This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Thursday, January 15, 2015
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.
Free All Our Class-War Brother And Sister Political Prisoners Now-The Cause That Passes Through The Prisons
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee Website-
James P.Cannon (center)-Founding leader of The International Labor Defense- a model for labor defense work in the 1920s and 1930s.
Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website. http://www.partisandefense.org/ Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010, updated December 2014. Markin comment: I like to think of myself as a long-time fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. Cases from early on in the 1970s when the organization was founded and the committee defended the Black Panthers who were being targeted by every police agency that had an say in the matter, the almost abandoned by the left Weather Underground (in its various incantations) and Chilean miners in the wake of the Pinochet coup there in 1973 up to more recent times with the Mumia death penalty case, defense of the Occupy movement and the NATO three, and defense of the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley).
Moreover the PDC is an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers like Lynne Stewart, articulate death-row prisoners like Mumia and the late Tookie Williams, anti-fascist street fighters like the Tingsley Five to black liberation fighters like the Assata Shakur, the Omaha Three and the Angola Three and who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters like the working-class based Ohio Seven and student-based Weather Underground who took Che Guevara’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Others, other militant labor and social liberation fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year tough I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time). That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson’s present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers in their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven, as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their younger days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today (also Black Panther-connected); the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point. That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind. And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. Many, too many for most of that time. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. The class-war prisoners must not stand alone.
*Free The Last of the Ohio Seven-They Must Not Die In Jail
COMMENTARY
ONE OF THE OHIO SEVEN -RICHARD WILLIAMS- RECENTLY DIED IN PRISON (2006). THAT LEAVES JAAN LAAMAN AND TOM MANNING STILL IN PRISON. IT IS AN URGENT DUTY FOR THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR MOVEMENT AND OTHERS TO RAISE THE CALL FOR THEIR FREEDOM. FREE ALL CLASS WAR PRISONERS.
Free the last of the Seven. Below is a commentary written in 2006 arguing for their freedom.
The Ohio Seven, like many other subjective revolutionaries, coming out of the turbulent anti-Vietnam War and anti-imperialist movements, were committed to social change. The different is that this organization included mainly working class militants, some of whose political consciousness was formed by participation as soldiers in the Vietnam War itself. Various members were convicted for carrying out robberies, apparently to raise money for their struggles, and bombings of imperialist targets. Without going into their particular personal and political biographies I note that these were the kind of subjective revolutionaries that must be recruited to a working class vanguard party if there ever is to be a chance of bringing off a socialist revolution. In the absence of a viable revolutionary labor party in the 1970’s and 1980’s the politics of the Ohio Seven, like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, were borne of despair at the immensity of the task and also by desperation to do something concrete in aid of the Vietnamese Revolution and other Third World struggles . Their actions in trying to open up a second front militarily in the United States in aid of Third World struggles without a mass base proved to be mistaken but, as the Partisan Defense Committee which I support has noted, their actions were no crime in the eyes of the international working class.
The lack of a revolutionary vanguard to attract such working class elements away from adventurism is rendered even more tragic in the case of the Ohio Seven. Leon Trotsky, a leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution of 1917, noted in a political obituary for his fallen comrade and fellow Left Oppositionist Kote Tsintadze that the West has not produced such fighters as Kote. Kote, who went through all the phases of struggle for the Russian Revolution, including imprisonment and exile under both the Czar and Stalin benefited from solidarity in a mass revolutionary vanguard party to sustain him through the hard times. What a revolutionary party could have done with the evident capacity and continuing commitment of subjective revolutionaries like the Ohio Seven poses that question point blank. This is the central problem and task of cadre development in the West in resolving the crisis of revolutionary leadership.
Finally, I would like to note that except for the Partisan Defense Committee and their own defense organizations – the Ohio 7 Defense Committee and the Jaan Laaman Defense Fund- the Ohio Seven have long ago been abandoned by those New Left elements and others, who as noted, at one time had very similar politics. At least part of this can be attributed to the rightward drift to liberal pacifist politics by many of them, but some must be attributed to class. Although the Ohio Seven were not our people- they are our people. All honor to them. As James P Cannon, a founding leader of the International Labor Defense, forerunner of the Partisan Defense Committee, pointed out long ago –Solidarity with class war prisoners is not charity- it is a duty. Their fight is our fight! LET US DO OUR DUTY HERE. RAISE THE CALL FOR THE FREEDOM OF LAAMAN AND MANNING. MAKE MOTIONS OF SOLIDARITY IN YOUR POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, SCHOOL OR UNION.
