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
Friday, April 26, 2013
ON COMING OF POLITICAL AGE-1960
COMMENTARY/BOOK REVIEW
THE PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS, NORMAN MAILER, VIKING, 1963
At one time, as with Ernest
Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that Norman Mailer wrote. In
his prime he held out promise to match Ernest as the preeminent male American
prose writer. Mailer certainly has the ambition, ego and skill to do so.
Although he wrote several good novels like The Deer Park in his time I believe
that his journalistic work, as he himself might partially admit, especially his
political, social and philosophical musings are what will insure his place in
the literary pantheon. With that in mind I recently re-read his work on the
1960 political campaign-the one that pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard M.
Nixon- that is the center of the book under review. There are other essays in
this work, some of merely passing topical value, but what remains of interest
today is a very perceptive analysis of the forces at work in that pivotal
election.Theodore White won his spurs
breaking down the mechanics of the campaign and made a niche for himself with
The Making of a President, 1960. Mailer in a few pithy articles gave the
overview of the personalities and the stakes involved for the America of that
time.
Needless to say the Kennedy
victory of that year has interest today mainly for the forces that it unleashed
in the base of society, especially, but not exclusively, among the youth. His
rather conventional bourgeois Cold War foreign policy and haphazard domestic
politics never transcended those of the New and Fair Deals of Roosevelt and
Truman but his style, his youth and his élan seemingly gave the go ahead to all
sorts of projects in order to ‘‘seek a newer world”. And we took him up on
this.This writer counted himself among
those youth who saw the potential to change the world. We also knew that if the
main villain of the age , one Richard Milhous Nixon, had been successful in
1960 as he graphically demonstrated when he later became president we would not
be seeing any new world but the same old, same old.
I had been eclectically interested
in politics from an early age. Names like the Rosenbergs, Joseph McCarthy,
Khrushchev and organizations like Americans for Democratic Action and the like
were familiar to me if not fully understood. I came of political age with the
1960 presidential campaign. Mailer addresses the malaise of American political
life during the stodgy Eisenhower years that created the opening for change-and
Kennedy and his superb organization rushed in. These chances, as a cursory
perusal of the last 40 odd years of bourgeois presidential politics makes
painfully clear, do not come often. The funny thing is that during most of 1960 I was actually ‘Madly for Adlai’, that
is I preferred Adlai Stevenson the twice defeated previous Democratic
candidate, but when the deal went down at the advanced age of 14 I walked door
to door talking up Kennedy. Of course, in Massachusetts that was not a big deal
but I still recall today that I had a very strong sense I did not want to be
left out of the new age ‘aborning’. That, my friends, in a small way is the start
of that slippery road to the ‘lesser evil’ practice that dominates American
politics and that took me a fairly long time to break with.
Mailer has some very cutting,
but true, remarks about the kind of people who populate the political milieu
down at the base of bourgeois politics, those who make it to the political
conventions. Except that today they are better dressed and more media savvy
nothing has changed. Why? Bourgeois politics, not being based on any fidelity
to program except as a throwaway, is all about winning (and fighting to keep on
winning). This does not bring out the better angels of our nature. For those
old enough to remember that little spark of youth that urged us on to seek that
newer world and for those too young to have acquired knowledge of anything but
the myth Mailer’s little book makes for interesting and well written reading.
From The American Left History Blog Archives (2006)
- On American Political Discourse
Markin comment:
In the period 2006-2009 I, in
vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American
presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed
election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the
event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious,
in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who
really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the
Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world
politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially
the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois
commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things
to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies,
the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for
a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some
of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.
************ LABOR DAY SCORECARD
2007
COMMENTARY
CONTINUING TOUGH
TIMES FOR THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT- AND THAT IS NO LIE
FORGET DONKEYS,
ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
This writer entered the blogosphere in February 2006 so this
is the second Labor Day scorecard giving his take on the condition of American
labor as we approach Labor Day. And it is not pretty. That, my brothers and
sisters, says it all. There was little strike action this year. The only
notable action was among the grossly overworked and underpaid naval
shipbuilders down in anti-union bastion Mississippi
in the spring and that hard fought fight was a draw, at best. Once again there
is little to report in the way of unionization to organize labor’s potential
strength. American workers continue to have a real decline in their paychecks.
