The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- Botticelli’s 115th Dream-With Botticelli’s “Venus” In Mind

The 50^th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- Botticelli’s 115^th Dream-With Botticelli’s “Venus” In Mind

By Special Guest Alex James

[Frankly my oldest brother Alex, who after all is over ten years older than I am, and I have never been all that close. Maybe that is natural due our age differences and of his decided and vocally not wanting to have an unruly younger brother tagging along while he and his vaunted corner boys did their thing. Later the gap widened as his lawyerly pursues were far removed as a rule from my own social and cultural concerns. A few weeks ago though, knowing that I write for a number of blogs, including here at American Left History, and in various smaller print journals he approached me on behalf of he and his “corner boys,” at least the ones still standing some fifty years later, to help organize and write a small tribute booklet in honor of their fallen comrade and fellow corner boy, Peter Paul Markin, who led them west in the great Summer of Love, San Francisco, 1967 explosion. I took on the tasks after Alex explained to me that he had been smitten with a nostalgia bug when he had gone to a legal conference out there by an exhibit at the deYoung Museum out in Frisco town, The Summer of Love Experience, being presented to honor the 50^th anniversary of the events of that summer.

Fair enough. I was glad to help out since I only knew the events second-hand and have always been interested in writing about and have written extensively about that period. As a result I had thought that the experience of putting out a small publication where we had to maybe for the first time in our lives work closely together “bonded” Alex and me somewhat. Fair enough again. Now though the guy is all hopped up, maybe showing signs of senility for all I know, about an exhibition he had seen at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where they have Botticelli’s Venus on display. As far as I know Alex could have given a rat’s ass about art, about the Renaissance back in the day or anything since not connected with his law practice. But the other day he asked me for some space here to talk about how that Botticelli painting at the exhibition reminded him about some love interest he had had during that summer of love period. What can I say. He is after all my brother.  Zack James]       

   

[I had written the basics of the small piece I wished to present here about a young girl that I had met out in San Francisco, Jewel Night Star, when I was out there after the Scribe [Peter Paul Markin] got a bunch of us to head out west in late summer 1967. (I will explain that whole moniker business, that serious need to “reinvent” ourselves below but just know now that I was always known out there as Cowboy, or Cowboy Angel, depending on my mood, the day, hell maybe the drug intake) That was before I read my youngest brother Zack’s introduction. I felt compelled to add a note here to announce to what he always likes to call a “candid world” that I am neither senile nor have I been in the past, a past Zack, tied up with his various writing projects about times that he has only lived through vicariously totally oblivious to the call of culture, to the call of art and artifact. What more can I say though as he is my host here. Oh, yes, he is also after all my brother. Alex James.]

I would be the last person in the world to deny that memories, good and bad, creep up on a person sometimes in unusual ways. (Of course in my law practice I have had to pay short shrift in general to anything to do with memory on behalf of my clients but that is out of professional necessity to keep the buggers from huge jail time or cash outlays.) Recently this came home to me in a very odd way. I had been out in San Francisco to attend a law conference which I do periodically to confer with other lawyers in my special areas of concern when as I was entering the BART transit station on Powell Street I noticed on a passing bus an advertisement for an exhibition called The Summer of Love Experience being put on at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of that wild west experiment. That set off the first series of memory bells which forced me to take some time out to go see what they had produced about those long ago times.                    

See, strange as it may seem given my subsequent total emergence into my law practice (at times just to keep afloat with three unhappy ex-wives and a parcel of kids, some happy some not, to support which almost killed me about ten years ago with a crush of college tuitions) I had been one of those tens of thousands of young people who drifted west to see what the whole thing was all about in San Francisco in the summer of love, 1967. Zack has probably told you that when I came back from this recent Frisco trip I gathered those of my old hometown corner boys from the Acre section of North Adamsville who as Zack stated were “still standing” to put together a small tribute book in honor of the event dedicated to the memory of the late Peter Paul Markin, the guiding spirit who led us out West like some latter day prophet.  

Mad monk Markin (and he really was we all called him the Scribe after our leader Frankie Riley gave him that moniker  in junior high school after Markin once had written some total bullshit homage to him and it hit the school newspaper and ever after the Scribe was his “flak” writing some stuff that was totally unbelievable about the real Frankie Riley whom we knew was seven kinds of a bastard even then) had gone out in the spring of 1967 after dropping out of Boston University in his sophomore year and had come back in late summer telling us the “newer world” he was always yakking about (and which we previously had given a rat’s ass about) was “happening” out there. He conned, connived, and begged but six of us beside him (and ever after also including Josh Breslin from up in Olde Sacco, Maine whom the Scribe met out in Frisco who was not a North Adamsville corner boy but whom we made one since he was clearly a kindred spirit)   went out and stayed for various lengths of time. I had gone back out with Markin after his “conversion” plea and stayed for about a year, mostly, as with all of us one way or another riding Captain Crunch’s “merry prankster” converted yellow brick road bus (the latter Markin’s term).     

While out there I had many good sexual and social experiences but the best was with a young gal whom I stuck with most of the time who went by the name Jewel Night Star as I went by the names Cowboy or Cowboy Angel depending on my mood. I make no pretense to know all of the psychological and sociological reasons at the time or thereafter but these monikers we hung on ourselves were an attempt to “reinvent” ourselves. Break out of the then conventional nine to five, beat the commies, and buy lots of stuff world our parents tried to drive a nail in our hearts about. Some people changed their monikers, their personas every other week but I stuck with my based on the simple love that I had had for Westerns growing up and since we were in the West it seemed right. Markin’s Be-Bop Kid was an overlay from his hearty interest in the “beats” who by 1967 were passe, who were being superseded by what was beginning to be called the “hippies.” Such were the times. The Jewel Night Star moniker when she told me about it one night was based on her eyes which in a certain light looked like diamonds, like twinkling stars. As long as I knew her she stuck with that moniker as well.            

Funny when I was out in Frisco for the conference and went to the museum I didn’t think anything about her. Had been through a small succession of women after she left the bus and as I have mentioned have had a whole raft of women since then, married and unmarried. I just mainly “dug” the scene at the museum and thought about the great music we heard (when they played White Bird by It’s a Beautiful Day I freaked out since I had not heard that song in ages), about the plentiful and mostly safe dope we did (we had an unwritten pact among the North Adamsville corner boys not to do LSD, “acid” after Markin explained his “bad trip” on the substance and after we had seen more than a few people going crazy at concerts and need medical attention), and about how we could “outrage” bourgeois society by our dress, our free spirits and, well, our goofiness if it came right down to it. (Tweaking those who were trying to drive those nails into our hearts.)

