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Wednesday, August 07, 2013
Join us in Washington, DC, November 16-17 at the Georgetown Law School for an amazing mix—including the inspirational Dr. Cornel West, brilliant international lawyer Mary Ellen O’Connell, Director of the ACLU's National Security Project Hina Shamsi, drone survivors and drone pilots, experts from Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Europe, government whistleblowers, peace activists, technology experts, artists and musicians. Get smarter, more engaged, better networked and motivated!
Register here! This event is sure to sell out quickly so register now. Can't make it? Please consider making a donation so that we can bring drone strike survivors to the conference to tell their stories. Any help you can give is greatly appreciated.We look forward to seeing you there!
Onwards towards a peaceful planet,
Alli, Allie, Amanda, Dooler, Emerson, Emily, Gianna, Hannah, Heidi, Jessika, Jodie, Maggie, Medea, Nancy K, Nancy M, Natalie, Noor, Rooj, Sergei, Tighe
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SAVE THE DATE --- Conflict in Syria: US Intervention and the Prospects for Peace!
A forum on Syrian perspectives, the US role and activist response
August 15, Thursday, 7-9 pm(location to be announced)
Presenters:
Marwa Alnaal, Syrian American
Forum; a graduate of the international relations program at Clark University,
Ms. Alnaal is a Syrian American who has travelled to Syria multiple times to
study the crisis.
Assaf Kfoury, Boston University
computer science department; Prof. Kfoury grew up in Beirut and Cairo and has
published numerous articles on the Middle East in the Nation, Z-net, Counter
Punch, etc, and has recently returned from Lebanon.
Nidal Bitari, A Palestinian
living in a Syrian refugee camp will talk about his experiences during the
uprising in Syria.
Commentary by Elaine Hagopian,
professor of sociology at Simmons College (emeritus); Prof. Hagopian is
Syrian by birth and has spent much of her life studying the Middle East,
Palestine and Syria.
The drawn out conflict in Syria is of great concern; 100,000 people have
been killed and the UN expects 3.5 million refugees by the end of 2013, but
intervention by the US and other countries creates the potential for a major
regional war.
The US decision to directly supply arms to the opposition and talk of
No-Fly Zones, in addition to years of sanctions and covert involvement,
dangerously escalates the violence when a ceasefire and political talks are
needed.
Most activists in the peace/antiwar movement and public opinion oppose US
intervention, but there are many questions because of the complexity and lack of
reliable information.
Donation $5 - no one turned away.
United for Justice with Peace http://justicewithpeace.org
United for Justice with Peace http://justicewithpeace.org
 |
Mobilizing Boston to
the March on
Washington
Thursday August 1st, 2013, 7 PM
Spontaneous Celebrations
45 Danforth Street
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
Call/text (617) 506-3762 in case you get lost!
RSVP on Facebook
Proposed Agenda
(1) Mobilizing Boston to the March on Washington
60 minutes
Suggested resources
The fight against racism doesn't stop here
The part of the dream they forget
Standing strong against the NYPD
(2) Learning through discussion and struggle: Socialist education & division of labor
45 minutes
45 Danforth Street
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
Call/text (617) 506-3762 in case you get lost!
RSVP on Facebook
Proposed Agenda
(1) Mobilizing Boston to the March on Washington
60 minutes
Suggested resources
The fight against racism doesn't stop here
The part of the dream they forget
Standing strong against the NYPD
(2) Learning through discussion and struggle: Socialist education & division of labor
45 minutes
This year is the 50th anniversary of the March on
Washington. What was planned as a commemorative march in D.C. has transformed
into a full blown nationwide mobilization -- bolstered by the protests in the
wake of the Zimmerman verdict. How can we organize across the city, alongside
civil rights, feminist, labor, and environmental activists, to bring people down
for the march? As socialists, what is our
role in helping to mobilize people, and how do we navigate working with liberal
and non-revolutionary groups?
Finally, come to our meeting to discuss plans for a day school on Marxism-Feminism -- specifically Black Feminism & Social Reproduction Theory. If we hope to be solid activists in the struggles of today, we need to educate ourselves on important theory.
-- Finally, come to our meeting to discuss plans for a day school on Marxism-Feminism -- specifically Black Feminism & Social Reproduction Theory. If we hope to be solid activists in the struggles of today, we need to educate ourselves on important theory.
August 01, 2013
Time To Act
Manning Verdict Risks Freedom of the Press
The verdict in the Bradley Manning trial has already begun to create reverberations as people start to understand its impact, beyond the impact on Manning. While the greatest threat to Manning, Aiding the Enemy, was defeated, another threat, The Espionage Act, was not. The crimes Manning was convicted of mean he is risking 136 years in prison. For a whistleblower who exposed war crimes and unethical behavior in U.S. foreign policy to be facing a lengthy prison term, while the people exposed by government documents are not even investigated, shows how confused the United States has become.
In fact, the crimes Manning exposed were much more serious than the crimes of which he has been convicted. The “Collateral Murder” video which showed U.S. soldiers slaughtering innocent Iraqis, and two Reuters journalists, with joy and glee is one example of many civilian killings that deserve prosecution. The documents which include the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and the diplomatic cables show:
Manning’s convictions for espionage are the first time a whistleblower has been convicted under the Espionage Act. This 1917 law passed during the propaganda effort to support World War I was designed to criminalize spying against the United States. For a whistleblower to be turned into a spy is a great risk to the First Amendment. Julian Assange described the verdict as “calling journalism ’espionage’” Reporters Without Borders sees the verdict as a threat to investigative journalists and their sources. The Center for Constitutional Rights writes in reaction to the verdict: “What is the future of journalism in this country? What is the future of the First Amendment?”
This question is even more frightening when the prosecutor’s argument on behalf of the government is understood. The prosecutor’s position was that merely publishing information that is critical of the United States would violate the law because it would provide enemies of the United States with a tool to build their movement. If that position is ever accepted by the courts, there will be no First Amendment remaining.
And, during the trial the treatment of the media by the military showed their utter disregard for press freedom. In many respects it seemed to be journalism itself that was facing court martial. Routine coverage was severely restricted by limiting access to court documents and records, frequent lack of any internet connection, and inadequate physical accommodation for reporters. During the closing argument we saw outright intimidation with intense security, including armed camouflaged troopswalking up and down the aisle peering over journalists’ shoulders. Reportedly this security was ordered by Judge Denise Lind.
It’s a sad irony that the significance of this trial for the future of press freedom has largely been lost on the mainstream press, who’ve been missing in action in this trial – as in many other historic developments over the past decade and more.
The key legal basis for turning whistleblowers that expose crime, fraud and abuse; as well as journalists reporting on such information into traitors treated as spies under the Espionage Act, is the removal of a “bad faith” requirement. In United States v Truong, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals commented on the notion of bad faith being a requirement for conviction writing that an “honest mistake” was not a violation. However, in the Manning case as well as the prosecution of former CIA agent John Kiriakou, the trial courts found no evidence of bad faith was needed. Academics, journalists, human rights lawyers and others concerned with the First Amendment need to build the case that bad faith is an essential requirement of prosecution under the Espionage Act in order to protect the First Amendment. The Manning appeals may become the vehicle for making this case and changing the law.
Judge Denise Lind now begins the sentencing phase of the Manning court martial. This is expected to last two to four weeks. Actual sentencing is expected at the end of August or beginning of September. Even the sentencing phase of this trial is controversial as the government will call 13 witnesses who will testify in executive session and rely on three “damage assessments” that will also not be publicly available (even Manning will not be able to see one, only his lawyer). During the sentencing phase, issues that were excluded in the guilt phase will be relevant, e.g. Manning’s intent, the impact of the release of the documents.
People should take heart from history. Throughout U.S history, bad decisions have led to social movements that created transformative change. In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that slaves were property without any human rights. The Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves occurred six years later in 1863. Paxton’s Case, in the pre-revolutionary period, upheld the right of the British to search homes, businesses and the persons of American colonists based on meaningless general writs. At the end of that trial, a young court reporter, John Adams, wrote “Then and there the child Liberty was born.”
And, Bradley Manning should take heart from the experience of Daniel Ellsberg. Unlike Manning, Ellsberg released top secret documents, Mannings were low level secrets that hundreds of thousands had access to. Ellsberg was also called a traitor and threatened with over 100 years in prison; if not for Nixon administration prosecutorial abuses he may have been convicted. But today, most people recognize Ellsberg is a hero for exposing the fraudulent foundation and purposes of the Vietnam War. Manning is considered a hero by many today and no doubt will be considered a hero by most Americans in the future.
Let the legacy of Manning’s courage be a rallying cry for all of us. It as an opportunity to push back on the U.S. security state and demand that the First Amendment protecting ourrights to Freedom of Speech, Assembly and to a Free Press, be re-invigorated. It is an opportunity to build a movement against U.S. empire and militarism and a complete re-thinking of U.S. foreign policy. These demands are ones for all Americans to insist upon; and they are for each of us to work for. Success in restoring these Constitutional rights and ending U.S. military interventionism would be a great legacy for the courage of Bradley Manning.
Kevin Zeese serves as Attorney General in the Green Shadow Cabinet, and is a member of the Steering Committee of the Bradley Manning Support Network and an organizer of Popular Resistance.
In fact, the crimes Manning exposed were much more serious than the crimes of which he has been convicted. The “Collateral Murder” video which showed U.S. soldiers slaughtering innocent Iraqis, and two Reuters journalists, with joy and glee is one example of many civilian killings that deserve prosecution. The documents which include the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and the diplomatic cables show:
*That U.S. troops kill civilians without cause or concern and then cover it up (more examples of hiding civilian killings here, here and here), including killing reporters;These examples show that Bradley Manning was a whistleblower, one of the most important whistleblowers in history. They also show the importance of whistleblowers to a free press and informed public. Shouldn’t the American people and the people in countries affected by U.S. policy know these facts?
*The CIA is fighting an undeclared and unauthorized war in Pakistan with Blackwater mercenaries;
*The President of Afghanistan is not trustworthy, that Afghanistan is rife with corruption and drug dealing;
*The Pakistan military and intelligence agencies aid Al Qaeda and the Taliban;
*The U.S. looks the other way when governments it puts in power torture;
*The diplomatic cables also show that beyond the war fronts, Hillary Clinton has turned State Department Foreign Service officers into a nest of spies who violate laws to spy on diplomats all with marching orders drawn up by the CIA;
*That Israel, with U.S. knowledge, is preparing for a widespread war in the Middle East, keeping the Gaza economy at the brink of collapse and show widespread corruption at border checkpoints.
Manning’s convictions for espionage are the first time a whistleblower has been convicted under the Espionage Act. This 1917 law passed during the propaganda effort to support World War I was designed to criminalize spying against the United States. For a whistleblower to be turned into a spy is a great risk to the First Amendment. Julian Assange described the verdict as “calling journalism ’espionage’” Reporters Without Borders sees the verdict as a threat to investigative journalists and their sources. The Center for Constitutional Rights writes in reaction to the verdict: “What is the future of journalism in this country? What is the future of the First Amendment?”
This question is even more frightening when the prosecutor’s argument on behalf of the government is understood. The prosecutor’s position was that merely publishing information that is critical of the United States would violate the law because it would provide enemies of the United States with a tool to build their movement. If that position is ever accepted by the courts, there will be no First Amendment remaining.
And, during the trial the treatment of the media by the military showed their utter disregard for press freedom. In many respects it seemed to be journalism itself that was facing court martial. Routine coverage was severely restricted by limiting access to court documents and records, frequent lack of any internet connection, and inadequate physical accommodation for reporters. During the closing argument we saw outright intimidation with intense security, including armed camouflaged troopswalking up and down the aisle peering over journalists’ shoulders. Reportedly this security was ordered by Judge Denise Lind.
It’s a sad irony that the significance of this trial for the future of press freedom has largely been lost on the mainstream press, who’ve been missing in action in this trial – as in many other historic developments over the past decade and more.
The key legal basis for turning whistleblowers that expose crime, fraud and abuse; as well as journalists reporting on such information into traitors treated as spies under the Espionage Act, is the removal of a “bad faith” requirement. In United States v Truong, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals commented on the notion of bad faith being a requirement for conviction writing that an “honest mistake” was not a violation. However, in the Manning case as well as the prosecution of former CIA agent John Kiriakou, the trial courts found no evidence of bad faith was needed. Academics, journalists, human rights lawyers and others concerned with the First Amendment need to build the case that bad faith is an essential requirement of prosecution under the Espionage Act in order to protect the First Amendment. The Manning appeals may become the vehicle for making this case and changing the law.
Judge Denise Lind now begins the sentencing phase of the Manning court martial. This is expected to last two to four weeks. Actual sentencing is expected at the end of August or beginning of September. Even the sentencing phase of this trial is controversial as the government will call 13 witnesses who will testify in executive session and rely on three “damage assessments” that will also not be publicly available (even Manning will not be able to see one, only his lawyer). During the sentencing phase, issues that were excluded in the guilt phase will be relevant, e.g. Manning’s intent, the impact of the release of the documents.
People should take heart from history. Throughout U.S history, bad decisions have led to social movements that created transformative change. In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that slaves were property without any human rights. The Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves occurred six years later in 1863. Paxton’s Case, in the pre-revolutionary period, upheld the right of the British to search homes, businesses and the persons of American colonists based on meaningless general writs. At the end of that trial, a young court reporter, John Adams, wrote “Then and there the child Liberty was born.”
