Exclusive new
clip, Oscar buzz, more… Let’s check in on “Food Chains” one month out from Nov.
21 national release! The theatrical release of a feature film on the Campaign for Fair Food has always seemed, quite honestly, a little surreal, but as we reach the one month mark in the countdown to its November 21st release, it’s becoming more real by the day. Above is an exclusive clip shared with the online industry blog Indiewire for a quick story on the film, presented with this introduction: With all things “organic,” “artisanal,” and “locally sourced” being among the food trends of the past several years, it can be very easy to forget about the human cost of the “farm-to-table” approach. For all the advances made as such, the food industry is still far behind the times when it comes to the conditions of farm workers, and the upcoming documentary “Food Chains” aims to shine a light on those concerns. |
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
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Occupy Boston Announcement-Harvard University
In Solidarity,
Geoff
Dear All,
This Thursday evening at 7:30 pm, Harvard University
workers will participate in a panel discussion on discrimination in employment
at the world's richest university. You're invited! Hear from workers who perform
such essential tasks as delivering mail, serving students food, and maintaining
Harvard's properties, and who have been disciplined and/or terminated for
discriminatory reasons. The event is being organized by a coalition of
students and workers at Harvard, who are deeply disturbed by consistent and
credible reports of discrimination on the basis of race, gender, country of
origin, sexual preference and ability. Such discrimination not only
harms the workers who are directly affected, but also creates an unsafe
environment for all workers, students, and members of the wider community.
Learn how you can help hold Harvard accountable for the treatment of
those who make the university function. The discussion will take place at the
Democracy Center, 45 Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge (steps from the Harvard
Square Red Line MBTA station). The Facebook event is here. Please forward this message as widely as
possible.In Solidarity,
Geoff
This Friday, help us spread
the word as we launch the first-ever consumer label of the Fair Food
Program! Indeed, it is an image two decades in the making. It has been twenty years since farmworkers began organizing in the streets of Immokalee for “dignity, dialogue, and a fair wage”; thirteen years since consumers across the country took a stand, side by side with farmworkers, to hold the world’s largest buyers of Florida tomatoes accountable for the farm labor exploitation in their supply chains; and four years since the CIW signed an historic agreement with Florida tomato growers to create the Fair Food Program. And in those four short years, the Fair Food Program has transformed the Florida tomato industry from “ground zero for modern-day slavery” into what has been called, on the front page of the New York Times, “the best working environment in American agriculture.” Today, the Fair Food Program is not only fully implemented in the Florida tomato industry, but poised for expansion to new crops and new states. And this Friday, the moment will finally come to launch the Fair Food label, which represents a new day for farmworkers that is no longer aspirational, but now fully realized, in Florida’s tomato fields. We need YOUR help in spreading the word about the new label! This Friday, the CIW will be teaming up with the award-winning “Food Chains” crew and an assortment of other food justice organizations to share the new Fair Food label on social media as a part of Food Day... |
***Yeah, Once Again Crime Does Not Pay-Robert Mitchum’s The Racket
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The Racket, starring Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan. Lizabeth
Scott, 1951
No question I started life as nothing by a po’ boy corner
boy with all the wanting habits that are available in this wicked old world,
wanting habits that only were magnified once the heavy burden of girlfriend-dom
came hurdling my way. Wanting habits that moreover I “knew” were not going to
be satisfied through some rich guy’s largesse, being a proper nice boy or by
some unfathomed merit being appreciated. Hey, that is way I thought, a lot of
guys thought, a lot of guys I knew back in the day who taught me a thing or two
about wanting habits and the satisfaction of those wants. For a while, for a
while until I began to think, after a few close calls, that it took infinitely
more energy to plan some illegal capers than the payoff warranted and that
maybe being a nice boy, well not nice boy but not a corner boy, and finding
some way to get in on that merit thing was a better bet that I would survive
past twenty-one on the outside. And you can ask my old time corner boys, who
taught me a trick or two and who did various stretches in various local,
county, state and in one case federal prison if maybe I chose the wiser course.
So of course, although maybe with a little tongue in cheek playing with the
title of this sketch I am a firm believer that crime does not pay. That is more
than I can say for our boy Nick (played by Robert Ryan) in the film under
review, The Racket, who learned that
lesson the hard way, the very hardest way, the big knock-off way.
Here is what happened. Nick, right after the war (that war giving
the time of the film being World War II for the unknowing), was king of the
hill, king of the rackets in Edge City (not the name of the town but that can
fill in for every town of any size where dough can be made by gambling,
extortion, dope, transporting woman, and any local variations which guys like
Nick can think up). Of course Nick didn’t get where he got by being a chump, by
being soft or by being anything but a hard guy to protect his interests, up to
and including murder. Of course when a guy, a rackets guy, runs a town there is
no question that he is wired in with the cops, the pols and the courts and as
we get a feel for the town in the film everybody can see, everybody with eyes
anyway can see, that the town is sewed up tight with everybody on the graft.
