From The Archives Of The Mumia Abu Jamal Case-Free Mumia

From The Archives Of The Mumia Abu Jamal Case-Free Mumia

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Website.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

This entry on behalf of the defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal was originally written in by me in 2008 in response to the Appeals Court’s turning down his appeal of his murder conviction, a conviction filled with all kinds of legal and moral problems from the government’s side. I have edited the piece slightly here in 2017 but the main political points, unfortunately retain their validity-Frank Jackman    

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Frank Jackman comment(2008):

The legendary social commentator and stand-up comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself over a slew of obscenity and drug-related cases, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction.

The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. (Pennsylvania has since stopped demanding the death penalty and Mumia is now serving a life without parole sentence-2017) Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be.

An Open Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal Supporters-A Personal Commentary

By Frank Jackman


The Partisan Defense Committee had (in 2008) passed "An Open Letter to All Supporters of Mumia‘s Freedom" to this writer. Those few who might not know of the torturous legal battles to free this innocent man can find further information at the above-mentioned Partisan Defense Committee site archives. I make my own comments below.

Normally I pass information about the case of political prisoner Mumia abu-Jamal on without much comment because the case speaks for itself. The case has been front and center in international labor defense struggles for over two decades. However, in light of the adverse ruling by a majority of a federal Third Circuit Court of Appeal panel in March 2008 that affirmed Mumia’s 1982 conviction for first-degree murder of a police officer and left the only issue for decision that of resentencing to either reinstate his original death sentence or keep him imprisoned for life without parole I have some things to say about this fight.

Occasionally, in the heat of political battle some fights ensue around strategy that after the smoke has cleared, upon reflection, leave one with more sorrow than anger. Not so today. Today I am mad. Am I mad about the irrational decision by the majority of the Third Circuit panel in Mumia’s case? Yes, but when one has seen enough of these cases over a lifetime then one realizes that, as the late sardonic comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, in the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

What has got me steamed is the obvious bankruptcy of the strategy, if one can use this term, of centering Mumia’s case on the question of a new trial in order to get the ‘masses’- meaning basically parliamentary liberal types interested in supporting the case. This by people who allegedly KNOW better. The bankruptcy of this strategy, its effects on Mumia’s case and the bewildered response of those who pedaled it as good coin is detailed in the above-mentioned Open Letter. Read it.

Today, in reaction to the Third Circuit court’s decision, everyone and their brother and sister are now calling for Mumia’s freedom. At a point where he is between a rock and a hard place. However, it did not have to be that way. Mumia was innocent in 1982 and he did not stop being innocent at any point along this long road. Freedom for Mumia was (and is) the correct slogan in the case. A long line of political criminal cases, starting in this country with that of the Haymarket Martyrs if not before, confirms that simple wisdom. Those who consciously pedaled this weak ‘new trial’ strategy as a get rich quick scheme now have seen the chickens come home to roost. And Mumia pays the price.

I would point out two factors that made a ‘retrial’ strategy in the case of an innocent man particularly Pollyanna-ish for those honest militants who really believed that Mumia’s case was merely a matter of the American justice system being abused and therefore some court would rectify this situation if enough legal resources were in place. First, it is illusory that somehow, as exemplified in this case, a higher court system would remedy this egregious wrong. Long ago I remember a lawyer, I believe that it might have been the late radical lawyer Conrad Lynn no stranger to political defense work, telling a group of us doing defense work for the Black Panthers that all these judges belong to the same “union.” They do not upset each other’s work except under extreme duress.

Second, and this is where the ‘wisdom’ of the reformists about reaching the ‘masses’ by a stage-ist theory of defense work (fight for retrial first, then freedom) turns in on them. As witness the list of names of those who have signed the Partisan Defense Committee’s call for Mumia’s freedom, excepting professional liberals and their hangers –on, those interested in Mumia’s case (or any leftwing political defense case) will sign on just as easily for freedom as retrial. Thus, opportunism does not pay, even in the short haul. That said, Free Mumia- say it loud, say it proud.

He’s Been A Bad Boy, He’s Been A Bad Boy-Again-The Very Loosely Film Adaptation Of Homer’s “The Iliad” Bad Boy Brad Pitt “Troy”(2004)-A Review

He’s Been A Bad Boy, He’s Been A Bad Boy-Again-The Very Loosely Film Adaptation Of Homer’s “The Iliad” Bad Boy Brad Pitt “Troy”(2004)-A Review

DVD Review

By Alden Riley

Troy, Brad Pitts

That dude, that max daddy poet who wrote in weird meter indeed, some hex hexameter thing only poets and English Lit majors would understand Homer (no known last name or place of residence although assuredly not homeless in the modern sense) knew how to tell a story, kept the crowds humming, kept the boys and girls fixated to see what they could learn about allure and love trampling power, glory and a side order of hubris which is after all a Greek word. Yes, that daddy, oops, max daddy poet whose works were only slightly shorter than the late Professor Alan Ginsberg, he of Howl angel hipsters and homoerotic fantasies got the whole thing about the ten major themes in Western literature right-especially the boy meets girl idea, the hubris of the gods (God in latter day mono speak) defining some ill-thought out fate for mere mortals, the mortals taking their own bad ass  fates with grains of salt, the hubris and rage, fury maybe a better word and the seemingly never-ending wars for power, glory, etc. maybe love in the mix too if Helen was as beautiful as the man said, the tormented life of the hero-heroine and the like. Good job brother, good job indeed. How old Homer’s idea translate to the big 21^st century screen is another question as the Bad Boy Brad Pitt-led cast of the film adaptation of Homer’s epic Troy bring to a crude point what our max daddy was trying to say on his way to numero uno in the Western literary canon, the now doomed old white men canon which has been given short shrift of late. (For no known academic reason except style and politics because after all you could in my humble opinion may world literature a “big tent” including all the unjustly forgottens-but later on that since we are into the roots today).

Here’s the play as old time film reviewer Sam Lowell a man locked in his own literary battles with Sarah Lemoyne, a young up and coming reviewer, was fond of saying in his salad days. Needless to say, love drove things batty back then, back three thousand years ago just like today if you can believe the news, fake, alternative, truthful or otherwise and take a look at what is going on around you. Paris, excuse me if I don’t run the litany of other aliases he went under especially after he went down to infamous and unmanly defeat at the hands of his girlfriend’s husband, Menelaus, king hell king, another Sam Lowell expression, of virtuous and manly Sparta who was full of that rage, maybe fury is a better word, and swore to kill the bastard who took his woman away without so much as a by your leave had eyes for one Helen. Helen, hellion, formerly of Sparta and now address unknown but suspected to be in a place called Illium and hence the Illiad but who in those days when men, women, gods (God in that damn mono-speak) worked like seven dervishes to keep the place safe from infidels, greedy kings and warlords, con men and priests under the name Troy, not Troy, New York which was only a Dutch sailor’s wonder dream back then if anybody was living in Dutch land.

