Courageous Radical Lawyer Lynne Stewart 1939–2017

Yes-we will miss Attorney Lynne Stewart-I will l have  my own tribute to this courageous fighter for our rights shortly-Frank Jackman . 

Workers Vanguard No. 1108	24 March 2017

Courageous Radical Lawyer

Lynne Stewart

1939–2017

Radical attorney Lynne Stewart died in Brooklyn on March 7 at the age of 77. The immediate cause was a series of strokes which, together with metastasized breast cancer, finally drained the life out of this tireless fighter for the oppressed. Lynne’s death will be keenly felt by the incarcerated opponents of the U.S. government, for whom she fought until the end. Without her, the world is a lonelier, crueler place for these prisoners and their families. We offer our condolences to Lynne’s husband, Ralph Poynter, and her entire family.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, New York, the young Lynne Stewart worked as a librarian in an all-black school in Harlem, developing her political consciousness through direct exposure to and confrontation with the entrenched racism of this society. She went on to law school at Rutgers. A proponent of 1960s New Left radicalism, Lynne dedicated herself to linking struggles of those in the outside world with those behind bars, fighting to keep militant leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state out of the clutches of its prison system.

Paying tribute to the work of Lynne and Ralph, class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal noted that they fought for decades for such groups as the Black Panthers and the Puerto Rican Young Lords, “but mostly, they fought for the freedom of the poor and dispossessed of New York’s Black and Brown ghettoes.” One of her most prominent cases was the defense of Larry Davis, a young black man in the Bronx who in November 1986 shot his way out of a murderous siege by cops and then became a folk hero for escaping an enormous manhunt for more than two weeks. With Lynne Stewart and William Kunstler arguing Davis’s right to self-defense, in November 1988 he was acquitted of the attempted murder of nine police officers. This stunning legal victory on behalf of victims of racist NYPD terror made Lynne a marked woman in the eyes of the state.

Lynne was also part of the legal team for the Ohio 7, who were prosecuted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Having already been sentenced to decades in prison, the Ohio 7 were further prosecuted by the Reagan and Bush Senior administrations under “seditious conspiracy” laws as part of an attempt to criminalize leftist political activity. The government spent over $10 million but failed to win a conviction—a victory for the working class and for all who would oppose the policies of the capitalist rulers. The Ohio 7’s Jaan Laaman recalled: “Lynne truly was fearless and could not be intimidated by prosecutors, judges or FBI and other gun-toting goons.”

With such a bio, Lynne found herself directly in the state’s crosshairs. In February 2005, she was convicted of material support to terrorism and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government for her vigorous legal defense of Egyptian fundamentalist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who had been convicted for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. The purported “material support” was communicating her client’s views to Reuters news service. The “fraud” was running afoul of Special Administrative Measures imposed by the Clinton administration that stripped prisoners of basic rights, including the ability to communicate with the outside world and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Her Arabic interpreter Mohamed Yousry and paralegal Ahmed Abdel Sattar were also convicted. As we wrote in “Outrage! Lynne Stewart, Mohamed Yousry, Ahmed Abdel Sattar Convicted” (WV No. 842, 18 February 2005):

“The verdict gives the government a green light to prosecute lawyers for the alleged crimes of their clients, thereby shooting the basic right to counsel to hell.... If nobody can get a lawyer to zealously defend him from prosecution, then fundamental liberties, from the right to a trial and an attorney, to even the right of free speech and assembly, are choked.”

The George W. Bush administration made Lynne Stewart’s prosecution a centerpiece of the bogus “war on terror,” having seized on the September 11 attacks to greatly enhance “anti-terror” measures enacted by Democratic president Bill Clinton. Indeed, she and her codefendants were convicted under Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.

Judge John Koeltl, who praised Lynne for representing “the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular,” gave her a 28-month sentence, far less than what the prosecution demanded. Outraged by such “leniency,” the government went to extraordinary lengths to appeal. At the instigation of the Obama administration, a ruling by a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals directed Koeltl to resentence her to ten years of hard time. On 15 July 2010, Koeltl complied.

We noted at the time that this was intended to be a death sentence for Lynne, who was suffering from Stage IV breast cancer. In prison she was taken to chemotherapy treatments in leg irons and handcuffs shackled to a chain around her waist; the weight of the chains was so heavy that guards had to essentially carry her from her cell to the prison hospital. In December 2010, she was transferred to the federal women’s prison in Carswell, Texas, far from family and supporters. Lynne was being brutally punished for nothing other than standing up to the U.S. government.

It was through the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee’s work in publicizing and rallying to the defense of Lynne Stewart and her codefendants that we came to know and work with her and Ralph, who had differences with our Marxist views. The two of them later became regular honored guests at the PDC’s annual Holiday Appeal benefits for class-war prisoners. Not ones to shy away from a good argument, Lynne and Ralph were quite happy to tweak our noses at the Holiday Appeals and get theirs tweaked in return. With a shared commitment to the fight for solidarity with victims of capitalist state repression, our mutual respect grew as we engaged in political debate.

Lynne’s political principles included not throwing her codefendants under the bus for her own interests. At a Lynne Stewart Defense Committee meeting following her 2005 conviction, PDC supporters stressed the importance of fighting for freedom for her codefendants, Yousry and Abdel Sattar. Lynne applauded this statement. But the defense committee, run by the National Lawyers Guild, abandoned her codefendants.

