Saturday, April 23, 2016

***In Honor Of James Connelly On The 100th Anniversary Of The Easter Uprising-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916


***In Honor Of James Connelly On The 100th Anniversary Of The Easter Uprising-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

 

A word on the Easter Uprising.

 

In the old Irish working-class neighborhoods where I grew up the aborted Easter Uprising of 1916 was spoken of in mythical hushed reverent tones as the key symbol of the modern Irish liberation struggle from bloody England. The event itself provoked such memories of heroic “boyos”  (and “girlos” not acknowledged) fighting to the end against great odds that a careful analysis of what could, and could not be, learned from the mistakes made at the time entered my head. That was then though in the glare of boyhood infatuations. Now is the time for a more sober assessment. 

 

The easy part of analyzing the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916 is first and foremost the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland, especially by the “shawlies” in Dublin and the cities who received their sons’ military pay from the Imperial British Army for service in the bloody trenches of Europe which sustained them throughout the war. That factor and the relative ease with which the uprising had been militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it lead easily to the conclusion that the adventure was doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the timing and the strategy and tactics of the planned action and of the various actors, particularly in the leadership’s underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. (Although, I think that frenzy on Mother England’s part would be a point in the uprising’s favor under the theory that England’s [or fill in the blank of your favorite later national liberation struggle] woes were Ireland’s [or fill in the blank ditto on the your favorite oppressed peoples struggle] opportunities.

 

The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation struggle experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were savagely committed to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not part of their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, cowardly British Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor Party leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and others today is the same as then if somewhat attenuated- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings on national liberation struggles I have come across a theory that the Easter Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising’s leaders only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. (“Let poets rule the land”).

As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. A formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 where the working class momentarily took power or the Soviet Commune of 1917 which lasted for a longer period did not figure in the political calculations at that time. As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic.

That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today, is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord in war as a way to open the road to the class struggle merited support on that basis alone. Chocky Ar La.

 

"James Connolly"

 

The man was all shot through that came to day into the Barrack Square

And a soldier I, I am not proud to say that we killed him there

They brought him from the prison hospital and to see him in that chair

I swear his smile would, would far more quickly call a man to prayer

Maybe, maybe I don't understand this thing that makes these rebels die

Yet all men love freedom and the spring clear in the sky

I wouldn't do this deed again for all that I hold by

As I gazed down my rifle at his breast but then, then a soldier I.

They say he was different, kindly too apart from all the rest.

A lover of the poor-his wounds ill dressed.

He faced us like a man who knew a greater pain

Than blows or bullets ere the world began: died he in vain

Ready, Present, and him just smiling, Christ I felt my rifle shake

His wounds all open and around his chair a pool of blood

And I swear his lips said, "fire" before my rifle shot that cursed lead

And I, I was picked to kill a man like that, James Connolly

A great crowd had gathered outside of Kilmainham

Their heads all uncovered, they knelt to the ground.

For inside that grim prison

Lay a great Irish soldier

His life for his country about to lay down.

He went to his death like a true son of Ireland

The firing party he bravely did face

Then the order rang out: Present arms and fire

James Connolly fell into a ready-made grave

The black flag was hoisted, the cruel deed was over

Gone was the man who loved Ireland so well

There was many a sad heart in Dublin that morning

When they murdered James Connolly-. the Irish rebel

"James Connolly"

Marchin' down O'Connell Street with the Starry Plough on high

There goes the Citizen Army with their fists raised in the sky

Leading them is a mighty man with a mad rage in his eye

"My name is James Connolly - I didn't come here to die

But to fight for the rights of the working man

And the small farmer too

Protect the proletariat from the bosses and their screws

So hold on to your rifles, boys, and don't give up your dream

Of a Republic for the workin' class, economic liberty"

Then Jem yelled out "Oh Citizens, this system is a curse

An English boss is a monster, an Irish one even worse

They'll never lock us out again and here's the reason why

My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die....."

And now we're in the GPO with the bullets whizzin' by

With Pearse and Sean McDermott biddin' each other goodbye

Up steps our citizen leader and roars out to the sky

"My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die...

Oh Lily, I don't want to die, we've got so much to live for

And I know we're all goin' out to get slaughtered, but I just can't take any more

Just the sight of one more child screamin' from hunger in a Dublin slum

Or his mother slavin' 14 hours a day for the scum

Who exploit her and take her youth and throw it on a factory floor

Oh Lily, I just can't take any more

They've locked us out, they've banned our unions, they even treat their animals better than us

No! It's far better to die like a man on your feet than to live forever like some slave on your knees, Lilly

But don't let them wrap any green flag around me

And for God's sake, don't let them bury me in some field full of harps and shamrocks

And whatever you do, don't let them make a martyr out of me

No! Rather raise the Starry Plough on high, sing a song of freedom

Here's to you, Lily, the rights of man and international revolution"

We fought them to a standstill while the flames lit up the sky

'Til a bullet pierced our leader and we gave up the fight

They shot him in Kilmainham jail but they'll never stop his cry

My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die...."

