Protest Escalation Of New Iraq War
Friday, July 10, 2015
As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Comes To A Close... Some Remembrances
The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European youth form all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts. Also clogged, or rather thrown in the nearest bin were the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. Other than isolated groups and individuals mostly in the weaker countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove thir manhood.
Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the last month of the first year of war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19th century), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.
The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20th century when the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last war on the fronts (that is how the generals saw it mainly having won their promotions in those earlier wars and so held captive to the past). However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.
The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can, hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.
A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America the Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “club fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell), were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.
Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day.
So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.
Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.
Thursday, July 09, 2015
“The Mere Idea Of You”-With Billie Holiday’s The Very Thought Of You In Mind
“The Mere Idea Of You”-With Billie Holiday’s The Very Thought Of You In Mind
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
A
while back I wrote about a guy named Otty Venise (not Otto as a number of
people assumed including school teachers who from first grade on thought he was
just misspelling his own name from what he told me one night sitting at
Charley’s Den on Charles Street in the Back Bay sipping low-shelf whiskies
since we were both in some financial difficulties). I had run into Otty in the
early 1980s when I lived on Beacon Hill in Boston and he lived in a small
studio apartment below me while working his way up the banking food chain. Otty
while a good guy to have a few off-hand drinks with was a great deal younger
than I was and so he had the inevitable woman troubles that I had put behind me
a bit then (two marriages and two divorces behind which explains low-shelf
whiskeys and financial difficulties forcing me to live in a studio apartment on
the Hill for a while when the rents weren’t sky high like now).
That little sketch I wrote about Otty had to do with one way
that he dealt with, maybe got through is a better way to say it, his miseries
with woman. See Otty had been in the dumps back then about his latest flame,
this Laura Perkins, who he said was five feet six inches of slender brunette
pale blues eyes and heartbreak, and who had him jumping through hoops. Nothing
new there since Otty said he had probably jumped through more hoops for more
unrequited love women than any seven men around Carver about thirty miles south
of Boston where he had grown up, maybe around Massachusetts. And with every
single one of them, or at least as far back as he could remember Otty said he would
feel just a little bit better if he listened, endlessly listened as if time did
not matter, or if time actually did stand still, when he played his old time
collection of four two-pocketed double-sided albums of Miss Bessie Smith which
he had inherited from his uncle when that uncle unexpectedly passed away in 1971.
Here is what didn’t figure, didn’t figure to Otty, and
certainly didn’t figure to me about his Bessie affliction. Here was a white
guy, a guy who before he got out of high school and went to work at a downtown
Boston bank in the junior exec program did not know one black person personally
and who moreover did not know squat about the roots of black music in slavery
times, in Mister James Crow times, in the great migration to the industrial North
times but who could only find solace in the raspy-throated voice of a black
back forty acres and a mule Southern Delta 1930s woman when he was in one of
his periodic dumps.
And that is my jumping off point. See I would have figured,
maybe to test out my own theory of Otty’s love depressions that one Miss Billie
Holiday, a certified torch singer is the one whom you would think would sent
those blues away. But she did not do so. Did not get him out of his dumps. No,
Miss Billie was reserved for when Otty and his latest flame were heating up
their affair, when some sweet woman was “curling his toes” as he always liked
to put the matter about his bouts of love-making. So I want to tell you the
Billie part of the Otty love triangle, the part when his and Laura’s love was
in its spring. Want to tell as maybe an exercise in full disclosure about that
mad young man especially since he held me to no confidence in the matter and
while I will not go into detail about that “curling his toes” business since
you can figure that out yourselves I can set the mood, the Billie mood for you.
Of course Otty’s whole thing with Laura read like an
adventure not written in the stars. He had run into her at the Surf Ballroom in
Hull hard by the Atlantic Ocean. He had gone there with Jimmy Eaton and couple
of other guys whom he had known in high school from the days where they had
hung out at Jimmy Jack’s Diner on Thornton Street over by the Town Hall in
Carver. He was in need of some distraction after he had broken it off with
Jeanie Callahan (no Bessie needed on that one since he knew from the beginning
dating the sister of a friend of his, Jack Callahan, as a favor when he had
nothing better to do was not made in heaven) to listen to the latest break-out
cover group, The Rambling Jets, who played a hard rock and roll sound that
despite his Bessie mood thing was his natural musical base. As usual as such
places the Surf was filled on a Friday night with clots of single hanging out
guys and girls. He had simply asked Laura to dance, she consented, and that was
the start.