Longtime “movement” lawyer Liz Fink, who quit the legal team days before Lynne Stewart’s resentencing, filed court papers that despicably tried to exonerate her client by framing up Yousry. Fink accused him of conversing in Arabic with the sheik to further the latter’s aims—a fabrication that the New York Times (7 March) repeated in its obituary for Lynne Stewart. Lynne rose up in court to disavow her attorney and announced that those were Fink’s words, not hers. In fact, Yousry had been writing a PhD thesis on radical Islam in Egypt under the guidance of Near East historian Zachary Lockman, who had advised him to interview the sheik. Yousry’s prosecution left his life in ruins.

In greetings read out by Ralph to a PDC Holiday Appeal in January 2011 in NYC, the imprisoned Lynne denounced the chilling effect of Justice Department witchhunting of political opponents, declaring: “That message once again must be shouted down, first by the resisters who will go to jail and second by us, the movement who must support them by always filling those cold marble courtrooms to show our solidarity and speaking out so that their sacrifice is constantly remembered.” In another letter, she conveyed the deep human solidarity that continued to drive her even under the inhumane conditions of incarceration. She wrote that with the monthly stipend she received as part of the PDC’s support to class-war prisoners, she was able to purchase books and, after finishing them, put them into “circulation” for other inmates. Lynne also used the stipend to help provide other imprisoned women with items like coffee, peanut butter and shampoo.

In 2013, as Lynne’s health precipitously declined, more than 40,000 people signed petitions demanding her release. At the request of her attorney, a medical doctor associated with the PDC meticulously documented how Lynne met all criteria for hospice eligibility by the government’s own guidelines. This played a role in procuring her release later that year when the Justice Department, after months of obstruction, finally allowed Koeltl to free her on the grounds of her “terminal medical condition and very limited life expectancy.” Arriving at LaGuardia airport on New Year’s Day 2014, Lynne, who could barely walk, told her supporters, “I’m going to work for women’s group prisoners and for political prisoners.” Being back with her family and back in the struggle literally added years to her life.

In honoring Lynne Stewart, we recognize a hard, effective champion of the oppressed. We salute her lifework, which is an inspiration to those fighting for social justice against the rulers of this racist capitalist society.

As The 150th Anniversary Commemoration Of The American Civil War Passes–In Honor Of The Abraham Lincoln-Led Union Side

As The 150th Anniversary Commemoration Of The American Civil War Passes–In Honor Of The Abraham Lincoln-Led Union Side- The  Hard Years Of War- A Sketch- Wilhelm Sorge’s War-Take Four

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 last year of which we are commemorating this month.

*****

Private Wilhelm Sorge looked once again at his now bullet-nicked heart-shaped locket stained sepia photograph of Miss Lucinda Mason heading back to his quarters after his third round of guard duty that night since old First Sergeant Winot had in for him. That bullet nick compliments of some Johnny Reb skirmisher as his regiment, the proud 20^th Massachusetts organized by the Harvards, headed south after Gettysburg victory.

Private Sorge began to tear up though, tear up in the privacy of his tent (really a lean-to but according to his platoon sergeant a stickler for army terminology a four-man tent, one like you could see an example if you wanted to know what they looked like of done by the painter Winslow Homer for Leslie’s Illustrated as he suggested in a letter to the lady in the picture) now that the Army of the Potomac had settled into winter quarters. He had been through a lot over the past several months since that same dear Lucinda had dragooned him into enlisting. Lucinda had declared that he had “no guts,” her actual wording, unlike her brothers and cousins now scattered over all the Eastern fronts fighting for “Old Abe” and glory, when he told her one night at a Union League dance that he was more a lover than a fighter. Said he didn’t give a fig about Old Abe and his slave brethren like Frederick Douglass, a friend of his father, Friedrich, who had been raising holy hell to get more black regiments into battle after they had acquitted themselves well in front of Fort Wagner down in the Carolinas a few weeks after he and the boys of the 20^th Massachusetts what men were made of. Was not going to lose life and limb either.  She had scowled at him, had immediately withdrawn her favors which he had come to expect when they were alone in her house on Commonwealth Avenue and would not to speak him again until several days later after he had seen the writing on the wall after their last fight and had gone the next day down to Tremont Street to enlist when he showed up wearing Union Blue. See Wilhelm, like many another young man then, and now, liked, liked very much to partake of his sweetheart’s favors.  

Wilhelm had seen hot action in the killing fields of Gettysburg with the remnants of the 20^th Massachusetts which had been chewed up along the way (the 20^th organized by the Harvard grandees over in Cambridge later built a memorial hall to commemorate their Civil War dead and Gettysburg has an inordinate list of Harvards who laid down their heads there) and lots of other small spot skirmishes on the way back south before the army went into winter quarters. That action had included a skirmish where he had been slightly wounded and where his beloved locket had been nicked by a stray bullet. No, the locket did not, like a lot of stories told around grizzled campfires about how this or that Bible or other cherished keepsake had deflected a fatal bullet, save his life since he had been carrying the locket in his pocket just then since his Union blue uniform jacket, his now faded, dirty, disheveled uniform had been “shoddy,” had fallen off at the touch one day.