YOU CAN GOOGLE THE ORGANIZATIONS MENTIONED ABOVE- THE PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE- THE OHIO 7 DEFENSE COMMITTEE- THE JAAN LAAMAN DEFENSE FUND.
**
As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner
In say 1912, 1913,
hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war
clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed
their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing
business in the world. Yes the artists of every school but the
Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists andSurrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements, those
who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to
paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw
that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems;
writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish
theory of progress,humankind had moved
beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would
put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins;
writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden
gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that
man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate
themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens
strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of
delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of
the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those
constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack
of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the
hair of another man. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not
profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising,
kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would
resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist,
Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes,
words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.
And then the war
drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out
their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets,
artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to
die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course,
their always fate….
Siegfried Sassoon
Before he went go on to write his largely autobiographical George Sherston trilogy of novels, the writer — most famous for his poetry — quit the army in a letter where he stated, “that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest.”
Free Chelsea Manning-President Obama
Pardon Chelsea Now!
No question the case of heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower Chelsea
Manning had fallen below the radar for the general public since her trial down
at Fort Meade in Maryland where she was convicted and sentenced to thirty-five
years for multiple charges including espionage in August 2013. (She was tried
by the military under the birth name Bradley Manning and has subsequently had
her name legally changed in a Kansas court.) Some of that fall-off would be
expected even in a high profile case once the verdict was in and the case was
taken off the front page and into the wrangle of appellate legal proceedings. Important people, including the heroic whistle-blower
Edward Snowden, still sign petitions and sent birthday greetings and the like
and Chelsea has occasional Op-Ed and other media changes to make her views
known to a candid world but what she needs is a renewed effort to get a pardon
from President Obama who has the legal authority to grant such a request. I urge
everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition to put pressure on
President Obama to do so.
“Cold Case Extraordinaire”- Master Crime Novel George V. Higgins’
The Mandeville Talent
Book Review From The Pen Of Frank Jackman The Mandeville Talent, George V. Higgins, 1991 Hey, any friend of Eddie Coyle’s is a friend of mine. You know
Eddie, right, the Cambridge-bred corner boy who got tied up with some guys who
did some things, a little of this and that late at night, a little of this and that
about giving guys the means to go rooty-toot-toot, did some things that “Uncle”
might take umbrage at and try to put a guy away for, for a nickel or a dime,
maybe. And poor middle-aged sag Eddie did not want to do the time, no way, but
also got caught up in something too big for him to handle. So you know Eddie
Coyle the guy who was found not looking too pretty one cop car morning in the
back of a stolen Chevy in some back parking lot in some dead-drop bowling alley
off Dorchester Avenue in Boston. Actually now that I think about the matter I don’t know, never heard
of, could not say word one about some guy, what was his name again, oh yeah,
Eddie Coyle. And of course while a lot of ex-corner boys (Jack Slack’s bowling
alleys in North Adamsville for me) knew plenty of guys exactly like benighted
Eddie no one could actually know him since he was the fictional creation of the
author under review, George V. Higgins, in his first and most famous crime
novel, The Friends Of Eddie Coyle published
in 1972 (and later adapted for the cinema starring Robert Mitchum as the
stand-up guy of the title). But, see, Brother Higgins was a prolific writer and
although many of his best works and pieces of righteous ear for “street”
dialogue involved low-end, well, gangster types he wrote other crime-centered
books where the “bad guys” were not front and center, did not in the final push
get away with murder. Although in the book under review, The Mandeville Talent, it was a close thing, a very close
thing. The air these days is full of “cold case” murder shows and books
but Higgin’s is probably an early attempt to place this genre into literature.
