All The Way To Easy Street

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

As he sat alone in his tee-shirt in his crummy one room overlooking the inner airshaft of the run down, seen better days, rooming house complex that he lived in on Beacon Hill in Boston Billy Riley had to laugh. Not the belly laugh that comes from something genuinely funny though. No, his laugh was a hearse horse snicker laugh about the condition that he had just then found himself, found himself in on the way to easy street. Or as he endlessly told whoever would listen found himself in “all the way to easy street.” See Billy was a gambler, well, not really a gambler in the Las Vegas sense (he knew nothing of cards and their attractions to those types and certainly was not some arm-weary slot machine player, oh no) or in the high-roller rack track among the swells sense but still a gambler.

Billy being a democratic sort spent his time in the bleachers among the real touts, the open collar working stiffs, the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters, those smoking endless cigarettes and cigars, swilling their beers on the concrete floor and complaining, endlessly complaining, about the price of that commodity. (And damning the concessionaire for charging so much because it cut into their betting kitties.) Or on sunny days along the rails, mingling with those pale faces almost afraid to face the sun looking to see if some luck would come their way by being closer to the turf, closer to smell and sweat of the horses, closer in order to look into the eyes of those damn jockeys who couldn’t ride if their lives depended on it. Those along the rails were a motley crew but mainly were brethren who had been on cheap street so long a big win would hardly faze them and their line of patter. But Billy considered himself a cut above that milieu, although he was at pains to savor their track talk like some latter day Damon Runyon. Still he considered himself different. See they didn’t, didn’t have like Billy, a system, because Billy was a guy who had a system, a fool-proof system that was going to get him to that El Dorado easy street.

As he sat there he thought any day, day the percentages would turn and he would flee, flee like a bat out of hell, this lousy sagging bed, broken-nob bureau, Salvation Army reject table and wobbly chair room with that window looking across the air shaft to other one room windows filled with guys, mainly guys, as far as he could tell since he had arrived in this exact spot a few weeks back when his luck had turned sour and his system had run into a momentary glitch, who had landed here under their own easy street addictive powers.

See Billy Riley thought because he had grown up rough and tough with as his grandmother would say “not a pot to piss in” down in the Adamsville housing projects filled in its way with the rejects and losers of society that that same society owned him a living, owed him easy street. Sure he had worked, worked hard, worked like a bastard, when he worked, as a house painter until his knees gave out, as a gravestone setter (actually an interesting job, and quiet, very quiet), as dishwasher when things were tough between jobs, stuff like that, edge of society work. But he had dreamed, dream big as a kid that he was going to wipe the dust of all that poverty and toil that his father faced, faced and just took it, and live like a real person, maybe a king even. And at some point he tired of the painter, gravestone setter, dishwasher world, and decided that he needed to make his own breaks a little, use his smarts to get out from under, and if necessary use other people’s smarts or money, or both to do so.

Billy had tried this and that before, had sold some drugs for a while but that was a hassle, the cops were pressing down, and the street stuff was getting dangerous. Moreover gone were the heydays of that late 1960s when everything was kind of loose before the cartels started to tighten their grip on the market and made everybody jump to their tune, or else. That “or else” being found face down in some ditch or floating off some river, also face down un-mourned and unknown like his old companion, Sammy Snyder, who ran afoul of the Mexican cartel. He thereafter had connected with a gang of small time hoods, aging corner boys really, guys still living at home where mother darned their socks and had dinner ready on demand, who were into midnight heists, then fencing the stuff on the cheap. After a while he figured that was dead-end and high risk for a guy who thought society owed him a living. Jail was not what he had in mind on that score. Then one day one of those corner boys asked him if he wanted to go to the racetrack, the one over in Revere, Suffolk Downs. He said sure why not. And from there he was off to the races, figuratively and literally.

See that first day, that first spring day, he had scored big, had been hot all day and wound up several hundred dollars ahead. Nice, he thought, nice and easy, and with no hassles, no income tax to pay either if you knew how to hide the dough. And that day, or really that night, he started plotting his future his race track tout future. What drove him, what he noticed, was that he had won when he played the number one horse in the race. So he devised a system. He would play off and on the number one horse in every race. Otherwise he would sit the race out. The next day he “played” his system. Although he didn’t win as much he still came out a couple of hundred dollars ahead, and had guys buying him a couple of beers when he spotted them a winner just for kicks. Just a bad day he thought, and a lot of the number one horses were dogs anyway. He had his system though and the key was to stick with it. The reason people couldn’t beat the horses he thought was they didn’t have a system, maybe just played a horse because it looked nice coming out of the paddock, or maybe had nice colors, or liked the jockey, or the name of the horse, anything, anyway. No wonder the suckers lost.

For a while his system worked pretty well, maybe for about a week, ten days, he was ahead a few thousand dollars. And didn’t have to work at all, just enjoy the sun, the crowds, and the sport of kings. Yes, just sit in the sun, sit on the bleachers, maybe go out on the rail and mingle, and figure his figures. Nice stuff. He even bought his girlfriend, Joyce, a nice ring worth a few hundred bucks and she responded with some very nice under the sheets stuff, some stuff she hadn’t done for him before even when he asked. That fact drove him even harder in his figures once he knew what was what with her. Then the other shoe fell, fell a little, then fell a lot as his system started to unravel and he started losing money, first the track’s then his.

