In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Irish Easter Uprising, 1916-Sean Flynn’s Fight-Take One

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Irish Easter Uprising, 1916-Sean Flynn’s Fight-Take One 

 

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.

**************

Here is a little commemorative piece based on the exploits of Frankie Riley from the old neighborhood grand-uncle’s, Sean Flynn, who gave a good account of himself when the time for fighting came:

Sean Flynn had a smile, an ironic smile, on his usually sullen face after he had just read William Butler Yeats’ latest poetic offering on behalf of the heroic Irish freedom-fighters of that glorious few days in April of 1916, Easter,1916.  Mind you ordinarily Sean Flynn had no truck with the outpourings of the bloody Anglo-Irish, those who had been oppressing the Irish, his Irish, since Cromwell’s time, and before. Yeats was different, had a sense of the tragic past etched in the heart of every kindred even though some times when Yeats wrote his mystical hysterical stuff like the Second Coming that left him cold. But the Easter poem was different, was different in its utter solemnity and respect and also utterly difference in that it heralded the new day coming-the time of the terrible beauty born. And with those words on his lips Sean went into deep remembering of those 1916 days when he fought along with the others, many now gone, in that forlorn General Post Office. (Sean, by the way, while not a poet in the land of poets could declaim with the best of them and that sonorous skill had gotten him into many a maiden’s bed, a few married women’s too.)

He remembered back to the time when the late lamented martyred Jimmy Connolly (not everybody called him, was allowed to call him, “Jimmy” only those who had gone through some battles with him could) first made the call to form the Irish Citizens’ Army to defend that terrible strike back in 1914 or so (after Jim Larkin left for parts unknown when the word got out the bloody British wanted his hide) and he had snuck into the ranks although only fifteen. Had snuck in for being a little tall for his age and snuck in because his brother, Seamus, had been a stalwart in that strike. Yes, if anybody was asking, that Army was made up of working-men and only working men until the hard battles of Easter forced a reorganization with the remnants of the Irish Volunteers. Jimmy said every working man under his command had to be a little vigilant about working with the poets and dreamers, the petty bourgeois nationalists he called them who made up the Volunteer units and who would still have them eating potatoes and stepping out on the bogs if they had control. Still Jimmy said that there were too few in Ireland just then, just before the big war in Europe flamed out of control in 1914, to not unite where they could be united with those who fiercely resisted the encroachments of John Bull’s tyranny. And in the event Jimmy had been right, had called the tune well, except Sean still did not feel that those poets and dreamers “boyos” could be trusted now with independent now a sure thing.

Sean remembered how proud he was to go out on those very bogs that he hated, hated thinking about how every bloody Englishman with two pence called him and his “the bogs,” to their faces in order to surreptitiously march and drill for the big day that would be coming, the day when Ireland would be free to breath its own air, make its own mistakes. So he marched, although he hated to march and was constantly out of step. And so he learned how to hold a rifle, although he was shy around weapons, was not comfortable with the idea of killing a man, even a bloody Englishman (although when the time came he gave a good account of himself, as good as any man there). And so he thrilled when at pub all the lasses, although militia membership was a secret, an open secret, would gather round him and well, flirt with him (and let him have his way with them) and totally ignore any Irishman who was not true to the cause. Ah, those were the days but Sean also remembered how he longed to get into action, longed to have that showdown he had been prepared for when that bloody war in Europe broke out and it looked like Ireland would never be free…        

*****Important Mumia Abu Jamal Update-Free Mumia

*****Important  Mumia Abu Jamal Update-Free Mumia

 

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

The legendary social commentator and standup comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction. The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be. ***** An Open Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal Supporters-A Personal Commentary (April 2008 but the main point-freedom for Mumia is still front and center) The Partisan Defense Committee has passed "An Open Letter to All Supporters of Mumia‘s Freedom" to this writer. Those few who might not know of the torturous legal battles to free this innocent man can find further information at the above-mentioned Partisan Defense site. I make my own comments below. Normally I pass information about the case of political prisoner Mumia abu-Jamal on without much comment because the case speaks for itself. The case has been front and center in international labor defense struggles for over two decades. However, in light of the adverse ruling by a majority of a federal Third Circuit Court of Appeal panel in March 2008 that affirmed Mumia’s 1982 conviction for first-degree murder of a police officer and left the only issue for decision that of resentencing to either reinstate his original death sentence or keep him imprisoned for life without parole I have some things to say about this fight. Occasionally, in the heat of political battle some fights ensue around strategy that after the smoke has cleared, upon reflection, leave one with more sorrow than anger. Not so today. Today I am mad. Am I mad about the irrational decision by the majority of the Third Circuit panel in Mumia’s case? Yes, but when one has seen enough of these cases over a lifetime then one realizes that, as the late sardonic comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, in the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the halls. What has got me steamed is the obvious bankruptcy of the strategy, if one can use this term, of centering Mumia’s case on the question of a new trial in order to get the ‘masses’- meaning basically parliamentary liberal types interested in supporting the case. This by people who allegedly KNOW better. The bankruptcy of this strategy, its effects on Mumia’s case and the bewildered response of those who pedaled it as good coin is detailed in the above-mentioned Open Letter. Read it. Today, in reaction to the Third Circuit court’s decision, everyone and their brother and sister are now calling for Mumia’s freedom. At a point where he is between a rock and a hard place. However, it did not have to be that way. Mumia was innocent in 1982 and he did not stop being innocent at any point along this long road. Freedom for Mumia was (and is) the correct slogan in the case. A long line of political criminal cases, starting in this country with that of the Haymarket Martyrs if not before, confirms that simple wisdom. Those who consciously pedaled this weak ‘new trial’ strategy as a get rich quick scheme now have seen the chickens come home to roost. And Mumia pays the price. I would point out two factors that made a ‘retrial’ strategy in the case of an innocent man particularly Pollyanna-ish for those honest militants who really believed that Mumia’s case was merely a matter of the American justice system being abused and therefore some court would rectify this situation if enough legal resources were in place. First, it is illusory that somehow, as exemplified in this case, a higher court system would remedy this egregious wrong. Long ago I remember a lawyer, I believe that it might have been the late radical lawyer Conrad Lynn no stranger to political defense work, telling a group of us doing defense work for the Black Panthers, that all these judges belong to the same union. They do not upset each other’s work except under extreme duress. Second, and this is where the ‘wisdom’ of the reformists about reaching the ‘masses’ by a stage-ist theory of defense work (fight for retrial first, then freedom) turns in on them. As witness the list of names of those who have signed the Partisan Defense Committee’s call for Mumia’s freedom, excepting professional liberals and their hangers –on, those interested in Mumia’s case (or any leftwing political defense case) will sign on just as easily for freedom as retrial. Thus, opportunism does not pay, even in the short haul. That said, Free Mumia- say it loud, say it proud.

