Tupac Wants To Know Why - 2011

"We (Black People) built this country and get none of the benefits! Why?" - Tupac Shakur

Tupac, because capitalists are in the business of creating wealth.

Back in the 20s and 30s the country was on a brink of a revolution and the government forced business to change their labor policies.

The struggle through the 40s,50s, and 60s was the fight for human rights. Since then our steps forward have been negated by increasing income inequality for all classes except one. and it ain't ours.

In the 21st Century everyone wants to be a millionaire, but there are only three ways to achieve that goal; birth, marriage, or theft and no one can steal like the rich.

But I don't have to tell Tupac that. He's a dead man. Dead for someone knows why. His aunt was a Black Panther. Tupac sooner or later was going to be a danger.

A dead man always knows the truth.

Live on Tupac. Life goes on.

KICK OUT THE JAMS by Peter Nolan Smith

In the fall of 1969 my all-boys parochial school entered a chocolate-selling competition fro Nestles to compete with the other Catholic educational institutions in Boston. The top prize for most sales of the city-wide contest was a concert by a band from Elektra Records. Rumors abounded that the band on offer was The Doors.

LIGHT MY FIRE had hit # 1 in 1967. Catholic girls loved Jim Morrison. The Lizard King couldn’t satisfy all of them, so our 1000-plus strong enrollment scoured the virgin suburbs of the South Shore with boxes of outdated chocolate bars, dreaming of teenage girls dancing to THE END.

Our school had never hosted a live show in the gym and we beat our nearest rival by over $5000.

On the cold morning December 1st our principal ended the morning messages by saying, “I congratulate you for selling the most chocolate bars. The cardinal also sends his thanks for the papal recruiting fund. I suppose you’re wondering who the band is.”

I was sitting in English class with thirty-five other seniors. Brother Bede leaned against the blackboard. We chanted, “Doors, Doors, Doors.”

The ex-boxer raised a hand to still us. My father had seen him fight as a heavyweight at Boston Arena. No one challenged the broken-nosed brother’s commands.

“I’m pleased to announce that Elektra band chosen the MC5 to be backed up by a local group, the Odyssey.”

“MC5?” The school’s quarterback pounded on his desk. “Who the fuck are they?”

His question stumped everyone in the room, but me.

“The Motor City 5 are out of Detroit. They opened for Led Zeppelin at the Garden two months ago.” Narragansett Beer had hosted its first Tribal Rock Festival to a sell-out crowd of 17,000. “In 1968 they appeared three nights at the Boston Tea Party with the Velvet Underground.”

“I w-w-wish you w-w-were as good w-w-with English as you are w-w-with rock and roll.” Brother Bede had not won that fight in Boston Arena or a few other combats. His stutter was a result of many beatings.

“Yes, b-b-brother.” I shared his perchance for a stutter.

“Who cares about history?” The quarterback glared in my direction, as if I had been the person in charge of deciding which band played at our school. “Are the MC5 any good? I’ve never heard of them.”

The majority of the class muttered out their disappointment. The Doors meant making out with girls from the score of all-girl schools on the South Shore.

“Good? They don’t play RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD.” BJ Thomas’ hit was # 1 on WBZ AM.

“They can’t be the Doors.” The quarterback was from Brockton. It was a tough town.

Only WBCN-FM played the MC5.

“The Doors are who people want you to hear. The MC5 are the best live band in America.” I was into rock and roll. My record collection was second to none. I had seen the Turtles, Animals, Shocking Blue, the Remains, and Rocking Ramrods at the Surf Nantasket, the Modern Lovers at Cambridge Commons, the Ultimate Spinach and Beacon Street Union on Boston Commons. My hair ran over the back of my shirt. My mother called me a hippie.

“Have you ever seen them?” The quarterback had won our school a state championship. He was a god in the eyes of my classmates. His favorite band was the Beatles.

“No, but I have their live LP. KICK OUT THE JAMS. I can bring it to school tomorrow. We can listen to it in the audio lab during study.” I hated the Fab Four. My girlfriend had mouthed his name on her family's sofa with the lights out. In the dark I was Paul.

“At least they have a record.” The quarterback wore his hair long like Paul McCartney. His girlfriend was the head cheerleader at our sister school, Our Blessed Virgin High School. All-girls.

“And it’s better than THE WHITE ALBUM.” My girlfriend was cheerleader at my town school. Kyla loved the Beatles and I never told her about my deep dislike for the pop sell-outs or about seeing his name on her lips.

The quarterback rose from his desk. Brother Bede stepped between us.

“Sit down. There’ll be no fighting in my class or anywhere else.” Brother Bede liked my poetry, but he was asst. coach on the football team and the quarterback was his boy. “You have that?”

“Yes, brother.” We shook hands with crunching duel of grips and then took our seats. Both of us rubbed our knuckles on the way back to our desks. Brother Bede had us read from A SEPARATE PEACE.

“Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.” read the quaterback.

“You have to do what you think is the right thing, but just make sure it’s the right thing in the long run, and not just for the moment.” was my counter.

During lunch everyone discussed the MC5.

Three other boys had heard of them; my best friend Chuckie Manzi and my two younger cousins.

“Hippie girls love the MC5. They symbolize revolution. The record opens with the lead singer yelling ‘motherfucker’.” Chuckie had listened to the album in my basement. His mother would kill him, if she heard that word in her house. My mother too. Thankfully she worked during the day.

“They had the balls to sing ‘motherfucker?”

"Yes."

Cool." The quarterback’s opinion elevated the MC5 to that of the Kingsmen, who mythically shouted ‘fuck’ during LOUIE LOUIE.

“They were also the only band to appear in Chicago during the Days of Rage in 1968 and they played for eight hours straight.” I learned about the band from the WBCN DJs, who worshipped their non-commercial fervor.

“So they’re against the war?” The quarterback had a brother stationed in Da Nang.

“Yes.” I was no liar at this point in my life.

“Then that’s good enough for me.” None of us were traitors, but at the end of the school year we were meat for the draft and even high school seniors knew that the Pentagon didn’t want to win this war. The only out of Brockton after graduation was the army or prison. The quarterback was lucky enough to have colleges interested in his arm.

The next day I brought in the MC5 LP. Our study period was right before lunch. The quarterback and I entered the audio lab. Mrs. Pepper, the librarian lent us headphones. The chubby thirty year-old was the only woman in the school. The Jewish divorcee wore her miniskirts short. I cued up the first track and turned the volume to 10. John Sinclair introduced the band.

“Brothers and sisters.” The radical from Detroit demanded from the audience at the Grande Ballroom,

“Are you ready to testify? I give you a testimonial. The MC5.”

The feedback guitars and falsetto lead voice caught the quarterback off guard like a safety blitz, but within seconds his head rocked on his neck and he smiled his approval.

Hearing ‘motherfucker’ on KICK OUT THE JAMS turned his smile into a grin. He pulled off the headphones and said, “They’re great, but we have a problem. The brothers will never let them say ‘motherfucker’ at the concert.”

“How they going to know about that?” In my minds the brothers listened to folk songs and Georgian chants.

“Some of them are young. They have contacts with the anti-war movement. We have snitches at school. They’re going to find out.” The quarterback believed in a good defense and lifted the stylus off the LP. “You never brought this to school.”

“You want to borrow it?” I rarely lent out records. No one ever gave them back in good condition.

“You would do that?” The quarterback slipped the record into the cover sleeve with care. We had never really spoken until now. I was on the track team.

“We are not the problem.” I answered quoting John Sinclair. “We are the solution.”

It was 1969. This was our world.

The quarterback instructed his team to squelch any mention of the MC5 and the word motherfucker.