Then last week, or the week before, I got this postcard advertisement from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston asking me to join their membership. (I assume somehow that having paid my admission to the deYoung on-line I had become a prime target for every museum from Portland East to Portland West). The ‘hook” on the other side of the postcard was that with a paid up membership I could see Botticelli’s Venus up close and personal. A view of that image on that postcard lead me directly, I say straight line directly, to my first memories of Jewel Night Star in maybe the fifty years since that summer of 1967 time.         

In the early fall of 1967 Markin and I had hitchhiked out across the whole country to Frisco. (I can see every mother grimace at that idea now, or then for that matter.) I won’t go into the details about how we got out there which I have written about in that tribute book the guys and I put together and Zack edited. Besides this is about Jewel not about some Jack Kerouac On The Road -influenced fling on our parts. Markin had had some contact with this guy, this wild man, Captain Crunch, who had somehow, most people who knew anything about it agreed that it was through a dope deal, gotten a yellow brick road converted school bus which he was travelling on up and down the West Coast picking up kindred spirits and letting them stay in and around the bus. (The attrition rate was pretty high most people staying a few weeks and then getting off or told to find another way to travel by Mustang Sally, the Captain’s sort of girlfriend, I never did figure out their actual relationship in all the time I was on the bus, if they stole stuff, didn’t keep fairly decent personal hygiene or let the drugs make them too weird and in need of some medical help.) When we got out West the Captain’s bus was stationed in Golden Gate Park and after the Scribe (then going under the moniker the Be-Bop kid-no more Scribe okay) introduced us and the Captain thought I was cool (and I thought he was as well) I was “on the bus.”              

A couple of weeks later the Captain was talking about taking a slow trip south to a place in La Jolla for the winter where he had a friend. The idea was that we would “house-sit” what turned out to be a mansion since that friend was one of the first serious high distribution drug dealers getting his product directly from south of the border only thirty or forty miles away in Tijuana.  We were all for it (me since every place was a new place for me in California and I was curious). It was on that trip as we headed toward Big Sur down the Pacific Coast Highway, a place called Todo el Mundo that I met Gail Harrington, Jewel Night Star.

We had stopped at a campsite where there was a party that was still going after about the six days before we got there so everybody was, using a term of art from those days “wasted.” I was grabbing a joint from somebody when this young woman came up to me and asked for a hit, for a “toke” for some grass. Her look. Well just check out the Botticelli Venus above that accompanies this piece and you get an idea. Tall, thin, hair braided, as was the style when a lot of young woman were on the road and didn’t want to, or couldn’t hassle with that daily chore to look beautiful stuff. Just as we guys grew our hair long and grew beards to avoid having the hassle of shaving. She had on a diaphanous kind of granny dress that showed her shape in detail. Nice. The granny dresses also a question of convenience and an expression that a woman’s shape was not as important as whether she was “cool” or not. But the best thing about her beyond being a Botticelli vision, a dream, what did I call it in the title to this piece. Yes, his 115^th dream, was that she was very friendly, and a little flirty, in a nice way unlike all the girls from North Adamsville that I knew who might be nice but who thought sex was a mortal sin before marriage, maybe ever.

At first I was a little disoriented when we hit Frisco and joined up with the bus since the girls were really without much guile friendly in a way that it was easier talking to them than the Bible between the knees girls I was used to. By the time we got to Todo el Mundo I had had a few dalliances, a few what we called back in the neighborhood, “one night stands” which didn’t go anywhere and nobody worried about it but I was still unsure about what to expect from the young women who were travelling that same “road” we were travelling. So I was kind of shy a little around Jewel at first since she struck me as something out of the Renaissance, something out a painting by Botticelli who before he “got religion” later in his life under the influence of Savonarola which I had seen in an art book when I was taking an art course in high school (and have been unable to find in recent Internet searches looking for that exact painting). They were mostly young countesses and merchants’ daughters who had time on their hands and whom Botticelli was interested in painting for profit and for a different look than the inevitable Holy Family, Jesus, religious paintings that were becoming overdone and passe. (I thought it was funny how many of his young women looked like Northern European women since I had a fixed idea of dark-eyed, dark haired, dark complexion Italian women who I saw at school or in the Little Italy neighborhood that started about ten blocks from the Irish-dominated Acre.)              

Well Jewel was not from Renaissance Italy but from Grand Rapids in Michigan. Had come west when she finished her first year at Michigan after she had heard one night on a date what the folk singer at the club she was attending talked about the music explosion going on out there. She had been out for several months and had headed south to Todo el Mundo when she thought things had gotten too weird in San Francisco. She had hitchhiked down with a guy who was heading further south to Los Angles but she was just then content to stay along the rugged rural coast for a while. Which she would have done for longer she said except when I asked to travel south on the bus she agreed. But that was a few weeks later.           

I suppose I have been somewhat beaten down in the women department because I had forgotten how easy to be with. Jewel was, I guess, thinking back she was one of those “flower children” that we kept hearing about. Meaning nothing more than she was whimsical, was relatively hassle-free and liked nothing better than to roam the hills around Todo el Mundo and the hardscrabble beaches in the area. With me in tow.  All of this may sound kind of simple-minded, kind of what is the big deal about his woman. But look at the look of Venus above, look at that faraway look and that twisting of her braids and you will get an idea of what Jewel was like. Look at Botticelli’s Venus eyes and you will see the same night star that I finally saw in Jewel’s.     

Like I said we stayed together more or less for most of that year I was out there until in the spring of 1968 Jewel said she was getting tired of the road and wanted to either settle down out in the desert, out in Joshua Tree where several communal groups were being formed or head back home to school. I didn’t like either idea although a few months later I would head back east to finish college. We agreed that our paths were going in different directions and one day she told me that she had purchased a bus ticket to Joshua Tree (actually when I went out there many years later Twenty-nine Palms the nearest bus stop then). The next day was the last day I saw her. Although we had agreed to keep in touch that like a lot of things in those days it never happened.  I wonder if she is still alive wherever she is if those eyes of hers still sparkle in a certain angle like a night star. I hope so.  

* The Baptism Of Fire- Norman Mailer's "St. George And The Godfather"

The Baptism Of Fire- Norman Mailer's "St. George And The Godfather"

Click on the headline to link to a "The New York Times" obituary for American writer Norman Mailer article, dated November 10, 2007.