*****No Killer/No Spy Drones...

*****No Killer/No Spy Drones...

From The Pen Of Bart Webber 

One night my friend from high school, Carver High Class of 1967 down in Southeastern Massachusetts Sam Lowell whom I hadn’t seen in a while and I were, full disclosure having a few high-shelf whiskeys at Jack Higgin’s Sunnyvale Grille in Boston, arguing over the increasing use of and increased dependence on killer/spy drones in military doctrine, American military doctrine anyway. Me, well again for full disclosure I am a supporter of Veterans For Peace and have been involved with such groups, both veteran and civilian peace groups, since my own military service ended back during Vietnam War days. I follow the line of VFP that killer/spy drones are qualitatively a no better (or no worse) part of the modern military arsenal that any other weapon and need to be opposed with the same rigor as we do for nuclear weapons and other all the military hardware used in the seemingly endless wars the American imperium has dragged us into. That “line” business in relationship to VFP is unlike various Marxist groups and quasi-Marxist collectives I hung around with in my younger days after discharge from the American Army as a matter of choice rather than obligation. In those old-time organizations hardly any of them around anymore or if so are peopled with the relics of those youthful endeavors (and good luck to them since the young these days except on rare and fleeting occasions are not picking up the torch) were guided they concept of democratic centralism from the Leninist Bolshevik organizational doctrine, if one disagreed with the organizational “line” would if in the minority keep quiet in public about the difference. VFP, based on more broadly-based democratic principles reflecting a different mission and different way to change the world, has no such restrictions although arguing for support of killer/spy drones would put one in opposition with the goals of the organization and one would in good conscience have to consider whether continued membership was appropriate.      

Sam’s position, full disclosure he was granted an exemption from military duty during the Vietnam War period after his father had died suddenly in 1965 and he was the sole support, or close to it, of his mother and four younger sisters, was a little more nuanced if nevertheless flatly wrong from my perspective. Perhaps reflecting an “average Joe” position of a guy who did not serve in the military and had not seen up close what all the “benefits” of modern military technology have brought forth to level whatever target they have chosen to obliterate and under what conditions. In the post-9/11 period he like many from our generation of ’68 had made a sea-change in their former anti-military positions and have embraced some form of selected approval of various aspects of current military doctrine. Starting with the initial approval of the “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq which in the end left egg all over his face. Sam, nevertheless, argued that the high degree of accuracy, the “cleanness” of the method, and the destruction of the specific object (his word, I would say person or place, mainly person) without high casualties on the American side (that reduction of “boots on the ground” argument which underpins much of modern doctrine in the wake of Vietnam and even Iraq itself) to fight the “war on terrorism” which disturbs his old age has made him a partisan of such weaponry.       

As usual these days we argued for a few hours or until the whiskey ran out, or we ran out of steam and agreed to disagree. The next day though, no, the day after that I got to thinking about the issue and while not intending to directly counter his arguments wrote a short statement that reflects my own current thinking the matter. Here it is:

“Ever since the early days of humankind's existence an argument has always been made by someone and not always by the gung-ho warriors, many times rather by some safely-ensconced desk-bound soul who was too busy to become a warrior but was more than glad to let some other mother's son do the bitch work, that with some new technology, some new strategic gee-gad, warfare, the killing on one of our own species, would become less deadly, would be more morally justified, would bring the long hoped for peace that lots of people have yacked about in the abstract until some governmental decision to go to war gets their war blood up.

Those arguments are being retailed these days by the killer/spy drone aficionados who think they have found something new under the sun. Don't believe that false bill of goods, don't believe the insane war lies from warriors, arm-chair warriors, or the merely fearful, it is the same old killing machine that has gone on for eons. Killing from far away places like Nevada to the Middle East in war game rooms with screens set up like video games except tell that to the "sorry, collateral damage, no foul because not intended" victims who got in the way. Enough said and enough of killer drones killing and spy drones spying too.”  

In Boston April 30th- Socialist Unity Conference

In Boston April 30th- Socialist Unity Conference

A View From The Left-France-Protests Against Anti-Union Law-Down With the “War on Terror” and Racist Police-State Measures

Workers Vanguard No. 1087	8 April 2016

France-Protests Against Anti-Union Law-Down With the “War on Terror” and Racist Police-State Measures!

On March 31, a million people took to the streets in cities across France to protest against the draft El Khomri law, an omnibus anti-labor and anti-union bill named for France’s minister of labor, Myriam El Khomri. This day of action was marked by a series of strikes by transport workers, notably railroad and Air France workers and longshoremen, as well as teachers and other public-sector workers. There is deep and widespread anger against the government’s attacks on working people.

As they have in a series of recent mass demonstrations, large contingents of high school and university students joined the March 31 protests, which in several cities were twice as large as the March 9 day of action. Around the country, tear gas, water cannons, horses and brute force were used by the forces of “law and order” against the youth. In Marseille, as elsewhere, cops attacked the youth who did not immediately disperse at the end of the demonstration; the clouds of tear gas were so thick that people in nearby sidewalk cafés were forced to flee. In Lyon, fascists attacked student demonstrators and were defended by the riot cops. In Rouen, as police attacked students with tear gas, a large contingent of longshoremen, joined by other workers, came to the students’ defense, forcing the cops to back down. Hands off the student youth! Drop the charges against all those arrested!