Here is the skinny on the case and you can decide how close to not solving the
solving of this one was. The Mandeville family had been a big name out in the
Berkshires for a long time, respectable people who ran the local bank and
prospered. Back the 1950s and 1960s though the latest Mandeville, James, got
the itch to make really big money, bigger than that old steady generation’s money,
just to prove he could do it. Just to put the James Mandeville name up to the front
of the clan. So he bought a big lot of land that he expected to turn into a
huge profit as people, people with cars, people tired of the city, people who
made enough money to have a second home in the golden age of America, drifted
into the valley. See even though Jim had big appetites for success he also had that
slow growth Mandeville DNA embedded in his
soul so he hedged his bets, didn’t want to put all of his wealth in the basket.
So he borrowed some of the dough. Problem was that he had to borrow some of the
dough, borrow it from “connected” guys (and if you don’t know who they are then
think “godfathers”) who also saw the land as a boondoggle. And that set up
Mandeville for execution gangland style in 1967-a “hit.” A messy job that no
question was a flat-out murder with a purpose. Except through more
sleighs-of-hands, more legal, judicial, medical and law enforcement incompetence, and more nefarious doings the
clear-cut murder got dismissed as a suicide, or if that was not good enough
then reduced to just a plain unsolvable murder. Fast forward twenty-plus years and a professor grand-daughter,
Julie, married to an up and coming Wall Street lawyer, Joe, is gnashing her
teeth to find out who murdered grandpa. And said Joe tired of the New York City
rat race is ready to oblige her even though the case is as cold as ice, a
no-winner. Except Joe is undaunted, especially when he finally teams up with an
old intelligence officer, Baldo, and they work the records, work the data, work
with anybody who has the slightest notion of what happened back then in 1967 and
before as they slowly a mass enough evidence that old man Mandeville and his
dreams had been cut short by the mob, not your old Al Capone shoot-em-up mob,
not even Eddie Coyle’s street-wise mob but a mob which operated on a business
model of foresight, exploration, patience, and cunning and capable of placing
“moles” inplace to make sure things go
their way just like any legal business. Funny though in the end they had had to
go to the old reliable, the “hit” to solve their Mandeville problem. Just like
with Eddie Coyle. Go figure.
Fight For 15
Tom
Morello: Lets win $15 in
2015!
Dear Friend,
The strike actions, rallies, and marches on December 4th were the largest ever since fast food workers went out on strike in fall 2012 demanding $15 and a union.
The movement for a $15 minimum wage is gaining tremendous momentum as workers, inspired by the victories in SeaTac, Seattle, and San Francisco, look to bring $15 to their cities.
Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, and The Nightwatchman was an early endorser of 15 Now, and recently played a benefit concert to help raise money to build a national movement for $15.
Watch this video, chip in $15 to help build 15 Now into a national movement, and please share it.
The Angola 3:Black Panthers and the Last
Slave Plantation
[see video Who Are the Angola 3?]
Showing Thursday, January 15, in Cambridge [please download & distribute flyer]
This film tells the gripping story of Robert King , Herman Wallace and Albert
Woodfox, men who have endured solitary confinement longer than any known living
prisoner in the United States. Politicized through contact with the Black
Panther Party while inside Louisiana s prisons, they formed one of the only
prison Panther chapters in history and worked to organize other prisoners into a
movement for the right to live like human beings. This film explores their
extraordinary struggle for justice while incarcerated in Angola, a former slave
plantation where institutionalized rape and murder made it known as one of the
most brutal and racist prisons in the United States.
In a partial
victory, the courts exonerated Robert King of the original charges and released
him in 2001.
[Herman Wallace, dying of liver cancer, was released on
October 2nd and died on October 4th, 2013. Albert Woodfox has now endured as a
political prisoner in solitary confinement for over 42 years.] The Angola 3 is dedicated to the Anarchist Black Cross who have been fighting for the freedom
of political prisoners and the abolition of prisons around the world for over
100 years.
Narrated by Mumia Abu-Jamal, The Angola 3 features interviews with
former Panthers, political prisoners and revolutionaries, including the Angola 3
themselves, and Bo Brown, Geronimo (ji Jaga) Pratt, Malik Rahim, Yuri Kochiyama,
David Hilliard, Rod Coronado, Noelle Hanrahan, Kiilu Nyasha, Marion Brown, Luis
Talamantez, Gail Shaw and many others.
