Chip Off the Old Block
by Unknown | 1/31/2009 02:31:00 AM
While I was home over Winter Break, I did an oral history with my dad, Bill Young. That's him on the right, with the devilish eyebrows and maniacal grin.

Topics of historical interest covered in the oral history include: ham radio, World War II, the history of model airplanes and boats (my dad was a founder of the North American Model Boat Association), magicians, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy, the Interstate Highway System, the Sylmar and Northridge Earthquakes, and the local history of Porterville, CA and the San Joaquin Valley.

A transcript of the interview is now available online here, if you're curious.

Labels: ,

 
Permalink | 3 comments
Historic firsts in labor history
by midtowng | 1/28/2009 09:02:00 PM
I have a habit of collecting interesting bits of information when I run across them, and after a while I like to put it all together. Sometimes its funny. Sometimes its gruesome. Often its just noteworthy.

For instance, the most noteworthy of firsts in labor history has to be the very first recorded strike.



Trouble with the help, or On Strike Against God
toward the end of the reign of the Pharaoh Ramses III widespread corruption and inefficiency had made Egypt barely governable, and construction at the city of Thebes had apparently severely depleted the grain reserves used to pay the workers at the royal necropolis. On the 21st day of the second month, in Ramses's 29th year, the scribe Amennakht personally delivered a formal complaint about this situation to the royal mortuary temple that was part of the large administrative complex of Medinet Habu. The workers implored,

"We are hungry: eighteen days have elapsed in the month."

Although a payment was soon made, the poor conditions continued, and in the sixth month of that year the workers organized the first recorded strike in history. The men of the two crews stopped work and marched together to one of the royal mortuary temples, where they staged what would today be called a sit-in. The men insisted,

"It was because of hunger and thirst that we came here. There is no clothing, no ointment, no fish, no vegetables. Send to Pharaoh our good lord about it, and send to the vizier our superior, that sustenance may be made for us."

The workers repeated their protest on the following day within the complex of another temple, and possibly a third, until their complaints were recorded by the priests and sent across the river to Thebes. Only then were the rations owed finally distributed. However, similar protests were repeated before the reign of Ramses III ended; and even in the reigns of subsequent Pharaohs workers had to go on strike in order to receive payment.
This was around 1158 or 1157 B.C.

An Unusual Worker's Compensation Agreement

Work on the High Seas in the 17th Century was dangerous and unrewarding. Its for these reasons more than any other that piracy spread. Generally the person who had the most to fear from being captured by pirates was the captain of the ship.
According to The Many-Headed Hydra, the pirate vessels of the days were incredibly progressive in their egalitarianism (all captains were elected) and race was not a factor in duties or rank.

Given this, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to discover that pirate ships were pioneers in the idea of workers compensation.
It was the custom to draw up articles of agreement before the commencement of a voyage, and it can be certain that the men who joined [Captain] Kidd on the Adventure Galley at London signed such an agreement. These articles regulated the various charges and payments to all members of the crew. Esquemiling, in the Buccaneers of America, writes of such agreements in the following terms:
[snip]
Lastly, they stipulate in writing what recompense or reward each one ought to have that is either wounded or maimed in his body, suffering the loss of any limb, by that voyage. Thus they order for the loss of a right arm 600 pieces-of-eight, or 6 slaves; for the loss of a left arm 500 pieces-of-eight; or 5 slaves; for a right leg 500 pieces-of-eight, or 5 slaves; for a left leg 400 pieces-of-eight, or 4 slaves; for an eye 100 pieces-of-eight, or one slave; for a finger of the hand the same reward as the same eye.


Trouble with the help, American style

The groundbreaking ceremony for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was on July 4, 1827. The canal was a collosal failure and was never completed, but that isn't what made it noteworthy.
Canal work was dangerous and the living conditions primitive. Canallers toiled from sunup to sundown, exposed to injuries common to physical labor and the epidemics that regularly swept public works construction - malaria, yellow fever, and cholera, which struck the C&O in 1832...Theirs was a difficult existence marked by hard toil, rude conditions, a bare subsistence, and a high degree of transience.
The difficult conditions broke the workers into tribal groups. In late January 1834, workers from northern Ireland (Longfords) began violent battles with workers from southern Ireland (Corkonians). Eventually a strike began.
The state militia was called in, and after they shot a few workers the situation settled down. However, January 29, 1834, President Andrew Jackson set a historic first.
Andrew Jackson becomes the first president to use federal troops to quell labor unrest; called on Secretary of War Lewis Cass to send Federal troops in to quell the workers; set a dangerous precedent for future labor-management relations. Workers building the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal were rebelling because of persistent poor working conditions and low pay.
The reason why federal troops shouldn't be used against workers was made clear 60 years later.