The proposed law is the latest in a series of brutal anti-labor laws pushed by the government of Socialist Party (PS) president François Hollande. The government has also been cracking down with unprecedented severity on working-class resistance. In January, eight trade-union militants, arrested while opposing the closure of a Goodyear plant in Amiens, were sentenced to nine months in prison. Five Air France workers face up to three years in prison after two managers literally lost their shirts at a strike rally in October.

The attacks on labor come in the context of the state of emergency that the government declared last November after the hideous ISIS massacre of 130 people in Paris and has extended until May. The police have conducted thousands of warrantless raids on homes, especially in largely Muslim neighborhoods, at all hours of the day and night. Hundreds of people were placed under house arrest, including ecologists who were planning a demonstration on the eve of December’s climate conference in Paris. Widespread surveillance measures allow police to record telephone conversations.

We print below a translation of a March 21 supplement to Le Bolchévik, newspaper of the Ligue Trotskyste de France, section of the International Communist League, which was distributed at the March 31 demonstrations in Paris, Rouen and other major cities.

*   *   *

The government no doubt thought that the surge of racist “national unity” following the criminal attacks on November 13 would allow it to pass its El Khomri bill without much trouble. Even the French Communist Party (PCF) voted for the state of emergency. Last year, it was in the wake of the anti-Muslim “I am Charlie” wave of national unity [see “France: Down With ‘War on Terror’ Repression!” WV No. 1060, 23 January 2015] that Hollande and [Prime Minister Manuel] Valls got the [anti-labor] Macron Law passed. But their plan could derail as the El Khomri bill has become the focal point for the hatred of this racist capitalist government that has built up over almost four years. Hundreds of thousands of workers and youth demonstrated on March 9, and again on March 17, to demand the withdrawal of the bill.

The El Khomri bill aims to make employment qualitatively more precarious by allowing employers to fire workers for virtually no reason, with little notice and at almost no cost. The bosses could impose a fixed pay rate, meaning that ten- or twelve-hour workdays would be paid the same as seven-hour days. To introduce such a measure, an employer would simply need a formal agreement with his employees, including by way of a so-called “workplace referendum.” This is an open assault against the unions. In small or medium-sized enterprises, all an employer needs to do to organize such a referendum is to win over a single “authorized employee.” In larger companies, management only needs the support of one or several trade-union representatives as long as their unions received even a combined 30 percent in elections [to various elected posts and workplace committees mandated by French law]. This would be the culmination of years of anti-union attacks that have often been carried out with the active collaboration of the union bureaucracy (such as the Sarkozy Law [which aimed at further tightening government and management control over the unions]). Down with the El Khomri law!

Meanwhile, the government has continued to bring charges against workers in struggle—and now against militant youth. Drop all charges against the Air France and Goodyear trade unionists and against protesters arrested in recent days! The fact that the unions today are weak, with less than eight percent of the workforce unionized, is not enough for the French capitalists. There are clearly some, including in the government, who think that it is possible to do without the collaboration of the trade-union bureaucracy altogether. They believe that class struggle is finished—except for that waged by the capitalists against the workers. Valls, Hollande: Hands off the unions!

The anti-union aspect of the El Khomri law is scarcely mentioned even by the left, which focuses on defending the “Labor Code” [the body of French labor laws and regulations governing everything from working conditions to workplace elections]. For example, in a March 14 editorial, Lutte Ouvrière [LO] declared that “the Labor Code is under threat,” thus sowing the illusion that the Labor Code in itself represents a gain for the working class and that the capitalist state stands above social classes. In reality, the Labor Code merely sets the framework within which the workers are forced to sell their labor power in order to eke out a living. For the most part, the Code specifies the advantages that are granted to various types of employers in particular circumstances. The remainder of the Code represents gains that we defend, gains resulting from workers’ struggles in the streets and on the picket lines.

Laurent Berger, leader of the CFDT union federation, rushed to endorse the El Khomri bill after a few cosmetic adjustments were made. As for the leaderships of the CGT, FO and SUD union federations, they only reluctantly called for the March 9 mobilizations. For four years, they hardly uttered a word against the attacks carried out by this capitalist government—because it was their government. In 2012, CGT leader Bernard Thibault officially called to vote for François Hollande. The union bureaucrats’ worldview does not extend beyond the administration of French capitalism, which today more than ever means the increasing destruction of the gains of the working class.

However, one must not throw the baby out with the bath water: Despite the betrayals of the bureaucrats, the unions are organizations for the basic economic defense of the working class at the point of production. The fight to defend the unions is the starting point for any defense of working-class gains, including the most basic, such as the seven- or eight-hour workday. The working class must oust the traitors at the head of the unions and replace them with a class-struggle leadership that will strengthen the unions. This fight is part and parcel of the fight for a revolutionary workers vanguard party.

Reformists Channeled Anti-CPE Struggle into Votes for PS

Ten years ago, the [right-wing] Chirac-Sarkozy-Villepin government also tried to ride the waves of a racist campaign against youth of North African and African origin, who had just risen up as part of a revolt in the banlieues [minority and working-class neighborhoods on the outskirts of big cities]. That government put forward a measure, the “First Employment Contract” (CPE), which would have generalized lack of job security for all newly hired youth [who could be fired without cause]. University and high school students demonstrated for weeks, during which time the government tried to fan the flames of racism by campaigning against banlieue high school students, who were labeled “casseurs” [hooligans]. But the labor movement increasingly mobilized its forces until the government withdrew the CPE.

A youth mobilization can be the spark for a widespread mobilization of workers, as was the case in May 1968 or with the CPE in 2006. But it is the working class that has the social power to stay the hand of the capitalists and their government because it is the workers who produce the wealth and profits appropriated by the capitalists in the factories, ports, refineries, transportation, etc. By stopping work, the workers can bring the entire economy to a standstill.