And, Bradley Manning should take heart from the experience of Daniel Ellsberg. Unlike Manning, Ellsberg released top secret documents, Mannings were low level secrets that hundreds of thousands had access to. Ellsberg was also called a traitor and threatened with over 100 years in prison; if not for Nixon administration prosecutorial abuses he may have been convicted. But today, most people recognize Ellsberg is a hero for exposing the fraudulent foundation and purposes of the Vietnam War. Manning is considered a hero by many today and no doubt will be considered a hero by most Americans in the future.
Let the legacy of Manning’s courage be a rallying cry for all of us. It as an opportunity to push back on the U.S. security state and demand that the First Amendment protecting ourrights to Freedom of Speech, Assembly and to a Free Press, be re-invigorated. It is an opportunity to build a movement against U.S. empire and militarism and a complete re-thinking of U.S. foreign policy. These demands are ones for all Americans to insist upon; and they are for each of us to work for. Success in restoring these Constitutional rights and ending U.S. military interventionism would be a great legacy for the courage of Bradley Manning.
Kevin Zeese serves as Attorney General in the Green Shadow Cabinet, and is a member of the Steering Committee of the Bradley Manning Support Network and an organizer of Popular Resistance.
August 01, 2013
There Should be No Sighs of Relief in Manning Verdict
A Devastating Verdict
The Bradley Manning verdict may seem a victory of sorts for the defense — it’s certainly being treated that way in the mainstream media — but the decision handed down Tuesday by Court Marshal Judge Colonel Denise Lind is actually a devastating blow not only to Manning, who was convicted of unjustifiably serious charges brought by an aggressive administration seeking to make an example of him, but also to Internet activity in general and information-sharing in particular.
Judge Lind found the young Army private not guilty of the most serious charge he faced: “aiding the enemy”. But it was the most serious because he could have faced life imprisonment as a result. Now he faces a sentencing hearing on 17 charges of which he was convicted.
Much of the media reaction reflected relief:
“We won the battle, now we need to go win the war,” Manning’s trial lawyer David Coombs told a press conference. “Today is a good day, but Bradley is by no means out of the fire.”
Or as Marcy Wheeler wrote in Salon: “But the big news — and very good news — is that Manning is innocent of the aiding the enemy charge. That ruling averted a potentially catastrophic effect on freedom of speech in this country.”
The relief may be misguided. We have not averted a catastrophe; we have experienced one. Manning’s convictions include five counts of “espionage” under the 1917 Espionage Act and therein lies the poison. The logic of that espionage finding means that any of us could potentially be convicted of the very same crime if we were to publish anything on the Internet that the government considers “dangerous” to its functioning or activities.
Hand in hand with the recently-revealed system of surveillance that effectively models a police state, this verdict is spectacularly pernicious.
That may be easier to understand when the decision is matched with the facts of the case.
Bradley Manning, an intelligence technologist with the Army, released a large number of documents to Wikileaks, among them the famous video tape of U.S. pilots bombing a wedding in Afghanistan and laughing as they killed many of the people in attendance. He was arrested and imprisoned in 2010 and then charged thereafter, after being held in a military brig for eight months under conditions human rights activists and a UN reporteur termed “torture,” including being kept in solitary, naked in an unheated cell.
He has never denied that he released the information and has offered to plead guilty to 10 of the charges leveled against him — basically that he released information against the rules of the Army and the regulations governing his security clearance. He did all that, he said, to spark a debate about a foreign policy he had come to deeply question during his work in the Army; he felt that important debate that was being quashed by government secrecy. In short, Manning admitted to being a whistle-blower who was completely clear, competent, missions-driven and ready to go to prison for what he considered a service to his country.
His best-known statement, which went viral on-line, reflects, not some confused and unbalance kid, but rather a mature, thoughtful and courageous young man who was ready to make a huge sacrifice for his country and humanity in general. In order to take that principles stance, Manning had to acknowledge that he leaked the stuff and he knew it would be circulated. Hence his guilty plea on those charges.
But he consistently rejected the government’s charges of espionage and aiding the enemy. That’s where things get creepy.
The government argued that Manning knew that anything he released on the Internet could be read by the enemies of the United States. This means that, effectively, he was involved in espionage and “aiding the enemy”. There’s a difference between those charges.
“Aiding the enemy” is a charge leveled at military personnel during times of conflict. It means you gave some assistance, material or moral, to the people your armed forces are fighting. It’s among the most serious charges a person can face, the very essence of “traitor”, and would have sent Manning away for the rest of his life. It was scary enough when Judge Lind agreed to consider the charge but apparently she did so to finally and firmly dispel it.
In finding him not guilty of that charge, Judge Lind did something else that was missed by a lot of coverage. It was about the bombing video. “While Manning admitted accessing the video,” Wheeler explains, “the government insisted he had leaked it months before Manning admitted to accessing it (and before forensic evidence showed he had). This claim — one Lind said they did not prove — was key to their claims that Manning had planned to leak to WikiLeaks from the start of his deployment to Iraq.” Had he been found guilty of that, the ruling would have logically labelled WikiLeaks a spy agency rather than a news outlet. That failed and it’s a victory for a “freer” press.
Espionage, on the the hand, is spying and both civilians and military can be found guilty of it. It means giving classified information to an enemy or another government. Ordinarily, the charge is leveled at intelligence people working for governments which have antagonistic relations with the United States and it is seldom used and hasn’t been popular among prosecutors for decades (probably since the anti-war 70s).
The federal prosecutors in Manning’s trial altered their definition of espionage to bring it back into fashion. They said it constitutes publishing on the Internet something potentially harmful to the government, the country’s security or the safety of U.S. personnel in other countries. Period. Because enemies of the U.S. use the Internet, they could presumably retrieve that information and it makes no difference if Manning was aware of that or not.
During the proceedings, Judge Lind ruled against that interpretation saying that to prove espionage the prosecution had to prove that Manning knew “enemies” could find that information and understood they would retrieve it. To prove that charge, the government showed that al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden had some of Manning’s released material on his computer. That, apparently, was all it took.
Under Judge Lind’s verdict, anything you publish on the Internet that could be harmful to the United States constitutes espionage because we all know our “enemies” can retrieve it. Effectively, it would have been impossible for Bradley Manning to be acquitted of espionage under that definition.
The most immediate impact here will be on whistle-blowers, the small army of truth-tellers the Obama Administration has been hunting down and jailing, having tried and imprisoned more whistle-blowers than any other Administration in history.
“This is the first ever espionage conviction against a whistleblower,” Julian Assange said in a statement today. “It is a dangerous precedent and an example of national security extremism. It is a short sighted judgment that cannot be tolerated and must be reversed. It can never be that conveying true information to the public is ‘espionage’.”
Specialist journalists and researchers in military and surveillance activities are also in the middle circle of the target. But there’s a third group of people who are now extremely vulnerable: movement activists.
Almost everything we write and publish, as a movement, goes on the Internet and is read by “enemies” of our government. At this point, the government’s definition of what is helpful to the enemy is fairly narrow: mainly government and military documents involving war and spying. But this is a government that is spying on you right now in a blanket surveillance program that goes beyond the systems described in even the most paranoid novels and completely violates the Fourth Amendment. In such a blanket surveillance climate, legal definitions can waffle and bend based on government policy or response to movements and protests. Without respect for the Constitution, governments are capable of anything and what you do as a movement activist could one day be listed as “dangerous” or “aiding the enemy”.
In fact, when linked with the surveillance programs, this definition of espionage becomes a current nightmare. You already probably communicating with someone who is considered potentially dangerous. For instance, I communicate with the BDS movement, a leader in the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli anti-Palestinian policies. There is no question that my email with that organization is captured and analyzed. If I email with you, for any reason, so is yours. The Internet is a “web” and all activists who use the Internet are targets of the federal surveillance program because our communication is scooped up, stored and analyzed.
The question is when does this communication become “dangerous” in the government’s eyes; I don’t know. Do you? Because, based on what happened to Bradley Manning, we’re in big trouble when it does.
What remains in the Manning case is the sentencing and, now that the “aiding the enemy” charge is no longer a threat, Judge Lind can pretty much do what she wants. There are no minimum sentences with any of these charges. Manning could actually be freed after the sentencing hearing (which begins July 31) since he’s already served over two years in jail. She could also, by the way, send this young man away for the rest of his life — the potential sentences amount to over 130 years in jail, if run consecutively.
But even if our hopes for Manning’s freedom prevail, the destructive impact of the convictions will remain in our lives for now on.
The one bright spot is the eruption of activity both in the courts and on the streets sparked by the revelations of Edward Snowden about the government’s surveillance programs. Surveillance, too long ignored by the progressive movement as an important issue, is now near the top of the list and given what happened in the Manning trial today, that’s where it belongs.
ALFREDO LOPEZ is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent three-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper.
Judge Lind found the young Army private not guilty of the most serious charge he faced: “aiding the enemy”. But it was the most serious because he could have faced life imprisonment as a result. Now he faces a sentencing hearing on 17 charges of which he was convicted.
Much of the media reaction reflected relief:
“We won the battle, now we need to go win the war,” Manning’s trial lawyer David Coombs told a press conference. “Today is a good day, but Bradley is by no means out of the fire.”
Or as Marcy Wheeler wrote in Salon: “But the big news — and very good news — is that Manning is innocent of the aiding the enemy charge. That ruling averted a potentially catastrophic effect on freedom of speech in this country.”
The relief may be misguided. We have not averted a catastrophe; we have experienced one. Manning’s convictions include five counts of “espionage” under the 1917 Espionage Act and therein lies the poison. The logic of that espionage finding means that any of us could potentially be convicted of the very same crime if we were to publish anything on the Internet that the government considers “dangerous” to its functioning or activities.
Hand in hand with the recently-revealed system of surveillance that effectively models a police state, this verdict is spectacularly pernicious.
That may be easier to understand when the decision is matched with the facts of the case.
Bradley Manning, an intelligence technologist with the Army, released a large number of documents to Wikileaks, among them the famous video tape of U.S. pilots bombing a wedding in Afghanistan and laughing as they killed many of the people in attendance. He was arrested and imprisoned in 2010 and then charged thereafter, after being held in a military brig for eight months under conditions human rights activists and a UN reporteur termed “torture,” including being kept in solitary, naked in an unheated cell.
He has never denied that he released the information and has offered to plead guilty to 10 of the charges leveled against him — basically that he released information against the rules of the Army and the regulations governing his security clearance. He did all that, he said, to spark a debate about a foreign policy he had come to deeply question during his work in the Army; he felt that important debate that was being quashed by government secrecy. In short, Manning admitted to being a whistle-blower who was completely clear, competent, missions-driven and ready to go to prison for what he considered a service to his country.
His best-known statement, which went viral on-line, reflects, not some confused and unbalance kid, but rather a mature, thoughtful and courageous young man who was ready to make a huge sacrifice for his country and humanity in general. In order to take that principles stance, Manning had to acknowledge that he leaked the stuff and he knew it would be circulated. Hence his guilty plea on those charges.
But he consistently rejected the government’s charges of espionage and aiding the enemy. That’s where things get creepy.
The government argued that Manning knew that anything he released on the Internet could be read by the enemies of the United States. This means that, effectively, he was involved in espionage and “aiding the enemy”. There’s a difference between those charges.
“Aiding the enemy” is a charge leveled at military personnel during times of conflict. It means you gave some assistance, material or moral, to the people your armed forces are fighting. It’s among the most serious charges a person can face, the very essence of “traitor”, and would have sent Manning away for the rest of his life. It was scary enough when Judge Lind agreed to consider the charge but apparently she did so to finally and firmly dispel it.
In finding him not guilty of that charge, Judge Lind did something else that was missed by a lot of coverage. It was about the bombing video. “While Manning admitted accessing the video,” Wheeler explains, “the government insisted he had leaked it months before Manning admitted to accessing it (and before forensic evidence showed he had). This claim — one Lind said they did not prove — was key to their claims that Manning had planned to leak to WikiLeaks from the start of his deployment to Iraq.” Had he been found guilty of that, the ruling would have logically labelled WikiLeaks a spy agency rather than a news outlet. That failed and it’s a victory for a “freer” press.
Espionage, on the the hand, is spying and both civilians and military can be found guilty of it. It means giving classified information to an enemy or another government. Ordinarily, the charge is leveled at intelligence people working for governments which have antagonistic relations with the United States and it is seldom used and hasn’t been popular among prosecutors for decades (probably since the anti-war 70s).
The federal prosecutors in Manning’s trial altered their definition of espionage to bring it back into fashion. They said it constitutes publishing on the Internet something potentially harmful to the government, the country’s security or the safety of U.S. personnel in other countries. Period. Because enemies of the U.S. use the Internet, they could presumably retrieve that information and it makes no difference if Manning was aware of that or not.
During the proceedings, Judge Lind ruled against that interpretation saying that to prove espionage the prosecution had to prove that Manning knew “enemies” could find that information and understood they would retrieve it. To prove that charge, the government showed that al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden had some of Manning’s released material on his computer. That, apparently, was all it took.
Under Judge Lind’s verdict, anything you publish on the Internet that could be harmful to the United States constitutes espionage because we all know our “enemies” can retrieve it. Effectively, it would have been impossible for Bradley Manning to be acquitted of espionage under that definition.
