is an organizer who would go out and organize others to swell
our ranks (something that has actually happened although as any political
organizer knows you can never have enough of them).
That first meeting, that
contentious first meeting centered on two points-who to support and where to expend
our energies since we were close to New Hampshire the first primary state in
the nomination process come February 11, 2020. That latter point was fairly easily
settled although a couple of people balked at focusing on New Hampshire when
there was plenty of work to be done at home. They left but the rest of us
agreed that Iowa and New Hampshire were important historical grounding boards
for most successful campaigns.
That brought us to which
of the then myriad (and still plentiful) candidates ready to take on Trump,
some serious, others who knows what they were about. This is where some of us
got a little shamefaced (actually Frank Jackman brought up the old refrain about
electoral candidates being part of the problem not the solution although he was
among the strongest partisans that we set up a committee early and grab a candidate
as well. The “contest” if you will had been centered on one Bernard Sanders,
U.S. Senator from Vermont who had run hard but unsuccessfully against Hillary Clinton
in 2016 and Massachusetts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. Others were vetted,
including the perennial Joe Biden, former Vice President under Barack Obama and
the darling of the Democratic Party establishment (maybe less so now in the
winter of 2019) but came up with too much negative baggage, or were too
light-weight to take the heavy mud fight that will be the 2020 General Election.
I found it hard to believe
that after a million years of scoffing one Senator Sanders that I would be his
biggest partisan come selection time. But such are the times. The kicker for
many of us was that despite being out in the wilderness from many years with
his entirely supportable programs like Medicare for All, his version of the Green
New Deal and college debt forgiveness he stood fast all these years and you
could trust him to work like seven dervishes to enact the programs after 2020.
Trust a characteristic in very short supply these days. Courage too now that I
think about it. In the end that would be the main draw from selecting Senator
Sanders as our candidate. Senator Warren has adopted many of Senator Sander’s
ideas along the way and for a while was dishing out a new program a week but we
felt she was a weak reed against a guy like Trump. Somebody mentioned that
there were only so many wonks who would appreciate her papers (including us who
wound up having to read them all). Not enough to
beat Trump in a mud fight.
I will leave it at that.
Friedrich Engels, in his 1878 book Anti-Dühring, observed that religion serves both as solace for the miseries produced by class society and as an ideology justifying class domination. Marxists counterpose a materialist view of the world to religious obscurantism and other forms of idealism. Against the notion that religious belief could be dispelled simply through rational argumentation, Engels explained that religion will only disappear with the realization of a classless communist society in which scarcity has been eliminated.
All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces….
We have seen repeatedly that in existing bourgeois society men are dominated by the economic conditions created by themselves, by the means of production which they themselves have produced, as if by an alien force. The actual basis of the religious reflective activity therefore continues to exist, and with it the religious reflection itself. And although bourgeois political economy has given a certain insight into the causal connection of this alien domination, this makes no essential difference. Bourgeois economics can neither prevent crises in general, nor protect the individual capitalists from losses, bad debts and bankruptcy, nor secure the individual workers against unemployment and destitution. It is still true that man proposes and God (that is, the alien domination of the capitalist mode of production) disposes. Mere knowledge, even if it went much further and deeper than that of bourgeois economic science, is not enough to bring social forces under the domination of society. What is above all necessary for this, is a social act. And when this act has been accomplished, when society, by taking possession of all means of production and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself and all its members from the bondage in which they are now held by these means of production which they themselves have produced but which confront them as an irresistible alien force; when therefore man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes—only then will the last alien force which is still reflected in religion vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect.
Maybe Not Fit For The Primetime Hallmark Channel- Gary Cooper’s “Peter Ibbetson” (1935)-A Short Film Review
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell
Peter Ibbetson, starring Ann Harding, Gary Cooper, 1935
Hasn’t the Hallmark Channel except this time of year add in some Christmas carols and a few decorated trees, etc. already done the plotline to this film, this 1935 film Peter Ibbetson, starring a mustachioed Gary Cooper in the title role and Ann Harding as his flame Mary. (He last seen in this publication in a review, a debunking expose of the legendary American Old West outlaw Link Jones who must have had a pretty press agent to beat the rap as a bad guy by self-proclaimed legend-slayer young Will Bradley). I know of whence I speak since Laura Perkins, yes, the Laura Perkins who writes here and my long-time companion is “addicted” to this channel’s television products this holiday time of year and some days I heard the plot-line as background when I am working or reading.
Let me outline, with Laura’s key input and approval, the plot and see if except the last almost surreal end minutes this couldn’t have been one of the long line of similar Hallmark presentations and saved the channel some money for screenwriters (although they probably only spent about six dollars on that expense from the dialogue and stories that I have overheard but please don’t tell Laura that). Some young professional woman returns home (for Christmas but any holiday would do) having either dumped or been dumped by some unworthy guy who didn’t see her positive qualities, or he didn’t have any as the case may be. During that home stay, and this is the important connector to the film under review, she runs into, one way or another “the boy next door,” some guy from her youth growing up in splendid small-town America. Either she had a crush on him or him her when they were young and that sets the “drama” for the rest of the production. Until that last clinching kiss after one or the other, or both have tried to avoid destiny call.
Fast forward, no, fast backward. Peter and Mary are the children of English ex-pats in the 19th century who live in some splendor in Paris-and are next door neighbors. And are fast friends despite their childhood predilections. Young Peter’s mother though dies of what probably was consumption then, tuberculous now and he is shipped back to England with some ne’er-do-well uncle. Before parting they swear undying devotion to each other. (Interestingly we see neither Peter or Mary’s father so maybe that ex-pat business had to do with their mothers as we called it in the old Acre working class section of North Adamsville where I grew up “going to see Aunt Emma,” leaving town or in this case country to have a child out of wedlock, to be pregnant, to bear illegitimate children no big deal now but very big then.)
That promise to reunite is what drives the second part of the film when Peter as an adult has taken up the profession of architect and Mary has landed on her feet very nicely by marrying an older man, an English Duke of the realm and loaded with dough and love of horses if not of Mary. And she him, the not in love part. The reunion, the dragged out reunion, between the pair gets resolved when up and coming architect Peter is commissioned by the Duke and Duchess to build a new stable for the horses, a job he will supervise for a couple of months without either him or Mary figuring out the basis of the growing attraction between them. Naturally the relationship between the two former neighbors grows putting everything in doubt once the Duke, who may have loved horses and not loved Mary, still was no fool and saw what was going on between them. Saw and had enough jealous rage to plot their murders. Except in the melee the Duke was killed by Peter. No good could come of that.
