|
[Take me to Cindy Varela Henderson for State Senate!] [Take me to The Fictional Times!] 
 ...on the land and in the band... 
 ...welcoming the crowd and performing at the Peace & Freedom Party fundraiser, Powerhouse Theatre, Aug. 5, 2007... Novelist, Screenwriter, Musician, Songwriter, Travel writer, playwright, humorist, columnist NEW CLIPS OF SONGS AND IMPROVISATIONAL COMMENTARIES, AND FROM THE 1995 PLAY, "THE SMOKING GUN CAFE" Click to watch clip from Gordon's piece on "Beyond Darwin", Voice In The Well show, Warszawa, 2009 (Eric Vollmer, Producer) Click to watch "Democratic Candidate Paul Simon's Lament" to the tune of songwriter Paul Simon's "The Boxer", from Gordon's satirical play "Primary Colors" produced in March, 1988; song parody lyrics by Steve Goodie, performed by Ira Luft. Click to watch Gordon on the CIA and Crack at Creativity, 1996 Click to watch Gordon on 1964, The Beatles and Mario Savio, at Creativity, 1996 Click to watch The Gary Gordon Band, March 2001 on the Santa Monica 3rd St. Promenade: "Stuck In Traffic" Click to watch Gordon, original song "By My Side", performed at the Hippodrome Coffee House June 1986 (songwriters circle with Ric Kaestner, Ed Gwaltney, and Paul Wales Click to watch Gordon on conspiracies and related topics, Creativity, 1996 Click to watch Gordon, original song "Sittin' On The Edge Of The Moon", performed at the Thomas Center, Gainesville, Oct. 1986 Click to watch Gordon, original song "I Do Not Have The Blues", performed as part of his one-person show, "The Seven Warning Signs of Life", Hippodrome Theater, Gainesville, circa 1987 Click to watch Gordon, original song, "Do The Jim and Tammy Bakker", performed at Catch A Rising Star, Cambridge, Fall 1987 Click to watch Gary Gordon Band, Gordon original song "Atlanta", circa 2001 band includes Leon Rubenhold on lead guitar, Reseda Mickey on keyboards, Jace Kent on harp and percussion, Shannon Leggette on drums, Steve Goodie on bass, and Deanna Hurst on vocals The clip below is from Gordon's play "The Smoking Gun Cafe", performed at LA (The Bookstore) in the fall of 1995. The play starred Russel Starlin, Daniel Pruitt, Tim Van Deusen, Lisa Dawn Sterling, and Gordon, all in multiple roles. In this scene, the various conspirators and hitmen who reside at the Smoking Gun Cafe put on a skit pondering and answering the question, "What if Anita Hill had been white?" Starlin plays the Democratic chair of the committee, Van Deusen is Arlen Specter, Lisa is Anita Bryant, Gordon and Van Deusen are Republican senators. Click to watch A scene from The Smoking Gun Cafe: What if it was Anita Bryant instead of Anita Hill? Blame the Mexicans and Gays: Report from the front lines of the Special Election campaign for State Senate, 26th District by Gary Gordon, 4/30/09 Last Tuesday night (April 28) I attended a campaign forum at St. Andrews recreation center in Inglewood. I was fully unprepared for the racism and rightwing rhetoric proffered under the guise of civil, civic campaigning. Disclosure; I am a member of the Peace & Freedom Party and working for candidate Cindy Varela Henderson, who was one of the two candidates who attended. This means you may conclude I’m biased, which is why I include the websites of the other two candidates to support as best I can what I’m reporting. The forum was hosted by Community Coalition, an organization, I’m told, founded around issues of housing, jobs, health care and the like. The email to Cindy explained the rules of the forum and underlined that it was not to be a debate. Candidate Nachum Shifren (Republican) would go first, speak for five minutes, take questions for twenty minutes, then close with another five minute speech. Cindy would go second with the same format, the Curren Price (Democrat) would go third—same format. Price didn’t show. Shifren went first and talked for over twenty minutes without interference from the moderator/host, said he would take questions for the rest of his time and was told by the moderator/host that the Q. & A. would be after each candidate’s opening statement, and he should just continue his opening remarks. New rules. Shifren then spoke for almost ten more minutes. During his thirty minutes he spent most of the time explaining the ills of the 26th district, Southern California, and California altogether—crime and the failure of the education system-- were attributable to a great extent to “illegal Mexican immigrants”, gays, liberal Democrats who were allied with the “gay agenda” to destroy marriage, and the “multiculturalism” that is taking over L.A. government, the schools, local government and state government. As you can see on his website, he declares he has the “guts” to point out that those who favor multiculturalism are the racists. Cindy is running to promote alternative solutions to California’s budget crisis—not just the current crisis, but the continuing crisis in which underfunding education and health care are on-going policies and failing to tax the rich, oil industry, and other corporations as needed is also on-going policy. Her solutions build on the work of Lenny Goldberg, among others, and include reform of 1978’s Proposition 13 with a split-roll initiative that would protect homeowners while taxing land-holding corporations at market value to realize approximately $5-$6 billion/year; implementing an oil severances tax (California is virtually alone among oil-producing states that doesn’t do this), and returning to tax rates that would result in wealthy Californians paying higher taxes, as they did years ago. Details of this are on her website: VoteCindy4Senate.com Cindy spoke for around 15 minutes, and while she spent most of her time talking about her budget proposals, she did respond to Shifren’s insistence that “illegal Mexican immigrants” and those promoting the gay and multicultural agenda were the problem. Cindy is Mexican-American, which turned out to be the wrong race for most of the black people in attendance. What followed was a rightwing white Jew stirring up a group of mostly black attendees to an anti-Mexican furor. