This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Dane Clark’s “Blackout” (1954)
DVD Review
By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell
Blackout (released in England as Murder By Proxy), starring Dane Clark, Belinda Lee, Hammer Productions, 1954
Wouldn’t you want a long-time film reviewer like me, or my colleagues in this space who are the regular reviewers, Sandy Salmon and Alden Riley, to draw a map for you, let you know what is what about any particular film in relationship to others in the genre. As the headline to this review notes (and has on other occasions in this ten film series) I am reviewing a series of B-film noirs from the 1950s produced by the Robert Lippert organization in conjunction with Hammer Productions in England. The idea, at least this is what I have been able to gather from various readings and speculations after now having reviewed scads of these efforts, by Lippert was to grab some faded Hollywood star who either needed the dough or was looking for some film, any film to satisfy whatever stardust lust drove him or her to the studio lots in the first place and back him or her up with an English cast, do the production in England and get away with costs on the cheap. If you knew that and then somebody, me, came along and told you that these efforts didn’t compare, didn’t compare at all with classic noirs, you know Out Of The Past, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Last Man Standing and others that you almost know all the lines from since you have seen the films so many times, wouldn’t you appreciate that knowledge
You would think so but you would at least in one case, actually more, but the reader I am thinking of as I write this has become something of a thorn in my side, my efforts to draw comparisons have given me nothing but grief, and had hung on me the title of “penny a word” writer as a joke by my colleagues.
In noted in my last review in this series, The House Across The Lake, that in my long career in the film reviewing racket, a profession if you will which is overall pretty subjective when you think about it, I have run up against all kind of readerships and readers but my recent escapade with one reader takes the cake as they used to say in the old days. That is the person I am thinking of right now as I write yet another screed against the injustice done to be by that person. To cut to the chase a B-grade film noir is one that is rather thin on plotline and maybe film quality usually made on the cheap although some of the classics with B-film noir queen Gloria Grahame have withstood the test of time despite that quality. I have contrasted those with the classics like The Maltese Falcon, Out Of The Past, The Big Sleep, and The Last Man Standing to give the knowledgeable reader an idea of the different.
I have as already noted done a bunch of these (excluding a couple which I refused to review since they were so thin I couldn’t justify the time and effort to even give the “skinny” on them) using a kind of standard format discussing the difference between the classics and Bs in some detail and then as has been my wont throughout my career giving a short summary of the film’s storyline and maybe a couple of off-hand comments so that the readership has something to hang its hat on when choosing to see, or not see, the film. All well and good until about my fifth review when a reader wrote in complaining about my use of that standard form to introduce each film. Moreover and this is the heart of the issue she mentioned that perhaps I was getting paid per word, a “penny a word” in her own words and so was padding my reviews with plenty that didn’t directly relate to the specific film I was reviewing.
Of course other than to cut me to the quick “penny a word” went out with the dime store novel and I had a chuckle over that expression since I have had various types of contracts for work over the years but not that one since nobody does that anymore. The long and short of it was that the next review was a stripped down version of the previous reviews which I assumed would satisfy her complaint. Not so. Using the name Nora Charles, the well-known distaff side of the Dashiell Hammett-inspired film series The Thin Man from the 1930s and early 1940s starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, she still taunted me with that odious expression of hers. (I also mentioned there as an aside that one of the pitfalls of citizen journalism, citizen commentary on-line is that one can use whatever moniker one wants to say the most unsavory things and not fame any blow-back). Now Sandy, Alden, Pete Markin, the administrator of this space and a few others have started to call me that as well-‘hey, penny a word.” That has made my blood boil on more than one occasion but I have calmly put up with it rather than blow-up and threaten murder and mayhem to them-and to Nora.
