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
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Do you side with Delta Airlines or Airport
Workers?
Sign the Petition!
15
Now and MSP Airport Workers Fight for $15/hr min.
wage
On October 20th, over 40
low-wage airport workers with 15 Now and community
supporters spoke-out at Minneapolis' monthly Metropolitan Airport Commission
(MAC) for a $15/hour minimum wage.
Over 1,000 airport workers have signed a petition
demanding a $15/hour wage, and now they're appealing for you support!
Sign the petition to Governor Mark Dayton
today, calling on him to direct his
appointees on the MAC to end poverty wages at MSP Airport.
Airport workers with 15 Now condemned
Delta Ceo Richard Anderson's $14 million salary while workers who clean Delta's
planes make under $10/hour. Delta is the biggest employer at MSP and fiercely
anti-union.
Governor
Mark Dayton appoints 13 of the 15 Metropolitan Airport Commissioners and has the
power to greatly influence the commissioners to pass a $15/hour minimum
wage.
Airport workers need your
support and solidarity. Please sign our petition demanding Governor Dayton to
take a stand against poverty wages. If Governor Dayton leads, the Airport
Commissioners he appointed will
follow.
Excerpt of Kerry Kennedy, President of the
Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, speaking on Huffington
Post Live about the Fair Food label on Food
Day.
New Fair Food Program label a huge
hit in print and social media on Food Day…
The Fair Food Program’s new label debuted this past Friday, and it made quite
the splash in the national media and the Twittersphere in the process! The
label, which was nearly five years in the making while the Fair Food Program was
hard at work in the fields cleaning up generations of exploitation and abuse,
was greeted with real excitement by consumers, food movement groups and media
outlets alike as the next big step in the movement to build a more modern food
industry that respects fundamental human rights. We’ve collected some of the
very best coverage and social media reactions for you in a special label launch
media round-up!
First up, Huffington Post Live conducted an interview on the morning of the
launch with Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice
and Human Rights, about the significance of the label. Check out the video
above for an excerpt from the interview with Kerry.
Down here in Florida, the Ft. Myers News-Press published a very strong, front
page story situating the Fair Food label as the most recent milestone in a
remarkable year for the Fair Food Program. Here is the article in full:
CIW debuts Fair Food label
nationwide By Amy Bennett Williams, October 24, 2014 The first-ever Fair Food label went national
Friday marking the latest milestone in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’
two-decade-long journey to improve the lives of Florida farmworkers. Similar to the “cruelty-free” or “fair trade” labels on other products,
the logo brands tomatoes harvested by workers paid a premium and guaranteed
human rights in the field...
The Immigration “Crisis": Has US Foreign Policy Created It? What Can We Do
About It?
When: Tuesday, November 11, 2014, 7:00 pm to 9:00
pm Where: encuentro 5 • 9 Hamilton Place • Park St T •
Boston
A
forum cosponsored by United for Justice with Peace and Massachusetts Trust Act
Coalition
What is the "border crisis" and how does it affect
Massachusetts?
What are political and social consequences of terms such as
"illegal aliens"
How has US foreign policy contributed to the problem?
How are local communities confronting the criminalization of
immigration polices, and helping recently arrived refugees?
Prof. Aviva Chomsky will provide historical context on the creation of
the so-called “illegal immigrant” in the US. She will discuss the effects
of military aid that the US poured into Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in
the 1980s that helped create a violently enforced inequality leading to the
problems today. Prof. Chomsky is coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem
State University and author of Undocumented: How Immigration Become
Illegal (2014).
Gabriel Camacho is the Immigration Programs
Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. Locally the AFSC is on
the Steering Committee of the Massachusetts Trust Act Coalition. With the
protracted death of "immigration reform" at the federal level, and President
Obama's repeated delays on executive action, Gabe will speak on conditions
facing newly arrived refugee families and how local communities are confronting
these issues.
November 4th is not the end of 15 Now in Boston or New England. We
are continuing to fight for working people to receive a real living wage of $15
with new, exciting campaigns in the new year! Get in touch to get
involved.
The 10th Suffolk
State Rep District has the ability to make history next Tuesday, November 4th.
By voting 'Yes' on Ballot Question 5 - for a $15 an hour minimum wage,
the 10th Suffolk will be standing up for all working people in Boston, the state
of Massachusetts and the US in saying that we want a real living wage for all
workers.
Ballot Question 5 is an advisory question that can serve as a
referendum on not just the minimum wage but on the need for substantial changes
in living standards for working people. A strong showing for a 'Yes'
vote can serve as a building block for future movements in the city and state
that emphasize the needs of working people over corporate
profits
To make the strongest campaign for $15/hr, we need your
help in the ballot box but also at the polls. Please contact us if you
are able to help build the movement by standing out at polling stations
throughout the district next Tuesday.
We've got an opportunity
to make a historic impact for the Fight for 15 movement. Let's do
it!
Friends Don't Let Friends Commit War
Crimes! Protest
the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces!