The fight against the CPE marked the last significant political victory against the capitalist government in France to be won through mass mobilizations. Since then, workers have repeatedly suffered huge setbacks, and the El Khomri law is even more brutal than the CPE. Why is this? How can we prevent this from happening again?

Ten years ago, we warned that the reformists would divert the mobilization into the presidential elections the following year. And indeed, the PCF, the [predecessor of the] NPA [New Anti-Capitalist Party] and Lutte Ouvrière called for a vote to [Socialist Party candidate] Ségolène Royal in 2007. Not content with this betrayal, they repeated it five years later when they campaigned for François Hollande in the second round of the 2012 presidential elections. (LO, for its part, refused to explicitly call for abstention.) In contrast, we said, both in 2007 and in 2012, that the election offered no choice for workers.

In the March issue of their newspaper, l’Etincelle Anticapitaliste, the NPA youth group now states:

“2010: eight million people in the streets, refineries blockaded, two and a half months of mobilizations. But the pension reform was passed, and everyone looked to the 2012 presidential elections. Hollande took advantage of this to cash in on votes. Four years later, millions of people have experienced this particularly nefarious socialist government, which has not only carried out the bosses’ agenda, but was able to do so thanks to the ‘left,’ with the consent of the leadership of the major unions.”

But in 2010 the NPA itself steered workers toward the elections, with its spokesman Olivier Besancenot stating that “the pensions struggle will be a decisive factor in the outcome of 2012. Now is the time to weaken the [right-wing] government and the right” (Tout Est à Nous, 2 September 2010).

Unlike in 2006 or 2010, today’s attacks against workers and youth are being waged by a nominally “left-wing” capitalist government. The PS is sharply divided at the top between those who want to remain social-democratic traitors and those, like Valls, who want to break openly with the labor movement and become outright bourgeois politicians.

Reformist workers parties are in decline across Europe. In Italy the former Communist Party has become an outright bourgeois party, the Democratic Party of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Aside from the Jeremy Corbyn phenomenon in the British Labour Party, a significant number of workers have turned to bourgeois populists, who no longer even claim to stand for the working class (Podemos in Spain, Syriza and Popular Unity in Greece)—that is, when they don’t turn toward the populism of the far-right (in France, the FN [National Front]). On the left in France we have [Left Party leader] Jean-Luc Mélenchon proclaiming an “era of the people” that will supposedly turn the page on the “era of the proletariat.”

For reformists today, like those of the NPA in 2010, a labor mobilization in the streets and the factories would serve as the starting point for forging a new parliamentary dead end, a popular-front alliance including “left-wing” bourgeois formations (the Greens, supporters of Mélenchon, etc.) and social democrats (PS dissidents, PCF), with the NPA and others in tow. If it isn’t [prominent PS dissident Martine] Aubry, it will be Mélenchon or someone else.

No! Down with class collaboration with the bourgeoisie! It is necessary to break the endless cycle of “left-wing” capitalist governments—each more anti-working-class than its predecessor—followed by a strong comeback by reactionary forces. Because of its role in production, the proletariat is the only social class that has the power and historic interest to overthrow the entire capitalist system through socialist revolution, led by a party like the Bolsheviks, who led the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Down With the European Union and the Euro!

The El Khomri law is intended to hammer the final nail in the coffin of the so-called “welfare state,” to modernize France and prevent it from losing more ground to its competitors. Emmanuel Macron, the Minister of the Economy, stated: “This will enable us to bring France into line with European Union law. This is the first step toward adapting our economy to the modern world, which will introduce more flexibility and at the same time more individual security, not based on statutory or corporatist arrangements” (Le Monde, 17 March).

The European Union (EU) is a reactionary and unstable bloc between rival powers. Every “Directive from Brussels” [headquarters of the EU] amounts to a further attack against workers in each EU country. While German imperialism is today the main beneficiary of the EU, the second is none other than its French rival, which is no less rapacious toward Greece, for example, than are the Frankfurt bankers. Down with the EU and the euro!

By continuing to push for the European Union to be reformed in a more “social” direction, the reformists leave the door wide open for the FN, allowing the latter to present itself as the only genuine opponent of the EU. Instead of fighting for international working-class unity against the capitalists, the CGT union bureaucrats are campaigning to “produce in France,” stirring up chauvinism that the FN feeds off. Workers have no country!

Under capitalism, all gains made by the working class are absolutely reversible. Following World War II, the capitalists were forced to grant significant concessions to the workers, particularly in West Europe where they were faced with militant struggles as well as the threat to the international capitalist order represented by the Soviet Union, born of the October Revolution, and East Europe. In these countries, the capitalists had been expropriated even though political power was usurped by a parasitic caste of Stalinist bureaucrats.

The fight to defend gains achieved by the working class here went hand in hand with unconditional military defense of the Soviet Union and East European countries against imperialist threats and the danger of counterrevolution. At the time, we Trotskyists uniquely fought for that program. Our perspective for the East was proletarian political revolution to oust the nationalist Stalinist bureaucrats and establish political power based on workers councils (soviets), and for the West, workers revolution to oust the capitalists. The capitalist counterrevolution in East Europe and the Soviet Union 25 years ago was an enormous defeat for workers throughout the world.

We are fighting not only against temporary demoralization in the wake of that defeat. The very perspective of a classless socialist society must be re-instilled in the consciousness of the workers and oppressed. With the supposed “death of communism,” the older generation no longer believes in that perspective. As for youth, they cannot even conceive of a communist society of abundance for all, a society that functions according to the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” The struggle to re-instill Marxism in the working class goes hand in hand with the struggle to forge a revolutionary workers vanguard party.

For a Class-Struggle Perspective!

Not only do the unions organize only a minority of workers, but they are also divided among several union federations. That allows the government today, for example, to set the CFDT against the CGT. A class-struggle leadership would seek to organize all workers in an industry in a single industrial union, including temporary workers and subcontractors, to put an end to the race to the bottom for work contracts. One industry, one union! Such unions will only emerge as a result of great class battles, and in opposition to the bureaucratic apparatuses of the CGT, CFDT, FO, etc.

