Cambridge City Hall rally takes aim at housing policy

 

David L. Ryan/globe staff

Peaceful demonstrators gathered on the front lawn.

By Steve Annear Globe Staff  August 31, 2016

CAMBRIDGE — Four protesters were arrested Wednesday after locking themselves to the front doors of City Hall during an hourslong rally that at times grew tense as elected officials and demonstrators argued about the city’s affordable housing policies.

Two women used U-shaped bike locks to connect themselves by the neck to the handles of the building’s doors around 6 a.m. The women were also linked to two other protesters — both men — whose arms were connected inside plastic tubing wrapped in red duct tape.

The protesters, who wore “Black Lives Matter Cambridge” T-shirts, were part of a larger demonstration that began with a peaceful march through the streets and ended on the front lawn of City Hall.

A woman who would identify herself only as Stephanie, a co-organizer of the protest, said the group was calling on city councilors to pledge to vote in favor of requiring developers with more than nine units of housing to make 25 percent of their developments affordable.

She said she believes Cambridge is struggling to meet its affordable housing goals as the city’s housing market grows more expensive.

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The Cambridge protest in photos, video

Demonstrators have chained themselves to City Hall to draw attention to the issue of affordable housing.

“Meanwhile, the people of color are disappearing. Meanwhile, Cambridge is getting less and less affordable for average people. Meanwhile, families are disappearing,” she said. “We’re here because we’re saying we want to keep Cambridge Cambridge.”

City officials are considering new rules that would set aside 20 percent of units in new housing developments at rents that are affordable to lower- and middle-income residents, nearly double the current rate of 11.5 percent.

But developers have pushed back, arguing that such a requirement would stall construction. At a Council hearing Tuesday night, developers and the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce argued for the new rules to be phased in over time.

Vice Mayor Marc McGovern, who spent the morning speaking to protesters who had gathered on the front lawn and were singing, chanting, and holding up signs, said adjusting the rules is a complex, multistep process.

“It’s a delicate balance,” he said, addressing the crowd using a megaphone. “It’s really complicated and delicate, and we have been working on this for a very long time. And I just want you to know that this is very important to us.”

By 9 a.m., police had cleared the protesters from the front doors by removing the handles. Police then slipped “skeds” — yellow, sled-like devices used by first responders as stretchers during rescue missions — underneath the demonstrators and pulled them away from the entryway.

Police later surrounded the protesters — the women remained locked together by their necks, and connected to the men — in the corner of the landing at the top of the steps.

For a time, the protesters remained on the ground but later carefully stood up together and made their way to the waist-high wall at the edge of the landing to face the large crowd.

David L. Ryan/globe staff

Protesters used bicycle locks and chains to block the front entrance of Cambridge City Hall Wednesday morning.

Cambridge police spokesman Jeremy Warnick said employees used other entrances to get into the building during the demonstration. The four protesters were eventually arrested around 2:30 p.m., after about eight hours.

“We did arrest the four individuals without incident after making several attempts to receive cooperation,” Warnick said in a statement.

Warnick said Andrew King, 30, and Abraham Lateiner, 34, both of Cambridge, and the two female protesters, who are juveniles, were arrested for disorderly conduct. Lateiner is also being charged with interfering with a police officer, Warnick said.

Throughout the morning, people in the crowd shouted, “The people united will never be defeated!” and “Brick by brick, wall by wall, racist systems have to fall!” in a show of support for the conjoined activists.

Mayor Denise Simmons arrived to greet protesters just after 11 a.m. Standing on the top landing, she spoke with affordable housing advocates. Simmons then addressed the crowd, saying it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when policy changes will be made. But she assured protesters that elected leaders were working to address their concerns.

“We might be going on separate trains,” she said. “But we are going in the same direction.”

Globe correspondent Dylan McGuinness and John R. Ellement and Tim Logan of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear.

A View From The Left-The Kurdish Women Combatants in Rojava: Their Significance and Implications

The Kurdish Women Combatants in Rojava: Their Significance and Implications

by Dilar Dirik

[This piece is a book chapter in "A Small Key Can Open A Large Door: The Rojava Revolution" by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness (Ed.), March 2015 (Combustion Books).]