His offensive line were the biggest boys in the school. We reached the Christmas vacation without a breach in our silence. The quarterback returne the record on the last day before break.

“Sorry, but everyone in my town wanted to hear it.”

“I understand.” I resisted checking for scratches and wished him Happy New Year.

“You too.”

As soon as he was out of sight, I pulled out the LP. It was untouched.

We were the high society.

Tickets went on sale the first day back at school. They cost $2.50 each. I put away $10 for Chuckie, his girlfriend and Kyla. I walked into school in January and headed to the school store. Over a hundred students were lined up for tickets. The Dean of Discipline was asking them about the band.

“Do they have a hit?” The Dean was fast with his hands. He liked the choir boys. We hated him.

“No, brother,” answered a nervous sophomore.

“Then why are you going?” In his US history class he preached that J. Edgar Hoover deserved our respect for fighting godless communism and now suspected something was amiss with the MC5.

“They have a new album coming out BACK IN THE USA.” Charles Laquidara had mentioned its release on his 10pm shift on WBCN-FM.

“So they’re ‘hip’?” The Dean of Discipline kept up with teenage slang to pretend that he wasn’t so different from us. The act didn’t fool any of us.

“Yes, brother.” Conversations with the Dean was best kept to five words or less. He was a dedicated witch-hunter and sex addict.

“I look forward to seeing them.” The Dean of Discipline walked away from the queue with his hands in his pockets, but this first round of interrogation was not the last. The Dean was very thorough in his investigation into subversion.

“Keep your mouths shut.” I wagged a warning finger at the sophomore.

“About what?”

“Good answer.”

Our parents thought that we were meant to be seen and not heard, but those days had ended at our school after last year’s strike to abolish the dress code. White shirts and tie were now optional and we regarded anyone wearing them as stooges for the old regime.

The MC5 show sold out the first day to the amazement of the school principal.

The quarterback told him that the student body was charged up about the first concert at the school. His hero status convinced the principal that a rock band was no threat to our souls and said that he was looking forward to seeing the group.

“They’re loud.”

“As long as they don’t break the sound barrier, I’ll be fine with loud.”

The quarterback and I felt confident that our deception had skated under the radar, then two nights before the show a disc jockey on WBZ reported on a secret concert by the MC5 at our high school.

The second I heard his announcement, I knew this was trouble and the next morning the principal ended the morning messages by announcing, “It had come to the school’s attention that the group scheduled to appear this Saturday night has been involved in an obscenity controversy. School policy strictly bans any curse words by teachers, students, and visitors.”

“Obviously the principal has never been to football practice.” The quarterback quipped from his desk. His coach was renown for his vitriolic outbursts of four-lettered words.

“Q-q-quiet.” Brother Bede stuttered his commands once and only once.

“Any mention of a bad words by the band before or during the show will result in the immediate termination of the concert. I have contacted the record company and warned them that any incident will incur the full wrath of the arch-diocese of Boston. That is all for today.”

This heavy-handed suppression of free speech fired the rebellion in our hearts.

“S-s-slow down, class.” Brother Bede sat on the edge of his desk with ON THE ROAD in his hands. We had read CATCHER IN THE RYE, 1984, and BRAVE NEW WORLD under his tutelage. He believed in an open mind. “A-a-at least the concert was not cancelled and from w-w-w-what the principal explained to the other brothers, the b-b-band only said one bad word on its record. He said nothing about their b-b-being revolutionaries.”

Brother Bede’s common sense calmed our young minds and we spread his good news throughout the school. The omission of one word wasn’t the end of the world, even though the truth of the matter was that none of us would be here if our fathers weren’t motherfuckers. Even Jesus had been a motherfucker and the word was bantered around the school like a badminton cock at a summer barbecue.

The night of the show Chuckie drove us to school in his family Valiant sedan. Both fron and back were spacious enough for making out.

I was wearing a fringed suede jacket and bell-bottom jeans. Kyla was a Tibetan goddess in her lambskin coat and miniskirt.

Snowflakes darted across 128. Chuckie put on WBCN. JJ Jackson was playing PINBALL WIZARD.

At Woodstock Abbie Hoffman denounced the concert was bullshit while John Sinclair was in prison for marijuana. Pete Townsend had driven the Yippie leader off stage with his guitar. Woodstock was about love and peace, not the injustice of the MC5's spokesman languishing in prison for a few joints and tonight was no different.

The four of us drank a six-pack of beer in the parking lot. We had another in the Valiant. Kyla and I made out in the back seat. Her lips tasted of bubble gum. My hands wiggled under her sweater to glide on baby-powdered skin. The heat of our young bodies fogged the windows.

Time was lost to passion, but at 8pm Kyla broke our embrace. I wiped away the condensation on the rear window.

The doors to the gym were open.

“Let’s go.”

As we approached the gym, two hippie girls asked if I had an extra tickets. They were college age. Two more co-eds posed the same question at the door. A pair of freshmen offered to be their dates. The girls did not refuse the request. This was a big show.

Inside the deejay was playing popular hits and the gathering crowd danced to Marvin Gaye and Sly.

My classmates were costumed in haute Haight-Ashbury. The pungent aroma of marijuana emanated from the bathroom.

Three long-haired men in colorful robes exited a minute later. None of them attended Xaverian and they smiled at Kyla with reddened eyes. She clutched my hand. Strange men scared the buxom brunette. I held her close. Her beauty was safe with me.

The stage was set up under the basketball net. I recognized the Odyssey from playing at the Surf Nantasket. The quartet looked nervous about performing tonight. They were a cover band. This was a big gig for them.

I didn’t see any sign of the MC5.

“Where are they?” the quarterback demanded at the table serving cokes. His girlfriend introduced herself to Kyla. She was as blonde as Peggy Lipton of THE MOD SQUAD.

“I heard on WBCN that they were playing an noon show in Detroit.”

“This afternoon?” Driving in a GTO at top speed from Detroit was an eight-hour ride with police lights in the rearview mirror.

“Yes. The DJ Charles Laquidara had told his listeners that the band had been playing an afternoon show in Detroit."

“How will they get here.” The show was scheduled for 9:30.

“They’re taking a flight to Logan.”

I leaned over to the quarterback. He smelled of Brut. It was Joe Namath’s cologne.

“They’ll be here. Just don’t tell anyone else. We don't want a riot here. At least not until they play the encore.”

The Odyssey opened their set with a cover of HEY JOE. I checked at my Timex watch. It was 8:30. The younger students danced to the hits.

None of the hippies in the audience paid attention to the group. Some of them looked older than 20.

The Dean of Discipline kept a close eye on them. Brother Bede had cotton stuffed in his ears. Chuckie and I went outside to finish our beers.

The night sky was clear of clouds and the stars showed their power from distant positions in space. A car engine was grinding up the road to the school. A white van slid on black ice into the parking lot. The vehicle accelerated between the rear-ends of our cars and braked before the gym. Five men jumped from the van. It was the MC5. I recognized the lead singer from his Afro. He waved for me to come closer.

“You go to school here?” I recognized him. His name was Wayne Kramer. “Yes, sir.” I had never spoken to a famous person.

“I’m not a sir, brother. This is Xaverian, right?” The guitarist checked out Kyla and eyed me with admiration.

The smell of bubble gum on her lips was a beautiful thing.

“Yes.” I couldn’t bring myself to call him brother. I already had three.

“Damn, we didn’t get lost. Good driving.” He slapped the driver on the shoulder. He was Fred Sonic Smith, the guitarist. “Let’s get set up. Brother, you want to carry an amp into the gym. The faster we set up, the faster we play for you.”

“Yes, sir.” The sir thing was a hard habit to lose in less than a minute.

