From The New Brothers Under The Bridge Series-The Iraq And Afghan War Brothers- Brother Jacob’s Last Stand  

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman:

A while back, maybe a couple of years ago now, I did a retrospective series of sketches about guys, about war veterans, Vietnam War veterans that I had started in the late 1970s and did not get a chance to complete since the publication that I was writing them for out in California, the East Bay Eye, like a lot of alternative media operations folded up as the 1960s went into a deep ebb tide and the audience went back to the professions, academia, and bourgeois politics. Those sketches centered on some groups of returning veterans who could not cope with the “real” world after Vietnam and build themselves an alternate “community” mostly down in Southern California and who by life’s circumstances got called the “brothers under the bridge.” Let me reproduce my motivation in part for that series because now for different reasons I am finding out stories about guys from the recent Iraq and Afghan occupations that also can’t cope with the “real” world and are forming, well, I don’t know exactly what they are forming but I damn well know it feels a lot like “brothers under the bridge.”:

“In the first installment of this series of sketches [Brothers Under The Bridge] space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town, California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy for fellow veterans since I had been in the military, grudgingly, during the Vietnam War period although not in combat were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and another down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who I had worked with after my own military service was over knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives on the Internet, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.

Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or got caught up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his whole blessed life pointed the other way…”

Now, after having recently as a favor to an old high school classmate tried to find his son, Jack, who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq and upon discharge got caught up in some stuff he could not handle, another generation of soldiers needs to be heard, need their stories told. In the old series I noted that I liked to finish up these introductions by placing the sketches under a particular sign; no question Brother Jacobs’s sign is the sign of the last stand.

This sketch is slightly different from the previous one about Private Jack Dawson’s private war where I knew many details about his life from his father, an old high school classmate of mine, and later Jack himself when I found him down in Southern California. In the case of Brother Jacob I only know what was presented in his memorial on the Chelsea Manning Support Network about his life. I do know this though that Brother Jacob automatically rates a nod (the old school days “nod” that signified that a guy who you did not know, was not one of your corner boys but who you maybe play some pick-up game against, maybe had in class was “cool”) for his early and fervent support for his fellow soldier, Chelsea Manning (formerly known as Bradley), who was in a heap of trouble with the American government and its military of which she was part for leaking lots of information about American atrocities in Iraq and other information that the government would rather not have us know about on the vital questions of war and peace.

Brother Jacob like many ex-soldiers, myself included, came to Chelsea’s aid once he got “religion” on what seven kinds of hell the American government was up to in Afghanistan (and Iraq). He was, as we in Veterans for Peace and other ex-soldier supporters, just following the old adage learned early on in basic training-you do not leave your buddy behind. And Brother Jacob and the rest of us will not leave Chelsea behind to face that thirty-five year sentence alone. Now we have his memory to honor as we continue our work. Let me place the comment from the Chelsea Manning Support Network here to fill in some of the information about Brother Jacob’s fate:                 

 Jacob David George (1982-2014)

September 22, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network

“I’m a bicycle ridin, banjo pickin, peace ramblin hillbilly from the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas!”



Jacob George at Fort Meade to protest to the court martial of Chelsea Manning, 6/1/13. Photo by Ward Reilly.

The Chelsea Manning Support Network is greatly saddened to learn the news of veteran and Manning supporter Jacob George’s passing.  Due to his years in service, Jacob suffered from various physical and mental injuries that he worked through with anti-war activism.  Jacob rallied for Chelsea Manning at Fort Meade, attended Chelsea’s court martial, and was one of the first people to rally to Chelsea’s defense in the days following her arrest in May 2010.

Jacob was a veteran of three combat tours in Afghanistan—Operation Enduring Freedom. To overcome those demons, Jacob cycled thousands of miles, “A Ride Till the End,” he called it, to promote peace and justice. He rallied fellow veterans to take political action. And he stood strong for military resisters–especially those who were prosecuted for refusing to do the things he himself had participated in.

Every day at least a dozen US military veterans take their own lives, with some estimates at over 22. In the end, these will far outnumber the fatalities on the far away battlefields. We are reminded that statistics are easy to live with, until the statistic strikes close to home.

We will likely never know why Jacob took his own life. He seemed to have done more than anyone to heal himself from the unseen physiological devastation of war. Today we simply remember an amazing individual whose contributions to our community go far beyond what words we can muster.

Donations to Jacob George’s Memorial Service:

https://www.everribbon.com/ribbon/view/18459

The Human Cost of War: IVAW Testimony

http://vimeo.com/66857895    

Many years ago, back in the 1970s, as I mentioned above I did a series of pieces for the now long defunct East Bay Eye on a group of Vietnam veterans who could not adjust to the “real world” after they got back from ‘Nam. They established what it would be fashionable to call today an “alternative community” adjacent to the railroad trestles, along the river beds, around the arroyos and under the bridges of Southern California. I had many more notes for sketches than were published before the paper went under which I found up in the attic of my garage a couple of years ago and which I have dusted off and have presented in this space under the title Brothers Under The Bridge, stealing the title from one of Bruce Springsteen’s songs that dealt with that same theme. The one thing that all the stories had in common was how hard it was for those guys to adjust to the “real world” and in the process of not doing so had exhibited all the pathologies that we have come to associate with guys who could not adjust. A few of those guys later when I investigated further had committed suicide, the great hush whisper of war-weariness from those who served. Now, as the notice and memorial piece above eloquently describes, in the case of Brother Jacob we have another generation of “brothers under the bridge” whose stories need to be told. If for no other reason today that to cry out to the heavens the demand on the part of anti-war veterans that should resonate loudly-Not Another War In Iraq or Syria! Free Chelsea Manning Now! Brother Jacob Presente!              

