Thursday, December 19, 2013

End-of-the-Year Reflections on Drawing the Court Martial of Chelsea Manning-Deb Vanpoolen


Note that this image is PVT Manning's preferred photo.






Although Private Manning vs. the United States was one of the most important trials in US history, no cameras were allowed inside the courtroom.  Without cameras in the courtroom, the world’s masses of people impacted by the Wikileaks releases could not be properly informed of the proceedings.  In the three years following the Wikileaks releases and Manning’s arrest, the mainstream US media provided miniscule coverage of anything to do with Private Manning, including her entire three-year pre-trial confinement and the two years of pre-trial hearings.   Thus, before the court martial began, I saw a dire need for alternative media as well as ordinary citizens to daily attend and closely report on the trial so that quality information about the historic trial was accessible to as many citizens of the whole world as possible.



Although I had virtually no experience in courtroom sketching, I predicted that my portrait drawing skills might prove useful in communicating images from the courtroom to the public.  I arranged my life (found a work-trade/rental situation providing massage, cleaning, and gardening services in exchange for rent) so that I could attend each day of the court martial which began in the first week of June and lasted until the third week in August, 2013.  I taught myself how to use a smart phone’s internet hot spot, a portable scanning device, the Picassa computer program, and Facebook and Twitter accounts so that I could immediately upload images during breaks in the courtroom proceedings. 



Throughout the summer’s proceedings, I experienced a huge spectrum of emotions.  I was deeply impressed by the way Private Manning held her professional, intensely attentive composure throughout each day of the trial.  She was almost always sitting on the edge of her seat, focused on each word that was spoken in the courtroom. Every single time one of the defense team prepared to speak, Manning flipped the switch which turned on the defense team’s microphone.



I was deeply inspired and encouraged by the opening and closing statements of David Coombs as well as the statement Chelsea Manning read on the final day of the trial.  I was very happy upon hearing the amazingly articulate testimony of Professor Benkler who schooled us all on the “aiding the enemy” charge’s potential to wield a fatal blow to freedom of the press in the US.  The day Benkler testified followed several days of ridiculous, nauseating prosecution witnesses who claimed—under oath--that national security was harmed by Manning’s actions.  When Benkler appeared, my heart leapt for joy because it recognized that truth had been resurrected (after a few days of hellish defeat) inside the Ft. Meade courtroom!  I was nauseatingly angry on the day the prosecuting attorney Ashden Fein spent over five hours giving his highly repetitive and mind-numbingly boring closing statement (which resulted in Coombs’ closing statement being postponed until the next day, when much less press was present).



I was also very moved by the following testimonies:  Lauren McNamara who spoke regarding Manning’s transgender desires; Debra Van Alstyne, who described her interactions with Manning as her aunt who offered Manning nurturing shelter at key times in her life; and Casey Manning, Chelsea’s older sister, who described Chelsea as a wonderful, loving, and dearly missed sibling.  I cried throughout the testimony of Casey Manning as the unceremonious courtroom was transformed by the presence of undeniable, sisterly, strong love between Casey and Chelsea Manning.



David Coombs often met with Manning supporters after the proceedings and I deeply valued each word he shared with us about Manning’s well-being and about the intricate developments of case.  He was consistently very warm and appreciative of our presence, as well as open to answer any questions we asked.  I was also thrilled to meet and work alongside of some of the very hard-working lawyers, journalists and activists who were regularly attending and/or commenting on the case:  Alexa O’Brien, Michael Ratner, Cornel West, Chris Hedges, Medea Benjamin, Debra Sweet and Ray McGovern.



The large group of Manning supporters, dubbed the “truth battalion” by David Coombs, was not only supportive of Chelsea, but also of each other.  Each day I went to Ft. Meade, I was fascinated to observe who else came to the proceedings and to learn where they were from and what exactly motivated them to support Chelsea by silently sitting in the courtroom.  Many supporters--whether they came just for a couple days of proceedings or were regular attendees--acknowledged me and thanked me for my work covering the trial.  The supporters, most of whom donned “truth” t-shirts for the day, were very friendly, intelligent, and informed.   Almost each day of the trial there were at least ten Manning supporters sitting in the courtroom and many days over thirty supporters were in the courtroom with another twenty in the overflow trailer.



I attempted to draw each witness who testified, even if they were on the stand for just a few minutes.  Throughout the summer, in between the times of witness testimony, I drew several portraits of Chelsea, David Coombs and Judge Denise Lind.   The drawings from the trial, as well as some watercolor portrait paintings of Manning, can be viewed at the following link: www.debvanpoolen.com.  Four of the images are available as limited edition giclee’ prints and can be ordered via the website.  



HAPPY HOLIDAYS!  

FREE CHELSEA MANNING! 

Dear Alfred,

VFP needs your help to keep up our work.  Thank you for your interest in Veterans For Peace in 2013. It was a great year.


We made a difference in working for peace and pushing our government to avoid  more war. We will do it again next year, but we need your help now to keep up the struggle in 2014.
Please consider making a year-end donation.  Follow this link to make your donation.



With our five areas of focus in the strategic plan: Current and Future Wars, G.I. Resistance, Drone Warfare, Redirecting of military budget to community needs and closing Guantanamo Bay, there is no other veteran organization that  consistently brings the voice of peace to such a broad set of issues.

2014 looks to be an exciting year for Veterans For Peace as we continue to resist war and forward the cause of peace. We are grateful to you for your support as we close out the old and bring in the new.




Donate to us today before the year is up. Your donation is tax deductible.





Sincerely,



Michael McPhearson
Interim Executive Director










 





Veterans For Peace, 216 S. Meramec, St. Louis, MO 63105, 314-725-6005
www.veteransforpeace.org



BOSTON FIRST NIGHT AGAINST THE WARS 2013-2014 EDUCATIONAL
Come celebrate the close of 2013 with First Night Against All Wars!
Join a growing coalition of people dedicated to ending all forms of oppression !
Noon until 6pm
Tuesday, December 31, 2013...
Facebook page
First Night Against All Wars
https://www.facebook.com/firstnightagainstallwars
 
Meeting first at 565 Boylston St. Community church of Boston and then walking on over to our set up location on the steps of the Boston Public Library (corner of Boylston & Dartmouth starting at Noon till six after the parade).
 
We'll have free hot chocolate and snacks for passersby who stop to pick up your literature. We're also going to have a bright sticker that has broad appeal and that everyone opposed to these wars can wear.
 