The most immediate impact here will be on whistle-blowers, the small army of truth-tellers the Obama Administration has been hunting down and jailing, having tried and imprisoned more whistle-blowers than any other Administration in history.
“This is the first ever espionage conviction against a whistleblower,” Julian Assange said in a statement today. “It is a dangerous precedent and an example of national security extremism. It is a short sighted judgment that cannot be tolerated and must be reversed. It can never be that conveying true information to the public is ‘espionage’.”
Specialist journalists and researchers in military and surveillance activities are also in the middle circle of the target. But there’s a third group of people who are now extremely vulnerable: movement activists.
Almost everything we write and publish, as a movement, goes on the Internet and is read by “enemies” of our government. At this point, the government’s definition of what is helpful to the enemy is fairly narrow: mainly government and military documents involving war and spying. But this is a government that is spying on you right now in a blanket surveillance program that goes beyond the systems described in even the most paranoid novels and completely violates the Fourth Amendment. In such a blanket surveillance climate, legal definitions can waffle and bend based on government policy or response to movements and protests. Without respect for the Constitution, governments are capable of anything and what you do as a movement activist could one day be listed as “dangerous” or “aiding the enemy”.
In fact, when linked with the surveillance programs, this definition of espionage becomes a current nightmare. You already probably communicating with someone who is considered potentially dangerous. For instance, I communicate with the BDS movement, a leader in the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli anti-Palestinian policies. There is no question that my email with that organization is captured and analyzed. If I email with you, for any reason, so is yours. The Internet is a “web” and all activists who use the Internet are targets of the federal surveillance program because our communication is scooped up, stored and analyzed.
The question is when does this communication become “dangerous” in the government’s eyes; I don’t know. Do you? Because, based on what happened to Bradley Manning, we’re in big trouble when it does.
What remains in the Manning case is the sentencing and, now that the “aiding the enemy” charge is no longer a threat, Judge Lind can pretty much do what she wants. There are no minimum sentences with any of these charges. Manning could actually be freed after the sentencing hearing (which begins July 31) since he’s already served over two years in jail. She could also, by the way, send this young man away for the rest of his life — the potential sentences amount to over 130 years in jail, if run consecutively.
But even if our hopes for Manning’s freedom prevail, the destructive impact of the convictions will remain in our lives for now on.
The one bright spot is the eruption of activity both in the courts and on the streets sparked by the revelations of Edward Snowden about the government’s surveillance programs. Surveillance, too long ignored by the progressive movement as an important issue, is now near the top of the list and given what happened in the Manning trial today, that’s where it belongs.
ALFREDO LOPEZ is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent three-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper.
Top Ten Ways Bradley Manning Changed the World
Posted on 07/31/2013 by Juan Cole
Bradley Manning will be sentenced today, having been found guilty of 20 counts on Tuesday, including espionage (despite the lack of evidence for intent to spy and the lack of evidence that his leaking ever did any real harm). Whatever one thinks of Manning’s actions, that we deserved to know some of what he revealed and that his revelations changed the world are undeniable.
1. Manning revealed the Collateral Murder video of a helicopter attack in Iraq on mostly unarmed non-combatants (though some of those struck may have been armed), including two Reuters journalists, whose cameras were taken for weapons, and children. The army maintains that the video does not show wrongdoing, but the killing of unarmed journalists is a war crime, and the callousness of video gives an idea of what was going on in Iraq during the years of the US occupation. When the Bush administration asked the Iraqi parliament for permission to keep a base in the country, the parliamentarians said, absolutely not. The US military was forced to withdraw from Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011.
2. Manning revealed the full extent of the corruption of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidin Ben Ali, adding fuel to the youth protest movement of late 2010, which translated the relevant US cables into Arabic. Manning contributed to the outbreak of powerful youth movements demanding more democratic governance in the Arab world.
3. Manning revealed to the US and Yemeni publics the secret drone war that Washington was waging in that country. That the cables show then dictator Ali Abdallah Saleh acquiescing in the US strikes on his country probably played into the movement to remove him as president, which succeeded in early 2012.
4. He revealed that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered US diplomats to spy on their United Nations counterparts. The UN spy requests included cables that “demanded detailed intelligence on the UN leadership including forensic detail about their communications systems, including passwords and personal encryption keys,” foreshadowing later revelations of extensive US spying on even allies like Germany via the NSA.
5. His leaks show that then Senator John Kerry pressed Israel to be open to returning the Golan Heights to Syria as part of a peace negotiation. This item suggests that Kerry might be more of an honest broker in the current negotiations than some observers give him credit for.
6. Revealed that Afghanistan government corruption is “overwhelming”. This degree of corruption, which has shaken the whole banking system and caused US funds to be massively misused, is still a factor in our decision of whether to stay in Afghanistan in some capacity after December 2014. The US public is in a better position to judge the issue with these documents available.
7. Manning revealed the degree of authoritarianism and corruption of the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak, which was subsequently swept away.
8. Manning revealed that hard-nosed realist, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, was against striking Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities because it would only slow their program down slightly, but would inevitably cause Iranians to be angry and mobilized in the aftermath.
9. Manning revealed that the Israeli authorities had a secret plan to keep the Palestinian population of Gaza on the brink of food insecurity and poor health, in among the creepiest military operations in history: “Israeli officials have confirmed to Embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.”
10. Manning’s act of courage encouraged hackers to leak the emails of Bashar al-Assad and his wife, showing their jewelry buys in Europe and gilded style of life while al-Assad’s artillery was pounding Homs and other cities with no regard for the lives of noncombatants. In fact, Manning inspired numerous leakers, including some who blew the whistle on PLO corruption and willingness to give away most of Jerusalem to Israel, and, likely, Edward Snowden, who revealed to us that our government has us all under surveillance.
h/t Justin Elliott and Zachary Roth
1. Manning revealed the Collateral Murder video of a helicopter attack in Iraq on mostly unarmed non-combatants (though some of those struck may have been armed), including two Reuters journalists, whose cameras were taken for weapons, and children. The army maintains that the video does not show wrongdoing, but the killing of unarmed journalists is a war crime, and the callousness of video gives an idea of what was going on in Iraq during the years of the US occupation. When the Bush administration asked the Iraqi parliament for permission to keep a base in the country, the parliamentarians said, absolutely not. The US military was forced to withdraw from Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011.
2. Manning revealed the full extent of the corruption of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidin Ben Ali, adding fuel to the youth protest movement of late 2010, which translated the relevant US cables into Arabic. Manning contributed to the outbreak of powerful youth movements demanding more democratic governance in the Arab world.
3. Manning revealed to the US and Yemeni publics the secret drone war that Washington was waging in that country. That the cables show then dictator Ali Abdallah Saleh acquiescing in the US strikes on his country probably played into the movement to remove him as president, which succeeded in early 2012.
4. He revealed that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered US diplomats to spy on their United Nations counterparts. The UN spy requests included cables that “demanded detailed intelligence on the UN leadership including forensic detail about their communications systems, including passwords and personal encryption keys,” foreshadowing later revelations of extensive US spying on even allies like Germany via the NSA.
5. His leaks show that then Senator John Kerry pressed Israel to be open to returning the Golan Heights to Syria as part of a peace negotiation. This item suggests that Kerry might be more of an honest broker in the current negotiations than some observers give him credit for.
6. Revealed that Afghanistan government corruption is “overwhelming”. This degree of corruption, which has shaken the whole banking system and caused US funds to be massively misused, is still a factor in our decision of whether to stay in Afghanistan in some capacity after December 2014. The US public is in a better position to judge the issue with these documents available.
7. Manning revealed the degree of authoritarianism and corruption of the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak, which was subsequently swept away.
8. Manning revealed that hard-nosed realist, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, was against striking Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities because it would only slow their program down slightly, but would inevitably cause Iranians to be angry and mobilized in the aftermath.
9. Manning revealed that the Israeli authorities had a secret plan to keep the Palestinian population of Gaza on the brink of food insecurity and poor health, in among the creepiest military operations in history: “Israeli officials have confirmed to Embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.”
10. Manning’s act of courage encouraged hackers to leak the emails of Bashar al-Assad and his wife, showing their jewelry buys in Europe and gilded style of life while al-Assad’s artillery was pounding Homs and other cities with no regard for the lives of noncombatants. In fact, Manning inspired numerous leakers, including some who blew the whistle on PLO corruption and willingness to give away most of Jerusalem to Israel, and, likely, Edward Snowden, who revealed to us that our government has us all under surveillance.
h/t Justin Elliott and Zachary Roth
From The Brothers Under The Bridge Series -Soldier Johnson’s Girl With The Pale Blue Eyes-Take Six
In the first installment of this series of sketches space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town, California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”
The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and another down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.
After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eyearchives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.
The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.
Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.
Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or got caught up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his whole blessed life pointed the other way. Soldier Johnson’s story is slightly different since it is not based on my Eye notes but on a story that Frank Jackman, a friend of my friend Peter Paul Markin related to him and that Peter then related to me when he heard that I was again putting together an occasional series on guys, Vietnam War guys, who found themselves under the “bridge.” Soldier spent time under the “bridge” in the ealry 1970s no question although the story that he related to Frank was from a period in the 1980s long after the interviews in the original series. Take this third-hand account with that in mind. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Soldier Johnson’s sign was that of those pale blue eyes.
**************
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:
In the first installment of this series of sketches space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town, California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”
The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and another down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.
After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eyearchives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.
The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.
Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.
Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or got caught up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his whole blessed life pointed the other way. Soldier Johnson’s story is slightly different since it is not based on my Eye notes but on a story that Frank Jackman, a friend of my friend Peter Paul Markin related to him and that Peter then related to me when he heard that I was again putting together an occasional series on guys, Vietnam War guys, who found themselves under the “bridge.” Soldier spent time under the “bridge” in the ealry 1970s no question although the story that he related to Frank was from a period in the 1980s long after the interviews in the original series. Take this third-hand account with that in mind. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Soldier Johnson’s sign was that of those pale blue eyes.
**************
He was getting ready to leave her again, leave her like he had so many times before, and like he would probably do again. Who knows what it was that triggered things this time. Maybe he got mad that she did not take, once he got his personal affairs into some order, his newly found passion for saving the world now that it was going to hell in a hand-basket seriously and was in desperate need of fixing and so was out on the streets with some fellow veterans, Vietnam War veterans if anybody was asking, who had also found “religion” on the war issue. Or maybe it was that he could not for the life of him understand why she wanted to stay cooped up in the little white house with picket fence and dog that they had been sharing in Old Lyme for the previous several years and let the world drift by while she, they, pursued their respective careers. She, a very, very competent lawyer who had started out in the beginning all starry-eyed enough but now looked to keep her head down and her chances for advancement in her Hartford firm up. And he, he had had done everything from washing dishes for eats and a place to stay to teaching school. Just then he was a better than middling free-lance copy editor for well-known local publishing houses, once he decided, or she decided him, to settle down a bit after he got the trauma of Vietnam under some kind of control .
As he packed his few belongings in a small backpack he had a recurring half-ironic vision that in forty or fifty years if he was still alive he would still be leaving her, or still be working his way back to her. That forty or fifty year thought didn’t faze him, didn’t cause him pain, and didn’t make him tremble. Didn’t make him tremble that maybe there would not be a forty or fifty years, that she would cut the “us” off, or he would before then. That idea, for better or worse, was outside the box of their relationship and always had been in the now numberless times they had danced this dance. That was just the way their love worked, or didn’t work. Yes, they both agreed, sometimes with a laugh, sometimes in maniacal rage, that was just the way it was between them and had been from about the first time they met a decade or so back in the mid-1970s.
Finished packing his belongings to head out for wherever he was heading this time he had a moment’s confusion. Like the other times, that numberless times, it was not clear where he would go, west to California, east on some tramp steamer to Morocco and some Kasbah hash den, north on the hitchhike trail before the snows set in and then south to the Baja, he didn’t know until he went out the door and walked some distance, maybe picked up a ride and that would decide it. All he knew was he was, she was, in a place neither of them wanted to be and so he would cast his fates to the wind. And he thought too, as he had thought so many times before when this damn interlude came upon them, about how he had met, or almost didn’t meet, his girl, his girl with the pale blue eyes.
Soldier Johnson had to laugh about that last fact, about how they had almost not met, or rather how he had almost not connected with his Jewel, Jewel Samson, the woman he was now about to leave again. Back then, back in the mid-1970s when his future had looked settled Soldier had thought that he had blown the dust of old North Adamsville off his shoes after he finished his military service and so his return, his painful return, back to his growing up hometown after he had busted out for the umpteenth time on the West Coast was quite a letdown. He had drifted back east, had not picked up much of anything in coming back, and had thus wound up, hat in hand, at his parents’ front door one night, defeated for the moment in life’s battles. The cost of that defeat, the immediate cost was a constant harping by his mother, taking up her vigil established since childhood, about his, uh, short-comings, short-comings against her expectation, and against the myriad neighbor children who had “made good.” After one such painful exchange with his distraught mother, on the fateful day he met Jewel, who continued to make it her personal responsibility to remind him constantly that at thirty- two he needed to get on with his life, needed to get a job, get married, get to whatever he had to do and in response to that also numberless tirade he had fled out the door and headed to Adamsville Beach to cool out a bit.