"on April 23, 1976, the Church Committee released its Final Staff
Report on the FBI and CIA's rampant domestic illegalities which included a
chapter entitled 'The FBI's Covert Action Plan to Destroy the Black Panther
Party.' " ~ G. Flint Taylor
"Even 15 days in solitary confinement
constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and
15 days is the limit after which irreversible harmful psychological effects can
occur. However, many prisoners in the United States have been isolated for far
longer." ~Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel
treatment
"The goal of the government was to get all the leaders of
the Black Panther Party in jail so that they could be killed systematically
through prison violence, and that way they could stop what was a very powerful
and evolving movement." ~James Cromwell
When/where doors open 6:40; film starts promptly 7pm 243
Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor, entrance on
Windsor rule19.org/videos
Please join us for a stimulating
night out; bring your friends! free film & free door
prizes[donations are encouraged]feel free to bring
your own snacks and soft drinks - no alcohol allowed
"You can't legislate good will - that comes through education." ~
Malcolm X
Why
should YOU care? It's YOUR money that pays for US/Israeli wars - on Iraq,
Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Libya. Syria, Iran, So America, etc etc - for
billionaire bailouts, for ever more ubiquitous US prisons, for the loss of
liberty and civil rights...
Foreign
Policy for All Workshop 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
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?
The Foreign Policy for All, incorporating your
ideas, will come before Massachusetts Peace Action’s annual meeting on February 7,
2015 for discussion and further input. Rev. Osagyefo Sekou and Rep. Dennis
Kucinich will be the keynote speakers.
Youth, faith, food movement allies come
together under a single flag, form the new Alliance for Fair Food!
Student/Farmworker Alliance,
Interfaith Action and Just Harvest USA unite in one vibrant, diverse ally
network ready for the next phase in the fight for Fair Food…
The Alliance for Fair Food is back and better than
ever! But before we tell you about this exciting new development in the Fair
Food movement, let’s first take a quick look back at its roots.
“There is today a human rights crisis in the
fields…”
For longtime members of the Fair Food Nation, the
Alliance for Fair Food (AFF) is a distant memory from the early, hopeful days of
the movement. Not long after the Taco Bell victory, in the midst of the
McDonald’s campaign that followed, a growing list of organizations, individuals,
and institutions began to coalesce around their support for the Campaign for
Fair Food. At that time, workers in Immokalee and their allies realized that
something new and important was happening, that what had started as a one-off
boycott was becoming a movement.
That movement was founded on certain fundamental
rights — the right to work free of sexual harassment and modern slavery, the
right to fair wages, the right complain without fear of retaliation, the right
to have a voice in the decisions that shape your workplace and your life — and
the first iteration of the AFF was formed as a body through which like-minded
organizations could formally endorse those rights for farmworkers and the
Campaign for Fair Food.
Beginning with the words, “There is, today, a
human rights crisis in Florida’s fields…,” the declaration announcing the
formation of the original AFF on March 8, 2006 was unequivocal...
In Boston Friday January 16, 2014- Support The Pakistani People's Resistance To The Taliban Frank Jackman comment; The Obama government (and other imperial powers and their hangers-on) have their way of fighting the ISIS-Taliban-Al Queda menace Islamic fundamentalist threat to the world-bombs, drones, more bombs, and increased troops on the ground while propping up governments, or agencies within the government, like the Pakistani with aid and other resources while some of those agencies protect these vicious enemies of the peoples of the world. The following is one event where average citizens of the world can show solidarity with those in and from Pakistan who are fighting the menace right on their doorstep. Stand in solidarity with the benighted peoples of Pakistan.
