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Dear Al,
In the upcoming weeks,
Congressional hawks plan to push for new sanctions on Iran. These new sanctions
would disrupt the most successful nuclear talks to occur between the two
countries and would undermine any diplomatic progress that has been made.
Please ask Senators Markey and Warren not to co-sponsor, and to vote against,
any legislation that would place new sanctions on Iran, because they will damage
current negotiations while also preventing a peaceful outcome.
 If Congress does impose new sanctions, they would be in
direct violation of agreements that the United States, as part of the P5+1, has
agreed to. The immediate result would be the end of negotiations. Secretary of
State Kerry, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and Ambassador to the United
Nations Samantha Power have asked Congress not to pass such
legislation.
Iran has met all of its
commitments under the interim agreement and has fully cooperated with the United
States. All the steps by Iran have been verified by the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA). Thanks to these talks, the IAEA has been given more
access to Iran's nuclear program. Successful negotiations would make peaceful
resolution of differences between the U.S. and Iran more likely and reduce the
risk of U.S. military action.
 Yours for peace and diplomacy,  Shelagh Foreman Program Director Massachusetts Peace Action P.S. Please ask Senators Warren and Markey to support the peaceful nuclear negotiations! Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership today! Dues are $40/year for an individual, $65 for a family, or $10 for student/unemployed/low income. Members vote for leadership and endorsements and receive newsletters and discounts on event admissions. Donate now and you will be a member in good standing through December 2015! Your financial support makes this work possible!  Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 617-354-2169 • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Click here to unsubscribe  
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Friday, January 16, 2015
Foreign Policy for All Discussion Workshops
Cambridge: Tuesday, January 20, 6:30 pm,
Central Square Library, 45 Pearl St, Lewis Room. Cosponsored with Cambridge
United for Justice with Peace
Ipswich (North Shore): Wednesday, January 21, 7-9pm, House of Peace, 1 High St. Cosponsored with North Shore Coalition for Peace & Justice
Sign up here to attend a workshop!
What is the Foreign Policy for All?Ipswich (North Shore): Wednesday, January 21, 7-9pm, House of Peace, 1 High St. Cosponsored with North Shore Coalition for Peace & Justice
Sign up here to attend a workshop!
Massachusetts Peace Action and our allies are holding a series of discussion workshops across Massachusetts in Winter 2015 for our members and partners to come together and discuss the fundamental problems of American foreign policy and what a new approach would look like.
Led by members of the Foreign Policy for All working group, the workshops will include a short slide presentation and ample time for discussion on:
- What’s wrong with U.S. foreign policy?
- What are the values that should guide our foreign policy?
- What are the key issues and priorites that should be addressed?
- Action steps: What it would take to get there from here? What are the obstacles? What actions are the people in the room prepared to take? To join us in our efforts?
Participants can read the Foreign Policy for All working paper or the shorter Foreign Policy for All At a Glance before or after the workshops. Feedback collected will be used to improve the working paper. The Foreign Policy for All, incorporating your ideas, will come before Massachusetts Peace Action’s annual meeting on February 7, 2015 for approval.
Full Schedule:
Cambridge: Tuesday, January 20, 6:30 pm, Central Square Library, 45 Pearl St, Lewis Room. Cosponsored with Cambridge United for Justice with Peace
Ipswich (North Shore): Wednesday, January 21, 7-9pm, House of Peace, 1 High St. Cosponsored with North Shore Coalition for Peace & Justice
Fall River (Southeast Mass.) Thursday, January 29, 6-8 pm, Fall River Public Library, 104 North Main St
Worcester: Saturday, January 31, noon to 4pm, Clark University, 950 Main St., room TBA; cosponsored with Clark University Peace Studies
Watertown (West Suburban): Sunday, February 1, 5:00 pm, Grace Vision Church, 80 Mt Auburn St. Cosponsored with Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice & Environment
Sign up here to attend a workshop!
 | ||
|
United for
Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and
community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed
after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic
justice.
Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP
today.
| ||
| 617-383-4857 | www.justicewithpeace.org | |
Upcoming Events:
| Foreign Policy for All Discussion Workshop | Tue Jan 20 | 6:30pm | Central Square Library | Cambridge | |
| Foreign Policy for All Discussion Workshop | Wed Jan 21 | 7:00pm | House of Peace | Ipswich |  |
| Music for Peace: Mendelssohn | Sat Jan 31 | 7:30pm | Harvard-Epworth Methodist Church | Cambridge |  |
| Foreign Policy for All Discussion Workshop | Sun Feb 1 | 5:00pm | Grace Vision Church | Watertown |  |
| Massachusetts Peace Action 2015 Annual Meeting | Sat Feb 7 | 1:00pm | First Church in Boston | Boston |  |
| Resistance to the Vietnam War - A Teach In | Sat Mar 28 | 9:30am | Location TBA | Cambridge |  |
| Vocal Chamber Music in Times of War and Peace | Sat Apr 11 | 7:30pm | Harvard-Epworth Methodist Church | Cambridge |  |
No Justice, No Peace- Stop The Police
Killings Of Black And Brown Youth-Drop The Charges Against The U. S. 93 Highway Protesters In Boston
Protesters snarl morning commute on I-93 near Boston
Commuters fume as highways are blocked; 29 in movement arrested
Protesters affiliated with the activist group Black Lives Matter carried out their most audacious and disruptive demonstration yet in the Boston area Thursday, blocking the largest highway into the city, snarling rush-hour traffic, and stopping an ambulance in its tracks.
