Eddie Daley’s Big Score –With Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s The Sting In Mind

A Sketch From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Eddie Daley, Edward James Daley, to the 1940s slapdash Dorchester triple-decker tenements within earshot of the rattling Redline subway born, dreamed, dreamed big dreams, ever since he was knee-high to a grasshopper as the old time used-up now corny expression had it, of making the big score, making easy street, and in the process leaving behind a legend that guys, corner boy guys and grifters would talk about long after he was gone. Talk about in reverent hushed whispers about the guy, Eddie Daley, thereafter to be dubbed the “king of the grifters” who pulled the biggest con that there ever was, and walked away from it free as a bird. Not all big scores, cons, even if consummated, had that final part, that walk away free part, just ask the shade of Frankie Finn who pulled the big Shiloh Fur scam worth two million easy (a lot of money back in the 1950s even when split four ways and a fifth cut for the fence plus his expenses although just walking around money today), pulled it off with just four guys, a good number for the haul, but who “forgot” that he was dealing with one “Rocket Kid,” Johnny Silver, in his entourage who after the heist put two between the eyes of his three confederates, figuring one is easier to count that three no matter than two of the guys were his long time corner boys. The Rocket Kid, Johnny, was subsequently “hit” by one of Buddy Boyle’s boys, everybody though Rolling Rex Buddy’s main contract man did the deed since he had not been seen around for a while, when he tried to fence the stuff since Buddy was the front money man on that caper and Frankie Finn’s cousin to boot. Buddy already rolling to dough had his own way of figuring one is easier to count when he was the one. So that walking away free part was no small part of the leaving a legend behind scenario.

Eddie’s dream might seem strange to the squares, to those who live life on the square, wake up and do the nine to five bit, or whatever the time bit these days with flexible hours, take two weeks’ vacation in Maine summer, raise and put three kids through college at great expense and get a gold watch or a pat on the back when they are turned out to pasture. Yeah, that dream definitely might seem odd to those who have never been from hunger, not just “wants” hunger like a million guys have, maybe more, but no food on the table hunger when the old man drank away the week’s paycheck at the Dublin Grille or hand-me-down clothes from older brothers in style or not hunger that ate deeply into every way that Eddie thought about things from very early on. Those who never worried about big scores, or cons since they had it coming in whatever they had to put out in expenses would never figure Eddie’s dreams out.

See Eddie was a what they called, called back in the old days, back in the 1930s, and still called them back in Eddie’s coming of age time in the 1960s when he came of age in that Dorchester section of Boston where he triple decker tenement grew up a natural-born grifter. When Eddie first heard that word used, strangely after he had already done his first con and somebody on the corner, that hang out corner being Mel’s Variety on Neponset Avenue near the Fields Corner subway stop, called him a born “grifter” he faked it and said yeah and then next day went to the library and looked it up in the dictionary and came up with this-“A grifter is someone who swindles you through deception or fraud. Synonyms include fraudster, con artist, cheater, confidence man, scammer, hustler, swindler, etc.” Eddie smiled the smile of the just on that one. Yeah, a grifter, is a guy like him who figured some angles, any angles, a guy who did this and that, did the best he could without working some nine to five hump job. [Here is a practical corner boy, not Mel’s but Jack Slack’s bowling alleys corner down in Carver about thirty miles south of Dorchester but still in “from hunger” land definition- “A grifter to fill in the gaps for the unknowing and clueless was a guy, sometimes a dame, although usually where there was a dame involved she was a roper especially if the mark was hopped up on some sex thing, who spent his eternal life figuring how to go from point A to point B, and point A was wanting dough and point B was getting it by any means necessary but mainly by stealth. By the way do not discount women in the grifter society one of the best who ever lived was a gal who went by the name Delores Del Rio, named herself after the 1940s movie star, who took some duke over in Europe for a cool two million in jewelry after she got him all jammed up and picked him clean leaving him with some fake jewels worth about six dollars in Woolworth’s, beautiful.]

So Eddie started figuring the angles very early on, very early on indeed and would regal, if that is the right word for it, the corner boys in front of Mel’s Variety Store on Neponset Avenue with tales of his derring do once he started hanging out there when he began high school at Dot High. Of course that was all kids’ stuff, baubles and beads stuff, since nobody expected a kid to have the talents for grifting right out of the box (having the heart, the “from hunger” wanting habits heart was a separate and maybe more pressing question) but there are certain guys, certain Eddie guys, who cling to those dreams pretty hard and give themselves a workout getting in shape.

From what one guy, Southie Slim, one of the Mel’s corner boys before he moved on to other stuff told me Eddie started pretty early, started simply conning other kids out of their milk money in elementary school over at the Monroe Trotter School. Here is the skinny on that first round according to Slim who got caught out himself before he picked up the grifter life for a while until he found out dealing high-grade dope to the Beacon Hill crowd was a great deal more profitable, and social too once you added in willing women. Eddie somehow had picked up some dice, yeah, a pair and he would bet other kids, boys or girls it did not matter, their milk money on the results. Of course he somehow had “loaded” them so he would win. Now that was a fairly easy thing but here is where Eddie learned his craft. To keep play going he would let the other kids win occasionally, just enough to keep them interested rather than be a greed-head like big bully Matty Dugan down at my elementary school, Myles Standish, down in Carver who just strong-armed a kid a day for his (or her it did not matter) milk money. But the real tip he picked up young as he was that as long as kids, people, think they can  “pick you clean” you will always have a willing pool of suckers, of people to swindle, small or large but think large.            

One night, one slow Friday night year later after he had settled deeply into the routine of the life, Eddie was cutting up touches about his old days while smoothing down high-shelf scotch (a no-no when you are on the hustle by the way save that for slow Friday nights when you are cutting up old touches Eddie said), about how he moved up after that dice thing ran its course as all such scams do if for no other reason that the grifter gets tired of the play, and he related what happened after that first scam when he got to the Curley Junior High School. Here is how it went, the basic outline since Eddie was kind of cagey about some of the details like the guys he was talking to that night were going to run right out and pull the scam themselves. Eddie basically ran a pyramid scheme on his fellow students. He conned the kids into giving him their money by saying he knew a guy, a friend of his older brother, Lawrence, who worked as a stable boy at the track and who knew when the fix was on in a race and who could place bets for him and get some bucks fast. Eddie convinced a couple of guys that if they put all their dough together they could buy a ticket and make some easy dough. And it worked for a while since Eddie in his devilish way paid off the guys with his own dough. Each guy getting maybe a buck which to a “from hunger” kid was a big deal. Word got out and soon plenty of kids, even girls were looking to get in on easy street. And so he would dole out some more dough. Then he pulled the plug, told everybody that he was going in for a big score that he was going to put twenty dollars on a sure thing that the stable boy had tipped him to. In the event he actually got about thirty five dollars collected altogether. Of course the horse ran out, never came close so all was lost. Hey, wait a minute have you been listening? Eddie didn’t know any stable boy, didn’t make any bet, so minus his seed money expenses he cleared twenty-five bucks. Here is what Eddie learned though know the “clients” (Eddie’s word) who you are dealing with and don’t be too greedy. He did that same small con for a couple of years and it worked like magic, got him his money for the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner on Gallivan Boulevard and movie money too. Small con wisdom but still wisdom.