The resistance against the Islamic State in Kobanê has woken the world to the cause of Kurdish women. Typical of the media's myopia, instead of considering the radical implications of women taking up arms in a patriarchal society - especially against a group that systematically rapes and sells women as sex-slaves - even fashion magazines appropriate the struggle of Kurdish women for their own sensationalist purposes today. Reporters often pick the most "attractive" fighters for interviews and exoticise them as "badass" Amazons. The truth is, no matter how fascinating it is - from an orientalist perspective - to discover a women's revolution among Kurds, my generation grew up recognising women fighters as a natural element of our identity.

 

The People's Defence Units (YPG) and the Women's Defence Units (YPJ) from Rojava (mainly Kurdish populated regions in northern Syria) have been fighting the so-called Islamic State for two years and now lead an epic resistance in the town of Kobanê. An estimated 35 percent - around 15,000 fighters - are women. Founded in 2013 as an autonomous women's army, the YPJ conducts independent operations and trainings. There are several hundred women's battalions across Rojava.

 

But what are the political motivations of these women? Why did Kobanê not fall? The answer is that a radical social revolution accompanies their rifles of self-defense…

First off, the meaning of women picking up guns against ISIS must be analyzed with the patriarchal implications of war and militarism, as well as the systematic nature of ISIS’s war on women. In war, women are usually perceived as passive parts of the lands that men protect, while sexual violence is systematically used as a war tool to “dominate” and “humiliate” the enemy.  Being a militant is seen as "unwomanly"; it crosses social boundaries, it shakes the foundations of the status quo. War is seen as a man's issue - started, led, and ended by men. So it is the "woman" part of "woman fighter" which causes this general discomfort. Even though traditional gender roles often essentialize and idealize women as saints, the punishment is vicious once women violate these assigned roles. That is also the reason why many struggling women, everywhere in the world, are subject to sexualized violence as combatants in war and as political prisoners. As many feminists have pointed out, rape and sexual violence hardly have anything to do with sexual desire, but are tools of power to dominate and force one's will over the other. In the context of militant women, the aim of sexualized violence, physical or verbal, is to punish them for stepping into a sphere reserved for male privilege.

 

Militant Kurdish women (currently) fight against the Turkish state, the second largest NATO army with its hyper-masculine military structure and a prime minister that appeals to women to bear at least three children; the Iranian regime, which dehumanizes women supposedly in the name of Islam; the Syrian regime, whose army systematically uses rape as part of their war strategy; and jihadists like ISIS. But further, they fight against the excruciating patriarchy in Kurdish society itself. Against child marriage, forced marriage, honor killings, domestic violence, and rape culture.

 

ISIS launched an explicit war on women through abductions, forced marriages, rape, and sex slavery. This systematic destruction of women is a specific form of violence: feminicide. Fighting women are punished for violating a perceived sphere of male privilege via sexualized violence. So, for ISIS-members , who have declared it as "halal" to rape enemy women and who are promised 72 virgins in paradise for their atrocities, militant women are indeed the ultimate enemy.

 

But considering that - apart from the explicit gendered nature of war and violence - around the world, women often play key roles in freedom struggles but are abandoned once "liberation" or "revolution" is perceived to be achieved and traditional gender roles make a comeback, supposedly to reestablish “normal” civil life, what can we learn about liberation from a radical standpoint?

 

The experience of Kurdish women with multi-layered oppression perpetuated by the status quo created consciousness of the fact that different forms of oppression are interrelated and constituted a starting point for the ideology that now drives the resistance in the three cantons in Rojava that were declared in January 2014 as autonomous, of which Kobanê is one. It is a resistance which resonates with struggling people worldwide, who claim the cause as their own.

 

So what are the politics behind Kurdish women’s resistance?

 

 “We don’t want the world to know us because of our guns, but because of our ideas,” says Sozda, a YPJ commander in Amûde, and points at the pictures on their common room’s walls: PKK guerrilla fighters and Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned ideological representative of the movement. “We are not just women fighting ISIS. We struggle to change the society’s mentality and show the world what women are capable of.” Though there is no organic tie between the PKK and the Rojava administration, the political ideology is shared.