But enough of that or Nora will really have case about me “padding” my reviews. Here is the “skinny” on the film under review Blackout in any case as is my wont and let dear sweet Nora suffer through another review-if she dares. (This film was released in England and on the continent as Murder By Proxy which unusually in this series is not closer to the nub of the plot since in fact a the lead man character, Dane Clark, does blackout and face serious consequences for that hard fact and has to face all kinds of hell) A down and out drunk Casey, the role played by down and out faded Hollywood star Dane Clark picked up on the cheap by Lippert and who was so “from hunger” he starred in a few of these B-babies not necessarily to his career advantage) was sitting in a bar (a nice bar, maybe classy too, since it had a female blues torch singer up on stage as the film begins which may have been the cinematic and thematic highlight of the whole venture) putting a load on when a beautiful young woman, Phyllis, played by fetching Belinda Lee, comes up to his table and before long makes him an offer he can’t refuse. No, not that, not something sexual which would be catnip for most guys once they got a look at her but an offer for him to marry her for a pile of dough so she can grab some inheritance money from a stingy father. Offers him serious dough, serious dough then anyway but as I have mentioned more than once in previous reviews nothing but cheapjack walking around money these days. Offers him five hundred pounds, pounds sterling which in those heady English days was maybe twenty-five hundred US, and I don’t know and it doesn’t matter now post-Brexit how many Euros. He bites and she drags him out of the gin mill and to a preacher man or justice of the peace maybe better to tie the profitable knot.
Easy dough, real easy for a down and out guy who had a drinking problem and was out of cash-flush. Easy, except for one problem, he winds up in a Gainsborough apartment, you know an artist’s apartment, female, an apartment of a woman who had started a portrait of Phyllis and can’t remember a thing about the night before except he had blood on his coat. Which is not good, very not good, since Phyllis isn’t easy to find and moreover her father had been murdered by a party or parties unknown that night before. So yes the coppers and everybody else have him set up as the fall guy, as the guy to take the big step-off, the guy to be hung high as they used to say. But not so quick because under the threat of the gallows Casey gets “religion” gets on the case to find out who actually did kill poor Phyllis’ father. Through a series of twists and turns with various shady characters he eventually finds out the real killer-the wife, the mother, as usual since she would be left out of the goodies if Phyllis grabbed all the dough. Here is the funniest twist old Casey after having more than a few suspicions about Phyllis winds up in the sack with her (and her bag of dough) which is okay for 1950s film censors since remember they were married- a legal marriage at it turned out.
For a while the film took turns like a real thriller but the dialogue and the wooden acting by the Brits (and by faded Dane in spots too too) make this thing a holy goof. As I have mentioned before in other reviews where things looked promising at the beginning here despite the come hither title and the titillating advertisement poster (see above) for the film this one fades away on its own dead weight. B-noir but seriously B not heading to classics-no way.
Remember 1979 Greensboro Massacre!-Built The Anti-Fascist United Front!
Emboldened by the overt racism of the Trump administration, fascists have stepped up their provocations and deadly attacks. Their murderous intent was clearly seen in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, when hundreds of fascists mobilized in defense of the Confederacy. Heather Heyer was murdered by a Nazi-lover who drove his car at high speed into a group of anti-fascist protesters. The goal of today’s fascists is no different than that of their Nazi and Klan forebears: racial genocide, of black people in particular, and the destruction of working-class organizations, including unions and the left.
Today, “Charlottesville” is a byword for fascist terror, just as “Greensboro” has been for 38 years. On 3 November 1979, Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists murdered five union organizers and anti-racist activists, supporters of the Communist Workers Party, in broad daylight in Greensboro, North Carolina. The fascist killers did not work alone; they were aided and abetted by the government. Dozens of Klansmen and Nazis in a nine-car caravan drove up to the black housing project of Morningside Homes, the assembly point for an anti-Klan rally. With calculated deliberation, they took their shotguns and semiautomatic weapons out of their trunks, aimed and opened fire directly at the 100 protesters. Then they calmly packed up and drove away. The whole massacre was shown live on TV and recorded by the Greensboro cops.
In less than 90 seconds, five demonstrators lay dead: César Cauce, Michael Nathan, William Sampson, Sandra Smith and James Waller. Ten more were wounded, one of them paralyzed for life. As soon as the attack ended, the cops swooped in and arrested survivors. Liberals, black Democrats and the trade-union bureaucracy reacted with the same lies as the bourgeois media, implying that the dead got what they deserved. Grotesquely, the New York Times described the carnage in Greensboro as a “shootout” between two “fringe groups.”
Many of the anti-Klan activists who survived were fired from their jobs, jailed and hounded by the FBI and local police. These courageous people—black and white, men and women—were targeted because they acted to oppose the fascists’ vicious campaign against blacks, Jews, unionists and leftists. Many of them had a long and honorable history in the Southern civil rights movement and as union militants in North Carolina, where Klan terror has historically been used by the bosses to keep unions out.