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. (Full disclosure, I’m a white Jew.) The following comments and exchanges occurred, made by various people as the Q. & A. (in what was not supposed to be a debate) turned into a free-for-all with only occasional moderating: When Shifren talked about crime and how much of it was caused by “illegal Mexicans”, Cindy responded by declaring her opposition to racial profiling and the harassment and worse that goes on with LAPD stopping people for “driving while brown” and “driving while black”. One person in the crowd shouted out, “How do you expect the cops to do their job?”, then Shifren trivialized the whole thing by declaring that when he goes to the airport and is searched, he doesn’t mind, he’s proud to be an American, and if his being searched helps prevent a terrorist from seizing a plane and killing hundreds of innocent people, he’s fine with that. Many in the crowd cheered and applauded. Cindy was challenged by one member of the audience on whether she believed the 14th Amendment applied to the sons and daughters of foreigners whose children were born in the United States, then told it was meant to apply only to freed black slaves after the Civil War. (I guess I’m out the loop on this, as I’d never heard this line of argument before.) When Cindy would not declare that she favored a wall along the border, she was accused of not really being American and challenged as to what really is her country. Her reply, that she is American, was born here, and is running for office here went unheard. One woman declared she was not a racist, but “Mexican maids steal and Mexican kids do all that graffiti.” When Cindy pointed out that every immigrant group at one time or another is attacked, discriminated against, scape-goated and that the very things being said about Mexicans were said about blacks, Jews, Irish, Italians etc., Shifren took the opportunity to tell the audience, “You came over on slave ships, you built this country, and now they’re trying to take it away from you.” He did not specify that he did not mean the rich, corporations, bankers, ruling class or the powers that be who were trying to take it away, but since he spent most of the evening talking about how “illegal Mexican immigrants” and their sons and daughters were wrecking the schools, I think it’s safe to conclude he was talking about the immigrants and their offspring and not the wealthy. At several times during the forum Shifren talked about the need for a "Marshall Plan" for the district, but as he railed against taxes and the Democrats who would increase taxes and Cindy's call for increasing taxes on the rich and corporations, he never identified where this "Marshall Plan" money would come from: especially as he repeatedly insisted there was no more money. (Although he kept declaring his support for things that cost money and declaring there is no money he did actually suggest that if there were no "illegal Mexicans" in our prisons there would be money to fund everything he favored-and his text on his website argues this would also lead to a substantial reduction in taxes!) Enough people in the crowd were so distracted by all the racial rhetoric that no one called him on his failure to identify how he would pay for what he said was needed, and failed to grasp that Cindy was offering solutions. Shifren attacked bi-lingual education and all the money spent on ESL repeatedly, a position most on the audience agreed with if their cheers, applause and demands of Cindy to explain herself for not agreeing were any indication. The audience did agree with Cindy in her analysis of the Prison Industrial Complex, as she spoke about the jobs that have not only been shipped to Mexico, India and elsewhere but have also been shipped to the prisons, where prisoners work for pennies. “Do you think when those prisoners are released they can go to the corporation they worked for in prison and get jobs?” “No!” people in the audience shouted, taking her point. But the opportunity to talk reasonably about the relationships between the free movement of capital across borders and the criminalization of immigrants who cross borders looking for work, along with the opportunity to educate and rally most of the attendees to a standard where their fears and anger as well as their concerns or hopes would focus on the real criminals: the politicians who shill for the rich and choose, as Karen Bass has, to rule the split-roll policy and oil severance tax and other tax-the-rich policies are “off the table” were lost as Shifren constantly cut in with his drumbeating to a mostly receptive audience, ready to blame Mexicans and gays, “illegal immigrants” and the “gay, multicultural agenda”. As I said at the outset, if you doubt my reporting, check out his website, especially what he says under the Platform tab, where he declares “I will propose legislation to deny the right to vote for anyone that does not pass state standards in education.” (Interestingly, he didn’t bring this up at the forum, perhaps because his position smacks of those poll taxes and literacy rules practiced under Jim Crow against blacks in the south.) I urge you to check out his website to see, in part, what Cindy and the rest of us are up against: RabbiForSenate.com Meanwhile, there’s the Democrat, Curren Price, who didn’t show. Price has many endorsements, but if you go to his website you’ll not only see he supports jobs and education and healthcare, you’ll see he offers no method whatsoever to pay for what he supports. And this is a major part of the problem. Many people on the LAAMN list as well as other leftist or progressive lists can guess that the Republican is no good, although they may not realize that his racism and anti-liberalism and anti-progressivism has traction within segments of the black community. What people on these lists, especially those caught up in Obama Nation