Frankly, Peter should have gotten himself a better lawyer because what was clearly a case of self-defense got him convicted of a murder rap in very protective of nobility England. Here is where things veer off from a Hallmark script. Essentially Peter and Mary are so much in love that they have a mystical bond between them which lasts for the rest of their lives despite being apart. Peter in some hell-hole Dickens Dartmoor dungeon and her in tortured splendor at her estate (she always seems to land on her feet unlike Peter who takes it on the chin always). I suspected they like Thomas de Quincy and Sam Coleridge were doing some very strong drugs but that is mere speculation. In any case when Mary dies Peter passes away as well although they will be united for eternity wherever they wind up. You know maybe I am wrong, maybe this one has too much drama, too much melodrama to pass muster on the Hallmark Channel. Laura agrees.
***An Encore Presentation -Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Time Of Frankie’s Carnival Time-With Bruce Springsteen's "Jersey Girl" in Mind
By Lance Lawrence
An old man walked, walked haltingly down a North Adamsville street, maybe Hancock Street, or maybe a street just off of it, maybe a long street like West Main Street, he has forgotten which exactly in the time between his walking and his telling me his story. A street near the high school anyway, North Adamsville High School, where he had graduated from back in the mist of time, the 1960s mist of time. A time when he was known, far and wide, as the king, the king hell king, if the truth be known, of the schoolboy be-bop night. And headquartered himself, properly headquartered himself as generations of schoolboy king hell kings had done previously, at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor as was his due as the reigning schoolboy king of the night. But that schoolboy corner boy king thing is an old story, an old story strictly for cutting up old torches, according to the old man, Frankie, yes, Francis Xavier Riley, as if back from the dead, and not fit, not fit by a long shot for what he had to tell me about his recent “discovery,” and its meaning.
Apparently as Frankie, let us skip the formalities and just call him Frankie, walked down that nameless, maybe unnamable street he was stricken by sight of a sign on a vagrant telephone pole announcing that Jim Byrd’s Carnival and Traveling Show was coming to town and setting up tent at the Veteran’s Stadium in the first week in June, this past June, for the whole week. And seeing this sign, this vagrant sign on this vagrant telephone pole, set off a stream of memories from when the king hell king of the schoolboy corner boy night was so enthralled with the idea of the “carny” life, of this very Jim Byrd’s Carnival and Traveling Show carnival life, that he had plans, serious plans, to run away, run away with it when it left town.
Under this condition, and of course there was always a condition: if Ma Riley, or Pa Riley if it came to it, although Pa was usually comfortably ensconced in the Dublin Pub over on Sagamore Street and was not a big factor in Frankie’s life when it came time for him to make his mark as king hell king, just bothered him one more time, bothered about what was never specified at least to me. Of course they never did, or Frankie never let on that they did, bother him enough to force the issue, and therefore never forced him on the road. But by then he was into being the corner boy king so that dream must have faded, like a lot of twelve year old dreams.
In any case rather than running away with the carnival Frankie served his high school corner boy term as king hell king, went to college and then to law school, ran a successful mid-sized law practice, raised plenty of kids and political hell and never looked back. And not until he saw that old-time memory sign did he think of regrets for not having done what he said that “he was born for.” And rather than have the reader left with another in the endless line of cautionary tales, or of two roads, one not taken tales, or any of that, Frankie, Frankie in his own words, wants to expand on his carnival vision reincarnation and so we will let him speak :
Who knows when a kid first gets the carnival bug, maybe it was down in cradle times hearing the firecrackers in the heated, muggy Fourth Of July night when in old, old time North Adamsville a group of guys, a group of guys called the “Associates,” mainly Dublin Pub guys, and at one time including my father, Joe Riley, Senior, grabbed some money from around the neighborhood. And from the local merchants like Doc over at Doc’s Drug Store, Mario over at Estrella’s Grocery Store, Mac, owner of the Dublin Pub, and always, always, Tonio, owner of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor. What they did with this money was to hire a small time, usually very small time, carnival outfit, something with a name like Joe’s Carny, or the like, maybe with a merry-go-round, some bumping cars, a whip thing, a few one-trick ponies, and ten or twelve win-a-doll-for-your-lady tents. On the side maybe a few fried dough, pizza, sausage and onions kind of eateries, with cotton candy to top it off. And in a center tent acts, clown acts, trapeze acts with pretty girls dangling every which way, jugglers, and the like. Nothing fancy, no three-ring circus, or monster theme amusement park to flip a kid’s head stuff. Like I say small time, but not small time enough to not enflame the imagination of every kid, mainly every boy kid, but a few girls too if I remember right, with visions of setting up their own show.
Or maybe it was when this very same Jim Byrd, a dark-haired, dark-skinned (no, not black, not in 1950s North Adamsville, christ no, but maybe a gypsy or half-gypsy, if that is possible), a friendly guy, slightly wiry, a slightly side-of-his-mouth-talking guy just like a lawyer, who actually showed me some interesting magic tricks when I informed him, aged eight, that I wanted to go “on the road” with him first brought his show to town. Brought it to Veteran’s Stadium then too. That’s when I knew that that old time Associates thing, that frumpy Fourth of July set-up-in-a-minute-thing-and-then-gone was strictly amateur stuff. See Jim’s Carny had a Ferris wheel, Jim had a Mini-Roller Coaster, and he had about twenty-five or thirty win-a-doll, cigarettes, teddy bears, or candy tents. But also shooting galleries, gypsy fortune-telling ladies with daughters with black hair and laughing eyes selling roses, or the idea of roses.
And looking very foxy, the daughters that is, although I did not know what foxy was then. Oh yah, sure Jim had the ubiquitous fried dough, sausage and onion, cardboard pizza stuff too. Come on now this was a carnival, big time carnival, big time to an eight-year old carnival. Of course he had that heartburn food. But what set Jim’s operation off was that central tent. Sure, yawn, he had the clowns, tramp clowns, Clarabelle clowns, what have you, and the jugglers, juggling everything but mainly a lot of whatever it was they were juggling , and even the acrobats, bouncing over each other like rubber balls. The big deal, the eight- year old big deal though, was the animals, the real live tigers and lions that performed in a cage in center stage with some blonde safari-weary tamer doing the most incredible tricks with them. Like, well, like having them jump through hoops, and flipping over each other and the trainer too. Wow.
