Wobbly times number 128

On the Eve of the Invasion of Iraq, 2003

It was a still Sunday morning in March. Even at 7:55am, the heat was already unbearable. The sun was pouring 40C down full scorn. It was Indian Summer in Perth and the Fremantle Doctor was out of town. Hector sat in his apartment waiting, his curtains drawn, his fan on full. As a janitor, he didn't bring much money home, even though he worked most everyday of the week. He had no regular pay. Essentially, he and his crew were on call for services so, the amount of money he had each week varied, sometimes quite widely. Hector was lead man at TempoJan. He'd be the first to get any call. He'd wake the others by phone, and become their wage-slave driver, if they were needed. Better, if he worked alone though. More money that way. But today was special. It was rent day. Both his employer and his "team members" at TempoJan knew that he couldn't take-off from home before 8:20am or so.

Hector lived life in the slow lane. He'd done that since he'd escaped from Sydney, his ex-wife and his failed building maintenance business. He'd traversed the whole of the Australian continent in a `66 Holden wagon ten years before. He still had his son and his daughter whom he would speak to now and again very loudly on his phone at 4 in the morning––his son being at university in Canada and his daughter, wasting her life away, employed in a shoe factory after her own divorce in Brazil. His wife...fortunately, he never heard from her again after he took off for the West Coast.

Hector's landlord would be coming by soon to pick up his bi-weekly rent. Don and his wife, Alice were always quite cheerful on rent days. They'd visit each of the eight apartments, knock on every door with a smile on their faces, expecting same and rent from those who answered. Funny how that works. Of course, they also used the occasion to take a peek at the condition their property was in. Two birds with one stone, win/win and all that.  Hector opened his door rather obsequiously after the first rap. He guffawed nervously, cigarette in hand. Alice tittered. "Eh, hombre!" he bellowed loudly. The others would know now that it was The Don. The Don was usually quite prompt for these Sunday rent collections––always 8am––unless something had gone awry––like the time he had to have his heart checked at the Royal Perth Hospital. Then, he'd phone Ian and Ian would make sure the other renters knew the new time of his arrival."Hot morning this one," Don observed to break the ice. Alice kept smiling. She reminded him of his ex-wife when she was giving worm pills to the family dog. His wife was Anglo too. "HereMercury." It was all wrapped up in hamburger that worm pill. Mercury would sniff and then his wife'd pop it down his throat as he opened his jaws for burger.  

Hector was from Brazil. Portuguese was his mother tongue. "Yayz. Buggah me. It'z ben so bloodah hah. Woo!"  Don Martino was of Italian stock. His parents had moved to WA to farm after WWII when he was still a little boy. They had been lured by the Australian Government's promise of cheap land. Plus, the idea of living in a country barely touched by war appealed to war weary Sicilians. Don's papa planted a couple of apricot and pear orchards. "The Don" as he was known, had taken overafter his parents retired. He'd decided to buy some apartments on the side in the 70s, after he'd married Alice. It was a second marriage for both of them and they'd wisely decided to pool their savings to buy some rental property before they'd gotten hitched. It was in writing.

The Don opened Hector's screen door and came in, black book in hand. "Less sigh, we goh-- elec-trissity this time oz while."   Hector silently grinned and asked as politely as he could, "How much bahz?" His tone was not challenging, indeed, it was taken humourously, The Don and Alice laughing out loud, The Don putting his pencil tip between his lips with his right hand while placing his left arm on Hector's shoulder."Well, ih comz to for-ee-oyt this toyem," Don informed him. His black book was at the ready, in case there was a challenge to the figure. "Eye goh eat," Hector replied. "Cheers Hektah, so ill be, let'z sigh", Don said as he took his pencil out of his shirt pocket and added the rent to the electricity figure on the pre-printed receipt, "too-hunret oy-teedollahs." Hector looked a bit taken a back and then smiled sheepishly, peeling off the $200 and then going into his back pocket, he pulled out his wallet for a fiver and then extracted a one and two dollar coin from his front pants-pocket.  After the last bout of the rent collecting ceremony had ended at Ian's door. The Don and Alice sauntered back slowly to their shiny, black, air-conditioned Holden Statesman for the drive back up to their home in the hills. Their spacious house was situated picturesquely next to their apricot and pear orchards.