In a pair of coordinated surprise actions that angered commuters, the protesters formed human barricades on Interstate 93 north of the city in Medford, and south, in Milton. Some put barrels filled with concrete on the highway and chained themselves to them. Twenty-nine protesters were arrested.
The well-organized protests were carried out on Martin Luther King’s birthday by activists calling attention to the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police in Missouri and New York.
RELATED: Statements from the protesters
“There cannot be any tolerance for this,” said Colonel Timothy Alben, superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police. At a morning news conference, Alben blamed protesters for “endangering people’s lives” and delaying ambulances rushing to hospitals.
“There was no place to go,” said Scott Cluett, operations manager of EasCare Ambulance, who said the ambulance heading to MGH was delayed about 20 minutes.
RELATED: Ambulance with crash victim diverted because of protest
Eleven protesters were arrested in Milton, and 18 in Medford. Two other people were arrested in Braintree trying to return a rental truck used in Milton.
Most of the protesters were in their 20s, though a few were in their 40s. Among them were people who listed their occupations as a librarian at Harvard University, a makeup artist, and self-employed music producer, court records show.
Protesters face charges that include trespassing, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and conspiracy, authorities said. They all pleaded not guilty, and were released without bail.
“The disregard for the safety and welfare of innocent citizens that this action manifests is shocking,” said Michael Morrissey, district attorney in Norfolk County.
Protesters defended their actions as a necessary call for change. “Disruptions wake people up a little bit from their privilege and insulation,” said Shannon Leary, a spokeswoman for the Milton protest. “Things have to change.”
The demonstration began at 7:30 a.m., when protesters stopped the box truck on I-93 north in Milton and unloaded four 55-gallon barrels filled with concrete, authorities said. In the face of oncoming traffic, they spread them across each lane of the highway and six people chained themselves to the barrels.
At roughly the same time, the second protest blocked the southbound highway in Medford near the Mystic Valley Parkway, as more than a dozen demonstrators tied themselves together using PVC pipe.
VIDEO: Woman explains rationale behind protest
In Medford, troopers quickly removed the protesters from the road. But in Milton, where protesters had placed their arms through the heavy barrels, emergency responders had to cut away the concrete to extricate them.
One of the protesters told a trooper, “I’m here for 4½ hours, there’s nothing you can do,” according to police. Another, asked whether she could release her arm on her own, refused to answer.
State Police said some of the protesters had worn diapers, apparently expecting the protest to last for hours. The highway did not fully reopen until 9:45 a.m.
PHOTOS: Scenes from the protests
The protest in Medford completely blocked traffic for a time, prompting some drivers to get out of their cars and yell at the protesters. They later thanked troopers for clearing the road.
“We did see some anger from the motorists on Route 93, but they cooperated with our troopers and got back in their car and waited for us to clear the road,” State Police Major Arthur Sugrue said. “It wasn’t a violent confrontation.”
When troopers approached the Medford demonstrators, they sat down and started chanting, “Black lives matter,” police said.
In a statement, protesters described themselves as a diverse group of “non-black people” allied with the activist group Black Lives Matter, which has held several peaceful marches in Boston since a grand jury in Ferguson, Mo., decision not to indict a white police officer in the shooting of teenager Michael Brown.
They defended their actions, saying it was “necessary to disrupt a capitalist structure that has been built on the physical and economic exploitation of Black bodies since our country’s inception.”
“Today, our nonviolent direct action is meant to expose the reality that Boston is a city where white commuters and students use the city and leave, while Black and Brown communities are targeted by police, exploited, and displaced,” said Katie Seitz, one of the protesters, said in the statement.
Daunasia Yancey of Black Lives Matter attended the Quincy District Court arraignment of the Milton protesters.
“We support the actions,” Yancey said.
Some protesters have ties to the Occupy Boston movement, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the demonstrations. One official called the protesters “anarchist-type people who are using the demonstrations to create problems with the police.”
Sugrue said there was no advance warning of this demonstration from any sources, including social media and protest groups that police have been talking to. “It was unexpected for us,” he said.
It took drivers four times longer than usual to travel north up a 5-mile section of the expressway between Braintree and Milton. According to state transportation statistics, the average time spent on that commute during the last three months between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. was less than 15 minutes. On Thursday, it was an hour.