 

 

From The Labor History Archives -In The 80^th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis And Toledo General Strikes- Lessons In The History Of Class Struggle 

STRIKES!Library Exhibit
Seattle Strikes! 1919 and 1934

****

This exhibit highlights primary sources on two famous strikes in Seattle's history. Included are facsimiles of contemporary news accounts and headlines, ephemera, memoranda, meeting minutes, and photographs. Most items are from holdings of the University of Washington Libraries' Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives. A short visual version of the larger exhibit, which was displayed in the Libraries from March 4 to April 12 and the Seattle Labor Temple in July and August, is presented here.

1919 General Strike

Chronology of the Seattle General Strike On January 21, 1919 months after the end of World War I, the Metal Trades Council in Seattle's shipyards declared a strike over a wage dispute. The Seattle Central Labor Council voted two days later to join the metal workers in a sympathetic general strike of the entire city, involving over 130 unions and 60,000 workers. For four days in early February 1919, the Seattle labor establishment closed down the city and captured nation-wide attention in the first city-wide general strike in U. S. history. Politicians and newspapers in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the country interpreted the action as the beginning of a Bolshevik-style revolution. Journalist Anna Louise Strong's editorial for the labor-owned daily, the Seattle Union Record, unnerved citizens with its Marxist sentiments. It became the celebrated manifesto of the General Strike's radical mystique and launched Strong on her travel and writing career in the Soviet Union and in China. Seattle's labor leaders did advocate a radical-progressive agenda and many rank-and-file workers espoused some form of syndicalism -- the idea that people should participate democratically in decisions about work and production. But the General Strike of 1919 was largely a defensive action Workers and their unions struck to protect the economic, organizational, and political gains made during World War I. Business, particularly the shipyard owners, sought to curb labor's power, believing that it was too strong and that the city should "be run for the benefit of all the people, not a particular class."

Leaflets widely distributed in Seattle fed citizens' fears of an insurrection, like the Russian Revolution.

Minutes of the Seattle Central Labor Council show rank and file solidarity with the strike. Although the strike was called when the regular Council leaders were away in Chicago, they held the strike effort together on their return and disavowed affiliation with the radical IWW (Industrial Workers of the World).

Federal shipbuilding official Charles Piez resisted attempts to compromise on shipyard workers' demands. His telegram to employers (Metal Trades Association) was misdelivered to the Metal Trades Council, outraging workers.

Portion of statement issued by Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson probably on Saturday, February 8th, 1919. It was published in papers outside of Seattle only, although it was sent over the United Press wires from the office of the Seattle Star. "...The seat of government is the city hall. We swore in 1,000 extra police and hold in reserve citizens armed with rifles and shotguns. I gave orders to shoot on sight any disturbance of the peace. They knew from experience they had at a riot a few weeks ago that we meant business and believe me, we did. I wanted a showdown. If there is a majority of these (unprintable) in the United States I don't want to live here. They told me the troops were disloyal and would not help us. I told them that was a lie but even if it was so we would fight until we were dead before we even allowed them to turn out one eight-candlepower light..."

Because of his World War I record as chairman of the State Council of Defense, UW President Henry Suzzallo was tapped by the ill Governor Ernest Lister to join the State Attorney General, Vaughn Tanner, and act on the governor's behalf. This Regent Governor pair countered the demand of hotheaded Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson for martial law. They worked with local Army and Navy officials to transport unarmed soldiers and sailors-in public view-to the Seattle and Tacoma armories. No violence ensued, whether from this measure or from labor's own unarmed patrols. Hanson, however, took credit for suppressing a revolution and promoted his political career in a national speaking tour and in a book, Americanism versus Bolshevism, 1920.

The legacy of the Seattle General Strike is mixed. The unions demonstrated that they could not only halt production, but also maintain essential city services, such as health care, feeding the hungry, and caring for children and the elderly (the unions served between 20,000 and 30,000 meals a day in their kitchens). And Seattle workers were not alone; 1919 was a year of large-scale labor unrest. More than four million workers -- one out of every five -- participated in a strike that year. But in Seattle and around the country, business and civic leaders responded to this show of force with a "red scare" that turned public opinion against the demands of workers and justified the open violent repression of strikes.