Faced with the threat of endless increases in working hours for those who still have jobs, the CGT now calls for a 32-hour workweek. All well and good, but given the current unemployment rate, it will take more than that to provide work for everyone! What is necessary is the sharing of available work among all hands with no loss in pay.

The most basic demands against the scourge of unemployment always come up against the capitalists’ rapacious drive for profit. Naturally, the capitalists will argue that it is not possible and that their finances don’t allow it, in spite of the CICE [tax credits] and other billions in subsidies that this government showers on them. In response, a revolutionary leadership would say: Very well, let’s open the books—the workers themselves will expose the bosses’ swindles. That poses the question of strike committees, factory committees, and ultimately of soviets. As Trotsky stated in the 1938 Transitional Program:

“If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. ‘Realizability’ or ‘unrealizability’ is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what its immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.”

Down With the Racist Security Laws!

The “war on terror” has twin manifestations: internally through repression against the French and immigrant Muslim population, and externally through bloody military interventions in Mali, Libya and Syria. One cannot genuinely oppose one without opposing the other. In order to get the El Khomri bill passed, the government seeks to pit non-Muslims against Muslims. It can only be defeated by opposing all aspects of the “war on terror.” French troops out of Africa and the Near East!

The government is attacking and expelling refugees fleeing wars waged by the imperialists in Syria and elsewhere. It is even seeking to give itself the power to strip people of their French citizenship. [After the publication of this supplement, President Hollande was forced to drop that plan.] This targets a strategic component of the working class—precisely those who are least likely to join in national unity to save French capitalism. Against this outrage, the labor movement should fight for full citizenship rights for all who are here, and against all expulsions. No stripping of nationality! Down with the state of emergency!

Hollande is currently writing into law all the arbitrary practices of the cops, including nighttime raids and spying on private communications. He promises the cops impunity while increasing their allocation of military weapons. The police, judges, prison guards and military are the repressive arm of the bourgeoisie, the core of the bourgeois state. The “war on terror” simply serves to disguise the real function of the police: preserving capitalist private property by means of violence while cracking down on any hint of revolt by the oppressed, and especially by the working class. The criminalization of students fighting against the El Khomri law has already begun. Down with Vigipirate and Sentinelle [racist police/army “anti-terror” operations]! Cops, security guards and prison guards, out of the unions!

For Labor/Minority Mobilizations Against the Fascists!

The bourgeoisie has yet another weapon for repressing the working class. If parliamentary shenanigans and everyday police repression were to prove insufficient to contain labor protests, or to head off a revolutionary offensive of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie would have no qualms about resorting to the fascists, who serve as its “extraparliamentary” armed gangs.

The fascists frequently attacked striking students and workers in the final phase of the struggle against the CPE, as well as railway workers during the struggle against pension “reform” in 2010. It is necessary to stop the fascists while they are still relatively small and weak paramilitary groups, through mass labor mobilizations backed by ethnic, racial and sexual minorities who are directly threatened by these scum.

Fascism is a phenomenon intrinsic to capitalism in the imperialist era. It is based on mobilizing the petty bourgeoisie threatened with ruin as a result of the endless crisis of capitalism. The reformist labor misleaders, concerned as they are with managing the system on behalf of big business, inevitably push into the arms of the fascists those layers threatened with downward social mobility, strangled by debt and stuck in single-family homes on the outskirts of urban areas while factories around them are closing. This is the basis for the National Front’s current electoral success.

The economic crisis besetting the capitalist system has no solution within the framework of a single country. It is necessary not only to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish workers rule through a revolution led by a Leninist party, but also to seek an international solution by extending the revolution to the entire continent and the whole world. The struggle for the Socialist United States of Europe goes hand in hand with the struggle to reforge the Fourth International of Leon Trotsky.

*****As Obama, His House And Senate Allies, His “Coalition Of The Willing” Ramp Up The War Drums In Syria -Again- Stop The Bombings

*****As Obama, His House And Senate Allies, His “Coalition Of The Willing” Ramp Up The War Drums In Syria -Again- Stop The Bombings-Stop The Incessant Escalations-- Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries From The Middle East!

Frank Jackman comment:

I have already recently mentioned elsewhere the night not long ago when my friend from high school, Carver High Class of 1967 down in southeastern Massachusetts, Sam Lowell, who I hadn’t seen in a while were, full disclosure, having a few high-shelf whiskeys at Jack Higgin’s Sunnyvale Grille in Boston, arguing over the increasing use of and increased dependence on killer/spy drones in military doctrine, American military doctrine anyway. I also mentioned that night, which is germane here, in discussing the broader category of the seemingly endless wars that the American government is determined to wage at the close of our lives ( we are both on the wrong side of seventy so check the actuarial tables if you think I am mistaken) so that we never again utter the word “peace” with anything but ironic sneers that I, again for full disclosure, am a supporter of Veterans For Peace and have been involved with such groups, both veteran and civilian peace groups, since my own military service ended back during Vietnam War days.

For those not in the know that organization of ex-veterans of the last couple of generations of America’s wars has been for over a quarter of a century (actually just commemorated its thirtieth anniversary this summer of 2015) determinedly committed to opposing war as an instrument, as the first instrument, of American policy in what that government sees as a hostile world (a view that it has held for a long time, only the targeted enemy and the amount of devastation brought forth has changed).  