What happened was that he started pressing a little too much on that number one horse, placing bets on some dogs figuring that the one was due. He spent many nights, many Joyce-less endlessly refining the system, seeing where he could make a big score, make a big score all the way to easy street. Nothing worked. He had gone dry, gone dry and pressed his luck too hard. The details of what brought him to that crummy room need not detain us long, actually on second thought let’s run through a couple of points. Naturally he started making bigger bets, figuring that a big bet win would get him well, would put him back on pace. Number Ones seemed to be in the doldrums at least when he placed a bet though. He quickly ran through his“winnings,” then started to dig into his own savings, blew those to kingdom come in a few weeks and then started begging, borrowing and stealing (literally in all three cases). First from Joyce (although he never, never asked her to hock that nice ring) until she finally gave him the air, the big brush-off and went looking for some other fool who was looking for easy street, or had already found it. Then borrowed from every friend whom he had ever lent a quarter giving a truly worthy hard-luck story that would bring tears to anyone’s eyes. Then he borrowed, soberly borrowed, from the hard boys, the high interest boys (whom he was trying to avoid in his lonely crummy room). Nothing.

Hell he even joined the stoopers and benders at the track trying to get well. You don’t know the stoopers? You know the guys, maybe women too, but mostly guys, every broker at every track in the world who lived not to place a bet, for they have long ago run out of money for more than some show bet on the favorite, but who scavenged for dropped tickets after each race hoping, hoping against hope, that someone had for about one of seven million reasons thought they had lost and just threw the damn tickets on the ground or in a trash barrel. Enough “scores”have been made this way that a human horde has learned to live for just that day. Yes, times were tough, desperately tough. No more romance of the turf with the weird assortment of losers, has-beens, never-wases, that he previously chatted with. He wore sunglasses to avoid some of those guys with their foolish ideas.

Billy though could not give up that dream that easy street dream. He knew that if he just stayed at it long enough the percentages would come back to him. And maybe Joyce would too, and he would buy her diamonds with his winnings, just for laughs, and not hearse horse snicker laughs either. So as he began to dress himself, put on his slightly frayed shirt, his threadbare pants and his round heel shoes for the day he thought this might be the day the day his luck changed, the day he went all the way to easy street. With that thought in mind like a lemming to the sea he went to Snookie’s newsstand over on Tremont Street to get a copy of the Daily Racing Form.

***Poet's Corner- Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

Markin comment:

I am not a big fan of Robert Frost's poetry (although his public readings were very interesting) but this one every once in a while "speaks" to me when there are two (or more) choices to make in life.

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

IN THE MATTER OF ONE MAC THE KNIFE

 

BOOK REVIEW

THE THREE-PENNY OPERA, BERTOLT BRECHT, ARCADE PUBLISHING, 1928

I have reviewed some of the master Communist playwright Bertolt Brecht’s later more consciously political and didactic plays elsewhere in this space. The play under review is an earlier work, before he fully committed himself to communism, and is an adaptation of John Gay’s 18^th century Beggar’s Opera to the modern theater. The subject at hand is a look at the way those in the lower depths of society survive under emergent capitalist conditions, especially the main character, one MacHealth a.k.a. Mac the Knife. As such Brecht’s adaptation has given no end of problems for those critics who want to claim it for the communist cause. It is far too universal in it sentiment about human nature in the capitalist era and therefore properly is a transitional to his later more consciously partisan works like The Measures Taken and The Mother. Thus one should take it for is own worth as a look at survival in a seemingly Hobbesian world.

The plot line is rather simply-MacHealth, a former British imperial soldier, has struck out on his own in dog-eat dog London and has created a name for himself as a master criminal and seducer of the ladies. Other forces including the constabulary, a small disreputable but conniving businessman and, let us be politically correct here; some sexual workers combine in an attempt to deprive Mac of life and limb. However luck and a royal coronation combine to thwart those best laid plans. All of this is performed in a light operatic format that allows Brecht to wax poetic at humanity’s plight through a series of sharply-etched songs in which he collaborated with the legendary Kurt Weill.

Above I referred to some controversy about Brecht’s intention in this work. That the roguish, incipient capitalist MacHealth is saved in the end through royal intervention has caused some commentators to argue for the organic connection between the rising capitalist class and the monarchy in England. Others have noted the similarities in appetite between the lumpenproletariat element as represented by MacHealth and his criminal crew and the developing capitalism of the time. I think that both views overdraw what one can take out of Gay’s story or Brecht’s adaptation. This story line is much more conducive to a generalized treatment on the nature of survival in a world that has broken from its agrarian past and has not yet stabilized it bourgeois norms of propriety. Some of these same characteristics were played out in the development of American capitalism, especially in the Wild West. But as presented here this is only a rudimentary outline of where things could go. I stand by my comment in the first paragraph about the unmediated nature of Brecht’s take on Gay’s little work. He most definitely got more focused on the nature of the human plight under capitalism latter as he developed as a Marxist.

THE STREETS ARE NOT FOR DREAMING NOW-1972

 

COMMENTARY/BOOK REVIEW

ST. GEORGE AND THE GODFATHER, NORMAN MAILER, THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY, NEW YORK, 1972 

As I recently noted in this space while reviewing The Presidential Papers and Miami and the Siege of Chicago (hereafter Miami) at one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that Norman Mailer wrote. In his prime he held out promise to match Ernest as the preeminent male American prose writer. Mailer certainly has the ambition, ego and skill to do so. Although he wrote several good novels like The Deer Park in his time I believe that his journalistic work, as he himself might partially admit, especially his political, social and philosophical musings are what will insure his place in the literary pantheon. With that in mind I recently re-read his work on the 1972 political campaign St. George and the Godfather-the one that pitted the hapless George McGovern against the nefarious President Richard M. Nixon.  This work while not as insightful as Miami or as existentially philosophical (except a short screed on the abortion question) or as cosmic as his approach in the Presidential Papers nevertheless only confirms what I mentioned above as his proper place in the literary scheme of things.