Philip Wood of Rockland, who owns a construction company, said the delays caused him to send a dozen of his workers home without pay after a company truck was stuck in traffic. Wood said he was not unsympathetic with the protesters’ cause but said there are better ways to go about it.
“All they do when they do something like this is alienate people to their cause,” he said.
Governor Charlie Baker and Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston criticized the shutdown as dangerous and disruptive.
“I just don’t understand it,” Walsh said. “I made it perfectly clear that I would love to have a conversation with anyone who wants to have a conversation with me. My doors are open. . . . I think someone should take me up on that offer.”
At MGH, some patients called to cancel while others were late. Some employees and doctors were delayed and had to reschedule patients.
Three patients headed to Brigham and Women’s Hospital for morning surgical procedures were up to two hours late because of traffic, said Lori Schroth, a spokeswoman. The hospital adjusted the schedule and all the patients had their procedures as planned.
Peter Racicot, senior vice president for Fallon Ambulance, said the shutdown slowed responses across Greater Boston, affecting as many as 100 ambulances. “This incident has caused havoc for public safety,’’ he said.
After the arraignment of the Medford protesters, 11 supporters greeted them outside the courtroom, breaking into applause as each one emerged carrying a clear plastic bag containing their belongings. One protester, who gave his name as Jackson, said he “wanted to show solidarity to black people as a non-black color person.”
More coverage:
• Opinion | Ward Sutton: Where race relations stand in America
• Opinion: Deeper issues with modern justice
Liz Kowalczyk, Nicole Dungca, David Abel, and Evan Allen of the Globe staff, and Globe correspondents Jean Lang and Aneri Pattani, contributed to this report.
In a pair of coordinated surprise actions that angered commuters, the protesters formed human barricades on Interstate 93 north of the city in Medford, and south, in Milton. Some put barrels filled with concrete on the highway and chained themselves to them. Twenty-nine protesters were arrested.
RELATED: Statements from the protesters
“There cannot be any tolerance for this,” said Colonel Timothy Alben, superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police. At a morning news conference, Alben blamed protesters for “endangering people’s lives” and delaying ambulances rushing to hospitals.
“There was no place to go,” said Scott Cluett, operations manager of EasCare Ambulance, who said the ambulance heading to MGH was delayed about 20 minutes.
RELATED: Ambulance with crash victim diverted because of protest
Eleven protesters were arrested in Milton, and 18 in Medford. Two other people were arrested in Braintree trying to return a rental truck used in Milton.
Most of the protesters were in their 20s, though a few were in their 40s. Among them were people who listed their occupations as a librarian at Harvard University, a makeup artist, and self-employed music producer, court records show.
Protesters face charges that include trespassing, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and conspiracy, authorities said. They all pleaded not guilty, and were released without bail.
“The disregard for the safety and welfare of innocent citizens that this action manifests is shocking,” said Michael Morrissey, district attorney in Norfolk County.
Protesters defended their actions as a necessary call for change. “Disruptions wake people up a little bit from their privilege and insulation,” said Shannon Leary, a spokeswoman for the Milton protest. “Things have to change.”
State Police describe morning’s protests on I-93
At roughly the same time, the second protest blocked the southbound highway in Medford near the Mystic Valley Parkway, as more than a dozen demonstrators tied themselves together using PVC pipe.
VIDEO: Woman explains rationale behind protest
In Medford, troopers quickly removed the protesters from the road. But in Milton, where protesters had placed their arms through the heavy barrels, emergency responders had to cut away the concrete to extricate them.
One of the protesters told a trooper, “I’m here for 4½ hours, there’s nothing you can do,” according to police. Another, asked whether she could release her arm on her own, refused to answer.
State Police said some of the protesters had worn diapers, apparently expecting the protest to last for hours. The highway did not fully reopen until 9:45 a.m.
PHOTOS: Scenes from the protests
Scott Eisen for The Boston Globe
“We did see some anger from the motorists on Route 93, but they cooperated with our troopers and got back in their car and waited for us to clear the road,” State Police Major Arthur Sugrue said. “It wasn’t a violent confrontation.”
When troopers approached the Medford demonstrators, they sat down and started chanting, “Black lives matter,” police said.
In a statement, protesters described themselves as a diverse group of “non-black people” allied with the activist group Black Lives Matter, which has held several peaceful marches in Boston since a grand jury in Ferguson, Mo., decision not to indict a white police officer in the shooting of teenager Michael Brown.
They defended their actions, saying it was “necessary to disrupt a capitalist structure that has been built on the physical and economic exploitation of Black bodies since our country’s inception.”
“Today, our nonviolent direct action is meant to expose the reality that Boston is a city where white commuters and students use the city and leave, while Black and Brown communities are targeted by police, exploited, and displaced,” said Katie Seitz, one of the protesters, said in the statement.
Daunasia Yancey of Black Lives Matter attended the Quincy District Court arraignment of the Milton protesters.