may fail to grasp is that the Democrats in Sacramento sold out the working families and disabled and poor and single-parent families when they made that budget deal with the Republicans. They could have put the tax-the-rich-and-corporations plans on the table and fought for them, but they didn’t. Conclude what you will about that, but include in your conclusion that Price is part of the group that is the problem. Again, even though he’s for all the good stuff (jobs, health care, education) he has no plan of how to pay for it: CurrenPriceJr.com Please consider supporting Cindy Varela Henderson in the special election May 19. Go to her website to learn about the upcoming fundraisers and other ways you can help. On An Island Three Miles Long, Long Ago: A Memory of the Three-Mile Island Nuclear Accident & Its Reverberations by Gary Gordon, 3/29/09 Thirty years ago, March 28, 1979, I didn’t turn on the morning TV or radio news so I didn’t know about the nuclear accident at Three-Mile Island near Harrisburg, PA until I arrived at the Catfish Alliance information table in the Plaza of the Americas near the edge of the University of Florida campus in Gainesville, Florida. I was on the steering committee of the anti-nuke organization, having become involved the previous December, and I’d stopped by to see how the promotion for our upcoming three-day teach-in was going. Howard Nelson, a UF pre-law student and fellow member of the steering committee announced the accident in his inevitable exaggerated way: “Hey, did you hear? Pennsylvania almost got blown off the map. Yeah, the whole northeast of the United States. Boom! Gone!” In the ensuing conversation I got some of the details, but to me at that moment most of the details were irrelevant. I knew this was going to be front page news for a few days, and our teach-in was scheduled on campus for the following week, with numerous workshops in numerous classrooms, hoping that some people would come. Now I knew more people than we’d hoped for would come, and we didn’t have enough materials. Stepping back, for a moment, to give some time and place context to this story: 1979 was a long time ago. Imagine, if you can, a world without cell phones, personal computers, the internet; imagine a primitive off-campus copying industry, and the regular use of and dependence on mimeograph machines. (I’m sure there must be a page on mimeograph machines on Wikipedia; suffice to say it was then somewhat state of the art and now would seem worse than cave drawings in France.) Twenty-four hour news stations did not exist. News came on some radio stations every hour, and on TV in the morning, at noon, and in the evening and just before Johnny Carson. Gainesville had a daily paper that came out in the afternoon; the UF had a daily that came out in the morning. Outside of the mainstream media, the only way to get the story was to use a telephone (land line only) and call someone in Harrisburg. We started cranking on the mimeograph machine we had in our downtown office, cranking out thousands of pages to create hundreds of booklets to hand out to people who would come to the workshops. The Catfish Alliance was a fledgling organization when I joined in December, 1978. Mark Davis was the nominal leader. Mac & Kathy Steen, two Gainesville citizens, also were involved. Mac had been a Captain of the UF Fightin’ Gators years before, and his involvement lent some credibility to the organization. Jeff Gerlach, head of the UF student Environmental Action Group (EAG) was also involved. Other UF students included Mike Givel, Grady Burch, Susan Braxton, Elizabeth Stevenson, Patty Everett, Carol Davis—there were a few more and I’ve forgotten their names. (Eventually Pam Smith, Gil Marshal and Jackie Betz also became very active, but I don’t remember exactly when.) When I say it was fledgling, as I experienced it, no one involved had much of a background in student organizing, community organizing, political organizing. They were young, eager, ready to devote time. I had a background from anti-war activity in all kinds of organizing—everything except labor organizing. I had little knowledge of nuclear power, so it was my organizing skills that I brought to the table. And some connections beyond the UF campus. Because I’d been a somewhat prominent musician in the Archer Road Band, and had just left the band in November 1978, I had a lot of musician and nightclub connections. My first tangible contribution to the group was to organize a music benefit, which was held in early March at Alan’s Cubana, where I was gigging regularly. And I guess because I was who I was, I was approached by two people; one was a local activist attorney, Clyde Ellis, who had an office space to rent and offered it at a nominal amount; the other was someone who offered to pay the rent on the office. So we had an office, a phone, and a music featuring local singer-songwriters and entertainers Jim Connor, Jane Yii, Nancy Cook, Barry Sides, Charlie Hyde, myself, and the band Palmetto Bluff. The campus TV station, WUFT Channel 5 came out and taped a lot of the event, and did an interview with me; when they aired it more people showed up, including Michelle Hartley, who volunteered to pay for the mimeograph machine. With an office address came mail and one day a letter from an anti-nuke outfit in Boston arrived, calling on everyone around the country to have anti-nuke and safe energy teach-ins April 2 - 4. It seemed like a good idea to me. I brought it to the newly formed steering committee and everyone agreed. Jeff made a lot of the on-campus arrangements since the EAG had an office there and was allowed to reserve rooms. At the next general meeting of the group people took assignments to write one or two pages about various aspects of nuclear power and safe energy, with Mac volunteering to lead a workshop on how nuclear plants were designed to work. (The workshop titles included Intro to the Nuclear Issue, Regulations & Worker Safety, Corporate