Wilhelm had grown up a lot during that time as well seeing now that his fighting for President Lincoln’s plan to save the Union by crushing the illegal Confederacy was bigger than he had thought, meant more than in the early carefree days (his carefree to court that Miss Mason of the locket days) when he had urged that the southern brethren to go on their own without anger. Since then he had learned that “King Cotton” was not worth the price of disunion on this green-blazed continent.

Now a lot of what he had learned had been from sitting around camp fires with some of those fellow private Harvard boys and their hell-fire talk of turning the South back to the Stone Age if necessary in order to win (by the way he also learned that though there were many Harvards in the regiment the barriers between the enlisted men and the officers from that institution were as strong they were against his young German ass). Many a night there was nothing but talk, talk, talk about how Johnny Reb had to be shown a lesson, about how the South had to come into the nineteenth century. He breathed in that new air, slowly at first but something in what his old father had spoken of and that he had dismissed out of hand from that source began to sink in.

But the real forces behind the changes in young Wilhelm’s demeanor came about from two sources- an old grizzled sergeant from another platoon, Heinz Grosz, who knew his father, Friedrich, had fought on those hometown Cologne barricades with him, and had after serving a two- year sentence there exiled himself first to England and then to America. Many a night the old man would talk, endlessly talk, about what it meant to be free, what it meant to be your own man, and that if anything was evil then slavery was the thing. Grosz emphasized something to Wilhelm that he had heard while in a London meeting of like-minded types-as long as the black man was not free in America then the white working- man was doomed to fall under the wheel of the budding capitalist juggernaut that was building a full head of steam on this continent. The other source-the kindness without reward or favor of a Negro sutler in giving him water and some first aid when he had been wounded and the old black man had put himself at some risk to do so since Johnny was hell-bent on chewing up another Yankee blue shirt. Still he wished they did not sweat to high heaven when they were near him.             

Hard Times In The Country Down On The Farm-With Stephen Foster’s Hard Times Come Again No More In Mind

By Bradley Fox

No one in Hazard, Hazard, down in Eastern Kentucky, Appalachia hard patch country which still has sections where the views would take your breath away just like it did those whose sense of wonder first brought them through the passes from the stuffed-up East, ever forgot the hard times in 1931, nobody. Not the coal bosses, actually coal boss since every little black-hearted patch belonged to Mister Peabody and company, who that year shut down the mines rather than accept the union, the “red union,” National Miner-Workers Union ( that “red” no euphemism since the American Communist Party was in its “ultra-left period of only working in its own “red” unions rather than as a faction of larger craft or industrial union) although Mister Peabody, given a choose, would have been under the circumstances happy to work out a sweetheart deal with John L. Lewis and his United Mine Workers. But the Hazard miners were a hard-nosed lot, certainly as hard-nosed as their more well-known cousins over in Harlan County who had songs sung and soft whispered words written about their legendary activities in taking on the coal bosses. (That cousin reference no joke since in hard times, and sometimes in good times you could not get a job in the mines if you were not vouched for.) Certainly no one in the Breslin clan ever forgot the 1931 hard times since they had lost a few wounded, a couple seriously in the skirmishes around the mine shaft openings  keeping the mines closed when the bosses, and not just Mister Peabody on that score, tried to bring in “scab” labor from West Virginia or Eastern Pennsylvania to work the mines.         

Of course the Breslin clans, the various branches gathered over the generations had been in the hills and hollows of Kentucky as far back as anybody could remember. Somebody said, some Breslin “historian,” that the first Breslin had been thrown out of England back in the early part of the 19^th century for stealing sheep and told never to return under penalty of death. And so he, Ike, or Icky, nobody even the historian was not sure which was the correct name hightailed it out on the nearest ship and wound up in Baltimore before heading west, ever westward as was the habit of lots of people, the plebes shut out of the big businesses and small craft shops by those whose people had come before, had come not long after the Mayflower, back then when the seacoast fame and fortunes were already locked and there was so much land to the west that it seemed a shame to see it go to another man, or his family.

So that first Breslin headed west and settled in the hills and hollows around Hazard, raised a big family, twelve who survived childhood and over a couple of generations helped populate the area. Here was the funny part, the part that would explain why there were still Breslins in Hazard after the land had petered out, and before coal was discovered as a usable mass energy source. Some of the Breslin clan had the wanderlust like old Ike/Icky and moved on when the land went fallow. Others took after that lazy, sheep stealing stay in one place part of the Breslin gene and refused to move expecting providence, or God, or something to see them through. The coal discovery to keep families from starvation’s door  helped but that didn’t change the sluggish no account ways of those who stayed, mostly.         