The Easter Uprising-1916- From The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) Of All Places

The Easter Uprising-1916- From The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) Of All Places

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/

Words Of Wisdom From The Guys And Gals Who Know- Veterans For Peace

Words Of Wisdom From The Guys And Gals Who Know- Veterans For Peace

Easter 1916-From The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) Of All Places

Easter 1916-From The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) Of All Places

http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/z2c4j6f

Black Lives Matter-The Late Class-War Prisoner Mondo we Langa's -"When It Gets To This Point"

Black Lives Matter-The Late Class-War Prisoner  Mondo we Langa's -"When It Gets To This Point"




Workers Vanguard No. 1086



25 March 2016
 
“When It Gets to This Point”

by Mondo we Langa

Michael Brown?
I had never heard of him
had never heard of anything he’d done
before the news of his death came
whoever he might have become
whatever he might have achieved
had he lived longer
not been riddled lifeless by
bullets from Darren Wilson’s gun
and crumpled on the pavement of a ferguson street
for more than four hours in
the heat of that august day
and before
I’d never heard of Trayvon Martin
had known nothing of who he was
until I learned of his demise
and cause of death
a bullet to the chest
George Zimmerman, the shooter
a badge-less, pretend police
with a pistol
and fear of the darkness
Trayvon’s darkness
and after a while
the pictures, the names,
the circumstances
run together
like so much colored laundry in the wash
that bleeds on whites

was it Eric Garner or Tamir Rice
who was twelve but seen as twenty
Hulk Hogan or The Hulk
with demonic eyes it was said
who shrank the cop in ferguson
into a five-year-old who
had to shoot
just had to shoot
and John Crawford the third
in a walmart store aisle
and air rifle in his hands he’d pick up
from the shelf
and held in the open
in an open-carry state
was it John or someone else
killed supposedly by mistake
in a dark stairwell
I know Akai Gurley fell
I hadn’t heard of him before
nor of Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell
prior to their killings
which of these two took slugs in the greater number
I don’t recall
my mind is too encumbered
with the names
of so many more before and since
the frequent news reports of
non-arrests, non-indictments,
non-true bills
and duplicitous presentations by “experts in the field”
the consultants put out front
to explain away
that which is so often plain as day
to coax and convince us that we’re the ones
who can’t see straight and
can’t hear clearly
who are the ones replacing facts with spin
to mislead and mystify
as the beatings and the chokings and shootings
of our boys and men
by these wrong arms of the law
proceed in orderly fashion
before the sometimes sad
sometimes angry faces of
our uncertain
our hesitant
disbelief.

May Day 2016 In Boston-Sunday May 1st-Join Us In Celebration


May Day 2016 In Boston-Sunday May 1st-Join Us In Celebration




*****Victory To The Fast-Food Workers The Vanguard Of The Fight For $15......

*****Victory To The Fast-Food Workers The Vanguard Of The Fight For $15......Fight For $15 Is Just A Beginning-All Labor Must Support Our Sisters And Brothers

 
 
 
 
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Frank Jackman had always ever since he was a kid down in Carver, a working class town formerly a shoe factory mecca about thirty miles south of Boston and later dotted with assorted small shops related to the shipbuilding trade, a very strong supporters of anything involving organized labor and organizing labor, anything that might push working people ahead. While it had taken it a long time, and some serious military service during the Vietnam War, his generation’s war, to get on the right side of the angels on the war issue and even more painfully and slowly on the woman’s liberation and gay rights issues, and he was still having a tough time with the transgender thing although the plight of heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower Army soldier Chelsea Manning had made it easier to express solidarity, he had always been a stand-up guy for unions and for working people. Maybe it was because his late father, Lawrence Jackman, had been born and raised in coal country down in Harlan County, Kentucky where knowing which side you were on, knowing that picket lines mean don’t cross, knowing that every scrap given by the bosses had been paid for in blood and so it was in his blood. Maybe though it was closer to the nub, closer to home, that the closing of the heavily unionized shoe factories which either headed down south or off-shore left slim leaving for those who did not follow them south, slim pickings for an uneducated man like his father trying to raise four daughters and son on hopes and dreams and not much else. Those hopes and dreams leaving his mother to work in the “mother’s don’t work” 1950s at a local donut shop filling donuts for chrissakes to help make ends meet so his was always aware of how close the different between work and no work was, and decent pay for decent work too. How ever he got “religion” on the question as a kid, and he suspected the answer was in the DNA, Frank was always at the ready when the latest labor struggles erupted, the latest recently being the sporadic uprisings amount fast-food workers and lowly-paid Walmart workers to earn a living wage.        

One day in the late summer of 2014 he had picked up a leaflet from a young guy, a young guy who later identified himself as a field organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a union filled to the brim with low-end workers like janitors, nurses assistants, salespeople, and the like, passing them out at an anti-war rally (against the American escalations in Syria and Iraq) in downtown Boston. The leaflet after giving some useful information about how poorly fast-food worker were paid and how paltry the benefits, especially the lack of health insurance announced an upcoming “Fight for $15” action in Downtown Boston on September 4, 2014 at noon as part of a national struggle for economic justice and dignity for the our hard working sisters and brothers. He told the young organizer after expressing solidarity with the upcoming efforts that he would try to bring others to the event although being held during a workday would be hard for some to make the time.

In the event Frank brought about a dozen others with him. They and maybe fifty to one hundred others during the course of the event stood in solidarity for a couple of hours while a cohort of fast-food workers told their stories. And while another cohort of fast-food workers were sitting on the ground in protest prepared to commit civil disobedience by blocking the street to make their point. Several of them would eventually be arrested and taken away by the police later to be fined and released.