Trouble with the help Part 3; the cradle of labor activism

If you are good at American history then you would know that the First Continental Congress took place in Philadelphia in 1774. If you are really good at American history then you will also know that this event happened in Carpenters' Hall.

But you would have to be spectacular at American history to know that Carpenters' Hall was owned by Carpenters' Company of Philadelphia, an early labor union guild in American history.
WHEREAS, it appears to this Assembly that, in the year one thousand seven hundred and twenty-four, a number of the House Carpenters of the City and County of Philadelphia formed themselves into a Company, for the purpose of obtaining instruction in the science of architecture, and assisting such of their members as should by accident be in need of support, or the widows and minor children of members;...
Philadelphia wasn't just the cradle of American democracy. It was also the cradle of labor activism.
In 1791, the Carpenters struck unsuccessfully for a 10-hour day. It was the first building trades strike, which was also the same year as the adoption of the Constitution.

However, the Carpenters weren't the first labor union guild, nor the first ones to strike. The first labor union guild was the Boston Shoemakers created on October 18, 1648. However, they weren't a real labor union. They were more a collusion between the employers and the journeyman against unskilled labor.

The honor of the first verifiable strike belongs to the New York Shoemakers in 1785. Their strike was about low wages and lasted for three weeks. The strike failed and the bosses retaliated by forming their own employer's combination.

The first successful strike in American history was by the Philadelphia printers in 1786.
In 1786, Philadelphia's employing printers collectively attempted to reduce the wages of skilled print craftsmen to $5.83 per week. In response, on 31 May 1786, twenty-six Philadelphia craftsmen jointly resolved to "not engage to work for any printing establishment in this city or county under the sum of $6.00 per week," and to "support such of our brethren as shall be thrown out of employment on account of their refusing to work for less than $6.00 per week." Standing by their resolution, these craftsmen waged what was probably the new nation's first labor strike, successfully procuring a $6-per-week minimum wage for skilled printers citywide.
However, the first unauthenticated strike in America may have come from the most unlikely of sources. The Charleston Gazette on October 29, 1763, has a very unusual news report.
It seems that Negro chimney sweepers "had the insolence, by a combination amongst themselves, to raise the usual price, and to refuse doing their work, unless their exorbitant demands are complied with."

Philadelphia was first in another major milestone in labor history - the general strike.

"The blood sucking aristocracy stood aghast; terror stricken they thought the day of retribution had come."
- John Ferral, union leader

The idea of a general strike was first circulated by a man named William Benbow. Benbow was an English socialist, but his radical ideas about "common concerted job action across occupational lines" began circulating in pamphlet form on the east coast in 1831.
Seventeen trade unions struck for a 10-hour day in Baltimore in 1833, but the strike was quickly crushed. Shortly afterwards a similar effort was made in Boston, and met a similar fate.

Word travelled from city to city. By June 1835, Philadelphia was ready.
Three hundred armed Irish longshoremen marched through the streets calling workers to join them on strike. Leather workers, printers, carpenters, bricklayers, masons, city employees, bakers, clerks and painters joined in, carrying their tools.
In all, 20,000 workers walked off their jobs and idled the city in a general strike for a 10-hour day. In what might be called the first "concern troll" in history, the Germantown Telegraph fretted for the well-being of the workers.
the brevity of only a sixty-hour week would be harmful to workers, that all the extra time would be "applied to useless and unworthy purposes."
After a week the city government caved. City workers would now only work 10 hours, from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., with one hour for lunch and one hour for dinner. Three weeks later the other employers in the city gave in to the general strike. The 10 hour day was adopted throughout the city along with some wage increases.
The success of the general strike electrified the labor movement, and a wave of strikes swept the east coast. By the following year the 10-hour day was the standard for skilled workers. In 1840 President Martin Van Buren instituted the ten hour day for federal employees.

Labels: , ,

 
Permalink | 0 comments
EchoHawk Should NOT Be Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs
by Winter Rabbit | 1/28/2009 06:20:00 PM
To begin, let’s look at what Scott Crowell’s introduction in his opposition letter says regarding his extreme disapproval of EchoHawk being “vetted for Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs.”


Source

I must express my shock and dismay to hear that Larry EchoHawk is being vetted as Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs. I have great respect for the EchoHawk name, and the highest respect for John and his stewardship of the Native American Rights Fund, and I have had the pleasure of working with many of the Echohawks now practicing Indian law in the northwest. But I must take exception with Larry EchoHawk and share with you the specific facts as to why.