The difference between survival and not for most working families is the two
job (or more) household. In short, the average family is working more hours to
make ends meet. Real inflation in energy and food costs has put many up against
the wall. Moreover the bust in the housing market has wrecked havoc on working
people as the most important asset in many a household has taken a beating. Once
again forget the Federal Reserve Bank’s definition of inflation- one fill up at
the pump confounds that noise. One does not have to be a Marxist economist to
know that something is desperately wrong when at the beginning of the 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, although certainly not the
only action necessary, to a turn-around for American labor is the unionization
of Wal-Mart and the South. The necessary class struggle politics that would
make such drives successful would act as a huge impetus for other areas of the
labor movement. This writer further argues that such struggles against such
vicious enemies as Wal-Mart can be the catalyst for the organization of a
workers party.Okay, okay let the writer
dream a little, won’t you? What has happened this year on this issue is that
more organizations have taken up the call for a boycott of Wal-Mart. That is
all to the good and must be supported by militant leftists but it is only a
very small beginning shot in the campaign (See archives, dated June 10, 2006).
National and local unions have taken monies from their coffers not for such a
worthy effort but to support one or another bourgeois candidate. Some things
never change.
*The issue of immigration has surfaced strongly again this
year, especially in presidential politics. Every militant leftist was
supportive of the past May Day actions of the vast immigrant communities to not
be pushed around, although one can also note that they were not nearly as
extensive as in 2006. Immigration is a labor issue and key to the struggle
against the race to the bottom. While May Day and other events were big moments
unless there are links to the greater labor movement this very promising
movement could fizzle. A central problem is the role of the Democratic Party
and the Catholic Church in the organizing effort.I will deal with this question at a latter
time but for now know this- these organizations are an obstruction to real
progress on the immigration issue. (See archives, dated May 1, 2006)
*If one needed one more example of why the American labor
movement is in the condition it is finds itself then yet another article this
summer by John Sweeney, punitive President of the AFL-CIO, and therefore one of
the titular heads of the organized labor brings that point home in gory detail.
The gist of the article is that the governmental agencies, like the National
Labor Relations Board, have over the years (and here he means in reality the
Bush years) bent over backwards to help the employers in their fight against
unionization. Well, John, surprise, surprise. Needless to say this year his
so-called friends in Congress were not able to pass simple legislation to
formally, at least, protect the right to unionization, the so-called employees’
bill of rights. That was a non-starter from the get-go.No militant
leftist, no forget that, no militant trade unionist has believed in the
impartiality of governmental boards, agencies, courts, etc. since about 1936.
Yes, that is right, since Roosevelt. Wake up.
Again this brings up the question of the leadership of the labor movement. And
I do not mean to turn it over to Andy Stein and his Change to Win
Coalition.We may be, as some theorists
imagine, a post-industrial society, but the conditions of labor seem more like
the classic age of rapacious capitalist accumulation.We need a labor leadership based on a program
of labor independence and struggle for worker rights- and we need it damn soon.
***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day
2013 Needs The Same Efforts
Boston's International Workers Day 2013
BMDC International Workers Day Rally Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM (Court St. & Cambridge St.) T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)
Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston) East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm
BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally
Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston
*******
All Out On May Day 2012: A Day Of
International Working Class Solidarity Actions- A Call To Action In Boston (And
Everywhere)
Click on the
headline to link to the <i>Boston May Day Coalition</i> website.
http://www.bostonmayday.org
All Out For May
1st-International Workers Day 2012!
Markin comment:
In late December
2011 the General Assembly (GA) of Occupy Los Angeles, in the aftermath of the
stirring and mostly successful November 2nd Oakland General Strike and December
12th West Coast Port Shutdown, issued a call for a national and international
general strike centered on immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a
moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. These and
other political issues such as supporting union organizing, building rank and
file committees in the unions, and defending union rights around hours, wages
and working conditions that have long been associated with the labor movement
internationally are to be featured in the actions set for May Day 2012.
May Day is the
historic international working class holiday that has been celebrated each year
in many parts of the world since the time of the heroic Haymarket Martyrs in
Chicago in 1886 and the struggle for the eight-hour work day. More recently it
has been a day when the hard-pressed immigrant communities here in America join
together in the fight against deportations and other discriminatory aspects of
governmental immigration policy. Given May Day’s origins it is high time that the hard-pressed American
working class begin to link up with its historic past and make this day its
day.