Structure, History & Morality of the Anti-Nuclear Movement, Crystal River Reactor, The UF Reactor, Nuclear Weapons, and Alternative Energy.) And several of us began familiarizing ourselves with what was known in the industry as the Greybook—the regular reports issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the performance of commercial nuclear reactors. Our focus in addition to the industry as a whole and safe energy as an alternative was Crystal River #3, the nuclear plant only 55 miles from Gainesville. The Greybook on CR3 made for some unsettling reading. The timing of the Three-Mile Island accident wasn’t the only thing that boosted interest in nuclear power; the people who booked movies for the UF campus theatre had already booked “The China Syndrome” for a couple of nights before our teach-in. It was, of course, the perfect leafleting opportunity. Between the accident, the movie, our arrangements and our promotion, the teach-in drew a mass of people, and active membership in the organization jumped from around fifteen to around fifty. After the teach-in, we participated in a statewide demonstration at CR3 and in the national demonstration in D.C., where a few hundred thousand anti-nuke and safe energy people marched and rallied, hearing speakers that included Ralph Nader and Tom Hayden, and musicians that included Jackson Browne. Shortly after, the organization threw what weight it had behind Jim Notestein’s campaign for City Commission. Notestein was already an anti-nuke, safe energy gardener and landscaping consultant and would’ve made an ideal commissioner, ready to push the local powers that be into a safer energy age. He lost. (Years later, after I was elected to the Gainesville City Commission, he was elected to the Alachua County Commission, and introduced some sanity that Penny Wheat was able to build on when she was elected a few years after that.) Unfortunately, along with the growth of the group came personality clashes and differences of opinion that were difficult to bridge. To thumbnail it, I was more interested in trying to change laws and policies at the local and state level through nuts and bolts lobbying and electoral activity; Nelson was more interested in demonstrations that included die-ins and other theatre that was known during the anti-war movement as guerilla theatre, and, in the right hands back then, had some impact. The demonstration at Barnwell, South Carolina in the fall of 1979 led to a permanent split in the group. Mac, Kathy and I formed Citizens for a Non-nuclear Future (not one of the best names) and I remained only a nominal member of the Catfish Alliance. My focus was on the transportation of nuclear waste through Gainesville, and we generated news coverage around that. We turned one reporter from the Jacksonville Times-Union who came to a press conference during which we called for public hearings on proposed DOT rules. He was convinced we were just complainers and exaggerators—when he called the guy at DOT in DC to get “the real story” the guy was so nasty the reporter became convinced we were right and gave us excellent coverage from then on. A meeting with Gainesville Mayor Mark Goldstein in January 1980 changed my path: Mike Givel and I met with Mark and Mark suggested I run for City Commission. The suggestion, coming as it did from whom it did, stayed lodged in my mind. (Mark also immediately wrote a letter to the DOT, including our input in the wording—a Mayor in action!) The meeting led to my work getting the city to form a citizen’s advisory committee on the transportation and storage of hazardous waste, which led to my meeting environmental activists Doug MacGregor, Doris Bardon, Francine Robinson and Ruth Van Doren, which led to my position on that advisory committee which led to my candidacy for City Commission in 1982 and a victorious campaign in 1983. On the broad fronts of safe energy, conservation, integrating energy planning, transportation planning, and land-use planning, Gainesville, thru Goldstein, myself, and Commissioners Beverly Hill and Mac McEachern finally began to turn some corners; the Alachua County Commission followed a little slower and later thru the efforts of Notestein and Wheat, and from what I understand, Mike Byerly. I never did accumulate a majority of votes to sell Gainesville’s interest in the CR3 plant. Nationally, the anti-nuke movement stopped the construction of nuclear plants for almost thirty years. Now nuclear power is on the table again and some environmentalists are arguing that it is safer than “clean” coal, safer than it used to be, and is part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Other activists, like Dan Hirsch of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a decades-old anti-nuke organization, still argue that the waste problem has yet to be solved and until it is there is no such thing as safe nuclear power. It can always appear to be self-serving to decide one’s place in history. Knowing what I know of Gainesville and Alachua politics, without the Three-Mile Island accident, I may not have risen to enough prominence to assist Goldstein and then take over leadership of the environmental movement as represented by elected officials. (I word it that way because there were many, many doers who weren’t elected, but most of them ultimately did not have the power to vote yay or nay.) And if I had not been elected, it’s unknown if Notestein, able to take advantage of the organization built around electing me, would’ve won, as that organization would not have existed, and all that would’ve made it more difficult for Penny Wheat, who once told me she was inspired by Goldstein and me to undertake running and then working to become the most prominent elected environmentalist in Alachua County. Put another way, when I ran in ’82 and won in ’83 the opposition was opposed to Goldstein and opposed to pushing forward on most pro-environment policies—there was also no one else willing to run who could