But now that I think about it seriously the real deal of the carny life was neither the Associates or Jim Byrd’s, although after I tell you about this Jim’s would enter into my plans because that was the carnival, the only carnival I knew, to run away with. See what really got me going was down in Huntsville, a town on the hard ocean about twenty miles from North Adamsville, there was what would now be called nothing but an old-time amusement park, a park like you still might see if you went to Seaside Heights down on the Jersey shore. This park, this Wild Willie’s Amusement Park, was the aces although as you will see not a place to run away to since everything stayed there, summer open or winter closed. I was maybe nine or ten when I first went there but the story really hinges on when I was just turning twelve, you know, just getting ready to make my mark on the world, the world being girls. Yes, that kind of turning twelve.
But nine or twelve this Wild Willie’s put even Jim Byrd’s show to shame. Huge roller-coasters (yes, the plural is right, three altogether), a wild mouse, whips, dips, flips and very other kind of ride, covered and uncovered, maybe fifteen or twenty, all based on the idea of trying to make you scared, and want to go on again, and again to“conquer” that scared thing. And countless win things (yah, cigarettes, dolls, teddy bears, candy, and so on in case you might have forgotten). I won’t even mention that hazardous to your health but merciful, fried dough, cardboard pizza (in about twenty flavors), sausage and onions, cotton candy and salt water taffy because, frankly I am tired of mentioning it and even a flea circus or a flea market today would feel compelled to offer such treats so I will move on.
What it had that really got me going, at first anyway, was about six pavilions worth of pinball machines, all kinds of pinball machines just like today there are a zillion video games at such places. But what these pinball machines had (beside alluring come-hither and spend some slot machine dough on me pictures of busty young women on the faces of the machines) were guys, over sixteen year old teenage guys, mainly, some older, some a lot older at night, who could play those machines like wizards, racking up free games until the cows came home. I was impressed, impressed to high heaven. And watching them, watching them closely were over sixteen- year old girls, some older, some a lot older at night, who I wondered, wondered at when I was nine but not at twelve, might not be interfering with their pinball magic. Little did I know then that the pinball wizardry was for those sixteen year old, some older, some a lot older girls.
But see, if you didn’t already know, nine or twelve-year old kids were not allowed to play those machines. You had to be sixteen (although I cadged a few free games left on machines as I got a little older, and I think the statute of limitations has run out on this crime so I can say I was not sixteen years or older). So I gravitated toward the skee ball games located in one of those pinball pavilions, games that anybody six to sixty or more could play. You don’t know skees. Hey where have you been? Skee, come on now. Go over to Seaside Heights on the Jersey shore, or Old Orchard up on the Maine coast and you will have all the skees you want, or need. And if you can’t waggle your way to those hallowed spots then I will give a little run-down. It’s kind of like bowling, candle-pin bowling (small bowling balls for you non-New Englanders) with a small ball and it’s kind of like archery or darts because you have to get the balls, usually ten or twelve to a game, into tilted holes.
The idea is to get as high a score as possible, and in amusement park land after your game is over you get coupons depending on how many points you totaled. And if you get enough points you can win, well, a good luck rabbit’s foot, like I won for Karen stick-girl one time (a stick girl was a girl who didn’t yet have a shape, a womanly shape, and maybe that word still is used, okay), one turning twelve-year old time, who thought I was the king of the night because I gave her one from my “winning,” and maybe still does. Still does think I am king of the hill. But a guy, an old corner boy guy that I knew back then, a kind of screwy guy who hung onto my tail at Salducci’s like I was King Solomon, a guy named Markin who hung around me from middle school on, already wrote that story once. Although he got one part wrong, the part about how I didn’t know right from left about girls and gave this Karen stick girl the air when, after showering her with that rabbit’s foot, she wanted me to go with her and sit on the old seawall down at Huntsville Beach and according to Markin I said no-go. I went, believe me I went, and we both practically had lockjaw for two weeks after we got done. But you know how stories get twisted when third parties who were not there, had no hope of being there, and had questionable left from right girl knowledge themselves start their slanderous campaigns on you. Yes, you know that scene, I am sure.
So you see, Karen stick and lockjaw aside, I had some skill at skees, and the way skees and the carny life came together was when, well let me call her Gypsy Love, because like the name of that North Adamsville vagrant telephone pole street where I saw the Byrd’s carnival in town sign that I could not remember the name of I swear I can’t, or won’t remember hers. All I remember is that jet-black long hair, shiny dark-skinned glean (no, no again, she was not black, christ, no way, not in 1950s Wild Willie’s, what are you kidding me?), that thirteen-year old winsome smile, half innocent, half-half I don’t know what, that fast-forming girlish womanly shape and those laughing, Spanish gypsy black eyes that would haunt a man’s sleep, or a boy’s. And that is all I need to remember, and you too if you have any imagination. See Gypsy Love was the daughter of Madame La Rue, the fortune-teller in Jim Byrd’s carnival. I met her in turning twelve time when she tried to sell me a rose, a rose for my girlfriend, my non-existent just then girlfriend. Needless to say I was immediately taken with her and told her that although I had no girlfriend I would buy her a rose.
And that, off and on, over the next year is where we bounced around in our “relationship.” One day I was down at Wild Willie’s and I spotted her and asked her why she wasn’t on the road with Jim Byrd’s show. Apparently Madame LaRue had had a falling out with Jim, quit the traveling show and landed a spot at Wild Willie’s. And naturally Gypsy Love followed mother, selling flowers to the rubes at Wild Willie’s. So naturally, naturally to me, I told Gypsy Love to follow me over to the skees and I would win her a proper prize. And I did, I went crazy that day. A big old lamp for her room. And Gypsy Love asked me, asked me very nicely thank you, if I wanted to go down by the seawall and sit for a while. And let’s get this straight, no third party who wasn’t there, no wannbe there talk, please, I followed her, followed her like a lemming to the sea. And we had the lockjaw for a month afterward to prove it. And you say, you dare to say I was not born for that life, that carnival life. Ha.
