Saturday, February 28, 2015

From The Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Website





Click below to link to the Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty website.

http://www.mcadp.org/
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Markin comment:
I have been an opponent of the death penalty for as long as I have been a political person, a long time. While I do not generally agree with the thrust of the Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Committee’s strategy for eliminating the death penalty nation-wide almost solely through legislative and judicial means (think about the 2011 Troy Davis case down in Georgia for a practical example of the limits of that strategy) I am always willing to work with them when specific situations come up. In any case they have a long pedigree extending, one way or the other, back to Sacco and Vanzetti and that is always important to remember whatever our political differences.

Here is another way to deal with both the question of the death penalty and of political prisoners from an old time socialist perspective taken from a book review of  James P. Cannon's Notebooks Of An Agitator:

I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.

The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s long time companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.

It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.

I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.

Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this system.

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Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."

last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll, another case of an injustice against black people. - Bob Dylan
, 1963

Markin comment (posted September 22, 2011):

Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.

On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.

Additional Markin comment posted September 23, 2011:

No question the execution on September 21, 2011 by the State of Georgia of Troy Anthony Davis hit me, and not me alone, hard. For just a brief moment that night, when he was granted a temporary stay pending a last minute appeal before the United States Supreme Court just minutes before his 7:00PM execution, I thought that we might have achieved a thimbleful of justice in this wicked old world. But it was not to be and so we battle on. Troy Davis shall now be honored in our pantheon along with the Haymarket Martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and others. While Brother Davis may have not been a hard politico like the others just mentioned his fight to abolish the death penalty for himself and for future Troys places him in that company. Honor Troy Davis- Fight To The Finish Against The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!

 




 
All Out For The Fifth Annual Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade In South Boston Sunday March 15, 2015

Frank Jackman comment:
I am always happy to publicize the Veterans For Peace-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade to be held this year on March 15th. This year will mark the fifth time that organized peace activists, anti-militarists, anti-imperialist, pro-LGBTQ and other socially conscious groups, have been excluded from the main “private” parade sponsored by the Allied War Council (that name goes a long way toward explaining the exclusions of the above-mentioned groups although pro-war LGBTQ veterans from an organization called OutVets has allegedly received permission to march openly). This year will mark the fourth time I will proudly march with my fellow veterans. (I was down in front of the gates at the Marine base at Quantico in Virginia standing for freedom for heroic Wikileaks whistle -blower Chelsea Manning and so could not attend the first effort.) This event is a highlight of the ant-war calendar each year and has become something of rallying point for all those, even some pro-military types who disagree with the politics of the peace parade, to express outrage that veterans have been excluded.  
Helping me to keep focused on publicizing this event is a statement attributed to one of the Allied War Council organizers a couple of years ago:             
 “We don’t want the word peace connected with the word veteran in our parade”
Of course that remark had me seeing red and I recall that I replied- “Oh yeah, well watch this, watch what we organize that day”- Don’t make a liar out of me this year. Plan to attend this important event.
All Out For The Smedley Butler Brigade Veterans For Peace-Initiated Saint Patrick’s PEACE Parade on Sunday March 15th in South Boston

 

Second-Faced Angel” Queen Of The Grifters-With Melinda Loring In Mind    

 
 
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Bart Webber, the writer, Bartlett Standish Webber III to those who need to know full monikers but nobody ever called him anything but Bart, or when he was a kid Black Bart after some television bad guy, had been in a funk, had had his seventh hell version of writer’s block ever since she, Melinda Loring she, had left town whereabouts unknown. As is well-known to any who have read his sketches and short pieces in some of the small smart alternative journals and on-line “zines” he had been subject to this writer’s block seemingly every other issue, although this was the first time that Melinda Loring had been the direct cause of his suffering. She had come whirling into town, into his life and then almost as quickly moved on, vanished really. But maybe we had better begin back when Bart and Melinda met and under what circumstances.

Bart had gone into his bank, the Boston First Bank, one day in order to apply for an automobile loan since his old Toyota Camry, vintage 1996, had bit the dust and he needed new wheels. Never having been much of a car buff in his youth back in Carver about thirty miles south of Boston he almost automatically went back to the Toyota Camry again, this time a brand new 2012 version, since what he knew about cars and their conditions would fill a thimble at best and so went the tried and true route that has been the default positon for lots of things in his life, especially recently. At the bank he was directed to the loan officer, a Ms. Perkins, as he found out when she introduced herself and then asked him to sit down as she was running behind on her work but she expected to be able to see him into about ten minutes. Since Bart was in the full bloom of his writer’s block he really did not mind the wait which he usually would have if he was in literary full flower.

When Bart sat down he noticed an attractive brunette who he thought had been waiting on the female customer who was being waited on by Ms. Perkins, or so he thought, roughly his age (although being wise to the ways of the world, the ways of the world with women of his generation despite being hit over the head constantly with the new sensibilities he would never publicly estimate a woman’s age), nice figure with very nice well-turned legs and pretty blue eyes behind her scalloped eyeglasses. Bart had a feeling that he had met this woman before, who turned out to be Melinda Loring later when they exchanged names, but like a million such situations once you have been in the world long enough to have these memory lapses you just do the best you can to see if you are right. Strangely Melinda after Bart made his first inquiry also thought that she had recognized him but she too could not place his face.

So they began the old routine, had they met at some literary function that Bart was endlessly being invited too, invited to when he was not suffering writer’s block and maybe had something new published in say the Evergreen Journal otherwise the literati or actually the non-literate social butterfly pace-setters went on to the next best thing. No. Melinda asked him if it might have been at some bar down on the Cape, around Falmouth since she had when she was on the East Coast always headed that way at the slightest whiff of summer and liked to relax at night either at Sailor Jack’s in Falmouth or Sandy’s Pub in Centerville. No.              

Getting nowhere with this line of inquiry they backtracked to their hometowns, hers’ Olde Saco up in Maine and his Carver so again no. Then they got to colleges, bingo. They were both members in good standing in the Class of 1984 at Boston University. Although they had not known each other then, had not been on speaking terms, the connection, the tenuous connection as it turned out, was that her best friend back then, Joyce Davis, had been Bart’s girlfriend Laura Parson’s roommate in the 700 dorms (the towers at 700 Commonwealth Avenue) and so they had seen each other a few times in passing, to give the nod to (not literally though since in those days guys only gave the “nod” to other guys they knew in passing as sign that while they were not companions for some reason they were cool. Females got the furtive glances and Bart did not remember doing so with Melinda since in those days he was enthralled with Laura.).

What Melinda did not know since Joyce had moved out to an apartment up off of Commonwealth Avenue in Allston for senior year and lost contact with Laura was what had happened to Laura. Bart, red-faced, proceeded to tell Melinda that Laura had been divorced wife number one of three divorces. Melinda laughed and said he was ahead of her since she had only two under her belt. Both making clear that they were now single as the mating ritual moved along right there in those waiting room chairs.  Melinda a bit coquettishly for a, ah, mature woman said she would not mind inspecting that new automobile Bart was about to purchase when the deal was closed. As Melinda’s  companion came out of Ms. Perkin’s office Bart no stranger to the wiles of coquettes, took the bait, they exchanged e-mail addresses and cellphone numbers and that turned out to lead to their first date. (That companion although she does not play any role in the future turned out to have been a fellow employee of Melinda’s who Melinda accompanied during their lunch break while she was arranging a loan, purpose unknown.)              

Of course for those who have been paying the slightest bit of attention to those smart journals and “zines” Bart wrote for he has a certain following more for his acerbic wit and clever eye than any serious pretentions to literary greatness. He always in mock humility called himself paraphrasing others a “first- rate third- rate hack.” He was no Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Banks, Tyler, or you name the well-known A-list author but he made his living at the trade and while many times he had led a hand-to-mouth existence he had survived and expected to continue to make his living that way. Apparently that blast of sincerity and candor sparked something in Melinda and they became lovers, the details of the affair need not detain us, or at least that was Bart’s position after Melinda left town for parts unknown. Bart argued that the less said about the details of their short affair the better since in the aftermath of Melinda’s vanishing many of the details probably were flat out lies or mis-directions.  

What does need to detain us is Melinda’s story. And that is where Bart met his comeuppance, had been the direct reason why these days he was in the throes of writers’ block. Melinda had had quite a ride after she graduated in 1984 having gotten married shortly after college to a guy, Jonathan Fairfield, from California who made a ton of money in the high tech field and then took off for parts unknown leaving her high and dry since she had no work resume then, having led the second level version of the rich and famous life as long as he Jonathan was around and showered her with whatever she needed as long as she “curled his toes ” (her expression for what Jonathan called sex, good sex). She assumed he had gone to Alaska since he had mentioned that he wanted to get out of the rat race but despite putting a couple of different private detectives on the case she came up empty-handed and had run out of dough anyway after the pawn shop-worthy stuff he had given her ran out.

Somehow Melinda survived all of that, having gotten her degree in accounting she got into the banking field out in Los Angeles for the Bank of America. That is where she had met her second husband, Lawrence Landon, a bank executive in the main office of the bank she worked at an after work party. After their marriage she was leading the life of the third level version of the rich and famous when the other shoe dropped and it turned out that old Lawrence had been dipping into the till, had been embezzling the bank for years to keep up his fantastic interest in antique automobiles which required much more money that he could access legally. (Melinda as a catch-line said she thought he loved those damn cars more than her which Bart thought rather sad and tried extra hard to console her about in the balmy days of their affair.) Lawrence must have had some inside information because he told Melinda that he was taking his automobiles to an auto show at Pebble Beach and would be gone for several days. The day he had the cars transported in a car van they waved each other good-bye like nothing was up. A couple of days later bank officials and governmental agents came looking for him out in their Topanga Canyon home. So again Melinda was on cheap street and back to accounting work.