Crowell has “had the pleasure of working with many of the EchoHawks now practicing Indian law in the northwest.” What are his reasons for opposing Larry EchoHawk? We’ll look at them, and then I’ll add my thoughts in regards to the matter.


He sets the foundation leading up to the fact that Larry EchoHawk was in a position of power and he used that power to make a suggestion to “Governor Andrus to convene a Special Session of the Idaho Legislature.” EchoHawk’s manipulative “suggestion” was for the Idaho Constitution to be amended “to change the language so that the State no longer would have a legal obligation under IGRA to negotiate for Class III gaming with Idaho’s Tribes.”



In the early 1990’s, when all the Idaho Tribes first requested gaming compacts under IGRA with the State of Idaho, there was first a dispute as to whether the Tribes could even operate bingo under Idaho law. Then-Idaho Governor Cecil Andrus asked DOI to review the situation and stated that he would honor DOI’s opinion and findings. Then- DOI Solicitor Tom Sansonetti came to Idaho, reviewed the laws and statutes and travelled the State to see what Idaho law and policy truly were regarding gaming. Sansonetti’s official opinion letter not only concluded that Idaho could not stop the Tribes from operating bingo, but that the State’s broad and bold State Lottery meant the State was obligated to negotiate Class III compacts with Tribes allowing for casino gaming, including machine gaming.



Continuing, these are the specifics of how EchoHawk, who is being considered for Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, attacked the Idaho Tribe’s ability to have Class III gaming.


(emphasis mine)

Larry EchoHawk,
then the Attorney General of the State of Idaho, while formally at the negotiating table with the Idaho Tribes, responded to DOI’s official opinion letter by calling on Governor Andrus
to convene a Special Session of the Idaho Legislature (a very rare occurrence in Idaho) to amend the Idaho Constitution to change the language so that the State no longer would have a legal obligation under IGRA to negotiate for Class III gaming with Idaho’s Tribes.
Imagine that, while at the table with a federal obligation to negotiate in good faith, Larry Echohawk instead headed up the extraordinary effort to change Idaho law to deprive Tribes of their federal and inherent rights to operate Class III games on their lands. Regardless of what other credentials and supporters that advocate for Larry EchoHawk’s appointment may exist, these facts and these circumstances demonstrate that he does not have the commitment to Indian Country required for the important office of Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs.



Essentially, that’s from the “how” formula of attacking Tribal Sovereignty. Now, what about the “why?” Let’s look at his own words first.



For me, life began to change at the age of 14, when two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Lee Pearson and Boyd Camphuysen, came into my home and presented the missionary lessons. Up until that time I knew very little about Christian religion and had seldom attended any church. When the time came for the missionaries to challenge our family to be baptized, they first asked my dad, and then my mother, and then the children, from the oldest to the youngest. I was the second youngest in the family, and by the time they got to me everyone else had said yes. When they asked me, I remember looking at my dad, who had a stern look on his face, and I knew what my answer should be.

I was baptized, but I did not have a testimony of the truthfulness of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Prophet Joseph Smith.


Now, let’s look at a comment about EchoHawk from someone I absolutely trust.


…First he's a Mormon who calls Indians "Lammonites" along with the strange Mormon beliefs of us being the "lost tribes of Israel…"


And what, is a “Lammonite?”


(emphasis mine)

Source

The book of Mormon claims to be an account of the history of America; beginning from 600 BC to 424 AD. It names the first settlers to America, the "Jaredites", a people who had been dispersed at the Tower of Babel. Later, another group called the Lammonites came to America (a barbaric people with dark skins); these were the American Indians.
Besides the Lammonites, another tribe called the Nephites came to this land. They were suppose to be the lost tribe of Israel.



Therefore, Larry EchoHawk is likely motivated to attack Tribal Sovereignty and Culture, because of his religious views. I’ll back that up by citing an instance from recent history, that is still going on today up to a point with Peabody Coal.


Indigenous People have been assimilated into Christianity and it is no easy subject, for it requires considering a judgment be made that is uncomfortable. A general clarification as well as an example will be given with my opinion before proceeding to McCain’s part in this forced relocation, because the "several First Mesa Hopi who had been converted to Mormonism" needs at least some general clarification before proceeding. Indigenous People in cases like this who have been assimilated into Christianity have also adapted the behaviors of their assimilators. For example, I heard an elder speak of how once they entered Boarding School as an adolescent, the ones who had been assimilated mocked them for speaking the language. How many people’s history has been lost because similar things happened in their own families and now it’s too late to retrieve? Indigenous People who have been assimilated into Christianity have every right to believe as they wish. However, abandoning the fact that in their ancestral lands lie the flesh of their ancestors which is the Earth Mother, they may see no problem fighting their relatives who hold that land sacred. So my uncomfortable judgment is, their replaced beliefs give them no right to act as predators…



I can assure Mr. EchoHawk that I am not part of the "lost tribes of Israel." I’m an example of successful Cultural Genocide, but I got over it. I’ll be civil with my last thoughts.