“Cool.” He handed Chuckie and me each a large Marshall amp.

The Odyssey had finished their set. Chuckie and I hauled the amps to the stage like altar boys carrying Sunday communion to the faithful.

The MC5 shook hands walking through the crowd. The hippie girls abandoned the freshmen for the stars of the night. The MC5 were a live band. They performed more than twenty shows a month. The roadies assembled the equipment array within a half hour.

The band climbed onto the stage, only to have the principal and Dean of Discipline to confront them. The topic of discussion was no secret to the student body and murmurs of dissent rippled through the audience.

The Dean of Discipline shone his sated disapproval, but Wayne Kramer raised his hand and strode over to the microphone.

“Brothers and sisters, we’re the MC5. You know who we are. You know what we stand for.” He turned to the two black-robed brothers. “Your principal had requested that we not use a word during the show. If we don’t agree to this condition, we won’t be allowed to play and we flew seven hundred miles to be with you tonight.”

Boos rocked the gym.

“It’s just one word. You know the word. We only say it one time. We didn’t come here to walk out the door.” The lead singer waved for the band to take their places. “We are the MC5 and you are you. One two three.”

They rocked the building with the MOTOR CITY IS BURNING. Rob Tyner drove the girls crazy with his strut during DOING ALL RIGHT. Mike Davis led the band with a thumping bass and the drummer drove a basic beat into our bones. The basketball floor bounced with our dancing and Kyla sang along to their cover of BABY PLEASE DON’T GO. The quarterback and I hugged each other with joy after HIGH SCHOOL. We were seventeen and free.

The MC5 left us ragged after two hours of solid rock and they ended with a homage to Chuck Berry and the title track of their new LP, BACK IN THE USA.

“Thank you, Xaverian.” Wayne Kramer shouted into the mike. “Peace, brothers and sisters.”

The MC5 jumped off the low stage and we chanted out more. We stomped the floor to the chant of ‘more’. The band emerged from the underneath the bleachers and Wayne Kramer grabbed the mike.

“We have saved the best for last and we have also kept our promise to the good brothers, but you didn’t make any promise,” I pointed the microphone into the audience. “Brothers and sisters, it’s now time to KICK OUT THE JAMS____”

Our voices shouted the word as one. “Motherfucker.” There was no quieting us. The world was on fire and the MC5 drew us into the flames that evening.

It was January 24, 1970

On January 25 today became yesterday and tomorrow was a long way away from yesterday.

"Kick out the jams, motherfuckers."

Post Labor Day

Labor Day Weekend traditionally marks the end of summer in the USA. Millions of Americans flocked to the shore, lakes, mountains, parks, and backyards for a last gasp of enjoyment before going back to work. Few realize that the holiday was established by President Grover Cleveland as a peace offering after his ordering in troops and federal marshals to break up the 1894 Pullman Strike outside Chicago.

The American Railway Union had struck and boycotted the Pullman Coach Company throughout the summer. Executives had cut workers’ wages, but refused to lower prices at the company stores or rents in their company towns. Nearly 200,000 railroad workers walked out across the country effectively shutting down transportation from coast to coast. President Cleveland called in 12,000 federal troops to protect corporate property and escort scabs or strike-breakers across the picket lines. In the ensuing violence thirty strikers were killed and many others wounded. Public opinion favored the action and ARU leader Eugene Debs was imprisoned for six months. Further investigation faulted George Pullman with inciting the unrest. Immediately after the end of the strike Cleveland designated first weekend in September as Labor Day was chosen rather than International Workers Day in May due to its association communists, anarchists, and socialists.

On Monday I asked twenty people in Montauk, “Why do we have Labor Day?” Most said to celebrate the end of summer, a few replied that they didn’t know, and two answered to honor the working man without any mention of the struggle to win an 8-hour day, a minimum wage, health care, social security, and many other commonly accepted entitlements for the working classes.

The Republicans, the Proud Boys, the anti-vaxxers and Bible Tumpers are too ignorant to know exactly the benefits, which were won by those strikers and the GOP has refused to enact any legislation to overhaul the national infrastructure, preferring for the country to crumple into dust rather than hired hundreds of thousands of Americans for good-paying jobs. An annual expenditure $100 billion will transform America into a nation of workers.

Do not give them up without a fight.

The police are workers working for the bosses.

They are not our friends when in uniform, except when they remember that they are union members too.

Workers of the world unite.

Bring on the Revolution - 2011

Last week I went out to eat with my nephews and their parents at a Mexican restaurant on Okochobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach. The conversation gravitated to sports; baseball for Trey, golf for Reese, and basketball for their father and me. Their mother was happy to be left in peace. After dinner we stepped into a warm Florida night. There was no one in the parking lot.

Looking at the colorful mural on the wall, I said, “Mexico 1968.”

“What about it?” AK’s slender and ever-beautiful wife responded with interest. We were more friends than before. I was good to her kids and nothing earns trust from a mother faster than treating their spawn well. My clan was far away in Thailand.

“Summer Olympics was held in Mexico City.”

“More like the Autumn Olympics. For some reason they were in October.”

“Summer or fall didn’t matter after Bob Beamon set a world record in the high jump at the altitude of 6000 feet. Rightfully never an asterisk for that jump." My individual best had been in my senior year. 1970. 19'6".

“He broke the previous record by a foot and a half.” AK joined in the telling. He was my age. 1968 was our youth.

“The world was on fire. Only the week before hundreds of students had been shot by the Mexican army and the streets of America were on fire after the assassination of Martin Luther King.”

“Could we talk about something else?” AK and I went back over thirty years to 1973. He was no born-again conservative, but the right-wing Storm Front had their headquarter meetings not far from here, White people in Florida tend to be whiter than most whites elsewhere in the USA and my talk was incendiary to white people, but the parking lot was empty.

“Let him talk.” AK’s blonde wife taught music at a private school. The curriculum was restrained by religion. She appreciated my loose tongue. ”

“Other places were in revolt too. Viet-Nam, Paris, Prague.”

I sang the first stanza of the Rolling Stones’ STREET FIGHTING MAN.

“Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy, cause summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy.”

AK rolled his eyes. He was more into R&B than rock, having played in the Authentics, a Boston funk band, to pay for his tuition at Berkeley School of Music. On our cross-country trip in 1974 AK had taught me how to play the kazoo.

"No one at the Olympics protested the death of hundreds of Mexican students. The army was in the streets. The olympic committee banned any protests by the athletes. The best runner in the world was Tommie Smith, 220 and 440 champion. A black man."

“From California.” AK was a sports nut too. Knicks versus my Celtics. We had played countless one-on-ones on the playgrounds of Boston and New York. He dominated the first twenty years. I outlasted his knees during the 90s, although now neither of us were in good shape.

“Tommie Smith set a world record in the 220.

“Time 19.83 seconds.” AK was showing off sports knowledge to his sons.

My best time in the 440 was 54.8 seconds. About thirty yrds behind Tommie Smit's best.

"At the medal ceremony Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the bronze winner, lifted their fists during THE STAR-SPANGLED banner to protest the mistreatment of blacks in America.”

My best friend in school is black.” Reese was named after the Dodgers' Pee Wee Reese.

“And what he say in class the other day.” AK was a Brooklyn boy at heart.

“That his father had been killed in Iraq. His father was a soldier.” Reese was eleven. Old enough to understand that death meant death. His younger brother believed in Santa Claus. I wished that I did too.

“Probably a good man as was the silver-medal winner from Australia.”

“Peter Norman wore an American “civil rights” badge as support to them on the podium.” AK remembered the incident better than me. “The Olympic Committee banned Smith and Carlos from the Village and Norman was dropped from the 1972 team.”

