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
*Poet's Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"- In Honor Of Julius And Ethel Rosenberg Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the heroic communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed by the American state on June 19, 1953.
To Those Born After
I
To the cities I came in a time of disorder That was ruled by hunger. I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar And then I joined in their rebellion. That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
I ate my dinners between the battles, I lay down to sleep among the murderers, I didn't care for much for love And for nature's beauties I had little patience. That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time, My speech betrayed me to the butchers. I could do only little But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily: That's what I hoped. That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
Our forces were slight and small, Our goal lay in the far distance Clearly in our sights, If for me myself beyond my reaching. That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
II
You who will come to the surface From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness That you've not had to face:
Days when we were used to changing countries More often than shoes, Through the war of the classes despairing That there was only injustice and no outrage.
Even so we realised Hatred of oppression still distorts the features, Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly. Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness, Could never be friendly ourselves.
And in the future when no longer Do human beings still treat themselves as animals, Look back on us with indulgence.
An Encore -The Son Of Dharma-With Jack Kerouac’s On The Road In Mind
Jack Callahan thought he was going crazy when he thought about the matter after he had awoken from his fitful dream. Thought he was crazy for “channeling” Jack Kerouac, or rather more specifically channeling Jack’s definitive book On The Road, definite in giving him and a goodly portion of his generation that last push to go, well, go search a new world, or at least get the dust of your old town growing up off of your shoes, that had much to do with his wanderings. Got him going in search of what his late corner boy, “the Scribe,” Peter Paul Markin called the search for the Great Blue-Pink American West Night (Markin always capitalized that concept so since I too was influenced by the mad man’s dreams I will do so here). Any way you cut it seeking that new world that gave Jack his fitful dream. That “driving him crazy” stemmed from the fact that those wanderings, that search had begun, and finished shortly thereafter, about fifty years before when he left the road after a few months for the hand of Chrissie McNamara and a settled life. Decided that like many others who went that same route he was not build for the long haul road after all.
But maybe it is best to go back to the beginning, not the fifty years beginning, Jesus, who could remember, maybe want to remember incidents that far back, but to the night several weeks before when Jack, Frankie Riley, who had been our acknowledged corner boy leader out in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys from about senior year in high school in 1966 and a couple of years after when for a whole assortment of reasons, including the wanderings, the crowd went its separate ways, Jimmy Jenkins, Allan Johnson, Bart Webber, Josh Breslin, Rich Rizzo, Sam Eaton and me got together for one of our periodic “remember back in the day” get-togethers over at “Jack’s” in Cambridge a few block down Massachusetts Avenue from where Jimmy lives. We have probably done this a dozen time over the past decade or so, more recently as most of us have more time to spent at a hard night’s drinking (drinking high-shelf liquors as we always laugh about since in the old days we collectively could not have afforded one high-shelf drink and were reduced to drinking rotgut wines and seemingly just mashed whiskeys, and draino Southern Comfort, and that draino designation no lie, especially the first time you took a slug, the only way to take it, before you acquired the taste for it).
The night I am talking about though as the liquor began to take effect someone, Bart I think, mentioned that he had read in the Globe that up in Lowell they were exhibiting the teletype roll of paper that Jack Kerouac had typed the most definitive draft of his classic youth nation travel book, On The Road in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of its publication in 1957. That information stopped everybody in the group’s tracks for a moment. Partly because everybody at the table, except Rich Rizzo, had taken some version of Kerouac’s book to heart as did thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of certified members of the generation of ’68 who went wandering in that good 1960s night. But most of all because etched in everybody’s memory were thoughts of the mad monk monster bastard saint who turned us all on to the book, and to the wanderings, the late Peter Paul Markin.
Yeah, we still moan for that sainted bastard all these years later whenever something from our youths come up. It might be an anniversary, it might be all too often the passing of some iconic figure from those times, or it might be passing some place that was associated with our crowd, and with Markin. See Markin was something like a “prophet” to us, not the old time biblical long-beard and ranting guys although maybe he did think he was in that line of work, but as the herald of what he called “a fresh breeze coming across the land” early in the 1960s. Something of a nomadic “hippie” slightly before his time (including wearing his hair-pre moppet Beatles too long for working class North Adamsville tastes, especially his mother’s, who insisted on boys’ regulars and so another round was fought out to something like a stand-still then in the Markin household saga). The time of Markin’s “prophesies,” the hard-bitten Friday or Saturday night times when nothing to do and nothing to do it with he would hold forth, was however a time when we could have given a rat’s ass about some new wave forming in Markin’s mind (and that “rat’s ass” was the term of art we used on such occasions).
We would change our collective tunes later in the decade but then, and on Markin’s more sober days he would be clamoring over the same things, all we cared about was girls (or rather “getting into their pants”), getting dough for dates and walking around money (and planning small larcenies to obtain the filthy lucre), and getting a “boss” car, like a ’57 Chevy or at least a friend that had one in order to “do the do” with said girls and spend some dough at places like drive-in theaters and drive-in restaurants (mandatory if you wanted to get past square one with girls, the girls we knew, or were attracted to, in those days).