Well everybody but Captain McQuigg (played by Robert
Mitchum, a guy who knows about crime not paying from his days taking the fall
for femme Katie in Out Of The Past,
so maybe he had smartened up since it sure looks like it at least in 1951) can
be bought but McQuigg is that odd breed the honest cop. So naturally there is
going to be a test of wills, these guys who knew each back on the block are
going to go mano y mano before the film is through. But see Nick is a dinosaur
even in the rackets, the new breed illegal/legal guys are tired unto death of
the murders, the beatings and all that stuff that was okay back in the 1920s
(when the original version of this film was done) but in the boom-boom days of
the 1950s that rough stuff was strictly for amateurs, for guys who were heading
somewhere, feet first.
But Nick remember is nothing but old school, knows that in
the end for him anyway it is either survival of the fittest or nothing. And McQuigg makes sure that it is nothing,
the big zero. But along the way he has to deal with state officials who are as
crooked as Nick, maybe more so. Has to deal with a torch singer (played by
husky-voiced Lizabeth Scott) who has seen it all, brother, seen it all, and it takes
a lot of arm-twisting by McQuigg before she tumbles to the side of the angels
all because he had her mitts into Nick’s brother and knew plenty but was not
squawking knowing the wrath of Nick. And has to deal with avenging a murder of
a good cop by stupid Nick. But good cops must prevail in these noir bust-ups
and so we knew beforehand that Nick was doomed. Hell I knew that when I was
nothing but a wet-behind-the-ears corner boy.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Poets’ Corner- The Mad Hatter 15th Century
France’s Francois Villon Whether They Claim Him Or Not
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Once, a long time ago, an old
communist I do not remember which version of the creed he adhered to, although
he had had some impressive documented revolutionary credentials in Germany
before Hitler pulled the hammer down in 1933 and he just barely got out into
American exile by a very long and circuitous route, told me that as far as
culture affairs, you know art, novels, music and what I want to talk about
here, poetry, is basically subject to whatever personal whims a person may have
on these matters. The caveat to all this is that both creators and admirers
should be left to their own devises except if they are actively engaged with
counter-revolutionary activity. Now that I think about it he probably got the
idea from Leon Trotsky himself who wrote about such matters in the 1920s in
books like Literature and Revolution although I am sure that he did not
consider himself a follower of that great revolutionary who was exiled in the
late 1920s.
The point today is that if a
left-wing political activist like myself, say, were very interested in the
poetry of Emily Dickerson or Wallace Stevens or Thomas Mann or Edna Saint
Vincent Millay then what of it. Except those kinds of poets do not “speak” to
me. Poets like Allan Ginsberg burning the pages with his negro streets, his
clamoring against the industrial complex, his angel hipsters, his chanting
against the fate of the best minds of his generation, the gangster-poet Gregory
Corso blazing the hot streets with his words and taking no prisoners, old
Rimbaud with his mad ravings, Verlaine too, Genet with his black soul they
“speak” to me. The troubadours, the “bad boys and girls,” the waifs, the
gangsters, the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters and those who act as
muses for the fallen are what makes me sit up and listen.
And that brings us to Francois Villon, the
“max daddy” of bad boy poets (and brigands) from the 15th century.
Strangely while I have picked up on most of my favorite poets from some
academic setting I learned of Villon from two maybe unusual sources. First from
the 1930s film The Petrified Forest where
the Bette Davis character, Gabby, was crazy for the Villon book of poems sent
from her returned to home mother in France. More importantly the poet and what
he stood for was brought up in the film in conversation with Leslie Howard’s
character Alan who was a Villon-like misplaced out of sorts wanderer out in the
Arizona desert. The other source was a poem by Villon used as a front-piece of
an article by Hunter S. Thompson who used the sentiment expressed by Villon
where he considered himself a stranger in his own country (as did Thompson back
in Nixon times in America).
But back to the muses, back to the
gangsta muses (sorry hip-hop nation for stealing your thunder but your
sing-song lyrics definitely make me think you have drawn from the same well,
the same Villon well, especially guys like Biggie, Tupac, 50 cent, and Brother
Cole, a brother from the same damn “sew those worn-out pants” projects
neighborhood in spirit as me). Old Villon must have gotten tripped up on his
DNA finding the back streets of Paris and later exile spots more attractive
than the court life, the scholar’s. Trouble followed the guy wherever he moved
(granted he had little room to maneuver in those days since he was a city man
and not some outlaw Robin Hood working the old rural pastures and forests). His
poetry speaks of drunken sots, of quick upstairs flights with besotten wenches,
of tavern dark corners to plan, plan the next caper, or the next poem to
explain away his life led.