Political
activists here in Boston, some connected with Occupy Boston (OB) and others who
are independent or organizationally affiliated radicals, decided just after the
new year to support that general strike call and formed the General Strike
Occupy Boston working group (GSOB). The working group has met, more or less
weekly, since then to plan local May Day actions. The first step in that
process was to bring a resolution incorporating the Occupy Los Angeles issues
before the GA of Occupy Boston for approval. That resolution was approved by GA
OB on January 7, 2012.
********
OB
Endorses Call for General Strike
January 8th, 2012
• mhacker •
The following
proposal was passed by the General Assembly on Jan 7, 2012:
Occupy Boston
supports the call for an international General Strike on May 1, 2012, for
immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a moratorium on foreclosures,
an end to the wars, and jobs for all. We recognize housing, education, health
care, LGBT rights and racial equality as human rights; and thus call for the
building of a broad coalition that will ensure and promote a democratic
standard of living for all peoples.
******** Early discussions
within the working group centered on drawing the lessons of the West Coast
actions last fall. Above all what is and what isn’t a general strike.
Traditionally a general strike, as witness the recent actions in Greece and
other countries, is called by workers’ organizations and/or parties for a
specified period of time in order to shut down substantial parts of the
capitalist economy over some set of immediate demands. A close analysis of the
West Coast actions showed a slightly different model: one based on community
pickets of specified industrial targets, downtown mass street actions, and
scattered individual and collective acts of solidarity like student support
strikes and sick-outs. Additionally, small businesses and other allies were
asked to close and did close down in solidarity.
That latter model
seemed more appropriate to the tasks at hand in Boston given itsless than militant recent labor history and
that it is a regional financial, technological and educational hub rather than
an industrial center. Thus successful actions in Boston on May Day 2012 will
not necessarily exactly follow the long established radical and labor
traditions of the West Coast. Group discussions have since then reflected that
understanding. The focus will be on actions and activities that respond to and
reflect the Boston political situation as attempts are made to create,
re-create really, an on-going May Day tradition beyond the observance of the
day by labor radicals and the immigrant communities.
Over the past
several years, starting with the nation-wide actions in 2006, the Latin and
other immigrant communities in and around Boston have been celebrating May Day
as a day of action on the very pressing problem of immigration status as well
as the traditional working-class solidarity holiday. It was no accident that
Los Angeles, scene of massive pro-immigration rallies in the past and currently
one of the areas facing the brunt of the deportation drives by the Obama
administration, would be in the lead to call for national and international actions
this year. One of the first necessary steps for the working group therefore was
to try to reach out to the already existing Boston May Day Coalition (BMDC),
which has spearheaded the annual marches and rallies in the immigrant
communities, in order to learn of their experiences and to coordinate actions.
This was done as well in order to better coordinate this year’s more extensive
over-all May Day actions.
Taking a cue from
the developing May Day action movement in this country, especially the broader
and more inclusive messages coming out of some of the more vocal Occupy working
groups a consensus has formed around the theme of “May 1st- A Day Without The
Working Class And Its Allies” in order to highlight the fact that in the
capitalist system labor, of one kind or another, has created all the wealth but
has not shared in the accumulated profits.Highlighting the increasing economic gap between rich and poor, the
endemic massive political voiceless-ness of the vast majority, and social
issues related to race, class, sexual inequality, gender and the myriad other
oppressions the vast majority face under capitalism is in keeping with the
efforts initiated long ago by those who fought for the eight-hour day in the
late 1800s and later with the rise of the anarchist, socialist and communist
and organized trade union movements.
On May Day
working people and their allies are called to strike, skip work, walk out of
school, and refrain from shopping, banking and business in order to implement
the general slogan. Working people are encouraged to request the day off, or to
call in sick. Small businesses are encouraged to close for the day and join the
rest of the working class and its allies in the streets.
For students at
all levels the call is for a walk-out of classes. Further college students are
urged to occupy the universities. With a huge student population of over
250,000 in the Boston area no-one-size-fits- all strategy seems appropriate.
Each kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, college,
graduate school and wayward left-wing think tank should plan its own strike
actions and, at some point in the day all meet at a central location in
downtown Boston.
Tentatively
planned, as of this writing, for the
early hours on May 1st is for working people, students, oppressed minorities
and their supporters to converge on the Boston Financial District for a day of
direct action to demand an end to corporate rule and a shift of power to the
people. The Financial District Block Party is scheduled to start at 7:00 AM on
the corner of Federal Street & Franklin Street in downtown Boston. Banks
and corporations are strongly encouraged to close down for the day.