[Soldier (real name Lawrence) Johnson had gotten that name, that moniker, while in basic training down at Fort Dix in New Jersey from the other raw recruits who kidded him about his non-existent soldierly deportment. He had done more drill sergeant-inspired push-ups for unmade bunks, footloose foot lockers, misshapen uniforms than anyone thought possible. More extra- duty KP (kitchen patrol for the civilians), more confined to quarters, more night guard duty, well, more of everything that most common grunts (enlisted men) would go well out of their way to avoid. And more screw-ups at the firing range or out at maneuvers than anyone thought possible either.
But the name stuck, stuck through hell-hole Vietnam where he was not the worst soldier, not at all, taking a little shrapnel to save a buddy, taking point out in that bloody Mekong Delta, swampy, fly-infested night and, mainly against all odds surviving the experience. Physically surviving it and when he got home his old corner boys from in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor kept the name on him and kept it on even more on him after they had heard his exploits for about the ten thousandth time. And it also stuck through his post -soldier internal war that he waged within himself, his personal civil war, which he hid from his parents, his corner boys, and his hastily-married first wife. His post-Vietnam trauma as it was described at the time before the condition got a more scientific name, included a stint at the VA hospital out in Frisco and another vagabond stint with fellow trance-walkers from ‘Nam under the lost soul bridges of Southern California. That is a story for another time though.]
Soldier walked that day the two miles to the beach from the family house so by the time that he got to the his favored boyhood spot near the North Adamsville Yacht Club and sat on the seawall to catch a cool breeze it was getting a little late. That spot always evoked deep feelings, mainly of frustration but also of some inner calm brought on by the splash of waves aimlessly reaching the waiting shoreline. He had no sooner settled in for a serious think about the cast of his fates than Jewel came walking by with her girlfriend, Laura.
Came walking by like something out of the mist of time, like maybe a 1940s pin-up model all the guys overseas would cherish inside their lockers or on the inner lid of their trunks in some forlorn barracks in some forlorn outpost of civilization, maybe some rock of land surrounded by infinite Pacific seas or under Normandy fogs. Or maybe a 1940s movie star, maybe Lana Turner, all in white when she sizzled up the screen and sizzled up poor clueless John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Twisted up dear John so bad he went to the big step off with a smile, or half-smile on his face, just for the thought of having been with her, having smelled that gardenia perfume she threw off even long after she left the room. Jewel came that day all dressed in white, white blouse, white shorts, short showing long well-thought out legs and well-turned ankles, white socks hugging white tennis shoes, and even from a distance of ten feet he could see, set off by her well-developed summer tan, those pale blue eyes that would haunt his dreams forever after.
And those eyes would cause him more hell and anguish than he ever imaged, and more happiness. Funny though because it didn’t have to have happened that way, didn’t have to have happened at all. Soldier still caught up in his mother-inflamed big think about the contours of his future had let her pass by, had let her go in his thoughts without comment. But as she moved a little distance away he switched from thoughts of getting a job, or whatever else of the twenty-one demands his mother insisted he pursue to thoughts of how this young passing woman, or rather one with her look, her sultry virginal look had always eluded him, had always been outside his grasp. Yeah, he knew that sultry virginal thing was a contradiction but it was all tied up with his Catholic upbringing and those Sunday morning novena –driven girls he watched from behind from the neighborhood in church. And by his teenage boy thoughts, corner boy-driven thoughts, of hot women inflamed by magazines, television, the movies and later when he knew the score with such girls, knew they were inflamed too, so make of it what you will.
In high school, maybe starting in freshman year, he and his friends, his corner boys then stationed against the wall in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor having moved up a step from Harry’s Variety Store in the normal progression of corner boy-hood, would hit Adamsville Beach right where he was sitting at that moment and watch, no, more than watch, leer, as the girls went by, the girls who would be dressed very much like Jewel, would sway in the sun very much like Jewel, would fill the very air with their presence, with that subtle fresh from a bath-like fragrance that swirled around them as they passed by. While other guys, particularly guys like Frankie Riley and Timmy Kelly, would have those swaying girls all in white by the dozens he had no such luck as much as they inflamed his schoolboy heart.
At night, summer nights, when the girls turned from white shorts to white dresses he also struck out. He seemed to get either the black-etched arty types who wanted to save the world or save him, or just be friends, or something like that, or the bookworms, especially the bookworms of indeterminate dress, say plaid and stripes or some such combination who endlessly wanted to speak of books, and not much else. He was okay with the books part, although the not much else drove him to distraction. And his dream white-dressed girls, wearing shorts or dresses, were not bookworms, were not even concerned about books for all he knew.
Later, before ‘Nam, while he was in college, those two years, he settled for the bookish types and left it at that. After ‘Nam he took whatever came his way, mainly fast and loose women, women like that wife that he married in far too much haste, who would not dream of wearing white, or be accused of dreaming about much of anything. But he never in the back of his mind really ever stopped thinking that someday he might snatch one, snatch that girl in white of his fevered boyhood dreams. And he never missed an opportunity to stare at them, younger or older, when they passed by ignoring him.
That summer day he could see that she, Jewel, was younger, maybe too much younger than he was although it was always tough to figure women’s ages when they looked that good. He and Jewel would laugh, laugh about how he was closer to her father’s age than hers, cry, cry when she could not understand having been a mere child at the time what ‘Nam had taken from his soul and what he could not give due to that clot, make fun about that difference, would say that when she was forty he would be an old man of fifty-two and stuff like that, about that twelve year difference as it turned out since she was only twenty, a sophomore in college, at the time. Still he let the thought go by as just another fantasy and that was that. Then, as fate would have it, the pair of young women walked back up past the yacht club again near the place where he was sitting and from out of nowhere, or maybe out of that boyhood angst, he called out to them, called out to the girl with the pale blue eyes that her eyes were pretty. That her eyes reminded him of the sun-drenched seas behind them (or some such thing for he was so nervous to get it out that he was not sure he remembered his exact words correctly but that was close enough).
Jewel looked at him, startled, like nobody had ever made that comment to her before. Being, as he found out later, a gentile young woman, she came over and asked him if he was speaking to her and when he responded that he was she said “thank you” with a slightly blushed face under her tan and in a hushed voice that spoke to him of adventures, and desire. That was all the opening he needed, well, almost the only opening, once he asked her name and what she did. It turned out that she was a student at Boston University a place where he had gone to school for a couple of years before he busted out about a decade before and wound up getting drafted into the damn army. She was visiting her friend and fellow classmate Laura who lived in Adamsville, and they were taking a little sea-side break from the summer course they were taking at BU. Something in Jewel’s manner gave him the impression she was looking for something, or maybe it was something in his kindly manner that stopped her (that kindly thing, along with what she called his wisdom of the ages prophet long hair and beard, as she told him later, was what kept her talking to him as he sat on that seawall).
Laura had to go, or had made some other excuse to leave them, but Jewel decided to sit on the seawall with him. They sat for hours talking, talking about this and that, about the travails of school life, about how he wanted to go back to school since he could do it on the G.I Bill and maybe teach, something like that, about busted dreams, hers too, since she had wanted, desperately wanted to be a scientist, wanted to be like Madame Curie who she had read about as a child, but was then knee- deep in a pre-law school program that he parents had pushed on her, pushed on her kicking and screaming. About her troubles adjusting to the hectic city life and obliquely about her failed love-life. She would tell him later that she felt comfortable talking about such things, sensing that he was not judgmental and that he was not above actually listening to her like most guys.
Jewel asked him then how he got that name Soldier and later she too called him that moniker except she called him, in good moments, with affection, her soldier boy. Soldier spoke about Vietnam and his lost decade, about a time that she back in Greenwich, Connecticut where she grew up, had no real recollection of except of protests that would drive her conservative parents crazy, and watching fearful childhood television snippets of war scenes. (He avoided speaking of his internal wars, his sometimes tough nights just then although that subject would emerge with a vengeance over time.) They kid boy and girl-like spoke about musical likes (many shared, like The Door, the Stones, Bob Dylan), movies (they both loved film noir, especially Bogie and Bacall), lots of things almost making stuff up in order not to leave that wall. He spoke vaguely of his busted married and she of a couple of guys who it didn’t work out with, not for her not trying she said.
As Jewel and Soldier talked into the dusk they both got just slightly flirty along the way, feeling things out, feeling whether this moment had any future (as they both were quick to point out later in recapping that first meeting they were both hoping that it did). All they knew was that they almost simultaneously asked for each other’s telephone numbers, and laughed. There was a lot more of that, that flirty then hesitation feeling, before they became a couple. And while whether they might be star-crossed lovers or have an eternal love still was being played out even as Soldier closed that white picket- fenced house door behind him that sweet summer day strangely enough started it, started their rocky road. Started with those pale blue eyes.
***Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Night- Free, Yah, Free- High Sierra- A Film Review
DVD Review
High Sierra, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, and, of course, Pard, directed by Raoul Walsh, Warner Brothers, 1941
Funny how a character, or performer, in one film will lead you to remember about or to investigate another. Recently I viewed and reviewed a film in which Ida Lupino starred, a kind of off-beat sweet fluff working-class thing in its way from 1942 entitled, Moontide, where she played alongside French actor, Jean Gabon, well-known for his fantastic performance in Children of Paradise as a down-at-the-heels hash-slinger seeking a little white house with a picket fence(maybe a dog and kids, not too many too). In that role there was no question of her being a femme fatale-type that guys get all, well, nervous over but just a reliable dame when the deal goes down, good or bad. A rare thing in crime noir world, especially with dames. Here in the noir classic, High Sierra, Ms Lupino picks up some of the down-at-the heels aspects of that role of hash-slinger as she plays along side Humphrey Bogart as that reliable shoe good guys and bad guys both use for their own purposes
Of course at this stage of his career Bogart was the king hell actor getting choice roles as the grizzled whatever from Sam Spade in Maltese Falcon to Captain Morgan in To Have Or Have Not so his presence is the driving force of the film. Ms. Lupino is just along for the ride, and to pick up the pieces when the deal goes south. Here Bogart plays the three-time loser, Roy Earle, just out of prison and heading west to get some fresh air, and maybe a new start. A new start in his old racket, armed robbery, big-time armed robbery.
Along the way west he is befriended by an Okie-type family heading to California just like the Joads before them. But Roy gets hung up on the young daughter, some lame Janie, and helps fund the operation to fix her foot. Naturally Janie is nothing but ungrateful and spoils Roy’s rehabilitation program. Needless to say, also along the way, brought along by one of the confederates, Marie, the role Ms. Lupino plays, is the smitten dish- rag gangster’s girl who stands by her man, although why with Roy the way he treats her is not apparent on the face of it.
As always in these crime noir adventures, in the end, crime doesn’t pay. In this case the big-time resort heist is fouled up by the inside man, shots are fired in a hasty retreat, and Roy and his confederates have to go on the run. Moreover Roy and Marie are forced to split up, once the cops know who pulled the hotel caper. Law enforcement keeps crowding Roy as the manhunt widens up into the mountains, ah, the High Sierras of the title, where Earle has taken refuge.
One thing a three-time loser knows, knows deep in his bones, if he goes back to prison he ain’t coming out. That knowledge drives the suspense of the last part of the film as Earle’s world becomes smaller and smaller. And, as they say, it’s a dog’s world that does him in at the end. Yah, but he was free, free like the starry nights that he had time to dream about in his prison nights. And Marie? Who knows but that some other heel may need a reliable shoe.
DVD Review
High Sierra, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, and, of course, Pard, directed by Raoul Walsh, Warner Brothers, 1941
Funny how a character, or performer, in one film will lead you to remember about or to investigate another. Recently I viewed and reviewed a film in which Ida Lupino starred, a kind of off-beat sweet fluff working-class thing in its way from 1942 entitled, Moontide, where she played alongside French actor, Jean Gabon, well-known for his fantastic performance in Children of Paradise as a down-at-the-heels hash-slinger seeking a little white house with a picket fence(maybe a dog and kids, not too many too). In that role there was no question of her being a femme fatale-type that guys get all, well, nervous over but just a reliable dame when the deal goes down, good or bad. A rare thing in crime noir world, especially with dames. Here in the noir classic, High Sierra, Ms Lupino picks up some of the down-at-the heels aspects of that role of hash-slinger as she plays along side Humphrey Bogart as that reliable shoe good guys and bad guys both use for their own purposes
Of course at this stage of his career Bogart was the king hell actor getting choice roles as the grizzled whatever from Sam Spade in Maltese Falcon to Captain Morgan in To Have Or Have Not so his presence is the driving force of the film. Ms. Lupino is just along for the ride, and to pick up the pieces when the deal goes south. Here Bogart plays the three-time loser, Roy Earle, just out of prison and heading west to get some fresh air, and maybe a new start. A new start in his old racket, armed robbery, big-time armed robbery.
Along the way west he is befriended by an Okie-type family heading to California just like the Joads before them. But Roy gets hung up on the young daughter, some lame Janie, and helps fund the operation to fix her foot. Naturally Janie is nothing but ungrateful and spoils Roy’s rehabilitation program. Needless to say, also along the way, brought along by one of the confederates, Marie, the role Ms. Lupino plays, is the smitten dish- rag gangster’s girl who stands by her man, although why with Roy the way he treats her is not apparent on the face of it.
