As The 150th Anniversary Commemoration Of The American Civil War Passes–In Honor Of The Abraham Lincoln-Led Union Side-The First International's Salute To Abraham Lincoln On His Re-Election In 1864

As The 150th Anniversary Commemoration Of The American Civil War Passes–In Honor Of The Abraham Lincoln-Led Union Side-The First International's Salute To Abraham Lincoln On His Re-Election In 1864 

 

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I would not expect any average American citizen today to be familiar with the positions of the communist intellectuals and international working-class party organizers (First International) Karl Mark and Friedrich Engels on the events of the American Civil War. There is only so much one can expect of people to know off the top of their heads about what for several generations now has been ancient history.  I am, however, always amazed when I run into some younger leftists and socialists, or even older radicals who may have not read much Marx and Engels, and find that they are surprised, very surprised to see that Marx and Engels were avid partisans of the Abraham Lincoln-led Union side in the American Civil War. I, in the past, have placed a number of the Marx-Engels newspaper articles from the period in this space to show the avidity of their interest and partisanship in order to refresh some memories and enlighten others. As is my wont I like to supplement such efforts with little fictional sketches to illustrate points that I try to make and do so below with my take on a Union soldier from Boston, a rank and file soldier, Wilhelm Sorge.  

 

Since Marx and Engels have always been identified with a strong anti-capitalist bias for the unknowing it may seem counter-intuitive that the two men would have such a positive position on events that had as one of its outcomes an expanding unified American capitalist state. A unified capitalist state which ultimately led the vanguard political and military actions against the followers of Marx and Engels in the 20^th century in such places as Russia, China, Cuba and Vietnam. The pair were however driven in their views on revolutionary politics by a theory of historical materialism which placed support of any particular actions in the context of whether they drove the class struggle toward human emancipation forward. So while the task of a unified capitalist state was supportable alone on historical grounds in the United States of the 1860s (as was their qualified support for German unification later in the decade) the key to their support was the overthrow of the more backward slave labor system in one part of the country (aided by those who thrived on the results of that system like the Cotton Whigs in the North) in order to allow the new then progressive capitalist system to thrive.       

 

In the age of advanced imperialist society today, of which the United States is currently the prime example, and villain, we find that we are, unlike Marx and Engels, almost always negative about capitalism’s role in world politics. And we are always harping on the need to overthrow the system in order to bring forth a new socialist reconstruction of society. Thus one could be excused for forgetting that at earlier points in history capitalism played a progressive role. A role that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Marxists, if not applauded, then at least understood represented human progress. Of course, one does not expect everyone to be a historical materialist and therefore know that in the Marxist scheme of things both the struggle to bring America under a unitary state that would create a national capitalist market by virtue of a Union victory and the historically more important struggle to abolish slavery that turned out to be a necessary outcome of that Union struggle were progressive in the eyes of our forebears, and our eyes too.

 

Furthermore few know about the fact that the small number of Marxist supporters in the United States during that Civil period, and the greater German immigrant communities here that where spawned when radicals were force to flee Europe with the failure of the German revolutions of 1848 were mostly fervent supporters of the Union side in the conflict. Some of them called the “Red Republicans” and “Red 48ers” formed an early experienced military cadre in the then fledgling Union armies. Below is a short sketch drawn on the effect that these hardened foreign –born abolitionists had on some of the raw recruits who showed up in their regiments and brigades during those hard four years of fighting, the third year of which we are commemorating this month.

 

Below is the First International's Address to Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of his re-election in 1864

 

The International Workingmen's Association 1864

Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America

Presented to U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams January 28, 1865 ^[A]

---

Written: by Marx between November 22 & 29, 1864
First Published: The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 169, November 7, 1865;
Transcription/Markup: Zodiac/Brian Baggins;
Online Version: Marx & Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000.

---

 

Sir:

 

We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.

 

From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?

 

When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, "slavery" on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding "the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution", and maintained slavery to be "a beneficent institution", indeed, the old solution of the great problem of "the relation of capital to labor", and cynically proclaimed property in man "the cornerstone of the new edifice" — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.

 

While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.

 

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world. ^[B]

 

Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association, the Central Council:

Longmaid, Worley, Whitlock, Fox, Blackmore, Hartwell, Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell, Nieass, Shaw, Lake, Buckley, Osbourne, Howell, Carter, Wheeler, Stainsby, Morgan, Grossmith, Dick, Denoual, Jourdain, Morrissot, Leroux, Bordage, Bocquet, Talandier, Dupont, L.Wolff, Aldovrandi, Lama, Solustri, Nusperli, Eccarius, Wolff, Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Kaub, Bolleter, Rybczinski, Hansen, Schantzenbach, Smales, Cornelius, Petersen, Otto, Bagnagatti, Setacci;

George Odger, President of the Council; P.V. Lubez, Corresponding Secretary for France; Karl Marx, Corresponding Secretary for Germany; G.P. Fontana, Corresponding Secretary for Italy; J.E. Holtorp, Corresponding Secretary for Poland; H.F. Jung, Corresponding Secretary for Switzerland; William R. Cremer, Honorary General Secretary.