---

1934 Waterfront Strike

After decades of organizing, reorganizing and failed strikes, longshore workers in ports from Seattle to San Diego hit the bricks once again on May 9, 1934. Longshoremen had joined the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) under President Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act, which gave workers the right to join unions of their choice and to bargain collectively. When shipping and stevedoring employers refused to bargain with the ILA the men struck. Intensive organizing began in spring 1934 with West Coast union representatives forming a federation of maritime workers to negotiate with employers coast-wide, rather than independently, port-by-port. That May, Joseph Ryan, the conservative New York based ILA leader, undermined the longshoremen by flying West to oppose industrial action. The rank and file, however, preferred to place their trust in young militants, headed by Harry Bridges, who had successfully revived the union in San Francisco. Bridges countered the conservative leadership by setting up a strike committee among the rank-and-file, transferring the authority to strike from corrupt leaders to the longshoremen themselves. President Roosevelt had intervened earlier in March, preventing a strike by establishing a fact-finding committee. But May brought the beginning of a coast-wide walkout, after the committee had failed to resolve the dispute. Longshore workers demanded a coast-wide contract, wage and hour improvements, an end to the speed-ups and the shape-ups, and the establishment of a union hiring hall. The longshoremen asked the Seattle Central Labor Council for a work stoppage by all union labor in the city. But Dave Beck and the Teamsters blocked a Labor Council vote at the end of May, and talk of a general strike died out. Together with Ryan, local Teamster boss Beck had urged Seattle strikers to secure their own deal with employers, but Puget Sound longshoremen maintained coast-wide solidarity. Employers transported strikebreakers by boat to their jobs in order to evade the picket lines that sealed off entry to the docks. At the University of Washington employers canvassed the fraternities, signing up over 100 students. University President, Hugo Winkenwerder and Dean of Men, Herbert Condon, objected vehemently to student strikebreaking and denied the companies docking privileges at the Oceanography wharf when they tried to pick up the students. In addition to student scabs employers recruited African Americans, whom they had used as strikebreakers since 1916. Though some worked as scabs early in the 1934 strike, many African Americans supported the union and joined the picket lines. In recognition of their significant support and the desire to end the use of African Americans as strikebreakers, the ILA opened its membership. The 1934 strike was a turning point in race relations among longshoremen. The situation intensified in Seattle following a series of failed negotiations and rising tensions during June. The violence of "Bloody Thursday" that accompanied the July 5 San Francisco General Strike was feared in Seattle as the number of waterfront picketers grew to 1,200. Seattle Mayor Charles Smith attempted to take decisive control of the situation. Assuming direct control of police, Smith ordered a series of raids on the headquarters of the Communist led Marine Workers Industrial Union, arresting 28 persons, a tactic reminiscent of the 1919 strike. Longshoremen led a counter-attack on police headquarters, and a violent conflict ensued at Smith's Cove on July 19, where 300 policemen armed with sub-machine guns tear-gassed strikers. One striker was killed by a tear-gas grenade and several others were seriously wounded. In this explosive atmosphere, the Waterfront Employers agreed to recognize the ILA on July 21 and arbitrate all outstanding issues with maritime unions if the longshoremen would accept arbitration. A coast-wide vote was taken among the ILA members on the question. Longshoremen in 17 coast ports voted 6,378 to 1,471 in favor of arbitration. Longshoremen returned to work on July 31. The strikers voted to submit the strike issues to arbitration, with Everett being the only port to oppose the strategy. In October, the award given on the most important issue, the hiring hall, established that "hiring of all longshoremen shall be through halls maintained and operated jointly," but "the dispatcher shall be selected by the International Longshoremen's Association." This was a major victory. The Tacoma local was exempted from this provision because its hall remained under full union control, setting the standard for the rest of the industry. The award also granted wage increases to 95 cents an hour straight time and $1.50 for overtime, a shorter week of thirty hours, and a six-hour day. The union had survived an 83-day strike after lying dormant for 14 years. In the words of a participant: "We had a new sense of our worth, of our power as workers. We instituted many of our own rules: strikebreakers were dismissed; if the load was too heavy it was sent back. The shopowners were only too eager to have their cargo moving again, so they went along with us."

****

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Starts ... Some Remembrances-Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky On The Anti-War Movement From War And The International   

 

The events leading up to World War I from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources to the supposedly eternal pledges by the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those parties in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20^th century history. The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20^th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine.

The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last war. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas. The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.

A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America Big Bill Haywood and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs, were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space. Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well as the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. So imagine in 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war.                   

Over the next period as we lead up to the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.     

THE ZIMMERWALD MANIFESTO [43]

Workers of Europe!

The war has lasted for more than a year. Millions of corpses lie upon the battlefields; millions of men have been crippled for life. Europe has become a gigantic human slaughter-house. All science, the work of many generations, is devoted to destruction. The most savage barbarity is celebrating its triumph over everything that was previously the pride of mankind.

Whatever may be the truth about the immediate responsibility for the outbreak of the war, one thing is certain: the war that has occasioned this chaos is the outcome of Imperialism, of the endeavours of the capitalist classes of every nation to satisfy their greed for profit by the exploitation of human labour and of the treasures of Nature.
Those nations which are economically backward or politically feeble are threatened with subjugation by the great Powers, which are attempting by blood and iron to change the map of the world in accordance with their exploiting interests. Whole peoples and countries, such as Belgium, Poland, the Balkan states, and Armenia, either as units or in sections, are menaced by annexation as booty in the bargaining for compensations.
As the war proceeds its real driving forces become apparent in all their baseness. Piece by piece the veil which has hidden the meaning of this world catastrophe from the understanding of the peoples is falling down. In every country the Capitalists who forge the gold of war profits from the blood of the people are declaring that the war is for national defence, democracy, and the liberation of oppressed nationalities. THEY LIE.
In reality they are actually burying on the fields of devastation the liberties of their own peoples, together with the independence of other nations. New fetters, new chains, new burdens are being brought into existence, and the workers of all countries, of the victorious as well as of the vanquished, will have to bear them. To raise civilization to a higher level was the aim announced at the beginning of the war: misery and privation, unemployment and want, underfeeding and disease are the actual results. For decades and decades to come the cost of the war will devour the strength of the peoples, imperil the work of social reform and hamper every step on the path of progress.
Intellectual and moral desolation, economic disaster, political reaction – such are the blessings of this horrible struggle between the nations.
Thus does the war unveil the naked form of modern Capitalism, which has become irreconcilable, not only with the interests of the working masses, not only With the circumstances of historic development, but even with the first conditions of human communal existence.
The ruling forces of Capitalist society, in whose hands were the destinies of the nations, the monarchical and the Republican Governments, secret diplomacy, the vast employers’ organizations, the middle-class parties, the Capitalist Press, the Church – all these forces must bear the full weight of responsibility for this war, which has been produced by the social order nourishing them and protecting them and which is being carried on for the sake of their interests.

Workers!