As always in these crime noir adventures, in the end, crime doesn’t pay. In this case the big-time resort heist is fouled up by the inside man, shots are fired in a hasty retreat, and Roy and his confederates have to go on the run. Moreover Roy and Marie are forced to split up, once the cops know who pulled the hotel caper. Law enforcement keeps crowding Roy as the manhunt widens up into the mountains, ah, the High Sierras of the title, where Earle has taken refuge.
One thing a three-time loser knows, knows deep in his bones, if he goes back to prison he ain’t coming out. That knowledge drives the suspense of the last part of the film as Earle’s world becomes smaller and smaller. And, as they say, it’s a dog’s world that does him in at the end. Yah, but he was free, free like the starry nights that he had time to dream about in his prison nights. And Marie? Who knows but that some other heel may need a reliable shoe.
***No Mas- No More Old Ways -The TimesThey Are A-Changing And If Not They Had Better
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
**********
Markin comment November 18, 2011:
Josh Breslin didn’t know what to expect this time as the streamlined subway car that he was riding was approaching the South Station stop on the MBTA Red Line in Boston. He half-expected to see some multi-colored hand-made poster proclaiming this stop as “Occupy Boston,” something with stenciled and silhouetted clenched fist, or something like that, proclaiming this newly sacred ground, this fetid, dank subway stop, in the name of the people. Hell, just like back in the old days, the old 1960s times of blessed memory, when no wall, no public wall anyway, was safe from revolutionary pronouncements, or off-hand midnight-crafted graffiti. He had certainly seen stranger signs plastered around the Occupy encampment the last few times that he had previously come over from his home in Cambridge on the other side of the river. Stuff from Thoreau and Gandhi, naturally, but also odd-ball wisps of wisdom about being kind, not being greedy, corporate greedy or otherwise, not being sexist, racist, homophobic and the whole litany of politically acceptable Don’ts scripted out since those ‘60s that seemed self-almost explanatory and in not need of proclamation in this microscopic social experiment, this exemplar of the “new world order,” leftist-style.
Ya, these times definitely call for some outlandish statement in bright day-glo colors something, he mused amused, to confuse the touristas who were making the Occupy site a “must see” stop on their vacation itineraries. Something to throw them off the scent when they asked their infernal questions- “What are the kids up to, why all the tents, why all the black flags (really not many but that black flag of anarchy, like the red one of communism, spooked people, made their deepest fears surface, and in the old days rightly so),” and on and on. Like he, Joshua Breslin, known far and wide back in the day under the moniker, Prince of Love, a magical mystery tour merry prankster, music-and-drugs-are- the-revolution, west coast communal living madman knew what was on the kids minds today, except they were getting the short straw in the game of who gets what in the social game.
Just then he reflected, flash-back reflected, that a lot of what he had seen and heard on those other occasions when he had crossed the river of late, maybe four or five by now, echoed some long ago, half-forgotten signs and totems from the times when he was searching for the blue-pink great American West night back in the late 1960s and had wound up in People’s Park in Berkeley out in wayward California. And had been wounded and tear-gassed, Prince of Love renown notwithstanding, for his efforts when things got twisted and the deal went down. Yes, this was just exactly what it was like and now he had a “theme” for the notes that he was feeling pressed to take on this trip now that he had a “feel” for the situation. Although this time, unlike back then, he was not expecting, not expecting in his on-coming dotage, to be wounded or tear-gassed. He frankly admitted to himself after his last visit to the camp site a few days before that he was not up those rigors now, those shake-them-off-and-come-back-swinging-youth- spunks that he had in great quantity as he headed barrel-assing out west from his old hometown, Olde Saco up Maine way.
The train then stopped jarring him in mid-thought, opened its air-pressurized doors, and its sullen passengers decamped for seven winds places. No, Josh noticed, no sign at the subway level anyway that occupyitis had expanded to the cavernous underground. On surfacing in the Dewey Square sunlight though, another mercifully warm late October day starting to break through, his ears were immediately accosted by the ranting, there was no other name for it, of “Syllable Slim,” a name that he had coined for this vagabond prince standing kitty-corner in front of him when he first heard him holding forth on the perfidies of the Democrats, democrats, Republicans, republicans and anyone else who held the whiff of power, or wanted it, at Park Street Station years ago. Now Slim was the “king” of the Dewey Square day and night having moved either uptown or downtown, Josh was not quite sure of the geographic relationship between the two subway stops, with a new audience to ignore, or try to ignore, him. What was also perfectly clear was, uptown or downtown, Slim would be hard-pressed to describe what was going on at his Occupy kingdom. His spiel did not depend on such trivials The city, any city with size, produces its fair share of drifters, grifters, and midnight shifters and they, like lemmings to the sea, have heard of the glad tidings emitting from Dewey Square (read: food, shelter, and no hassles-the famous “three squares and a cot” from “on-the-road” jungle camp lore) and have come forth. And Slim is their king.
Josh, by the way, was here, here on assignment, not much pay but an assignment anyway, his first since he “officially” retired from his onerous editorial duties a couple of years back to be able to sit back, kick back, and write that great sex/drug/political/musical/ hail fellows well met/digger commune 1960s explosion novel he had been putting off since, well, since he “got off the bus” in 1971 and headed back first to Olde Saco and then drifted down to various Boston area spots. See the pay part was required, no, demanded by Josh, in order to give his employer a real “feel” for the flavor of what was going on at Dewey Square to the “soccer moms and dads” who might be wondering what they were missing while waiting, SUV-waiting, for their little Ashley or Samson to finish up their suburban kids soccer league workouts, or one or another of twelve other possible organized kid to do things for their resumes, the kid’s that is. A few random notes to titillate the rubes, and move on. No sweat. He, moreover, was going to parlay those skimpy notes into working order for his now great Tom Wolfe-ish sociological sex/drug/political/musical/ hail fellows well met/digger commune 1960s explosion novel. And in Josh Breslin’s mind Syllable Slim was already slated, with a big intro, to lead off this 21st century magical mystery tour, merry prankster gig, warts and all. We merely get his leavings.
********
“Hey brother, can you help me put this tarp over my tent? It got cold as hell last night and the winds were blowing fierce,” yelled a cherub-faced male, almost too youthful to be here but such are the times, although it was later learned that he was now a few weeks-seasoned Occupy Boston grizzly veteran resident to a middle-aged man casually walking by. “Sure thing, let’s get to it” replied that passer-by. Was the passer-by some wayward tourist looking for the next thrill in the city night life, a career gawker, or just one many unnamed “volunteers” who have sprung from the woodwork (okay, okay suburbia) in response to the news that something more than nine-to-five and white picket fences might be in the air?
********
“Can you bring this hot pot of soup to the kitchen? Some lady, a lady who would not give her name and would not acknowledge anything but thanks, drove up on the Atlantic Avenue side and asked me to unload some stuff for her,” said one young woman in shorts, short shorts thereby showing off her firm athletic legs for one and all to see to another young woman dressed in long pants, maybe jeans, getting ready for colder climates. Shortly thereafter the “laundry lady” tooted her horn looking for help in unloading a trunk-load of everything from towels to sleeping bags. And our two young women again “hit” the Atlantic Avenue curb for this “angel.” See the angel’s kindly thing, her matronly, middle-aged, unnamed kindly thing, was to come by on Tuesday for dirty laundry and return on Thursday with everything Seventh Generation bright and clean. Said “laundry lady” is also unnamed like our tent-fixing passer-by and soup lady, but clearly one who has come out of the woodwork on the news of the glad tidings.
********
“If you want a meal, a nice hot meal, could you wash some dishes to help us out,” barked, barked above the din of the dozen assorted humans in line in front of him, a man who has daily volunteered to help out in the makeshift kitchen. A kitchen whose primitive dishwashing apparatus entailed the familiar rubber soul dish pan, some lukewarm water, a little oily from the leaving of some off-hand meal, joy detergent, and rinsing tub, dishcloth and done. Primitive like back in kid time doing after supper dishes before being released in the teenage be-bop dark streets night. And a couple of older guys, older guys who knew the streets and the lore of the streets backward and forward, stepped behind the tent and got to work on a stack while the third passed on the request. When the hot meals came on deck all three got a meal, no questions asked, but somewhere, somewhere deep inside his career vagabond heart that third man knew he was not built for this new world a-borning. Not for social solidarity dishes cleaned. Meanwhile our kitchen master chef, master of the artful tuna sandwich and of the slabbed peanut butter and jelly (grape just then) variety as well answers an older man’s inquiry about what was pressingly needed for the next day’s “menu.” That older man, a man who did not look like he had the means to do so, and could have very easily passed for a “resident” of this tent city, had been coming daily with perhaps one hundred dollars worth of whatever our master chef told him the kitchen needed. Angels, apparently, come in all sizes, shapes, and circumstances.
********
Jesus, the logistics of this encampment is simplicity itself. A few rows of tents, sleeping tents, mostly good firm weather-conditioned tents in all colors, mainly blue or the feel of blue though. Unlike those watered-down Army olive drab pup tents that I made do with out in ‘Frisco when Butterfly Swirl and I were a thing traveling up and down the West Coast in the summer of love, 1967. Of course then love drove the be-bop great western night and we probably could have made due with some newspapers under our heads. But that’s a story for another time. Then several tents at each end of the encampment for special tasks like media, the library, and the “information desk.” A few odds and end here and there but mainly kept up nicely, city urban vagabond nicely. Fit for any well-fed college student out on an urban adventure to place his or her head on, and not have mother worry too much. And at the far end, the end away from the subway station a huge granite gray slab of a building, something to do with the ‘big dig” project that created this space, officially the Rose Kennedy Greenway, in its aftermath. The side wall of that big slab now serves as the main poster board for any political messages that people have the energy (and magic marker) to proclaim. And in front of that wall a few chairs, a mike, and various other equipment for those who want harangue, humor, or hum the crowd. That fleeting chance at fifteen minutes of fame for the soul-weary, for the voiceless, and for the voiced-over. Let’s listen in for bit and jot down a few of the things said.
“Karl Marx was right, this capitalist system has got to go and we need to make a new world,” sing-songed a middle-aged man, seemingly some kind of college professor out doing missionary work this day, who then proceeded to spend his fifteen minutes expanding on his scheme to have Congress vote to limit the amount of profit each corporation can make, using some sort of exotic formula that only he had the pass code to unravel. I missed that idea when I read Marx long ago but maybe I missed one of the footnotes the probable source. Our professor didn’t. This place, every time I come, at least during the day is loaded down with professors and others from the myriad local colleges and universities that dot the Boston skyline and each brings his or her own panacea with them, usually some third-rate variation off of Marx or some other 19th century thinker dressed up to wake up the texting-enchanted modern listener.
“This place is a Potemkin Village,” chanted another younger speaker a little later to a wandering, wavering crowd audience of about seven. “The people who run this thing go home at night to their nice warm beds while we stay here and keep the faith, the real faith,” he added. This inflamed black flannel-shirted youth finished up with this epistle, “Besides half the tents are empty and the tents that have people in them are just drifters and bums who don’t know anything about what we are trying to do here. They are just trying to keep warm and away from getting hassled by the cops.” I had heard that sentiment expressed before, more than once, from political types and kind of dismissed it out of hand but this guy seemed to be speaking from some truth experience. I reminded myself to come back in a few minutes and talk to him when he was done. However when I went back about ten minutes later he was gone. But his plaintive plea stuck with me and I will have to keep on the trail of that strand.
********
Later that same day at the same wall-
“Man, play us a Hendrix tune on that thing, ‘cause you are smokin’, man” earnestly requested a young, red-bearded man, obviously a student, an ardent musical student from the look of him. “Okay man, if you play a little drum behind me,” came the reply from the reincarnation of Jimi, complete with tie-dyed headband to hold his head together. And for perhaps fifteen minutes they held it together like some aura out on the 1960s be-bop night, their fifteen minutes of fame on the Dewey Square main stage for their resumes. And the crowd that swelled to listen in knew they had heard some old phantom primordial from the womb sound, and liked it. Another group this time a guitar, harmonica, drum combination trying to bring a blues riff together sends most of the crowd wandering in all directions. Such are the hard facts of the fame game from Broadway to tent city. Hopefully some more harmonious society will have more room for the fringes of that game.
*********
“Say, can I have cigarette, man, I’m out?” said another older man weary, street weary, getting ready to enter a tent to catch a few winks. “I’m rolling Bull, okay?” answered a red-headed dread-locked young man. That cadging of cigarettes, factory-made or from the pouch, between and among the young is somewhat strange after the righteous lifetime drumbeats of foul smoking. Not all messages get through.
Such were, are, will be the random sights and sounds of the Occupy Boston encampment on any given day, or any given minute if you can be in seven places at one time, as the camp continues to organize itself in the tradition of the old westward pioneers seeking that great American west blue-pink night, and still are seeking it generations later.
********
“Hey man, don’t be cheap give me a fucking cigarette, I’m all shaky,” shouted out a razor- edged guy, obviously working off some hang-over, although not necessarily an alcoholic or drug one. “I’m down to my last one, what the fuck do you want from me,” came the surly reply. The tension spiked then passed away in the midday air. In that same midday air came this from one of the tents, voiced by an unseen man, a gruff-voiced man, not young “Fuck, give me my space, my free space, don’t be all around me.” And that voice too went to ground, unresolved.
