In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Film “Casablanca”- Out In The Film Noir Night- Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon

Out In The Film Noir Night- Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon

Films In Brief

The Maltese Falcon, written Dashiell Hammett, starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet

In literature and film there have been no lack of private detective-types depicted from the urbane Nick Charles (also a Hammett creation) to Mickey Spillane’s rough and tumble Mike Hammer but the classic model for all modern ones is Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade (the Humphrey Bogart role in the film) in The Maltese Falcon. Some may argue Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe and may have a point but as for film adaptation Spade wins hands down. Compare, if you will, Bogart’s performance in The Maltese Falcon with The Big Sleep. Get my point. But enough of that. What make’s Spade the classic is his intrepidness, his orneriness, his dauntless dedication to the task at hand, his sense of irony, his incorruptibility, his willingness to take an inordinate amount of bumps and bruises for paltry fees and his off-hand manner with the ladies and a gun. And in The Maltese Falcon he needs all of these qualities and then some.

In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Film “Casablanca”- You Know How To Whistle, Don’t You?”-Lauren Bacall And Humphrey Bogart’s To Have And Have Not

***“You Know How To Whistle, Don’t You?”-Lauren Bacall And Humphrey Bogart’s To Have And Have Not

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

To Have And Have Not, starring Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Hoagy Carmichael, directed by Howard Hawks, screenplay by William Faulkner, based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, 1944

The recent passing away of the actress Lauren Bacall (Summer, 2014) got me to thinking about watching (again) her very first movie with her paramour met on the film then, Humphrey Bogart, the now classic To Have and Have Not. And so I did and reminded myself how that film has always been at the top of my list for the greatest films that I have seen. And why not. Look at the pedigree. Based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway (although in the end quite loosely for I do not believe a fox like Marie, the role Ms. Bacall plays in the film, would have stayed in the same room as the novel’s Captain Morgan for a minute). Based on a screenplay at least in part written by William Faulkner who had a feel for such dialogue. Some musical interludes played by the great popular composer (Stardust, How Little We Know), Hoagy Carmichael, as the worldly piano player, Cricket, at the bar of the hotel where Marie and Captain Morgan (Steve before long, before she gets her hooks into him) play out their dance. A very good performance by Walter Brennan as a drunk who thinks he is watching out for the good captain. Directed by well-regarded Howard Hawks. But all of that is so much eye-wash what makes this film great is the chemistry between Marie and Steve. Chemistry I have mentioned elsewhere producing some of the sexiest scenes that two people can make with their clothes on. (Nudity would detract enormously from this mating ritual. Beside, unlike in pre-code 1930s Hollywood, no such thing would occur before the screen. Christ they were afraid to show assumed nudity scenes behind a shower curtain and gave married couples twin beds. Jesus.)              

Even the plotline pales before the dance these two put on. Frankly some of the story seems a bit of a rehash of the earlier Bogart vehicle (with Ingrid Bergman), Casablanca, where a recalcitrant Rick, owner of Rick’s American Café and recovering from a lost love affair gets involved with the Free French (the good guy against the damn Vichy) as well. Here day sports fishing boat Captain Morgan walks into the same thing except in Martinique rather than Morocco. But not before shedding his doubts about taking such risks, and of course when Marie enters the scene by coyly asking him for a match for her cigarette you know those fears will fall by the wayside. (By the way it seems that they, everybody from the breakfast table to the smoke-filled night clubs are lighting cigarettes every two seconds reminding me of how much smoking when on then in the movies, and in life including mine.)

See Steve (Captain Morgan to you guys who don’t know him) is strictly  hand to mouth on this day fishing trip business.  Right when they meet he has no dough having been stiffed by some goof fisherman (and a guy Marie clipped a wallet from which started the official dance between them). Once Marie tells her story though and how she hold up when the chips are down (at the police station where they are questioned by the local gestapo-types and she is slapped and later when she performs nurse duties without flinching) gets to him in the end. Naturally once Steve moves off the dime he is totally committed to seeing that some reckless resistance fighter who got nicked the first time he tried gets to finish the job he was sent to that outpost to do (getting a chief resistance man off Devils’ Island no mean task). Like I say all that is window-dressing for the moves Marie and Steve put on each other from that first tossed matchbook to the ‘you know how to whistles scene” to her seductively singing with Cricket to that shimmy she puts on as they walk out the door of the bar (Eddie trailing behind) off to see what the future brings-together. Thanks Bogie-Thanks Lauren-RIP        

In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Film “Casablanca”- Hell No They Ain’t No Angels-Humphrey Bogart’s We’re No Angels

Hell No They Ain’t No Angels-Humphrey Bogart’s We’re No Angels

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

We’re No Angels, starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Aldo Ray         

Over the past couple of years I have been running the table on Humphrey Bogart films, as an expression of the kind of guy, cinematic guy anyway, that I could relate to as a kid (and still admire in certain ways). You know a guy that no one would dare throw sand in their face, certainly no woman, not because of his physical size so much as that he had a look that if somebody was so foolhardy as to do such a deed they would find themselves in a bad place on some dark, foggy night when they least expect to find themselves facing his personal bastinado. A guy not looking for trouble but not ducking it either, not ducking even some punk hood, all what did they call it back then, yeah, all “gaudy and show” with some dangling hot gun that he would be more than happy to take away from such a miscreant, and the punk, being a punk would have to take it, have to take it or else. And speaking of dames, twists, frills, frails or whatever you called women, good-looking femme fatale-type women in your old corner boy night, including good-looking dames who might be so foolhardy as to throw sand in a guy’s face (not literal sand but fog-bound sand and story to mix a guy up beyond belief), a guy who was not afraid to take a little gaff for some twisty dame who gave him that come hither look. A guy ready to chase some windmills for that look just to see where it led. Best of all a guy not afraid to run the rack on some bad guy (or a good guy who was looking to turn bad) just because he was a bad guy, maybe kept some old man awake at night, worrying, or some frail tied up to his rackets, that kind of thing.  