“The good are always good at the moment of their best.”

I explained the myth of the rights of man. My nephews were fast studies and loyal nephews. We were two miles from The Breakers Hotel. I told them a story that I had heard three years ago.

“The beachfront hotel had been a world-class destination for over a century. The railroad tycoon Henry Flagler completed construction on his resort for the rich in 1896. That night Flagler held a BBQ for the laborers on the golf course. While they feasted on ribs and chicken, Flagler ordered his goons to burn out the workers’ bungalows, thus insuring that no poor people will ever live on the barrier island.”

‘Is that a true story?” My oldest nephew asked his father. We had been friends for almost forty years. The West Palm Beach school teacher shrugged with suspicion.

“True as far as I know.” My source had lived in Palm Beach since her childhood, but was no historian. “But that wasn’t right either. That’s why we protest against the evil in man.”

“Your uncle tells a good story.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Interesting if true. That’s you.”

My nephews and I posed before the Mexican mural with raised fists. Their mother took the photo. We said good night. It had been great to see AK and his family. The last time had been in the summer of 2008. Things were better now.

Later that night I went online to find out the truth about the Breakers.

It wasn’t there.

Then again the truth is yet to be told.

Bring on the revolution.

The youth is with us and we are coming for your children.

The Three Rules of Wealth Acquisition

In a revolution traditionally the first ones against the wall are the landlords.

In our cities the only construction are luxury condos with 30% occupancy destroying whole neighborhoods by raising real estate taxes thanks to over-inflated values of empty apartments, so the elite can launder their wealth.

If you want to point fingers at why the people of the world are without money, it's because the corporation for the sake of profits are too greedy to care about anything more than the wealth cloud and the rise of stock prices. No one on the streets has any money. No one carries money. Every transaction cost 2-3% in fees to the banks.

No one complains about the .00001%, because the hoi polloi share a deluded hope that one day they might be Cronus, however the only three sources of wealth are birth, marriage, or theft. Although sports players are changing that equation as well as drug dealers. They attained their wealth through hard work.

ps Joe Biden has done a good job, except for his hand in Israel's regifting the Holocaust on Palestine. You can never get to the future by only looking in the rearview mirror.

Viva International Write-Off Day.

ps I'm a poet living off the state created by LBJ, the Great Society.

Photo by Aaron Slim

The Marxist Rebellion of Trump

ONE RPM by Peter Nolan Smith

PUBLISHED IN ELK 2006

February's blizzards buried New York City with two-foot drifts and people conversed about Global Warming as a distant threat in comparison to Iraq. America was gearing up to war and nothing could stop the process, because the President was acting like a pit bull too stubborn to spit out the bone stuck in his throat. After all Saddam had tried to kill his father.

When the Director of Homeland Security announced an unspecific Orange Alert, Manhattanites hermitically sealed their apartments with duct tape and plastic sheets against toxic attack. Two elderly people died of asphyxiation, but even worse the March to War was killing business in the Diamond District and It was hardly worth going to work, except my girlfriend in Thailand was awaiting my winter arrival, so I mummified myself in my warmest clothes to catch the 9:11am 9th Street Bus.

The sun was brilliant in a cloudless sky and the air temperature hovered above 10 without taking into consideration the wind. The time was 9:08 and a blue-and-white bus was traversing 1st Avenue ahead of schedule. The light was against me and I remained on the curb, since HBV or 'hit by vehicle' caused the most visits to the Bellevue Hospital emergency ward any season of the year.

On the opposite corner an old woman impatiently pushed her load into the street. The holes in her tennis shoes showed bare toes and I dug for a dollar in my pocket. The city was tough on the elderly, especially since she wasn't the only one in a hurry.

A mammoth SUV with Jersey plates revved its engine on 10th Street and the truck clumsily accelerated left with the old lady in its path. The collision seemed unavoidable and I could only shout. "Watch out."

My warning paralyzed the old lady, but a lanky man in a long overcoat snagged her out of the luxurized truck's path, although its chrome bumper crashed into the shopping cart, cascading scores of bottles into the gutter. After the SUV lumbered to a halt, a middle-aged man in a NY Giants sweatshirt waddled to the woman. "Are you okay?"

"My things." The old lady stared at her crushed cart.

"All right?"

The man in the overcoat helped the old woman to her feet, daubing the lady's bloodied knees with a pristine handkerchief.

"You damn near killed her."

"Hey, she stepped into the street."? The paunchy driver looked over his shoulder to the pasty blonde poking her head out the side window. A few spectators gathered on the sidewalk and I stopped too, for the upscale clothing couldn't disguise Jamie Parker.

The driver reached for his wallet and a hundred-dollar bill quickly fluttered in his hand. "I'm glad no one is hurt. Can I pay you for the damages?"

"Damages?" Money was unimportant to Jamie. He was after trouble. "How much you wanna to pay for ruining her day with your big-ass SUV?"

"Hey, it was an accident and no one was hurt." The driver hadn't expected a tirade from a Good Samaritan. "Why don't you calm down?"

"Calm down?" Parker was rat-tough from his years as a guest of the State. "You blew that light and almost killed her."

Cops cruised the avenue. Their writing up a report meant an increase in the driver's insurance rates. He held out two hundred dollar bills. "The cart isn't worth twenty bucks."

"So you're bargaining with the old lady's life."

"We can call it quits, Sonny. I've fallen worse in my bathtub." The old lady snatched the money with the swiftness of a cobra attacking its careless trainer and skedaddled down the avenue. The driver eyed Jamie. "Happy now?"

"Happy? Happy you drive that pig? Happy, 40,000,000 of those gas-guzzlers suck the oil from the Earth and spew billions of tons of smog into the air to breathe?" Jamie was on a roll. "The terrorists topple the Twin Towers and how does America respond? Build oil junkie cars to fund the Al-Qaeda through the Saudis, so you fatsos can feel thinner in your SUVs."

"Yeah, that's right." His harangue was echoed by assenting shouts, for while the landlords might have renovated the East Village for young professionals, the neighborhood contained enough weirdo radicals to stage a hair-trigger riot.

The driver recognized the building anger and jumped inside his SUV. His vehicle veered into the oncoming traffic, thunking into a speeding Ford Navigator. Both cars stopped and the drivers inspected the damage. It was in the thousands of dollars.

Jamie hooted with triumph and I grabbed his arm.

His eyes widened in anger, then a smile. "Hey, man."

"I liked his hero act, but the rabble-rouser was a bit much for more than five minutes.

Traffic had snarled into a knot. Other motorists rubbernecked the accident. The SUV driver pointed at Jamie and pulled out his mobile phone. His finger hit three buttons. 911. The police wouldn't interpret Jamie's saving a woman's life as a carte blanche for abusing the public. "Jamie, it's time to go."

"I had my heart set on a croissant from SOMETHING SWEET." He gazed to the corner bakery and pushed his gloved hand through greasy hair. Even lacking two front teeth Jamie was handsome, but nothing good lasted long on him. His cashmere coat had a tiny tear in the arm and his crocodile loafers were stained with salt.

"You can come back later." I tugged at his sleeve.

Jamie understood my unspoken urgency and we strode along a 10th Street clogged with irate drivers. He spat at a parked Land-Rover. "Their fuel addiction doesn't piss me off so much as their tough guy acts. I mean the only bump an Expedition runs over is their fat kid's tricycle in the driveway."

"A little angry this morning?"

"I haven't abandoned the revolution."

"The revolution?" This wasn't 1776 or 1789 or 1845 or 1917 or even 1968. The Republicans ran the country and most Americans' vision of change is dictated by a TV remote control.

