From Socialist Alternative-Boston Mayor Walsh - Don't punish workers and students!
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Saturday, April 08, 2017
From Socialist Alternative-Boston Mayor Walsh - Don't punish workers and students!
4/22 March for Science (Boston)-Support Scientific Research & Build The Resistance
4/22 March for Science (Boston)-Support Scientific Research & Build The Resistance
This is the Boston, MA rally being held in parallel to the Scientists
March on Washington DC. This page is simply an event page so you can get
time, date, and location updates. Please JOIN OUR GROUP for discussion,
calls to action, volunteering opportunities, and other ways to be
involved. 😊
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1283459638410385/
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/1283459638410385/>
We are working on permits to determine a venue. Stay tuned for more
updates on logistics.
We have also updated our mission statement in solidarity with the D.C.
organizers (now updated in the group's description, and included below).
We would like to again emphasize that the focus of this event is a
non-partisan support for science. While we understand that politics may
be a motivator for involvement by some participants, the core goal of
this event will continue to be the show of support for science.
Mission Statement:
The March for Science champions publicly-funded and
publicly-communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and
prosperity. We unite as a diverse, non-partisan group to call for
science that upholds the common good, and for political leaders and
policy makers to enact evidence-based policies in the public interest.
This group is inclusive of all individuals and types of science!
Sat. 12 PM - 5 PM
Boston Common
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March on Washington DC. This page is simply an event page so you can get
time, date, and location updates. Please JOIN OUR GROUP for discussion,
calls to action, volunteering opportunities, and other ways to be
involved. 😊
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1283459638410385/
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/1283459638410385/>
We are working on permits to determine a venue. Stay tuned for more
updates on logistics.
We have also updated our mission statement in solidarity with the D.C.
organizers (now updated in the group's description, and included below).
We would like to again emphasize that the focus of this event is a
non-partisan support for science. While we understand that politics may
be a motivator for involvement by some participants, the core goal of
this event will continue to be the show of support for science.
Mission Statement:
The March for Science champions publicly-funded and
publicly-communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and
prosperity. We unite as a diverse, non-partisan group to call for
science that upholds the common good, and for political leaders and
policy makers to enact evidence-based policies in the public interest.
This group is inclusive of all individuals and types of science!
Sat. 12 PM - 5 PM
Boston Common
---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
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Act-MA@act-ma.org
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In Massachusetts Support The Safe Communities Act-Don't Support Aiding ICE Immigrant Round-Ups
In Massachusetts Support The Safe Communities Act-Don't Support Aiding ICE Immigrant Round-Ups
From The Marxist Archives-Karl Liebknecht-No Unity With The Class Enemy-Build The Resistance
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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
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24 March 2017
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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.
Friday, April 07, 2017
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 20th 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 20th 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 20th 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 20th Massachusetts which had been chewed up along the way (the 20th 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 19th 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 19th 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
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:
/More Peace and Justice Events
<http://justicewithpeace.org/upcoming-events>. How to Submit Events
<http://justicewithpeace.org/posting-events>/
Newsletter:
UJP <http://justicewithpeace.org/taxonomy/term/74>
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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:
/More Peace and Justice Events
<http://justicewithpeace.org/upcoming-events>. How to Submit Events
<http://justicewithpeace.org/posting-events>/
Newsletter:
UJP <http://justicewithpeace.org/taxonomy/term/74>
Unsubscribe from this newsletter
<http://justicewithpeace.org/newsletter/confirm/remove/d743232f6f2896t74>
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This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
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