EchoHawk should not become Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs.
 
Permalink | 6 comments
Blogging and Brashness
by Unknown | 1/28/2009 11:12:00 AM
I'm a brash blogger. Actually, I used to be an even brasher blogger. I decided I was going to build a big community blog, staffed by a bunch of people with advanced degrees, when I was twenty-one and had just received my bachelor's degree. I attacked the historical profession for being insufficiently interested in the blogosphere without bothering to take the slightest look at the wonderful work already going on in history blogging. I trashed Thomas Bender's most recent book without even having seen it (a problem I've since remedied). Even today, I refer to all bloggers by their first names, no matter what their professional rank (though I don't maintain that in person; thus, the proprietor of Cliopatria is "Ralph" on this site and "Dr. Luker" at the AHA).

Of course, some of this brashness reflects my personality. I do have a tendency to be fearless and blunt in my dealings with people. However, in person, I'm only brash with people whom I know very well and whom I trust. I'm brash with my advisor, but not with my other professors. I'm brash with my close friends, but not with people I hardly know. In the blogosphere, however, it's just the opposite. I'm more likely to criticize you if I've never read your work before or met you in person. Once you've earned my respect, I'll treat you carefully and give you the benefit of the doubt.

Those of you who haven't read me over a long period of time will be surprised to learn that when I was a political blogger from 2003-2007, I was actually considered something of a concern troll. I had to leave Daily Kos around mid-2007 (though I'm now back in a limited capacity, as a favor to a friend) because I got tired of watching established bloggers pick on newbies, and said so vocally on multiple occasions, which rather annoyed some of the folks I was criticizing. I've never been one for much cursing online, which is a staple of the political blogosphere. And I'm willing to see the good in the occasional Republican, which makes me a despicable turncoat to some extreme partisans on the left.

What I want to explore today is whether brashness in the blogosphere is a drawback of relative anonymity, as many have claimed, or whether it's a positive value. I definitely don't believe the first. I used to believe the second; now, I'm not so sure.



I have a bit of a different view on the blogosphere than do many others because I entered this medium through the Howard Dean campaign. Those of us who were "Deaniacs" fancied ourselves the ultimate populist movement (a bit odd in retrospect given the generally white middle-class demographic of that campaign). We were, to use Jerome Armstrong's and Markos Moulitsas' phrase, "crashing the gate" -- overthrowing the established order and replacing it with a grassroots movement helmed by a "man of the people" (really a blue-blood multi-millionaire, but who cares about accuracy).

Coming from that perspective, I saw our brash demeanor and quickness to condemn those who disagreed with us as both a conscious choice and a powerful virtue. Democrats in Congress had failed us by being lily-livered weaklings, trying to appease when they should have opposed; we wouldn't make that same mistake. Instead, following the bellicose Dean's lead, we crafted a muscular, heroic image of liberalism that would overthrow the existing brand in hand-to-hand combat, then return to the field of battle to dispatch the evil Republicans. (At the time, we couldn't understand why women didn't like Dean -- go figure.) Arguments in the blogosphere, we thought, were simply proxy wars for the real conflict; we were reclaiming America shout by shout.

I believed in that mission for a long time, and part of me still believes in it. But I've come to realize that what's appropriate for one situation isn't necessarily the right fit for another. The Dean movement came out of a particular moment in history in which the leaders of both major parties were peculiarly unresponsive to the needs of the people; the sword-of-truth-style campaign Dean ran would be inappropriate today, when President Obama enjoys sky-high approval ratings from both Democrats and Republicans. In the historical blogosphere, this type of crusading fervor is even more inappropriate; I fail to see what could be the point of crashing the gate of, say, John Hope Franklin. In the historical profession, at least for the most part, people occupy positions of power because they've earned them, and a healthy measure of respect is due to those who've climbed that ladder on the strength of their work. I didn't see it that way when I started this site in September 2006; perhaps I've grown up a little since then.

