No Revolution Ever Disappears

No Revolution Ever Disappears

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wallace300708.html

30/07/08
by Len Wallace

Penelope Rosemont, Dreams & Everyday Life: André Breton, Surrealism,
Rebel Worker, sds & the Seven Cities of Cibola, Charles H. Kerr
Publishing Company, Chicago, 2008, ISBN 978-0-88286-234-2
--

Despite an era made for modern-day state and corporate Metternichs
there are stirrings, movement, growing discontent. In the words of
Buffalo Springfield's song, "There's something happening here. What
it is ain't exactly clear." It's difficult to define it, but it's
there and it has some folks worried. Today's sparks are being
compared to the sixties New Left.

I recently saw a televised panel discussion making just such
comparisons. The pundits argued that the sixties youth were a
spoiled generation of a consumerist society who never experienced
economic depression and political oppression. Left "leaderless"
because of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy,
Martin Luther King, Jr., the movement spiraled off into excessive
radicalism and violence. Of course, what other "insight" could one
expect from the defenders of the status quo?

I was fourteen in that tumultuous year of 1968 when student youth
congregated in protest at the Democratic Party National convention in
Chicago and were brutally clubbed, tear gassed, jailed by the riot of
the forces of law and order. In Prague, Czechoslovakia, students and
workers rallied in the streets against Red Army tanks of the Soviet
Union sent in to crush attempts of democratization. In Paris,
France, students, spurred on with the slogans of surrealists and
situationists, occupied universities and, allied with workers,
erected barricades in the streets as the country advanced to a
general strike that almost toppled the DeGuallist government
order. Worldwide protest against the Vietnam war raised
consciousness against colonial order. Black Power, the Black Panther
Party of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, openly confronted
institutionalized and systematic racism of the state. Women's
Liberation challenged male privilege and white men in suits.

The following years were for me a passage of discovery grappling with
and absorbing wide-ranging radical thought, ideas, symbols and images
so different from those I obtained through osmosis from the elders of
Windsor's left-wing working-class Ukrainian-Russian community.

By the time I reached university, the New Left train had departed and
left the station on the way to derailment. The student rebels had
exited the campus and broke into factionalism. Some went off to the
factories to join the proletariat and hopefully ferment
revolution. Others were swallowed up by increasingly commodified
counter-culture. A few would eventually make their peace with
capitalism, seeking gain in publicly funded institutions, amused at
their youthful endeavors, and only speak about their "left-wing
principles" in very hushed tones. And by the 1980s, the corporate
counter-revolution under the various names of Reaganism, Thatcherism,
neo-conservatism, and neo-liberalism with the correlative growth of
state authoritarianism was in full swing.

The actors and activists of that sixties movement have attempted to
define and redefine what it was all about. Was there anything here
worth preserving? Has any program for dissidence, rebellion, and
revolution been snuffed out? Is there any hope of
resurrection? Paul Buhle and Harvey Pekar's Students for a
Democratic Society: A Graphic History tries to tell some of the
stories. One of the chapters focuses on the role of Penelope Rosemont.

Rosemont was at the center of the whirlstorm as activist in SDS, on
its national staff and editor of its theoretical journal Radical
America. In Dreams & Everyday Life she recounts her journey to
becoming a revolutionary from the first moments she stepped onto the
campus of Chicago's Roosevelt University in 1964. Written forty
years later, her account is a retelling of that personal journey
still with the fresh eyes of youth. Artist, writer, editor,
surrealist, she remains a revolutionary still captivated with the
vision that freedom is worth fighting for.

The philosopher Hegel once asserted that "nothing great in the World
has been accomplished without passion." Rosemont's book is a
passionate remembering. In an era when we are taught that there is
no real history because nothing ever changes, that today's society is
the way it has always been and will always be, amen!, remembering
becomes a useful and subversive tool.

If one is seeking an analytical and historical text about the rise
and fall of the New Left, this is not the book. There are no
judgments of people, parties, and programs here. No second thoughts
or justifications. This is a personal history of a history unfolding
-- at once a personal diary and the potent weapon of cultural
critique against conformity and the mindless drudge of imposed wage
work. Rosemont takes us along a journey and trajectory opening
dreams and possibilities. In the conscious surrealist activity of
aimlessly walking the streets of Chicago directed by chance she
discovers the thousands of instances of daily life that exist far
beyond the pale of commodity capitalism, those small rebellions, free
spaces of action, art, poetry, music, and culture, real human
relationships that have not been devalued by the cold exchange of
cash. The discoveries on the streets are also discoveries of the
links to a revolutionary past that reaches back to the Haymarket
strikes of 1886, the birth of the IWW, the street corner soapboxing
of old socialists and anarchists. History is indeed an unfolding and
the past does not simply disappear.

Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Emma Goldman, Sigmund Freud, and Herbert Marcuse are part of the
journey and accompany her to meetings with the old rebel Wobblies, to
London, England's anarchists, and the profound influences of André
Breton and the surrealists of Paris. This very personal account
recaptures the youthful sense of marvel, excitement, and desire that
are too often pushed aside and buried under the dead weight of life's
daily drudgeries. She takes aim at today's spirit-sucking new world
corporate Disney Wal-Mart order of iPods, Internet, text messaging,
commercial bombardment, official government lies, and doublespeak that numb us.

André Breton announced in an early surrealist manifesto that
imagination balks at being stifled. As we bend to the vicissitudes
of capitalist utilitarianism, it will abandon us to a "lusterless
fate." Fast approaching the age of 54, I'll be damned that such a
fate lays in store for me. Rosemont's book provides a good reminder
never to let go of radical and revolutionary youthful élan.
--

Len Wallace is a singer, songwriter, and activist.

.

Power to the Park People

Power to the Park People

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/artsculture/power_to_the_park_people/Content?oid=799135

Free political theater for the masses.

By Sam Hurwitt
July 30, 2008

It's amazing that there are still people in the Bay Area who act
surprised to learn the San Francisco Mime Troupe does agitprop
musical comedy rather than pantomime. The collective has been putting
on shows for free in the parks every summer for nearly fifty years,
so you'd think people would have caught on by now. It's their
patriotic duty as active, informed citizens to check out what they have to say.

Of course, it's nice when it doesn't feel like a duty. Red State,
written and directed by Michael Gene Sullivan, is certainly amusing
enough to keep you entertained for its ninety minutes sans
intermission. The story is much flimsier than last year's
war-profiteering satire Making a Killing, and the message vaguer, but
it's often very funny, with some strong performances and catchy songs
from rags to R&B to country.

A presidential election has resulted in a tie (the candidates are
never mentioned), and it's up to the citizens of a run-down Kansas
town to break the tie, because they'd been given a defective voting
machine. The former union town has lost all its social services ­ the
hospital and high school have closed, and now the pencil factory
that's the sole source of employment is moving to Uzbekistan. Also
the library's closing, which means the long-simmering love between
right-wing laborer Eugene (Robert Ernst) and progressive librarian
Miss Rosa (Velina Brown) will remain unexpressed as she leaves town.
Gradually the citizens of Bluebird realize they can hold the election
hostage to get some much-needed government dollars for civic improvements.

Ultimately the show's about Eugene, whose labor hero father was
derided as a commie. Now Eugene has a knee-jerk reaction about
spending government dollars on the people and hollers at the
slightest provocation, "I ain't no red!" Will he get over it in time
to help save the town?

Brown doubles as midlevel bureaucrat Faustina Page, who just wants to
get transferred out of whatever state this is ­ she can never
remember ­ for a desk job in glamorous Washington, DC, which she
sings about like it's a tropical paradise. Her song as no-nonsense
Miss Rosa is a knockout, but her parts as written aren't much to work
with. Rosa doesn't get much stage time, and chirpy Faustina makes a
half-baked villain. Former Blake Street Hawkeye Ernst gives a strong
and sympathetic performance as a working-class antihero, and Noah
James Butler has some hilarious turns as hick Wendell and the
cheeseball mayor. Lisa Hori-Garcia, Lizzie Calogero, and Adrian C.
Mejia breeze through as a variety of townsfolk and TV commentators.

The upshot is that the people have the power, and that the taxes we
pay should be spent on us, which sounds both pretty reasonable and
unusually simplistic. It's a good thing the Mime Troupe tends to have
follow-up materials available for the incensed to take action,
because the thesis in the play seems underdeveloped.

You wouldn't have a Mime Troupe if there hadn't been Bertolt Brecht a
generation before, and one thing that Brecht makes perfectly clear in
The Good Person of Szechuan is that nothing is simple.

The gods come to town looking for one good person, and latch on to
the prostitute Shen Te, even though she insists she's not good and is
too poor to follow the commandments. They give her money to open a
tobacco shop, and she's immediately beset by freeloaders and has to
pose as her fictional male cousin Shui Ta to make them back off.

Woman's Will is also staging Good Person free in the parks now, in a
new adaptation by artistic director Erin Merritt with a large cast
and a versatile set by Jackie Scott that looks like its own
unfinished backside. Rona Siddiqui's new a cappella arrangements for
Brecht's songs sound like sea chanteys.

Holly Chou is lively and appealing as outgoing water seller Wang, and
El Beh has a commanding presence as gruff cousin Shui Ta, although
her Shen Te becomes exaggeratedly passive when she goes back to being
herself. Maryssa Wanlass has a terrific roguish swagger as bad-boy
pilot Yang Sun, and Anne Hallinan makes an amusing busybody as former
shop owner Mrs. Shin. Susan Jackson, Molly Nicholas, and Lisa Patten
offer some halfhearted slapstick as the three gods, and their final
musical number comes off, in the second week of performances, as if
they'd never sang it before.

Merritt's adaptation adds a few distracting contemporary references
and could stand trimming, but the staging is generally well-paced,
some missed entrances and variable performances aside. Although
Woman's Will's usual all-female casting adds a layer when the
characters are cross-dressing within the play, Brecht's plays are so
non-naturalistic that it hardly matters. It gets its point across
entertainingly, which is remarkable enough for a play that apologizes
at the end for not solving anything. As informed and active citizens
that's your job. Get cracking.

.

Port Huron Resurrection

Port Huron Resurrection

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/artsculture/port_huron_resurrection/Content?oid=799091

Mark Tribe helps revivify Oakland's Panther history.

By Rachel Swan
July 30, 2008

New York artist and curator Mark Tribe got the idea shortly after he
arrived at Brown University three years ago. It was two years into
the war in Iraq, Bush's approval ratings were finally starting to
decline, The New Yorker was running edgier articles that criticized
the invasion. But Brown's campus remained eerily quiet. "I was really
surprised by how little activism there was," said 41-year-old Tribe,
noting that he'd seen a lot more student-led protests when he was in
college twenty years prior, and that twenty years before that, the
antiwar movement would have probably dwarfed any other campus
activity. "The question in my mind was what is it about these times
that makes us feel that resistance is futile?" Tribe recalled. "And
what would it feel like to believe you were part of a movement that
could change history? What would it feel like to believe you had the
power to join together with your peers and change the political
future of your country?"

