This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Trying To Figure Out
What The Heck Is Going In A Film-A Case Study-Tom Cruise’s “The Last Samurai” (2003)
DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
The Last Samurai,
starring Tom Cruise, Ken Wantanabe, 2003
Usually in doing film
reviews I watch the film, alone or with my companion to compare notes after viewing,
and then write a draft review from scratch. I do not usually look at the now
many film reviews provided by such companies as Netflix and the like on the
Internet. (The best by far is still American
Film Gazette which started out as a hard copy magazine about seventy years
ago and went to on-line about ten years ago and has reviewed over fifty
thousand films in that time, many reviews classics in the genre like that publication’s
Sam Lowell’s extensive and inclusive film noir series from the 1970s which
defined the genre in the wave of the French New Wave which went crazy over the
1930s-1940s material) With the film
under review though I was perplexed as to what my hook would be so I looked at
some thoughtful and familiar reviewers I have known and trust (despite the
cutthroat nature of the business personally between reviewers who take no
prisonersthe reviews usually are spot
on) and found that they had missed the point or had gotten so caught up in the
action that they missed the real point which I will discuss in a minute after I
take a few of the views expressed to school.
Marlene Kalen, a
well-regarded reviewer and former colleague of Leslie Dumont now of this
publication at Women Today, seemed to
have dismissed the whole venture as just a violence-soaked way to put Tom
Cruise in a period piece (1870s Japan after the American Civil War when many of
the fighters of that war were free-booters, were ready and willing mercenaries
for whatever came up from training foreign armies in modern warfare to robbing
banks and trains a la the James gang and Cruise’s character, Captain Algren,
took a leap to the Orient for a private company working on behalf of the
Japanese government trying to modernize its army and put down a rebellion by
traditional samurai who were resisting those efforts). To Ms. Kalen Cruise,
along with Harrison Ford and the string of James Bond from Sean Connery on,
were hopped up on the male fantasy cave man taking on all comers to preserve,
well, preserve something. I have lost the figure, or it is not at hand but in a
film of some two and one-half hours Ms. Kalen noted over twenty separate
“battle, skirmish, fake battle” scenes including using children as foils for
the violence. While I might today have sided a bit with her general conclusion
about films, action films, which exist solely to keep people glued to their
respective seats in horror, fascination I think by modern standards, and given
the subject matter of the film which after all was about the demise of free
agent warrior culture in a country trying to modernize the film’s violence was
inherent in what was being produced.
Naturally if you want to
avoid talking endlessly about violence in modern films, and not so modern films
check out the gangster classics of the 1930s, then the next step is to fix on
the brotherhood, the multicultural brotherhood (Japanese and American) between
Captain Algren and the leading samurai, Kyoto, played by Ken Watanabe, around questions
of honor, valor, and service. That was the approach Lenny Lynch then of American Film Gazette took when he made
this out as one of the great buddy films in the tradition of Robert Redford and
the late Paul Newman where individuals who would not normally associate with
each other, would not normally interact in their respective occupations find a
serious bond by virtue of their common (maybe universal at least that was the
way Lenny broached the subject) regard for fellows who took honor, sacrifice
and expertise seriously. Maybe if Lenny had thought more about what he saw on
screen he would have seen that these two men in the end did not really
understand each other since Kyoto was trying to stave off the injurious effects
of modernization on Japanese society and Algren was barely more than a
well-paid, well-trained but vicious mercenary. A loner to boot.
A lot of people have
prattled on endlessly, Danny Lawrence, from Film
Today, for one about how the American Civil War was the harbinger of mass
military industrialization and that older values and occupation had to bow down
to what was coming, coming to America and to Japan and that to challenge that
was fool-hardly and unwise. Thus the Kyoto-Algren axis of the film was
misdirected and the railroad magnate Omura, and his agent Colonel
Bagley formerly of the Union Army as well, should have been held up as the model
of modernizers and agents of serious change whatever personal benefits they
would receive from such changes. The film according to Danny can be taken as a
cautionary tale about what happens to those who can’t keep up with social
changes and had to, should be left bury themselves in splendid isolation.
Action-faction, buddy-buddy
and holding the thumb in the dike may all have a place in a review of this film
but sometimes reviewers can’t see what is in front of them, can’t get out of
the way of their own shadows, can’t imagine the obvious as in this film. The key
here, maybe the only thing that gives this film any energy is the “boy meets
girl” aspect that none of the above reviewers had a clue about. (Remember I
told you the film review occupation is not for the faint-hearted, is more cutthroat
that any lawyers would dream possible and they consider themselves a pretty wild
lot when they get up a head of steam). Think about it. This Captain Algren, a
drunk, a stone-cold killer either while under orders or as a free-lancer, and a
guy you should hang on to your wallet when he is around is nowhere, is nothing
until his Japanese sweetie, Taka, whose husband he has off-handedly killed in battle
sobers him up, get him to take a bath, teaches him how the show works in Japan and
takes him in tow. Ms. Kalen may have counted up the number of violent acts
committed in the film but what about the more numerous significant glances between
Algren and Taka as the film rolls along. There will be problems as with any
pair who are from different cultures but Taka softened the rough edges off of
the good captain. The proof of what I say is obvious by the end of the film
when there is speculation about what happened to Captain Algren after the decisive
battle between Omura’s troops and the samurai warriors where Kyoto is killed
and the samurai legend extinguished except in lore and novels is done and his whereabouts
unknown. Does it really take a private detective like Phil Marlowe to figure out
he hightailed it back to his Taka. Like I have said elsewhere Hollywood has milked
this boy-girl theme a million times to good effect. Here as well.