That said, there's an essential kernel of that brashness that I want to retain: the idea that ordinary people matter, that they matter more than many of us give them credit for, and that we should never stop working to bring them into the academic conversation as much as we can. However, though we may disagree on strategies or on the extent of that commitment, that's not an idea that needs to be sold to my fellow history bloggers. Those historians using this medium, by and large, are doing so precisely because they get it about ordinary people and academia. I'm proud to be a member of that company -- and perhaps, right now, my dissertation is the only gate that needs crashing.

Labels:

 
Permalink | 11 comments
Occasional Open Thread
by AndrewMc | 1/27/2009 09:49:00 PM
A few years back I happened to be riding on the elevator in the National Archives. I was in the car with two long-time [and names-withheld] archivists, who were discussing the problem of aging microfilm becoming unreadable. The conversation went something like this (from memory)

Archivist #1: Well, a lot of that microfilm is becoming unreadable--it's deteriorated so badly it won't be usable in 20 years.

Archivist #2: Yeah, but after they filmed it in the 1930s and 1940s, they threw away the originals. So what can you do?

At this point I interrupted with "Really? Are you serious?" To which I got the reply "Yep, it mostly got tossed out in the trash, hauled to a dump. Millions of records. Some stuff was picked up by private collectors. But it's gone."

I about died.

What's on your mind?



Labels: ,

 
Permalink | 7 comments
How the Press, the Pentagon, and Even Human Rights Groups Sold Us an Army Field Manual that (Still) Sanctions Torture
by Valtin | 1/25/2009 12:05:00 AM
Originally published at AlterNet -- If you wish to repost this essay you can download a .txt file of the html here (right click and save). Permission granted.

A January 17 New York Times editorial noted that Attorney General designate Eric Holder testified at his nomination hearings that when it came to overhauling the nation's interrogation rules for both the military and the CIA, the Army Field Manual represented "a good start." The editorial noted the vagueness of Holder's statement. Left unsaid was the question, if the AFM is only a "good start," what comes next?

The Times editorial writer never bothered to mention the fact that three years earlier, a different New York Times article (12/14/2005) introduced a new controversy regarding the rewrite of the Army Field Manual. The rewrite was inspired by a proposal by Senator John McCain to limit U.S. military and CIA interrogation methods to those in the Army Field Manual. (McCain would later allow an exception for the CIA.)

According to the Times article, a new set of classified procedures proposed for the manual was "was pushing the limits on legal interrogation." Anonymous military sources called the procedures "a back-door effort" to undermine McCain's efforts at the time to change U.S. abusive interrogation techniques, and stop the torture.



A Forgotten Controversy

Over the next six months or so, a number of articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the L.A. Times described the course of the controversy. By mid-June 2006, the NYT was reporting that, under pressure from unnamed senior generals and members of Congress (including McCain, and Senators Warner and Graham), the Pentagon was rethinking its plan to have a classified annex to the AFM, which would include a different set of interrogation rules for "unlawful combatants," like the detainees at Guantanamo. Included in the discussion about these classified procedures were, reportedly, members of the State Department and various human rights organizations.

According to an article in the L.A. Times, this latest fight over the classified procedures went back at least to mid-May 2006. The manual itself had been written at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, roughly a year earlier, and then sent to the Pentagon for further evalution. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's right-hand man, Stephen Cambone, was put in charge of its final draft. According the L.A. Times article, members of Congress were "keen to avoid a public fight with the Pentagon." The announcement that the controversial and still unknown procedures might not be included in the manual was seen as a success by human rights groups.

Yet the proverbial chickens never hatched, and by early September 2006 the new Army Field Manual was finally released. The section on special interrogation procedures for "unlawful combatants" was included as a special appendix (Appendix M), and published in unclassified format. According to a L.A. Times story on September 8, Cambone was crowing that the new Army Field Manual instructions would give interrogators "what they need to do the job." The article noted:
The new manual includes one restricted technique that will only be used on so-called unlawful combatants – such as Al Qaeda suspects – not traditional prisoners of war.

That technique, called “separation,” involves segregating a detainee from other prisoners. Military officials said separation was not the equivalent of solitary confinement and was consistent with Geneva Convention protections.
As for the proposed secrecy surrounding the new techniques, the Pentagon had decided it couldn't keep them secret forever. Senator Warner was also on record as against any classified annex to the manual.

Not long ago, I wrote about what was included in Appendix M, which purports to introduce the single technique of "separation." In fact, the Appendix M includes instructions regarding solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, and, in combination with other procedures included in the Army Field Manual, amounted to a re-introduction of the psychological torture techniques practiced at Guantanamo, and taught by Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, or SERE psychologists and other personnel at the Cuban base and elsewhere.