Who knows what makes a man or woman
a stranger in their own land, an internal exile. Maybe like Villon it was his
dismissal of the vanities of court life, the vacuity of the student life, or
the lure of the outlaw life when bourgeois society (and France in the 15th
century was reaping the beggar’s banquet of bourgeois society) and it took no
Karl Marx to notice that the old ways had to give way to the new city ways with
their gold and death to free spirits, to those who lived outside allegiances.
Maybe like Ginsberg shattered by the smoke of downtown Paterson, maybe
shattered by the hysterical cries of his beloved if discarded mother, maybe
shattered by the square-ness of his father-poet. Maybe like Jean bon Genet born
of some ancient mix of the crime that dared not speak its name and crimes that
had names. Trolling waterfronts looking for rough trade, looking for his lady
of the flowers. Strangers, strangers all looking for some new Algiers, some new
Casablanca, some new city a-borning.
Villon, lord of the sneak away
night, besotted with six wines, drunk with the fragrance of women. Women who
reek of the kingdom’s perfumes and if Hilary Mantel is to be believed over in
bedeviled England all the women worked lilac and lemon tree leaves into their
skin so that guys, guys like Villon ready to seek a lady’s favor could stand to
be within ten feet of them. Reeking of words too, Villon reeking of words that
is, quick words, words with hidden messages, words heard in taverns, on wormy
mattresses, in stinking hayloft barns, unholy holy words that would make men
quake if they had the sense that their God gave them as a gift (or was it the
son, the damn crazed son, Jesus, called bandit), stealthily grabbing whatever
was to be grabbed and the hell with the lord business. Then writing in dark
dungeon nights looking for reprieves from a wretched life.
Beautiful, a beat down brother, no
wonder Alan the wandering homeless out of fashion intellectual in The Petrified Forest claimed him as
kindred, and why he could have walked on steamy late night New York streets and
found kindred among the midnight sifters. Beat, beatified before his time
probably clamoring on some woe begotten trumpet, blowing out big medieval blow notes
to the hard Seine, the hard Norman shores, to all who would listen, Yeah, Saint
Villon, sanctified, man of misrule, man of the hidden cloth, beat, beat about
six ways to Sunday if you believe his resume, if you believe his 15th
century be-bop wail. What did Kerouac, hell, a kindred, a Breton, said-yes,
moan, moan long and hard for man, and Saint Villon grant us some sign, some
path that we might come to rescue you in sotted, sweated dungeons, so that you
too can walk the fetid streets singing, holy, holy, holy.
What was it that his literary
descendants, guys like Jack Kerouac who I swear had Villon blood in him, guys
like Alan Ginsberg who sang holy, holy, holy to the new age except he cried out
in vain to dreaded Molochs, called those who listened to their own drummers,
listened to the winds beyond the towns, beyond the cities, listened to the
forest men, the men who earlier in their lives lived in towns and cities? Oh yeah, “holy goofs.” Not goofs like you
would call some guy walking down the street looking down and he hits his head
on a telephone pole because he wasn’t watching where he was going. No, our holy
goof, I think Kerouac used that term to describe, or rather used that term as
one of the ways to describe mad man fellow traveler Dean Moriarty, and hence
the model Neal Cassady as well, to his Sal Paradise in On The Road. A guy who is for the moment, an existential be-bop
guy, a guy who knows the score, knows right from wrong even, knows it better
than you and me, and says “what the fuck,” says you know, I know, and so let
the mystery be, let the cloistered intellectuals in their sullen monasteries
poring over the number of angel that can fit on the head of a needle sulk while
he worked on the angles, looked for dough, dames and dope. See, I swear Villon
from his hidden grave sent down to posterity the model for the holy goof, and
these other guys picked it out of the fog-bound air.
Sweet word man Villon articulate in
a hoary dark world when gangster warlord and unsavory princes vied with each
for land, for wealth, for some fair maiden’s favors. And let’s not beat about
the bush it wasn’t for some silly scarf just off the boats from faraway China
or the Japan Seas but for a tussle in some off-hand hayloft, some milady’s
boudoir, some back room tavern straw bed. Read what you want into that but some
buck jack was taking his right of first night, well, before the first night.
But heroic buck jacks sometimes could speak no lady’s words, could not utter
the thoughts in an otherwise black heart and so old Villon had a space to
breath, had words to tell of loves truths, or what milady would go to the downy
billows for. And for his services for he was a man of the city, a man of the
back alleys, a man who consorted with the rabble, a con man and a wordsmith in
his own right and so every once in a while a bored milady would stop her
quilling, stop her needlepoint and show the old curmudgeon her downy billows
for just one word of the night, for the sound of those moans that no child
should know before his or her time.