At noon there
will be a city permit-approved May Day rally to be addressed by a number of speakers
from different groups at Boston City Hall Plaza. Following the rally
participants are encouraged to head to East Boston for solidarity marches
centered on the immigrant communities that will start at approximately 2:00 PM
and move from East Boston, Chelsea, and Revere to Everett fora rally at 4:00 PM. Other activities that
afternoon for those who chose not to go to East Boston will be scheduled in and
around the downtown area.
That evening, for
those who cannot for whatever reasons participate in the daytime actions and
for any others who wish to do so, there will be a “Funeral March” for the banks
forming at 7:00 PM at Copley Square that steps off at 8:00 PM and will march
throughout the downtown area.
Pick up the
spirit of the general slogans for May 1st now- No work. No school.
No chores. No shopping. No banking. Let’s show the rulers that we have the
power. Let’s show the world what a day without working people and their allies producing
goods and services really means. And let’s return to the old traditions of May
Day as a day of international solidarity with our working and oppressed sisters
and brothers around the world. All Out For May Day 2012 in Boston!
***The Once And Future King-The Charles II Story
Book Review
Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration, Antonia Fraser, Delta Books, 1979
A number ofsocial and political observers, both academics like the old time sociologist of revolution Crane Brinton and activists like Leon Trotsky have noted that in the long cycle of great revolutions one of their defining characters is that the old regime, the old way, never really comes all the way back during the period of reaction. That was certainly the case in the English Revolution of the 17th century and the story here, the biography of Charles II by Antonia Fraser, throughout it four hundred plus pages demonstrates that idea in the person of the king restored to power after the revolution had run out of steam.
Ms. Fraser who has also written a biography of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell and other 17th century leaders, and so knows the period well, traces Charles II life from the early years when he was under his father’s tutelage, through his education to be a king, and then on to the historically important battles which formed the Civil War period during the 1640s when he fought to defeat the parliamentary armies as a military commander. She also details his place in the period of defeat for the monarchy, from the trial and execution of his father, Charles I, and Charles II’s subsequent attempts to defeat the Cromwell-led forces in Scotland and elsewhere militarily. That defeat which led to his famous escape and exile highlight the low period of his life.
The most serious, and compelling, part of the biography for the purposes of that above stated thesis about the old regime not returning in exactly the way, starts with Charles II return, his summons really, by Parliament soon after Cromwell’s death and a time when the revolution had run out ofsteam. The rest of the book essentially details the struggle between Parliament and king over the extent of his prerogative on issues from the king ‘s expenses, payments for his war policy, the question suppression of religious dissent, foreign relations especially with France and Holland,, and critically toward the end of his regime the questions of succession of the Stuart line against the strong Parliamentary position that there must be a Protestant succession ( his brother who would become king, James II, was a professed Catholic). The key here to understand is that while the king had certain powers he had to assent to various parliamentary maneuvers more so that under his grandfather and father’s regimes although there was a period when he ruled without Parliament at the end in the 1680s. She also cites the various anti-Popish plots, intrigues, and false moves around those times including the famous Rye House Plot that came very near to success.
Ms. Fraser also, as she must since he was decidedly a womanizer, details Charles II love affairs that also had political consequences once it was established that his wife, Queen Catherine, would not produce a legitimate heir. He nevertheless had many children by his wide assortment of mistresses including the most famous bastard, his son the Duke of Monmouth, who had pretensions to be king and acted on that premise when egged on by those forces, mainly opposition Whigs, who did not want to see James succeed Charles.
Finally Ms. Fraser spends a fair amount of time on Charles II various interests, including sports, the races, creating new palaces and parks, taking walks, and making and encouraging scientific experiments among his various kingly duties. She presents Charles, warts and all, as a charismatic positive character especially after the turmoil of the 1640s and 50s and the fitful start of plebeian republican movements under Cromwell and other Parliamentary defenders.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
From The American Left History Blog Archives (2006)
- On American Political Discourse
Markin comment:
In the period 2006-2009 I, in
vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American
presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed
election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the
event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious,
in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who
really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the
Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world
politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially
the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois
commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things
to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies,
the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for
a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some
of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.