Markin was whistling in the dark for a long time, past high school and maybe a couple of years after. He wore us down though pushing us to go up to Harvard Square in Cambridge to see guys with long hair and faded clothes and girls with long hair which looked like they had used an iron to iron it out sing, read poetry, and just hang-out. Hang out waiting for that same “fresh breeze” that Markin spent many a girl-less, dough-less, car-less Friday or Saturday night serenading us heathens about. I don’t know how many times he dragged me, and usually Bart Webber, in his trail on the late night subway to hear some latest thing in the early 1960s folk minute which I could barely stand then, and which I still grind my teeth over when I hear some associates going on and on about guys like Bob Dylan, Tom Rush and Dave Von Ronk and gals like Joan Baez, the one I heard later started the whole iron your long hair craze among seemingly rationale girls. Of course I did tolerate the music better once a couple of Cambridge girls asked me if I liked folk music one time in a coffeehouse and I said of course I did and took Markin aside to give me some names to throw at them. One girl, Lorna, I actually dated off and on for several months.
But enough of me and my youthful antics, and enough too of Markin and his wiggy ideas because this screed is about Jack Kerouac, about the effect of his major book, and why Jack Callahan of all people who among those of us corner boys from Jack Slack’s who followed Markin on the roads west left it the earliest. Left to go back to Chrissie, and eventually a car dealership, Toyota, that had him Mr. Toyota around Eastern Massachusetts (and of course Chrissie as Mrs. Toyota).
In a lot of ways Markin was only the messenger, the prodder, because when he eventually convinced us all to read the damn book at different points when we were all, all in our own ways getting wrapped up in the 1960s counter-cultural movement (and some of us the alternative political part too) we were in thrall to what adventures Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty were up to. That is why I think Jack had his dreams after the all-night discussions we had. Of course Markin came in for his fair share of comment, good and bad. But what we talked about mostly was how improbable on the face of it a poor working-class kid from the textile mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, from a staunch Roman Catholic French-Canadian heritage of those who came south to “see if the streets of America really were paved with gold” would seem an unlikely person to be involved in a movement that in many ways was the opposite of what his generation, the parents of our generation of ’68 to put the matter in perspective, born in the 1920s, coming of age in the Great Depression and slogging through World War II was searching for in the post-World War II “golden age of America.” Add in that he also was a “jock” (no slur intended as we spent more than our fair share of time talking about sports on those girl-less, dough-less, car-less weekend nights, including Markin who had this complicated way that he figured out the top ten college football teams since they didn’t a play-off system to figure it out. Of course he was like the rest of us a Notre Dame “subway” fan), a guy who played hooky to go read books and who hung out with a bunch of corner boys just like us would be-bop part of his own generation and influence our generation enough to get some of us on the roads too. Go figure.
So we, even Markin when he was in high flower, did not “invent” the era whole, especially in the cultural, personal ethos part, the part about skipping for a while anyway the nine to five work routine, the white house and picket fence family routine, the hold your breath nose to the grindstone routine and discovering the lure of the road and of discovering ourselves, and of the limits of our capacity to wonder. No question that elements of the generation before us, Jack Kerouac’s, the sullen West Coast hot-rodders, the perfect wave surfers, the teen-alienated rebel James Dean and wild one Marlon Brando we saw on Saturday afternoon matinee Strand Theater movie screens and above all his “beats” helped push the can down the road, especially the “beats” who along with Jack wrote to the high heavens about what they did, how they did it and what the hell it was they were running from. Yeah, gave us a road map to seek that “newer world” Markin got some of us wrapped up in later in the decade and the early part of the next.
Now the truth of the matter is that most generation of ‘68ers, us, only caught the tail-end of the “beat” scene, the end where mainstream culture and commerce made it into just another “bummer” like they have done with any movement that threatened to get out of hand. So most of us who were affected by the be-bop sound and feel of the “beats” got what we knew from reading about them. And above all, above even Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem, Howl which was a clarion call for rebellion, was Jack Kerouac who thrilled even those who did not go out in the search the great blue-pink American West night.
Here the odd thing, Kerouac except for that short burst in the late 1940s and a couple of vagrant road trips in the 1950s before fame struck him down was almost the antithesis of what we of the generation of ’68 were striving to accomplish. As is fairly well known, or was by those who lived through the 1960s, he would eventually disown his “step-children.” Be that as it may his role, earned or not, wanted or not, as media-anointed “king of the beats” was decisive.
But enough of the quasi-literary treatment that I have drifted into when I really wanted to tell you about what Bart Webber told me about his dream. He dreamed that he, after about sixty-five kinds of hell with his mother who wanted him to stay home and start that printing business that he had dreamed of since about third grade when he read about how his hero Benjamin Franklin had started in the business, get married to Betsy Binstock, buy a white picket fence house (a step up from the triple decker tenement where he grew up) have children, really grandchildren and have a happy if stilted life. But his mother advise fell off him like a dripping rain, hell, after-all he was caught in that 1960s moment when everything kind of got off-center and so he under the constant prodding of Markin decided to hit the road. Of course the Kerouac part came in from reading the book after about seven million drum-fire assaults by Markin pressing him to read the thing.
So there he was by himself. Markin and I were already in San Francisco so that was the story he gave his mother for going and also did not tell her that he was going to hitchhike to save money and hell just to do it. It sounded easy in the book. So he went south little to hit Route 6 (a more easterly part of that road in upstate New York which Sal unsuccessfully started his trip on). There he met a young guy, kind of short, black hair, built like a football player who called himself Ti Jean, claimed he was French- Canadian and hailed from Nashua up in New Hampshire but had been living in Barnstable for the summer and was now heading west to see what that summer of love was all about.