Films to While Away The Class Struggle By-"Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story"- Leonard Peltier Must Not Die In Jail
Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin
DVD Review Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story, Leonard Peltier, various leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM), defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, witnesses and by-standers, directed by Michael Apted, 1991
Let’s start this review of this documentary of the incidents surrounding the case of Leonard Peltier at the end. Or at least the end of this documentary, 1991. Leonard Peltier, a well-known leader of the Native American movement, convicted of the 1975 murder, execution-style, of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota after he had been extradited from Canada in the wake of the acquittal of two other Pine Ridge residents. In an interview from federal prison in that period the then still relatively young Peltier related that after receiving his life sentences and being told by prison officials that that meant his release date would be in 2035 he stated that he hoped not, for he would then be an old, old man. Here is what should make everyone interested in the case, and everyone interested in the least sense of justice, even just bourgeois justice, blood boil, he is now an old sick man and he is still in jail for a crime that he did not commit, and certainly one that was not proven beyond that cherished “reasonable doubt”
This documentary, narrated by Robert Redford in his younger days as well, goes step by step through the case from the pre-murder period when Native Americans, catching the political consciousness crest begun in the 1960s by the black civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement, started organizing, mainly through the American Indian Movement (AIM), on the Indian reservations of the West, some of the most impoverished areas in all the Americas. The focal point of this militant organizing effort came in the war zone-showdown, the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973. The tension that hovered in the air in the aftermath of that war between the American government and its Indian agent supporters on one side, and the AIM-led “warrior nation” on the other is the setting for this incident at Ogala.
Through reenactment of the crime scene; eye witnesses, interested and disinterested, voluntary or coerced; defense strategies at both trials from self-defense to lack of physical evidence, and on appeal; the prosecution's case, its insufficient evidence, and it various maneuvers to inflame white juries against unpopular or misunderstood Native Americans in order to get someone convicted for the murders of one of their own; the devastating, but expected effect of the trials on the political organizing by AIM; and the stalwart and defiant demeanor of one Leonard Peltier all come though in this presentation. As a long time supporter of organizations that defend class-war prisoners, like Leonard Peltier, this film only makes that commitment even firmer. With that in mind- Free Leonard Peltier-He Must Not Die In Jail!
A Good Woman Is Hard To Find On His Mind-The Trials and Tribulations of Lance Lawrence
...yeah forever young
By Seth Garth
Sam Lowell had never seen anybody as skirt –crazy as his old friend Lance Lawrence, a guy that he had met in college, met at Boston University when by the luck the draw they became roommates freshman year and had remained in contact, sometimes with serious lapses of time, sometimes like now over forty years later almost daily. Day one freshman year they had hardly gotten their books from the bookstore when Lance had propositioned some young thing (his expression for the fair sex, for young women, okay, which he has used until this day even though who he is speaking or thinking of had lost the sweet bloom of youth long ago), Not only had propositioned her but had coaxed her (Sam’s gentile word for a lot more than some innocent coaxing) up into their dorm room on Bay State Road (leaving Sam, for the first but not the last hanging somewhere not in the dorm). That seduction, no, that coaxing a definite no-no in the hard-pressed later 1960s when freshman were supposed officially by the in locus parentis school authorities to be above such sexual desire and ways to relieve those desires. Nothing ever came of that indiscretion and like a million other Lance indiscretions for which he became something like campus famous never looked back, never thought such conduct was anything but the natural order. Lance’s natural order and if pressed today would probably wonder what the hell anybody was talking about, making a big deal about it as just the way he operated in his silver spoon world. And he had had since those fresh bloom days three, count them, three full-fledged divorces and a myriad of affairs to put paid to that sense of wonder like some Fitzgerald Dutchman looking for the first time at that fresh green breast of the Long Island of his deportee dreams.
No question Lance was a good-looking guy, a good-looking guy in that sly, wicked way that guys back in the day looked to the opposite sex and which no longer commands those longing loving looks from forlorn midnight sitting by the telephone young women who charted his life and theirs by their meaningful glances (nowadays by the way waiting almost anyplace by the cellphone). Tall, not too tall, lanky, a little wiry which meant don’t mess with him and which on occasion especially under drink was very good advice, a long tousle of dark black hair and bedroom eyes (that remark made Sam mad when girls, his date girls, would ask him who the guy with the bedroom blue eyes was with a slightly suggestive sexual emphasis that usually did rouse to his benefit later in the evening). So, yes, Lance was a piece of work. And although Lance had lost several steps in the aging process he still believed that he had what it took to get the now no longer young “mature” women who engaged his attention a quick tumble just like that first freshman day.