“We support the actions,” Yancey said.
Protesters arraigned in Quincy District Court
Sugrue said there was no advance warning of this demonstration from any sources, including social media and protest groups that police have been talking to. “It was unexpected for us,” he said.
It took drivers four times longer than usual to travel north up a 5-mile section of the expressway between Braintree and Milton. According to state transportation statistics, the average time spent on that commute during the last three months between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. was less than 15 minutes. On Thursday, it was an hour.
Philip Wood of Rockland, who owns a construction company, said the delays caused him to send a dozen of his workers home without pay after a company truck was stuck in traffic. Wood said he was not unsympathetic with the protesters’ cause but said there are better ways to go about it.
“All they do when they do something like this is alienate people to their cause,” he said.
Governor Charlie Baker and Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston criticized the shutdown as dangerous and disruptive.
“I just don’t understand it,” Walsh said. “I made it perfectly clear that I would love to have a conversation with anyone who wants to have a conversation with me. My doors are open. . . . I think someone should take me up on that offer.”
At MGH, some patients called to cancel while others were late. Some employees and doctors were delayed and had to reschedule patients.
Three patients headed to Brigham and Women’s Hospital for morning surgical procedures were up to two hours late because of traffic, said Lori Schroth, a spokeswoman. The hospital adjusted the schedule and all the patients had their procedures as planned.
Peter Racicot, senior vice president for Fallon Ambulance, said the shutdown slowed responses across Greater Boston, affecting as many as 100 ambulances. “This incident has caused havoc for public safety,’’ he said.
After the arraignment of the Medford protesters, 11 supporters greeted them outside the courtroom, breaking into applause as each one emerged carrying a clear plastic bag containing their belongings. One protester, who gave his name as Jackson, said he “wanted to show solidarity to black people as a non-black color person.”
More protest coverage:
More coverage:
• Opinion | Ward Sutton: Where race relations stand in America
• Opinion: Deeper issues with modern justice
Liz Kowalczyk, Nicole Dungca, David Abel, and Evan Allen of the Globe staff, and Globe correspondents Jean Lang and Aneri Pattani, contributed to this report.
No Justice, No Peace- The Cases Of
Ferguson, Missouri’s Michael Brown And New York's Eric Garner - Stop The Police Murders Of Black And Brown
Peoples-All Out In Boston On MLK Day-January 19th
Protest March in Boston on Martin Luther King Day
4 Mile March
Against Police Violence and Racism
1 pm on Monday,
January 19 at Old State House (corner of State and Washington
streets, downtown Boston) responding to
a national call named after the time (4 1/2 hours) Michael Brown's body lay in
the street in Ferguson, MO
www.4milemarch.org
(national website -- Coalition Against Police Violence)
| ||
|
United for
Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and
community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed
after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic
justice.
Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP
today.
| ||
| 617-383-4857 | www.justicewithpeace.org | |
Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night-The Songs of Tom Waits-Take Five
From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin
A YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night
If you, as I do, every once in a while, every once in a while when the norms of the today’s bourgeois-driven push, you know grab goods, grab the dough, grab some shelter from the storm, the storm that these days comes down like a hard rain falling, to get ahead in this wicked old world have to step back and take stock, maybe listen to some words of wisdom, or words that help explain how you got into that mess then you have come to the right address. Okay, okay on that bourgeois-driven today thing maybe going back further to Calvinist Puritan avenging angels times with John Winthrop and the Mayflower boys but you best ask Max Weber about that since he tried to hook the boys to the wheel of the capitalist profit, profit for you at the expense of me, system with the new dispensation coming out like hellfire from Geneva and points east and west. But you get the point.
If all that to-ing and fro-ing (nice touch, right) leaves you wondering where you fell off the edge, that edge city (edge city where you danced around with all the conventions of the days, danced around the get ahead world with blinkers on) where big cloud outrageous youthful dreams were dreamt and you took risks, damn did you take risks, thought nothing of that fact either, landed on your ass more than a few time but just picked yourself up and dusted your knees off and done stick around and listen up. Yeah, so if you are wondering, have been pushed off your saintly wheels, yeah, pushed you off your sainted wheels, and gotten yourself into some angst-ridden despair about where you went off that angel-driven dream of your youth, now faded, tattered, and half- forgotten(but only half, only half, the wisp of the dream, the eternal peace dream, the figuring out how to contain that fire, that wanting habits fire in your belly dream sisters and brothers), and need some solace (need some way to stop the fret counting the coffee cups that while away your life), need to reach back to roots (reach back to roots that the 1950s golden age of America kicked the ass out of to make us crave oneness, to forget about those old immigrant customs, made us forget that simple country blues, mountain breeze songs, cowboy ballads, Tex-Mex, Cajun Saturday night that make the people feel good times), reach back to the primeval forest maybe, put the headphones on some Tom Waits platter (oops, CD, YouTube selection, etc.- “platter” refers to a, ah, record, vinyl, put on a record player, hell, look it up in Wikipedia, okay) and remember what it was like when men and women sang just to sing the truth of what they saw and heard.