With these questions in mind, Tribe came up with a project that was
would draw parallels between Vietnam and the current occupation of
Iraq, while showing the power of oratory as a form of political
protest. Named for the Port Huron Statement ­ a 1962 book-length
manifesto by Tom Hayden (then field secretary of Students for a
Democratic Society) that became one of the founding documents of the
New Left ­ the Port Huron Project comprised six reenactments of
protest speeches from the '60s and '70s, made by such movement
leaders as César Chávez, Stokely Carmichael, Paul Potter, Howard
Zinn, Coretta Scott King, and, in Saturday, August 2's installment at
DeFremery Park (1651 Adeline St., Oakland), Angela Davis. Tribe chose
these speeches because of their staying power and their way of
linking domestic movements (i.e., labor and civil rights) to foreign policy.

If all goes as planned, Saturday's Angela Davis reenactment ­ of the
trenchant 1969 speech "The Liberation of Our People" ­ should be a
haunting performance. DeFremery Park, after all, is pregnant with
Black Panther history. It's an iconic site where Bobby Seale and Huey
Newton organized rallies four decades ago. Actress Aleta Hayes ­ an
instructor in Stanford University's dance department ­ will play the
part of Davis at Saturday's event. She will stand on the porch of the
old park building, the same place where Davis stood in 1969, when she
was just 25 years old. Said Tribe, "If this project goes forward, I'm
struck by how powerful the experience is of standing in a park in the
same place where a speech was given forty years ago and hearing how
relevant it is." He added that if you just changed the proper nouns,
it could have been made yesterday. 6 p.m., free. MySpace.com/porthuronproject

.

My night of joy with the Godfather of Gloom [Leonard Cohen]

My night of joy with the Godfather of Gloom

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/5493/

Poet of pessimism? No way - Leonard Cohen's first London gig in 15
years proves that his witty, heartfelt misery is as uplifting as ever.

by Nathalie Rothschild
22 July 2008

His jog on to stage prompts rapturous applause, wolf whistles and
howls. His one-fingered piano solo triggers an ecstatic round of
clapping. A simple twirl delights the 20,000-strong crowd. He can
hardly get a word in between songs; when he does, every quip draws
roars of laughter, and every sombre recital has the ladies – and the
gentlemen – awkwardly pretending that something's gotten in their
eyes. As he waves goodbye, the crowd calls him back with deafening
standing ovations. Even after the five-number encore at the end of a
three-hour set, the fans still want more.

This is not the response to the latest teen sensation but to the
husky-voiced, at times growling, never less than elegant
septuagenarian, Leonard Cohen. And little wonder: the Canadian poet
and novelist turned folk singer turned Zen Buddhist monk is back on
stage for the first time in 14 years. 'I was 60 then', he says, 'just
a kid with a crazy dream'.

He lists the many anti-depressants he has taken over the past
decade-and-a-half, and says that during that time he has also studied
religion and philosophy – 'but cheerfulness kept breaking through'.

The well-rehearsed joke is also well-placed, coming in between the
doom-mongering 'The future' ('I've seen the future, brother: it is
murder / Things are going to slide, slide in all directions / Won't
be nothing / Nothing you can measure anymore') and the humorous
'Everybody knows' ('Everybody knows you've been discreet / But there
were so many people you just had to meet / Without your clothes').

At last week's performance at London's 02 arena, Cohen spared the
audience any spiritual titbits he may have picked up during his five
years at the Mount Baldy Zen Centre in southern California in the
1990s. This was fortunate given his Zen moniker, Jikan, meaning
'silent one'. Instead, the Cohen we witnessed was positively
effusive. Repeatedly introducing his band members, and clasping his
black fedora in between songs as he thanked and smiled at his fans,
he came across as 'humble yet cosmic'.

On Mount Baldy, Cohen spent his time meditating, chanting, scrubbing
floors, cooking and acting as secretary for his ninetysomething
teacher, Joshu Sasaki Roshi. When he came down from the mountain and
traded his monk's robes for his customary Armani suits, he found
himself in financial difficulty. With little left in his bank
account, Cohen went to work. Whether or not his diminished funds were
truly the main motivation behind publishing a new book of poetry,
recording a couple of albums and setting off on his current world
tour in the space of just a few years, Cohen's loss is certainly our gain.

He is on form and his band – all decked up in dark suits and hats –
give many of his old songs soulful, jazzy, gypsy and Hispanic tones.

Cohen's tour (several new dates have been added recently) is not so
much a comeback as a nostalgia trip, a long gorgeous swansong; and at
every gig Cohen makes sure to thank his fans for 'keeping my songs
alive all these years'. At the London concert, he told an anecdote of
toasting his teacher on his ninety-seventh birthday ('Roshi' is now
102), who then told Cohen: 'Excuse me for not dying.' 'I kind of feel
the same right now', Cohen said.

Well, 'the ladies' man' ain't dead yet. When Cohen sings 'If you want
a doctor I'll examine every inch of you', the women respond
'woooooooo!' - and at the line, 'Or if you want to take me for a
ride, you know you can', they shout 'YES!'. Cohen concludes: 'I'm
your man.' The men in the audience, mostly either grey-haired or
bald, probably identify more with the opening line of Cohen's 'The
tower of song': 'Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey / I
ache in the places where I used to play.'

But Cohen's appeal transcends the generations, as his appearances at
more youthful events over the summer, such as the Glastonbury
festival, testify. In short, his songs are timeless, appealing as
much to pubescent poet-scribblers as to middle-aged melancholics. And
since the release of his 1975 greatest hits album, The Best of
Leonard Cohen, many a teenage girl has stared at the picture of Cohen
blowing smoke rings on the sepia-coloured backcover and angstily
agreed that 'there ain't no cure for love'.

Accused of writing 'songs to slit your wrists by', Cohen has also
been labelled 'the poet of pessimism', 'the godfather of gloom' and
'the prophet of despair'. Aficionados would, of course, disagree. At
the start of the documentary Ladies and gentlemen… Mr Leonard Cohen,
shot in Montreal in 1965, the author (he had not yet started
recording music), far from prompting a mass quietus, has an audience
doubled over with laughter before a voice-over explains that Cohen
'is not primarily a stand-up comic, but a novelist, a poet and a very
confident young man'.

At the sold-out 02 arena concert, Cohen thanked the audience for
'overcoming financial and geographical obstacles' to be there and to
meet him 'at the other side of intimacy'. But everybody knows that
Cohen's is an easy crowd to please; after all his fans have been
desperate to see him for nearly 15 years.

Three hours and 20-odd songs on, and after pretending to end the show
with 'Closing time' and skipping off stage, Cohen comes back singing
'I tried to leave you': 'Goodnight, my darling, I hope you're
satisfied, the bed is kind of narrow, but my arms are open wide. And
here's a man still working for your smile.'

There was little spontaneous or unrehearsed about the show, but, hey,
what a way to say goodbye!
--

Nathalie Rothschild is commissioning editor of spiked.
--

Leonard Cohen returns to the 02 Arena on 13 November. You can find
more details on his website. http://www.leonardcohen.com/tour.cgi

.

A Street Protester Looks Back at 1968

Protest Politics and the Democratic Party

A Street Protester Looks Back at 1968

http://www.counterpunch.org/finamore07312008.html

By CARL FINAMORE
July 31, 2008

Street protests in Chicago outside the 1968 Democratic Party
convention offer a sharp and revealing comparison to the approaching
August 2008 Democratic convention in Denver.

The contrast between the two conventions captures the essence of
political differences between then and now.

In 1968, it was events outside Chicago's Amphitheatre that captured
the world's attention. In 2008, it will be what's happening inside
Denver's Pepsi Center that will have the spotlight.

Of course, Obama's nomination acceptance on the 45th anniversary of
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech will be loaded with
historic symbolism. This is sure to be shamelessly exploited by a
duplicitous party hierarchy that has itself unquestionably
contributed to the erosion of civil rights over the last four decades.

In addition, a very professional stage production will undoubtedly be
designed to keep focus on theatrics inside the convention.

This is a significant departure from 1968 where attention largely
remained on explosive struggles against war and racism, some of which
were dramatically played out in numerous street actions outside the
Democratic convention under conditions most observers described as a
'virtual police state.'

Why the big difference between the two conventions?

Civil rights and war were center stage in 1968 because a mobilized,
independent protest movement of millions propelled these causes.

Throughout the 1960s, thousands of neighborhood, labor, religious,
campus, civil rights and women's groups were active in organizing
teach-ins, marches, picket lines, student strikes, rallies and mass
protests for civil rights, women's rights, and peace in Vietnam. It
was a time of regular and sustained organizing and protest.

The impending deliberations at the Chicago convention forty years ago
took place against this backdrop of social upheaval. Clearly, the
demands of the peace and civil rights movements eclipsed the dull,
tepid and deceitful party platform discussions inside Chicago's Amphitheatre.

This certainly is not the case in 2008.

Protest Politics and the Democratic Party

The two establishment parties never want to see social movements take
shape outside their control. Dissent is to be shuffled back and forth
between the two parties like a B-Movie 'Good Cop, Bad Cop'
interrogation. This is as true now as it was in 1968.

It is generally known that President Kennedy dispatched his brother
Robert to convince Martin Luther King Jr. to call off the 1963 March
on Washington. To his credit, King understood building an independent
mass movement was far more powerful political leverage than relying
on individual assurances from Washington politicians.

King was committed to keeping his movement from being controlled by
the same politicians he sought to influence. In one notable example
he explicitly defied the advice of powerful, well-funded Democratic
Party liberals that he dodge the war issue.

Instead, in 1967 King delivered his first impassioned speech against
the Vietnam War. He responded to his detractors by saying that
"Silence is Betrayal." That year King led 400,000 of us on April 15
from New York's Central Park to the United Nation's building. (New
York Times, 4/16/67)

Unable to stop the growth of these independent civil rights and
antiwar movements, the government sought to actually disrupt and
destroy them through their criminal COINTELPRO campaign.

But while the protest movements remained viable, they had a profound
impact on politics in America. For example, the Texas "good old boy"
President Lyndon Johnson was the unlikely promoter of the most
comprehensive anti-discrimination laws since Reconstruction.

But that is the point. Johnson supported profound social legislation
despite his biases. Enormous political pressures arose and
overwhelmed his otherwise retrograde impulses.

Similarly, unable to sidetrack the independent antiwar protest
movement, the vulgar reactionary President Richard Nixon withdrew the
last US soldier from Vietnam in 1973.

Politics was driven by powerful social forces operating in the
streets, not from within the Oval Office. Unfortunately, this dynamic
has long been absent.

Who Defines the Political Agenda?

In 1968, civil rights demands to fund a "War on Poverty" and antiwar
demands for "Immediate Withdrawal from Vietnam" were clearly defined
through years of debate and discussion among tens of thousands of activists.