Now some of those attributes might not mean a lot, might in fact be kind of old-fashioned, kind of rough male of the species over the top these days in some circles in polite Western society but there you have it. For a time that running the table included reviews of Bogie as the hard-nosed, take no prisoners, give no quarter and take none shoot first and ask questions later mad monk gangster Duke Mantee who really was a man of his deadly word in the matchup between primitive man and the increasingly effete intellectual modern world man featured in The Petrified Forest and the take no nonsense world-weary, world-wary detective Sam Spade ready at the drop of a hat to either chase some stuff of dreams windmills or to put the handcuffs on tight for some wayward femme with that come hither look and that jasmine scent or whatever the hell she was wearing in the film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Reviews as well of the jaded ex-pat (who had that funny little prior resume point of having been a “premature anti-fascist” in the 1930s struggle in Spain) “welcome to the struggle” ready to take on the whole German Army once he got religion and once she, and you know the she even if she did not have the price of that jasmine scent, for the seven thousandth time got under his skin Rick of Rick’s Café in Casablanca, and, oh yeah, along that same vein the knight in shining armor, or better because more useful sea-worthy boat captain ready to take on the whole Vichy French apparatus in the wartime (World War II version) to save a damsel in distress, a dame who would have gotten under anybody’s skin once she asked for that off-hand cigarette-lighting match and gave that come hither whistle, in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have Or Have Not. And to give a couple more examples for those who don’t get the allure a couple of reviews of Bogie as the resourceful but also world-weary, world wary detective Phillip Marlowe who keeps the dreams of an old man alive (and his wayward daughters, including one who took dead aim at him as a windmill chaser and the other just dead aim, out of trouble) in taking a punk mobster down to size in the film adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and as a  “don’t leave your buddy behind” true blue Army guy looking for the bad guys who tried to blocked him from doing just that in Dead Reckoning. So with just those few examples you can see that they were all films where Bogie exhibited certain manly traits that were (and some may still be) worth emulating. And then we come to the film under review, We’re No Angels, and the guy switches up on us. Turns into a Good Samaritan, of sorts, an ironic one splashed with a little humorous bend too.           

What gives? What gives, just to give a snapshot of what this film is about, is that Bogie is one of three hardened convicts (the other two played Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray), French convicts, hard cases all (murderers, career criminals) who are doing hard time at that little maximum prison resort in the Caribbean, Devil’s Island. But being resourceful, especially around Christmas time, they escaped to the town nearby with plans to set sail for France and to take up their old lives as carefree guys once again, maybe a heist here, a con there, simple stuff. But first they need dough, plenty of dough, and some new duds since to grab that departing ship requires not just dough but a certain look, a look like you did not just escape from high security Devil’s Island.  So they planned to rob a clothing merchant to give them that cash, and throw in the duds while they were at it. Turned out though, as the film slowly developed, the merchant was no good as a businessman having failed in France and been sent out to the boondocks by his greedy rich cousin, a nefarious relative as it turned out, no question, had a wife, a fetching wife, no question, who stood by him (they don’t always, the fetching ones), and a sweet teenage daughter, all betwixt and between, who was in love with, well, you know how teenagers are, in love with being in love.   

So our hardened criminals, our nefarious bad guys slowly turned things around and went from attempted robberies and petty pilfering of civilian outfits to Good Samaritans and help the merchant (by getting rid of, getting rid in a very final way, the greedy cousin who had come from France for an inspection), the wife (still standing by her husband to Bogie’s chagrin), and that smitten daughter (who fell in and out of love with one guy, and then in love with another, like I said a typical teenager) being witty, ironic, and funny by turns, especially Bogie. And get this, once they have spread their Christmas cheer they head back to jail, no, head back to hellhole Devil’s Island. What the heck is going on with our man Bogie. Give me Duke Mantee who would just as soon put a slug in a guy as look at him (and does in that endless cinematic battle between the primitive instincts of man and the modern attempts to curb those baser instincts which got a thorough-going test in the real world of the 1930s and 1940s) or Sam Spade who turned over, once he took a cold shower to wipe that come hither look out of his mind and opened a window to let the city air merge and melt that jasmine scent, that filled with the stuff of dreams femme fatale who just so happened to have an itchy trigger-finger to the coppers without a tear. Give me that Rick of Rick’s Café who gave up his honey, without or without the jasmine scent as a lure that was just the way it was with them, for the good of the cause or that made of sterner stuff skirt-chasing Captain Morgan once he saw she could sing too, sing and take a few knocks without crying about the matter. Okay, and give me that handy Philip Marlowe, avenger of sullen women’s sicknesses, avenger of old men’s broken dreams, avenger of wrong track turned right femmes, avenger of small time right gees and grifters by bad hombres who put paid to the career of one Eddie Mars or the stick to his guns, undeterred, inquisitive, and vengeful Rip not leaving his Army buddy behind, or anything to sullen his memory. You take him in We’re No Angels, okay.