Exploited, deprived of your rights, despised – you were recognized as brothers and comrades at the outbreak of the war before you were summoned to march to the shambles, to death. And now, when militarism has crippled, lacerated, degraded, and destroyed you, the rulers are demanding from you the abandonment of your interests, of your aims, of your ideals – in a word, slavish submission to the “national truce.” You are prevented from expressing your views, your feelings, your pain; you are not allowed to put forth your demands and to fight for them. The press is muzzled, political rights and liberties are trampled upon – thus is military dictatorship ruling today with the iron hand.

We cannot, we dare not, any longer remain inactive in the presence of a state of things that is menacing the whole future of Europe and of mankind. For many decades the Socialist working class has carried on the struggle against militarism. With growing anxiety its representatives at their national and international conferences have devoted themselves to the war peril, the outcome of an Imperialism which was becoming more and more menacing. At Stuttgart, Copenhagen, and Basle the International Socialist Congresses indicated the path that the workers should follow. [44]
But we Socialist Parties and working-class organizations which had taken part in determining this path have since the outbreak of war disregarded the obligations that followed therefrom. Their representatives have invited the workers to suspend the working class struggle, the only possible and effective means of working class emancipation. They have voted the ruling classes the credits for carrying on the war. They have put themselves at the disposal of their Governments for the most varied services. They have tried through their press and their envoys to win over the neutrals to the Government policies of their respective countries. They have given to their Government Socialist Ministers as hostages for the observance of the national truce, and thus have taken on themselves the responsibility for this war, its aims, its methods. And just as Socialist Parties failed separately, so did the most responsible representative of the Socialists of all countries fail: the International Socialist Bureau. [45]
These facts constitute one of the reasons why the international working-class movement, even where sections of it did not fall a victim to the national panic of the first period of the war, or where it rose above it, has failed, even now, in the second year of the butchering of nations, to take up simultaneously in all countries an active struggle for peace.
In this intolerable situation we have met together, we representatives of Socialist Parties of Trade Unions, or of minorities of them, we Germans, French, Italians, Russians, Poles, Letts, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Swedes, Norwegians, Dutch and Swiss, we who are standing on the ground, not of national solidarity with the exploiting class, but of the international solidarity of the workers and the working-class struggle. We have met together in order to join anew the broken ties of international relations and to summon the working class to reorganize and begin the struggle for peace.
This struggle is also the struggle for liberty, for Brotherhood of nations, for Socialism. The task is to take up this fight for peace for a peace without annexations or war indemnities. Such a peace is only possible when every thought of violating the rights and liberties of the nations is condemned. There must be no enforced incorporation either of wholly or partly occupied countries. No annexations, either open or masked, no forced economic union, made still more intolerable by the suppression of political rights. The right of nations to select their own government must be the immovable fundamental principle of international relations.

Organized Workers!

Since the outbreak of the war you have put your energies, your courage, your steadfastness at the service of the ruling classes. Now the task is to enter the lists for your own cause, for the sacred aims of Socialism, for the salvation of the oppressed nations and the enslaved classes, by means of the irreconcilable working-class struggle.

It is the task and the duty of the Socialists of the belligerent countries to begin this struggle with all their power. It is the task and duty of the Socialists of the neutral countries to support their brothers by all effective means in this fight against bloody barbarity.
Never in the history of the world has there been a more urgent, a more noble, a more sublime task, the fulfilment of which must be our common work. No sacrifice is too great, no burden too heavy, to attain this end: the establishment of peace between the nations.
Working men and women! Mothers and fathers! Widows and orphans! Wounded and crippled! To all who are suffering from the war or in consequence of the war, we cry out over the frontiers, over the smoking battlefields, over the devastated cities and hamlets:

“Workers of all countries unite”

In the name of the International Socialist Conference:

For the German Delegation: George Ledebour, Adolph Hoffman

For the French Delegation: A. Merrheim, Bourderon

For the Italian Delegation: G. E. Modigijani, Consanino Lazzari

For the Russian Delegation: N. Lenin, Paul Axeirod, M. Bobrov

For the Polish Delegation: St. Lapinski, A. Warski, Cz. (Jacob) Hanecki

For the Inter-Balkan Socialist Federation:

(For the Rumanian Delegation) G. Rakovsky

(For the Bulgarian Delegation) Vasil Kolaro.

For the Swedish and Norwegian Delegation: Z. Hoglund, Ture Nerman.

For the Dutch Delegation: H. Roland-Holst.

For the Swiss Delegation: Robert Grimm.

September 1915.

***After The Folk Minute Of The 1960s Faded- Keeping The Tradition Alive- The UU (Universalist-Unitarian) Folk Circuit

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I have spilled no little cyber-ink talking about one of the formative experiences of my young adulthood, the folk minute of the early 1960s which was ultimately dethroned, if that is the right word, by the British Invasion (the Beatles, the Stones, you know all those muppet guys your mother, looking at your hair, said needed a haircut but more importantly your girlfriend thought were “cute,”) a little by the rising Motown sound (all those great girl groups, you know The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, The Miracles and on and on listening to stuff that was not old time black country blues or even Chicago-etched electric blues but a more sophisticated sound that even your mother could like since they were earnest clean-cut boys and girls), and the sweep in of acid rock later in that decade  (your mother then wishing and praying for the muppet boys to come back, since looking again right at your hair, Jerry Garcia, Jim Morrison, Neal Young, and all those hippie bastards needed a haircut badly but more importantly your girlfriend, your new girlfriend thought were “groovy”).