I also noted Sam’s position with his concurrence, full disclosure, he was granted an exemption from military duty during the Vietnam War period after his father had died suddenly in 1965 and he was the sole support, or close to it, of his mother and four younger sisters, was a little more nuanced if nevertheless flatly wrong from my perspective on the killer/spy drones. I thought his argument perhaps reflected an “average Joe” position of a guy who did not serve in the military and had not seen up close what all the “benefits” of modern military technology have brought forth to level whatever target they have chosen to obliterate and under what conditions. More importantly that Sam, who marched in any number of anti-Vietnam War parades with me after my service was over and I gave him the “skinny” on what was really going on in that war, had made in the post-9/11 period like many from our generation of ’68 a sea-change in their former anti-military positions. Something in that savage criminal attack in New York City against harmless civilians got the war lusts, yes, the war lusts up of people, good, simple people like Sam and lots of “peaceniks” from our generation to kill everything that got in our way. LBJ and Richard Nixon would have in their graves rather ironic smiles over that change of heart.   

And those many who changed positions, who sulkily went along with whatever was “necessary,” including I remember one time a woman who identified herself as a Quaker who, I swear, asked plaintively on some radio talk show I was listening to whether we (meaning the American government and not her individually I assume but who knows) could not surgically nuclear bomb Al Qaeda from all memory. Sam got caught up in this war lust wave and has since, starting with his initial approval of the “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq, wound up in the end left with egg all over his face.

But Sam is nothing if not determined just like me to carry on in his views and so another night at Jack Higgin’s found us arguing over the more recent egg-in-face aspects of American war policy in the Middle East with the rise of ISIS, the demise of the failed states of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan and with it whatever rationale made the American government built a thing from which it had to run.

As is also usual these days like with the question of killer/spy drones we argued for a few hours or until the whiskey ran out, or we ran out of steam and agreed to disagree. The next day though, no, the day after that I again got to thinking about the issue of the debacle of American policy and while not intending to directly counter Sam arguments wrote a short statement that reflects my own current thinking the matter. Here it is:

“Nobel “Peace” Prize Winner, U.S. President Barack Obama (and yes that word peace should be placed in quotation marks every time that award winning is referenced in relationship to this “new age” warmonger extraordinaire), abetted by the usual suspects in the House and Senate (not so strangely more Republicans than Democrats, at least more vociferously so) as internationally (Britain, France, the NATO guys, etc.), has over the past year or so ordered more air bombing strikes in the north of Iraq and in Syria, has sent more “advisers”, another fifteen hundred at last count [summer of 2015] but who really knows the real number with all the “smoke and mirrors” by the time you rotate guys in and out, hire mercenaries, and other tricks of the trade long worked out among the bureaucratiti, to “protect” American outposts in Iraq and buck up the feckless Iraqi Army whose main attribute is to run even before contact is made, has sent seemingly limitless arms shipments to the Kurds now acting as on the ground agents of American imperialism whatever their otherwise supportable desires for a unified Kurdish state, and has authorized supplies of arms to the cutthroat and ghost-like moderate Syrian opposition if it can be found to give weapons to {which it could not and backed off for now in the Fall of 2015],  quite a lot of war-like actions for a “peace” guy (maybe those quotation mark should be used anytime anyone is talking about Obama on any subject ).

Of course the existential threat of ISIS has Obama crying to the high heavens for authorizations, essentially "blank check" authorizations just like any other "war" president, from Congress in order to immerse the United States on one side in a merciless sectarian war which countless American blunders from the get go has helped create.

All these actions, and threatened future ones as well, have made guys who served in the American military during the Vietnam War and who, like me, belatedly, got “religion” on the war issue from the experience (and have become a fervent anti-warrior ever since), learn to think long and hard about the war drums rising as a kneejerk way to resolve the conflicts in this wicked old world. Have made us very skeptical. We might very well be excused for our failed suspension of disbelief when the White House keeps pounding out the propaganda that these actions are limited when all signs point to the slippery slope of escalation (and the most recent hikes of whatever number for "training" purposes puts paid to that thought).

And during all this deluge Obama and company have been saying with a straight face the familiar (Vietnam-era familiar updated for the present)-“we seek no wider war”-meaning no American combat troops. Well if you start bombing places back to the Stone Age, or trying to, if you cannot rely on the weak-kneed Iraqi troops who have already shown what they are made of and cannot rely on a now virtually non-existent “Syrian Free Army” which you are willing to give whatever they want and will still come up short what do you think the next step will be?

Now not every event in history gets repeated exactly but given the recent United States Government’s history in Iraq those old time Vietnam vets who I like to hang around with might be on to something. In any case dust off the old banners, placards, and buttons and get your voices in shape- just in case. No New War In Iraq!–Stop The Bombings In Iraq And Syria!- Stop The Arms Shipments!-Vote Down The Syria-Iraq War Budget Appropriations!     

***
Here is something to think about picked up from a leaflet I picked up at a recent (small) anti-war rally:  

Workers and the oppressed have no interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary Sunni-Shi’ite civil war in Iraq or the victory of any side in Syria. However, the international working class definitely has a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism that constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and downtrodden.

[Whatever unknown sister or brother put that idea together sure has it right]  

*****Lady Day Is In The House-With Torch Singer Billie Holiday In Mind

*****Lady Day Is In The House-With Torch Singer Billie Holiday In Mind

 

 

From The Pen Of Josh Breslin 

 

 

I remember one day many years ago now, although it could have been any number of years before or since given the woman who I want to talk about, talk about Lady Day, and how she made me feel better about things, about blue things going on in my life those many years ago that I am thinking of, or many years before or many years after that. By the way although I know that this is confessional age, an age when every emotion seemingly has to be publicly wrought out over no matter how private this is not about my blues, or not much but about the lady in question, Lady Day helped chase some of them away and I will leave it to the reader to decide whether I am running a confessional scene like some errant Catholic schoolboy, a faith that I grew up in incense and high Latinisms and all but which probably was trumped by that finer Irish Catholic grandmother heritage of not "airing the damn, her term, family's or your dirty linen in public." Yeah, I do believe the latter prevailed in the long haul. So, yes, I want to talk about a woman whom I never knew personally since she was of my parents generation and thus removed by at least a generation from any possibility of being a direct influence unlike my Olde Saco, Maine corner boys, was hanging out in New York City a place I never went to until my high school years long after she was a shade and was black a condition that would not have played well in that Irish Catholic grandmother-etched neighborhood where I grew up. Had moreover had never been that aware of her as a performer although I believe I heard her one wisp of a time on the Ed Sullivan Show but don’t quote me on that.