So yes skirt-crazy as ever. Skirt-crazy through those three marriages two which broke up due to that very chasing (the third, his first flighty one when he expected to be shipped out to Vietnam and had worried himself to perdition that he would die unsung, and unmarried, was due to her chasing some football player type while he was in Dear John Vietnam without a scratch on him except whatever heart bleed he secretly harbored against the “bitch”). Of late Lance had been momentarily down in the dumps due to the break-up of his latest affair, an affair with Minnie Murphy whom he had had an “affair” with, the gentile way that he put it to Sam one night over drinks at Sam’s favorite watering hole in Cambridge, Joey’s Grille, although they had been shacked up for at least a decade before she gave him his walking papers. The breakdown of the Lance crisis had not been that he had done his damnest to earn those walking papers by his ever-lasting philandering, which he had, or at least that went unspoken but you never knew with quiet Minnie, a habit of hers drilled in childhood by a drunken father who made it his business to shut his whole brood up. No, Lance was beside himself with the fact that he was lady-less, was without a companion after an almost endless string going back, well, going back to that first freshman wayward day. Had been alone almost a month at that point.
Lance at least in Sam’s presence had never before been known to be reflective about his romantic downturns so Sam was rather surprised when Lance mentioned how his inattention, his distance, his indifference to Minnie’s feelings and he self-absorption had left Minnie no choice but to flee the scene, to go on her own quiet quest to “find herself” without the tensions of having to bear whatever mood Lance was in at any given time. Sam should have known that such self-analysis was a “cover,” a convenient way to introduce some latest scheme to grab some skirt rather than own up to his boorishness with Minnie. (Sam, a victim of his own two divorces and scads of college-weighted kids always had a soft spot in his heart for Minnie, especially after one meaningful night when he half-drunk brought up the subject and Minnie, gently as was her way always, told him that she had some feelings that way toward him too but Lance was her man and that was that, damn Lance.)
What had Lance down in the dumps was his latest “search” for some skirt. See, as he told Sam that bleary self-confession barroom drinking night he had recently joined a senior-oriented in-line dating service, Seniors Please, and had been hard-pressed to find his niche, his place in such an off-hand way of meeting women, “mature” women but Sam knew in his mind Lance was working the same game plan he had used to floor women since he was about six. Lance, as long as Sam had seen him operate under all weathers, always depended on those piecing bedroom eyes and a gift of blarney that would make any honest Irishmen weep for their inadequacies. That meant that he would meet some woman at a bar or at work (or at a bookstore when that was in style and there were bookstores, brick and mortar bookstores, where women would congregate to get their weekly reading materials and as it turned out when he found out later lingering around to see if there were any prospective men within fifty miles of the place the idea being that a guy who at least read a book was a likely prospect. Yeah, the bar at a certain age was pretty low.). Then work his magic based on some chemistry between them or some lust (on her part as likely as his also something Lance had found out from experience).
This on-line dating business was ass-backward. You filled out a “profile” of rather simpleton and non-responsive questions, some bullshit prompted lines about what you were looking for (sex of course, not only the province of the young), and a decent photo. The hook though was when you placed your profile on-line and got a few bites you couldn’t respond because you were not a member of the service and had to pay the entry fee which Lance begrudgingly did. Once he did that he got very few responses that he was interested in (what he would later find was that there were benighted trolls, a blight on all social media sites and something he had never expected “cougars,” older women “stalking” younger men, that could be an eighty year old hunting for sixty year old, Jesus). The photo and bullshit written profile did not play to his strong suit, did not play to that chemistry. The old days were long gone when you met somebody live say at a party, clicked, and exchanged phone numbers (or went out to parked car if it was that kind of night). So what was an “active” man to do when there were no other obvious ways to meet women when there were none at work or in his profession, the law profession, in general who were around his age and were interested in anything but making partner, where the “meat market” bars were way behind him and where his hi-jinks in the art museum he was advised to go to in order to meet women only gave him a headache.
Lance made Sam laugh with some of the stuff he mentioned he had run into (out loud laugh because some of the situations were funny and secretly laugh that finally the playboy of the western world had been taken down a peg or two). That cougar older woman hunting young man business but also the way Lance talked about what women, seemingly rational and intelligent women, put on-line. The expected bullshit “profile” stuff about finding a soul-mate and eternal love but also some impossible stuff like seriousness, good manners, and gentlemanly behavior. Jesus, Lance told Sam what the hell did they expect from guys who probably had at least a passing acquaintance with the 1960s and looser styles and mores. But the photographs were the tip-off that Lance was in deep trouble. He could not believe that these same women who were looking for eternal love unabashedly put photographs of themselves with their broods of grandchildren in the lead photographs (although Lance loved his own brood of grandkids he hardly would advertise himself as grandpa of the year). Could not believe that they put amply photographs of their pets (sometimes looking cuter than their owners) among their selections. Had flipped out when one woman had a photograph of her big bruiser of an adult son who looked like a professional football player all surly beside his mother looking for all the world like he would bust some guy’s nose if he looked cross-eyed at his dear mother.