The presiding dignity of the fortress unbreachable King Priam, played in the film, remember to follow the bouncing ball because we are reviewing a film along the way, by the oldest brother of Peter O’Toole or maybe father because he had lost a step or seven since he played Lawrence of Arabia in another war is hell film and Henry some number in The Lion In Winter going mano a mano with Eleanor of Aquitaine speaking of salad days. Priam father to ninety-eight pound weakling Paris who was totally outmatched by old man Menelaus and his mega-death brother and heir apparent Hector who as older brothers often have to do finished off Menelaus just in a nick of time.  So Hector he-man and Paris light on his feet match up in the sibling contest to bring some excitement to Illium town.  

Funny this older brother had it right when he heard Paris had bewitched Helen, that beauty so they say who would go on to launch a thousand ships-and not in a good and jovial way like at a ship’s christening. War ships and plenty manned by rough-hewn sailors who took their love anyway they could get it under the whip just like Carl Solomon of hipster dreams and madness. This kidnapping, some say the whole thing was an early high-end wife-swapping but those harpies have malicious tongues, of Helen was bad news, was predicted by Mr. Hector, also no known last name or abode, except that silly Illium, of bringing down everlasting hell and damnation on the town, would make guys, gods, like Apollo go crazy with ire, maybe fury is a better word. Proved right but at what cost when senile and nerve-deadened Priam indulged his freaking younger son and who knows maybe had twilight designs on her himself if she really was that beautiful. (The gal who played her Diane Kruger no question an ice queen beauty was built for sweaty nights and silky sheets but who would soon wear on a man’s nerves with her damn harping about that bloody lost to her ex-husband now mercifully dead by the hand of Hector mentioned already).

War, war to the death, like half of the Western literary canon that would follow this path-breaking epic was all that could resolve this deadly dispute. Not surprising the leader of the war party in Greek was Menelaus’ older brother Agamemnon, king of flea-bitten Mycenae and a guy who lived to breath everlasting hell and damnation on anything that breathed over in Illium town-wanted power glory and a few good wenches, slaves to keep his bed warm. Naturally this is only the barest outline of what got the conflict going and be assured that no way could Hollywood dole out enough dough to do the whole Trojan War, Trojan remember the other name for residents of wacky Illium. The cost for the billion extras alone would break Universal or Paramount. The war lasted years as one might expect of guys who fought with axes, spears, and arrows so this film will only detail the last gripping episodes where Troy is burned to the ground by the greedy Greek governors led by brother-less child Agamemnon and that cast of thousands who roiled the Aegean finding love wherever they could-savage rapine if the occasion called for it and wenches and shipboard romances if they hit an lively port.   

While the boy meets girl story drives the film, has to since after all Helen’s face launched that one thousand ships and the guys who played the Greek kings except the pretty boy kind of Ithaca who seemed to have some sway over him, the real focus is on the warrior class, on guys like one Achilles, later in history as predicted by myopic mother to be known as painful Achilles heel but then a stone-cold killer, a warrior to put every Marvel Comic cinematic character in the shade, even Captain America if you can believe that. This Achilles is ranked number one in the world, the known world which was basically the Greek city-states, Troy, Dutch lands if inhabited by static dreamers and maybe bloody England since many of the actors had distinctive British accents and had that sun never sets on the Empire demeanor. The problem with being Achilles, warrior for hire to the highest bidder or if he like the taked, remember played by modern day bad boy, and bad boy again Brad Pitt, is some ass is always looking to knock you down, take you down a peg. Or have some hireling do the dirty work. No question Achilles, another guy with no known last name or address except the battlefields of whoever has the best deal, had a long run at number one stone cold killer maybe the legendary Greek psycho but he also had his sensitive side, that brooding philosophy king in waiting Plato was always dogging us mere mortals with. Worried maybe about his strange obsession with bedding vestal virgins especially those who served one Apollo, a god among gods (God in mono-speak), also with no known last name or place of residence. Emphatically not worried about his fate, knowing what dear mother had spun her crystal ball around, knowing too a soldier’s destiny but ready to throw the dice that glory would come with living fast, dying young and making a good ashen-strewn corpse. And we still speak his name, speak of the warrior king if not of his vestal virgin with the unpronounceable first name, also with no last name although her former residence was One Temple Of Apollo Place. Yeah, that max daddy Homer sure knew how to tell a story-even in weird meter.              

Speak To Me Of Mendocino-With The McGarrigle Sisters Song On The Same Theme In Mind

Speak To Me Of Mendocino-With The McGarrigle Sisters Song On The Same Theme In Mind

By Zack James

Sid Lester had often wondered whether Lena, Lena of the Caffe Lena, the small coffeehouse that weaned many folksingers in the days when such activity was on deck, in the time of the now fabled early 1960s folk minute, now too but she the grey eminence had long gone to the shades and so that is not her bother had ever gotten to the Mendocino of her dreams and the song that the McGarrigle Sisters had reportedly written for her when she dreamed the dream of West Coast dreams. This was no mere academic question since Sid was asking it not only to himself but to his lovely companion, Mona Lord, who was accompanying him just that moment on the Pacific Coast Highway about fifty miles from that very spot, from the Mendocino of his dreams if not hers (fifty miles but probably about three hours given the hairpin turns that he increasingly hated to take along some very treacherous stretches of that beautiful view highway having almost gone down an un-guard-railed embankment to the ocean around Big Sur a few years back).

It was not like Sid had not been to the dreamland before, having made the trip up from the fetid seas of Frisco town (fetid in comparison to the Mendocino white washed breakers eroding the sheer rock at a greater rate than he would have expected) a number of times mostly with his old time now long gone to “find herself” Laura, Laura Perkins whom he had talked into going up those several times based on nothing more than that he liked the McGarrigle-etched song. Liked too that she, Laura liked it as well and would cover the song anytime she could find somebody to do a duo with her at folkie “open mics” and coffeehouse features depending on how she was feeling. Mona having heard the song exactly once (she didn’t like the fact that Laura liked the song and had been to Mendocino before she had and so would not listen when Sid tried to play it on his car CD player as they got closer to the place). Moreover she was reserving judgment on the relationship between the song and the place.