… on a cold clear winter night across the channel you could see the sparks from the welding torch flying earthbound as the mad monk welder (a modern day sorcerer in his own right) seven stories scaffolding up melded yet another bolt to join the emerging ship’s skin and elsewhere hear the thundering beat of immense hammerings as some deafened laborers laid foundation bones to her bottom (her, yes, her, ships always her against the manly King, or was it uncle, or brother, Neptune who jealously ruled the seas). That beehive of activity created World War II troops transports (one a day collectively to bring bad boy Hitler righteously to his knees and that bastard Tojo too) and later majestic (majestic on launching but barnacled, rusted, and needing paint after a few trans-oceanic voyages) and gigantic floating oil well tankers made old hometown Adamsville stir, made its denizens leap for joy as each new contract came in. Money to spent, money to burn after hard time 1930s depression days (not called great depression, not by the railroad siding, shanty town shack, park bench newspaper for a pillow living, but only anointed as such later by august historians and quirky plainsong singers). He noticed though that those welded sparks and headache hammerings were less frequent, less frequent at night, in childhood 1950s and while he could hear occasional muted hammerings and firefly sparks that gigantic superstructure lost his undivided attention.
His attention now drawn to sullen laborers, mostly kindred Irish, Irish moved south from the great Southie migration when Hitler’s moves demanded a troop transport a day (no I haven’t forgotten that bastard Tojo but Adamsville ships were meant for Atlantic waters) and sturdy hands and fellaheen forbear hearts gave it to him right in the kisser, unemployed now, sitting in Dublin Grille, Irish Pub, hell, Johnny Ricco’s Bar (where they could get credit, drink credit, okay), gnawing over wife- nagging troubles (she tiredly counting out the bill envelopes, food, gas, electric, oil, telephone, no skip that this week ,to cover the weekly graft, or a littlebit to keep the wolves away from the door for another week), kids getting to be strangers troubles (not knowing ofsullen dads, or penny-pinching moms,but only of Jones’ children with spiffy sporty clothes, not hand- me-downs, personal record players and money, cash money to buy be-bop Elvis records and rock the night away), and rent troubles (no more mortgage troubles, thank god, since the house went last year along with that six payments short of completion up-scale Buick that was a pride and joy).
He noticed too the town at daylight seemed kind of ashen grey, kind of preternaturally quiet against the steel-hammered plated world, trash strewn, uncollected, over ball fields, down Adamsville beaches, up the store front empty Square, average citizens with their heads bent down walking around just to walk around (just to get out of the house, and get, what did his grandfather call it, oh yah, to get the stink blowed off), and houses, too many houses, in need of lawn trimmings, in need of paint to color the world again, in need of, in need of, damn, life.He swore (an oath, not a Catholic brimstone and damnation no no word) on all that his twelve-year old dreams could dream on that he would get out, get out just as fast as he could.
Another sound, a bobbing machine sound, ten thousand bobbing machine sounds at once all day and all night along one blessed textiles to clothe a modern world mile (including modern armies to kick Hitler’s butt, and Tojo’s too), maybe more, all red brick and waspish-sounding owner names, peopled by Irish, Italians, Greeks, and French-Canadians down from Quebec farms and Gaspe ports of call, the ethnics, the usual suspects in mill- town America (who knows maybe the world) another smell, smoke, endless smoke from endless chimneys form long phallic lines (don’t let Allen know that) across the Lowell sky and add look, look at the rushing Merrimac torrent now colored blue ,or red, or yellow, depending on day’s fabric as those looks are carried to the Atlantic seas. Money to spend , money to burn, sounds familiar, after hard time 1930s depression days (not called great depression, not by the Boston and Maine railroad siding, riverside shanty town shack, Daly Square park bench newspaper for a pillow living, but only anointed as such later by august historians and quirky plainsong singers). He noticed, like his Adamsville cousin down the road with his blessed savior ships , that those bobbing sounds, grey smoke belching chimneys, and flash- colored river torrents were less frequent, less frequent at night, in childhood 1950s and while he could hear occasional muted bobbings and see fire- spark crackling smokes, that long red mile lost his undivided attention.
His attention now drawn to sullen laborers, mill hands mostly, mostly too kindred F-C, F-C moved south from the great Quebec migration when sturdy hands and fellaheen forbear hearts were needed to clothe a naked world, unemployed now, sitting in Jacques’ Grille, The French- American Club over in Pawtucketville, hell, even the Galway Pub (where they could get credit, drink credit, a universal need in doldrums days, okay), gnawing over wife- nagging troubles (she tiredly counting out the bill envelopes, food, gas, electric, oil, telephone, no skip that this week , to cover the weekly graft, or a little bit to keep the wolves away from the door for another week), kids getting to be strangers troubles (not knowing ofsullen dads, or penny-pinching moms,but only of Jones’ children with sporty clothes, not hand- me- downs, personal record players and money, cash money to buy be-bop Elvis records and rock the night away), and rent troubles (no more mortgage troubles, thank god, since the house went last year along with that six payments short of completion up-scale Buick that was a pride and joy).
He noticed too the town at daylight seemed kind of ashen grey not real ash, like some eruptedvolcano, just metaphor ash, kind of preternaturally quiet against the bobbing-less world, trash strewn, uncollected, over ball fields, down riverside fronts, up in Daly Square, average citizens with their heads bent down walking around just to walk around (just to get out of the house, and get, what did his grandfather, universal grandfather, call it, oh yah, translated from F-C patois, get the stink blowed off), and houses, too many houses, in need of lawn trimmings, in need of paint to color the world again, in need of, in need of, damn, life.He swore (an oath, not a Catholic brimstone and damnation no no word) on all that his twelve- year old dreams could dream on that he would get out, get out just as fast as he could.
And further south, Jersey town south, down past the Jersey piers, and dotted oil tanks, Paterson, a town oftowns of long ago boss fights and John Reed big story reportings, red, a town name now to make a poet blanche.Another bobbing sound, a bobbing machine sound, ten thousand bobbing machine sounds at once all day and all night along one blessed textiles to clothe a modern world section of town (including modern armies to kick Hitler’s butt, and Tojo’s too), all red brick and waspish-sounding owner names, peopled by Irish, Italians, Greeks, and occasionally some Jews fresh from New York Seventh Avenue flights to get away from big city noises, crimes, distractions (strangely their sons and daughters, and Adamsville and Lowell son and daughters, will be moth-drawn to the big fussy neon cities), the ethnics, the usual suspects in mill- town America (who knows maybe the world) another smell, smoke, endless smoke from endless chimneys form long phallic (don’t let Allen know that, or maybe he already knows the metaphor ) lines across the Paterson sky and add look, look at the rushing river torrent now colored blue ,or red, or yellow, depending on day’s fabric as those looks are carried to the Atlantic seas. Money to spend, money to burn, sounds very familiar, after hard time 1930s depression days (not called great depression, not by the Penn railroad siding, shanty town shack, downtown park bench newspaper for a pillow living, but only anointed as such later by august historians and quirky plainsong singers). He noticed, like his Adamsville cousin up north with his blessed savior ships and his up north too Lowell cousin with his infernal be-bop bobbings, that those bobbing sounds, grey smoke belching chimneys and flash- colored river torrents were less frequent, less frequent at night, in childhood 1950s and while he could hear occasional muted bobbing and fire- spark crackling smokes, those long smoke stacks lost his undivided attention.