Sure there was plenty more to fill in. About how well Otty
and Laura got along at first, how she had stayed the night a few times in his
Beacon Hill studio apartment to seal the deal, how they had certain plans once
she finished school at Bridgewater State in her hometown, and he moved up the
banking ladder. Plenty too about the little fights about who he, or who she
could and could not see until that time. The usual boy-girl stuff going on
since they invented that boy-girl controversy stuff. It had all started when
Laura began having second thoughts about her old beau, Bart Webber, just back
from a tour of duty in the Army having been stationed in Germany. He had called
her and talked to her about getting back together. Otty had said to Laura no
dice to them even talking. Somehow though Laura and Bart had reconnected as
Otty found out the hard way seeing them one Saturday afternoon having lunch together
at the Sea and Surf in Hull when he and Laura had a date for the Surf that
night. After a couple of weeks of explosions on both sides Laura gave Otty his
walking papers.
That was at the end though but I want to go back to those
nights Laura stayed with Otty on Beacon Hill, or rather the first night they
“did the do” as the old scat blues singer Howlin’ Wolf would say. Like I said I
won’t fill in the sex details because you can figure that on your own but just
tell how he, a bottle of wine (white and pretty cheap from what he said), a
couple of joints (when that was still cool to do before “cocaine all round your
brain” became the drug flavor of the month) and of course Billie, Billie before
the pusher man got to her bad, put her on the nod, cut her torch voice into
little pieces at the end. Billie when she could make the angels cry about their
vocal inadequacies when they heard that voice.
See Laura knew from nothing about Billie so Otty just ran
the rack with LP album after album on his stereo and they just drank that wine
and smoked that dope until Billie’s The
Very Thought Of You came busting into the room and pulled something in
Laura’s usually semi-frozen heart. And that was that, they messed up the sheets
a bit that night (you know what I mean, right). So, yes, I can see where Miss
Billie Holiday might do, might do very well in the throes of love department. Although
frankly Billie as an aphrodisiac was a new one on me then.
But that is not the end because the night Otty told me this
story he also said that he had written something about one of Billie’s albums,
some kind of review for a local paper or something I forget, and about the
effect had on him. Here’s what he had to say:
“In my book, and I am hardly alone on this, Billie Holiday
is the torch singer’s torch singer. Maybe it is the phrasing on her best songs.
That well-placed hush. Maybe it is the unbreakable link between her voice when
she is on a roll and the arrangements. Hell, maybe in the end it was the dope
but, by Jesus, she could sing a modern ballad of love, lost or both like no
other. And if it was the dope, let me say this- a ‘normal’ nice singer could
sing for a hundred years and never get it right, the way Billie could get it
right when she was at her best. Dope, or no dope.
Was she always at her best? Hell no, as the current
compilation makes clear. [Otty was reviewing a then recently released “greatest
hits” compilation.] These recordings done between 1945 and her death in 1959
for Verve show the highs but also the lows as the voice faltered a little and
the dope put the nerves on edge toward the end.
Many of the songs on the current compilation are technically
sound, a few not, as is to be expected on such re-mastering. You will like Come Rain or Come Shine, Stars Fell On
Alabama and Stormy Blues. A tear will come to your eye with Some Other Spring and East of the Sun. The surprise of the
package is Speak Low, a sultry song
with tropical background beat. That one is very good, indeed.
One last word- I have occasionally mentioned my love of
Billie Holiday’s music to younger acquaintances. Guys and gals at work or at a
couple of place where I do volunteer work. Some of their responses reflecting,
I think, the influence of the movies (especially Lady Sings The Blues) or some black history up-lift looks on her
life have written her off as an addled doper. Here is my rejoinder- If when I
am in the mood for love and need a pick-me-up and put on a Billie platter then,
my friends, someone who can do that for me I will buy them, metaphorically of
course, all the dope they ever need. Enough said.”
I
can add no more.
A Real Independence Day Walk Through The Streets- A Tale Of Two Parades-An Encore
A Real Independence Day Walk Through The Streets- A Tale Of Two Parades
From The Pen Of Sam Eaton
Yeah, the streets of the small towns and big cities of this nation were resplendent with red white and blue bunting, the kids filled to the brim with soda, candy and hot dogs and adults coyly sipping their store bought wines and beers in red plastic containers (or at least that seemed the color of choice from a brief but telling visual unscientific poll) as happens every hot summer July Independence Day, the Fourth to short-haul the name of the event I am talking about. As a nice summer holiday nobody, including me, has any quarrel, especially getting the school-stormed kids out of doors and reddened from their prison pallor earned the previous past nine months.