Lance went on with his funny descriptions until he and Sam had had enough to drink and decided to head for their respective homes. As they parted after going out the door Lance said to Sam that he had to go home and boot up the computer to see if greeklady123 or coolocean47 (on-line monikers that everybody assumed on site) had responded to his messages. Yeah, Lance was a skirt-crazy guy, no question.
Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access-What Every Young Woman Should Know
Frank Jackman comment:
One of the great struggles on college campuses during the height of the struggle against the Vietnam War back in the 1960s aside from trying to close down that war outright was the effort to get the various ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps, I think that is right way to say it) programs off campus. In a number of important campuses that effort was successful, although there has been back-sliding going on since the Vietnam War ended and like any successful anti-war or progressive action short of changing the way governments we could support do business is subject to constant attention or the bastards will sneak something in the back door.
To the extent that reintroduction of ROTC on college campuses has been thwarted, a very good anti-war action indeed which had made it just a smidgen harder to run ram shot over the world, that back door approach has been a two-pronged attack by the military branches to get their quota of recruits for their all-volunteer military services in the high schools. First to make very enticing offers to cash-strapped public school systems in order to introduce ROTC, junior version, particularly but not exclusively, urban high schools (for example almost all public high schools in Boston have some ROTC service branch in their buildings with instructors partially funded by the Defense Department and with union membership right and conditions a situation which should be opposed by teachers’ union members).
Secondly, thwarted at the college level for officer corps trainees they have just gone to younger and more impressible youth, since they have gained almost unlimited widespread access to high school student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do their nasty work. Not only do the recruiters who are graded on quota system and are under pressure produce X number of recruits or they could wind doing sentry guard duty in Kabul or Bagdad get that access where they have sold many young potential military personnel many false bills of goods but in many spots anti-war veterans and other who would provide a different perspective have been banned or otherwise harassed in their efforts.
Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of the high schools-military recruiters out as well! Let anti-war ex-soldiers, sailors, Marines and airpersons have their say.
An Encore -He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Jack Dawson was not sure when he had heard that the old long-bearded son of a bitch anarchist hell of a songwriter, hell of a story-teller Bruce “Utah” Phillips caught the westbound freight, caught that freight around 2007 he found out later a couple of years after he too had come off the bum this time from wife problems, divorce wife problems (that "westbound freight" by the way an expression from the hobo road to signify that a fellow traveler hobo, tramp, bum it did not matter then the distinctions that had seemed so important in the little class differences department when they were alive had passed on, had had his fill of train smoke and dreams and was readyto face whatever there was to face up in hobo heaven, no, the big rock candy mountain that some old geezer had written on some hard ass night when dreams were all he had to keep him company). That “Utah” moniker not taken by happenstance since Phillips struggled through the wilds of Utah on his long journey, played with a group called the Utah Valley boys, put up with, got through a million pounds of Mormon craziness and, frankly, wrote an extraordinary number of songs in his career by etching through the lore as he found it from all kinds of Mormon sources, including some of the dark pages, the ranch war stuff, the water stuff not the polygamy stuff which was nobody's business except the parties involved of those latter day saints.
For those who do not know the language of the road, not the young and carefree road taken for a couple of months during summer vacation or even a Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac-type more serious expedition under the influence of On The Road (what other travelogue of sorts would get the blood flowing to head out into the vast American Western night) and then back to the grind but the serious hobo “jungle” road like Jack Dawson had been on for several years before he sobered up after he came back from ‘Nam, came back all twisted and turned when he got discharged from the Army back in 1971 and could not adjust to the “real world” of his Carver upbringing in the East and had wound up drifting, drifting out to the West, hitting California and when that didn’t work out sort of ambled back east on the slow freight route through Utah taking the westbound freight meant for him originally passing to the great beyond, passing to a better place, passing to hard rock candy mountain in some versions here on earth before Black River Shorty clued him in.
Of course everybody thinks that if you wind up in Utah the whole thing is Mormon, and a lot of it is, no question, but when Jack hit Salt Lake City he had run into a guy singing in a park. A guy singing folk music stuff, labor songs, travelling blues stuff, the staple of the genre, that he had remembered that Sam Lowell from Carver High, from the same class year as him, had been crazy for back in the days when he would take his date and Jack and his date over to Harvard Square and they would listen to guys like that guy in the park singing in coffeehouses. Jack had not been crazy about the music then and some of the stuff the guy was singing seemed odd now too, still made him grind his teeth. but back then it either amounted to a cheap date, or the girl actually liked the stuff and so he went along with it.