Melinda related some other matters about affairs and funny trysts she had as well as some places a guy she met in Vegas, Jack Lang, took her to. So she had been around, been around the mean streets and she said survived if not with a smile then at least survived. Basically fleeing the West she decided to try her luck in Boston since she had gone to school there, had family close by up in Maine and knew the area and the prospects for a job. She quickly got a job at a large accounting firm and seemed to be getting along fairly well.            

Over a few month period Bart and Melinda got very close, and not surprisingly Bart produced some interesting articles based on the stories Melinda told him about her life, and about the men she knew. Bart also found out that he was getting very serious about Melinda despite the fact that after, Joyell, after wife number three he was off marriage, said that it was cheaper just to have affairs. Melinda also was putting a little bit of pressure on Bart to get married citing the fact that she needed at that time in her life to have some stability, have a steady home. She did not do a tom-tom drumbeat about the matter but she did make her point of view known.    

And that is where the other shoe fell on Bart’s head. One day Melinda called Bart from work telling him that she needed to talk to him as soon as possible, that their futures depended on the talk. Bart agreed to meet her at her firm within an hour. They met and went to the CafĂ© Blanc near Downtown Crossing in Boston. There Melinda told Bart that Lawrence Landon had called her and said that he was getting ready to turn himself in but that he would need her help to get bail money. Putting it plainer than that though Lawrence said if she didn’t help then he would implicate her in the embezzlement schemes the bank and government were looking for him about. Melinda started crying and then begged Bart to help her. She said Lawrence’s lawyer had told him to expect to come up with fifty-thousand dollars to gain bail. Melinda said she had twenty-five thousand or could raise that amount on her own, so could Bart loan her the other twenty-five to save her. Bart hesitated, seriously hesitated, since he had at most thirty thousand in the bank or that he could raise on short notice. Bart told her that and she pleaded with him some more to figure out a way to save her, couldn’t he borrow off of his 401k or grab an advance from a publisher. She was persistent and eventually Bart tapped part of his 401k to get the twenty-five grand.            

Here is where things got squirrelly though. After giving Melinda the money in the office he kept to do his serious writing in over in North Cambridge she said she was taking the train to meet Lawrence in New York City so that he could turn himself in, have his bail hearing, make arrangements to post his bail and so Bart would not hear from her for a few days. Bart was not happy about that but did not press the issue under the circumstances aided by the forlorn look Melinda gave him at parting. After a week though he couldn’t figure out what had happened to Melinda since she had not contacted him. He went to the manager of her apartment building to find out that she had left a least the week before owing six months’ rent and no forwarding address. The manager told him that he let her slide on rent because she said she had some money coming in soon and, well,  she was nice, and nice to look at. Bart winced. He then went to the accounting office in downtown Boston where they told him she had given her notice a couple of weeks before, no, no forwarding address. Also told him after he inquired about her position with the firm that contrary to what she had told him she was not a senior accountant with her own office but merely a staff accountant in a small cubicle. That last piece of information cut him to the quick, began giving him a sinking feeling, as other things she had told him over the previous started to not add up. Bart decided then he had to go to the cops to see if he should file a missing person’s report or whether they knew anything about Melinda Loring from a criminal angle.  

At the station, Station Four, after a fifteen minute wait, he talked to a Detective Sergeant Malloy from what used to be called the bunko squad when he was a kid but now was called the white collar crime department and gave him his story. Malloy in turn looked kind of quizzically at Bart and asked him if he had ever heard of a woman whom had the moniker “Second-Face Angel.” Bart said he never had, although he was not unfamiliar with monikers from his writing and from his addiction to old time private detection stories by guys like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Then Malloy filled Bart in on what had happened to him as he nodded in agreement as Malloy presented the facts. Melinda Loring, aka, Angel Lang, aka, Angel Linden, aka, “Second-Face Angel” among others in other jurisdictions had been working that “needs bail bond money” scam for a while, maybe two years around the Boston area. Malloy described the way the scam went which matched up with what Bart had told him in his story except Malloy snidely said Bart had gotten away cheap at twenty-five grand so she must have been desperate. Jonathan Fairfield had been taken for fifty thousand several months before. Lawrence Landon for almost one hundred thousand the previous year. Other guys, totally twelve as far as the detective knew, at least that is the number who had contacted the cops after she pulled her capers, had been being taken for amounts between that fifty and two hundred thousand, so join the line. The detective snickered when he asked if Bart wanted a list of the name of the other suckers and compare notes. Bart declined the offer and his writing declined from that time as well.           

Although Bart did not directly contact in person the other, well, suckers, he did sent some of them e-mails, made some inquiries and put a private detective friend, Rick Roberts, who usually did key-hole peeping for divorce lawyers but who thought he could help, to work for a while not so much to find Melinda, to find the Second-Face Angel (named that Bart thought from the contrast between her upscale front, her good looks, and her stone cold “grifter” heart). Here is what he was able to piece together from what Rick and other sources reported after a couple of months when Bart called everything off. He had had enough, had played the sucker in his mind enough:     

Melinda Loring had been arrested along with her parents up in York Beach, Maine in the summer of her junior year of high school in 1978 for running what amounted to a Ponzi scheme among the summer crowd when one “customer” though the whole scheme involving time shares in beachfront condos seemed fishy. Very fishy as it turned out since the Lorings were selling shares for five thousand dollars a pop in York and Wells giving out fake paperwork for property they did not own but which did belong to real owners who had not commissioned them to sell shares of their property. Melinda who role was to play the dutiful daughter to give the appearance that the play was family-friendly was placed on a year’s probation. Apparently off of that experience she decided to work her grifts alone since there was no record of her working her “bail” scams or any others she might have pulled off with a confederate.

Melinda, no question smart, an A student mostly at Olde Saco High up in Maine, got accepted at Boston University with a scholarship and that is where Bart and Melinda passed in the night through Laura’s roommate Joyce. Here is what surprised Bart though Melinda had never actually graduated in 1984, or any year. In her senior year she developed a little cocaine habit, the drug of choice at the time provided by a small-time dealer boyfriend, and dropped out to do some free-lance escort work (prostitution for the less faint-headed) advertising in the Phoenix back pages and working out of a Harvard Avenue apartment in Brookline. At some point in the late 1980s she broke her coke habit and had gathered enough money from her tricks to head west. That was at a time when the vicious Russian syndicates  were then attempting to corner the sex trade in Boston and wanted no free-lancers around to cut the price of paid-for sex and had tried with a belt buckle to her face by one of their thugs to put her in their stable, or else. So she split.

Out West Melinda may or may not have picked up on her escort service to make ends meet for a while, the evidence was inconclusive.  She did attempt to break into the film industry as an actress, model or in some capacity so she probably did wind up as some producer’s mistress for a while. In about 1992 Rick was able to find evidence that she worked her first “bail” scam nicking a well-known married film director out in California for about forty thousand (Bart wondered how she came up with the numbers in her demands, probably by a shrewd estimate of what the traffic would bear as in his case).

The next dozen or so cons ending with him went about the same way Bart figuring she had raked in at least a million plus if the numbers guys were taken for were right. Bart also figured only a very attractive, smart college-type woman with an ability to “curl a guy’s toes” and get him all confused with the jasmine scent of sex while carrying around a heart of stone could pull off that many grifts and not get caught. By the way Rick could find no record of Melinda ever having been married to anybody anywhere. End of story.                

Well wait a minute not the end of the story Bart thought later once the shock of his sucker-hood had sunk in and began to fade. He was sure some publisher, hell, maybe a pulp fiction publisher, would pay more than twenty-five grand for a dressed up version of that Melinda story as a novella or short novel describing how a well-educated good-looking woman with seemingly no guile decided at some point the “grift” was easier than working the straight and narrow. Guys would love it if he spiced it up with sex, especially a couple of “curl your toes” things she did and a few other alluring things, no, just the sex would sew it upon that end. Women would half admire her for taking a run of so-called smart guys over the hoops, maybe would pick up the book for some pointers.

Bart thought would work like he had done previously with such real live material by loading up the project up with various insights gleaned from his experience and that of the others. Like how easy it was for Melinda to con guys who were just looking to try to help her without question and without checking into whether the reasons she gave about anything were true or not (other guys gave small sums of money to help tide her over and he had given her money for rent a few times which as he found out she did not bother to pay in Boston), how according to Rick she stayed with each guy just long enough, a few months, to gain his trust and then spring her trap. He was fascinated by working through how she used the same basic understanding of men, certain men and Bart confessed that he had been in his life something of a con artist himself when he had his own addictions out of control, without much deviation according to the reports each time she pulled a con on the premise that cons of whatever stripe were the most susceptible to a con. How she sized guys up for the kill and for how much which really intrigued him since if she had say asked in his case for fifty grand he would have balked. How guys including him overlooked in their lust (he had originally just seen the thing as a fling, a little something to have nice memories of when he got older, and then move on back to his long-time companion Laura Peters), or plans for future togetherness (he had in the end took Melinda that he would dump Laura for her if it came down to it and she encouraged that train of thought), the inconsistences in her story. How she would always cover up her mistakes quickly like the time she told Bart she had been in California with Lawrence at a certain time when she later told him that she had been down the Cape during that time, or about her jacking up her job description, told a pretty story about her family which she claimed was doing well up in Maine when he father was sitting then in Shawshank for his part in an armed robbery, and that all her personal information after college was totally bogus. Worse and Bart felt he might get some play out of the idea how easy it was for her to put on an act about how much she cared about a guy when she was already half-way out the door. Talked about marriage and retirement and the big warm blues skies in California. All puff. Sure he could put together a hundred or two hundred thousand words easy. Yes the writer’s block was over.