win in my absence. The same is true for Notestein and Wheat. Without them, many of the efforts undertaken by Goldstein then me would’ve ended at the city limits and would’ve been negated by county laissez-faire development rules. The one nominal environmentalist on the County Commission was that in name only; she was part of the “half-a-tree” approach, all too willing to compromise such that she would win half a tree, which, of course, is no tree at all. I think Three-Mile Island changed the lives of many Gainesvillians, and helped change the political map of the city, even if its role wasn’t evident at the time. But that may just be self-serving, and everyone is invited to criticize my history and write their own. Nationally, the nuclear accident at Three-Mile Island put the stop on the growth of the nuclear industry for at least 30 years. What it means for the future—well, as Mort Sahl once observed: “The future lies ahead.” Mudcrutch, From Gatorville to Santa Barbara in 35 Years by Gary Gordon, April, 2008 There was a time when Benmont Tench was the name of the kid in Golf View who played piano and might be a good addition to a band. Around then, the number one band in Gainesville was The Maundy Quintet, with a drummer known as Boomer, who later went on to be a star DJ on WGGG—it was the rock station, before FM existed. Tom Petty worked at Lipham’s Music when it was in the Gainesville Shopping Center on 10th and Main, and was in a band with Tom Leadon called The Epics, who played for the P.K. Yonge homecoming dance at the gym for $80.00. No, it wasn’t when Lincoln was president, but it was a long strange trip of a lifetime ago. Before the mainstream media covered rock and roll, before Rolling Stone was a slick national magazine, way before MTV, VHS, CDs, DVDs, IPODs—back when rock n roll was still somewhat revolutionary, feared and frowned upon, when any kind of racial integration was still an uphill battle, when the draft breathed down our necks, when Dylan, the Byrds, Townshend, Hendrix, Clapton, the Beatles, the Stones and scores of others broke new ground, creating sounds, songs, beats, and lyrics that drew us to a new world. The Mudcrutch concert at the beautiful Arlington theatre in Santa Barbara, California the other night compelled these memories and more as the improbable unfolded before a standing room only audience. Improbable: a high school band recreated over thirty years later, organized by one of the leading rock stars and songwriters of our time, bookended by two of his successful and talented bandmates and completed with the addition of two musicians who were cut from the band decades ago only to be plucked from their daily routines to rejoin former colleagues and play in the spotlight, almost as if the intervening decades hadn’t occurred. The operative word is Play. Although Petty’s choice to reassemble the band did pose risks—you have to live out here to fully appreciate how carefully the most famous musicians, actors, and comics step, always fearful of a wrong choice that will expose their flaws and send their bankability into the toilet—Petty’s shrewd and the band is talented. So instead of having to measure every step, every choice, every lick, every nuance, they just got together to play. And if the Santa Barbara show is representative of this mini-tour, the play is a joyful celebration of good-time fun covers like “Six Days On The Road” and Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women 12 & 35”, exhilarating dueling guitars, soaring harmonies; penetrating, insightful and revealing lyrics (as we’ve come to expect from Petty), built on the foundation of solid bass and drums and painted and decorated with taste and enthusiasm by keyboardist Tench. Although for many in the audience the trip was to see Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench and a couple of guys who were in the Bogdanovich documentary who used to play with Tom (and one o f them is one of Bernie Leadon’s younger brothers), the trip for me was to see a band I hadn’t seen since ’70 or ’71 when they played at the University of Florida Auditorium along with Tower and RGF, and especially to see Tom Leadon, who I played with a few times in pick-up bands and on jam nights at Richenbacher’s in the late 80’s. So it was impossible to watch the show without recalling Tom and Tom at the P.K. Yonge gym (for some reason I was the one who booked them for the school to play that gig), and recalling the times I’d seen Leadon with his band at Richenbacher’s (Kenny Shore on bass, Bruce Shepard on sax), and had worked with him, recalling Leadon’s strict approach to his diet and the precision of his guitar-playing. From the opening song, “Shady Grove”, thru the Grateful Dead-like jam on “Crystal River”, thru the dueling guitars on “Bootleg Flyer”, you hear right away this is not the Heartbreakers; Campbell is fully unleashed and both he and Leadon wail on the bluegrass tunes and rock jams, Leadon and Tench each take a turn singing lead, and best of all, you don’t know what will happen next. Even if you’ve heard some of the album, much of what comes is a wonderful surprise. There is the genuine sense that the band is discovering the music at the same time as the audience, and in that way it is more similar to those long ago days when rock n roll was a voyage of discovery and not the all-too-often presentation of canned goods. It is, of course, Petty, who grounds the enterprise, centers the band, and it is his lyrics that contribute to the memories of this concert and truly separate this Mudcrutch from the band of long ago. “My mother loves me but my daddy don’t, I try to work it out but I probably won’t, there’s a woman waiting at the top of the stairs, it’s the wrong thing to do but I don’t… care,” Petty sings on “The Wrong Thing To Do”. There’s the mournful, hopeful “Orphan of the Storm” about the Katrina hurricane and subsequent tragedies (“Lord send me down a fallen angel, there’s a miracle to perform, and I ain’t the