We're organizing an educational action that reaches the 100,000s of people who will be in Boston to celebrate First Night. We want to welcome them. We want to celebrate.
 
But we also want everyone to be fully conscious of the many wars:
• Wall Street and Government's War on Us!
•The wars on women. •The wars on people of color and immigrants. •The wars on working people.
 
•The wars in Africa and Middle East. •The war on the environment.
 
These are all connected!
 
Help make this happen!
 
To help with the planning and organizing, please call "Dan the Bagel Man", Daniel Kontoff, at 857-272-6743.
Daniel.Kontoff@yahoo.com
 
Our second planning meeting will be on Monday, December 16 at 6:30 PM at the Community Church 565 Boylston Street Copley SquareSee More
565 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116
565 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116
***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…


 

… and ten thousand tearful partings at the train station, Grand Central, Union, South Station, Adamsville, Podunk, as Jimmy’s number has been called (or fill in that government issue’s, G.I. okay, name who has caused the tearful parting), called to go fight against the night-takers who stalk their world, go to push back against the night of the long knives some maniacs have declared against the commonality. Jimmy and kindred numbers to wade on the dangerous ocean swirled fragile beachheads of Europe, to take guard duty in some frozen lean-to up north near the Arctic Circle, to flame-blow inside some cave on some unnamed, maybe nameless Pacific atoll, to wait, always wait, tented against the China Sea squalls.

She swore she would wait for him, wait for him in lonely home-fire rooms (his picture right next to Christ on that lonely room wall). All the time wondering, fearing whether he has laid his head down on some Italian beach, some frozen tundra, in some watery grave, against some stony bridge, and what will become of her (and the baby). Thinking, thinking too hard for the times that she will get by, get by somehow.

And he, Jimmy (or fill in your named one, okay) now in some landing craft off some foreboding beach, in some woe-begotten lean-to holding off frost-bite, in some water-rat cave, in some make-shift beaten down tent, hoping to high heaven that he will not have to lay down his head so far from home, so far away from her wondering in his lost moments whether she will really wait for him, wait for him alone. Silly boy haven’t you been reading her letters, her every day letters (although usually delivered in bunches, APO hassles- you know snafus), she was built for forty, fifty year Jimmy love, yeah she was built to get by until you return thank you very much.                                  
From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-The WIL view (Britain)

...those not particularly invested in the various disputes that have arisen in the world Trotskyist movement are unlikely to realize that such differentiations are key to the struggle for a revolutionary program. Whether the disputes between small groups and grouplets seem esoteric we can leave aside but the struggle for program, a program that marches in step with the objective needs of the working class is decisive-and messy.    





Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover”the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible. 

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the

********

The WIL view

We reprint the following document to provide a contrast to the article on the Left Fraction by Harry Selby. It first gives an account from the point of view of the Political Bureau of the Workers International League of the development of Trotskyism in Britain up until the “Peace and Unity Conference” held in August 1938. It then deals with developments after the conference, especially in respect of the disintegration of the Revolutionary Socialist League. Reasons of space prevent us from reproducing in this issue the various resolutions, statements and letters to which reference is made in the document.

The document was intended to accompany the discussion inside the WIL initiated by the proposal of the minority led by Gerry Healy for immediate unification with the RSL on the basis of the proposals of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. Undated and untitled, the document was written in the latter half of 1943. The last date given in the document is 4 July 1943, but it was probably issued around 11 September, as it was written to accompany a document which appeared on that date answering a criticism of the WIL made by Lou Cooper of the Socialist Workers Party of the USA.

John Archer adds that in his opinion the statement may have also arisen because there was contact at a rank and file level between members of the WIL and the RSL.