Yeah, talk about how a lady from my parents time, from a foreign city and a foreign color chased away my blues, unlike a number of women who I have known from my own time and place, and white too, Irish Catholic red-headed women mostly who have given me endless heartache (although having grown up in a different time and eventually place than grandmother's Irish Catholic-etched Olde Saco neighborhood streets I did had a couple of black women who gave me that same endless heartache), more than once before that day I am thinking about and did so after. This particular day Lady Day came in very handy, it must have been a winter day for sure since I still can feel the frosty feeling, the snow whirling outside and inside my brain I had while the events were unfolding.

So add that to the depression I was feeling over the latest serious quarrel I had had with my wife, the chill and bluster of that winter day had me down as well, as I entered a bookstore in Harvard Square, I think the Harvard Bookstore which is still there although it could have been the Paperback Book Smith which is long gone as Square fixture. That wife very soon thereafter to be my ex-wife, an ex-wife who with her alimony demands and child support would continue to have plenty to do with my blues for a long time thereafter, but who just that moment had plenty to do with the particular depression I felt that time so don’t blame the winter for that, but don’t ask for the particulars of the dispute, that time, that is another story, a story already done and wrapped up in a bow. And don’t blame Billie for either the cold or subsequent divorce since people have blamed Billie enough for what ails them and I have come today to honor that fresh flower lady day.

Now that I think about it on that blustery day I have it ass backwards I think I was entering the old long gone Paperback Booksmith store but it might have been the still there Harvard Book Store up the street so don’t hold me to the particular bookstore just know that it was a bookstore, in Harvard Square, in the cold raw winter (and you know about the depression part so onward).

In any case that is the day and place where I heard this low sad torchy female voice coming out of the sound system most of those places had (have) to liven things up while you were (are) browsing (or “cruising” as I found out later when somebody told me bookstores were the “hot” spot if you were looking for a certain kind of woman [or man], needless to say my kind of woman, bookish, sassy and, well, a little neurotic but the dating circling ritual among the bookish, sassy whatevers is also a story for another day). 

A smoky voice for smoky darkly lit rooms where the smoke hangs on the walls through daylight but best seen in low wattage light  and where romances might burst open (or at least be an inexpensive cheap date at a couple of cups of coffee and a pasty or a couple of glasses of sweet red wine hopefully not just out of the press and more hopefully loosen her up, loosen up that hot date you had been moving heaven and hell to get to for weeks,for the night’s anticipations) reminding me of cafés and coffeehouses in places like New York, Boston, San Francisco. New York around the Village when smoking was “cool,” when cigarettes smokers like me (heavily at times especially whisky drinking or dope pulling times all now mercifully quieted) ruled the roost with regulation butt hanging out of side of one's mouth in the old con man or French gangster imitating Chicago gangster style (and now pity for French style smokers now banished, now desperate refugees in the outer edge of the outdoor café tables, rain or shine, destroying the whole noir cinema night).

When smoky rooms lived and jazz (okay, okay jazz and some rarified urban blues too not the country bumpkin Delta kind every black person who could follow the northern star was fleeing from to break Mister James Crow’s grip) was king and such a rasp-edged cut the air with a knife voice would be  swaying in the background amidst the cling of glasses, small wine glasses bulb-like with slender stems filled maybe one third of the way with some house blend (again hopefully not newly pressed) and sturdy whisky shot glasses which spoke of hard-edged ethnic enclaves, workingmen drowning themselves in sorrows to break the hunger sorrows of their lives and their sons taking right up where they left off except maybe since café prices unlike men’s taverns were dear sipping the edges of the glass more slowly. A voice to cut through the edge of the air around the small murmurs of collective voices (two, three, four but an uncomfortable fit to a table times whatever number Bob, Ray or Sam could squeeze into the space without the fire marshal raising hell about capacity or asking for a bigger extortionous pay-off)  talking of the news of the day (Jesus, that damn war is starting to heat up), the current hardship of life (Christ, the damn rent man was looking for his draw and I barely culled him out of the damn thing), the latest lost romance (divorces, two-timings, will write when I get a chance, waiting by the midnight phone the damn thing growing out of the ear waiting for that prisoner’s one call) or just cheesy chitchat. Yeah just the dross of daily life until the singer (you already know who she is because I set it up that she is smoky-voiced, can cut the air with the damn thing), yeah, until she hits that high white note and for one second, maybe today the time a nanosecond but whatever the count the room is silent, no glasses tinkling (some slender dame almost ready to put the stem of the glass to her mouth, some guy, maybe Red Radley who was famous for the slow whisky sipping and all of the bartender in town dreaded his appearance at their doors because he would take up a table or a stool and the tip would be nada), no dishes clanging (those pastries with two forks almost gone and the parties asking why they had bothered to order the damn thing since it tasted like last week’s stale remainders at some Salvation Army Harbor Lights retreat, which I can tell you is pretty stale, no voices chattering their hearts out (that midnight waiting suspended in the air) but stopped against that neck-turning sound.

The hushed patrons searching the dark smoky night for the source finally fixing in on an ill-lit stage, a joke of a stage put together slap-dash, a few boards, a little varnish, raised just enough to see whoever was performing, hell, to see Lady Day performing she was practically indentured to the owner since he had advanced her seven weeks pay when she had to see the “fixer man” to get well, in order not to cut down on the number of café tables that could be squeezed into the space, a third-rate bass player strumming his beat message (that’s all Harry could afford he said then ranting about the musicians' union scale but what were you going to do  otherwise she would have to hoof it alone), likewise the pitter-patter of the second-rate drummer not playing too loudly in order avoid drowning out the voice in front of him (see he had been her lover before that “fixer man” became her true lover, gave her that smoky voice, let the night air be cut by her voice), and a first-rate big sexy sax man (a second cousin to Johnny Hodges and so had something big and high white culled in his genes) blowing his brains out and mentally taking note that amid the clutter of daily life, the insolvability of the hardships and the need to go on to find the next romance that for that one moment those concerns were suspended.