************ ON THE PARALLELS BETWEEN VIETNAM AND IRAQ
COMMENTARY
IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM
IRAQ
As anyone who writes a
political blog probably has become aware of sometimes you get drawn into a discussion
that you really do not want to get involved in. Until very, very recently I
have tried to NOT draw parallels between the American experience in the Vietnam
War of my youth and the Iraq War of my old age. I broke that policy slightly
over the last couple of weeks in comparing the fate of Nguyen Diem in Vietnam
in 1963 and the possible fate of al-Maliki today in Iraq. In Diem’s case once
the Kennedy Administration got disenchanted with him coup planning time began
full time. Do not the tom toms out of Iraq drum that same siren song?
Strangely, one George W. Bush, the President of the United States, had until
very, very recently observed the same as I had not to draw parallels with
Vietnam, for his own reasons of course. Now that his Iraq policy is clearly on
the ropes he wants to invoke the supposed horrors of the ‘cut and run’ American
policy in Vietnam as a reason to not cut and run in Iraq. And that, dear
reader, is why a couple of brief comments are in order about those parallels.
Although the parallels
between Vietnam and Iraq have absolutely nothing to do with the overwhelming
American military capacity to return either society back to the Stone Age (as
the Americans almost succeeded in doing with their various bombing strategies
in Vietnam) it does have everything to do with the hubris behind that
assumption. Was there really a hell of a lot of different between the
assumptions of one War Secretary Robert McNamara and his “Whizz Kids” and one
War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his “Neo-Cons”?I think not. The military capacity to level
cities, either Hanoi or Fallujah, in order to create a security zone for the
government is a house of cards. Does anyone today think that once the American
troops either turn over military responsibly to the Iraqis or withdraw that the
situation will be stable? Hell, no. As in Vietnam the forces in play are just
waiting for the Americans leave to return. And seemingly, unlike Americans,
they are patient. If the American troops stay ten more years they will wait.
One only has to take a cursory glance at the history of the Vietnam conflict to
find that same phenomena. There was an apt old army expression for it- ‘the
night belongs to Charlie’ (the Viet Cong). In Iraq the night belongs to al-Sadr
and others.
American bourgeois
politicians have the seemingly willful capacity to refuse to learn the lessons
of history either from the European experiences or their own. We will forget
the little things like Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada, covert support to
the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and the not so covert aid in the contras in
Nicaragua. We will merely pass by Bush Senior’s little Iraq escapade. And this
writer would not dream of impinging on the liberal Clinton (Bill) air war against
Serbia over Kosovo. Hell, no body could learn lessons from those experiences
and no bourgeois politician needed to because these were essentially walk
overs. So it really is back to Vietnam if you want to see the full panoply of
imperialist hubris in action. And that is the point. The assumption is that the
time tables are determined to suit American conveniences and predilections.
Al-Maliki’s situation is a case in point. He has run as inept and corrupt crony
serving operation as Diem did in Vietnam. That he is a lapdog of American imperialism
is a given. However, he has to respond as every politician must to his base.
And that base is nationalistic and patriotic, as well as sectarian, and by its
own lights will do what it can to seem independent from the Americans. The
point is that to ‘cut and run’ now is the beginning of wisdom in order to cut
losses. That is just sensible. But since we know after five long years of war
that this administration is NOT sensible we had better keep fighting to build
those anti-war soldier and sailor solidarity committees and get those troop
transports revved up- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal from Iraq, come hell
or high water.
ON THE ROAD WITH CHE
DVD REVIEW
The Motorcycle Diaries, 2005
I have reviewed a biography of the life and works of the Latin American revolutionary (I think that is how he wanted to see himself) Ernesto “Che’ Guevara elsewhere in this space and make no bones about my admiration for his revolutionary skills and ardor while also noting my political differences. In a world that in 2007 is filled to the brim with fake ‘hero’ that youth are asked to emulate here is the real things. The film under review is a little difference take on Che’s life from a time before he became a world known revolutionary fighter and icon. Apparently this film is based on his diaries written while he and another footloose companion were traveling the highways and byways of Latin America on motorcycle, foot, boat, and cart or by any other mode of transportation that would move them to their objective. During that fateful trip middle class professional (doctor) Che has his eyes opened both to the geographic beauty of his continent but also the grim underside of life for the masses. We, unfortunately, are painfully aware of how that story ends in the hills of Bolivia literally pursuits by all of the security forces in the Western world.