And that last point, the point for Sid anyway, was exactly how the song and the place connected. Was the real source of his wonder about old Lena back in the tired old East. Had she longed like he had to be done with Eastern pressures and pitfalls. To stop worrying about where the money would come from for rent, to pay the utilities, hell to pay the performers and stop them from having to play for the foolish “basket” like when they  had just started out on some forlorn street in Cambridge , Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Old Town or the Village. Stop all of that and head west, head to flat earth land South Bend for a minute, head over the majestic no hyperbole Rockies and suck in the breezes of the new land, of the new dispensation. Yeah, he bet though that she never got to the West, never could leave her cats, never could get that café out of her system, would probably fret even if she only went out for a week or so.

As they, Sid and his new Mona, approached the outskirts of Mendocino he wondered, seriously wondered whether Mona would ask him someday to speak of Mendocino, to let the place get under her skin. Yeah, speak of Mendocino.                  

When Prince Love Loved In The 1967 Summer Of Love

When Prince Love Loved In The 1967 Summer Of Love

“Jesus, I never thought I would get here and here I am in San Francisco all in one piece standing at the foot of Russian Hill where all the “hippies” were hanging out before they went over to Golden Gate Park and “blew” their minds,” Joshua Breslin (a.k.a. Prince Love or Prince, and hereafter so identified), late of Olde (very old to hear him tell it) Saco (Maine) High School Class of 1967, but just now of youth nation, youth nation descending on friendly, friend-sized, go West young man (and woman), go West, heaven said to his boon companion of three days, Benny Buzz (real name Lawrence Stein, Brooklyn High School of Science, Class of 1967), also currently of youth nation. It was Benny Buzz who, having the vast experience of having been in ‘Frisco for a week now, and having “been up the hill,” who guided Prince Love to the foot of Russian Hill in preparation for, well, for his first summer of love experience. No, not the eternal teen summer of love at some beach, camp or vacationland amusement park where boys ogle girls (and they back, maybe) but the long expected jail break-out from the squares, from the cradle to grave plan-every-step world, and from the hassles, man, just the hassles.

Yes, Prince Love, could write the book on hassles, hassles followed by man, or not. Just a few week before he, having just graduated from Olde Saco High, had a “job offer,” a job working as a janitor in Shepard’s Textile Mill, ya, the ones who make those “boss” sweaters the girls are all crazy for these days. Crazy for in winter anyway because right now warm suns, California, Denver, hell even Maine suns, require nothing more than some skimpy top, shoulders showing, and a pair of shorts, short shorts depending on the legs or vanity. His father, Prescott, a long time employee of the mills, the lifeblood of Olde Saco just then, “pulled a few wires” to get him the job for the summer before he went off to State U in the fall. Last year, last year when he was nothing but a raw hang-out in front of the Colonial Doughnut Shoppe on Main Street (officially U.S. Route 1) with his boys (and occasionally girls, but only for a few moments while they picked up their orders) he would have jumped with both feet, maybe with both hands and feet, at the job to get some money for college.

But that was then and this is now, as they say. Now, or rather the now just a few weeks or so before he got to the foot of Russian Hill, he had received word through that mysterious youth nation grapevine that parents, squares, cops, and authority guys were frantic to figure out, but who, in the end, were clueless about, of a “great awakening” that was going on in ‘Frisco and that news fed, fed deep, into the wells of the discontent he was feeling, about his own desire to break-out from the squares, from the cradle to grave plan-every-step world, and from the hassles, man, just the hassles mentioned before. The grapevine, by the way, was not all that mysterious. Some young, long-haired, wild-looking guy dressed in a blotted multi-colored shirt (later he found out such things were called tie-dyed) from the West Coast had come east to see his grandparents who lived on Olde Saco Beach a few miles down the road and had run into Prince Love at the doughnut shop when he was looking for some joe and cakes to tide him over before a walk on the beach and told him about what was happening on the West Coast. Simple as that, okay.

That information, those pressing on the brain existential jail-break things, and well, he had just broken up with his girl, his long-time high school honey, Julie Cobb, were what drove him to seek the road west. Simple as that. Well not so simple, really, because, if the truth be known, Julie left him for another guy, an older guy who was already working in the mills (not Shepard’s but Cullen’s, the high society linen-makers), had some dough, had a boss 1964 Mustang and, most importantly, wanted to get married, and pretty soon too. That was the sticking point between the Prince and Julia, the marriage game thing that had been going on in the town since, since, well Prince didn’t know but it was pretty common. Graduate Olde Saco, work in the mills, get a couple of bucks, get married, get a tiny house on Atlantic Avenue, maybe, have two point six children, throw in a dog or two cats, and then finish up whitewashing that picket fence in front of the house with the grandchildren. No sale, not for Prince Love. He was going to college, leave the dust of that old town behind, and make a name for himself at something before he settled down in not-Olde Saco, maybe, maybe on the settle down. And from what he heard on his way west, and since he had arrived in San Fran a lot of people were feeling, wondering, groping for some answers just like him. And, ya, looking to try some dope, listen to some far-out music, grab some cool chick to shack up with, and really leave that hometown dust behind before going back east for the fall semester of school.

Now you are filled in, a little, on the what and the why of Prince (and Benny Buzz who however is right then leaving Prince to go see a man, well, go see a man about something, let’s just leave it at that) being on Russian Hill, that classic San Francisco hill mentioned a while back. A hill not previously known to first time ‘Frisco Prince Love, although maybe to some ancient Native American shaman delighted to see our homeland, the sea, out in the bay working it way to far-off Japans. Or to some Spanish conquistador, full of gold dreams but longing for the hills of Barcelona half a world away.

I just remembered, you know everything, everything except how Prince Love got here which is not a big deal since he took some dough he had originally saved up for college and used it for the Greyhound bus fare to get him here. Not for him the hitchhike road through every back road. Not for him merry prankster buses driven by mad-monk zen masters in the heated western night.