As the Don and his Alice were going down the driveway into King Charles Street, Hector's phone rang and the owner of TempoJan informed him of a small clean up job at Skipper's Hyundai Auto Mart.  As Hector was putting his phone down, Jimmy, the Scotsman popped out of his apartment below. He immediately began to complain to Ian about how little The Don did for upkeep at the complex. Ian listened patiently, "Humm," he said. "Oy seee," he saidslowly. After pointing out for the 10,000th time how The Don only cared, "boot this," holding his hand up and rubbing his thumb and his index finger together, the scene evaporated in retreat from the ever rising sun, into the fan cooled interiors of their respective chambers.

Afternoon was even more torrid. By the time Hector got back, even the bricks in his apartment were radiating a withering heat. As he entered his oven-like home, he spied a cockroach out the corner of his eye. The toenail sized brown bug scuttled along the lip of the sink, racing behind the fridge. "Got damn ro-shez," he whispered irritably, as the stale,humid air of the apartment sank into his lungs. He had to keep it locked and sealed when he was away. There were break-ins happening all the time in his neighbourhood. A yawning wave came over him. It was time to nap. He shut the front door, opened his windows and turned his two fans on. He left his sweat soaked clothes in one clump. The hot, form fitted sheet stretched across a lonely queen-size mattress which was plopped, frame-less. atop a set of box springs. His head slumped into the feather-filled pillow.

Dream dramas took over more or less instantly as he found himself in a furniture-less living room. His ex-wife was shouting at him because he hadn't remembered where her laundry was. A kangaroo appeared behind her, putting its arm over her shoulder. But she didn't seem to notice its presence as she shrieked. On thefloor, surrounded by wall stickers, advising the location of her web site (complete with telephone number), the sloth-ant arched, its black, furry back.....

He awoke clutching his heart! His pillow was damp from sweat. He glanced at his alarm clock. He had been out for an hour and a half. He got up, trundled to the bathroom and splashed cool water on his face. The feeling was so refreshing that he decided to shower. In he jumped, letting the water run cold over his back, over his head, then he adjusted it warmer and shampooed his matted hair. The rest of the accumulated dirt and encrusted sweat-scum from his body disappeared under the vigorous sudsing action of an aqua-green Palmolive soap bar. From there, it was off to the fridge door for a cold one.

"No beer!' his thoughts panicked in Portuguese. He remembered now that he'd drunk the last of his Emu Bitter block on Saturday night with Jimmy. "Time to get dressed and make your way to the bottle shop at the Broken Hill," he whispered to himself in Portuguese. Out he went, into the last, dimming orange tinted light of day, with his partially jelled hair slicked back, crisp white shirt on, his khaki coloured shorts only one day old. His flip-flops struck his heels rhythmically and he walked down the cement staircase onto the driveway and onto the sidewalk. He proceeded down King Charles road to the Albany Highway, to cross the street to the sparkling, old Aussie hotel structure known as, The Broken Hill. 

"Perhaps a small beer before I go to the bottle shop," he reflected outside pub entrance."G'day myte," Ian said smiling from the bar. "How long Yu ben he-ah?" Hector asked."Since `bout tha-rree the avo myte." said Ian. "Come, I'll by ya a Jameson's.""I'm goin' to the boh-ul shop myte." 