Eddie as he got older, got into high school, got hanging around with his corner boys at Mel’s, got restless, always had that idea in back of his mind that he would pull a big score if he learned all the tricks of the trade, if he could get onto something big. For a while in high school it looked like he was on the fast track, he learned how to work the charity circuit for walking daddy (his term) walking around money using the old homeless but proud gag that those private charity donors love that he picked up one day when he was playing hooky from school and ran into an old con man, Railroad Bill, on a bench at Boston Common near the Park Street Station who gave him the tip. Eddie would laugh at how easy it was to pull off walking into let’s say the United Methodist Church Social Services office up on Beacon Street dressed in his very real hand-me- downs and unshaven making him look older but not too old (meaning the old telltale sign that the guy had been “on the bum” too long to be proud and work him way out of his current jam) going through his rough things but wanting to get back on track if he only had a the price of a week’s rent in one of the rooming houses that dotted the other side of the hill then (a few still there even today, significantly fewer though). That was good for ten or twenty at a time although the down side of that caper was that you could only use it once, maybe twice. The upside was that there were numerous private social service agencies like that looking for somebody “worthy” to give the dough to.  

 With that walking around money Eddie would work a variation of his kids’ stuff milk money run, he would sell lottery tickets (in the days before the state got its greasy hands into that racket), for different charities, say he was raising it for blind kids or to send kids to summer camp. Offer as prizes radios, televisions, maybe a record player, stuff like that which people wouldn’t mind spending a dollar or “three for five dollars” on to help some crippled-up kids, give them fresh air, or some other small break or something. So he would grab the dough and then have one or more of his corner boys rip off what was needed over at Lechmere Sales or someplace like that (usually using at first “Five Fingers” Riley or “Rat” Malone who started that racket early once they figured out that if you were fearless in grabbing stuff nobody was going to catch you, and that worked for a long time until they “graduated” to armed robberies and did consecutive nickels, dimes and quarters in various Massachusetts state pens). See nobody gave a good damn if the charity he was hustling for ever got the dough all they knew was that for a buck, or three for five, they had a chance for their own television, radio, or record player important to hard-pressed high school kids who would not have those items otherwise. Needless to say the corner boys he used were good and he paid them off well like he should to keep them in line, another lesson learned, and so he honed his skills.

When Eddie graduated from high school and was to face the workaday world though he panicked a bit, decided that he needed to move up a step if he was going to avoid the fate of his belabored father, belabored by drink, yes, but also hard work on the docks, not always steady and with a brood of kids and a nagging wife to contend with. If the nine-to-five was not for Eddie neither was staying down in the depths either. (A history teacher had mentioned one time in class that all of her charges should seek to move up the latter of society at least one jump ahead of their parents and that kind of stuck with him.) So he started going into downtown Boston, started hanging around the Commons regularly unlike in high school where he would go just  when playing hooky but really to blow off steam when something exploded at home in that damn crowded apartment, started to listen to guys to see if they had any ideas like that time “Railroad Bill” gave him the scoop on the private charity gag, had been on easy street at one time. He didn’t bother with the eternal winos and junkies for they had nothing to say that he could use but to guys and there always were guys who maybe had been on the hustle and got waylaid, or just got old in a young man’s racket and so maybe had some words to share. And before he knew it he met Sidewalk Sam and Bright Boy Benny a couple of guys who told him about old time scams, about how guys survived by their wits in the hard-ass Depression days. And come some old Friday night, a slow girl-less Friday usually, Eddie would hold forth about what he had learned in the world, learned from Sidewalk and Bright Boy.

Here, for example, is what he told the boys one Friday night, one “Five-Fingers” Malone-less Friday night marking the first time he got bagged for doing a robbery, unarmed that time, of a gas station and was doing a six month stretch at Deer Island, which will give you an idea of where Eddie was heading, a story of a scam that seemed impossible to pull off given what they were trying to do. Unless you knew how very greedy some guys, even smart guys were. Let’s call it the wallet switch, an old scam that Eddie would perform a couple of times later, successfully. You need two guys for this, at least. In this case two used to be “from hunger” Great Depression grifters Denver Slim and Gash Lavin. And you must know your mark’s movements pretty well and whether they have dough on them, a more usual circumstance than you might think back then than now that we are in this age of the ATM and cashable credit cards among those a shade to the left of the law (and a whole new Eddie-less generation tech- savvy grifters with their dreams, and stories they are telling their confederates on slow Friday nights). I won’t go into the preliminaries about setting the mark up, but they knew their guy, knew his movements and knew what he was carrying, so just rest assured that Denver and Gash had seeded their mark. Well actually Denver had seeded the mark, one Ricardo “Slice” Russo (you figure out the why of that moniker, okay), who was the bag man for Lou Thorpe’s numbers racket in New York City, yes the Lou Thorpe who ran wild back in the day and made a splash in Vegas to top off his career but this is earlier when he was greedier than Midas and so was particularly susceptible to any scheme that put money in his waiting hands. Once a week Slice headed for Chicago on the midnight train to pay off Lou’s confederates there (at the high end of the rackets there are always confederates to pay off, cops too so it is just part of the overhead to keep on the streets. Guys down the bottom of the food chain don’t have such financial worries they are too busy keeping one eye out for looming John Law.)

