The Latest From The “Veterans For Peace” Facebook Page-Gear Up For The Winter 2015 Anti-War Season-Troops Out Of Afghanistan Now!-Not Another War In Iraq! -No Intervention In Syria!-Hands Off Ukraine! Hands Off The World!

 

Click below to link to the Veterans For Peace Facebook page for the latest news on what anti-war front the organization is working on.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Veterans-For-Peace/49422026153

A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day-Tuesday November 11, 2014 - Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Afghanistan! Hands Off Syria! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!

Peter Paul Markin comment:

Back on Veterans Day 2010 I happened to be at the Boston Common located just off the downtown section when I came across some white flags, maybe twenty, waving in the distance over near when Charles Street intersects Beacon Street (the main street of the famous Beacon Hill section of Boston). Since I was heading that way I decided to check out what those flags were all about. Upon investigation I found that the white flags also contained in black outline a peace dove symbol and the words Veterans for Peace. Yah, sign me up, my kind of guys and gals. So, to make a long story short,  I marched with the contingent that year in their spot behind, and not part of, the official parade sponsored by the city (the reason for that separation will be described in more detail below) and have marched each year since, including this year. Previously in promoting and commemorating this peace event I have recycled my sketch from 2010 out of laziness, hubris, or the basic sameness of the yearly event. I have updated that sketch a bit here to reflect on this year’s event.    

 **********

Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, and socialist causes in my long political life. Some large, many small but both necessary. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have, like I have, “switched” over to the other side, have gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace and what to do about it, have exposed the better angels of their nature after the long hard thrust of war and preparations for war have lost their allure, and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system in America has embarked upon.

From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days (the days when even guys like the present Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry had to march in the streets to allay their angers and hurts) I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them out of the barracks, off the bases, and into the streets as happened a little as the Vietnam War moved relentlessly onward ) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, don’t do a bookish analysis, complete with footnotes, of the imperial system and their cog part in it, but they are kindred spirits.

Now normally in Boston, and in most places, a Veterans Day parade means a bunch of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) or American Legion-types taking time off from drinking at their post bars (the infamous “battle of the barstool,” no, battles) and donning the old overstuffed moth-eaten uniform and heading out on to Main Street to be waved at, and cheered on, by like-minded, thankful citizens. And of course that happened in 2010 (and this year) as well. What also happened in Boston this year as in 2010 (and other years but I had not been involved in prior marches) was that the Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace (VFP) organized an anti-war march as part of their Armistice Day (“Veterans Day”) program. Said march to be held at the same place and time as the official one, one o’clock in the afternoon in downtown Boston near the Common.

Prior to 2010 there had been a certain amount of trouble, although I am not sure that it came to blows, between the two groups. (I have only heard third-hand reports on previous events so all I know is that there were some heated disputes) You know the "super-patriots" vs. “commie symps” thing that has been going on as long as there have been ex-soldiers (and others), maybe before, who have differed from the bourgeois parties’ pro-war line. In any case the way this impasse had been resolved previously, and the way the parameters were set in 2010 and this year as well, was that the VFP took up the rear of the official parade, and took up the rear in an obvious way. Separated that year, if you can believe this, from the main body of the official parade by a medical emergency truck. This year by a phalanx of Boston Police motorcycle cops. Nice, right? Something of the old "I’ll take my ball and bat and go home" by the "officials" was in the air on that one on every occasion.

In the event this year’s march went off as usual for both parties, as we waited behind the motorcycle cordon for the “officials” to pass by. While waiting I noticed that while the anti-war contingent was about the same size as it has been for the past few years that I have participated, filled out with other peace activists from Quakers and shakers to ranters and chanters and ant-drone folk (strolling along with a mobile replica of a drone to make their point nicely), all angelic, or at least all also on the right side of the angels, the VFP component looked a little smaller. This reflecting the inevitable aging, can’t make the walk, reality that VFP like myriad peace and social justice-oriented organizations are now peopled, alarmingly so, mainly by older activists who cut their teeth in the struggles of the 1960s (or earlier).

Equally as alarming was the sight of more of my Vietnam era veterans using canes, walkers and other aids to either walk the parade or to get around and listen to the program at the end of the march at the Samuel Adams Park at Fanuiel Hall. The hopeful sign though was an increased number of Iraq (Iraq II, 2003) and Afghanistan veterans who have had enough time to reflect on their war experiences and made a decision to come over to the side of the angels. One such veteran spoke from platform, as did veterans from World War II,  the Korean and Vietnam War eras, as well as a speakers, young speakers and proud from the Iraq and Afghan war zones, who sang, read their poets, or read their prose pieces to flush out the event. And to say that a new generation of anti-war soldiers will take the torch, take it and go forward as the older generations fades away.  