Hector answered as he took the whiskey in hand and downed it in one quick, satisfied gulp.Ian sniffed the lip of his tumbler and then, "Dawn tha hahtchmyte. I'll calm which ya. By the whey, did yah know ah'mgoin' back ta Ireland next year?. I want to see weatha I kin live there agin," Ian said."Am leavin' this blood-ay Westurn Austrailyah too," Hector replied. "Ma see-ster sayz thot I cah leave which her familia until I get whirk." "Where'z tha, myte?""Brass-eel," Hector said. "Way-ahr  you tink?""Less go," Ian said. He accompanied Hector to the bottle shopjust outside and around the corner."One block of Emu Bitter and one litre of Jameson's. Is that all?", the bottle shop attendant asked."Yayz," Hector answered. "Hearz thur-tee for the whiskey, myte." Ian said putting onehand on Hector's shoulder while shoving the thirty dollars into his mate's palm."I tank U, leslie tanks U," Hector replied grinning, a freshly burning cigarette dangling from his lip. 

Hector had lived in America for a few months, learning English and some of the commercials stuck, it seemed, forever. He took the cold Emu block under his arm. Ian grabbed the Jameson's and the two made theirway back across the Albany Highway, up King Charles road, into the driveway, up the cement stairs and into Hector's hot-as-an-oven kitchen.

"Blah-dee roaches!" Hector said as he twisted the brownexo-skeleton against the wall near the light switch. He wiped the gut stain from the wall with a paper towel. "Podon me. I'ma gonna wash ma handz." "No were ease, myte," Ian smiled. "Aye got the sameproblem. These thingz are a bloody new-since." "Yah, and Jim-ah, he say, The Don, he don't donothin'," Hector guffawed from the bathroom. "He juscollek da rent." "Nowah, therez a trooth," Ian returned.

Hector came out, turned the TV on sound down and put an Anita Bryant LP on his record player. "The man is the soul of a woman," she wailed. The music drifted on through an eclectic selection of piled discs. The TV in the background flickered like a campfire as the two sat at Hector's kitchen table talking weather, sports, former familylife, and news events while downing swigs of Jameson's, followedon by Emu Bitter stubbies. 

The last record plopped down on the turntable and the Morman Tabernacle Choir came on with their stirring rendition of, "Onward Christian Soldiers". The two men stopped talking, giving the choir their undivided, even rapt attention. The music stopped and a moment of silence ensued. 

Of a sudden, they started slurring their views on the coming war. "Waz you think? The bloodee Air-abs. Therz no hopa. Bloodee liars, all of them. Hypocrits. All of dem-- hyp-O-crites."

"Am not sure what's happenin' owt they-are now,myte," Ian said, his head lowered, his eyes looking up through his thick eyebrows. Then, with his head cocked sideways, he looked askance at Hector from his kitchen chair. His broadly set, greyish-blue eyes stared out from his white, partially balding skull. 

"Not shoah? Dare blooda hypocrits. I theenk dah Americans are gonna bomb dem back to sheet. But no dramas fo me, myde. I stick bah mahself. Day go aroun bombing sit-ays and so fort," Hector said looking a bit desperate. He had forgotten to take his medicine after getting up in the morning. 

"I d'own ax-act-lee know wha you myan, myte?"

"I meen, they all hypocrits, the whole useless bloodee lot. They can all die in their sheet. I doan cair. Wha you meen yu do-own noah? You some kind of hypocrit too?"

"Wha? Yur sayin' I'm a hypocrit?"

"They all dezerve die. Nothin' but hypocrits."

"Whass. You sayin', I'm a hypocrit?"

"They all hypocrits. They talk one ting and sigh an-udder,"Hector said. "They sheet."

"Whass? You sayin', I'm a hypocrit?" Ian insisted.

"The blood-ah Erbs, they gonna get it now. Saddam, hissheet."

"U sayin' I'm a hypocrit?" Ian kept on, his dark,deep voice slurred, but threatening too.

"Dat Bush, heez hypocrit too. Belief me, the world is full of`em. All liahs," Hector answered.

"U sayin' I'm a hypocrit?" Ian asked again. 

Too much booze in too little time had changed them both into the other people, the people they would be happy to forget they were in the morning.

