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
Thanks to all of you who signed the petition in support of Lynne Stewart’s
application for compassionate release. Over 2,500 people have signed to date and
the number keeps rising. The list includes the change.org signatories and signatures received from
organizations.
There are a few things that you can do to keep the momentum going:
1. Many of you sent the petition to friends and family who also joined the
effort. Think of five more people whom you know. Each of those five is to be
asked to contact another five with the same requirement. In five stages, your
message will have enlisted 3,000 people! Please direct them to the change.org petition site: http://www.change.org/petitions/petition-to-free-lynne-stewart-save-her-life-release-her-now-2
3. Propose that the organizations of which you are a member endorse the
petition to free Lynne Stewart. Send those endorsements to
4. Check out the Justice for Lynne Stewart website for articles, news,
Lynne’s legal documents and more. http://www.lynnestewart.org
5. Send a message with your email address to the Lynne Stewart Defense
Committee to receive updates from the Committee.
Together We Can Free Lynne Stewart!
Out In The Anti-War Night-Reflections On The Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade-2013
From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin
FunnyLenny Baxter had not seen Frank Jackman for few years, not since those halcyon days antiwar days in 2006, 2007 he guessed when they had met at a meeting over at U/Mass-Boston to plan an anniversary anti-war march around stopping the continuing Iraq war. Yes, now that he thought about it, it was 2006 since they had been planning a third anniversary march. Frank was closely associated with an anti-war veterans group, Veterans For Peace (VFP), and Lenny had been part of an ad hoc committee that was composed of a number of anti-war activists ranging from Quakerly pacifists (little old ladies in tennis sneakers his had called them, kindly called them, from some ancient mother mention about the type when he was a kid) to stanch anti-imperialists, and maybe a few old-time socialists and communists too. Since Lenny was a veteran as well, although of the first Iraq war back in 1991 not the second, he had gravitated toward Frank’s VFPers and had gotten to know Frank and his fellow vets pretty well although they were mainly from the Vietnam War era. They had worked together that year and through 2007.Then things kind of just fell apart in the anti-war milieu and they had drifted apart. Lenny had subsequently had a few personal problems, a broken marriage, a small drug problem that might have gotten bigger had he not sobered up, and some injuries, mental and physical and so he had not been active since that period.
No so Frankas Lenny approached him at the Park Street MBTAin downtown Bostonon the Saturday before Saint Patrick’s Day where he was passing out those never-ending flyers that seem to go with passing through the downtown territory. Lenny had not been downtown, at least on a Saturday, for a long time so he had forgotten about the mishmash ofcause barkers (with or without soapboxes like some old time Eugene Debs figures or Wobblie flame-throwers ), harkers (the “good word” people harmless Christian sect cranks), card-sharkers (more nefarious hustlers, drifters, grifters, and midnight shifters, intermingled with the homeless who have historically made the area their “home,” and flat-out crazies released against all good caution from some institution ) and the like who populate the area in front of that station on any given Saturday. Frank was passing out flyers informing one and all that VFP and others, other peace and progressive activist groups, were staging a parade, a peace parade, the third annual one according to the flyer, and to Frank’s barking that information over a jerry-bilt mic system he had in front of him in South Boston right after the regular Saint Patrick’s Day parade and was pitching that everybody was welcomed to watch or join in on that event the following afternoon.
After Lenny identified himself to Frank and they shook hands Frank invited Lenny over for the next day’s event. Lenny, having been out of the loop for a while, asked Frank what the whole thing was about. Frank quickly pointed out that a couple of years before VFP had applied to the organizers of the official parade to participant as a contingent. They had been denied obstensibly because the organization was political or some such excuse. In reply they had quickly organized a counter-parade that year inviting other groups, notably the gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-sexual community that had also been historically excluded from the official parade (Lenny knew some of the details of that exclusive from events back in the 1990s) and marched after the official parade. The upcoming event, with added details that Frank did not elaborate on and told Lenny to read about in the flyer, was a continuation of that new-found tradition. Frank pressed the issue of Lenny’s attendance along with any other people he might know from the old days to come and march. Lenny said he would try to make the event.