But here is where there is a certain amount of rough plebeian justice, a small dose for those on the side of the angels, in this wicked old world. In order to form up, and this was done knowingly by VFP organizers in 2010 and this year well, the official marchers, the bands and battalions that make up such a march, had to “run the gauntlet” of dove emblem-emblazoned VFP banners waving frantically directly in front of their faces as they passed by. Moreover, although we again this year formed the caboose of this thing the crowds along the parade route actually waited for us after the official paraders had marched by and waved, clapped, and flashed the ubiquitous peace sign at our procession from the sidelines. Be still my heart.

That response just provides another example of the "street cred” that ex-soldiers have on the anti-war question. Now, if there is to be any really serious justice in the world, if only these fellow vets would go beyond then “bring the troops home” and pacific vigil tactics and embrace- immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied Troops from everywhere, embrace a more studied response to the nature of war policy “in the belly of the beast” then we could maybe start to get somewhere out on those streets. But today, like at that first white flag sighting in 2010 I was very glad to be fighting for our peaceful more social future among those who know first-hand about the dark side of the American experience. No question.

*******

In The Desperate Search For Peace- The Maine March For Peace and Protection Of The Planet From Rangeley To North Berwick -October 2014

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

“You know I never stepped up and opposed that damn war in Vietnam that I was part of, a big part of gathering intelligence to direct those monster B-52s to their targets. Never thought about much except to try and get my ass out of there alive. Didn’t get “religion” on the issues of war and peace until sometime after I got out when I ran into a few Vietnam veterans who were organizing a demonstration with the famous Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) down in Washington and they told me what was what. So since then, you know, even if we never get peace, and at times that seems like some kind of naïve fantasy I have to be part of actions like today to let people know, to let myself know, that when the deal went down I was where the action was, ’’ said Jack Scully to his fellow Vietnam veteran Pete Markin.

Peter was sitting in the passenger seat of the car Jack was driving (Mike Kelly, a younger veterans from the Iraq wars sat in back silently drinking in what these grizzled old activists were discussing) as they were travelling back to Jack’s place in York after they had just finished participating in the last leg of the Maine Veterans for Peace-sponsored walk for peace and preservation of the planet from Rangeley to North Berwick, a distance of about one hundred and twenty miles over a ten day period in the October breezes. The organizers of the march had a method to their madness since Rangeley was projected to be a missile site, and the stopping points in between were related to the war industries or to some environmental protection issue ending in North Berwick where the giant defense contractor Pratt-Whitney has three shifts running building F-35 missiles and parts for fighter jets. The three veterans who had come up from Boston to participate in the action had walked the last leg from Saco (pronounced “socko” as a Mainiac pointed out to Peter when he said “sacko”) to the Pratt-Whitney plant in North Berwick, some fifteen miles or so along U.S. Route One and Maine Route Nine.   

After Peter thought about what Jack had said about his commitment to such actions he made this reply, “You know I didn’t step up and oppose the Vietnam War very seriously until pretty late, after I got out of the Army and was working with some Quaker-types in a GI bookstore near Fort Dix down in New Jersey (both of the other men gave signs of recognition of that place, a place where they had taken their respective basis trainings) and that is where I got, what did you call it Jack, “religion” on the war issue. You know I have done quite a few things in my life, some good, some bad but of the good that people have always praised me for that social work I did, and later teaching I always tell them this- there are a million social workers, there are a million teachers, but these days, and for long time now, there have been very few peace activists on the ground so if you want to praise me, want to remember me for anything then let it be for this kind of work, things like this march today when our forces were few and the tasks enormous.”             

With that the three men, as the sun started setting, headed back to the last stretch to York in silence all thinking about what they had accomplished that day.  

******
It had been a long day starting early for Peter since, due to other commitments, he had had to drive up to York before dawn that morning. Jack and Mike already in York too had gotten up early to make sure all the Veterans for Peace and personal gear for the march was in order. They were expected in Saco (you know how to say it now even if you are not from Maine, or even been there) for an 8:30 start to the walk and so left York for the twenty-five mile trip up to that town about 7:30. They arrived at the inevitable Universalist-Unitarian Church (U-U) about 8:15 and prepared the Veterans for Peace flags that the twelve VFPers from the Smedley Butler Brigade who came up from Boston for the last leg would carry.