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 Hemingway as the preeminent male American prose writer of the 20th century. 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 same 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 however also marked 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 20th 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 ultimately 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 that time , 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 between the two without necessarily drawing my political conclusion. In a couple of hundred pages on the campaign 1972 Mailer 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 is taking place, if slowly. If one seeks to find the genesis for the bad politics of this period then Norman Mailer’s take on these events, as exemplified in the conventional political process, bears close examination. That said, as I noted in the Miami review, and and which 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.

*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- THE ONCE AND FUTURE CZAR- And A Little Reality Check By Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's Chapter Four of his definitive "The History Of The Russian Revolution" entitled "The Tzar and The Tzarina". That is the reality check. Enough said.


COMMENTARY

THE LESSONS OF REVOLUTION



Recent news out of Moscow is interesting, at least from a historic point. Apparently a researcher into the matter has come up with what may be the bodies of Alexei, teenage son and heir of the Nicolas II, the last Czar of All the Russia, and one of his sisters. Others have claimed to have found Nicolas, Alexandra and the other daughters elsewhere. As should be well known the Bolsheviks near Yekaterinaburg in the Urals executed the Czar and his wife and family as the White Guards were approaching their positions in the course of the Russian Civil War in 1918. The question directed toward leftists today, and the subject of this commentary, revolves around the ‘justice’/military necessity of executing the Czar and his family.

Leon Trotsky, in his three volume History of the Russian Revolution, spent one pithy and knowledgeable chapter on the Czar and Czarina, their wilful ignorance and other character defects. That pitiless expose said it all. Others, more sympathetic to the Czar and his coterie, have made the same observations with perhaps a little less venom. Seemingly revolutionary times bring forth not only new ideas and passions from previously passive and submerged sources in the depths of society but bring forth particularly obtuse and clueless leaders. Trotsky noted a very close similarity between Charles I and his Queen Henrietta in 17th century England, Louis XV and Marie Antoinette in 18th century France and Nicholas and Alexandra in 20th century Russia. So be it. Lenin, among others, always claimed that the two conditions for revolution were that the old regime could not rule in the old way and that the bulk of society refused to be ruled in the old way. Early 20th century Russia merely confirms this point.

The real question, and the one that liberals and social democrats have cried over for years, is whether the Czar and his family should have been executed. This question goes back a long way, again to the time of Charles I the first serious political regicide in modern history. The long and short of it is that yes under conditions of civil war where the opponent is composed of many elements who literally want to return to the old, in this case, czarist system (or a close approximation) then the live symbol is too tempting to be left alive. Tactically, from a purely military perspective, with the Whites coming out of the East literally right behind the retreating Bolsheviks this seems a no-brainer.

It should be noted that Trotsky was not happy when he heard of the executions. Not of the fact of the executions, but that he would not be able to be the prosecutor in a show trial against the Czar. I do not think he cried many tears over it though; he was too busy desperately defending the shrinking Soviet territory against those self same imperial defenders. I have often argued that Oliver Cromwell and his associates did not spend nearly enough time trying to neutralize Charles I’s sons, the later Charles II and James II. Not out of a personal interest in bloodthirstiness but military necessity. However, my argument is tempered in that case by the fact that was when modern revolutions were young and our forbears did not know better this little truism- If you are going to overthrow the king you better be prepared to go all the way. The Bolsheviks did 'good'.

From The 10th Anniversary Archives-Sadly-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 21st 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, 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 as union organizing at Wal-Mart but to support one or another bourgeois electoral 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 should 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 movement brings that point home in gory detail. The gist of the article is that 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 in the 19th century. We need a labor leadership based on a program of labor independence and struggle for worker rights- and we need it damn soon.


THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

On The 80th Anniversary- The Lessons of Barcelona 1937 May Days:How The Popular Front Strangled The Spanish Revolution (Young Spartacus -May 1977)

On The 75th Anniversary- The Lessons of Barcelona 1937 May Days:How The Popular Front Strangled The Spanish Revolution-(Young Spartacus -May 1977)

liance with the Spanish "democratic" bourgeoisie.
Revolution is the crucible in which political programs and the parties of the working class face their acid test. Forty years ago, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, the politics of class collaboration took their toll— 'with vengeance. Under the blows of the Popular Front and its Stalinist henchmen the flower of the Spanish working class—the Catalan proletar­iat—was trampled. As the Spanish workers head for parliamentary elec­tions the bitter lessons of Barcelona must be brought to the fore for the new generation of proletarian militants-popular fronts mean workers blood'.

Struggle Against Francoism

The July 1936 military coup under the leadership of Francisco Franco came at the height of the largest strike wave in Spanish history. After the huge working-class vote in Feb­ruary 1936 for the popular-front coalition headed by the leader of the Republican Left, Manuel Azana, the government's arrest of strike leaders and the censorship of the working-class press discredited Azana in the eyes of the Spanish workers. Despite the participation of the Socialist and Communist parties (as well as the social-democratic UGT trade-union federation), the workers refused to entrust the government with the strug­gle against Franco and the fascists.

Franco's military revolt in Morocco triggered the massive mo­bilization of the Spanish proletariat. The bourgeois popular-front govern­ment, fearing the workers' response, first suppressed the news of the up­rising a full day and then urged that everyone be "calm." But the memories of the bloody suppression of the 1934 Asturian miners' insur­rection (which left 5,000 dead) at the hands of the "loyal Republican" army proved too vivid, and across Spain workers poured into the streets to demand arms for the fight against Franco—which Azana refused.

As garrison after garrison of the "democratic" army declared its loy­alty to the Rebel forces of Franco, local workers committees took the initiative. Beginning on July 19, mil­itant workers, often armed with no more than a few sticks of dynamite or a few aging handguns, stormed armories and barracks of the Re­public's army. Those garrisons loyal to Franco (the vast majority) were disbanded and their arms used to equip the rapidly organized workers militias,.

By the afternoon of July 20 Bar­celona, the Spanish citadel of revo­lution, was in the hands of the workers—unified under the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Mi­litias. Within days the military revolt had been smashed in two-thirds of Spain by the armed working class. As tens of thousands of initial vol­unteers were hastily dispatched to the front to stem the advance of the Francoist troops, the organized work­ers militias settled into control of the streets.

Dual Power in Republican Spain

Following the July workers' up­rising, Republican Spain entered into a revolutionary situation with two an­tagonistic poles of power: the bour­geois government and the armed workers militias. The working class patrolled the streets, organized the war effort and undertook the dis­arming of the army and the police— the latter were individually "volun­teered" for service at the front. Workers collectives managed the factories and agricultural production was taken over by the farm collectives (who significantly raised output).

