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Tuesday, April 28, 2015
"May Day" is celebrated around the world as
International Worker's Day to honor the struggle for workers
rights.
On May 1st, 1886, and in the days that followed, Chicago
police opened fire, attacking thousands of workers on strike. Every year since, workers across the globe
have stood together to unite all of our struggles – an injury to one, is an injury to
all!
This Friday, May 1st,
2015 we hope to
get as many different campaigns, groups of people and organizations as possible
out on the streets in defense of workers rights!
There is no doubt, this winter was one of the more
politically active seasons we have seen in Boston. We've seen large actions
supporting Black Lives Matter, No Olympics campaigns and the continued struggle
for $15 an hour. May Day is about bringing these causes together under the
banner of Solidarity. Whether the
ruling class is oppressing workers or using the police to disenfranchise whole
races of people,
May Day is our day to stand together and announce in
celebration; "Enough is Enough."
Join
Us this Friday, May 1, 2015
12PM Rally on the Boston Commons
2PM March to Haymarket Station
After the march to Haymarket, join the BMDC & get on the #111 bus to Chelsea!
4pm Gather at
Chelsea City Hall
4:30pm March from Chelsea to
Everett
5:30pm Rally at Glendale Park,
Everett
We hope to see you out in the trenches on May Day and please pass this along to friends as well!
Solidaridad,
The Boston May Day Committee
Monday, April 27, 2015
As The 100th Anniversary Of The First
Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some
Remembrances-Artists’ Corner-Muirhead Bone
In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the
beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a
full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated
horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the
world. Yes the artists of every school the
Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come
to speak for those movements (hell even the Academy spoke the pious words when
there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial
society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal
juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had
to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that,
according to their Whiggish theory of progress,
humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the
diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing
that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious
novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that
notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too
much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by
having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust
streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin
concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their
tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of
its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would
go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, putting another man to
ground or lying their own heads down for some imperial mission. They all
professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because
they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the
summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick
to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the
war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.
They would stay the course.
And then the war drums intensified, the
people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they
made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful poets like
Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful
damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots
who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through
sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood,
angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert
Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as they marched in formation
leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their
thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those
freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words
confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct
to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing
beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown
into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like
old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men,
wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old
brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at
the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss his high tea. Jesus what a
blasted night that Great War time was.
And do not forget when the war drums
intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their
lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it
turned out
And then the war drums intensified, the
people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they
made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, artists, beautiful artists like
Fernand Leger who could no longer push the envelope of representative art
because it had been twisted by the rubble of war, by the crashing big guns, by
the hubris of commanders and commanded and he turned to new form, tubes, cubes,
prisms, anything but battered humankind in its every rusts and lusts, all
bright and intersecting once he got the mustard gas out of his system, once he
had done his patria duty, like speaking of mustard gas old worn out John Singer
Sargent of the three name WASPs forgetting Boston Brahmin society ladies in
decollage, forgetting ancient world religious murals hanging atop Boston museum
and spewing trench warfare and the blind leading the blind out of no man’s
land, out of the devil’s claws, like Umberto Boccioni, all swirls, curves,
dashes, and dangling guns as the endless charges endlessly charge, like Gustav
Klimt and his endlessly detailed gold dust opulent Asiatic dreams filled with
lovely matrons and high symbolism and blessed Eve women to fill the night,
Adam’s night after they fled the garden, like Joan Miro and his infernal boxes,
circles, spats, eyes, dibs, dabs, vaginas, and blots forever suspended in deep
space for a candid world to fret through, fret through a long career, and like
poor maddened rising like a phoenix in the Spartacist uprising George Grosz
puncturing the nasty bourgeoisie, the big bourgeoisie the ones with the real
dough and their overfed dreams stuffed with sausage, and from the bloated
military and their fat-assed generals stuff with howitzers and rocket shells,
like Picasso, yeah, Picasso taking the shape out of recognized human existence
and reconfiguring the forms, the mesh of form to fit the new hard order, like,
Braque, if only because if you put the yolk on Picasso you have to tie him to
the tether too.
And do not forget when the war drums
intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their
lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it
turned out sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches
to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course,
their always fate ….
URGENT: Calls Again Needed to Save Mumia's Life!Stop the attempted murder of Mumia through medical neglect!Keep the pressure on! | ||
|
Please call these
numbers and any other
numbers you have for the Prison and the Governor.