That inevitable U-U remark by the way needs some explanation, or rather a kudo. Of all the churches with the honorable exception of the Quakers the U-Us have been the one consistent church which has provided a haven for peace activists and their projects, various social support groups and 12- step programs and, of course, the thing that Peter knew them for was as the last gasp effort to preserve the folk minute of the early 1960s by opening their doors on a monthly basis and turn their basements or auditoria into throw-back coffeehouses with the remnant folk performers from that milieu playing, young and old.                  

And so a little after 8:30 they were off, a motley collection of about forty to fifty people, some VFPers from the sponsoring Maine chapter, the Smedleys, some church peace activist types, a few young environmental activists, and a cohort of Buddhists in full yellow robe regalia leading the procession with their chanting and pacing drum beating. Those Buddhists, or some of them, had been on the whole journey from Rangeley unlike most participants who came on one or a few legs and then left. The group started appropriately up Main Street although if you know about coastal Maine that is really U.S. Route One which would be the main road of the march until Wells where they would pick up Maine Route Nine into North Berwick and the Pratt-Whitney plant.

Peter had a flash-back thought early on the walk through downtown Saco as he noticed that the area was filled with old red brick buildings that had once been part of the thriving textile industry which ignited the Industrial Revolution here in America. Yes, Peter “knew” this town much like his own North Adamsville, another red brick building town, and like old Jack Kerouac’s Lowell which he had been in the previous week to help celebrate the annual Kerouac festival. All those towns had seen better days, had also made certain come-backs of late, but walking pass the small store blocks in Saco there were plenty of empty spaces and a look of quiet desperation on those that were still operating just like he had recently observed in those other towns.    

That sociological observation was about the only one that Peter (or anybody) on the march could make since once outside the downtown area heading to Biddeford and Kennebunk the views in passing were mainly houses, small strip malls, an occasional gas station and many trees. As the Buddhists warmed up to their task the first leg was uneventful except for the odd car or truck honking support from the roadway. (Peter and every other peace activist always counted honks as support whether they were or not, whether it was more a matter of road rage or not in the area of an action, stand-out or march). And so the three legs of the morning went. A longer stop for lunch followed and then back on the road for the final stages trying to reach the Pratt-Whitney plant for a planned vigil as the shifts were changing about three o’clock.   

[A word on logistics since this was a straight line march with no circling back. The organizers had been given an old small green bus for their transportation needs. That green bus was festooned with painted graffiti drawings which reminded Peter of the old time 1960s Ken Kesey Merry Prankster bus and a million replicas that one could see coming about every other minute out of the Pacific Coast Highway hitchhike minute back then. The green bus served as the storage area for personal belongings and snack and, importantly, as the vehicle which   would periodically pick up the drivers in the group and leaf-frog their cars toward North Berwick. Also provided rest for those too tired or injured to walk any farther. And was the lead vehicle for the short portion of the walk where everybody rode during one leg before the final walk to the plant gate.]       

So just before three o’clock they arrived at the plant and spread out to the areas in front of the three parking lots holding signs and waving to on-coming traffic. That was done for about an hour and then they formed a circle, sang a couple of songs, took some group photographs before the Pratt-Whitney sign and then headed for the cars to be carried a few miles up the road to friendly farmhouse for a simple meal before dispersing to their various homes. In all an uneventful day as far as logistics went. Of course no vigil, no march, no rally or anything else in the front of some huge corporate enterprise, some war industries target, or some high finance or technological site would be complete without the cops, public or private, thinking they were confronting the Russian Revolution of 1917 on their property and that was the case this day as well. 

Peter did not know whether the organizers had contacted Pratt-Whitney, probably not nor he thought should they have, or security had intelligence that the march was heading their way but a surly security type made it plain that the marchers were not to go on that P-W property, or else. As if a rag-tag group of fifty mostly older pacifists, lukewarm socialists, non-violent veterans and assorted church people were going to shut the damn place done, or try to, that day.         

Nothing came of the security agent’s threats as there was no need for that but as Peter got out of Jack’s car he expressed the hope that someday they would be leading a big crowd to shut that plant down. No questions asked. In the meantime they had set the fragile groundwork. Yes, it had been a good day and they had all been at the right place. 