His attention now drawn to sullen laborers, mill hands mostly, mostly not Jewish kindred now (they had moved on to Jersey shore suburbs and away from all cities big and small), but Irish and Italian (and, a few, what did Gregory call them, oh yah, spics, from Puerto Rico, thrown in)when sturdy hands and fellaheen forbear hearts were needed to clothe a naked world, unemployed now, sitting in Billy’s Grille, Nino’s Bar in the barrio, hell, even the Galway Pub (where they could get credit, drink credit, a universal need in doldrums days, okay), gnawing over wife- nagging troubles (she tiredly counting out the bill envelopes, food, gas, electric, oil, telephone, no skip that this week ,to cover the weekly graft, or a little bit to keep the wolves away from the door for another week), kids getting to be strangers troubles (not knowing ofsullen dads, or penny-pinching moms,but only of Jones’ children with sporty clothes, not hand- me- downs, personal record players and money, cash money to buy be-bop Elvis records and rock the night away), and rent (no more mortgage troubles, thank god, since the house went last year along with that six payments short of completion up-scale Buick that was a pride and joy).
He noticed too the town at daylight seemed kind of ashen grey not real ash, like some eruptedvolcano, just metaphor ash, kind of preternaturally quiet against the bobbing-less world, trash strewn, uncollected, over ball fields, in front of abandoned downtown store fronts,up in the square, average citizens with their head bent down walking around just to walk around (just to get out of the house, and get, what did his grandfather, universal Jewish grandfather, call it, oh yah, to unwind the mind and think kabala thoughts of ancient times, or, simple Hebrew translation , just to get the stink blowed off)and houses, too many houses, in need of lawn trimmings, in need of paint to color the world again, in need of, in need of, damn, life.He swore (an oath, not a Talmudic brimstone and damnation no no word) on all that his twelve- year old dreams could dream on that he would get out, get out just as fast as he could.
… yah, towns to get out of, towns to be long gone daddy gone from.
Paterson
What do I want in these rooms papered with visions of money? How much can I make by cutting my hair? If I put new heels on my shoes, bathe my body reeking of masturbation and sweat, layer upon layer of excrement dried in employment bureaus, magazine hallways, statistical cubicles, factory stairways, cloakrooms of the smiling gods of psychiatry; if in antechambers I face the presumption of department store supervisory employees, old clerks in their asylums of fat, the slobs and dumbbells of the ego with money and power to hire and fire and make and break and fart and justify their reality of wrath and rumor of wrath to wrath-weary man, what war I enter and for what a prize! the dead prick of commonplace obsession, harridan vision of electricity at night and daylight misery of thumb-sucking rage.
I would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping in my veins, eyes and ears full of marijuana, eating the god Peyote on the floor of a mudhut on the border or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman; rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun; rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati; rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies; rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles, raised up to die in Denver, pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain, come down roaring in a blaze of hot cars and garbage, streetcorner Evangel in front of City I-Tall, surrounded by statues of agonized lions, with a mouthful of shit, and the hair rising on my scalp, screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality, screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world, blood streaming from my belly and shoulders flooding the city with its hideous ecstasy, rolling over the pavements and highways by the bayoux and forests and derricks leaving my flesh and my bones hanging on the trees.
The Christmas Truce of 1914--A Poem by Richard Greve
It was early in the war and early in their lives, but they already knew that their oh-so-brave leaders had sent them to the slaughter, with cheering crowds, no less. Blind and dumb a continent goes mad with lust-for-war disease.
In the muddy holes they dug, lice crawling under caps, and coughing from cold, they stopped the madness for a few days respite, to celebrate the prince of peace that their royal leaders gave lipservice to on Sunday morning. They sang some songs. drank a soothing drug they shared to find a little peace. They played some ball (they were so young) and went back to muddy holes to sleep a final silent night.
It could not last, their leaders, in their cozy beds, would make sure of that. For four more years the slaughter reigned and holes were dug in rows for them, for their eternal sunless beds, in the lonely fields of France that don't remember or redeem.
When The Oklahoma Kid Did Not Infest My Childhood Dreams-Complete With Reasons
By Sam Lowell
Recently on an airplane ride of some duration I did a little light reading to pass the time. The book I was perusing by the well-known late crime novelist Robert B. Parker was a fictionalized account of the trials and tribulations of the legendary baseball player and heroic breaker of the color-line in Major League baseball Jackie Robinson-and his white bodyguard. That later part carrying the bulk of the fiction around the story. One of the subplots in the story is the utter devotion of a young male baseball fan who whiled away many hours dealing with players, their statistics and their teams. That dedication to task got me to thinking about others whose spent their lonely or forlorn childhoods in that manner. The great Beat novelist Jack Kerouac even had imaginary leagues and all kinds of statistical materials. Others, some well- known, some not had similar stories.
Not me. Not me despite growing up in one of the golden ages of major league baseball when it was for all intends and purposes the dedicated national pastime. This before the endlessly boring football fouled the airwaves and our Sundays and other television nights. I grew up in the 1950s, in the post Brooklyn to Los Angeles and New York to San Francisco times when the leagues reached nation-wide levels despite the crying, the continual crying if I hear right about the diehards, of the Dodgers and Giants leaving the town bereft. My time was the time of New York Yankees run when they were almost unstoppable if healthy. And maybe that is why I was nonplussed by baseball, by counting major league players and their stats and whatever else was going on in that world.
This was the time of stand-out star Mickey Mantle, the Oklahoma Kid who could hit homers, bring in runs and hit for average like nobody’s business. But let’s look at it this way even though I was no homer for the then horrible Boston Red Sox how could a kid from the waterfront projects relate to such athletic prowess from out in dustbowl Oklahoma. Funny, because I loved to deal with numbers too. Sorry Jack and cast but your devotion leave me cold.