WHEN:
THURSDAY OCTOBER 30, 2014 STARTING
AT 5:30PM
WHERE:
WESTIN WATERFRONT HOTEL (425 SUMMER
ST. BOSTON)
WHAT:
PICKET & RALLY AGAINST FRIENDS
OF THE ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCE
(FIDF) NEW ENGLAND CHAPTER ANNUAL
FUNDRAISER
WHY:
The
IDF is responsible for the slaughter of thousands of innocent Palestinians in
Gaza this past summer and the 47-year old occupation of Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza. Despite being one of the world's best financed armies, FIDF
materially supports this slaughter, sending millions of dollars to Israeli
soldiers and does so as a non-profit! In addition, the IDF trains police forces
throughout the US in the repressive and military tactics that we saw
particularly in Ferguson, MO this summer, but also that communities of color
here experience regularly.
Join
us in protesting this deplorable event and let's continue to build a movement in
solidarity with Palestine here in Boston.
Friends Don't Let Friends Commit War
Crimes! Protest
the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces!
WHEN:
THURSDAY OCTOBER 30, 2014 STARTING
AT 5:30PM
WHERE:
WESTIN WATERFRONT HOTEL (425 SUMMER
ST. BOSTON)
WHAT:
PICKET & RALLY AGAINST FRIENDS
OF THE ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCE
(FIDF) NEW ENGLAND CHAPTER ANNUAL
FUNDRAISER
WHY:
The
IDF is responsible for the slaughter of thousands of innocent Palestinians in
Gaza this past summer and the 47-year old occupation of Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza. Despite being one of the world's best financed armies, FIDF
materially supports this slaughter, sending millions of dollars to Israeli
soldiers and does so as a non-profit! In addition, the IDF trains police forces
throughout the US in the repressive and military tactics that we saw
particularly in Ferguson, MO this summer, but also that communities of color
here experience regularly.
Join
us in protesting this deplorable event and let's continue to build a movement in
solidarity with Palestine here in Boston.
Students march in Mexico City in protest of the recent atrocities in
Guerrero. The masks are a double entendre, evoking Mexico’s traditional “Day of
the Dead” celebrations at the end of the month and the repeated findings of
dozens of corpses in mass graves in the Guerrero
countryside.
“Enough! Mexico Is
Ready to Explode”…
Two weeks ago we brought you an
extended analysis of the human rights crisis in Mexico and its impact on the
agricultural industry there. In a post entitled “Fear and Fair Cannot Coexist,”
we wrote:
Mass graves. Horribly disfigured corpses.
Police complicity in the ultraviolence of all-powerful drug gangs.
Since 2005, stories like these have played out
across Mexico’s headlines day after day, month after month, year after year.
But the details of last month’s mass killing and disappearance of student
activists in the southern state of Guerrero stood out above the ever-growing
body count in Mexico’s drug and corruption wars…
… Unlike the more than 120,000 deaths in Mexico’s
drug wars since 2005 — which rarely inspired any kind of concerted or widespread
protests — news of these latest murders sparked outrage across the country.
Carrying signs demanding an answer to the question “Who Governs
Guerrero?,” tens of thousands of people blocked streets in cities across
Mexico last week (right) in an extraordinary departure from the silent
resignation that typically greets news of the latest grisly
killings.
Today, another dispatch from
Mexico, entitled “Enough! Mexico is Ready to Explode” tells of the continued
growth of popular pressure for an end to the decade-long nightmare of drug- and
corruption-fueled violence. [...]
[...]
Countdown to the big national of “Food Chains” begins!
Meanwhile, back here in Florida — where
the Fair Food Program has helped bring about a human rights revolution in the
$650 million tomato industry, transforming it from “ground zero for modern day
slavery” to the “best working environment in American agriculture” — an
important date is rapidly approaching.
“Food Chains”, the film that documents the history
of the CIW’s struggle to modernize Florida’s tomato industry, is set to be
released in just thee short weeks, and the final stages of planning for the big
release are underway!
On The 155th Anniversary Of The
Heroic Captain John Brown-Led Fight For Black Liberation At Harper’s Ferry-Josh Breslin’s Dream
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
I remember a few years ago my friend and I,
Josh Breslin, from the old working- class neighborhoods of North Adamsville, a
town south of Boston, were discussing the historical events that helped form
our political understandings back in the early 1960 since we were, and are,
both political men driven by historical examples as much as by the minutia of organizing
principles. And while we have diverged on many of the influences since then as we
have a fair degree of differences on the way to change the world and what
agencies can do that (basically working within the current political system or
moving over to the base of society and organizing from the ground up within or
outside of the system depending on circumstance) we both agreed whole-heartedly
that one of our early heroes was old Captain John Brown and his heroic efforts
with his small integrated band of men at Harper’s Ferry down in what is now
West Virginia but the just Virginia, a slave-holders stronghold. As we
discussed the matter more fully we found we were hard pressed to explain what
first captured our attention and agreed that then would have not had the
political sense then to call Brown’s actions heroic although we both understood
that what he did was necessary.