Now bag men are pretty low in the food chain of any criminal enterprise but are like Eddie and every other Eddie-like dreamer also groomed on the con, on easy street dreams. What Denver did was to ask Slice, whom he cornered by evoking “Shark” Mahoney’s name, a mutual acquaintance, as he was heading to the station on the way to Chicago to drop off three thousand to a guy, “Bones” Kelly, also known to both men, on Division Street in that city for him. That money had been placed in a wallet, a black leather wallet similar to the one Slice was carrying the twenty thousand pay-off in, and when Slice got to Chi town he gave the wallet to the Division Street guy, to Kelly, the one with three thousand in it, three thousand in counterfeit money as Kelly later found out. See Slice had figured that doing Denver’s delivery was like finding money on the ground especially when he thought up the fake dough angle. So tough luck, Denver. Worse though, worse for Slice anyway, the mob’s wallet also had twenty thousand in counterfeit money when he delivered the wallet to an office in the Loop. What had happened was that Gash had been on that train, had in the course of bumping into Slice switched wallets and got off in Cleveland leaving Slice to his troubles. But here is what you have to know, know about the mob. They thought Slice, a troublesome bag man and so an easy fall guy was pulling a fast one on them when he explained what he thought had happened and he wound up in the Illinois River face down before anybody investigated anything. Beautiful work by Denver and Gash who headed out West for a while just to be on the safe side but also know this-if you are running on the high side expect some blow-back, nasty blow-back if you don’t walk away clean. Just ask Slice

One night, another of those aimless nights when there was no action, or maybe Eddie was cooling out from a con, a wise move since overdoing the con scene leads inevitably to trouble, usually fist, gun or John Law trouble, he told the guys a story, a story about the granddaddy of all the scores, a haul of almost half a million back in the 1930s when half a million was not just walking around money like it is today. A story that Nutsy Callahan, another one of the Great Depression guys he would listen to over on the Commons told him about one afternoon after he had played out some luscious honey over on Tremont Street who had “curled his toes” and he was a bit too restless to head home (Eddie wasn’t much for girlfriends or serious female company on his way up and maybe it was better for him to just catch a quick “curl the toes” on an off-afternoon with some passing fancy because no question women are far tougher to deal with that the hardest scam). The way Nutsy told the story implied that he might have been in on the caper, although like all good grifters, grafters, percentage guys, and midnight sifters, he would put the account in the third person just in case the statute of limitations had not run out on whatever the offenses were, or, more likely, some pissed off Capo or his descendants were still looking to take some shots at guys who pulled such scams.

Nutsy had told Eddie a few lesser scams that he had been involved in and Eddie told a few lies of his own but the important thing for Eddie, or rather Eddie’s future was that he was looking to break out of the penny-ante grifts and ride easy street so he was looking for ideas, long ago ideas really because just maybe with a duke here and a juke there the thing could be played again. Eddie didn’t bother to tell Nutsy that for Nutsy would probably not have told the story or as likely dismiss Eddie’s chances out of hand. So Nutsy told the story and Eddie’s eyes went bonkers over the whole set-up.

This one involved “Top Hat” Hogan so named for the simple fact that as long as anybody had known him, or could remember, he always wore a fancy day top hat although rarely, very rarely, with any accompanying evening clothes. Some of his girl friends said he wore the damn thing when he was in bed with them and that was just fine because Top Hat was a walking daddy when it came to loving his women. Top Hat had been widely assumed to have been the brains behind the Silver Smith Fur scam, the Morgan Bank scam and the Golden Gate Mine dust-up which people talked about almost until the war (World War II if you are counting). So Top Hat under any circumstances was a number one grifter who any guy with any dough, any serious dough, had better check up on to see if Top Hat had been in the vicinity if he wanted to keep said cash. The other key guy, and the reason Top Hat, who had been semi-retired at the time of this caper and rightfully so having run the rack already, was a raw kid, a kid with promise but not much else then, was “Jet” Jenkins. And the reason that Top Hat even considered teaming up with a raw kid like Jet, was that he was the son of Happy Heddy Jenkins, a fancy woman who had “curled his toes” back in his younger days. Heddy had had some good days and bad days but one of the bad days had been meeting up with the famous gambler, Black Bart Benson, one of the great flim-flam, flim-flam meaning simply a cheater without mercy and guys, leg-breaker if anybody had a problem with that, poker players of the day.

Old Bart had nevertheless had run into a streak of bad luck at cards which even cheaters face at times, had borrowed and lost almost a one hundred thousand dollars from Heddy (who ran on the best, friendliest, and easiest to enter if you had the money whorehouses in Chicago). Somehow things had taken a turn for the worst after Black Bart left Heddy high and dry and she was back on cheap street trying to raise a helter-skelter growing boy with short funds. Not so Black Bart who had cheated his way to a million dollar bonanza when his luck changed. (That cheating not known, obviously, to the guys taking the beating at the card table but Heddy knew her Bart and imparted that wisdom onto her son.) When Heddy sent Jet to see if Bart would ante up the cash he had borrowed from her he dismissed Jet with a flick of his hand, and after a serious beating by one of his leg-breakers had him dumped him in some back alley in Altoona one night. Bart had, with a laugh, as his boys administered that beating, told Jet that he should sue him in court to get his money back as he wasn’t in the mood to give some bent whore dough that she had gotten from her whorehouse dollies. So Heddy, so Jet, and after hearing about what Bart had called Heddy, so Top Hat were primed for revenge. But more than revenge because that is easy, kids’ stuff, to send Bart back to cheap street hustling winos with three-card Monte tricks or stuff like that.

The key to understanding Black Bart was that like a lot of con artists, no, most con artists, no, make that all con artists, is that beside being easy prey to any scam especially a scam that plays to their greed they always assume that they are smarter than whoever is making the proposition and can double-back on it to their profit. Top Hat had easy pickings when he ran across guys like Bart. Here is the way that Top Hat worked his magic, although when Nutsy finished telling Eddie the lay Eddie thought the venture had too many moving parts, too many guys in on the score once Black Bart was brought down.

It went like this. “Buggy” Bannon knew Black Bart, knew he was always interested in an easy score so Buggy put the word in Bart’s ear about some silver and gold mining stock that was about to go through the roof once the worst parts of the Depression were over. So Buggy, who had worked with Top Hat on the Silver Smith scam and so was trustworthy, or as trustworthy as any guy working on a scam can be introduced Top Hat to Bart as a chief stockbroker for Merrill Lynch. Then Top Hat went through the traces, got Bart hooked in with the knowledge about the gold and silver stock. Of course Top Hat had had “Horseless” Harry sent up a nice brochure in color all about the various possibilities of the mining stock and Bart got interested, saw quick dollar signs. Of course even an over-the-top greedy guy like Bart had to see some real stuff, some real stockbroker operation, so Top Hat had rented out space in a building in the financial district and created out of sheer nothing a stock market room complete with ticker-tape, running around employees (all grifters from out west so that Bart would not recognize them) or and investors milling around.

That was the part that Eddie thought was over the top, the too many moving parts aspect, but in any case it all looked good to Bart. Here is the carrot Top Hat told Bart to invest a few thousand to see how it went. And so Bart did, bringing to the stock room five thousand in cash as all con artists did then in the days before working kited checks and credit cards and stuff like that opened out new ways to bilk people, including smart guys. A few days later Top Hat delivers ten thousand to Bart, all fresh dough, and so they are off to the races because now he sees that this thing could make him really rich. Of course Top Hat knowing that you have to bring a guy, a sucker along, knowing you needed to whet his appetite had just added five of his own money to Bart’s to bring in the bonanza (writing it off as overhead just like any other legal or illegal operation).