In order to acquaint our membership with the events leading up to the present relations between ourselves and the RSL as well as with the International Secretariat, we present a short factual summary of the early development of the Fourth International in this country together with the main documents relating to the 1938 Unification Conference.
British communism has always been more backward than in other countries. This was the case not only among our own cadres, but also in the Communist Party, whose leadership was always regarded by the International movement as the most backward in the world.
The initial cadres of the Left Opposition in the Communist Party of Great Britain were, in the main, petit-bourgeois. While accepting the ideas and principles of the International Left Opposition, they made no attempt to concretise these ideas and apply them to the British movement. The spirit of a petit-bourgeois discussion circle was fostered in the early meetings. No real attempt was made to acquaint the youth members and sympathisers with the theoretical differences between the Bolshevik Leninists and the Stalinist bureaucracy nationally or internationally, or with the programme of the Left Opposition. The leadership showed the greatest incapacity to train the younger elements or to conduct any decisive political action.
During the period of the campaign of the Left Opposition for re-entry into the Communist parties, it was possible for a loose collection of individuals to hold together, for in this country it enabled them to appear in public as “critics” while binding them to no real programme of activity. However, when the German betrayal impelled the Left Opposition to consider the reform of the Comintern no longer possible and to adopt the perspective of orientation towards the new Fourth International, the basic weakness of the British Bolshevik Leninists was revealed.
The directive given to the British comrades was to turn towards the centrist organisations as the main field of work. This perspective worked out by comrade Trotsky was fundamentally correct, but due to the complete incapacity of the Trotskyists to carry out this tactic, the outcome resulted in failure. This turn towards the centrists marked the first of what was to be a series of splits. Incapable of acting as a unified body, the opposition burst asunder, one group entering the ILP, the other at first remained independent and later entered the Labour Party. This initial split took place without any thorough discussion or preparation, the factional lines running parallel to the personal alliances of the various individuals.
From 1934 until 1938 a continuous series of splits took place. The political lines were, as a rule, not fundamental in character, but on questions of tactics, which were raised to immutable principles. The factions were characterised by a core, who, generally speaking, broke along lines of personal affiliation. The few who remained on the periphery of these factions – mainly fresh elements turning to the Trotskyist viewpoint – moved aimlessly from one group to another, seeking a lead.
The French Party’s turn to the Socialist Party and the Oehler split in America over the question of entry into the Socialist Party, created a new basis for the various factions. The “principle” of the “independence of the Bolshevik Party” became the centre of the new and “higher” forms of political discussion.
During the whole of this period, the International Secretariat was completely misinformed as to the real situation in the British movement – its strength, the forms of work it conducted, its support among the workers, and in every other aspect of its activities. The loose connection between the IS and the British movement facilitated this.
The Trotskyist groups which evolved and disappeared were myriad. The Communist Left Opposition, the Marxist League, the Marxist Group, the Militant Group, the Chelsea Action Group, the Revolutionary Socialist League, the Unified Revolutionary Socialist League, the Militant Labour League, the Revolutionary Workers League, the Workers International League – all these in the London area alone, and others emerged from time to time in the provinces.
By September 1938 there were three distinct groups in existence in the London area as follows (the names of the leaderships of these organisations are given to identify them, as subsequently the names were changed): The Revolutionary Socialist League (James, Duncan, Lane, Wicks, Dewar), the Marxist League (Wicks, Dewar) had just entered into a unification with the RSL on the basis of the Independent tactic. The Militant Group (Harber, Jackson) was an entrist group in the Labour Party, and the Workers International League (Lee, Grant, Haston) was an entrist group in the Labour Party.
There also existed the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Edinburgh, which was moving towards the Fourth International and was about to effect a unification with the RSL on the basis of the Independent tactic. The leaders of this group were Maitland and Tait.
Each year, and sometimes twice a year, a “unity” conference was called, but without any serious preparation or intention. The soft elements who had proved themselves incapable of any continuity of organised work, who had dropped out of the movement from time to time, appeared on the platform and played a prominent role in the “discussions”. Each year it became more and more obvious that a genuine unification among the old elements was absolutely precluded, because of the determination of the “leaders” to retain their independence and resist any encroachment on their positions, and, most importantly, because of the absence of a genuine rank and file. It was evident that unification would only take place on the basis of a common programme of action, on the basis of common work.
Such was the position in the British movement when the “Peace and Unity Conference” took place in September 1938. In the bulletin circulated for pre-conference discussion, there were three theses submitted for discussion by the WIL, the RSL and the RSP. The conference was attended by representatives of these three groups, as well as a representative of the Militant Group. At this conference the “Peace and Unity Agreement” was drawn up and presented by the American comrade. There was no political discussion on the differences of tactics and perspective, for Britain, which had separated the groups for years – only this “Peace and Unity Agreement” which the groups were given 20 minutes to sign. All groups signed except the WIL. We reproduce here the Peace and Unity Agreement.
(Here follows the text of the Peace and Unity Agreement of August 1938)
The American comrades addressed the whole of the membership of the WIL on several occasions with the object of convincing them to accept the above agreement as the basis for unity. The WIL unanimously rejected this. We claimed that the so-called “unification” was not a unification at all but was merely the prelude to further splits because of two fundamental factors: there was no unified tactic and therefore no unified body; with two tactics in operation without a majority decision, it was impossible to work as a unified body. The WIL expressed to the American comrade the desire to become a sympathetic section of the Fourth International, which he assured us he would exert his influence to effect. We were asked to send a delegate to the International conference, failing which we were to hand a statement to DDH [Harber], a delegate of the unified section who attended the conference. The WIL decided to send a written statement and delivered it by band to DDH, as instructed by the American comrade. The statement of the WIL is produced below.
(Here follows the text of the statement addressed by the WIL to the Founding Conference of the Fourth International)
The International Conference accepted the “unified” organisation, the RSL, as the official British Section of the Fourth International. It rejected the application of the WIL to be recognised as an official section or even a sympathetic section and predicted its inevitable degeneration and collapse.
Below is produced the statement of the 1938 International Conference on the “Lee Group” (WIL). It must be pointed out that the accusation in Section 3, that our statement was addressed to the world at large, presents a mis-statement of fact. We addressed our statement in a sealed envelope to the conference as headed.
(Here follows the resolution of the Founding Conference of the Fourth International on the “Lee Group” [WIL])
Hardly had the ink dried on the Peace and Unity Agreement and the American delegates departed for home, when the cracks in the “unified” organisation began to appear. These cracks rapidly widened into splits. After signing the agreement, the RSP, which launched a vicious attack against the WIL at the International Conference because of our warnings on the nature of the unification, had split away before the year had ended. What is more, they split precisely on the basis we predicted. The “lefts” soon followed suit, setting up their own “official section” of the same name, the RSL. This was followed by a rapid disintegration of the majority of such provincial groups and contacts as the unified section still retained. It is noteworthy, that although the International took a very “hard” stand when the WIL refused to accept the Peace and Unity Agreement as the basis of agreement and made a caustic public condemnation of the WIL, no public statement was ever issued denouncing the splitters from the “unified” section. Thus we have it that such elements who did not enter the unification honestly – Wicks, Dewar, Lane, Maitland, etc., etc. – these are the people who are using the statement of the International against the WIL today.
For the information of members, we produce the statements of the first two splits issued by the RSP and the RWL (the latter is the nucleus of the present ”TO” [Trotskyist Opposition]). Although these are somewhat lengthy they are of value insofar as they demonstrate the exact line of development as foreseen by the WIL.
(Then follow the statements of the Edinburgh RSP and the London ”RSL” [later called the RWL] splitting from the united RSL, section of the new Fourth International)
Once again the old situation existed, except that it was more chaotic than at any time in the past. Our movement continued to consist of “general staffs” but without the armies.
During this period the WIL continued its work, convinced that the only way out of the impasse of British Trotskyism was to turn our backs on the old clique spirit and petit-bourgeois milieu and draw in fresh workers to reinforce the ranks of the movement. That we suffered from the denunciation of the IS is undoubted. But as we had the correct policy and the correct attitude, the general harmony within our ranks gave us a superiority in the orientation and organisation of our cadres. A new phase began in the development of our movement. Whereas in the years 1934-39 we witnessed a series of interminable splits, superficial re-unifications and splits again, the last period 1939-43 has marked a period of genuine unification of all the serious elements and the growth and influence in our ideas among the British working class. This unification has taken place within the framework of the Workers International League. Any member or section seeking the road to the genuine building of the party in Britain found their way into the WIL as an organisation putting forward the policy of the Fourth International, conducting its activities in a serious and disciplined manner, and basing itself upon the principles of democratic centralism.
Just over 12 months ago we made contact with the comrades in the RSL who now constitute the TO. At that time the RSL was composed of three warring factions, the so-called “Left” (Robinson, Mercer), the “Centre” (Harber, Davis), and the “Right” (Lawrence, Lane). The TO claimed to hold a position identical to the WIL on the political and tactical questions facing our movement. The “Left” characterised the WIL, as well as the IS and SWP, as “chauvinist” and “opportunist” and retained the entrist tactic. The “Centre” was between the two, claimed also that the WIL and the IS were “chauvinist” and “opportunist”.
It must be pointed out that the TO was working in very close and comradely collaboration with the WIL. We were paying Lawrence at the same rate as our professionals – in effect he was a professional for our organisation. But as a result of Stuart's intervention the TO changed its course. It turned away from collaboration with the WIL and returned to the perspective of re-entering the RSL with the object of gaining the majority,
Today the position of the RSL is that both “Left” and “Right” have been expelled. The TO has taken into its ranks elements who have opposed the political position of the WIL and the Fourth International for a period of years, who have opposed entry into the WIL on the grounds of political differences. That the TO has been influenced by these elements is undoubted.
In a letter to the WIL, dated 4 July 1943, they write:
We are not prepared at this stage to open up “written discussion” with WIL on the points of agreement and disagreement with your present political program – but we certainly do not consider the program as a whole to be incompatible with membership of the FI.
Not only have the TO moved their political position, but they have expelled and are expelling members from their ranks who disagree with their tactics and who demand a genuine collaboration with the WIL, and yet remain in agreement with the basic policy on which the TO was formed.
Thus, from a position of comradely collaboration with the TO, we have reached a position today where the TO has political disagreements with the WIL; they have made no gains from the RSL; they are expelling members who disagree with their tactic and methods and demand a genuine collaboration with the WIL. The responsibility for this situation rests on the shoulders of Stuart, who prevented the TO from fusing with the WIL in the most favourable circumstances and diverted the political struggle onto organisational questions. When his tactic of re-entry into the RSL appeared to be failing (far less winning the majority), Stuart proposed to the TO … that they found a new Trotskyist party in this country, that they establish a new Trotskyist journal, with no apparent programme other than the alleged programme of “Democratic Centralism” and that they conduct a public struggle against the WIL and the RSL. He thus repudiated his previous “principled” position, apparently lending international authority to a further split in out. movement. Here is reproduced the letter from Stuart to the TO:
(Then is reproduced the letter of JB Stuart [Sam Gordon] to JL [John Lawrence] dated 4 February, 1943)
As the result of this and other letters of Stuart, the leaders of the TO are drawing the logical conclusions: when the TO eventually does fuse with the WIL, they will maintain their fraction within the WIL as the “true” Fourth Internationalists. In other words, instead of liquidating the factions after the fusion. the TO is discussing the maintenance of the split within the ranks of the fused organisation, yet it has no avowed political differences. This is a false and unprincipled conception of unification and lays the basis for a future split.
The above documents provide the facts of the British situation as a background to the discussions now opening up in the organisation.
Political Bureau
Workers International League