See, coming up in a mainly Irish working-class
neighborhood we were always aware, made particularly aware by grandfathers who
had kindred over there in those days, of that heroic struggle in Easter 1916 that
was the precursor to the long sought national liberation of Ireland from the
bloody British. So when we first studied, or heard about John Brown we
instinctively saw that same kind of struggle. Both of us also agreed that we
had had back then very strong feelings about the wrongness of slavery, a
wretched system going back to Pharaoh’s time if not before, although Josh was
more ambivalent about the fate of black people after Civil War freedom than I
was since there was in his household a stronger current of anti-black feeling
around the civil rights work down south in those days than in mine. (Strangely
my father, who was nothing but a corn liquor, fast car, ex-coal miner good old
boy from down in Kentucky was more sympathetic to that struggle that Josh’s
Irish grandfather whom Josh could never get to call black people anything
better than “nigras.” At least we got my father to say “Negro.” Jesus.)
A couple of week after that conversation Josh
called me up from California one night where he was attending a professional
conference near San Jose and told me that he forgot to tell me about what he
called a “dream” he had had as a kid concerning his admiration for John Brown. Of
course that “dream” stuff was just Josh’s way of saying that he had sketched
out a few thoughts that he wanted to share with me (and which will undoubtedly
find their into a commentaryor review
or something because very little of Josh’s “dream” stuff fails to go to ink or cyberspace).
Some of it is now hazy in my mind since the hour was late here in the East, and
some of it probably was really based on stuff we had learned later about the
Brown expedition like how Boston Brahmins and high abolitionists like George
Stearns secretly funded the operation or Brown’s attempts to get Fredrick
Douglass and Harriet Tubman on board (neither name which we would have known
very much about then), and some of the stuff was probably a little goofy since
it involved Josh in some hero worship. Since he will inevitably write something
on his own he can make any corrections to what I put down here himself. Know
this though whenever I hear the name John Brown mentioned lately I think about
Josh’s telephone call and about how the “old man” has held our esteem for so
long. Here is what I jotted down, edited of course, after that
conversation:
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and
was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harper’s Ferry. I would
say that was in about the sixth grade when I went to the library and read about
Abraham Lincoln before he became president and how he didn’t like what John
Brown did because he knew that that action was going to drive the South crazy
and upset the delicate balance that was holding the Union together. Frank
though thinks it was the seventh grade when we were learning about the slavery
issues as part of the 100th anniversary of the start of the American
Civil War and his name came up as a “wild man” out of some Jehovah Calvinist
burning bush dream who was single-handedly trying to abolish slavery with that
uprising. Was ready to “light the spark” to put out the terrible scourge of
slavery in the land with some spilled blood. That slavery business, if you can
believe this really bothered both of us, especially when we went to a museum
that showed the treatment of slaves and the implements used to enforce that
condition down South. And I remember one time going to the Museum of Fine Arts
and saw how old Pharaoh used his slaves to build those damn pyramids to
immortalize himself. Yeah, the hell with slavery, any kind.
I think I am right thought about when I first heard about
the “old man” because I know I loved Lincoln, loved to read about him, loved
that back then we celebrated his birthday, February 12th, and we got
the day off from school. Loved that Lincoln was basically forced at the governmental
level to implement Brown’s program to root out slavery once the deal went down
and he was merciless about its extermination once he got “religion” on the
matter. Of course neither I nor Frank would have articulated our thoughts that
way then but we knew “Massa Lincoln” was on the right side of the angels in his
work as much as he hated to burn down the South in the process. But there was
no other way to get the damn issue resolved and I think that is what he learned
from the Captain whether he gave credit to the man or not. By the way this I do
know that while we celebrated Lincoln’s birthday in the North as the great
emancipator and Union-saver Frank once told me a story about one of his cousins
down south and how when he mentioned that he had Lincoln’s birthday off that
cousin said “we don’t celebrate that
man’s birthday down here,’’ in such a way that Frank began to understand
that maybe the Civil War was not over. That some people had not gotten the word)
I knew other stuff back then too which added to my feel for
the Brown legend. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a
prior existence as John Brown’s Body,
a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they
bravely headed south. Funny but back then I was totally unaware of the role of
the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first black regiment raised
although with white officers when Father Abraham gave the word, whose survivors
and replacements marched into Charleston, South Carolina, the heart and soul of
the Confederacy, after the bloody Civil War to the tune of John Brown’s Body. That must have been a righteous day. Not so
righteous though and reflecting a very narrow view of history that we were
taught back then kind of fudging the very serious differences back in Civil War
times even in high abolitionist Boston was not knowing thing number one about
Augustus Saint-Gauden’s commemorative frieze honoring the men of the 54th
right across from the State House which I passed frequently when I went on to
Boston Common.
I was then, however, other than aware of the general
narrative of Brown’s exploits and a couple of songs and poems neither familiar
with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much
about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the ante
bellum struggle against slavery of which he represented the extreme activist
left-wing. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior
military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery.
Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong
bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was
executed I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the
turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in
the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Some 150 years after his
death I am proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown. [And I am too,
brother!-Frank]
If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth,
of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge
of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only
conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As various biographies point
out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early
service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves
northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery
propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery
elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the
‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on
Harper’s Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by
those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day
apologists for the institution about his so-called ‘madness’. This is a
political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.