Bart was ecstatic to have somebody to kind of show him the ropes, what to do and don’t do on the road to keep moving along. So they travelled together for a while, a long while first hitting New York City where Ti Jean knew a bunch of older guys, gypsy poets, sullen hipsters, con men, drifters and grifters, guys who looked like they had just come out some “beat” movie. Guys who knew what was what about Times Square, about dope, about saying adieu to the American dream of their parents to be free to do as they pleased. Good guys though who taught him a few things about the road since they said they had been on that road since the 1940s.
Ti Jean whose did not look that old said he was there with them, had blown out of Brockton after graduating high school where he had been an outstanding sprinter who could have had a scholarship if his grades had been better. Had gone to prep school in Providence to up his marks, had then been given a track scholarship to Brown, kind of blew that off when Providence seemed too provincial to him, had fled to New York one fine day where he sailed out for a while in the merchant marines to do his bit for the war effort. Hanging around New York in between sailings he met guys who were serious about reading, serious about talking about what they read, and serious about not being caught in anything but what pleased them for the moment. Some of this was self-taught, some picked up from the hipsters and hustlers.
After the war was over, still off-center about what to do about this writing bug that kept gnawing at him despite everybody, his minute wife, his love mother, his carping father telling him to get a profession writing wasn’t where any dough was, any dough for him he met this guy, a hard knocks guys who was something like a plebeian philosopher king, Ned Connelly, who was crazy to fix up cars and drive them, drive them anyway. Which was great since Ti Jean didn’t have a license, didn’t know step one about how to shift gears and hated driving although he loved riding shot-gun getting all blasted on the dope in the glove compartment and the be-bop jazz on the radio. So they tagged along together for a couple of years, zigged and zagged across the continent, hell, went to Mexico too to get that primo dope that he/they craved, got drunk as skunks more times than you could shake a stick, got laid more times than you would think by girls who you would not suspect were horny but were, worked a few short jobs picking produce in the California fields, stole when there was no work, pimped a couple of girls for a while to get a stake and had a hell of time while the “squares” were doing whatever squares do. And then he wrote some book about it, a book that was never published because there were too many squares who could not relate to what he and Ned were about. He was hoping that the kids he saw on the road, kids like Bart would keep the thing moving along as he left Bart at the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge on their last ride together.
Then Bart woke up, woke up to the fact that he stayed on the road too short a time now looking back on it. That guy Ti Jean had it right though, live fast, drink hard and let the rest of it take care of itself. Thanks Markin.
If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83-Once More Into The Time Capsule
By Music Critic Bart Webber
Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in (and the former two never got over since they will still tell a tale or two about the times if you go anywhere within ten miles of the subject-I will take my chances here because this notice is important) all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. That is where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers who sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
But there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some other colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s where some of those names played 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 Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about). 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, out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is different, 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. Tough too when you 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.
The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. She 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) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember 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 whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels
Rosalie's friend Malvina Reynolds
CD Review
Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001
"Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:
Disc One; Woody Guthrie on “Hard Travelin’”, Big Bill Broonzy on “Black , Brown And White”, Jean Ritchie on “Nottamun Town”, Josh White on “One Meat Ball” Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”, Cisco Houston on “Midnight Special”, The Weavers on “Wasn’t That A Time”, Glenn Yarborough on “Spanish Is A Loving Tongue”, Odetta on “I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain”, The New Lost City Ramblers on “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down”, Bob Gibson and Bob Camp on “Betty And Dupree”, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on “San Francisco Bay Blues”, Peggy Seeger on “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, Hoyt Axton on “Greenback Dollar” and Carolyn Hester on “Turn And Swing Jubilee”."
Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”. Like everyone else from the “Generation of ‘68” who paid attention to folk music on their way to greater social and political consciousness I know this song from Pete Seeger’s rendition. I only knew the name Malvina Reynolds much later. I only ‘knew’ the musical work of Ms. Reynold much later through the efforts of Rosalie Sorrels who did a whole CD compilation of Malvina's work (reviewed in this space). The lyrics to “Little Boxes”, by the way, are a very concise and condensed expression of the way many of us were feeling about the future bourgeois society had set up for us back in the early 1960s. As the song details-it was not pretty. I submit that it still is not pretty.
Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems
Little Boxes
Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1990. Malvina and her husband were on their way from where they lived in Berkeley, through San Francisco and down the peninsula to La Honda where she was to sing at a meeting of the Friends’ Committee on Legislation (not the PTA, as Pete Seeger says in the documentary about Malvina, “Love It Like a Fool”). As she drove through Daly City, she said “Bud, take the wheel. I feel a song coming on.”
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1 Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one, And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses All went to the university, Where they were put in boxes And they came out all the same, And there's doctors and lawyers, And business executives, And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course And drink their martinis dry, And they all have pretty children And the children go to school, And the children go to summer camp And then to the university, Where they are put in boxes And they come out all the same.