18 Greek Street, Soho.

---

^[A] From the minutes of the Central (General) Council of the International — November 19, 1864:

"Dr. Marx then brought up the report of the subcommittee, also a draft of the address which had been drawn up for presentation to the people of America congratulating them on their having re-elected Abraham Lincoln as President. The address is as follows and was unanimously agreed to."

^[B] The minutes of the meeting continue:

"A long discussion then took place as to the mode of presenting the address and the propriety of having a M.P. with the deputation; this was strongly opposed by many members, who said workingmen should rely on themselves and not seek for extraneous aid.... It was then proposed... and carried unanimously. The secretary correspond with the United States Minister asking to appoint a time for receiving the deputation, such deputation to consist of the members of the Central Council."

---

Ambassador Adams Replies

Legation of the United States
London, 28th January, 1865

Sir:

 

I am directed to inform you that the address of the Central Council of your Association, which was duly transmitted through this Legation to the President of the United [States], has been received by him.

 

So far as the sentiments expressed by it are personal, they are accepted by him with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world.

 

The Government of the United States has a clear consciousness that its policy neither is nor could be reactionary, but at the same time it adheres to the course which it adopted at the beginning, of abstaining everywhere from propagandism and unlawful intervention. It strives to do equal and exact justice to all states and to all men and it relies upon the beneficial results of that effort for support at home and for respect and good will throughout the world.

 

Nations do not exist for themselves alone, but to promote the welfare and happiness of mankind by benevolent intercourse and example. It is in this relation that the United States regard their cause in the present conflict with slavery, maintaining insurgence as the cause of human nature, and they derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies.

 

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,

 

Charles Francis Adams

Once I Was A Good Boy-With Guitarist T-Bone Walker In Mind

Once I Was A Good Boy-With Guitarist T-Bone Walker In Mind 

 

 

 

 

By Lester Lannon 

No question Frank Jackman started out once as a good boy. Even his mother, Delores, brought up a pious Catholic and a “no tolerance” for evil type of mother admitted that up to the age of about eight he was a model child, went to school every day, got as good marks in school as he could with his limited abilities, went to church, that Roman Catholic Church thing his mother lived for, and was a star in Sunday school class. Then at about eight, maybe nine he fell in with the wrong crowd, fell in with some wrong gees as the saying went in the old neighborhood. Three of those young cronies spent many years in prison for armed something, one just finishing up a dime’s worth for armed robbery of a liquor store. Frank’s fate will be discussed further below after we figure out how he went from a good boy to bad.

A lot of people, you know, professional sociologists, criminologists and psychologists, blamed it on the neighborhood, “the projects,” where Frank and the others came of age. No question they had a point for the statistics bear out the facts of all kinds of strange pathologies among people at the bottom of the feeding chain, the hungry ones, “los olvidados” as one Spanish guy, one hip Spanish sociologist who came out of the place, called those “forgotten” hermanos (not hermanas so much) in the barrio when liberals were actually interested in trying to figure out how to make all boats rise. No question “from hunger” drove a lot of stuff back then when Frank was coming of age in the 1970s, now too although nobody is looking to closely at the subject (except to construct more jails or in the international case drop more bombs). And no question if Frank had been brought up in say leafy Forest Lawn or Glen Ellen he might not have run into those wrong gees, Ronnie, Ducky, Pistol, and Whiplash. Would maybe have found some Alfred, Harry and Bradley let us say and planned mayhem on the basketball court or something and not the local gas station which first got Frank into  trouble (unarmed robbery in the daytime). Actually that first troubled covered up in the courts so not counted was the ‘five-finger clip” at Kay’s Jewelry up in Riverdale Square. Like I said that didn’t count.        

But to Delores’ mind, to Paul his father’s too, Frank was strictly “bad seed,” although not put in such a graphic pseudo-sexual way. Bore the mark of Cain, the mark of the early banishment from Eden unto as the 1930s writer titled one of his novels –East of Eden. And they, their other three boys, Frank’s grandparents and the rest of the extended family bore down on him with those thoughts until he actually began to believe he was marked by the original sin we are all born with under high hell Catholic doctrine. Started almost the day that Frank (and Whiplash not known as Whiplash then, that came later at about age fourteen when he took a chain and nearly beat a guy to death for being on the “wrong” corner and needed to teach the guy a lesson about turf) got caught at Kay’s trying to “five-finger” a bunch of onyx with diamond chips rings to give to some girl Pistol was trying to get a blow job from. (That part, the head reason, never came out and would have freaked out the whole neighborhood, the adults anyway. To keep the record straight despite the lack of jewelry to entice the girl Pistol got his blow job anyway. She was that kind of guy-crazy girl.)       