 

The PKK, founded in 1978, started a guerrilla war against the Turkish state in 1984. Initially aiming at an independent Kurdistan, it long moved beyond statehood and nationalism, both of which it now critiques as inherently oppressive and hegemonic, and advocates an alternative liberationist project in the form of inclusive, feminist, radical democracy and regional autonomy: “democratic confederalism” based on gender equality, ecology, and grassroots-democracy for all ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups.

 

Abdullah Öcalan explicitly states that patriarchy along with capitalism and the state lie at the roots of oppression, domination, and power: "Man is a system. The male has become a state and turned this into the dominant culture. Class and sexual oppression develop together; masculinity has generated ruling gender, ruling class, and ruling state.” He emphasizes the need for autonomous and conscious feminist struggle: “Woman’s freedom cannot just be assumed once a society has obtained general freedom and equality”. PKK cadres attend seminars to challenge patriarchy and advocate gender equality to transform men’s sense of privilege and entitlement. Öcalan makes the connection between different institutions of power clear: “All the power and state ideologies stem from sexist attitudes and behaviour[...]. Without women’s slavery none of the other types of slavery can exist let alone develop. Capitalism and nation-state denote the most institutionalized dominant male. More boldly and openly spoken: capitalism and nation-state are the monopolism of the despotic and exploitative male”. The women’s movement independently produces sophisticated theories and critiques as well, but it is striking that a male leader of a Middle Eastern liberation struggle places women’s liberation as a critical measure of freedom. Only when reading and understanding this movement’s position and its corresponding actions is it possible to grasp the mass mobilization of women in Kobanê. It did not emerge out of nothing, but is based on a rooted tradition with a determined set of principles.

 

The PKK splits administration equally between one woman and one man, from party presidencies down to neighborhood councils, through its co-chair principle. Beyond providing women and men with equal decision-making power, the co-chair concept aims to decentralize power, prevent monopolism, and promote consensus-finding. The women’s movement is autonomously organized, socially, politically, militarily. While these organizational principles seek to guarantee women representation, massive social and political mobilization aims to raise society’s consciousness so that it internalizes the advocated principles. Influenced by the PKK's feminist stance, the majority of women in the Turkish parliament and municipal administrations are Kurdish. Together with the YPG/YPJ, PKK units were key to creating a safety corridor to rescue the Yazidis in the Sinjar Mountains in August. Some PKK women died defending Makhmour in Iraqi Kurdistan alongside male fighters.

 

Inspired by these principles, the Rojava cantons enforce co-presidencies and quotas and they created women’s defense units, women’s communes, academies, tribunals, and cooperatives. The women’s movement Yekîtiya Star is autonomously organized in all walks of life, from defense to economy to education to health. Autonomous women’s councils exist parallel to the people’s councils and can veto the latter’s decisions. Laws aim to eliminate gender-based discrimination. Men committing violence against women are not supposed to be part of the administration. In the midst of war, one of the governance’s first acts was to criminalize forced marriages, domestic violence, honor killings, polygamy, child marriage, and bride price. Many non-Kurdish women, especially Arabs and Syriacs, join the armed ranks and administration in Rojava and are all encouraged to organize autonomously as well. In all areas of life, including in the internal security forces (asayish) and the YPJ and YPG, gender equality is a central part of education and training.

 

While some columnists arrogantly claimed that women in Kobanê fight “for western values,” women’s academies in Rojava critique the notion that women in the west are more liberated than them or that the west has a monopoly on values like gender equality. “There is no individual freedom if the whole of society is enslaved.” In public seminars, women come up with their own critiques of the social sciences and propose ways of liberating knowledge from power. Yet this popular and explicitly feminist social revolution is completely ignored by mainstream media.

 

“Our struggle is not just to defend our land”, YPJ commander Jiyan Afrin explains. “We as women, take part in all walks of life, whether fighting against ISIS or combating discrimination and violence against women. We are trying to mobilize and be the authors of our own liberation”.

What liberation?