Well, maybe some out there in the hinterlands have a quarrel with celebrating the Fourth as a freedom day after my reading of an archival piece from a re-tweeted blog that my long-time friend and political activist comrade, Ralph Morris (more about him later), send along to me. He had received it via the Internet from our mutual friend living in New York City, Fritz Jasper, a guy who refused to serve in Vietnam after he had been inducted into the Army and his number was called to do 11 Bravo duty (infantryman, grunt, cannon fodder, take your pick) back in the day and did a serious year or more in an Army stockade for his troubles before some smart and savvy civilian lawyer who knew the military law inside out got him sprung on a habeas corpus petition in federal court or he might still be on in the wheat fields of Kansas at Fort Leavenworth along with the heroic Wiki-leaks whistleblower Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.
The gist of the article and that is all I want to do is give the gist since this sketch is about other matters, although 4th of July connected, was penned by a NYU professor who Fritz knows and let’s write on his blog, American Politics Today. The good professor’s argument was that due to the way this country got its freedom from old Mother England as a result of a straight up military victory and the kind of society that was formed afterwards based on the enslavement of black people and later the extermination of Native peoples (although a lot was done well before that “later” to those “collateral damage” peoples) we should be more circumspect about celebrating the event. Unlike say the English, French or Russian revolutions which were hell-bound flat-out social revolutions whatever happened later to rein them in.
And the good professor from NYU, Jack Kirby I think his name was who has written several books and monograms along that same line, might have a very good point (and Fritz too who agreed with that part of Kirby’s analysis about being circumspect all things considered but disagreed with the “not celebrating” part since he sees it as a legitimate part of the struggle from human freedom even if today we would recoil from what that experience has produced. More on this in a minute when Ralph and I weight in). But what interests today me as an old anti-war campaigner (make that a full-time anti-war campaigner against the now endless wars of the American imperium and other misadventures as well) since the early 1970s after I got “religion” as I like to call it on the issues of war and peace is being able to use the day, and more importantly the thousands of locally organized parades or other commemorations, to get our anti-war message out.
The “got religion” part about war came after some soul-searching when I learned that my best friend, Jeff Mullins, from Carver High was blown away in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1969. Jeff had sent me a bunch of letters telling me of the horrors of the situation, his desperation in trying to right it, and his total disgust with the ugly abuse that the American government was putting its soldiers, the people of Vietnam (and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as it turns out), and virtually everything it touched a few months before he was killed to tell one and all that the war was totally crazy, totally “off the wall” as he called it. (I was a little sheepish at first since through the vagaries of life I wound up with a military deferment due to being the sole support for my mother and four much younger sisters after my drunken sot of a father passed away suddenly from a massive heart attack in 1965. But I got over that when somebody said the message “from the grave” I had to bring to the table squared things.)
The hard fact is that in the year 2015 despite almost fourteen years of endless war from that first bombing raids on Kabul by Bush II in the aftermath of the horrendous unspeakable criminal actions in New York on 9/11 until the latest (Spring, 2015) announced Obama third wave, or is it fourth, “creeping troop escalation” in Iraq the streets of America have been abandoned as a way to get our message out by those who previously knew (if only for a minute in the later part of 2002 and early 2003) that you need to get the anti-war message out via the streets, raise hell about the situation, since the media has blocked any coverage out otherwise as yesterday’s news.
So the 4th of July is an excellent place to bring the message home to a war-weary (and wary) people without an “in your face” confrontation. (How are you going to, on either side, get red-faced angry when soda-hot dog-candy filled kids and ordinary everyday citizens out to get some well-deserved time off and have a few red cup brews are looking your way with not unkindly feelings.) Now, full disclosure, Ralph Morris as a Vietnam veteran like the fallen Jeff Mullins (and not Vietnam-era either since he served eighteen months “in-country” as he calls it) and I who have worked with him since we “met” at the RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. on May Day 1971 are both members of an organization dedicated to the principle of peace, Veterans For Peace (VFP), and have been for a number of years (he as a full member and I as an associate since I am not a veteran, a least a war veteran although Ralph always says that I am a “veteran” in his book since being peace veterans is really what is important about what we have, or have not, done with our lives).
VFP likes to, maybe lives to, use any reasonable occasion to get the peace message out. So these days events like 4th of July parades, Memorial Day Peace remembrances, ditto Veterans Day/Armistice Day (the real and original reason for the holiday going back to end of World War I times), Saint Patrick’s Day in Boston, Gay Pride parades, you name it you are very likely to find the white flags with the black-outlined doves of peace embossed on them fluttering in the wind at some such occasion. And this Fourth of July was no exception. Ralph who lives in Troy, New York when we are not off somewhere spreading as best we can these days the good news of peace came to Boston and joined the local VFP chapter, the Smedley Butler Brigade (named in honor of the famous much decorated Marine Corps general who coined the phrase “war is a racket” in a speech you can read if you Google his name or go to Wikipedia). We marched on the evening of July 3rd in the annual parade in historic Gloucester (of the famed fishermen going down to the sea, those battling our home land the sea for its bounty) and in the adjacent town of Rockport the next evening.