kind who gives up, but I’m so tired of rain, Lord I’m just an orphan of the storm”). There’s Petty’s classic defiance (“My love’s an ocean, you better not cross it,” and his classic confession (“I’m a loser at the top of my game… I’ve got a sin I never confessed”), he sings in “Scare Easy”. Underlying the whole evening, if you are to join the band on this trip, is the question of who we were and who we are. It was a minute ago. It was a lifetime ago. It was choices made, roads taken and not taken, possibilities of celebration and regrets, joy and bitterness. For the SRO crowd, it was a joy, it was a good choice Petty and his fellow musicians made, and wonderfully enough, no one in the crowd called out for a Heartbreakers song, as if everyone knew this was a different adventure and they were glad to be on it. Gary Gordon played in numerous bands in Gainesville in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, served on the City Commission ’83-86, and lives in Culver City, California. How The Anti-War Movement Lost The Peace by Gary Gordon, 3/31/07 A shorter version of this was published in the L.A. Free Press The emails these days include many writers and activists who've concluded the reason for the current Congressional debate about setting a deadline to withdraw from Iraq is that the anti-war demonstrations have been effective. And the readers of this piece may agree with that conclusion. But should they? It is not cynical to point out that a huge additional pot of money to support the war was just agreed to by the Senate and the House, and that the language concerning withdrawal still lives in that gray area within the new instrument of government, the non-binding resolution. Let's turn back a few pages to Oct. 10 and 11, 2002, when both the Senate and House passed a binding resolution: the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution. On October 10, 133 members of the US House of Representatives voted against that resolution, losing to the 296 who supported it. The next day, 23 Senators voted against the resolution, defeated by the 77 who supported it. Put another way, almost a quarter of the Senate and over a quarter of the House voted against the war. This was a significant improvement over the vote that took place in 1964 when Johnson wanted to pursue his war in Vietnam. Then, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution garnered unanimous support in the House and only two Senators voted against it. What does this mean? In part, it means that in 2002 the peace movement, the anti-war movement was already in the Senate and House, not solely in the streets. What has happened since 2002? Books have already been written that describe the calamity that the Iraq war quickly became. Everyone but the beneficiaries of government no-bid contracts has lost: lost lives, relatives, friends, homes, cities, funding, business, rights, freedoms, opportunities—the losses here and there are too great to calculate. We all know the mainstream press was complicit. All of us can go to nationalpriorities.org and learn how many schools or hospitals could've been built for what has been spent on bombs, guns, ammo, armor, camo and MREs—a comparison that rarely makes it into mainstream press analysis. And all of us have seen the 10- to 30-second clips of anti-war demonstrations on mainstream TV "news". Yet we all know what has been going on, whether through the internet, or various shows on C-SPAN (and BookTV); Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert and Keith Olbermann; or thru the documentaries by Robert Greenwald and others, or by hearing speakers at community meetings and universities, or by reading the now numerous books. And we all know that, except for the price of gas, which may or may not be a by-product of the war, that the war has actually not impacted us very much, other than to offend our sensibilities, to outrage us, to cause us to walk through city blocks chanting, or in the words of my comrade, to "shout at buildings". The irony and shame that must be reckoned with at the moment—well, there are many ironies and many shames, but I'll start with this one: as the protestors march, many of them are either recalling their anti-war demonstration activities during the Vietnam War, or, if they're not old enough, then they're thinking, vicariously, that this is what was done and what ended the Vietnam War. There are many things that contributed to the end of the Vietnam War, and I submit that decreasing numbers of anti-war demonstrators was not one of them. During that war the opposition increased and the number of demonstrators increased. To draw five or six thousand people in a city the size of Los Angeles would've been thought of as pathetic. And it is pathetic. But it is not pathetic because so few people show up to the almost monthly ANSWER "Coalition" demos. It is pathetic because the anti-war movement, such as it is, has been reduced to thinking that marching through a few city blocks and shouting at buildings is actually the way to end the war. It is pathetic because otherwise rational and well-intentioned people actually think that standing on a curb or traffic circle in a clump of three or four or even ten and holding signs saying "End the War" is what has worked in the past and is working now. But even though the numbers of those who opposed the Vietnam War visibly increased as the war continued, it was not only the number that was significant. It was the behavior. It doesn't take much memory or research to recall or learn that most of those demonstrations represented a threat to the powers that were. Why? Because at the edge of those primarily peaceful marches lived those who were engaged in making the society ungovernable. Ungovernable. There are two ways for the people to end a war: they must either make the society ungovernable, or they must change the make-up of those in power. Since 2002 the anti-war movement has done neither. So what do we have? We have an anti-war