Eventually, this debate spilled over into the homes of millions of
Americans. After several years of experience with the rising human
death toll, the call for "Immediate Withdrawal" was generally
accepted by the American people. Many Americans also came to support
the principle of "self-determination" for developing countries,
opposing the idea of "pre-emptive" interventions.

All this has often been dismissed by right-wing politicians as the
"Vietnam Syndrome," but it is the reason no US occupation troops
remain in that country today.

In 2008, we are still plagued by issues of racism, war and poverty,
but the solutions will be more defined by compromising politicians,
many of whom will be assembled in Denver.

As a result, discussions about getting out of Iraq invariably contain
exemptions for permanent US military bases and the right to intervene
to protect U.S. "interests."

Today's peace movement slogan of "Immediate Withdrawal from Iraq &
Afghanistan" is largely ignored by establishment 'insiders'. That's
because the massive antiwar movement needed to promote this slogan
onto the national agenda is not there in 2008 as it was in 1968.

Antiwar protests are planned for Denver in August, but they are not
likely to distract much from the agenda inside the convention.

The world's attention may be focused on what is happening inside the
Denver convention, but those of us hoping for real social change in
this country must look outside, to the grassroots and to the future
of mass organizing.

No serious reform is possible without this step.

For example, it is impossible to have genuine health care reform
without ending the criminal stranglehold of the enormously-profitable
insurance companies. It is also impossible to terminate wars of
intervention without ending the economic free-trade aggression of
greedy US corporations.

Overcoming these obstacles does not come easy. It requires a very
tough struggle. That's why broad serious reforms have only occurred
twice since Reconstruction, under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B.
Johnson. And both times it was under circumstances of near revolt by
major sections of the population.

This is a fact ignored by those who desire to influence Obama
personally from inside his campaign to somehow transcend his class
loyalties. On the contrary, politicians of the two elite parties have
only been influenced to enact major change from the outside.
--

Carl Finamore was chairman of the University of Illinois, Chicago
Circle, Committee to End the War in Vietnam and participated in all
the protests outside the 1968 Democratic Party convention. This
lifelong outsider eagerly awaits a party worth getting inside. He is
former President (ret), Air Transport Employees Local Lodge 1781,
IAMAW, and can be reached at local1781@yahoo.com

.

Socialism and Homosex

Socialism and Homosex

http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19870403&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=6

By: DOUG IRELAND
07/24/2008

Recovering our hidden gay history has been a critically important
byproduct of the modern gay movement, and in its current Summer 2008
issue, the 46-year-old independent socialist review New Politics has
published a significant discovery that restores to us a lost moment
of our political history - specifically, of the history of gays and the left.

The discovery was made quite accidentally by the historian
Christopher Phelps, a professor of history at Ohio State University
at Mansfield whose books include the critically well-regarded
biography "Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist." While Phelps
was researching a forthcoming book on anti-Stalinist black radicals,
he came across an article by one "H.L. Small" on homosexual
emancipation entitled "Socialism and Sex," which appeared in 1952 in
Young Socialist, the mimeographed bulletin of the youth section of
the Socialist Party, then led by Norman Thomas.

And on further investigation, and after interviewing survivors of
that period, Phelps unearthed the fact that there was an organized
effort within the Socialist Party at that time to have it take a firm
and bold position in favor of the decriminalization of homosexuality
and the end of discrimination against gays and lesbians - an unheard
of political initiative at the time for any political party.

Until now, it has been thought that the roots of modern gay political
activism could be found only in the work of the legendary Harry Hay,
who began organizing homosexuals while he was a member of the
Communist Party. The first gay organization Hay fathered was created
during the 1948 presidential campaign of Henry Wallace, the former
FDR vice president who that year became the candidate of the
newly-formed, left-wing Progressive Party, initiated and dominated by
the Communists. Bachelors for Wallace was the discreet name Hay gave
to this embryonic group.

And it was in part out of the nucleus he'd recruited for Bachelors
for Wallace that Hay and Rudi Gernreich, who became a well-known
fashion designer in the 1960s and '70s, founded the Mattachine
Society in 1951, the first US "homophile" organization. Gernreich was
an Austrian refugee from the Nazis who brought with him both his
left-wing politics and his knowledge of the early agitation for
homosexual liberation in Germany, led in the first third of the last
century by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld.

Gernreich was in the same political orbit as Hay, and indeed the
earliest members of Mattachine were mostly drawn from the Popular
Front culture dominated by the Communist Party.

In order to organize Mattachine, Hay was obliged to leave the
Communist Party. As historian Phelps writes in his essay in New
Politics, "The Communist Party forbade membership to homosexuals on
the grounds that homosexuality was symptomatic of bourgeois
decadence, a perversion, a byproduct of capitalism and fascism. It
also viewed homosexuality, like drug use, as a security risk that
would make individuals susceptible to blackmail or exposure that
would discredit it."

Moreover, Phelps notes, "Although he left the Communist Party, Hay
brought many residues of his Stalinism with him. The Party's habits
of organization, combined with the circumstances of McCarthyism and
anti-gay repression (which demanded at least some modicum of
discretion), led Hay to conceive of Mattachine as a hierarchical
organization led by an inner circle while maintaining the secrecy of
the underground."

In other words, Hay followed a Leninist model of organization.

There was a different political tradition in the Socialist Party and
in its youth arm, the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL, commonly
pronounced "Yipsel"). The Yipsels "made no official prohibition
against same-sex desire and had no official ideology against it," as
Phelps records. "No one was ever expelled from the Socialist Party or
its youth group for 'deviancy' or 'bohemianism.'"

This meant that the author of the article on homosexual emancipation
in the Young Socialist, "H.L. Small" - undoubtedly a pseudonym, as
was common in radical publications during the era of McCarthyism to
prevent employer reprisals - "could write freely without fear of
suppression within the left, such as the expulsions gay Communists
experienced... YPSL members in the 1950s were attracted to
libertarian socialism - evincing, for example, a strong interest in
Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish-German revolutionary who supported the
Russian Revolution but was critical of the early Soviet state for its
ominous consolidation of power."

In his 1952 article, rediscovered by Phelps, "Small" drew on
democratic socialism's libertarian traditions, writing, "The freedom
of the legally of-age adult of both sexes to have sexual relations
with whomever he or she wishes of the same or opposite sex, without
fear of sanction, is an important libertarian principle that is part
of the law in many socialist and semi-socialist countries today,
e.g., in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, etc. It means, to the
individual 'deviant,' that the fear of legal sanction, as well as
illegal repression, blackmail, etc., are forever banished from his
mind. It means an area of operational freedom that will enable the
emancipated individual to work and think more effectively in his
tasks of everyday life. It means the difference between health and
sickness for thousands of people who are non-productive members of
society today... Whether we individually consider it right or wrong,
healthy or unhealthy, to have a large or small vocabulary of
libidinal expression, repression of such expression, or practice
under fear, does not make for a whole, productive individual.
Propaganda aimed toward the homosexual individual should stress his
importance as a political concern, it should point out his right to
what the Declaration of Independence called 'the pursuit of happiness'..."

Phelps deserves added points for recognizing the importance of his
rediscovery of this article because he is not himself gay, although
he has been in the forefront of the fight against anti-gay
discrimination on the campus where he teaches. And, as Phelps writes
in New Politics, the article "Socialism and Sex" "prefigured the
1960s. It urged socialists to understand the genesis of political
commitment and their ultimate goals in a capacious sense,
transcending narrow economic terms. It treated sexuality as a
political issue, comprehending the interrelationship between personal
and public in a manner strikingly similar to the subsequent feminist
position that 'the personal is political.' While the scant
intellectual resources available to a young person exploring such
questions in the early 1950s lent the article a modest temperament,
the document contains in embryonic form the admixture of socialism
and gay liberation that would find more militant, revolutionary
expression in the post-Stonewall explosion of such groups as the Gay
Liberation Front. For all these reasons, 'Socialism and Sex' is a
document of great significance in the larger sexual history of the
political left... It stands as an arresting forerunner of modern gay
civil rights consciousness."

Moreover, in a series of interviews with YPSL and Socialist Party
activists from the 1950s, Phelps discovered that the Party came very
close to adopting a homosexual emancipation plank in its platform at
its 1952 convention. The chairman of YPSL at that time was Vern
Davidson, a UCLA senior who had had several same-sex affairs,
including with other Party members, and who, he told Phelps, "was
instructed by the YPSL to attempt to put a homosexual rights plank
before the platform committee."

Norman Thomas, often called "the grand old man of American
socialism," who had been the Socialist Party's candidate for
president six times and who was widely admired as a man of principle
in progressive circles way beyond the Socialist Party, was
sympathetic when Davidson raised the idea of a homosexual
emancipation plank at the platform committee. As Davidson recalls,
"He said, 'Well, Vern, if the YPSL thinks that's something that we
should consider, I certainly think we should consider it, and I have
nothing against it, but I wish you could draw up something and come
back with it.'"

Davidson told Phelps he tried and tried to draft an appropriate
platform plank but "I just couldn't write anything that seemed to fit
into the platform. So I let it slide by. I had no guidance. We didn't
talk about 'discrimination based on sexual orientation' in those
days. That phrase would never have come to me. And everything was
going fast, we were fighting over the [Korean] war and everything,
and it didn't get done. And I take responsibility. But I believe to
this day, had I been able to do my job, Thomas would have joined me,
and we would have had it back then, in '52."

The fact that there was political discussion of what we now call gay
rights and an effort within the Socialist Party organized enough to
bring the question to the national decision-makers of the party in
the same time frame that Harry Hay and his pro-Communist circle were
giving birth to the Mattachine Society is a chapter of gay history
that until now has never been written.

Hay's semi-clandestine Leninist model for Mattachine eventually
failed. As Phelps writes, "By 1953, a majority of newer members,
hundreds of whom had joined after Mattachine successfully defended a
member in Los Angeles from police entrapment, came to feel
manipulated and sought an open, democratic organization. Hay opposed
them, holding that such a transformation would sacrifice 'all the
idealisms that we held while we were a private organization.'

"This membership rebellion, reflective of widespread distrust of the
initial conspiratorial and top-down structure, coincided with
threatened inquiry by Congressional investigative committees,
prompting Hay and other radical founders to withdraw from Mattachine
in 1953. As its new and more conservative leaders sought
respectability, the Mattachine Society lost many members and pursued
a timid, self-effacing course..."

Phelps' rediscovery of the "Socialism and Sex" article and the
organizational initiatives it reflected give rise to interesting
speculations as to what course the nascent homosexual emancipation
movement might have taken if the Socialist Party had indeed embraced
the cause back then. Eventually, it did become the first US political
party to put forward an openly gay candidate for president when, in
1980, it nominated veteran pacifist organizer David McReynolds as its
candidate.