If the norms of don’t rock the boat (not in these uncertain times like any times in human existence were certain, damn, there was always something coming up from the first man-eating beast to the human race-eating nuclear bombs), the norms of keep your head down (that’s right brother, that’s right sister keep looking down, no left or rights for your placid world), keeping your head down being an art form now with appropriate ritual (that ritual looking more and more like the firing squad that took old Juan Romero’s life when he did bad those days out in Utah country), and excuses, because, well, because you don’t want to wind up like them (and fill in the blank of the “them,” usually dark, very dark like some deathless, starless night disturbing your sleep, begging, I swear, begging you to put that gun in full view on the table, speaking some unknown language, maybe A-rab, maybe gibberish for all you know, moving furtively and stealthily against your good night) drive you crazy and you need, desperately need, to listen to those ancient drum beats, those primeval forest leave droppings maybe, that old time embedded DNA coda long lost to, oh yes, civilization, to some civilizing mission (think of that Mayflower gang or ask Max Weber), that spoke of the better angels of your nature when those angel dreams, half-forgotten but only half remember, ruled your days. Turn up the volume up another notch or two on that Tom Waits selection, maybe Jersey Girl or Brother, Can You Spare A Dime (can you?), Hold On, or Gunn Street Girl.
If you need to hear things, just to sort things out, just to recapture that angel-edge, recapture the time when you did no fear, you and everybody else’s sisters and brothers, that thing you build and from which you now should run, recapture that child-like wonder that made you come alive, made you think about from whence you came and how a turn, a slight turn this way or that, could have landed you on the wrong side. And I have the list of brothers and sisters who took that wrong road, when he wound up face down in some dusty back road arroyo down Sonora way when the deal went bust or when she, maybe a little kinky for all I know, decided that she would try a needle and a spoon, I swear, or she swore just for kicks and she wound up in Madame LaRue’s whorehouse working that bed to perdition, hey, sweet dreams baby I tried to tell you when you play with fire, watch out.
So if you need to sort things out about boozers (and about titanic booze-crazed struggles in barrooms, on beaches, in the back seats of cars, lost in the mist of time down some crazed midnight, hell, four in the morning, penniless, cab fare-less night), losers (those who have lost their way, gotten it taken away from them like some maiden virginity), those who never had anything but lost, not those who never had a way to be lost, dopesters inhaling, in solitary hotel rooms among junkie brethren, gathering a needle and spoon in some subterranean dank cellar, down in dark alleys jack-rolling some poor drunk stiff out of his room rent for kicks (how uncool to drink low-shelf whiskeys or rotgut wines hell the guy deserved to be rolled, should feel lucky he got away with just a flipped wallet), out in nighttime canyons flame blaring off the walls, the seven seas of chemical dust, mainly blotter, maybe peyote (the sweet dreams of ten million years of ghost warriors working the canyon walls flickering against the campfire flames) if that earth angel connection comes through (Aunt Sally, always, some Aunt Sally coming up the stairs to ease the pain, to make one feel, no, not feel, better than any AMA doctor without a prescription pad), creating visions of long lost tribes trying, trying like hell, to get “connected,” connected in the campfire shadow night, hipsters (all dressed in black, mary mack dressed in black, speeding, speaking be-bop this and be-bop that to stay in fashion, hustling, always hustle, maybe pimping some street urchin, maybe cracking some guy’s head to create a “new world order” of the malignant, always moving), fallen sisters (sisters of mercy, sisters who need mercy, sisters who were mercifully made fallen in some mad dash night, merciful sister feed me, feed me good), midnight sifters (lifting in no particular order hubcaps, tires, wrenches, jacks, an occasional gem, some cheap jewelry in wrong neighborhoods, some paintings or whatever is not saleable left in some sneak back alley, it is the sifting that counts), grifters (hey, buddy watch this, now you see it, now you don’t, now you don’t see your long gone John dough, and Mister three card Monte long gone too ), drifters (here today gone tomorrow with or without dough, to Winnemucca, Ogden, Fresno, Frisco town, name your town, name your poison and the great big blue seas washing you clean out into the Japans ), the drift-less (cramped into one room hovels, shelters, seedy rooming houses afraid to stay in-doors or to go outside, afraid of the “them” too, afraid to be washed clean, angel clean), and small-time grafters (the ten-percent guys, failed insurance men, repo artists, bounty hunters, press agents, personal trainers, need I go on). You know where to look, right.