(Dialling
code from UK for the USA is 001. Pennsylvania is five hours behind
London.)
John
Wetzel
Secretary, Department of Corrections ra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov 717-728-4109 717-728-4178 Fax 1920 Technology Pkwy, Mechanicsburg PA 17050
John Kerestes
Superintendent SCI Mahanoy 570-773-2158 x8102 570-783-2008 Fax 301 Morea Road, Frackville PA 17932
Susan
McNaughton
Public Information Office PA DOC Press secretary: 717-728-4025 smcnaughton@pa.gov | ||
|
Mumia's
Condition Grave
Take Action NOW! |
 | |
|
On
Friday, April 24, Mumia Abu-Jamal was visited by his
wife, Wadiya Jamal, who reported that his condition
has worsened.
She
saw him again on April 25 and he appeared even more gravely ill. Everyone is asked to call the prison
and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
immediately.
Please
continue to call on
throughout this week.
Mumia was
released from the prison infirmary three days ago even though he was in no
condition to be in general population. His request to be seen by independent
medical specialists was denied by the PA Department of Corrections. Yet he is in
need of 24-hour care and supervision. He is too weak and in this state he may
not be able ask for help.
| ||
|
Please
call the numbers listed. Along with Mumia's
name his prison number is AM 8335. Call
local news sources
in your area that would report on this crisis. Share this email with your contact
lists. Get out the information via any
social media you use especially Facebook and
Twitter using the hashtag #MumiaMustLive.
Demand
that prison officials call Mumia’s wife and his lawyer
Bret Grote to discuss his condition. Demand
that Mumia Abu-Jamal see a competent doctor of his
choice immediately, that he be taken to the hospital for emergency care and not
be left to go into a diabetic coma.
| ||
|
It
is clear that Pennsylvania prison officials are intent on carrying out their
plans to murder Mumia through medical neglect.
This
situation is urgent.
Every call matters. Every action matters. Call your friends, your neighbours. We must
speak out now before it’s too late.
For
more information:
Free
Mumia,
Move organization, Campaign
to Bring Mumia Home, International Action Center and Mumia’s Facebook.
| ||
|
| ||
From The Pen Of American Communist Party Founder And Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon
Click below to link to the “James P. Cannon Internet Archives.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/index.htm
*************
Markin comment on founding member James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party taken from a book review, James P. Cannon and the Early American Communist Party, on the “American Left History” blog:
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.
At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American socialist revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.
For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party.
These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third- party bourgeois candidates;trade union policy; class-war prisoner defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the late 1920’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles in America this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.
As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism. I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.
*********
BOOK REVIEW
NOTEBOOK OF AN AGITATOR- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.
The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s long time companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.
It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.
I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.
Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this system.
I also suggest a close look at Cannon’s articles in the early 1950’s. Some of them are solely of historical interest around the effects of the red purges on the organized labor movement at the start of the Cold War. Others, however, around health insurance, labor standards, the role of the media and the separation of church and state read as if they were written in 2014 That’s a sorry statement to have to make any way one looks at it.
BOOK REVIEW
NOTEBOOK OF AN AGITATOR- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.
The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s long time companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.
It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.
I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.
Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this system.
I also suggest a close look at Cannon’s articles in the early 1950’s. Some of them are solely of historical interest around the effects of the red purges on the organized labor movement at the start of the Cold War. Others, however, around health insurance, labor standards, the role of the media and the separation of church and state read as if they were written in 2014 That’s a sorry statement to have to make any way one looks at it.
In The Hills And Hollows Again- With Mountain Music Man Norman Blake In Mind
In The Hills And Hollows Again- With Mountain Music Man Norman Blake In Mind
Recently in discussing Sam Lowell’s relationship with mountain music, the music from down in the hills and hollows of Kentucky where his father and his people before him had lived dirt poor for generations eking almost nothing out of the land that had been abandoned decades before by some going west driven spirits who played the land out and moved on, some moving on until they reached ocean edge California, Bart Webber noticed that he had concentrated a little too heavily on the music of Sam’ s father’s Kentucky hills and hollows. There were other places down south like in the Piedmont of North Carolina where a cleaner picking style had been developed by the likes of Etta Baker and exemplified more recently by Norman Blake who has revived the work of performers like Aunt Helen Alder and Pappy Sims by playing the old tunes. There are other places as well like down in the inner edges of Tennessee and Georgia where the kindred also dwelled, places as well where if the land had played out there they, the ones who stayed behind in there tacky cabins barely protected against the weathers, their lack of niceties of modern existence a result not because they distained such things but down in the hollows they did not know about them, did not seem to notice the bustling outside world.