And the boys go into business And marry and raise a family In boxes made of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one, And they're all made out of ticky tacky
Reflections On Memorial Day, 2017 At The Vietnam Memorial Wall-Fritz Taylor’s Endless War
By Josh Breslin
Fritz Taylor, Vietnam veteran, 1969-1971, 4th Infantry, always claimed long after he had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace, after he had earned the right to oppose the bloody damn thing having been up close and personal that some of his fellow veterans had been shortchanged when it came to the crying wall, crying for him every time he went down to D.C. and was drawn to, had to pay his respects to his fallen comrades. He knew that each name inscribed on that black granite had paid their dues. No question.
This year he happened to be in D.C. on Memorial Day and so as it turned out quite by accident his “duty” to his fallen comrades, especially hometown boys Eric Slater and Jimmy Jenkins Fritz forever etched in stone there, he had caught part of the annual ceremony. Righteous Fritz who went he went over to the peace side of the equation probably had logged more jail time than was good for him with acts of civil disobedience when he wanted to make a point about the current wave of endless wars, moreover did not have any issue when new names of those who were missing in action somehow had gotten repatriated or had been accounted for by some other method. (See above for additions to this year’s crying wall). What grieved Fritz was those like his friend from Vietnam days, Johnny Ridge, a working class kid from Steubenville out in Ohio near the river who after many years of suffering psychic wounds received in Vietnam jumped into that Ohio River. Or another friend from anti-war soldier days, Manny Gibbons who spent his last few years fighting cancer which the doctors directly related to his exposure to Agent Orange. There were others whose stories he knew but those two accounts will do to make this point.
Fritz, righteous Fritz, that day once again promised his lost comrades that he would work until he went to his own not too distant death to get their names etched in stone. Vietnam will never end for one Fritz John Taylor, or a lot of other guys either.
A century ago, leading Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai underscored the commitment of the early Soviet workers state, which issued out of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, to emancipating women. Addressing the leadership of the Third International, newly founded as the party of world revolution, she pointed to the need to free working women from their enslavement in the family, the main source of women’s oppression, through the socialization of its functions. While the Bolsheviks did everything possible with the resources at hand in backward, impoverished Russia, the liberation of women required a qualitative leap in economic development that depended on the extension of proletarian power to the wealthy industrialized countries. Beginning in 1923-24, a bureaucratic caste under J.V. Stalin usurped political power from the Soviet proletariat, promoting “socialism in one country,” and later rehabilitated the institution of the family.
The great Russian proletarian revolution solved the problem of political rights for women with one stroke. Working women and peasant women have now become full-fledged citizens of Soviet Russia. The goal of Working Women’s Day has been fulfilled.
Yet it is now, in the heat of sharp battle with the old, obsolete bourgeois world, that life presents the international proletariat with many new, mature, and urgent challenges in the fight for women’s emancipation.
Women workers and peasant women enjoy the right to vote on a par with men. Nevertheless, despite this formal recognition, this right is nothing more than a means, a weapon for the fight against the conditions of life, the relics of capitalism, that oppress women.
Women workers and peasant women are still very much domestic slaves, still chained to the bourgeois family, still objects of shameful commerce as unwilling prostitutes.
Among the large number of extremely important tasks facing the Third International is the task of women’s thoroughgoing emancipation. Today this question is no longer merely abstract and theoretical. Real life calls for action. Over the last half century women’s labor acquired enormous weight in production. The further planned development of the national economy and its productive capacity has become inconceivable without the assistance of women’s labor power. To use this power expediently in the communist economy, women must be relieved of their burdens and spared unnecessary, unproductive, and wasteful labor in housework and child rearing. Building the new society demands that the living, fresh energy of women must be directed toward constructing life on new principles.
Instead of doing unproductive housework, women can play an enormous role in organizing the new economic order; instead of educating the family, women can contribute greatly to strengthening and developing the beginnings of socialist public education. The new, Third, Communist International needs only to set itself the task of utilizing the female proletariat, of developing the entire breadth of its initiative in order to draw the women workers into the cause of struggling for and building a new way of life and developing a new ethic, a new relationship between the sexes.
—Alexandra Kollontai, “Working Women’s Day and the Third International” (March 1919), reprinted in John Riddell (ed.), Founding the Communist International (1987)
In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Robert Seth Hayes
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
When The Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon
Governments Wasted A Whole Generation of Precious Youth In The Folly Of The
Vietnam War Which Caused Every Young Man So Serious Reflection-An Encore-Frank Jackman’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters of War In Mind
Introduction by Greg Green
Life is full of surprises as everybody over the
age of about three knows firsthand even if that hard fact does not stand out
and light a fire under you at every possible moment. Take my own situation. A
couple of years ago I was working hard at the American Film Gazette managing the overall film review schedule and
trying to outdo the legendary publisher Larry Lorton from Film Daily in the number of films we did reviews on. Then Pete
Markin (aka Allan Jackson who used that moniker in honor of a fallen hometown friend
who taught him and a few of the other writers here a thing or two about the
profession although he eventually fell on his own sword which is a story many
had detailed here over time and I need not go into) brought me over here to run
the day to day operations while he readied himself for retirement or some other
project. Jesus, then the Summer of Love, 1967, or rather the 50th
anniversary commemoration of the event hit this place like a whirling dervish.