Nonetheless, even though the un­stable Azana coalition lacked a sig­nificant social base—both Spanish capitalists and large landowners had for the most part deserted the! Republic in favor of Franco—the popular-front government remained the sole repository of bourgeois class rule in Republican Spain. Without even a significant armed force at its disposal, the few petty-lawyers of the Second Republic were indeed the "shadow of the bourgeoisie" (Trotsky). Their stay in power de­pended solely upon the determination of the bourgeois workers parties to uphold capitalist property relations. But the distrust and hatred of Pres­ident Azana was of such magnitude that the Stalinists and social-democrats were forced to withdraw from the government under working-class pressure.

As with Russia between February and October 1917 and Germany in '1918-1919, so in Spain the independent organs of the working class were in a position to challenge the bourgeois state for state power. In all three cases the tottering bourgeois state was propped up only by the par­ticipation of reformist workers parties—all of whose bases of support existed elsewhere: in Russia the Soviets, in Germany the workers' and soldiers' councils and in Spain the trade union federations.

Unlike Russia, however, dual pow­er in Spain existed only at the local or regional level. While workers mili­tias controlled the streets, the unified national organs of proletarian power, the Soviets or juntas, never crystal­lized. Lacking the intervention of a revolutionary party struggling to unite the working class Tor the seizure of state power—and ‘necessarily reject­ing any political collaboration with the bourgeoisie—the government of the "shadow bourgeoisie" remained the only national expression of the anti-Francoist forces. More than any other factor, this paved the way for Franco's march to power.

Revolutionary Catalonia

The locus of dual power par excellance was Catalonia—the center of 70 percent of pre-Civil War Spanish industry. The Catalan proletariat had long been the most militant in Spain, and land seizures and workers control of industry had begun long before Franco's uprising. Under wartime conditions, separated from the Basque metalwork’s industry, Catalonia was converted into the powerhouse of the Republic. The valiant workers col­lectives expanded the Catalan re­fineries, increased industrial pro­duction and built up a munitions industry and chemical works from scratch.

The workers militias also found their highest expression in Catalonia where they were centralized under the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias. The planned army takeover of Barcelona was decisively smashed and after July 20 the Catalan government was dependent upon the bureaucratic CNT (mass anarchist trade-union federation) leadership of the Central Committee for its con­tinued existence. Fully the equal of the PCE and the Socialists in terms of class collaboration the Anarchists of the CNT readily acceded, going so. far as to incorporate bourgeois forces^ in the leadership of the Anti-Fascist Militias.

While the Madrid government was rearranged—with PSOE leader Largo Caballero as prime minister and the PCE in the cabinet—the government of Catalan Left leader Luis Companys temporized and granted "official recognition" to workers' activities over which it did not even have the ves­tige of control. Unable to dispute the military prowess of the workers militias, Companys invited the CNT-FAI (the Anarchist trade union and party) and the POUM (the centrist Catalan-centered Workers Party of Marxist Unification, formed in 193E by the fusion of former Trotskyism leaders with the Workers and Peas­ants Bloc led by Joaquin Maurin) to enter the Generalitat—the Catalan government. Caballero alone could not shore up Companys; in Catalonia the CNT was the hegemonic force on the left.

Only the entry of the CNT into the Generalitat on 26 September 1936 could have sufficiently strengthened Companys for a counterrevolutionary mobilization. Behind the rejection of the crucial importance of state power—i.e., either bourgeois or pro­letarian—which had been the hallmark of the vulgar anarchist "theoreti­cians" for decades lay the oppor­tunism of the leaders. The abstract rejection of the state, the glorification of the producers' cooperatives emerging from the revolution as the culmination of the anarchist millennia, all gave way in September 1936 with the offer of ministerial portfolios. With the CNT and the POUM in the government Companys began to reinforce the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state. In October, only a month after the new coalition was formed, he disbanded the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Mil­itias and ordered the armed workers into the bourgeois "Popular Army." Later, in December the POUM's ser­vices were no longer required; and it found itself booted out of the coalition. In the meantime, the gov­ernment was amassing a force of 20,000 well-armed men in the previ­ously insignificant Carabineros—the customs police. Not only were these to be the shock troops of the Generalitat, but they laid the basis for the first direct challenge to the CNT (which had controlled the customs houses since July).

May Days in Barcelona

The strength of the Barcelona proletariat was exemplified by the red and black flags flying atop the Tele­phone Exchange. The Telef6nica, the most prominent building in central Barcelona, symbolized the seizure of industry and public services by the workers committees. Possession of the former AT&T building permitted the predominantly CNT workers oc­cupying the premises to monitor the .activities of the Generalitat—a small though real lever of control on the activities of the Companys camarilla. The confrontation that was to cen­ter on the Telefonica had been brewing for several weeks. The Carabineros had repeatedly tried to seize the customs houses .from the CNT. To­gether with the Assault Guards, the Carabineros had attacked workers patrols in Barcelona. And for the first time since the fall of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the government banned all demonstrations on May Day. Even more ominous was the murder of a dissident UGT leader (a member of the Catalan Communist Party, the PSUC, that controlled sections of the UGT in Catalonia) which the Stalinists used to marshal the forces of counterrev­olution. The PSUC turned the funeral for a slain workers’ leader into a three-and-a-half hour mobilization of police and government soldiers in the heart of the workers' districts,

The stage was set when on May 3 the Stalinist Commissar of Public Order, Rodriguez Salas, arrived at the Telefoinica with three truckloads of Assault Guards (riot police). Salas demanded that the workers permit the "normalization" of the situation—i.e., that they hand over the premises to the cops. After forcibly entering the building, Salas and the cops (including a CNT police functionary) were forced to take shelter on the ground floor by CNT machine gun fire from the floor above.

Word of the attack spread like wildfire. Within hours the city was engulfed in street barricades. Des­pite the buildup of the Generalitat forces, they were no match for the armed workers' patrols. By the end of the first day, the entire city save parts of the center was indisputably in the hands of the workers. By nightfall, street fighting had begun.

The barricades posed the fun­damental class question for every tendency on the left; particularly for those which had participated in the Popular Front. The Popular Front confronted the armed working mas­ses across the Barcelona barricades. At each barricade, with each shot fired, the class line was drawn with brutal clarity.