That minute the time of the great interest in old timey roots music from down home Mississippi Delta country blues (and the “discovery” of John Hurt, Son House, Bukka White, Skip James and that old juke joint Saturday swig of liquor and a good woman gone wrong with some other guy and wouldn’t you like to cut him lyric) to jug bands (Memphis Jug Band, Cannon Stompers, name your state Shieks who an important section of the folk scene gravitated to with the likes of John Sebastian, Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, and Jim Kweskin forming and re-forming bands depending on who had a fast jug and a sweetbread kazoo) to mountain music (the music strangely enough of the old country for those hollows and hills folks who stayed put when the others deflowered the land and headed west to deflower other lands, the British Isles left behind once the land ran out or your forbears got run out for some offense against the king’s dignity, the Saturday night getting corn liquor high, fiddle, banjo, guitar, take your best girl with those ribbons in her hair music of my father’s people exemplified by the Carter Family in its various incarnations) to cowboy prairie (that going west itch never satisfied except for a minute on that Saturday blast down in some barn again your good girl swaying those petticoats with the likes of Bob Wills and his Playboys and for a short time Milton Brown and his crew) and a lot of other niche music. Music mainly craved by a young audience (mostly, a sign of the times trying to reverse that great vanilla assimilation driven by the immigrant-landed sons and daughters seeking to mesh with the great WASP central committee and their children flipping back to the roots) wearied by the pablum then current on AM radio (FM was the wave of the future, the place where acid rock, or let’s call it that to give Jerry, Jim, Janis, Jimi a name to hang onto, found a home before going bigtime in the late 1960s) where non-descript, purposely not-descript music filled the airwaves after Elvis died or whatever happened to him when he started making silly Blue Hawaii-type movies that even my girlfriend did not think were cute (all these girlfriend references are different young women from different times and not a single girl since I had and have had plenty of problems hanging onto the darlings but that is a story for another day and another venue), Chuck (who played with fire with Mister’s women and paid the price, a price being paid even today in our “post-racial” society), Jerry Lee (who loved too closely but who before the crash thrilled us with that scene on the back of the flat-bed truck flailing, there is no other way to put it, on High School Confidential in the film of the same name) and a handful of others, Buddy, Richie, the Big Bopper, Eddie who also crashed and burned.

So some of us were ready, more than ready when the new dispensation came breezing through first the radio (WBZ in the Boston area on Sunday night for starters, although I have heard more recently about folksinger Tom Rush via a documentary, No Regrets, putting folk music on the Harvard radio station map with Hillbilly at Harvard  so lots of smaller waves were coming forth) and then making the crosstown journey from North  Adamsville to Harvard Square the one of the American meccas for folk music (others being the Village, Ann Arbor, Old Town in Chicago, the Unicorn in Los Angeles and various places in San Francisco, all places which had some small long-standing traditions of caring about this kind of music).

And if one talked of Harvard Square in those days  then one had to talk about the Club 47 (now Club Passim in a different location by still providing that some kind of music for oldsters and new aficionados alike but then over on Mount Auburn Street up from Elsie’s Deli, the Harvard student savior hangout). But that was not the only location in the Square. The whole place was filled with lots of little coffeehouses where for the price of a shot of instant caffeine expresso (then the exotic drink of choice for the hip avoiding Maxwell House or whatever regular store-bought coffees were around then) and maybe some ill-thought of pastry or sandwich one could spent the evening listening to the next big thing in folk music which was producing the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Donovan ( a little later), Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band (including later solo artists Geoff and Maria Muldaur), Josh White, Jr., Eric Von Schmidt, and a host of others who all passed through one of the meccas trying to draw a fan base. Most of the names of the clubs are now forgotten although The Idler and Blue Parrot still ring a bell but the beauty of the concept, the absolute beauty was that a poor high school or college student could take a like-minded date (and there were plenty of folkie women around even in high school at one point all trying to emulate Joan Baez’s ironed long hair to, well, to impress the boys who were infatuated with Ms. Baez and her exotic look) on the cheap and still maybe “scoring,” whatever that might have entailed and not always hopping into bed, although that was the plan for most guys I assume. I know it was for me.

So like I said I was washed clean by the folk minute, wash cleaned by the coffeehouse scene, and washed clean by the whole folk ethos and remain so even today. And today is what I want to talk about. That pure searching for roots folk minute did not survive Dylan going electric, the British invasion and the musical trends that I mentioned earlier but that was hardly the end of the story since a cohort of people continued to and continue to support that folk minute idea, especially the laid-back coffeehouse idea. Funny and maybe this is a sociological observation or a psychological observation or something but there might be some truth in it. I remember as a kid in the 1950s always rebelling against my parents’ music the music of the big band era in the late 1930s and 1940s (the Duke, the Count, Harry James, Jimmy and Tommy Dorey and so on, groups like the Mills Brothers, the Inkspots, the Andrews Sisters, and individual artists like Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, and Vaughn Monroe) that got them through the Great Depression and the anxieties of World War II. Music that formed their youth and which they stayed with not branching out much throughout their lives. I am noticing, and not just in my own case, but I will use that as the example here, that I tend to favor the music that formed my musical tastes in my youth-now classic (ouch!) rock and roll, blues and folk pretty much in that order. And others have too, specifically this folk music.