 


Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program- Thirteen- The Sons Of Franz Fanon     






…he took the lashes, took the bitter lashes, the sable slave lashes in Pharaoh times, he took the ocean swells to the bottom unnoticed, Mister unnoticed, in Middle Passage time, he took the ebony lashes again in Mister Mississippi goddam plantation black code time, a time to make him studied ignorant, or else, ignorant of his history, of his past, of his kin except for hot sun cotton fields, and more hot sun cotton fields, he took the rope, he took the no hope, he took the Mister walk here, not there, sit here, not there, stand here, not there in Jim Crow time, he took his down-turned head in “talented tenth” time when he was not of the better sort, hell, he even kept that head down in “new negro” times when they were separating out the small pie portions. He, hell, he had had enough, enough of broken down internal rages, enough of unchallenged Mister hurts, enough of okie/arkie nobodies chanting  jim, get backs, enough of every kind of glad hand indignity. Enough.                  

And then he found his way out, or a way out, then he remembered, if he remembered rightly, that all over the world in the old days in Russia cold places, red guard arms in hand, when he was just a kid in China places, people’s army arms in hand,  right now, right this minute now, in Vietnam places where they were raising holy hell with Mister, with arms in hand, some of Mister’s own too, and above all in great Mother Africa, arms in hand, they were shoving Mister to the sea, if they let him get that far. Above all he remembered Algeria struggle, Algeria which he knew about from some brother telling him that this West Indian guy, this doctor, this head doctor, said that in the end if you didn’t pick up the gun, if you did not make a sacrificial act, if you just waited around for Mister to give you bread and butter that you would never right Pharaoh wrongs, Middle Passage wrongs, Mister plantation wrongs, Mister James Crow wrongs, hell even talented tenth and new negro wrongs (who were they to decide anyway). That anything that he was given without a righteous cleansing struggle would turn to ashes in his black-skinned mouth.       

And so he picked up the gun, picked it up easily, laughingly (like armed Mister laughed) held it barrel to the blue sky in public, learned to shoot the damn thing, and felt himself purified, slave purified for once in his down presser man life, and walked with a certain swagger, an angel swagger, and when some Johnny Reb okie transplant tried to take his measure he just showed “the colors.”  Beautiful to see that white ass turned, turned way around. And funny too others picked up the gun to avenge ancient hurts and they formed a brotherhood, solid, and declared, declared among themselves at first, until Mister heard it through the grapevine, that stinking new negro grapevine, war on that foreign country that he lived in, that Algeria in America country, like that head doctor talked about. And then things, thing started to get interesting, and bloody…         

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 the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), 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 gazebo 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, putting another man to ground or lying their own heads down for some imperial mission. 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, beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as the marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss hi shigh tea. Jesus what a blasted nigh that Great War time was.   

And do not forget when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it turned out 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 ….            
    
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The Enormous Room

 
In 1917 young Edward Estlin Cummings went to France as a volunteer with a Red Cross ambulance unit on the western front. But his free-spirited, insubordinate ways soon got him tagged as a possible enemy of La Patrie, and he was summarily tossed into a French concentration camp at La Ferte-Mace in Normandy. Under the vilest conditions, Cummings found fulfillment of his ever ...more
Paperback, 200 pages
Published November 3rd 2006 by Hard Press (first published 1922)
Stop The Killer-Drone Madness…Stop It Now

 

If one takes a quick look at military history not at the pre-conditions that set any particular war up but, you know, what was decisive in the victory of one side over the other you will, except those times when desperate valor saved the day, actually an unusual occurrence in the great scheme of warfare, notice that the side with the technological advantage, the latest gadget usually will prevail. Or at least that is what the average run of military historians will highlight. Taking an example from American internal war history, the Civil War of the 1860s, the decisive edge had been given to the industrial power of the North to produce as many cannon, guns, wagons, etc. as needed whereas the South, especially after Billy Sherman and his “bummers” marched through Georgia and its environs squeezing whatever industrial capacity that region did have, was starved for such materials. Thereafter the massing of high caliber accurate firepower weaponry became the standard on the battlefield.

All of this simple-simon history is presented to make a point about what military strategists are up to these days with the incessant use of killer-drones, those gadgets that now, whether recognized as such or not are seen as the solution to reducing the need for boots on the ground which in turn means that those like the American military and its civilian administrators need to worry less about outraged citizens when the body count gets too high. That has not deterred every administration, including the current Obama one from anteing up the boots on the ground when the deal goes down and land needs to be secured. So needless to say this military “new age” thinking is hogwash since while drones had more than occasionally hit their targets they have more than occasionally created what is euphemistically termed “collateral damage” to anybody in the area of the strike.

That fact alone, that fact of innocent civilian causalities, is why I along with others, hopefully a growing number of others, are out in the streets at anti-war rallies and elsewhere telling presidents and generals to stop their killer-drone programs. Join us on this one just like you would when the American government throws boot on the ground in some ill-conceived plan to make the world “safe for democracy.”         

         

In Boston-Free All Class-War Prisoners 

 

Free Angela and All Political Prisoner ***** Rescheduled to March 1 *******



When: Thursday, March 1, 2015, 6:45 pm to 9:00 pm
Where: Central Square Cambridge Library • 45 Pearl Street • In Honor of Black History Month • Cambridge
An Inspiring docudrama that takes a gripping look at the historical incidents that created an International movement to free activist Angela Davis.
“For more than four decades the world renowned author, activist and scholar Angela Davis has been one of the most influential activists and intellectuals in the United States. An icon of the 1970’s black liberation movement, Davis’ work around issues of gender, race, class and prisons has influenced critical thought and social movements across several generations.”      From Democracy Now, March 6, 2014
Parking nearby Municipal garage on Green Street
Sponsored by Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Light refreshments will be served 


Upcoming Events: 

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-The Complete Stories

 
One-A Room Of One’s Own 

Big Joe Barker (the Big Joe, rather than just Joe earned from many labor battles along the docks, along the waterfront, going back to the big one, the Frisco big one in ’34) sat in that Merritt College (Oakland, out in California, if you didn’t know its locale) classroom, a room like many another he had sat in over the years, chalky blackboard, wooden chairs and all, wondering what Bobby Seale, the Chairman of this new Black Panther Party that had gotten all the notoriety earlier in the year flashing rifle barrel up shot guns over in the state capitol, Sacramento, and had the white boys all freaked out, freaked out big time, was going to say about the black nation, about how he, and his black brethren were going to finally inherit the earth, finally have a place to call home without ever eye-balling whitey hanging his fat white ass all over the place.           

Funny, Big Joe thought, as he waited for the room to fill a little and the program to begin, how what goes around comes around. He remembered way back in the early 1930s when he first heard of the Communist Party when they had come around the Embarcadero, around Third Street over in Frisco and were helping him and a couple of the brothers out trying to stop people from being evicted on his block at the height of the Depression that one of their comrades had mentioned, mentioned in passing, wouldn’t it be great if black people had their own nation. That idea, that simple seeming idea, had drawn his interest since he had been (and his daddy too, his daddy like Malcolm’s never getting over that first thrill of black-ness, black righteousness) a fervent supporter of Marcus Garvey and his black- nationalist movement back in the early 1920s. So at that time he was all ears when that guy had mentioned something about Harry Haywood and his work on the black nation question, the question of the right of national self-determination, for their organization.          

And so, like this evening, he had gone to a meeting, a meeting like this one, chalkboard and wooden chairs included, over at Berkeley, when Harry Haywood had come to town on a speaking tour touting Communist Party work, work on the black question as it was then posed. Now this Harry Haywood was beautiful, smooth as silk, seemed like a “talented tenth” guy (although not having read W.E.B. Dubois he would not have used that term then), a good speaker, and fashioned himself out as the “black Bolshevik,” but some of the stuff he had to say was just pure air. See, he, or someone, had gone to a lot of trouble, to show on a map just exactly how the right to self-determination (that’s the way they liked to present the idea, present it in democratic terms) would look if a black nation was created, created in the south of the United States where most black people lived then. He had laughed, laughed to himself that the damn thing looked like a checker board.  Moreover, he (and his daddy) had hightailed it out of the south, the damn Mister James Crow south in the late 1920s to get the hell away from that crap. If that was the black nation they wanted him to fight for then no deal, no sale. So while he worked with the Communists in that ’34 Frisco strike, and a few things afterward, sometimes very closely, he always kept a certain distance event though he had never given up on that idea of a black nation, or black something.            