The experience of the Kurdish women’s movement illustrates that for meaningful social revolution, concepts of liberation must be freed from the parameters of the status quo. For instance, nationalism is a gendered, patriarchal concept. Its premises limit struggles for justice. Similarly, the idea of a nation-state perpetuates the dominant oppressive hegemonic system. Rather than subscribing to these concepts, liberation should be seen as a never-ending struggle, a quest to build an ethical society, solidarity between communities, and social justice.  Hence, rather than being a rights-based side issue that puts the burden on women, women’s liberation and equality of all genders become a matter of responsibility for all of society, because they become measures of defining society’s ethics and freedom. For a radical and revolutionary freedom struggle, women's liberation must be a central aim, but also an active method in the process. Political participation must move beyond voting and rights and must be radically reclaimed by the people.

 

In an era in which female policy makers feed unjust wars in third world countries by pleading to “save the poor oppressed women,” along with racist, chauvinist groups that seem to believe to contribute to the cause of Middle Eastern women through sensationalist egocentric actions they consider as radical, and in which extreme individualism and consumerism are propagated as emancipation and empowerment, the struggling women in Kobanê contributed to rearticulating radical feminism by refusing to comply with the premises of the global patriarchal capitalist nation-state order, by reclaiming legitimate self-defense, dissociating the monopoly of power from the state, and by fighting a brutal force not on behalf of imperialists, but in order to create their own terms of liberation.

 

From inside Kobanê, YPJ fighter Amara Cudî tells me via internet: “Once again, the Kurds appeared on history’s stage. But this time with a system of self-defense and self-governance, especially for women, who may now, after millennia, write their own history for the first time. It is our philosophical views that made us women conscious of the fact that we can only live by resisting. If we cannot defend and liberate ourselves, we cannot defend or liberate others. Our revolution goes far beyond this war. In order to succeed is, it vital to know what you fight for.”

 

Without this collective effort to raise society's consciousness, to transform formerly silenced people into political subjects, Kobanê would not have been able to resist for this long. That is why the ideological and political mobilization of the population of Rojava cannot be treated in isolation of their victories against ISIS - genuine revolution must first challenge society’s mentality. Thus, the women’s fight against ISIS is not only militarily, but also philosophically an existential one. They not only resist against feminicidal ISIS, but also the patriarchy and rape culture prevalent among their own community. After all, ISIS exploits the concept of “honor” in the region, constructed around women’s bodies and sexualities. Thus, a large banner in the city centre of Qamishlo declares: “We will defeat the attacks of ISIS by guaranteeing the freedom of women in the Middle East.”

 

One does not need to like the PKK, but one cannot appropriate Kobanê’s resistance, while denying the thought behind it, and yet claim solidarity with the brave women fighting ISIS. You cannot write the epos of Kobanê’s women without reading the life of Sakine Cansiz, a co-founder of the PKK, who led a prison uprising in Turkey and spat at her torturer’s face, later on adding “As a militant of a just cause, I was afraid to say ‘ah.’” She was murdered along with Fidan Dogan and Leyla Saylemez on January 9^th, 2013 in the heart of Paris. Women like her paved the way to the fight against ISIS - women, labeled as prostitutes, terrorists, and confused irrational evil witches prior to the rise of ISIS, because they were fighting NATO-member Turkey. Today, Rojava’s women decorate their rooms with photos of their comrades Sakine, Fidan, and Leyla.

The de-politicization of the struggle in Kobanê robs the fighters of their agency and takes the collective mobilization out of context for the interest of the coalition, which consists of states that ignored and marginalized the resistance of Rojava against ISIS for two years and which previously provided weapons to those now forming the same murderous group.

Solidarity with Kobanê’s women means to actually care about their politics. It means to challenge the UN, NATO, unjust wars, patriarchy, capitalism, political religion, global arms trade, nationalism, sectarianism, the state-paradigm, environmental destruction – the pillars of the system that caused this situation to begin with. Do not allow those who created the dark, violent shadows over the Middle East, which led up to the rise of ISIS, pretend to be the good guys. Supporting the women in Kobanê means getting up and spreading the revolution.