Why? Well, come on now, not everybody got every piece of news, especially in Podunk Maine, about the ways west, VW bus west, stick-out-the-thumb west and that there were people, your kind of people, ready to pick you up and take you down the road a piece. Even backing up on super-highway interstates to pick up a fellow youth nation straggler left on some desolate stretch fair game for hungry police eyes. Besides, after about a two-day bout with his parents about not taking that summer job, using the dough for college for such foolishness (to quote his everywoman mother), and other assorted arguments, family arguments started back in childhood, he had promised them to take the bus west. Let’s just say hassles, man, hassles and be done with it. And now we are done with past.

Right then though, after saying a few things in parting to Benny Buzz about catching up with each other later, as he started walking up the hill toward the entrance to the mini-“people’s park” that was about half way up Russian Hill Prince spied a tall young man, maybe a few years older than him although such things were always hard to tell with older looking beards, drug haggards, and glazed looks. He was, at second glance, tall but not as tall as Prince, lanky, maybe not as lanky as him either and from the look of him his drug stews diet had taken some additional pounds off, and some desire for pounds as well, not really normally lanky. Dressed, always worthy of description in 1967 “Frisco, male or female, in full “hippie” regalia (faded olive drab World War II army jacket, half-faded blue jeans, bright red bandanna headband to keep his head from exploding, striped checkerboard flannel shirt against the cold bay winds, against the cold bay winds even in summer, and nighttime colds too, and now that we are on the West Coast, with roman sandals on his feet). And to draw the eye more fully to the scene he is sitting with two foxy-looking young women. One, the younger one, maybe a high school student, blonde, blue-eyed, slender, short shorts belying West Coast origin, and de rigueur practical road-worthy peasant blouse. A poster child for San Francisco summer of love if he ever saw one, and of his own feverish Maine night teenage desire summer or winter of love now that Julia was past. The other women, whom he found out later called herself Lupe Matin just then although the Prince found out that she had run through several monikers previously, a college student for sure , dark-haired, dark-eyed, slightly voluptuous, seemingly a little out of place, out of figuring place, with her current male companion completed the entourage. (Her real name, Susan Sharp, Vassar College, Class of 1966, and “trying to find herself.”)

Prince cast several glances at that regal company, nodded slightly, a knowing nod, eyes fixed, as was the fashion just then, and then turned around and asked to no one in particular but kind of zeroing in on the blonde (ya, he had a thing for blondes, see Julia was just that same kind of waspy blonde, minus the tan and year-round sunshine, that he fell for, fell for hard and fast), “Got some dope, for a hungry brother?” The male, who Prince would later come to know as Far-Out Phil (Phillip Larkin, North Adamsville, Massachusetts, Class of 1964), looked at him in a bemused manner (nice touch, right). Except for shorter hair, which only meant that this traveler had either not been on the road very long or had just recently caught the “finding himself” bug he could have, thought Far-Out to himself, been Phil’s brother, biological brother.

That line, that single Prince Love line, could have been echoed a thousand, maybe ten thousand times that day along a thousand hills (well maybe not that many in San Fran), aimed at any small clot of like-minded spirits. And Phil sensing that just that one sentence spoke of kindred said, “Sure, a little Columbia Red for the head, okay?” And so started the long, well hippie long, 1960s long anyway, relationship between one Phillip Larkin and one Joshua Breslin. And, maybe, including the women too.

And, of course, as well was that sense that Far-Out had that he and Prince Love were kindred was based on the way that the Prince posed that first question. His accent spoke, spoke hard of New England, not Boston but farther north. And once the pipe had been passed a couple of times and the heat of day started getting everybody a little talkative then Prince spilled out his story. Yes, he was from Olde Saco, Maine, born and bred, a working-class kid whose family had worked the town mills for a couple of generations, maybe more, but times were getting hard, real hard in those northern mill towns now that the mill-owners had got the big idea to head south and get some cheaper labor, real cheap. So Joshua, after he graduated from high school a few weeks before decided, on a whim (not really a whim though), to head west and check out prospects here on the coast for later use after college. Josh, now fully into his Prince Love self finished up his story by saying, “And here I am a few weeks later sitting on Russian Hill smoking righteous dope and sitting with some sweet ladies.”

The Prince was just being a little off-handedly flirtatious as was his style when around women, young or old (old being thirty, tops), aiming his ammunition in general but definitely honing in on the blonde, the blonde now identified for all eternity as Butterfly Swirl (real name, Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School, California, Class of 1968). (Phil, by the way, never ever said what his reaction to that last part of the Prince’s spiel, the flirtatious part, which seemed, the way it was spoken, spoken by Phil in the re-telling, filled with menace. Girl-taking menace. Well, old North Adamsville corner boy Phil would have felt that way but maybe in that hazed-out summer of love it just passed by like so much air.) Naturally Phil, a lordly road warrior now, "on the bus" now, whatever his possible misgivings, invited the Prince to stay with them, seeing as they were practically neighbors back home. Prince Love was “family” now, and Butterfly seemed gladder than the others of that fact.

And of course, family, meant home, and home for Far-Out, Butterfly Swirl, and Lupe Matin meant the now locally famous (West Coast local, okay) yellow brick road bus now known as Captain Crunch’s Crash Pad (after the owner of the bus, and “leader,” whatever that meant, of the expedition). Prince Love, from the first night, not only felt that he had found a home, a home that he never felt he had in Olde Saco but that whatever happened out here he would survive. And as more dope-filled pipes were passed that night, and as the music played louder into the sea-mist bay night, and lights gleamed from all directions the Prince grew stronger in that conviction. Especially when Far Out Phil, acting out of some old testament patriarchal script, came sauntering over to the Prince around midnight and whispered in his ear, “Butterfly Swirl wants to be with you, okay?” And that night the Prince and Butterfly Swirl were “married.”

LEON TROTSKY-THE MAKING OF A REVOLUTIONARY

LEON TROTSKY-THE MAKING OF A REVOLUTIONARY

Google to link to the important chapter 42, "The Last Period Of Struggle Within The Party," giving Trotsky's take on the inner-party fights in the late1920s, from the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's version of his "My Life" of 1930.

BOOK REVIEW

MY LIFE, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1970

THIS YEAR MARKS THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF LEON TROTSKY-ONE OF HISTORY’S GREAT REVOLUTIONARIES. IT IS THEREFORE FITTING TO REVIEW HIS BOOK MY LIFE WHICH TELLS HIS STORY IN HIS OWN WORDS.