I was too young to know much about that time but had heard some pretty raw and
scary stuff about from writers here who had been there under Markin’s guidance,
the real Markin not Allan. In any case Allan went crazy to make sure the damn
event got almost as much coverage after 50 years as when the thing actually got
off the ground and created what he and the others hatched up as a re-work on the
Generation of ’68.
All well and good. Well not all well and good
since the younger writer could in the words of Alden Riley one of the leaders
of the Young Turks give a fuck about the fucking Summer of Love, 1967 or any other
year in that decade. That led to a show-down and the demise of Allan Jackson, a
founding member, and my elevation to site manager and the overall poohbah of
this operation. According to what I hear around the water cooler things are
calmer now that not everybody has to spent 24/7/365 neck-deep in the 1960s like
that was the golden age, like that was the Garden as Lance Lawrence mockingly
called it.
All this to say that some of the stuff from the
1960s, and the recently concluded The Roots
is the Toots rock and roll series is one example that I was more than happy
to give an encore presentation (admittedly after a little nudge froof Eden m
Sam Lowell and others), is worth another inspection. That brings us to the real-life
story below about what happened to Frank Jackman when he was of draft age in the
age when that meant something and meant some tough decisions for a whole generation
of young men who didn’t know what the hell to do when their number got called.
Yeah, maybe this tale is not the sexiest one on the block, on the lowdown of
the 1960s when youth nation went overboard with sex, drugs and rock and roll but
fifty years or so later it still reads like a good story that people should
know about-and shout from the rooftops about as we enter another year of
endless war in the endless wars of our times.
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Jack Callahan’s old friend from Sloan High School in
Carver down in Southeastern Massachusetts Zack James (Zack short for Zachary
not as is the fashion today to just name a baby Zack and be done with it) is an
amateur writer and has been at it since he got out of high school. Found out
that maybe by osmosis, something like that, the stuff Miss Enos taught him
junior and senior years about literature and her favorite writers Hemingway,
Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker to name a few, that she would entice the
English class stuck with him with through college where although he majored in
Political Science he was in thrall to the English literature courses that he
snuck into to his schedule. Snuck in although Zack knew practically speaking he
had a snowball’s chance in hell, an expression he had learned from Hemingway he
thought, of making a career out of the literary life, would more
likely wind driving a cab through dangerous midnight sections of town
occasionally getting mugged for his night’s work. That Political Science major
winding up producing about the same practical results as the literary life
though. Those literary designs stuck with him, savior stuck with him, through
his tour of duty during the Vietnam War, and savior stayed with him through
those tough years when he couldn’t quite get himself back to the “real” world
after ‘Nam and let drugs and alcohol rule his life so that he wound up for some
time as a “brother under the bridge” as Bruce Springsteen later put the
situation in a song that he played continuously at times after he first heard
it “Saigon, long gone…." Stuck with him after he recovered and
started building up his sports supplies business, stuck with him through three
happy/sad/savage/acrimonious “no go” marriages and a parcel of kids and child
support. And was still sticking with him now that he had time to
stretch out and write longer pieces, and beat away on the word processor a few
million words on this and that.
Amateur writer meaning nothing more than that he liked to
write and that writing was not his profession, that he did not depend on the
pen for his livelihood(or rather more correctly these days not the pen but the
word processor). That livelihood business was taken up running a small sports
apparel store in a mall not far from Lexington (the Lexington of American
revolutionary battles to give the correct town and state) where he now lived.
Although he was not a professional writer his interest was such that he liked
these days with Jimmy Shore, the famous ex-runner running the day to day
operations of the store, to perform some of his written work in public at
various “open mic” writing (and poetry) jams that have sprouted up in his area.
This “open mic” business Zack had embarked on s was a
familiar concept to Jack from the days back in the 1960s when he would go to
such events in the coffeehouses around Harvard Square and Beacon Hill to hear
amateur folk-singers perfect their acts and try to be recognized as the new
voice of their generation, or something like that. For “no singing voice, no
musical ear” Jack those were basically cheap date nights if the girl he was
with was into folk music. The way most of the "open mics" worked,
although they probably called them talent searches then, was each
performer would sign up to do one, two, maybe three songs depending on how long
the list of those wishing to perform happened to be (the places where each
performer kicked in a couple of bucks in order to play usually had shorter
lists). These singers usually performed in the period in front of the night’s
feature who very well might have been somebody who a few weeks before had been
noticed by the owner during a previous "open mic" and asked to do a
set of six to sixteen songs depending on the night and the length of the
list of players in front of him or her. The featured performer played,
unlike the "open mic" people, for the “basket” (maybe a hat) passed
around the crowd in the audience and that was the night’s “pay.” A tough racket
for those starting out like all such endeavors. The attrition rate was pretty
high after the folk minute died down with arrival of other genre like folk
rock, heavy rock, and acid rock although you still see a few old folkies
around the Square or playing the separate “open mic” folk circuit that also run
through church coffeehouses just like these writing jams.
Jack was not surprised then when Zack told him he would
like him to come to hear him perform one of his works at the monthly third
Thursday “open mic” at the Congregational Church in Arlington the next town
over from Lexington. Zack told Jack that that night he was going to perform
something he had written and thought on about Frank Jackman, about what had
happened to Frank when he was in the Army during Vietnam War times.