So he wondered, wondered what this Bobby Seale was going to say, say about what this right of self-determination was going to look like. He swore if they brought that old time Haywood map, or something like it, out he would walk right out. If Seale said let’s take California as our space then he would give a serious listen. Still, he had learned a few things since those old days, that the black man’s fate, his fate (or, more importantly his grandchildren’s) for better or worse, and he hoped not for the worst like always, was trying to break down the goddam barriers in the whole country, trying to jail-break out of the whole thing. Still he liked the idea of a black nation, a room one could call one’s own…        

Two- A Job Of One’s Own  

Leon Coleman was worried, worried sick, when he heard rumors that due to the world oil situation, whatever that was, although as a practical matter he knew that meant higher gas prices at the pump and more shell out for ways to get around, get around in cars, the main way, including him, people got around in America.  The reason that Leon Coleman was worried, and rightly so, was that the world oil situation would determine whether he had a job or not, at least a good-paying union wage job or not. Whether people would still buy new cars every few years. See Leon worked the line, the assembly line, over at Dodge Main in Detroit (really Hamtramck, over in Polack town) yes, that famous Dodge Main from a few years back, around 1971, when some brothers, some righteous black brothers mainly, closed the place down over some cracker foreman’s racist slurs and stuff like hiring brothers in the skilled trades jobs to get them the hell off of the damn assembly line. And he had reason to worry as well because he had just come off of a short lay-off  about eight months back and since he was as they say “last hired”  (having only worked at the plant a couple of years altogether) he would again be among the “first fired.” An old story, an old black story as far as he knew but he didn’t have anything in particular to back that view up since most of his people had  come north from Mississippi a while back and they had always had plenty, too plenty, of back-breaking hot sun work to do on some Mister’s plantation. At least he never had to suffer that fate, tough as the line was, tough as it was when they kept speeding the damn thing up.  

All Leon Coleman knew was it was tough to be a black man, a young black man, trying to make something of himself. Maybe just being a man was tough, especially a man with family and a woman with wanting habits, he wouldn’t argue that, but the way the deal went down when things went wrong, anything from the world oil situation to get kicked off the job first a black man had a burden. Yah, the damn thing was stacked against a black man. Hell, he could understand why those brothers said enough a few years back (although as a “new hire” right after that time he was told to, and did, stay clear of any revolutionary brother stuff) and argued that the way workers were hired and fired (okay, laid-off but it felt like being fired) had to be changed, that black men (and women too since they were starting to hire more woman for some quota thing) should not have to be the “fall guy.” And just that minute he could see where they were right back then, although little good it would do him.       

Little good too it would do him with wifey, Alberta, sweet Alberta with her child-wanting ways, harping on him about starting a family. Jesus, lord. As he thought about what loomed ahead he thought back to the days before he got his first serious job at the auto plant (before then for real jobs as a teenager he had worked in a low-rent car wash and flipped a few burgers at different places but mainly he didn’t work) when he was “running the streets” with his corner boys, stealing stuff, midnight stealing stuff, a couple of armed robberies (never picked up for) and at the end, dealing dope (and sniffing to, bad stuff, dealing and sniffing too, because you take too many chances when you are dope-addled), dealing dope to high heaven (and picking up a couple of arrests in the pursuit). It was the last arrest, the last arrest when they were going to step him off for a few years at state prison that his mother (father, Leon too, long gone, a Mississippi rolling  stone, whereabouts unknown) stepped in, made some connection with a union rep relative to get the auto job, made a deal with the judge, and he walked, as long as he kept clean. And he had, and Alberta, whatever her wanting ways, had made sure of that, after they had met at some whiskey joint out on Six Mile Road. So he harnessed himself to the work, kept straight during that lay-off time and grabbed all the overtime he could when he got back. He just wished it wasn’t so tough being a black man, a young black man, and that he had a job that he could call his own …                

Three- A Shop Of One’s Own  

“Doc” Jackson  (first name William but nobody, including his wife, Lucille, ever  called him anything but Doc, so Doc) had been dispensing pills and sundries and notions (not one knew what that mean, including Doc, but it sounded good, good to the tongue, when one said it reading it off the front door sign) at his corner drugstore for over thirty years in that spot at the intersection of  First Avenue and Grand Boulevard  and Third Street in the high Detroit Southward  neighborhood, what some called the “colored section” when he first started out back just a few years after World War II, others, black and white, called “niggertown” showing some contempt or self-contempt in the snarly way that they pronounced it, still others, reflecting the new sociology of the 1960s called it by some seemingly pathological name, “ghetto,” and he called just plain ordinary vanilla home. See Doc had lived over that drugstore of his for all the time that he had been dispensing those pills, those sundries, and those notions. That apartment’s value and an adjacent rented one had helped when money was tight, when things were slow, or when the neighborhood and the times changed. He was proud that he had held on, held on tight.     

He had seen some changes, from the high side money coming in during the “golden age of the automobile” when everybody was looking, looking hard to upgrade to a new car every few years (he had even caught the bug going from an old Packard, to a Chevy, to a high-end Buick, the one sitting out in the back of the store just then) to the hard time’60s when they, those bastard black brothers, burned everything they could get their hands on after Doctor King was assassinated, and almost got the drug store and its environs but the neighbors, his black and brown neighbors, had drawn a line in the sand and said, no, no more. And now, he was seeing some very disturbing signs that the town was going to be further devastated because they, as a result of some world oil situation which even he didn’t understand, were going to close Dodge Main, a place where in good times and bad, a lot of the neighborhood worked, or had somebody working.        

Worst though, much worst, was that his old clientele was pulling up stakes, or was dying off he hated to admit and so his old seven in the morning to ten at night speedy service of those in need of their medicines (or their liquor, which he carried for those with prescriptions, and those without, but the less said about that the better) and he was being squeezed out, squeezed out by the new chain drugstores, the new one they want to build right on his corner spot. And there was nothing that he could do about it. See, despite what everyone believed, even Lucille, he didn’t actually own the building, the apartments or anything but had leased them from Mister Reed, a good white man who had run the drugstore before him and seen the neighborhood change and seen that Doc was someone who could be trusted to keep the place going, long ago. Mister Reed, who had recently died, had a son who, as sons will do, wanted to convert his legacy to cash and was willing to sell out to that Osco Drug chain. So here he was now with nothing much to show for a lifetime of work, of sweat, of service except to rekindle his dream of a shop of his own somewhere, anywhere to close out his days…              

Four- A Home Of One's Own

Lettie Morse had been sitting on the rim of the world.  Lettie , all of eighteen, and sweet child- mother of three young children (ages, if you can believe this, and you will once the facts become known, two girls four and three and a boy, one) was just that moment sheltered against the rawness of life, if just for that moment, over at that Sally ‘s Harbor Lights safe house (Salvation Army for those not in need of their facilities and only familiar with their operations at supermarkets and the like ringing bells and seeking dollars at Christmas) in the deep South End section of  Boston over by Blackstone Park.  And like all such citizens caught up on the rim of the world Lettie had a story, and a dream too. Not a long story, not at eighteen, and not when one is on the rim of the world when just getting by from one day to the next, hell, just one step in front of you to the next, took up your hours, and not the stuff of story, or parable either.                 

See Lettie, sweet child-mother Lettie, considered herself, and was considered by friend and family alike to be, how to put it kindly, an ugly duckling (although motherhood became her as she held forth black Madonna-like in facing that one step after the next day), the runt of the litter of seven children when Vernon and Eleanor Morse (yes, named after the former First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt, for her kindnesses toward  the Negro people) when they had come up from Clarksville down in the Mississippi delta after hearing that Boston was the “land of milk and honey” and had landed smack dab in the recently constructed Columbia Point Housing Project over by the waters of Dorchester Bay. As so whether that was a wise or foolish decision (probably wise given hellhole Mister James Crow Mississippi goddam) the “projects” was where Lettie came of age, came of age fast, too fast.     

She would not speak of her troubles adjusting, adjusting as best she could, to northern urban life, bunched up in a shared small corner room with two other pretty sisters slightly older, of the slow heavy as molasses drawl she inherited from her maternal grandmother and which drew howls of laughter at the junior high school that serviced the projects, or of the cruel ugly duckling taunts from boys (and a wayward girl or two). Like a lot of not pretty girls (and maybe pretty girls too but that is best left for another story, today we are on the rim of the world with black Madonna Lettie) she substituted being sexually available to the boys for anything else she might have felt. And they, as boys will, when the midnight whistle blows and they hear of some “easy piece” had their way with her, and then left her, left her that first time, well not exactly empty- handed, but with child, one of them anyway, and hence Christine .

Things went along okay for a while in that “projects”  Morse home, she making room for her baby in her shared room, but Lettie, got a little restless as young girls will, and a boy, a not from the projects boy, took an interest in her. What she did not know was that he was selling reefer like crazy to the kids over near Uphams Corner (a school nearby the central point of sales) and eventually got busted, busted flat and sent away to reform school for a while. However, not leaving her empty-handed and thus Shana. That episode broke the camel’s back in the Morse household as fragile as it was. Lettie was unceremoniously told to pack her bags and she did. And so with two small children, no money, no home and no prospects she hit the streets, the mean streets. Lettie said to tell you no matter how bad things get, no matter how rough you think life is stay away from Mister’s streets, from his trick streets, from his walking daddy hustler’s streets, from his pimp daddy streets. She learned that lesson the hard way although she was not left empty-handed and hence Robert, father unknown, maybe unknowable.