The Greensboro Massacre was the product of collusion between the fascists and the capitalist state. A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent helped train the killers and plot the assassinations; a police/FBI informer rode shotgun in the lead car; a Greensboro cop brought up the rear. The killers literally got away with murder. They were acquitted by all-white juries, affirming once again the meaning of “justice” in this racist, capitalist system.
The fascists announced they would “celebrate” the Greensboro Massacre a week later in Detroit. In response to this provocation in a black proletarian center, the Spartacist League built a labor/black mobilization at the same place and time that the Klan threatened to rally. Over 500 people, including black and white auto workers, turned out to make sure that the Klan did not ride in the Motor City. In organizing the protest, we had to overcome sabotage from the trade-union misleaders (especially UAW bureaucrats), who refused to endorse and build the rally, and from black Democratic Party mayor Coleman Young, who threatened to arrest the anti-Klan protesters. In an exemplary way, this mobilization showed that the working class, marching at the head of all the fascists’ intended victims, has the power to sweep the race-terrorists off the street.
The fascists must and can be stopped. Greensboro showed that the fascist killers can’t be effectively fought by individual direct action, no matter how courageous. What is necessary is to mobilize the strength of the working class. As we wrote in the immediate aftermath of Greensboro:
“Every successful cross burning, every fascist parade through a Jewish or black neighborhood, every courtroom victory in the liberals’ campaign for ‘free speech for fascists’ whets the murderers’ appetite for more violence.... This campaign of terror must be stopped. Socialists and militants in the labor movement must call on organized labor to mobilize its tremendous social power, in alliance with black and other minority organizations and the left to stop the Klan in its tracks.”
— “For Labor/Black Mass Mobilizations: Smash KKK Killers!” WV No. 243, 9 November 1979
Such mobilizations can give the working class a sense of its social power and of the class nature of the capitalist state and the Democrats. They also point to the need to forge a workers party to lead the fight for a socialist revolution. That is the only way to get rid of the fascist murderers once and for all—by doing away with the racist capitalist system that breeds them. In fighting for a workers America, we honor the memory of the Greensboro martyrs.
For The Frontline Defenders Of The Working Class!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”-Build The Resistance-A Program
By the American Left History blog staff
[Sometimes and the period we are in of late, over the last several years, a period of cold civil war in the United States, is one of those times, we have to come up with some programmatic statements in order to help the process of clarification about the immediate and future tasks of the Left. To what the later Peter Paul Markin, forever known as the Scribe, called in his old hard-core working class growing up neighborhood days “seeking the newer world” which he unfortunately by his untimely early death was not able to help create although for a while he tried, tried like hell to do in his best days and which a number of us, his old comrades both from corner boy days and later have been trying to continue. The following is a draft, and only a draft, of what we collectively have come up with to help orient the newfound and promising Resistance that has sprung up in the era of one Donald J. Trump, his henchmen and his hangers-on to reverse the one-sided class war we have been on the brunt side of and of the cultural wars we have been fighting rear-guard action against for about the last forty years. Josh Breslin for the American Left History blog staff. ]
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere! ******** Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule! ******** A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was as high in the American labor force as it is just tentatively recovering from of late, although it is admittedly down from the Great Recession 2008 highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. Socially productive work not make-shift stuff although we would support an vast expansion of public works to fix the broken down infrastructure in need of serious and immediate repair. his is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.
The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions’ plans as a result of battles like the General Strike in San Francisco in the 1934, is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.
Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” –with the no reduction in pay proviso, although many low –end employers are even now under the “cover” of the flawed Obamacare reducing hours WITH loss of pay-so that to establish this work system as a norm it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.
Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy. Support the recent militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially acceptable wage in their Fight For 15.
Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.
Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of company-owned trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. The key here is to organize the truckers and distribution workers the place where the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of individual retail stores. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.
Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize.
Simple-No more defeats like in Wisconsin in 2011, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections like the unsuccessful one against Governor Scoot Walker in Wisconsin in the aftermath of the huge defeat of public workers in Wisconsin funds and talents which could have been used to reorganize the public workers for union struggles ahead. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.
* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008, 2012, and 2016 labor, organized labor, spent over well over 700 million dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between the rich and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus efforts rather than the serious labor organizing among low wage workers, the unorganized, the South and Wal-Mart the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement since they have been very generous with own paychecks. The old norm in need of revival is that the bureaucrats at all levels should receive no more than the pay of the average skilled worker they represent.