For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly,
it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. Like them without
warts and with a discernible thrust from early adulthood that leads to some
heroic action. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would
hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in
any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions
in Kansas (concerning allegations of the murder of some pro-slavery elements
under his direction) have also clouded his image. However if one looks at
Kansas as the start of the Civil War then all the horrible possibilities under
the heat of battle mitigate some of that incident although not excusing it
anymore that we would today with American soldiers in places like Afghanistan
and Iraq busting down doors and shooting first. However, when the deal went
down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no
other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the
occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call
him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great
historical figures shows that they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they
make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.
Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy
for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter
of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness
of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination
of slave revolt modeled after the Maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s
earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerilla warfare of the ‘third
world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years
later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that
had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually
uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs. The execution of
the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the
book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point
that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by
other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists,
including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with
connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at
Harper’s Ferry.
What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a
true Calvinist “avenging angel” in the struggle against slavery and more
importantly acted on that belief. (Strange, or maybe not so strange now, both
Frank and I who grew up upright Roman Catholics gravitated toward those
photographs of Brown with his long unkempt beard as some latter day Jehovah and
I remember Frank had a photo on the wall in his room with just such a
photograph from I think a detail of the big mural in the State House in
Kansas.) In short Brownwas committed to bring justice to the black
masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It
is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well
as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist sense of pre-determination that he would
not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements
never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement
led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported Brown and kept
his memory alive in hard times. In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the
Old Testament prophet. This old time prophet animating spirit is not one that
animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand today the
depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if
not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at
Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a
combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind
that picture of him.
By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of
brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were
killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed,
including Brown. He prophetic words upon
the scaffold about purging the evil of slavery in blood proved too true. But
that demeanor in the face of defeat was very appealing to me back then.I have learned since that these results, the
imprisonments or executions are almost inevitable when one takes up a
revolutionary struggle against the old order if one is not victorious. One need
only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in
1871 when that experience was crushed in blood after heroic resistance. One can
fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others
bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar with
now there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the
defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that
galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by
history.
Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political
mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize
important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant
Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on
Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that
his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or
gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and
others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy
that led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same
incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming
American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be
revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political
implications.
From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black
liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately
successful reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s
actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no
program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American
constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone.
Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political
freedom. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the
reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities
changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time.
Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown,
and of his friend Frederick Douglass.
I used to fervently believe that if Douglass had come on
board as Brown had urged the chances for success would have been greater, at
least more blacks (mostly free blacks and not plantation blacks for obvious
reasons) and more radical whites who could have been mobilized as a result of
all of the events of the 1850s especially the struggle against the Fugitive
Slave Act and the struggle against the imposition of slavery in Kansas. Now I
am not so sure that Douglass’ acceptance would have qualitatively changed the
outcome. He went on to do yeoman’s work during the Civil War articulating the
left black perspective and organizing those black regiments that shifted the
outcome of the war at a decisive point. In any case honor the memory of old
Captain John Brown and his heroic band at Harper’s Ferry.
***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation
Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night - Sam’s Song
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Sam Lowell thought it
was funny how things worked out sometimes in such a contrary fashion in this
wicked old world, not his expression that “wicked old world” for he preferred
of late the more elastic and ironic “sad old world” but that of his old time
North Adamsville corner boy Peter Markin who will be more fully introduced in a
moment (Markin aka Peter Paul Markin although nobody ever called him that
except his mother, as one would expect although he hated to be teased by every
kid from elementary school on including girls, girls who liked to tease him,
tease him when they wanted to show their interest usually, and his first
ill-advised wife, Martha, a heiress of the local Mayfair swells who tried,
unsuccessfully since they sensed right away that he was not one of them, to
impress her leafy horse country Dover suburban parents with the familiar waspy
triple names).
Neither of those expressions referred
to however dated back to their youth since neither Sam nor Peter back then,
back in their 1960s youth, would have used such old-fashioned
religious-drenched expressions to explain their take on the world since as with
all youth, or at least youth who expected to “turn the world upside down” (an
expression that they both did use although each in very different contexts)
they would have withheld such judgments or were too busy doing that “turning”
business they had no time for adjectives to express their worldly concerns. No
that expression, that understanding about the wickedness of the world had been
picked up by Sam from Peter when they had reconnected a number of years before
after they had not seen each other for decades to express the uphill battles of
those who had expected humankind to exhibit the better angels of their nature
on a more regular basis. Some might call this nostalgic glancing back,
especially by Peter since he had more at stake in a favorable result, on a
world that did not turn upside down or did so in a way very different from
those hazy days.
The funny part (or ironic if you
prefer) was that back then Sam had been in his youth the least political, the
least culturally-oriented, the least musically-oriented of those corner boys
like Markin, Jack Dawson, Jimmy Jenkins and “max daddy” leader Fritz Fallon
(that “max daddy” another expression coined by Peter so although he has not
even been properly introduced we know plenty about his place in the corner boy
life, his place as “flak,” for Fritz’s operation although Fritz always called
him “the Scribe” when he wanted something written and needed to play on Peter’s
vanity) who kept the coins flowing into the jukebox at Phil’s House of Pizza.
That shop had been located down a couple of blocks from the choppy ocean waters
of Adamsville Beach (and is still there although under totally different
management from the arch-Italian Rizzo family that ran the place for several
generations now run by some immigrant Albanians named Hoxha).