"Da world iss a big plaza ma ferend. Full a hypocrits. I doanlie. No, I doan need ta lie. Day all lie. I doan need a lot. Am simple mine. Haf a simple life, right he-ah. I doan need they steen-king money. Am a simple mine."

"U sayin' I'm a hypocrit?"

Another silence fell over the table. The men looked through their blurred visions at each other.

"Get ow of mah house!"

"U sayin' I'm a hypocrit?"

"Geh ow mah house!"

"U sayin' I'm a hypocrit?"

Hector got up and opened the front door. Then Ian got up and Hector tried to push Ian away towards the screen door. But Ian wasn'tso easily dealt with. He stood his ground and with determined, semi-bowed gaze focussed on Hector, his slurred speech erupted once again, "U sayin' I'm a hypocrit?"

The two men were close to being the same size. Both had had about the same amount to drink. Only Hector was a bit more under the influence of things beyond his control. He stood in close proximity to Ian, and with a frustrated, angry, loud, "Hee-ah!" heforced his mate's torso into the precariously latched, aluminum-framedscreen door. Ian's body went backwards, out onto the cat walk cement landing. 

With this victorious defence of his territory, Hector quickly slammed his front door, "Bang!" as he glimpsed hisdrinking mate's body hit the iron grating outside and begin its bounce back towards him at the entrance to his apartment. He stomped through his living room/kitchen turning off all three of his lights. Then, in the dark, he set his alarm for 5am. Still fully clothed, he collapsed onto his bed and into an immediate, if troubled sleep.

After loudly inquiring three more times, "U sayin' I'm ahypocrit?" while banging his fist against Hector's door, Ian retreated to his corner abode. He turned his record player on-- volume on high. It was 3am and the air inside his brick dwelling was a stale 40C. The sounds of "Irish Eyes Are Smiling" blared from his open windows. He sat in his chair staring, incoherent soliloquies flowing through his mind like bands of angry chimps. 

At five, Hector's alarm rang and didn't stop ringing until seven.

Wobbly Times number 51

The following is a transcription of an interview done with me at a Stanford University coffee shop back in the 1980s:

I hope to find a few kindred spirits who opposed the war Were you one of them? If so, I would like to know where you were and what you did.

I was one of them. I was at Michigan State University and then just an East Lansing worker from 1967-1975. I attended most all the anti-war demos and helped organizing a few. My orientation wasn't just to end that particular war; but to present a working class critque of capitalism, along with a presentation of what I thought would work better as a society.

First of all, I want to talk about how one joins the antiwar movement. "Join" the antiwar movement... I think that is a very strange term. We didn't have to enlist or enroll or anything. If the antiwar movement wasn't "joined," one merely "became" a part of it as it evolved. Do you agree?


Yes, if you prefer that verb.

How did it happen for you?


I was in the Marine Corps from 1963 to 1967. Out of high school, I was a patriotic lad, who thought that all the guys had to go in to the military either before or after college. As I knew that one could get money from the government to go to school after one had been "in", I used that knowledge to help me make my decision to enlist. In 1963 there was a universal draft. Also, it didn't hurt that my father had been in the Army as a career before he met an untimely death in the early 50's.

My experience in the USMC led me to a rather vague set of conclusions about the War as it developed. Primary among these was a skeptical reception to major media stories about what it was really like in the War. Although, I never set foot in Vietnam, I did have occasion to "debrief" fellow Marines about their experiences. None of these tales matched what was being written in "Time" magazine, my ideological mentor of choice then. Something was fishy and this nagging concept began to combine with an idea, generated in the bowels of USMC bureaucracy and hierarchy that the War was in reality not about what the major ideological sources claimed--democracy/national liberation--it was instead, a power struggle between States. I was evolving into an undefined sort of pacifist. This was helped along by reading Sartre's triolgy on the roads to freedom--TROUBLE SLEEP, AGE OF REASON, the third's title escapes me now. It was also hastened by meeting a brave young African American, who just refused to take orders and who was thrown in the brig and then out of the USMC. This guy was the one who turned me on to existentialism. I was also beginning to listen to Dylan and the Stones. I was determined not to become, "only a pawn in their game."