Late on 4th of July evening after having walked our legs off the previous two early evenings we headed to Johnny’s Olde Wagon Wheel Diner over on Thornton Street (Rockport) for a meal (Johnny’s providing the best meatloaf dinner around and both Ralph and I in our hitchhiking days in the early 1970s either on our own or through the kindness of friendly truckers know many, many diners to compare the bills of fare on that subject and that accolade is thus deserved) and a few drinks of high-shelf whisky (although our favorite watering hole for that purpose when Ralph is in Boston is Jack’s Grille down by the Financial District in the downtown area but that place that day would be a zoo with the huge crowds that attend the well-known concert on the Esplanade and fireworks after) in order to “evaluate” what our takes on the two events were.
Now you have to know a little something about VFP’s past participation in these Fourth of July parades in Gloucester and Rockport. VFP started about twenty years to participate in the two parades via the efforts of VFP members in both towns to get us in (at the barbeque this year before the Rockport parade that fact was honored with a short speech and, well, a cake). The first few years in the second Clinton administration were rocky since a key component to any of this American spirit holidays are groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and American Legion posts who put a lock on patriotism of a certain kind, mainly of the unthinking or wrong-thinking “my country, right or wrong” kind, and that is that. Moreover the other key organizers for such events are the town police and fire departments whose memberships overlap with the veterans’ groups many times. Those combinations are used to organizing such events and normally set the agenda. So the first few years were tough with the local organizers taking a stance out of the playbook of the Allied War Council (AWC) in Boston which for five years now has excluded VFP from its Saint Patrick’s Day parade held over in South Boston in March of each year under the rubric, as one AWC-er put it-“we don’t want the words “veterans” and “peace” put together in our (private) parade. Small towns and cities are however under pressure, or if not should be, to see that the whole community is represented and so VFP found a spot in each parade. Of course another hard pressed time was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when even Ralph and I were afraid to go on the streets with the peace message at a time when the average citizen who generally is indifferent to our presence had daggers in their eyes at the sight of peace signs or symbols (although we did, we did go out among the hostile populace, at least in Boston that year, but with the most trepidation that either of us had faced in our long anti-war careers) and then with the war drums beating in the lead-up to the so-called slam-dunk 2003 Iraq War.
But each year since as the endless wars have continued to meander their endless sun-less rivers the patriotic bounce has stopped driving sneers, ugly remarks, old-time out of touch anti-commie slurs and the like that every protestor from neophyte to veteran knows is at least hidden in some quarters when you work “street” politics. Both Ralph and I made that same observation this year (as well as our traditional one about how those old yellow ribbons festooned on the back bumpers of cars and trucks have faded to pale white). That absence of malice rather than the notable increased cheering as the VFP contingent of white flag dove of peace –embossed limply-walking older wars veterans, jauntily-walking younger Afghan and Iraq war veterans and assorted peace group supporters approached their vantage points is the most striking difference over the years. We both noted in Rockport there was plenty of genuine cheering to overthrow any uncivil remarks (although one guy, an old duffer who looked like he might have been a mess sergeant in 1958, told us to “go back to Moscow” and another in that same old duffer category to “just stay at home” apparently to not offend his starry eyes. Jesus, where have these guys been since about 1991.)
Here is our dilemma though, and not just Ralph, mine or VFP’s but for any “peaceniks” working the streets these days. We could palpably see the war-weariness in the remarks headed our way, especially in Gloucester an old working-class town that has provided more than its share of soldiers and sailors as the city memorial to the fallen of that place readily testifies, those remarks made from many a flatbed working man’s truck that dotted the route of the parade. Trucks, more than either of us thought existed in a town that size (and missing for the most part from the more upscale Rockport parade with its average Audi or BMW) complete with whole families in the bed taking in the sights, having a little something to eat or drink, and probably trying to figure out how to calm down the sugar-laden kids before bedtime after such a hectic day of sights and sounds.
Here is where Ralph and I have racked our brains in sullen frustration-how do you turn that obvious war-weariness into some kind of protest movement beyond the kind words and rousing applause sent our way on parade days. We did not solve that dilemma that night maybe because we were tired, maybe we were too sated from Johnny’s meatloaf, maybe a few too many high-shelf whiskeys or maybe like the kids too many sights and sounds. All I know is that we will be back next year, hopefully with more people joining our efforts to spread the good words of peace around. You can bet on that.