So Jack, nothing better to do, sat in front of guy and listened. Listened more intently when the guy, who turned out to be Utah (who was using the moniker “Pirate Angel” then, as Jack was using "Daddy Two Cents" reflecting his financial condition or close to it, monikers a good thing on the road just in case the law, bill-collectors or ex-wives were trying to reach you and you did not want to reached), told the few bums, tramps and hoboes who were the natural residents of the park that if they wanted to get sober, if they wanted to turn things around a little that they were welcome, no questions asked, at the Joe Hill House. (No questions asked was right but everybody was expected to at least not tear the place up, which some nevertheless tried to do.) That Joe Hill whom the sobering up house was named after by the way was an old time immigrant anarchist who did something to rile the Latter Day Saints up because they threw he before a firing squad with no questions asked. Joe got the last line though, got it for eternity-“Don’t mourn (his death), organize!”
Jack, not knowing anybody, not being sober much, and maybe just a tad nostalgic for the old days when hearing bits of folk music was the least of his worries, went up to Utah and said he would appreciate the stay. And that was that. Although not quite “that was that” since Jack knew nothing about the guys who ran the place, didn’t know who Joe Hill was until later (although he suspected after he found out that Joe Hill had been a IWW organizer [Wobblie, Industrial Worker of the World] framed and executed in that very state of Utah that his old friend the late Peter Paul Markin who lived to have that kind of information in his head would have known. See this Joe Hill House unlike the Sallies (Salvation Army) where he would hustle a few days of peace was run by this Catholic Worker guy, Ammon Hennessey, who Utah told Jack had both sobered him up and made him some kind of anarchist although Jack was fuzzy on what that was all about. So Jack for about the tenth time tried to sober up, liquor sober up this time out in the great desert (later it would be drugs, mainly cocaine which almost ripped his nose off he was so into it that he needed sobering up from). And it took, took for a while.
Whatever had been eating at Jack kept fighting a battle inside of him and after a few months he was back on the bottle. But during that time at the Joe Hill House he got close to Utah, as close as he had gotten to anybody since ‘Nam, since his friendship with Jeff Crawford from up in Podunk Maine who saved his ass, and that of a couple of other guys in a nasty fire-fight when Charley (G.I. slang for the Viet Cong originally said in contempt but as the war dragged on in half-hearted admiration) decided he did indeed own the night in his own country. Got as close as he had to his corner boys like Sam Lowell from hometown Carver. Learned a lot about the lure of the road, of drink and drugs, of tough times (Utah had been in Korea) and he had felt bad after he fell off the wagon. But that was the way it was.
That was the last time that Jack saw Utah in person although he would keep up with his career as it moved along. Bought some records, later tapes, still later CDs just to help the brother out. In the age of the Internet he would sent occasional messages and Utah would reply. Then he heard Utah had taken very ill, heart trouble like he said long ago in the blaze of some midnight fire, would finally get the best of him. And then somewhat belatedly Jack found that Utah had passed on. The guy of all the guys he knew on the troubled hobo “jungle” road who knew what “starlight on the rails” meant to the wanderers he sang for had cashed his ticket. RIP, brother.
To Sin By Silence When We Should Protest Makes Cowards Out Of Men (Women Too)!-Build The Resistance!-Down With The Trump Government
By Political Commentator Frank Jackman
To Sin By Silence When We Should Protest Makes Cowards Out Of Men … (and I added women too)-lines from “Protest” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Usually when I want to grab a line or two from some poem it would more likely by from say Bertolt Brecht’s “To Those Born After,” Langston Hughes’ “Homage To John Brown” or Claude McKay’s “Let’s Us Die Like Men (and I would add women here again) and not some relatively obscure American poet but when the point is made so succinctly I could not resist using the damn thing as it disturbed my sleep one night
Ella Wheeler Wilcox whatever her vices or virtues as an American working the ways of the late 19th and early 20th century had it exactly right-had a mantra that we need to live by these dark days on the American frontier (the frontier not Harvard Professor Turner’s old idea about the closing of the frontier once you hit the Pacific Ocean with all its consequences for a restless people ever since but the outer edge of civil society). We must continue to resist the Trump government with whatever resources we have. And whatever hubris we can gather in to keep us from the storm that has gathered right on our doorsteps.
Most of us didn’t want this fight, the older ones of us thinking that maybe we could pass on under conditions of an armed truce with the imperial government. But then the cold civil war descended on us and we had to pick sides, those of us who see the necessity of picking sides when bans are in place, when walls are being built and when the rich, no, hell no, the super-rich have literally stepped up to besieged every social program that our people need to face the next day. And act. Act to build the resistance which these days looks like it will need to be on the order of the French Resistance in World War II.
Do you really want to bend your head down when the deal, the hell train coming, goes down and your kids, if you have kids, your grandkids if you have grandkids, or just your own conscience asks you what did you when it was time to speak up. Remember Ella had it right, right as rain.
Here is Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After" if you need further reason-
I
To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
II
You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:
Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.
Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.
And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.