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- AN EX-STALINIST'S TAKE ON THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF LENIN

BOOK REVIEW

LENIN- LIFE AND LEGACY, D.A. VOLKGANOV, HARPER BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1995

In my political life I have read numerous biographies, sketches and essays on the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, none of them recently. Thus, in looking for a new book on Lenin’s life I was searching for one that would reflect the latest information from the various archives opened up by the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92. With that in mind I happened upon this biography by a Soviet historian who had intimate access to and control of the Soviet archives. However, even with that imprimatur this hostile biography could easily have been written in 1955 by any number of former communist turned anti-communist Western writers during the heart of the Cold War under the influence of the ‘god that failed’ theory of anti-communism. So much for the virtue of access to the new files!

Moreover, after reading the biography I found that it told more about the author than the subject. He was a good Khrushchevite when Khrushchev was in power. He was a good Brezhnevite when Brezhnev was in power. He was a good Gorbachevite when Gorbachev was in power. Finally, after the demise of the Soviet Union and the capitalist counter-revolution under Yeltsin he was a good Yeltstinite. No one can deny that he knew how to trim his sails to determine which way the political winds blew. Whether such a checkered personal biography permits him then to write a critique of a revolutionary leader, any revolutionary leader, apparently without the least embarrassment is another question. Well, such is the literary life.

And so what is the latest in Soviet historiography on Lenin? The author retails every ‘horror’ story about Lenin that has sifted through the anti-communist milieu since Lenin first came on the political scene at the turn of the 20th century Russia. Of course, the author starts with the Bolshevik-Menshevik split in 1903- that is the ‘original sin’ for all anti-Leninists who claim to stand in any tendency of the international social democratic tradition. He then goes through the litany of later sins; the anti-nationalist, anti-war Bolshevik propaganda of the First World War; the hoary tales of ‘German’ gold to the Bolsheviks in the wake of the February Revolution in Russia; the ‘sealed train’ through Germany bringing Lenin and other Social Democrats back to Russia; the defeatism toward the Provisional Government; the Bolshevik ‘coup’ in October; the outrage to the author’s nationalist sentiments of the Brest Litovsk Treaty with Germany; the horrors of the Civil War, lightly passing over the White internal and foreign counterrevolutionary actions and placing the onus on the Bolsheviks; and the 'Moscow' gold provided to foreign Communist parties by the Communist International. And much more in that same vane.

The real point of the documentation presented throughout the book, however, is to buttress the author’s central argument that bad old Stalinism was not some sort of distortion of Bolshevism and Leninist thought but the true and natural heir of Leninism. Others have argued that position far more persuasively with far less access to the archives. The fact of the matter, at least based on this exposition, is that the archives provide little new hard material about Lenin and the early Bolshevik regime that has not already been in circulation for a long time. Take one example, the ‘relationship’ between the Bolsheviks and the German High Command during World War I that has been speculated on in reams of material. Volkganov sets up his argument for such an alliance using the time worn innuendoes of secret meetings, use of intermediaries, etc. However, if an author is using this argument in the post-Soviet period then one would expect some new information that definitely links Lenin to German ‘gold’ or let it rest. Where is the smoking gun? As there is nothing new the author lets us off with some dubious circumstantial evidence and lots and lots of conjecture. It goes on and on like that throughout most of the book. The author has personal axes to grind here and the archives only marginally help him in those efforts.

Finally, what of the counterfactual argument that every historian makes to argue that an alternative situation to the one that occurred was possible? Here the author argues that in 1917 some form of Menshevik/Social Revolutionary government or a more stable Kerensky government i.e. some kind of bourgeois government could have brought Russia out of its impasse and into the Western democratic parliamentary tradition. He even has a kind word for the Czar in retrospect, at least as a battering ram against the Bolsheviks. This hardened Stalinist who has since found ‘religion’ attempts to argue a very, very improbable position. Kerensky was the best, and I do mean best, those bourgeois democratic forces had at their command in 1917. No more need be said. We do not always get the revolutions in the pristine condition that we would like and this is not the place to argue extensively about the author’s politics but both by their actions and by the crush of events the possibility of some kind of stable bourgeois democracy in 1917 Russia was the least likely outcome. In short, like in other such revolutionary periods, it was the Bolsheviks or the counterrevolutionary Whites. And one had to take sides accordingly. I will stand with Lenin and Trotsky.

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- Up Close And Personal- John Reed and The Russian Revolution Of 1917

Click on title to link to the John Reed Internet Archives.

BOOK REVIEW


This is the Anniversary of the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution. It is fitting that I review a book that did much to give Westerners a bird's-eye view of what happened during that tumultuous year. Forward To New Octobers!


Ten Days That Shook The World, John Reed, New American Library Edition, New York, 1967



I, on more than one occasion, have mentioned that for a detailed history of the ebb and flow of the Russian Revolution of 1917 from February to October of that year your man is the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky’s "History of the Russian Revolution" is partisan history at its best. One does not and should not, at least in this day in age, ask historians to be ‘objective’. One simply asks that the historian present his or her narrative and analysis and get out of the way. Trotsky meets that criterion. I have also mentioned in that same context that there are other excellent sources on this subject, depending on your needs. If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its affect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr’s "History of the Bolshevik Revolution" offers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920’s. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov’s "Notes on the Russian Revolution". If you need a more journalistic account for the period of the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks and the immediate aftermath, the book under review, John Reed’s classic "Ten Days That Shook the World" is invaluable.