 

Notes:

Öcalan, Abdullah, 2011, Democratic Confederalism (Cologne: International Initiative "Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan - Peace in Kurdistan), Available online at http://www.freeocalan.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Ocalan-Democratic-Confederalism.pdf

 

Öcalan, Abdullah, 2013, Liberating Life: Woman’s Revolution(Cologne: International Initiative "Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan - Peace in Kurdistan), Available online at http://www.freeocalan.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/liberating-Lifefinal.pdf

Dakota Access Pipeline: #NoDAPL Solidarity Standout-The Struggle Continues...

Dakota Access Pipeline: #NoDAPL Solidarity Standout

Thursday, September 8, 2016, 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm

TD Bank • 617 Mass Ave • Central Square • Cambridge

Arlington United for Justice with Peace stands out on Thursday, September 8, 2016 from 5-6:30 PM at TD Bank in Central Square Cambridge (617 Massachusetts Avenue) in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe against the Dakota Access Pipeline. There is an international call for solidarity actions at https://nodaplsolidarity.org
The “Dakota Access” Pipeline (DAPL) is a $3.8B, 1,100 mile fracked-oil pipeline currently under construction from the Bakken shale fields of North Dakota to Peoria, Illinois. DAPL is slated to cross Lakota Treaty Territory at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation where it would be laid underneath the Missouri River, the longest river on the continent.
Construction of the DAPL would engender a renewed fracking-frenzy in the Bakken shale region, as well as endanger a source of fresh water for the Standing Rock Sioux and 8 million people living downstream.
DAPL would also impact many sites that are sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux and other indigenous nations. The DAPL is a massive project being organized by a shady group of the world’s largest fossil-fuel companies and banks.
One of the banks is TD with a branch located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Standing Rock Tribe has filed a federal lawsuit in Washington DC district court against the Army Corps of Engineers for failing to protect and engage the Tribe when it granted permits for this project. Judge James E. Boasberg is expected to rule on this case as soon as September 9, 2016.
Read more at: http://earthjustice.org/features/faq-standing-rock-litigation
We have the signs, we just need you!

Upcoming Events: 

#NoDAPL Solidarity Standout	Thursday, September 8, 2016 - 5:00pm	TD Bank	Cambridge
Elections 2016: Humanity's Future in a Troubled World	Monday, September 19, 2016 - 7:00pm	encuentro 5	Boston

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Elections 2016: What About War, Climate, and Social Justice?

Elections 2016: What About War, Climate, and Social Justice?

ELECTIONS 2016
Humanity's Future in a Troubled World
What About War, Climate, and Social Justice?

The major parties present a belligerent war hawk running against a confirmed warmonger, yet the issue of U.S. never-ending wars is barely acknowledged. With Bernie no longer a candidate, should the Left support Hillary Clinton, back a candidate for independent politics, or is there another way?
Come hear a discussion on the choices before us this election and the implications for movement building after November.

Monday, September 19, 7:00 pm
Encuentro 5
9A Hamilton Pl., Boston (near Park St. Station)

Panelists:
Vote Jill Stein:
Green Party representative tba

Vote Socialist:
Jeff Mackler, National Secretary, Socialist Action and Socialist Action's candidate for President in 2016.

Vote Hillary Clinton:
Rosalie Anders, Mass. Peace Action Board Member (speaking for herself rather than for the organization),active on peace and climate issues. Member 350MA.

Vote Strategically to Defeat Trump – Greens or Democrats:
Jared Abbott, Democratic Socialists of America

United for Justice with Peace

www.justicewithpeace.org

info@justicewithpeace.org

617-383-4857

Upcoming Events: 

#NoDAPL Solidarity Standout	Thursday, September 8, 2016 - 5:00pm	TD Bank	Cambridge
Looking into the Syrian Crisis	Saturday, September 10, 2016 - 6:00pm	Luck Art Gallery	Newton
Elections 2016: What About War, Climate, and Social Justice?	Monday, September 19, 2016 - 7:00pm	encuentro 5	Boston

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In Cambridge- SATURDAY - Looking into the Syrian Crisis