So Frank (never Frankie, just Frank) went from bad to worse. Got sly as he grew older, got to thinking about what he didn’t have in the world, saw what his father had to grovel for to keep his family, to keep Frank, feed and clothed. The sight of the poor bedraggled man coming home always with his damn head down even when he had steady work and a reason to pull his head up for a moment made Frank swear to himself one night an oath to never be like his father, never grovel to anybody period if he could help it. As far as anybody ever knew Frank never did, but never did grow up to be half the man his father had been as he began to recognize long and too late afterward while serving an armed robbery rap for single-handedly robbing the First National Bank of Gloversville of a hundred thou (unfortunately he set off an alarm in the bank on his way out and the cops found him a few days later in New York. Lesson learned: always have another guy at your back).

But that was later, a half- dozen armed robberies and assaults later. The key one, the one that gave him that first record, on the way to a near permanent home in some state correctional institution including now at the “max” security Hammerhead joint. The first was the night he along with Fast Eddy Jones robbed at gunpoint the Cities Service gas station on Thorndike Street in Riverdale. Got away with it for a while, even got a free blow job from that girlfriend of Pistol’s she was so juiced up by what he had done, so yeah, she was that kind of girl but don’t tell Pistol that because he thinks she is still chastely waiting for him to finish up his dime at Shawshank up in Maine for robbing a grocery store when he was high as a kite on cousin cocaine. Pistol would kill her and every guy who even looked at her so please keep this to yourself.

Naturally kids of fourteen are going to brag about such an event if for no other reason than to prove their manhood out on the dangerous streets. At least naturally for Fast Eddy (Frank never bragged about nothing- his motto just do the thing-from robbery to boffing some frail who looked his way ever so slightly). So Frank and Fast Eddy took the fall, did the youth detention center, reform school, for a couple of years and that was that. (Fast Eddy would open his mouth once too often usually to some frail and wound up face down in the Merrimack River up in New Hampshire for his efforts.)

No need to list all the other felonies that Frank committed from that time to his thirty-fifth birthday because Frank was strictly an armed something guy and the only distinction between the crimes was the time served. Except that last one-that three strikes and you are out last one. The one where a bank sneeze, a bank cop at the Portland (Georgia) Trust Bank got hit between the eyes when he believed that the money he was guarding was his and got rum brave, but also got  very dead. Felony murder, murder one  and in death penalty crazy Georgia that meant the big step-off, the big kiss-off of the face of the earth. He is still waiting for the “hangman” as this written. Every once in a while his ancient mother is able to get down to Georgia to see her boy, her bad boy. And every time she says to Frank-“up to the age of about eight you were  a model child, went to school every day, got as good marks in school as you could with your limited abilities, went to church, that Roman Catholic Church thing that I lived for, and were a star in Sunday school class.” Frank just took that never-ending line in and sat in stony silence.      

From The Chelsea Manning Archives-Free Chelsea Now-Right Now!

Man And Superman-Woody Allen’s Irrational Man

Man And Superman-Woody Allen’s Irrational Man

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Irrational Man, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Emily Stone, written and  directed by Woody Allen, 2015

Well Woody Allen is up to his old existential man tricks again, (and again and again) with his latest well what will we call it-philosophical drama, mystery drama, semi-romantic, semi-black comedy under review here, Irrational Man. Once again the madman actor/director/writer goes down into the mud to try to figure out what makes modern humankind tick. What is the meaning of life in a world beyond our control that has dogged old Woody since he started making films. They could be as high art as Annie Hall or Manhattan or somewhere in the middle like this one but Woody is always trying to pose some great question of existence when he puts his mind to a script. A lot of this film is rehash of earlier material but all lot is a different not quite serio-comic take on one modern man’s attempts to live in the modern world- and fail.      

So take one Abe Lucas (played by Joaquin Phoenix last seen in this space as a drug-strung out Johnny Cash hounding Reese Witherspoon as June Carter for her hand in marriage), well-travelled, well-worn and well world-wearied college professor, a philosophy professor of course, a rock star in his profession and not some lowly adjunct being paid per course (although off of his teaching technique and style in the film maybe he should have been in that latter category) who as part of his never-ending mid-life existential crisis number 27 is slumming teaching at a small elite college in Rhode Island for the summer(Brown one would guess although the locale given was Newport so go figure except the occasional ocean scenes are spectacular). He carries his existential angst baggage with him of course.