So things kind of went downhill from there for a while, as Lettie tried to keep her little family together, tried to get off the streets, tried to get off the rim of the world, and so she landed at the Sally’s  safe house. She would stay there as long as it took for that promised apartment in the Orchard Park Housing Authority to come through. And that thought, the thought of  getting off the rim of the world, that thought of fixing up a home, a home to keep her children safe, a home of her own kept her focused… 

Five - A History Of One's Own

What James “Big Daddy” Dixon did not know about history would fill a book said his boyhood friend Anthony Hilton. What Anthony meant by that, or what James thought he meant by that was the saga of the American experience was a book sealed with seven seals for him. James, not usually one to suffer a slight with a shrug of the shoulders, and he took the remark as a slight, a kidding slight, not to be avenged but a slight nevertheless, wanted to know more about what was on Anthony’s mind that cold February 1964 morning. Normally, James would not give a rat’s ass (a popular expression picked up by the kids, James and Anthony included, in the rat-filled tenement house on the corner of Washington Street in the high Roxbury ghetto where James and Anthony had grown up, and had come of age together before they parted company to go their separate ways in in this wicked old world) about what Mister George Washington did, or did not do, at Valley Forge. Or what madness Mister Andrew Jackson brought down on the English in front of New Orleans or whether Mister Davey Crockett was ill-advised to make that terrible, fateful last stand down in the Podunk Alamo or whether Mister Abraham Lincoln (Father Abraham in his grandmother’s home, a place where he was dumped more often than not when his late mother had her wanting habits on, wanting men habits on) meant to free the slaves or whether Mister Woodrow Wilson sincerely, hah,  wanted to “make the world safe for democracy” when he send American boys (including a grand uncle) over to Europe to do some hellish fighting in a war that lasted forever some years back or whether Mister Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, or did not, sell out to Mister Joseph Stalin at Yalta in the last big war or wherever it was that he was supposed to have done the deed.

James relationship to history was more up to date, more existential if he had known the word, or had asked Anthony what it meant (and if he had known the word then six-two-and even that Anthony would have known what it meant, Anthony always knew what the words meant, always). His world history was based on how much liquor had been served at his High Hat Club the night before (and how much he had been clipped for by those thieving negro brothers he had running the place), how his numbers runners were doing and whether the latest shipment from Mexico with that grade A reefer, that Acapulco Gold, would get here this month. And he expressed those world historic concerns to Mister Anthony Hilton (as he had done on other occasions) in no uncertain terms. What concerned him just that moment was whether Mister Honky (and he used that name freely in front of, and behind the backs of, his white associates) was going to continue to protect his operations in the neighborhood or not. And as he began to explain to Anthony (as he had also done many times before) the historical facts of his place in the sun in the Roxbury world Anthony stopped him short with this.       

“James, doesn’t it matter to you that you could be descended from kings, from great warrior -kings back in Mother Africa, back before bondage times and that our people could erect great works before the bloody honkys could figure out how to use a spoon to eat with(Anthony too , although college educated and ready to become a professor within a few years if things worked out right, maybe at Howard,  could speak the language of private black rage when he was among kindred, and James was kindred), doesn’t it matter that our history has been denied us. Not only that we were warrior- kings, but that we more than paid our dues when we came to this land all shackled up and bedraggled, that we built this country as sure as hell. That we fought our share, our freedom share with old Nat Turner, and a thousand other slave revolts, that our brothers stood with that old prophet angel John Brown at Harpers Ferry fight to make Mister Whitey red with rage, that our proud forbears right in this city formed a regiment, the Massachusetts 54th, to avenge our shackles in Civil War fight, and that we have put our brand on American culture from ….”                           

With that James, who also knew, knew from deep in his brethren soul, that Anthony was prepared to give him the whole entire panorama of the black experience on these damn shores if he didn’t stop him right then and there did so. Did it as he always did with his right arm extended out hand palm up- stop. And Anthony knowing the sign, ever since that one time fight to determine who was the king hell king of the tenement night, knew to stop. As he prepared to go James stopped him, handed him ten one hundred dollar bills from inside his suit pocket and said, “Use that for that damn Negro History project you are working on over a Boston University.” 

After their good-byes and had Anthony left, and after James had figured up the previous night’s receipts and determined that those thieving negro brothers had only nicked him a little, he, in the quiet of his office, thought about what Anthony had said, about the warrior- king part of it, for in truth that was the only part he remembered. And the next time Anthony came by he was going to ask him more about that, a lot more and for just that minute James “Big Daddy” Dixon wished he had a known history, a history of  his own… 

Six – A Peace Treaty Of One's Own

Jamal Pratt, Boston Boy’s English High School Class of 1965 (touted as the old public high as such in the country ahead of Boston Latin in that regard), was crazy to go into the military right after high school come June, a plan that he had been mulling in the back of his mind for the previous couple of years. In addition to that intense desire to prove his manhood, his righteous black manhood, to prove that he had what it took to step off with the tough guys, the tough guys when and where it counted, he was having troubles with Ma at home (rolling stone Pa, a blur when young, was long gone, gone with some other woman in some other town as far as his mother and his paternal grandmother knew).

You know the steady drumbeat of what are you going to do with your life (he had only vaguely alluded to that service career which she might have freaked at if he explained it in too much detail), why were you hanging out with who you were hanging out with, don't you know those corner boys of yours will just get you in trouble the universal mother drill (in fact she was only about half right about that since Junior was headed for college and Roy the Boy had military ideas too, although Jesse and Preston were slated to do time, black time, for some cheap jack robberies). Moreover he had no steady girlfriend since Sheila had moved back down south with her grandmother after her parents split up and he was just keeping his head above water when it came to that corner boy midnight shifter stuff his mother kept harping on (he was under Jesse’s spell in particular just then). He was desperately in need of a change of scenery, no question.

Besides he wanted, English High proud wanted (the glass case in the front lobby exhibited many of the servicemen and others who had distinguished themselves in service to the country in the long line of campaigns this country has conducted as befitted the oldest public high school in the country, both fact drummed in the boys from day one of grade nine), to do his duty for his country against the communist menace that it was facing, besides big dog Red Russia, from a place called Vietnam, a place where, from all the reports, the citizenry was growing wild, and getting wilder and would take down the whole region with it. That, of course was part of it, part of what any red-blooded American, black or white, feared and Jamal thought rightfully so, although he was loose, pretty loose, on exactly what the hell was happening there. The big part though was that Jamal Pratt was smitten by a John Wayne Army Special Forces action film, The Green Berets, having seen it several times and having bored, bored there was no other word for it, his corner boys as they hung around nights in front of his apartment house over on the corner of Washington Street and Geneva Avenue in the high Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.

What got to Jamal was how smooth these guys were, these Special Forces guys (and how they he heard also got plenty of action from the girls around North Carolina and places like that who were ready to do just about anything to get their kicks with a Green Beret), how they were able to take on about ten gooks (yes, that was the term he used for them and a term of common usage, Charlie only came later when the deal went down in –country, and the more respectful Mr. Charlie even later) and whip their sorry asses before they knew what hit them, about how they saved little rice-growing peasant village after little rice-growing peasant village when those crummy cowardly commie bastards tried to stake out their claim, and about how cool their weapons were that made quick victories possible (especially that quick-action M-16 that every guy got to carry, later he would pray, pray to high heaven for a sweet AK-47 that Mr. Charlie had at his disposal when his goddam M-16 would jam at the wrong freaking time ).He wanted in, wanted in bad on that action, and since he had not planned to go to college anyway for lack of money and interest he figured that when he signed up down at the recruiting station on Tremont Street he would try his luck as a Green Beret recruit even though his physical aspect (thin and short) was just inside the stiff Special Forces regulations. He figured if that didn’t work out, although he was pretty sure he had the stuff that the Green Berets were made of, he would pick a skill school, maybe carpentry or plumbing like his uncle, and be all set for when after he got out.

Well Jamal’s dream, like a lot of things, and not just black things, in this wicked old world, didn’t pan out, the Green Beret part (strangely he couldn't pass the hearing test, although, strangely too it did not disqualify him from the military as a whole), although he did gain a skill school, not exactly the one he had planned on, partly any way. He was assigned to be 11-Bravo, a grunt, a foot soldier, cannon fodder (although that thought term only came later, grunt was the word his used to his friends back on the block when he came home on leave the first time). He did take advantage of an opportunity to go to jump school, paratrooper school, down at Fort Benning in Georgia and was thereafter sent to Fort Bragg (where the Special Forces units were also located) down in North Carolina to be part of the 82nd Airborne Division.

 

As luck would have it 1966 was a year that the action was getting hot and heavy in Vietnam and so units, including his unit, of the 82nd were ordered to that hot spot as President Johnson acceded to every request from the general in charge, General Westmoreland, for more and more troops (that’s when he first heard the term cannon fodder but he did not connect it with himself then). As stories started coming back in about the actual fighting situation in Vietnam and as he gathered from the training he had received in how to kill gooks by the score (although that Mr. Charlie designation and constant rumors about how the night belonged to him was becoming more and more the term of usage among his fellow soldiers whatever  term was being used on the streets or in the barrooms) Jamal started getting more anxious, anxious for a very good reason since he had met a girl, Tonya, from Fayetteville, the town outside the fort, and they had plans to marry and all. (Apparently girls, girls around Fayetteville anyway, were just as happy to get their kicks with airborne guys as with Green Berets or any other elite military units but that attraction is a question for another time).