SATURDAY - Looking into the Syrian Crisis

Saturday, September 10 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
LuckArt Gallery, 438 Lexington St , Auburndale, MA 02466 United States

| Free

A closer look into the Syrian refugee crisis. See the ramifications of the conflict that has plagued the region through the unique and intimate perspective of photographs. In addition, hear speakers discuss the political landscape, the populations affected, and what we can all do to help.
Photographs provided by Pablo Tosco of Oxfam America. 
Video provided by Lior Sperandeo.
Speakers
Angela Kelly: Angela worked as a refugee solidarity volunteer at the borders of Greece.
Ali Aljundi: Ali is a Syrian civil activist who now works as a Syria Project Officer at Oxfam America, contributing to advocacy work regarding the Syrian humanitarian crisis.
Prasannan Parthasarathi: Prasannan is a BC professor and MAPA Middle East Working Group member.
Food will be served.
Sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action.  Co-sponsored by Newton South Peace Action and Newton Dialogues on Peace and War.  The event was organized by Newton South senior Karina Aguilar.   Info: info@masspeaceaction.org; 617-354-2169

Upcoming Events: 

#NoDAPL Solidarity Standout	Thursday, September 8, 2016 - 5:00pm	TD Bank	Cambridge
Looking into the Syrian Crisis	Saturday, September 10, 2016 - 6:00pm	Luck Art Gallery	Newton
Elections 2016: What About War, Climate, and Social Justice?	Monday, September 19, 2016 - 7:00pm	encuentro 5	Boston

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UFPJ URGENT MESSAGE: Send a Letter Now to Halt Weapon Sales to Saudi Arabia

UFPJ URGENT MESSAGE: Send a Letter Now to Halt Weapon Sales to Saudi Arabia

Dear UJP Activist,
As you may know, UFPJ is part of the campaign to stop the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
We have a rare opportunity to help a group of Congress halt the sale of $1.15 BILLION in weapons to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but we only have a couple days to do it.
Many of UFPJ's allies are taking action this week to put pressure on Congress, the U.S. State Department, and the Obama Administration to block the weapons deal, while Saudi Arabia is committing war crimes and killing thousands of civilians in Yemen.
Will you click here and quickly send a letter to your representatives, urging them to sign a letter that's gaining popularity in Congress, to President Obama, to halt the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia?

Thank you for being a leader on this important campaign for peace and human rights that is gaining widespread popularity.
In Peace,
UFPJ

Upcoming Events: 

#NoDAPL Solidarity Standout	Thursday, September 8, 2016 - 5:00pm	TD Bank	Cambridge
Looking into the Syrian Crisis	Saturday, September 10, 2016 - 6:00pm	Luck Art Gallery	Newton
Elections 2016: What About War, Climate, and Social Justice?	Monday, September 19, 2016 - 7:00pm	encuentro 5	Boston

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*****Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over-On The Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death-Magical Realism 101

*****Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over-On The Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death-Magical Realism 101

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Scene: Brought to mind by the cover art on some deep fogged memory producing, maybe acid-etched flashback memory at the time, accompanying CD booklet tossed aside on the coffee table by a guy from the old days, the old New York University days, Jeff Mackey, who had been visiting Sarah, Josh Breslin’s wife of the moment. Jeff had just placed the CD on the CD player, the intricacies of fine-tuned down-loading from YouTube beyond anybody’s stoned capacity just then and so the “primitive” technology (stoned as in “turned on,” doped up, high if you like just like in the old days as well although Josh had gone to State U not NYU but the times were such that such transactions were universal and the terms “pass the bong” and “don’t bogart that join” had passed without comment). Don’t take that “wife of the moment” too seriously either since that was a standing joke between Sarah and Josh (not Joshua, Joshua was dad, the late Joshua Breslin, Jr.) since in a long life they had managed five previous  marriages (three by him, two by her) and scads of children and two scads of grandchildren (who had better not see this piece since grandma and grandpa have collectively expended many jaws-full hours of talk  about the danger of demon drugs, the devil’s work).