PCE: Spearhead of Counterrevolution

Without doubt the most despicable role during the May Days was played by the PCE. At the time of its entry into the Popular Front the PCE did not possess a solid base in the work­ing class—before fusing with the PSOE youth its membership was about 10,000. But Soviet military aid pro-vided the PCE an important lever to gain posts within-and to dictate terms to—the Republican forces However, the .real strength' of the -PCE. was its unswerving loyalty to bourgeois class rule. Throughout the popular-front period Stalinists the world over were beside themselves in demonstrating to the capitalist class their indispensability in sup­pressing the class struggle.

The PCE was the only working-class tendency willing to enter the Azana government in July of 1936 (during the Third Period the PCE had termed Azana a "fascist ")-but had been prevented from doing so by Caballero's adamant refusal to rejoin the coalition at that time. The PCE had resolutely opposed all nationali­zations, land seizures, factory occu
pations—in short, any incursions upon capitalist property relations. At a plenary session of the PCE Central Committee on 5 March 1937 Spanish Stalinist chief Jose' Diaz laid down the line bluntly:

"If in the beginning the various pre­mature attempts at 'socialization' and 'collectivization,' which were the re­sult of an unclear understanding of the character of the present struggle, might have been justified by the fact that the big landlords and manufac­turers had deserted their estates and factories and that it was necessary at all costs to continue production, now on the contrary they cannot be justified at all. At the present time, when there is a government of the Popular Front, in which all the forces engaged in the fight against fascism are represented, such things are not only not desirable, but absolutely im­permissible." [our emphasis] —Communist International, May 1937

But in tirading against the seething struggles of the Spanish toilers Diaz and the other PCE leaders were only parroting the anti-revolutionary line of the Kremlin bureaucracy. A few months earlier, in December 1936, Stalin dispatched a personal letter to Prime Minister Largo Caballero ad­vising him to conciliate "the middle and lower bourgeoisie... [by] pro­tecting them against confiscations" (reprinted in New York Times, 4 June 1939).

But most of all, the Stalinists pro­vided the rallying force for the at­tack on the Spanish labor movement. On 17 December 1936 Pravda laid out Stalinist policy with undisguised counterrevolutionary zeal:

"So far as Catalonia is concerned the cleaning up of the Trotskyist and Anarcho-Syndicalist elements has already begun, and it will be carried out with the same energy as in the U.S.S.R."

—quoted in Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth

Pravda's words rang all too true. PSUC commissar Salas directed the attack on the Telefonica and coordin­ated the attacks upon the workers militias. For the PSUC the barri­cades posed no problem whatsoever: their members were the only working-class tendency on the side of the Companys government. There could be no excesses in the rooting out of "Trotskyist" and "Anarcho-syndicalist" "Francoist agents"; and the hidden dungeons and torture cham­bers in the basements of PSUC-controlled police prefectures attest to this.

The Downfall of Spanish Anarchism

The May Days proved the undoing of the oldest current in the Spanish labor movement: Anarchism. The entry into the Catalan and Madrid governments had exposed the funda¬mental opportunism and class collaborationism of the CNT-FAI leader­ship. The May Days forced them to choose between their working-class base and the bourgeoisie; in the final analysis they chose the latter.

The CNT newspaper, Solidaridad Obrera, attempted to bury the news of the attack on the Telefonica; mean-while, the CNT-FAI leaders ma­neuvered to "negotiate" its surrender to the Generalitat. As the CNT ranks swelled the barricades and took con­trol of the city, the CNT-FAI issued a leaflet exhorting the workers to: "Put down your arms; embrace like brothers!

Victory will be ours if we unite; we shall be defeated if we fight among ourselves." —quoted in Grandizo Muniz, Jalones
de derrota; promesa de victoria. But the "we" included the first 1,500 Assault Guards sent by the central government (which had moved to Val­encia) to drown the workers in blood. The CNT-FAI sent its top leaders to Barcelona—to counsel "serenity" and abandoning the barricades. CNT National Secretary Marciano Vasquez, the Anarchist Minister of Justice Gar­cia Oliver ' and Federica Montseny (the "Pasionaria" of the CNT) has¬tened to Barcelona from Valencia-each one with the same message: surrender. As the cops streamed into the city Oliver, the most brazen among them, urged the workers, "Hold your , fire; embrace the Assault Guards!" (quoted in Muniz, op, cit.).

The Anarchist leaders faced no easy task. Clearly in command mili­tarily, the workers were ill disposed to surrender to the hated police and Stalinists. But without organized leadership and following the demoral­izing treachery of their leaders the workers drifted from the barricades. By May 6 the Generalitat controlled the city and reprisals were launched. Even the official CNT-FAI apologist was forced to admit:

"the overwhelming majority of the population were with the C.N.T. ... It would have been easy to attack the center of the city, had the re­sponsible committee so decided.... But the Regional Committee of the C.N.T. was opposed to it." —Augustin Souchy, The Tragic Week
in May

The barricades were finally aban­doned in exchange for the "promise" to "negotiate." 'With the barricades down, the police seized the Telefonica and rampaged through the working-class neighborhoods. However, the treachery of the CNT-FAI did not stop here. Again Souchy admits:
"Bad the workers in the outlying districts been informed immediately of this development, they would surely have insisted upon taking further measures and returned the attack."

Once again, Solidaridad Obrera sup­pressed the news.

The open capitulation of the An­archists fueled the courage of bour­geois reaction on the Republican side. Before the May conflagration Companys haughtily dismissed the largest workers party, predicting that its leadership "would capitulate as they always had before." After the May Days Jaime Miraltlles, a Catalan Left minister in the Generalitat, railed "in fact the Anarchists had committed suicide. By this uprising they had shown themselves incom­petent" (quoted in Robert Payne, The Civil War in Spain).
The actions of the CNT-FAI dur­ing the May Days, their refusal to take power and the desertion of their followers, was the logical outcome of their entry into the government. Writ­ing in December 1937, Trotsky sum­med up their role:

"In opposing the goal, the conquest of power, the Anarchists could not in the end fail to oppose the means, the revolution. The leaders of the CNT and FAI not only helped the bourgeoisie hold on to the shadow of power in July 1936; they also helped it to reestablish bit by bit what it had lost at one stroke. In May 1937, they sabotaged the up­rising of the workers and thereby saved the dictatorship of the bour­geoisie. Thus anarchism, which wished merely to be antipolitical, proved in reality to be antirevolutionary, and in the more critical moments—counterrevolutionary." —The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning

POUM vs. Trotskyism

The most tragic capitulation was that of the POUM. Up until mid-September 1936, the POUM stood op­posed to the Popular Front, at least in words. As the CNT entered into negotiations with the Generalitat, the POUM began to waver and on 18 September declared itself "willing to leave the question open." Eight 'days later POUM leader Andres Nin became Minister of Justice in a bourgeois government.