That baggage entails a weariness with life, that middle age life problem everybody faces dressed up as angst, alienation, ennui and, hell, why not throw in hubris (or the film’s background music all instrumental to set the tone). Along the way we get a tour of the various currents in 19^th and 20^th century philosophy especially the Sartre-de Beauvoir-driven existentialism popular in Europe in the post-World War II period. Old Abe is bored, frustrated, blocked and temporally sexually impotent (with emphasis on the temporary). So naturally a good-looking philosophy professor with rock star quality is irresistibly attractive first to a fellow female professor and the big prize of every male college professor’s sexual fantasy dream, that budding co-ed who is ready willing and able to jump into bed with him, Jill, played by fetching Emma Stone.

That part is straight up college romance stuff and not enough these days to get anything but a yawn (or a review before the faculty board for corrupting the morals of the youth, the female youth and therefore a violation against the unwritten law of intergenerational sex). What jumps this one up after the long sexual foreplay before Abe and Jill hit the sheets is that Abe has an epiphany- gets religion at the local diner after overhearing some poor bedraggled woman speaking about how she is getting screwed over by the justice system in her divorce by a corrupt judge friendly to her husband’s case. That overheard conversation gets Abe’s juices flowing (literally as he jumps in the hay with that smitten fellow professor who had been trying to jump his bones during his temporary impotency). He decides to be not merely man but superman, decides to play God and change that woman’s fate-for the better of course. Kill the judge and end the misery.        

 And old Abe does so with poison after stalking the judge. Of course Jill who overheard that same diner conversation was shocked when she heard that the judge had died unexpectedly of what at first was called a heart attack then murder, murder most foul, murder by poison. Then as always the pieces started falling together. As always as well crime doesn’t pay, the criminal must pay the cinematic price for his foul deed, and Jill finally figures that Abe did that misbegotten judge in. She, middle class and conventional at heart, had no truck with some Nietzsche-crazed idea and tells Abe to turn himself in, or else. The “or else” is what Abe opted for trying to kill dear Jill in an elevator mishap. But rough justice will out in the end in this wicked old world sometimes and in the scuffle to throw Jill down the waiting elevator shaft Abe took the fall from Eden. And Jill, well, Jill is wiser for the experience. Enough of irrational supermen for her. Yeah, Woody was up to his old tricks- again.            

*****Once Again The Life Of The Dharma-Jack Kerouac-A Biography By Tom Clark

*****Once Again The Life Of The Dharma-Jack Kerouac-A Biography By Tom Clark

From The Pen Of Bart Webber  

Sam Lowell has of later liked to review books, movies, musical CDs for various citizen journalist blogs and other such cyberspace outlets as relaxation writing from the drear of his professional writing, writing legal briefs, memoranda and motions for himself and other lawyers. Usually he does such avocational writing as a wisp-of-willow affair depending on some prompt that would get him going like happened recently after hearing a song on YouTube by Bob Dylan from his prime days, Like a Rolling Stone. While listening to that song he noticed on the sidebar which gives other performances that one might wish to look at a segment from the D.A. Pennebaker documentary, Don’t Look Back, where Dylan, his then shortly to be abandoned flame and great folksinger in her own right, Joan Baez, and his then road manager and folksinger Bob Neuwirth were sitting in some English hotel singing bits of Hank Williams’ Lost Highway. That got him interested in seeing the whole documentary which had just been rereleased in the Criterion films series and which he ordered on Netflix and later reviewed. Such helter-skelter choices are the norm for his selection process.           

Not so on the subject of the “beats,” those cool cats and kittens (I guess that is the way it would have been put by hipsters in North Beach and the Village when beat was pure before the movement became just another commodity to be sold on television like cars or soap) who came shortly before our coming of age time down in working-class Carver where we grew up and were slightly singed by the beat flame. That “working-class” before Carver was not accidental, not for Sam anyway since his “max daddy,” “be-bop daddy,” or any way you want to say it literary hero from that period was the hipster mad monk novelist Jack Kerouac who had grown up about sixty miles north of Carver in working-class mill town getting ready to move south for cheaper labor Lowell. So in Sam’s eyes that designation was important then although maybe not quite as deeply thought through as recently when he had been on a tear re-reading most of Jack’s work.

Here again chance plays a part in what he would review. After having read a few of the more important novels, the iconic classic (we must use the word “iconic” these days to keep up with the professional users of that word which is now something of a flavor of the month term for any event or person who had had at least fifteen minutes of fame along the way) On The Road, Desolation Angels, and Big Sur he had picked up the Ann Charter-edited Portable Jack Kerouac which led him to her early informative biography. But Sam was looking for something more than a literary appraisal of Kerouac’s work, important as that is, than the Charter biography provided. He was looking for tidbits, pieces of information about Kerouac’s time in Lowell, the effect that growing up working poor had on him growing up in that city by the Merrimac. In short Sam wanted to expand on that idea of why Kerouac had, even if at a remove, on him, us as kids growing up in working poor Carver, then the cranberry capital of the world. So he went through some other later biographies which blossomed especially around the time in 2007 of the 50^th anniversary of the publication of On The Road.