Did the madness of the sixties influence your affiliation with the antiwar movement?


Probably, the absurdity of bureaucratic acceptance, combined with the knowledge that we are all, "condemned to be free" i.e. we choose, whether we think so or not. We are responsible.

You said that your later years in USMC were marked by a nagging doubt about what America was doing, and you mentioned "USMC bureaucracy and hierarchy." That reminded me of the distrust we all felt for a monolithic "system." When you looked at the government and "military-industrial complex," did you perceive a giant, insensitive, illogical monolith that was difficult to trust? If not, what did you see?


Well yes. I became more and more convinced that the system was capitalism. As capitalism, the US system was democratic to a degree. The degree that it was democratic, depended largely on what era you were talking about. I saw it as becoming more and more democratic i.e. more and more run by the people; but not run by the people in many important areas, most importantly the economy. The economy was/is related directly to the question of the military industrial complex and those entities influence on the State. While we could elect representitives to the government, those representitives were often more beholden to the minority which made up the employing class and not the majority who made up the employed i.e. what in common terms is called the middle class.

I'm glad we both speak Bob Dylan. Right now, I would like to explore some of the frustration you probably felt about awakening others to the terrible things we were doing in Vietnam, but the public was sleeping soundly underneath all the "ideolgically impregnated/programmed ignorance" you saw around you. Those days reminded me of one of the closing verses of "Desolation Row":

all hail to Nero's Neptune
the Titanic sails at dawn
everybody is shouting,
"which side are you on?"
and Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot
are fighting in the captain's tower
while calypso singers laugh at them
and fishermen hold flowers
between the windows of the sea
where lovely mermaids flow
and nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row.

How frustrated did the "ideolgically impregnated/programmed ignorance" make you and the other protesters around you feel when you tried to make the public aware of what was going on?



Pretty frustrated, indeed. We saw the media manipulation of the issues we brought up because we were bringing these issues up and then we'd see them in the press and it would take an entirely different slant.

No wonder the "ordinary" silent majority was against us. They had been the victims of disinformation. So, we attempted to build a counter culture, complete with its own media. "Music was our only friend--until the end."

Do you remember '68, with the Tet offensive, the assinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Chicago convention and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia? What did you think of when you watched those events unfold on the news?


Yeah. I remember all of the above. I thought different things about each of the above. I hadn't yet read Marx in '68. By then, I had come to define myself as an anarchist; but I didn't know what exactly I meant by it. I was also contradictory. As I said, I began that year supporting McCarthy and ended it wanting to vote for the Peace and Freedom Party. The assassinations just seemed to stem naturally from a society going bonkers. The Chicago Democratic Convention appalled me. The USSR's invasion of Czechoslovakia didn't come as a surprise; after all there had been Hungary.

Do you think the madness started earlier, perhaps with the civil rights marches? With the JFK assassination?


Maybe.

We discussed your participation in demonstrations, and how the their tenor changed as the war continued:

"And the demonstrations... did they seem more innocent and peaceful in the beginning?

Yes. The participants were more innocent. Those opposing the demonstrations were nastier. They tended to crawl back in to the woodwork as flower power gave way to self-defense classes and steel toed boots.

When did they get nastier? After Chicago in '68? After the Cambodian Invasion in '70? How did they get nastier?

I'd say after Chicago in '68. People knew that they'd better start protecting themselves. At least some people knew. The analysis of the police began to take shape and develop then."

I wonder if you could send some specific anecdotes, do give those who read your remarks a flavor of what antiwar demonstrations were like. Is that possible?


