This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Massachusetts Stands Against Nuclear War: Lobby Day
Thursday, July 12 @ 10:00 am - 1:00 pm ~ State House Room 222
Thursday, July 12, 10am • Massachusetts State House, Room 222
Massachusetts has a chance to take a stand against nuclear war – join us to call on our representatives to support action to end the President’s sole authority over our nuclear arsenal!
This spring, State Senator Barbara L’Italien introduced a resolution,SD 2488, calling on Congress to put checks and balances on the President’s unilateral authority to start nuclear war. As it moves to the Veterans and Federal Affairs Committee, let’s make sure our state representatives know their constituents support taking action to stop nuclear war.
We will be welcomed by Sen. L’Italien and we will break down into teams to canvass the State House.
With a White House ready and willing to go to nuclear war, it’s imperative states demand Congressional action to pull back from the brink of ever using a nuclear weapon. Whether he’s tweeting threats at North Korea at 2AM or demanding a tenfold increase in our nuclear arsenal, Trump has shown a cavalierness about nuclear weapons that has confused allies globally and undermined our safety.
No one person should be able to decide the fate of entire communities, and this presidency makes that clearer than ever. This resolution will send a clear message that Massachusetts stands against nuclear war — let’s make sure it gets voted on this summer!
Join us Thursday, July 12th at 10AM at the MA State House to meet with your representatives and call on them to support this resolution. We’ll provide all materials and a quick training beforehand on how to speak to your representative.
For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-A Working Class Anthem For Labor Day- " Solidarity Forever"
A YouTube's film clip of Pete Seeger, appropriately enough, performing old Wobblie songwriter Ralph Chaplin's labor anthem, Solidarity Forever. A good song to hear on our real labor holiday, the holiday of the international working class movement, May Day, but even today on this country's consciously competing holiday.
If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go-Round At 83
Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.
Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.
Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)
Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night-yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels
Solidarity Forever Solidarity forever! Solidarity forever! Solidarity forever! For the union makes us strong When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun. Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one? But the union makes us strong. They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn, But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn. We can break their haughty power; gain our freedom when we learn That the Union makes us strong. In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold; Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold. We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old For the Union makes us strong. This labor anthem was written in 1915 by IWW songwriter and union organizer Ralph Chaplin using the music of Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic. These song lyrics are those sung by Joe Glazer, Educational Director of the United Rubber Workers, from the recording Songs of Work and Freedom, (Washington Records WR460)
A Writer’s Tale-Vincente Minnelli’s Film Adaptation Of James Jones’ “Some Came Running” (1958)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Fritz Taylor
Some Came Running, starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, directed by Vincente Minelli, adapted from the novel by James Jones, 1958
No question I was first drawn to Some Came Running, a film based on the novel of the same name by James Jones whose more famous novel Here To Eternity also was adapted to the screen and stands as one of the great classic films of the modern cinema, by the ex-soldier’s story and then by his plight as a blocked writer. The draw of the ex-soldier’s story reflected something that had been in my own experience about coming back to the “real” world after the military. That seems to be the character played by Frank Sinatra Dave Hirsh’s situation. That inability to go to the nine to five routine, to settle down after military service had shaken him out of his routine rang a bell. In my own military service generation, in my own service, I ran across plenty of guys who couldn’t deal with the “real” world coming back from Vietnam and who tried to hide from that fact as “brothers under the bridges” alternate communities out in places like Southern California. I spent time in such places myself. I see and hear about young Iraq and Afghanistan War service personnel having the same woes and worse, having incredibly high suicide rates. So yeah, I was drawn to Dave’s sulky, moody, misshapen view of the world.
The story line is a beauty. Dave, after a drunken spree, finds he was shipped by bus back in that state by some guys in Chicago to his Podunk hometown in Parkman, Indiana, a town he had fled with all deliberate speed when he was a kid orphaned out by his social-climbing older brother Frank because, well, because he was in the way of that social-climb after their parents die. Dave was not alone in his travels though since he had picked up, or had been attached to, a floozy named Ginny, played by Shirley MacLaine, who will make life hell for him in the end. As he became accustomed to his old hometown and while deciding whether to stay or pick up stakes (the preferred fate of his brother and his also social-climbing wife) he was introduced to a local school teacher Gwen, played by Martha Hyer, who will also make hell for him in the end since he was quickly and madly in love with her but she was seriously stand-offish almost old maid stand-offish since she had had a few tastes of his rough-hewn low life doings. Doings which were encouraged by a gambler, Bama, played by Dean Martin who became his sidekick.