When Josh had picked up the tossed aside booklet he noticed a  wispy, blue-jeaned, blouse hanging off one shoulder, bare-foot, swirling mass of red hair, down home Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night. The woman maybe kin to Janis, maybe not, but certainly brethren who looked uncannily like his first ex-wife, Laura, who had taught him many little sex things learned from a trip to India and close attention to the Kama Sutra which he had passed to everybody thereafter including Sarah. And no again don’t take that wistful though about Laura as anything but regret since their civil wars had passed a long time before and beside Laura had not been heard from since the time she went down to Rio and was presumably shacked up with some dope king or diamond king or something probably still earning her keep with those little India tricks.

Still looking at the tantalizing artwork he thought of the time of our time, passed. Of wistful women belting out songs, band backed-up and boozed-up, probably Southern Comfort if the dough was tight and there had been ginger ale or ice to cut the sweet taste or if it was late and if the package store was short of some good cutting whiskey, but singing, no, better evoking, yes, evoking barrelhouse down-trodden black empresses and queens from somewhere beyond speaking troubled times, a no good man taking up with that no good best girlfriend  of hers who drew a bee-line to him when that empress advertised his charms, no job, no prospect of a job and then having to go toe to toe with that damn rent collector man on that flattened damn mattress that kept springing holes, maybe no roof over a head and walking the streets picking up tricks to pass the time, no pocket dough, no prospects and a ton of busted dreams in some now forgotten barrelhouse, chittlin’ circuit bowling alley complete with barbecued ribs smoking out back or in a down town “colored” theater. Or the echo of that scene, okay. Jesus, maybe he had better kick that dope thing before he actually does start heading to Rio.

*******

Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some merry prankster yellow brick road bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or someplace like that, maybe Russia he was not sure of the geography all he knew was that he had made a wag wiggle a little for his indiscretion)  was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, weary even of hanging out with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish up some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising. Yeah, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do, the Prince mused to himself. Chuckled really, term paper stuff was just not his “thing” right then. Hell, he had dropped out of State U, dropped out of Laura Perkin’s life, dropped out of everything to chase the Western arroyo desert ocean washed dream that half his generation was pursuing just then.

Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, 1967 version to be exact, autumns of drugs, strange brews of hyper-colored experience drugs and high shamanic medicine man aztec druid flame throws, winters of Paseo Robles brown hills discontent, brown rolling hills until he sickened of rolling, the color brown, hills, slopes, plains, everything, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of Martin Luther King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim former high school runner’s frame could not afford.

Now the chickens had come home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed, after graduating from high school, that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, the Prince is nothing but a Mainiac, Olde Saco section, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though before she went back to her golden-haired surfer boy back down in Carlsbad (his temperature rose even now every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.

What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.

Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Miss Ruby, as he called her as a little bait, a little come on bait, playing on her somewhere south drawl, although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message).

Josh, all throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, even a gal like Wanda Jackson, when they were hungry, and that hunger not only carried them to the stars but slaked some weird post-World War II, red scare, cold war hunger in guys like Josh Breslin although he never, never in a million years would have articulated it that way back then. That was infernal Captain Crunch’s work (Captain is the “owner” of the “bus” and a story all his own but that is for another time) always trying to put things in historical perspective or the exact ranking in some mythical pantheon that he kept creating (and recreating especially after a “dip” of Kool-Aid, LSD for the squares, okay).

But back to Ruby love. He got a surprise one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and he felt was meant to be a little coquettish and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.

What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace that someone, Bonnie Raitt or Maria Muldaur, had found in old age out in some boondock church social or something, mad Bessie Smith squeezed dry, freeze-dried by some no account Saint Louis man and left wailing, empty bed, gin house wailing ever after, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie, the queen of the double entendre, sex version, with her butcher, baker, candlestick-maker men, doing, well doing the do, okay, and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog made just for her that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all a full-blast Piece Of My Heart.

Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey just up the road from the Big Sur merry prankster yellow bus camp, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting some work at the Monterrey Pop Festival held each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl (or maybe some cheap gin or rotgut Southern Comfort, cheap and all the in between rage for those saving their dough for serious drugs).