Bart, although no fool and still had some suspicions, was no question hooked though as Top Hat fed him another stock tip and told him he should let the ten thousand ride, which he did. About a week later Top Hat delivers twenty-two thousand to Bart and he was really hooked, really wants to put more money down. Especially when that twenty-two went to fifty grand a few weeks later. Bart said to Top Hat that it was like finding money on the street. Then Top Hat really got to him, let him know that in South Africa, a known gold, silver and diamond mother lode to everybody in those days that a new field was within days of being explored and discovered and that Bart should be ready to go big and get in on the ground floor. Here is the beauty of the thing though. The financial pages were almost in a conspiracy with Top Hat because they were also projecting some speculation about new minefields. One day Top Hat told Bart to get all the cash he could gather because that South African stock, low, very low at the time would be going through the roof once the discovery was confirmed. So a few days later Bart brought a suitcase filled with cash, about a million maybe a little less, and pushed it over to Top Hat. Top Hat went to the cashier (“Hangman” Henry of all people) and brought back a receipt to Bart.

Now you can figure out the rest. A few days later news of that new minefield did come in and that stock did rise although in a world filled with gold and silver with nobody to buy stuff yet not as much as you would have expected but still a good take. Bart then called Top Hat to tell him to cash in. No answer at Top Hat’s number. Bart then went to the stock exchange room to find nothing but a “for rent” sign on the doors. As for Top Hat and Jet well they were on the train back to New York with that one hundred grand for Heddy and a twinkle came into Top Hat’s eyes about those old days when she “curled his toes,” and might again. Beautiful.

That story etched in his brain Eddie Daley started putting together a few ideas in his head, getting on the phone to a few guys (fewer than Top Hat had in his operation), and started making some dough connections for financing. Out in the grifter night they still talk about Eddie Daley, whereabouts unknown, “king of the grifters” after he took Vince Edwards the big book operator for about a million and a quarter in cold hard cash. You now know the back story on that one.                                                                                                   

Hail Edward Snowden!-Citizenfour: A Review Free Chelsea Manning! Hands Off Edward Snowden! Hands Off Julian Assange! Workers Vanguard No. 1060	23 January 2015

Hail Edward Snowden!-Citizenfour: A Review

 

By A. Stevens

 

What compels a person to take action on his own and at great personal risk against the most deadly government on earth? Why does a so-called democracy spy on its own citizens, foreign nationals and even allied heads of state? Citizenfour is the story of Edward Snowden, a former private contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA who disclosed details of how the U.S. government, in cahoots with the largest telecommunications and internet service companies, spies on virtually everyone, everywhere. Those disclosures revealed Big Brother’s spy apparatus to be far greater than previously known.

Snowden used the alias “Citizenfour” to make contact with Laura Poitras, a writer and filmmaker who for years has tenaciously exposed U.S. surveillance activities. For her courageous truth-telling, Poitras earned a spot on a government watch list. Citizenfour is the third part of her trilogy about how the world has changed since September 11, 2001 under the endless U.S. “war on terror.”

Snowden’s story, which captured the front pages of newspapers across the globe in 2013, is well known. Yet it is riveting to watch it unfold in real time, with Poitras behind the camera as Snowden gives his account to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill in a Hong Kong hotel room. The film also provokes the disturbing recognition that people feel so powerless in the face of relentless government overreach that Snowden’s exposure of the NSA, which caused a tremendous stir just over a year ago, is now met with little more than a collective shrug of resignation. Worse yet is the acquiescence, expressed in the often-heard line: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.” Tell that to the legions of fighters against class and race inequality in this country whose lives have been wrecked or snuffed out through government surveillance and repression.

Surveillance is a weapon in the arsenal of state repression. Citizenfour reveals that there are 1.2 million people on U.S. watch lists. The small city of Dearborn, Michigan, (population 96,000) has the largest percentage of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans per capita and has thus been racially profiled by law enforcement as the number two place in the country where suspected terrorists reside.

In the aftermath of the cold-blooded killing of black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, where another white cop walked away with a pat on the back, it’s important to recognize the connection between surveillance and racial and political profiling. Protesters against racist American injustice need to be aware that fighters for social change in this country are put on one or another government watch list. And in a nation founded on black chattel slavery, a special place is reserved for fighters for racial equality and opponents of capitalist class rule. As James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time (1962): “People find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.”

Capitalist Decay and Attacks on the Right to Privacy

The “war on terror” has been a pretext for unfettered force and violence by the American ruling class abroad and at home, from the wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq to the shredding of the civil liberties of the U.S. population. In Washington’s “anti-terror” crusade, national security is the trump card to quash democratic rights. First the Republican Bush administration and then the Democrat Barack Obama seized on the September 11, 2001 attacks to institutionalize extraordinary government powers and snooping through such measures as the USA Patriot Act. These are merely the top shelf of an entire arsenal of repressive legislation that includes the 1917 Espionage Act, which has always been used to criminalize dissent and repress labor and leftist opposition to the U.S. government during wartime. Among its first and most prominent victims was Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs, jailed for his political speech and agitation against the capitalist slaughter of World War I.

Snowden is threatened with prosecution under the Espionage Act if he were to return to the U.S. from temporary asylum in Russia. Chelsea Manning, who was tortured and now languishes in Leavenworth Prison, was sentenced to 35 years under the Espionage Act. Manning was gone after for letting the world see irrefutable government evidence, documented in its own military logs and diplomatic cables, of heinous U.S. war crimes as well as the everyday depredations of imperialist domination. Snowden was inspired by Manning’s outstanding courage to step forward with his own gigantic trove of information. Curiously, Manning is not mentioned in Poitras’s film, yet it is crucial to link all current struggles for justice with the fight to free victims of government repression. Julian Assange, who published Manning’s material on WikiLeaks, is threatened with U.S. prosecution and remains ensconced in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. We demand: Free Chelsea Manning! Hands off Edward Snowden! Hands off Julian Assange!

The film does show tantalizing evidence of yet another insider with a conscience, who was inspired by Snowden to leak new evidence of U.S. government dirty tricks to Glenn Greenwald. The U.S. government has created its own security nightmare, as disillusioned idealistic servants bite back like the multiheaded Hydra and lift the veil on government secrecy.

In the salad days of its struggle against the yoke of the British monarchy’s colonial rule, the American bourgeoisie fought for the right to privacy and enshrined it as the Fourth Amendment in the original 1791 Bill of Rights. This legal protection against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government grew out of English common law, which enjoined the police or other forces of the Crown from entering a private home without an official writ. This protection was effectively nullified in the American colonies, where royal magistrates and judges routinely issued writs and warrants to allow British soldiers to ransack private homes and seize property without so much as a suspicion of crime.