No question there was a certain amount of in-breeding which didn’t help the gene pool but was to be expected when you had people living in isolated pockets, more men surviving than women after childbirth. Some of it was a certain “don’t give a damn” attitude-as long as something was on the table for supper, as long as the roof of the shack, and most of the Breslins lived in the ubiquitous shacks seen in photographs of the times by photographers like Weston and Arbus. Places, tiny places, one or two rooms, a living area, a bedroom area, no windows to speak of, not made of glass anyway maybe waxed paper, just holes on the sides to let in air, those sides of the building protected by tar paper, ditto the roof, a porch with some old pappy sitting in a rocker, a parcel of kids, half clothed, and a lifetimes worth of junk scattered around the yard. Maybe a mangy dog, maybe some poultry. Some of the problem was lack of any education, or anybody to teach them the niceties of the right way to do things. Fathers would tell their sons that they didn’t need any education to pick coal out of the ground. And for a couple of generations that worked out, nothing good, nothing but short, brutish, nasty lives but there it was.             

That was the way it was in late 1930 in the Prescott Breslin clan, the great-great grandson of that original Breslin who had gotten himself unceremoniously kicked out of England. Living from hand to mouth with eleven children to raise like weeds. Then cousin Brody Breslin, who lived over in Harlan County, and was a son from the Jerimiah Breslin branch, came to organize for the NMU, for the “reds.” Organized the Breslins, the Johnsons, the Foxes and the Bradys mostly and when Mister Peabody refused to negotiate shut the damn mines down. Closed them tight, the Breslins took casualties to prove that point. And that was a very tough year as the company almost starved everybody out. But the union held, the companies wanted the coal produced and they settled (eventually with a lot of political maneuvering which nobody ever rightly figured out the NMU later joined the Lewis UMW and came under that leadership including NMU local president Brody Breslin).       

So thereafter in the 1930s the Breslins worked the mines, mostly, mostly except when there was “too much” coal and the company stopped production for short periods to drive the price up. Young Prescott Breslin, Prescott’s youngest son (not everybody gave the first born son the father’s name down there and hence junior but the pure truth was that old Prescott and his tired-out wife couldn’t think of another name and so Prescott), in his turn at fourteen dropped out of school and went to picking coal in the mines like his forbears (remember the epitaph-“you don’t need no education to pick coal” mentioned above) in about 1933 and worked there until the war came along, until the bloody Japanese bastards attacked Pearl Harbor. Three days after, December 10, 1941, young Prescott left the mines and headed for Prestonsburg where the nearest Marine recruiting station had been hastily set up.

When his father asked him why he did such a foolish thing since there were still young Breslin mouths including sisters to be feed and since he would have been exempted from military service because there was going to be a tremendous need for coal Prescott kind of shrugged his shoulders and thought for a minute about the question. Then he answered his father this way; between fighting the Nips (Japanese) out in the Pacific and shoveling Mister Peabody’s coal he would take his changes on survival to a ripe old age with the Marines. And he never looked back with the slightest regret for doing that despite the later hardships that would dog his life including more misunderstandings with his kids than you could shake at.            

Never looked back but as Prescott was leaving to head to boot camp a few days later he thought that it had not all been bad. There were those Saturday night dances down at Fred Brown’s old red barn where anybody with any musical instrument showed up and created a band for the evening playing the old mountain music songs carried over from the old country. (Stuff that a few spirited musicologists starting with Francis Child in the 19^th century collected and made more widely known.) Dancing his head off with Sarah Brown, Priscilla Breslin, a distant cousin, and Betty Shaw. As he got older  getting high on Fred’s corn liquor, remembering how sick he got the first time drinking too fast and not remembering the motto-this was Kentucky sipping whiskey, mountain style, so sip. When he came of age getting up his liquor courage to “spark” Sarah, Priscilla and Betty in that order causing real sparks when they found out that he had had his way with each of them by shyly saying they were each the first. When he thought about that predicament he began to think maybe he would be better off taking his chances fighting the Japs on that front too. But he was a man headed out into the great big world beyond the hills and hollows of home. So he left for good never to return except right after he was discharged from the Marines to pack up his few belongings not already passed on to some other siblings.           

This is the way the younger Prescott Breslin told the story to his youngest son Josh in 1966 when they were still on civil speaking terms as he was heading out into his own world leaving in the dust Olde Saco his growing up time up in Maine. (Prescott had been stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Base before being discharged, had met and married Delores LeBlanc from Olde Saco after meeting her at a USO dance in Portland and settled into that town when he returned from that brief sojourn back home.) And this is the way Josh remembered what his father said fifty years later. Yeah, those times in 1931 sure should have been hard. Hard like his father’s fate would be later. Damn, hard times come again no more.    

FRIDAY: Stop Trump's War on Syria. Emergency protest 5pm, Park Street

FRIDAY: Stop Trump's War on Syria. Emergency protest 5pm, Park Street

Stop Trump's War on Syria

When: Friday, April 7, 2017, 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm

Where: Park Street Station • Tremont & Park Streets • Boston

On Thursday night, Donald Trump attacked Syria with over 50 Tomahawk missiles. We don’t know who caused the chemical attack in Idlib province, but U.S. bombs will not help the situation. The Syrian civil war must be solved by diplomacy, not more bombs.

A new U.S. war against Syria’s government is not the answer to the catastrophic Syrian civil war.

Whoever is responsible for the recent use of chemical weapons, a war against a sovereign country is certainly not the answer. As we learned in Iraq, once started there is no telling where such a war will go and what impact it might have. The Iraq war gave us ISIS. Who knows what this one will give us after all the triumphalism in Washington fades.