Of course a guy who liked to walk on
the wild side, who was organically incapable of saying a straight thing if for
no other reason than self-preservation would have many a back room tavern wench
taking him around the world (yes, they, the wenches, and their procurers, knew all
about “taking a guy around the world” like that little sexual trick was invented
by Master and Johnson or something). And on a normal night, maybe after stealing
some gold from a merchant’s back room, maybe pilfering some goods just off the boat
from the Japan seas, maybe after waylaying some drunken sot for his ready bag
of cash that would be good enough, would sate his sexual desire. But once every
dark moonless night, maybe feeling a little put upon by his wretched place in
the world he would seek the high life, “go uptown” as they said in their own
way among the brotherhood.
And here is how it was done. A great
and gratifying scam. Some poor high life guy who made his dough off the Japan
seas or something like that had a lady love who could not be moved except by
words, words of love. And he from rough usage spoke only in twaddle. No sale.
So sweet boy Villon to the rescue. Pretty words at a dime a throw. A few ducats.
But get this that poor roughly used guy would have old boy Villon prate the
words to his love to his love. And sometimes, sometimes when there was a dark, moonless,
night maybe a little sweaty milady would close her virginal eyes and act the
backroom tavern wench and take old brother Villon around the world. See she
knew such arts too. And that roughly sued sot would never be the wiser. Oh sweet
boy Villon teach your arts.
Yes, wanderers, waifs, strangers in
a strange land, sneak thieves in the milady’s heart heated night, those are the
poets I want to read and listen to. And what of it.
F
alse beauty that costs me so dear,
R ough
indeed, a hypocrite sweetness,
A mor, like iron on the teeth and harder,
N amed only
to achieve my sure distress,
C harm that’s
murderous, poor heart’s death,
O covert
pride that sends men to ruin,
I mplacable
eyes, won’t true redress
S uccour a
poor man, without crushing?
M uch better
elsewhere to search for
A id: it
would have been more to my honour:
R etreat I
must, and fly with dishonour,
T hough none
else then would have cast a lure.
H elp me,
help me, you greater and lesser!
E nd then?
With not even one blow landing?
Or will
Pity, in line with all I ask here,
Succour a
poor man, without crushing?
That time
will come that will surely wither
Your bright
flower, it will wilt and yellow,
Then if I
can grin, I’ll call on laughter,
But, yet,
that would be foolish though:
You’ll be
pale and ugly: and I’ll be old,
Drink deep
then, while the stream’s still flowing:
And don’t bring
trouble on all men so,
Succour a
poor man, without crushing.
Amorous
Prince, the greatest lover,
I want no
evil that’s of your doing,
But, by God,
all noble hearts must offer
To succour a
poor man, without crushing.
God orders
me to plough, and sow again:
Even for
this end are we come together.
Princess,
listen to this I now maintain:
That my
heart and yours will not dissever:
So much I
presume of you, and claim:
Even for
this end are we come together.
As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner
THE SOUL OF JEANNE D'ARC
_She came not into the Presence as a martyred saint might come,
Crowned, white-robed and adoring, with very reverence dumb,--_
_She stood as a straight young soldier, confident, gallant, strong,
Who asks a boon of his captain in the sudden hush of the drum._
She said: "Now have I stayed too long in this my place of bliss,
With these glad dead that, comforted, forget what sorrow is
Upon that world whose stony stairs they climbed to come to this.
"But lo, a cry hath torn the peace wherein so long I stayed,
Like a trumpet's call at Heaven's wall from a herald unafraid,--
A million voices in one cry, '_Where is the Maid, the Maid?_'
"I had forgot from too much joy that olden task of mine,
But I have heard a certain word shatter the chant divine,
Have watched a banner glow and grow before mine eyes for sign.
"I would return to that my land flung in the teeth of war,
I would cast down my robe and crown that pleasure me no more,
And don the armor that I knew, the valiant sword I bore.
"And angels militant shall fling the gates of Heaven wide,
And souls new-dead whose lives were shed like leaves on war's red tide
Shall cross their swords above our heads and cheer us as we ride,
"For with me goes that soldier saint, Saint Michael of the sword,
And I shall ride on his right side, a page beside his lord,
And men shall follow like swift blades to reap a sure reward.
"Grant that I answer this my call, yea, though the end may be
The naked shame, the biting flame, the last, long agony;
I would go singing down that road where fagots wait for me.
"Mine be the fire about my feet, the smoke above my head;
So might I glow, a torch to show the path my heroes tread;
_My Captain! Oh, my Captain, let me go back!_" she said.