The legitimization of black chattel slavery in the U.S. Constitution bespeaks the limited, conservative goals of the bourgeois-democratic American Revolution. Nonetheless, the so-called “founding fathers,” leaders from a period when the bourgeoisie was historically progressive, would be outlaws today in the period of advanced capitalist decay. America’s rulers would appear to them as King George loyalists and traitors to their own revolution and citizenry. The U.S. government has long served as the gendarme for reaction worldwide and backed the bloodiest regimes on the planet. The silver-tongued Obama intones “freedom” while shredding democratic rights at home, prosecuting more whistleblowers than all prior presidents combined and directly authorizing assassinations of U.S. citizens abroad.

It’s Gonna Take a Revolution

Glenn Greenwald’s latest book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (New York: Henry Holt, 2014), is a good read in conjunction with viewing Poitras’s Citizenfour. The same conversations with Snowden that Poitras captured on film are related in greater detail in Greenwald’s book. Poitras and Greenwald have both moved to other countries to continue their work at greater distance from vindictive and threatening American authorities. Poitras has been detained and had her notes and electronics seized more than 40 times at U.S. airports. Some of Greenwald’s colleagues in the capitalist media howled for him to be prosecuted because he dared print what the government sought to keep under wraps. In a gratuitously vicious move to torment Greenwald, the British authorities, in league with the U.S., detained and terrorized his partner and political collaborator, David Miranda, when he ferried documents from Poitras to Greenwald through London’s Heathrow airport.

Edward Snowden was compelled by his conscience to risk everything he had in life by taking a stand against omnipresent U.S. government surveillance because he thinks people have a right to know what the government is doing and a right to debate and change policy. In this, Snowden shares a moral and political compass with Chelsea Manning. We hail their courageous acts. Despite Manning’s and Snowden’s self-identification as U.S. patriots, their disclosures provide a factual basis for Marxists like us to help working people see through the stupefying fog of patriotism and democracy that is peddled by the bourgeoisie to dull the wits of those they exploit. It is going to take more than leaks and whistles to fundamentally change society. An essential precondition is the understanding that the government is not “ours,” nor can it be made into a neutral arbiter. Rather, it is part of the machine to maintain capitalist class rule, suitably disguised as an expression and tool of “the people.”

Glenn Greenwald expresses the views held by many libertarians, liberals and reformist leftists that the problem with the encroaching police state is simply that it is wildly out of control. Greenwald argues, “The alternative to mass surveillance is not the complete elimination of surveillance. It is, instead, targeted surveillance, aimed only at those for whom there is substantial evidence to believe they are engaged in real wrongdoing.” Asking capitalism’s secret police to play nice is like asking a great white shark to chew softly.

In capitalist society, where a tiny minority of the population lives off the labor of the working class, the rulers will always resort to spying, lying and violence to keep the vast majority down. Anything that challenges property rights and the racial, ethnic, religious and moral prejudices that prop up this whole capitalist system of exploitation and injustice constitutes “wrongdoing.” The liberals are blinded by lofty words like “freedom” and “democracy”—classless terms that snooker working people into believing they have equal rights in an increasingly unequal society. Any talk of achieving freedom that does not involve a struggle for the abolition of classes is simply a lie.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels explained the fundamental difference in purpose between petty-bourgeois democrats and communists in their 1850 “Address of the Central Authority to the [Communist] League.” Against a backdrop of the failed German bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848, in which the bourgeoisie had gone over to the side of the old reactionary classes against the revolutionary proletariat, Marx and Engels observed:

“Far from desiring to transform the whole of society for the revolutionary proletarians, the democratic petty bourgeois strive for a change in social conditions by means of which the existing society will be made as tolerable and comfortable as possible for them....

“While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible…it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, the proletariat has conquered state power, and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far that competition among the proletarians in these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of the existing society but the foundation of a new one.”

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes In Boston- No Justice, No Peace- Black Lives Matter- You Have Got That Right Young Brothers and Sisters-Speaking Truth To Power-The Struggle Continues  

A lot of people, and I count myself among them, see the new movement against police brutality and their incessant surveillance of minority youth, mainly black and latino, that seems to be building up a head of steam to be the next major axis of struggle. The endemic injustices are so obvious and frankly so outrageous that the pent-up anger at the base of society among we the have-nots is so great that it needed visible expression. The past six months have given us that. But below is an example, a beautiful graphic example, of just how deep the hurts go, and how deep into society these injustices are felt. Read on.

 

        

In Boston-Free All Class-War Prisoners 

 

Free Angela and All Political Prisoner ***** Rescheduled to March 1 *******

When: Thursday, March 1, 2015, 6:45 pm to 9:00 pm

Where: Central Square Cambridge Library • 45 Pearl Street • In Honor of Black History Month • Cambridge

An Inspiring docudrama that takes a gripping look at the historical incidents that created an International movement to free activist Angela Davis.
“For more than four decades the world renowned author, activist and scholar Angela Davis has been one of the most influential activists and intellectuals in the United States. An icon of the 1970’s black liberation movement, Davis’ work around issues of gender, race, class and prisons has influenced critical thought and social movements across several generations.”      From Democracy Now, March 6, 2014
Parking nearby Municipal garage on Green Street
Sponsored by Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Light refreshments will be served 

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

Upcoming Events: 

***Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes- Trumpet Player


From The Pen Of Frank Jackman


February is Black History Month

 

Trumpet Player

 

The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Has dark moons of weariness
Beneath his eyes
where the smoldering memory
of slave ships
Blazed to the crack of whips
about thighs

The negro
with the trumpet at his lips
has a head of vibrant hair
tamed down,
patent-leathered now
until it gleams
like jet-
were jet a crown

the music
from the trumpet at his lips
is honey
mixed with liquid fire
the rhythm
from the trumpet at his lips
is ecstasy
distilled from old desire-

Desire
that is longing for the moon
where the moonlight's but a spotlight
in his eyes,
desire
that is longing for the sea
where the sea's a bar-glass
sucker size

The Negro
with the trumpet at his lips
whose jacket
Has a fine one-button roll,
does not know
upon what riff the music slips

It's hypodermic needle
to his soul
but softly
as the tune comes from his throat
trouble
mellows to a golden note

 

Langston Hughes

 

Shorty Blast (not his real name, his stage moniker that was all put together from his six feet two height and his big jazz-doomed lungs, the reason for the ruse will be mentioned below but since he was working the New York café society crowd who were crazy to see him in person and needed to have a cabaret license a necessary moniker) dreamed his eternal great big fat immense high white note dream. Dreamed it since he had heard Miles at Minton’s blow it straight across the Atlantic, dreamed it incessantly as only a high-end blaster could,  dreamed it right then while he was playing, horn splish-splash playing, just kicks riff and raffs, little be-bop, be-bop nothings that got the customers attention and a certain nod, maybe a send-over scotch from some stray white dame, or some guy, black or white dated up with some smooth silky thing and he wanted to impress her with that silly act, as if that brethren knew, hell, knew anything about high white notes or anything.

