The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government

The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government

By Frank Jackman 

These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.

I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.

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The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers’ government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]

For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.

That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.

Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when classic capitalism began to become the driving economic norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.

Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.

The most unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really came with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).

Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)

So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).

America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America, are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.

Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.

[A reference back to the American Communist Party’s work in the 1920s may be informative here. As mentioned above there was some confusion, no, a lot of confusion back then about building a labor party base on workers and farmers, a two -class party. While the demands of both groups may in some cases overlap farmers, except for farm hands, are small capitalists on the land. We need a program for such potential allies, petty bourgeois allies, but their demands are subordinate to labor’s in a workers’ party program. Fast forward to today and it is entirely possible, especially in light of the recent Occupy experiences, that some vague popular frontist trans-class movement might develop like the Labor Non-Partisan League that the labor skates put forward in the 1930s as a catch basin for all kinds of political tendencies. We, of course, would work in such formations fighting for a revolutionary perspective but this is not what we advocate for now.]

Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.

And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.

“Shoot Pools ‘Fast Eddie,’ Shoot Pools”-With Paul Newman’s “The Hustler” In Mind

“Shoot Pools ‘Fast Eddie,’ Shoot Pools”-With Paul Newman’s “The Hustler” In Mind

By Lance Lawrence

“Fast Eddie” Felson was the greatest pool player to ever chalk up a stick and you had better believe that because I know from where I speak because in most quarters, among the serious followers of the game, I, Jackie “Big Man” Gleason think that title belongs to me. Maybe you never heard of “Fast Eddie,” never knew the story behind the story of how for a couple of years anyhow, maybe three he ruled the roost, he was the king of the hill. All I know is from the first moment Eddie entered Sharkey’s Pool Hall, the place where my manager, Bart, and I hustled all comers at the sport of kings, down on 12^th Avenue in the teeming city of New York I was afraid to play him. Afraid he would damage my reputation as the king of the hill. I had never played game one against him but still I sensed something in his swagger, in his bravado that made my hands shake. Shaking hands the kiss of death in our profession.               

In case you don’t know, and maybe some readers might not having decided to read my homage to “Fast Eddie” based on the “hook” that this was about Paul Newman the movie actor shooting big-time pool, hustling pool in the old days before Vegas, Atlantic City, Carson City started putting up money to have high dollar championships was about more that learning technique, having a vision of where the fucking balls would enter the pockets like your mother’s womb. A lot more. It was about having heart, about something that they would call Zen today but which we called “from hunger” in my day. Eddie’s too. That’s what Eddie had, that is what I sensed, what brought me to cold sweats when that swaggering son of a bitch came looking for me like I was somebody’s crippled up grandfather. It took a while, Eddie took his beatings before he understood what drove his art but he got it, got it so good that I left the game for a couple of years and went out West to hustler wealthy Hollywood moguls who loved the idea of “beating” “Big Man” Gleason at ten thousand a showing.             

But forget about me and my troubles once Fast Eddie came through that long ago door after all this is about how the best man who ever handled a stick got to earn that title in my book. Like a lot of guys after the war, after World War II, after seeing the world in one way Eddie was ready to ditch his old life, was ready to take some chances and say “fuck you” to the nine to five world that would be death to a free spirit like him (that “free spirit” would put a few daggers in his heart before he was done but that is for later). Eddie, against my doughty frame, my big man languid frame, was a rangy kid, kind of tall, wiry, good built and Hollywood bedroom eyes like, well, like Paul Newman when he was a matinee idol making all the women, girls too, wet. Strictly “from hunger” just like in my time, the Great Depression, I had been the same before I left Minnesota for the great big lights of the city and “action.” Like I said raw and untamed but I could tell that very first time he put the stick to the green clothe he had the magic, had that something that cannot be learned but only come to the saints and those headed for the sky.           

So Eddie came in with a few thousand ready to take on the “Big Man.” While I feared this young pup I sensed that I could teach him a lesson, maybe a lesson that would hold him in good stead, maybe not, but which would at least give me enough breathing room to figure out what I would do when Eddie claimed his crown. His first mistake, a rookie error that I myself had committed was not having a partner, a manager to rein him in, to hold him back in tough times. He had some old rum dum, Charley, Billy, something like that, who cares except this rum dum was a timid bastard who couldn’t hold up his end. His end being strictly to estimate his opponent and rein the kid in when he was off his game like we all get sometimes. Me, like I said after I wised up, teamed up with Bart, Bart who knew exactly who and who was not a “loser” and who didn’t lose my money by making bad matches or bad side bets (those side bets were the cushion money that got us through hard times and many times were more than whatever we won at straight up games).      