[Oops, before I forget since whenever I mention how Ralph and I met down in D.C. on May Day 1971 people want to know how that happened in a professional football stadium in May when the football season is long past. Ralph wrote up his version in 2011 and I added a few pithy comments (his term) for that American Politics Today our friend Fritz runs for the fortieth anniversary of the event. I will give a short wrap-up here to show why we have been amigos since that strange day in May. You already know my reasons for turning anti-war but Ralph’s came like Jeff’s from actual hard rock service in that benighted country. In short as Ralph says when he is giving talks- “he grew disenchanted with what he had to do as a soldier (as an 11 Bravo cannon-fodder like Jeff), what his Army buddies getting blown away and mangled had to do, and what the damn American government was making of them-nothing but animals (always said with a sneer). So when he got out in late 1969, early 1970 he wound up working with a predecessor of VFP, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). By 1971 with no end of the war in sight a lot of us, radicals, frustrated liberals, ex-G.I.s upped the ante- decided to as the slogan went-“if the government would not shut down the war, we would shut down the government.”
As thousands descended on Washington including Ralph with New York VVAW and me then living in Cambridge with some radicals I knew we really thought we had enough to change history. For that illusion many of us, Ralph and me among them, wound upon the football field at RFK being used that May as a holding area for those arrested. He noticed I was wearing a VVAW supporter button in honor of Jeff and that started our friendship. If you need more info on that day just check Wikipedia because I have to move on.]
*Songs To While Away The Struggle -Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam"-Make Sure To See The Netflix Documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?
Click on the title to link a "YouTube" film clip of Nina Simone performing her "Mississippi Goddam. Thanks, Nina.
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
Markin comment:
50 years later and even the mere mention of Mississippi puts me directly in mind of Nina Simone's no-nonsense song about the struggle down South in the early part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Thanks, Nina.
Mississippi Goddam Lyrics
(1963) Nina Simone
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet
Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer
Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know
Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we
Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me
Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know
You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
That's it for now! see ya' later
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
Markin comment:
50 years later and even the mere mention of Mississippi puts me directly in mind of Nina Simone's no-nonsense song about the struggle down South in the early part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Thanks, Nina.
Mississippi Goddam Lyrics
(1963) Nina Simone
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet
Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer
Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know
Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we
Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me
Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know
You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
That's it for now! see ya' later
When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of Dave Van Ronk’s Time
When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of Dave Van Ronk’s Time
Sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan, maybe younger too if kids have browsed through their parents’ old record collections now safely ensconced in the attic although there are stirrings of retro-vinyl revival of late. Most also would know about how Dylan, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s singing his songs in his style something a fellow acolyte like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot never quite got over when he moved on but who actually made a career out of Woody covers, became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, my generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then the master troubadour of the age. (Troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them by song and poetry as well.) So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered.
But of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s but was washed by it when he came to the East, came into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. People frankly fed up with the cultural straightjacket of the red scare Cold War times and seriously looking as hard at roots in all its manifestations as their parents’ were burying those same roots under a vanilla existential Americanization. One of the talents who was already there, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who deservedly fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.
That former role is important because we all know that behind the “king” is the “fixer man,” the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were like some mighty mystic (although in those days when he fancied himself a socialist that mystic part was played down). Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute. (New York like Frisco, maybe in small enclaves in L.A. and in precious few other places during those frozen time a haven for the misfits, the outlaws, the outcast, the politically “unreliable,” and the just curious. People like the mistreated Weavers, you know, Pete Seeger and that crowd found refuge there when the hammer came down around their heads. Boston/Cambridge by comparison until late in the 1950s could have been any of the thousands of towns who bought into the freeze.)
Von Ronk told a funny story, actually two funny stories, about the folk scene and his part in that scene as it developed a head of steam in the mid-1950s which will give you an idea about his place in the pantheon. During the late 1950s after the publication of Jack Kerouac’s ground-breaking road wanderlust adventure novel that got young blood stirring, On The Road, the jazz scene, the cool be-bop jazz scene and poetry reading, poems reflecting off of “beat” giant Allen Ginsberg’s Howl the clubs and coffeehouse of the Village were ablaze with readings and cool jazz, people waiting in line to get in to hear the next big poetic wisdom if you can believe that these days when poetry is generally some esoteric endeavor by small clots of devotees just like folk music. The crush of the lines meant that there were several shows per evening. But how to get rid of one audience to bring in another in those small quarters was a challenge. Presto, if you wanted to clear the house just bring in some desperate “from hunger” snarly nasally folk singer for a couple, maybe three songs, and if that did not clear the high art be-bop poetry house then that folk singer was a goner. A goner until the folk minute of the 1960s who probably in that same club played for the “basket.” (You know the “passed hat” which even on a cheap date, and a folk music coffeehouse date was a cheap one, one felt obliged to throw a few bucks into to show solidarity or something.) And so the roots of New York City folk.