Today we expect political memoir writers to take part in a game of show and tell about the most intimate details of their private personal lives on their road to celebrity. Refreshingly, you will find no such tantalizing details in Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky's memoir written in 1930 just after Stalin had exiled him to Turkey. Instead you will find a thoughtful political self-examination by a man trying to draw the lessons of his fall from power in order to set his future political agenda. This task is in accord with his explicitly stated, and many times repeated, conception of his role as that of an individual agent at service of the historical struggle toward a socialist future. Thus, underlying Trotsky’s selection of events highlighted in the memoir such as the rise of the revolutionary waves in Russia in 1905 and 1917, the devastation to the traditional socialist program caused by the capitulation of European social democracy to their individual national capitalist classes at the start of World War I and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, especially in the aftermath of the failure of the German Revolution of 1923 and Lenin’s untimely death is a sense of urgency about the need for continued struggle for a socialist future. The book also provides Trotsky, as always, a platform for polemics against those foes and former supporters who had either abandoned or betrayed that struggle.

At the beginning of the 21st century when the validity of socialist political programs as tools for change is in apparent decline or disregarded as utopian it may be hard to imagine the spirit that drove Trotsky to dedicate his whole life to the fight for a socialist society. However, at the beginning of the 20th century he represented only the most consistent and audacious of a revolutionary generation of mainly Eastern Europeans and Russians who set out to change the history of the 20th century. It was as if the best and brightest of that generation were afraid, for better or worse, not to take part in the political struggles that would shape the modern world. As Trotsky noted elsewhere this element was missing, with the exceptions of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and precious few others, in the Western labor movement. Trotsky, using his own experiences, tells the story of the creation of this revolutionary cadre with care and generally proper proportions. Here are some highlights militant leftists should think about.

On the face of it Trotsky’s personal profile does not stand out as that of a born revolutionary. Born of a hard working, eventually prosperous, Jewish farming family in the Ukraine (of all places) there is something anomalous about his eventual political occupation. Always a vociferous reader, good writer and top student under other circumstances he would have found easy success, as others did, in the bourgeois academy, if not in Russia then in Western Europe. But there is the rub; it was the intolerable and personally repellent political and cultural conditions of Czarist Russia in the late 19th century that eventually drove Trotsky to the revolutionary movement- first as a ‘ragtag’ populist and then to his life long dedication to orthodox Marxism. As noted above, a glance at the biographies of Eastern European revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, Martov, Christian Rakovsky, Bukharin and others shows that Trotsky was hardly alone in his anger at the status quo. And the determination to something about it.

For those who argue, as many did in the New Left in the 1960’s, that the most oppressed are the most revolutionary the lives of the Russian and Eastern European revolutionaries provide a cautionary note. The most oppressed, those most in need of the benefits of socialist revolution, are mainly wrapped up in the sheer struggle for survival and do not enter the political arena until late, if at all. Even a quick glance at the biographies of the secondary leadership of various revolutionary movements, actual revolutionary workers who formed the links to the working class , generally show skilled or semi-skilled workers striving to better themselves rather than the most downtrodden lumpenproletarian elements. The sailors of Kronstadt and the Putilov workers in Saint Petersburg come to mind. The point is that ‘the wild boys and girls’ of the street do not lead revolutions; they simply do not have the staying power. On this point, militants can also take Trotsky’s biography as a case study of what it takes to stay the course in the difficult struggle to create a new social order. While the Russian revolutionary movement, like the later New Left mentioned above, had more than its share of dropouts, especially after the failure of the 1905 revolution, it is notably how many stayed with the movement under much more difficult circumstances than we ever faced. For better or worst, and I think for the better, that is how revolutions are made.

Once Trotsky made the transition to Marxism he became embroiled in the struggles to create a unity Russian Social Democratic Party, a party of the whole class, or at least a party representing the historic interests of that class. This led him to participate in the famous Bolshevik/Menshevik struggle in 1903 which defined what the party would be, its program, its methods of work and who would qualify for membership. The shorthand for this fight can be stated as the battle between the ‘hards’ (Bolsheviks, who stood for a party of professional revolutionaries) and the ‘softs’ (Mensheviks, who stood for a looser conception of party membership) although those terms do not do full justice to these fights. Strangely, given his later attitudes, Trotsky stood with the ‘softs’, the Mensheviks, in the initial fight in 1903. Although Trotsky almost immediately afterward broke from that faction I do not believe that his position in the 1903 fight contradicted the impulses he exhibited throughout his career- personally ‘libertarian’, for lack of a better word , and politically hard in the clutch.

Even a cursory glance at most of Trotsky’s career indicates that it was not spent in organizational in-fighting, or at least not successfully. Trotsky stands out as the consummate free-lancer. More than one biographer has noted this condition, including his definitive biographer Isaac Deutscher. Let me make a couple of points to take the edge of this characterization, though. In that 1903 fight mentioned above Trotsky did fight against Economism (the tendency to only fight over trade union issues and not fight overtly political struggles against the Czarist regime) and he did fight against Bundism (the tendency for one group, in this case the Jewish workers, to set the political agenda for that particular group). Moreover, he most certainly favored a centralized organization. These were the key issues at that time. Furthermore, the controversial organizational question did not preclude the very strong notion that a ‘big tent’ unitary party was necessary. The ‘big tent’ German Social Democratic model held very strong sway among the Russian revolutionaries for a long time, including Lenin’s Bolsheviks. The long and short of it was that Trotsky was not an organization man, per se. He knew how to organize revolutions, armies, Internationals, economies and so on when he needed to but on a day to day basis, no. Thus, to compare or contrast him to Lenin and his very different successes is unfair. Both have an honorable place in the revolutionary movement; it is just a different place.

That said, Trotsky really comes into his own as a revolutionary leader in the Revolution of 1905 not only as a publicist but as the central leader of the Soviets (workers councils) which made their first appearance at that time. In a sense it is because he was a free-lancer that he was able to lead the Petrograd Soviet during its short existence and etch upon the working class of Russia (and in a more limited way, internationally) the need for its own organizations to seize state power. All revolutionaries honor this experience, as we do the Paris Commune, as the harbinger of October, 1917. As Lenin and Trotsky both confirm, it was truly a ‘dress rehearsal’ for that event. It is in 1905 that Trotsky first wins his stars by directing the struggle against the Czar at close quarters, in the streets and working class meeting halls. And later in his eloquent and ‘hard’ defense of the experiment after it was crushed by the Czarism reaction. I believe that it was here in the heat of the struggle in 1905 where the contradiction between Trotsky’s ‘soft’ position in 1903 and his future ‘hard’ Bolshevik position of 1917 and thereafter is resolved. Here was a professional revolutionary who one could depend on when the deal went down. (A future blog will review the 1905 revolution in more detail).