Frank, when he reflected on the day’s events later, was pretty elated as he told his old friend Josh Breslin whom he had called up in Maine to tell him what had happened that day. Josh had also grown up in a factory town, a textile town, Olde Saco, and had been to many such support events himself and before he retired had as a free-lance writer written up lots of labor stories. The key ingredient that impressed Josh in Frank’s description had been how many young serious black and Latino workers had participated in the actions. Later than night when Frank reflected further on the situation he broke out in a smile as he was writing up his summary of his take on the events. There would be people pass off the torch to when guys like him and Josh were no longer around. He had been afraid that would not happen after the long drought doldrums in the class struggle of the previous few decades. Here is what else he had to say:            

No question in this wicked old world that those at the bottom are “the forgotten ones,” “los olvidados,” those who a writer who had worked among them had long ago correctly described as the world fellahin, the ones who never get ahead. This day we are talking about working people, people working and working hard for eight, nine, ten dollars an hour. Maybe working two jobs to make ends meet since a lot of times these McJobs, these Wal-Mart jobs do not come with forty hours of work attached but whatever some cost-cutting manager deems right to keep them on a string and keep them from qualifying for certain benefits that do not kick in with “part-time” work. And lately taking advantage of cover from Obamacare keeping the hours below the threshold necessary to kick in health insurance and other benefits. Yes, the forgotten people.

But let’s do the math here figuring on forty hours and figuring on say ten dollars an hour. That‘s four hundred a week times fifty weeks (okay so I am rounding off for estimate purposes here too since most of these jobs do not have vacation time figured in).That’s twenty thousand a year. Okay so just figure any kind of decent apartment in the Boston area where I am writing this-say one thousand a month. That’s twelve thousand a year. So the other eight thousand is for everything else. No way can that be done. And if you had listened to the young and not so young fast-food workers, the working mothers, the working older brothers taking care of younger siblings, workers trying to go to school to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty you would understand the truth of that statement. And the stories went on and on along that line all during the action. 

Confession: it has been a very long time since I have had to scrimp and scrim to make ends meet, to get the rent in, to keep those damn bill-collectors away from my door, to beg the utility companies to not shut off those necessary services. But I have been there, no question. Growing up working class town poor, the only difference on the economic question was that it was all poor whites unlike today’s crowd. Also for many years living from hand to mouth before things got steady. I did not like it then and I do not like the idea of it now.  I am here to say even the “Fight for $15” is not enough, but it is a start. And I whole-heartedly support the struggle of my sisters and brothers for a little economic justice in this wicked old world. And any reader who might read this-would you work for these slave wages? I think not. So show your solidarity and get out and support the fast-food and Wal-Mart workers in their just struggles. 

Organize Wal-Mart! Organize the fast food workers! Union! Union!  
       http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/09/04/boston-fast-food-workers-rally-for-wages-unions/bc1ZqZIgwsVcOw0QHIV74M/story.html         

*****Victory To The Fast-Food Workers The Vanguard Of The Fight For $15......

*****Victory To The Fast-Food Workers The Vanguard Of The Fight For $15......Fight For $15 Is Just A Beginning-All Labor Must Support Our Sisters And Brothers

 
 
 
 
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Frank Jackman had always ever since he was a kid down in Carver, a working class town formerly a shoe factory mecca about thirty miles south of Boston and later dotted with assorted small shops related to the shipbuilding trade, a very strong supporters of anything involving organized labor and organizing labor, anything that might push working people ahead. While it had taken it a long time, and some serious military service during the Vietnam War, his generation’s war, to get on the right side of the angels on the war issue and even more painfully and slowly on the woman’s liberation and gay rights issues, and he was still having a tough time with the transgender thing although the plight of heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower Army soldier Chelsea Manning had made it easier to express solidarity, he had always been a stand-up guy for unions and for working people. Maybe it was because his late father, Lawrence Jackman, had been born and raised in coal country down in Harlan County, Kentucky where knowing which side you were on, knowing that picket lines mean don’t cross, knowing that every scrap given by the bosses had been paid for in blood and so it was in his blood. Maybe though it was closer to the nub, closer to home, that the closing of the heavily unionized shoe factories which either headed down south or off-shore left slim leaving for those who did not follow them south, slim pickings for an uneducated man like his father trying to raise four daughters and son on hopes and dreams and not much else. Those hopes and dreams leaving his mother to work in the “mother’s don’t work” 1950s at a local donut shop filling donuts for chrissakes to help make ends meet so his was always aware of how close the different between work and no work was, and decent pay for decent work too. How ever he got “religion” on the question as a kid, and he suspected the answer was in the DNA, Frank was always at the ready when the latest labor struggles erupted, the latest recently being the sporadic uprisings amount fast-food workers and lowly-paid Walmart workers to earn a living wage.        

One day in the late summer of 2014 he had picked up a leaflet from a young guy, a young guy who later identified himself as a field organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a union filled to the brim with low-end workers like janitors, nurses assistants, salespeople, and the like, passing them out at an anti-war rally (against the American escalations in Syria and Iraq) in downtown Boston. The leaflet after giving some useful information about how poorly fast-food worker were paid and how paltry the benefits, especially the lack of health insurance announced an upcoming “Fight for $15” action in Downtown Boston on September 4, 2014 at noon as part of a national struggle for economic justice and dignity for the our hard working sisters and brothers. He told the young organizer after expressing solidarity with the upcoming efforts that he would try to bring others to the event although being held during a workday would be hard for some to make the time.

In the event Frank brought about a dozen others with him. They and maybe fifty to one hundred others during the course of the event stood in solidarity for a couple of hours while a cohort of fast-food workers told their stories. And while another cohort of fast-food workers were sitting on the ground in protest prepared to commit civil disobedience by blocking the street to make their point. Several of them would eventually be arrested and taken away by the police later to be fined and released.