The Shadow Knows, Knows Nada, Nada Nunca, Nada As Legend-Slayer Will Bradley Steps Up His Game-With Alex Baldwin’s “The Shadow” (1994) In Mind-A Film Review, Of Sorts
By Will Bradley
The Shadow, starring Penelope Ann Miller, Alex Baldwin, John Lone, 1994
How the mighty have fallen. As the constant reader knows I have been on a tear the past year or so beginning with the expose of the legend around one Sherlock Holmes (where I locked horns with old man Seth Garth in an epic fourteen movie review struggle which between us left nothing much left of that silly so-called private detective and his boyfriend or whatever their relationship), or whatever his name really was since the London police files show Larry Lawrence on its books when he was arrested for transporting stolen goods and about thirty other similar charges and a couple more serious like conspiracy to murder which he and a few others did serious time for in Dartmoor, and his dear friend Doc Watson whose real name was Nigel something but don’t get hung up on names when dealing with legends since their various activities require such or their well-paid and padded press agents decided to spruce up their desperado names to appeal to the public’s fancy.
I won’t bore the reader with the litany of those whose reputations, over-inflated, bloated, undeserved or just plain false, lies so brazen that even a priest would be hard-pressed to give absolution, have been crushed and they are now ready for the trash barrel of history. I have taken my righteous campaign going back as far as Robin Hood and his press agent’s coverup of his nefarious doings when he came into some dough. This Robin Hood, for the record real name Robert Locklear or Lockwood the manse records are messy and show both spellings, for example, who was nothing but a gouging rack-renter once his patron King Richard, aka the Lion-Hearted, gave him plenty of acreage for services rendered and he became as oppressive a landlord in his lofty manor as any country squire. Forgot about those yeomen bandits who helped him with his armed robberies of rich and poor alike, whoever dared show their faces in and around Sherwood Forest up in the north of England. Shamed that Lady Marian, real name Holly, by what today would be called “pimping” her to the various courtesan when he found a younger woman, Ophelia.
(I have refused thus far to take on the “big boys and girls,” the ancient Greeks and Romans, the cranky and crazed gods and goddesses for the simple reason that tracing the records is a bear of a job but I do have a lightweight line on Andromeda and Perseus which I am following concerning his alleged fight against the sea serpents to free her which looks like it was a put -up job worked out so he could “gain her favors,” ancient talk for hitting the sheets or however they covered themselves in their pursuit of lust, if they did, did cover themselves)
Here is the exciting news though and should help me a lot moving up the food chain in this crazy quilt pattern and cutthroat profession which I am only now beginning to navigate with some confidence. A recent UCal survey, poll, conducted in association with the well-known Harrison Foundation has shown a decrease in the belief in various legendary figures of late. The survey was simplicity itself with a broad cross section of the population represented, rich, poor, various genders, races a good mix from what I have seen so far in the preliminary report, as the interviewee was asked about his or her belief in some figure, then told to read my or somebody else’s documented research and asked whether they were more likely, less likely or the same to believe in the legend. Almost across the board the ratings for these bums with nothing but high priced press agents and shills touting their deeds went down, especially a guy named Don Juan who legend was made of whole cloth by some pent up in a convent by a rich man’s hormonally-charged daughter and Captain Blood exposed as one of the worse of the worse Middle Passage slave trade transporters (and reportedly the person British painter Turner was thinking of when he painted his masterful “Slave.”)
Naturally in any human endeavor there are failures, failures when people still believe despite all the evidence to the contrary in the validity of something. That was the case with one Johnny Cielo whose legend has kept me up many a night trying to figure out why with all the documentation that I have amassed his ratings actually “spiked” in this latest polling (I should note maybe reflecting the season that belief in angels has also spiked during this period). Fellow writers had shaken their heads when I started this legend-slaying campaign although once I showed them the poll results they have since backed off since especially among the older writers who were knee-deep in backstabbing me for their own purposes, mainly to not fall down the food chain further in my wake. They still though look at me with funny glances around the water cooler when I bring up my troubles breaking the Cielo legend. My whole idea is to get people to think more reasonably to shed their misconceptions, to shed their alternate facts universe in these troubled times when clear heads and clear thinking are necessary. Hence the heavy push against the fake Cielo legend.
A few Cielo details before I go on to my current task of busting up one Lamont Cranston and his shadow game. The genesis of my knowledge of the Cielo legend came from a fellow journalism graduate student who I knew at NYU and whom I had kept in touch with over the past few years. He had been down in Florida, down in the Keys, on an unrelated story which the parties had backed off on, didn’t show up to expose whenever they had to offer (something about CIA conduits to Cuba if I recall). He was sitting in the old Tanner Tavern trying to drown his sorrows and come up with some kind of story to earn his daily bread. While there an older guy, a drunk from the look of him, Billy something (here I really don’t remember the last name) came up and tried to cadge a drink from him.
My guy reluctantly bought him a whiskey, and a few more as the evening wore on, and as a result that loosened up Billy’s tongue about the old days in Key West. The days when Johnny Cielo roamed the space, roamed the skies by day and drank and whored by night. My guy had never heard of Johnny and so Billy spent the better part of an hour describing this and that about Johnny’s place in the early aviation pantheon which every serious aficionado knows about. (That part, the press agent bullshit part is at least true that the cultists know every detail about Johnny, especially in this part of Florida and the South in general)
The rest of the story can be told by the researching I did after my fellow reporter told me the story since he knew I was looking for copy on these so-called legendary characters for my burgeoning by-line. The first tip of the Johnny iceberg was the claim that he has been the first guy to take human flight. This would seem to have been the straw that broke the camel back on the legend since I was able to retrieve a copy of his birth certificate from the Elmira clerk’s office showing one John Richard Cielo to have been born in 1910. The Wright boys did their magic at Kitty Hawk in 1903. The other kind of secondary piece of evidence for Johnny’s early days was that he gave Howard Hughes the idea for TWA and would have made millions if he had stayed with Hughes. The real deal Johnny was basically a low-rent flying mail postman who ran many operations to the ground before he had to hightail it out of the country with guys with guns breathing down his neck, and a reward on his head by some Chicago mobster who he tried to shake down.
That leaving the country is really where the Johnny legend is centered, that and his later so-called exploits before he fell into the sea. Yeah, his leaving for Barranca to run a mail operation down there is when all the bullshit got wings. See he was supposed to have talked movie icon drop-dead beautiful Rita Hayworth into leaving with him before she ran off with the Aga Khan after Johnny ran out of dough-and prospects. The reality. He had met a whore working some joy house in Hoboken named Sarah Lind, remember be wary of the truth of names in this stuff who did look like Rita and went with him figuring she was getting off cheap street with this good-looking guy (so-so, okay looks from the photos). A view of her photos taken later when Johnny’s money had run out and she had too from some men’s magazines, “girlie” magazines shows that her legs were nowhere as good as Rita’s and this tramp didn’t have a tenth of Rita’s style on her best days.