No discussion of this period of Trotsky’s life is complete without mentioning his very real contribution to Marxist theory- that is, the theory of Permanent Revolution. Although the theory is over one hundred years old it still retains its validity today in those countries that still have not had their bourgeois revolutions. This rather simple straightforward theory about the direction of the Russian revolution (and which Trotsky later in the 1920’s, after the debacle of the Chinese Revolution, made applicable to what today are called “third world" countries)has been covered with so many falsehoods, epithets, and misconceptions that it deserves further explanation. Why? Militants today must address the ramifications of the question what of kind of revolution is necessary as a matter of international revolutionary strategy.

Trotsky, taking the specific historical development and the peculiarities of Russian economic development as part of the international capitalist order as a starting point argued that there was no ‘Chinese wall’ between the bourgeois revolution Russian was desperately in need of and the tasks of the socialist revolution. In short, in the 20th century ( and by extension, now) the traditional leadership role of the bourgeois in the bourgeois revolution in a economically backward country, due to its subservience to international capitalist powers and fear of its own working class and plebeian masses, falls to the proletariat. The Russian Revolution of 1905 sharply demonstrated the outline of that tendency especially on the perfidious role of the Russian bourgeoisie. The unfolding of revolutionary events in 1917 graphically confirmed this. The history of revolutionary struggles since then, and not only in ‘third world’ countries, gives added, if negative, confirmation of that analysis. (A future blog will review this theory of permanent revolution in more detail).

World War I was a watershed for modern history in many ways. For the purposes of this review two points are important. First, the failure of the bulk of the European social democracy- representing the masses of their respective working classes- to not only not oppose their own ruling classes’ plunges into war, which would be a minimal practical expectation, but to go over and directly support their own respective ruling classes in that war. This position was most famously demonstrated when the entire parliamentary fraction of the German Social Democratic party voted for the war credits for the Kaiser on August 4, 1914. This initially left the anti-war elements of international social democracy, including Lenin and Trotsky, almost totally isolated. As the carnage of that war mounted in endless and senseless slaughter on both sides it became clear that a new political alignment in the labor movement was necessary. The old, basically useless Second International, which in its time held some promise of bringing in the new socialist order, needed to give way to a new revolutionary International. That eventually occurred in 1919 with the foundation of the Communist International (also known as the Third International). (A future blog will review the first years of the Communist International). Horror of horrors, particularly for reformists of all stripes, this meant that the international labor movement, one way or another, had to split into its reformist and revolutionary components. It is during the war that Trotsky and Lenin, not without some lingering differences, draw closer and begin the process of several years, only ended by Lenin’s death, of close political collaboration.

Secondly, World War I marks the definite (at least for Europe) end of the progressive role of international capitalist development. The outlines of imperialist aggression previously noted had definitely taken center stage. This theory of imperialism was most closely associated with Lenin in his master work Imperialism-The Highest Stage of Capitalism but one should note that Trotsky in all his later work up until his death fully subscribed to the theory. Although Lenin’s work is in need of some updating to account for various technological changes and the extensions of globalization it holds up for political purposes. This analysis meant that a fundamental shift in the relationship of the working class to the ruling class was necessary. A reformist perspective for social change, although not specific reforms, was no longer tenable. Politically, as a general proposition, socialist revolution was on the immediate agenda. This is when Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution meets the Leninist conception of revolutionary organization. It proved to be a successful formula in Russia in October, 1917. Unfortunately, those lessons were not learned (or, at least, learned in time) by those who followed and the events of October, 1917 stand today as the only ‘pure’ working class revolution in history.

An argument can, and has, been made that the October Revolution could only have occurred under the specific condition of decimated, devastated war-weary Russia of 1917. This argument is generally made by those who were not well-wishers of revolution in Russia (or anywhere else, for that matter). It is rather a truism, indulged in by Marxists as well as by others, that war is the mother of revolution. That said, the October revolution was made then and there but only because of the convergence of enough revolutionary forces led by the Bolsheviks and additionally the forces closest to the Bolsheviks (including Trotsky’s Inter-District Organization) that had been prepared for these events by its entire pre-history. This is the subjective factor in history. No, not substitutionalism, that was the program of the Social Revolutionary terrorists and the like, but if you like, revolutionary opportunism. I would be much more impressed by an argument that stated that the revolution would not have occurred without the presence of Lenin and Trotsky. That would be a subjective argument, par excellent. But, they were there.
Again Trotsky in 1917, like in 1905, is in his element speaking seemingly everywhere, writing, organizing (when it counts, by the way). If not the brains of the revolution (that role is honorably conceded to Lenin) certainly the face of the Revolution. Here is a revolutionary moment shown in every great revolution when the fate of the revolution turned on a dime (the subjective factor). The dime turned. (See blog dated April 18, 2006 for a review of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution).

One of the great lessons that militants can learn from all previous modern revolutions is that once the revolutionary forces seize power from the old regime an inevitable counterrevolutionary onslaught by elements of the old order (aided by some banished moderate but previously revolutionary elements, as a rule). The Russian revolution proved no exception. If anything the old regime, aided and abetted by numerous foreign powers and armies, was even more bloodthirsty. It fell to Trotsky to organize the defense of the revolution. Now, you might ask- What is a nice Jewish boy like Trotsky doing playing with guns? Fair enough. Well,Jewish or Gentile if you play the revolution game you better the hell be prepared to defend the revolution (and yourself). Here, again Trotsky organized, essentially from scratch, a Red Army from a defeated, demoralized former peasant army under the Czar. The ensuing civil war was to leave the country devastated but the Red Army defeated the Whites. Why? In the final analysis it was not only the heroism of the working class defending its own but the peasant wanting to hold on to the newly acquired land that he just got and was in jeopardy of losing if the Whites won. But these masses needed to be organized. Trotsky was the man for the task.

Both Lenin’s and Trotsky’s calculation for the success of socialist revolution in Russia (and ultimately its fate) was its, more or less, immediate extension to the capitalist heartland of Europe, particularly Germany. While in 1917 that was probably not the controlling single factor for going forward in Russia it did have to come into play at some point. The founding of the Communist International makes no sense otherwise. Unfortunately, for many historical, national and leadership-related reasons no Bolshevik-styled socialist revolutions followed then, or ever. If the premise for socialism is for plenty, and ultimately as a result of plenty to take the struggle for existence off the agenda and put other more creative pursues on the agenda, then Russia in the early 1920’s was not the land of plenty. Neither Lenin, Trotsky nor Stalin, for that matter could wish that fact away.