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin –The Big Knock-Out

 
 
As readers know Tyrone Fallon, the son of the late famous Southern California private operative, Michael Philip Marlin (Tyrone used his mother’s maiden name for obvious reasons), and private eye in his own right told my old friend Peter Paul Markin’s friend Joshua Lawrence Breslin some stories that his illustrious father told him. Here’s one such story.  

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

Every wise guy, every sporting guy, every crippled corner newsie, hell, everybody over the age of twelve, no more, knows, knows to a certainty that boxing, you know guys (and these days gals) beating each other down for the amusement of the blood-lusted crowds is fixed. Is fixed six ways to Sunday even before the first bell is sounded. It is worst now than in the old days when you at least knew that when a champ was crowned he was the one and only champ not like now the World Boxing this, Federated Boxing that, and United Boxing the other thing handing out gaudy belts like they were going out of style. But just so nobody gets all nostalgic about the good old days, gets misty-eyed that only one champ meant only one skinning on the bet line, only one fix, let’s look at our trusty brother tough-edged, hard guy private eye Michael Philip Marlin as he tried to unravel murder and mayhem on the canvas. And while Marlowe had seen it all, had figured out a few things in his time he almost for a minute believed with this kid, this well-built, scrappy kid that was being groomed for a championship fight was on the up and up. That momentary slip almost cost him his life so listen up.

Marlin thought that he really should have passed on the job, should have just walked away and maybe seen if that graveyard shift as the house peeper at the old Taft Hotel was still available. Yes, he was short of dough, short of office rent money, short of room rent but lining himself up with Jacky Craig, the, ah, boxing promoter, and man of many operations, mostly illegal, gave him pause. But damn that rent had to be paid and so in the year of our lord 1940 one more gumshoe took a walk on the wild side and he showed up at Craig’s gym to find out what was expected of him. See what Jackie wanted to see him about.

Of course a wise guy, if he wants to stay a wise guy, or at least alive covers himself with layers of protection so Markin was prepared when he was frisked by Frankie Lip, a cheapjack gunsel who had been with Craig for years, before entering his majesty’s office. The nature of Craig’s offer though was pretty straight up, pretty straight up on the face of it, a job for a tough- guy private eye and not for some brainless muscle only good for taking shots to protect the boss. What Jackie wanted was for Marlin to investigate who had been threatening Earl Avery, the best fighter in his stable and a boxer everybody said was slated to take a run for the light heavy-weight championship, when he was ready. Not only had somebody, some punk, Jackie called him been threatening the Earl but also Jean, the girlfriend that Jackie had provided to keep Earl amused, and to keep an eye on him in the sex, drugs, booze department.  No booze, no dope and one girl, this Jean who had Earl under her thumb about two minutes after he saw her.       

This Jean was a looker, the kind of woman Marlin favored, the kind he would take straight aim at if she wasn’t attached to the Earl, or to Jackie. Hell, taking a second look he thought if things worked out right he might take that run anyway, especially once he got close enough to get a small whiff of that sandalwood perfume she was wearing, wearing just enough to make a guy, a red-blooded guy, jump.  Moreover Jean’s story, when Marlin got around to hearing it, included some tough times, some down times. She had come West like a million other frails as she tried to make a go as a singer, along with another  woman doing duos and had finally caught on when Jackie heard them, mainly her over at the Club Lola near the Santa Monica Pier. Jackie signed them to perform at his club-casino, The Lighthouse, up in Malibu. But enough of Jean, enough for now because  Marlin was on the case to find out what the hell was going on in that murky world of boxing, big time money boxing out on the angel streets of his city, Los Angeles.