I'll try. There were two types of demo: the planned and the spontaneous. The planned ones took weeks and even months to prepare for--leaflets, posters, publicity in the counter cultural press and so on. Then we we did it on whateve level, local, statewide or national. Most local ones were gatherings of 10 to 20 thousand people which would start in East Lansing and go to the State Capitol building in Lansing. It was a stroll about 5 miles down the main drag, Grand River Avenue. People would be encouraging others to speak some slogan in unison e.g. "One, two, three, four, we don't want your fucking war." or some such thing. Sometimes we would be attacked by onlookers; but most people were sort of tentatively curious, sometimes even supportive. The longer the war went on, the more supportive they got. You would usually be with some of your friends and stick with them throughout the demo. Sometimes you carried signs, sometimes flags. Many people smoked marijuanna and passed joints around. It all went with the counter culture.

At the end of the parade, we'd party. Some would seriously listen to the speeches given by politicians trying to latch on to the popular sentiment or to organizers from mostly lennists sects, who attempted to lead the masses to something or another. Most of us didn't give a damn about the politicians. We wanted the killing to stop, the death culture to die and for enjoyment to take over.

Spontaneous demos, like the one in 1972 over the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, were much more volatile. We ended up taking over the main arteries of the town of East Lansing during it. Without warning, people just started gathering in the streets. People were worried that this action by our government would provoke a nuclear response from the USSR and/or China. Lives were on the line. Serious statements needed to be made and they were. Shutting down business as usual was a form of forced general strike. The cops went crazy, using tear gas on the multitudes and lining the roofs of department stores with men armed with shotguns. But we held our ground. Well, at least for that first and the next night.

When we went out to lunch, you told me about one time when four or five busloads of police came to retake the admin building from a handful of freaks, and how the crowd switched sides from pro-police to pro-freaks when they saw the cops' abuse of powers. Could you please retell that story for the anthology?


Some freaks were arrested for marijuanna possession and/or giving it away in the Michigan State University student union during Spring Term, 1968. Their friends knew that they had been entrapped by the local campus narc police. So, they got pissed and occupied the Administration Building demanding the charges be dropped. The police were bussed in to campus--State Police--to bolster the local cops. There were about three city buses full of them all dressed up in riot gear with ax handle clubs about 5 feet long in their hands. When students on campus got wind that the Admin Bldg was being occupied by long hair freaks they started gathering around jeering the occupiers and waiting for the police to come.
When the cops got there the students outside were totally on the side of the authorities. The cops then lined up very military like on both sides of a 25 yard sidewalk which led from the street and their waiting three buses to the door of the Admin Bldg. A flying squad of helmeted cops was sent in to flush out the freaks.

Students stood outside, waiting for the action and they got it. The freaks were driven out the door and on to the sidewalk where they were pummled by the cops as they were forced to run the gauntlet. The formerly supportive students on the began making pleas to cease hitting these hippie peaceniks. But the police kept running them out through the gauntlet-- I think there were about ten in all, men and women. They were bloody, screaming pain by the time they got on the buses.

Well all hell broke loose then. The students saw that the cops weren't going to stop beating these people, so they started attacking the cops with stones and fists. The cops at first stood their ground; but then the situation became apparent to them--the hippies with ax handles and some of these "hippies" were students. The police were attacking us! We attacked back with a vengence. It was like an army who had their adversaries on the run. The buses began to move. The drivers tried to steer their way through the growing crowds and they people kept rocking the buses all along the way...

Eventually the buses were able to leave campus and behind them stood thousands of newly radicalized students, who had begun to understand which side they were on what it was telling us about the war in Vietnam.

You also told me about burning your hand on a teargas canister. That implies you must have felt outraged by the powers that be (at least once or twice). Can you share any anecdotes of how you felt at public demonstrations?


See above.
I've got too many and not much more time to tell them now. (I was on my lunch hour from work.)

You also spoke of the tension that existed between protesters and "rednecks." Were "rednecks supporters of the government? Why were protesters so cautious? What kinds of troubles were likely to occur between protesters and "rednecks"? Would they take place in public or in private? Specific examples would be good for giving readers a flavor of the time.