The second story involved his authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course just like today maybe people are getting doctorates in hip-hop or some such subject. Eager young students, having basked in the folk moment and with an academic bent, breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the “skinny”. Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and a wicked snarly cynic’s laugh but also could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish once published in the dissertation would then be cited by some other younger and eager students complete with the appropriate footnote. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one, Dave .
As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer (who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who is featured on a recent Tom Rush documentary No Regrets) when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which tended to be spoofs on some issue of the day.
I saw him perform many times over the years, sometimes in high form and sometimes when drinking too much high shelf whiskey not so good, and had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2003. He had died a few weeks before. I would note when I had seen him for what turned out to be my last time he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and his performance was subpar. But that is at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music.
As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Comes To A Close... Some Remembrances
As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Comes To A Close... Some Remembrances
The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European youth form all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts. Also clogged, or rather thrown in the nearest bin were the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. Other than isolated groups and individuals mostly in the weaker countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove thir manhood.
Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the last month of the first year of war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19th century), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.
The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20th century when the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last war on the fronts (that is how the generals saw it mainly having won their promotions in those earlier wars and so held captive to the past). However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.
The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can, hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.
A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America the Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “club fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell), were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.
Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day.
So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.
Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.
*The "High Priestess Of Soul"- A Nina Simone Biography- A Guest Review-Make Sure To See The Netflix Documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?
Click on the headline to link to a "The Boston Sunday Globe", book review, dated February 21, 2010, reviewing Nadine Cohodas's "Princess Noire", the life and times of the great singer Nina Simone.
February Is Black History Month
Markin comment:
Nobody familiar with the work done in this space needs to be reminded that singer Nina Simone stands very high in my book, if for nothing else than her righteous song ,"Mississippi Goddam", that caused her some political and professional trouble. Hats off.
Mississippi Goddam Lyrics
(1963) Nina Simone
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet
Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer
Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know
Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we
Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me
Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know
You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
That's it for now! see ya' later
February Is Black History Month
Markin comment:
Nobody familiar with the work done in this space needs to be reminded that singer Nina Simone stands very high in my book, if for nothing else than her righteous song ,"Mississippi Goddam", that caused her some political and professional trouble. Hats off.
Mississippi Goddam Lyrics
(1963) Nina Simone
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet
Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer
Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know
Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we
Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me
Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know
You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
That's it for now! see ya' later
A Voice From The Left-The Latest From The Steve Lendman Blog
A
Voice From The Left-The Latest From The Steve Lendman Blog
A link below to link to the Steve Lendman Blog
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/
Sam Lowell was feeling his years these days, not so much the physical aches and pains that seem to reside for months when in the days of his youth, the days when he would cavort around the country doing his best Jack Kerouac on the road imitation and later after Jake Jacobs was killed in some Vietnam outpost in the Central Highlands his best high hat radical fight against the American monster role, and think nothing of it but politically weary. As he told his old time friend and comrade Ralph Morris over the cellphone one night when he was feeling down after a day of trying to get his Congressman, Danny Shea, to listen to him and the others in his delegation to vote against the war appropriations for the Middle East nightmare and for the umpteenth time was told that by Shea that he had to support the supply of American “boots on the ground” no matter what, he was weary unto death of such thankless delegations, small anti-war rallies where passers-by show utter indifference and of people refusing to talk any serious politics except the fruitless “horse race” stuff for President and the like. (That comrade expression by the way not signifying some allegiance to Moscow or Peking [sic] like it very well might have done in the old days but in the old fashion 19th century way to connote a politically solid friendship for which either party would scale the barricades for, and gladly.
Of course Ralph felt a little badly for Sam (although he knew better than to mention the fact to Sam for Sam was not the kind of guy who took feeling badly for, especially in politics, with good grace) since he had been instrumental in getting Sam back into the left-wing liberal political battles back in 2002 in the lead-up to the Bush junior Iraq War after years of badgering him about his withdrawal from active progressive politics when the great wave of the 1960s ebbed and it looked like an Ice Age had set in for the kind of world that they both were seeking in their callow youths. Ralph had stayed far more active in progressive circles over the years but even he had to admit that he had drifted far from the in-your-face street confrontations like the one down in Washington in 1971 where he and Sam had met in RFK Stadium after they had been arrested and placed there after an indiscriminate police round-up of anybody who even looked young and was not wearing a three-piece suit that day. He had spent his off-hours when not running his father’s electrical shop doing the exact same things that Sam had bitched to him about over the phone. With the advent of the Internet and the rise of social networking he had originally thought that the old idea of a world “tribal youth nation” had traction again. He had even gone full force when the rising star of Barack Obama seemed like it would push the rock up the hill. And although that particular star had turned into a cipher he was still fighting the good fight trying to make this foolish messy democratic system work since those old street confrontation days didn’t produce anything but forty plus years of cold cultural civils wars, and they were not on the winning side.