But here is the hook that almost saved Dave and almost lit a spark under dear Gwen. Dave was a blocked writer, had some time before written a couple of books that were published and had gathered some acclaim, were well written. Gwen attempted to act as his muse, and did prove instrumental in getting a work of his published. To no avail since Dave was not looking for a muse, well, not a muse who wasn’t thinking about getting under the silky sheets. No go, no go despite Dave’s ardent efforts. Frustrated Dave turned to Ginny and whatever charms she had-and the fact that she loved him unconditionally despite their social and intellectual differences. In the end Dave in a fit of hubris decided to marry Ginny after being rebuffed by Gwen enough times. The problem though was that Ginny had a hang on gangster guy trailing her who was making threatening noises about putting Dave, and/or Ginny, underground. In the end they were not just threatening noises as he wounded Dave and killed poor bedraggled Ginny. Watch this one-more than once and read James Jones’ book too which includes additional chapters about those soldiers who could not relate to the “real” world after their military experiences. This guy Jones could write, sure could write about that milieu based on his own military service. (There is a famous photograph of Jones, Norman Mailer, and William Styron, the three great soldier boy American literary lights of the immediate post-World War II war period with Jones in uniform if I recall.)
Welcome Young-With Remembrances Of Golden Age Fourth Of July’s In Mind (2017)
By Prescott Blaine
Si Lannon had always been a man of unmitigated memories. Had always been the guy, the kid when that term was appropriate, who kept vigil over what had occurred and when from the surprise of the first conscious Christmas (and thereafter the unscrambling of the Santa question) to the scent of Laura Perkin’s perfume (or when she was a kid herself the smell, the intoxicating smell, of that bath soap that drove him crazy when they danced close in that first school days dance meant to keep unruly thoughts in check. He would, such was his memory drive, often later wonder whether she had used that article for a certain effect that far back in the boy-girl tango. He knew later she would do such things consciously and he was glad of it). Si, now having lived long enough to have a treasure trove of memories, had of late been drawn to the faraway events that made up his early childhood in the old neighborhood where he grew up, came of age (along with that Laura Perkins with whom he was an item all through high school but when he went off to college they broke up since she did not want to wait four years or more to get married-such were the times and expectations back then). Since it was that time of year he had been musing over the old days when the Fourth of July was something of a watershed in the summer.
This series of recollections back in time to those particular times were no mere happenstances and it was a question in Si’s mind whether he would have been dwelling on this seasonal event if it had not been for the fact that he had recently moved back into the old neighborhood. As Si would say “to make a long story short” so we can get to the heart of what has possessed the man of late his marriage, his long-time marriage, to Lana Shea had ended when she decided that she had to go “find herself” and that adventure was not to include Si who she considered part of the problem for not having been able to “find herself” in some earlier time. (Admittedly Si did not, does not, understand how all they had together could blow away like some mistral wind since he believed, believes, that he never stood in her way to do whatever finding was to be found). He had spent some time up in Maine after the break-up in order to see if distance would help heal some wounds. They didn’t and one night, maybe less, he decided that he was not cut out for the isolation of the wilds of Maine and that he needed to get back around cities and some sense of rootedness. So back to the much changed old neighborhood-and memories.
Si had adjusted pretty well to his return, knew some things like the change in the ethnic composition of his old working class neighborhood from overwhelming Irish to mostly Asian was a fact of life in mobile America. He could understand the Chinese exodus from Boston’s Chinatown and environs since the Irish and Italians had respectively exited the North End and South Boston in search of fresher air in his grandparents’ time but the Vietnamese migration had him baffled since there had been no previous indigenous grouping in the Greater Boston area. Moreover, Si, a Vietnam veteran himself although he had long ago made his peace with the Vietnamese if not his own government wondered how Jimmy Jenkins and Vince Riley two neighborhood guys who had laid down their heads in Vietnam would have reacted to the fact that right there on Kenny Street which he passed almost every day Vietnamese families were living in their respective growing up houses. Probably not any better than when they joined up to kill commies.
But Si also knew some things had been lost although he could not put his finger on exactly what that was until the Fourth of July. And then only by becoming aware of the absence of any celebration, a hallmark of the old neighborhood come America’s birthday. Such celebrations having gone the way of the horse and buggy it seemed in an age when people flee their neighborhoods on the holidays to vacation or “to summer” elsewhere, anyway perhaps. In the old days “to summer” was to hike the mile to Adamsville Beach to roast in the sun and roast weenies. Then people stayed put either because they had no car to flee with (Si’s family situation until he was a late teenager) and no additional funds beyond the weekly white envelopes to fend off the bill collectors-for a while.
So much for the sociology and cultural aspects which really was not what was driving Si’s memory bank on reflection. All he could think about were those maybe half a dozen maybe eight years when his (and that of his four other brothers) Fourth of July centered on events not one hundred yards away from his family’s house. Si grew up and lived across from the Welcome Young ballfield (still there although shortened up with the addition of some tennis courts). Welcome Young an apt name and which was actually the name of the person who gave the town the property to be used for the young. This Welcome Young field most of the summer was a hot, dusty usually during the day vacant lot (at night the local fathers and older brothers played softball there as an excuse to have a few beers at the three barrooms located directly across from the field and those institutions collectively sponsored some of the teams in the makeshift league). But on the Fourth it was turned into something like a carnival.