That made Phil’s among other things a
natural hang-out place for wayward but harmless poor teenage corner boys. The
serious “townie” professional corner boys, the rumblers, tumblers, drifters,
grifters and midnight sifters hung around Harry’s Variety with leader Red Riley
over on Sagamore far from beaches. Night haunting boys far from sweated sun,
tanned daytime beaches, with their equally pale, black dress-etched “tramps,” well
known the boyos network at the high school for those few adventurous enough to
mess with an off-hand “from hunger” girl looking for kicks and a fast ride in
some souped-up Chevy or on back of fat hog Harley, the bike of choice around
the town. Although tanned daytime beaches rumors had it that the beach, the
isolated Rock Island enough, had been the site of more than one nighttime orgy
with “nice” publicly virginal girls looking for kicks with rough boys down
among the briny rocks. Rumors they remained until Sam ran into Sissy Roswell
many years later who confessed that she and the “social butterfly” prom/fall
dance/ yearbook crowd she hung around with on a couple of occasions had been
among the briny rocks the summer after graduation when school social ladders
and girls’ locker room talk didn’t mean a thing.
Getting back to Harry’s, a place where
cops with their patrol cars parked conspicuously in front of the store during
the daytime placed their bets with “connected” Harry who used the store as a
front for the bookie operation and fence for Red’s nighttime work, Fritz and
the boys would not have gone within three blocks of that place. Maybe more from
fear, legitimate fear as Fritz’s older brother, Timmy, a serious tough guy
himself, could testify to the one time he tried to wait outside Harry’s for
some reason and got chain-whipped by Red for his indiscretion. So the tame corner
boys at Phil’s were more than happy to hang out there where the Rizzos were
more than happy to have them spent dough on the jukebox and pizzas except on
Friday family pizza night to give Mom a rest for once until after nine (and
secretly, since these corner boys were, if tame, still appealing looking to
passing girls glad to have then around at that hour to boost the weekend sales).
Moreover this spot provided a beautiful vantage point for scanning the horizon
for those wayward girls who also kept their coins flowing into Phil’s jukebox
(or a stray “nice” girl after Red and his corner boys threw her over).
Sam had recently thought about that
funny story that Markin had told the crowd once on a hot night when nobody had
any money and were just holding up the wall at Phil’s about Johnny Callahan,
the flashy and unstoppable halfback from the high school team (and a guy even
Red respected having made plenty of money off of local sports who bet with him
on the strength of Johnny’s prowess any given Saturday although Johnny once
confessed that he, rightly, avoided Harry’s after what had happened to Timmy
Fallon). See Johnny was pretty poor even by the median working poor standard of
the old neighborhoods in those days (although now, courtesy of his incessant
radio and television advertising which continues to make everyone within fifty
miles of North Adamsville who knew Johnny back in the day aware of his new
profession, he is a prosperous Toyota car dealer, called Mr. Toyota, down across from the mall in Hull about twenty
miles from North Adamsville, the town where their mutual friend Josh Breslin
soon to be introduced came from). Johnny, a real music maniac who would do his
football weight-lifting exercises to Jerry Lee’s Great Balls of Fire, Gene Vincent’s Be-Bop-A-Lula and stuff like that to get him hyped up, had this
routine in order to get to hear songs that he was dying to hear, stuff he would
hear late at night coming from a rock station out of Detroit and which would
show up a few weeks later on Phil’s jukebox just waiting for Johnny and the
kids to fill the coffers, with the girls who had some dough, enough dough
anyway to put coins into that jukebox.
Johnny would go up all flirty and
virile to some young thing (a Fritz expression coped from Jerry Lee and not an
invention of Markin as Peter would later claim to some “young thing” that he
was trying to “score”). Maybe, depending on whatever intelligent he had on the
girl, maybe she had just had a fight with her boyfriend or had broken up with
him Johnny would be all sympathy, or maybe she was just down in the dumps for
no articulable reason like every teen goes through every chance they get,
whatever it took. Johnny, by the way, would have gotten that intelligence via
Peter who whatever else anybody had to say about him, good or bad, was wired
into, no, made himself consciously privy to, all kinds of boy-girl information
almost like he had a hook into that Monday morning before school girls’ locker
room talkfest. Everybody already knew that he was hooked into the boys’ Monday
morning version and had started more rumors and other unsavory deeds than any
ten other guys. Spreading ugly rumors about
a guy whose girl he was interested in a specialty. But the guy was like Teflon,
nobody ever thought to take him out for his actions they were so dependent on
his information to keep their place in the social pecking order.
Now here is what Johnny “knew” about
almost every girl if they had the quarter which allowed them to play three
selections. He would let them pick that first one on their own, maybe something
to express interest in his flirtation, maybe her name, say Donna, was also
being used as the title of a latest hit, or if broken up some boy sorrow thing.
Brenda Lee’s I Want To Be Wanted,
stuff like that. The second one he would “suggest” something everybody wanted
to listen to no matter what but which was starting to get old. Maybe an Elvis,
Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee thing still on the jukebox playlist but
getting wearisome. Then he would go in for the kill and “suggest” they play
this new platter, you know, something like Martha and the Vandelas Dancing in the Streets or Roy’s Blue Bayou both of which he had heard on
the midnight radio airwaves out of Detroit one night and were just getting play
on the jukeboxes. And bingo before you know it she was playing the thing again,
and again. Beautiful. And Johnny said that sometimes he would wind up with a
date, especially if he had just scored about three touchdowns for the school, a
date that is in the days before he and Kitty Kelly became an item. An item,
although it is not germane to the story, who still is Johnny’s girl, wife,
known as Mrs. Toyota now.