Does this early life study of Che work? As a member of the Generation of ’68 I am very, very familiar with the wanderlust that drove many of my generation to seek salvation and companionship of kindred spirits on the roads of America and elsewhere. We rode those Volkswagen buses to the ground or we hitchhiked (nobody does that anymore, and unfortunately nobody should with all the weirdness out there on the mean roads of America these days).Che got the urge before Kerouac’s classic On the Road and we got it as a result. However that liberation from parental authority and the norms of bourgeois existence do not in themselves produce anything except an existential traveler. If one did not know that this was about Che then, while it was interesting, cinematicallybeautiful and the interplay between the two travelers was well-acted then it could have been about a fair percentage of the children of post-World War II generation. The missing link is the politics. Here it is hard to say that that on the basis of what was presented as ‘enlightening’ Che about the miseries of existence on his travels that he would be led to a revolutionary road. Yes, I know that to recruit people to revolution these days we will be dealing with bright, articulate, thoughtful, concerned liberals like Che in this period but I believe that the makers of this film took a dive on the politics. If they wanted to honor the memory of Che they did a disservice. If they, as I assume, wanted to ride the wave of a real icon for international youth then I have real political differences with their use of Che legacy.
***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day
2013 Needs The Same Efforts
Boston's International Workers Day 2013
BMDC International Workers Day Rally Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM (Court St. & Cambridge St.) T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)
Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston) East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm
BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally
Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston
*******
Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs
To Join The May Day 2012 Actions -This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our
Unions! - Defend The Working Class-Take The Offensive!-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
http://www.bostonmayday.org
Click on the headline to link to the <i>Boston May
Day Coalition</i> website to find out about actions planned in the
Greater Boston area. Google May Day and your city for actions in other locales.
Markin comment:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge
in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West
Coast activists back on December 12, 2011and the subsequent defense of the
longshoremen’sunionat Longview, Washington beating backthe anti-union drives by the bosses there. As
I have pointed out in remarks previously madeas part of the Boston solidarity rally with the West Coast Port Shutdown
on December 12th this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling
class for a very different, more equitable society.
Not everything has gone as well, or as well-attended, as
expected including at our rally in solidarity in Boston on that afternoon of
December 12th but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the struggle against
the bosses, including plenty of illusions or misunderstandings by many newly
radicalized militants about who our friends, and our enemies, are. Some of that
will get sorted out in the future as we get a better grip of the importance of
the labor movement to winning victories in our overall social struggles. May
Day can be the start of that new offensive in order to gain our demands
****** An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The
Labor Movement And Its Allies! Defend All Those Who Defend The Labor Movement!
Defend All May Day Protesters Everywhere! ****** <b>Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's
Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!</b> ******* Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community
Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 Actions-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises,
unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of
poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a
result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. Sound familiar? Words,
perhaps, taken from today’s global headlines? Well, yes. But these were also
the similar conditions that faced our forebears in America back in the 1880s
when the vicious ruling class was called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,”
and threatened, as one of their kind stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one
half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain
their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.
What did change then is that our forebears fought back,
fought back long and hard, starting with the fight connected with the Haymarket
Martyrs in 1886 for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day
celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May
Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate
grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the robber
barons of the 21st century.
No question over the past several years (really decades
but it is just more public and in our face now) American working people has
taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Starting with
massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors
(and jobs that are not coming back except as “race to the bottom” low wage,
two-tier jobs dividing younger workers from older workers), paying for the
seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and
corporations “too big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,”
effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, we pay), mountains of
consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and
college student loan debt as a lifetime deadweight around the neck of the kids
there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream”.
Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing
immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and women and the grievances voiced
in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it
is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will
continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable
future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the
time of our grandparents (or, for some of us, great-grandparents).
That is this condition will continue unless we take some
lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like demons, against the
ruling class that seems to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle
like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and
Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of
working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the ruling
class of that day by their front-man Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR) to shut
the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property.
The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take
(and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks
(up to a point as we have found out via the Occupy movement), and curse them to
eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits.
Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can
help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed,
homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from
under. All Out On May Day 2012.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our
Unions!
* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works
projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and
water systems, etc.)!
*End the endless wars- <b>Troops And Mercenaries
Out Of Afghanistan (and Iraq)!-U.S Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here
no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage
increases for all workers!
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher
education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No
transportation worker lay-offs! For free quality public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1,
2012 we will be organizing a wide-ranging series of mass collective
participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal
workplace organizations where there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing, where a strike is not possible,
to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out”.