Just then he was dribbling a few stray riffs, be-bop, bop-be, see-bop, hell, even one bop-bop-bop got a hand like three bops tops meant the cat’s meow, Jesus, for the early arrivers (and early leavers, two low-shelf scotches and out, the six in the morning wakers, subway riders probably from the low-shelf look not cab-riders like him, his bedtime, maybe if he was not tangled  up with some sweet Jane,  Jesus what do they do all day but wait upon the night, their own small dream version of the high white note night), the quick scotch and soda crowd before the night bleeds, bleeds all cab fare honking out front to announce their arrival Mayfair white around eleven (and the real stuff, after hours after two, three, four, when the clubs let out and the boys play for each other, and to beat each other, to tag off some phantom riffs ) at this Red Fez gig that he had been working, working for a couple of months now to keep body and soul together and to keep Mister Landlord, a not very understanding fellow, from his door, and to keep the former Mrs. Blast far, far away from his door (and his latest paramour, Miss Lucille Pratt close).

Yes, he dreamed of that high white note, dreamed when or where or how it would come but never, never that it would not come because, he, frankly, frankly you hear, brothers and sisters, had the sheer lung power and muse-magic to turn that big fat note on a dime. So this night, this could be night, Shorty did, as he always work did, once he had a few house scotches in him, or maybe some godsend reefer to change the pace if one of the boys scored. He, having been burnt once with a small container of weed and done a couple up at state prison was not the scorer any more, no way, not with that dream note still out there. No way could that high white penetrate another set of prison walls.

He knew that the note could come out at the Red Fez, the Hi Hat Club, maybe at some wicked jam at LoJo’s, or even while he was up in his tenement room, practicing ,when Miss Lucille was not around since when Miss Lucille was around, around with her wanting habits on, even Gabriel did not want to blow some funky horn but no way, no way in hell was that note coming out in Ossining town, no way. What he knew from previous failures, maybe getting three-forth there, maybe not making it due to that one too many scotches, was to go into a certain state, a certain state where he was not really in the Red Fez , he was not playing for crowds, early or late, was not even in the present time but back to Mother Africa times, to Pharaoh times if anybody was asking, okay.

That Pharaoh time kick had stayed with him since about the sixth grade, yes, it was the sixth grade when he and his older brother (now resting in some European graveyard after having spilled his black brother blood against that damn Hitler) and he, they , were mesmerized by the Egyptian exhibit at the Museum Of Fine Arts in Boston where they grew up complete with pharaonic statues and wondered , wondered out loud about those slave days, about the winds rushing across the Nile, about the rapid river run of the Nile, and about some ancient sound, a sound that sounded very much like the sound that would be produced by that high white note, the note that would bring down pharaoh, bring down Mister’s thousand acre cotton fields, bring down Mister James Crow, bring down that silky smooth Mayfair swell crowd that was starting to fill up the place just then. And so Shorty played, played like Pharaoh was coming to get him, coming to take his deep breath away…

No Killer/No Spy Drones...

Ever since the early days of humankind's existence an argument has always been made by someone and not always the gung-ho warriors that with some new technology, some new strategic gee-gad, warfare, the killing on one of our own species, would become less deadly, would be more morally justified, would bring the long hoped for peace that lots of people have yacked about in the abstract until they get their war blood up. Don't believe that false bill of goods, don't believe the sanity war lies, its the same old killing machine that has gone on for eons. Enough said and enough of killer drones killing and spy drones spying too.  

Ancient Dreams, Dreamed- With Diana Talbot In Mind

 

 

A YouTube film clip of the Beatles performing When I'm Sixty-Four from the animated movie Yellow Submarine.

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964 and thus already past sixty-four, comment:

Many of my fellows from the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.

Yah, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair, go to the big step-off kind of smiling, okay maybe just half-smiling. Frank (read: future Peter Paul and a million, more or less, other guys) had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and the then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair, also white. She may have been just another blonde, very blonde, frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled, yelled through the womb or some toddler’s crib maybe, at the screen for him to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end.

Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window “the projects” wait on better times, get a leg up, don’t get left behind in the dawning American streets paved with gold dream but for now just hang your hat dwelling, small, too small for three growing boys with hearty appetites and desires to match even then, warm, free-flow oil spigot warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother kinship sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching, relentlessly marching as he, that older brother, went off to foreign places, foreign elementary school reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic places and, he, the nose flattened against the window brother, is left to ponder his own place in those kind of places, those foreign-sounding places, when his time comes. If he has a time, has the time for the time of his time, in this red scare (but what knows he of red scare only brother scares), cold war, cold nose, dust particles floating aimlessly in the clogging still air night.

A cloudless day, a cloudless blasted eternal, infernal Korean War day, talk of peace, merciless truce peace and uncles coming home in the air, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, fields for slides and swings, diamonded baseball, no, friendlier softball fields the houses are too close, of gimps, glues, cooper-plated portraits of wildly-maned horses, of sweet shaded elms, starting, now that he too, that nose-flattened brother, has been to foreign places, strange boxed rooms filled with the wax and wane of learning, simple learning, in the time of his time, to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means that, and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes, but changes.

Nighttime fears, red-flagged Stalin-named fears, red bomb aimed right at my head unnamed shelter blast fears, named, vaguely named, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg hated stalinite jews killed fears, jews killed our catholic lord fears, and what did they do wrong to get the chair anyway fears against the cubed glass glistening flagless flag-pole rattling dark asphalt school yard night. Alone, and, and, alone with fears, and avoidance, clean, clear stand alone avoidance of old times sailors, tars, sailors’ homes AND deaths in barely readable fine- marked granite-grey lonely seaside graveyards looking out on ocean homelands and lost booty. Dead, and the idea of dead, the mystery of dead, and of sea sailor dead on mains, later stream thoughts of bitch proctoresses, some unnamed faraway crush teacher who crossed my path and such, in lonely what did he do wrong anyway prison cells, smoking, reading, writing of dinosaurs die and other laments. Dead.