When Be-Bop Bopped In The Doo Wop Night-With The Classics Til Then In Mind
Till then, my darling, please wait for me Till then, no matter when it may be One day I know I'll be home again Please wait (till) till then
Our dreams will live though we are apart Our love will always stay in our hearts Till then, when of the world will be free Please wait for me
Although there are oceans we must cross and mountains that we must climb I know every gain must have a loss, so pray that our loss is nothing but time
Till then, we'll dream of what there will be Till then, we'll call on each memory Till then, when I will hold you again Please wait till then (ooh)
Sure I have plenty to say about early rock ‘n’ roll, now called the classic rock period in the musicology hall of fame. Yeah, I know I have already talked some ears off, maybe yours, about how hard-pressed Mississippi plantation workers (semi-slaves the way the pay-out came down at theend of the year) gathered around on some sweaty Saturday night to hear Big Bill, Big Jack, Big Little, or Big somebody belt the blues out of some whiskey bottle in some broken down juke joint, and left enough of an impression that that dark boy in the corner, kind of shy but very inquisitive about that beat took it north-ward and put it in an electric outlet and you could see the audience, the woman audience part, swaying that sway that meant they got it, got that rif (and maybe said thanks that shy young brother in their own swaying way). I know too that I have left some ears kind of staggered after mouthing off about who Jesse Lee and Billy Bob, a couple of plain ordinary good old boys maybe heard a far off echo of that electrified music and started riff-ing on their own in places like Memphis and Mobile waiting to be discovered as the next be-bop daddy musical white negro (Norman Mailer’s term, hipster term, not mine but it fits) all young and hungry, ready to play for free, or nickels just to get out of the small town Saturday night and jump.
So yeah I have talked some, some about the big broad trends coming out of the mid-century muck (mid-20th century just so you know) and within that say I have spent a little time, not enough, considering its effect on us on the doo-wop branch of the genre. Part of the reason for the “not enough,” once I thought about it was that obviously back in those mid-1950s jail-breakout days I did not (and I do not believe that any other eleven and twelve-year olds did either), distinguish between let’s say rockabilly-back-beat-drive rock, black-based rock centered on a heavy rhythm and blues backdrop, and the almost instrument-less (or maybe a soft piano or guitar backdrop) group harmonics that drove doo-wop. Even now that stuff is better left to the aficionados and musical intelligentsia, the guys who make dough putting the stuff in some boxed-in historical perspective.
All I knew, all any of us knew when our knees started to tremble, maybe wobble is better, to the new beat that came out of some Mother Africa from whence we came, was that it was not my parents’ mannered Tin Pan Alley by-the-numbers music, not close. Get this too as a selling point it did not hurt that they, those same parents, got nervous, very nervous, anytime it was played out loud in their presence. Forever “turn it down” (or father “turn the damn thing down”) raced along with each song. Fortunately, some sainted, sanctified, techno-guru developed the iPod of that primitive era; the battery-driven transistor radio. No big deal, technology-wise by today’s standards, but get this you could place it near your ear and have your own private out loud without parental scuffling in the background. Yes, sainted, sanctified techno-guru. No question.
What doo-wop did though down in our old-time working-class housing projects neighborhood, and again it was not so much by revelation as by trial and error, is allow us to be in tune with the music of our generation without having to spend a lot of money on instruments or a studio or anything like that. Strictly built for po’ boys like us. First of all where the hell would we have gotten the dough, when we were stretched grabbing nickels and dimes, stealing really okay, from Ma’s pocketbook just to keep the juke-box at Sandy’s Diner going, for such things when papas were out of work, or were one step away, and there was “max daddy” trouble just keeping the wolves from the door. Bills and repo men the bane of every family’s existence. (Worse, worse though when papas could not take it anymore and just split, long-gone daddy split with or without some barroom frill or got nasty drunk with the paycheck and left Ma with empty Friday night envelopes and nothing to stave off the collectors.)
Sure, some kids, some kids like my corner boy elementary school boyhood friend Billy, William James Bradley, were crazy to put together cover bands with electric guitars (rented occasionally), and dreams. Or maybe go wild with a school piano a la Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, or Fats Domino but those were maniac aficionados. I remember one time Billy was so hopped up on the fame game that in the height of the Elvis craze when all us other boys were busy growing side-burns and perfecting our sneers (sneers meant for some young thing, in our neighborhood and in that time meaning stick girls who had not gotten their forms yet, to wipe off into the sunset) he tried to hop on the Bo Diddley bandwagon. Hop on that bandwagon until one cruel school talent show night he learned the hard facts of the racial divide in a northern white housing project by one of the older boy rednecks and returned to Elvis-land with the rest of us. Billy, never say die Billy, also trying to break out with a Bill Haley and the Comets routine which worked okay around the neighborhood where all the girls went nuts but got him nowhere when a regional new talent show came through town and he was all geared up to win except the suit jacket his mother had jerry-rigged for the occasion fell apart about half way through his performance. Yeah, Billy had it bad.