One of the books that satisfied his desire for biographical information was Tom Clark’s Jack Kerouac: A Biography (Paragon House, 1990) which he told us about one night, us being Frankie Riley, Jack Callahan, Sam Eaton, Ralph Morris and me, when we gathered together for our periodic night out at the Rusty Nail in downtown Boston and which he wrote a review of later.  Here’s what Sam had to say about Jack Kerouac, warts and all:

“I have been on a Jack Kerouac tear of late (if you do not know who he is at this point either think On The Road, the famous alternate hitchhike road to life from the white picket fence norm book he wrote putting flesh and blood to the “beat” movement of the 1950s, think of the guy who the media proclaimed as the “king of the beats” after writing that novel which he wore kicking and screaming or if those suggestions fail ask your parents, or ouch, grandparents for they will know of him, probably headed out on the road themselves if only for a minute after reading the book). I have been reading not so much his works, although I have been doing some of that too but reading biographies, essays, and other sketches to get a better grasp on my fascination about this working class guy from Lowell not so far from where I grew up, about a guy who grew up from hunger as I did, and a guy who for a minute anyway gave the literary set a run for its money with a new way of writing novels.

He called it, maybe disingenuously “spontaneous writing” since he was an incredible re-writer and reviser of everything he wrote as well as a meticulously organized keeper of his own archives but probably better is a take from a Norman Mailer title-“advertisements for myself” since the vast majority of his work was an on-going saga of his life and times spread out from the 1930s with Maggy Cassidy to just before his death in 1969 Vanities of Duclouz. (Allen Ginsberg, the poet, his early friend and road companion, and no mean hand as a rememberer himself called Jack “the great rememberer” of their generation and that is probably right.)

That said, I have gained a lot of information not previously known by looking into the life of the man who probably with the exceptions of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ernest Hemingway (yeah, Hemingway is always in the mix somewhere when you talk guys, guy writers in the 20^th century, guys who influenced “modern” writing) has influenced me more than all others in a lifetime of reading. This is a little bit ironic since I was a shade bit too young to appreciate as a child of the generation of ’68 (you know those of us who raised hell with the government, with society, hell, with Jack who disowned us when the deal went down although we, I, did not disown him, or his influence in the 1960s).       

Now there are several ways to approach doing a biography about a writer. The two ways that come to mind most readily in the case of Jack Kerouac are, one, to do a close analysis of his writings like his first real biographer, Ann Charters did (the one whom almost all those have written something about Jack afterward own a debt to, acknowledged or not), who had the advantage of actually working with the man on his bibliography before he passed (and the disadvantage of knowing him too well so that on the personal stuff she did a great deal of sliding over as later biographers have felt no need to do). The other is to do like the writer/poet Tom Clark did in the book under review, Jack Kerouac: A Biography, and give us the more nitty-gritty details of Jack’s life, his terrible struggles to get published and his awful time with success when he became the “once and future king of the “beats”         

In a recent review of the Ann Charters biography which I think bears repeating here I noted the following:

“It is probably hard for today’s youthful generation (the so-called millennials) to grasp how important the jail break-out of the 1960s, of breaking free from old time Cold War red scare golden age dream, of creating our own sense of space was to my generation, my generation of ’68 (so-called). That “generation of ’68” designation picked up from the hard fact that that seminal year of 1968, a year when the Tet offensive by the Viet Cong and their allies put in shambles the lie that we (meaning the United States government) was winning that vicious bloodstained honor-less war, to the results in New Hampshire which caused Lyndon Baines Johnson, the sitting President to run for cover down in Texas somewhere after being beaten like a gong by a quirky Irish poet from the Midwest and a band of wayward troubadours from all over, mainly the seething college campuses, to the death of the post-racial society dream as advertised by the slain Doctor Martin Luther King, to the barricade days in Paris where for once and all the limits of what wayward students could do without substantial allies in bringing down a reactionary government, to the death of the search for a “newer world” as advertised by the slain Robert F. Kennedy, to the war-circus of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago which put paid to any notion that any newer world would come without the spilling of rivers of blood, to the election of Richard Milhous Nixon which meant that we had seen the high side go under, that the promise of the flamboyant 1960s was veering toward an ebb tide.

But we did not “invent” the era whole, especially in the cultural, personal ethos part, the part about skipping for a while anyway the nine to five work routine, the white house and picket fence family routine, the hold your breath nose to the grindstone routine and discovering the lure of the road and of discovering ourselves, of our capacity to wonder. No question that elements of the generation before us, the sullen West Coast hot-rodders, the perfect wave surfers, the teen-alienated rebel James Dean and wild one Marlon Brando and above all the “beats” helped push the can down the road, especially the “beats” who wrote to the high heavens about what they did, how they did it and what the hell it was they were running from.