All I am saying is that this kid’s manager did Fast Eddie wrong, let him go wild that first night when he was all gassed up to beat the Big Man. You already know that I whipped his ass or you haven’t been paying close enough attention. But that was all a ruse like I said, all kid bravado and swagger added in so it was like taking candy from a baby that first night. But I knew I was beat, beat bad in a straight up contest. What saved me that night was two things, no three. First, Fast Eddie like lots of kids figured that he could beat an old man with his hands tied behind his back and so he started his “victory lap” drinking, drinking hard high-end scotch even before the match had started. Second, he was cocky enough to declare that the only way to determine the winner was who cried “uncle” first (Bart smiled and whispered “loser” in my ear at hearing that). Third and last he had picked up this broad, some boozer and maybe a hooker named, Sandy, Susie, no, Sarah whom he was trying to impress somehow. She looked like a lost kitten but I didn’t give a damn about that just that Fast Eddie’s mind would be half on getting her down under the sheets, maybe had dreams of getting a blow job for his efforts she looked the type who was into some kinky stuff just for kicks. At least that was the way it looked at the time. As I will tell you later it was very different and I was totally wrong about the dame.          

It took almost twenty-eight hours in that dark dank smelly booze-strewn Sharkey pool hall which looked like something out of the movies’ idea of what a low rent pool hall should look like complete with low-lifes but eventually between the booze, the bravado, and the broad I took Eddie down, left him about two hundred bucks “walking around” money. Left him to cry “uncle.” Cry it for the last time. Between grabbing Fast Eddie’s money and the side bets Bart made I, we were able to lay off for a couple of months (usually after a big score that was standard practice since the one-time suckers who want to brag to the hometown folks that they played hard and fast with the Big Man and almost won scatter to the winds for a while before they inevitably come back for their well-deserved beatings). Bart said, no crowed, that he had had Fast Eddie’s number, a “loser.” Was another gone guy, forget him.  But I had seen some moves, some moves especially before the booze got the better of the kid that I could only dream of trying without looking like a rube.         

This part of the story coming up I pieced together from what Bart told me, what Sharkey had heard, and what little Fast Eddie let on when he came back at me in earnest, in that Zen state or whatever the fuck you want to call it when a guy is “walking with the king.” Eddie went into “hiding,” went licking his wounds, which in the pool world meant that he was trying to put a stake together hustling at pool halls in bowling alleys, places like that where the rubes are dying to lose a fin or double sawbuck and not cry about it. A player at the kid’s level though would have a hard time of making much scratch with the carnival-wheelers so unbeknownst to me Eddie got in touch with Bart who staked him to some dough for a big cut of the proceedings. They made money, a fair amount, but Bart, at least this is what he told me later after I pistol-whipped him before I left for Hollywood and the big beautiful suckers there figured that would just come back to me in the end because Bart still had the kid down as a loser, a big bad loser.         

This part is murkier still. Along the way on this trip that Bart and Fast Eddie took to fleece the rubes this Sarah started to get religion, started wanted to settle down with Eddie, make Eddie settle down. After I had beaten him when he was laying low he moved in with her, they got along okay until Eddie connected with Bart whom Sarah definitely did not like, I guess she was off the bottle for a while but started in again once she saw that Eddie wouldn’t give up his dream, his dream of beating the Big Man. This part is even murkier but one night Eddie was hustling some Bourbon king and Bart and Sarah were left behind to drink the night away. Somehow Bart, who except when negotiating bets and matches was a pretty smooth talker, conned Sarah who was miffed at Eddie like I said into bed. Got her to either take him around the world or let him take her anally (or he forced the issue figuring she was just a bent whore anyway he had odd sexual desires from what I was able to figure out after a few years with him). The boozy haze, the rough sex, being unfaithful to Eddie, maybe her whole fucking life marching before her left her with who knows what angry feelings. In any case that night before Eddie got home she had slit her wrists.     