They all, all the hills and hollows people, just kept plucking away barely making ends meet, usually not doing so in some periods, and once they had abandoned cultivating the land these sedentary heredity “master-less men” thrown out their old countries, mainly the British Isles, for any number of petty crimes, but crimes against property and so they had to go on their own or face involuntary transportation they went into the “black god” mines or sharecropping for some Mister to live short, nasty, brutish lives before the deluge.
But come Saturday night, come old Fred Brown’s worn out in need of paint red barn the hill people, the mountain people, the piedmont brethren, hell, maybe a few swamp-dwellers too, would gather up their instruments, their sweet liquor jugs, their un-scrubbed bare-foot children or their best guy or gal and play the night away as the winds came down the mountains. This DNA etched in his bones by his father and the kindred is what Sam had denied for much of his life.
But like Bart had mentioned when discussing the matter with Sam one night sometimes “what goes around comes around” as the old-time expression had it. Take for example Sam Lowell’s youthful interest in folk music back in the early 1960s when it had crashed out of exotic haunts like Harvard Square, Ann Arbor, Old Town Chi Town and North Beach/Berkeley out in Frisco. Crashed out by word of mouth at first and ran into a lot of kids, a lot of kids like Sam, who got his word from Diana Nelson who got it from a cousin from North Adamsville nearer Boston who frequented the coffeehouse on Beacon Hill and Harvard Square who had “hipped” her to this new folk music program that he had found flipping the dial of his transistor radio one Sunday night.
See Sam and Diana were tucked away from the swirl down in Carver about thirty miles as the crow flies from Boston and Cambridge but maybe a million social miles from those locales and had picked up the thread somewhat belatedly. He, along with his corner boys, had lived in their little corner boy cocoon out in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner figuring out ways to get next to girls like Diana but who were stuck, stuck like glue to listening to the “put to sleep” music that was finding its way to clog up Jimmy Jack’s’ hither-to-fore “boss” jukebox. Christ, stuff like Percy Faith’s Moon River that parents could swoon over, and dance to. Had picked the sound up belatedly when they were fed up with what was being presented on American Bandstand and WJDA the local rock station, while they were looking for something different, something that they were not sure of but that smelled, tasted, felt, and looked different from a kind of one-size-fits-all vanilla existence.
Oh sure, as Bart recognized once he thought about it for a while, every generation in their youth since the days when you could draw a distinction between youth and adulthood a century or so ago and have it count has tried to draw its own symbolic beat but this was different, this involved a big mix of things all jumbled together, political, social, economic, cultural, the whole bag of societal distinctions which would not be settled until the end of that decade, maybe the first part of the next. That big picture is what interested him. What Sam was interested then down there in Carver about thirty miles south of Boston was the music, his interest in the other trends did not come until later, much later long after the whole thing had ebbed and they were fighting an unsuccessful rearguard action against the night-takers and he was forced to consider other issues. And Sam had been like that ever after.
The way Sam told it one night a few years back, according to Bart, some forty or so years after his ear changed forever that change had been a bumpy road. Sam had been at his bi-weekly book club in Plymouth where the topic selected for the next meeting was the musical influences, if any, that defined one’s tastes and he had volunteered to speak then since he had just read a book, The Mountain View, about the central place of mountain music, for lack of a better term, in the American songbook. He had along with Bart and Jack Dawson also had been around that time discussing how they had been looking for roots as kids. Musical roots which were a very big concern for a part of their generation, a generation that was looking for roots, for rootedness not just in music but in literature, art, and even in the family tree.
Their parents’ generation no matter how long it had been since the first family immigration wave had spilled them onto these shores was in the red scare Cold War post-World War II period very consciously ignoring every trace of roots in order to be fully vanilla Americanized. So their generation had had to pick up the pieces not only of that very shaky family tree but everything else that had been downplayed during that period.
Since Sam had tired of the lazy hazy rock and roll that was being produced and which the local rock radio stations were force- feeding him and others like him looking to break out through their beloved transistor radios he had started looking elsewhere on the tiny dial for something different after Diana had clued him in about that folk music program. Although for a while he could not find that particular program or Carver was out of range for the airwaves. But like a lot of young people, as he would find out later when he would meet kindred in Harvard Square, the Village, Ann Arbor, Berkeley he fortunately had been looking for that something different at just that moment when something called folk music, roots music, actually was being played on select stations for short periods of time each week and so it was before long that he was tuned in.