The entry of the POUM was a decisive confirmation of Trotsky's determined struggle against its for­mation. The fusion of Nin's followers, the majority of the Spanish Left Op­position, with Maurin came at the expense of programmatic capitulations on the questions of the popular front and Catalan nationalism. From its inception, the POUM gravitated into the left-wing orbit of the CNT and never presented itself as a de­termined competitor for leadership of the class. Thus, when the CNT opted for ministerial portfolios, the POUM meekly followed suit.

During the initial phase of the May Days the POUM played a de­cisive military role. As the largest organized force on the workers' bar­ricades, the POUM militias num­bered over 10,000, the POUM was in a unique position to channel the militant disillusionment with the treachery of the CNT tops into a con­certed struggle for the seizure of power. Instead the POUM carried its politics of centrist capitulation to its highest expression: it ordered its fol­lowers off the barricades. As the prol­etariat faced the onslaught of the police, the May 6 issue of La Batalla (the POUM newspaper) advised the workers to "leave the streets" and "return to work."
The Spanish Trotskyists along with a small left-wing anarchist group, the Friends of Durruti, were the only organizations to have called for the defense of the barricades and raise a program for the seizure of power. Despite their size, the Bolshevik-Leninist section of Spain (for the Fourth International) widely dis­tributed on the barricades the fol­lowing leaflet dated May 4:

"LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION­ARY OFFENSIVE

No compromise. Disarmament of the National Republican Guard and the reactionary Assault Guards. This is the decisive moment. Next time it will be too late. General strike in all the industries excepting those con­nected with the prosecution of the war, until the resignation of the reac­tionary government. Only proletarian power can assure military victory.

Complete arming of the working class. Long live unity of action of CNT-FAI-POUM.

Long live the revolutionary front of the proletariat.

Committees of revolutionary defense in the shops, factories, districts." —quoted in Felix Morrow, Revolution and Counterrevolution in Spain

Aftermath of the May Days

The May Days broke the back of the struggle against Franco. The Valencia government sent 6,000 As­sault Guards (equipped with Soviet arms and described by George Or­well as by far the best troops he'd seen in Spain) to smother the last embers of workers insurrection. When the fighting was over more than 500 had been killed, thousands wounded and the militias decisively defeated. Andres Nin and Left anar­chist leader Camillo Berneri—along with numerous other proletarian mili­tants—were murdered by the Stalinists. The POUM was outlawed and La Batalla banned; Solidaridad Obrera was censored; and Caballero •and the Anarchists were driven from the government. On 26 January 1939 Franco's troops marched into Barcel­ona; the resistance had long before been crushed.

An embittered George Orwell aptly summed up the nature of the "anti­fascist bourgeoisie's" war against Franco:

"A government which sends boys of fifteen to the front with rifles 40 years old and keeps its biggest men and newest weapons in the rear, is manifestly more afraid of the revolu­tion than of the fascists." —Homage to Catalonia

Barcelona was the purest expres­sion of the bourgeois character of the popular front. As the battle lines of the class struggle were drawn in blood, only the Trotskyist program offered the revolutionary proletariat the path leading to the seizure of power. The actions of the ostensible revolutionaries, from the POUM on the left to the Stalinists on the right, confirmed Trotsky's classic formulation:

"In reality, the People's Front is the main question of proletarian class strategy for this epoch. It also offers the best criterion for the difference between Bolshevism and Menshevism.... All the People's Fronts in Europe are only a pale copy and often a caricature of the Russian
People's Front of 1917 "
— Writings, 1935-36

Popular fronts are bourgeois poli­tical formations fundamentally counterposed to proletarian class inter­ests. The working class must give no support to popular fronts, not even voting for the workers parties within them. This is the lesson of the Pop­ular Front; two generations of the Spanish working class have borne the oppressive burden of Francoism as a result. But this lesson must be em­bodied in what Trotsky termed the three conditions for victory in Spain: the party, the party and once again the party. Forward to the building of a Trotskyist party in Spain, section of a reforged Fourth International.'

In The Matter Of The Centennial Of The Birth Of Film Actor, Noir Film Actor, Robert Mitchum (2017)

In The Matter Of The Centennial Of The Birth Of Film Actor, Noir Film Actor, Robert Mitchum (2017)

By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

[Due to the “controversy” between current film critic Sandy Salmon and his old-time friend and film critic emeritus I have been designated to write up this article based on notes that Sandy gave me and a perusal of Sam’s film review of Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer’s Out of the Past, the film that sparked the controversy. Site moderator Pete Markin agreed with that decision if for no other reason than to put an end to the bickering, his term. Here it is-Alden Riley]    

Film Editor Emeritus Sam Lowell is like something out of a film noir which he has always been fascinated by ever since he was a kid down in cranberry bog Carver south of Boston and would catch the Saturday matinee double-headers at the Bijou Theater (now long gone and replaced by a cinematic mega-plex out on Route 28 in one of the long line of strip malls which dot that road now). That fascination had a name, The Maltese Falcon, starring rugged chain-smoking tough guy Humphrey Bogart as a no nonsense, well almost no nonsense, private detective, who almost got skirt-crazy, almost got catch off guard by some vagrant jasmine scent from a femme over the matter of an extremely valuable bejeweled bird which the theater owner, Sean Riley, would occasionally play in a retrospective series that he ran to keep expenses down some weeks rather than take in the latest films from the studios.     

The reason that I, Sandy Salmon, current film critic at the American Left History blog and also at the on-line American Film Gazette can call the old curmudgeon Sam Lowell “something out of a film noir” is because once he decided to retire from the day to day hassle of reviewing a wide range of current and past films he contrived to get me to take his place on the blog along with my other by-line. That based on our years together as rivals and friends at the Gazette.  He did this “putting himself out to pasture” as he called it to the blog’s moderator, Peter Paul Markin, when he mentioned the subject of retirement with the proviso that he could contribute occasional “think” pieces as films or other events came up and curdled his interest. I had no particular objection to that arrangement since it is fairly standard in the media industry and is an arrangement that I would likewise want to take up in my soon to come retirement from the day to day grind. (To that end I am grooming an associate film critic Alden Riley for that eventuality.)