If the Assad regime used chemical weapons, it is a war crime and should be dealt with through the International Criminal Court. If the extremist militias that we and our allies support in Syria are responsible for the chemical attack, they should be brought before international tribunals.

The lives of Arab women and children are of no concern to this frightening administration in Washington. If we really want to protect the lives of tens of thousands of women and children in the Middle East, we should end our military and political support for rebels in Syria and for Saudi Arabia’s savage destruction of Yemen.

If Trump is so concerned about children being killed in gruesome ways, why is he killing so many of them in Yemen? Do we really trust Exxon’s CEO to decide who we go to war with (Syria) and whose wars we help in every way possible (Saudi Arabia)?

Trump’s war on Syria is a major breach of both international and U.S. law. Impeachment would be an appropriate response. Congress must come back into session immediately to stop this war and to debate our Syria policy.

Statement by Massachusetts Peace Action and American Friends Service Committee.  Rally also supported by United for Justice with Peace, Veterans for Peace, Massachusetts Global Action, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, ANSWER Coalition, and Democratic Socialists of America (list in formation)

Upcoming Events: 

Stop THAAD Missile Deployment in Korea: Seongju City People's Protest

Monday, April 10, 2017 - 7:00pm

Bo

From Veterans For Peace In Boston -Stop Trump's War on Syria! Emergency Rally Friday, April 7 @ 5:00 pm Park Street Station, Boston

Smedley's, please do everything you can to reach out to friends and organizations you are associated with to spread the word about this emergency rally.  

Stop Trump's War on Syria!

Emergency Rally

Friday, April 7 @ 5:00 pm

Park Street Station, Boston

On Thursday night, Donald Trump attacked Syria with over 50 Tomahawk missiles. We don’t know who caused the chemical attack in Idlib province, but U.S. bombs will not help the situation. The Syrian civil war must be solved by diplomacy, not more bombs.

A new U.S. war against Syria’s government is not the answer to the catastrophic Syrian civil war.

Whoever is responsible for the recent use of chemical weapons, a war against a sovereign country is certainly not the answer. As we learned in Iraq, once started there is no telling where such a war will go and what impact it might have. The Iraq war gave us ISIS. Who knows what this one will give us after all the triumphalism in Washington fades.

If the Assad government used chemical weapons, it is a war crime and should be dealt with through the International Criminal Court. If the extremist militias that we and our allies support in Syria are responsible for the chemical attack, they should be brought before international tribunals.

The lives of Arab women and children are of no concern to this frightening administration in Washington. If we really want to protect the lives of tens of thousands of women and children in the Middle East, we should end our military and political support for rebels in Syria and for Saudi Arabia’s savage destruction of Yemen.

If Trump is so concerned about children being killed in gruesome ways, why is he killing so many of them in Yemen? Do we really trust Exxon’s CEO to decide who we go to war with (Syria) and whose wars we help in every way possible (Saudi Arabia)?

Trump’s war on Syria is a major breach of both international and U.S. law. Impeachment would be an appropriate response. Congress must come back into session immediately to stop this war and to debate our Syria policy.

Statement by Massachusetts Peace Action and American Friends Service Committee.  Rally also supported by United for Justice with Peace, Veterans For Peace, Massachusetts Global Action, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, ANSWER Coalition, and Democratic Socialists of America (list in formation)

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In Boston-The Anti-War Resistance Begins- FRIDAY: Stop Trump's War on Syria. Emergency protest 5pm, Park Street

 FRIDAY: Stop Trump's War on Syria. Emergency protest 5pm, Park Street

 

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Charlie WelchviaAct-MA

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FRIDAY: Stop Trump's War on Syria. Emergency protest 5pm, Park Street

Stop Trump's War on Syria

*When:* Friday, April 7, 2017, 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm

*Where: Park Street Station • Tremont & Park Streets • Boston*

On Thursday night, Donald Trump attacked Syria with over 50 Tomahawk
missiles. We don’t know who caused the chemical attack in Idlib
province, but U.S. bombs will not help the situation. The Syrian civil
war must be solved by diplomacy, not more bombs.

A new U.S. war against Syria’s government is not the answer to the
catastrophic Syrian civil war.

Whoever is responsible for the recent use of chemical weapons, a war
against a sovereign country is certainly not the answer. As we learned
in Iraq, once started there is no telling where such a war will go and
what impact it might have. The Iraq war gave us ISIS. Who knows what
this one will give us after all the triumphalism in Washington fades.

If the Assad regime used chemical weapons, it is a war crime and should
be dealt with through the International Criminal Court. If the extremist
militias that we and our allies support in Syria are responsible for the
chemical attack, they should be brought before international tribunals.

The lives of Arab women and children are of no concern to this
frightening administration in Washington. If we really want to protect
the lives of tens of thousands of women and children in the Middle East,
we should end our military and political support for rebels in Syria and
for Saudi Arabia’s savage destruction of Yemen.

If Trump is so concerned about children being killed in gruesome ways,
why is he killing so many of them in Yemen? Do we really trust Exxon’s
CEO to decide who we go to war with (Syria) and whose wars we help in
every way possible (Saudi Arabia)?

Trump’s war on Syria is a major breach of both international and U.S.
law. Impeachment would be an appropriate response. Congress must come
back into session immediately to stop this war and to debate our Syria
policy.