If we do not, as mentioned above, expect our historians to be ‘objective’ then we have a lesser expectation of those journalists who write the ‘first draft of history’. Reed makes no bones about the fact that that he is a partisan of the Bolshevik-led social revolution that he was witnessing. He, nevertheless, tells his story reasonably well for those who are not partisans. Moreover, Reed seems to have been everywhere in Petersburg during those days. He is as likely to have been reporting from Petersburg’s Winter Palace, the seat of the Kerensky's Provisional Government, as Smolny, the seat of the insurgent Soviets. We can find him among the bourgeois politicians of the City Duma or at the Russian Army General Staff headquarters. Hell, he was also in Moscow when things were hot there as the Soviet forces tried to seize the Kremlin. He is at meetings large-Peasant Soviet size- or in some back room at Smolny with Trotsky’s Military Revolutionary Committee that directed the uprising. To that extent, as a free lancer on the move, he covers physically during this period much more territory than Trotsky could as central director of the action and thus has more first hand observations.

Reed’s style tends toward straight forward reportage with little obvious sense of irony in the various situations that he is witnessing. Of course, against Trotsky’s masterly ironic sense he is bound to suffer by comparison. Nevertheless Reed gets us into places like the City Duma and into the heads of various characters like the Mayor of Petersburg that Trotsky, frankly, displayed no interest in dealing with. Probably the greatest compliment that one could pay Reed is that he is widely quoted as a reliable source in many historical accounts from Trotsky on the winning side to someone like Kerensky on the losing side. For those who want a quick but serious overview of the dynamic of the October Revolution then here is your man. Add in his companion Louise Bryant’s separate account, "Six Month In Red Russia" (if you can find it), and some very good primary source poster, pamphlet and newspaper material in the appendices of Reed’s book and you are on your way.

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- YEAR ONE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION" by Victor Serge

Click on title to link to Victor Serge's Internet Archives and his acclaimed "Year One Of The Russian Revolution". Serge was an important addition to the international communist movement coming over from the pre-World War I anarchist movement. His political fate at the end is murky, to say the least. What is not murky is his defense of the non-revolutionary actions of Andreas Nin and the POUM in Spain in the course of the revolution there in the 1930's. More later.

YEAR ONE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by Victor Serge

Book Review 

Present At The Creation 

I have read several books on subjects related to the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge and find that he is a well-informed insider on this subject although the novel rather than history writing is his stronger form of expressing his views. See his The Case of Comrade Tulayev. This book can be profitably read in conjunction with other better written left-wing interpretations of this period. Sukhanov's Notes on the Russian Revolution (for the February period), Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World come to mind.

The task Serge sets himself here is to look at the dramatic and eventually fateful events of first year of the Russian Revolution. Those included the Bolshevik seizure of power, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the struggle by the Bolsheviks against other left-wing tendencies in defining Soviet state policy, the fight to end Russian participation in World War I culminating in the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany and, most importantly, the beginnings of Civil War against the Whites. In short, he investigates all the issues that will ultimately undermine and cause the degeneration of what was the first successful socialist seizure of state power in history.

Serge's history is partisan history in the best sense of the word. It is rather silly at this late date to argue that historians must be detached from the subject of their investigations. All one asks is that a historian gets the facts for his or her analysis straight. And then stay out of the way. Serge passes this test. Serge worked under the assumption that the strategic theory of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky was valid. That premise stated that Russia as the weakest link in the international capitalist system could act as the catalyst for revolution in the West and therefore shorten its own road to socialism. The failure of that Western revolution, the subsequent hostile encirclement by the Western powers and the inevitable degeneration implicit in a revolution in an economically undeveloped country left to its own resources underlies the structure of his argument.

The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the defining event for the international labor movement during most of the 20th century. Serious militants and left -wing organizations took their stand based on their position on the so-called Russian Question. At that time the level of political class-consciousness in the international labor movement was quite high. Such consciousness does not exist today where the socialist program is seen as, at best, utopian. However, notwithstanding the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92 and the essential elimination of the Russian Question as a factor in world politics on a day to day basis anyone who wants learn some lessons from the heroic period of the Russian Revolution will find this book an informative place to start.

Some of the books reviewed here may not be readily available at local libraries and bookstores. Check Amazon.com/books for availability there, both new and used.

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- *In Honor Of The Great Russian October 1917 Revolution- A Very Personal View

Click on title to link to one of YouTube's film clips of the "Russian Revolution". Some are in English, some are in Russian, some are absurd. Good luck in sorting them out. But honor the 100th anniversary of that watershed event.


Commentary/Reflections


Today, as we honor the 100th anniversary of the Great Russian October 1917 revolution I am in a reflective mood. Although the resulting Soviet Union that I spend a great part of my adult political arguing in the defense of is no more that bright shining moment in 1917 still lingers in my soul. Perhaps that mood is a result of once again having to think about the seemingly daunting task of making the American October. Perhaps that mood is a result of a certain disappointment over the blasé reaction of many, who should have known better, to the latest imperial moves by the Obama administration in Afghanistan when the called for reaction was anger and an urge to action.

Or perhaps it is a result of the grinding down, no, the virtual atomization of the American working class (and by extension the international working class) symbolized by the high unemployment rates and the failure to response to the capitalist deprivations of the past several years. Whatever the cause today, at least, I am thinking back to the little accumulation of factors; many that I am sure have been lost in the mist of time that made me so receptive to the siren call of the victory of the first workers state although I was two generations removed from its actuality.

As communists, particularly those of us who follow the ideas generated by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, we are always talking about stages of human consciousness: ruling class consciousness; working class consciousness; political consciousness; international working class consciousness;, and revolutionary consciousness are all mixed together. Clearly, and certainly based on my own personal experiences, there is no straight line development of political consciousness much less that one is born a Bolshevik. However, many life circumstances sure as hell can pave the road. I have spend no little time in this space over the past several years relating relevant incidents and commentary from my lifetime of left wing personal and political experiences. I do not intent to repeat those observations here. I actually want to go back to my youth and recount some things that, now, make my political direction seem more like that straight line mentioned above.

