In Honor Of International Workers’ Day- May Day 2016
-Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People?-Frank Jackman’s War-Take One
From The American Left History Blog Archives –May
Day 1971
Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming
hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all I know,
every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from
Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners
taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some
peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least
a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was
well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum
easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums,
aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let- her-rip cosmic brakeman
Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some Iowa/Kansas wheat field night
fantasy this trip.
No this trip was not about securing some cultural
enclave in post-war America (post-World War II so as not to confuse the reader)
in break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho
New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about
mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead
world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and
maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute,
absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we, I, am ready. On that
dusty road ready.
More. See all roads head south as we, my girlfriend of
the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more
for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or
dream wish and my sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted,
okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you
had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your
“type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or
were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some
forlorn rear view mirror.
Yah, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more,
too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down
to D.C. for what many of us figure will be the last, finally, push back against
the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching
television and the news, but THEY, and you knew (know) who they were (are), had
their antennae out too, they KNEW we were coming, even high-ball fixed (or
whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies
Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop
Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a
contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style
(and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee
guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad
as Ct, nothing except Arizona is). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy
(remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you
wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance
sometime).
The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe,
better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, thought about it later in
lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really,
and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms this jailbird was
ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that
furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something
recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the
tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all
with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day
1971.
And not just any massed presence like the then
familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention too anymore except the
organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring
peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream
that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New
Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more
and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter,
would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls
in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat.
Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation
refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl
organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody
mentioned them out loud in my presence and I was at every meeting, high or low.
Moreover I had my ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. I,
rightly or wrongly, silly me thought “cop.”
So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little
sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment
around DuPont Circle (I think) but it may have been further up off 14th Street,
Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember
that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed
helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates
for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly
Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification
pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys
from old revolutions and so, well, discounted to early rise (or early stay up
cigarette chain-smoking and coffee slurping to keep the juices flowing). Out
into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant
apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson,
Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a
cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded,
coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere,
bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever
latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam,
naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum,
beat, beat like gongs, defeated.
Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all,
was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government
days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of
a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere
righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested,
two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to
arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big
Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial
lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.
And, as I was being led away by one of D.C.’s finest,
I turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice
who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join
us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being
led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole
slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with
the strategy that day and I had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before,
that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from
themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous
sister, forgive me. (Not so anonymous actually since I saw her many times later
in Boston, almost would have traded in lust for her but I was still painted
Botticelli-bewitched and so I, we, let the moment passed, and worked on about
six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later.
I saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)
Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of
the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such
times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising
but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world
a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some
wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart
road tramp acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just
then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, I was longing for the hot, dusty,
truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back
home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.
********
Frank Jackman wandered across
the National Mall, the D.C. National Mall for those who have not been to that
locale, the locale where the Washington Monument is, that early April 30th
1971 evening trying to keep warm against the unseasonable late April chill that
was pressing down on the day. Wandered and found a space, a spot, a closed in
spot where several people had begun to start a small fire away from the din of
the massive crowds who had earlier in the day filled the space with their singed
yearnings for peace leaving a less massive crowd ready to battle on the next
day, May Day, against the whole freaking government. Frank needed to figure out
where he stood on that proposition, needed to figure out if he could take more
jail time just then.
And that was no academic
question as Frank thought back to just a few months before when he had finally
under judicial edict been released from the Fort Devens stockade as a military
conscientious objector after almost a collective year in jail. And that was his
dilemma doing more jail time, although he was not altogether sure of the
effectiveness of the proposed action either. But just that chilled evening he
was in a memory mood, a mood to flash back a little and reflect on his own
previous small contribution to the struggle against the Vietnam War.
He thought first and foremost
about what a fool he had been to even allow himself to be drafted in the Army
in the first place. While he had not been particularly vocal about his
opposition to the war having been, frankly, caught up more with the idea of
wine, women and song as befit many a college student lying in wait on the
campuses of this country in order to pray that the war would be over before he
graduated and his healthy body number was called. In any case he was drafted by
his friends and neighborhoods in North Adamsville (as they so quaintly put it
on his draft notice) and he was inducted in January, 1969 (after the heavy
military action by the North Vietnamese in TET 1968, and the heavy political
action in America throughout that year ahd changed the war mood significantly).
From about day three after he
had been shipped to the replacement center (nice army term) at Fort Jackson
down in South Carolina Frank realized that he had made a grievous mistake and
should have refused induction, or something. That only became clearer as he
trudged through basic training and then was given his MOS, his job, 11 Bravo,
infantryman, grunt in the common parlance, cannon fodder as he would later
describe it after he got wised up politically. What was clear from that
designation was that he was going to be trained to be doing hard fighting, and
just then that hard fighting was only being done en masse in the jungles of
Vietnam. That infantry training by the way was done down in high rebellion
country (American Civil War rebellion) at Fort McClellan in Alabama. Although
he (and a few other Yankees) gave the command fits about possibly refusing to fire
machine guns he held his own consul until he could get to friendly ground after
he received his orders to proceed to Fort Lewis in Washington State for
transport to Vietnam.
At that point Frank became a
little tired of thinking since he had been up about twenty-four hours straight
and so he nodded off for a bit…
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