The rewrite of the Army Field Manual included other seemingly minor changes. It introduced dubious procedures, such as the "False Flag" technique, wherein interrogators could pretend they were from another country. It also redefined the meaning of "Fear Up," a procedure meant to exploit a prisoner's existing fears under imprisonment. Now, interrogators could create "new" fears. The AFM rewrite was a masterpiece of subterfuge and double talk, which could only have been issued from the offices of Rumsfeld and Cambone.

One would think this turnaround of the Pentagon's position regarding a removal of these controversial procedures would have been a matter of some note. But there was no protest from Congress, no mention of the past controversy in the press, and only vague comments at first and then acceptance by human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Only Physicians for Human Rights protested the inclusion of the techniques listed in Appendix M. For the rest... silence.

DoD Rolls Out the New Model

On September 6, 2006, a news briefing was held by the Department of Defense, as part of the unveiling of the new Army Field Manual, in conjunction with the then-new Defense Department Directive for Detainee Programs (DoD Directive 2310.01E). Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Cully Stimson and Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2) Lt. Gen. John Kimmons were the DoD presenters.

Much of the belief that the AFM provides an improvement over previous policies of the Department of Defense is likely due to a confusion between the two documents introduced that summer of 2006, the new Detainee Program Directive and the new Army Field Manual.

DoD Directive 2310.10E made a number of changes in regards to detainee operations and management. It made clear that "All persons subject to this Directive shall observe the requirements of the law of war, and shall apply, without regard to a detainee’s legal status, at a minimum the standards articulated in Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949..." The same type of language appears in the text of the Army Field Manual itself.

During the press briefing on September 6, and a different one the next day for the foreign press, reporters were not so easily fooled.

One unnamed reporter at the DoD briefing challenged Lt. Gen. Kimmons on the "single standard" issue:
Q General, why was the decision made to keep these categories -- the separate categories of detainees? You have traditional prisoners of war and then the unlawful enemy combatants. Why not treat all detainees under U.S. military custody the exact same way?
Kimmons's answer gives us insight into the kind of convoluted legal thinking that went into the Pentagon's rationale for the acceptability of coercive interrogation -- for some (emphasis added):
GEN. KIMMONS: Well, actually, the distinction is in Geneva through the Geneva Convention, which describes the criteria that prisoner -- that lawful combatants, such as enemy prisoners of war -- which attributes they possess -- wearing a uniform, fighting for a government, bearing your arms openly and so on and so forth. And it's all spelled out fairly precisely inside Geneva.

Geneva also makes clear that traditional, unlawful combatants such as in the -- 50 years ago, we would have talked about spies and saboteurs, but also now applies to this new category of unlawful -- or new type of unlawful combatant, terrorists, al Qaeda, Taliban.

They clearly don't meet the criteria for prisoner of war status, lawful combatant status, and so they're not entitled to the -- therefore to the extra protections and privileges which Geneva affords.
But Kimmons' clarification was not very helpful. In fact, if a prisoner is judged not a "lawful combatant", then he or she immediately becomes covered by Geneva IV, the "Civilian Convention," which protects anyone "who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever find themselves" held prisoner. According to the International Red Cross Commentary on the Geneva Conventions:
Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third [POW] Convention, [or] a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention.... There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law.
Separation and Sensory Deprivation

One questioner took on the topic of the "Separation" technique. Wasn't it the same as solitary confinement, and wasn't solitary confinement "banned by Common Article 3 in the affront to human dignity, other provisions? "Are you confident," a reporter asked, "that separation is permitted under Common Article 3?"

The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs responded by denying that separation amounted to solitary confinement, even though the AFM describes the technique as, among other things "physical separation" "limited to 30 days of initial duration." Extensions for such physical separation must be reviewed and approved the General Officer or Flag Officer who initially approved the original "separation."

Kimmons' reply was even more disingenuous:
We have always segregated enemy combatants on the battlefield at the point of capture and beyond, to keep them silent, segregate the officers from the enlisted, the men from the women, and so forth. That's traditional; it goes back to World War II and beyond.
So, is "separation" a matter of segregating prisoners, or what? In the Army Field Manual itself, one gets that same kind of double talk. At first it is presented thus:
The purpose of separation is to deny the detainee the opportunity to communicate with other detainees in order to keep him from learning counter-resistance techniques or gathering new information to support a cover story; decreasing the detainee's resistance to interrogation.
This description sounds a lot like segregation for security purposes, although there is that phrase "decreasing the detainee's resistance." A page or so later, however, we find the following (emphasis added):
The use of separation should not be confused with the detainee-handling techniques approved in Appendix D [Guide for Handling Detainees]. Specifically, the use of segregation during prisoner handling (Search, Silence, Segregate, Speed, Safeguard, and Tag [5 S's and a T]) should not be confused with the use of separation as a restricted interrogation technique.
Furthermore, we learn that "separation" requires an interrogation plan, and medical and legal review, as well, of course, as "physical separation." If this is not solitary confinement for the purposes of breaking a prisoner down for interrogation, then the English language has lost all purpose in explaining things.