If you need to be refreshed on the subject of hoboes, bums, tramps (and remind me sometime to draw the distinction, the very real and acknowledged distinction between those three afore –mentioned classes of brethren once told to me by a forlorn grand master hobo, a guy down on his luck moving downward to bum), out in the railroad jungles in some Los Angeles ravine, some Gallup, New Mexico Southern Pacific trestle (the old SP the only way to travel out west if you want to get west), some Hoboken broken down pier (ha, shades of the last page of Jack Kerouac’s classic), the fallen (fallen outside the gates of Eden, or, hell, inside too), those who want to fall (and let god figure out who made who fall, okay), Spanish Johnnies (slicked back black hair, tee shirt, shiv, cigarette butt hanging from a parted lip, belt buckle ready for action, leering, leering at that girl over there, some gringa for a change of pace, maybe your girl but watch out for that shiv, the bastard), stale cigarette butts (from Spanish Johnnie and all the johnnies, Camels, Luckies, no filters, no way), whiskey-soaked barroom floors (and whiskey-soaked drunks to mop the damn place up, for drinks and donuts, maybe just for the drinks), loners (jesus, books, big academic books with great pedigrees could be written on that subject so let’s just pass by), the lonely (ditto loners), sad sacks (kindred, one hundred times kindred to the loners and the lonely but not worthy of study, academic study anyway), the sad (encompassing all of the above) and others at the margins of society, the whole fellahin world, then Tom Waits is your stop.
Tom Waits is, frankly, an acquired taste, one listen will not do, one song will not do, but listen to a whole record (CD okay) and you won’t want to turn the thing off, high praise in anyone’s book, so a taste well worth acquiring as he storms heaven in words, in thought-out words, in cribbed, cramped, crumbled words, to express the pain, angst and anguish of modern living, yes, modern living, looking for busted black-hearted angels (who left him short one night in some unnamed, maybe nameless, gin mill), for girls with Monroe hips (swaying wickedly in the dead air night, and flaming desire, hell lust, getting kicked out of proper small town hells (by descendants of those aforementioned Mayflower boys promising the world for one forbidden night), get real, and left for dead with cigar wrapping rings, for the desperate out in forsaken woods who need to hold on to something, and for all the misbegotten.
Tom Waits gives voice in song, a big task, to the kind of characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). The, frankly, white trash Dove Linkhorns of the world, genetically broken before they begin, broken before they hit these shores (their forbears thrown out of Europe for venal crimes and lusts, damn them, the master-less men and women, ask old Max about them too), having been chased out, cast out of Europe, or some such place. In short, the people who do not make revolutions, those revolutions we keep hearing and reading about, the wretched of the earth and their kin, far from it, but those who surely, and desperately could use one. If, additionally, you need a primordial grizzled gravelly voice to attune your ear and occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Finally, if you need someone who “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. Keep looking for the heart of Saturday night, Brother, keep looking.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Support "Courage To Resist"-The Organization Supporting Military Resisters And Chelsea Manning
Frank Jackman comment on Courage To Resist and military resisters:
I have always admired military resisters having, frankly, done my time in the military, Vietnam Era time, without any serious reflection about the military, my role in the military, or what was just and unjust about that war until after I got out. After I got out, began to see thing through the fog of war and got serious “religion” on the questions of war and peace from several sources. At first working with the Cambridge Quakers who I had noticed around the fringes of anti-war GI work in the early 1970s when there was a serious basis for doing such work as the American army one way or another was half in mutiny toward the end of American involvement in that war. And a serious need as guys, guys who get their “religion” in the service needed civilian help to survive the military maze that they were trying to fight. This connection with the Quakers had been made shortly after I got out of the service when my doubts crept in about what I had done in the service, and why I had let myself be drafted when I had expressed serious anti-war doubts before induction about what the American government was doing in Vietnam to its own soldiers. But, more importantly, and this was the real beginning of wisdom and something I am keenly aware every time the American government ratchets up the war hysteria for its latest adventure, to the Vietnamese who to paraphrase the great boxer Mohammed Ali (then Cassius Clay) had never done anything to me, never posed any threat to me and mine. But as much as I admired the Quakers and their simple peace witness, occasionally attended their service and briefly had a Quaker girlfriend, I was always a little jumpy around them, my problem not theirs, since their brand of conscientious objection to all wars was much broader than my belief in just and unjust wars.
Later I worked with a couple of anti-war collectives that concentrated on anti-war GI work among active GIs through the vehicle of coffeehouses located near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and Fort Dix down in New Jersey. That work while satisfying and rewarding by actually working with guys who knew the score, knew the score from the inside, and had plenty to tell, especially those who had gotten “religion” under fire was short-lived once American on the ground involvement in Vietnam was minimalized and the horrific draft was abolished as a means of grabbing “cannon fodder” for the damn war. Once the threat of being sent to Vietnam diminished the soldiers drifted off and the anti-war cadre that held things together as well.
What really drove the issue of military resistance home to me though, what caused some red-faced shame was something that I did not find out about until well after my own military service was over. A few years later when I went back to my hometown on some family-related business I found out after meeting him on the street coming out of a local supermarket that my best friend from high school, Sean Kiley, had been a military resister, had refused to go to Vietnam, and had served about two years in various Army stockades for his efforts. Had done his “duty” as he saw it. Had earned his “anti-war” colors the hard way.