*****Frank Jackman’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters of War In Mind
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Jack Callahan’s old friend from Sloan High School in Carver down in Southeastern Massachusetts Zack James (Zack short for Zachary not as is the fashion today to just name a baby Zack and be done with it) is an amateur writer and has been at it since he got out of high school. Found out that maybe by osmosis, something like that, the stuff Miss Enos taught him junior and senior years about literature and her favorite writers Hemingway, Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker to name a few, that she would entice the English class stuck with him with through college where although he majored in Political Science he was in thrall to the English literature courses that he snuck in to his schedule. Snuck in although Zack knew practically speaking he had a snowball’s chance in hell, an expression he had learned from Hemingway he thought,of making a career out of the literary life as a profession, would more likely wind driving a cab through dangerous midnight sections of town occasionally getting mugged for his night’s work. That Political Science major winding up producing about the same practical results as the literary life though. Stuck with him, savior stuck with him, through his tour of duty during the Vietnam War, and savior stayed with him through those tough years when he couldn’t quite get himself back to the “real” world after ‘Nam and let drugs and alcohol rule his life so that he wound up for some time as a “brother under the bridge” as Bruce Springsteen later put the situation in a song that he played continuously at times after he first heard it “Saigon, long gone…." Stuck with him after he recovered and started building up his sports supplies business, stuck with him through three happy/sad/savage/acrimonious “no go” marriages and a parcel of kids and child support.And was still sticking with him now that he had time to stretch out and write longer pieces, and beat away on the word processor a few million words on this and that.
Amateur writer meaning nothing more than that he liked to write and that writing was not his profession, that he did not depend on the pen for his livelihood(or rather more correctly these days not the pen but the word processor). That livelihood business was taken up running a small sports apparel store in a mall not far from Lexington (the Lexington of American revolutionary battles to give the correct own and state) where he now lived. Although he was not a professional writer his interest was such that he liked these days with Jimmy Shore, the famous ex-runner running the day to day operations of the store, to perform some of his written work in public at various “open mic” writing (and poetry) jams that have sprouted up in his area.
This “open mic” business was a familiar concept to Jack from the days back in the 1960s when he would go to such events in the coffeehouses around Harvard Square and Beacon Hill to hear amateur folk-singers perfect their acts and try to be recognized as the new voice of their generation, or something like that. For “no singing voice, no musical ear” Jack those were basically cheap date nights if the girl he was with was into folk music. The way most of the "open mics" although they probably called them talent searches then, worked was each performer would sign up to do one, two, maybe three songs depending on how long the list of those wishing to perform happened to be (the places where each performer kicked in a couple of bucks in order to play usually had shorter lists). These singers usually performed in the period in front of the night’s feature who very well might have been somebody who a few weeks before had been noticed by the owner during a pervious "open mic" and asked to do a set of six to sixteen songs depending on the night and the length of the list of players in front of him or her. The featured performer played, unlike the "open mic" people, for the “basket” (maybe a hat) passed around the crowd in the audience and that was the night’s “pay.” A tough racket for those starting out like all such endeavors. The attrition rate was pretty high after the folk minute died down with arrival of other genre like folk rock, heavy rock, and acid rock although you still see a few old folkies around the Square or playing the separate “open mic” folk circuit that also ran through church coffeehouses just like these writing jams.
Jack was not surprised then when Zack told him he would like him to come to hear him perform one of his works at the monthly third Thursday “open mic” at the Congregational Church in Arlington the next town over from Lexington. Zack told Jack that that night he was going to perform something he had written and thought on about Frank Jackman, about what had happened to Frank when he was in the Army during Vietnam War times.
Jack knew almost automatically what Zack was going to do, he would somehow use Bob Dylan’s Masters of War lyrics as part of his presentation. Jack and Zack ( a Vietnam veteran who got “religion” on the anti-war issue while he in the Army and became a fervent anti-war guy after that experience despite his personal problems) had met Frank in 1971 when they were doing some anti-war work among the soldiers at Fort Devens out in Ayer about forty miles west of Boston. Frank had gotten out of the Army several months before and since he was from Nashua in the southern part of New Hampshire not far from Devens and had heard about the G.I. coffeehouse, The Morning Report, where Jack and Zack were working as volunteers he had decided to volunteer to help out as well. Now Frank was a quiet guy, quieter than Jack and Zack anyway, but one night he had told his Army story to a small group of volunteers gathered in the main room of the coffeehouse as they were planning to distribute Daniel Ellsberg’s sensational whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various spots around the base (including as it turned out inside the fort itself with one copy landing on the commanding general’s desk for good measure). He wanted to tell this story since he wanted to explain why he would not be able to go with them if they went inside the gates at Fort Devens.
Jack knew Zack was going to tell Frank’s story so he told Frank he would be there since he had not heard the song or Frank’s story in a long while and had forgotten parts of it. Moreover Zack wanted Jack there for moral support since this night other than the recitation of the lyrics he was going to speak off the cuff rather than his usual reading from some prepared paper.