This last part is not murky, not murky at all. After beating the hell out of Bart he took the bus back to New York and one night he came through Sharkey’s door and I knew I was roasted (Bart had telegrammed about what had happened and told me that he would put up fifty thousand dollars against Fast Eddie’s luck). I had no choice but to play the play out. After Fast Eddie took that fifty thousand and another twenty-five that I had put up I cried “uncle.” Cried uncle and left for Hollywood and the bright lights. Left Fast Eddie to play out his string, left Eddie to “shoot pools, ‘Fast Eddie’, shoot pools.”     

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-In The Time Of The Be-Bop Baby Boom Jail Break-Out-The Cats Are Still Rocking

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-In The Time Of The Be-Bop Baby Boom Jail Break-Out-The Cats Are Still Rocking 

A YouTube film clip of the Falcons performing You're So Fine.

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Everybody knew, everybody who got within fifty feet of him, distance enough for him to bellow out some 1950s song, knew that Jimmy Jenkins had been on some kind of childhood nostalgia kick back in 2012 when he went wild or as he said more soberly at the time, “I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in an extensive commercial Rock ‘n’ Roll series and have kicked out the jams doing that deed.” Done so for a purpose to be described now. Well, hell, you already know if you knew Jimmy back in the day, back when that rock and roll music was just coming off the presses as fast a discretionary spending teenagers could get their hands on the latest be all and end all number, or like I did when I met him about twenty years ago when he was married to my sister Jenny, his third and hers to so there was no crying about what to expect, or not expect out of that institution, that it had to be about some woman.

A lot of the nostalgia gag, given that Jimmy had just turned seventy at the time, and frankly should have been past such childish things had been a result of running into Melinda Loring, an old classmate and one time dream flame in high school, Hampton Falls High up in New Hampshire, although nothing had come of it then. Nothing had come of it after he, having been properly warned off after inquiring of some guys at school about whether she had a boyfriend or not, important information to avoid the fatal faux pas of making a “move” on somebody who was “taken” that she was “unapproachable,” had moved on. There are books that could be written, and maybe they have already, about the subtle and not so subtle codes in that old time mating ritual but I think Jimmy had it about right to move on rather than test the waters and become the tittle at some Monday morning before school girls’ locker room talkfest where such an indiscretion would have been the kiss of death for him for the rest of his high school time. See too Melinda confirmed that information when he ran into her at some class reunion thing or I think he said it was the class celebrating all those who had survived three score and ten having gained some wisdom from two broken marriages. Get this though and you may not find it in any code book but maybe just the book of getting on in life she said that she was not “unapproachable” to Jimmy now.

And so they had had a short affair, a few month thing not exactly fling but not exactly forever, an affair that just didn’t have the will power to survive on both parts, her with her incessant need to plan in detail their every move for the next three years and he by an incessant need after his own three failed marriages to keep running away from the serious commitment that she craved. However during the high life of the affair Jimmy felt that he needed to go back and retrace their musical times, felt as was his wont that he had to trace every blessed song (and bellow them out as well) from their youth in order to impress her with his sincerity. See that was his style, his way to work the woman scene back then and it worked, worked on girls who were as nerdy as him but not genuine foxes like Melinda (and looking at an old high school yearbook photograph, no, not the silly class picture where everybody looked like they had just done five to ten for armed robbery at the state pen, even the girls, but one of her as an officer some club, the Glee Club I think, confirms that “fox” designation).

And so the affair, or whatever it was in each of their minds, might not have lasted but his CD review work has a certain lasting quality that he insisted that I read. See I knew guys like Jimmy in high school, nerdy guys who had to know every blessed thing about some subject or they felt stupid or incomplete but you had better as your shrink about that, and being the same age roughly knew the music (unlike my sister Jenny who was ten years younger and so knew “acid rock” and later stuff) and so I became something of a sounding board as he “discovered” each new selection. Oh yeah, and in case you don’t remember I would have been a guy who warned Jimmy off of Melinda back in the day, and that little affair they had as well except I was in California then, and so he said I “owed” him. In the interest of full disclosure, and Jimmy knows this opinion of mine so I am not telling tales out of school. See I too was a guy who was interested in a girl, Diana Nelson, and another classmate had warned me off her as “unapproachable” except I did not move on and faced a few Monday morning before school girls’ locker room bashings (again showing how important intelligence is to have before making some fatal blushing move).       