And so in some areas of the country, and Boston is one of them (although not so much Cambridge as in the old days except that Club Passim I mentioned earlier), there is an on-going if not exactly thriving folk scene centered on the demographic who came of age with the music (and a source of concern as baby-boomers die off and are not replaced in the ranks by the young). Now I mentioned that the coffeehouse idea is still alive. But not like in the old days where there was one on every block (not really, but a lot) and each place seemed to be busy every night. The economics of running such a venture preclude running coffeehouse as businesses (even Passim over the last period had been a non-profit organization dependent on grants, memberships and constant concerts in that small space). Now the coffeehouse scene is centered on the churches, mainly, who open their doors maybe once or twice a month for a weekend folk concert (complete with coffee and other refreshments as well). And the king hell leader of the pack in opening their doors, and hence the reference in the title, are the U-U churches in the area (Universalist-Unitarian who merged to survive many years ago but still keep their doctrinal differences for one and all to inspect). I would say that a great majority of folk events I have attended over the past several years certainly in the New England (where U-U-dom is strongest) are those simple churches. And so one can expect the hall to be setup with folding chairs, a simple stage, a sound system worked by some volunteer magic techie, the inevitable coffee and pastry, some flyers for upcoming events, an MC who has been around since whenever the coffeehouse started and some usually very good local talent. Occasionally an “open mic” for the brave or those who are nursing their act will fill in part of the program. That open mic democratic music idea is that you have a feature artist or two for an hour and the rest of the time brave souls go up and each play one or two songs for the rest of the program . Well it ain’t Dylan-Baez-Rush-Paxton-Kweskin-VonRonk-incarnate but it does keep this important segment of the American songbook alive. All of this mainly attended by AARP-ready patrons. So if somebody asks you, at least in New England, whether there is folk music around now you know where to direct them for a start. Hats Off To The U-U (and other) Coffeehouses      

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner-Italian Poets   

 

Brothers

by Giuseppe Ungaretti

What regiment d'you belong to
brothers?

Word shaking
in the night

Leaf barely born

In the simmering air
involuntary revolt
of the man present at his
brittleness

Brothers

***Channeling Doctor Gonzo- Hunter Thompson’s Where The Buffalo Roam  

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

Where The Buffalo Roam, starring Bill Murray, Peter Boyle,   

Frank Jackman thought it was ironic how many times that he had been investigating for pieces that he wanted to write kind of came full circle. You know checking something out in one context and then having that same thing turn up in another. Like when you are thinking about a word or a song and a couple of days later they turn up in the newspaper or on the radio. Stuff like that. Frank had recently finished a sketch about the old days in his neighborhood of North Adamsville (that’s in Massachusetts) where he used to have a growing up love/hate relationship with the biker scene, you know hard ass, hard living motorcycle guys out of the Hell’s Angels mode who wreaked havoc around his town. He liked their outlawry, their rebellion but was ultimately repelled by their savage destructiveness and nihilism (to speak nothing of the fact that he could not handle the power of a serious bike like an Indian or a Harley).

Of course any serious investigation into the notorious biker scene back in the 1960s when they were seen as just a little less dangerous that the red menace coming out of the Soviet Union and its fellow-travelers here then had to include a perusal of the late Doctor Hunter Thompson’s in-depth rather definitive journalistic study, Hell’s Angels, which included getting very up close and personal with a few of the dudes. The ironic part came later when a friend of his, Peter Markin, whom he had met in San Francisco back in the  1967 summer of love days there called him up, or sent him an e-mail, he couldn’t remember which asking Frank to go over to his Cambridge digs and talk about the old days in the 1960s when revolution was in the air, when the two of them had been part of a mass movement to “turn the world upside down,” and had been defeated by the dead-enders who had all the guns, the prisons, the legal system, the governmental power, and used them to the fullest to thwart that search for a “newer world.” Both recognized that defeat, whether one called it a political defeat like Frank did or like Peter  a military defeat, led to what is now a forty plus year rearguard action against the bastards who took over and have made those kindred angels pay dearly for their hubris.

One of the “parlor games” that Frank and Peter had played over the years was to date the time when the bubble burst on the counter-culture’s efforts to bring forth that newer world although their theories are not germane here. What is germane in this mix though is that earlier Hunter Thompson reference. See not only did Hunter write serious and humorous, jabbing humorous, words about the Hell’s Angels but he was a moving force via the start-up Rolling Stone magazine behind the “new journalism,” behind what became known later when time came for naming such things, “gonzo” journalism, and hence his moniker of Doctor Gonzo. To kind of wrap things together here, to make the irony, Frank after reading what Thompson had to say about bikers as was his way when something appealed to him read everything he could get his hands on by the man and Hunter became something of a muse, a now long gone lamented muse. Although they were a million miles apart politically Frank enjoyed reading Hunter’s stuff for some general insights into the absurdities of bourgeois culture by a man who definitely knew how to skewer his victims. Relished it in fact. And that brings us full circle because one night, not the first night that Frank and Peter started cutting up touches about old days but later, Peter had ordered a copy of the Hunter Thompson-centered Where The Buffalo Roam to spark some memories of the times and the man.                  

While there is no need to discuss Markin’s or Jackman’s views on when the high tide of the 1960s ebbed Thompson’s is important, at least according to Frank, since one of the episodes in that semi-autobiographical film sketch, part true, part fiction deals with the 1972 presidential campaign where one Richard M. Nixon, sitting President of the United States swamped his opponent, Senator George McGovern, swamped him without regard to all the illegal activity he commanded in his efforts to win. This is Hunter’s ebb point, the point where the downhill slide worked its way down further. So it is no accident that the period which the film covers is between 1968 when all hell broke out here in America with the Chicago police riots in the summer of 1968 at the Democratic National Convention, broke out in Europe with the May Days in Paris, and most importantly broke out in Vietnam where the heroic DNV/NLF troops rained hell on everybody with the Tet offensive that signaled that the Vietnam war was unwinnable and the ebb 1972. This is also the period when Thompson made his mark as a gonzo journalist (again mostly through his hot and cold relationship with the management of Rolling Stone), perfected his skills as an active part of the stories he was covering.   