_Theodosia Garrison_
Poets’ Corner- The Mad Hatter 15th Century
France’s Francois Villon Whether They Claim Him Or Not
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Once, a long time ago, an old
communist I do not remember which version of the creed he adhered to, although
he had had some impressive documented revolutionary credentials in Germany
before Hitler pulled the hammer down in 1933 and he just barely got out into
American exile by a very long and circuitous route, told me that as far as
culture affairs, you know art, novels, music and what I want to talk about
here, poetry, is basically subject to whatever personal whims a person may have
on these matters. The caveat to all this is that both creators and admirers
should be left to their own devises except if they are actively engaged with
counter-revolutionary activity. Now that I think about it he probably got the
idea from Leon Trotsky himself who wrote about such matters in the 1920s in
books like Literature and Revolution although I am sure that he did not
consider himself a follower of that great revolutionary who was exiled in the
late 1920s.
The point today is that if a
left-wing political activist like myself, say, were very interested in the
poetry of Emily Dickerson or Wallace Stevens or Thomas Mann or Edna Saint
Vincent Millay then what of it. Except those kinds of poets do not “speak” to
me. Poets like Allan Ginsberg burning the pages with his negro streets, his
clamoring against the industrial complex, his angel hipsters, his chanting
against the fate of the best minds of his generation, the gangster-poet Gregory
Corso blazing the hot streets with his words and taking no prisoners, old
Rimbaud with his mad ravings, Verlaine too, Genet with his black soul they
“speak” to me. The troubadours, the “bad boys and girls,” the waifs, the
gangsters, the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters and those who act as
muses for the fallen are what makes me sit up and listen.
And that brings us to Francois Villon, the
“max daddy” of bad boy poets (and brigands) from the 15th century.
Strangely while I have picked up on most of my favorite poets from some
academic setting I learned of Villon from two maybe unusual sources. First from
the 1930s film The Petrified Forest where
the Bette Davis character, Gabby, was crazy for the Villon book of poems sent
from her returned to home mother in France. More importantly the poet and what
he stood for was brought up in the film in conversation with Leslie Howard’s
character Alan who was a Villon-like misplaced out of sorts wanderer out in the
Arizona desert. The other source was a poem by Villon used as a front-piece of
an article by Hunter S. Thompson who used the sentiment expressed by Villon
where he considered himself a stranger in his own country (as did Thompson back
in Nixon times in America).
But back to the muses, back to the
gangsta muses (sorry hip-hop nation for stealing your thunder but your
sing-song lyrics definitely make me think you have drawn from the same well,
the same Villon well, especially guys like Biggie, Tupac, 50 cent, and Brother
Cole, a brother from the same damn “sew those worn-out pants” projects
neighborhood in spirit as me). Old Villon must have gotten tripped up on his
DNA finding the back streets of Paris and later exile spots more attractive
than the court life, the scholar’s. Trouble followed the guy wherever he moved
(granted he had little room to maneuver in those days since he was a city man
and not some outlaw Robin Hood working the old rural pastures and forests). His
poetry speaks of drunken sots, of quick upstairs flights with besotten wenches,
of tavern dark corners to plan, plan the next caper, or the next poem to
explain away his life led.
Who knows what makes a man or woman
a stranger in their own land, an internal exile. Maybe like Villon it was his
dismissal of the vanities of court life, the vacuity of the student life, or
the lure of the outlaw life when bourgeois society (and France in the 15th
century was reaping the beggar’s banquet of bourgeois society) and it took no
Karl Marx to notice that the old ways had to give way to the new city ways with
their gold and death to free spirits, to those who lived outside allegiances.
Maybe like Ginsberg shattered by the smoke of downtown Paterson, maybe
shattered by the hysterical cries of his beloved if discarded mother, maybe
shattered by the square-ness of his father-poet. Maybe like Jean bon Genet born
of some ancient mix of the crime that dared not speak its name and crimes that
had names. Trolling waterfronts looking for rough trade, looking for his lady
of the flowers. Strangers, strangers all looking for some new Algiers, some new
Casablanca, some new city a-borning.
Villon, lord of the sneak away
night, besotted with six wines, drunk with the fragrance of women. Women who
reek of the kingdom’s perfumes and if Hilary Mantel is to be believed over in
bedeviled England all the women worked lilac and lemon tree leaves into their
skin so that guys, guys like Villon ready to seek a lady’s favor could stand to
be within ten feet of them. Reeking of words too, Villon reeking of words that
is, quick words, words with hidden messages, words heard in taverns, on wormy
mattresses, in stinking hayloft barns, unholy holy words that would make men
quake if they had the sense that their God gave them as a gift (or was it the
son, the damn crazed son, Jesus, called bandit), stealthily grabbing whatever
was to be grabbed and the hell with the lord business. Then writing in dark
dungeon nights looking for reprieves from a wretched life.