Phelps' article in New Politics is a must read for anyone interested
in the history of the American gay movement, and it also was the
jumping-off point for a symposium of mini-essays in the magazine on
"Gays and the Left," with fascinating and widely different political
perspectives from McReynolds; Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Martin
Duberman, known as the "Father of Gay Studies"; historian John
D'Emilio, the biographer of gay civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and
the founding director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's
Policy Institute; gay theorist Jeffrey Escoffier, author of "American
Homo: Perversity and Community" and other books; and lesbian Bettina
Aptheker, a professor of feminist studies at the University of
California/Santa Cruz, who was the daughter of leading Communist
intellectual Herbert Aptheker and herself a former member of the CP
for two decades, and author of "Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red,
Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel."

As it happens, the same issue of New Politics also includes a
hitherto-unpublished poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini and a critique of his cinema.

If you can't find this important Summer 2008 issue of New Politics at
one of the better magazine shops, you may order it for $9 from New
Politics, 155 West 72 Street, Room 402, New York, 10023. The Phelps
article and mini-essays in the symposium on "Gays and the Left" are
also available online at http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/ .
--

Doug Ireland can be reached through his blog, DIRELAND, at
http://direland.typepad.com/

.

States cast wary eye on salvia

States cast wary eye on salvia

http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2008/jul/27/0727_salviadrug/

Legal herb is hallucinogenic

Sunday, July 27, 2008
By Sara Foss (Contact)
Gazette Reporter

NEW YORK STATE ­ Two years ago, the New York State Office of
Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services put an informational item
about a little-known hallucinogenic herb called Salvia divinorum on
its Web site.

Salvia is unregulated and can be purchased in head or smoke shops or
on the Internet by anyone with a credit card, and it isn't illegal.

Now, a growing number of states are considering banning or regulating
salvia, which is said to trigger intense but relatively brief hallucinations.

Earlier this year, the New York State Senate passed a bill that would
have made it illegal to sell salvia in New York, but a similar
measure died in the state Assembly. In Massachusetts, legislators are
considering a bill that would ban salvia, and the Drug Enforcement
Agency lists salvia as a "drug of concern." Twelve states, including
Maine and California, have already moved to ban or regulate it.

Though salvia use is far from prevalent in the Capital Region, it's
something drug-prevention experts are aware of.

"We haven't seen a lot of use," said Patty Kilgore, clinical director
at the Saratoga Partnership for Prevention. "We've seen a lot of kids
who are aware of it. … More kids know about it than are actually
using it. It's not classified, but it probably should be."

Kilgore said she's talked to a few teens who have used salvia. She
said there are several reasons teens are less likely to use salvia
than other drugs. For one thing, they may not have a credit card,
which would make it more difficult to purchase salvia online. Some
kids have also complained that salvia is not a "good high" ­ that
because the drug is unregulated, it doesn't always produce the
desired effect. And addicts, she noted, are less likely to use
hallucinogenics because you develop a tolerance to them more quickly.
"Salvia isn't a daily use type of drug," she said.

Nancy Johnson, coordinator of the Schenectady County Substance Abuse
Prevention Partnership, said staff first learned about salvia about a
year and a half ago, when a parent reported that a child's friend had
used the drug. "We were all on the Internet researching it, but then
things died down," she said. "We haven't heard anyone talk about salvia since."

The Schenectady County Substance Abuse Prevention Partnership sent
information about salvia to parents, Johnson said, to make them aware
of it. But in terms of teenage substance abuse, alcohol and marijuana
remain the biggest problems, and officials are concerned about
illicit prescription drug use, she said. Some kids have started
holding "rainbow parties," where they throw different pills into a
bowl, mix them up and then take one or two of them, she said.

Dianne Henk, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Alcoholism and
Substance Abuse Services, said OASAS decided to post the item on
salvia on the agency's Web site after the agency's medical director
read several articles about the drug.

Henk said that it's important that parents know about the drug, and
how easy it is to obtain over the Internet. "Because it's so easy to
obtain and not regulated, it's something the medical community is
talking about," she said. "Because we know the Internet spreads the
word, and because we know there's a great deal of information on the
Internet, the sense was that it was important to address it."

Right now, the state has no plans to regulate salvia, Henk said. "Our
focus is 'let's educate as much as possible,'" she said.

The legislation to outlaw salvia in New York was proposed by state
Sen. John Flanagan, R-Smithtown. "Parents are unaware of this," said
Robert Caroppoli, a spokesman for Flanagan. "[Flanagan] sees it as a
gateway drug to harsher drugs. He decided that if the federal
government wasn't going to do anything, he would try to do something here."

Determining how many people in New York have used salvia is tricky.

"It's not a substance which we track," Henk said.

A National Survey of Drug Use and Health report released in February
found that more people are using salvia.

"There is evidence suggesting the emergence of new hallucinogens,
such as Salvia divinorum, which has been marketed as an 'herbal
high,'" the report noted. About 1.8 million people aged 12 and older
have used salvia in their lifetime, and approximately 750,000 did so
in 2006. In comparison, approximately 23 million people aged 12 and
older have used LSD in their lifetime, but fewer than 700,000 people
used LSD in 2006.

Salvia, which is also known as diviner's sage, is a psychoactive drug
that is typically smoked, but can also be absorbed by chewing, tea
infusions or inhaling the vapors of the burning leaves. It is a
perennial herb in the mint family, native to Mexico, where the
Mazaetc Indians use it in healing ceremonies. But little is known
about its long-term effects.

The OASAS item on salvia states, "Currently, there is a lack of
information regarding plants or weeds commonly found in our
environment that can cause serious legal harm when ingested, smoked
or rubbed into the skin. Most of these substances are not illegal. …
Research suggests that teen misuse of these weeds and plants
increases when they are in bloom in the spring and summer months,
though they can be used year round and could possibly be purchased
over the Internet."

.

35 years of drug war failure

[2 items]

35 years of drug war failure

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/steigerwald/s_577348.html

By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, July 13, 2008

Belated birthday greetings to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The DEA, which Richard Nixon created in 1973 and charged with the
impossible but politically useful mission of winning the "all-out
global war on the drug menace," turned 35 on July 1.

So, how's its track record after 35 years of difficult, often
dangerous drug-war-making? If the DEA were a heroin addict, it would
have overdosed on its own incompetence by age 6.

Despite its failures and the harm it's done to American society,
however, the DEA has done more than merely survive. It's become a
typically bloated, self-preserving federal bureaucracy whose power,
budget and continuing existence bear no relation to its performance.

In 1974 the DEA had 1,470 special agents, a budget of less than $75
million ($346 million in 2007 money) and 43 offices in 31 countries.

Today, it has 5,235 special agents, a $2.3 billion budget and 87
offices in 63 countries.

If you consider locking up mostly pot smokers and other perpetrators
of victimless crimes a valid measure of success in the war on drugs,
the DEA and its fellow state and local drug warriors deserve high praise.

Annual drug arrests have tripled in the last 25 years to 1.8 million
in 2005 (when 43 percent of all drug arrests were for marijuana
offenses). And we had about 500,000 drug criminals in various
federal, state and local slammers in 2005, compared with 41,000 in 1980.

The DEA touts its latest alleged successes in cutting demand for
drugs on its Web page
(usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/cngrtest/ct031208_successes08.pdf). If you can
believe the DEA's current statistics or those annual pronouncements
of tough-talking White House drug czars, we're winning the drug war
-- again and again.

Yet today illegal drugs are as plentiful and cheap as ever. And rates
of drug use are essentially the same as they were when the DEA was
born, according to Monitoring the Future, which each year since 1975
has studied the behaviors, attitudes and values of 50,000 American
high schoolers.

Based on Monitoring the Future's latest study, the DEA's most
significant career victory over drugs is that the percentage of
12th-graders who reported using marijuana dropped from 40 percent in
1975 to 31.7 percent in 2007.

Otherwise, despite untold billions blown on the war on drugs, the
percentage of kids in 1975 who reported using cocaine (5.6 percent)
and heroin (1 percent) has dropped insignificantly to 5.2 percent and
0.9 percent, respectively, in 2007.

Meanwhile, a new study of drug use by the World Health Organization
casts further doubt on the long-term efficacy of our war on drugs.

Of 17 countries surveyed, China and Japan had the lowest rates of
drug use and the United States had the highest rate -- by far.

Obviously, culture, economics and politics play important roles, but
WHO's researchers found that there's no relationship between a
country's strict anti-drug policies and its levels of drug use.

Maybe it's unfair to dump on the DEA, especially on its birthday.
After all, it's only following orders.

It's not the DEA's fault that for 35 years Congress and seven
presidents haven't had the brains or the political courage to
decriminalize marijuana or at least work to humanize America's drug policy.

So happy birthday, DEA. But not many happy returns.
--

Bill Steigerwald is the Tribune-Review's associate editor. He can be
reached at bsteigerwald@tribweb.com or 412-320-7983.

--------

Dissing the DEA

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/letters/send/s_579277.html

Friday, July 25, 2008

As a former special agent in charge serving in South America,
Thailand, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, and with over 35
years experience in all phases of narcotic enforcement, I take
exception to Bill Steigerwald's column criticizing the Drug
Enforcement Administration for becoming a "bloated, self-preserving
federal bureaucracy whose power, budget and continuing existence bear
no relation to its performance" ("35 years of drug war failure", July
13 and PghTrib.com).

The DEA doesn't waste valuable time arresting pot smokers and
perpetrators of victimless crimes.

• Fifty high-ranking Mafia families, Gambino, Genevese and Ormento,
were all arrested and jailed in New York for drug trafficking and conspiracy.

• Undercover operation "French Connection" arrested Auguste Ricord
for conspiracy and importing multi kilos of heroin into the U.S. This
case was made as a result of DEA cooperation with the French and U.S.
police in New York and with Interpol.

• Timothy Leary, the guru of LSD, was charged with illegal
manufacturing of the drug and setting up numerous labs nationwide.

• In San Francisco, 40 Hell's Angels were arrested and charged with
drug and racketeering charges.

• The DEA in cooperation with foreign diplomats and law enforcement
officials caused the extradition of numerous Mafia drug traffickers
from Thailand, South America, Mexico and Europe.

Mr. Steigerwald made no mention of numerous DEA, state, local and
foreign agents who lost their lives fighting the drug wars.

And it should be noted that the responsibility of setting U.S. drug
policy enforcement and intelligence gathering lies with the DEA, FBI,
U.S. Customs, CIA, U.S. Coast Guard, State Department, Congress, the
White House and state and local law enforcement agencies.

I agree with Mr. Steigerwald that the marijuana laws should be
decriminalized, but that would take the White House's and Congress' approval.

Daniel J. Addario
New Bern, N.C.

.

OBIT: Katherine Kinkade, founder of Twin Oaks

[3 articles]

Kathleen 'Kat' Kinkade, 77; Pioneer Started Va. Commune

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/15/AR2008071502719.html

By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Kathleen "Kat" Kinkade, 77, a founding member of a rural Virginia
commune called Twin Oaks Community, died July 3 of complications
related to bone cancer. She had been a resident of Twin Oaks, about
35 miles southeast of Charlottesville, since its beginning in 1967.