Statement by Massachusetts Peace Action and American Friends Service
Committee. Rally also supported by United for Justice with Peace,
Veterans for Peace, Massachusetts Global Action, Women’s International
League for Peace and Freedom, ANSWER Coalition, and Democratic
Socialists of America (list in formation)

Upcoming Events:

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In Boston-4/13 Passage at St. Augustine: Film Screening Rescheduled

4/13 Passage at St. Augustine: Film Screening Rescheduled

 

4:25 PM

Charlie WelchviaAct-MA

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Passage at St. Augustine: Film Screening and Discussion with filmmaker

Clennon L. King, Civil Rights Veteran Mimi Jones who is featured in the
film.

*Long before there was a Black Lives Matter Movement in places like
Cleveland, Ferguson and Baltimore, there were black activists in the
tourist town of St. Augustine, Florida.

*The award-winning documentary Passage at St. Augustine tells their
story, and establishes St. Augustine as the most violent Civil Rights
campaign of the entire Movement. Viewers enter a time machine and are
transported to the 'Nation's Oldest City' to hear first-hand from those
who fought the 18-month battle that led directly to the passage of the
landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

*With brief introductory remarks, documentary filmmaker Clennon L. King
segues into facilitating a larger conversation on race and history in
America, rounding out the program with a spirited question and answer
session with Civil Rights veteran Mimi Jones, featured in the film.

*THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2017, 6 – 7:30 P.M.
*

*Where Dudley Branch of the Boston Public Library
65 Warren Street
Boston MA 02116
Location Dudley
Neighborhood Roxbury
Type of Event Film, Talks & Lectures
Cost Free
Audience Teens (Ages 13-18), Young Adults (Ages 20-34), Adults, College
Students, Seniors, Families, Businesses, Visitors
Link *

**

*Passage At St. Augustine - Film & Discussion Program On Race & History
- Documentary Screening & Discussion Program*
<https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.passageatstaugustine.com%2F&h=ATNf-D6rjHf7DJyp0QwnPvWeNCR8NYMFpi_EaMdKjO7DLu6MilSY7HBCkzXkMpQ5KGBU8ncu4GgUI3orGXYqIhTD8l6-iy6l5-QnUoVNLsMdqctt3uqF7TVrgR0Bysl3qHRBRO92rA&enc=AZPFrxv5qBRy4hEKTqp76cbyhTkn1_zD8B5zpARO0Mlu1iVGguXzKu37m6s2dhtK6gTrC5eCYQbl2-QiqXPY_7xE_kQ_myQfm7jhPanfMx7cdYdNrV69_xftn3B84ekZQTxcENOOu5VAYs0ugqHKXIu_3hIXWfiYKyl8vj0yctxmSkEkj3c4nplX-53jaeOfdAQ&s=1>**

*Learn more about the award-winning film 'Passage at St. Augustine,' the
documentary screening & discussion program on race.*

*PASSAGEATSTAUGUSTINE.COM*

**

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An Encore- Coming Of Age, Political Age, In The 1960s Night- A Baptism Of Fire-Making War On The War-Makers

An Encore- Coming Of Age, Political Age, In The 1960s Night- A Baptism Of Fire-Making War On The War-Makers

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He was scared. All of fourteen year old Peter Paul Markin’s body was scared. Of course he knew, knew just as well as anybody else, if anybody thought to ask, that he was really afraid not scared, but Peter Paul was scared anyway. No, not scared (or afraid for the literary correct types), not Frannie De Angelo demon neighborhood tough boy, schoolboy nemesis scared, scared that he would be kicked in the groin, bent over to the ground in pain for no reason, no reason except Frannie deep psycho hard boy reasons known only to himself. Markin was used to that kind of scared, not liking it, not liking getting used to it but he was not tough, not even close although he was wiry, but not Franny heavyweight tough, but used to it. And this certainly was not his usual girl scared-ness on the off chance that one, one girl that is, might say something to him and he would have no “cool” rejoinder. (Yes, girls scared him, not Franny scared but no social graces scared, except in the comfortable confines of a classroom where he could show off with his knowledge of two thousand arcane facts that he thought would impress them but no avail then, later he would be swarmed, well, maybe not swarmed but he didn’t have to spend many lonely weekend nights studying to get to three thousand arcane facts) This was different. This, and his handkerchief-dabbed wet palms and forehead did not lie, was an unknown scared.

See, Peter Paul had taken a bet, a “put your money where your mouth is" bet, from best freshman high school friend Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, if you want to know the full name. Now these guys had previously bet on everything under the sun since middle school, practically, from sports game spreads, you know Ohio State by ten over Michigan stuff like that, to how high the master pizza man and owner at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, Tonio, would throw his pizza dough one strange night when Frankie needed dough (money dough that is) for his hot date with girlfriend Joanne. So no bet was too strange for this pair, although this proposition was probably way too solemn to be bet on.