Another line of questioning took on the AFM's contention that it banned sensory deprivation. The entire exchange at the September 6 hearing is worth reproducing here. It represents, among other things, the most thorough line of inquiry I have seen by any reporter in quite some time. The following quote contains added emphases.
Q General, as an expert in interrogations, do you believe that sensory deprivation was abusive, or did it ever prove to be helpful in interrogation?

GEN. KIMMONS: Sensory deprivation is abusive and it's prohibited in this Field Manual, and it's absolutely counterproductive, in my understanding of what we have used productively. Sensory deprivation, just to be clear -- and we define it in the Field Manual, but basically, it comes down to the almost complete deprivation of all sensory stimuli, light, noise, and so forth, and to the point where it can have an adverse mental, psychological effect on a -- disorienting effect on a detainee.

Q So could there be deprivation of light alone for extended periods of time, as opposed to complete sensory deprivation?

GEN. KIMMONS: I think the total loss of an external stimulus, such as deprivation of light, would not fit what we have described here as -- for example, if you're hinting about separation, separation does not involve the darkness or lack of that type of sensory stimulation.

Q That wasn't the question, though. Would sensory -- would the deprivation of light alone be permitted under the current manual, as opposed -- because you described sensory deprivation as total deprivation --

GEN. KIMMONS: That's correction.

Q -- of all senses. So deprivation of light alone for extended periods would be permitted?

GEN. KIMMONS: I don't think the Field Manual explicitly addresses it.

It does not make it prohibited. And it would have to be weighed in the context of the overall environment. If it was at nighttime during sleep hours, then it would make personal sense to turn the lights off.

Q You know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to get at -- because you said specifically total sensory deprivation -- so deprivation of any one sense might be permitted. Like light, for example. They could be kept in the dark for extended periods of time beyond the usual nighttime hours.
This is really too specific and challenging for the DoD briefers, and they turn on their double-talk machine:
MR. STIMSON: Jim, questions like this are good questions to ask. And what's important to remember is that interrogation plans are put together for a reason so that not just one person can decide what he or she wants to do and then run off and do it. They're vetted. It's laid out how they're vetted. General Kimmons could go into that in exhaustive detail. Typically, there would be a JAG, as I understand it, General Kimmons --

GEN. KIMMONS: That's correct.

MR. STIMSON: -- that would have to review that. It goes up through various chains of command. And so, you know, types of questions like this would have to be asked and then vetted through that process.
Burying the Story

With all the hard questioning by the press, you'd think the issues would have been aired in the media in the days and weeks following the introduction of the Army Field Manual. As should be evident by now, that's not what happened.

Here's how the L.A. Times covered it (9/6/06), getting the story exactly backwards (emphasis added):
Bowing to critics of its tough interrogation policies, the Pentagon is issuing a new Army field manual that provides Geneva Convention protections for all detainees and eliminates a secret list of interrogation tactics.

The manual, set for release today, also reverses an earlier decision to maintain two interrogation standards – one for traditional prisoners of war and another for “unlawful combatants” captured during a conflict but not affiliated with a nation’s military force.
There is no mention of Appendix M or any controversy over techniques. Jumana Musa, an "advocacy director for Amnesty International, is quoted as noting, "“If the new field manual embraces the Geneva Convention, it is an important return to the rule of law.'"

The 9/7/06 article in the Washington Post was, if anything, even more laudatory of the new AFM:
Pentagon officials yesterday repudiated the harsh interrogation tactics adopted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, specifically forbidding U.S. troops from using forced nudity, hooding, military dogs and waterboarding to elicit information from detainees captured in ongoing wars.