movement that won't take the action necessary to be effective and instead hopes that its' meager actions will cause those in power to shake in fear. Does anyone actually believe that Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, or any of the other instigators and perpetrators of this war and any of the back-channel beneficiaries of the no-bid contracts has, for even one moment, been shaken by any of the demonstrations? Johnson was shaken in '67 and '68; Nixon was shaken for most of his occupation of the White House. Just read the books, read the transcripts, listen to the tapes: they thought the society was on the verge of collapse or revolution or anarchy. And if you take the time to remember or do the research, you'll see why someone who grew up in WWII and began their political career in the "Leave It To Beaver" '50s might've thought so. Demonstrators were demanding, unruly, uppity, troublesome, clever, unpredictable, fearless, lawbreaking and—here's the punchline: dangerous. Contrast that to the narrowly scripted ANSWER "Coalition" fundraising events that pass for demonstrations these days. First, the power structure is paid a fee for a permit so the march can occur. It's remindful of the line in Oliver Twist when the starving youth holds out his empty bowl and pleads: "Please sir, can I have some more food?" Second, the "coalition" (in L.A., really an elite, top-down, exclusionary organization) lines up speakers. Is the first or second speaker or the majority of speakers from either the Green or Peace & Freedom Party, the two anti-war parties on the ballot? Does the "coalition" support these parties by providing a platform for genuine electoral action? No. Instead there is the usual rhetoric that passes for analysis, most of which has been heard before by the marchers, who are already in agreement with most of the speakers, punctuated with various chants like "Dump Bush" and "Stop the War Machine" or "End Imperialism" as if chanting makes it so. (Did the people who responded to King, Gandhi, Malcolm etc. merely chant?) Third, any organization wanting to set up an information table has to pay the "coalition", thus begging the question, what happened to free speech? The "coalition" insists it must be paid because these demos cost money. (I've heard the figure $20,000.) So let's recap: a demonstration that must be bought from the power structure and has no possible chance of throwing any fear into the power structure and that does not give an ample and abundant platform to support the electoral alternatives to the power structure is what passes for an anti-war movement. That is pathetic. And what of resistance, the step beyond demonstration? During the Vietnam War there was actual resistance. Draft evasion. Draft-card burning. Peaceful civil disobedience and a variety of other activities that did not please the law and order crowd who elected Nixon to "bring us together" occurred with varying degrees of impact and alarm. Now resistance, for the most part, takes the form of calling for a national no-shopping day, as if this could possibly have any impact that matters to anyone but those who call for this nonsense. Break it down: if all of us don't buy toothpaste and groceries and gas etc. on a particular day, there's a one hundred percent chance that we'll buy that stuff within the week if not the next day. This is going to end the war? I realize that of those of you who may still be reading this, many of you may be furious with my thesis, or offended at my willingness to negate many of your activities over the last 5 years. And some of you may be getting set to argue that there is forward motion on ending the war, as evidenced by the 2006 mid-term elections. So let me ask: how many of you have studied those elections closely, district by district, to discover exactly how many real anti-war candidates were elected? Do not victimize yourself by hearing what you want to believe, reading what you want to believe, concluding what you want to believe. Belief has nothing to do with it. Feelings have nothing to do with it. Ending the war is about facts and acts, not beliefs and feelings. Feeling or believing a particular candidate will do a certain thing is the weakest reason someone can have for supporting a candidate. In the California 36th congressional district that includes Venice, California, represented by the wealthy pro-war, pro-patriot act, pro-torture Democrat Jane Harmon, an anti-war Democrat (Marcy Winograd) challenged her in the primary, garnered eighteen thousand votes (37.5%), but lost. The Peace and Freedom Party candidate did substantially worse in the general election (forty-five hundred votes), as most of the anti-war voters who supported Winograd let their anti-war sentiments take a back seat to supporting a Democrat over a Republican. How often did this happen? Even without doing the research, the evidence is clear: it happened enough so that, along with continuing funding for the war, we now have the possibility of a non-binding resolution that might end the US occupation of Iraq in 2008. Not 2007. 2008. But just the possibility. This is an anti-war Congress? The investment of votes and hopes by the anti-war movement in the Democratic Party has yielded mush. The door prize might be that Attorney General Gonzales resigns. Whoopee. Meanwhile, the war continues, and although Republican pundits Tony Blankley and Robert Novak write that Bush is in trouble, the people who are really in trouble are those at the terminus of the bombs, and those of us back in the States who would prefer universal health insurance, more schools, more hospitals, fewer prisons, and an end to the war. Again, glancing quickly at the past, in 1972 the Democrats actually nominated an anti-war candidate who won 39% of the national vote. Continued investment in the Democrats means one must ask if Hillary or Barack is genuinely against the war. The prognosis is not good. Put another way, the only hope we have to fear is pointless