This business with Sam and his guest commentaries all came tumbling down on my head recently after he had read somewhere, maybe the Boston Globe, yes, I think it was that newspaper  that the centennial of the birth great actor, great film noir actor,  Robert Mitchum, was at hand. Without giving me a heads up he, Sam, decided that he wanted to do a “think” piece on this key noir figure and someone whose performances in things like Out Of The Past, Cape Fear, and Night Of The Hunter were the stuff of cinematic legend. But you see I wanted, once I became aware of the centennial, to write something to honor Mitchum although I have the modesty not to call it a “think” piece. My idea, as was Sam’s in the end, had been to write about that incredible role Mitchum played as a low key private eye in Out Of The Past against the dangers of a gun-addled femme. We resolved the dispute if you want to call it resolved by having “dueling” appreciations of that classic film. Sam’s potluck article has already been published and now I get my say. Enough said.          

I will say one thing for Sam although I would have noted it myself in any case that both our headlines speaks of a film noir actor although Micthum did many more types of films from goof stuff like the Grass Is Greener where he played some kind of rich oil man adrift in England and infatuated by some nobleman’s wife and Heaven Help Mr. Allison where he got all flirty with a fellow marooned nun to truly scary can’t go to sleep at night without a revolver under the pillow stuff like Cape Fear to the world weary, world wary former standup guy  pasty/fall guy in the film adaptation of  George V. Higgin’s The Friends Of Eddie Coyle. (That film a true Boston Irish Mafia classic complete with men only barroom scenes and a view of dank City Hall Plaza was the best novel Higgins wrote, wrote with a passion that his later work fell a little short on.) That said to my mind, as to Sam’s as well, his classic statement of his acting persona came in the great performance he did in Out Of The Past where between being in the gun sights of an angry gangster played by Kirk Douglas and the gun sights of a gun crazy femme played by Jane Greer he had more than enough to handle.

Yeah, if you think about it, think about other later non-goof, do it for the don’t go back to the “from hunger” days paycheck vehicles Mitchum starred in (he did something like one hundred plus films in his time plus some television work) that film kind of said it all about a big brawny barrel-chested guy who had been around the block awhile, had smoked a few thousand cigarettes while trying to figure out all the angles and still in the end got waylaid right between the eyes by that damn femme. All she had to do was call his name and he wilted like some silly schoolboy. I like a guy who likes to play with fire, likes to live on the edge a little but our boy got caught up badly by whatever that scent, maybe jasmine, maybe spring lilac but poison that he could never get out of his nostrils once she went into over-drive.

Sam in his review went out of his way to make Mitchum’s character, Jeff, let’s just call him Jeff since for safety reasons he had other aliases seemed like, well, seem like the typical “from hunger” guy who got wrapped up in a blanket with a dizzy dame and that his whole freaking life led to that fatal shot from that fatal gun from that femme fatale. She had a name, Kathie, nice and fresh and wholesome name but nothing but fire and fiery although Sam insisted that it could have been any one of a thousand dames as long as she had long legs, ruby red lips and was willing to mess up the sheets a bit. Yeah, Jeff as just another from nowhere guy who got caught between a rock and a hard place.      

No, a thousand time no. Robert Mitchum, ah, Jeff in those scenes has those big eyes wide open from the minute he hit Mexico, no, the minute he got the particulars from Whit, from his new employer of the moment, he was no fall guy but a guy playing out his hand, maybe well, maybe badly but playing the thing out just as he always had done since he was a kid. (Sam, maybe reflecting his own “from hunger” up-bringing in working class cranberry bog Carver if you look at his reviews of those luscious black and white films from the 1940s and 1950s that he feasted on always overplayed that fateful “from hunger” aspect of a male character’s persona, a failing to see beyond his own youth in many cases being his fatal error here)

As Sam would say here is the play, the right way to see Mitchum’s cool as ice character. Whit, a shady businessman, hell, call him by his right name, a gangster, a hood, played by cleft-chinned Kirk Douglas, a young Kirk just as Mitchum was young then too although he always seemed older whatever the role, wanted to hire Jeff (and by indirection his partner Fisher who will undercut him reminding me of that friction between Sam Spade and Miles Archer although Sam wound up doing right by his old partner. Fisher just bought the farm trying to move in on Jeff’s business) to find his girlfriend who left him high and dry minus a cool forty thousand and plus a little bullet hole as a reminder that not all women are on the level. The minute Jeff heard the particulars he was in, not for the dough, although dough is a good reason to take on a job in any profession including his, private detection, but to see what kind of dish ran away from a good-looking, rich guy with plenty of sex appeal and a place to keep her stuck in the good life. Sam missed the whole idea that Jeff already had a head of steam for this elusive Kathie before he went out the door of Whit’s mansion (Kathie or whatever her name really was played by sultry sexy, long-legged, ruby red-lipped ready for a few satin sheet tumbles Jane Greer).   

For a professional detective like Jeff Kathie was not hard to find, maybe intentionally if she had Whit figured out which I think she did, and you could palpably feel the tension as Jeff waited to meet his quarry. If you followed the way he was thinking, if you in this case followed the scent then you would have known that Jeff was no more a victim of some bad childhood that I was. Everything follows from that first prescient presence in that run-down wreak of a cantina down in sunny desperate Mexico and those first drinks between them. The sheets followed as night follows day as did the plans they had to flee from whatever dastardly deeds Whit would do once he knew that a real man had taken his pet away from him-without flinching. The key was the dodge Jeff, remember it was Jeff who led the misdirection when Whit showed up in sunny Mexico wondering what the fuck was going on. Jeff had them in Frisco town before you say goodbye. Nice work.          

Hey Jeff knew, knew as any man knew who had been wide awake after the age of thirteen knew, that his grip on Kathie unlike the later tryst with good girl Anne once he had to go into exile when Kathie flipped her wig, would only last as long as he could keep her interested. I will grant Sam this that maybe Jeff should have been a little more leery of what crazy moves Kathie could make when she was cornered, maybe should have thought through a little better why she put a slug in Whit just for the hell of it. But in his defense Jeff was playing his hand out and it was just too much bad luck that his old partner Fisher got on his trail as Whit’s new hound dog. Got on his trail, and hers, which she stopped cold when she put the rooty-toot-toot to Fisher. Then blew town leaving Jeff to pick up her mess.