Jimmy told me a lot of his reviews had been driven by the artwork which graced the covers of each CD, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may, to the themes of those artwork scenes. The series basically went from about 1955 to 1965 the time now called the age of classic rock and roll. One year, the year I want to hone in on, 1959, Jimmy found the artwork a case of the latter, of the not fitting in.

He said (actually he showed me the cover after he described the thing since I just had to see it) on this cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time when we had least at the feel of our generational breakout), two blondish surfer guys, surf boards in tow, were checking out the scene. A term back then, maybe now too, meaning only one thing in summer, hell, in any season, meaning checking out the frails (a localism that got started as far as Jimmy knew by his corner boy, Frankie Kelly, who had about twenty different names for girls, so many that he and the other corner boys could not keep up).

The two blonde surfers, although not all male surfers were blonde even though I think all their girlfriends were out there in sunny California, were just the front. Just the frosting, okay. The important scene although not pictured (except a little background fluff to inform you that you are at the beach, the summer youth beach and no other, the place where oldsters, even old hipsters in the black night le tout for a day of sun are not welcome here, and certainly not the tortuous family beach scene with its lotions, luggage, lawn chairs, and tacky hot dogs and tepid hamburgers, longings, longings to be elsewhere in early teen brains), can only mean checking out the babes, girls, chicks, or whatever you called them in that primitive time before we called them sister, and woman. No question that this whole scene is nothing but a California come hinter scene. One thinks ahead to warm night breezes and souped-up cars traveling the boulevard (also not pictured) looking, and looking hard like we all did, and not just in cool breeze California for the heart of Saturday night.

No way that it has the look of Eastern pale-face beaches, family or youth. This is nothing but early days California dreamin’ cool hot days and cooler hot nights with those dreamed bikini girls. These surfers, if that is what they are calling themselves are, no question “beach bums,” inventing themselves in classic Hollywood-driven California  style, little did we know in the frigid East unless we had relatives or friends there that whole sub-cultures, or what would be called sub-cultures by the hoary academics who wanted to explain everything, of surfers, hot-rodders, outlaw bikers valley boys, and later girls, out there waiting for the winds to blow eastward. No way that they are serious surfer guys, certainly not Tom Wolfe’s Pump House LaJolla gang where those surfers lived for the perfect wave, and nothing else better get in the way. For such activity though for avoiding becoming a prune waiting on those perfect waves needed rubberized surf suits complete with all necessary gear. In short these guys are “faux” surfers. Whether that was enough to draw the attention of those shes they are checking out Jimmy said he would leave to the reader’s imagination.

And what caused Jimmy not to fit into that scene other that the fact that he was not blonde, had not known until he actually when out there in the mid-1960s that surfers as a culture even existed, and as we know had been rebuffed before he started by a fetching girl who probably, no definitely, in summer was one of those bikini-clad frails. Eastern version. Believe it or not Jimmy was afraid, or at least half afraid, of the ocean even though he had grown up (as had I) a stone’s throw from the ocean all his growing up times. I had actually gone many times to the beach with him when he was married to Jenny (and we were talking not always coterminous) and had forgotten that I had never seen him go in the water. There was a reason for him not going into the water, although he said that he would go in when the spirit moved him or he was hot, just not over his head.

Reason: when Jimmy was about eight or nine he had almost drowned when he lived on the other side of town, down at the treacherous Snug Harbor Beach. That summer shortly after school got out he had been out swimming on a decent day, not a threatening day at all, and had lazily drifted out with the tide. While there he grabbed on to a floating log, a telephone pole, and drifted some more until he realized that he was pretty far out for a kid who was not a good swimmer. Typical kid’s move though as he started back for shore he let go of the log as he swan back. Swimming for a while and getting tired he knew he could not make it back and started to go down. Somehow his older brother, Sam, saw what was happening and called for help to the swimming instructor who was stationed at the beach that day. She went out and saved him before he went down for the third time. When she got him ashore and revived him he thanked her an scurried off totally embarrassed. And also made his brother swear not to tell their mother. So that was why he was cold to that 1959 cover art. Why he could not relate to the surfers, beach bums or whatever they were trying to pull off. 