Yeah, a voice, now that he had been through his own troubles with sister cocaine (hence the knowledge of slow whisky sipping a la Red Radley, Salvation Army Harbor Light retreats, and if you could get through the “detox” then the screwy message they had to spread the gospel that you had to listen to and no Sky’s Miss Sarah Brown all pert, petite, and pious, and of waiting around midnight phones after the twelfth “cure” had not taken and your own Miss Sarah Brown has abandoned ship, has moved onto some other Eddie whose only virtue, and maybe no virtue was that he was not you, that his nose was clean [a pun] and that she would at least have a breather until whatever fatal weakness he was hiding took hold) having just an edge fortified by some back room dope (she was trying to ease off “boy”, H, heroin to the squares and so the “fixer man” was squeezing sweet cousin cocaine into her brain) to break the monotony of the day (and who knows maybe the life, maybe of everything that had led her to this dark, ill-lit stage filled with too many tables, no room to breathe, no drink in hand to get through the numbers until the break as her cousin was wearing off after that early rush) with its phrasing (strange how the phrasing separated out those who could reach that high white note, not every night like this night for she would know but the silence, by the absence of glass clanging, the shuffling of dishes, the small murmurs all in suspension except those clouds of smoke rising to meet her, and her wishing to chase down that damn drink with a nice mellow cigarette to calm her fucking nerves), pleading with you like in some biblical battle between heaven’s angels and hell’s like something old revolutionary divine John Milton would think up but which she just the deliverer of high white notes not some literary light to take your blues away.

Like in that second (okay to be all up to date nanosecond) aside from whatever the dope that was still running round her brain could do she had a space there in that frail shimmering body with its pit-marked skin that could end that fucking war, could make that rent man disappear, could sent that guy a dime to drown that midnight phone madness, hell, could make the decision between red or white for the living room walls, to solve your pain, to take yours on, and get rid of hers.  

Not placing the alluring voice in that bookstore that day since my torch singers of choice then were the likes of Bessie Smith, Dinah Washington, Eartha Kitt, Helen Morgan, or Peggy Lee I asked one of the clerks who the person who was singing that song, the old Cole Porter tune, Night and Day with such sultry, swaying feeling on the PA sound system. She, looking like a smarmy college student, probably a senior ready to graduate and enlighten us, the heathens some way, and therefore wise to the worldly world who didn’t mind the job she was doing while waiting for her small change fame but was not in the habit of answering questions about who or what was being played over the loudspeaker since she had been hired to cater to help patrons find where such-and-such a best seller, academic, or guide book was located, looked at me like I was some rube from the sticks when she said Billie Holiday, of course (and she could have added stupid, which is what that look meant).      

Now that event was memorable for two things, listening to that song and a follow-up one, All of Me (which she did not hit the high white note on in that PA version), almost immediately thereafter got me out of my funk despite the fact that the subjects of the songs were about love, or romance anyway, something I was at odds with just that moment (remember the wife, ex-wife business). The other, as is my wont when I hear, see, read something that grabs my attention big time also was the start of my attempt to get every possible Billie Holiday album or tape (yeah, it’s been a while since that wintry day of which I speak) I could get my hands on. So thereafter any time that I felt blue I would put on a Billie platter or tape and feel better, usually.

In my book, and I am hardly alone on this, Billie Holiday is the torch singer's torch singer. Maybe it is the phrasing on her best songs (like I heard in that first song that got me thinking back to old time cafes and coffeehouses). That well-placed hush, the dying gasp. The hinted fragrant pause which sets the next line up. Maybe it is the unbreakable link between her voice when she is on a roll and the arrangements which with few exceptions make me think whoever else might have been scheduled to cover the song the composer had Billie in the back of his or her mind when they were playing the melody in their heads. Hell, maybe in the end it was the dope that kept her edge up but, by Jesus, she could sing a modern ballad of love (Cole Porter show tunes, Irving Berlin goof stuff, Gershwin boys white boy soul), lose, or both like no other.

And if in the end it was the dope that got her through the day and performance, let me say this- a “normal” nice singer could sing for a hundred years and never get it right, the way Billie could get it right when she was at her best. Dope or no dope. Was she always at her best? Hell no, as a review of all her recorded material makes clear. Some recordings, a compilation, for example, done between 1945 and her death in 1959 for Verve show the highs but also the lows as the voice faltered a little and the dope put the nerves over the edge toward the end.

Here is the funny thing though, no, the strange thing now that I think about the matter, the politically correct strange thing although those who insist on political correctness in everyday civil life should lay off anybody’s harmless cultural preferences and personal choices if you ask me. One time I was touting Billie’s virtues to a group of younger blacks, a mixed group, who I was working with on some education project and the talk came around to music, music that meant something other than background noise, other than a momentarily thrill and I mentioned how I had “met” Billie and the number of times and under what circumstances she had sung my blues away when times were tough. A few of these young blacks, smart kids who were aware of more than hip-hop nation and interested in roots music, old time blues, Skip James on the country end and Howlin’ Wolf on the city end, to an extend that I found somewhat surprising, when they heard me raving about Billie startled me when they wrote her off as an empty-headed junkie, a hophead, and so on. Some of their responses reflected, I think, the influence of the movie version of her life (Lady Sings the Blues with Diana Ross) or some unsympathetic black history ‘uplift,’ “you don’t want to wind up like her so keep your eyes on the prize and stay away from dopers, hustlers, corner boys and the like, or else” views on her life that have written her off as an “addled” doper.

I came back on them though, startled them when I said the following, “if Billie needed a little junk, a little something for the head, a little something to get through the night, to keep her spirits up I would have bought her whatever she needed just to hear her sing that low, sultry and sorrowful thing she did in some long lost edgy New York café that chased my blues away.” Enough said.