Obviously when a journalist is living out in edge city, when his whole illegal life-style (illegal not just in the technical sense of violating various drug laws, and other high crimes and misdemeanors but illegal as a model for behavior which those dead-enders hated even worse than the drugs and a life-style which if copied would create quite a sea-change) is on display in public, as a public actor the line between fact and fiction best be blurred. Deniability becomes the beginning of wisdom so it was never clear in his books, or in this film where fact and fiction worked out.  Most of the episodes in this loosely plotted film have a half-life in something that he wrote like the Democratic National Convention of 1972, Super Bowl 1972, and the like.

The central device used in the film is a flashback by mad monk Hunter now ensconced in in cozy Woody Creek (where the buffalo roam, or did) trying to meet another frenzied magazine dead-line, an article about his lawyer/comrade/soul-mate and kindred mad monk hell-raiser Carlos Lazlo. Lazlo whose whereabouts at the time of writing are unknown, although he is presumed dead, probably either by some  drug cartel or some third world security agency who did not like the idea of a revolution in their country by a certified mad monk. But all of that is speculation. What is not speculation is Hunter’s detailing of their friendship from Lazlo’s use of his legal education to fight for the “newer day” defending street kids being busted for personal dope use which wound up costing Lazlo his license to practice and his freedom and to the trip that would become the novel Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas to the Super Bowl story to the 1972 presidential story to his going over the edge, going to a place Hunter now endowed with celebrity did not, or could not, go. In the end Hunter missed the brown buffalo, just like in the end Frank Jackman missed his muse, warts and all. 

From The Labor History Archives -In The 80^th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis And Toledo General Strikes- Lessons In The History Of Class Struggle 