Frank, when he reflected on the day’s events later, was pretty elated as he told his old friend Josh Breslin whom he had called up in Maine to tell him what had happened that day. Josh had also grown up in a factory town, a textile town, Olde Saco, and had been to many such support events himself and before he retired had as a free-lance writer written up lots of labor stories. The key ingredient that impressed Josh in Frank’s description had been how many young serious black and Latino workers had participated in the actions. Later than night when Frank reflected further on the situation he broke out in a smile as he was writing up his summary of his take on the events. There would be people pass off the torch to when guys like him and Josh were no longer around. He had been afraid that would not happen after the long drought doldrums in the class struggle of the previous few decades. Here is what else he had to say:            

No question in this wicked old world that those at the bottom are “the forgotten ones,” “los olvidados,” those who a writer who had worked among them had long ago correctly described as the world fellahin, the ones who never get ahead. This day we are talking about working people, people working and working hard for eight, nine, ten dollars an hour. Maybe working two jobs to make ends meet since a lot of times these McJobs, these Wal-Mart jobs do not come with forty hours of work attached but whatever some cost-cutting manager deems right to keep them on a string and keep them from qualifying for certain benefits that do not kick in with “part-time” work. And lately taking advantage of cover from Obamacare keeping the hours below the threshold necessary to kick in health insurance and other benefits. Yes, the forgotten people.

But let’s do the math here figuring on forty hours and figuring on say ten dollars an hour. That‘s four hundred a week times fifty weeks (okay so I am rounding off for estimate purposes here too since most of these jobs do not have vacation time figured in).That’s twenty thousand a year. Okay so just figure any kind of decent apartment in the Boston area where I am writing this-say one thousand a month. That’s twelve thousand a year. So the other eight thousand is for everything else. No way can that be done. And if you had listened to the young and not so young fast-food workers, the working mothers, the working older brothers taking care of younger siblings, workers trying to go to school to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty you would understand the truth of that statement. And the stories went on and on along that line all during the action. 

Confession: it has been a very long time since I have had to scrimp and scrim to make ends meet, to get the rent in, to keep those damn bill-collectors away from my door, to beg the utility companies to not shut off those necessary services. But I have been there, no question. Growing up working class town poor, the only difference on the economic question was that it was all poor whites unlike today’s crowd. Also for many years living from hand to mouth before things got steady. I did not like it then and I do not like the idea of it now.  I am here to say even the “Fight for $15” is not enough, but it is a start. And I whole-heartedly support the struggle of my sisters and brothers for a little economic justice in this wicked old world. And any reader who might read this-would you work for these slave wages? I think not. So show your solidarity and get out and support the fast-food and Wal-Mart workers in their just struggles. 

Organize Wal-Mart! Organize the fast food workers! Union! Union!  
       http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/09/04/boston-fast-food-workers-rally-for-wages-unions/bc1ZqZIgwsVcOw0QHIV74M/story.html         

*****John Brown’s Body Lies A Moldering In The Grave-With The Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment In Mind.

*****John Brown’s Body Lies A Moldering In The Grave-With The Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment In Mind.



 



Every time I pass the frieze honoring the heroic Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment across from the State House on Beacon Street in Boston, a unit that fought in the American Civil War, a war which we have just finished commemorating the 150th anniversary of its formal ending (April 1865) I am struck by one figure who I will discuss in a minute. For those who do not know the 54th Regiment the unit had been recruited and made up of all volunteers, former slaves, freedmen, maybe a current fugitive slave snuck in there, those were such times for such unheralded personal valor, the recruitment a task that the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, himself an ex-slave had been central in promoting (including two of his sons). All knew, or soon became aware that if they did not fight to the finish they would not be treated as prisoners of war but captured chattel subject to re-enslavement or death.  The regiment fought with ferocious valor before Fort Wagner down in South Carolina and other hot spots where an armed black man, in uniform or out, brought red flashes of deep venom, if venom is red, but hellfire hatred in any case to the Southern plantation owners and their hangers-on (that armed black men acting in self-defense of themselves and theirs still bringing hellfire hatred among some whites to this day, no question).

I almost automatically focus in on that old hard-bitten grizzled erect bearded soldier who is just beneath the head of the horse being ridden by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the white commander of the regiment who from a family of ardent abolitionists fell with his men before Fort Wagner and was buried with them, an honor. (See above) I do not know the details of the model Saint-Gauden’s used when he worked that section (I am sure that specific information can be found although it is not necessary to this sketch) but as I grow older I appreciate that old man soldier even more, as old men are supposed to leave the arduous duty of fighting for just causes, arms in hand, to the young.