But enough of this downstream stuff Sam
thought. The hell with Johnny and his cheapjack tricks (although not to those
three beautiful touchdowns days, okay) this thing gnawing at him was about old
age angst and not the corner boy glory days at Phil’s, although it is about old
time corners boys and their current doings, some of them anyway. So yeah he had
other things he wanted to think about (and besides he had already, with a good
trade-in, gotten his latest car from Mr. Toyota so enough there), to tell a
candid world about how over the past few years with the country, the world, the
universe had been going to hell in a hand-basket. In the old day, like he kept
going back to, back in the day he was not the least bit interested in anything
in the big world outside of sports, and girls, of course. And endlessly working
on plans to own his own business, a print shop, before he was twenty-five.
Well, he did get that small business, although not until thirty and had prospered
when he made connections to do printing for several big high-tech companies,
notably IBM when they began outsourcing their work. He had prospered, had
married (twice, and divorced twice), had the requisite tolerated children and
adored grandchildren, and in his old age a woman companion to ease his time.
But there had been for a long time,
through those failed marriages, through that business success something gnawing
at him, something that Sam felt he had missed out on, or felt he had do
something about. Then a few years ago when it was getting time for a high
school class reunion he had Googled “North Adamsville Class of 1964” and came
upon a class website for that year, his year, that had been set up by the
reunion committee, and decided to joint to keep up with what was going on with
developments there. He would wind up not going to that reunion as he had
planned, a long story about a slight ill-advised flirtation with an old flame
classmate although that too is not germane to the story here except as one more
thing that gnawed at him. But mostly in the end he could not face going home, came
to believe what Thomas Wolfe said in the title of one of his novels, you can’t
go home again).
After he had registered on the site
giving a brief resume of his interests and what he had been up to those past
forty years or so years Samlooked at
the class list, the entire list of class members alive and deceased (a rose
beside their name signifying their passing)of who had joined and found the names of Peter Markin. He had to laugh Peter
had been listed as Peter Paul Markin since everybody was listed by their full
names, revenge from the grave by his poor mother, and that leafy suburban first
wife who tried to give him Mayflower
credentials, he thought.He also found
the name of corner boy Jimmy Jenkins among those who had done so. (Jack Dawson
had passed away a few years before, a broken man, broken after his son who had
served in Iraq and Afghanistan had committed suicide, according to Peter, as
had their corner boy leader, Fritz Fallon, homeless, and found down along a railroad
trestle in New Jersey, after going through a couple of fortunes, his own and a
third wife’s).
Through the mechanism established on
the site which allowed each class member who joined to have a private cyberspace
e-mail slot Sam contacted both men and the three of them started a rather
vigorous on-line chat line for several weeks going through the alphabet of
their experiences, good and bad. The time for sugar-coating was over unlike in
their youth when all three would lie like crazy, especially about sex and with
whom in order to keep their place in the pecking order, and in order to keep up
with Fritz whom lied more than the three of them combined. Peter knew that,
knew it better than anybody else but in order to keep his place as “scribe” in
that crazy quill pecking order went along with such silly teenage stuff, stuff
that in his other pursuits he would have laughed at but that is what made being
a teenager back then, now too, from what Sam saw of his grandchildren’s trials
and tribulations.
After a while, once the e-mail
questions had worked their course, all three men met in Boston at the Sunnyvale
Grille, a place where Markin had begun to hang out in after he had moved back
to Boston (read: where he did his daytime drinking) over by the waterfront, and
spent a few hours discussing not so much old times per se but what was going on in the world, and how the world had
changed so much in the meantime. And since Markin, the political maniac of the
tribe, was involved in the conversations maybe do something about it at least
that is what Sam had hoped since he knew that is where he thought he needed to
head in order to cut into that gnawing feeling. Sam was elated, and unlike in
his youth he did not shut his ears down, when those two guys would talk
politics, about the arts or about music. He now regretted that he had not
listened back then since he was so strictly into girls and sports, not always
in that order (which caused many problems later including one of the grounds
for his one of his divorces, not the sports but the girls).