As mentioned in those previous reviews Theodore White may have won his spurs breaking down the mechanics of the campaign and made a niche for himself with The Making of a President, 1960 and his later incarnations on that theme but Mailer in his pithy manner has given us a useful overview of the personalities and the stakes involved for the America in these campaigns. I would also note here that his work on the 1972 campaign represents the efforts of a man deeply immersed in the working of bourgeois politics from the inside. The 1972 campaign also marks the beginning of new kid on the block ‘gonzo’ journalist Doctor Hunter Thompson’s take on that same process from the outside with Fear and Loathing on the 1972 Campaign Trial. In a shootout Thompson wins this one hands down. Poor Teddy White is over in a corner somewhere, muttering. In Mailer’s defense, as he acknowledged, there was not much to work with in 1972 inside the process and so the only real way to do it was from the outside.

That last statement is kind of an epiphany for my take on these three journalistic works by Mailer. The campaigns of 1960, 1968 and 1972 not only  bear commenting on as part of the breakdown of the bourgeois consensus in the last third of the 20^th century but represent a parallel personal politic story about my own political trajectory in that period. One clear point that I made in Miami was my undiminished commitment to the defeat of one Richard M.  Nixon in the year 1968. As a result I found myself going from critical support for Lyndon Johnson, uncritical adoration for Robert Kennedy and pounding on doors for Hubert Humphrey. The details of that sorry saga have been commented on in this space last year in Confessions of an Old Militant-A Cautionary Tale. (See archives, October 2006). My main point for reviewing the 1972 campaign is that by then, although Richard Nixon had not taken himself off my most wanted list and George McGovern was clearly superior to the likes of Hubert Humphrey as an honest bourgeois presidential candidate, I had decisively broken from ‘lesser evil’ politics. Between 1968 and 1972 I had had a socialist ‘conversion’ experience and for me the Democratic Party had become an empty shell. If one takes the time to compare Mailer’s work on the 1968 and 1972 elections one can draw that same contrast without necessarily drawing the same political conclusion. In a couple of hundred pages he basically has to make up a story out of whole clothe because the drama on the Democratic side came  after the convention with the vice-presidential choice debacle and on the Republican side the convention was so scripted that one could have read the transcripts instead. Again the real action, the real face of the born-again Richard Milhous Nixon came after the convention in the throes of the Watergate explosion.    

As I write this commentary it has been 35 years since those conventions and much has politically gone on in that time, mainly for the worst from the perspective of leftist politics. One would think that it is finally time for a shift back to the left. I believe that the right wing has had its time and that indeed the shift will take place, if slowly. If one seeks to find the genesis for the bad politics of the last period then Norman Mailer’s take on these events, nodal points in the conventional political process, if you will, bear close examination. As I noted in the Miami review, and it bears repeating here, we had better make very good use of any shift to the left and not let the other side off the hook this time. Enough said.

 

THE BAPTISM OF FIRE-1968

 

COMMENTARY/BOOK REVIEW

MIAMI AND THE SIEZE OF CHICAGO, NORMAN MAILER, THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY, NEW YORK, 1968

As I recently noted in this space while reviewing Norman Mailer’s The Presidential Papers at one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that he wrote. In his prime he held out promise to match Hemingway as the preeminent male American prose writer. Mailer certainly has the ambition, ego and skill to do so. Although he wrote several good novels in his time like the Deer Park I believe that his journalistic work, as he himself might partially admit, especially his political, social and philosophical musings are what will insure his place in the literary pantheon. With that in mind I recently re-read his work on the 1968 political campaign Miami and the Siege of Chicago -the one that pitted Lyndon Johnson, oops, Hubert Humphrey against Richard M. Nixon.  This work is exponentially better than his scattershot approach in the Presidential Papers and only confirms what I mentioned above as his proper place in the literary scheme of things. Theodore White may have won his spurs breaking down the mechanics of the campaign and made a niche for himself with The Making of a President, 1960 and his later incarnations on that theme but Mailer in his pithy manner gives an overview of the personalities and the stakes involved for the America in that hell bent election. I would note that for Mailer as for many of us, not always correctly as in my own case, this 1968 presidential campaign season and those conventions evolved in a year that saw a breakdown of the bourgeois electoral political process that had not been seen in this country since the 1850’s just prior to the Civil War.

The pure number of unsettling events of that year was a portent that this would be a watershed year for good or evil. Out of the heat, killing and destruction in Vietnam came the North Vietnamese/National Liberation Front Tet offensive that broke the back of the lying reports that American/South Vietnamese success was just around the corner. Today’s Iraq War supporters might well take note. In the aftermath of that decisive event insurgent anti-war Democratic presidential hopeful Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy’s seemingly quixotic campaign against a sitting president jumped off the ground. In the end that offensive also forced Lyndon Johnson from office. And drove Robert Kennedy to enter the fray. The seemingly forgotten LBJ spear carrier Hubert Humphrey also got a new lease on life.  I will have more to say about this below. Then, seemingly on a dime, in a tick we seemed to be losing ground. The assasination of Martin Luther King and the burning down of the ghettoes of major cities in its aftermath and later of Robert Kennedy at a moment of victory placed everything on hold. That spring also witnessed turmoil on the campuses of the United States exemplified by the Columbia University shut down and internationally by the student –ignited French General Strike. These and other events held both promise and defeat that year but when I reflect on 1968 almost forty years later I am struck by  the fact that in the end one political retread, Richard Milhous Nixon, was on top and the front  of an almost forty year bourgeois political counter revolution had began. Not a pretty picture but certainly a cautionary tale of sorts. The ‘of sorts’ of the tale is that if you are going to try to make fundamental changes in this society you better not play around with it and better not let the enemy off the hook when you have him cornered. That seems like the beginning of wisdom.