I like to think that that old grizzled brother who aside from color looks like me when he heard the call from Massachusetts wherever he was, maybe had read about the plea in some abolitionist newspaper, had maybe even gotten the message from Frederick Douglass himself through his newspaper, The North Star, calling Sable Brother to Arms or on out the stump once Lincoln unleashed him to recruit his black brothers for whatever reason although depleting Union ranks reduced by bloody fight after bloody fight as is the nature of civil war when the societal norms are broken  as was at least one cause, he picked up stakes leaving some small farm or trade and family behind and volunteered forthwith. Maybe he had been born, like Douglass, in slavery and somehow, manumission, flight, something, following the Northern Star, got to the North. Maybe learned a skill, a useful skill, got a little education to be able to read and write and advance himself and had in his own way prospered.
But something was gnawing at him, something about the times, something about tow-headed white farm boys, all awkward and ignorant from the heartland of the Midwest, sullen Irish and other ethnic immigrants from the cities where it turned out the streets were not paved with gold and so took the bounty for Army duty, took some draft-dodger’s place for pay, hell, even high-blown Harvard boys were being armed to defend the Union (and the endless names of the fallen and endless battles sites on Memorial Hall at Harvard a graphic testament to that solemn sense of duty then). And more frequently as the days and months passed about the increasing number of white folk who hated, hated with a red-hot passion, slavery and if that passion meant anything what was he a strong black man going to do about it, do about breaking the hundreds of years chains. Maybe he still had kindred under the yolk down South in some sweated plantation, poorly fed, ill-treated, left to fester and die when not productive anymore, the women, young and old subject to Mister’s lustful appetites and he had to do something.
Then the call came, Governor Andrews of Massachusetts was raising a “sable” armed regiment (Douglass’ word) to be headed by a volunteer Harvard boy urged on by his high abolitionist parents, Colonel Shaw, the question of black military leadership of their own to be left to another day, another day long in the future as it turned out but what was he to know of that, and he shut down his small shop or farm, said good-bye to kin and neighbors and went to Boston to join freedom’s fight. I wonder if my old bearded soldier fell before Fort Wagner fight down in heated rebel country, or maybe fell in some other engagement less famous but just as important to the concept of disciplined armed black men fighting freedom’s fight. I like to think though that the grizzled old man used every bit of wit and skill he had and survived to march into Charleston, South Carolina, the fire-breathing heart of the Confederacy, then subdued at the end of war with his fellows in the 54th stepping off to the tune of John Brown’s Body Lies A-Moldering In The Grave. A fitting tribute to Captain Brown and his band of brother, black and white, at Harper’s Ferry fight and to an old grizzled bearded soldier’s honor.             


A Twice-Told Tale-With Katrina The Girl With The Sparkling Eyes In Mind




A Twice-Told Tale-With Katrina The Girl With The Sparkling Eyes In Mind  








By Zack James


Hey, Phil Larkin, P.I. private eye to you here to give you the low-done on my lawyer friend (and a guy I have worked for on a contract basis for several years), Tim Clary, who has as usual let himself get in way over his head with a dame, a young dame too, boot who has been leading him by the nose (or another more private part if you ask me) for a few months now. Usually I like to make some commentary but here I will just let him bask in his glory since apparently this time, this one last time as the dame, Katrina, has said right along he has finally got everything right-Good luck brother-and forget about “last time” with this one:    


 


Sweetie- some days it is great to be a lawyer, to actual help somebody, to help a damsel in distress, you okay, and today is one of them. Yeah, to actually help somebody without having to crush somebody else which is the usual case in our adversarial legal system where in court one side wins and the other side loses most of the time.  Most days are like that, dog eat dog, not at all like they tried to play with your head with in law school about justice being blind and everybody is equal under the law.


And it is not just the court system that is screwed up but I remember back when I was doing more criminal cases starting out like a lot of young hungry lawyers looking to get a start in the business and some guy, usually they were guys, was in court on a drug charge, maybe trafficking, maybe possession of too much dope to not be prosecuted like for kilos or something who would get up on the stand and act all innocent (like I told him to do) and the prosecutor starts talking about a couple of prior convictions for the same offenses that had been “continued without a finding” (meaning they would go away if the guy kept his nose, literally his nose in cocaine cases, clean for a period long enough to say he was rehabilitated). Of course he never told me that little piece of information when I had asked him about “priors” so naturally I looked like a fool when I went to the bench and asked for some kind of plea bargain rather than the “not guilty” I was looking for. Or the time a guy in all honesty (he was a little simple-minded but not as much as he pretended) thought he had some kind of constitutional right to have a pistol in his hand when he displayed it in a 7/11 store in Dracut and the clerk, scared out of her mind, though it was an armed robbery as she handed over the money. It was, the guy had about six “priors,” for various armed and unarmed robberies.  Had a million cases like that.        


Hell later the civil case clients would still goof with me sometimes like when I did a few divorce cases before I gave that up as too scary once I realized that I would rather defend the low-rent criminals who at least were half honest when they would lie, male or female it didn’t matter, about why they wanted a divorce. Worse when it came to dividing up the property. Christ they fought tooth and nail over a television set or some foolish piece of furniture. I won’t even go into the “civil wars” when there were lawsuits between two unrelated parties about ownership of land, or chattels. Worse when there were personal injury cases (although “win or lose” I made good money on those cases I will admit) and one party would almost ask the judge for the death penalty beside money damages in the case for some car dent or whiplash back deal. Jesus.  


You will appreciate this one. I have to chuckle every time I think about Harry’s case, or rather cases. Harry was from up your way, up in Bedford if I recall, who had a small printing business in Lowell over on Merrimack Street by the river in the Taylor Building (now converted to condos at some outrageous price just because they had a river view but they were poorly constructed and I wouldn’t live in one if you paid me). He was always coming to me to “negotiate” with some customer who was not paying his or her bills. One time a big customer, an independent book publisher, got behind on his payments, had as it turned out made a bunch of bad decisions about what books would sell in the consumers’ market, and got so far behind in his bills that Harry took him to court, rightfully so. When Harry got up on the stand to say his piece he, on his own, started talking about putting the poor guy in now non-existent debtor’s prison like something out of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations which you probably read in school.  Like Harry had never heard of bankruptcy laws (that the guy finally had to go to which was sad in a way because he had in his younger days published some very good if not exactly best-seller books which is always worthwhile). When I asked you about your situation in the hospital and whether you could leave or were being held before you explained everything to my satisfaction I thought of you as a Harry’s case for real.       