This is probably the place for Sam to
introduce Peter Markin although he had already given an earful (and what goes
for Peter goes to a lesser extent for Jimmy who tended to follow in Pete’s wake
on the issues back then, and still does). Peter, as Sam has already noted,
provided that noteworthy, national security agency-worthy service, that
“intelligence” he provided all the guys (and not just his corner boys, although
they had first dibs) about girls. Who was “taken,” a very important factor if
some frail (a Fritz term from watching too many 1940s gangster and detective
movies and reading Dashiell Hammett too closely, especially The Maltese Falcon),was involved with
some bruiser football player, some college joe who belonged to a fraternity and
the brothers were sworn to avenge any brother’s indignities, or worse, worse of
all, if she was involved with some outlaw biker who hung out in Adamsville and who
if he hadn’t his monthly quota ofcollege boy wannabes red meat hanging out at Phil’s would not think
twice about chain-whipping you just for the fuck of it (“for the fuck of it”
aterm Jimmy constantly used then, and
now, so it was not always Markin or Fritz who led the verbal life around the
corner). Who was “unapproachable,”probably more important than that social blunder of ‘hitting on” a taken
woman since that snub by Miss Perfect-Turned-Up-Nose would make the rounds of
the now legendary seminar, Monday morning before school girls’ locker room (and
eventually work its way though Markin to the boys’ Monday morning version
ruining whatever social standing the guy had spent since junior high trying to
perfect in order to avoid the fatal nerd-dweeb-wallflower-square name your term
existence). Strangely Markin made a serious mistake with Melinda Loring who
blasted her freeze deep on him and he survived to tell the tale, or at least
that is what he had the boys believe. Make of this what you will though, Peter never
after that Melinda Loring mistake, had a high school girlfriend from North
Adamsville High, who, well, liked to “do the do” as they called it back then,
that last part not always correct since everybody, girls and boys alike, were
lying like crazy about whether they were “doing the do” or not, including
Markin.
But beyond, well beyond, that schoolboy
silliness Markin was made of sterner stuff (although Sam would not have
bothered to use such a positive attribute about Markin back then) was
super-political, super into art and into what he called culture, you know going
to poetry readings at coffeehouses, going over Cambridge to watch foreign films
with subtitles and themes at the Brattle Theater that he would try to talk
about and even Jimmy would turn his head when he went on and on about French films,
especially those films by Jean Renoir, and super into music, fortunately he was
not crazy for classical music (unlike some nerds in school then who were in the
band) but serious about what is now called classic rock and roll and then in
turn, the blues, and folk music. (Sam still shuttered at that hillbilly folk
music stuff Markin tried to interest him in when he thought about it).
That folk music was how Peter had first
met Josh Breslin, still a friend, whom he introduced to Sam at one of their
meetings over at the Sunnyvale Grille. Josh told the gathering that Markin had
met him after high school, after he had graduated from Hull High (the same town
where Johnny Callahan was burning up the Toyota sales records for New England)
down at the Surf Ballroom (Sam had his own under twenty-one memories of the
place, some good, some bad including one affair that almost wound up in
marriage). Apparently Josh and Peter had had their wanting habits on the same
girl at one Friday night dance when the great local cover band, the Rockin’
Ramrods held sway there, and had been successively her boyfriend for short
periods both to be dumped for some stockbroker from New York. But their
friendship remained and they had gone west together, gone on that Jack Kerouac On The Road for a number of years when
they were trying their own version of turning the world upside down on. Josh
also dabbled (his word) in the turning upside down politics of the time.
And that was the remarkable thing about
Peter, not so much later in cahoots with Josh because half of youth nation,
half the generation of ’68 was knee-deep in some movement, but in staid old
North Adamsville High days, days when to just be conventionally political,
wanting to run for office or something, was kind of strange. See Peter was into
the civil rights movement, nuclear disarmament, and social justice stuff that
everybody thought he was crazy to be into, everybody from Ma to Fritz (and a
few anonymous midnight phone-callers yelling n----r-lover in the Markin home
phone).He had actually gone into Boston
when he was a freshman and joined the picket-line in front of Woolworths’
protesting the fact that they would not let black people eat in their
lunchrooms down south (and maybe Markin would say when he mentioned what he was
up to they were not that happy to have blacks in their northern lunchrooms
either ), had joined a bunch of Quakers and little old ladies in tennis
sneakers (a term then in use for airhead blue-haired lady do-gooders with
nothing but time on their hands) calling on the government to stop building
atomic bombs (not popular in the red scare Cold War we-are-fighting- against-
the- Russians-terror North Adamsville, or most other American places either),
running over to the art museum to check out the exhibits (including some funny
stories about him and Jimmy busting up the place looking at the old Pharaoh times
slave building Pyramids stuff uncovered by some Harvard guys way back), and
going to coffeehouses in Harvard Square and listening to hokey folk music that
was a drag. (Sam’s take on that subject then, and now.) So Peter was a walking
contradiction, although that was probably not as strange now as it seemed back
then when every new thing was looked at with suspicion, and when kids like
Peter were twisted in the wind between being corner boys and trying to figure
out what that new wind was that was blowing though the land, when Sam and the
other corner boys, except Jimmy and sometimes Jack would try to talk him out of
stuff that would only upset everybody in town.
But here is the beauty, beauty for Sam
now that he was all ears about what Peter had to say, he had kept at it, had
kept the faith, while everybody else from their generation, or almost
everybody, who protested war, protested around the social issues, had hung
around coffeehouses and who had listened to folk music had long before given it
up. Markin had, after hisArmy time,
spent a lot of time working with GIs around the war issues, protested American
foreign policy at the drop of a hat and frequented off-beat coffeehouses set up
in the basements of churches in order to hear the dwindling number of folk
artists around. He had gotten and kept his “religion,” kept the faith in a
sullen world. And like in the old days a new generation (added to that older
North Adamsville generation which still, from the class website e-mail traffic he
received when classmates found out they were in communication had not gotten
that much less hostile to what Peter had to say about this wicked old world,
you already know the genesis of that term, right), was ready to curse him out,
ready to curse the darkness against his small voice.