I have written elsewhere (see archives, Confessions of An Old Militant- A Cautionary Tale, October 2006) that while all hell was breaking loose in American society in 1968 my essentially left liberal parliamentary cretinist response was to play ‘lesser evil’ bourgeois electoral politics. My main concern, a not unworthy but nevertheless far from adequate one, was the defeat of one Richard Nixon who was making some very depressing gains toward both the Republican nomination and the presidency. As noted in the above mentioned commentary I was willing to go half the way with LBJ in 1968 and ultimately all the way with HHH in order to cut Nixon off at the knees. I have spent a good part of the last forty years etching the lessons of that mistake in my brain and that of others. But as I pointed out in that commentary I was much more equivocal at the time, as Mailer was, about the effect of Robert Kennedy the candidate of my heart and my real candidate in 1968. I have mentioned before and will do so again here that if one bourgeois candidate could have held me in democratic parliamentary politics it would have been Robert Kennedy. Not John, although as pointed out in my review of The Presidential Papers in my early youth I was fired up by his rhetoric but there was something about Robert that was different. Maybe our very similar deep Irish sense of  fatalism, maybe our shared sense of the tragic in life or  maybe in the end it was our ability to rub shoulders with the ‘wicked’ of this world to get a little bit of human progress.  But enough of nostalgia.  If you want to look seriously inside the political conventions of 1968 and what they meant in the scheme of American politics from a reasonably objective progressive partisan then Mailer is your guide here. This is the model, not Theodore White’s more mechanical model of coverage, that Hunter Thompson tapped into in his ‘gonzo’ journalistic approach in latter conventions- an insightful witness to the hypocrisy and balderdash of those processes.     

ON COMING OF POLITICAL AGE-1960

 

COMMENTARY/BOOK REVIEW

THE PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS, NORMAN MAILER, VIKING, 1963

 

At one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that Norman Mailer wrote. In his prime he held out promise to match Ernest as the preeminent male American prose writer. Mailer certainly has the ambition, ego and skill to do so. Although he wrote several good novels like The Deer Park in his time I believe that his journalistic work, as he himself might partially admit, especially his political, social and philosophical musings are what will insure his place in the literary pantheon. With that in mind I recently re-read his work on the 1960 political campaign-the one that pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard M. Nixon- that is the center of the book under review. There are other essays in this work, some of merely passing topical value, but what remains of interest today is a very perceptive analysis of the forces at work in that pivotal election.  Theodore White won his spurs breaking down the mechanics of the campaign and made a niche for himself with The Making of a President, 1960. Mailer in a few pithy articles gave the overview of the personalities and the stakes involved for the America of that time.

Needless to say the Kennedy victory of that year has interest today mainly for the forces that it unleashed in the base of society, especially, but not exclusively, among the youth. His rather conventional bourgeois Cold War foreign policy and haphazard domestic politics never transcended those of the New and Fair Deals of Roosevelt and Truman but his style, his youth and his élan seemingly gave the go ahead to all sorts of projects in order to ‘‘seek a newer world”. And we took him up on this.  This writer counted himself among those youth who saw the potential to change the world. We also knew that if the main villain of the age , one Richard Milhous Nixon, had been successful in 1960 as he graphically demonstrated when he later became president we would not be seeing any new world but the same old, same old.

I had been eclectically interested in politics from an early age. Names like the Rosenbergs, Joseph McCarthy, Khrushchev and organizations like Americans for Democratic Action and the like were familiar to me if not fully understood. I came of political age with the 1960 presidential campaign. Mailer addresses the malaise of American political life during the stodgy Eisenhower years that created the opening for change-and Kennedy and his superb organization rushed in. These chances, as a cursory perusal of the last 40 odd years of bourgeois presidential politics makes painfully clear, do not come often. The funny thing is that during most  of 1960 I was actually ‘Madly for Adlai’, that is I preferred Adlai Stevenson the twice defeated previous Democratic candidate, but when the deal went down at the advanced age of 14 I walked door to door talking up Kennedy. Of course, in Massachusetts that was not a big deal but I still recall today that I had a very strong sense I did not want to be left out of the new age ‘aborning’. That, my friends, in a small way is the start of that slippery road to the ‘lesser evil’ practice that dominates American politics and that took me a fairly long time to break with.

Mailer has some very cutting, but true, remarks about the kind of people who populate the political milieu down at the base of bourgeois politics, those who make it to the political conventions. Except that today they are better dressed and more media savvy nothing has changed. Why? Bourgeois politics, not being based on any fidelity to program except as a throwaway, is all about winning (and fighting to keep on winning). This does not bring out the better angels of our nature. For those old enough to remember that little spark of youth that urged us on to seek that newer world and for those too young to have acquired knowledge of anything but the myth Mailer’s little book makes for interesting and well written reading.

From The American Left History Blog Archives (2006) - On American Political Discourse  

Markin comment:

In the period 2006-2009 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.