Endless walks, endless one way sea street water rat-infested fear seawall walks, rocks, shells, ocean water-logged debris strewn every which way, fetid marsh smells, swaying grasses in light breezes to the right, mephitic swamps oozing mud splat stinks to the left making hard the way, the path, the symbolic life path okay, to uptown drug stores, some forgotten chain-name drug store, passing perfumes, lacquers, counter drugs, ailments cured, hurts fixed and all under a dollar, trinkets ten cents baubles, gee-gads, strictly gee-gads, grabbing, two-handed grabbing, heist-stolen valentines, a metaphor in the making, ribbon and bow ruby-red valentine night bushel, signed, hot blood-signed, weary-feet signed, if only she, about five candidates she, later called two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-head, sticks all, no womanly shape to tear a boy-man up, would give a look his way, his look, his newly acquired state of the minute Elvis-imitation look, on endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash inside his head would be quiet. Man emerging out of the ooze, and hope.

Walks, endless waiting bus stop, old late, forever late, story of a young boy’s life late, diesel-fueled, choking fumed non-stop bus stop walks, no golden age car for jet moves in American Dream wide-fin , high tech automatic drive nights, walks, walks up crooked cheap, low-rent, fifty-year no fix rutted pavement streets, deeply gouged, one-lane snow-drift hassles, you get the picture, pass trees are green, coded, secretly coded even fifty street rutted years later, endless trees are green super-secret-coded except for face blush waiting, waiting against boyish infinite time, infinite first blush of innocent manhood, boyhood times, gone now. For what? For one look, one look, and not a quick no-nonsense, no dice look, no time for ragamuffin boys either that would elude him, elude him forever. Such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots. And no dance, no coded trees are green dance, either, no high school confidential (hell elementary school either, man), handy man, breathless, Jerry Lee freak-out, at least no potato sack stick dance with coded name trees are green brunette. That will come, that will come. But when?

City square, no trespass, no standing, standing, low-slung granite buildings everywhere, granite steps leading to granite doors leading to granite gee-gad counters, hated, no name hated, low-head hated, waiting slyly, standing back on heels, going in furtively, coming out ditto, presto coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carat, no russkie Sputnik panel glitter for his efforts such is the way of young lumped-up crime, no value, no look, just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark, dark night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dream make no more sense that this bodily theft.

A bridge too far, an unarched, unsteeled, unspanned, unnerved bridge too far. One speed bicycle boy, dungarees rolled up against dog bites and geared meshes, churning through endless heated, sweated, no handkerchief streets, names, all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea, names. Twelve-year old hard churned miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old drifter, grifter, midnight shifter petty larceny friends, that’s all it was, petty and maybe larceny, hard against the named ships, hard against the named seas, hard against the named fishes, hard against the named fauna, hard against the unnamed angst, hard against those changes that kind of hit one sideways all at once like some mack the knife smack devilish thing

Lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, maybe later, just some junior league dream fuss though, some future cheerleader football dame though, some sweated night pasty crust and I, too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic cheerleader windows. Such is the new decade a-borning, a-borning but not for me, no jack swagger, or bobby goof as they run the table on old tricky dick or some tired imitation of him. Me, I’ll take exotics, or lindos, if they every cross my path, my lonely only path

Sweated dust bowl nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic cheerleader glance nights but something else, something not endless walked about, something done, or with the promise of done, for something inside, for some sense of worth in the this moldy white tee shirt, mildewy white shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, Chuck Taylor sneakers pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval, watch tick in hand, looking, looking I guess for immortality, immortality even then. Later, in bobby darin times or percy faith times, who knows, sitting, sitting high against the lion-guarded pyramid statute front door dream, common dreams, common tokyo dreams, all gone asunder, all gone asunder, on this curious fact, no wind, Irish or otherwise. Stopped short. Who would have figured that one?

Main street walked, main street public telephone booth cheap talk walked searching for some Diana greek goddess wholesale on the atlantic streets. Diana, blonde Diana, cashmere-sweatered, white tennis –shoed Diana, million later Dianas although not with tennis shoes, really gym shoes fit for old ladies to do their rant, their lonely rant against the wind. Seeking, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turns out; nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, a small-time after school soda split sit at the counter Doc’s drugstore date, or slice of pizza and a coke date at Balducci’s with a few nickels juke boxed in playing our song, our future song, a Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall song, and dreams of I Want To Wanted sifting the hot afternoon air, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of local lore car parked submarine races and mysteries unfurled, ah, to dream, no more than to dream, walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on senior errands. No way, no way and then red-face, alas, red-faced no known even forty years later. Wow.

Multi-colored jacket worn, red and black, black and red, some combination reflecting old time glories, or promises of glory, cigarette, Winston small-filtered, natch, no romantic Bogie tobacco-lipped unfiltered, hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee, if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Move out the act onto Boston fresh-mown streets. Finally, that one minute, no not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of the fame game, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss on non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson learned, very tough. And not yet twenty.

Drunk, whisky drunk, whisky rotgut whisky drunk, in some bayside, altantic bayside, not childhood atlantic bayside though, no way, no shawlie way, bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish, although who could have known that then. Who could have know that tet, lyndon, bobby, hubert, tricky dick war-circus all hell broke loose thing then, or wanted to.

Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no on hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, no earthy good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession. The days of rage, rage against the light, and then the glimmer of the light.

The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black Madonna of a night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, not Winston filter-tipped seductions, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little. Free at last but with a very, very sneaking feeling that this is a road less traveled for reason, and not for ancient robert frost to guide you… Just look at blooded Kent State, or better, blooded Jackson State. Christ.

Bloodless bloodied streets, may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.

Chill chili nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Calais’, Monktons, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas’ flats, golden-gated bridges, malibus, Joshua Trees, pueblos, embarcaderos, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern wall. And enough of short-wave radio beam tricky dick slaughters south of the border in deep fall nights. Enough, okay.

He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle. He said it in 1848, he said it in 1917, he said it in 1973. Whee, an old guy, huh.

Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored antic newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.

A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million time in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night stands, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Ya that seems right, right against the oil-beggared time, right.

Lashed against the high end double seawall, bearded, slightly graying against the forlorn time, a vision in white not enough to keep the wolves of time away, the wolves of feckless petty larceny times reappear, reappear with a vengeance against the super-rational night sky and big globs of ancient hurts fester against some unknown enemy, unnamed, or hiding out in a canyon under an assumed name. Then night, the promise of night, a night run up some seawall laden streets, some Grenada night or maybe Lebanon sky boom night, and thoughts of finite, sweet flinty finite haunt his dreams, haunt his sleep. Wrong number, brother. Ya, wrong number, as usual.

White truce flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more war-weary dastardly fight against Persian gulf oil-driven time, against a bigger opponent, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other he said struggle, struggle. Ya, easy for you to say.