What got it started, the need for a bet started, this time, really had to do with school, or maybe better, the world situation in 1960. Peter Paul, a bundle of two thousand facts that he guarded like a king’s ransom, went off the deep end in 9th grade Civics class when he, during a current events discussion, exploded upon his fellow classmates with the observation that there were too many missiles, too many nuclear bomb-loaded guided missiles, in the world and that both sides in the Cold War (The United States and the Soviet Union and their respective hangers-on) should “ban the bomb.” But you have not heard the most provocative part yet, Peter Paul then argued that, as a good-will gesture and having more of them, the United States should destroy a few of its own. Unilaterally.

Pandemonium ensued as smarts guys and gals, simps and stups also, even those who never uttered a word in class, took aim at Peter Paul’s head. The least of it was that he was called a “commie” and a "dupe" and the discussion degenerated from there. Mr. Merck was barely able to contain the class, and nobody usually stepped out line in his class, or else. Somehow order was restored by the end of class and within a few days the class was back to normal, smart guys and girls chirping away with all kinds of flutter answers and the simps and stups, well the simp and stups did their simp and stup thing, as always.

Frankie always maintained that that particular day was one of the few that he wasn’t, and he really wasn’t, glad that Peter Paul was his friend. And during that class discussion he made a point, a big point, of not entering the fray in defense of his misbegotten friend. He thought Peter Paul was off the wall, way off the wall, on this one and let him know it after class. Of course, Peter Paul could not leave well enough alone and started badgering friend Frankie about it some more. But this was stone wall time because Frankie, irreverent, most of the time irreligious, and usually just happy to be girl-smitten in the world, and doing stuff about that, and not worried about its larger problems really believed, like the hard Roman Catholic-bred boy that he was underneath, that the evil Soviet Union should be nuclear fizzled-that very day.

But Peter Paul kept egging the situation on. And here is the problem with a purist, a fourteen year old purist, a wet behind the ears fourteen year old purist when you think about it. Peter Paul was as Roman Catholic-bred underneath as Frankie but with this not so slight difference. Peter Paul’s grandmother, Anna, was, and everybody who came in contact with her agreed, a saint. A saint in the true-believer catholic social gospel sense and who was a fervent admirer of Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker for social justice movement started in the 1930s. So frequently The Catholic Worker, the movement newspaper, would be lying around her house. And just as frequently Peter Paul, taking grandmother refuge from the hell-bend storms at his own house, would read the articles. And in almost every issue there would be an article bemoaning the incredible increase in nuclear weapons by both sides, the cold war freeze-out that escalated that spiral and the hard fact that the tipping point beyond no return was right around the corner. And something had to be done about it, and fast, by rational people who did not want the world blown up by someone’s ill-tempered whim. Yah, heady stuff, no question, but just the kind of thing that a certain fourteen year old boy could add to his collection of now two thousand plus facts.

Heady stuff, yah, but also stuff that carried some contradictions. Not in grandmother Anna, not in Dorothy Day so much as in Peter Paul and through him Frankie. See, the Catholic Worker movement had no truck, not known truck, anyway with “commies" and "dupes”, although that movement too, more than once, and by fellow Catholics too, was tarred with that brush. They were as fervent in their denunciation of the atheistic Soviet Union as any 1950s red-baiter. But they also saw that that stance alone was not going to make the world safer for believers, or anybody else. And that tension between the two strands is where Frankie and Peter Paul kind of got mixed up in the world’s affairs. Especially when Peter Paul said that the Catholic Worker had an announcement in their last issue that in October (1960) they were going to help sponsor an anti-nuclear proliferation rally on the Boston Common as part of a group called SANE two weeks before the presidential elections.

Frankie took that information as manna from heaven. See, Frankie was just as interested in knowing two thousand facts in this world as Peter Paul. Except Frankie didn’t guard them like a king’s ransom but rather used them, and then discarded them like a tissue. And old Frankie, even then, even in 1960 starting to spread his wings as the corner boy king of the North Adamsville high school class of 1964, knew how to use his stockpile of facts better than Peter Paul ever could. So one night, one fiercely debated night, when Frankie could take no more, he said “bet.” And he bet that Peter Paul would not have the courage to travel from North Adamsville to Park Street Station in Boston to attend that SANE rally by himself (who else would go from old working- class, patriotic, red-scare scared, North Adamsville anyway). And as is the nature of fourteen year old boy relationships, or was, failure to take the bet, whatever bet was social suicide. “Bet,” said Peter Paul quickly before too much thinking time would elapse and destroy the fact of the bet marred by the hint of hesitation.

But nothing is ever just one thing in this wicked old world. Peter Paul believed, believed fervently, in the social message of the Catholic Worker movement especially on this nuclear war issue. But this was also 1960 and Irish Jack Kennedy was running, and running hard, to be President of the United States against bad man Richard Milhous Nixon and Peter Paul was crazy for Jack (really for younger brother, Bobby, the ruthless organizer behind the throne which is the way he saw his own future as a political operative). And, of course, October in election year presidential politics is crunch time, a time to be out hustling votes, out on Saturday hustling votes, especially every Irish vote, every Catholic vote, hell, every youth vote for your man.