Having grown up in a dirt- poor working class family and living in those early days of the post- World War II “American Century” which promised unheard of prosperity after the trials and tribulations of the 1930s Great Depression and the World War II fight certainly made a deep impression on me. Moreover, living in an almost exclusively working poor environment with all of its adverse pathologies, also gives one, of necessity, a much distorted world view. As I pointed out in a commentary last year it was a very long time before I knew that there was anything other than being poor. Although I sensed it on the few occasions that I came up against middle class and rich kids. So early on I knew that there was an us, and them. And I definitely was with us-whatever that meant.

So that is predicate-but how does that take one away from what in most cases is a turning inward away from society rather than to defiantly fighting the monsters. That, my friends is not a simple story and do not believe those who give too quick an answer to how they developed their world view. It is a mix of impressions, understandings, misunderstandings and turning points. Hell, some of it is just happenstance, or at least it seems that way. How explain that in the heart of the Joe McCarthy-led “red scare” I did not hate communists. I did not want to turn anyone I suspected in to the government. In fact a quick run through of my political trajectory that I have made people laugh at is that when told that someone was a communist (by this I mean a Stalinist, the only game in town that I was aware of at the time) I said, in my best “family of the left” voice- so what that is one more for our side. When I moved left and was actively searching for communists to unite with I could only find them deep inside the Democratic Party. And when I seriously took up a Marxist worldview I dreaded running into them. 

But enough of that. What do you make of this- In 1960 I distinctly remembered rooting for the Soviet Union to win more gold medals than the United States at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Or, being in a frenzy to get a copy of the “Communist Manifesto”, although for fairly long time to use it as a political opponent of that world view. (Which I got by sending away to the Government Printing Office. The reason that the GPO had it was that it was part of the ‘evidence’ from the famous 1960 San Francisco sessions of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) the one that were being demonstrated against as one of the first acts of the 1960s rebellion in the North or West.). Or being non-plussed when a high school history teacher called me a “Bolshevik” (I wasn’t… then) for some minor disobedience. Those are all well and good examples but let’s leave it at this. All of this was the stuff that made up, helter-skelter, the development of my political class consciousness. I like to think that all of that was natural for a working class kid. Hey, a theory that says labor must rule should be like moth to a flame for a working class kid. I have never regretted sticking with my class. And I never have regretted my “softness” for the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. Except this- Forward to more Octobers!

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- How the Bolsheviks Fought for Women's Emancipation

Click on the headline to link to the "Leon Trotsky Internet Archive' online copy of his 1923 article, "From The Old Family To The New".

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1988 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.

**********

Return to the Road of Lenin and Trotsky

How the Bolsheviks Fought fo Women's Emancipation

On the second anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin announced, "In the course of two years of Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of Europe more has been done to emancipate women, to make her the equal of the 'strong' sex, than has been done during the past 130 years by all the advanced, enlightened, 'democratic' republics of the world taken together" ("Soviet Power and the Status of Women," Collected Works). This truth has a fundamental materialist basis. Only a socialist revolution, breaking the bonds of private property, can create the conditions necessary for the emancipation of women. It's more than ever true today: amidst the barbarous social decay of the imperialist "democracies" like the United States, where reactionary bigots target women's rights, even a mere statement of formal equality like the ERA can't make it into law.

Women and Revolution here reprints three early Soviet decrees addressed to the emancipation of women. Codifying the hard-fought gains of the Bolshevik Revolution, these decrees laid out a perspective for the introduction of new social forms to replace the institution of the family and to draw women into the socialist construction of society. As Lenin said in November 1918, "The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it. The Soviet government is doing everything in its power to enable women to carry on independent proletarian socialist work" ("Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women," Collected Works).

Women in the Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution was sparked by the working women of St. Petersburg, when, 71 years ago, they celebrated International Women's Day with a spontaneous strike and march through the streets. Thousands of women standing in bread lines joined them; hastily improvised red banners rose above the crowd, demanding bread, peace and higher wages. Years of imperialist war had brought the mammoth social tensions of tsarist Russia, where modern capitalism existed superimposed upon entrenched medievalism, to the breaking point.

The Bolsheviks had long been active in organizing Russian proletarian women. The journal Rabotnitsa (The Working Woman), founded in 1914, was only one means by which the Bolsheviks sought to win the ranks of working women over to revolutionary socialism. Social backwardness and poverty in Russia before the revolution fell doubly hard on its women: even mai the minimal gains which capitalism had made possible in the more advanced industrialized countries Europe did not exist in semi-feudal Russia, where serfdom had been abolished a mere 56 years earlier, life lay in the grip of the Orthodox church an priests; religious prejudices were deeply rooted in poverty and ignorance. Peasant women in particular lived under indescribably primitive conditions, cultural impoverished that in 1897 the illiteracy rate was as as 92 percent.

The Bolsheviks understood that the oppression of women could not be legislated out of existence family as the capitalist economic institution for bearing the next generation could not simply be swept away by decree. It had to be replaced with socialized child and housework to remove the burden of doing chores from women, enabling them to participate fully in social and political life. Such a revolutionary restructuring of society could occur only with large-scale industrialization, necessarily years in the future. While fully committed to this revolutionary program, the Bolsheviks were handicapped by terrible objective conditions. For the first few years of Soviet rule their meager resources were absorbed by the Red Army's drive to defeat the imperialists and White Guards who launched a counterrevolutionary war against the young workers republic.