Eighty-five income-sharing adults and 15 children continue the
communal experiment Ms. Kinkade helped originate. Each member
receives food, housing, health care and personal spending money from
the community, whose income derives primarily from making
high-quality rope hammocks, casual furniture, indexing books and tofu.

Her involvement with communal living began when she was a 36-year-old
secretary and single mother in Los Angeles and happened to read
"Walden Two," a utopian fantasy by Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner.
The novel imagines a self-contained communal society of 1,000 people
who solve life's problems through behavioral engineering.

"I read 'Walden Two' throughout one day, breaking only to get up and
pace the floor and shout, 'This is what I want!' " Ms. Kinkade told
The Washington Post in 1998.

She wrote Skinner, asking whether there was a real Walden Two that
she could join, but got no reply. A friend pointed out a small
classified ad in a magazine from a D.C. cabdriver named Wayne who was
interested in launching a Walden Two community. Ms. Kinkade and her
daughter moved across the country to join Wayne's group house.

Wayne went his own way, and Ms. Kinkade married another boarder in
the house. The couple eventually found a fellow "Walden Two"
enthusiast who provided seed money to lease a small tobacco farm
southeast of Charlottesville. She, her husband and her daughter were
among the eight Twin Oaks founders.

Unlike thousands of other communes that sprang up in the 1960s only
to succumb to the perplexities of shared living, Twin Oaks gradually
began to flourish, despite early hardship and dissension. It grew to
almost a hundred communards, became a self-sustaining land trust of
450 efficiently managed acres and began to thrive financially when it
signed a long-term contract with Pier 1 for its hammocks.

Although she was involved in founding two other income-sharing
communities -- in Missouri and Virginia -- she told The Post in 1998
that communal life had not measured up to her expectations.

"My mother was disappointed that Twin Oaks did not turn out to be the
model for what the rest of our society would be," said her daughter,
Dr. Josie Kinkade of Louisa, Va. "When she found out that it was
really just a nice place for some middle-class people to live, she
was disappointed."

Kinkade said she reminded her mother that she had created a
"university of life," and she seemed satisfied with that assessment.

Ms. Kinkade was born in Seattle, grew up poor during the Depression
and became the first person in her working-class family to go to
college, when she attended the University of Washington for a year.
She dropped out to marry an Army sergeant. When the marriage
dissolved, she took her 4-year-old daughter to live in Mexico City,
where she taught English to first-graders at a private school.

She returned to the United States in 1960, got a job as a secretary
and became a folk dancer. She encountered "Walden Two" as an
assignment for a class she was taking during night school. Although
the novel was the inspiration for her communal vision, Twin Oaks, as
it evolved, bore little resemblance to Skinner's utopian fantasy.

She quickly discovered communal living was devilishly difficult.
"Freeloading hippies began to turn up," reporter Tamara Jones noted
in a 1998 Washington Post magazine story. "Personality clashes made
living cooperatively a constant challenge."

She found herself swamped with administrative chores and complaints
that she was too authoritarian. Eventually, the community brought in
facilitators to mediate the power struggle, and their recommendations
resulted in more democratic governance.

Although Ms. Kinkade persevered, the challenge never got easier. "She
left Twin Oaks once, 'with a man, but he wasn't mine,' " she once
told The Post, "and she started a new commune that also frustrated
and disappointed her. She ventured into the outside world for a
while, then surprised herself by coming back."

She also got involved in sacred harp music through the nearby
Yanceyville Church, where, as an atheist, she sang in the choir
because she loved the harmonious, shape-note singing of the sacred
harp tradition.

At 70, she moved into a tiny house in nearby Mineral (the first house
she had ever owned) and enjoyed planting flowers and rescuing
abandoned kittens. When she became too weak to live alone, Twin Oaks
took her back in and community members tended to her needs until her death.

Ms. Kinkade's marriages to Donald Logsdon and George Griebe ended in divorce.

In addition to her daughter, from her first marriage, survivors
include a granddaughter.

--------

Community living tests utopian beliefs

http://www.vindy.com/news/2008/jul/26/community-living-tests-utopian-beliefs/

July 26, 2008

When Kathleen Kincaid, 77, died from complications of bone cancer
earlier this month, her dream died with her.

Her greatest hope was to create communities of caring persons who, by
shunning possessions and ambition, might create the best of all
possible worlds for themselves ­ little heavens on earth.

Utopians have been around forever, but "Kat" Kincaid's definition of
Eden originated in the 1960s, when alienated young men and women fled
from commerce and conflict to form rural communes ­ extended families
of otherwise unrelated persons devoted to becoming economically and
contentedly self-sufficient.

In 1967 she was a single mother living with her infant daughter in
Los Angeles. As a class assignment in night school, she read the book
"Walden Two" by B.F. Skinner, a psychologist who argued that people
could re-program their lives to provide for one another's needs and
live peacefully together.

After moving to a group house in Washington, D.C., she married a
resident. Together, they inspired another would-be utopian to lease a
small Virginia farm 35 miles from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Five
more enthusiasts joined them to create a primitive community they
named Twin Oaks. Members come and go, but today, 41 years later, Twin
Oaks is still home to an extended family of 85 income-sharing adults
and 15 children.

Joe Holley, writing in The Washington Post, reveals that "each member
receives food, housing, health care, and personal spending money from
the community, whose income derives primarily from making
high-quality rope hammocks and casual furniture" plus indexing books
and marketing tofu.

When freeloading hippies tried to crash the community, "Kat" quickly
discovered that governing a utopian community was an onerous task.
Her daughter, now a physician, says, "My mother was disappointed that
Twin Oaks did not turn out to be the model for what the rest of our
society would be. When she found out that it was really just a nice
place for some middle-class people to live, she was disappointed."

After a time, she left Twin Oaks to help create two similar
income-sharing communes in Missouri and Virginia. In retirement, she
bought her own little house in Mineral, Va., and devoted her life to
planting flowers and rescuing abandoned kittens. When she was no
longer able to live alone, her former Twin Oaks "family" invited her
back and cared for her until her death.

Utopians share a belief in the innocence and perfectibility of human
nature ­ a faith that is severely tested by the rigors of cooperative
living. Although 1960s-style secular communes are hard-pressed to
survive, there are some 20,000 thriving utopian communities across
the nation. The vast majority of them are religiously motivated.
Their members acknowledge human conflict and the need for mutual
discipline to ensure peace. They find it in God's providence.

It's worth mentioning that, although "Kat" Kincaid's utopianism had
no room for religious faith, she refused to allow her atheism to keep
her from singing in the Yanceyville Church choir.

--------

OBIT:
KATHERINE KINKADE, 77

Founder of utopian commune

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/obituaries/bal-md.delse28.1jul28,0,5106222.story

7/28/08

American soil has proved to be fertile ground for utopian
communities. Since the days of Brook Farm, they have come and gone -
most of them quickly. Twin Oaks, an experimental community near
Charlottesville, Va., inspired by the behaviorist ideas of
psychologist B.F. Skinner, still survives after nearly 40 years.
Katherine Kinkade, one of its founders, died there July 3.

The cause was breast cancer, said her daughter, Josie Kinkade.

Inspired by the ideal society described in Mr. Skinner's book Walden
Two, Ms. Kinkade, who was known as Kat, joined seven other fellow
believers in 1967 and took over a former tobacco farm to realize her
vision of a perfect egalitarian society.

It was not easy. The farm's well ran dry, cows starved over the
winter and rammed-earth bricks did not generate the kind of revenue
that the founders had hoped for. Pot-smoking hippies who drifted into
the commune found themselves at odds with work-ethic missionaries
like Ms. Kinkade, whose blunt practicality and executive talent -
rare qualities in the counterculture - helped the stumbling colony
achieve not just self-sufficiency but something resembling prosperity.

"She was the Hillary Clinton of Twin Oaks," her daughter said.

In 1964, while living in Los Angeles and working in a dead-end
secretarial job, she read Walden Two. Mr. Skinner's novel, about
people living in an egalitarian society, strikes many readers as
bloodless and forbidding, but Ms. Kinkade responded ecstatically. She
wrote to the author asking whether such a community existed and
whether she could join.

She received no reply, concluded that there was no such community and
decided to create one.

Ms. Kinkade found a house in Washington, D.C., whose residents were
trying to put Walden Two into practice and had been living there for
two years when a wealthy devotee of Mr. Skinner lent the residents
money to buy a 123-acre tobacco farm.

"They really thought that the rest of the world would see their
community and follow its example," Josie Kinkade said. "Today I think
Twin Oaks sees itself more as an eco-village, living lightly on the land."

In addition to producing hammocks, an important generator of revenue
for the community, Twin Oaks makes foods like tofu in three flavors
and vegetarian sausage.

Ms. Kinkade helped found two other communes, East Wind, in Columbia,
Mo.; and Acorn, a few miles away from Twin Oaks in Louisa County. Both survive.

.

Down time: Hawkwind

Down time: Hawkwind

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article4386490.ece

July 27, 2008
Robert Sandall

One of British rock's most enduring hippie institutions, Hawkwind
formed in 1969 and staked their claim as heroes of the counterculture
by playing a free gig outside the Isle of Wight festival. As famous
for their open-door membership policy as their "space rock" sound,
Hawkwind have 29 alumni, including Cream's drummer, Ginger Baker, and
Lemmy. Only the guitarist and main songwriter, Dave "Dr Technical"
Brock, has survived the band's shake-ups. A live album, Knights of
Space, is out tomorrow.

1 Silver Machine Their big space-boogie hit - No 3 in 1972 - had to
be sung by the bassist, Lemmy, after Robert Calvert was sectioned.
2 Urban Guerrilla Released as a single in 1973, just as the IRA's
mainland bombing campaign began, and promptly banned by the BBC.
3 Kings of Speed A Spectorish production, with lyrics by their
literary mentor, Michael Moorcock.
4 Motorhead The last song Lemmy wrote, in 1974, before leaving to
form the band of the same name.
5 The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke) The band's signature
anthem in the 1970s.
6 Back on the Streets With punk kicking off, they reasserted their
anarcho-street credentials.
7 Quark, Strangeness and Charm A song about a sexually inept
astronomer, which, unusually, poked fun at the band's cosmic agenda.
8 Master of the Universe By 1983, Brock and co were the last space
hippies still in business.
9 Right to Decide A convincing stab at techno-rock, from the 1992
album Electric Tepee.
10 Love in Space Still out there, live, in 1996.

.

Party like it's 1969

Party like it's 1969

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080728/NEWS04/807280358/1003/NEWS02

July 28, 2008
By Brent Curtis Herald Staff

BENNINGTON ­ The Elks Lodge on Washington Street was a hip place to
be on Sunday.