Now the truth of the matter is that most generation of ‘68ers like myself only caught the tail-end of the “beat” scene, the end where mainstream culture and commerce made it into just another “bummer” like they have done with any movement that threatened to get out of hand. So most of us who were affected by the be-bop sound and feel of the “beats” got what we knew from reading about them. And above all, above even Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem, Howl which was a clarion call for rebellion, was Jack Kerouac’s On The Road which thrilled even those who did not go out in the search the great blue-pink American West night.”              

Here the odd thing, as Tom Clark’s biography insightfully brings out better than Ann Charters who as I said perhaps was too close to the scene , Kerouac except for that short burst in the late 1940s was almost the antithesis of what we of the generation of ’68 were striving to accomplish. He spent after some modest success with the semi-autobiographical Town And City writing about six versions of Road, other unpublished material and lots of frustration although not much self-doubt trying to break through the arcane New York publishing scene. He said when fame did come he was no longer physically, mentally or philosophically the same man who sought out the mid-20^th century version of the great American West dream of his youth even though his admirers thought he still had those inclinations. As is fairly well known, and if not you can google YouTube for the famous debate Kerouac was part of in 1968 on William Buckley’s PBS show Firing Line where he lays it, by those who lived through the 1960s, Kerouac would eventually disown his “step-children.” Be that as it may his role, earned or not, wanted or not, as media-anointed “king of the beats” is worthy of investigation along with his obvious literary merits as a member in good standing of the American literary pantheon.           

On the face of it a poor working-class kid from the textile mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, from a staunch Roman Catholic French-Canadian heritage of those who came south to “see if the streets of America really were paved with gold” would seem an unlikely person to be involved in a movement that in many ways was the opposite of what his generation, the parents of the generation of ’68 to put the matter in perspective, born in the 1920s, coming of age in the Great Depression and slogging through World War II was searching for in the post-World War II “golden age of America.” Add to those factors his being a “jock,” a corner boy (at least that is the feel from a read his antics with his boys and his forlorn love in Maggie Cassidy), and a guy who liked to goof off and that only adds to the confusion about who and what Jack Kerouac was about.

But here is the secret, the secret thread that runs through the Clark biography (and Charters too as well as Jack’s friend and rival John Holmes in his remembrances of Jack), he was a mad man to write, to write and to write about himself and his times. And had enough of an ego to think that his writing would carry out his task of making a legend of his own life. Yeah, a million word guy (probably much more than that and without a word processor to keep count, to make editing easier, despite his theory of spontaneous writing to the contrary, and to easily store his output).

So the value of this biography is the material presented about his rough-hewn upbringing in down and out Lowell, the dramatic effect that the death of his older brother at a young age had on his psyche, his football prowess and disappointments, his coming of age problems with girls, his going off to New York to prep school and college, his eventual decision to “dig” the scene in the Village, his checkered military record during the war, the shock of the death of his father, his inability to deal with women, and marriage, his extreme sense of male bonding, his early and often drinking problems and other personal anecdotes offered by a host of people who knew, loved and hated him do not play second fiddle to this literary strand here.       

Mister Clark does his best work when he goes by the numbers and discusses Kerouac’s various troubles trying to be a published paid serious writer, and to be taken seriously by the literary establishment. The fate of On The Road which after all is about his and Neal Cassady’s various cross-country trips, drug and alcohol highs, partying, women grabbed in the late 1940s and not published until 1957 is indicative of the gap between what Kerouac thought was his due and what the finicky publishing world thought about him. Of course after he became a best-seller, had his “fifteen minutes of fame plus fifty plus years” getting his work published was the least of his problems.

While he was to write some more things after he became famous there is a real sense that he ran out of steam. And as Clark’s last chapters summarily detailed beginning with the 1960 events which made up the short novel Big Sur about his increasing alcohol and drug problems and breakdowns highlight those problems and how the problem of fame itself got the better of him. Although no way can you consider Jack Kerouac a one-note literary Johnny. However if he had only written On The Road his niche in the pantheon would be assured.          

At the end of my review of the Charters biography I made a suggestion to the millennials who need to read Kerouac -after you read On The Road - read Charter’s something of an early definitive biography (with lots of good notes at the end about her sources for various opinions and questions of fact) to get a feel for what it was like to be there at the creation of the big jail-break “beat” minute which spawned your parents, or ouch, grandparents “hippie” minute. I can now make another addition. Read this one too. While other later biographies have been produced, especially around the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of On The Road in 2007, this is the one to check out next.   

*****President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!-The Struggle Continues ….We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind

*****President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!-The Struggle Continues ….We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Updated-Winter 2015  

A while back, maybe a year or so ago, I was asked by a fellow member of Veterans For Peace at a monthly meeting in Cambridge about the status of the case of Chelsea Manning since he knew that I had been seriously involved with publicizing her case and he had not heard much about the case since she had been convicted in August 2013 (on some twenty counts including several Espionage Act counts, the Act itself, as it relates to Chelsea and its constitutionality will be the basis for one of her issues on appeal) and sentenced by Judge Lind to thirty-five years imprisonment to be served at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. (She had already been held for three years before trial, the subject of another appeals issue and as of May 2015 had served five years altogether thus far and will be formally eligible for parole in the not too distant future although usually the first parole decision is negative).