That night Zack was already in the hall talking to the organizer, Eli Walsh, you may have heard of him since he has written some searing poems about his time in three tours Iraq. Jack felt right at home in this basement section of the church and he probably could have walked around blind-folded since the writing jams were on almost exactly the same model as the old folkie “open mics.” A table as you entered to pay your admission this night three dollars (although the tradition is that no one is turned away for lack of funds) with a kindly woman asking if you intended to perform and direct you to the sign-up sheet if so. Another smaller table with various cookies, snacks, soda, water and glasses for those who wished to have such goodies, and who were asked to leave a donation in the jar on that table if possible. The set-up in the hall this night included a small stage where the performers would present their material slightly above the audience. On the stage a lectern for those who wished to use that for physical support or to read their work from and the ubiquitous simple battery-powered sound system complete with microphone. For the audience a bevy of chairs, mostly mismatched, mostly having seen plenty of use, and mostly uncomfortable. After paying his admission fee he went over to Zack to let him know he was in the audience. Zack told him he was number seven on the list so not to wander too far once the session had begun.
This is the way Zack told the story and why Jack knew there would be some reference to Bob Dylan’s Masters of War that night:
Hi everybody my name is Zack James and I am glad that you all came out this cold night to hear Preston Borden present his moving war poetry and the rest of us to reflect on the main subject of this month’s writing jam-the endless wars that the American government under whatever regime of late has dragged us into, us kicking and screaming to little avail. I want to thank Eli as always for setting this event up every month and for his own thoughtful war poetry. [Some polite applause.] But enough for thanks and all that because tonight I want to recite a poem, well, not really a poem, but lyrics to a song, to a Bob Dylan song, Masters of War, so it might very well be considered a poem in some sense.
You know sometimes, a lot of times, a song, lyrics, a poem for that matter bring back certain associations. You know some song you heard on the radio when you went on your first date, your first dance, your first kiss, stuff like that which is forever etched in your memory and evokes that moment every time you hear it thereafter. Now how this Dylan song came back to me recently is a story in itself.
You remember Eli back in October when we went up to Maine to help the Maine Veterans for Peace on their yearly peace walk that I ran into Susan Rich, the Quaker gal we met up in Freeport who walked with us that day to Portland. [Eli shouted out “yes.”] I had not seen Susan in about forty years before that day, hadn’t seen her since the times we had worked together building up support for anti-war G.I.s out at the Morning Report coffeehouse in Ayer outside Fort Devens up on Route 2 about thirty miles from here. That’s when we met Frank Jackman who is the real subject of my presentation tonight since he is the one who I think about when I think about that song, think about his story and how that song relates to it.
Funny as many Dylan songs as I knew Masters of War, written by Dylan in 1963 I had never heard until 1971. Never heard the lyrics until I met Frank out at Fort Devens where after I was discharged from the Army that year I went to do some volunteer anti-war G.I. work at the coffeehouse outside the base in Army town Ayer. Frank too was a volunteer, had heard about the place somehow I forget how, who had grown up in Nashua up in southern New Hampshire and after he was discharged from the Army down at Fort Dix in New Jersey came to volunteer just like me and my old friend Jack Callahan who is sitting in the audience tonight. Now Frank was a quiet guy didn’t talk much about his military service but he made the anti-war soldiers who hung out there at night and on weekends feel at ease. One night thought he felt some urge to tell his story, tell why he thought it was unwise for him to participate in an anti-war action we were planning around the base. We were going to pass out copies of Daniel Ellsberg’s explosive whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various location around the fort and as it turned out on the base. The reason that Frank had balked at the prospect of going into the fort was that as part of his discharge paperwork was attached a statement that he was never to go on a military installation again. We all were startled by that remark, right Jack? [Jack nods agreement.]
And that night the heroic, our kind of heroic, Frank Jackman told us about the hows and whys of his Army experience. Frank had been drafted like a ton of guys back then, like me, and had allowed himself to be drafted in 1968 at the age of nineteen not being vociferously anti-war and not being aware then of the option of not taking the subsequent induction. After about three week down at Fort Dix, the main basic training facility for trainees coming from the Northeast then, he knew two things-he had made a serious mistake by allowing himself to be drafted and come hell or high water he was not going to fight against people he had no quarrel with in Vietnam. Of course the rigors of basic training and being away from home, away from anybody who could help him do he knew not what then kept him quiet and just waiting. Once basic was over and he got his Advanced Infantry Training assignment also at Fort Dix which was to be an infantryman at a time when old Uncle Sam only wanted infantrymen in the rice paddles and jungles of Vietnam things came to a head.