*******
“This place is neat, three squares and a cot, and nobody hassles you and you don’t have to work for your grub, or nothing,” murmured a street veteran, shabbily-dressed, rough edge- bearded but of sober expression to no one in particular in a crowd of suburban tourists who have made the site at Dewey Square a place on their “must see” map. A young man came up to a clot of that same crowd to discuss the Occupy theme. A question was asked about the shabbily-dressed man’s comment. “Oh, ya, most of the residents are street people, a few of us like me stay to keep the peace but most of the politicos go home, or back to the dorms when the General Assembly is over. We opened the space to anyone who followed the simple rules of the camp so here we are.” One tourista smirked the smirk of someone who “knew, just knew” this thing was not going to work, not with bums, hell no. We shall see.
********
“Out of the tents, into the streets, Out of the tents, into the streets” yelled a tall dark-haired young man dressed in black, Black Bloc black, meaning black everything black, from boots to jacket, topped off with the de rigueur black bandana handkerchief covering the bottom part of his face as some kind of security blanket measure. This youth is known to me so that there is only a little affectation in his dress to be in touch with his anarchist heart. Others’ motives I am not as sure of as they flaunt their garb like wearing the “uniform” would cast away all sins and black purify their corrupted souls. Such act would guard against turning into a stinking bourgeois baddie like daddy.
This sight, the nightmare sight to every protective mother guarding her young against the travails of the world and the bane of every government seeing spook shadows behind the dress, is however here among the tents just another guy with a cause. He repeats himself several times as he tries to rouse the denizens of the new world tent city to come out and march on behalf of any number of causes, this one in solidarity with the shutting down of the Port of Oakland by Occupy Oakland on this early November day, the vanguard action city of the whole American movement and one that has been increasing under attack, under police attack almost nightly.
A few younger comrades also dressed in black, head-to-toe black as well, heeded his plea and stirred from their tents, stretching the stretch of the huddled or prone to ready themselves for the couple of mile walk on this cold but clear evening. Mostly the camp residents ignore the plea and go about their business of fixing tents, heading to the kitchen mess tent for supper or just pretend that our big-hearted black-attired anarcho-mad monk of an activist will gather his troops and leave. And here is where the funny part comes in as I think back to a guy I heard up on the “main stage” a few days back who kept yelling about this occupation site being a Potemkin Village. [Markin: For those not in the know about Russian history or are unfamiliar with the term it signifies all front, no substance. Allegedly one of Russian Empress Catherine the Great’s lovers back in the 18th century, Potemkin, ordered beautiful villages build with only the facades so his honey would have pleasant sights to see when they went riding by. Ya I know, lame but that is the story.] And today that seems true, at least to my eye, as the vast majority of the three hundred or so marchers were not resident “occupiers,” or had the now signature drawn-out slightly dazed sag look of occupiers. In any case we are off, as I have decided to express my solidarity with the sisters and brothers in Oakland (a place I know well from back in the day).
Naturally the black-suited sisters and brothers are up front leading this thing chanting solidarity slogans centered on the defense of Occupy Oakland ("From the East Bay to Back Bay-Defend Occupy Oakland"), the ubiquitous “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” that is something of a national anthem for the movement now, and to show the tenor of militancy this night this little beauty, “What’s the solution?: Revolution, What’s the reaction?: Direct action." All in a day’s work out in the protest march world though. What makes this one a little unusual is the march route. See the line of march on this one, perhaps reflecting some super-black dream kick, is deliberately planned to go helter-skelter, one assumes to “throw off” the bicycle police and other law enforcement types who are “guarding” the march.
Of course the only ones who are confused by all this are the few marchers who are rare rookies to this scene, trampling on others' shoes we travel zigzag (and they, the rookies zigzag) up the wrong way on Winter Street or Congress Street stopping already stopped rush hour traffic with our pleas for solidarity and a whole range of other concerns. Eventually we get to the State House on Beacon Street then march down to Charles Street and move against the waiting traffic before heading back to Boylston Street and then to Downtown Crossing for the now obligatory “die in” (a momentary sit-in, if you are not familiar with that term) a few “mic check” shout-outs and then more chanting back to camp. Done, finis, chalk up some more march miles on my protest-o-meter. A spirited march, a necessary march, no question, but I hope that I was just being jittery when I got that feeling in my spine at the end of the march that something was out of joint, that those who wish to “lead” a revolution, a black-encrusted revolution, were heading up the wrong street with their antics.
********
“You had better stay the fuck away from my woman, and stay way away,” threatened a young guy, a young white guy, not a street guy, not a student but just the kind of guy who drifts in and out of things. “Fuck you and your woman,” came the reply from a young Spanish-looking dude who had daggers in his eyes as the two nearly came to blows. Just then someone yelled “rainbow” and several people appeared to calm the situation down. Not too quickly calmed it down by the way.
This too is a part of the “new world a-borning” as not everybody is quite ready yet to shift gears, or just has too much, much too much, baggage from old bourgeois society to make the leap of faith just yet.
********
Voices overheard while waiting for a rally or march against or for something to start, a Free School University lecture to begin, a this or that meeting to proceed, a just plain old ordinary passing through the camp or the thousand and one other things waits at the Occupy Boston site at Dewey Square.
“See, this is the way it works,” said a tall, red-headed curly-haired young man, dressed in an “approved” regulation Occupy resident garb, fatigue jacket, denim jeans, a rakish hat, and this warmish evening wearing shoes with no socks to a small, middle-aged, graying woman dressed in some outfit worthy of high hippie times in the summer of love, 1967 but who was having a hard time getting around the various concepts involved in participation in a General Assembly (GA) show-up, the central decision-making body of the Occupy movement, although she liked the idea in theory as she made plain to tell her “tour guide” at the start.
The red-headed youth, let’s call him Red for short although no inference should be drawn about his political allegiances from that, continued, “Somebody brings an idea they, or their group, want to have heard, discussed, and voted on by GA. Let’s say, for example, an action like having everybody turn in their saving and checking accounts at the big banks like Bank of America and transfer the money to credit unions or small neighborhood banks on a certain day. They come here, get their point put on the agenda and when their turn comes up they can motivate it. Then people can discuss it, discuss it from all angles, sometimes unto death practically, I’ve seen that at GA, and periodic “temperature checks” can be taken on the favorability of supporting such an action.”
“What’s a temperature check?” asked our somewhat bewildered ancient flower-child.
“That’s a sense of the meeting on some point and instead of the crowd yelling and screaming a response you just wiggle your fingers on one hand, or two, in the middle, or down. It doesn’t mean a thing about whether the thing, the idea being presented, will pass or not,” young Red answered, answered in the patient low-key monotone that he had either spent many moons perfecting in secret or came naturally to him. I suspect the latter from other times I have seen him give his spiels at GA. “After the proposal is presented then people can approach the facilitator, or the assigned “stack” person, and ask to speak on the matter, in turn.” Okay, so far?”
“After full discussion that can, like I say, take the whole evening there is a vote, a vote if there is a quorum left at GA by voting time. Sometimes there is not, more so recently. Then a bunch of procedures come into play that I don’t always understood about dissent blocks and mortal dissent blocks that can kill a proposal even before a vote if somebody thinks it is a small or big danger to what the Occupy movement is trying to do. And others agree after a vote, if it gets that far. Usually though that doesn’t happen because the stuff we deal with isn’t that weird. The quorum thing will more likely delay action on a vote and the thing is tabled until a later GA. If nothing gets in the way though it can be voted that night by consensus.
“What?” asked the starting to get glazed-eye woman, who seemingly no stranger to the in and outs of grassroots participatory democracy, is taken back by our Red’s use of the word.
“Okay, okay in the corporate world things get done by majority vote, right. So a lot of people can be losers even if the vote is close so to guard against that tyranny of the majority everything is done by consensus. Someone explained it to me this way and it made sense to me. You raise your hand in approval if you can live with the proposal. On the credit union thing that would be easy but on some other stuff maybe not.”
“So what if you don’t get consensus but have a majority? Our fair lady asks. “No go, go back and work on your proposal or give it up,” shot back Red, for the first time a little annoyed with a question like the idea of consensus was automatically the best way to do things in a democracy and how could anyone, especially an anyone who came from 1960s land, object. “Thanks, for your help” our hippie lady, our perplexed hippie lady on that last point, told Red as she meandered around the camp looking for the kitchen area, or maybe just to think over what had suddenly perplexed her.
***********
“How long have you been coming here?,” asked the white-haired old man, neatly although inexpensively dressed, a man who seemingly had seen many struggles in his time, not all of them political, but enough of them to know that he had some political thoughts hidden among those white hairs. “Oh, I started camping out here on Day 1 in September and stayed for a few weeks but then I had to go back to my dorm at Boston University because there was too much noise here at night for me to study and anyway I got kind of bored just hanging around a lot being gawked at by tourists and everybody else who wanted to see what was going on here at the beginning,” forthrightly answered a fetching young brunette who did not, frankly, look, strictly from appearances, like she belonged here for one day never mind weeks but that is the beauty of what has been churned up this fall by the tide of the Occupy movement in the face of overwhelmingly social discontent.
The wizened white-haired man moved slowly away to speak to others he had met, especially a couple of Veterans For Peace supporters whom he had come to know fairly well, at the site when the young woman reached out, tugged at his coat and said “Wait, I have more to tell you.” A little startled the old man stopped in his tracks and asked to hear more. She continued “I’ve seen you around camp before, talking to some people I know about the 1960s and about the funny stuff that went on then, and you look like you might have been a hippie or something so I think I can tell you stuff.” “What stuff?” answered the now red-faced old man waiting for the young damsel to pore out her heart about the indignities of life, boy-friend problems, some unknown addictions, or some such thing.
“I just didn’t leave because I couldn’t study or was bored although that was part of it. Mainly it was because I feel this movement has lost direction, lost direction in a big way, by spending all its time and energy here defending and winter fortifying the camp and getting isolated from trying to reach out to people. I’m studying about social movements in school and this one seems to be going away from what groups like the black civil rights movement and anti-war movements were trying to even if they made a lot of mistakes. My boy-friend and I almost broke up over it because he likes the camp life, he’s still here, and he doesn’t want any demands raised, period, and thinks that if we just show a good example people will gravitate to see things our way. He was furious when I said nobody was watching, or not enough were. We made up after I left and went back to my dorm room but I still think after over a month that the encampment has been here that I was right, although we avoid talking about it. What do you think?”
The white-haired man laughed, laughed good-naturedly explaining that he did not expect in his fairly frequent stops at Dewey Square that he would be performing Dear Occupy Abby services to the lovelorn. She gave half a smile to that notion. He continued, “We too made every mistake in the book back in the day, especially in going out of our way to alienate every possible person who disagreed with us until, like some light bulb going on, we finally got it that such things were self-defeating and changed tack. I too share your reservations about getting isolated out here in the middle of nowhere, even if it is the center of the Financial District, but an old radical, and old communist actually, told me back in the day that each generation must find its own ways to drive the struggle. And he was basically right. At least some of us did learn and I am living proof that not all mistakes are politically fatal. Things are still fresh yet so talk to your boy-friend, and keep talking about the need to break out of the camps. Okay?” She nodded the nod of the half-believer and walked away saying she hoped to run into our wizard again.
**********
Five minutes ago the sidewalk along the Atlantic Avenue side of the encampment was deserted, a lonely yellow-jacketed cop shifting back and forth on his heels to make his duty time pass more quickly. Now the first sign of the day, “Tax The Rich,” along with it human holder, here a well-dressed, well-preserved older woman, a woman who looked like she has seen many battles for social justice in her time hit the sidewalk. And her action acted as a catalyst because then came a couple of young students carrying a banner-“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” one of the anthems of the Occupy movement, to stand beside her. They smile, she smiles, nothing more is needed as they banner understand each other completely.
Then a convoy of about twelve middle-aged and older Universalist-Unitarians from out in some suburban town, who have rented a bus for the occasion, begin filling in the sidewalk a little farther up the street with their “peace, this,” “peace, that,” “good-will toward all” signs. Upon investigation this group had made a solemn decision, as only U-Uers can, to come weekly to Boston to stand in solidarity with the efforts in Dewey Square.
A few minutes later, from out of nowhere, came a nomadic resident of the “village” with a plateful of cookies, chocolate chip perhaps, and offers them to those “working the line” on Atlantic Avenue.
********
Later, an older model automobile, frankly a heap, driven by a menacing-looking man in lumberjack jacket with fierce flashing eyes like some crazed survivalist stopped just in front of the Atlantic Avenue entrance to the encampment and yells out, “Hey, when do I put these sleeping bags, tarps, shovels, and pots? I can’t stay but I am with you, with you all the way.” Of such acts by such desperate looking men, revolutions are made, big-time revolutions.
Toward late afternoon the Atlantic Avenue traffic gets heavier, bumper to bumper, as people try to leave the city, and city cares behind. A guy in a big dump truck, a flat-top hair cut showing yells out, “Get a job” at a group of street people standing on the avenue. Later a pedestrian muttered to that yellow-jacketed cop on duty, who was still rocking his heels, about how he paid taxes and isn’t it a shame what these people are up to. The call of the day though goes to a guy, a light-skinned Cuban-looking guy in a late model cherry red sports car driving on the far right lane away from the encampment, who yells out, “Commies, go back to where you came from.”