Red necks would beat protestors up. Protestors did not usually fight back on an individual level. If crowds were plowed in to by cars of rednecks, there would be a violent response.
They would happen both in public and private. At that time, having hair which was long was considered an act of anti-war activity. You were a target, if you had long hair.

Now I'm thinking about Abbie Hoffman's "second American revolution." How did you feel about people who wanted to overthrow the government?


I thought we needed more democracy. I think Abbie thought that too.

What do you mean when you said " we needed more democracy"? Was the "second American revolution" revolution founded upon the same rationale that Jefferson expressed in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government... [emphasis added]

To the best of your knowledge, was that the rationale of the "second American revolution"?


Precisely. However, as I've said above, I believed that democracy had evolved from Jefferson's time. I did think that capitalism had become destructive of those ends and the way I saw/see it is that the employing class is the ruling class and therefore the prime movers of governmental policy in the USA. That is to say, governmental policy is shaped according to the interests of the capitalist class; just as it was in the countries ruled by the dogma of "my country, right or wrong."

You also mentioned an interest in presenting "a working class critque of capitalism, along with a presentation of what I thought would work better as a society." I suppose that presentation evolved over time. When did your presentations first appear?


1969.

How did they change as time passed?


They evolved from a vaguely philosophical Marxist critique, shaped mostly by Raya Dunevaskaya and CLR James to a more well defined prgrammatic approach engendered by reading DeLeon, the Situationists, Luckacs and Marx.

How did the public receive them?


Mostly with confusion, derision and ideolgically impregnated/programmed ignorance.

Were your presentations welcome, or did the public seem threatened?

10% welcome. 80% no opinion. 10% opposition.

I'm thinking about alienation of youth now. Did anyone ever harass you for being a member of the counterculture?


No. But the threat was always there. It was in the air. You didn't want to be anywhere near rednecks and rednecks were almost everywhere.

Were you regarded as a communist?


Not a CP member; but I was a known socialist. I ran "against" Congress in 1974 on the Socialist Labor Party ticket.

A traitor?


Few people call ex-Marines traitor.

An anarchist?


I've been called that by both the left and the right.

Did the police ever give you any grief -- drug searches and the like... did you feel alienated from the American culture?


Alienated. For sure. Police are always grief. I was only arrested once for being in a building with 165 other students, who were discussing the Kent State and Jackson State murders. It was May 4,1970. We wern't planning to be arrested, i.e. it wasn't a sit-in. We just continued our teach-in after the building, the Student Union had been officially closed. We didn't want to be arrested; we just wanted to talk.

When Agnew gave his speech about "effete intellectual snobs," how did his remarks make you feel?


Agnews remarks fell like water off a duck's back.

What about Nixon's plea for the "silent majority"? Did their words affect your behavior at subsequent demonstrations?



No.

When I mentioned Agnew's excoriation of protesters and Nixon's call for the silent majority, I recognize their remarks had little affect on you. Do you think they had any affect on the silent majority who came out to contend with you during your demonstrations?


Yes. We were questioning all authority which came from the Establishment. On the other hand, the people who supported the Establishment saw their ideals and dogmas under attack. Being conservative of those dogmas and ideals, they saw Nixon's people as giving voice to their frustrations. Disinformation by the major media plus bourgeois politicians=what democracy we had at that time.

Now I'm thinking about Daniel Ellseburg's Pentagon Papers and the role of the free press. How did you feel when the Papers were published? Maybe betrayed? Maybe a little more cynical about the people in power? Did they affect your behavior at d emonstrations?


No. They didn't affect my behaviour. They only confirmed what I already knew--we needed more democracy, not less.

If you have some other thoughts you would like to share with me regarding the antiwar movement, please do so.