Desperately clutching his new white flags, his 9/11 white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this is no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say, oh yes, struggle.

One more battle, one more, please one more, one fight against the greed tea party night. He chains himself, well not really chains, but more like ties himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief. Another guy does the same, except he uses some plastic hand-cuff-like stuff. A couple of women just stand there, hard against that ebony fence, can you believe it, just stand there. More, milling around, disorderly in a way, someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene is complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knows, knows for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora whom he needed to worry about, and that his child dream was a different thing altogether. But who, just a child, could have known that then.

From The Pages Of The Communist International- In Honor Of The 95th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919) -Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then

Click below to link to the Communist International Internet Archives"

http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/index.htm

Markin comment from the American Left History blog (2007):

BOOK REVIEW

‘LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM-AN INFANTILE DISORDER, V.I. LENIN, UNIVERSITY PRESS OF THE PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA, 2001

An underlying premise of the Lenin-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was that success there would be the first episode in a world-wide socialist revolution. While a specific timetable was not placed on the order of the day the early Bolshevik leaders, principally Lenin and Trotsky, both assumed that those events would occur in the immediate post-World War I period, or shortly thereafter. Alas, such was not the case, although not from lack of trying on the part of an internationalist-minded section of the Bolshevik leadership.

Another underlying premise, developed by the Leninists as part of their opposition to the imperialist First World War, was the need for a new revolutionary labor international to replace the compromised and moribund Socialist International (also known as the Second International) which had turned out to be useless as an instrument for revolution or even of opposition to the European war. The Bolsheviks took that step after seizing power and established the Communist International (also known as the Comintern or Third International) in 1919. As part of the process of arming that international with a revolutionary strategy (and practice) Lenin produced this polemic to address certain confusions, some willful, that had arisen in the European left and also attempted to instill some of the hard-learned lessons of the Russian revolutionary experience in them.

The Russian Revolution, and after it the Comintern in the early heroic days, for the most part, drew the best and most militant layers of the working-class and radical intellectuals to their defense. However, that is not the same as drawing experienced Bolsheviks to that defense. Many militants were anti-parliamentarian or anti-electoral in principle after the sorry experiences with the European social democracy. Others wanted to emulate the old heroic days of the Bolshevik underground party or create a minority, exclusive conspiratorial party.

Still others wanted to abandon the reformist bureaucratically-led trade unions to their then current leaderships, and so on. Lenin’s polemic, and it nothing but a flat-out polemic against all kinds of misconceptions of the Bolshevik experience, cut across these erroneous ideas like a knife. His literary style may not appeal to today’s audience but the political message still has considerable application today. At the time that it was written no less a figure than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the American Communist Party, credited the pamphlet with straightening out that badly confused movement (Indeed, it seems every possible political problem Lenin argued against in that pamphlet had some following in the American Party-in triplicate!). That alone makes it worth a look at.

I would like to highlight one point made by Lenin that has currency for leftists today, particularly American leftists. At the time it was written many (most) of the communist organizations adhering to the Comintern were little more than propaganda groups (including the American party). Lenin suggested one of the ways to break out of that isolation was a tactic of critical support to the still large and influential social-democratic organizations at election time. In his apt expression- to support those organizations "like a rope supports a hanging man".

However, as part of my political experiences in America around election time I have run into any number of ‘socialists’ and ‘communists’ who have turned Lenin’s concept on its head. How? By arguing that militants needed to ‘critically support’ the Democratic Party (who else, right?) as an application of the Leninist criterion for critical support. No, a thousand times no. Lenin’s specific example was the reformist British Labor Party, a party at that time (and to a lesser extent today) solidly based on the trade unions- organizations of the working class and no other. The Democratic Party in America was then, is now, and will always be a capitalist party. Yes, the labor bureaucrats and ordinary workers support it, finance it, drool over it but in no way is it a labor party. That is the class difference which even sincere militants have broken their teeth on for at least the last seventy years. And that, dear reader, is another reason why it worthwhile to take a peek at this book.

Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then

Commentary

No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon the founder of The Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined.

The conclusion that I drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders to lead the fight for state power.

In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spend a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. That position stands in need of some amendment now.

Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.


It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question, religion, special racial and gender oppressions) and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.

As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the ‘new’ working class or a ‘new’ vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an ideas that goes back to the days of Marx himself.

And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on , frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray ( in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960’s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?

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Save the Date - UNAC National Conference, May 8 - 10, 2015

 

No Justice, No Peace- Black Lives Matter- You Have Got That Right Brothers and Sisters-Speaking Truth To Power-The Struggle Continues 

 

 

 

Listen up. No, I am not black but here is what I know. Know because my grandfather, son of old Irish immigrants before the turnoff the 20^th century, the ethnic immigrant group which provided a hard core of police officers in the City of Boston and surrounding towns back then, and now too for that matter, told me some stuff. (The “surrounding towns” part as they left the Irish ghettoes in South Boston and Dorchester, the latter now very heavily filled with all kinds of people of color, and moved first to Quincy and Weymouth then for some to the Irish Rivera further south in Marshfield and places like that). Those Irish also provided their fair share of militants in the “so-called” Boston Police Strike of 1919.

Here is what he said when I was a kid and has been etched in my brain since my youth. Cops are not workers, cops are around to protect property, not yours but that of the rich, cops are not your friends because when the deal goes down they will pull the hammer down on you no matter how “nice” they are, no matter how many old ladies and old gentlemen they have escorted across the street. And every time I forget that wisdom they, the police remind me, for example, when they raided the Occupy Boston encampment late one night in October 2011 and then razed the place in December 2011 when the restraining order was lifted without batting an eye.

Now this is pretty damn familiar to the audience I am trying to address, those who are raising holy hell in places like Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York about police brutality, about police murder under the color of law. And those who support the, well, let’s call a thing by its right name, rebellion.

Here is what my grandfather, or my father for that matter, did not have to tell me. They, and I ask that you refer to the graphic above, DID NOT need when I came of age for such discussions that I had to be careful of the cops as I walked down the street minding my own business(unless of course I was in a demonstration but I had that figured already). Did not need to tell me that I was very likely to be pulled over while “walking while Irish.” Did not suggest, as the graphic wisely points out, that I would need to have more identification than an NSA agent to walk down my neighborhood streets. Did not need to tell me that I would suffer all kinds of indignities for breathing.                        

He, they, did not have to tell me a lot of things that every black adult has to tell every black child about the ways on the world in the United States. But remember what that old man did tell me, cops are not workers, cops are not friends, cops are working the   other side of the street. That old man would also get a chuckle out of the slogan-“Fuck The Cops.” If more people, if more white people especially, would think that way maybe we could curb the bastards in a little.