"How many Communists took over Russia? 10,000. And Castro landed in Cuba with many followers? 17. How many voters in Dade County swung the vote to GW Bush? 217?"

"Che went into Bolivia with forty-five men and was buried a fat old failure." The images of the SLA's flameout, the Ruby Ridge's shooting, and the Days of Rage in Seattle were dealt as losing hands by my memory's blackjack dealer.

"I heard a rumor he hung up his AK047 to become a farmer."

"The CIA says different. Che exists only on t-shirts and posters." I wished otherwise for JFK, Malcolm X, and Marc Bolan. "Besides you're looking a little prosperous better off than when we were swimming in the East River three years ago."

"I was never too down on my luck that I sold out." He tossed his head with a laugh at a forgotten punchline. "After leaving you, I met this punk girl. Mousy blonde hair, skinny, almost cute. You know the type. Their parents won't let them use their stash or fuck the football team or they're catching a beating in school, so they runaway to the East Village and live in filthy squats."

"Not many burnt-out buildings left in the Lower East Side now."

"Yeah, they live on the street off the kindness of suckers." These ragged sons and daughters of the suburbs cadged cigarettes and quarters on St. Mark's Place. Their sneering rejection of materialism earned the ridicule of veteran East Villagers, who labeled them 'children of the dust'.

I didn't give them a penny, but admitted, "I prefer them to the junior exec bar-crawlers shouting on their cell phones."

"And the old junkies, right?"

"Let's not get carried away." The neighborhood was better off without Hakim, for thieving junkies had overrun the East Village in the 1970s. His murder had never hit the papers, but his death had cleared the way for the gentrification of lawless blocks beyond Avenue A.

“Anyway this punk called herself Bakunin. Always carried his anarchist essays around. She was eighteen and disenfranchised from her mother, an uptown heiress. Bakunin called me the street messiah, since I taught her friends where to find free food, how to stuff newspapers under their clothes to stay warm or to sleep with their shoes under their heads to prevent anyone stealing them. I didn't tell them all the tricks, after all I have to protect the real bums from the amateurs."

"Sounds you were sticking around, because you were soft on this Bakunin?" The clock on St. Mark's Church bonged out the half-hour and I walked faster across 2nd Avenue. My boss hated my chronic tardiness and my excuses even more.

"Naw, she didn't wash and smelled like she had been dug from the grave." His nose scrunching in distaste was amusing, considering Jamie had historically been not too particular about his own personal hygiene. "But you're right. You do get tired of being alone and I liked these kids. They didn't watch TV or eat potato chips or listen to boy band music."

"Or fake punk bands?" I looked both ways, crossing 4th Avenue.

"Plus they believe in something. A revolution." Jamie followed me into the subway station. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Not if I've had three beers in me."

Jamie must have thought I was kidding.

"The main problem with a revolution is that they usually come about when everyone is real angry, which means bloodshed, however non-violence worked for Gandhi in India or Martin Luther King in the Sixties. Perhaps not as fast as violence, but it is the other path."

THE JETSONS had promised a world of automation. I had dreamed of eternal youth and driving beautiful blondes along the beaches in streamlined cars. It was hard living the lie. "A revolution in this country is impossible."

"We had one in 1776 and one in the Sixties."

"One win, one loss. The Mets aren't playing .500 ball this year. Where you going?"

"47th Street." I swiped my multi-pass at the turnstile.

"You working in the Diamond District?"

"No one else would have me." My job on 47th Street consisted of extolling the beauty of diamonds to glowing brides-to-be and inanely explaining financial shortcuts to men unwilling to blow two month's wages on an artificially inflated commodity.

"I'll come with you." Jamie leapt the barrier and darted into the car a second before the doors shut. "Old habits die hard."

The other passengers' disapproval disappeared as soon as the train left the station and Jamie respected their apathy, but whispering, "The President has us in the purgatory of an Endless War. The environment is a mess. Our food has produced two generations of fat people and TV has sedated the masses more completely than any religion or drug. 9/11 should have disturbed their complacent slumber, except the 'people' are toasty in their cocoons of consumerism."

The train's steel wheels shrieked on the curve into the Union Square Station. Not one passenger covered their ears and I asked, "You have a better offer?"

"This present is beyond help. Tomorrow is another story. Where we want to be ten years from now? Twenty? People's aspirations are simplified to purchases of the same items in different colors and sizes. A change has to happen. A change for the better."

The train slowed to a stop. The people exiting ignored us. We had become invisible, even when Jamie"s fist thumped his chest. "I remember your old movement."

"I had hoped everyone had forgotten the National Resurgence Party." The last meeting in the cellar of a Polish church had been in 1979. A month later I had broken up with my hillbilly girlfriend and became persona non persona in the East Village.

"Who can forget Nuke the Whales. or proposing a war against France to stop their theft of Jerry Lewis?" Jamie had been the treasurer and my hillbilly girlfriend the minister of disinformation. Another twenty people comprised the NRP. We wore brown shirts and black ties. Our critics declared us closet fascists. Our salute came from a gladiator movie. "They were punk jokes."

"Most people have no sense of humor."

"We've strayed far from the pursuit of happiness." No one from the nation's two killjoy camps dared laugh about fat-inducing corn, Osama Bin Laden, terrorism, or freedom.

"What better moment than now to take advantage of the chaos."

My political activity consisted of voting at each election, writing insane letters to the President, and attending non-violent demonstrations."I'm too old for revolution."

"Stop saying you're old." Jamie's eyes sifted through the straphangers for any eavesdroppers and he dismissed our fellow travelers as mere wage-slaves. "Those squatters constantly blather about overthrowing the government, especially Bakunin's boyfriend, Clash. I counseled against anything rash."

In the 70s Jamie had aided the Underground, committed acts of felony, and robbed dealers without ever backing down from anyone in or out of authority. "The voice of reason doesn't suit you."

"I know, but one of them might have gotten hurt and Bakunin actually admired my pacifism. We spent a lot of time walking around Lower Manhattan. It was almost like being a teenager again. She discussed going back home and I said she could return to her mother's duplex as easily as Dorothy returned to Kansas. I was shocked to hear she had never seen THE WIZARD OF OZ."

"Probably hasn't heard Judy Garland sing SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW."

Today's teenagers didn't know what they were missing from those old black-and-white movies and no one was telling them either, because Time/Warner didn't want kids seeing SULLIVANS TRAVELS, THE WAGES OF SIN, or SOME LIKE IT HOT. "Funny, how the parents don't tell them about it."

"They're too busy trying to attain an impossible lifestyle. Bakunin's not knowing about the Tin Man or Wicked Witch was wrong and right then I saw a billboard for a Cadillac SUV. A big fat-ass car for stupid fucking people. That's all these kids see. Something to consume. I had to destroy it. Hit the corporations in their pocket, only it was too far away for a Molotov cocktail."

"So the rage passed?" It was twenty to 10 and we were only at 28th Street. Like Jamie the train seemed not to obey any schedule.

"No, Bakunin told me how Clash practiced for an FBI shoot-out with a paintball gun. While he was drinking beer at Sophie's I liberated it and headed back to the Caddy SUV billboard. Bakunin tagged along as a lookout. I splattered the ad with three hits. Red for revolution and I wasn't done either. I took out a Tommy Hilfiger billboard and another for Pringle Potato Chips."

"Cars, fashion, and fast food." Each was an enemy of the people.

"Bakunin nailed a model selling perfume in the breasts. She hugged me and I kissed her. Bakunin told me her real name was Billie and she wanted a bath. We went for a schvitz at the Russian Steam Bath. She cleaned up good and we took a room in the St. Mark's Hotel, where we made love and talked about saving the world from consumerism."