Ralph thought he would try to buck Sam up after that last call by referring him to some blogs that he “followed” (followed here meaning merely clinking onto the blogger’s homepage and nothing more sinister like some cultish madness that he had nearly got caught up in after the ‘60s wave turned tepid and he was looking for some “new age” personal solutions) to show he had kindred out there in the progressive political universe. Sam did pay attention to a couple, one in particular the Steve Lendman blog which gave good analyses but after a while he had this abiding feeling that he was again spinning his wheels in this progressive mish-mash. He decided to write something about his dilemma although he is not a writer but rather had just recently retired from the printing business which was taken over by his son. Here is what he had to say, and here is where the problem lies:
Over the last couple of years that I have been presenting political material in this space I have had occasion to re-post items from some sites which I find interesting, interesting for a host of political reasons, although I am not necessarily in agreement with what has been published. Two such sites have stood out, The Rag Blog, which I like to re-post items from because it has articles by many of my fellow Generation of ’68 residual radicals and ex-radicals who still care to put pen to paper and the blog cited here, the Steve Lendman Blog. The reason for re-postings from this latter site is slightly different since the site represents a modern day left- liberal political slant. That is the element, the pool if you will, that we radicals have to draw from, have to move left, if we are to grow. So it is important to have the pulse of what issues motivate that milieu and I believe that this blog is a lightning rod for those political tendencies.
I would also add that the blog is a fountain of rational, reasonable and unrepentant anti-Zionism which became apparent once again in the summer of 2014 when defense of the Palestinian people in Gaza was the pressing political issue and we were being stonewalled and lied to by the bourgeois media in service of American and Israeli interests. This blog was like a breath of fresh air.
I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past.
Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on.
The left-liberal/radical arena in American politics has been on a steep decline since I was a whole-hearted denizen of that milieu in my youth somewhere slightly to the left of Robert Kennedy back in 1968 say but still immersed in trying put band-aids on the capitalist system. That is the place where Steve Lendman with his helpful well informed blog finds himself. As do my old anti-war comrade Ralph Morris and myself as well. It is not an enviable place to be for anyone to have a solid critique of bourgeois politics, hard American imperial politics in the 21st century and have no ready source in that milieu to take on the issues and make a difference (and as an important adjunct to that American critique a solid critique of the American government acting as front-man for every nefarious move the Israeli government makes toward increasing the oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank).
Of course I had the luxury, if one could call it that, which a look at Mr. Lendman's bio information indicates that he did not have, was the pivotal experience in the late 1960s of being inducted, kicking and screaming but inducted, into the American army in its losing fight against the heroic Vietnamese resistance. That signal event disabused me, although it took a while to get "religion," on the question of the idea of depending on bourgeois society to reform itself. On specific issues like the fight against the death penalty, the fight for the $15 minimum wage, immigration reform and the like I have worked with that left-liberal/ radical milieu, and gladly, but as for continuing to believe against all evidence that the damn thing can be reformed that is where we part company. Still Brother Lendman keep up the good work and I hope you find a political home worthy of your important work. Hell, I hope I can find such a home too because this endless beseeching of bourgeois politicians to do the right thing is getting threadbare and getting me old time street action crazy.
A link below to link to the Steve Lendman Blog
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/
Sam Lowell was feeling his years these days, not so much the physical aches and pains that seem to reside for months when in the days of his youth, the days when he would cavort around the country doing his best Jack Kerouac on the road imitation and later after Jake Jacobs was killed in some Vietnam outpost in the Central Highlands his best high hat radical fight against the American monster role, and think nothing of it but politically weary. As he told his old time friend and comrade Ralph Morris over the cellphone one night when he was feeling down after a day of trying to get his Congressman, Danny Shea, to listen to him and the others in his delegation to vote against the war appropriations for the Middle East nightmare and for the umpteenth time was told that by Shea that he had to support the supply of American “boots on the ground” no matter what, he was weary unto death of such thankless delegations, small anti-war rallies where passers-by show utter indifference and of people refusing to talk any serious politics except the fruitless “horse race” stuff for President and the like. (That comrade expression by the way not signifying some allegiance to Moscow or Peking [sic] like it very well might have done in the old days but in the old fashion 19th century way to connote a politically solid friendship for which either party would scale the barricades for, and gladly.