Sweeping Away the Filth of Tsardom

Once in power, the Bolsheviks moved immediately to end all the old legal impediments to women's equality. Women were given the vote, at a time when only Norway and Denmark had legalized women's suffrage. Marriage and divorce were made a simple matter of civil registration, while all distinctions between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" children were annulled. In 1919 the Communist Party created the Department of Working Women and Peasant Women, Zhenotdel, for special work among women, which included organizing over 25,000 literacy schools.

In 1920 the Soviet government legalized abortion and made it free. The People's Commissariat of Health pressed for development of and education about birth control methods, which barely existed in Russia at that time, while discouraging abortion as a threat to health in this age before antibiotics. Even more crucial was the workers government's commitment to eliminating the poverty which drove many women to abortion for sheer lack of ability to provide for their children. The Bolsheviks' aim was to build childcare centers and socialized dining halls to enable women to work knowing their children would be well cared for and fed; single mothers were to receive special help. Despite the severe objective limits facing Soviet society, the birth rate went steadily up and the infant mortality rate steadily down.

The workers revolution in Russia, in sweeping away the rotten filth of tsardom, also abolished in December 1917 all the old laws against homosexual acts. As Dr. Grigorii Batkis, the director of the Moscow Institute of Social Hygiene, pointed out in "The Sexual Revolution in Russia," published in the Soviet Union in 1923:

"Soviet legislation bases itself on the following principle:

'It declares the absolute non-interference of the state and society into sexual matters so long as nobody is injured and no one's interests are encroached upon.... "Concerning homosexuality, sodomy, and various other forms of sexual gratification, which are set down in European legislation as offenses against public morality—Soviet legislation treats these exactly the same as so-called 'natural' intercourse. All forms of sexual intercourse are private matters." [emphasis in original]

The Fight for Women's Rights in Soviet Central Asia

Nowhere was the condition of women more downtrodden than in the primitive Muslim areas of Soviet Central Asia. The Bolsheviks believed that women, having the most to gain, would be the link that broke the feudal chain in the Soviet East, but they could not with one blow abolish oppressive Muslim institutions. The Bolshevik approach was based on ma¬terialism, not moralism. The Muslim bride price, for example, was not some sinister plot against womankind, but had arisen as an institution central to distrib¬uting land and water rights among different clans (see "Early Bolshevik Work Among Women of the Soviet East," W&R No. 12, Summer 1976, for a fuller discussion).

Systematic Bolshevik work among Muslim women was only possible in 1921, after the end of the bitter Civil War. Dedicated and heroic members of the Zhenotdel donned veils in order to meet Muslim women and explain the laws and goals of the new Soviet republic. Special meeting places, sometimes "Red Yertas" or tents in nomadic areas or clubs in cities, were a key way for the Communist Party to begin to win the trust of these women. Such clubs followed Lenin's policy of using Soviet state power to carefully and systematically undermine native tribalism by demonstrating the superiority of Soviet institutions. The tremendous pro¬ductive capacity of the Soviet planned economy provided the services, education and jobs that finally decisively undercut the ancient order and liberated women from their stifling subjugation.

Today the condition of women in Soviet Central Asia is centuries removed from the oppression their sisters across the border in Afghanistan still face. We said "Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!" because the 1979 Soviet Army intervention against murderous Islamic counterrevolution (whose rallying cry is keeping women under the veil) posed the possibility of a revolutionary transformation of this hideously backward country. Under the protection of the Red Army, the women of Afghanistan have been taught to read and write, and a major¬ity of university students are now women and girls; many hold jobs outside the home; and there are 15,000 women in the Afghan army, defending their new freedoms.

Return to the Road of Lenin and Trotsky!

Many of the gains made by Soviet women under the Bolsheviks were subsequently reversed by the Stalinist political counterrevolution. In 1936, abortion was made illegal. (It was again legalized in 1955.) Divorce becar difficult to obtain, co-education was abolished, horr sexuality was again outlawed. As Trotsky said, "The actual liberation of women is unrealizable on a basis 'generalized want.' Experience soon proved this ai tere truth which Marx had formulated eighty years before." The cruel Civil War decimated the proletariat in the young workers state. Most fundamentally, failure to extend the Revolution internationally strengthened the Stalinist bureaucratic caste in the isola Soviet Union. Workers democracy was smashed." Leninist internationalist program was abandoned favor of the search for "peaceful coexistence" versus imperialism, while domestically the Stalinists sou social props and ideological justifications for bure cratic rule. Exploiting social backwardness to strenghten their grip over society, the Stalinists rehabilitated family as a useful institution of social conservatism control.

Trotsky denounced the Stalinist bureaucracy "Thermidor in the Family" (The Revolution Betray "These gentlemen have, it seems, completely fogooten that socialism was to remove the cause which impels woman to abortion, and not force her into the 'joys of motherhood' with the help of a foul police interference in what is to every woman the most mate sphere of life....

"Instead of openly saying, 'We have proven still poor and ignorant for trie creation of socialist tions among men, our children and grandchildren realize this aim,' the leaders are forcing people together against the shell of the broken family, and not only that, but to consider it, under threat of extreme penalties, the sacred nucleus of triumphant socialism. It is hard to measure with the eye the scope of the retreat."

Despite these counterrevolutionary measures, capitalist private property has not been restored in the Soviet Union. The tremendous productive capac the Soviet planned economy has opened opportunities for women—in education, jobs, social service—which capitalism can never provide. We defend the USSR today unconditionally against imperialism because the fundamental gains of the October lution remain; it is a society based on production for social needs, not capitalist profit. At the same time call for political revolution to re-establish workers democracy and to return the Soviet Union to the liberating goals and program of Lenin and Trotsky.