You know even this big deal case from Washington I am working on now that I keep telling you I am busy on is a “one side wins, the other side loses” situation (except me because I am getting paid, paid a lot, or I should say I shall get paid a lot since I am working by the hour on the thing and so not dependent on winning like in some cases I have had, some cases when I put a lot of time in and got nothing for it when the client lost). It is about land, or really land use which people come to me about since I won a case a while back, a big case in Massachusetts, on appeal about who owned the land. Not a big case like the U.S. Supreme Court case in Miranda, the give you your rights case, or Lawrence, the gay civil rights case, but a big land use case that lawyers still refer to when they have what are called “adverse possession” cases. What that means in laymen’s terms is that one guy used land for a long time, over twenty years, thinking it was his but on the land deed it was really another guy’s. That other guy showed no proof of active ownership so the first guy got possession. What was important to the first guy, my guy, was that he have that land to sell because a huge condo developer wanted the land but only if he could have all of it undisputed. That is what the D.C. case is all about but the land use size is much bigger, the developer wants to put 160 condos/townhouses up but needs a disputed strip for a street between sections. Without that-no go.


But enough of these law court “war stories” let’s get to why you should be happy that I feel good to be a lawyer today. Last night I was talking to my accountant about your situation, about the blizzard of e-mails we had sent back and forth earlier in the day in order to made a plan to move forward and get you out of “jail,” about what had been happening to you over the past couple of weeks since you paid off that late insurance premium on your mother’s life insurance policy. See I need his authorization from the law office accounts, especially for a large sum like $2100. I have been keeping him “out of the loop” on those bank transfer things that didn’t work because they were being drawn off my credit cards which he doesn’t have control over (meaning he doesn’t have to authorize use although he does need the monthly statements for tax purposes, Christ, he always as you know wants some damn receipt for every little thing).


By the way when I told him about the failed bank transfers from my bank, Bank of America (hereafter B of A), to your bank, Banco de Or, especially from Xoom which he uses all the time and likes and which you said you were not in favor of using he had the problem solves in a jiffy. That paperwork BOD (Banco de Oro) wanted you to sign was because you had a savings account and not a checking account. According to him there was no way Xoom or Bank of America (I mean B of A) could transfer money from my bank account to yours because you didn’t have a routing number. So what that local branch of BOD (Banco de Ora, okay) would have wanted from you if you could have contacted them was to sign off on paperwork to allow international bank transfers into your savings account. That was all.                         


But that wasn’t the reason he, my accountant, called me, although while I had him the line I told him about your situation. You know about you being in the hospital for stomach ulcers since you had not been eating, or had been fasting for some reason, I don’t remember off-hand which it was, the former I think, but basically not taking care of yourself because you had no dough to live on until you cashed in on the $45,000 (sorry I don’t know how many pesos, Philippine pesos that was, about 2,000,000 if I remember the conversion rate correctly) insurance policy we had paid the premium on. That you had gone to the hospital, taken I think by your brother and two cousins, Rufus, no, Ricky, and Jonathan the night before you were supposed to get the big insurance pay-out you were entitled too. Damn getting sick just when you were going to get financially well. (Did you ever tell me your brother’s name I know he is a student and is about seventeen, right?). They had taken you to the same hospital, Saint Tomas, where your mother had been taken to before she passed away and which we had had to buy off for $800 USD (United States dollars, 35,000 pesos right) in medical bills before they would let you give her a proper burial.


My accountant asked about which wing of the hospital you were being held at, the low-rent charity ward or the “plush suites,” his terms since he knew the hospital from trips to Manila on business, and I told him because we had pieced off the place in your  mother’s case with that 800 clams (35,000 pesos clams) before they let you be treated with the Mayfair swells, you know the upper crust, in the nicer section (his saying “being held at” like you were a prisoner which is as you know I thought until just yesterday when you straightened me out and so I did the same for him about your wanting to do everything by the book, legally).


Like I said the real reason my accountant called was because he had received an e-mail by some parish priest from that Quinpo (sorry if I misspelt it) church your mother belonged to thanking me for sending the five years Mass Card who although not familiar with your mother’s name, didn’t know her from Adam or Eve from what my accountant said, was pleased that I had thought of her, one of God’s children,  and that of course on her death anniversary day they would do their duty to her by saying a Mass in her name. (I gave February 27th as her death date since that was the day you left I think and if that is not right then that will still count for her as her remembrance time anyway.) Of course you know I only did that out of respect for you (and indirectly your brother whose name I don’t know, is it Angel, maybe you did tell me). I have mentioned my feelings as an old-time sinner myself about the Church before and I don’t want to get started on that because that is not what this message to you is about. About great news not ancient Catholic childhood mental wounds that have never properly healed. But just be aware that as for your mother somebody is looking out for her when you are away elsewhere.              


Of course since I have known my accountant for a long time and except when he goes crazy over receipts and invoices he and I get along, and he has after all kept me out of trouble, out of serious trouble anyway, he felt free to make his usual “pussy-whipped” comment after I told him about your sad ass tale and your various post insurance premium- related capers. You remember I hope that e-mail I sent you one time about his comment about “thinking with cock, not my brain,” in dealing with you once he saw how pretty you were and how nice too. Here is a copy just in case you forgot what with your other worries and stuff:


“Hi Sweetie-hope things are going well with you-thanks for the revealing photos of you. They certainly had my woodie getting hard just thinking about those beautiful tits of yours (“Woodie” that’s your word for cock right-I remember you calling it that once time when we were talking before you left for the Philippines). Of course I would have to have a closer inspection, a much closer inspection in order to confirm how nice they are.