That had also been the time immediately after the sentencing when Private Manning announced to the world her sexual identity and turned from Bradley to Chelsea. The question of her sexual identity was a situation than some of us already had known about while respecting Private Manning’s, Chelsea’s, and those of her ardent supporters at Courage to Resist and elsewhere the subject of her sexual identity was kept in the background so the reasons she was being tried would not be muddled and for which she was savagely fighting in her defense would not be warped by the mainstream media into some kind of identity politics circus.

I had responded to my fellow member that, as usual in such super-charged cases involving political prisoners, and there is no question that Private Manning is one despite the fact that every United States Attorney-General including the one in charge during her trial claims that there are no such prisoners in American jails only law-breakers, once the media glare of the trial and sentencing is over the case usually falls by the wayside into the media vacuum while the appellate process proceed on over the next several years.

At that point I informed him of the details that I did know. Chelsea immediately after sentencing had been put in the normal isolation before being put in with the general population at Fort Leavenworth. She seemed to be adjusting according to her trial defense lawyer to the pall of prison life as best she could. Later she had gone to a Kansas civil court to have her name changed from Bradley to Chelsea Elizabeth which the judge granted although the Army for a period insisted that mail be sent to her under her former male Bradley name. Her request for hormone therapies to help reflect her sexual identity had either been denied or the process stonewalled despite the Army’s own medical and psychiatric personnel stating in court that she was entitled to such measures.

At the beginning of 2014 the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington, General Buchanan, who had the authority to grant clemency on the sentence part of the case, despite the unusual severity of the sentence, had denied Chelsea any relief from the onerous sentence imposed by Judge Lind.

Locally on Veterans Day 2013, the first such event after her sentencing we had honored Chelsea at the annual VFP Armistice Day program and in December 2013 held a stand-out celebrating Chelsea’s birthday (as we did in December 2014 and will do again this December of 2015).  Most important of the information I gave my fellow VFPer was that Chelsea’s case going forward to the Army appellate process was being handled by nationally renowned lawyer Nancy Hollander and her associate Vincent Ward. Thus the case was in the long drawn out legal phase that does not generally get much coverage except by those interested in the case like well-known Vietnam era Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, various progressive groups which either nominated or rewarded her with their prizes, and the organization that has steadfastly continued to handle her case’s publicity and raising financial aid for her appeal, Courage to Resist (an organization dedicated to publicizing the cases of other military resisters as well).     

At our February 2015 monthly meeting that same VFPer asked me if it was true that as he had heard the Army, or the Department of Defense, had ordered Chelsea’s hormone therapy treatments to begin. I informed him after a long battle, including an ACLU suit ordering such relief, that information was true and she had started her treatments a month previously. I also informed him that the Army had thus far refused her request to have an appropriate length woman’s hair-do. On the legal front the case was still being reviewed for issues to be presented which could overturn the lower court decision in the Army Court Of Criminal Appeals by the lawyers and the actual writing of the appeal was upcoming. A seemingly small but very important victory on that front was that after the seemingly inevitable stonewalling on every issue the Army had agreed to use feminine or neutral pronoun in any documentation concerning Private Manning’s case. The lawyers had in June 2014 also been successful in avoiding the attempt by the Department of Defense to place Chelsea in a civil facility as they tried to foist their “problem” elsewhere. 

On the political front Chelsea continued to receive awards, and after a fierce battle in 2013 was finally in 2014 made an honorary grand marshal of the very important GLBTQ Pride Parade in San Francisco (and had a contingent supporting her freedom again in the 2015 parade). Recently she has been given status as a contributor to the Guardian newspaper, a newspaper that was central to the fight by fellow whistle-blower Edward Snowden, where her first contribution was a very appropriate piece on what the fate of the notorious CIA torturers should be, having herself faced such torture down in Quantico adding to the poignancy of that suggestion. More recently she has written articles about the dire situation in the Middle East and the American government’s inability to learn any lessons from history and a call on the military to stop the practice of denying transgender people the right to serve. (Not everybody agrees with her positon in the transgender community or the VFP but she is out there in front with it.) 

[Maybe most important of all in this social networking, social media, texting world of the young (mostly) Chelsea has a twitter account- @xychelsea

 

Locally over the past two year we have marched for Chelsea in the Boston Pride Parade, commemorated her fifth year in prison last May [2015] and the fifth this year with a vigil, honored her again on Armistice Day 2015, celebrated her 28^th birthday in December with a rally.
 