Today there is great interest in the Soviet Union, in part because of the visible difficulties of American imperialism, but also because of Gorbachev's promises of glasnost (openness). Yet this "enlightened bureaucrat" will never tell the truth about the revolutionary work of the Bolshevik Party. Between that tradition and today's bureaucracy lies the gulf of the bloody political counterrevolution carried out by Stalin.

To appease the nuclear nuts in the White House, Gorbachev appears willing to pull out of Afghanistan. The Kremlin bureaucracy's willingness to abandon Afghan women to illiteracy, the veil and chattel slavery starkly exposes the gulf separating them from the Bolsheviks, who understood that the question of women's liberation,was key, above all in such backward, feudal areas.

In imperialist countries like the United States, only the abolition of private property will make women's emancipation a historical reality. It will take a socialist revolution in the U.S. to win the basic rights and social institutions the Bolsheviks fought for in the early years of the USSR. Given the tremendous productive capacity of U.S. industry and a far higher level of culture than that which the Bolsheviks inherited from the tsar, we have no doubt that the American workers government will be able to quickly implement such far-reaching social programs. For women's liberation through socialist revolution!

Soviet Measures to Liberate Women

Decree of the People's Commissariat of Health and Social Welfare and the People's Commissariat of Justice in Soviet Russia

During recent decades the number of women interrupting pregnancy by abortion has risen both in the West and in our country.

The legislation of all countries combats this evil by severe punishment of the women undergoing abortions as well as of the doctors performing them. To date this method has succeeded only in making the operation illegal, performed in secrecy, and in making women the victims of ignorant quacks or unscrupu¬lous doctors who turn a profit from abortion. As a result, 50 percent of these women become seriously ill and 4 percent of these die from the consequences of the operation.

The Workers and Peasants Government regards this phenomenon as a terrible evil for the entire society. The Workers and Peasants Government sees the consolidation of the socialist order and agitation against abortion among the broad masses of the female working-class population as the way to successfully combat it. It combats this evil in practice with the most far-reaching protection of mothers and children, hoping that it will gradually disappear. However, as long as the remnants of the past and the difficult economic conditions of the present compel some women to undergo an abortion, the People's Commissariat of Health and Social Welfare and the People's Commissariat of Justice regard the use of penal measures as inappropriate and therefore, to preserve women's health and protect the race against ignorant or self-seeking profiteers, it is resolved:

I. Free abortion, interrupting pregnancy by artificial
means, shall be performed in state hospitals, where
women are assured maximum safety in the operation.

II. It is absolutely prohibited to perform this operation without a doctor.

III. Midwives or "wise women" who break this law
shall forfeit their license to practice and be handed over to the People's Court.
IV. Doctors performing this operation in their private offices for personal gain shall also be brought before the People's Court.


Women's Work in the Economy

Women as Participants in the Construction of Soviet Russia

Resolution of the Eighth Congress of Soviets

Considering that the primary task of the hour is raising the level of industry, transportation and agriculture; that women comprise more than half of the population of Soviet Russia—women workers and peasants; that implementing the proposed unified economic plan is only possible by involving all the female labor power: the Eighth

Congress of Soviets resolves that:

a) Women workers and peasants are to be
involved in all economic organizations which are
working out and realizing the unified economic
plan; likewise in factory administrations, in fac¬
tory committees and in the administration of the
trade-union organizations.

b) For the purpose of reducing the unproduc¬
tive work of women in the household and in child-
care, the Eighth Congress of Soviets requires that
the local Soviets encourage women workers to
support, with their initiative and activity, the
reforms of social institutions, the beginnings of
communist construction, such as organizing com¬
munal dwellings and workshops for washing and
mending laundry in city and village, organizing
squads of cleaning women, creating foster care
centers, communal laundries and dining halls.

The Eighth Congress of Soviets charges the newly constituted Central Executive Committee of the Soviets to immediately begin working out measures aimed at reducing the unproductive work of women in the household and family, thereby increasing the supply of free labor power to raise the people's standard of living and augment the productivity of the Workers Republic.

Social Institutions for the Relief of the Housewife Communal Kitchens in Moscow

The Russian Soviet bodies are committed to the opinion that the traditional housework performed by the mothers of families in individual households must pass over to socialized institutions. This is both in the interest of women, who squander their time and energy in arduous, grinding, unproductive tasks, and in the interest of society, which can make full use of women's talents and accomplishments in the economy and culture. In Moscow there are at present no fewer than 559 communal kitchens in which hot midday and evening meals are prepared daily for 606,100 adults. The children take their meals in the childcare and educa¬tional centers where they have found places or which they attend during the day.

Compare the blessings of "orderly conditions" in the states that are still capitalist with this result of "Bolshevik chaos"! Part and parcel of these "orderly conditions" is the fact that in all major cities, in all industrial centers, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands go without a warm midday meal every day and in the evening in an uncomfortable home they choke down a meal their harried wives have prepared hurriedly and with insufficient means. Increasingly, women in the proletariat and also in the petty bourgeoisie must con¬tribute to the family's income. The double burden of working for a living and running the household rests on her. Meals in common—insofar as they occur at all— unite an overtired mother, a husband who is often grouchy because he does not find at home what he seeks, and children whose eyes and clothing bespeal their lack of care and attention.

'In Russia the working woman can throw off the burden of household obligations. She knows not only she herself, but, more importantly, her husband and children are better cared for than she could manage a home even with great energy and devotion. The home can now be a home in the most noble sense for husband and wife, for parents and children, a place to be together, for thinking and striving together, for enjoyment. Women have the time and leisure to learn, to educate themselves, to participate in all areas of social life, both giving and receiving. Oh, these Bolshevik "wreckers" and "destroyers"! Is that no what the philistines of all the capitalist countrie are still prattling?