Of course Ralph felt a little badly for Sam (although he knew better than to mention the fact to Sam for Sam was not the kind of guy who took feeling badly for, especially in politics, with good grace) since he had been instrumental in getting Sam back into the left-wing liberal political battles back in 2002 in the lead-up to the Bush junior Iraq War after years of badgering him about his withdrawal from active progressive politics when the great wave of the 1960s ebbed and it looked like an Ice Age had set in for the kind of world that they both were seeking in their callow youths. Ralph had stayed far more active in progressive circles over the years but even he had to admit that he had drifted far from the in-your-face street confrontations like the one down in Washington in 1971 where he and Sam had met in RFK Stadium after they had been arrested and placed there after an indiscriminate police round-up of anybody who even looked young and was not wearing a three-piece suit that day. He had spent his off-hours when not running his father’s electrical shop doing the exact same things that Sam had bitched to him about over the phone. With the advent of the Internet and the rise of social networking he had originally thought that the old idea of a world “tribal youth nation” had traction again. He had even gone full force when the rising star of Barack Obama seemed like it would push the rock up the hill. And although that particular star had turned into a cipher he was still fighting the good fight trying to make this foolish messy democratic system work since those old street confrontation days didn’t produce anything but forty plus years of cold cultural civils wars, and they were not on the winning side.
Ralph thought he would try to buck Sam up after that last call by referring him to some blogs that he “followed” (followed here meaning merely clinking onto the blogger’s homepage and nothing more sinister like some cultish madness that he had nearly got caught up in after the ‘60s wave turned tepid and he was looking for some “new age” personal solutions) to show he had kindred out there in the progressive political universe. Sam did pay attention to a couple, one in particular the Steve Lendman blog which gave good analyses but after a while he had this abiding feeling that he was again spinning his wheels in this progressive mish-mash. He decided to write something about his dilemma although he is not a writer but rather had just recently retired from the printing business which was taken over by his son. Here is what he had to say, and here is where the problem lies:
Over the last couple of years that I have been presenting political material in this space I have had occasion to re-post items from some sites which I find interesting, interesting for a host of political reasons, although I am not necessarily in agreement with what has been published. Two such sites have stood out, The Rag Blog, which I like to re-post items from because it has articles by many of my fellow Generation of ’68 residual radicals and ex-radicals who still care to put pen to paper and the blog cited here, the Steve Lendman Blog. The reason for re-postings from this latter site is slightly different since the site represents a modern day left- liberal political slant. That is the element, the pool if you will, that we radicals have to draw from, have to move left, if we are to grow. So it is important to have the pulse of what issues motivate that milieu and I believe that this blog is a lightning rod for those political tendencies.
I would also add that the blog is a fountain of rational, reasonable and unrepentant anti-Zionism which became apparent once again in the summer of 2014 when defense of the Palestinian people in Gaza was the pressing political issue and we were being stonewalled and lied to by the bourgeois media in service of American and Israeli interests. This blog was like a breath of fresh air.
I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past.
Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on.
The left-liberal/radical arena in American politics has been on a steep decline since I was a whole-hearted denizen of that milieu in my youth somewhere slightly to the left of Robert Kennedy back in 1968 say but still immersed in trying put band-aids on the capitalist system. That is the place where Steve Lendman with his helpful well informed blog finds himself. As do my old anti-war comrade Ralph Morris and myself as well. It is not an enviable place to be for anyone to have a solid critique of bourgeois politics, hard American imperial politics in the 21st century and have no ready source in that milieu to take on the issues and make a difference (and as an important adjunct to that American critique a solid critique of the American government acting as front-man for every nefarious move the Israeli government makes toward increasing the oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank).
Of course I had the luxury, if one could call it that, which a look at Mr. Lendman's bio information indicates that he did not have, was the pivotal experience in the late 1960s of being inducted, kicking and screaming but inducted, into the American army in its losing fight against the heroic Vietnamese resistance. That signal event disabused me, although it took a while to get "religion," on the question of the idea of depending on bourgeois society to reform itself. On specific issues like the fight against the death penalty, the fight for the $15 minimum wage, immigration reform and the like I have worked with that left-liberal/ radical milieu, and gladly, but as for continuing to believe against all evidence that the damn thing can be reformed that is where we part company. Still Brother Lendman keep up the good work and I hope you find a political home worthy of your important work. Hell, I hope I can find such a home too because this endless beseeching of bourgeois politicians to do the right thing is getting threadbare and getting me old time street action crazy.
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