URGENT: Calls Again Needed to Save Mumia's Life! Stop the attempted murder of Mumia through medical neglect! Keep the pressure on!
HEAR Mumia’s 26 April message thanking the movement!		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 Tom Wolf PA Governor 717-787-2500 governor@PA.gov 508 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg PA 17120 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.
Circulated  by: Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike & Payday men’s network

 

 

Will The Circle Be Unbroken-The Music Of The Carter Family (First Generation)

You know it took a long time for me to figure out why I was drawn, seemingly out of nowhere, to the mountain music most famously brought to public, Northern public, attention by the likes of the Carter Family, Jimmy Rodgers, The Seegers and the Lomaxes back a couple of generations ago. The Carter Family famously arrived via a record contract in Bristol, Tennessee in the days when radio and record companies were looking for music, authentic American music to fill the air and their catalogs. The Seegers and Lomaxes went out into the sweated dusty fields, out to the Saturday night red barn dance, out to the Sunday morning praise Jehovah gathered church brethren, out to the juke joint, down to the mountain general store to grab whatever was available some of it pretty remarkable filled with fiddles, banjos and mandolins.

As a kid, as a very conscious Northern city boy, I could not abide that kind of music  but later on I figured that was because I was so embroiled in the uprising jail-break music of my generation, rock and roll, that anything else faded, faded badly by comparison. Later in high school when Brian Pirot would drive us down to Cambridge and after in college when I used to hang around Harvard Square to be around the burgeoning folk scene that was emerging for what I later would call the folk minute of the early 1960s I would let something like Gold Watch And Chain register a bit, registering a bit then meaning that I would find myself occasionally idly humming such a tune. (The version done by Alice Stuart at the time gleaned when I hear her perform at the Club Nana in the Square one time when I had enough dough for two coffees, a shared pastry and money for the “basket” for a date, a cheap date. The only Carter Family song that I consciously could claim I knew was theirs was Under the Weeping Willow although I may have unconsciously known others from seventh grade music class when Mr. Dasher would bury us with all kind of songs and genre from the American songbook so we would not get tied down to that heathen “rock and roll” that drove him crazy when we asked him to play some for us.) But again more urban, more protest-oriented folk music was what caught my attention more when the folk minute was at high tide in the early 1960s.           

Then one day not all that many years ago as part of a final reconciliation with my family which I had been estranged from periodically since teenage-hood, going back to my own roots, making peace with my old growing up neighborhood, I started asking many questions about how things turned so sour back when I was young. More importantly asking questions that had stirred in my mind for a long time and formed part of the reason that I went for reconciliation. To find out what my roots were while somebody was around to explain the days before I could rightly remember the early day. And in that process I finally, finally figured out why the Carter Family and others began to “speak” to me.         

The thing was simplicity itself. See my father hailed from Kentucky, Hazard, Kentucky long noted in song and legend as hard coal country. When World War II came along he left to join the Marines to get the hell out of there. During his tour of duty he was stationed for a short while at the Portsmouth Naval Base and during that stay attended a USO dance held in Portland where he met my mother who had grown up in deep French-Canadian Olde Saco. Needless to say he stayed in the North, for better or worse, working the mills in Olde Saco until they closed or headed south for cheaper labor and then worked at whatever jobs he could find. All during my childhood though along with that popular music that got many mothers and fathers through the war mountain music, although I would not have called it that then filtered in the background on the family living room record player.

But here is the real “discovery,” a discovery that could only be disclosed by my parents. Early on in their marriage they had tried to go back to Hazard to see if they could make a go of it there. This was after my older brother Prescott was born and while my mother was carrying me. Apparently they stayed for several months before they left to go back to Olde Saco before I was born since I was born in Portland General Hospital. So see that damn mountain was in my DNA, was just harking to me when I got the bug. Funny, isn’t it.            

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Artists’ Corner-

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 hide-bound Academy filled with its rules, or be damned, spoke the pious words of peace, brotherhood and the affinity of all humankind when there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society in its squalor, it creation of generations of short, nasty, brutish lives just like the philosophers predicted 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 laying 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 as 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 ….           

Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night-The Songs of Tom Waits-Take Five

From The Pen Of The Late Peter Paul Markin (who feel by the wayside looking too hard for his own Saturday night-RIP, Brother)     

A YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night

If you, as I do, every once in a while, every once in a while when the norms of the today’s bourgeois-driven push, you know grab goods, grab the dough, grab some shelter from the storm, the storm that these days comes down like a hard rain falling, to get ahead in this wicked old world have to step back and take stock, maybe listen to some words of wisdom, or words that help explain how you got into that mess then you have come to the right address. Okay, okay on that bourgeois-driven today thing maybe going back further to Calvinist Puritan avenging angels times with John Winthrop and the Mayflower boys but you best ask Max Weber about that since he tried to hook the boys to the wheel of the capitalist profit, profit for you at the expense of me, system with the new dispensation coming out like hellfire from Geneva and points east and west. But you get the point.