The anti-war movement was essentially divided in to two wings. One wanted to just end this particular war because it was unjust. The other wing wanted to end war by ending the system that produced it. It identified itself as a "counter culture" because in essence, it began seeing itself as beginning to build a new society and consciousness within the womb of the old. The first group went on to become the yuppies. The second group developed in many directions but remained committed to bringing about a more democratic society.

Wobbly Times number 44

HOW TO MAKE A SOCIAL REVOLUTION


1. Take out a Red Card. Joining the One Big Union is the first step.

a. study the IWW Constitution and consciously digest the IWW Preamble.

2. Once you've taken out your IWW union card, pay your dues.

a. One Big Union cannot function without your active solidarity and that begins with supporting the OBU with your dues. If you don't pay your dues, you've failed to make even a minimal contribution to your own liberation.
b. If everyone who had ever taken out a Red Card had continued to pay their dues, we'd have the Four Hour day by now. War, sexism, racism and wage-slavery would have come to their well deserved end.


3. Once you've paid your dues; agitate, educate and organise your fellow workers to the point where they see the necessity of getting together to support their One Big classwide Union.

a. Paying your dues is the minimum effort you can contribute toward making a social revolution. Only the workers can make a social revolution happen and 'workers' mean you.


4. Learn Wobbly songs and make them up yourself with your fellow workers and sing them at the picketlines and demonstrations you go to.



If all workers who take out Red Cards do these things and continue to do them, the social revolution can happen in our lifetimes. If workers just take out a Red Card and do none of these things,even the MINIMUM thing of paying their dues, they will be able to say, "Look, I have a Red Card." That's all that will happen. That worker will have purchased another cultural icon which can be safely stored with the other junk in the garage.

REMEMBER!


The job is the only place where you can win your demands.
Organization does not just happen; it is made to happen. Do your part.
The person next to you should be in the union. Have you tried?
The IWW is practical. Let people know about it.
Union literature in your pocket is lying idle. Take it out and put it to work.
If every Wobbly gets a new Wobbly every month, we would have a 4 hour day in a year.
If meetings aren't being held in your locality, you can arrange them.
The activity of the rank and file, and not the "leaders," will advance the cause of labor.
Don't send for a delegate when you can do it yourself.
One who fears is enslaved. To understand the IWW is to know that industrial unionism
will guarantee your protection.
Even on a job that can't be unionized for now there is always something that can be improved,
and collective action can lay the ground work for later organizing.
The strength of workers lies in solidarity.

Wobbly Times number 11

Oh...in answer to the question, "What did you do in the war, daddy?" , I have the following answer, to be found here.

"War? What is it good for?" Well that depends, mostly on which class you're in. All wars are fought by workers and peasants for their masters in the ruling class. It's in the class interests of those who control the State to maintain the power of that State and yes, to project it into other States; to defeat other States and, if possible, to take control of all or part of the wealth through war. That's what war between States is about....mostly. There are also working class concerns in winning a war which their rulers send them out to fight in. For example, it was in workers' class interests to have the fascists lose the battle for world hegemony aka WWII. Of course, we got the Cold War and the continuance of class rule and threat of nuclear annihilation (all of which continues today, although the names have been changed to promote an innocence); but we avoided the worst of the excesses of capitalist dictatorship gone mad with social Darwinist ideas and actions. I mean, learning Japanese would be an honourable, difficult, admirable thing for an Australian to do these days; but think about what a Japanese victory in WWII would have meant in terms of having to learn the Japanese language. Thanks to the workers of the world who were on the side of the anti-fascists in WWII!

War within States, civil wars are usually competitions between rival ruling classes in conflict. Again though, we need to be careful in totally condemning them all e.g. the U.S. Civil War. This war resulted in ending chattel slavery in the USA and therefore was in the interest of the workers to see the Union defeat the Confederacy. In the Spanish Civil War, it was in the class interests of the workers of the world to see Franco's undemocratic Nationalists defeated.

But, for the most part, wars, including civil wars tend to be good for, "Absolutely Nothing!" from a class conscious worker's point of view.