Jamal did his time in 'Nam, did his rotation (a year and a month’s R&R in Hawaii where Tonya met him on the quiet since she wasn’t supposed to do so), although he never did want to talk about it that much, about the killing (the constant firing part, the fields of fire part,  although he would go on and on about that damn jamming M-16 and when he complained about it being told by the sergeant that he must not have cleaned it properly, Jesus, he could clean it in his sleep), about the burning down of villages to save them (although he never asked the reason for doing so he just heard that some colonel from his brigade had said that was the reason), about having black sweats every night every single fucking night on the perimeter waiting for Mr. Charlie to come back and take his back (and some black sweat nights later in the “real world” too, for a while), and a few things he swore he would never tell anybody about what he had done there, about what he had seen done there, and about who these peasants really were anyway.

 

What he did want to talk about was the sea-change in his own attitude, him and some of the brothers (a few white guys too but not from the 82nd they, the white guys anyway, were still gung-ho), about how Cassius Clay turned Mohammed Ali was right-“that no Viet Cong ever called him nigger,” that he had no quarrel with those yellow-skinned people, that this red scare thing was a white man’s idea, a white man’s war, taking down poor black, brown, yellow-skinned peoples and making them like it, or trying to make them like it. He read some stuff given to him by a guy, a fellow soldier, whose brother was what he called a Black Panther, a black hell-raiser out on the streets of Oakland in California, some stuff by a guy named Fanon, a West Indian guy, a doctor who had been all wrapped up helping bring down the French in Algeria (the same French had been kicked out of Vietnam by Mr. Charlie he found out when he started looking into stuff). Some of it made sense, some just flat-out didn’t (like the hokey black nation thing, he already knew about what that looked like, just walk down Washington Street and Geneva, Jesus. 

 

Well, when he got back to the "real world" he and a few brothers decided, after hearing their unit might be going back to take on Mr. Charlie again , that they didn’t like it, didn’t like it enough to say something about it, say it out loud, and say it in public. At that point, that 1968 point, especially after Charlie went wild during his Tet earlier in the year, a number of guys, dog soldiers like him, were raising hell, white guys too, but mainly brothers because wouldn't you know the brothers were taking an immense amount of the burden in all those hellish fire-fights that was burning up the dreaded Vietnamese countryside. And so they wound up, fistfuls of service combat decorations and all, in that dreaded Fort Bragg stockade for a while before some publicity-conscious general decided that the best thing to do was to get him and the brothers out, give them undesirable discharges and be done with it. He didn’t like the deal but he took it (he would later fight to change it, get it upgraded when that was possible). He had had enough of Mister’s war, enough of killing, and enough of losing everything he held dear (his Fayetteville girl heeding her army father left him in the lurch too) but he had made his peace, his personal peace treaty with the world…

 

Seven –A Defense Of One’s Own  

All hell was breaking loose in Mississippi in 1964 after they found those boys, those civil rights worker boys over in some ditch in Philadelphia (hell was breaking out before and after too but that year got everybody’s attention North and South, abolitionist and redneck, because a  showdown was coming no question). Even Jacob Block knew some hard-ass stuff was coming down as isolated as he was from white folks (and other black folk too) on his poor excuse of a share crop farm about fifty miles outside of Hattiesburg. As he thought about it afterwards, after all hell had broken loose in his little world and its environs, he should have known it would come to that, come to a confrontation with Mister, or Mister’s rednecks acting in his name. Hell, his great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Ezra Bond, had jumped his plantation over near Savannah, Georgia, to walk down and join Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s 2nd South Carolina Volunteers and raise some hell with the boys in grey. And later some cousin had been lynched right in broad daylight down near Biloxi, a big feisty rabid white crowd watching on, watching on with glee from what he had heard just because that cousin had tried, shotgun in hand, to defense his woman when some white rascal got his lust habits on. Yes, he should have known, known it was in the blood that when the deal went down he had to do something, had to defend his own, his sweet Martha, and the little ones.                      

Jacob did not know how he had first found out they were coming, about the redneck rampage, maybe something overheard in Otis Junction when he went to get his monthly provisions, maybe from somebody at the Lord’s Worship Baptist Church over in Oxbridge that time he went for Jim Jackson’s daughter’s wedding. But no question either that they were coming, coming to throw the worst fear into every last “nigger” (their term, always their term even when directly speaking to a negro, just one more way to put the black man behind the eight ball) within one hundred miles of Hattiesburg once they heard that some blacks were going right to the farms to get other blacks, farmers and small town dwellers alike, to register to vote, to exercise their American-given right to have a say in things. He had never voted, never cared if he voted, and never even really tried once he had gotten wise to Mister Jim Crow and his ways even though he could, mother taught, read and write as well as any white man in the county, hell, maybe in the state of Mississippi. He wanted no trouble, wanted no part of Mister, no part of confronting Mister Jim Crow and just wanted to be left alone. And that was that.     

That was that until he heard about those Philadelphia boys, and until he had heard that they had, that white trash that had been put up to it by Mister and his damn White Citizens Councils, burned down Jack Lewis’ place, his beautiful little shack that he had spent half a life time trying to fix up, when he decided to lead his fellow church people to Hattiesburg to register to vote. Jacob still did not care whether he voted or not, registered or not, but since he was, the way things were going, to be targeted anyway just for being black, poor and nothing but a sharecropper well that was enough. Enough to get him and a few fellows, young bucks, sons of farmers he had met over the years although he did not know them or their sons well, and get ready to defend their land, come hell or high water, defend the land like some avenging angels arms in hand like they were heeding some ghost call from that old black abolitionist rabble-rouser Frederick Douglass with his call “to arms, sable warriors, to arms, the hour is at hand” to fight for freedom one more time. 

Yah, it had come to that, come to simple black manhood time, time to either keep that lifetime head bent down, or walk on two black feet. And when it came to that showdown they were ready as Ebby Johnson’s son, William, a veteran of Korea, showed them how to use their shotguns to effect. And that knowledge came in handy one night, one night when they heard that a gang of whites was heading up Traversville Road about ten miles from Jacob’s land in three cars shooting and slowly setting fires at random and watching their handiwork. Probably drunk too Jacob (and William) figured. So they set an ambush around Tyler Road, dark, with high ground and easy escape. And that night, whether it ever got recorded, reported, or noted, a small cadre of black men, black avenging angels (no niggers, nigras, or even negroes now) sent a fusillade of shotgun fire down at the three cars coming up that black night Mississippi road. And, you know, no marauding rednecks ever came within twenty miles of Jacob Block’s land again. And while he never took the time to register to vote when that became easier later he was always at pains to tell  everybody he knew that one sweaty fearful night he had  done all the voting he needed to do…         

Eight –No More Jail Cells   

Jesus, how did he, let’s leave him nameless at his request but his story is legion, legion in black ghetto America and brown Latino barrio America too ever since Mister and his damn cop justice system decided to go after drugs, small change drugs really, get caught up in the dragnet this time, just as he was starting to get things in his life under control, a little. His teenage years had been one hell after another once his father left, left rolling stone left with some woman not his mother and was down south somewhere according to his paternal grandmother and his mother had taken up, undivided attention taken up, with some Johnny Blade (not a bad guy really but not his father, no way, not a guy to talk to about his troubles since as he made plain his undivided attention was to his mother).

First thing was that first “clip” bust at thirteen (laughable when he thought about it now, some damn onyx ring, snagged under his shirt so cool he thought from over at Mister Earl’s  junk jewelry two- bit joint, a two-bit joint which had been in the neighborhood for as long as anybody could remember, even his grandmother over on Warren,  now with a big old monitor cruising the premises, that he just had to have for Shara’ s Valentine present, long gone and now forgotten Shara), then a couple more small robbery, burglary things (stealthy midnight creeps through back alleys and shimmied windows in the neighborhood apartments, close to home stealing ), then dropping out of school (that too to spent time with some Shara, although that was not her name, name now not remembered), then a “go to jail or go to the army, or else” thing from the that old whitebread judge who thought he was doing him a favor, getting him out of the hard streets harms’ way when he and two other confederates (who took the time, and had been taking time ever since for one thing or another) did one too many midnight creeps.  

The judge favor turned out being that he had two little purple hearts from two- tour Iraq courtesy of Saddam Hussein’s boys, or somebody nasty in Baghdad. Then back to the streets the down streets of Boston, really Roxbury, you know around Washington Street and Geneva his old home turf and its change from just a neighborhood, the ‘hood of child remembrance to something else, a free-fire zone of a different kind.           

And you know too that a guy, a black guy, even a purple heart black guy, without any real education, without some serviceable skill (nothing but a damn 11-Bravo to tout, nothing), and without some luck, real luck was up against it, up against it when the cops were always looking you up and down for just walking since he got back to the “real world” (he had been eye-balled and stopped twice right after he got back from Iraq and hell he was in uniform one time and they could see the damn purple hearts). So, you know, he took up “the life” again, the life this time meaning no small time Mr. Earl cheap jack jewel clips and midnight creep robberies (kids’ stuff) but working his way up the chain in the burgeoning local drug scene.