The hard reality today is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. One of most egregious recent examples that we can recall- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks in the summer of 2011 when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor when the deal went down from Bush to Obama to Trump on down.
This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio (also think, think hard, about having to go that far back to get a positive example). That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections against individual reactionaries, like the Scoot-Walker recall effort in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle (and which was overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the number of unionized public workers has dwindled to a precious few).
*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reached its final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we argued that we must recognize that we anti-warriors had failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in previously in Libya and now in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Chad and other proxy wars) continue now with a new stage against ISIS (Islamic State) in Iraq and other Middle East states we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before that fight is over. No War With North Korea, Iran! Out of Syria! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East! Stop The Bombing Campaigns! Defend The Palestinian People! And as always after 16 long years, since 2001 for the forgetful Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!
U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off North Korea!- American (and world) imperialists have periodically ratcheted up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of North Korea and Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partners on this issue, Israel and Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea) in North Korea or Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of North Korea and Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and the Kim regime in North Korea in our own way in our own time.
U.S. Hands Off The World! And Keep Them Off!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.
Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that in 1915 in the heat of war and paid the price unlike other party leaders who were pledged to stop the war budgets and reneged on that promise by going to prison. The jailhouse the only play for an honest representative of the working class under those conditions. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now no new funding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea preparations, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get our drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.
*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs. Be clear Obamacare is not our program and has been shown to be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program against those like Trump and the majority of his Republican ilk r his who wish to dismantle it and leave millions once again uninsured and denied basic health benefits.
Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!
This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle-class as well.
Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students from broken homes and minority homes in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget if you want to find the money quickly to do the job right), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.
Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion plus dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while low-cost aid has not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!
Stop housing foreclosures and aid underwater mortgages now! Although the worst of the 2008 crunch has abated there are still plenty of problems and so this demand is still timely if not desperately timely like in the recent past. Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble had also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.
Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda.
Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.
Build a workers’ party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to socialism, to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):
“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
********
Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Preacher man, don't tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Most people think, Great god will come from the skies,
Take away everything And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light, You stand up for your rights. jah!
Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )
Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )
Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )
Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )
Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )
Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )
We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty god is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )
So you better: Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )
Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )
*************
A special word about Bob Marley whose song above inspired us to update and present out programmatic ideas:
We Don’t Want Your Ism-Skism Thing- Dreadlocks Delight- “One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley And The Wailers”- A CD Review
One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley And The Wailers, Bob Marley And The Wailers, UTV Records, 2001
Admit it, back in the late seventies and early eighties we all had our reggae minutes, at least a minute anyway. And the center of that minute, almost of necessity, had to be a run-in with the world of Bob Marley and the Wailers, probably I Shot The Sheriff. Some of us stuck with that music and moved on to its step-child be-bop, hip-hop when that moved on the scene. Others like me just took it as a world music cultural moment and put the records (you know records, those black vinyl things, right?) away after a while. And that was that.
Well not quite. A few year back, back in 2011 the Occupy movement, the people risen, had done a very funny musical thing, at least funny to my ears when I heard it. They, along with the old labor song, Solidarity Forever, and, of course Brother Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land , had resurrected Bob Marley’s up-from-under fight song, Get Up, Stand Up to fortify the sisters and brothers against the American imperial monster beating down on all of us and most directly under the police baton and tear gas canister. And that seems, somehow, eminently right in the monster age of one Donald J. Trump, his henchman, and his hangers-on. More germane here it has gotten me to dust off those old records and give Brother Marley another hear. And you should too if you have been remiss of late with such great songs as (aside from those mentioned already) No Woman, No Cry, Jamming, One Love/People Get Ready (ya, the old Chambers Brother tune), and Buffalo Soldier. And stand up and fight too.
Legendary Marvel Comic Book Illustrator And Super-Hero Creator Stan Lee Passes At 95
By Seth Garth
Greg Green has asked me to make comment on the passing of legendary Marvel Comic illustrator and innovative super-hero creator (think Hulk, Captain America, Black Panther) Stan Lee at 95. He said he was in a quandary about asking anybody to do the piece since he had been the one who in 2017 had the writers here, young and old alike, do film reviews of Marvel and DC Comic characters as they hit the screen. This as part of what I think was asserting his authority when he took over the day to day operations of the publication as site manager after a bloody internal battle pitting young against old which resulted in the previous manager being purged and sent into exile. This frankly hare-brained scheme was Greg’s notion of “broadening our horizons,” or some such thing in order to reach a younger demographic. Both young and old writers rebelled against this dictate and more importantly the reader base which is heavily composed of baby-boomers did as well. If Greg, and
I won’t go on and go about his grievous error since we have bloodied the pages on this subject already, has thought to ask any writer, young or old, about what drives the youngsters to the cinema to see these gaggles of super-heroes doing their action a minute stuff against bad guys he would have known that they do not read so-called high brow film reviews in baby-boomer oriented publications. Don’t read at all or not much when the Internet will instantly spoon-feed them whatever they need to know. But enough.