What happened was simplicity itself a guy like Jackie Craig doesn’t take chances, tries to control his environment and so it was the case here too. That is why a certain Sammy Sams (believe it or not his real given name so why change it), a punk, was found floating out with the tide, a classic Jackie job and Marlin was ripping mad once he found out that he had been simple-simon doped up by Jackie. And Jackie tried to control all his arena, his boxing business, tried to control the new boxing commissioner, Steve Earle, a former state senator and power in the state capital, who had come in declaring the he was going to “clean the sport up.” So Jackie tried by might and main to buy him off, buy him off good. And Brother Earle turned out to be looking for the main chance, and that had Jackie’s signature all over it too. That was what Marlin was up against and after a few fists flying, a few off-hand shootings at The Lighthouse, and a few off-hand tosses under the sheets with Jean he closed down Jackie’s operation, closed down Earle’s operation and felt he had done some good work. Even if he got no dough to pay that office rent coming due at the end of the week.                    

Oh yeah, about Jean, about that perfume driving Marlin crazy every time he came with a mile of her. The Earl Avery thing was strictly as a favor to Jackie, a favor to get her act on his stage and before long Marlin and she were roughing up some sheets. Here is the funny thing though this Jean had her own ax to grind, grind against Steve Earle. Her previous performance companion, Ada, had committed suicide after they were forced, after striking out in a few mean street gin mills doing opening act duos for third-rate has-beens out in the heartland, to turn a few tricks out on the mean streets to keep body and soul together and Ada was too ashamed to face that fact. The funny part although obviously not funny is that this Ada was allegedly Steve Earle’s daughter and so Jean had drifted to L.A. to squeeze Earle for some dough, for retribution dough.

Naturally any girl, any guy for that matter, down on her uppers was entitled to take a chance at getting out from under with guys who had dough. But this Earle character proved quite reluctant even when she put the proposition to the boss, Jackie. But before she could properly squeeze the main chance Jackie as was his way tried to insure that his boy Earl had a one- hundred percent chance, no one-hundred and ten percent chance of winning that championship so the fix was in, in big time. Jackie bought Earle (who actually needed dough and so it made sense that Jean’s pitch fell on deaf ears) into the tent. Avery in three.  Marlin took that probability off the agenda though when he confronted Jackie with his evidence. Those aforementioned fists and guns flailed away. Needless to say the boxing world was short one promoter. In the fallout Earle tumbled under Jackie’s weight after Marlin pulled the hammer down on his operation Jean and so lost her chance for serious dough. But ever the trouper all Jean said when her current partner said that The Lighthouse was closed was “I guess we have to hit the road again.” Nice. Nice too that Marlin told her to keep in touch, and keep wearing that sandalwood next time they met.           
***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

…yeah, always getting a guy with the big talk, a flash wad (what did they used to call it, oh yeah, a Missouri bankroll, a twenty up front and singletons in back-yeah-“show me”), some fancy latest cut suit (on credit with some downtown tailor now dunning for payment, or else), although a small room-war shortages he said, just temporary he said that time she rolled over on the bed and wound up flat on her face. Oh brother, she should have fled then but she was well let’s call it underdressed at the time.

She could have put up with the no dough, maybe given him the dough to get that jerk tailor off his back, he sure looked good in it all pressed up, and would not have complained of that fall on the floor (he was well, well, let’s put it this way he knew how make a girl happy in bed) if he only would not live in that two- cent dream world of his about his ship coming in. Not a ship like other guys, like her husband who shipped out just after she ran into Mr. Big Talk at Jimmy’s when she was feeling blue and needed a quick drink. Some sunken treasure Spanish doubloons ship, some pipe dream ship.         

Yeah, she always drew the talkers (the takers and the fakers too)- that hubby Europe-bound no better than him (and well not as good in bed as him if you want to know) or she might have stayed home at night and remained true-blue. Always drew the little walkers with that little walk, a guy who promised the moon, the stars, all of god’s heavens, if you would just give it up. Yeah, give it up for a cold floor face down in some cheap rooming-just temporary of course. Saying maybe you could walk the streets to raise, what did he call it, capital, yes, capital. Then glad-handing back to your door looking for two dollars to pay the taxi fare, smelling, smelling lots of smells, smells of low-rent whisky meaning he is busted (in the chips nothing but high-shelf bonded blends), smelling of some Bull Durham roll-your-own meaning real broke (and meaning once again his nasty pitch to raise capital, raise it off of her back), smelling of reefer meaning long gone broke (wouldn’t score any for her though when she was blue and needed a lift- said it would make her a tramp, yeah, like he hadn’t already), and smelling of some other woman’s sweat and faded sandalwood perfume. Yeah, yeah get the hell out here you two-timing so and so…         

From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Two false oppositions (Socialist League-Britain) 

...the question of smaller revolutionary left-wing groups entering into larger working class formations like the British Labor Party is a tricky matter and had bedeviled many smaller organizations. In a time of left-wing drift entry in those reformist formations to take advantage of being able to speak to the serious militants make lots of sense. The classic example in the United States was the 1930s entry (not without opposition from those who were happy with the propaganda group spirit) of the Socialist Workers Party into the Socialist Party. While the experience was not long the SWP drew out the best militants from that organization and essentially crushed that party as a pole of attraction for serious labor militants. A huge organization like the Labor Party with lots of authority in the working class however is more problematic, especially in the "dog days" and the pressure to go easy on the tops as demonstrated by this sketch below is strong.      
 



Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover”the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible. 

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the

********

Two false oppositions

The following article, dealing with winding up of the Socialist League, appeared in the 10 August 1937 edition of L’Internationale, the monthly magazine of the Union Communiste in France. As the original English text has been lost, we have retranslated it from the French.

The main document published before the fifth annual Conference of the Socialist League was the resolution of the National Council recommending the dissolution of the League. This resolution protests against the “action of the Executive Committee of the Labour Party which no longer recognises the affiliation of the Socialist League and considers adherence to the Labour Party to be incompatible with that of the League”. Conference was requested, in the sacred name of unity (with the EC of the Labour Party) to dissolve the organisation. The National Council of the League, however, would still be free, to express “the confident hope” that the following annual, Conference of the Labour Party would reverse the decision of its EC. If this was so, then, and only then, would the Socialist League become “reconstructed as a propaganda organisation inside the labour movement”, the term Labour Movement is used as, a synonym, for the Labour Party. An amendment deleting this part of the resolution, which shows clearly that the National Council of the League had no intention of reforming the organisation without the express permission of the Executive of the Labour Party, was, put. down in the course of the Conference and accepted by the National Council. But, however modified, the resolution still left. the rebirth of the, League to the discretion, of the National Council, which had already, decided to leave this task to the Labour Party Conference, which meant, in effect, the EC of the Labour Party.
The participation of the Socialist League in the Unity Campaign with the Independent Labour Party and the Communist Party, which provoked the break with the League and the violent expulsion of its members from the Labour Party was motivated by two principal reasons; an overestimation on the part of the leaders of the League, Sir Stafford Cripps & Company, of their influence over the rank and file of the Labour Party and their underestimation of the power of the tops of the Labour Party whom the actions of the League had inconvenienced and who were ready to fight for their existence.
This false opposition, a majority of it petit bourgeois, decided to commit suicide in order not to inconvenience the tops of the Labour Party.