"By paintbombing SUV ads?" It seemed a little lightweight.

"No, I had small ideas to take advantage of her clan. We made fake parking tickets and pasted a warning to SUV drivers that they were violating the Earth under their windshield wipers."

"What the drivers do?"

"Just stuffed them in their pockets or threw them on the street without reading a single word. They didn't care about the planet."

"So?"

"We needed a more radical course of action and I bought a couple of cans of paint."

"For another attack on the billboards?"

"I had Bakunin's squatter friends paint all the parking meters in the Lower East Side. The meter maids were blocked from seeing, if they were in violation. We obliterated the parking signs in Wall Street and Chinatown. Several squatters covered the City Courts with FREE NEW YORK without ever saying from what."

"The Staten Island Ferry is the only thing free in New York."

"Nothing wrong with dreams."

The train pulled into Grand Central and I exited from the train with Jamie in tow.

The paint squad planned on tagging every meter and sign in the city. Way too ambitious and bound to get someone on Rikers Island. I called off the painting campaign and organized them into gangs gathering the circulars stuck on the doorsteps. We returned them to the super markets and chain stores and then blockaded a luxury condo with those phony newspaper dispensers of the corners."

"Sounds Mickey Mouse to me." None of these incidents had hit the newspapers, then again the newspapers didn't report on events, which might upset the status quo.

"You're right. I had to devise a feat which the media couldn't ignore or blame on teenage vandals." Jamie was a menace to society and himself, but no terrorist, yet I had to say, "Sounds like the end to non-violence to me."

The two policemen armed with shotguns guarded Grand Central. Despite 9/11 people weren't avoiding populated or famous locations. As we mounted the escalator for the old Pan-Am Building, Jamie glanced at the starry ceiling. "Bakunin's boyfriend suggested robbing banks with a toy gun like that actor from ZABRISKI POINT."

"Michael something." The handsome actor had attempted to rob a bank high on acid and the police had shot his friend dead. His defense was insanity. The State of Massachusetts had ignored his plea of insanity and given him 25 to Life. "He died in Walpole Prison. Weights fell on him."

"Clash was jealous of my telling the squatters there's no such dog as a little violence and he suspected Bakunin and I were having an affair."

"He wasn't wrong."

"He was when he chained her to a wall. I wanted to kill him, but Bakunin told me to chill. Things would work out. Fucking kids."

"Shouldn't we be hanging out with people our own age?"

"Most of my old friends are dead plus you're only as old as you feel."

Two businessmen passed us and he whispered, "Riding the Staten Island Ferry I got an idea."

"Kidnap the Statue of Liberty?"

"Close. I decided to invade Governor's Island."

"Invade?" I asked loudly enough for two Hassidim to flinch.

"The Coast Guard abandoned the island ten years ago and the Federal government has been trying to give it to the city ever since. Clinton offered the island to Giuliani for a measly dollar. The mayor considered its upkeep was too expensive and there was talk about his cutting a deal with the real estate developers. 400 acres of free land for the taking and I proposed to the squatters we liberate the island and declare it Babylon."

"Babylon?" Pattaya in Thailand satisfied my vision of Babylon.

"Not everyone wants to be a saint and an anything-goes-land would be the perfect outlet to do drugs, sex, murder, total anarchy. No laws, no police and, if I ran a bordello, I'd earn more money than God. Babylon Island five minutes from New York. They'd be traffic jams south to the Delaware Bridge and north to New Haven."

"How about liberating Governors' Island to establish a sex paradise sit with your squatters?" Cities in the Sixties had experimented with Combat Zones only to discover their citizens' demand for Sin outpaced their expectations.

"Hey, they dig free love." We exited the terminal into the city's icy claws and Jamie pulled up his collar. "The girls weren't above hustling Hassidic men on Delancey Street. One even stripped at the BabyDoll Lounge. They thought it sounded like fun and we assembled at the Hudson River Boathouse to appropriate some kayaks. The squatters had the banners to declare the island's liberation. Before I cut the chain locking the boathouse, something made me turn around and I saw these young kids' faces. They would obey my every command and I flashed on Hitler at the Munich Beer Hall Putsch."

We turned onto 46th Street and I bought a large tea from a street vendor's cart. The cup was warm in my gloved hands. I had felt the same way with the National Resurgence Party. "People are willing to do anything anyone tells them, if they think it's a good idea."

"Or have nothing to live for and I know all about true meaninglessness, except these kids were too young to throw away their futures." After Jamie ordered a large coffee, we proceeded across 5th Avenue with the 'walk' light. He ripped off a sliver of plastic and sipped the coffee. "Clash resented my backing out and tried to force Bakunin into a kayak, but I wasn't letting him ruin her life and pushed him into the river. He couldn't swim and I had to rescue him. He started crying and I told the rest of them to find another messiah and took Bakunin home."

"So you betrayed the revolution?" The corner shops on 47th Street were already open and their jewelry glittered in the morning light.

"I told Bakunin that the revolution was a one-man show."

"Something tells me that's not the end of the story."

"Her mother was so grateful that she hired me as chauffeur/go-fer."

"You're Tony Danza in WHO'S THE BOSS?" I joked, nearing Manny's store.

"Much more classy." Jamie frowned with the disapproval. "MY MAN GODFREY, the forgotten man becoming the servant to the rich."

"Your patroness as beautiful as Carole Lombard?" I tried to recall if she had starred opposite William Powell.

"More a dissolute Veronica Lake." Jamie threw his coffee cup into the trash.

Manny was in the window tapping at his Rolex. Another minute or two wouldn't cost me my job. "So all's well that ends well?"

"I guess so." Jamie wasn't free to tell me about his life as a man-of-all-trades on the Upper East Side.

"You see any of the other squatters?"

"No, autumn drove them to the suburbs or college." Jamie studied the diamonds in the window, a thief pondering his old trade. "A few die-hards are lingering in Tompkins Square Park like bears who had forgotten the location of their hibernating caves. Clash, he's hanging out with a fat girl. They seem happy, although he walks the other way, if he sees me."

"What about Bakunin?" I signaled to Manny a few more minutes.

"She went off to college." Jamie raised his collar. "We have the weekends."

"And the mother?"

"It's a job," he said with little conviction and I asked, "What car you drive?

"A Bentley. Nice ride and it isn't a SUV." The sun flashed against a skyscraper in the Rockefeller Complex and he put on imported sunglasses. Manny regarded him as a potential buyer and pointed at a ring. "Your boss seems a little eager to make a sale."

"So am I." I could use the money and we shook hands. "You take care."

"Hey, what other choice I have?" He released his grip and strode toward the Plaza Arcade.

I worried about him finding some meaning to his life, but I should have been more worried about myself, for a voice called his name. He turned to greet the old lady. They embraced and the old lady's wig fell off. The thin girl was young and blonde. I recognized Bakunin from Jamie's brief description. They turned to me and waved good-bye. I pulled up my coat collar and looked to the sky. The clouds to the west promised more snow, though not enough for snow tomorrow.

Manny rapped on the window. No one else had showed up yet. Not his son. Not my co-workers. I was almost early. Entering the exchange Manny shook his head. "When are you ever going to come on time?"

"Manny, I'm never going to change." It wasn't the answer he wanted to hear, but nothing in the world was changing soon, because nothing happens overnight except to those who weren't expecting the change in the first place, then again one day I might be surprised and Jamie Parker and I were counting on that day. Hopefully others were too and until that moment living right is my only course of action, for even at one revolution per minute positive actions add up. You only have to do the math, even if it means taking off your shoes to count your toes.