I don’t know much about Stan Lee except as he became a more known figure in the comic book world it was clear he was a max daddy innovator, a guy who could create super-heroes however misshapen and loaded with super-human powers had some human qualities that an average kid or older aficionado could hang onto. And maybe that is his legacy, the kindness and the thought behind his creations which were reflected more fully I think in the comic books rather than the films with the action a minute scenarios which seemed too implausible to dwell on. If the doing no harm in the real world and providing some easy leisure time reading as I did for me as a kid despite not knowing he created many of the characters s then that says enough. RIP, Stan Lee, RIP.
From The Living
Archives Of Boston Veterans For Peace-They Ain't Your Grandfather's Veterans
[Ralph Morris who has
lived in Troy, New York most of his life, been raised there and raised his own
family there, went to war, the bloody, horrendous Vietnam War which he has made
plain many times he will never live down, never get over what he did, what he
saw others do, and most importantly for the long haul, what his evil government
did with no remorse to people in that benighted country with whom he had no
quarrel never was much for organizations, joining organizations when he was
young until he came up a group formed in the fire of the Vietnam War protests
-Vietnam Veteran Against the War (VVAW) which he joined after watching a
contingent of them pass by in silent march protesting the war in downtown
Albany one fall afternoon. Somebody in that contingent with a microphone called
out to any veterans observing the march who had had enough of war, had felt like
that did to “fall in” (an old army term well if bitterly remembered). He did
and has never looked back although for the past many years his affiliation has
been with a subsequent anti-war veterans’ group Veterans for Peace.
Sam Eaton, who has
lived in Carver, Massachusetts, most of his life, been raised there and raised
his own family there, and did not go to war. Did not go for the simple reason
that due to a severe childhood accident which left him limping severely thereafter
he was declared no fit for military duty, 4-F the term the local draft board used.
He too had not been much for organizations, joining organizations when he was
young. That is until his best friend from high school, Jeff Mullins, died in
hell-hole Vietnam and before he had died asked Sam that if anything happened to
him to let the world that he had done things, had seen others do things, and most
importantly for the long haul, what his evil government did with no remorse to
people in that benighted country with whom he had no quarrel. As part of
honoring Jeff’s request after Sam found out about his death he was like a whirling
dervish joining one anti-war action after another, joining one ad hoc group,
each more radical than the previous one as the war until the fateful day when he
met Ralph down in Washington, D.C.
That was when both in their
respective collectives, Ralph in VVAW and Sam in Cambridge Red Front, were
collectively attempting one last desperate effort to end the war by closing down
the government if it would not shut down the war. All they got for their
efforts were tear gas, police batons, and arrest bracelets and a trip to the
bastinado which was the floor of Robert F. Kennedy stadium which is where they would
meet after Sam noticed Ralph’s VVAW pin and told him about Jeff and his request.
That experience would form a lasting friendship including several years ago Sam
joining Ralph’s Veterans for Peace as a supporter, an active supporter still
trying to honor his long gone friend’s request and memory.
No one least of all
either of them would claim they were organizing geniuses, far from it but over
the years they participated, maybe even helped organize many anti-war events.
One day their friend, Josh Breslin, who writes a by-line at this publication, and
who is also a veteran asked them to send some of events they had participated in
here to form a sort of living archives of the few remaining activist grouping
in this country, in America who are still waging the struggle for peace. So
periodically, since we are something of a clearing house and historic memory
for leftist activities, we will put their archival experiences into our archives.
Report Back On Honk!