As Lenny walked away from the station and headed toward Government Center to catch the Blue Line home he pondered whether he would go or not. He had not been politically active for some time what with this and that personal problem, had not followed what was going on much, and was not sure exactly the point of marching separately in a parade right after another parade because you had been excluded from that other parade. Why not just go elsewhere and have your own parade at your own time andplace like a million others have done, including many of those excluded groups signed up as sponsors for tomorrow’s event. Moreover he was not sure, not sure at all, that he wanted to return to Southie, return to place where he had long ago family connections and where more recently, before he got sober, he had some drug deal problems. As he entered the Blue Line train and sat down he started to read the details of the history of the Peace Parade efforts. As he rode home some stirrings from the old days told him he should go the next day, and so he resolved to do so.
The plan according to Frank and the leaflet was for the Peace Parade to step off at 3:00 PM, a while after the official parade ended (VFP and the others were under legal restraint to stay one mile behind the official parade per some judge’s order) from the corner of West Broadway and D Street. Lenny decided to go a little early to see if any of his old activist friends were still around and maybe march with them. (He felt funny about the idea of marching up front with VFP). As he headed down D Street from the Convention Center with throngs of people, most dressed in some form of patriotic Irish-flamed green attire, he noticed the VFP flags fluttering in the wind that told him he was at the staging area. If that sight hadn’t informed he could see and hear Frank, good old Frank with hisVFP tee-shirt on and greens ribbons embossed withEaster 1916 on them, bellowing out from that same jerry-bilt mic seen the previous day at Park Street for one and all to stay for the second parade. He went up to Frank to “report in” and they again shook hands and knowing Frank was busy Lenny moved on. He thereafter milled around the crowd forming up to look for old faces.
As Lenny was milling around he did run into some old activists from the anti-imperialist committee who held a banner proclaimingNo War On Iran and after introductions and chit-chat he decided to march with that contingent. March if they ever got going. He had been to enough marches to know that they never start on time, maybe on principle, maybe as a matter of karma, but in any case they were always late but this one was burdensomely so. (He found out later part of the reason for the delay was because the official parade had run late and because of that foolish mile rule that added to the delay of the peace parade). Finally they were off, about an hour late.
While he was talking with his old time associates before the step off they informed him that the previous year’s march had been good, the day had been unseasonably warm, unlike this day, and the crowds or some substantial parts of them had stayed to watch the second parade. They had also told him that the first year there had been about five hundred participants (on short notice) and the previous year about two thousand with bands and other parade-type things. When the stepped off he looked back to estimate this year’s crowd he did not feel, at least to his eye, that there were that number here this day. (Frank had empathized at Park Street that they needed to increase the numbers this year to make a political point to the official organizers and to the city.) There were certainly not more than two thousand and he was a pretty good judge of crowd sizes from his pervious anti-war work. So he was feeling some trepidation as they stepped off.
As they made the turn from D Street onto West Broadway he noticed that masses of people, mostly young people, were moving down toward the Broadway MBTA station which indicated they were heading home. He again felt something was wrong, or maybe not wrong so much as against the expectations he had told about. As they marched up West Broadway there were small clots of attentive by-standers here and there but mainly he noted people were moving either toward the bars, restaurants, stores, or to the side streets for parties and whatever is done on Saint Patrick’s Day by the faithful. That same, frankly, indifference, was felt throughout West Broadway and then down through East Broadway as well. Something did not connect, something was not happening, and he could feel it in the sullen manner of marchers as they passed the emptying streets as they reached the neighborhood section part to the march. What topped things off though was the walk down Dorchester Avenue, a wide thoroughfare toward the end of the parade, where there were very, very few spectators.
At the end the VFPers had formed up on each side of the street to thank the marchers and band members for coming and he ran into Frank and asked him his assessment of the event. Frank said, “We have to figure out another way to reach people, this thing was a failure, and will not help our message.”Lenny told Frank he was glad he had marched although he shared some of Frank’s political estimate. Frank brightened at that remark a little as they shook hands again. Lenny as he headed toward the Andrew MBTA station starting thinking, thinking about how and where the excluded might celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day more fruitfully next year. Lenny was back…
One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution by Nancy Stout,
foreword by Alice Walker
“I love this book.
. . an insightful, mature, and sometimes droll exploration of a profoundly
liberated, adventuresome and driven personality. I love the life of Celia
Sánchez, a life that was singular, sui generis, and true to its time of
revolution and change in Cuban society.”