KILL THE RICH CHAPTER 2 By Peter Nolan Smith

Two NYPD homicide detectives stood in front of the Vent du Sol. Uniformed officers kept the curious behind the yellow tape. Dead men attract spectators. The rubberneckers weren't looking for the victim to come back to life, but waited to see if anything else out of the ordinary happened on this quiet Upper East Side street. An attractive blonde woman was crying at the restaurant doorway. An older man had his arm around her.

"Girlfriend and best friend," Lee Solent said, lifting his eyes from his notebook.

"No, girlfriend and maitre de. From what I heard the victim had no friends." Sam Chatham had been his partner for ten years. They had solved many murders. They hadn't solved many more.

"What we have so far?"

"The victim, Mark Bonsoul, came out to smoke a cigarette. He is one of the richest men in New York. The waiter who had been at the job since the end of the Co-vid closings came outside and for no reason came outside and pumped three shots. Twice in the chest and once in the head. He jumped into a car for parts unknown. License plate unseen. The bullet casings came from a .38. I questioned the maitre. He knows nothing and no one saw anything. I left the girlfriend for you. That's all so far."

"I'll talk to her now." He thought about the .38. No one used the revolver anymore, but it was a good gun to hit a target at close range and he bet himself that the rich guy had been shot from less than a distance from five feet.

Close.

"Try and be nice." Sam Chatham rarely got to play 'bad guy'.

I'm always nice."

"Yeah, right."

Detective Solent motioned for an patrolman to lift the tape. He walked over to the restaurant's entrance and introduced himself. The blonde woman had stopped crying and the detective put his notebook in inside his jacket, noting she wore no jewelry.

"Sorry about your friend. Miss...?"

"Kerry Mahony. This was our third date." Her eyes were as green as mowed grass.

"You're not leaving town, are you?"

"No, this is my home. Born and bred." Her accent said private West Side schools and an Ivy League college and her tone reveal her annoyance at this intrusion, as she said, "Why do you ask that?"

"I wanted to make sure I could question you tomorrow."

"I can't see why not, but I will have my lawyer there." A lawyer wasn't necessary, but people can say the wrong things after a murder and the police like fitting square blocks into round holes.

"My partner will take your information." He stared at the maitre de, as if he were hiding the murder weapon on his person and said, "He'll get yours too.

"Up to you." The maitre de was accustomed to big people and the police weren't big people in his mind. Detective Solent walked away. He knew all about people like the maitre de. Everyone was guilty of something.

Everyone.

KILL THE RICH CHAPTER 1 by Peter Nolan Smith

The Vent de Sol was booked solid. The clientele hailed from the upper echelons of New York's1%. Table # 4 sat eight people was dominated by a 54 year-old man in an impeccably British tailored suit. No one in the Upper East Side bistro had earned more than the wily investment banker. No one on Madison Avenue and no one in Manhattan either. No one even close.

The masked Latino waiter expertly refills Mark Bonsoul's glass of 2000 Château Lafite Rothschild - Pauillac and the host of the party of eight says, "This one sip of wine costs more than this man makes in a night. Well, it does have to be a big sip."

The banker guzzled a mouthful to the laughter of his friends.

The waiter bowed with dancer's grace and serves the other guests a lesser vintage.

Dinner is served like a ballet of tastes and textures.

Before dessert mark Bounsoul ordered a Remy-Martin Louis XIII cognac and stood, patting his chest for the pack of Treasurer Aluminum Gold.

"You'll have to forgive me, but old bad habits die hard and you usually die before the bad habit."

He exited from the restaurant onto Madison Avenue. The pandemic had emptied the streets. Mark had never caned more money than throughout Co-vids and lit his cigarette with a gold lighter. The windows of nearby high-rises were dark. No one he knew lived in those hovels. He inhaled on the Traveler. rich tobacco. A five-star restaurant. An extraordinary wine. A beautiful wife. Alone he basked in aloneness.

The waiter approached him on the sidewalk. Mark sighed thinking he might have to speak with him. He thought that until he saw the gun. It didn't look expensive and Mark took another huff like a dead man before a firing squad, because there was no running from this fate. A bullet hit his chest, then another, each strangely without any bang.. He dropped to the sidewalk on his left side. His vision was growing black and his lungs offered no help. He was a dead man and nothing was going to change that.

AUGUST 15, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY

I spotted Alice in a Greek dinner on 2nd Avenue. I sneaked inside and snatched her pocketbook. Her arm bent and she caught the straps inside her elbow. HShe was more city than I imagined and swore, "You asshole."

I rubbed my hand. I had hurt my fingers on my attempted joke and sat at the table.

"I guess I wasn't cut out to be a purse-snatcher."

"It wasn't funny."

"I was just testing."

I hate test. You know I do."

"I wasn't testing you. I was testing me to see, if I was any good."

"You sucked, but sit down and have some coffee. It's all that I ccan afford."

THE PENULTIMATE SOCIETY

New York City became a metropolis in the 1880s. The gentile class robbed all the money from the immigrant masses happy to have fled persecution in the Old World. They even imagined themselves free.

Nowadays the rbber barons have destroyed the city and are cashing in their century-old chips.

The neglected parks have detiorated to crime wildernesses, the sidewalks are buried in uncollected trash, dog shit paves the streets, and the burst water mains flood the gutters. Squat new condos rise over the detriorating tenements, which had houses the construction workers of the lastd century. Not a single ship is moored to the waterfront docks on the Hudson, populated at night by rats and queers seeking sex. There is no middle-class in the East Village and the creme de le creme elite's quarters of the Upper East Side are protected by the NYPD who act if they had 'shoot to kill' orders from the mayor.

The Soviet Empire and the Red Chinese restlessly await the collpase of Capitalism like the Huns on the Roman Empires borders adn the Turks before Constantinople, although the Russians have been financely bled dry by the Arms Race trying to figure out how to build $10,000 trench shovels and $40,000 toilet seats for strategic bombers. There are none to be found in the Amry-Navy Surplus stores on 42 Street. The Chicom Army hasn't enough mechanizations to transport their troops farther than the frontier and are still licking their wounds after a border was with Vietnam.

There is no threat of revolution from within. Our wage slaves have been infected with addictive drugs and their bodies poisoned by cheap junk food. The White Race has total control of the police and governemtn and army as well as schools and churches, but lacks any urge for equality.

I reject everything. I have no followers, No believers. Bible-Belt Christians pray for the Second Coming of Christ to achieve spiritual rapture and escape the sins of the 1970s; homosexuality, atheism, hedonism, and race mixing. They are too lazy to protect their values and I told Kim about my fears for our freedom.

"They will try and change us back to who we were."

"Most people accept the status quo, because it doesn't chanllnge their way of life; hot dogs, baseball, and White Power. The failure of the struggle is like rolling the perfect bowling bowl and getting a 7-10 split. Getting a spare is almost impossible."

"What about a Civil War?"

"One Civil War was enough." The north barely remembers the battles, even though the impact of those five year has determined our history for over a hundred years. The South refuses to believe in defeat and worships the dead and fallen of Petersburg and Gettysburg as saints.

After ten years of the Vietnam War our country's unity is very fragile. The Right has battered the Working Man with the anti-communistic rants of Joe McCarthy, the corruption of Nixon, the betrayal of democracy with Watergate, the voter repression, and political assassinations of anyone calling for peace or liberty or the pursuit of happiness. Southerners want to secede and many northerners have been brain-wahed into the same mind-set. A national dissolvement fueld by internal dissent and external threats transform America into a giant stature fallen into the sea. The first thousand feet don't hurt, but like the USS Thresher the pressure will collapse steel or stone.