Tie-dyed T-shirts, moon beads and hair ­ long, flowing,
untamed-freak-flag manes of hair ­ filled the otherwise square and
well-kempt dining hall at the lodge where the casting call for
Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee's new movie, "Taking
Woodstock," was held.

Hippies and those willing to play the part stood in line, posed for
Polaroid shots and interviewed with casting directors, who asked them
questions about their availability during the August shoot in New
Lebanon, N.Y., queried them about their musical and acting talents
and inquired about their willingness to participate in nude scenes
written into the film. A casting call took place in Brattleboro Saturday.

Nude or not, the dozens of people who came to audition were ready to
get their groove on.

"It's all about the outfits," 50-year-old Valerie Toenes said, in her
colored skirts and a hair wrap that complemented her daughter's peace
sign and guitar nicely. "We figured if we got in, great. If not we at
least had fun finding the outfits."

Toenes, who hinted at hippie-style leanings in her past and her
14-year-old daughter Jillon McGreal, who said she went through a
hippie phase way back in middle school, drove up from Chatham, N.Y.,
to try their luck.

None of the participants learned on Sunday whether they were in or
out, but Toenes and McGreal said the directors seemed interested in
the mother's free-flowing hair and tarot card reading and the
daughter's guitar playing.

Toenes, who most days inhabits a professional office suite where she
works as an architect, said she expected those talents to attract interest.

What they didn't expect was the directors' interest in the family dog.

"They said they might be interested in recruiting our dog," Toenes
said of the family's black Labrador-Rottweiler. "That was a surprise."

Toenes and McGreal said they planned to shop for a tie-dyed dog
collar or a neckerchief to get their pooch ready for the part.

Mother and daughter were like many people at the audition in one key
respect ­ they weren't real hippies.

Stephanie Hedges of Lenox, Mass., for example, never experimented
with the counterculture lifestyle. But as an actress with a resume
ranging from locally produced plays to extra roles in movies such as
"National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" and television shows such as
"Walker, Texas Ranger," Hedges said she's up to taking on an unfamiliar role.

Unfortunately, her wardrobe wasn't.

But after digging through her closet, the 39-year-old said she hit
upon a transparent paisley blouse ­ actually two large bandanas sewn
together ­ which had a quasi-hippie appeal to it.

As a payday, the extra role would pay Hedges and the other extras
$100 to $130 a day with some meals thrown in.

But Hedges said auditioning for extra roles can be worth the trip
because non-speaking roles can transform into speaking roles if
directors see talent.

"Ideally, a speaking role is what I'm hoping for," she said.

Nine-year-old Skylar Burditt of Rutland looked like a hippie with his
face half-hidden behind long blonde locks of hair.

But Burditt said he doesn't know what a hippie is and he certainly
isn't into the music of the '60s ­ he likes his hair long, according
to his dad, so he can head-bang to the English heavy-metal band Iron Maiden.

"I know it was a concert with about 5,000 people," Burditt said when
asked what he knew about Woodstock.

What Burditt does know is he wants to be an actor some day and a
small role in a movie is just the stepping stone that the Rutland
youngster, who has acted in two plays, said he is looking for.

Ironically, longtime hippies Janet Gordon and David Cook have
something in common with the 9-year-old ­ their experience with
Woodstock is limited to what they've heard.

Both Gordon, 62, and Cook, 58, were immersed in the counterculture
when the iconic music and arts festival rolled onto Max Yasgur's
600-acre farm for three days of love and music.

But Gordon, who was living in a commune, was pregnant at the time and
Cook, who was living in Massachusetts, said he couldn't hitch a ride.

Now Gordon, who works as a nurse, and Cook, who live together in
Pownal, have a chance to relive history.

And Gordon, who said she was inspired to audition in part because of
her successful bout with breast cancer last year, said she has every
intention of playing the extra role like it's 1969 again.

"They asked me if I would do a nude shot and I said, 'Oh yeah,'" she said.
--

Contact Brent Curtis at brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com.

.

Boomer Babes a Hit with the Baby Boomer Crowd

Boomer Babes a Hit with the Baby Boomer Crowd

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/69622

Dorothy Thompson
July 27, 2008

What do you get when you mix Sex and The City on replacement hormones
and Viagra? You get Boomer Babes: True Tales of Love and Lust in the
Later Years of course!

Maria Grazia Swan´s newest book, Boomer Babes: True Tales of Love and
Lust in the Later Years, is the perfect solution to some outrageous
inspiration to kick start your love life or grab some sizzling
salacious gossip about the woman who could be your next door neighbor!

It´s no surprise that the generation who burned bras and brought you
the The Summer of Love continues to redefine the way the world thinks
about sex. Long-term lovers or one-night stands, there´s nothing
these women haven´t tried. And now they dish on some of their dirtiest secrets!

Chock full of revolutionary real-life stories, tantalizing celebrity
trivia and Cosmo-esque quizzes, Boomer Babes´ wisdom can be put to
use by woman of any age.

Maria Grazia Swan is a writer and Realtor based in Phoenix, Arizona.
When her house was burned down by a stalker in 1998, she became an
advocate for the safety of people living alone. As a result, she
began getting more single clients in her real-estate business. Soon
after that, she began hosting singles parties and is now responsible
for bringing together a number of happy couples.

Swan is a columnist for the online magazine Single for Now .She has
also written a monthly column for singles in Life in Southern
California, a magazine based in Orange County. She has been featured
several times in The Arizona Republic and is the winner of an award
from the Women´s National Book Association.

Swan immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1969. She is the
divorced mother of two and grandmother of two.

You can visit her website at www.boomerbabesbook.com.

.

Democratic Socialist Solidarity and the Farm Workers’ Struggles

Democratic Socialist Solidarity and the Farm Workers' Struggles

http://theactivist.org/blog/?p=303

Jul 25th, 2008
by Perry Landman-Hopman

The ties between American democratic socialism and the struggles of
farm workers have existed for over a century. Since the founding of
the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in 1901, democratic socialist
ideals have been often found at the root of farm workers' struggles.
The Socialist Party of America was formed by the merging of the
Social Democratic Party and a faction of the Socialist Labor Party.
The SPA focused on interaction with organizations such as the
Industrial Workers of the World, whose objectives emphasized
industrial inequities and the necessity of worker unification. Thus,
the SPA revolutionized the idea of industrial unionizing by expanding
to the level of mass organization. The notion of mass organization is
parallel and further demonstrates the long-standing links between
democratic socialism and the struggles of the working class,
particularly farm workers. In fact, democratic socialist solidarity
has often found itself manning the frontlines in this battle for justice.

While democratic socialism finds its roots in a multitude of
philosophies, the central theme is that democracy and socialism go
hand and hand and more importantly, that there is a need to extend
true democratic accountability to the political and economic spheres
of society. Thus, Democratic socialists believe organized labor is a
necessary check to the power of business under capitalism, and that
organized labor will play a central role in the movement towards a
post-capitalist future. American democratic socialist involvement in
organized labor and farm worker struggles are exemplified in the
1930s by the formation of the Share Cropper's Union (SCU). The SCU
was a large labor force in the deep South consisting primarily of
disenfranchised tenant workers and sharecroppers, a majority of whom
were minorities. The ability of share croppers and tenant farmers to
successfully organize in the face of the mechanization and
proletarianization in the South marked the first of many major
victories of farm workers in the struggle for justice. Using strikes
and taking direct action against both police and corporate
authorities, the SCU along with other sharecropper organizing
substantiated the notion of the potential power held in these farm
worker organizations.

This belief proved vital to the formation and success of the National
Farm Workers Association, founded by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta,
who is today a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Honorary
Co-Chair. The National Farm Workers Association soon became the
United Farm Workers Association (UFW), the nation's first successful
and largest farm workers union. In 1965, an independent group of
Mexican and Filipino farm workers orchestrated the beginnings of the
historic grape boycott that would last through 1970, staging a
walkout that Cesar Chavez used as a spark to nationally ignite the
UFW. Chavez understood the importance of demonstrating the potential
power within an organization such as UFW and set about sending
representatives of the grape boycott throughout the entire country.
In New York and Chicago, the local Socialist Party chapters were
known to be particularly helpful in aiding these representatives.
Organizations that were affiliated with the Socialist Party of
America, before the formation of DSA, took on the jobs of finding
them homes and providing them with the networks that allowed for
success. Democratic socialist solidarity was particularly helpful in
New York where grape consumption was decreased by 90%, due in large
part to the cooperation between UFW activists and democratic
socialist advocates such as DSA Chair Michael Harrington.

One of the more important results of the connection between DSA and
UFW became the work of Eliseo Medina, currently the Vice President of
the Service Employees International Union and highest ranking
immigrant union official in the United States. Medina, a UFW activist
in the 1960s, was sent to Chicago with the orders of organizing and
extending the grape boycott. In 1969, Medina came into contact with
Carl Shier, a member of the local Socialist Party of America chapter
and later to be one of the founders of the Democratic Socialist
Organizing Committee, the organization that preceded DSA. Shier
connected Medina with the Chicago Labor movement, a decision that
propelled Medina's success with both the grape boycott and his
career. At a 2001 DSA national convention dinner honoring Eliseo
Medina and the work he did for organized labor and as DSA Honorary
Co-Chair, he epitomized the experience of many UFW activists in their
interaction and cooperation with democratic socialist solidarity:

"…it was the DSA chapter that adopted me in Chicago, that got us
food, found me a place to live…And so I want to thank you, 35 years
later, for what you did for me and for what you did for farm workers,
because, I think, thanks to that help, we were successful, and we did
stop the sale of grapes, and we did build a farm workers union."

Medina's organizing, with the help of the Chicago Labor movement,
resulted in a great deal of democratic socialist participation in the
grape boycott. This relationship did not exist only in Chicago,
however, and was represented in cities across the country. The main
engine of this work was the original Young People's Socialist League
(YPSL), the predecessor organization to the Young Democratic
Socialists. Chapters at schools such as Harvard and New York
University became very active in the grape boycott, spending
incredible amounts of time on the picket lines. Today's YPSL, an
affiliate of the Socialist Party of the United States of America
(SP-USA), is also active in farm worker solidarity.

One of the major ties between DSA and the struggles of farm workers
remains the common ground shared between the two entities in their
anti-racist and pro-immigrant right perspectives and activism. Recent
National Agricultural Workers Surveys shows that over 70% of farm
workers are born outside of the United States. Overall, 65% of the
farm working population is of Hispanic descent. Leo Casey, a former
National Director of DSA, formed the Sacramento Immigration Committee
(SIC) in 1976 in response to the disproportionate numbers of
minorities in farm work, a pattern that began well before the 20th
century. The focus of the SIC was immigrant rights and the continuing
expansion of the organization was prominent in the decision to merge
the institution into DSA, as their Anti-Racism Commission. Thus, this
branch of DSA has strong roots in the struggles of farm workers, with
the goal to ensure their ability to organize and protect their civil
rights. The formation of the SIC and Anti-Racism Commission show the
ability of democratic socialist solidarity to stay realistic with the
changing trends of society. While Dolores Huerta, the co-founder of
UFW, continued to show that it was "okay to be a socialist" ,
democratic socialists began to recognize the importance of a
partnership and mutual respect between their organization and the
growing Hispanic and Latino populations within the country. The goal
became to work with labor in an anti-racist manner, and more
importantly work with youth such as the Chicano student movements to
display the draw of democratic socialism and the importance of
organized labor to their shared cause.