Jack knew almost
automatically what Zack was going to do, he would somehow use Bob Dylan’s Masters
of War lyrics as part of his presentation. Jack and Zack ( a Vietnam
veteran who got “religion” on the anti-war issue while he in the Army and
became a fervent anti-war guy after that experience despite his personal problems)
had met Frank in 1971 when they were doing some anti-war work among the
soldiers at Fort Devens out in Ayer about forty miles west of Boston. Frank had
gotten out of the Army several months before and since he was from Nashua
in the southern part of New Hampshire not far from Devens and had heard about
the G.I. coffeehouse, The Morning Report, where Jack and Zack were working as
volunteers he had decided to volunteer to help out as well.
Now Frank was a quiet guy, quieter than Jack and Zack
anyway, but one night he had told his Army story to a small group of volunteers
gathered in the main room of the coffeehouse as they were planning to
distribute Daniel Ellsberg’s sensational whistle-blower expose The
Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various spots around the base
(including as it turned out inside the fort itself with one copy landing on the
commanding general’s desk for good measure). He wanted to tell this story since
he wanted to explain why he would not be able to go with them if they went
inside the gates at Fort Devens.
Jack knew Zack was going to tell Frank’s story so he told
Frank he would be there since he had not heard the song or Frank’s story in a
long while and had forgotten parts of it. Moreover Zack wanted Jack there for
moral support since this night other than the recitation of the lyrics he was
going to speak off the cuff rather than his usual reading from some prepared
paper.
That night Zack was already in the hall talking to the
organizer, Eli Walsh, you may have heard of him since he has written some
searing poems about his time in three tours Iraq. Jack felt right at home in
this basement section of the church and he probably could have walked around
blind-folded since the writing jams were on almost exactly the same model as the
old folkie “open mics.” A table as you entered to pay your admission this night
three dollars (although the tradition is that no one is turned away for lack of
funds) with a kindly woman asking if you intended to perform and direct you to
the sign-up sheet if so. Another smaller table with various cookies, snacks,
soda, water and glasses for those who wished to have such goodies, and who were
asked to leave a donation in the jar on that table if possible. The set-up in
the hall this night included a small stage where the performers would present
their material slightly above the audience. On the stage a lectern for those
who wished to use that for physical support or to read their work from and the
ubiquitous simple battery-powered sound system complete with microphone. For
the audience a bevy of chairs, mostly mismatched, mostly having seen plenty of
use, and mostly uncomfortable. After paying his admission fee he went over to
Zack to let him know he was in the audience. Zack told him he was number seven
on the list so not to wander too far once the session had begun.
This is the way Zack told the story and why Jack knew
there would be some reference to Bob Dylan’s Masters of War that
night:
Hi everybody my name is Zack James and I am glad that you
all came out this cold night to hear Preston Borden present his moving war
poetry and the rest of us to reflect on the main subject of this month’s
writing jam-the endless wars that the American government under whatever regime
of late has dragged us into, us kicking and screaming to little
avail. I want to thank Eli as always for setting this event up every
month and for his own thoughtful war poetry. [Some polite applause.] But enough
for thanks and all that because tonight I want to recite a poem, well, not
really a poem, but lyrics to a song, to a Bob Dylan song, Masters of
War, so it might very well be considered a poem in some
sense.
You know sometimes, a lot of times, a song, lyrics, a
poem for that matter bring back certain associations. You know some song you
heard on the radio when you went on your first date, your first dance, your
first kiss, stuff like that which is forever etched in your memory and evokes
that moment every time you hear it thereafter. Now how this Dylan song came
back to me recently is a story in itself.
You remember Eli back in October when we went up to Maine
to help the Maine Veterans for Peace on their yearly peace walk that I ran into
Susan Rich, the Quaker gal we met up in Freeport who walked with us that day to
Portland. [Eli shouted out “yes.”] I had not seen Susan in about forty years
before that day, hadn’t seen her since the times we had worked together
building up support for anti-war G.I.s out at the Morning Report coffeehouse in
Ayer outside Fort Devens up on Route 2 about thirty miles from here. That’s
when we met Frank Jackman who is the real subject of my presentation tonight
since he is the one who I think about when I think about that song, think about
his story and how that song relates to it.
Funny as many Dylan songs as I knew Masters of
War, written by Dylan in 1963 I had never heard until 1971. Never heard the
lyrics until I met Frank out at Fort Devens where after I was discharged from
the Army that year I went to do some volunteer anti-war G.I. work at the
coffeehouse outside the base in Army town Ayer. Frank too was a volunteer, had
heard about the place somehow I forget how, who had grown up in Nashua up in
southern New Hampshire and after he was discharged from the Army down at Fort
Dix in New Jersey came to volunteer just like me and my old friend Jack
Callahan who is sitting in the audience tonight. Now Frank was a quiet guy
didn’t talk much about his military service but he made the anti-war soldiers
who hung out there at night and on weekends feel at ease. One night thought he
felt some urge to tell his story, tell why he thought it was unwise for him to
participate in an anti-war action we were planning around the base. We were
going to pass out copies of Daniel Ellsberg’s explosive whistle-blower
expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various location
around the fort and as it turned out on the base. The reason that Frank had
balked at the prospect of going into the fort was that as part of his discharge
paperwork was attached a statement that he was never to go on a military
installation again. We all were startled by that remark, right Jack? [Jack nods
agreement.]