hope. The 1972 Democratic Party candidate, Sen. George McGovern, returned to D.C. in December to offer his plan for a withdrawal within six months and a reparations program for Iraq, a plan detailed in the October 2006 Harper's Magazine article and in his book Out of Iraq. Some in the Congress appreciated and supported his plan, but most Democrats, along with the Republicans, ignored him. Had this Congress been truly anti-war, the plan would’ve been adopted in January and the war would be over in three months. The sad truth is that in all likelihood the anti-war movement will not end this war. Eventually the mainstream politicians at various levels of government will become so strapped for cash that they will insist the war be ended. The part of the power structure that wasn't cut in on the Haliburton/KGR skim will declare that stability is better than instability and further involvement in the war will create too much destabilization. The funding of the war itself will make the country ungovernable because it will tie up too much money. The exception to this sad truth would be if the anti-war movement participates in making the society ungovernable faster than the money drain makes it ungovernable. Meanwhile, there is the big picture, the long run. What can be done to prevent future wars like this? This is the relevance of the two anti-war parties in California: the Greens and the Peace & Freedom Party. I don't think anyone in either of these parties is under the illusion that they will win significant power in the foreseeable future to change the paradigm, retract the empire, and get back to the job of creating a just society. The people in these parties are engaged not in making the society ungovernable, but in the other option: electoral power. True, many of these activists have chosen to victimize themselves by being distracted into practicing the pointless tactic of demonstrations and shouting at buildings. The hope is that they will return to their actual purpose: they are political parties, their job is not to plead with and try to influence those in power, their job is to gain power. At this point I have either convinced some of you, or failed. Some of you will still insist that demonstrations have a place, and I would agree with you under certain conditions. Spontaneous demonstrations are effective. Demonstrations that contain an unexpected turnout, like the immigration demonstrations last year, or unexpected fervor, fury, militancy, and organization, like the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle several years ago, were very effective, in part because they reflected power and in part because they were threatening to those in power. But the success or failure of a demonstration ultimately has to be measured in whether or not in genuinely forwards the agenda and that means: does it lead to gaining power? When Bush was re-selected in 2004, I suggested the following plan: 1) cease all demonstrations, 2) put all energy that was going into demonstrations into working door-to-door, neighborhood-to-neighborhood, to build as large and organized constituency as possible, 3) return to demonstrations only after number two had been worked for at least a year if not two years, and 4) when returning to demonstrations, do not get permits. Along with this, people would choose whether they would prefer to contribute to making the society ungovernable, or work in the electoral realm as offered the Peace & Freedom Party and the Greens. Further, all demonstrations would be geared to one tactic or the other, and not to endless rhetorical speeches. Obviously, this did not occur. But it's not too late to adopt the strategy. To those of you who disagree with this thinking, I would urge you to study the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60s, study the make-up of the current and prospective Congress, and think about the best use of your time. Demonstrations then were qualitatively different, a tactic that offered and secured results, and I submit that having house parties, inviting friends, neighbors and co-workers, educating them with documentaries and discussions, and urging them to get involved in the same way with their friends, neighbors and co-workers will yield more anti-war volunteers than endless ANSWER "Coalition" marches ever will, and that those volunteers, if they're wise, will reflect the kind of power that ultimately shakes the power structure. To those of you who agree with what I've written here, please register Peace & Freedom or Green (one is Socialist, the other isn't; both are anti-war). If you're already registered then it's time for you to consider being on a steering committee or central committee, or running for office. In this way, eventually, the anti-war movement can win the peace. Here's some books I recommend: and dozens or hundreds more. 
Gary excerpted a piece of Larry Beinhart's novel American Hero for a reading. This was the book on which the movie Wag The Dog was based. To read the excerpt and/or order the book from Amazon:American Hero, by Larry Beinhart Hi. I post a variety of original material-- columns, essays, free songs, movie reviews and more-- on this site, and some friends have suggested that I put this donation button on so that if you like the site you can help support it. Please consider making a donation to help me continue the site and its variety of material. Thanks. ---Gary Gordon Special thanks to Ira Luft, who talked me into getting a Kaypro computer in 1984; special thanks to Bonnie Wolfe, without whom I'd still be using the Kaypro computer; special thanks to Jerry Ackerman and Bonnie for computer guidance; special thanks to Fee Alvi and Bonnie, without whom I wouldn't have this website; and thanks to Murray Mintz for needed and timely assistance regarding graphics software! Mainpage Photos by Joe Folsom, Cindy Henderson, Steve Levine, and Fee Alvi All material on this site is Copyright Gary Gordon, All Rights Reserved, unless otherwise noted. |