Beautiful, a beat down brother, no
wonder Alan the wandering homeless out of fashion intellectual in The Petrified Forest claimed him as
kindred, and why he could have walked on steamy late night New York streets and
found kindred among the midnight sifters. Beat, beatified before his time
probably clamoring on some woe begotten trumpet, blowing out big medieval blow notes
to the hard Seine, the hard Norman shores, to all who would listen, Yeah, Saint
Villon, sanctified, man of misrule, man of the hidden cloth, beat, beat about
six ways to Sunday if you believe his resume, if you believe his 15th
century be-bop wail. What did Kerouac, hell, a kindred, a Breton, said-yes,
moan, moan long and hard for man, and Saint Villon grant us some sign, some
path that we might come to rescue you in sotted, sweated dungeons, so that you
too can walk the fetid streets singing, holy, holy, holy.
What was it that his literary
descendants, guys like Jack Kerouac who I swear had Villon blood in him, guys
like Alan Ginsberg who sang holy, holy, holy to the new age except he cried out
in vain to dreaded Molochs, called those who listened to their own drummers,
listened to the winds beyond the towns, beyond the cities, listened to the
forest men, the men who earlier in their lives lived in towns and cities? Oh yeah, “holy goofs.” Not goofs like you would
call some guy walking down the street looking down and he hits his head on a
telephone pole because he wasn’t watching where he was going. No, our holy
goof, I think Kerouac used that term to describe, or rather used that term as
one of the ways to describe mad man fellow traveler Dean Moriarty, and hence
the model Neal Cassady as well, to his Sal Paradise in On The Road. A guy who is for the moment, an existential be-bop
guy, a guy who knows the score, knows right from wrong even, knows it better
than you and me, and says “what the fuck,” says you know, I know, and so let
the mystery be, let the cloistered intellectuals in their sullen monasteries
poring over the number of angel that can fit on the head of a needle sulk while
he worked on the angles, looked for dough, dames and dope. See, I swear Villon
from his hidden grave sent down to posterity the model for the holy goof, and
these other guys picked it out of the fog-bound air.
Sweet word man Villon articulate in
a hoary dark world when gangster warlord and unsavory princes vied with each for
land, for wealth, for some fair maiden’s favors. And let’s not beat about the
bush it wasn’t for some silly scarf just off the boats from faraway China or
the Japan Seas but for a tussle in some off-hand hayloft, some milady’s boudoir,
some back room tavern straw bed. Read what you want into that but some buck jack
was taking his right of first night, well, before the first night. But heroic buck
jacks sometimes could speak no lady’s words, could not utter the thoughts in an
otherwise black heart and so old Villon had a space to breath, had words to
tell of loves truths, or what milady would go to the downy billows for. And for
his services for he was a man of the city, a man of the back alleys, a man who
consorted with the rabble, a con man and a wordsmith in his own right and so
every once in a while a bored milady would stop her quilling, stop her needlepoint
and show the old curmudgeon her downy billows for just one word of the night, for
the sound of those moans that no child should know before his or her time.
Yes, wanderers, waifs, strangers in
a strange land, sneak thieves in the milady’s heart heated night, those are the
poets I want to read and listen to. And what of it.
Le Testament: Ballade: Pour Robert d’Estouteville
A t
dawn of day, when falcon shakes his wing,
M ainly from
pleasure, and from noble usage,
B lackbirds
too shake theirs then as they sing,
R eceiving
their mates, mingling their plumage,
O, as the
desires it lights in me now rage,
I ’d offer
you, joyously, what befits the lover.
S ee how
Love has written this very page:
E ven for
this end are we come together.
D oubtless,
as my heart’s lady you’ll have being,
E ntirely
now, till death consumes my age.
L aurel, so
sweet, for my cause now fighting,
O live, so
noble, removing all bitter foliage,
R eason does
not wish me unused to owing,
E ven as I’m
to agree with this wish, forever,
Duty to you,
but rather grow used to serving:
Even for
this end are we come together.
And, what’s
more, when sorrow’s beating
Down on me,
through Fate’s incessant rage,
Your sweet
glance its malice is assuaging,
Nor more or
less than wind blows smoke away.
As, in your
field, I plant I lose no grain,
For the
harvest resembles me, and ever
God orders
me to plough, and sow again:
Even for
this end are we come together.
Princess,
listen to this I now maintain:
That my
heart and yours will not dissever:
So much I
presume of you, and claim:
Even for
this end are we come together.