While the 1960s saw the polarization of the African American and
white cultures, DSA used the 1970s and the new decade to emphasize
the importance of the Latino populations. Helping to organize
Latino-dominated organizations such as the Farm Worker's Organizing
Committee or farm workers unions of North Carolina, DSA saw the
importance of these organizations in respect to their mission. The
organizing of farm workers had three major achievements related to
both democratic socialist and farm workers goals. First was the
creation of unions and organized labor, a step that protected
immigrant worker's rights while also creating a greater sense of true
democracy in society. Second, this organizing often created a sense
of Latino solidarity, vital to the survival and flourishing of Latino
culture. Lastly, farm worker organizing served as a way for
immigrants to empower themselves and gain democratic control over
their own lives. Such reforms, which challenge structures of power,
are important to begin moving a capitalist society towards social
justice, and ultimately democratic socialism.

The emphasis on immigrant rights and organized labor has carried
through DSA into the 21st century. Currently, the struggle for
justice of immigrant and undocumented workers remains a high priority
of both the DSA and Young Democratic Socialists (YDS) national
agenda. While YDS, the youth section of DSA, has remained an ally of
the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) since the beginning of their
organization in 1993, DSA and YDS's more recent work with CIW shows
the continuing trend to fight for the rights of immigrant workers in
the face of big corporations. CIW has been noted on several accounts
for their achievements in fighting the unfair business practices of
Taco Bell, McDonald's, and now Burger King. Leading protests over the
wages paid to farm workers on tomato plantations with the
"penny-a-pound" movement, CIW was hugely successful in their fight
against Taco Bell and McDonald's. The "penny-a-pound" movement was
aimed at increasing the salary of farm workers by one cent per pound
of tomatoes picked, which in time and in large quantities takes CIW
members out of poverty wages. DSA was able to help publicize and
organize two conferences during the McDonald's struggle, as well as
house many CIW supporters in Chicago during the protests and
meetings. Along with financial contributions, the Greater Oak Park
Branch of Chicago DSA organized the final protest of McDonald's
before McDonald's agreed to the CIW terms, a protest that also drew
large support from YDS. Demonstrations organized and aided by YDS
chapters nationwide continue for the struggle against Burger King.
YDS members recently played a key role in the 2008 Student Labor Week
of Action where we were highlighted by Jobs with Justice for our
support work of CIW. DSA and YDS intend to continue the close
relationship between democratic socialism and the struggles of farm
workers. Democratic socialists believe that true democracy and social
equity are intrinsically linked and that neither can be reached until
all workers in society are viewed and treated equally.
--

Perry Landman-Hopman is a rising sophomore at the George Washington
University Elliott School of International Affairs, currently
pursuing two degrees in International Development Patterns with a
concentration in Africa and African History. He is interning with YDS
in the summer and plans to serve a large role in the founding of a
chapter at George Washington University in the fall.

.

Red Faces Over Obama's Red Mentor

Special Report:
Red Faces Over Obama's Red Mentor

http://www.rightsidenews.com/200807281562/culture-wars/special-report-red-faces-over-obama-s-red-mentor.html

July 28, 2008
By Cliff Kincaid

In a strange development, supporters of Barack Obama's childhood
mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, are openly debating the nature and
depth of Davis's commitment to the Communist Party and his
relationship with the Democratic candidate. The debate has gotten heated.

This unusual debate, which is taking place on Obama's official
website, raises the question once again as to why Obama has not been
asked by the major media about this relationship. Davis was
identified as a Communist Party member by various investigative
committees and acknowledged his party membership in a private letter
obtained by John Edgar Tidwell, who was sympathetic to Davis and
edited his books.

On one side of this debate is somebody claiming to be the son of
Davis. On the other side is Alan Maki, a political activist and union
organizer with a long history of involvement in left-wing causes.
Indeed, Maki confirms that he has been a member of the Communist
Party USA (CPUSA) and was a communist decades ago when he was in the
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

Although he doesn't support Obama because of his ties to Big
Business, Maki wrote a blog on the Obama website stating that he was
grateful to Obama for bringing Davis to his attention, and that he,
Maki, regarded Davis as his mentor, too. Maki announced establishment
of a "Frank Marshall Davis Roundtable for Change" and invited Obama
supporters to join it.

Maki did his homework, which is more than most of our own media have
done, and he obtained Davis's books. It is absolutely clear, Maki
stated, that Davis was a communist.

In his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, Obama cites "Frank" as
someone who gave him advice on various matters, including race,
American values, and college, and read poems to him during his
high-school years in Hawaii. One of Davis's poems was a tribute to
the Soviet Red Army. Another mocked the work of Christian missionaries.

New Zealand blogger Trevor Loudon was the first to alert people to
the fact that "Frank" was identified as Frank Marshall Davis, a
controversial black writer and poet, by Gerald Horne, a writer for a
CPUSA publication. Davis's influence over Obama could help explain
why the candidate associated with communists, socialists and
anti-American figures through college and his political life in Chicago.

Maki says his intention is to use Davis's writings "to advance the
unity of working people to be a voice to be reckoned with by the
Obama Administration, which to me, at this point, looks like will be
an overwhelming landslide victory over the Republicans."

Communist-style Change

Into the picture comes the person claiming to be the son of Frank
Marshall Davis, who posted some comments on the Obama website in
which he expresses the view that Maki and I are somehow in cahoots
because Maki agreed to talk to me about his views on communism and Obama.

While Maki doesn't personally like my conservative views, he was
honest and forthright about his own political beliefs. Maki posts his
telephone number, is easy to reach, and doesn't hide his political
affiliation. And since I reported the results of these conversations,
the person calling himself Mark Davis says Maki and I have become
"strange bedfellows" and involved in some kind of alliance against Obama.

This would be amusing were it not for the fact that this Mark Davis
figure seems determined to obscure the truth and tries to publish
this information on various Internet sites. Mark Davis has even
posted comments on the misnamed "Intellectual Conservative" website,
after somebody named Bob Stapler claimed it was a "delusion" on my
part to think that a communist named Frank Marshall Davis had any
impact on Obama. Stapler, who claims to be a conservative, refused to
correct the record after several requests and appeals for him to
examine the factual evidence in the Davis matter.

Sounding authoritative, this Mark Davis character has declared that
Frank Marshall Davis "was not a communist," was not Obama's "mentor,"
and that his influence over Obama has been "exaggerated." However, he
does contend that Obama did have "respect for Davis's social insight"
and showed "good will" toward him. Coming from someone claiming to be
Davis's son, these assertions might appear to hold some weight.

It is important to note that there is no denial that "Frank" was
Frank Marshall Davis. The main question, it seems, is how much
influence he exerted over Obama, and how much of a card-carrying
communist he actually was.

Lately, this same "Mark" has gone further, appearing to embrace
suggestions that it is somehow "defamation" to accuse Davis of being
a communist, even though reports from various committees and
investigations identified him as such and Davis admitted it in the
private letter cited by Tidwell. This is apparently a tactic to try
to prevent people from delving too deeply into the Obama-Davis relationship.

More investigations must and will be done, not only in regard to
Davis but also those in Hawaii and elsewhere who continue to cover up
for him. Indeed, the attacks on AIM for publicizing the Obama-Davis
link appear designed to protect associates of Davis from scrutiny. If
this is the intention, the tactic has backfired.

AIM is vowing to publish more information about Davis and his supporters.

Tell the Truth

Clearly, there is an effort underway to sanitize or play down the
Obama-Davis relationship and try to intimidate the major media into
not covering it. But it is unusual, to say the least, that some of
this effort is occurring on the official Obama website. The reaction,
which makes the controversy even more newsworthy and significant,
suggests that the truth is seeping out through other means, mostly in
the alternative media, and increasing the pressure at least on
Obama's supporters to deal with the matter.

In another strange twist, Mark Davis claims some of his comments have
been taken off the Obama website, but some freely remain (see comment
37) on the AIM website, which is open to a variety of views in the
form of comments on posted columns. Some Davis comments were
apparently deleted from the Obama website on the ground that they
were "part of a racist, anti-Semitic hate campaign" against Maki.
Davis insists they were not of that nature.

Eventually, if this controversy about Frank Marshall Davis continues
to build, Obama could be personally forced by the media to respond,
in the same way that former Democratic vice presidential candidate
Geraldine Ferraro had to hold a full-blown press conference to answer
questions about her husband's alleged Mob connections.

Maki thinks it admirable that Davis was a communist, but the odds are
that few Americans would agree with him.

It is a problem not only for Obama and his campaign, but for those
who associated with and covered up for Davis.

If Mark Davis is truly Davis's son, one would think he would know the
truth and have inside information about his father. His thin
"profile" on the Obama website claims he is an Obama supporter but
not registered to vote. It's difficult, of course, to determine a
true identity based on the limited information available about this
person on the Internet. But it is Obama's website and should be taken
somewhat seriously. Maki has reported that he got a telephone call
from the "real" Mark Davis, suggesting the one posting comments
supposedly in defense of Davis is somebody else.

In any case, Maki is rightly perplexed by the claims that Davis was
not a communist, noting that Davis's own books frankly explore his
communist views.

"Let me get this straight," Maki told Davis, "you are disowning
everything Frank Marshall Davis wrote. Who cares about the use of the
term 'mentor?' Look in any dictionary, you are quibbling about terms
that mean the same no matter who uses them...How come you haven't
taken issue with the editor of the books, John Edgar Tidwell and the
Publishers, University of Wisconsin Press and University Press of
Mississippi. I think you should contact the editor and publishers and
have them either stand behind what has been written or disown it...as
you are fully aware, IF YOU HAVE EVER READ either of the two books,
the only thing I have done is quote the books and say the same thing
the editor has stated."

Maki was referring to Livin' the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist
and Poet, as well as The Writings of Frank Marshall Davis: A Voice Of
the Black Press. Tidwell, the editor referred to by Maki, has to be
taken seriously.

In fact, in Livin' the Blues, Davis charges black writer Richard
Wright with "treason" for leaving and exposing the CPUSA. This is the
mark of a hard-core communist.

"Out of curiosity," says Maki to Mark Davis, "do you think Karl Marx
was a Communist?"

Red and Proud

Maki declared that "If there is one thing Frank Marshall Davis makes
clear is that he had the utmost respect for Communists because of the
way Communists fight for the rights of working people and against
racism. Frank Marshall Davis was entitled to his political
views-there is no doubt he joined the ranks of members of the
Communist Party USA along with his very good friends Benjamin Davis
and Paul Robeson...for you to deny this is cowardly, shameful and disgusting."