If all that to-ing and fro-ing (nice touch, right) leaves you wondering where you fell off the edge, that edge city (edge city where you danced around with all the conventions of the days, danced around the get ahead world with blinkers on) where big cloud outrageous youthful dreams were dreamt and you took risks, damn did you take risks, thought nothing of that fact either, landed on your ass more than a few time but just picked yourself up and dusted your knees off and done stick around and listen up. Yeah, so if you are wondering,  have been pushed off your saintly wheels, yeah, pushed off your sainted wheels, and gotten yourself  into some angst-ridden despair about where you went off that angel-driven dream of your youth, now faded, tattered, and half- forgotten(but only half, only half, the wisp of the dream, the eternal peace dream, the figuring out how to contain that fire, that wanting habits fire in your belly dream sisters and brothers), and need some solace (need some way to stop the fret counting the coffee cups that while away your life), need to reach back to roots (reach back to roots that the 1950s golden age of America kicked the ass out of all the old to make us crave oneness, to forget about those old immigrant customs, made us forget that simple country blues, mountain breeze songs, cowboy ballads, Tex-Mex, Cajun Saturday night that made the people feel good times), reach back to the primeval forest maybe, put the headphones on some Tom Waits platter (oops, CD, YouTube selection, etc.- “platter” refers to a, ah, record, vinyl, put on a record player, hell, look it up in Wikipedia, okay) and remember what it was like when men and women sang just to sing the truth of what they saw and heard.

If the norms of don’t rock the boat (not in these uncertain times like any times in human existence were certain, damn, there was always something coming up from the first man-eating beast to the human race-eating nuclear bombs), the norms of keep your head down (that’s right brother, that’s right sister keep looking down, no left or rights for your placid world), keeping your head down being an art form now with appropriate ritual (that ritual looking more and more like the firing squad that took old Juan Romero’s life when he did bad those days out in Utah country), and excuses, because, well, because you don’t want to wind up like them (and fill in the blank of the “them,” usually dark, very dark like some deathless, starless night disturbing your sleep, begging, I swear, begging you to put that gun in full view on the table,   speaking some unknown language, maybe A-rab, maybe gibberish for all you know, moving furtively and stealthily against your good night) drive you crazy and you need, desperately need, to listen to those ancient drum beats, those primeval forest leave droppings maybe, that old time embedded DNA coda long lost to, oh yes, civilization, to some civilizing mission (think of that Mayflower gang or ask Max Weber), that spoke of the better angels of your nature when those angel dreams, half-forgotten but only half remember, ruled your days. Turn up the volume up another notch or two on that Tom Waits selection, maybe Jersey Girl or Brother, Can You Spare A Dime (can you?), Hold On, or Gunn Street Girl.

If you need to hear things, just to sort things out, just to recapture that angel-edge, recapture the time when you did no fear, you and everybody else’s sisters and brothers, that thing you build and from which you now should run, recapture that child-like wonder that made you come alive, made you think about from whence you came and how a turn, a slight turn this way or that, could have landed you on the wrong side. And I have the list of brothers and sisters who took that wrong road, when he wound up face down in some dusty back road arroyo down Sonora way when the deal went bust or when she, maybe a little kinky for all I know, decided that she would try a needle and a spoon, I swear, or she swore just for kicks and she wound up in Madame LaRue’s whorehouse working that bed to perdition. Hey, sweet dreams baby I tried to tell you when you play with fire, watch out.