His own lucky station had been a small station, an AM station, from Providence in Rhode Island which he would find out later had put the program on Monday nights from eight to eleven at the request of Brown and URI students who had picked up the folk music bug on trips to the Village (Monday a dead music night in advertising circles then, maybe now too, thus fine for talk shows, community service programs and odd-ball stuff like roots music to comply with whatever necessary FCC mandates went with the license.) That is where he first heard the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk, a new guy named Tom Rush from Harvard whom he would hear in person many times over the years, and another guy, Eric Von Schmidt whom he would meet later in one of the Harvard Square coffeehouses that were proliferating to feed the demand to hear folk music. Those coffeehouses were manna from heaven, well, because they were cheap for guys with little money. Cheap alone or on a date, basically as Sam related to his book club listeners for a couple of bucks at most admission, the price of a cup of coffee to keep in front of you and thus your place, maybe a pastry if alone and just double that up for a date except share the pasty you had your date deal all set for the evening hearing performers perfecting their acts before hitting the A-list clubs.
He listened to it all, liked some of it, other stuff, the more protest stuff he could take or leave depending on the performer but what drew his attention, strangely then was when somebody on the radio or on stage performed mountain music, you know, the music of the hills and hollows that came out of Appalachia mainly down among the dust and weeds. Things like Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow, Gold Watch and Chain, Fair and Tender Ladies, Pretty Saro, and lots of instrumentals by guys like Buell Kazee, Hobart Smith, The Charles River Boys. Norman Blake just starting his rise along with various expert band members to bring bluegrass to the wider younger audience that did not relate to guys like Bill Monroe and his various band combinations, and some other bluegrass bands as well that had now escaped his memory.
This is where it all got jumbled up for him Sam said since he was strictly a city boy, made private fun of the farm boys, the cranberry boggers, who then made up a significant part of his high school. He furthermore had no interest in stuff like the Grand Ole Opry and that kind of thing, none. Still he always wondered about the source, about why he felt some kinship with the music of the Saturday night red barn, probably broken down, certainly in need of paint, and thus available for the dance complete with the full complement of guitars, fiddles, bass, mandolin and full complement too of Bobby Joe’s just made white lightening, playing plainsong for the folk down in the wind-swept hills and hollows.
Then one night, a Sunday night after he had picked up the Boston folk program station on the family radio (apparently the weak transistor radio did not have the energy to pick up a Boston station) he was listening to the Carter Family’s Wildwood Flower when his father came in and began singing along. After asking Sam about whether he liked the song and Sam answered that he did but could not explain why his father told him a story that maybe put the whole thing in perspective. After Sam’s older brother, Lawrence, had been born and things looked pretty dicey for a guy from the South with no education and no skill except useless coal-mining his father decided that maybe they should go back to Kentucky and see if things were better for a guy like him there. No dice, after had been in the north, after seeing the same old tacky cabins, the played out land, the endless streams of a new generation of shoeless kids Sam’s father decided to head back north and try to eke something out in a better place. But get this while Sam’s parents were in Kentucky Sam had been conceived. Yeah, so maybe it was in the genes all along.
In
Honor Of The 99th Anniversary Of The Irish Easter Uprising,
1916-Sean Flynn’s Fight-Take Two
A
word on the Easter Uprising
In the old Irish working-class
neighborhoods where I grew up the aborted Easter Uprising of 1916 was spoken of
in mythical hushed reverent tones as the key symbol of the modern Irish
liberation struggle from bloody England. The event itself provoked such
memories of heroic “boyos” (and “girlos”
not acknowledged) fighting to the end against great odds that a careful
analysis of what could, and could not be, learned from the mistakes made at the
time entered my head. That was then though in the glare of boyhood
infatuations. Now is the time for a more sober assessment.
The easy part of analyzing the Irish
Easter Uprising of 1916 is first and foremost the knowledge, in retrospect,
that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland, especially by the
“shawlies” in Dublin and the cities who received their sons’ military pay from
the Imperial British Army for service in the bloody trenches of Europe which
sustained them throughout the war. That factor and the relative ease with which
the uprising had been militarily defeated by the British forces send in main
force to crush it lead easily to the conclusion that the adventure was doomed
to failure. Still easier is to criticize the timing and the strategy and
tactics of the planned action and of the various actors, particularly in the
leadership’s underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any
opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. (Although, I think that frenzy
on Mother England’s part would be a point in the uprising’s favor under the
theory that England’s [or fill in the blank of your favorite later national
liberation struggle] woes were Ireland’s [or fill in the blank ditto on the
your favorite oppressed peoples struggle] opportunities.