Oh yeah, get this, the woman who saved him was Melinda Loring’s mother and Melinda had been on the beach that day sitting with her mother since she was too young to be left at home. She had watched the whole episode, and vividly remembered that her mother was both shaken and elated. Shaken since Jimmy was very close to drowning and elated because she had acted coolly and saved a life, her first save. The way Jimmy found out about that connection was when he mentioned that he had gone to Snug Harbor Elementary School and Melinda thought back th the times when she would accompany her mother to the beach which was near the school.  Melinda had mentioned in an e-mail about her mother saving an eight or nine year old boy at the beach and that was that. One of the things Jimmy said to Melinda before they started dating, while they were still feeling each other out about getting together, was that they might as well get together since they had already “met.” Melinda laughed and agreed. During their short time together both thought for a while that the “meeting” at the beach when they were eight or nine meant that their thing was “written in the stars.” It was not but Jimmy said don’t blame the sea for that.             

As for the music that Jimmy was crazy for Melinda to know about, the 1959 music that backs up this cover art that didn’t quite fit well that didn’t fit either, really. As Jimmy said we were clearly in a trough as anybody who had heard the shift in musical tone on the transistor radio that provide the source of most of our music and formed our tastes knew. The golden age of rock with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, and Chuck Berry was fading, fading fast into what Jimmy said when he described the music scene back then could only be called “bubble gum” music. (Strangely or maybe not, Melinda told Jimmy she liked the Fabian -Bobby Vee – Bobby Darin-Everly Brothers stuff that dominated that year and a few years after which may have been an omen but maybe Jimmy was just exhibiting sour grapes about the affair and not a fair evaluation of what these guys were doing except they were “pretty” to the girls who grabbed their fan magazines).

Jimmy said sure he listened to it (and so did I), listened to it hard on his old transistor radio (as did I), mainly because that was all that was presented to us. It would be a while until the folk, folk rock, British invasion, and free expression rock (aka “acid” rock) engulfed us. Jimmy said the bulk of this CDs contents attested to our marking time. There were, however, some stick-outs there that have withstood the test of time. They include: La Bamba, Ritchie Valens; Dance With Me, The Drifters; You’re So Fine (great harmony),The Falcons; Tallahassee Lassie (a favorite then at the local school dances by a New England boy  who made good), Freddy Cannon; Mr. Blue (another great harmony song and the one, or one of the ones, anyway that you hoped, hoped to distraction that they would play for the last dance), The Fleetwoods; and, Lonely Teardrops, Jackie Wilson (a much underrated singer, then and now, including by this writer after not hearing that voice for a while). So that was Jimmy take on the music year 1959.

Oh yeah I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this. After a recent trip to the Southern California coast I can inform you that those two faux surfer guys are still out there and still checking out the scene. Although that scene for them now is solely the eternal search for the perfect wave complete with full rubberized suit and gear. Forget the girls part.  Moreover their days as cover art material have taken a turn for the worst, No artist would now, or at least I hope no artist would, care to rush up and draw them. For now these brothers have lost a step, or seven, lost a fair amount of that beautiful bongo blonde hair, and have added, added believe me, very definite paunches to bulge out those surfer suits all out of shape. Ah, such are the travails of the baby-boomer generation. Good luck though, brothers.

Fighting For The Brass Ring- Kate Hudson’s “Almost Famous” (2000)- A Film Review

Fighting For The Brass Ring- Kate Hudson’s “Almost Famous” (2000)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Alden Riley

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up here a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackman (using the moniker Peter Paul Markin in honor of fallen comrade from high school days) some organizational norms have changed. That vote was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, and in the aftermath the habit of previous site manager of assigning writers to specific topics like film,  books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

Almost Famous, starring Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Patrick Fugit some of the story is based on real events in the young life of director Cameron Crowe, 2000  

[If any reader has read the announcement from the Editorial Board below my name above or has been following the developing situation around the change in leadership at this site they know that there has been a certain amount of fall-out around the question of whether the old site administrator, Peter Paul Markin (not his real name but a moniker he has used for the past decade of more of his leadership I will get to a bit later in this introduction) had retired or been purged. The “official” stance is that he has retired to parts unknown making that “purge” rumor only stick faster especially among the older writers, Markin’s contemporaries from the 1960s, their growing up and coming of age days which was, is, one of the issues which caused Markin’s tumble from grace. This “disappearance” a stinging remind to those guys who graphically remember the Cold War Stalinist habit of sending deposed opponents out to Siberia some place for “rest” or from their own personal experiences in the latter part of the 1960s, toward the ebb part, when among radicals the “politically incorrect” of that time were banished never to be heard from again although that was more shunning that sending them to outer Utah or someplace like that.