See Sean like me, like a lot of working-class kids from places like our hometown, Gloversville, up in Massachusetts, maybe had a few doubts about the war but had no way to figure out what to do and let himself be drafted for that very reason. What would a small town boy whose citizens supported the Vietnam War long after it made even a smidgen of sense, whose own parents were fervent “hawks,” whose older brother had won the DSC in Vietnam, and whose contemporaries including me did their service without a public murmur know of how to maneuver against the American military monster machine. But what Sean saw early on, from about day three of basis training, told him he had made a big error, that his grandmother who grew up in Boston and had been an old Dorothy Day Catholic Worker supporter had been right that there was no right reason for him to be in that war. And so when he could, after receiving orders for Vietnam, he refused to go (I will tell you more of the details some time when I ask him some questions about events that I have forgotten) and did his time in the military that way.
Sean’s story, and in a sense my belated story, are enough reasons to support Courage to Resist since, unfortunately, there are today very few organizations dedicated to providing informational, legal, and social support for the military resisters of the heinous onslaughts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organization needs the help of every ex-soldier who got “religion,” of every anti-war activist, and of every honest citizen who realizes, now more than ever, that the short way to end the endless wars of this generation is to get to the soldiers, get to the cadre on the ground fighting the damn wars. Enough said.
Frank Jackman comment on Courage To Resist and military resisters:
I have always admired military resisters having, frankly, done my time in the military, Vietnam Era time, without any serious reflection about the military, my role in the military, or what was just and unjust about that war until after I got out. After I got out, began to see thing through the fog of war and got serious “religion” on the questions of war and peace from several sources. At first working with the Cambridge Quakers who I had noticed around the fringes of anti-war GI work in the early 1970s when there was a serious basis for doing such work as the American army one way or another was half in mutiny toward the end of American involvement in that war. And a serious need as guys, guys who get their “religion” in the service needed civilian help to survive the military maze that they were trying to fight. This connection with the Quakers had been made shortly after I got out of the service when my doubts crept in about what I had done in the service, and why I had let myself be drafted when I had expressed serious anti-war doubts before induction about what the American government was doing in Vietnam to its own soldiers. But, more importantly, and this was the real beginning of wisdom and something I am keenly aware every time the American government ratchets up the war hysteria for its latest adventure, to the Vietnamese who to paraphrase the great boxer Mohammed Ali (then Cassius Clay) had never done anything to me, never posed any threat to me and mine. But as much as I admired the Quakers and their simple peace witness, occasionally attended their service and briefly had a Quaker girlfriend, I was always a little jumpy around them, my problem not theirs, since their brand of conscientious objection to all wars was much broader than my belief in just and unjust wars.
Later I worked with a couple of anti-war collectives that concentrated on anti-war GI work among active GIs through the vehicle of coffeehouses located near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and Fort Dix down in New Jersey. That work while satisfying and rewarding by actually working with guys who knew the score, knew the score from the inside, and had plenty to tell, especially those who had gotten “religion” under fire was short-lived once American on the ground involvement in Vietnam was minimalized and the horrific draft was abolished as a means of grabbing “cannon fodder” for the damn war. Once the threat of being sent to Vietnam diminished the soldiers drifted off and the anti-war cadre that held things together as well.
What really drove the issue of military resistance home to me though, what caused some red-faced shame was something that I did not find out about until well after my own military service was over. A few years later when I went back to my hometown on some family-related business I found out after meeting him on the street coming out of a local supermarket that my best friend from high school, Sean Kiley, had been a military resister, had refused to go to Vietnam, and had served about two years in various Army stockades for his efforts. Had done his “duty” as he saw it. Had earned his “anti-war” colors the hard way.
See Sean like me, like a lot of working-class kids from places like our hometown, Gloversville, up in Massachusetts, maybe had a few doubts about the war but had no way to figure out what to do and let himself be drafted for that very reason. What would a small town boy whose citizens supported the Vietnam War long after it made even a smidgen of sense, whose own parents were fervent “hawks,” whose older brother had won the DSC in Vietnam, and whose contemporaries including me did their service without a public murmur know of how to maneuver against the American military monster machine. But what Sean saw early on, from about day three of basis training, told him he had made a big error, that his grandmother who grew up in Boston and had been an old Dorothy Day Catholic Worker supporter had been right that there was no right reason for him to be in that war. And so when he could, after receiving orders for Vietnam, he refused to go (I will tell you more of the details some time when I ask him some questions about events that I have forgotten) and did his time in the military that way.