Ya, I know not everybody got the news about twenty years back, not everybody gets what is going on now, and not everybody, despite the sleek street slogan of ninety-nine percent, is with the Occupy movement. But just remember that guy, that lumberjack jacket guy in that old heap, who gave what he had, and gave all the way.
This archival piece from 2011 started out life as From
#Occupied Boston (#Tomemonos Boston)-No Mas- The Class-War Lines Are Being
Drawn-There Is A Need To Unite And Fight-Random Sights From Life At Dewey
Square #5 and is being given an encore here because, frankly, the
original stuff said it all, and still needs our attention.-Peter Paul Markin
***********An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
**********
Markin comment November 18, 2011:
Josh Breslin didn’t know what to expect this time as the streamlined subway car that he was riding was approaching the South Station stop on the MBTA Red Line in Boston. He half-expected to see some multi-colored hand-made poster proclaiming this stop as “Occupy Boston,” something with stenciled and silhouetted clenched fist, or something like that, proclaiming this newly sacred ground, this fetid, dank subway stop, in the name of the people. Hell, just like back in the old days, the old 1960s times of blessed memory, when no wall, no public wall anyway, was safe from revolutionary pronouncements, or off-hand midnight-crafted graffiti. He had certainly seen stranger signs plastered around the Occupy encampment the last few times that he had previously come over from his home in Cambridge on the other side of the river. Stuff from Thoreau and Gandhi, naturally, but also odd-ball wisps of wisdom about being kind, not being greedy, corporate greedy or otherwise, not being sexist, racist, homophobic and the whole litany of politically acceptable Don’ts scripted out since those ‘60s that seemed self-almost explanatory and in not need of proclamation in this microscopic social experiment, this exemplar of the “new world order,” leftist-style.
Ya, these times definitely call for some outlandish statement in bright day-glo colors something, he mused amused, to confuse the touristas who were making the Occupy site a “must see” stop on their vacation itineraries. Something to throw them off the scent when they asked their infernal questions- “What are the kids up to, why all the tents, why all the black flags (really not many but that black flag of anarchy, like the red one of communism, spooked people, made their deepest fears surface, and in the old days rightly so),” and on and on. Like he, Joshua Breslin, known far and wide back in the day under the moniker, Prince of Love, a magical mystery tour merry prankster, music-and-drugs-are- the-revolution, west coast communal living madman knew what was on the kids minds today, except they were getting the short straw in the game of who gets what in the social game.
Just then he reflected, flash-back reflected, that a lot of what he had seen and heard on those other occasions when he had crossed the river of late, maybe four or five by now, echoed some long ago, half-forgotten signs and totems from the times when he was searching for the blue-pink great American West night back in the late 1960s and had wound up in People’s Park in Berkeley out in wayward California. And had been wounded and tear-gassed, Prince of Love renown notwithstanding, for his efforts when things got twisted and the deal went down. Yes, this was just exactly what it was like and now he had a “theme” for the notes that he was feeling pressed to take on this trip now that he had a “feel” for the situation. Although this time, unlike back then, he was not expecting, not expecting in his on-coming dotage, to be wounded or tear-gassed. He frankly admitted to himself after his last visit to the camp site a few days before that he was not up those rigors now, those shake-them-off-and-come-back-swinging-youth- spunks that he had in great quantity as he headed barrel-assing out west from his old hometown, Olde Saco up Maine way.
The train then stopped jarring him in mid-thought, opened its air-pressurized doors, and its sullen passengers decamped for seven winds places. No, Josh noticed, no sign at the subway level anyway that occupyitis had expanded to the cavernous underground. On surfacing in the Dewey Square sunlight though, another mercifully warm late October day starting to break through, his ears were immediately accosted by the ranting, there was no other name for it, of “Syllable Slim,” a name that he had coined for this vagabond prince standing kitty-corner in front of him when he first heard him holding forth on the perfidies of the Democrats, democrats, Republicans, republicans and anyone else who held the whiff of power, or wanted it, at Park Street Station years ago. Now Slim was the “king” of the Dewey Square day and night having moved either uptown or downtown, Josh was not quite sure of the geographic relationship between the two subway stops, with a new audience to ignore, or try to ignore, him. What was also perfectly clear was, uptown or downtown, Slim would be hard-pressed to describe what was going on at his Occupy kingdom. His spiel did not depend on such trivials The city, any city with size, produces its fair share of drifters, grifters, and midnight shifters and they, like lemmings to the sea, have heard of the glad tidings emitting from Dewey Square (read: food, shelter, and no hassles-the famous “three squares and a cot” from “on-the-road” jungle camp lore) and have come forth. And Slim is their king.
Josh, by the way, was here, here on assignment, not much pay but an assignment anyway, his first since he “officially” retired from his onerous editorial duties a couple of years back to be able to sit back, kick back, and write that great sex/drug/political/musical/ hail fellows well met/digger commune 1960s explosion novel he had been putting off since, well, since he “got off the bus” in 1971 and headed back first to Olde Saco and then drifted down to various Boston area spots. See the pay part was required, no, demanded by Josh, in order to give his employer a real “feel” for the flavor of what was going on at Dewey Square to the “soccer moms and dads” who might be wondering what they were missing while waiting, SUV-waiting, for their little Ashley or Samson to finish up their suburban kids soccer league workouts, or one or another of twelve other possible organized kid to do things for their resumes, the kid’s that is. A few random notes to titillate the rubes, and move on. No sweat. He, moreover, was going to parlay those skimpy notes into working order for his now great Tom Wolfe-ish sociological sex/drug/political/musical/ hail fellows well met/digger commune 1960s explosion novel. And in Josh Breslin’s mind Syllable Slim was already slated, with a big intro, to lead off this 21st century magical mystery tour, merry prankster gig, warts and all. We merely get his leavings.
********
“Hey brother, can you help me put this tarp over my tent? It got cold as hell last night and the winds were blowing fierce,” yelled a cherub-faced male, almost too youthful to be here but such are the times, although it was later learned that he was now a few weeks-seasoned Occupy Boston grizzly veteran resident to a middle-aged man casually walking by. “Sure thing, let’s get to it” replied that passer-by. Was the passer-by some wayward tourist looking for the next thrill in the city night life, a career gawker, or just one many unnamed “volunteers” who have sprung from the woodwork (okay, okay suburbia) in response to the news that something more than nine-to-five and white picket fences might be in the air?
********
“Can you bring this hot pot of soup to the kitchen? Some lady, a lady who would not give her name and would not acknowledge anything but thanks, drove up on the Atlantic Avenue side and asked me to unload some stuff for her,” said one young woman in shorts, short shorts thereby showing off her firm athletic legs for one and all to see to another young woman dressed in long pants, maybe jeans, getting ready for colder climates. Shortly thereafter the “laundry lady” tooted her horn looking for help in unloading a trunk-load of everything from towels to sleeping bags. And our two young women again “hit” the Atlantic Avenue curb for this “angel.” See the angel’s kindly thing, her matronly, middle-aged, unnamed kindly thing, was to come by on Tuesday for dirty laundry and return on Thursday with everything Seventh Generation bright and clean. Said “laundry lady” is also unnamed like our tent-fixing passer-by and soup lady, but clearly one who has come out of the woodwork on the news of the glad tidings.
********
“If you want a meal, a nice hot meal, could you wash some dishes to help us out,” barked, barked above the din of the dozen assorted humans in line in front of him, a man who has daily volunteered to help out in the makeshift kitchen. A kitchen whose primitive dishwashing apparatus entailed the familiar rubber soul dish pan, some lukewarm water, a little oily from the leaving of some off-hand meal, joy detergent, and rinsing tub, dishcloth and done. Primitive like back in kid time doing after supper dishes before being released in the teenage be-bop dark streets night. And a couple of older guys, older guys who knew the streets and the lore of the streets backward and forward, stepped behind the tent and got to work on a stack while the third passed on the request. When the hot meals came on deck all three got a meal, no questions asked, but somewhere, somewhere deep inside his career vagabond heart that third man knew he was not built for this new world a-borning. Not for social solidarity dishes cleaned. Meanwhile our kitchen master chef, master of the artful tuna sandwich and of the slabbed peanut butter and jelly (grape just then) variety as well answers an older man’s inquiry about what was pressingly needed for the next day’s “menu.” That older man, a man who did not look like he had the means to do so, and could have very easily passed for a “resident” of this tent city, had been coming daily with perhaps one hundred dollars worth of whatever our master chef told him the kitchen needed. Angels, apparently, come in all sizes, shapes, and circumstances.
********
Jesus, the logistics of this encampment is simplicity itself. A few rows of tents, sleeping tents, mostly good firm weather-conditioned tents in all colors, mainly blue or the feel of blue though. Unlike those watered-down Army olive drab pup tents that I made do with out in ‘Frisco when Butterfly Swirl and I were a thing traveling up and down the West Coast in the summer of love, 1967. Of course then love drove the be-bop great western night and we probably could have made due with some newspapers under our heads. But that’s a story for another time. Then several tents at each end of the encampment for special tasks like media, the library, and the “information desk.” A few odds and end here and there but mainly kept up nicely, city urban vagabond nicely. Fit for any well-fed college student out on an urban adventure to place his or her head on, and not have mother worry too much. And at the far end, the end away from the subway station a huge granite gray slab of a building, something to do with the ‘big dig” project that created this space, officially the Rose Kennedy Greenway, in its aftermath. The side wall of that big slab now serves as the main poster board for any political messages that people have the energy (and magic marker) to proclaim. And in front of that wall a few chairs, a mike, and various other equipment for those who want harangue, humor, or hum the crowd. That fleeting chance at fifteen minutes of fame for the soul-weary, for the voiceless, and for the voiced-over. Let’s listen in for bit and jot down a few of the things said.
“Karl Marx was right, this capitalist system has got to go and we need to make a new world,” sing-songed a middle-aged man, seemingly some kind of college professor out doing missionary work this day, who then proceeded to spend his fifteen minutes expanding on his scheme to have Congress vote to limit the amount of profit each corporation can make, using some sort of exotic formula that only he had the pass code to unravel. I missed that idea when I read Marx long ago but maybe I missed one of the footnotes the probable source. Our professor didn’t. This place, every time I come, at least during the day is loaded down with professors and others from the myriad local colleges and universities that dot the Boston skyline and each brings his or her own panacea with them, usually some third-rate variation off of Marx or some other 19th century thinker dressed up to wake up the texting-enchanted modern listener.
“This place is a Potemkin Village,” chanted another younger speaker a little later to a wandering, wavering crowd audience of about seven. “The people who run this thing go home at night to their nice warm beds while we stay here and keep the faith, the real faith,” he added. This inflamed black flannel-shirted youth finished up with this epistle, “Besides half the tents are empty and the tents that have people in them are just drifters and bums who don’t know anything about what we are trying to do here. They are just trying to keep warm and away from getting hassled by the cops.” I had heard that sentiment expressed before, more than once, from political types and kind of dismissed it out of hand but this guy seemed to be speaking from some truth experience. I reminded myself to come back in a few minutes and talk to him when he was done. However when I went back about ten minutes later he was gone. But his plaintive plea stuck with me and I will have to keep on the trail of that strand.
********
Later that same day at the same wall-
“Man, play us a Hendrix tune on that thing, ‘cause you are smokin’, man” earnestly requested a young, red-bearded man, obviously a student, an ardent musical student from the look of him. “Okay man, if you play a little drum behind me,” came the reply from the reincarnation of Jimi, complete with tie-dyed headband to hold his head together. And for perhaps fifteen minutes they held it together like some aura out on the 1960s be-bop night, their fifteen minutes of fame on the Dewey Square main stage for their resumes. And the crowd that swelled to listen in knew they had heard some old phantom primordial from the womb sound, and liked it. Another group this time a guitar, harmonica, drum combination trying to bring a blues riff together sends most of the crowd wandering in all directions. Such are the hard facts of the fame game from Broadway to tent city. Hopefully some more harmonious society will have more room for the fringes of that game.
*********
“Say, can I have cigarette, man, I’m out?” said another older man weary, street weary, getting ready to enter a tent to catch a few winks. “I’m rolling Bull, okay?” answered a red-headed dread-locked young man. That cadging of cigarettes, factory-made or from the pouch, between and among the young is somewhat strange after the righteous lifetime drumbeats of foul smoking. Not all messages get through.
Such were, are, will be the random sights and sounds of the Occupy Boston encampment on any given day, or any given minute if you can be in seven places at one time, as the camp continues to organize itself in the tradition of the old westward pioneers seeking that great American west blue-pink night, and still are seeking it generations later.
********
“Hey man, don’t be cheap give me a fucking cigarette, I’m all shaky,” shouted out a razor- edged guy, obviously working off some hang-over, although not necessarily an alcoholic or drug one. “I’m down to my last one, what the fuck do you want from me,” came the surly reply. The tension spiked then passed away in the midday air. In that same midday air came this from one of the tents, voiced by an unseen man, a gruff-voiced man, not young “Fuck, give me my space, my free space, don’t be all around me.” And that voice too went to ground, unresolved.