And that night the heroic, our kind of heroic, Frank
Jackman told us about the hows and whys of his Army experience. Frank had been
drafted like a ton of guys back then, like me, and had allowed himself to be
drafted in 1968 at the age of nineteen not being vociferously anti-war and not
being aware then of the option of not taking the subsequent induction. After
about three week down at Fort Dix, the main basic training facility for
trainees coming from the Northeast then, he knew two things-he had made a
serious mistake by allowing himself to be drafted and come hell or high water
he was not going to fight against people he had no quarrel with in Vietnam. Of
course the rigors of basic training and being away from home, away from anybody
who could help him do he knew not what then kept him quiet and just waiting.
Once basic was over and he got his Advanced Infantry Training assignment also
at Fort Dix which was to be an infantryman at a time when old Uncle Sam
only wanted infantrymen in the rice paddles and jungles of Vietnam things came
to a head.
After a few weeks in AIT he got a three day weekend pass
which allowed him to go legally off the base and he used that time to come up
to Boston, or really Cambridge because what he was looking for was help to file
an conscientious objector application and he knew the Quakers were historically
the ones who would know about going about that process. That is ironically
where Susan Rich comes in again, although indirectly this time, since Frank
went to the Meeting House on Brattle Street where they were doing draft and
G.I. resistance counseling and Susan was a member of that Meeting although she
had never met him at that time. He was advised by one of the Quaker counselors
that he could submit a C.O. application in the military, which he had
previously not been sure was possible since nobody told anybody anything about
that in the military, when he got back to Fort Dix but just then, although they
were better later, the odds were stacked against him since he had already
accepted induction. So he went back, put in his application, took a lot of crap
from the lifers and officers in his company after that and little support,
mainly indifference, from his fellow trainees. He still had to go through the
training, the infantry training though and although he had taken M-16 rifle
training in basic he almost balked at continuing to fire weapons especially
when it came to machine guns. He didn’t balk but in the end that was not a big
deal since fairly shortly after that his C.O. application was rejected although
almost all those who interviewed him in the process though he was “sincere” in
his beliefs. That point becomes important later.
Frank, although he knew his chances of being discharged
as a C.O. were slim since he had based his application on his Catholic
upbringing and more general moral and ethical grounds. The Catholic Church
which unlike Quakers and Mennonites and the like who were absolutely against
war held to a just war theory, Vietnam being mainly a just war in the
Catholic hierarchy’s opinion. But Frank was sincere, more importantly, he was
determined to not got to war despite his hawkish family and his hometown
friends,’ some who had already served, served in Vietnam too, scorn and lack of
support. So he went back up to Cambridge on another three day pass to get some
advice, which he actually didn’t take in the end or rather only partially took
up which had been to get a lawyer they would recommend and fight the
C.O. denial in Federal court even though that was also still a long shot
then.
Frank checked with the
lawyer alright, Steve Brady, who had been radicalized by the war and was offering
his services on a sliding scale basis to G.I.s since he also had the added
virtue of having been in the JAG in the military and so knew some of the ropes
of the military legal system, and legal action was taken but Frank was one of
those old time avenging Jehovah types like John Brown or one of those guys and
despite being a Catholic rather than a high holy Protestant which is the usual
denomination for avenging angels decided to actively resist the military. And
did it in fairly simple way when you think about it. One Monday morning when
the whole of AIT was on the parade field for their weekly morning report
ceremony Frank came out of his barracks with his civilian clothes on and
carrying a handmade sign which read “Bring the Troops Home Now!”
That sign was simply but his life got a lot more
complicated after that. In the immediate sense that meant he was pulled down on
the ground by two lifer sergeants and brought to the Provost Marshal’s office
since they were not sure that some dippy-hippie from near-by New York City
might be pulling a stunt. When they found out that he was a soldier they threw
him into solitary in the stockade.
For his offenses Frank was given a special court-martial
which meant he faced six month maximum sentence which a panel of officers at
his court-martial ultimately sentenced him to after a seven day trial which
Steve Brady did his best to try to make into an anti-war platform but given the
limitation of courts for such actions was only partially successful. After that
six months was up minus some good time Frank was assigned to a special
dead-beat unit waiting further action either by the military or in the federal
district court in New Jersey. Still in high Jehovah form the next Monday
morning after he was released he went out to that same parade field in civilian
clothes carrying another homemade sign “Bring The Troops Home Now!” and he was
again manhandled by another pair of lifer sergeants and this time thrown
directly into solitary in the stockade since they knew who they were dealing
with by then. And again he was given a special court-martial and duly sentenced
by another panel of military officers to the six months maximum.
Frank admitted at that point he was in a little despair
at the notion that he might have to keep doing the same action over and over
again for eternity. Well he wound up serving almost all of that second six
month sentence but then he got a break. That is where listening to the Quakers
a little to get legal advice did help. See what Steve Brady, like I said an
ex-World War II Army JAG officer turned anti-war activist lawyer, did was take
the rejection of his C.O. application to Federal District Court in New Jersey
on a writ of habeas corpus arguing that since all Army interviewers agreed
Frank was “sincere” that it had been arbitrary and capricious of the Army to
turn down his application. And given that the United States Supreme Court and
some lower court decisions had by then expanded who could be considered a C.O.
beyond the historically recognized groupings and creeds the cranky judge in the
lower court case agreed and granted that writ of habeas corpus. Frank was let
out with an honorable discharge, ironically therefore entitled to all veterans’
benefits but with the stipulation that he never go onto a military base again
under penalty of arrest and trial. Whether that could be enforced as a matter
of course he said he did not want to test since he was hardily sick of military
bases in any case.