A time for national resurgence is in order, although without the purge of commies, faggots, drug dealers, and poets. THe purge is mandated for the Rich, who have everything to lose. This call for National Unity appeals to my friends; Ro was an immediate recruit to the crusade, but wants it now. It can't be now, becasue none of us have lost everything and no oen will risse until they realize everything they love is gone.

1970 One Million Against the War

Hundreds of Trump supporters have gathered at State Capitols to protest the stay-out edicts issued by their governors. The Media has made a big deal about these gatherings and I agree with them a little. Fuck the Government, but these pissant protests are bullshit.

In 1970 a million people traveled to Washington to demand for the end to the Vietnam War.

That was a protest, but where are those old hippies now.

I am always for the revolution.

I'm With Angela Davis Too

Angela Davis was the cover girl for the Black Panthers.

She was and remains a true revolutionary.

Now more than ever.

But she was never alone.

They fed the people.

They spoke about freedom.

They fought the pigs.

RESIST.

In the words of Bobby Sands IRA MP for Belfast - "Our revenge will be the laughter of our children."

He fought the Crown with hunger.

Da Poor Versus Da Rich

BURN ALL CONDOS

We all poor and we ain't gonna get rich believing in WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE.

Burn baby burn.

Foto by Gwen O'Neill.

Da Poor Versus Da Rich

BURN ALL CONDOS

We all poor and we ain't gonna get rich believing in WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE.

Burn baby burn.

Foto by Gwen O'Neill.

The Ghost Of Pumpkin Trotsky

Two weekends ago thousands of New England college students converged on Keene, New Hampshire. The annual Pumpkin Festival ended in a riot. My nephew attended the celebration of the Jack O'Lantern. Eric told his father that he had left before the disturbances flared into violence. Paddy and I looked at each other. We had been young once.

In 1965 three friends and I had vandalized an abandoned missile base on a hill south of Boston. That skein of destruction had nothing to do with politics. We trashed the missile silos, offices, bunkers with a Hun's delight and that same spirit ruled the blooding running through the veins of Pumpkin Fest rioters.

The euphemism for this outlaw behavior is 'blowing off steam' and William Osterweil of Alzaara.com pointed out this week that "the white college kids in Keene flipped cars and threw bottles at cops for the fun of it, the media called them rowdy booze-filled revelers and all sorts of other euphemisms. By contrast, when Ferguson protesters aggressively confronted the police, the media framed the actions in terms of rioting, thuggery, destruction of their own community and other harsh verdicts. The two incidents offered an object lesson in the media’s racial bias."

I was not there.

I was not at Ferguson.

But I condone any resistance to the will of the police.

Ferguson or Keene. TO READ AL JAZEERA'S ARTICLE ON KEENE, PLEASE GO TO THIS URL.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/10/ferguson-keene-pumpkinfestpartyriotspoliceviolence.html

Whose streets?

What's Yours Is Ours

AN OLD JOKE FROM THE 60S.

A rich man comes out of his mansion and spots a young man camping on his lawn. Filled with indignation he strides up to the squatter and demands him to leave or else he'll call the police.

"How did you get this land?" The young man remains seated by his fire.

"What difference does it make?" The rich man wishes he had his shotgun to put the fears in this interloper.

"The difference between my staying or leaving."

"I worked for it." 18 hours a day when he was a young investment banker.

"And who owned it before you and your kind?"

"I don't know." Rock salt in the young man's ass would get him moving.

"It belonged to the Indians, right?"

"I suppose so." Buckshot might work better.

"And how did they lose their land. Someone took it from them and I'm taking it from you."

"You're only one." The rich man was thinking of a .45. A single shot to protect his estate.

"Not one." The young man pointed to the ivy-covered wall. Hundreds of people were climbing over the barrier between those that have and those that don't. "We're many."

"This is theft." The rich man would need more than the police to evict this many people.

"We like liberation better, my name's Jake, neighbor."

And they lived happily ever after on the rich man's wine cellar and grilled foie gras, because a barbecue was better than a bonfire.

A Letter from Huey Newton

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A Letter from Huey Newton to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters about the Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements" is considered the first pro-gay, pro-woman proclamation to come out of the black civil rights movement. During the past few years strong movements have developed among women and among homosexuals seeking their liberation. There has been some uncertainty about how to relate to these movements. Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion. I say "whatever your insecurities are" because as we very well know, sometimes our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth, and want a woman to be quiet. We want to hit a homosexual in the mouth because we are afraid that we might be homosexual; and we want to hit the women or shut her up because we are afraid that she might castrate us, or take the nuts that we might not have to start with. We must gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people. We must not use the racist attitude that the White racists use against our people because they are Black and poor. Many times the poorest White person is the most racist because he is afraid that he might lose something, or discover something that he does not have. So you're some kind of a threat to him. This kind of psychology is in operation when we view oppressed people and we are angry with them because of their particular kind of behavior, or their particular kind of deviation from the established norm. Remember, we have not established a revolutionary value system; we are only in the process of establishing it. I do not remember our ever constituting any value that said that a revolutionary must say offensive things towards homosexuals, or that a revolutionary should make sure that women do not speak out about their own particular kind of oppression. As a matter of fact, it is just the opposite: we say that we recognize the women's right to be free. We have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppressed people in the society. And what made them homosexual? Perhaps it's a phenomenon that I don't understand entirely. Some people say that it is the decadence of capitalism. I don't know if that is the case; I rather doubt it. But whatever the case is, we know that homosexuality is a fact that exists, and we must understand it in its purest form: that is, a person should have the freedom to use his body in whatever way he wants. That is not endorsing things in homosexuality that we wouldn't view as revolutionary. But there is nothing to say that a homosexual cannot also be a revolutionary. And maybe I'm now injecting some of my prejudice by saying that "even a homosexual can be a revolutionary." Quite the contrary, maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary. When we have revolutionary conferences, rallies, and demonstrations, there should be full participation of the gay liberation movement and the women's liberation movement. Some groups might be more revolutionary than others. We should not use the actions of a few to say that they are all reactionary or counterrevolutionary, because they are not. We should deal with the factions just as we deal with any other group or party that claims to be revolutionary. We should try to judge, somehow, whether they are operating in a sincere revolutionary fashion and from a really oppressed situation. (And we will grant that if they are women they are probably oppressed.) If they do things that are unrevolutionary or counterrevolutionary, then criticize that action. If we feel that the group in spirit means to be revolutionary in practice, but they make mistakes in interpretation of the revolutionary philosophy, or they do not understand the dialectics of the social forces in operation, we should criticize that and not criticize them because they are women trying to be free. And the same is true for homosexuals. We should never say a whole movement is dishonest when in fact they are trying to be honest. They are just making honest mistakes. Friends are allowed to make mistakes. The enemy is not allowed to make mistakes because his whole existence is a mistake, and we suffer from it. But the women's liberation front and gay liberation front are our friends, they are our potential allies, and we need as many allies as possible. We should be willing to discuss the insecurities that many people have about homosexuality. When I say "insecurities," I mean the fear that they are some kind of threat to our manhood. I can understand this fear. Because of the long conditioning process which builds insecurity in the American male, homosexuality might produce certain hang-ups in us. I have hang-ups myself about male homosexuality. But on the other hand, I have no hang-up about female homosexuality. And that is a phenomenon in itself. I think it is probably because male homosexuality is a threat to me and female homosexuality is not. We should be careful about using those terms that might turn our friends off. The terms "faggot" and "punk" should be deleted from our vocabulary, and especially we should not attach names normally designed for homosexuals to men who are enemies of the people, such as Nixon or Mitchell. Homosexuals are not enemies of the people. We should try to form a working coalition with the gay liberation and women's liberation groups. We must always handle social forces in the most appropriate manner. posted by Jim Fouratt, longtime revolutionary