—Alice
Walker, author,The Color Purple;
winner, Pulitzer Prize & National Book
Award
“A penetrating and
startling biography. . . takes on the importance of the work of Arundhati Roy or
Noam Chomsky in its insistence on looking at facts rather than self-serving
capitalist and neocolonialist myth. . . also a damn good read about a
passionate, sensuous, and brilliant woman!”
—Sapphire,
author
ofPushandThe
Kid
“Engrossing,
endearing, and eloquent, this sympathetic and superbly crafted portrait of the
‘True Flower of the Revolution’ unfolds in magnificent detail. . . so intimate
is Stout’s well-informed tour de force that the description of
Sánchez’s death brings the reader to tears, inspired by a deep sense of love and
loss.”
—Christopher
P. Baker, author,Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling Through
Castro’s Cuba
“In this riveting
and eloquent portrait, Celia Sánchez finally emerges as a major star in Cuba’s
revolutionary drama: a political animal, a management consultant, a historian,
and of course, a confidante to Fidel Castro. . . her legacy, especially for
women and girls’ education and health, and as the chief archivist of the
insurgency, comes alive in Stout’s exhaustively researched
biography.”
—Julia
Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow and Director, Latin America
Studies and Global Brazil Initiative, Council on Foreign
Relations
“This excellent
book tells us about Celia Sánchez, an early leader of the Cuban Revolution and a
fascinating character. . . as Stout movingly describes her, Celia was totally
devoted to Fidel and to the Cuban Revolution. And she loved and was loved by the
Cuban people. I was in Havana at the time of her death in January of 1980 and
well remember the deep sadness it occasioned.”
—Wayne S.
Smith, senior fellow and director of the Cuba Project, Center for International
Policy; former head, U.S. Interests Section in
Havana
Celia Sánchez
is the missing actor of the Cuban Revolution. Although not as well known in the
English-speaking world as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Sánchez played a pivotal
role in launching the revolution and administering the revolutionary state. She
joined the clandestine 26th of July Movement and went on to choose the landing
site of the Granma and fight with the rebels in the Sierra Maestra. She
collected the documents that would form the official archives of the revolution,
and, after its victory, launched numerous projects that enriched the lives of
many Cubans, from parks to literacy programs to helping develop the Cohiba cigar
brand. All the while, she maintained a close relationship with Fidel Castro that
lasted until her death in 1980. The product of
ten years of original research, this biography draws on interviews with
Sánchez’s friends, family, and comrades in the rebel army, along with countless
letters and documents. Biographer Nancy Stout was initially barred from the
official archives, but, in a remarkable twist, was granted access by Fidel
Castro himself, impressed as he was with Stout’s project and aware that Sánchez
deserved a worthy biography. This is the extraordinary story of an extraordinary
woman who exemplified the very best values of the Cuban Revolution: selfless
dedication to the people, courage in the face of grave danger, and the desire to
transform society.
Nancy Stout is a writer and
photographer living in New York City, currently employed by Fordham University
as a Reference Librarian. Her books include Great American Thoroughbred
Racetracks, Homestretch, The West Side YMCA: A Social and
Architectural Retrospective, Havana/La Habana (with architect
Jorge Rigau, who wrote the text), and Habanos: the Story of the Havana
Cigar (author and photographer).
Alice Walker is
an author, poet, and activist; she won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book
Award for her novel The Color
Purple.
The third annual "alternative people's" parade hosted by chapter 9 (the Smedley D. Butler Brigade) of Veterans for Peace in South Boston: this inclusive event is the alternative to a St. Patrick's Day Parade that has excluded peace groups as well as members of LGBTQ groups since the 1990s. This year's participants also included veterans and others from all over New England, as well as a large range of local-regional labor groups, faith communities, and others working for social, economic, and climate justice, including Occupy. Participants were treated to the music of 6 different bands and performances by members of the Bread and Puppet Theater. Themes ranged from blocking the Keystone XL pipeline to freeing Bradley Manning, and ending all wars of occupation ("support the troops: bring them home!").
so happy we got to be a part of this parade this year. Awesome day, beginning to end. Love that you made sure that every group got a moment in here, too.
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