The hard part is to draw any
positive lessons of that national liberation struggle experience for the
future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish
national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later,
including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in
their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were savagely committed
to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground
if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not part
of their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, cowardly British
Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor
Party leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that
James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British
militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and
others today is the same as then if somewhat attenuated- All British Troops
Out of Ireland.
In various readings on national
liberation struggles I have come across a theory that the Easter Uprising was
the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by
over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the
Uprising’s leaders only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause.
Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were
prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such
organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently
socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political
independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish
cultural hegemony. (“Let poets rule the land”).
As outlined in the famous
Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin,
Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the
order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a
left bourgeois republic. A formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 where
the working class momentarily took power or the Soviet Commune of 1917 which
lasted for a longer period did not figure in the political calculations at that
time. As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile
comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was
prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a
republic.
That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not
support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of
Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended
the uprising against those who derided the Easter rising for involving
bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is
in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned
by militants today, is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what
program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own experiences in
Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of
society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a
heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist
nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the
socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord in war as
a way to open the road to the class struggle merited support on that basis
alone. Chocky Ar La.
********
Here
is a little commemorative piece based on the exploits of Frankie Riley from the
old neighborhood grand-uncle’s, Sean Flynn, who gave a good account of himself when
the time for fighting came:
Funny, Sean Flynn thought, about how words and phrases
can capture a moment, capture an Irish poetic moment, of which in the benighted
history of this benighted isle there were few and far between. He had been
reading, really re-reading, William Butler Yeats’ homage to the men of Easter
1916, his men (although he had been a mere slip of a boy, if a tall manly
looking boy then), and about that powerful refrain that ended a few verses -“a
terrible beauty was born.” Yes, Sean thought, that phrase fit the occasion to a
tee, fit those working men like himself and his brother, Seamus, who gave their
all those bloody April days to free Ireland from the English yoke. Yes, funny
too how an Anglo-Irishman, a bloody heathen if you really thought about it,
captured the spirit of those times, of those times when men, a few men , had to
step up and be counted. Ordinary working men mostly, the ones from his Irish
Citizens’ Army, the one Jimmy Connolly (the late lamented martyred James
Connolly to most) put together to defend the neighborhoods against the bloody
reprisals after the big 1914 strike. The others too, too few others in Dublin
no question what with all the confusion, mainly poets and students caught up in
some professor’s exaltations.
Sean remembered, distinctly remembered, how nervous he
had been waiting, eternally waiting for the sign of the uprising to take
place-he knew for sure it would not be like some Wolfe Tone thing, or the
rising of the moon. Not this time not when the Irish finally had the British at
a disadvantage. That big war in Europe was actually to their benefit. Oh no,
not at first when everybody, even hot-headed Irishmen if one could believe
that, was ready to give his or her all for the bloody King of England against
the damn Huns. No, rather later once everybody knew that England was so
desperate to beat the Huns in Europe with everything they had that a small
military encounter with whatever remnants the British left behind to garrison
the Irish colony could be disposed of with ease and a free Ireland delivered at
little cost. The question that made Sean nervous, made many a man nervous, was
when. As 1915 slipped into 1916 those nerves only got more frayed since there
were constant rumors that the war in Europe would soon be over and a chance to
gain the upper hand would be lost.
Finally, finally word filtered down to the “boyos”
that the Irish Citizens’ Army (meaning James Connolly above all others) would
join with the Irish Volunteers (Patrick Pearse’s operation, among others) to
declare a republic and stand and fight. Naturally there were more delays as the
chieftains (now including the previously non-committal Irish Republican
Brotherhood) argued about the necessity, the validity, and then the timing of a
rising. (All this not known until later after the smoke had cleared and the
survivors could take stock of who, and who did not, do what, who did, and did
not, show up, and what else went wrong.) Then that Easter week came and the
order to arm came. And all arms to head to Dublin, to the strategic General
Post Office (their, the bloody English’s post office). Sean got there just in
time to hear the Proclamation read and posted. The battle was on and suddenly
all of Sean’s nervousness about being exposed, about not being a military man,
about being shy around guns evaporated.
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