Note: The ballade was written for Robert to present to his
wife Ambroise de Loré, as though composed by him.
On The 155th Anniversary Of The Heroic Captain John Brown-Led Fight For Black Liberation At Harper’s Ferry-Josh Breslin’s Dream
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
I remember a few years ago my friend and I, Josh Breslin, from the old working- class neighborhoods of North Adamsville, a town south of Boston, were discussing the historical events that helped form our political understandings back in the early 1960 since we were, and are, both political men driven by historical examples as much as by the minutia of organizing principles. And while we have diverged on many of the influences since then as we have a fair degree of differences on the way to change the world and what agencies can do that (basically working within the current political system or moving over to the base of society and organizing from the ground up within or outside of the system depending on circumstance) we both agreed whole-heartedly that one of our early heroes was old Captain John Brown and his heroic efforts with his small integrated band of men at Harper’s Ferry down in what is now West Virginia but the just Virginia, a slave-holders stronghold. As we discussed the matter more fully we found we were hard pressed to explain what first captured our attention and agreed that then would have not had the political sense then to call Brown’s actions heroic although we both understood that what he did was necessary.
See, coming up in a mainly Irish working-class neighborhood we were always aware, made particularly aware by grandfathers who had kindred over there in those days, of that heroic struggle in Easter 1916 that was the precursor to the long sought national liberation of Ireland from the bloody British. So when we first studied, or heard about John Brown we instinctively saw that same kind of struggle. Both of us also agreed that we had had back then very strong feelings about the wrongness of slavery, a wretched system going back to Pharaoh’s time if not before, although Josh was more ambivalent about the fate of black people after Civil War freedom than I was since there was in his household a stronger current of anti-black feeling around the civil rights work down south in those days than in mine. (Strangely my father, who was nothing but a corn liquor, fast car, ex-coal miner good old boy from down in Kentucky was more sympathetic to that struggle that Josh’s Irish grandfather whom Josh could never get to call black people anything better than “nigras.” At least we got my father to say “Negro.” Jesus.)
A couple of week after that conversation Josh called me up from California one night where he was attending a professional conference near San Jose and told me that he forgot to tell me about what he called a “dream” he had had as a kid concerning his admiration for John Brown. Of course that “dream” stuff was just Josh’s way of saying that he had sketched out a few thoughts that he wanted to share with me (and which will undoubtedly find their into a commentary or review or something because very little of Josh’s “dream” stuff fails to go to ink or cyberspace). Some of it is now hazy in my mind since the hour was late here in the East, and some of it probably was really based on stuff we had learned later about the Brown expedition like how Boston Brahmins and high abolitionists like George Stearns secretly funded the operation or Brown’s attempts to get Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Tubman on board (neither name which we would have known very much about then), and some of the stuff was probably a little goofy since it involved Josh in some hero worship. Since he will inevitably write something on his own he can make any corrections to what I put down here himself. Know this though whenever I hear the name John Brown mentioned lately I think about Josh’s telephone call and about how the “old man” has held our esteem for so long. Here is what I jotted down, edited of course, after that conversation:
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and
was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harper’s Ferry. I would
say that was in about the sixth grade when I went to the library and read about
Abraham Lincoln before he became president and how he didn’t like what John
Brown did because he knew that that action was going to drive the South crazy
and upset the delicate balance that was holding the Union together. Frank
though thinks it was the seventh grade when we were learning about the slavery
issues as part of the 100th anniversary of the start of the American
Civil War and his name came up as a “wild man” out of some Jehovah Calvinist
burning bush dream who was single-handedly trying to abolish slavery with that
uprising. Was ready to “light the spark” to put out the terrible scourge of
slavery in the land with some spilled blood. That slavery business, if you can
believe this really bothered both of us, especially when we went to a museum
that showed the treatment of slaves and the implements used to enforce that
condition down South. And I remember one time going to the Museum of Fine Arts
and saw how old Pharaoh used his slaves to build those damn pyramids to
immortalize himself. Yeah, the hell with slavery, any kind.