George Seldes on San Francisco's Press and the 1934 General Strike

First (there was) the San Francisco strike of 1934 when the press itself played the role of strikebreaker. This was something new. I had known that all Pittsburgh papers could more or less suppress news of a strike, but so far as I knew there had never been a planned campaign by united publishers. (It did of course happen in the early days of Fascist Italy.) But San Francisco of 1934 in my opinion has written the most shameful page in the history of that city's journalism.
San Francisco was not friendly to organized labor; naturally the press was unfriendly. In May, 1934, the longshoremen went on strike and in the course of several months gained the sympathy of many big unions who voted the general strike. It was called. In the first three days the city was in a holiday mood and there was no real suffering from lack of food deliveries. The strikers did not stop the rounds of the milkmen. Those same three peaceful days the press of San Francisco, augmented by the voice of paid radio orators, preached fear and hatred. News was distorted, invented, colored with propaganda; radio speeches were pure demagoguery, and the villains were always the "Reds" and "foreign agitators." Labor was smiling, quiet; the newspaper-reading citizenry and the radio masses were quick to respond to hysterical suggestions, when as a climax General Hugh Johnson, arriving as mediator, delivered himself of a senseless blast against labor which became the newspaper signal for hysteria. "When the means of food supply - milk for children - necessities of life to the whole people are threatened, that is bloody insurrection," Johnson said. Not a hand had been raised, not a shot fired, not a milk delivery missed, no one had gone hungry for lack of transport, and all the fundamental public services were functioning. The general strike began peacefully. It followed the police attack and the shooting of two men several days earlier. Labor had surprised itself and the press with the spontaneous march of twelve thousand men behind the victims' coffins. Despite the press, union after union enthusiastically declared for the strike. When it came, labor permitted the press to function, the telephones to ring, the deliveries of bread, milk and ice to continue and nineteen restaurants were allowed to remain open the first day, fifty the second. Doctors received gasoline for their cars. The few instances of violence, a truck overturned, an altercation between a picket and a strikebreaker, were unimportant. To the press, however, they were sensations worth headlines. As in Italy in 1922, and in Germany in 1933, the politicians of big business, big business itself and the newspapers it controlled were united in San Francisco, but having no Fascist Duce or Feuhrer they called upon the mayor to ask for national troopers to put down the Red Revolution. In the offices of the Chronicle, the Call-Bulletin and the other papers which raised the Red scare and defeated labor, type was being set by members of the typographical union. The publishers, minor Machiavellis, gave the union men a raise in wages on the eve of the strike. And union labor, here as elsewhere, scabbed on its fellow men. As a preparation for the general strike the majority of newspapers of San Francisco began a series of inflammatory editorials and distorted news items calling it a revolution; on the other hand, many newspapers failed to print even the official declarations of the strike committee giving the reasons, causes and grievances. A Hearst paper under a headline "SHOOT, KILL," FRISCO RIOT TROOPS TOLD reported that Colonel H. H. Mittlestaedt, commanding the soldiers, had ordered the court-martial of any man who fired a shot into the air and told them "in case the strikers attack again, that they would first clip their opponents with the butts of their rifles, then bayonet them, and finally shoot them." The people of San Francisco were completely befuddled by the press, which was itself hysterical and which raised the usual Red banner to pass its hysteria over to the masses. "Deliberate journalistic malpractice" is the characterization of San Francisco's editors by the correspondent of the New Republic, Evelyn Seeley, who exempts only one newspaper, the Scripps-Howard News. But even this journal, which is known as friendly to labor, omitted from a late edition the column in which Heywood Broun had said: ". . . and so I still think that the lawless employers should be restrained, and if they don't like it here I see no possible objection to sending them back where they came from." The Chronicle, for example, went in for rabid expressions like these: "The radicals have seized control by intimidation. What they want is revolution. . . Are the sane, sober working-men of San Francisco to permit these communists to use them for their purpose of wreckage, a wreckage bound to carry the unions down with it?"; while the Los Angeles Times stated that "the situation in San Francisco is not correctly described by the phrase 'general strike.' What is actually in progress there is an insurrection, a Communist-inspired and led revolt against organized government. There is but one thing to be done - put down the revolt with any force necessary and protect the right of ordinary people to conduct their ordinary occupations in security . . ." The Sacramento Bee informed Mayor Rossi that his program had the united support of the law-abiding citizens and spoke of the strikers as persons seeking to overthrow the government of the United States. The San Francisco Call-Bulletin upheld the "conservative union men [who] have been shouted down by an element bent seemingly on strife and self-aggrandizement." the Oakland Examiner said: "If the small group of Communists, starting with their control of longshore and maritime unions, extend their power over the community of the bay area - and thence into the whole or even part of the State - California would be no more fit to live in than Russia." The Oakland Chronicle said, "The radicals have seized control . . . The radicals have wanted no settlement. What they want is revolution." The Portland (Oregon) Times said the strikers were refusing the public the necessities of life and blamed "rampant radicalism for unrestrained rule or utter ruin." The editorials in the press range all the way from falsehood to hysteria; they unite in raising the Communist scare; throughout the strike they blamed the strikers daily forg and general violence. The eastern press reprinted the editorials and the news which came largely from the offices of the California papers. The East naturally believed that a revolutionary uprising was occurring in San Francisco. Yet the question of veracity and integrity of the press must certainly arise in the mind of any man who reads the following dispatch from America's national humorist and generally unprejudiced observer. Will Rogers telegraphed from California to the scores of newspapers which take his daily idea: "In 1926 I was in England during their world-famous general strike. And brother it was general. Not a paper printed, not a train, not a bus, not a wheel turned. Well, I never got through telling of the composure of those level headed people. "Well, I went to San Francisco, and I tell you we were not so 'nutty' under stress as you might think. It was as quiet as the British. The only thing went haywire was the headlines in the out of Frisco papers. I hope we never live to see the day when a thing is as bad as some of our newspapers make it. "There is lots of sense in this country yet." Again, for his Sunday readers, Will Rogers, whom no one has yet called a Bolshevik, summed up San Francisco. Saying as usual that all he knows is what he reads in the papers, he added that everything in San Francisco was quiet, that eighteen restaurants were open, that "all the trucks you saw on the street was either ice, milk, bread or bare necessities." Roger concludes that, inasmuch as manufacturers and bankers have associations, "there is nothing fairer than workmen having unions for their mutual benefit . . . but that when people felt that the Reds were running the thing . . . they turned against 'em . . . But what I want to get over is that the people were just as down to earth, as peaceful and law abiding as you ever saw. Again, a dog fight would have constituted excitement. There is lots of Reds in the Country, but you would be surprised at the amount of Whites. . . ." On the subject of violence either the majority of California papers or Mr. Rogers is not telling the truth, and knowing both, I would say, even if I had no other evidence, that the facts are those given by the latter. The strike was smashed. The press announced that the public was to be congratulated upon this action. "The truth, born of long experience, that a great strike cannot be won if it outrages public opinion," said the New York Times, "has apparently been grasped by the strategy committee. . . ." Does or doesn't the Times know who makes and controls public opinion? Has or hasn't the Times ever heard about the "power of the press"? Two days later, July 22, 1934, the Times under an editorial headline "The American Way" was jubilant. "This country may rightly take satisfaction at the way in which the general strike at San Francisco was met and conquered . . . the local authorities stood fast. . . . Best of all, perhaps, was the spirit displayed by the citizens near whom the danger pressed. They were not thrown into a panic. . . . Doubtless there must be some 'mopping up' in other cities before troubles are over. But what already has been accomplished is sufficient demonstration that Americans will not harbor anarchists, nor tolerate revolutionists, and are still able, as Abraham Lincoln said, to 'keep house.'" The mopping up, which the Times foresaw, took another direction. Thanks to the daily dose of anti-Red poison administered to the public by the press, groups of business men, thugs, morons and super-patriots did exactly what the Reds had been accused of doing: they took the law into their own hands and indulged in violence. They broke into private homes and offices, confiscated and destroyed property, wrecked, stole and burned. This rioting by the Vigilantes was too much even for the Times which reported that "constitutional rights were disregarded outright" by the mob, "or lightly brushed aside by the constituted authorities." It is a fact that the San Francisco police followed the thugs, entered the wrecked buildings, destroyed what was left undestroyed, and arrested the victims, not the aggressors. Four hundred men and women, described as "Reds," were thrown into prison but not one thug was touched. An attorney for the Communists, George Anderson, whose life had been threatened by the Vigilantes, demanded jury trials. For this invocation of constitutional rights Municipal Judge George Steiger threatened him with contempt action. This exhibition of lawlessness was hailed with delight by several newspapers. They were the inspirers and did not disown their handiwork. Some of them commented bitterly, moreover, on the apologies of Municipal Judge Sylvian Lazarus, made to the four hundred victims when he released most of them the next morning. "I am disgusted to think that this good old town should have acted like a pack of wolves," he said. "I don't know who is responsible, but it should be traced back to its source." The source confronted the judge from every news stand. Peter Gulbrandsen, journalist, writes in the San Francisco News that "the so-called vigilante raids are a disgrace to the community. The newspaper editors who have allowed the whipping up of insane anti-red hysteria have shown a decidedly un-American behavior. . . . It has been a sad spectacle during this crisis to have the large San Francisco dailies, with one solitary exception, indulge in the encouragement of these abominable raids. . . . I am not a Communist myself, but I want to register an emphatic protest against the disgusting vigilante tactics and the tacit approval of such Hitlerian violence by certain San Francisco dailies and the dailies of the East Bay cities." Source: Freedom of the Press by George Seldes