So where does Bob Dylan’s Masters of War come
into the picture. Well as you know, or should know every prisoner, every
convicted prisoner, has the right to make a statement in his or her defense
during the trial or at the sentencing phase. Frank at both his court-martials
rose up and recited Bob Dylan’s Masters of War for the record.
So for all eternity, or a while anyway, in some secret recess of the Army
archives (and of the federal courts too) there is that defiant statement of a
real hero of the Vietnam War. Nice right?
Here is what had those bloated military officers on
Frank’s court-martial board seeing red and ready to swing him from the highest
gallows, yeah, swing him high.
Masters Of War-Bob Dylan
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead
On May 25, MOVE members Janet Holloway Africa, 68, and Janine Phillips Africa, 63, walked out of prison on parole. Their release after more than 40 years in Pennsylvania dungeons follows the paroling of Debbie and Michael Africa Sr. last year. All of the MOVE 9 were jailed and sentenced to 30 to 100 years in 1978, framed up for the killing of a Philadelphia police officer during the cop siege of MOVE’s Powelton Village home. Despite being model prisoners, Janet and Janine had been repeatedly denied parole since 2008 for “lack of remorse.” Merle Africa and Phil Africa died in jail under suspicious circumstances. Chuck, Delbert and Eddie Africa are still behind bars. Free them now!
Soon after the predominantly black, radical back-to-nature MOVE commune emerged in the early 1970s, it became the target of vicious cop terror, not least because the group championed the right to armed self-defense. Janine’s infant son, Life, was trampled and killed in 1976 when police invaded the MOVE house and knocked her over, baby in arms. On 8 August 1978, after a months-long siege, nearly 600 cops surrounded the house to evict the residents. Police unleashed a barrage of gunfire, then stormed the home. One officer died in the cops’ own cross fire. At least eight witnesses testified that no gunshots came from the house. Weapons the cops said they found inside had no fingerprint of any MOVE member on them. The MOVE 9 were all innocent.
On 13 May 1985, Philadelphia police under black Democratic mayor Wilson Goode, in collusion with the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, dropped high-powered explosives on MOVE’s Osage Avenue home. Eleven people, including five children, were burned to death, and an entire black neighborhood was left in smoldering ruins. Among the dead was Janine’s son with Phil Africa, 12-year-old Little Phil; Janet lost her child Delicia in the inferno. For 34 years, the Spartacist League has sought to sear this premeditated racist state murder into the memory of the working class. Ramona Africa, imprisoned for the “crime” of being the sole adult survivor of the massacre, received support from the class-war prisoner stipend program of the Partisan Defense Committee, the class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the SL. The MOVE 9 were also among the first PDC stipend recipients.
Crushing political dissent and terrorizing black people exemplify what cops get paid to do as enforcers of the capitalist order. It will take a workers revolution to relegate the capitalist state’s machinery of murderous repression to the dustbin of history.
On Memorial Day, Green-Wood Cemetery officials in Brooklyn hosted a day of remembrance for both sides in the Civil War. This event was part of a weeks-long propaganda campaign to glorify the pro-slavery forces by enshrining their supposed noble “sacrifice.” This gross, racist provocation should repulse any decent anti-racist fighter, anyone who takes up the cause of the working class.
During the Civil War—which the Daily News (29 May) referred to as “divisive”—New York City was a hotbed of pro-secessionist sentiment. This was mainly driven by the material interests of merchants who were an indispensable link in the chain of circulation of the goods and services wrenched from the blood, sweat and tears of black slaves. In the Civil War, the last great bourgeois-democratic revolution, the Northern bourgeoisie as a whole, in following its own class interests, abolished chattel slavery and destroyed the old Southern plantation agricultural system. After the war, the Northern capitalists betrayed the promise of black freedom and formed an alliance with the remnants of the slavocracy in order to exploit Southern resources and the freedmen.
We will not forgive, nor will we forget. While Memorial Day today celebrates bloody U.S. imperialism, we point to the first Memorial Day (then known as Decoration Day), initiated by emancipated blacks in honor of the Union dead. On 1 May 1865, in liberated Charleston, South Carolina, nearly 10,000 former slaves marched on the grounds of the old Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, prewar bastion of the planter elite. During the war, the racecourse was turned into a hellish prison camp, where hundreds of Union soldiers died of disease and were buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. After black workmen buried the dead properly on the grounds, 3,000 black schoolchildren marched past the graves, softly singing “John Brown’s Body” and laying flowers. Several Union regiments joined the march, including the 104th and 35th Colored regiments, as well as the famous 54th Massachusetts, commemorated in the movie Glory.
The Civil War will be finished when there is a socialist America, the only way to achieve black liberation. To hell with the “national reconciliation” pushed by the capitalist press, right-wing and “liberal” alike. We stand for implacable class struggle to smash the racist capitalist system and the rule of the bloody imperialist oppressors, who from Baghdad to Kabul to Brooklyn are daily, and increasingly, tightening the chains on the oppressed and exploited.