*We will be organizing students from kindergarten to
graduate school and the off-hand left-wing think tank to walk-out of their
schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to
rally at a central location.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass
consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to
make purchases on that day.
Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial
Workers OfThe World, Wobblies) website
http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
Agree or disagree with the Wobblies and their political
concepts for winning the class struggle but read their very early statement
about the nature of class warfare. “Big Bill” Haywood and his crowd got it
right then and have useful words to say to us now. Read on.
Preamble to the IWW Constitution(1905)
Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor
The working class and the employing class have nothing in
common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class,
have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the
workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of
production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of
industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope
with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a
state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another
set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage
wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers
into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their
employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the
working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its
members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work
whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an
injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's
wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the
revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do
away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for
everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when
capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are
forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
Watch this website and other social media sites for
further specific details of events and actions.
All out on May Day 2012.
***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts
Boston's International Workers Day 2013
BMDC International Workers Day Rally Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM (Court St. & Cambridge St.) T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)
Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea) Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston) East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm
BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally
Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston
******* Uno de Mayo (Martes) En Boston !- Un Dia SinLos Obreros!-Huelga Generale!
***On War-For Those Who Come After-Fritz Taylor's View
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor RA048433691 to be exact, was still in a reflective mood a few days after he had made his way from home town Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the jut of land Christopher Columbus Park for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance). And while he was glad, glad as hell, and felt about ten feet tall for a while, that he had done so these observance memory trips triggered many old days Vietnam thoughts, too many sometimes. Although, mercifully, mercifully for his “sweet pea,” his better other, Lillian, not this time(he had named her that for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too).
This time his thoughts dwelt on an old comrade-in-arms from ‘Nam, Johnny Jakes, a buddy who had just recently passed away after a long struggle with about seven known medical complications, and about twelve unknown ones, including the mysterious war-frenzy disease (not carried by him, not quiet, unassuming Johnny Jakes, but caught from others, family others, Richard Nixon and his crowd others, VFW and American Legion others, back in the day, and now too for that matter, although the names of the frenzied have changed, if not the frenzy).
Yes, John Lee Jakes, Johnny Jakes out of nowhere Georgia (actually Dalton Junction but we will call it nowhere, okay), or a nowhere that Fritz, northern boy Fritz, had ever heard of, and from Johnny’s night stories, sometimes night barroom stories along the way, no where he needed to go. And as long as the two had known each other, and as many adventures, dead-ends, wrong roads, and, occasionally, a right road they had traveled together in a forty year friendship, through hot and cold friendship phases, he had never been there. And Johnny never pressed the issue, never pressed it after he told Fritz the rough outline details, the blood-stained, sweat-fermented, star-spangled details. And the story, the thoughtless rush to war, the hoopla three-ring circus, brass band blaring, waving off soldier boys at the station story, was not that unfamiliar then. Fritz had been caught up in a little quieter cousin of that same story. Fritz hoped against hope to high heaven that the story was uncommon now but he felt, felt deep in his war-scarred gut, that that was not true. But right now it is Johnny’s turn in the limelight. Speak, good god, quiet, unassuming Johnny Jakes speak, and maybe it will become an uncommon story:
“Jakes, and for that matter McKays (my mother’s side), have fought out of little nowhere Georgia in all of the American military adventures since back in Civil War times. Naturally that Civil War military adventure was under the auspices of the Confederate version of American military adventures but don’t tell me, my kin, my brethren, or any complete Southern stranger that it was a failed, flawed or any of that other yankee stuff about cloud-puff dreams for bad, or ugly, reasons. Let’s just say, so we stay even now, that we fought, that there was an honored tradition of fighting, and any odd-ball relative, male of course, our women don’t fight but stay at home and worry, who didn’t, well, I never heard about anyone like that so I don’t know what would have happened. We fought, some of us bled, and most of us grabbed a fist-full of medals along the way. And our womenfolk cheered us on, as we left for the world’s fronts at that still working little nowhere Georgia railroad station that took us to some god-forsaken military camp.