Maki also reported, "After calling the publishers [of Davis's books],
they said they never heard from anyone in the family upset with
anything in the books; nor is the family contesting anything in the books."

In the introduction to another Frank Marshall Davis book, Black
Moods, Tidwell quotes an undated private letter written by Davis in
which he confesses that "I have recently joined the Communist party."
The letter was an effort to recruit the prominent writer and poet
Irma Wassall to the CPUSA. Tidwell says that Davis was a "closet"
member of the CPUSA and issued "public denials of his activities."
The FBI engaged in surveillance of Davis and maintained a file on him, he says.

All Mark Davis had to do was read the books. Perhaps he didn't like
what he saw. Or perhaps he's not really the son of Frank Marshall
Davis. Perhaps he should post his birth certificate, like his
candidate claims to have done. But that would not in any way dispute
what we know about Frank Marshall Davis.

Davis's CPUSA Membership

Beyond this controversy, there are some legitimate questions about
Davis's party membership. Tidwell notes that it is not clear how long
Davis stayed with the party. It is also not clear when he joined the
party. However, the same letter cited by Tidwell quotes Davis as
saying that "I have had leanings in that direction [i.e. Marxism]
since I was in college." Ultimately, Frank Marshall Davis is to blame
for any questions about the timing and duration of his party
membership because he publicly refused to talk about it. This is a
void that a real son of Frank Marshall Davis should be expected to
fill with facts and figures, not denials of documented reality.

Tidwell confirms that Davis was "actively involved" in the League of
American Writers as early as 1938, and that Davis came to realize
that the organization was a CPUSA front. Even earlier, in 1936,
Tidwell notes, Davis was associated with the National Negro Congress,
whose executive committee officers "were either party members or
fellow travelers."

As I noted in a recent column, thanks to the work of researcher
Herbert Romerstein, we have evidence of Davis signing a statement by
the League of American Writers in June 1941 opposing war against Nazi
Germany at a time of the Hitler-Stalin pact. This was a reflection of
the CPUSA line.

Earlier, in November 1940, we find the name of Frank Marshall Davis
on a list of endorsers of a National Negro Congress event that
included a statement objecting to "war hysteria" and being "engaged
in another war." Romerstein, who also uncovered this information,
points out, "This was of course consistent with the line of the
Communist Party during the Soviet Nazi alliance against national defense."

The Red Record

Official congressional hearings and investigations confirm Davis's
history of membership and involvement with the CPUSA and its fronts,
and his activities as a Stalinist. As late as 1956, Davis was
appearing before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and
refusing to deny his CPUSA membership. He also refused to deny that
he was a member of the faculty of the communist Abraham Lincoln
School in Chicago.

This is significant because, as Romerstein describes it in the
44-page report, "Communism in Hawaii and the Obama Connection," the
Commission on Subversive Activities of the Legislature of the
Territory of Hawaii reported on February 28, 1955, that "About
November 1950, the communist party in Hawaii was reorganized on an
underground basis...In the new organization, party groups were to
consist of not more than three members. Groups were identified by
numbers (1-10) rather than by names, as formerly." Among those
identified as having been members of the underground groups were
Frank Marshall Davis and his wife Helen C. Davis.

Lawyer for the Accused

What's also interesting about the Davis appearance before the Senate
is the fact that his lawyer was Harriet Bouslog, identified as a
CPUSA member in the 1959 House Committee on Un-American Activities
report, "Communist Legal Subversion. The Role of the Communist
Lawyer." Bouslog was identified as a CPUSA member by two witnesses,
both former communists.

Bouslong, it turns out, was the star of a 2004 public television
program in Hawaii that completely ignored her documented CPUSA
membership and described her as a "true advocate and defender of
American democratic values." It noted that her long-time friend and
"mentor" was Harry Bridges, president of the International
Longshoreman's and Warehouseman's Union (ILWU), but didn't mention
that Bridges was a secret CPUSA member.

One whose name shows up in the credits as a contributor of some sort
is Chris Conybeare, who also served as the producer/writer of a 1988
program about Davis that ignored his CPUSA membership and activities.
The video was released by the Center for Labor Education & Research,
University of Hawaii - West Oahu (CLEAR) and Hawaii Public Television.

So it is not surprising that Conybeare, who also functions as the
"secretary general" of the World Association of Press Councils, has
attached his name to a press release from the "Honolulu Media
Council" denouncing Accuracy in Media and Bill Steigerwald of the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for bringing to light the facts about Davis
being a communist and Obama's mentor.

"We find that there is no substance to these claims," this group of
would-be censors declares. Ignoring all of the evidence against
Davis, including his service on behalf of the CPUSA and its
manipulation of black Americans for the communist and Stalinist
cause, it announced that Davis was a true "advocate for civil rights
in the US."

This media council questions Steigerwald's statement that Davis was a
"lifelong" Communist, when the length of time of his CPUSA membership
is a question that only Davis probably could have resolved. There is
no question, however, that he was involved with the CPUSA and/or its
front organizations before, during and after World War II.

The term "mentor," as applied to his relationship with Obama, is
accurate, even based on the limited information that Obama himself
provides in his own book about "Frank."

But there was one truthful bit of information in the Honolulu Media
Council release. Davis "had many friends, including Barack Obama's
grandfather," it noted.

BINGO. And that grandfather, Stanley Dunham, is the person who picked
Davis as Obama's mentor. Gerald Horne originally identified "Frank"
as Frank Marshall Davis and Dr. Kathyrn Takara of the University of
Hawaii confirmed this. She also told me that Obama had been
introduced to Davis by his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who
considered Davis a "strong black male figure" and thought he exerted
a "positive" influence over the young man in his high-school years.
"His grandfather was one of Frank's closest friends," she said. "They
played chess or cards together."

However, Takara disputes the overwhelming evidence that Davis was a
communist. Not surprisingly, she was the associate producer of that
1988 Conybeare program which whitewashed Davis.

The evidence shows that Davis, who died in 1987, became Obama's black
mentor during the years 1975-1979, primarily because Obama's black
father had deserted the family. Dunham made a bad decision. It's too
bad Obama didn't describe it as such in Dreams From My Father. He
might have avoided a scandal if he had directly confronted the
problem of his mentor's communist beliefs. But that wouldn't have
gotten him off the hook for associating with communist terrorists
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in Chicago and going to Jeremiah
Wright's church.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Which brings us back to square one: When will the media ask Obama
about the Obama/Davis relationship? And why did he conceal the
complete identity of "Frank" in his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father?

I think we are beginning to understand the reasons for this cover-up.
Not only would the identification of "Frank" as Frank Marshall Davis
expose communist influence on a young Obama, it might also expose
those who collaborated with him and tried to whitewash his communist
activities.

Davis, it should be noted, was just one member of a communist network
which also included secret CPUSA members Paul Robeson and labor
leader Harry Bridges, who was so deep in CPUSA activities that Moscow
accepted and designated him as a member of the CPUSA Central
Committee. Davis was friends with both of them.

If the son of Frank Marshall Davis is really out there, it would be
advisable for him to come completely clean and set the record
straight. Better yet, as Maki says in one of the exchanges, "I would
suggest that you take up your concerns with Barack Obama, who first
brought Frank Marshall Davis to our attention."
--

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be
contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org

--------
COMMENT:

written by Mark, July 28, 2008

(This was posted to the original AIM column, and is reproduced for
your information)

I'm pleased that Kincaid has finally responded to some of my concerns
concerning my father, Frank Marshall Davis. Thank you, sir!

I believe I was born at 5:31 PM on November 9, 1950, at Kapiolani
Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Frank Marshall Davis is shown to be
my father on my birth certificate, if you care to verify my identity.
I graduated from Honolulu's Farrington High School in 1968, if you
care to verify my identity. I enlisted in the Air Force in December
1968, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United
States Air Force on 15 February 1983, if you care to verify my
identity. As an Air Force Intelligence Officer, I completed the CIA
Deception Analysis Course on 25 August 1989, and have a certificate
from the CIA Office of Training and Education, if you care to verify
my identity. I have a Certificate of Retirement from the United
States Air Force, dated 1 February 1993 and signed by Lieutenant
General Edward P. Barry Jr., Commander, Space and Missile Systems
Center, if you care to verify my identity. I also have a Certificate
of Appreciation signed by George Bush, Commander In Chief, upon my
retirement, if you care to verify my identity. Do you require more
authentication?

I posted as #2 and #21 in the Obama Berlin comments that I am no
longer contesting the allegation that Davis joined the Party sometime
during WWII, as claimed by Edgar Tidwell. That is not defamation. On
the other hand, misrepresenting your speculation as being the actual
truth could very well be.

My problem is with the claim that my father was a lifelong MEMBER of
the CPUSA, and that he was a Stalinist because he STAYED with the
Party after 1939. These are just some of the myriad
misrepresentations that exaggerate Davis's radical background and
influence over Obama, as outlined in my blog at
http://my.barackobama.com/page...eokualoha.

My problem is with AIM misquoting people regarding my father,
including Gerald Horne "noting" he was Obama's mentor, Dr. Takara
saying he was a "socialist realist," and most despicably of all, the
AIM column by Paul Kengor falsely attributing harsh criticism of my
father to Roy Wilkins, when it actually came from a rookie Honolulu
NAACP board member, who just happened to be white.

My problem is with "communist" Alan Maki cooperating with you in
attacking my father, then misrepresenting my criticism on his blog.

My problem is with AIM deliberate misrepresentations such as saying
my father gave Obama advice that "black people had a right to hate
white people." FACT: Obama's book says that Davis told him that black
people have a REASON to hate white people, which is entirely
different. (Japan had a REASON to bomb Pearl Harbor, not a right. Al
Qaeda had a REASON for 9/11, not a right. Bank robbers have a REASON
to rob banks, not a right. There is a world of difference between a
reason and a right.) A later Kincaid blog changed "right to hate" to
"reason to hate," but immediately after Obama's Berlin speech,
Kincaid once again claimed Davis "read his "poems" to a teenage Obama
and advised him that black people had a right to hate white people."

We won the Cold War, but it seems that professional advocates like
Cliff Kincaid cannot accept victory. The "raison d'être" of these
Cold Warriors is fighting communism, just as the "raison d'être" of
old school civil rights activists is fighting racism. Both Cliff
Kincaid and Jesse Jackson seem to suffer from success. Both have been
relegated to fighting shadows in anachronistic bids to retain relevance.

My problem is with AIM's attempts to vilify a dead poet who was more
likely to teach random acts of kindness than disloyalty to young
Barack Obama. That is what makes my "face red." They deliberately
misrepresent the values Obama may have internalized through this
relationship, in a transparent attempt to smear Obama's character.
Every candidate has flaws, but they should be examined with
"Fairness, Balance, and Accuracy In News Reporting," as your banner proclaims.

.