Did Jeff call copper, did he go crying on his knees to Whit. No he went into exile waiting for the next move, waiting to see what Kathie would come up with next. He may have built him a nice little gas station business in Podunk, have gotten a dewy fresh maiden in Anne but anybody could see once he was exposed by one of Whit’s operatives passing through that little town he played his hand out to the very end. Went to see what was what including learning of Kathie’s opportunistic return to Whit’s embrace. And subsequently her return to his embrace. Of course such a course was bound to not turn out very well for anybody. Whit wasted by Kathie for the hell of it and then Jeff wasted by her as well once he knew the game was up. Don’t make though too much of that play at the very end when Anne asks Jeff’s deaf gas station employee whether he was really ready to leave everything Jeff and she had together for Kathie and the kid said yes. Yes with the implication that Jeff did the whole play to spare Anne. No, that is too pat. Jeff wanted to go with Kathie, wanted to play with fire, knew that the game was up and just didn’t care any longer as long as he was with Kathie. Couldn’t Sam see in Jeff, in Robert Mitchum’s, eyes that he didn’t care what she did, or what she didn’t do, that was the way it was between them. No fall guy there.

I don’t know about Sam but I am ready to move on to speak out about other major Mitchum films. I agree with Sam those payday check films in a career where he played in over one hundred are not worth blowing any smoke about but there are still plenty worthy of attention. More later. 

Boston Preview of Ken Burns / Lynn Novick film series on Vietnam - Sept. 6

8/24/2017 6:39 PM

VFP Smedley

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On Sept. 17 WGBH will start to air the Burns/ Novick 10 part documentary on the Vietnam War.  Locally, however, WGBH has scheduled a  one-hour preview of the series on Sept. 6 here in Boston that features Burns and Novick in person for a Q&A following the preview.  It's the first of many upcoming opportunities to make sure we do our best to set the record straight on why we went to war there in the first place and what really happened.  The Sept. 6 preview is at John Hancock Hall, 180 Berkeley St, Boston. 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.  The Q&A will be moderated by Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, hosts of  Boston Public Radio.  Admission is $15.00 and tickets can be purchased on line atwgbh.org/events.  We want to encourage all Smedleys who can to attend this preview.  We will be handing out copies of the Full Disclosure newspaper to attendees as they enter. We could use your help and would appreciate your letting us know if you're available to pitch in.  Please let us know by writing vfpsmedley@gmail.com.

 Veterans For Peace has developed a platform of resources that provide insights to the strengths and weaknesses of this documentary along with suggestions as to how we can get involved in various forums that will or should take place. Please see below, especially the Full Disclosure newspaper and the attached review by Thomas Bass - America's Amnesia.  These resources will sharpen and provoke memories of what we all experienced.     

The Vietnam War & Full Disclosure

In September 2017, PBS will air a documentary about the Vietnam War, directed by respected documentarians Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The goal of this 10-episode, 18-hour project is, according to the directors, to “create a film everyone could embrace” and to provide the viewer with information and insights that are “new and revelatory.” Just as importantly, they intend the film to provide the impetus and parameters for a much needed national conversation about this controversial and divisive period in American history.

The film will be accompanied by an unprecedented outreach and public engagement program, providing opportunities for communities to participate in a national conversation about what happened during the Vietnam War, what went wrong and what lessons are to be learned. In addition, there will be a robust interactive website and an educational initiative designed to engage teachers and students in multiple platforms.

The release of this documentary is an opportunity to seize the moment about telling the full story of the U.S war on Viet Nam.

What Can You Do?

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Want to Continue to Be Part of the Conversation?

 

Sign up to be on the "Full Disclosure" email list if you want to communicate with VFP activists around the country who are working on this.

 

To join the Vietnam Full Disclosure "google group" you must have a Google login. Once logged onto Google, go to: http://groups.google.com/group/vnfd and submit a request to join the group.

Alternatively, send a request to group manager Becky Luening at becky.pdx@gmail.com and she will directly add you to the group. After being subscribed, anyone can post to the group via the email address vnfd@googlegroups.com 

 

Get involved in this rare opportunity to get America talking about what really went down in Viet Nam!

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As We Approach The 80th Anniversary Of Barcelona 1937-From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal- The Spanish Left (1930s version)in its Own Words-The Programme of the POUM in 1936

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

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Markin comment:

There is no question that in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s the prime driving force was the working class of Catalonia, and within that province its capital, Barcelona, was the key hot-bed for revolutionary action. The role of Barcelona thus is somewhat analogous to that of Petrograd (later Leningrad) in the Russian revolution of 1917 and deserves special attention from those of us later revolutionaries trying to draw the lessons of the hard-bitten defeat of the Spanish revolution. All the parties of the left (Socialist Party, Communist Party, left bourgeois radicals, Catalan nationalists, Anarchists, various ostensible Trotskyists, the POUM, and non-party trade unionists) had militants there, and had myriad associated social and political organizations that drove the revolution forward in the early days before the working class surrendered its hard-fought gains to the bourgeoisie or in Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky’s memorable phrase, “the shadow of the bourgeoisie.”

That said, the May Days in Barcelona take added importance for those of us who believe that in the ebb and flow of revolution that the actions taken there by the various parties, or more pertinently, those actions not taken by some, particularly the POUM (and left-anarchists) sealed the fate of the revolution and the struggle against Franco. A description of the flow of the events, a fairly correct description of the events if not of the political conclusions to be drawn, in those days by a militant who was there, Hugo Oehler, is an important aid in understanding what went wrong.

Note: Hugo Oehler was noting but a pain in the butt for Jim Cannon and others in the United States who were trying to coalesce a Trotskyist party that might be able to affect events that were rapidly unrolling here in the heart of the Great Depression. Nevertheless Cannon praised Oehler as a very good and honest mass worker. That meant a lot coming from Cannon. One does not have to accept Oehler’s political conclusions to appreciate this document. Moreover, his point about trying to link up with the Friends of Durritti is an important point that every militant in Barcelona should have been pursuing to break the masses of anarchist workers from the CNT-FAI. Time ran out before these links could be made decisive. But that is a commentary for another day. Read this (and Orwell and Souchy as well) to get a flavor of what was missed in those May days.

additional Note On The POUM Program

The editorial comment above the programmatic points makes the correct criticisms of the "omissions" in the POUM program. I would add that another problem is the issues that are not raised, especially on the specific question of the right to national self-determination on the Spanish peninsula (and not just the question of a socialist federation of nations which is raised) and the very thorny and devastating one the colonial question, particularly on Spanish Morocco where Franco recruited heavily for his side.