Cripps & Company were taking good care to express their devotion to “unity” (which means an opportunist bloc on chauvinist lines with other parties along with left phrases and slogans), and they promised to continue to work for the Unity Campaign. Having proved that they were ready to submit to the Executive of the Labour Party, this task limited them to passing on unity resolutions to Labour Party Conferences. In reality Cripps & Company intended to keep in existence a left tendency without really leading it to fight the right wing of the Labour bureaucracy and the Stalinists had their aims made easier of organising the leftward-moving masses around a reactionary programme under cover of “left” and democratic slogans.
There was a Trotskyist opposition at the Conference consisting of two groups:
  1. The Marxist League – of nearly 30 members – publishing a monthly organ, The Red Flag. Their representative was Reg Groves, a member of the National Council of the Socialist League.
  2. The Militant Group – of about 40 members – publishing a duplicated organ for sale inside the Labour Party – The Militant – For Revolutionary Socialism appearing monthly. Their representative at the conference was D.D. Harber.
These groups have “tactical” differences with Trotsky but they have never explained publicly in what they consist. There were also “tactical” differences between the two groups. Even though they did not met in the fractional meetings before the Conference the Harber Group supported the resolution put down by a member of the Marxist League.
In this resolution the Trotskyists demanded that the Socialist League continued its existence inside the Labour Party and renounce the Unity campaign. They made no attack against the dissolution of the Socialist League, a dissolution exposing the false nature of the opposition of Cripps & Company.
The Trotskyists did not consider it to be opportune to speak in the presence of militants of the Labour Party about its break with the Socialist League and the dissolution of the latter by Cripps’s adherents nor to denounce the reactionary nature of the Labour Party and expose the pretensions of Cripps to pass himself off as a revolutionary opposition, but judged it preferable instead to consider the affair as the unfortunate consequence of the wrong tactic, which could be rectified by doing what the Executive of the Labour Party demanded of them.
The perspective of a break with the Labour party and the formation of a new Communist party was not presented. Moreover, in their resolution the Trotskyists asked conference to decide “to reconstitute the Socialist League as a revolutionary organisation within the Labour Party”, renewing and spreading the illusion that it is possible for a revolutionary organisation to exist inside the Labour Party. With this opportunist position, which in reality comes round to support for reformism, the Trotskyists in Great Britain are on a level with their colleagues in the United States and elsewhere.
The resolution of the Trotskyists gained 10 votes with 51 against. The dissolution of the organisation was unanimously accepted.
R. Groves informed the Conference that he would continue to work inside the Labour Party and invited those in agreement to meet together after the Conference. After the Conference the Harber and Groves groups met.
Capitulation is something never admitted, whether it be Zinoviev and Kamenev before Stalin, German Social Democracy before Hitler, or simply the sacrifice of the Socialist League to the cause of “unity”.
The reply of the Labour Executive to the obliging dissolution of the Socialist League was a further strengthening of the dictatorship of reformism inside the party.
Twenty four hours after the Conference the Daily Herald, the organ of the labour bureaucracy, warned those who intended to continue to support the organisation and work of the League that fresh measures would be taken against them.
Three weeks after the dissolution of the League the secretary of the Scottish Labour Party sent a circular to all sections asking their delegates to sign an undertaking a) to take no part in the Unity Campaign, b) to accept no proposal for unity in action, c) to accept nothing of like character, and d) to refuse to put itself to any trouble in favour of unity in action (New Leader, 4 June 1937).
“We must struggle for each piece of independence”, Trotsky said before becoming demoralised by the fascist victories and leading the sections of the International Communist League towards the right and into centrist and reformist parties.
But it is not impossible that Trotskyists in Great Britain, following the example of those in France, are going to form an independent organisation (The Marxist Group, which publishes an organ Fight: For the Fourth International, under the leadership of C.L.R. James, a group which includes the greater part of the Trotskyists in the Independent Labour Party, has already preceded them). But unless they recognise their entry into the Socialist League (and the ILP) as an evolution to the right, an abandonment of the Leninist position of the necessity for the independence of the revolutionary organisation caused by demoralisation following the defeats of the proletariat, a demoralisation principally due to a disproportion of petit bourgeois elements in the organisation, and unless they recognise this in all clarity, courageously orientate themselves in complete independence in the first instance towards the proletariat at the point of production, in the factories, the mines, the naval dockyards, and the trade unions, and only in the second instance towards the political parties, they will become no more than a centrist group making a display of “leftist” slogans without mass roots, without real influence.
POSTSCRIPT:
Since the drafting of the above report the leaders of the Socialist League have decided not to establish a common platform with the Stalinist party and the ILP, confirming our forecast as to their ultimate capitulation before the bureaucracy of the Labour Party. Significantly, neither the ILP nor the Stalinists have taxed them with this capitulation. The Stalinists greeted it with pleasure, and the ILP simply regretted the “tactic” of the Socialist League.
We conclude from the press that the Trotskyists have formed a “Left Socialist Federation” within the Labour Party, to spread the idea of a United Front opposed to the Popular Front on the basis of rejecting imperialist alliances and the activity of the League of policy of active class conquest of power and of socialism.
Yet again it is necessary to analyse this point to reveal the pathetic positions of these people. The need for a United Front springs from the weakness and divisions of the working class. For the revolutionary party it is a compromise, intending to prove to the workers an identification with their interests, and at the same time to demonstrate in action against the exploiting class the true nature of other parties.
Without a revolutionary party, exposing the agents of the bourgeoisie, and those who indirectly support them, there is no United Front; there can only be a bloc of centrist and rightist parties, whose principal object will be to camouflage these parties and help them to mislead the working class, which is what realising the Popular Front means in everyday language.
In not openly establishing this, and in asserting that the United Front is possible without a revolutionary party, the Trotskyists themselves, after their fashion, are supporters of the Popular Front.
Such is the swamp in which are enmeshed those who think that the question of the independence of the revolutionary organisation in the struggle for the revolutionary party reduces itself to a simple “tactical” question.
Ernest Rogers
Leninist League
Glasgow
June 1937
Free the Class-War Prisoners!-28th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal-Partisan Defense Committee