After a few weeks in AIT he got a three day weekend pass which allowed him to go legally off the base and he used that time to come up to Boston, or really Cambridge because what he was looking for was help to file an conscientious objector application and he knew the Quakers were historically the ones who would know about going about that process. That is ironically where Susan Rich comes in again, although indirectly this time, since Frank went to the Meeting House on Brattle Street where they were doing draft and G.I. resistance counseling and Susan was a member of that Meeting although she had never met him at that time. He was advised by one of the Quaker counselors that he could submit a C.O. application in the military, which he had previously not been sure was possible since nobody told anybody anything about that in the military, when he got back to Fort Dix but just then, although they were better later, the odds were stacked against him since he had already accepted induction. So he went back, put in his application, took a lot of crap from the lifers and officers in his company after that and little support, mainly indifference, from his fellow trainees. He still had to go through the training, the infantry training though and although he had taken M-16 rifle training in basic he almost balked at continuing to fire weapons especially when it came to machine guns. He didn’t balk but in the end that was not a big deal since fairly shortly after that his C.O. application was rejected although almost all those who interviewed him in the process though he was “sincere” in his beliefs. That point becomes important later.
Frank, although he knew his chances of being discharged as a C.O. were slim since he had based his application on his Catholic upbringing and more general moral and ethical grounds. The Catholic Church which unlike Quakers and Mennonites and the like who were absolutely against war held to a just war theory, Vietnam being mainly a just war in the Catholic hierarchy’s opinion. But Frank was sincere, more importantly, he was determined to not got to war despite his hawkish family and his hometown friends’, some who had already served, served in Vietnam too, scorn and lack of support. So he went back up to Cambridge on another three day pass to get some advice, which he actually didn’t take in the end or rather only partially took up which had been to get a lawyer they would recommend and fight the C.O. denial in Federal court even though that was also still a long shot then.
Frank checked with the lawyer alright, Steve Brady, who had been radicalized by the war and was offering his services on a sliding scale basis to G.I.s since he also had the added virtue of having been in the JAG in the military and so knew some of the ropes of the military legal system, and legal action was taken but Frank was one of those old time avenging Jehovah types like John Brown or one of those guys and despite being a Catholic rather than a high holy Protestant which is the usual denomination for avenging angels decided to actively resist the military. And did it in fairly simple way when you think about it. One Monday morning when the whole of AIT was on the parade field for their weekly morning report ceremony Frank came out of his barracks with his civilian clothes on and carrying a handmade sign which read “Bring the Troops Home Now!” That sign was simply but his life got a lot more complicated after that. In the immediate sense that meant he was pulled down on the ground by two lifer sergeants and brought to the Provost Marshal’s office since they were not sure that some dippy-hippie from near-by New York City might be pulling a stunt. When they found out that he was a soldier they threw him into solitary in the stockade.
For his offenses Frank was given a special court-martial which meant he faced six month maximum sentence which a panel of officers at his court-martial ultimately sentenced him to after a seven day trial which Steve Brady did his best to try to make into an anti-war platform but given the limitation of courts for such actions was only partially successful. After that six months was up minus some good time Frank was assigned to a special dead-beat unit waiting further action either by the military or in the federal district court in New Jersey. Still in high Jehovah form the next Monday morning after he was released he went out to that same parade field in civilian clothes carrying another homemade sign “Bring The Troops Home Now!” and he was again manhandled by another pair of lifer sergeants and this time thrown directly into solitary in the stockade since they knew who they were dealing with by then. And again he was given a special court-martial and duly sentenced by another panel of military officers to the six months maximum.
Frank admitted at that point he was in a little despair at the notion that he might have to keep doing the same action over and over again for eternity. Well he wound up serving almost all of that second sex month sentence but then he got a break. That is where listening to the Quakers a little to get legal advice did help. See what Steve Brady, like I said an ex-World War II Army JAG officer turned anti-war activist lawyer, did was take the rejection of his C.O. application to Federal District Court in New Jersey on a writ of habeas corpus arguing that since all Army interviewers agreed Frank was “sincere” that it had been arbitrary and capricious of the Army to turn down his application. And given that the United States Supreme Court and some lower court decisions had by then had expanded who could be considered a C.O. beyond the historically recognized groupings and creeds the cranky judge in the lower court case agreed and granted that writ of habeas corpus. Frank was let out with an honorable discharge, ironically therefore entitled to all veteran’s benefits but with the stipulation that he never go onto a military base again under penalty of arrest and trial. Whether that could be enforced as a matter of course he said he did not want to test since he was hardily sick of military bases in any case.
So where does Bob Dylan’s Masters of War come into the picture. Well as you know, or should know every prisoner, every convicted prisoner, has the right to make a statement in his or her defense during the trial or at the sentencing phase. Frank at both his court-martials rose up and recited Bob Dylan’s Masters of War for the record. So for all eternity, or a while anyway, in some secret recess of the Army archives (and of the federal courts too) there is that defiant statement of a real hero of the Vietnam War. Nice right?
Here is what had those bloated military officers on Frank’s court-martial board seeing red and ready to swing him from the highest gallow, yeah, swing him high.
Masters Of War-Bob Dylan
Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin’ But build to destroy You play with my world Like it’s your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion As young people’s blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud
You’ve thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain’t worth the blood That runs in your veins
How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I’m young You might say I’m unlearned But there’s one thing I know Though I’m younger than you Even Jesus would never Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die And your death’ll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I’ll watch while you’re lowered Down to your deathbed And I’ll stand o’er your grave ’Til I’m sure that you’re dead