Ya just a wisp of a girl, wearing spattered blue-jeans, some damn moth-eaten tee-shirt, haphazardly tie-dyed by someone on a terminal acid trip, barefoot, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma, (although he had seen a fair share of the breed in Fryeburg Fair Maine) who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster.

Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. And maybe some sweet sidle promise, who knows in that alcohol blaze around three in the morning. All Josh knew was this woman, almost girlish except for her sharp tongue and that eternal hardship voice, that no good man, no luck except bad luck voice, that spoke of a woman’s sorrow back to primordial times, had that certain something, that something hunger that he recognized in young Elvis and the guys. And that something Josh guessed would take them over the hump into that new day they were trying to create on the bus, and a thousand other buses like it. What a night, what a blues singer.

The next day Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that just slightly off-hand look in her eye that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him, and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either, whoever that dull-wit was) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August, sign up for State U., and still be okay but that he had better grab Ruby now while he could.

*****The Latest From The "Jobs With Justice Blog"-It's High Time To Push Back-Push Back Hard-30 For 40 Is The Slogan

*****The Latest From The "Jobs With Justice Blog"-It's High Time To Push Back-Push Back Hard-30 For 40 Is The Slogan Of The Day.

Click below to link to the Jobs With Justice Blog for the latest national and international labor news, and of the efforts to counteract the massively one-sided class struggle against the international working class movement.

http://www.jwjblog.org/

From the American Left History blog-Wednesday, June 17, 2009
 

With Unemployment Too High, Way Too High - The Call "30 For 40"- Now More Than Ever- The Transitional Socialist Program

Click Below To Link To The Full Transitional Program Of The Fourth International Adopted In 1938 As A Fighting Program In The Struggle For Socialism In That Era. Many Of The Points, Including The Headline Point Of 30 Hours Work For 40 Hours Pay To Spread The Work Around Among All Workers, Is As Valid Today As Then.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm

Guest Commentary
 

From The Transitional Program Of The Fourth International In 1938- Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours

Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.

The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.

Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.

Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment,“structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.

Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.

***After The Fall-John Steinbeck's "Eden Of Eden"- "There Are No Sins Outside The Gates Of Eden"

 

BOOK REVIEW

EAST OF EDEN, JOHN STEINBECK
I usually do not read the comments of book reviewers on Amazon.com (or, in a few cases, at least not until after I have written my own). I was, however, interested in finding out whether Steinbeck and his tale still held interest for today’s readers. The answer seems to be yes. Moreover, I was interested in what other people had to say about the symbolic nature of the clash between and among generations of brothers and its relationship to the old biblical struggles going back to the ‘first family’.

Damn, life has definitely been tougher since the ‘fall’. The morale to be derived from Steinbeck’s novel is, apparently, that while the ‘fall of man’ under the spell of earthly temptations had its down side humankind is better for the struggle. A strong argument can moreover be made that without that struggle by fallen humankind no serious progress would have been made. That struggle is epitomized by the characters, tensions and actions of the two brothers (in both generations ,Adam’s the father’s and Aaron’s and the son’s) which makes me think that Steinbeck may see this an eternal struggle and that we are endlessly doomed to roll that rock up the hill just to have it come crashing back down on us.

Those who have only seen the 1950’s movie version of this novel starring, among others, the ill-fated James Dean and a young Julie Harris, have missed some great writing about the effects of the destruction, struggle to rebuilt and attempts at redemption in the wake of the fall of Adam Trask and his struggle to change his ways. And through him, his sons. The movie (that I saw long before reading the book) skips over the compelling first section which deals with the seemingly pre-ordained destruction of Adam, by his ‘wife’ among others. Moreover, in the movie the demonic role of the ‘wife’ Kathy is glossed over (probably due to the less tolerate and more squeamish mores about ‘fallen women’ in the 1950’s). She is not a ‘nice’ person. Read the book and see why we, even the best of us, are now all living just East of Eden.

Fight Deportations-Join Veterans For Peace At The US-Mexico Border In Nogales-October 7-10, 2016

Fight Deportations-Join Veterans For Peace At The US-Mexico  Border In Nogales-October 7-10, 2016