Workers Vanguard No. 1034



Free the Class-War Prisoners!-28th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal

This year marks the 28th anniversary of the Partisan Defense Committee’s program of sending stipends to class-war prisoners, those behind bars for the “crime” of standing up to the varied expressions of racist capitalist oppression. The PDC’s Holiday Appeal raises funds to send monthly stipends to 21 class-war prisoners and also provides holiday gifts for the prisoners and their families. We do this not just because it’s the right thing to do. The monthly stipends, just increased from $25 to $50, and holiday gifts are not charity. They are vital acts of class solidarity to remind the prisoners that they are not forgotten.

The Holiday Appeals are a stark contrast to the hypocritical appeals of bourgeois charities. Whether it comes from the megachurches of Southern televangelists or the urbane editors of the New York Times, the invocation of “peace on earth and goodwill toward men” at this time of year is nothing more than a public relations scam to obscure the grinding exploitation of workers and the beggar-the-poor policies that are the hallmark of both major parties of American capitalism. The lump of coal in the Christmas stocking for millions of impoverished families this year is a drastic cut in their already starvation food stamp rations. Christmas turkey for many is likely to be sculpted from cans of Spam.

The prisoners generally use the funds for basic necessities, from supplementing the inadequate prison diet to buying stamps and writing materials, or to pursue literary, artistic and musical endeavors that help ameliorate the living hell of prison life. As Tom Manning of the Ohio 7 wrote to the PDC four years ago: “Just so you know, it [the stipend] goes for bags of mackerel and jars of peanut butter, to supplement my protein needs.” In a separate letter, his comrade Jaan Laaman observed: “This solidarity and support is important and necessary for us political prisoners, especially as the years and decades of our captivity grind on.... Being in captivity is certainly harsh, and this includes the sufferings of our children and families and friends. But prison walls and sentences do not and can not stop struggle.”

We look to the work of the International Labor Defense (ILD) under its first secretary, James P. Cannon (1925-28), who went on to become the founder of American Trotskyism. As the ILD did, we stand unconditionally on the side of the working people and their allies in struggle against their exploiters and oppressors. We defend, in Cannon’s words, “any member of the workers movement, regardless of his views, who suffered persecution by the capitalist courts because of his activities or his opinion” (First Ten Years of American Communism, 1962).

Initiated in 1986, the PDC stipend program revived an early tradition of the ILD. The mid 1980s were a time of waning class and social struggle but also a time when the convulsive struggles for black rights more than a decade earlier still haunted America’s capitalist rulers, who thirsted for vengeance. Among the early recipients of PDC stipends were members and supporters of the Black Panther Party (BPP), the best of a generation of black radicals who sought a revolutionary solution to black oppression—a bedrock of American capitalism.

Foremost among these was Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), former leader of the BPP in Los Angeles. Geronimo won his release in 1997 after spending 27 years behind bars for a murder the cops and FBI knew he did not commit. FBI wiretap logs, disappeared by the Feds, showed that Geronimo was 400 miles away in San Francisco at the time of the Santa Monica killing. Other victims of the government’s deadly Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) remain entombed decades later. Absent an upsurge of class and social struggle that transforms the political landscape, they will likely breathe their last breaths behind bars.

Among the dozens of past stipend recipients are Eddie McClelland, a supporter of the Irish Republican Socialist Party who was framed on charges related to the killing of three members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland, and Mordechai Vanunu, who helped expose the Israeli nuclear arsenal. At its outset, our program included five British miners imprisoned during the bitter 1984-85 coal strike. State repression of labor struggle in the U.S. added to our program, for a time, other militants railroaded to prison for defending their union against scabs in the course of strike battles: Jerry Dale Lowe of the United Mine Workers in West Virginia, Amador Betancourt of Teamsters Local 912 in California and Bob Buck of Steelworkers Local 5668 in West Virginia. (For more background on the PDC and the stipend program, see “18th Annual Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners,” WV No. 814, 21 November 2003.)

The most recent additions to the stipend program include Lynne Stewart and the Tinley Park 5. Stewart is an attorney who spent four decades fighting to keep black and radical activists out of the clutches of the state, only to find herself joining them behind bars on ludicrous “support to terrorism” charges. The youthful anti-fascist fighters known as the Tinley Park 5 were thrown in prison for heroically dispersing a meeting of fascists in May 2012.

At the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, we warned that the enhanced police powers being amassed to go after immigrants from Muslim countries would also be used against the oppressed black population and the working class as a whole. That the “war on terror” takes aim at leftist opponents of this or that government policy is affirmed by the massive “anti-terror” police mobilizations and arrests that have accompanied protest outside every Democratic and Republican national convention, among other gatherings, in recent years. Other recent examples include the FBI-coordinated nationwide crackdown on “Occupy” movement encampments and the state of siege in Chicago during the 2012 NATO summit.

The witchhunt against the Tinley Park 5 coincided with and fed into the hysteria whipped up against the anti-NATO protesters, particularly anarchists and participants in Black Bloc actions. Sitting in jail awaiting trial for 18 months are three protesters set up by a police provocateur. They were arrested and charged under Illinois anti-terrorism statutes, the first time these laws were ever used. Free the anti-NATO protesters! Drop the charges!

Continuing the Legacy of Class-Struggle Defense

The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization that champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the Marxist political views of the Spartacist League, which initiated the PDC in 1974. The PDC’s first major defense effort was the case of Mario Muñoz, the Chilean miners’ leader threatened with death in 1976 by the Argentine military junta. An international campaign of protests by unions and civil libertarians, cosponsored by the Committee to Defend Worker and Sailor Prisoners in Chile, won asylum in France for Muñoz and his family. The PDC has also initiated labor/black mobilizations against provocations by the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis from San Francisco to Atlanta to New York to Springfield, Illinois, and mobilized sections of the integrated labor movement to join these efforts.