I mentioned that Johnny later, in the late 1950s fell into the ocean, fell into the Gulf of Mexico. That location is important for the last really blasphemous part of the Johnny legend. That he was the guy flying arms and other supplies into Cuba for Fidel, Che and the hermanos and had fallen down into the Caribbean. All the flight manifests from Key West show Johnny flying a Piper Club, Jesus, a freaking tinplate Piper Club, taking well-heeled passengers to Naples down in Florida before he fell into the Gulf. To this day despite every denial by successive Cuban governments and every belief by those who want to see a romantic Amerciano helping the good guys that is the lynchpin of his legacy. That is the basis of the shrine, the heavy money-making shrine in the Keys which Johnny’s estate such as it was established to milk the whole thing for what it was worth. Yes, it will be tough to break that one if all the documentation has provided nothing but a spike in his legend. Damn.
But we must move on to the case of one Lamont Cranston, who claimed until his end at Bellevue where he spent the last twenty years of his life in the indigent ward that he was the so-called Shadow whose task was to rid New York City, also called Gotham, also called Metropolis, of crime and criminals. A one-man wrecking crew, ah, vigilante man. We will crack this one easily although I do feel some trepidation right now thinking that maybe one of the reasons for the durability of the Cielo legend is that he was an American and maybe there is as in a lot of things these days a sense of American exceptionalism, that all the modern recordable American legends have to be true. Baloney. (By the way I should point out that all these one-man or one-woman vigilante operations to rid New York City, Gotham, Metropolis of crime and criminals beyond questioning whatever nefarious motives they have is not borne out by the statistics. Per capita that town’s crime rate was no higher than say Roseville out in Kansas then, maybe now too with the epidemic of opioid addiction flooding the rural parts of the country.)
World War I, Lamont Cranston’s war, I will use that name despite the fact that the only person with that name in the 1920s was on the NYPD police blotter for selling jewelry from a push-cart without a license on 7th Avenue and subsequently for a “bait and switch” con on so-called magic decoder rings, was hard on a whole generation of European and American youth. The effects hit Lamont like a ton of bricks, maybe shell shock is what he had although that diagnosis was in its infant stages back then, made him a Class A junkie before long. But instead of heading to Paris in the 1920s, in the Jazz Age he headed to Tibet and gathered in a serious opium addiction and lustful carryings on with a fistful of concubines-all at one time when he was really high. Then the Lama, Jimmy Lama if I am not mistaken, Lama in any case, took up his case, made him see that he was made for better stuff, made to see the better angel of his nature.
This Lama, no it wasn’t Jimmy but Jerry, yeah, Jerry Lama spent a ton of time giving Lamont the skill set to go back to America, go back to so-called cesspool NYC and clean house, make it livable for average joes to survive. One of the skills he picked up was the ability to transform himself via a joke store nose to look differently when he was doing his whirling dervish Shadow shtick. That and a silly eerie laugh fit in the end more fit for Bellevue than the mean streets of NYC. Yeah, the Shadow knows alright.
I grant that for a while this Cranston caught the public’s imagination although strangely during his escapades the crime rate in Gotham spiked before they put him in a safe place. Mostly I attribute that positive spin to his hiring a press agent, the famous society columnist John Kerr, and his reputation soared for a bit. Then the wheels came off his express. See back in Tibet the word was that Lamont was some progeny of one Genghis Khan, yes that Genghis whose nomadic marauding Mogol hordes at least according to some revisionist historians brought some stability and modernization to Central Asia in his day. DNA testing has proven once Lamont’s body was exhumed at the request of his estate to see the truth of that matter showed he was descended originally in the 14th century from a pig thief in England who was hanged, hanged high in those days when stealing livestock meant something, especially when the stolen object was of royal or noble ownership.
Yeah so Lamont played out the Genghis Khan gag, along with his brother Don, the bad guy in the loop who like his forebear wanted to rule the known world. A known world much larger to conquer these days than the steppes of Central Asia which was child’s play for those lustful Mongol hordes. This Don Khan, this brother, arrived in H.G. Wells time machine fashion via a coffin delivered to the natural history museum in that town. After Don arrived all hell broke loose since all he cared about were two things-world conquest and bringing brother Lamont in on the deal as his hatchet man, as his alter ego maybe since Don too had been trained by Jerry Lama. No wonder this so-called Lamont character wound up in a straight- jacket, maybe they should have used two to be safe.
Of course when you have a guy like John Kerr sprucing up your legend, taking liberties with the truth you have to have some society dame in the mix or these Mayfair swells won’t read the column or buy into the legend. The love affair aspect here is provided by one Lois Lane, no Margo Lane, whose father allegedly was the real father of the atom bomb. More on him in a minute. We know that Lamont had some kinky sex habits when he was high as a kite on cocaine, opium whatever he could find in Xanadu, in the late Kubla Khan’s opulent opium den where Sam Coleridge earlier had picked up his habit by the sunless seas. This so-called society girl, this so-called Margo, was some call girl he picked up in a joy house he frequented on 8th Avenue when he was looking for a “flute player” just because she said she could read Lamont’s mind. Not the hardest task in the world when somebody is looking for a little off-kilter sex.
Here is where things get interesting. The legend anyway. Don, Don Khan in case you forgot his name, that erratic symbiotic brother was interested in this Margo too, and for the same reason in the end but mainly because she had a certain style which could work with the guy who claimed to be the father of the atomic bomb. This bomb is what Don needed to play out his hand. Margo got handed back and forth and in the end she went with Lamont since he was more her speed than the defeated maniac Don. Done in by the NYPD wrapping up his operations off the East River. Well folks that is the legend, the legend the Mayfair swells bought into to keep the “people with the pitchforks” from Riverside Drive and other high number precincts in the 1920s and 1930s. In the end though they trusted their local coppers who at least they could bribe rather than another one of John Kerr’s paste-up jobs. Still legends die hard, especially modern legends which can be traced as I have been doing of late. For now though another bum-of-the-month down.
In Honor Of The Late Black Liberation Fighter The Omaha Three’s Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa -Support And Donate To The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal For Our Political Activists Inside The Prison Walls
By Frank Jackman
I know, as I have recounted elsewhere about my personal situation during my military service, so-called, my military resister time, during the Vietnam War, that the holidays are tough times for our political prisoners, hell all prisoners, but today we write on behalf of our fellow activists behind the walls. A place where we outside the walls may find ourselves under the regime of whatever party in power. (After all Lynne Stewart and Chelsea Manning among others, for example, were in jail in Obama time.) And nobody on the outside working for social change is exempt as the case of the late black liberation fighter Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, outlined below, will demonstrate. So be very generous this year in aid of those on the inside who will garner strength knowing that those outside the walls today are standing in solidarity. I know in my time I did from such support in my time.