And he was doing okay for a while until one night they, and you know who the “they” was, came smashing down the door at the safe house over on Norfolk (somebody had snitched, somebody not alive right now if you want to know) and he was taken in. He did a year at South Bay for that one. It was there that he got “religion.” No, not some damn Black Muslim thing, or god holy roller thing, jesus, no, but, you know, wise to the hard fact that if he was going to make thirty (a milestone for a young black man according to some stuff he read from some report some foundation did while he was in and reading a magazine from the library after GED classes were over one day) his life flow was going against that prospect. And so he changed, changed a little, got a job through the VA, not much of a job, but steady, a short order cook and was moving along. Then this night of all nights he decided that he wanted to see a friend, not being exactly sure why but maybe a little wobbly on that straight and narrow,  from the old neighborhood, yes, bad move, the guy he visited related to the drug trade and he was just present when they came storming in. Thirty ain’t looking so good tonight…      

Nine –To Be Judged By One’s Own    

No question, no question at all that Robertson Edgars, twenty-two,  all sable warrior tough, six-two, two hundred and forty pounds, who had played some ball in high school, a rumbling, tumbling, stumbling break back fullback, the worst kind,  who devoured opposing linemen, was every white man’s nightmare, every white man’s nightmare dream that if he, Robertson Edgars, came into that white man’s range, say his neighborhood at dusk or dawn, never mind into his curtilage anytime, that he would sweat, sweat like hell, about what to do with the bastard, especially if the wife and kids were there to see him sweat, sweat death fear sweat. And no question either that every white woman, every white women, mothering woman, feared, feared that black night fear when she came within fifty feet of a monster like the brother. (Well, maybe not everyone since Brother Edgars had had a bed full of white chicks, white chicks who status conscious in high school craved amazing break-back fullbacks and others later craved that ersatz black man experience when the times dictated that as a rite of passage experience among certain white educated women, and a few not so well educated too, although nothing steady, that was strictly black stuff, strictly, some educated, some not)

So Robertson’s lawyer, his mother downtown red brick textile sweat shop crimp and save bought lawyer, Jim Everett,  was surprised (and in fact had tried like hell to argue him out of the decision, tried to explain one more time the what and why of the white man’s justice system that even he, an honored white man, knew, knew not just in his bones but through his pile of black convictions and the many years prison time was stacked again him) when he had told him that he preferred to have his case, his burglary case tried before a jury rather than a judge (the judge in this case, Judge Abbott, notorious in the Court of Common Pleas, for his quick dispatch of young men into the Texas prison system night with heavy terms, and fines too).               

And here was the rub. In Macomb County even though blacks outnumbered whites about three to two the jury pool would probably wind up being majority white. Robertson’s argument that a few black mothers empaneled might take pity on him since he actually was innocent and had an alibi (a black alibi but an alibi nevertheless) and although he had some priors (a couple of drug busts, a couple of DUIs, kids’ stuff really) he thought he could survive that information if the situation came to that since those mothers would perhaps have had their own crimp and save son in trouble woes, or knew of such doings) time came for that. His back-up was that maybe some black father (although not Robertson’s, his father had died in some stinking jungle hellhole in Vietnam in 1971) worried about his own son might see where Robertson had been framed, framed like a million other black kids. Jim thought he was foolish to believe that might happen but he kept it to himself once Robertson made it plain he was adamant on the question.        

On the day set for trial Judge Abbott, according to Jim Everett, seemed to be in a particularly bad mood. He was known to be ill-tempered even on his good days and was deliberately rude to Jim when he requested dismissal of the charges for lack of evidence, some standard Jim argued not met by the prosecution, and he ruled that motion down in about two seconds with no arguments heard. This action by the judge only confirmed in Robertson’s mind the wisdom of his choice. Shortly thereafter the jury selection proceeded and from the start things went badly when a young white woman was dismissed for some cause and then a young black woman who looked like she was making eyes at Robertson (neither of those two women would be picked, or have survived challenge, under any circumstances, black or white, being young was a bar to selection, an unwritten law). By noontime the jury had been selected and Robertson almost, as big as he was, cried. Not only in three to two black Macomb County was the jury all- white it was ten men and two women. And the two women might as well have been men because they looked and acted like they were prison guards at the women’s prison or some such thing. Robertson reached back as he was walking outside for a cigarette before the start of the trial itself that afternoon and said out loud to himself Paul (his black brother alibi) better come through, he had better come through…               

Ten–A Nation Of One’s Own?    

Jackson Pulley had been doing his Saturday morning soapbox spiel in the environs of Lenox Avenue and 125th Street in high Harlem up in New Jack City for as long as anyone could remember. Some grandmothers would tell their grandchildren whom they were minding or raising as their own while passing by doing the Saturday morning shopping that they could remember when their own grandmothers of blessed memory had taken them to that very same Saturday shopping not to listen to, not to be bothered by Jackson’s big boom voice, and of his hand-held mic that could be heard far above and below the avenue. And Jackson Pulley’s spiel had not changed much since he had first given voice to his project back in the late 1920s. His basis idea was that the black people in America, his people, his sweated, kicked around, abused beautiful people, someone later would call it the “beloved community,” due to the white man’s inherent racism, needed a country, a nation of their own. He would moreover argue his conceptions through good times and bad, against all comers, from old black knight scoundrel Marcus Garvey through the Communist Party turns for and against the black nation, through the “new negro” stuff in the 1950s through to the Doctor King and Malcolm X knock down drag out fight and right up until recently when the Black Panthers gave the idea of a black nation a whirl for a while. Old Jackson kept his main idea front and center and would as the “false” challengers arose kick them like tin cans down the road.  

Jackson had had no truck with old black knight Marcus Garvey seeing in him just another black hustler working the ignorant West Indies immigrant black janitors and black maids and down and out southern slave-branded sharecroppers out of their hard earned dough. He had been right as rain on that man when he first started seeing that blacks needed a new homeland. The pivotal event though that drove him to his position was seeing one of his own kin lynched right after World War I down in the great state of Georgia while the whites watched with red-heat passion bordering on lunacy. Later before heading north he bore the full brunt of Mister James Crow and his equally savage ways. No, it was time to separate, long past time.

He had had some respect for the Communist Party and their black nation idea. In fact he had been in a study circle with some brothers in the African Blood Brotherhood before some of them went over to the party. He could not go with them since he refused to belong to an organization that allowed whites in. Besides those reds didn’t follow that black nation policy except when they wanted to use it to recruit blacks in hard times. That “new negro” stuff was a joke as far as he was concerned, something out of W.E.B. Dubois’ “talented tenth” and just another way to buy off the natural leaders of black people. Stuff them harmlessly out of the way like some old time Toms and Mister Whitey brought them out when trouble brewed to be “reasonable,” see things in the long perspective, take a little at a time if that was what was offered. Bullshit, excuse his English, his slave language English (he only swore in his own home for out on the streets he was more respectful learning that lesson the hard way when one irate grandmother swung an umbrella at him when he was young and not street talk savvy and sworn while her grandchildren were within earshot).

Jackson got serious when Malcolm X arose like a phoenix out of the ashes but he had no truck with Elijah Mohammed seeing him as a less clever Marcus Garvey with all that religious mumbo-jumbo that never did anybody any good. Just another fast-talking preacher hustle, except not Baptist hustle like he knew about while growing up. The Black Panthers of course demanded respect, respect as black warriors ready to stick their necks out for the black community,  but they had been taking a beating of late trying to stay in America, in the cities. Were taking a beating from whitey and his bad ass cops who went crazy when they saw black men with guns ready to defend their own. Still they were righteous and had an idea of what black people needed to get the hell off the eight-ball.       

When pressed Jackson like he was this Saturday by a young black brother who seemed to want to know more details about how it would work he would say that what blacks should fight for is a place like Idaho, a place with lots of land and far away from the vast majority of whites. Although he himself had never been there he was sure it would do, and equally sure once black people had had enough of the white man (and increasingly the white woman) on their necks they would be flocking there. But the young man seemed to say by the shrug of his shoulders like one grandmother said as she passed Jackson Pulley and his soapbox for the hundredth time to her grandchildren “Don’t pay old Jackson any never mind.”…       

Eleven-In the Beginning   

…they came out of the hard okie/arkie white trash Hell’s Angels- dominated mean streets of Oakland, Oakland out in sunny California at the end of the American continental line. The place where the staccato faux -Spanish style (speaking unknowingly of earlier conquistador invasions) was to close out dreams, dreams of plenty, dreams of an ocean’s worth of good times.  They came out of the cop- infested army of occupation on those dark 1960s negro streets (the streets that they wanted to make black, proud black, devouring that old Spanish negro alien word, and deed). They came out of the mid-1960s hard reality that while their brothers and sisters in Selma, Montgomery, Lake Charles, Albany (GA), Greenwood, and all points south, south of the American slick democracy had gained something, something worth fighting (and dying) for that they, Oakland, Watts, Harlem, Cleveland, Newark, and all points North and West, north and west of American slick democracy, had been left behind. That they too had to face down their own copper nightmare, their own ghetto-imposed wanting habits nightmare, wanting some decent sweat-less non-grinding job, wanting their own cozy bungalow (white picket fence optional in the laid-back Frisco Bay night), wanting their own take a vacation out in the high Sierras, wanting above all to stop being cop looked at every time they went onto the white streets of  town, hell the black streets too, and to get rid of their own subtle damn neighborhood (and maybe not so subtle when they started to rile up the okies and arkies) Mister James Crow.