So if you need to sort things out about boozers (and about titanic booze-crazed struggles in barrooms, on beaches, in the back seats of cars, lost in the mist of time down some crazed midnight, hell, four in the morning, penniless, cab fare-less night), losers (those who have lost their way, gotten it taken away from them like some maiden virginity), those who never had anything but lost, not those who never had a way to be lost, dopesters inhaling, in solitary hotel rooms among junkie brethren, gathering a needle and spoon in some subterranean dank cellar, down in dark alleys jack-rolling some poor drunk stiff out of his room rent for kicks (how uncool to drink low-shelf whiskeys or rotgut wines hell the guy deserved to be rolled, should feel lucky he got away with just a flipped wallet), out in nighttime canyons flame blaring off the walls, the seven seas of chemical dust, mainly blotter, maybe peyote (the sweet dreams of ten million years of ghost warriors working the layered canyon walls flickering against the campfire flames and the sight of two modern warriors ready to do justice for the white man's greed until the flames flickered out and they fell in a heap exhausted) if that earth angel connection comes through (Aunt Sally, always, some Aunt Sally coming up the stairs to ease the pain, to make one feel, no, not feel, better than any AMA doctor without a prescription pad), creating visions of long lost tribes trying, trying like hell, to get “connected,” connected in the campfire shadow night, hipsters (all dressed in black, mary mack dressed in black, speeding, speaking be-bop this and be-bop that to stay in fashion, hustling, always hustle, maybe pimping some street urchin, maybe cracking some guy’s head to create a “new world order” of the malignant, always moving), fallen sisters (sisters of mercy, sisters who need mercy, sisters who were mercifully made fallen in some mad dash night, merciful sister feed me, feed me good), midnight sifters (lifting in no particular order hubcaps, tires, wrenches, jacks, an occasional gem, some cheap jewelry in wrong neighborhoods, some paintings or whatever is not saleable left in some sneak back alley, it is the sifting that counts), grifters (hey, buddy watch this, now you see it, now you don’t, now you don’t see your long gone John dough, and Mister three card Monte long gone too ), drifters (here today gone tomorrow with or without dough, to Winnemucca, Ogden, Fresno, Frisco town, name your town, name your poison and the great big blue seas washing you clean out into the Japans ), the drift-less (cramped into one room hovels, shelters, seedy rooming houses afraid to stay in-doors or to go outside, afraid of the “them” too, afraid to be washed clean, angel clean), and small-time grafters (the ten-percent guys, failed insurance men, repo artists, bounty hunters, press agents, personal trainers, need I go on). You know where to look, right.

If you need to be refreshed on the subject of hoboes, bums, tramps (and remind me sometime to draw the distinction, the very real and acknowledged distinction between those three afore –mentioned classes of brethren once told to me by a forlorn grand master hobo, a guy down on his luck moving downward to bum), out in the railroad jungles in some Los Angeles ravine, some Gallup, New Mexico Southern Pacific  trestle (the old SP the only way to travel out west if you want to get west), some Hoboken broken down pier (ha, shades of the last page of Jack Kerouac’s classic), the fallen (fallen outside the gates of Eden, or, hell, inside too), those who want to fall (and let god figure out who made who fall, okay), Spanish Johnnies (slicked back black hair, tee shirt, shiv, cigarette butt hanging from a parted lip, belt buckle ready for action, leering, leering at that girl over there, some gringa for a change of pace, maybe your girl but watch out for that shiv, the bastard), stale cigarette butts (from Spanish Johnnie and all the johnnies, Camels, Luckies, no filters, no way), whiskey-soaked barroom floors (and whiskey-soaked drunks to mop the damn place up, for drinks and donuts, maybe just for the drinks), loners (jesus, books, big academic books with great pedigrees could be written on that subject so let’s just pass by), the lonely (ditto loners), sad sacks (kindred, one hundred times kindred to the loners and the lonely but not worthy of study, academic study anyway), the sad (encompassing all of the above) and others at the margins of society, the whole fellahin world, then Tom Waits is your stop.

Tom Waits is, frankly, an acquired taste, one listen will not do, one song will not do, but listen to a whole record (CD okay) and you won’t want to turn the thing off, high praise in anyone’s book, so a taste well worth acquiring as he storms heaven in words, in thought-out words, in cribbed, cramped, crumbled words, to express the pain, angst and anguish of modern living, yes, modern living.

See he ain’t looking for saints out there, out on the American mean streets he has pawed, maybe doesn’t believe in saints for all I know, but is out looking for busted black-hearted angels all dressed in some slinky silk thing to make man, a high-shelf whiskey man that night go off his moorings feeding her drinks and she a sponge (and who left him short one night in some unnamed, maybe nameless, gin mill when she split, after she split with the bartender who watered her drinks, hell, the thing was sweet all she needed to when he leaned into her was grab his sorry ass and get the damn wallet). Looking too, a child of the pin-up playboy 1950s, for girls with Monroe hips (hip swaying wickedly in the dead air night, and enflaming desire, hell lust, getting kicked out of proper small town hells by descendants of those aforementioned Mayflower boys promising the world for one forbidden night), got real, and got left for dead with cigar wrapping rings. Yeah, looking for the desperate out there who went off the righteous path and wound up too young face down in some forsaken woods who said she needed to hold on to something, and for all the misbegotten. 

Tom Waits gives voice in song, a big task, to the kind of characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). The, frankly, white trash Okie/Arkie Dove Linkhorns of the world who had to keep moving just for the sake of moving something in the DNA driving that whirlwind, genetically broken before they begin, broken before they hit these shores (their forbears thrown out of Europe for venal crimes and lusts, pig-stealing, deer-pouching, working the commons without a license, highwaymen, ancient jack-rollers, the flotsam and jetsam of the old world, damn them, the master-less men and women, ask old Max about them too), having been chased out, cast out of Europe, or some such place. In short, the people who do not make revolutions, those revolutions we keep hearing and reading about, the wretched of the earth and their kin, far from it, but those who surely, and desperately could use one. If you want to hear about those desperate brethren then here is your stop as well.