************
LABOR DAY SCORECARD 2007

COMMENTARY

CONTINUING TOUGH TIMES FOR THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT- AND THAT IS NO LIE

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

This writer entered the blogosphere in February 2006 so this is the second Labor Day scorecard giving his take on the condition of American labor as we approach Labor Day. And it is not pretty. That, my brothers and sisters, says it all. There was little strike action this year. The only notable action was among the grossly overworked and underpaid naval shipbuilders down in anti-union bastion Mississippi in the spring and that hard fought fight was a draw, at best. Once again there is little to report in the way of unionization to organize labor’s potential strength. American workers continue to have a real decline in their paychecks. The difference between survival and not for most working families is the two job (or more) household. In short, the average family is working more hours to make ends meet. Real inflation in energy and food costs has put many up against the wall. Moreover the bust in the housing market has wrecked havoc on working people as the most important asset in many a household has taken a beating. Once again forget the Federal Reserve Bank’s definition of inflation- one fill up at the pump confounds that noise. One does not have to be a Marxist economist to know that something is desperately wrong when at the beginning of the 21^st century with all the technological advances and productivity increases of the past period working people need to work more just to try to stay even. Even the more far-sighted bourgeois thinkers have trouble with that one. In any case, here are some comments on the labor year.

*The key as it was last year, although certainly not the only action necessary, to a turn-around for American labor is the unionization of Wal-Mart and the South. The necessary class struggle politics that would make such drives successful would act as a huge impetus for other areas of the labor movement. This writer further argues that such struggles against such vicious enemies as Wal-Mart can be the catalyst for the organization of a workers party.  Okay, okay let the writer dream a little, won’t you? What has happened this year on this issue is that more organizations have taken up the call for a boycott of Wal-Mart. That is all to the good and must be supported by militant leftists but it is only a very small beginning shot in the campaign (See archives, dated June 10, 2006). National and local unions have taken monies from their coffers not for such a worthy effort but to support one or another bourgeois candidate. Some things never change.       

*The issue of immigration has surfaced strongly again this year, especially in presidential politics. Every militant leftist was supportive of the past May Day actions of the vast immigrant communities to not be pushed around, although one can also note that they were not nearly as extensive as in 2006. Immigration is a labor issue and key to the struggle against the race to the bottom. While May Day and other events were big moments unless there are links to the greater labor movement this very promising movement could fizzle. A central problem is the role of the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church in the organizing effort.  I will deal with this question at a latter time but for now know this- these organizations are an obstruction to real progress on the immigration issue. (See archives, dated May 1, 2006)    

*If one needed one more example of why the American labor movement is in the condition it is finds itself then yet another article this summer by John Sweeney, punitive President of the AFL-CIO, and therefore one of the titular heads of the organized labor brings that point home in gory detail. The gist of the article is that the governmental agencies, like the National Labor Relations Board, have over the years (and here he means in reality the Bush years) bent over backwards to help the employers in their fight against unionization. Well, John, surprise, surprise. Needless to say this year his so-called friends in Congress were not able to pass simple legislation to formally, at least, protect the right to unionization, the so-called employees’ bill of rights. That was a non-starter from the get-go.   No militant leftist, no forget that, no militant trade unionist has believed in the impartiality of governmental boards, agencies, courts, etc. since about 1936. Yes, that is right, since Roosevelt. Wake up. Again this brings up the question of the leadership of the labor movement. And I do not mean to turn it over to Andy Stein and his Change to Win Coalition.  We may be, as some theorists imagine, a post-industrial society, but the conditions of labor seem more like the classic age of rapacious capitalist accumulation.  We need a labor leadership based on a program of labor independence and struggle for worker rights- and we need it damn soon.

***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts

Boston's International Workers Day 2013


BMDC International Workers Day Rally
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall
Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM
(Court St. & Cambridge St.)
T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)

To download flyer click here. (Please print double-sided)

Other May Day events:

Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston)
East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm

BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally

Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston

 *******

All Out On May Day 2012: A Day Of International Working Class Solidarity Actions- A Call To Action In Boston (And Everywhere)

Click on the headline to link to the <i>Boston May Day Coalition</i> website.

http://www.bostonmayday.org

All Out For May 1st-International Workers Day 2012!

Markin comment:

In late December 2011 the General Assembly (GA) of Occupy Los Angeles, in the aftermath of the stirring and mostly successful November 2nd Oakland General Strike and December 12th West Coast Port Shutdown, issued a call for a national and international general strike centered on immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. These and other political issues such as supporting union organizing, building rank and file committees in the unions, and defending union rights around hours, wages and working conditions that have long been associated with the labor movement internationally are to be featured in the actions set for May Day 2012. 

May Day is the historic international working class holiday that has been celebrated each year in many parts of the world since the time of the heroic Haymarket Martyrs in Chicago in 1886 and the struggle for the eight-hour work day. More recently it has been a day when the hard-pressed immigrant communities here in America join together in the fight against deportations and other discriminatory aspects of governmental immigration policy. Given May Day’s origins it  is high time that the hard-pressed American working class begin to link up with its historic past and make this day its day.

Political activists here in Boston, some connected with Occupy Boston (OB) and others who are independent or organizationally affiliated radicals, decided just after the new year to support that general strike call and formed the General Strike Occupy Boston working group (GSOB). The working group has met, more or less weekly, since then to plan local May Day actions. The first step in that process was to bring a resolution incorporating the Occupy Los Angeles issues before the GA of Occupy Boston for approval. That resolution was approved by GA OB on January 7, 2012.   