*******
“This place is neat, three squares and a cot, and nobody hassles you and you don’t have to work for your grub, or nothing,” murmured a street veteran, shabbily-dressed, rough edge- bearded but of sober expression to no one in particular in a crowd of suburban tourists who have made the site at Dewey Square a place on their “must see” map. A young man came up to a clot of that same crowd to discuss the Occupy theme. A question was asked about the shabbily-dressed man’s comment. “Oh, ya, most of the residents are street people, a few of us like me stay to keep the peace but most of the politicos go home, or back to the dorms when the General Assembly is over. We opened the space to anyone who followed the simple rules of the camp so here we are.” One tourista smirked the smirk of someone who “knew, just knew” this thing was not going to work, not with bums, hell no. We shall see.
********
“Out of the tents, into the streets, Out of the tents, into the streets” yelled a tall dark-haired young man dressed in black, Black Bloc black, meaning black everything black, from boots to jacket, topped off with the de rigueur black bandana handkerchief covering the bottom part of his face as some kind of security blanket measure. This youth is known to me so that there is only a little affectation in his dress to be in touch with his anarchist heart. Others’ motives I am not as sure of as they flaunt their garb like wearing the “uniform” would cast away all sins and black purify their corrupted souls. Such act would guard against turning into a stinking bourgeois baddie like daddy.
This sight, the nightmare sight to every protective mother guarding her young against the travails of the world and the bane of every government seeing spook shadows behind the dress, is however here among the tents just another guy with a cause. He repeats himself several times as he tries to rouse the denizens of the new world tent city to come out and march on behalf of any number of causes, this one in solidarity with the shutting down of the Port of Oakland by Occupy Oakland on this early November day, the vanguard action city of the whole American movement and one that has been increasing under attack, under police attack almost nightly.
A few younger comrades also dressed in black, head-to-toe black as well, heeded his plea and stirred from their tents, stretching the stretch of the huddled or prone to ready themselves for the couple of mile walk on this cold but clear evening. Mostly the camp residents ignore the plea and go about their business of fixing tents, heading to the kitchen mess tent for supper or just pretend that our big-hearted black-attired anarcho-mad monk of an activist will gather his troops and leave. And here is where the funny part comes in as I think back to a guy I heard up on the “main stage” a few days back who kept yelling about this occupation site being a Potemkin Village. [Markin: For those not in the know about Russian history or are unfamiliar with the term it signifies all front, no substance. Allegedly one of Russian Empress Catherine the Great’s lovers back in the 18th century, Potemkin, ordered beautiful villages build with only the facades so his honey would have pleasant sights to see when they went riding by. Ya I know, lame but that is the story.] And today that seems true, at least to my eye, as the vast majority of the three hundred or so marchers were not resident “occupiers,” or had the now signature drawn-out slightly dazed sag look of occupiers. In any case we are off, as I have decided to express my solidarity with the sisters and brothers in Oakland (a place I know well from back in the day).
Naturally the black-suited sisters and brothers are up front leading this thing chanting solidarity slogans centered on the defense of Occupy Oakland ("From the East Bay to Back Bay-Defend Occupy Oakland"), the ubiquitous “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” that is something of a national anthem for the movement now, and to show the tenor of militancy this night this little beauty, “What’s the solution?: Revolution, What’s the reaction?: Direct action." All in a day’s work out in the protest march world though. What makes this one a little unusual is the march route. See the line of march on this one, perhaps reflecting some super-black dream kick, is deliberately planned to go helter-skelter, one assumes to “throw off” the bicycle police and other law enforcement types who are “guarding” the march.
Of course the only ones who are confused by all this are the few marchers who are rare rookies to this scene, trampling on others' shoes we travel zigzag (and they, the rookies zigzag) up the wrong way on Winter Street or Congress Street stopping already stopped rush hour traffic with our pleas for solidarity and a whole range of other concerns. Eventually we get to the State House on Beacon Street then march down to Charles Street and move against the waiting traffic before heading back to Boylston Street and then to Downtown Crossing for the now obligatory “die in” (a momentary sit-in, if you are not familiar with that term) a few “mic check” shout-outs and then more chanting back to camp. Done, finis, chalk up some more march miles on my protest-o-meter. A spirited march, a necessary march, no question, but I hope that I was just being jittery when I got that feeling in my spine at the end of the march that something was out of joint, that those who wish to “lead” a revolution, a black-encrusted revolution, were heading up the wrong street with their antics.
********
“You had better stay the fuck away from my woman, and stay way away,” threatened a young guy, a young white guy, not a street guy, not a student but just the kind of guy who drifts in and out of things. “Fuck you and your woman,” came the reply from a young Spanish-looking dude who had daggers in his eyes as the two nearly came to blows. Just then someone yelled “rainbow” and several people appeared to calm the situation down. Not too quickly calmed it down by the way.
This too is a part of the “new world a-borning” as not everybody is quite ready yet to shift gears, or just has too much, much too much, baggage from old bourgeois society to make the leap of faith just yet.
********
Voices overheard while waiting for a rally or march against or for something to start, a Free School University lecture to begin, a this or that meeting to proceed, a just plain old ordinary passing through the camp or the thousand and one other things waits at the Occupy Boston site at Dewey Square.
“See, this is the way it works,” said a tall, red-headed curly-haired young man, dressed in an “approved” regulation Occupy resident garb, fatigue jacket, denim jeans, a rakish hat, and this warmish evening wearing shoes with no socks to a small, middle-aged, graying woman dressed in some outfit worthy of high hippie times in the summer of love, 1967 but who was having a hard time getting around the various concepts involved in participation in a General Assembly (GA) show-up, the central decision-making body of the Occupy movement, although she liked the idea in theory as she made plain to tell her “tour guide” at the start.
The red-headed youth, let’s call him Red for short although no inference should be drawn about his political allegiances from that, continued, “Somebody brings an idea they, or their group, want to have heard, discussed, and voted on by GA. Let’s say, for example, an action like having everybody turn in their saving and checking accounts at the big banks like Bank of America and transfer the money to credit unions or small neighborhood banks on a certain day. They come here, get their point put on the agenda and when their turn comes up they can motivate it. Then people can discuss it, discuss it from all angles, sometimes unto death practically, I’ve seen that at GA, and periodic “temperature checks” can be taken on the favorability of supporting such an action.”
“What’s a temperature check?” asked our somewhat bewildered ancient flower-child.
“That’s a sense of the meeting on some point and instead of the crowd yelling and screaming a response you just wiggle your fingers on one hand, or two, in the middle, or down. It doesn’t mean a thing about whether the thing, the idea being presented, will pass or not,” young Red answered, answered in the patient low-key monotone that he had either spent many moons perfecting in secret or came naturally to him. I suspect the latter from other times I have seen him give his spiels at GA. “After the proposal is presented then people can approach the facilitator, or the assigned “stack” person, and ask to speak on the matter, in turn.” Okay, so far?”
“After full discussion that can, like I say, take the whole evening there is a vote, a vote if there is a quorum left at GA by voting time. Sometimes there is not, more so recently. Then a bunch of procedures come into play that I don’t always understood about dissent blocks and mortal dissent blocks that can kill a proposal even before a vote if somebody thinks it is a small or big danger to what the Occupy movement is trying to do. And others agree after a vote, if it gets that far. Usually though that doesn’t happen because the stuff we deal with isn’t that weird. The quorum thing will more likely delay action on a vote and the thing is tabled until a later GA. If nothing gets in the way though it can be voted that night by consensus.
“What?” asked the starting to get glazed-eye woman, who seemingly no stranger to the in and outs of grassroots participatory democracy, is taken back by our Red’s use of the word.
“Okay, okay in the corporate world things get done by majority vote, right. So a lot of people can be losers even if the vote is close so to guard against that tyranny of the majority everything is done by consensus. Someone explained it to me this way and it made sense to me. You raise your hand in approval if you can live with the proposal. On the credit union thing that would be easy but on some other stuff maybe not.”
“So what if you don’t get consensus but have a majority? Our fair lady asks. “No go, go back and work on your proposal or give it up,” shot back Red, for the first time a little annoyed with a question like the idea of consensus was automatically the best way to do things in a democracy and how could anyone, especially an anyone who came from 1960s land, object. “Thanks, for your help” our hippie lady, our perplexed hippie lady on that last point, told Red as she meandered around the camp looking for the kitchen area, or maybe just to think over what had suddenly perplexed her.
***********
“How long have you been coming here?,” asked the white-haired old man, neatly although inexpensively dressed, a man who seemingly had seen many struggles in his time, not all of them political, but enough of them to know that he had some political thoughts hidden among those white hairs. “Oh, I started camping out here on Day 1 in September and stayed for a few weeks but then I had to go back to my dorm at Boston University because there was too much noise here at night for me to study and anyway I got kind of bored just hanging around a lot being gawked at by tourists and everybody else who wanted to see what was going on here at the beginning,” forthrightly answered a fetching young brunette who did not, frankly, look, strictly from appearances, like she belonged here for one day never mind weeks but that is the beauty of what has been churned up this fall by the tide of the Occupy movement in the face of overwhelmingly social discontent.
The wizened white-haired man moved slowly away to speak to others he had met, especially a couple of Veterans For Peace supporters whom he had come to know fairly well, at the site when the young woman reached out, tugged at his coat and said “Wait, I have more to tell you.” A little startled the old man stopped in his tracks and asked to hear more. She continued “I’ve seen you around camp before, talking to some people I know about the 1960s and about the funny stuff that went on then, and you look like you might have been a hippie or something so I think I can tell you stuff.” “What stuff?” answered the now red-faced old man waiting for the young damsel to pore out her heart about the indignities of life, boy-friend problems, some unknown addictions, or some such thing.
“I just didn’t leave because I couldn’t study or was bored although that was part of it. Mainly it was because I feel this movement has lost direction, lost direction in a big way, by spending all its time and energy here defending and winter fortifying the camp and getting isolated from trying to reach out to people. I’m studying about social movements in school and this one seems to be going away from what groups like the black civil rights movement and anti-war movements were trying to even if they made a lot of mistakes. My boy-friend and I almost broke up over it because he likes the camp life, he’s still here, and he doesn’t want any demands raised, period, and thinks that if we just show a good example people will gravitate to see things our way. He was furious when I said nobody was watching, or not enough were. We made up after I left and went back to my dorm room but I still think after over a month that the encampment has been here that I was right, although we avoid talking about it. What do you think?”
The white-haired man laughed, laughed good-naturedly explaining that he did not expect in his fairly frequent stops at Dewey Square that he would be performing Dear Occupy Abby services to the lovelorn. She gave half a smile to that notion. He continued, “We too made every mistake in the book back in the day, especially in going out of our way to alienate every possible person who disagreed with us until, like some light bulb going on, we finally got it that such things were self-defeating and changed tack. I too share your reservations about getting isolated out here in the middle of nowhere, even if it is the center of the Financial District, but an old radical, and old communist actually, told me back in the day that each generation must find its own ways to drive the struggle. And he was basically right. At least some of us did learn and I am living proof that not all mistakes are politically fatal. Things are still fresh yet so talk to your boy-friend, and keep talking about the need to break out of the camps. Okay?” She nodded the nod of the half-believer and walked away saying she hoped to run into our wizard again.
**********
Five minutes ago the sidewalk along the Atlantic Avenue side of the encampment was deserted, a lonely yellow-jacketed cop shifting back and forth on his heels to make his duty time pass more quickly. Now the first sign of the day, “Tax The Rich,” along with it human holder, here a well-dressed, well-preserved older woman, a woman who looked like she has seen many battles for social justice in her time hit the sidewalk. And her action acted as a catalyst because then came a couple of young students carrying a banner-“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” one of the anthems of the Occupy movement, to stand beside her. They smile, she smiles, nothing more is needed as they banner understand each other completely.
Then a convoy of about twelve middle-aged and older Universalist-Unitarians from out in some suburban town, who have rented a bus for the occasion, begin filling in the sidewalk a little farther up the street with their “peace, this,” “peace, that,” “good-will toward all” signs. Upon investigation this group had made a solemn decision, as only U-Uers can, to come weekly to Boston to stand in solidarity with the efforts in Dewey Square.
A few minutes later, from out of nowhere, came a nomadic resident of the “village” with a plateful of cookies, chocolate chip perhaps, and offers them to those “working the line” on Atlantic Avenue.
********
Later, an older model automobile, frankly a heap, driven by a menacing-looking man in lumberjack jacket with fierce flashing eyes like some crazed survivalist stopped just in front of the Atlantic Avenue entrance to the encampment and yells out, “Hey, when do I put these sleeping bags, tarps, shovels, and pots? I can’t stay but I am with you, with you all the way.” Of such acts by such desperate looking men, revolutions are made, big-time revolutions.
Toward late afternoon the Atlantic Avenue traffic gets heavier, bumper to bumper, as people try to leave the city, and city cares behind. A guy in a big dump truck, a flat-top hair cut showing yells out, “Get a job” at a group of street people standing on the avenue. Later a pedestrian muttered to that yellow-jacketed cop on duty, who was still rocking his heels, about how he paid taxes and isn’t it a shame what these people are up to. The call of the day though goes to a guy, a light-skinned Cuban-looking guy in a late model cherry red sports car driving on the far right lane away from the encampment, who yells out, “Commies, go back to where you came from.”
Ya, I know not everybody got the news about twenty years back, not everybody gets what is going on now, and not everybody, despite the sleek street slogan of ninety-nine percent, is with the Occupy movement. But just remember that guy, that lumberjack jacket guy in that old heap, who gave what he had, and gave all the way.
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