Sean’s story, and in a sense my belated story, are enough reasons to support Courage to Resist since, unfortunately, there are today very few organizations dedicated to providing informational, legal, and social support for the military resisters of the heinous onslaughts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organization needs the help of every ex-soldier who got “religion,” of every anti-war activist, and of every honest citizen who realizes, now more than ever, that the short way to end the endless wars of this generation is to get to the soldiers, get to the cadre on the ground fighting the damn wars. Enough said.
The Promise of a Socialist Society
Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them.
Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself....
With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears.... Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.
To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.
—Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878)
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
(Quote of the Week)
Workers Vanguard No. 1025
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31 May 2013
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TROTSKY
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LENIN
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The Promise of a Socialist Society
(Quote of the Week)
In the selection below, Friedrich Engels makes plain how proletarian revolution opens the road to an emancipated future in which the productive powers of humanity are unleashed for the benefit of all mankind.
Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them.
Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself....
With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears.... Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.
To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.
—Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878)
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):
“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-Honor The Historic Leader Of The German Spartacists-Karl Liebknecht
EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT.
Karl Liebknecht Thumbnail Biography
The son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the founders of the SPD, Karl Liebknecht trained to be a lawyer and defended many Social Democrats in political trials. He was also a leading figure in the socialist youth movement and thus became a leading figure in the struggle against militarism.
As a deputy in the Reichstag he was one of the first SPD representatives to break party discipline and vote against war credits in December 1914. He became a figurehead for the struggle against the war. His opposition was so successful that his parliamentary immunity was removed and he was imprisoned.
Freed by the November revolution he immediately threw himself into the struggle and became with Rosa Luxemburg one of the founders of the new Communist Party (KPD). Along with Luxemburg he was murdered by military officers with the tacit approval of the leaders of the SPD after the suppression of the so-called “Spartacist Uprising” in January 1919.
**************Markin comment:
Karl Liebknecht- A Model Anti-Warrior
This comment was originally written in 2006 in the American Left History blog but the main points hold true today:
I recently (2006) have received a comment from someone whom I took earnestly to be perplexed by a section of a commentary that I had written where I stated that the minimum necessary for any anti-war politician was to vote against the Iraq war budget in a principled manner. Not the way former Democratic presidential candidate Massachusetts Senator John Kerry’s (and others) dipsy-doodled votes for and against various war budgetary requests in 2004. And certainly not the other variations on this theme performed recently by aspiring Democratic presidential candidates Senators Obama and Clinton in the lead-up to 2008. Nor, for that matter, the way of those who oppose the Iraq war budget but have no problems if those funds were diverted to wars in Afghanistan, Iran , North Korea, China or their favorite ‘evil state’ of the month. What really drew the commenter up short was that I stated this was only the beginning of political wisdom and then proceeded to explain that even that would not be enough to render the politician political support if his or her other politics were weak. The commenter then plaintively begged me to describe what kind of politician would qualify for such support. Although I have noted elsewhere that some politicians, Democratic Congressman James McGovern of Massachusetts and presidential candidate Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich stand out from the pack, the real anti-war hero on principle we should look at is long dead-Karl Liebknecht, the German Social-Democratic leader from World War I. Wherever anyone fights against unjust wars Liebknecht’s spirit hovers over those efforts. Here is what I had to say in part about that revolutionary politician:
"…I do not believe we are lacking in physical courage. What has declined is political courage, and this seems in irreversible decline on the part of parliamentary politicians. That said, I want to finish up with a woefully inadequate political appreciation of Karl Liebknecht, member of the German Social Democratic faction in the Reichstag in the early 1900’s. Karl was also a son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, who had been a friend of Karl Marx and founder of the German Social Democratic Party in the 1860’s. On August 4, 1914, at the start of World War I the German Social Democratic Party voted YES on the war budget of the Kaiser against all its previous historic positions on German militarism. This vote was rightly seen as a betrayal of socialist principles. Due to a policy of parliamentary solidarity Karl Liebknecht also voted for this budget, or at least felt he had to go along with his faction. Shortly thereafter, he broke ranks and voted NO against the war appropriations. As pointed out below Karl Liebknecht did much more than that to oppose the German side in the First World War. That, my friends, is the kind of politician I can support. As for the rest-hold their feet to the fire.
"One of the problems with being the son of a famous politician is that as founder of the early German Social Democratic Party Wilhelm Liebknecht's son much was expected of Karl, especially on the question of leading the German working class against German militarism. Wilhelm had done a prison term (with August Bebel) for opposition to the Franco-Prussian War. As for Karl I have always admired that famous picture of him walking across the Potsdam Plaza in uniform, subject to imprisonment after loss of his parliamentary immunity, with briefcase under arm ready to go in and do battle with the parliamentary cretins of the Social Democratic Party over support for the war budget. (That photograph can be Googled.) That is the kind of leadership cadre we desperately need now. REMEMBER HIS FAMOUS SLOGANS- "HE MAIN ENEMY IS AT HOME’-‘NOT ONE PENNY, NOT ONE PERSON (updated by writer) FOR THE WAR." Wilhelm would have been proud.
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