What would happen every year is that some of the guys who frequented the barrooms (and their owners’), including Si’s father, formed what was called the North Adamsville Associates whose members would comb the neighborhood in search of donations from residents and local businesses in order to put on “a time” (an old expression from the Irish diaspora not heard expressed in many a moon). That “time” included everything from food, drink, and prizes to paying for the band at the night’s end dance (mostly for adults and older kids). Si claims he never attended one but could hear the music from across the way as he drifted off to sleep after a hard day’s work at having fun.
Si had to laugh to himself as he thought about the various silly kid escapades he had partaken in. The first in time was early on exploiting the fact that for once the tumbledown house where he and his siblings grew up actually proved of strategic importance. One of the highlights of the day was that twice, at ten and at one, members of the Associates would put up makeshift tables and distribute tonic (an old New England term for soda also not heard in many a moon) and ice cream to the throngs of kids milling about nervously waiting for the distribution. All well and good. The cause of Si’s laughter though was that he and his brothers would form a relay from those tables to their house. Or rather the refrigerator in the back hall of that house which before the day ended would be filled with enough tonic (remember soda) and ice cream to last the whole summer (or that was the idea). Kids holy goof stuff.
Of course there were rides, baby carriage contests, singing contests, pie-eating contests, beauty contests and the like although Si never got a prize for anything like that. What Si remember though were the foot races (including the silly three-legged ones), the fifty yard dashes. He never won any of those either. But the last year that he attended the festivities, the summer of the year that he entered the ninth grade he did win a race. The vaunted, locally vaunted, six hundred yard race around several of the neighboring streets. This was for the older boys, boys and young men a lot older than him. He would always remember that race since he made a cardinal mistake of running too fast (out of fear of the older guys) at the beginning and running into oxygen debt toward the end. He won though, barely, and would wear the jacket that was the prize seemingly forever before it bit the dust.
Ah, such is memory…maybe next year he will check out and see if anybody wants to “put on a time” for the kids. Payback-okay.
A Call to Observe Hiroshima and Nagasaki Week in Massachusetts
Building Peace with North Korea and Iran
August 5 - August 9, 2018
73 years have passed since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 48 years since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) took effect, and almost one year since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons opened for signing. Yet the five original nuclear weapons states, led by the United States, have not taken serious action on their commitments to abolish nuclear weapons.
After threatening North Korea with “fire and fury”, President Trump held a summit meeting with Chairman Kim Jong-un, but much work remains to resolve the nuclear crisis with North Korea and bring peace to the Korean peninsula. He unveiled a Nuclear Posture Review that for the first time declares that the U.S. might use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear threats, and he continues to fund the $1.2 billion nuclear weapons escalation program. President Trump broke the Iran nuclear deal, falsely claiming that Iran was a nuclear threat.
In reality, it is the United States’ 6,500 nuclear warheads, although with those of the other nuclear powers, that pose an imminent threat to humanity. The President can launch a civilization-destroying nuclear war on his sole authority.
Without a powerful grassroots movement dedicated to nuclear disarmament, the world’s nuclear crisis will only get worse instead of better. Therefore, Massachusetts Peace Action joins with peace groups, people of faith, youth, community groups, and human rights advocates who have organized events across Massachusetts on August 5-9, 2018, to call attention to the people’s demand for an end to the $1 trillion nuclear weapons escalation and the failure of the United States to support the nuclear ban treaty.
We urge your or your organization to plan an event in your town, church, or campus. Send information on your events to info@masspeaceaction.org. We will publish a calendar of events across the state so that all people who seek a peaceful world will know that they are not alone! Last year, we listed 17 events in Massachusetts and we hope to top that this year!
We hope you will collaborate with us in this joint effort! Contact 617-354-2169 or info@masspeaceaction.org with questions or to connect and exchange ideas.
We have posted the events we know about here.
Calendar
Saturday August 4, 1pm, Hanscom Air Force Base, Lincoln – Nuclear Holocaust Peace Pilgrims. Join the monks and nuns of the Grafton Peace Pagoda at Hanscom Air Force Base and for the other events on their walk for nuclear disarmament.
Sunday, August 5, Amherst to Leverett – Peace Walk with the monks and nuns of the Grafton Peace Pagoda followed by Hiroshima Ceremony, then continuing on to Vermont Yankee, Bennington, Saratoga Springs, Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, and Grafton on August 12.
Sunday, August 5, 11:45 am, Cambridge Common – Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Welcoming Momentum for Peace in Korea. Outdoor gathering after church.
How to Participate
We urge your organization to plan an event in your town, church, or campus. Send information on your events to info@masspeaceaction.org and we will add it to our current calendar so that all people who seek a peaceful world will know that they are not alone! Last year, we listed 17 events inMassachusetts and we hope to top that this year!
We hope you will collaborate with us in this joint effort! Contact 617-354-2169 or info@masspeaceaction.orgwith questions or to connect and exchange ideas.
--
"Not one step back"
Cole Harrison
Executive Director
Massachusetts Peace Action - the Commonwealth's largest grassroots peace organization