Now that the business stuff is over let me tell you a story about why I was asking for revealing photos of you. During this last insurance premium go-round my accountant said I was thinking with “my cock and not my brain” in dealing with you what with all the zigzags we went through.  He didn’t exactly put it that way but you know how guys talk about good-looking women and their desire for them  what he meant was that I was pussy-whipped, “cyber-pussy-whipped” by you because every little request by you for anything and I was calling him up day and night to see if it could be done without getting into trouble. That got me to thinking back to the previous photos that you had sent me of you before you went away. I was thinking that if I was pussy-whipped (which you and I know I am not but rather just trying to help a damsel in distress and will in the future too if necessary and we will work out some kind of thing that will be okay for both of us so we are on the same page) then I might as well have a look at the pussy I am being whipped by. Sometime when you get a chance I would not a little photo like that. This would be just between us but I would be able to laugh every time he went on and on about stuff like that. You could do that for me sweetie I hope.          


As usual when I have gone to Washington I always get behind and so I have been working today to get caught up on an interesting case I will tell you about sometime. I also jogged this morning before the rain started here. If you can believe this and this is no April Fools’ joke tomorrow and the day after (Sunday and Monday here) it is supposed to snow-not much but what the heck it is April. I am also finishing up an interesting novel by Ernest Hemingway-do you know who he is-or remember reading anything by him in high school-about Paris in the 1920s during the Jazz Age. I would like to go Paris this year in the fall so I am reading stuff like that to get motivated to go –Of course Paris is a place you don’t want to go alone if you know what I mean.    


I often think about what you are reading about, what you are doing over there while you are waiting for your fortunes to change. Tell me some stuff like that, what kind of food do they have there, did you go any place of interest. You know stuff like that so we can “reconnect” 


I have learned the basics of sexting (oops) texting but it takes me a long time to put a message together. I haven’t got all the symbols and shorthand down. As you can tell it is much easier (and faster) for me to write a bunch of stuff in an e-mail-Let me hear from you and what you are up to and remember I will continue to be your amigo as things go forward-Later.” 


Then I sent another e-mail which went like this:  


 “Hi sweetie- thanks for note- I sent you a note about sending your photos to g-mail address but that can wait until you have a phone-Will you have a phone before you leave the Philippines or wait until you get back to America. I sure would like to have a voice to put with that lovely face. I hope you don't mind me being a little sexy with you- all I know is that “woodie” was pretty hard when I saw those photos-kind of got hard just like that but I am sure you know that would happen when I saw them and I hope you are glad about it-I don't think you do mind about the little sexy stuff but everything I say is just between us-


 As far as my accountant goes if he had seen those photos of you and the ones you sent before he would have the same reaction I did. Then who would be cyber-pussy-whipped. He's a good guy and like I said he has kept me out of trouble for a while and so that is good but he would never understand why I like a nice younger woman like you and have gone out of my way to help you even though we haven't met in person. But accountants are like that-never take a risk because it might throw their balance sheets off. You know the only sheets I am worrying about taking off-I hope.              


It’s funny when you say you would never let me down because all through this business stuff whatever was going on I think in the back of my mind I had a feeling you would not, you just seemed to be that way. Maybe it was our both growing up kind of poor, kind of from the wrong side of the tracks as they say that made me feel that way. We can take about that some other time but we should talk about it.


I didn't quite understand about the "constructing church" you were talking about-is that in Paris? I don't remember hearing about that or seeing it the times I have gone there. Have you ever been to Paris? 


You know you might know that guy Hemingway although not his name did you ever read about a story called the Old Man and the Sea where this old-time Cuban fisherman is out by himself and sees a huge fish that will put him on easy street if he can catch it and bring it back to port and sells it. He catches the fish but along the way back to port about seven things happen and when he gets to port there is nothing to sell, the fish is nothing but bones. So much for easy street…” 


You had such a great response-remember. If not here’s the way that went:


“Hello babe thank you so much again I’m glad you like my photos! I know Woodie will like it too xoxoxo! Don't mind your accountant once we meet in person we will both show him and laugh in him for calling you that way! I know you're not that kind of guy he's just bitter because you will be with a fine lady and he won't! I appreciated all your good deeds for me babe and i promise I will never let you down! Speaking of down I can show you my down stairs of course but right after I get a phone with camera xoxo! Lol really? No I don't know that person but I love to read what you been writing! We will both go to the place I wanted so much and see the still constructing church together!! I've been reading a lot of space lately just bunch of random facts about universe and galaxy! I have never been to any nice place here since I don’t have money yet I have been eating more of Philippine foods and I kind of like it its call tinolang manok and pork sisig! Lol I’m glad you learning how to text if you can you can shoot me one sometimes and I will reply back! I only have less than 10$ to survive the week and I hope I can get the money by this coming week or next week once I do I will let you know and will keeping you update of my comeback! I miss talking stuff like this with you!” 