And so they, okay, okay, Huey and Bobby they, started putting together a little group, a little group of students and the young bucks from the ‘hood  (neighborhood , okay, but who else would you expect to start stuff like that, insurrection kind of stuff, out in sunny blood-stained California, even a California by that freaking fog-bound bay ), corner boys really, under a simple proposition-voting and the such might have been okay in that all point south night down in America but in land’s end that didn’t mean jack. What meant jack was to get that damn down presser man, the guys in blues, the almost totally white guys in blue off their backs, and let the brothers and sisters breath.  And so they, black proud, and black smart, decided after looking at history a little, fog-bound black history as fogged as that rusted colored golden gate bridge once Mister Whitey got through with it, that the only time that Mister Whitey paid attention was when proud black warrior-savants pressed the issue, defended themselves against that slave market and jim crow night. And so they looked to the mighty 200,000 strong of the Union black army in Civil War times, hell, even the brothers who bled arms in hand with that prophet angel-avenger Jehovah John Brown at Harpers Ferry fight, and the mighty southern struggle Robert F. Williams over across the land in Monroe, North Carolina just a few years back and said enough. So they righteously armed themselves. And said in some small recess of the brain they knew that this too was worth dying for.                      

Twelve -Sacramento, 1967     

…there is a famous picture of them, of the Black Panther core, Huey and the Bobbys, all black proud and black smart, not just street smart that day, but all the way smart, kind of  “turn whitey’s rules back on him” smart, in May 1967  over in Sacramento at the State Capitol, arms in hand, shotguns, serious business shotguns if the occasion arose, arms and shotguns uplifted away from any thought of placing anyone in harm’s way like whitey’s law book said was okay, just fine out in the cool blue-pink American West night. It might not have worked in Cambridge or Peoria but out when the cowboy lands ended, real and faux cowboys, anything went, went with whatever small uplift proviso the local government attached to it.

That day though all black proud, armed, berets tilted slightly showing a sign of determination and not just show, black leather jackets, sharp, yah, uniform sharp and leaving that same uniform sharp impression any serious uniform brings up (soda jerks, McDonald ‘s burger flippers, and gas jockeys step back, step way backs serious uniforms are in town). That day too those brothers evoked, evoked proud black manhood, evoked memories of Africa slave-catcher revolts, evoked memories of maroon fights down in Caribe islands, evoked old Nat Turner come and gone plantation fires, evoked old Captain Brown and his brave band at Harpers Ferry fight, evoked the memory of those two hundred thousand blue-capped, blue-uniformed, yes, uniformed, sable warriors who made Johnny Reb cringe and wish he had never been born. Evoked too, Africa freedom struggles, and desperate fights to break the down presser man’s will, his fortitude, and his hunger to keep what was never his. And evoked no more turning the other cheek stuff, no more waiting on whitey, even leftie, and more, much more, the great white fear…negros with guns, jesus.                

And they freaked, those whites guys freaked like they always did, like they always did when even the idea, no, even the thought of an idea of armed black men touched their radar. Hence death this and death that slave codes, hence Nat Turner brutal ashes, hence no quarter given, no respect, no  black honor respect before Fort Wagner fight when black men bled red for freedom and on a hundred other battlefields, hence Robert F. Williams flights. So that day, that freaked-out day a sort of cold (soon to be hot) civil war was a-brewing. And whitey, maybe not so smart but afraid of armed black men and ready to act forthwith on that decided that maybe, just maybe, the wild west needed a little taming, just in case the brothers decided to aim those guns straight at someone.       

Thirteen- The Sons Of Franz Fanon     

…he took the lashes, took the bitter lashes, the sable slave lashes in Pharaoh times, he took the ocean swells to the bottom unnoticed, Mister unnoticed, in Middle Passage time, he took the ebony lashes again in Mister Mississippi goddam plantation black code time, a time to make him studied ignorant, or else, ignorant of his history, of his past, of his kin except for hot sun cotton fields, and more hot sun cotton fields, he took the rope, he took the no hope, he took the Mister walk here, not there, sit here, not there, stand here, not there in Jim Crow time, he took his down-turned head in “talented tenth” time when he was not of the better sort, hell, he even kept that head down in “new negro” times when they were separating out the small pie portions. He, hell, he had had enough, enough of broken down internal rages, enough of unchallenged Mister hurts, enough of okie/arkie nobodies chanting  jim, get backs, enough of every kind of glad hand indignity. Enough.                  

And then he found his way out, or a way out, then he remembered, if he remembered rightly, that all over the world in the old days in Russia cold places, red guard arms in hand, when he was just a kid in China places, people’s army arms in hand,  right now, right this minute now, in Vietnam places where they were raising holy hell with Mister, with arms in hand, some of Mister’s own too, and above all in great Mother Africa, arms in hand, they were shoving Mister to the sea, if they let him get that far. Above all he remembered Algeria struggle, Algeria which he knew about from some brother telling him that this West Indian guy, this doctor, this head doctor, said that in the end if you didn’t pick up the gun, if you did not make a sacrificial act, if you just waited around for Mister to give you bread and butter that you would never right Pharaoh wrongs, Middle Passage wrongs, Mister plantation wrongs, Mister James Crow wrongs, hell even talented tenth and new negro wrongs (who were they to decide anyway). That anything that he was given without a righteous cleansing struggle would turn to ashes in his black-skinned mouth.       

And so he picked up the gun, picked it up easily, laughingly (like armed Mister laughed) held it barrel to the blue sky in public, learned to shoot the damn thing, and felt himself purified, slave purified for once in his down presser man life, and walked with a certain swagger, an angel swagger, and when some Johnny Reb okie transplant tried to take his measure he just showed “the colors.”  Beautiful to see that white ass turned, turned way around. And funny too others picked up the gun to avenge ancient hurts and they formed a brotherhood, solid, and declared, declared among themselves at first, until Mister heard it through the grapevine, that stinking new negro grapevine, war on that foreign country that he lived in, that Algeria in America country, like that head doctor talked about. And then things, thing started to get interesting, and bloody…         

Fourteen -“Lord, Lord They Shot George Jackson Down”

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/27/Book_cover%2C_Soledad_Brother_by_George_Jackson.jpg

…he, nameless, he legion, he young restless mischievous roamer of those mean, as the 1950s “beat” saint poet called it, negro streets, name the city, Chi town, Beantown, the Big Easy, Frisco town, New Jack City, those hard corner boy, homeboy (before homeboy name stuck) streets, he doing a little of this a little of that, a jack roll here a clip there, just enough to keep body and soul together, later some whack here some heist there, the stuff of lumpen legend, the stuff that kept the corner boys, uh, the brothers, on their toes, and playing hopscotch with the law. He, George Jackson, to name him, to take him out of the nameless numberless savage lumpen night (yes, savage, those old time 1871 Paris Communards were right to hang the slogan “Death to Thieves” very high on their democratic tree of liberty) went toe to toe with the law, went toe to toe one too many times and thus played the hopscotch into stir, the lumpen world in big print, the, as someone explained it all in sociological terms, the “prison-industrial complex,” and later, a later sociologist called it “the new jim crow,”  Mister James Crow for modern times. He, they just called it stir, and counted the days, the freedom days.       

Then he, George Jackson, fully named now removed from savage lumpen nights, got “religion.” No, not some hocus pocus stuff, some Nation of Islam stuff very hip in negro-filled jails back then, back on those mean negro streets, but looking around him, around his world, his whole world (and with time, plenty of time to read and think), he saw how he was part of  big fellahin (although he would not know that word, not know that dark dirt from some ancient soils word, and need not know it) world that was exploding out against the Mister imposed rules, the “hey, fellaheen (or fellaheena if that is the way to express the female part of the ordering but not so noticeable) sit here, walk there, eat across there, stand in the next lane” rules. With arms in hand. The mighty thump of Africa up and down (except blighted South Africa fight), bleeding Algeria twisting in the wind, armed success in China and Cuba, hell, little island Cuba, for god’s sake, and rumbles, plenty of rumbles at home.

So, he, George Jackson immersed himself in his new simpatico fellahin world, began to organize, organize the brothers, the hermanos, the blancos, whoever wanted to breakout of the six by twelve desolate nights. And he imbibed, hell, inhaled, Father Fanon, latched his kin name to that father, began to speak of heroic revolutionary acts, began to speak of the cleansing, soul cleansing, revolutionary acts of purifying violence, the struggle to regain Mister-taken manhood, and began to link the dots, prison, courts, lawyers, cops, no dough, mean streets, down presser man streets, and the need, the desperate need to push back, to spring like a panther, and take back the night, the day too.                 

But all that wisdom, all that righteous wisdom, ran smack against the hard reality that he was in a box, a prison box, yes, a court-imposed box, yes, a lawyer pushed box, yes, a cop- cuffed box, YES, a no dough box, yes, a still mean streets box, yes, and down presser man streets, box, yes, and so he, he who liked to take a chance or two, fell before he could find some way, some way to spring like a panther and take back the night, and the day too. Lord, lord they shot George Jackson down, and so others would, will have to wake up the fellahin world…      

 

The Ten Point Program

 

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:[39][40]

 

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

 

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

 

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

 

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

 

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

 

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

 

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

 

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

 

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

 

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

 

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

 

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

 

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

 

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

 

We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.