If, additionally, you need a primordial grizzled gravelly voice to attune your ear to the scratchy earth and occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Hey, let’s leave it at this- if you need someone who “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. Keep looking for the heart of Saturday night, Brother, keep looking.

The Many Faces Of Struggle In Boston -The Mother's March For Peace In The Streets 

 

In The Days When Capitalism Held Wonder In The World-With The Dutch Masters In Mind

 

A while back, not too long ago, a few months at most, I was thinking about when I was a kid growing up in the reds scare Cold War 1950s, a time when due to international politics one manifestation of the struggle for supremacy was the race to space, the race to see who could claim to get there first in a manned object and stake a claim. The way that translated to a kid, this kid, but certainly many others as well was to direct me, us, to the stars and to stare and wonder, wonder what the heck was out there, and whether what was out there was dangerous to Mother Earth or friendly. Maybe today such efforts are directed toward the earth and creating technology commiserate with our seemingly endless need to look at electronic gadgetry but then the heavens held our gaze and we judged those who reached for the stars as the vanguard, as the way forward. And it was not just kids either as my old friend Sam Lowell reminded me but kids, kids I knew anyway way seemed to get an extra jolt out of the idea of being kings (and queens but precious few girls shared the vision as far as Sam and I recall and maybe that is why we were “outcasts” in late elementary school and junior high when they were dreaming of sock hops and “cool” guys.  Sam can testify to that unsuccessful part since he almost became a victim of the “collateral damage” of the quest for the stars. After several attempts with anything from balsa wood models glided along a wire flight path between two poles to welded soup cans and a funnel filled with odd-ball chemicals (hey, come on I was ten or eleven what do you want) and nearly getting people killed or grievously injured (Sam, my late younger brother, Kenny, and Allan Johnson whom I had met in first grade), including myself, I left the task to safer hands. But the wonder stayed for a long while, the wonder about what was out there and what was new to discover. Then I slowly turned my face to more earthly matters (after also failing to figure out girls), trying to figure out how to organize this world more equitably through a litany of theoretical models.             

When I look at the picture of these clearly prosperous well-fed, Dutch merchant-adventurers (see above) I have the feeling that they too were wondering about what was out there, out beyond the coastal European seas, wondering how to get there first before the bounty they expected to find could be taken by other hands. Wondering, since these are Dutch burghers we are referring to, what they, better what their sea-captains would make of what F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby called the fresh green breast of the new world when they entered Long Island Sound. Wondered, maybe innocently, for a minute anyway, just like the space race wonder of my youth. Then I put my political hat on and thought back to that time, to a time when such types, wondering or not, led the drive away from the old stagnant feudal order, the old hokus-pokus religion (they all have the look of those who took their religion as an individual task, took it lightly once the crush of the Holy Catholic popish church had been lifted allowing them to wonder about earthly “doing and making”), and that there was a pretty penny to be made in the world.    

All of this got tied together for me one day after looking at the picture several times at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and realizing that back then those wonderings, that seeking out of individual worth, even that concept of “doing and making” in the world which drove their ethic, and which formed the rudiments of the capitalist ethos is what pushed human progress along. Fitfully, unevenly, and with plenty of inequality but pushed it along whatever the personal desires of the individuals portrayed in the picture. So while today I, we, can see that the old-time positive capitalist ethos has lost its head of steam and another system of organizing the productive forces of the world is necessary those smirky, self-satisfied burghers have an honorable place in human history. Yeah, and all their wonder too.            

Free All The Class-War Prisoners-The Latest News From The Partisan Defense Committee   

In Honor Of International Workers’ Day- May Day 2014 -Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People?-Frank Jackman’s War-Take Five  

 

From The American Left History Blog Archives –May Day 1971

 

Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all I know, every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums, aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let- her-rip cosmic brakeman Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some Iowa/Kansas wheat field night fantasy this trip.

No this trip was not about securing some cultural enclave in post-war America (post-World War II so as not to confuse the reader) in break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute, absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we, I, am ready. On that dusty road ready.

More. See all roads head south as we, my girlfriend of the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or dream wish and my sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted, okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your “type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some forlorn rear view mirror.