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OB Endorses Call for General Strike

January 8th, 2012 • mhacker •

The following proposal was passed by the General Assembly on Jan 7, 2012:

Occupy Boston supports the call for an international General Strike on May 1, 2012, for immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. We recognize housing, education, health care, LGBT rights and racial equality as human rights; and thus call for the building of a broad coalition that will ensure and promote a democratic standard of living for all peoples.

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Early discussions within the working group centered on drawing the lessons of the West Coast actions last fall. Above all what is and what isn’t a general strike. Traditionally a general strike, as witness the recent actions in Greece and other countries, is called by workers’ organizations and/or parties for a specified period of time in order to shut down substantial parts of the capitalist economy over some set of immediate demands. A close analysis of the West Coast actions showed a slightly different model: one based on community pickets of specified industrial targets, downtown mass street actions, and scattered individual and collective acts of solidarity like student support strikes and sick-outs. Additionally, small businesses and other allies were asked to close and did close down in solidarity.

That latter model seemed more appropriate to the tasks at hand in Boston given its   less than militant recent labor history and that it is a regional financial, technological and educational hub rather than an industrial center. Thus successful actions in Boston on May Day 2012 will not necessarily exactly follow the long established radical and labor traditions of the West Coast. Group discussions have since then reflected that understanding. The focus will be on actions and activities that respond to and reflect the Boston political situation as attempts are made to create, re-create really, an on-going May Day tradition beyond the observance of the day by labor radicals and the immigrant communities. 

Over the past several years, starting with the nation-wide actions in 2006, the Latin and other immigrant communities in and around Boston have been celebrating May Day as a day of action on the very pressing problem of immigration status as well as the traditional working-class solidarity holiday. It was no accident that Los Angeles, scene of massive pro-immigration rallies in the past and currently one of the areas facing the brunt of the deportation drives by the Obama administration, would be in the lead to call for national and international actions this year. One of the first necessary steps for the working group therefore was to try to reach out to the already existing Boston May Day Coalition (BMDC), which has spearheaded the annual marches and rallies in the immigrant communities, in order to learn of their experiences and to coordinate actions. This was done as well in order to better coordinate this year’s more extensive over-all May Day actions.    

Taking a cue from the developing May Day action movement in this country, especially the broader and more inclusive messages coming out of some of the more vocal Occupy working groups a consensus has formed around the theme of “May 1st- A Day Without The Working Class And Its Allies” in order to highlight the fact that in the capitalist system labor, of one kind or another, has created all the wealth but has not shared in the accumulated profits.  Highlighting the increasing economic gap between rich and poor, the endemic massive political voiceless-ness of the vast majority, and social issues related to race, class, sexual inequality, gender and the myriad other oppressions the vast majority face under capitalism is in keeping with the efforts initiated long ago by those who fought for the eight-hour day in the late 1800s and later with the rise of the anarchist, socialist and communist and organized trade union movements.

On May Day working people and their allies are called to strike, skip work, walk out of school, and refrain from shopping, banking and business in order to implement the general slogan. Working people are encouraged to request the day off, or to call in sick. Small businesses are encouraged to close for the day and join the rest of the working class and its allies in the streets.

For students at all levels the call is for a walk-out of classes. Further college students are urged to occupy the universities. With a huge student population of over 250,000 in the Boston area no-one-size-fits- all strategy seems appropriate. Each kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, college, graduate school and wayward left-wing think tank should plan its own strike actions and, at some point in the day all meet at a central location in downtown Boston.

Tentatively planned, as of this writing,  for the early hours on May 1st is for working people, students, oppressed minorities and their supporters to converge on the Boston Financial District for a day of direct action to demand an end to corporate rule and a shift of power to the people. The Financial District Block Party is scheduled to start at 7:00 AM on the corner of Federal Street & Franklin Street in downtown Boston. Banks and corporations are strongly encouraged to close down for the day.

At noon there will be a city permit-approved May Day rally to be addressed by a number of speakers from different groups at Boston City Hall Plaza. Following the rally participants are encouraged to head to East Boston for solidarity marches centered on the immigrant communities that will start at approximately 2:00 PM and move from East Boston, Chelsea, and Revere to Everett for  a rally at 4:00 PM. Other activities that afternoon for those who chose not to go to East Boston will be scheduled in and around the downtown area.

That evening, for those who cannot for whatever reasons participate in the daytime actions and for any others who wish to do so, there will be a “Funeral March” for the banks forming at 7:00 PM at Copley Square that steps off at 8:00 PM and will march throughout the downtown area.

Pick up the spirit of the general slogans for May 1^st now- No work. No school. No chores. No shopping. No banking. Let’s show the rulers that we have the power. Let’s show the world what a day without working people and their allies producing goods and services really means. And let’s return to the old traditions of May Day as a day of international solidarity with our working and oppressed sisters and brothers around the world. All Out For May Day 2012 in Boston!

***The Once And Future King-The Charles II Story

Book Review

Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration, Antonia Fraser, Delta Books, 1979

A number of social and political observers, both academics like the old time sociologist of revolution Crane Brinton and activists like Leon Trotsky have noted that in the long cycle of great revolutions one of their defining characters is that the old regime, the old way, never really comes all the way back during the period of reaction. That was certainly the case in the English Revolution of the 17^th century and the story here, the biography of Charles II by Antonia Fraser, throughout it four hundred plus pages demonstrates that idea in the person of the king restored to power after the revolution had run out of steam.