We mostly came back that same way, mostly okay but not all, and not my father, Jefferson Davis Jakes. See Jefferson Davis Jakes, before the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, was the king hell-raiser of Forsythe County, was known far and wide as such and was not known to back down from anything, anything any male, or female for that matter, put in his way. But little did anyone know, anyone in the public know, that old Jeff (that’s the name he liked to be called by in later life, by friend and foe alike, so I will use it here), was smitten by my mother, Doris McKay Jakes, so smitten that he had turned to putty in her hands. Not things that anyone, anyone in public anyway, would notice. All they would see is a king-hell-raiser and maybe a cut or other wound for their efforts, or the wise ones would cut a wide path away from his fury. But Doris had a spell over him, and he craved being with her, craved it more than anything, even being king hell-raiser of Forsythe County. Soft, and he knew it. So when those Jap bombs landed at Pearl and all Georgia thought it was William Tecumseh Sherman returned to burn the land and every red-blooded, hell, every any- blooded male, even black guys, were running to the railroad station to get signed up Jefferson Davis Jakes hesitated, hesitated just that minute, just that Doris McKay back home minute. Until Doris McKay, no squeamish damsel, and maybe with some vision of Scarlett O’Hara, pushed dad out the door- “Go now, and go fast.” And I will quote here, quote because I heard it about six times a year, at least, the first few years of growing up, “Kill every Jap you can get your hands on, and more if you can. And when you come back I will be a Jakes, and proudly.”
So naturally she and half the town show up at that nowhere train station to see the boys, including in the lead my father, off. And as such scenes go that is the nice, upbeat part. The not so up-beat part was that after almost four years of South Pacific war, relentless, heat-scrabbled, hell-underbrush and hard rock-scrabbled war on more nowhere islands than one would think possible as big as the Pacific is Jefferson Davis Jakes, Jakes fist-full of medals collected, some odd souvenirs of as many Japs as he could collect, and only a few small purple heart wounds he returned home, home to his ever-loving Doris McKay. They married, as Doris had promised, and they had four children, all boys, including number two, me, John Lee Jakes. Just a normal American post- World War II scenario.
Hold on; hold on just a minute, please. Jefferson Davis Jakes came home, and to the public eye, he seemed just like the pre-war king hell-raiser of Forsythe County. But on some nights, sometimes late at night, after a few hours of hard, hard drinking he would go up into the attic of the old-time Jakes home where we lived and begin to howl, howl like a wolf at the moon. And everyone around thought that was what it was. We knew better, or got to know better, especially Ma. This went on for a few years, every once in a while, but as time went on more frequently as such things do. And dad got quieter, more home quiet, although out in public he was still Jefferson Davis Jakes whose family had fought in this country’s battles since back in Civil War days. Then one night when I was eight he went up to the attic and we didn’t hear him howl like we expected. A few minutes later we heard a shot, one shot. They buried Jefferson Davis Jakes with full military honors down at our nowhere Georgia cemetery, believing the story we had concocted about his having interrupted an intruder and had accidentally discharged his old M-1. And that was the end of it.”
Fritz thought; well, not quite the end of it. Once nowhere Georgia heard about the commies in Vietnam in the 1960s every red-blooded male, hell, every any-blooded male, even black guys, headed down to the fading railroad station to sign up. Including quiet, unassuming John Lee Jakes, the late Johnny Jakes. But see Johnny had also hesitated, hesitated just that non-Jakes moment, just that Doris McKay Jakes moment. Until Doris McKay, still no squeamish damsel, and maybe still with some vision of Scarlett O’Hara, pushed Johnny out the door- “Go now, and go fast. Kill every gook you can get your hands on, and more if you can.”
*******
John Brown
John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore
His mama sure was proud of him!
He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all
His mama’s face broke out all in a grin
“Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine
You make me proud to know you hold a gun
Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get
And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home”
As that old train pulled out, John’s ma began to shout
Tellin’ ev’ryone in the neighborhood:
“That’s my son that’s about to go, he’s a soldier now, you know”
She made well sure her neighbors understood
She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile
As she showed them to the people from next door
And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun
And these things you called a good old-fashioned war
Oh! Good old-fashioned war!
Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come
They ceased to come for about ten months or more
Then a letter finally came saying,“Go down and meet the train
Your son’s a-coming home from the war”
She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around
But she could not see her soldier son in sight
But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last
When she did she could hardly believe her eyes
Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off
And he wore a metal brace around his waist
He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know
While she couldn’t even recognize his face!
Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face
“Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done
How is it you come to be this way?”
He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move
And the mother had to turn her face away
“Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud
You wasn’t there standing in my shoes”
“Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine”
Oh! Lord! Just like mine!
“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink
That I was just a puppet in a play
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke
And a cannonball blew my eyes away”
As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close