In an attempt to clear the air and give the readership a better understanding about what has happened over the past several months to cause the shake-up the new site administrator, Greg Green, who held a similar position at the American Film Gazette and who I knew there from the time I worked as a stringer, has allowed us free reign to tell our take on what has happened and why after Markin was deposed when he lost a vote of no confidence among the collection of writers who write for this site. In the interest of transparency I was among the “Young Turks” who led the revolt and was also a key person in bringing Greg into the fold. 

Others like my former “boss” Sandy Salmon whom I also knew at the Gazette and who brought me in to be his associate film critic after he replaced the now retired Sam Lowell another key “coup” member have given their take so I will not burden the reader with too much detail about the actual events which led up to Markin’s ouster except to broadly outline what triggered everything. (That “former boss” reference reflects as noted above the new policy of only using surnames to identify writers in an effort by Greg to break down the barriers between younger and older writers.) 

A few years ago Markin, in what at the time seemed like a good move to “pass the torch” according to the older writers who had been with him for a long time (and some whom he had known from his hometown growing up days or from his wild and wooly 1960s hippie days) and widen what was increasingly a nostalgia trip tied to the turbulent 1960s experiences which formed most of their worldviews brought in some younger writers. (Don’t make as much out of the “younger writers” designation since most of us are pushing fifty very gingerly and the only really younger writers, twenty somethings, were free-lance stringers.) That perspective was honored more in the breech that the observance as increasing the younger writers were assigned projects relating to that same period, that turbulent 1960s era,  which for the most part were not events that we were that familiar with or gave a fuck about. So some of this stuff had been simmering for a while, for a couple of years anyway.

This summer, the summer of 2017, everything came to a head when Markin after being coaxed by his old growing up neighborhood friends and a couple of the older writers whom I will not name since they have survived the tumult just as they had survived every regime change when they were younger and into radical politics he “force marched” everybody into writing about the Summer of Love, 1967 after an old friend Alex, Zack James’ brother, told him about how San Francisco was commemorating the 50^th anniversary of that experience. That started the mad rush. Someone called those older turncoat writers who should be handled in the same manner as deadly snakes as ready to change their principles with the new wind blowing as their shirts and that seems about right. They had no trouble leaving Markin in the lurch wherever he is and moving on without a ripple. Whatever they thought of the project everybody was forced to reference some aspect of the 1960s fun and foolishness whatever they were writing about even if it was not germane to their subject or whether they gave a damn about it.

I will give my personal “awakening” which led me to join the “Young Turks,” join with a vengeance if you must know. Sandy to appease Markin had taken it upon himself to write a film review of the well-known documentary by D.A. Pennebaker on the first Monterey Pops Festival also held in fateful 1967 which is where the big belting blues singer from Texas Janis Joplin made her big breakthrough to stardom. As was his wont during the few years I have known him (he worked at American Film Gazette when I was a stringer there but I did not know him since I was a stringer and would submit my articles via FedEx or later e-mail attachments) he mentioned how well the documentary had held up unlike many others from that time and how Janis “stole the show.” That is when I made what would be my fatal error and told him that I did not know who Janis Joplin was. He laughed and let it pass.

Somehow though Markin got wind of the fact of my ignorance and “ordered” over Sandy’s head and without his knowledge me to “do penance” (Markin’s words) by reviewing a bio/pic on Janis entitled Little Girl Blues. If that sleigh-of-hand was not enough Markin almost went apoplectic when I mentioned in some detail that after my viewing of the Pennebaker documentary for my article that I thought that Otis Redding equally “stole the show” that year. Since this year is also the 50^th anniversary of his death and of his signature song Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay released shortly before his death I gave that perspective amble space in the piece. Markin red-pencilled most of it and in a rage told me (in front) of several senior writers that while he appreciated Redding’s contribution to soulful music the piece was supposed to be a homage to Joplin’s effect on he and his growing up hometown friends who went West partially to see the “acid” rock scene emerging in the Bay Area during that decisive year.