The ideological underpinnings of that fight center on the Stalinist concept of ‘socialism in one country’, that is Russian socialist development alone versus the Trostskyist position of the absolutely necessary extension of the international revolution. In short, this is the fights that historically happens in great revolutions- the fight against Thermidor (from the overthrow of Robespierre in 1794 by more moderate Jacobins). What counts, in the final analysis, are their respective responses to the crisis of the isolation of the revolution. The word isolation is the key. Do you turn the revolution inward or push forward? We all know the result, and it wasn’t pretty, then or now. That is the substance of the fight that Trotsky, if initially belatedly and hesitantly, led from about 1923 on under various conditions until the end of his life by assassination of a Stalinist agent in 1940.

Although there were earlier signs that the Russia revolution was going off course the long illness and death of Lenin in 1924, at the time the only truly authoritative leader the Bolshevik party, set off a power struggle in the leadership of the party. This fight had Trotsky and the ‘pretty boy’ intellectuals of the party on one side and Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (the so-called triumvirate)backed by the ‘gray boys’ of the emerging bureaucracy on the other. This struggle occurred against the backdrop of the failed revolution in Germany in 1923 and which thereafter heralded the continued isolation, imperialist blockade and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union for the foreseeable future.

While the disputes in the Russian party eventually had international ramifications in the Communist International, they were at this time fought out almost solely with the Russian Party. Trotsky was slow, very slow to take up the battle for power that had become obvious to many elements in the party. He made many mistakes and granted too many concessions to the triumvirate. But he did fight. Although later (in 1935) Trotsky recognized that the 1923 fight represented a fight against the Russian Thermidor and thus a decisive turning point for the revolution that was not clear to him (or anyone else on either side) then. Whatever the appropriate analogy might have been Leon Trotsky was in fact fighting a last ditch effort to retard the further degeneration of the revolution. After that defeat, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled it and for what purposes all changed. And not for the better.

In a sense if the fight in 1923-24 is the decisive fight to save the Russian revolution (and ultimately a perspective of international revolution) then the 1926-27 fight which was a bloc between Trotsky’s forces and the just defeated forces of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin’s previous allies was the last rearguard action to save that perspective. That it failed nevertheless does not deny the importance of the fight. Yes, it was a political bloc with some serious differences especially over China and the Anglo-Russian Committee. But two things are important here One- did a perspective of a new party make sense at the time of the clear waning of the revolutionary tide the country. No. Besides the place to look was at the most politically conscious elements, granted against heavy odds, in the party where whatever was left of the class-conscious elements of the working class were.

As I have noted elsewhere in discussing the 1923 fight- that “Lenin levy” of raw recruits, careerists and just plain thugs was the key element in any defeat. Still the fight was necessary. Hey, that is why we still talk about it now. That was a fight to the finish. After that the left opposition or elements of it were forever more outside the party- either in exile, prison or dead. As we know Trotsky went from expulsion from the party in 1927 to internal exile in Alma Ata in 1928 to external exile to Turkey in 1929. From there he underwent further exiles in France, Norway, and Mexico when he was finally felled by a Stalinist assassin. But no matter when he went he continued to struggle for his perspective. Not bad for a Jewish farmer’s son from the Ukraine, of all places.

The last period of Trotsky’s life spent in harrowing exiles and under constant threat from Stalinist and White Guard threats- in short, on the planet without a visa -was dedicated to the continued fight for the Leninist heritage. It was an unequal fight, to be sure but he waged it and was able to cohere a core of revolutionaries to form a new international. That that effort was essentially militarily defeat by fascist or Stalinist forces during World War II does not take away from the grandeur of the attempt. He himself stated that he felt this was the most important work of his life- and who would challenge that assertion. But one could understand the frustrations, first analysis of the German debacle then in France and Spain. Hell a lesser man would have given up. In fact, more than one biographer has argued that he should have retired from the political arena to, I assume, a comfortable country cottage to write I do not know what. But, please dear reader, have you been paying attention? Does this seem even remotely like the Trotsky career I have attempted to highlight here? Hell, no.

Many of the events such as the disputes within the Russian revolutionary movement, the attempts by the Western Powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks in the Civil War after their seizure of power and the struggle of the various tendencies inside the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International discussed in the book may not be familiar to today's audience. Nevertheless one can still learn something from the strength of Trotsky's commitment to his cause and the fight to preserve his personal and political integrity against overwhelming odds. As the organizer of the October Revolution, creator of the Red Army in the Civil War, orator, writer and fighter Trotsky he was one of the most feared men of the early 20th century to friend and foe alike. Nevertheless, I do not believe that he took his personal fall from power as a world historic tragedy. Moreover, he does not gloss over his political mistakes. Nor does Trotsky generally do personal injustice to his various political opponents although I would not want to have been subject to his rapier wit and pen. Politicians, revolutionary or otherwise, in our times should take note.

REVISED JULY 25, 2006


SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE FROM LOCAL BOOKSTORES AND LIBRARIES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED.

Did You See Starlight On The Rails- The Songs Of Utah Phillips

Did You See Starlight On The Rails- The Songs Of Utah Phillips

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go-Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

Utah Phllips Songbook, 4 CD set, Utah Phillips, 2005 


My youthful leftward drift in political consciousness (by no means left-wing, merely liberal or a touch social-democratic) coincided with an expansion of my musical tastes under the influence of the great blues and folk revivals of the 1960’s. First came the blues ‘discoveries,’ the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Son House, Skip James, and Mississippi John Hurt. Unfortunately my exposure to the blues greats was mainly on records as many of them had been forgotten, retired or were dead. Not so with the folk revival which was created mainly by those who were close contemporaries. The likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave Von Ronk, Eric Von Schmidt, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton. Alas, they too are now mainly forgotten, retired or dead. It therefore was with special pleasure that I first heard the 4 Cd set Utah Phillips Songbook while he is very much alive in 2005. Although he has since passed away the comments I made then still apply.