Ms. Fraser who has also written a biography of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell and other 17^th century leaders, and so knows the period well, traces Charles II life from the early years when he was under his father’s tutelage, through his education to be a king, and then on to the historically important battles which formed the Civil War period during the 1640s when he fought to defeat the parliamentary armies as a military commander. She also details his place in the period of defeat for the monarchy, from the trial and execution of his father, Charles I, and Charles II’s subsequent attempts to defeat the Cromwell-led forces in Scotland and elsewhere militarily. That defeat which led to his famous escape and exile highlight the low period of his life.

The most serious, and compelling, part of the biography for the purposes of that above stated thesis about the old regime not returning in exactly the way, starts with Charles II return, his summons really, by Parliament soon after Cromwell’s death and a time when the revolution had run out of steam. The rest of the book essentially details the struggle between Parliament and king over the extent of his prerogative on issues from the king ‘s expenses, payments for his war policy, the question suppression of religious dissent, foreign relations especially with France and Holland,, and critically toward the end of his regime the questions of succession of the Stuart line against the strong Parliamentary position that there must be a Protestant succession ( his brother who would become king, James II, was a professed Catholic). The key here to understand is that while the king had certain powers he had to assent to various parliamentary maneuvers more so that under his grandfather and father’s regimes although there was a period when he ruled without Parliament at the end in the 1680s. She also cites the various anti-Popish plots, intrigues, and false moves around those times including the famous Rye House Plot that came very near to success.

Ms. Fraser also, as she must since he was decidedly a womanizer, details Charles II love affairs that also had political consequences once it was established that his wife, Queen Catherine, would not produce a legitimate heir. He nevertheless had many children by his wide assortment of mistresses including the most famous bastard, his son the Duke of Monmouth, who had pretensions to be king and acted on that premise when egged on by those forces, mainly opposition Whigs, who did not want to see James succeed Charles.

Finally Ms. Fraser spends a fair amount of time on Charles II various interests, including sports, the races, creating new palaces and parks, taking walks, and making and encouraging scientific experiments among his various kingly duties. She presents Charles, warts and all, as a charismatic positive character especially after the turmoil of the 1640s and 50s and the fitful start of plebeian republican movements under Cromwell and other Parliamentary defenders.

From The American Left History Blog Archives (2006) - On American Political Discourse  

Markin comment:

In the period 2006-2009 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.

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ON THE PARALLELS BETWEEN VIETNAM AND IRAQ

COMMENTARY

IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM IRAQ

As anyone who writes a political blog probably has become aware of sometimes you get drawn into a discussion that you really do not want to get involved in. Until very, very recently I have tried to NOT draw parallels between the American experience in the Vietnam War of my youth and the Iraq War of my old age. I broke that policy slightly over the last couple of weeks in comparing the fate of Nguyen Diem in Vietnam in 1963 and the possible fate of al-Maliki today in Iraq. In Diem’s case once the Kennedy Administration got disenchanted with him coup planning time began full time. Do not the tom toms out of Iraq drum that same siren song? Strangely, one George W. Bush, the President of the United States, had until very, very recently observed the same as I had not to draw parallels with Vietnam, for his own reasons of course. Now that his Iraq policy is clearly on the ropes he wants to invoke the supposed horrors of the ‘cut and run’ American policy in Vietnam as a reason to not cut and run in Iraq. And that, dear reader, is why a couple of brief comments are in order about those parallels.

Although the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq have absolutely nothing to do with the overwhelming American military capacity to return either society back to the Stone Age (as the Americans almost succeeded in doing with their various bombing strategies in Vietnam) it does have everything to do with the hubris behind that assumption. Was there really a hell of a lot of different between the assumptions of one War Secretary Robert McNamara and his “Whizz Kids” and one War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his “Neo-Cons”?  I think not. The military capacity to level cities, either Hanoi or Fallujah, in order to create a security zone for the government is a house of cards. Does anyone today think that once the American troops either turn over military responsibly to the Iraqis or withdraw that the situation will be stable? Hell, no. As in Vietnam the forces in play are just waiting for the Americans leave to return. And seemingly, unlike Americans, they are patient. If the American troops stay ten more years they will wait. One only has to take a cursory glance at the history of the Vietnam conflict to find that same phenomena. There was an apt old army expression for it- ‘the night belongs to Charlie’ (the Viet Cong). In Iraq the night belongs to al-Sadr and others. 

American bourgeois politicians have the seemingly willful capacity to refuse to learn the lessons of history either from the European experiences or their own. We will forget the little things like Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada, covert support to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and the not so covert aid in the contras in Nicaragua. We will merely pass by Bush Senior’s little Iraq escapade. And this writer would not dream of impinging on the liberal Clinton (Bill) air war against Serbia over Kosovo. Hell, no body could learn lessons from those experiences and no bourgeois politician needed to because these were essentially walk overs. So it really is back to Vietnam if you want to see the full panoply of imperialist hubris in action. And that is the point. The assumption is that the time tables are determined to suit American conveniences and predilections. Al-Maliki’s situation is a case in point. He has run as inept and corrupt crony serving operation as Diem did in Vietnam. That he is a lapdog of American imperialism is a given. However, he has to respond as every politician must to his base. And that base is nationalistic and patriotic, as well as sectarian, and by its own lights will do what it can to seem independent from the Americans. The point is that to ‘cut and run’ now is the beginning of wisdom in order to cut losses. That is just sensible. But since we know after five long years of war that this administration is NOT sensible we had better keep fighting to build those anti-war soldier and sailor solidarity committees and get those troop transports revved up- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal from Iraq, come hell or high water.