Cannon’s ILD, which was affiliated to the early Communist Party, was our model for class-struggle defense. It fused the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) tradition of militant class-struggle, non-sectarian defense and their slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all,” with the internationalism of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, a revolution made not merely for the workers of Russia but for the workers and oppressed of the world. These principles were embodied in the International Organization for Aid to Fighters of the Revolution (MOPR), a defense organization formed in the Soviet Union in 1922 that was more popularly known as the International Red Aid.

The ILD was born out of discussions in 1925 between Cannon and Big Bill Haywood, who had been a leader of the Western Federation of Miners and then the IWW. The venue was Moscow, where Haywood had fled in 1921 after jumping bond while awaiting appeal of his conviction for having called a strike during wartime, an activity deemed a violation of the federal Espionage and Sedition Act. Haywood died in Moscow in 1928. Half his ashes were buried in the Kremlin, the other half in Chicago near the monument to the Haymarket martyrs, leaders of the fight for the eight-hour day who were executed in 1887.

The ILD was founded especially to take up the plight of class-war prisoners in the United States. Initially, the ILD adopted 106 prisoners for its stipend program, including California labor leaders Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, framed up for a bombing at the Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco in 1916, and Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, immigrant anarchist workers executed in 1927 for a robbery/murder they did not commit. The number grew rapidly: Zeigler miners in Illinois whose fights over wages and working conditions pitted them head-on against the KKK; striking textile workers in Passaic, New Jersey. The ILD monthly, Labor Defender, educated tens of thousands of workers about the struggles of their class brothers and carried letters from prisoners describing their cases and the importance of ILD support.

Many of the imprisoned militants were IWW members. After a brief membership in the Socialist Party (SP), Cannon himself had been an IWW organizer and a writer for its press. Witnessing the anarcho-syndicalist IWW crushed by the bourgeois state while a disciplined Marxist party led a successful proletarian revolution in Russia, Cannon rejoined the SP in order to hook up with its developing pro-Bolshevik left wing. In 1919, that left wing exited the SP, with Cannon becoming a founding leader of the American Communist movement. He brought a wealth of experience in labor defense. As Cannon later recalled, “I came from the background of the old movement when the one thing that was absolutely sacred was unity on behalf of the victims of capitalist justice.”

In the year preceding the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, the ILD and sections of the International Red Aid led mass actions in their defense, including protests and strikes of tens of thousands on the eve of the executions. The SP and pro-capitalist union tops undermined the growing workers mobilization by looking to the political agencies of the class enemy, a policy accompanied by a vicious anti-Communist campaign of slander and exclusion. Cannon addressed the two conflicting policies:

“One policy is the policy of the class struggle. It puts the center of gravity in the protest movement of the workers of America and the world. It puts all faith in the power of the masses and no faith whatever in the justice of the courts. While favoring all possible legal proceedings, it calls for agitation, publicity, demonstrations—organized protest on a national and international scale.... The other policy is the policy of ‘respectability,’ of the ‘soft pedal’ and of ridiculous illusions about ‘justice’ from the courts of the enemy. It relies mainly on legal proceedings. It seeks to blur the issue of the class struggle.”

— “Who Can Save Sacco and Vanzetti?” (Labor Defender, January 1927)

The principle of non-sectarian, class-struggle defense has guided our work, in particular our more than two-decade struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. As a small organization, we don’t pretend that we are able to mobilize the type of hard class struggle that not only built the unions in this country but also harnessed the social power of the working class to the defense of labor’s imprisoned soldiers in the class war. Such struggles are today a very faint memory. Nor do we want to distribute rose-colored glasses through which even the most minimal stirrings against particular atrocities by the racist capitalist rulers appear as sea changes in the political climate—a practice that is common fare for sundry proclaimed socialists.

Instead, we are dedicated to educating a new generation of fighters in the best traditions of the early Communist defense work before it was poisoned by Stalinist degeneration. As Cannon wrote for the ILD’s second annual conference: “The procession that goes in and out of the prison doors is not a new one. It is the result of an old struggle under new forms and under new conditions. All through history those who have fought against oppression have constantly been faced with the dungeons of a ruling class.” He added, “The class-conscious worker accords to the class-war prisoners a place of singular honor and esteem.” Keeping the memory of their struggles alive helps politically arm a new generation of fighters against the prison that is capitalist society. We urge WV readers to honor the prisoners by supporting the Holiday Appeal.

The 21 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below.

*   *   *



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 America’s foremost class-war prisoner. Mumia remains condemned to life in prison with no chance of parole.




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. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 69-year-old Peltier is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another eleven years! Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family.





Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 36th 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. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings. None have been released.

WRITE LYNNE!

Lynne Stewart is a lawyer imprisoned in 2009 for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric convicted for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. Stewart is a well-known advocate who defended Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state. She was originally sentenced to 28 months; a resentencing pursued by the Obama administration more than quadrupled her prison time to ten years. As she is 74 years old and suffers from Stage IV breast cancer that has spread to her lungs and back, this may well be a death sentence. Stewart qualifies for immediate compassionate release, but Obama’s Justice Department refuses to make such a motion before the resentencing judge, who has all but stated that he would grant her release!



 
Jaan Laaman of the Ohio 7

 

 


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. 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 a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.









Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They are 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. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now spent more than 40 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.





 
Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his late 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious torture chamber Pelican Bay SHU in California, a focal point for hunger strikes against grotesque inhuman conditions.



Jason Sutherlin, Cody Lee Sutherlin, Dylan Sutherlin, John Tucker and Alex Stuck were among some 18 anti-racist militants who, in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park in May 2012, broke up a gathering of fascists called to organize a “White Nationalist Economic Summit.” Among the vermin sent scurrying were some with links to the Stormfront Web site run by a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon. Such fascist meetings are not merely right-wing discussion clubs but organizing centers for race-terror against black people, Jews, immigrants, gays and anyone else the white-supremacists consider subhuman. For their basic act of social sanitation, these five were sentenced by a Cook County court to prison terms of three and a half to six years on charges of “armed violence.”

Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeals 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 depredations. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.

************



Note that this image is PVT Manning's preferred photo.

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.


Reposted from the American Left Historyblog, dated December 1, 2010.

Markin comment:

I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. And an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers, articulate death row prisoners, anti-fascist street fighters to black liberation fighters who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters who took Che’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Others, other militant fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.

Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart* (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).

That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthersin their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven, as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.

That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.

And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. Many, too many for most of that time. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. The class-war prisoners must not stand alone.