Many of the folksingers of the 1960s attempted to use their music to become troubadours for social change. The most famous example, the early Bob Dylan, can be fairly described as the voice of his generation at that time. However, he fairly quickly moved on to other concepts of himself and his music. Bob Dylan’s work became more informed by the influences of Rimbaud and Verlaine and the French Symbolists of the late 1800’s and thus moved away to a more urban, sophisticated vision. On the other hand from the start and consistently throughout his long career Utah Phillips acted as a medium giving voice to the troubles of ordinary people and the simpler ethos of a more rural, Western-oriented gone by day in the American experience. He evoked in song the spirit of the people Walt Whitman paid homage to in poetic form and John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck gave in prose. He sat conformably in very fast company. Therefore, Utah Phillips could justly claim the title of a people’s troubadour.

A word about politics, or rather about political differences and disagreements. Generally, one rates music and musical influences without reference to politics unless there is something starkly unusual about a song or performer that begs the question to be addressed. However Utah Phillips introduced the political element and made it a subject for comment by the way he structured the Songbook. Each song is introduced by him as to its significance heavily weighted to his political experiences, observations and vision. Thus, political comment is fairly in play here.

Utah Phillips was a long time anarchist and unrepentant supporter of the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World, hereafter IWW). Every working class militant cherishes the memory of the class battles led by the IWW like the famous Lawrence strike of 1912 (the “bread and roses” strike now observing it centennial) and honors the heroes of those battles like Big Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Jim Cannon, Frank Little and Vincent St. John and the militants they recruited to the cause of the working class in the first part of the 20th century. They paved the way for the later successful union organization drives of the 1930s.

Nevertheless, while Utah and I would both most definitely agree that some old-fashioned class struggle by working people in today’s one-sided class war would be a very good thing we as definitely differed on the way to insure a permanent victory for working people in order to create a decent society. In short, Utah’s prescriptions of good moral character, increased self-knowledge, and the creation of small intentional communities are not enough. Under modern conditions it is necessary to take and safeguard political power against those who would quite consciously deny that victory. History has been cruel in some of the bitter lessons working people have had to endure for not dealing with the question of taking state power to protect their interests. But, enough said. I am more than willing to forgive the old curmudgeon his anarchist sins when I hear him sing I Remember Loving You, Starlight On The Rails, Walking Through Your Snow, Phoebe Snow and a dozen other tramp, hobo, bum, railroad siding jungle camp songs and politically pungent barb songs like Enola Gay.

An Unrepentant Wobblie At Work- The Music Of Utah Phillips

An Unrepentant Wobblie At Work- The Music Of Utah Phillips

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go-Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

CD REVIEW

STARLIGHT ON THE RAILS- UTAH PHILLIPS, 2005

Although this space is mainly dedicated to reviewing political books and commenting on past and current political issues as a way to orient today’s alienated radical youth on the lessons of the past literary output is hardly the only form of political creation. Occasionally in the history of the American and international left musicians, artists and playwrights have given voice or provided visual reminders to the face of political struggle. With that thought in mind, every once in a while I will use this space to review those kinds of political expression.

My musical tastes were formed, as were many of those of the generation of 1968, by ‘Rock and Roll’ music exemplified by the Rolling Stones and Beatles and by the blues revival, both Delta and Chicago style. However, those forms as much as they gave pleasure were only marginally political at best. In short, these were entertainers performing material that spoke to us. In the most general sense that is all one should expect of a performer. Thus, for the most part that music need not be reviewed here. Those who thought that a new musical sensibility laid the foundations for a cultural or political revolution have long ago been proven wrong.

That said, in the early 1960’s there nevertheless was another form of musical sensibility that was directly tied to radical political expression- the folk revival. This entailed a search for roots and relevancy in musical expression. While not all forms of folk music lent themselves to radical politics it is hard to see the 1960’s cultural rebellion without giving a nod to such figures as Dave Van Ronk, the early Bob Dylan, Utah Phillips, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and others. Whatever entertainment value these performers provided they also spoke to and prodded our political development. They did have a message and an agenda and we responded as such. That these musicians’ respective agendas proved inadequate and/or short-lived does not negate their affect on the times.

My leftist political consciousness, painfully fought for in my youth coincided with an expansion of my musical tastes under the influence of the great blues and folk revivals of the 1960’s. Unfortunately my exposure to the blues greats was mainly on records as many of them had been forgotten, retired or were dead. Not so with the folk revival which was created mainly by those who were close contemporaries. Alas, they too are now mainly forgotten, retired or dead. It therefore is with special pleasure that I review Utah Phillips Songbook while he is very much alive.

Many of the folksingers of the 1960’s attempted to use their music to become troubadours for social change. The most famous example, the early Bob Dylan, can be fairly described as the voice of his generation at that time. However, he fairly quickly moved on to other concepts of himself and his music. Bob Dylan’s work became more informed by the influences of Rimbaud and Verlaine and the French Symbolists of the late 1800’s and thus moved away to a more urban, sophisticated vision. From the start and consistently throughout his long career Utah has acted as a medium giving voice to the troubles of ordinary people and the simpler ethos of a more rural, Western-oriented gone by day in the American experience. He evokes in song the spirit of the people Walt Whitman paid homage to in poetic form and John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck gave in prose. He sits comfortably in very fast company. Therefore, Utah Phillips can justly claim the title of a people’s troubadour.

A word about politics. Generally, one rates music without reference to politics. However, Utah has introduced the political element by the way he structured the Songbook. Each song is introduced by him as to its significance heavily weighted to his political experiences, observations and vision. Thus, political comment is fairly in play here. Utah is a long time anarchist and unrepentant supporter of the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World, hereafter IWW). Every militant cherishes the memory of the class battles led by the IWW like the famous Lawrence strike of 1912 and honors the heroes of those battles like Big Bill Haywood and Vincent St. John and the militants they recruited to the cause of the working class in the first part of the 20th century. They paved the way for the later successful organization drives of the 1930’s.

Nevertheless, while Utah and I would both most definitely agree that some old-fashioned class struggle by working people in today’s one-sided class war would be a very good thing we as definitely differ on the way to insure a permanent victory for working people in order to create a decent society. In short, Utah’s prescriptions of good moral character, increased self-knowledge and the creation of small intentional communities are not enough. Under modern conditions it is necessary to take and safeguard political power against those who would quite consciously deny that victory. History has been cruel in some of the bitter lessons working people have had to endure for not dealing with the question of taking state power to protect their interests. But, enough said. I am more than willing to forgive the old curmudgeon his anarchist sins if he’ll sing ‘I Remember Loving You’ the next time he tours the Boston area.