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Workers Vanguard No. 1124
15 December 2017
The following article appeared under the Partisan Defense Committee's Class-Struggle Defense Notes masthead in the print version of this issue of Workers Vanguard. The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the political views of the Spartacist League.
32nd Annual Holiday Appeal
Free the Class-War Prisoners!
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
This year’s Holiday Appeal marks the 32nd year of the Partisan Defense Committee’s program of sending monthly stipends as an expression of solidarity to those imprisoned for standing up to racist capitalist repression and imperialist depredation. This program revived a tradition initiated by the International Labor Defense under James P. Cannon, its founder and first secretary (1925-28). This year’s events will pay tribute to a former stipend recipient, Lynne Stewart, who succumbed to the effects of metastasized breast cancer last March. A courageous radical lawyer who defended numerous poor people and fighters for the oppressed, including the Ohio 7, Stewart had been incarcerated for her vigorous defense of a fundamentalist sheik who was convicted in an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks. We honor her by keeping up the fight for the freedom of all class-war prisoners. The PDC currently sends stipends to 12 class-war prisoners.
* * *
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Framed up for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, Mumia was sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Federal and state courts have repeatedly refused to consider evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed the policeman. In 2011 the Philadelphia district attorney’s office dropped its longstanding effort to legally lynch Mumia, condemning him to life in prison with no chance of parole. Last year attorneys for Mumia filed a petition under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) seeking to overturn the denial of his three prior PCRA claims by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. If successful, he would be granted a new hearing before that court to argue for reversal of his frame-up conviction. On September 7, Judge Leon Tucker ordered a private review of the complete file of the prosecution by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office of Mumia’s case, looking for evidence of the personal involvement of then D.A. Ronald Castille, whose refusal as a judge to recuse himself during Mumia’s PA Supreme Court appeal is the basis for this PCRA. After a two-year battle, Mumia was finally able to begin lifesaving treatment for hepatitis C. In May, lab tests showed that he was free of this life-threatening illness. But the drawn-out period during which he was refused treatment left him with an increased risk of liver cancer.
Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its Native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier was framed up for the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents marauding in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation. The lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have repeatedly denied Peltier’s appeals while acknowledging blatant prosecutorial misconduct. Before leaving office, Barack Obama rejected Peltier’s request for clemency. The 73-year-old Peltier is not scheduled for another parole hearing for another seven years. Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions including a heart condition for which he had to undergo triple bypass surgery. He is incarcerated far from his people and family.
Seven MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa and Eddie Africa—are in their 40th year of prison. After the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, they were sentenced to 30-100 years, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. Collectively known as the MOVE 9, two of their number, Merle Africa and Phil Africa, died in prison under suspicious circumstances. After nearly four decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings.
Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Now Laaman and Manning face prison torture where they are isolated in solitary confinement for extended periods. Manning has been deprived of necessary medical attention. The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals but, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not crimes. They should not have served a day in prison.
Ed Poindexter is a former Black Panther supporter and leader of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. He and his former co-defendant, Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, who died in prison last year, were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation, under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. They were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and Poindexter has now spent more than 45 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter a new trial despite the fact that crucial evidence, long suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.
Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeal events will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. This is not charity but an elementary act of solidarity with those imprisoned for their opposition to racist capitalism and imperialist depredation. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.
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Workers Vanguard No. 1086
25 March 2016
Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa
1947—2016
Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, born David Rice, died on March 11 in the maximum-security Nebraska State Penitentiary of respiratory failure. A courageous class-war prisoner who was imprisoned for life for a crime he did not commit, Mondo suffered his last days ill with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, still fighting for his freedom. He spent almost 46 years in prison and remained a political fighter against racial oppression until the end.
Mondo had been an activist since his youth, radicalized by the mass social struggles that swept the country in the 1960s. Mondo became a supporter of the Black Panther Party in response to racist police brutality, in particular the killing of black 14-year-old Vivian Strong, who was shot in the back of the head by a cop in Omaha, Nebraska, in the summer of 1969. He went on to be a leader of the Omaha National Committee to Combat Fascism with his comrade Ed Poindexter. As Mumia Abu-Jamal put it in a March 15 audio tribute, by becoming a Panther, Mondo “walked into the crosshairs of the state.” He became one of the many victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panthers were killed and hundreds more framed up and imprisoned.
Mondo and Poindexter, who became known as the Omaha Two, were falsely convicted of the 1970 killing of a cop in a bomb explosion on the perjured testimony of teenager Duane Peak, who first confessed to acting alone in placing the bomb. Peak was threatened with getting the electric chair and was offered a deal to be sentenced as a juvenile if he helped frame Mondo and Poindexter. Peak’s clearly coerced testimony was shown to be completely bogus. A recording of a 911 call that proved Peak’s testimony was perjured was excluded from evidence in the trial and was long suppressed by the FBI. The political motivation for the frame-up was made clear two decades later by Jack Swanson, an Omaha police detective and key figure in the prosecution. In a 1990 BBC documentary, Swanson boasted: “We feel we got the two main players in Mondo and Poindexter, and I think we did the right thing at the time, because the Black Panther Party...completely disappeared from the city of Omaha...and it’s...been the end of that sort of thing in the city.”
Federal appeals courts ruled that Mondo should be released or retried, but that ruling was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, which ordered the case returned to the Nebraska state courts. The Nebraska Supreme Court then ruled that his appeal time had lapsed! In 1993, the Nebraska parole board recommended that the Board of Pardons commute Mondo’s life sentence to a term of a set number of years, which would have made him eligible for parole. But the Board of Pardons denied Mondo a hearing.
Mondo was one of the class-war prisoners who receive monthly stipends from the Partisan Defense Committee. The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the political views of the Spartacist League. The class-war prisoner stipend program is not an act of charity but the duty of those on the outside toward those inside prison walls, irrespective of their particular views or affiliation. Ed Poindexter, who remains imprisoned, is also a PDC stipend recipient.
We remember Mondo—writer, artist and unbroken fighter—who was consigned to America’s prison hell for his opposition to racial oppression. We print below a poem he composed in June 2015 titledWhen It Gets to This Point.