I nursed my “wounds” over that slight and frankly Markn’s misjudgment about not putting Redding in the picture as part of the turbulent and fateful 1960s mix from the perspective of a guy who was looking at the times from the outside, a guy who didn’t go weak-kneed any time the number 60 came up. Then Sandy, who was, is, roughly Markin’s, wherever he is, contemporary and who knew his close growing up hometown friend Sam Lowell from their Gazette days and who brought Sandy in when he, Sam, decided to retire, in early September assigned me the review below, Almost Famous. Like others have said the original intent of this site was to cover all aspects of the American political, social and cultural history through commentary about events, movements, books, films, music and the like.

But when Sandy went to check with Markin on assignment and told him I was expected to do this review he again went apoplectic not against me personally, I don’t think, but about the idea that a review of music and the trials and tribulations of bands getting a leg up not from the 1960s, the subject of the film, was being covered. That heavy-handed maneuver along with other smoldering grievances led to the “Young Turks” uprising. Led me to join in if for no other reason that while I appreciated what Markin and the others had done in the 1960s I didn’t want to be trapped in a time machine stuck in that era.  So until Markin was “deposed,” sent to Siberia, or whatever happened to him after that vote of no confidence this review was put on hold. Now it can see the light of day.

********

I assume that director Cameron Crowe had a field day directing this little gem of a film Almost Famous about the coming of age of a teenage rock journalist based on his own rock journal experiences and the trials and tribulations of a band, a set of personalities and varying degrees of musical showmanship, trying to break out of the garage or wherever they hung out and practiced. This film had a special appeal to me since it featured an up and coming rock group that was situated in the thick of the 1970s and 1980s a time when I came of musical age, the Peter Frampton, Heart, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the “heavy metal” rock scene.

Young musical beat writer whiz kid William Miller (the character based in part on director Crowe’s youthful experiences), played by Patrick Fugit, is adrift in the world, a world where he doesn’t fit in except he has an ear for music and a big steady hand to write with (in the days when a pencil and notebook of not blessed memory were the tools of the writing trade). He works his way, despite his over-bearing mother’s attempts to thwart him at every turn from beginning to end it seemed, into the scene, the 1970s music scene of blessed memory by getting a free-lance assignment to review a Black Sabbath concert for Rolling Stone magazine despite his tender age of fifteen. Although that famous rock group does not play into the story the fictional front group band, the Stillwaters, led by William Hammond, played by Bill Crudup, does as he latches onto the idea of promoting them as the next big thing in heavy metal rock.

Two things aid him in getting on the inside of this group’s network. First Hammond liked him, likes the young kid although that relationship would have its fair share of ups and downs when the mercurial Hammond questions William’s motives and what he expected to get out of the whole thing. Then William along the way meets what is inevitable in rock circles, maybe all musical circles, the lead “groupie” Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson, who befriends him and gets him the inside track on the group. Gets him a seat on the touring bus with Stillwater as they claw their way to what they hope will be the brass ring-that coveted cover on Rolling Stone which in those days if not now signified that you had arrived. William was there at the creation to chronicle all of that. Naturally along the way he has all the coming of age experiences of friendship, betrayal, misunderstandings, fun and frolic, and losing that virginity his mother fretted about when he went on the road. Not the best story line on the emergence of a rock group but very well done, very well done indeed. (And now I can say not about a rock group emerging from the pack in the 1950s and early 1960s age of what is name classical rock, praise be.)                                                    

Free Reality Leigh Winner-Billie Winner-Davis breaks her silence & issues a call to action!

Courage to Resist

2/21/2018 4:52 PM

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Billie Winner-Davis breaks her silence  "Reality Winner’s mom is tired of keeping her own counsel while the federal government brands her 26-year-old daughter a spy . . . To me, this is not how the American justice system is supposed to operate,” continued Winner-Davis, who was employed for 26 years with Texas Child Protective Services. “I want people to really pay attention. I want the courts to know people are watching. I don’t want them to feel like they can do whatever they want to her.”  -Read full article here- (Photo: R. Robin McDonald/ALM) Have you heard? Billie has issued a call-to-action for supporters to attend the pre-trial hearing on February 27th! - Can you attend the pre-trial hearing in Augusta, Georgia next week? We want to show Reality the public support she has as well as let Mom know that we have her back.  - Can you attend our virtual rally on the day of the hearing? Help us whip up a storm of attention & awareness on facebook, twitter and enjoy live updates & interviews. - Stay tuned to your email inbox. We'll be sending out several emails in the coming week with all the info, resources & ways for you to really show up for Reality! CALL TO ACTION: Attend the pre-trial hearing in GA on 2/27 Attend our online event anytime on 2/27 and help us raise a storm of support for Reality!  Join our Facebook event now! (click here)