More recently big campaigns by Courage To Resist and the Press Freedom Foundation have almost raised the $200, 000 needed (maybe more by now) to give her legal team adequate resources during her appeals process (first step, after looking over the one hundred plus volumes of her pre-trial and trial hearings, the Army Court Of Criminal Appeal)

Recently although in this case more ominously and more threateningly Chelsea has been charged and convicted of several prison infractions (among them having a copy of the now famous Vanity Fair with Caitlyn, formerly Bruce, Jenner’s photograph on the cover) which could affect her parole status and other considerations going forward.     

We have continued to urge one and all to sign the on-line Amnesty International petition asking President Obama to grant an immediate pardon as well as asking that those with the means sent financial contributions to Courage To Resist to help with her legal expenses.

After I got home that night of the meeting I began thinking that a lot has happened over the past couple of years in the Chelsea Manning case and that I should made what I know more generally available to more than my local VFPers. I do so here, and gladly. Just one more example of our fervent belief that as we have said all along in Veterans for Peace and elsewhere- we will not leave our sister behind… More later.              

In Boston-April 4th-Tell Mayor Walsh and Gov. Baker: #MakeGEpay its Taxes!

Tell Mayor Walsh and Gov. Baker: #MakeGEpay its Taxes!

WHAT: Rally Outside Welcome Party for GE Execs Hosted by Gov Baker & Mayor Walsh
WHEN: April 4^th, 2016, 3:30pm-5:30 pm
WHERE: 60 State Street, Boston, MA (near Boston City Hall and State Street Stop on the Orange Line)
WHO: Coalition of Boston area social justice groups and leaders

            #MakeGEPay:  $37 billion in Federal Taxes
          GE has parked $119 billion in profits overseas, avoiding over $30 billion in federal taxes. If GE paid their fair share, billions would be available for public schools, low cost housing, fixing the T, renewable energy, green jobs and countless other needs.  GE also receives federal funds for weapons used to commit war crimes in the Middle East.

#MakeGEPay:  $125m in State Taxes + $613m Cleanup of Housatonic River
Governor Baker has promised $125 million in tax breaks for GE.  $125 million would help reduce MBTA fare hikes, lower public college costs, move homeless families out of motels, and support jobs, not jails!  Not a penny for GE until it cleans up its pollution of the Housatonic River in Western MA!

#MakeGEPay:  $25m in City Tax Breaks  + $90m Bridge
Mayor Walsh has promised a $25 million tax break and a $90 million bridge over Fort Point Channel for GE. $25 million could stop budget cuts in the Boston Schools or provide rent vouchers for the homeless.   And $90 million would be better spent to rebuild the bridge to Long Island to reopen facilities for people in recovery.  
On April 4, Mayor Walsh and Gov. Baker are hosting a Public Forum with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt at 60 State Street in Boston.
Let's welcome GE to Boston!
Union of Minority Neighborhoods • Budget for All Campaign • Jewish Voice for Peace –Boston • Neighbor to Neighbor • Right to the City/Boston • Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants • Progressive Mass • American Friends Service Committee • Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom • Unitarian Universalist Mass Action Network • New England War Tax Resistance • OPENBoston • Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine • United for Justice with Peace • Massachusetts Peace Action • Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee • Housatonic River Initiative • MassMuslims • NoBoston2024 • Massachusetts Senior Action • Pass Mass Amendment 

To get involved contact:
Union of Minority Neighborhoods • 617-522-3349 • horacesmall@umnunity.org
Budget for All Massachusetts • 617-354-2169  • info@budget4allmass.org
Jewish Voice for Peace – Boston • 339-223-3185 • jvpboston@gmail.com

In Boston -Walk for Water Justice-Saturday, April 23, 2016, 10:00 am to 1:00 pm

In Boston -Walk for Water Justice-Saturday, April 23, 2016, 10:00 am to 1:00 pm

 

 

 

300 Athenaeum Street • (near Kendall Square red line stop) • Cambridge

From Flint to Chelsea to Palestine, water must be a basic human right.  But water in these communities is being used as a weapon for political purposes.  The Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine and the organization 1for3 are teaming up to bring attention to this issue, especially Israeli control of the water supply used by Palestinians in the Palestinian territories and Gaza.  Water is plentiful in the Jewish settlements, but Palestinians often don't have enough water for daily use.
1for3's Walk for Water is raising money to support important water reclamation projects, rooftop gardens, and more for the Aida Refugee Camp in the West Bank of Palestine.  UJP stands in solidarity with 1for3 and all groups working for water justice.  UJP is supporting this campaign -- come join us!
Join the UJP Team on April 23rd in 1for3's Walk for Water -- 5K walk in support of Palestinian refugees.
Go to http://classy.org/ujp to register and/or donate. 

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 

Israel/Palestine

Newsletter: 

UJP Activist

Unsubscribe from this newsletter