Note on the documents: The three pieces reprinted here are our own translations from the April 1921 issue of Die Kommunistische Fraueninfernationat (Communist Women's International), the official German-language journal of the Women's Secretariat of the Communist International. In W&R No. 9 (Summer 1975) we reprinted another version of the abortion legislation, which included at the end the signature "N. Semashko, People's Commissar of Health; Kursk) People's Commissar of Justice." That was taken fron the book Health Protection in the U.S.S.R. by N./A Semashko, published in London by Gollancz in 1934 The date given for the decree on abortion in Semashki is 18 November 1920. Regarding "Women's Work in the Economy": the Eighth Congress of Soviets was held in Moscow from 22 to 29 December 1920. We were unable to find a date for the third piece; the Comintern women's journal did not give a source."

The Risen People?-May Day 1971-Build The Resistance-2017

The Risen People?-May Day 1971-Build The Resistance-2017

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-

Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all we knew, every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums, aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let her rip cosmic brakeman Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some wheat field night fantasy this trip.

No this trip was not about securing some cultural enclave in post-war (World War II so as not to confuse the reader) break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute, absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we are, he is, ready. On that dusty road ready.

More. See all roads head south as we and they, his girlfriend of the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or dream wish and his sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted, okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your “type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some forlorn rear view mirror.

Yah, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more, too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down to D.C. for what many of them figured would be the last, finally, push back against the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching television and the news, but THEY, and we knew (know) who they were, had their antennae out too, they KNEW those who were coming, even high-ball fixed (or whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style (and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad as Ct., nothing except Arizona was). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy (remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance sometime).

The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe, better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, they thought about it later in lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really, and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms these jailbirds-in-waiting- were ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day 1971.

And not just any massed presence like the then familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention then to anymore except the organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter, would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat. Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody mentioned them out loud in our presence and we were at every meeting, high or low. Moreover we had our ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. We, rightly or wrongly, silly us thought “cop.” 

So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment around DuPont Circle (He, we, thought, but it may have been further up off 14^th Street, Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys from old revolutions and so, well, discounted) to early rise (or early stay up cigarette chain-smoking and coffee-slurping to keep the juices flowing).

Out into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded, coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere, bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam, naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum, beat, beat like gongs, defeated.

Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all, was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested, two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big ironic (past ironic) Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.

And, as we were being led away by one of D.C.s finest, we turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with the strategy that day and we had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before, that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous sister, forgive us. (Not so anonymous actually since we saw her many times later in Boston, and Peter Paul almost would have traded in lust for her but he was still painted Botticelli-bewitched and so I, he, let the moment pass, and worked on about six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later. We saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)

Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart road tramps acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, we were longing for the hot, dusty, truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Barry McGuire's "Eve Of Destruction"

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Barry McGuire's "Eve Of  Destruction "   

During, let’s say the Obama administration or, hell, even the Bush era, for example  we could be gentle angry people over this or that notorious war policy and a few others matters and songs like Give Peace A Chance, We Shall Overcome, or hell, even that Kumbaya which offended the politically insensitive. From Day One of the Trump administration though the gloves have come off-we are in deep trouble. So we too need to take off our gloves-and fast as the cold civil war that has started in the American dark night heads to some place we don’t want to be. And the above song from the 1960s, another tumultuous time, makes more sense to be marching to. Build the resistance!      

BARRY MCGUIRE LYRICS

Play "Eve Of Destruction" on Amazon Music

"Eve Of Destruction"

The eastern world it is exploding
Violence flarin', bullets loadin'
You're old enough to kill but not for votin'
You don't believe in war but whats that gun you're totin'?
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'

But you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction

Don't you understand what I'm tryin' to say
Can't you feel the fears I'm feelin' today?
If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy, it's bound to scare you boy

And you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction

Yeah my blood's so mad feels like coagulating
I'm sitting here just contemplatin'
I can't twist the truth it knows no regulation
Handful of senators don't pass legislation
And marches alone can't bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin'
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin'

And you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for four days in space
But when you return it's the same old place
The pounding of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead but don't leave a trace
Hate your next door neighbor but don't forget to say grace

And tell me
Over and over and over and over again my friend
You don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction
Mmm, no, no, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction

 4/22 March for Science (Boston)-Support Scientific Research & Build The Resistance 

 

11:37 AM

Charlie Welch

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This is the Boston, MA rally being held in parallel to the Scientists
March on Washington DC. This page is simply an event page so you can get
time, date, and location updates. Please JOIN OUR GROUP for discussion,
calls to action, volunteering opportunities, and other ways to be
involved. 😊
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1283459638410385/
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/1283459638410385/>

We are working on permits to determine a venue. Stay tuned for more
updates on logistics.

We have also updated our mission statement in solidarity with the D.C.
organizers (now updated in the group's description, and included below).

We would like to again emphasize that the focus of this event is a
non-partisan support for science. While we understand that politics may
be a motivator for involvement by some participants, the core goal of
this event will continue to be the show of support for science.

Mission Statement:
The March for Science champions publicly-funded and
publicly-communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and
prosperity. We unite as a diverse, non-partisan group to call for
science that upholds the common good, and for political leaders and
policy makers to enact evidence-based policies in the public interest.
This group is inclusive of all individuals and types of science!

Sat. 12 PM - 5 PM

Boston Common

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