One night when Peter and Sam were alone
at the Sunnyvale, maybe both had had a few too many high-shelf scotches (able
to afford such liquor unlike in the old days when they both in their respective
poverties, drank low-shelf Johnny Walker whiskey with a beer chaser when they
had the dough, if not some cheapjack wine), Peter told Sam the story of how he
had wanted to go to Alabama in high school, go to Selma, but his mother
threatened to disown him if he did, threatened to disown him not for his desire
to go but because she would not have been able to hold her head up in public if
he had, and so although it ate at him not to go, go when his girlfriend, Helen
Jackman, who lived in Gloversville, did go, he took a dive (Peter’s words).
Told a redemptive story too about his
anti-war fight in the Army when he refused to go to Vietnam and wound up in an
Army stockade for a couple of years altogether. (Sam thought that was a high
price to pay for redemption but it may have been the scotch at work.) Told a
number of stories about working with various veterans’ groups, throwing medals
over Supreme Court barricades, chainings to the White House fence, sitting down
in hostile honked traffic streets, blocking freeways complete with those same
hostile honkings, a million walks for this and that, and some plain old
ordinary handing out leaflets, working the polls and button-holing reluctant
politicians to vote against the endless war budgets (this last the hardest
task, harder than all the jailings, honkings, marches put together and
seemingly the most fruitless). Told too stories about the small coffeehouse
places seeing retread folkies who had gone on to other things and then in a fit
of anguish, or hubris, decided to go back on the trail. Told of many things
that night not in a feast of pride but to let Sam know that sometimes it was
easier to act than to let that gnawing win the day. Told Sam that he too always
had the gnaw, probably always would in this wicked old world. Sam was delighted
by the whole talk, even if Peter was on his soapbox.
That night too Peter mentioned in
passing that he contributed to a number of blogs, a couple of political ones,
including an anti-war veterans’ group, a couple of old time left-wing cultural
sites and a folk music-oriented one. Sam confessed to Peter that although he
had heard the word “blog” he did not know what a blog was. Peter told him that
one of the virtues of the Internet was that it provided space (cyberspace, a
term Sam had heard of and knew what it meant) for the average citizen to speak
his or her mind via setting up a website or a blog. Blogs were simply a way to
put your opinions and comments out there just like newspaper Op/Ed writers or
news reporters and commentators although among professional reporters the
average blog and blog writer were seen as too filled with opinions and
sometimes rather loose with the facts. Peter said he was perfectly willing to
allow the so-called “objective” reporters roam free to state the facts but he
would be damned if the blog system was not a great way to get together with
others interested in your areas of interest, yeah, stuff that interested you
and that other like-minded spirits might respond to. Yeah that was worth the
effort.
The actual process of blog creation (as
opposed to the more complex website-creation which still takes a fair amount of
expertise to create) had been made fairly simple over time, just follow a few
simple prompts and you are in business. Also over time what was possible to do
has been updated for ease, for example linking to other platforms to your site
and be able to present multi-media works lashing up say your blog with YouTube
or downloading photographs to add something to your presentation. Peter one
afternoon after Sam had asked about his blog links showed him the most political
one that he belonged to, one he had recently begun to share space with Josh
Breslin, Frank Jackman and a couple of other guys that he had known since the
1960s on and who were familiar with the various social, political and cultural
trends that floated out from that period.
Sam was amazed at the topics that those
guys tackled, stuff that he vaguely remembered hearing about but which kind of
passed him by as he delved into the struggle to build his printing shop. He
told Peter that he got dizzy looking at the various titles from reviews of old
time black and white movies that he remembered watching at the old Strand
second run theater uptown, poetry from the “beat” generation, various political
pieces on current stuff like the Middle East, the fight against war, political
prisoners most of whom he had never heard of except the ones who had been Black
Panthers or guys like that, all kinds of reviews of rock and roll complete with
the songs via YouTube, too many reviews of folk music that he never really
cared for, books that he knew Peter read like crazy but he could not remember
the titles. The guys really had put a lot of stuff together, even stuff from
other sites and announcements for every conceivable left-wing oriented event.
He decided that he would become a Follower
which was nothing sinister like some cult but just that you would receive
notice when something was put on the blog.
Peter also encouraged him to write some
pieces about what interested him, maybe start out about the old days in North
Adamsville since all the guys mined that vein for sketches. That is what Peter
liked to call most of the material on site since they were usually too short to
be considered short stories but too long to be human interest snapshots. Sam
said he would think about the matter, think about it seriously once he read the
caption below:
“This space is noted for politics
mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social,
economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the
place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II
be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of our interest over the past
several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of
popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind,
hardworking, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest
to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk
music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break
rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn our
attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter
under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might
dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to
back in the day.”
Sam could relate to that, had something
to say about some of those songs. Josh Breslin laughed when he heard that Sam
was interested in doing old time rock and roll sketches. He then added, “If we
can only get him to move off his butt and come out and do some street politics
with us we would be getting somewhere.” Peter just replied, “one step at a
time.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.