ON THE ROAD WITH CHE

DVD REVIEW

The Motorcycle Diaries, 2005

I have reviewed a biography of the life and works of the Latin American revolutionary (I think that is how he wanted to see himself) Ernesto “Che’ Guevara elsewhere in this space and make no bones about my admiration for his revolutionary skills and ardor while also noting my political differences. In a world that in 2007 is filled to the brim with fake ‘hero’ that youth are asked to emulate here is the real things. The film under review is a little difference take on Che’s life from a time before he became a world known revolutionary fighter and icon. Apparently this film is based on his diaries written while he and another footloose companion were traveling the highways and byways of Latin America on motorcycle, foot, boat, and cart or by any other mode of transportation that would move them to their objective. During that fateful trip middle class professional (doctor) Che has his eyes opened both to the geographic beauty of his continent but also the grim underside of life for the masses. We, unfortunately, are painfully aware of how that story ends in the hills of Bolivia literally pursuits by all of the security forces in the Western world.

Does this early life study of Che work? As a member of the Generation of ’68 I am very, very familiar with the wanderlust that drove many of my generation to seek salvation and companionship of kindred spirits on the roads of America and elsewhere. We rode those Volkswagen buses to the ground or we hitchhiked (nobody does that anymore, and unfortunately nobody should with all the weirdness out there on the mean roads of America these days). Che got the urge before Kerouac’s classic On the Road and we got it as a result. However that liberation from parental authority and the norms of bourgeois existence do not in themselves produce anything except an existential traveler. If one did not know that this was about Che then, while it was interesting, cinematically beautiful and the interplay between the two travelers was well-acted then it could have been about a fair percentage of the children of post-World War II generation. The missing link is the politics. Here it is hard to say that that on the basis of what was presented as ‘enlightening’ Che about the miseries of existence on his travels that he would be led to a revolutionary road. Yes, I know that to recruit people to revolution these days we will be dealing with bright, articulate, thoughtful, concerned liberals like Che in this period but I believe that the makers of this film took a dive on the politics. If they wanted to honor the memory of Che they did a disservice. If they, as I assume, wanted to ride the wave of a real icon for international youth then I have real political differences with their use of Che legacy.

***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts

Boston's International Workers Day 2013


BMDC International Workers Day Rally
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall
Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM
(Court St. & Cambridge St.)
T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)

To download flyer click here. (Please print double-sided)

Other May Day events:

Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston)
East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm

BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally

Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston

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Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 Actions -This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions! - Defend The Working Class-Take The Offensive!-Stand Up!-Fight Back!

http://www.bostonmayday.org

Click on the headline to link to the <i>Boston May Day Coalition</i> website to find out about actions planned in the Greater Boston area. Google May Day and your city for actions in other locales.  

Markin comment:

We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists back on December 12, 2011and the subsequent defense of the longshoremen’s  union  at Longview, Washington beating back  the anti-union drives by the bosses there. As I have pointed out in remarks previously made  as part of the Boston solidarity rally with the West Coast Port Shutdown on December 12th this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a very different, more equitable society.

Not everything has gone as well, or as well-attended, as expected including at our rally in solidarity in Boston on that afternoon of December 12th but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the struggle against the bosses, including plenty of illusions or misunderstandings by many newly radicalized militants about who our friends, and our enemies, are. Some of that will get sorted out in the future as we get a better grip of the importance of the labor movement to winning victories in our overall social struggles. May Day can be the start of that new offensive in order to gain our demands

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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Labor Movement And Its Allies! Defend All Those Who Defend The Labor Movement! Defend All May Day Protesters Everywhere!
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<b>Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!</b>
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Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 Actions-Stand Up!-Fight Back!

 

Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. Sound familiar? Words, perhaps, taken from today’s global headlines? Well, yes. But these were also the similar conditions that faced our forebears in America back in the 1880s when the vicious ruling class was called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.

What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight connected with the Haymarket Martyrs in 1886 for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the robber barons of the 21st century.

No question over the past several years (really decades but it is just more public and in our face now) American working people has taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Starting with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back except as “race to the bottom” low wage, two-tier jobs dividing younger workers from older workers), paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “too big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, we pay), mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a lifetime deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream”.

Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and women and the grievances voiced in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or, for some of us, great-grandparents).

That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like demons, against the ruling class that seems to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the ruling class of that day by their front-man Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property.

The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out via the Occupy movement), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under. All Out On May Day 2012.

Show Power

We demand:

*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!

* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!

*End the endless wars- <b>Troops And Mercenaries Out Of Afghanistan (and Iraq)!-U.S Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!

 

* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!

* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!

* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!

* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!

*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! For free quality public transportation!

To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:

*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there is no union - a one-day general strike.

*We will be organizing, where a strike is not possible, to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out”.

*We will be organizing students from kindergarten to graduate school and the off-hand left-wing think tank to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location.

*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.

Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial Workers Of  The World, Wobblies) website http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml

Agree or disagree with the Wobblies and their political concepts for winning the class struggle but read their very early statement about the nature of class warfare. “Big Bill” Haywood and his crowd got it right then and have useful words to say to us now. Read on.

Preamble to the IWW Constitution  (1905)

Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.

All out on May Day 2012.

***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts

Boston's International Workers Day 2013


BMDC International Workers Day Rally
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall
Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM
(Court St. & Cambridge St.)
T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)

To download flyer click here. (Please print double-sided)

Other May Day events:

Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston)
East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm

BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally

Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston
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Uno de Mayo (Martes) En Boston !- Un Dia Sin Los Obreros!-Huelga Generale!

http://www.bostonmayday.org

Uno de Mayo!-Un Dia Sin Los Obreros!

*Ni trabajo!

*Ni escuela!

*Ni compras!

www.bostonmayday.org