Parade And Octoberfest In Harvard Square-Sunday October 7th -Thanks
To Smedley Honk! Marchers and Octoberfest Booth Volunteers
Special thanks to Dan H.
and Jain R-H for bringing materials, etc. over from the wilds of Quincy to the
Wild West of Harvard Square
Kudos to the Smedleys
and supporters, carrying flags furling in the breeze, who marched to the music
of our allies in the Leftist Marching Band in the Honk! Parade on Sunday
October 7th starting in Davis Square, Somerville, and wending (nice
word, right) its way to Harvard Square, that is in the high rent district of
Cambridge. We got, as usual in this “choir” parade, a good response along the
way and a great response, again as always, in Harvard Square propah. The parade
stepped off at noon or a little after and we got applause from the start. A
special feature this year was a banner brought by leading Smedley Pat Scanlon
from our “banner-maker” in North Andover (kudos to him)-captioned with our big
Armistice Day push to get one and all to ring the bells at 11 on November 11th.
We also passed out VFP informational leaflets and our Armistice Day parade and
program announcement. (We will be presenting more info on that event as we get
closer to the day.)
Octoberfest in Harvard
Square, still in the high rent district of Cambridge-about 10 AM to 5 PM
Dan Higgins and Jain
R-H brought our canopy and other materials sometime before 10 AM (8-10 is when
vehicles were allowed to unload, etc.) and he and others helped set the booth
up with literature and our new expanded inventory of clothing. As we go to
press, oops, to cyberspace, I have no figures on the day’s take, how much moola
we made, but we had steady business and conversations all afternoon. (I will
amend this for the Minutes to reflect our “take,” how much moola we made, on
the day minus the $135 graft to get the booth.)
[We made $254,00 on
the day-Scribe]
The divine Jain Rudivich
(maybe sic)-Higgins staffed the booth early. Irrepressible Jon Niles committed himself
to spending time at the booth as did Pat Scanlon-Doug Stuart Kebartas and John
Robinson -and also helped after marching from the wilds of Somerville. At a
little 5 PM before as the rains which seemed predestined to plague this event several
people helped pack up after a long day. Thanks to all marchers and booth
volunteers who made our work easier by their presence.
This young BU student, from China, writing this piece as an assignment for a journalism course, has more gleaned from us, and concisely expressed our mission, than I ever thought possible. It is amazing.
Why can't we, in Boston, get reporters like this?? (Or, editors who direct their reporters to stories like this, The 100th Anniversary of Armistice Day! Seems clear who wants endless war...who's complicit.
More than half of the U.S. government’s discretionary spending is military-related. If you think there’s something wrong with such priorities, we certainly agree.
If you contribute now with a tax-deductible donation, you’ll be helping the RootsAction Education Fund to gear up our efforts -- working for peaceful resolution of conflicts instead endless wars.
And we’re committed to freedom of information that can make possible the informed consent of the governed instead of media manipulation that’s so routine.
That’s why the RootsAction Education Fund actively supports the rights of whistleblowers, journalists, researchers and activists who insist on speaking truth to -- and about -- power.
We challenge the kind of power that spends astronomical amounts of tax money on the military while so many people are suffering from lack of health care, education, housing, nutrition and other human rights.
We can’t keep doing the work of the RootsAction Education Fund without support from people who care. And frankly, after focusing on the content of our work all year, our organization is just about out of money. That’s why we’re sending this email, asking for your tax-deductible donation so we can continue this work and make it stronger.
Thank you!
With best wishes, The RootsAction Education Fund team
Last Call-We Are
Marching To…End The Endless Wars- Be There At Noon Sunday November 11th
For Our Annual Peace Parade And Program-We Will Have Vehicle In Parade For
Those Who Need To Ride So Come On Out
We Will Have Vehicle In
The Parade For Those Who Need To Ride
Be there, be aware. We
are marching this 100th Anniversary of the Armistice to finish the
task of ending the endless wars which have gone on since that close of WWI, the
war that was supposed to end all wars.
We will, as we have in
the past, form up at the corner of Beacon Street and Charles Street at noon to
be ready to step off after the “official” parade at 1 PM as it heads to the
finish line at City Hall Plaza
We will, as we have also
done in the past, have our Armistice Day program, this year mercifully shorter,
at Sam Adams Park in Fanueil Hall Marketplace complete with speakers, bands and
poets starting about 2 PM.
If none of this getting
sore feet and listening to endless speakers drone on does not get you
motivated, then if you are a veteran or would just like to break bread with
veterans the proprietors of nearby Durgin Park provide a nice meal to all
veterans that day after completion of our program.