Even Billy though, when the deal went down, especially after hearing Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers was mad to do the doo-wop and make his fame and fortune on the cheap. (No need for instruments, cheapjack jackets or racial taunts.) The cover art on a doo wop compilation I once reviewed in an old time rock and roll series made that poor boy and girl point beautifully. No not some Karl Marx brotherhood of man thing or Adams Smith all ships rising if one guy rises. Nothing that heavy, please. The cover showed a group of young black kids, black guys, young guys who looked “from hunger” too like us and who looked like they were doing their doo wop on some big city street corner (maybe Brooklyn, maybe the old days Bronx, maybe uptown Harlem Saturday night). And that made sense reflecting the New York City-derived birth of doo-wop and that the majority of doo-wop groups that we heard on the AM transistor sister radio were black. But the city, the poor sections of the city, white or black, was not the only place where moneyless guys and gals were harmonizing, hoping, hoping maybe beyond hope, to be discovered and make more than just a 1950s musical jail-breakout of their lives. Moreover, this cover art I speak of also showed, and showed vividly, what a lot of us guys were trying to do-impress girls, impress them on the cheap with some harmonies and moonlight and maybe a little side chatter too (and maybe visa-a-versa for girl doo-woppers but they can tell their own stories).
Yes, truth to tell, it was about impressing girls that drove many of us, Billy included, Christ maybe Billy most of all, to mix and match harmonies. And you know you did too (except remember girls just switch around what I just said). Yah, four or five guys just hanging around the back door of the old South Adamsville Elementary School on hot summer nights, nothing better to do, no dough to do things, maybe a little feisty because of that, and started up a few tunes. Junior corner boys with no corner because, well, because true corner-dom required a drugstore, a mom and pop variety store, or maybe if you were lucky a pizza parlor to be real corner boys and we did not have such institutions within five miles of our isolated peninsula projects. Billy, who actually did have some vocal musical talent (he did a very servable Bo Diddley although no way did he have that Afro-Carib beat down being as I later tried to figure out just a tad too white to have immersed his soul in that milieu and also did, if not a son of Bill Haley act if you don’t count the clothes flying off, then close very good job), usually sang lead, and the rest of us, well, doo-wopped. (Sha-sha-do-be-doo, okay just in case you thought I was kidding.) We knew nothing of keys and pauses, of time, notes, or reading music we just improvised. Worked on stuff kind of by osmosis or something and over the course of a summer we started to jell a little (And to keep in that jell mood I kept my changing to a teen-ager, slightly off-key voice on the low, on the very low.)
Whether we did it well or poorly, guess what, as the hot sun day turned into humid night, and the old sun went down just over the hills, first a couple of girls, then a couple more, and then a whole bevy (nice word, right?) of them came and got kind of swoony and moony. And swoony and moony was just fine. And we all innocent, innocent dream, innocent when we dreamed, make our virginal moves. But, mainly, we doo-wopped in the be-bop mid-1950s night. And a few of the songs previously mentioned in that reviewed CD compilation could be heard in that airless night. The stick outs: Deserie, The Charts; Baby Blue, The Echoes; Till Then, The Classics; Tonight (Could Be The Night), The Velvets. And of course Why Do Fools Fall In Love although Billy did not make any mistake this time since he had seen Frankie and his boys on American Bandstand and so did no imitation.
As for the girls as summer turned to school times on certain humid hot late August nights you could hear a mix and match of young male and female voices like they too had imbibed Billy’s dream, had seen that fame and fortune coming their way and they wanted in on it, if for no other reason than to get out of the projects. Or maybe I dwell too much, after the fact project too much, and they just wanted to bathe in the jail-break night we all knew was coming with the new rock dispensation.
Yah, I know everybody wants to know what happened to Billy since the name does not instantly come to mind when one thinks of the legends of classic rock, or doo wop bop. Well, Billy was wired for that success that always eluded him and after a while, after a few too many failures, bad moves or poor judgment he lost interest in being the president of rock and roll and turned to a life of small-time crime (even there he could not breakthrough since that life was just as “rigged” as everything else if you were not connected), got caught a few times and then I lost contact where he was and what he was doing. Whatever it was he still made many a project kid, including this kid, feel good for a couple of summers crooning out the tunes and bringing the girls around. Thanks Billy, thanks a lot.
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