Yah, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more, too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down to D.C. for what many of us figure will be the last, finally, push back against the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching television and the news, but THEY, and you knew (know) who they were (are), had their antennae out too, they KNEW we were coming, even high-ball fixed (or whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style (and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad as Ct, nothing except Arizona is). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy (remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance sometime).

The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe, better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, thought about it later in lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really, and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms this jailbird was ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day 1971.

And not just any massed presence like the then familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention too anymore except the organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter, would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat. Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody mentioned them out loud in my presence and I was at every meeting, high or low. Moreover I had my ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. I, rightly or wrongly, silly me thought “cop.”

So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment around DuPont Circle (I think) but it may have been further up off 14th Street, Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys from old revolutions and so, well, discounted to early rise (or early stay up cigarette chain-smoking and coffee slurping to keep the juices flowing). Out into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded, coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere, bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam, naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum, beat, beat like gongs, defeated.

Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all, was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested, two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.

And, as I was being led away by one of D.C.’s finest, I turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with the strategy that day and I had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before, that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous sister, forgive me. (Not so anonymous actually since I saw her many times later in Boston, almost would have traded in lust for her but I was still painted Botticelli-bewitched and so I, we, let the moment passed, and worked on about six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later. I saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)

Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart road tramp acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, I was longing for the hot, dusty, truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.

*********

The spring of 1971 had been like the previous couple of years in the escalating anti-Vietnam War struggle. There was the inevitable massive peaceful protest planned for late April in Washington, D.C. as the mainline organizers of these now semi-annual events (others took place in the fall) put on the word in the media and on the street. The expectation of the organizers, the strategy, at least the public strategy, was driven by the idea that ever-increasing numbers on the National Mall would in short order whip the war-mongers. In short more housewives and mothers from Jersey taking the trek south would do the trick. There were at this time, as usual when the commonplace strategies to make political change do not work, others, mainly students and young unaffiliated radicals who had other ideas about stopping the madness of the Vietnam War. In little collectives, known as May Day collectives for the day of action, small clots of like-minded brethren were committed to major acts of civil disobedience. In their parlance-‘if the government does not shut down the war, we will shut down the government.” It was with these different concepts in mind that Frank Jackman, his girlfriend Joyell, and a couple of other of her friends from Cambridge hitchhiked to Washington, D.C. that spring.           

 

Frank, having only a couple of months previously had been discharged from the U.S. Army as a conscientious objector after serving almost a year in the Fort Devens, Massachusetts stockade, was intrigued by the thought of massive direct action to stop the war. His own evolution on the subject of effective political action had started from his perception that more than mass marches were necessary to stop the slaughter. His own actions in the Army while individualistic were done with the thought of spurring fellow soldiers into active opposition to the war. In time he saw that more than acting as a model was necessary and was therefore intrigued by the idea of mass civil disobedience to shut down the war machine.

 

Frank and Joyell had had many argument over the question of direct civil action, “street violence” she called it mentioning the wild and wooly radical types from Cambridge and elsewhere who were touting the May Day actions. Frank thought every such option was up for grabs with the never-ending war and so his objections were strictly personal. He was not sure that he wanted to go through another jail term, potentially long, so soon after his previously stint. The pair argued (along with those two friends) all the way do to Washington about the subject of the right strategy.  In any case Frank and Joyell “decided” before the trip that while Frank would stay for the May Day action as a witness at least Joyell would travel back to Boston once the large Saturday rally was over.

 

On the Saturday of the mass rally the National Mall was overflowing with people of every physical description, fashion statement, race, creed, and the rest. From the platform every self-interested politician and grouping got their moment in the sun. What Frank noticed and which only confirmed his suspicions about every greater masses of people gathering to force the war issue was the essentially festive nature of the event, This motley would not “storm heaven” and so as the day wore on, tired, almost exhausted he began to toy with the idea that, yes, come Monday morning he would be out in the streets. The ante had been upped.

 

That was why Frank Jackman, late of the U.S. Army, had been sitting on the National Mall around a blazing campfire, tired, a little hungry, and doing a little quiet thinking through his options on the Sunday night before May Day 1971...

The Kingsmen's Jack Ely Passes At 71 

The Kingsmen probably had the greatest one hit wonder song of the whole rock and roll 1960s. Hell, I got more shy boy dances from girls on that one song than I could shake a stick at. Not everything worked out but thanks guys. I am not done with this sketch but any stretch of the imagination but will right something longer later. Bet on it.     

 

Happy 100^th Birthday Citizen Kane-Film Director, Actor, Writer Orson Welles At 100

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3r2qyBrTFpTPv2rZxGrJBtT/cinema-giant-orson-welles-at-100