I think I am right thought about when I first heard about
the “old man” because I know I loved Lincoln, loved to read about him, loved
that back then we celebrated his birthday, February 12th, and we got
the day off from school. Loved that Lincoln was basically forced at the governmental
level to implement Brown’s program to root out slavery once the deal went down
and he was merciless about its extermination once he got “religion” on the
matter. Of course neither I nor Frank would have articulated our thoughts that
way then but we knew “Massa Lincoln” was on the right side of the angels in his
work as much as he hated to burn down the South in the process. But there was
no other way to get the damn issue resolved and I think that is what he learned
from the Captain whether he gave credit to the man or not. By the way this I do
know that while we celebrated Lincoln’s birthday in the North as the great
emancipator and Union-saver Frank once told me a story about one of his cousins
down south and how when he mentioned that he had Lincoln’s birthday off that
cousin said “we don’t celebrate that
man’s birthday down here,’’ in such a way that Frank began to understand
that maybe the Civil War was not over. That some people had not gotten the word)
I knew other stuff back then too which added to my feel for
the Brown legend. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a
prior existence as John Brown’s Body,
a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they
bravely headed south. Funny but back then I was totally unaware of the role of
the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first black regiment raised
although with white officers when Father Abraham gave the word, whose survivors
and replacements marched into Charleston, South Carolina, the heart and soul of
the Confederacy, after the bloody Civil War to the tune of John Brown’s Body. That must have been a righteous day. Not so
righteous though and reflecting a very narrow view of history that we were
taught back then kind of fudging the very serious differences back in Civil War
times even in high abolitionist Boston was not knowing thing number one about
Augustus Saint-Gauden’s commemorative frieze honoring the men of the 54th
right across from the State House which I passed frequently when I went on to
Boston Common.
I was then, however, other than aware of the general
narrative of Brown’s exploits and a couple of songs and poems neither familiar
with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much
about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the ante
bellum struggle against slavery of which he represented the extreme activist
left-wing. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior
military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery.
Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong
bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was
executed I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the
turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in
the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Some 150 years after his
death I am proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown. [And I am too,
brother!-Frank]
If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth,
of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge
of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only
conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As various biographies point
out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early
service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves
northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery
propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery
elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the
‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on
Harper’s Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by
those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day
apologists for the institution about his so-called ‘madness’. This is a
political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.
For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly,
it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. Like them without
warts and with a discernible thrust from early adulthood that leads to some
heroic action. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would
hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in
any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions
in Kansas (concerning allegations of the murder of some pro-slavery elements
under his direction) have also clouded his image. However if one looks at
Kansas as the start of the Civil War then all the horrible possibilities under
the heat of battle mitigate some of that incident although not excusing it
anymore that we would today with American soldiers in places like Afghanistan
and Iraq busting down doors and shooting first. However, when the deal went
down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no
other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the
occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call
him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great
historical figures shows that they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they
make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.
Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy
for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter
of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness
of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination
of slave revolt modeled after the Maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s
earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerilla warfare of the ‘third
world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years
later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that
had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually
uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs. The execution of
the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the
book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point
that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by
other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists,
including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with
connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at
Harper’s Ferry.
What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a
true Calvinist “avenging angel” in the struggle against slavery and more
importantly acted on that belief. (Strange, or maybe not so strange now, both
Frank and I who grew up upright Roman Catholics gravitated toward those
photographs of Brown with his long unkempt beard as some latter day Jehovah and
I remember Frank had a photo on the wall in his room with just such a
photograph from I think a detail of the big mural in the State House in
Kansas.) In short Brown was committed to bring justice to the black
masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It
is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well
as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist sense of pre-determination that he would
not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements
never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement
led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported Brown and kept
his memory alive in hard times. In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the
Old Testament prophet. This old time prophet animating spirit is not one that
animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand today the
depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if
not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at
Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a
combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind
that picture of him.
By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of
brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were
killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed,
including Brown. He prophetic words upon
the scaffold about purging the evil of slavery in blood proved too true. But
that demeanor in the face of defeat was very appealing to me back then. I have learned since that these results, the
imprisonments or executions are almost inevitable when one takes up a
revolutionary struggle against the old order if one is not victorious. One need
only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in
1871 when that experience was crushed in blood after heroic resistance. One can
fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others
bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar with
now there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the
defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that
galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by
history.
Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political
mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize
important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant
Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on
Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that
his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or
gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and
others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy
that led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same
incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming
American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be
revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political
implications.
From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black
liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately
successful reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s
actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no
program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American
constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone.
Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political
freedom. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the
reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities
changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time.
Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown,
and of his friend Frederick Douglass.
I used to fervently believe that if Douglass had come on
board as Brown had urged the chances for success would have been greater, at
least more blacks (mostly free blacks and not plantation blacks for obvious
reasons) and more radical whites who could have been mobilized as a result of
all of the events of the 1850s especially the struggle against the Fugitive
Slave Act and the struggle against the imposition of slavery in Kansas. Now I
am not so sure that Douglass’ acceptance would have qualitatively changed the
outcome. He went on to do yeoman’s work during the Civil War articulating the
left black perspective and organizing those black regiments that shifted the
outcome of the war at a decisive point. In any case honor the memory of old
Captain John Brown and his heroic band at Harper’s Ferry.
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