FRIENDS OF REALITY WINNER ~ PATRIOT & ALLEGED WHISTLEBLOWER c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610 ~ 510-488-3559 standwithreality.org @standbyreality (on twitter)  Friends of Reality Winner (on facebook)

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Free The Class-War Prisoners-Support Those Inside From Those On The Outside-Join The Committee For International Labor Defense (CILD)

Free The Class-War Prisoners-Support Those Inside From Those On The Outside-Join The Committee For International Labor Defense (CILD)

Comment by Lance Lawrence

A number of people in the Greater Boston area, many having worked on political prisoner campaigns from freeing Black Panthers in the old days (and a few who still inside the walls all these years later putting emphasis on the FBI vendetta against that organization and other militant black organizations as well) to more recently Mumia, Leonard Peltier, Chelsea Manning and Reality Leigh Winner have over the past couple of years decided to form a Committee for International Labor Defense. If those last three words ring a bell it is because this group consciously is trying to model itself after the organization started many years ago back in the 1920s initiated by the American Communist Party and led at first by founder James P. Cannon and others like Big Bill Haywood and his fellow anarchists who saw the need for the labor movement to defend its own and others who were being persecuted by the capitalist state. In all an honorable tradition including stalwart defenses of the martyred immigrant anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti and the Alabama Scottsboro Boys cases.

In practice what the original ILD (and now the CILD) attempted to do was make sure that those class-war prisoner not all of them necessarily in political agreement with the Communist Party or any party were not forgotten. That those inside were treated with the same dignity as those outside the wall (outside for the present anyway given the ups and downs of capital existence that can be a very close thing). For those who have spent time behind bars knowing that there are others outside looking after your interests has been a tremendous morale booster. That along with taking care of families, providing stipend to prisoners to purchase items inside, providing legal defense funds and personnel, writing letter to those inside are just some of the things that the ILD (and now the CILD) was committed to seeing done. Not as charity or social work as Cannon made very clear but as acts of hard solidarity with those inside. Read the statement, check out the website listed, and if possible support with anything from writing letters to donating legal fund in order to get our class-war prisoners freed as quickly as possible. Thank you   

From The Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Website-Never Forget The Sacco and Vanzetti and Troy Davis Cases

From The Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Website-Never Forget The Sacco and Vanzetti and Troy Davis Cases

Click below to link to the Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty website.

http://www.mcadp.org/

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Frank Jackman comment:

I have been an opponent of the death penalty for as long as I have been a political person, a long time. While I do not generally agree with the thrust of the Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Committee’s strategy for eliminating the death penalty nation-wide almost solely through legislative and judicial means (think about the 2011 Troy Davis case down in Georgia for a practical example of the limits of that strategy when last minute stay and appeal to the United States Supreme Court went for naught) I am always willing to work with them when specific situations come up. In any case they have a long pedigree extending, one way or the other, back to Sacco and Vanzetti and that is always important to remember whatever our political differences.
Here is another way to deal with both the question of the death penalty and of political prisoners from an old time socialist perspective taken from a book review of James P. Cannon's Notebooks Of An Agitator:

I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.

The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s long time companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.

It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.

I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.

Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this system.

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Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."

last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll, another case of an injustice against black people. - Bob Dylan
, 1963

Frank Jackman comment immediately after the execution of Troy Davis (posted September 22, 2011):

Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.

On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.

Additional Jackman comment posted September 23, 2011:

No question the execution on September 21, 2011 by the State of Georgia of Troy Anthony Davis hit me, and not me alone, hard. For just a brief moment that night, when he was granted a temporary stay pending a last minute appeal before the United States Supreme Court just minutes before his 7:00PM execution, I thought that we might have achieved a thimbleful of justice in this wicked old world. But it was not to be and so we battle on. Troy Davis shall now be honored in our pantheon along with the Haymarket Martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and others. While Brother Davis may have not been a hard politico like the others just mentioned his fight to abolish the death penalty for himself and for future Troys places him in that company. Honor Troy Davis- Fight To The Finish Against The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!