Remember too how my accountant went crazy looking for that Sun Life insurance premium invoice or there was going to be hell for me to pay (and you bailed me out by sending the copy which was hard for you do to do when you were hospital and which I haven’t forgotten about, believe me I haven’t forgotten). Here’s a refresher:


“Desperate situation-HELP


Sweetie this is why the situation is desperate and I need your help. I, you maybe, we, are in trouble about that money I loaned you out of my pocket to pay your insurance premium of $1000 or whatever it was. I told my accountant who handles both the law office and my personal financial accounts about my sending you the WU money transfer and when I told him I had lent you from my pocket (what he called “behind his back”) he flipped out-again. Said didn’t I realize that lending the dough for the insurance premiums on top of paying the medical bills and funeral expenses made it look like I had an interest in the insurance money. Make it look like I was in with you on the insurance deal since I am the guy who sent the WU money transfers. In any case lawyers involved with client’s (that was the way the previous medical and funeral expenses went on the books in the law office ) is a big no-no-not legal, not ethical and he will be forced to report that to the Massachusetts Board Of Bar Overseers-the people who make sure lawyers don’t do stuff like that. Where you could be in trouble is that you knew I was a lawyer, knew the money for the medical expenses and funeral expenses and that first time I tried to send you the insurance money where I made a mistake on the name-remember was coming from a lawyer.           


He is not going to lose HIS job or get in trouble with the CPA (Certified Public Accountants) guys who license him so I need to get that damn insurance receipt and fast to show that I just loaned you the money to help you out. Otherwise he will be forced to turn his information over to the Bar Overseers and who knows what will happen. They do not like and there are plenty of cases about it seeing lawyers even looking like they are benefitting from third-party (you) insurance claim. I need to keep my license clean in order to practice law (and help you in the future when you get back to America and your nursing career or whatever else you want to do.


So sweetie can you please, please, please find another computer place there must be more than one in Manila to scan that receipt and send it quickly-very quickly. You can do that sweetie right-I have stood by you and done the best I could by you but now, right now, I need you to help me out.    


After that is done, after we can show that the insurance premium money was just a personal loan, then everything will look right and I can help you with the other stuff like the rent and all and it will just be personal and all right. You can do that for me sweetie-yes. After we get this behind us then I will help you to the best of my ability. And you know that’s true because I have a track record of helping you that you can depend on.       


Right now though nothing else matters but that receipt so let’s get to that. My lawyer said I shouldn’t even be communicating with you except to ask for the receipt but I felt I had to tell what I was up against so you would know how serious the situation is. I will abide by what he says though-no communication- until I get that receipt- I will be glad when this is behind us-su amigo”


All of this rehashing of e-mails has a purpose though, a purpose that will make you realize what a good guy my accountant really is, how much you and I owe him, and why I am happy to be a lawyer today. I mentioned to my accountant as we were talking last night that because you were, in effect, under house arrest you couldn’t leave the hospital under penalty of arrest and incarceration in a real slammer (jail) and so couldn’t get to your bank to take care of that international money transfer issue that I mentioned above that he had solved for us by cluing us in about what BOD (Banco de Oro) wanted from you. Also that your relationship with Sun Life was thwarted when you got sick the night before you were to complete the deal and couldn’t get over to their offices to get your hands on what I then thought was an insurance check you could deposit in your BOD (Banco de Oro) savings account. After you had told me that Sun Life only deals in cash pay-outs on insurance policies, even large ones like $45,000 USD (United States dollars and about 2,000, 000 Philippine pesos) I told him the same thing, Told him that was why you couldn’t draw the dough out since you had to go there in person. That because you were in gaol (jail) and nneeded my help for one last time to pay off your jailers (they really are when you think about it since you, trying to act legally, can’t leave except under severe penalty). Needed me to sent you $2100 USD (United States dollars, around 9000 or 10,000 pesos right?) via Moneygram in care or your cousin Rickey, no, Jonathan, Jonathan Mateo because Rickey had either lost his driver’s license or had failed to renew it (that’s right isn’t it, lost it for speeding or something-did he, Ricky, ever get it back).


That’s when my accountant “flipped” out but also came back to earth and “saved” us. He told me and I quote, “ What are you crazy, didn’t you know that Moneygram  had been involved in settling a big fraud claims case a few months ago where they had let scammers use their site for illegal actions?” I said no, and that I wasn’t until recently in dealing with you up to speed on all this electronic money transfer stuff. He answered, “I wouldn’t use Moneygram in a million years.” Period.


When he settled down, after I asked him, pretty please, asked him how was I to help you if that avenue was closed off, he, once again came up with the solution. Here is where it is good to know a few people in key places. See he, as you might expect of a business accountant who works for lawyers, deals with insurance companies all the time, so he knows, Sam Larkin, the Vice-President for International Affairs at Sun Life in America, which Sun Life in the Philippines is a subsidiary of. My accountant called Sam this morning and told him my/your/our story. No problem. Sam has ordered an agent in the Philippines, Tomas Ramos, to go to your hospital Monday or any day you want if Monday is no good and on giving him your insurance policy and premium invoice do whatever you need done. If you want cash or a check, done. Sam suggested a check because $45, 000 USD (United States dollars, or what did I say before a couple of million Philippines pesos) is a lot of money to be carrying around the Philippines these days and he is right I think from what you have said about going out at night or just being around that dangerous drug-infested neighborhood you lived in with the batos hanging out right on that street you live on. If you need a ride to your bank, done. Anything you need just tell me what day and what time you want Tomas to come and take care of business and it is done.


So you can see why I like being a lawyer today. You win, I win, Angel (I think) wins, Jonathan and Ricky win.  My accountant, a good guy right, wins. Great news.