On top of that Jack, old Irish Jack Kennedy, war hero, good-looking guy with a good-looking wife (not Irish though not as far as anyone could tell), rich as hell, was trying to out-Cold War Nixon, a Cold War warrior of the first degree. And the way he was trying to outgun Nixon was by haranguing everyone who would listen that there was a “missile gap,” and the United was falling behind. And when one talked about a missile gap in 1960 that only meant one thing, only brooked only one solution- order up more, many more, nuclear-bomb loaded guided missiles. So there it was, one of the little quirks of life, of political life. So, Peter Paul, all fourteen year old scared Peter Paul has to make good on his bet with Frankie but in the process put a crimp into his hoped-for political career. And just for that one moment, although with some hesitation, he decided to be on the side of the “angels” and to go.

That Saturday, that October Saturday, was a brisk, clear autumn day and so Peter Paul decided to walk the few miles from his house in North Adamsville over the Neponset Bridge to the first MTA subway station at Fields Corner rather than take the forever Eastern Mass. bus that came by his street erratically. After crossing the bridge he passed through one of the many sections of Boston that could pass for the streets of Dublin. Except on those streets he saw many young Peter Pauls holding signs at street corners for Jack Kennedy, other passing out literature, and others talking up Jack’s name. Even as he approached the subway station he saw signs everywhere proclaiming Jack’s virtues. Hell, the nearby political hang-out Eire Pub looked like a campaign headquarters. What this whole scene did not look like to Peter Paul was a stronghold place to talk to people about an anti-nuclear weapons rally. Peter Paul got even more scared as he thought about the reception likely at the Boston Commons. He pushed on, not without a certain tentative regret, but he pushed on through the turnstile, waited for the on-coming subway to stop, got on, and had an uneventful ride to the Park Street Station, the nearest stop to the Common.

Now Park Street on any given Saturday, especially in October after the college student hordes have descended on Boston, is a madhouse of activity. College student strolling around downtown looking for goods at the shops, other are just rubber-necking, other are sunning themselves on the grass or park benches in the last late sun days before winter arrives with a fury. Beyond the mainly civilized college students (civilized on the streets in the daytime anyway) there are the perennial street people who populate any big city and who when not looking for handouts, a stray cigarette, or a stray drink are talking a mile a minute among themselves about some supposed injustice that has marred their lives and caused their unhappy decline. Lastly, and old town Boston, historic old town Boston, scene of many political battles for every cause from temperance to liberty, is defined by this, there are a motley crew of speakers, soap-box speakers whether on a real soap-box or not, who are holding forth on many subjects, although none that drew Peter Paul’s attention this day. After running that gauntlet, as he heads for the Francis Parkman Bandstand where the SANE rally was to take place he was amused by all that surrounds him putting him in a better mood, although still apprehensive of what the day will bring forth.

Arriving at the bandstand he saw about twenty people milling around with signs, hand-made signs that showed some spunk, the most prominent being a large poster-painted sign that stated boldly, “Ban The Bomb.” He is in the right place, no question. Although he is surprised that there are not more people present he is happy, secretly happy, that those twenty are there, because, frankly, he thought there might be just about two. And among that crowd he spotted a clot of people who were wearing Catholic Worker buttons so he is now more fully at ease, and was starting to be glad that he came here on this day. He went over to the clot and introduced himself and tells them how he came to be there. He also noted that one CWer wore the collar of a priest; a surprise because at Sacred Heart, his parish church, it was nothing but “fire and brimstone” from the pulpit against the heathen communist menace.

Get this-he also met a little old lady in tennis sneakers. For real. Now Frankie, devil’s advocate Frankie, baited Peter Paul in their arguments about nuclear disarmament by stating that the “peaceniks” were mainly little old ladies in tennis shoes-meaning, of course, batty and of no account, no main chance political account, no manly Jack Kennedy stand up to the Russians account. Peter Paul thought to himself wait until I see Frankie and tell him that this little old lady knew more about politics, and history, than even his two thousand facts. And was funny too boot. Moreover, and this was something that he had privately noticed, as the youngest person by far at the rally she, and later others, would make a fuss over him for that very reason talking about young bravery and courage and stuff like that.

Over the course of the two hours or so of the rally the crowd may have swelled to about fifty, especially when a dynamic black speaker from the W.E.B. Dubois club at Harvard University linked up the struggle against nuclear weapons with the black struggle down South for voting rights that those in the North had been hearing more about lately. It was not until later, much later, that Peter Paul found out that this Dubois club business was really the name of the youth group of the American Communist Party (CP) at the time but by that time he was knowledgeable enough to say “so what.” And it was not until later that he found out that the little old lady with the tennis sneakers was a CPer, although she had said at the time he talked to her she was with some committee, some women’s peace committee, within the Democratic Party. Oh, well. But then he would also be able to say “so what” to that accusation in proper “family of the left” fashion.

 

But forget all that later stuff, and what he knew or did not know later. See, that day, that October 1960 autumn day, Peter Paul learned something about serious politics. If you are on the right side of the angels on an issue, a central issue of the day, you are kindred. And although there were more than a few catcalls from the passers-by about “commies”, “dupes”, and “go back to Russia” he was glad, glad as hell that he came over. Although nothing turned inside him, noticeably turned inside him that day, about his politics and his determination to see Jack Kennedy and the Democrats take the White House he thought about those brave people at the bandstand and what they were standing for a lot for a long time after the event faded from memory. Oh yah, it was good to be on the side of the angels. And it didn’t hurt that he won that Frankie bet, either.