The Defense Department simultaneously embraced international humane treatment standards for all detainees in U.S. military custody, the first time there has been a uniform standard for both enemy prisoners of war and the so-called unlawful combatants linked to al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.
The article falsely claims the AFM bans manipulation of sleep patterns. Regarding any controversy, the article explains:
Three expanded techniques -- good cop, bad cop; pretending to be an official from another country; and detention in a separate cell from others -- are allowed but require approval from senior officers. Officials originally considered keeping those three techniques classified but decided to make them public for the sake of full transparency.
The Post article also briefly mentions the generally positive response of human rights groups:
"This is the Pentagon coming full circle," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "This is very strong guidance."
As for the human rights organizations, Amnesty International later essentially signed off on the AFM. In an article from the Winter 2007 issue of Amnesty International Magazine, Jumana Musa, quoted in the L.A. Times article above, had this to say about the new AFM:
AIUSA also worked with U.S. representatives and senators to introduce legislation to create a single, transparent standard for interrogations and to limit the CIA to approved interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual.
In a telephone interview for this article, Mr. Malinowski said he supported using the Army Field Manual as a replacement for the CIA "enhanced interrogation techniques," and described the question of abuse in Appendix M as not entirely clear. The language in Appendix M was "ambiguous," and open to criticism due to a "lack of clarity." He maintained, however, that using the current Army Field Manual as a model was merely a beginning, and that a new overhaul of interrogation techniques was on the agenda.

A call made to Amnesty International's press contact regarding this issue, and an e-mail sent to Jumana Musa, were both unreturned.

Conclusion

Two conclusions can be drawn from the above examination of the "selling" of the Army Field Manual to the American public in the late summer of 2006 and beyond. One is that reporters on the beat were very aware of the origins and implications of the issues surrounding Geneva and the AFM, and the controversies surrounding the use of isolation and other techniques under the rubric of "Separation." The extremely muted or non-existent discussion in the mainstream press of these issues after the AFM was introduced means that a decision to suppress these issues was made at an editorial level, and were not the result of laziness or dilatory reporting on behalf of reporters.

Secondly, the role of some human rights organizations in promoting the new Army Field Manual -- in particular, the actions of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch -- are curious, to say the least. Press reports and the interview with Malinowski show that inclusion of certain human rights organizations in the vetting of the AFM started at the very beginning. We may not be able to find out what went on in the editorial offices of the nation's top newspapers, but we should know more about the discussions within the human rights organizations on how they advised, or were fooled, by talks with Bush administration and Pentagon personnel.

Meanwhile, other human rights organizations, such as the Nobel Prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights, have criticized the language and techniques described in Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, and called for rescission of the offending text. In a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in May 2007, Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director of PHR, and retired Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, MD, former Commanding General of the Southeast Regional U.S. Army Medical Command, wrote:
The new Army Field Manual on human intelligence gathering... explicitly prohibits several SERE-based techniques, yet Appendix M of the manual explicitly permits what amounts to isolation, along with sleep and sensory deprivation. The manual is silent on a number of other SERE-based methods, creating ambiguity and doubt over their place in interrogation doctrine....

PHR, therefore, respectfully urges you to take the following actions:

1. Fully implement the OIG’s recommendation to “preclude the use of Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape physical and psychological coercion techniques” in all interrogations. (Id, pp. 29-30.) This includes rescission of Appendix M of the new Army Field Manual and specific prohibition, by name, of each of the known SERE-based methods and their equivalents.
It seems likely that the Army Field Manual, whether by executive order (most likely) or by legislation, will become the new "single standard" for U.S. interrogation. Press reports hint that the Obama administration may yet allow a loophole for CIA interrogators. I don't know how that will sit with the many military lawyers and officers who have been instrumental in opposing Bush/Rumsfeld's torture policies from the beginning. I'm thinking of people like Alberto Mora and Antonio Taguba, or the new nominee for DoD General Counsel, Jeh Charles Johnson, who apparently intends to seriously change the policies set by his predecessor, Jim Haynes.

In any case, the full history and controversy behind torture and U.S. interrogation policy deserves a full airing. What happened, for instance, between June and September 2006, allowing for Pentagon acceptance of the Appendix M abusive procedures? When it comes to the implementation of a host of torture and cruel, inhumane interrogation techniques by the U.S. government, both an investigation and prosecutions are needed.

It will be a challenge for our society to bring out the full story, while also bringing to justice those individuals who broke both domestic law and international treaty. We will need both investigations and prosecutions in order settle scores with the past, to understand where we stand now, and what we need to change to move forward.

Also posted at Invictus

Labels: , , , , ,

 
Permalink | 4 comments
Open Letter To President Obama: Free Leonard Peltier (Update)
by Winter Rabbit | 1/24/2009 10:59:00 PM
Mr. President,

It is with a great sense of urgency that I ask you to free Leonard Peltier. Peltier was recently attacked, was prevented from speaking to his attorney on January 23 after he was attacked, and he is now just permitted one phone call every thirty days. Honestly Mr. President, this does not surprise me. Before proceeding, I honor you for and am grateful beyond words for the immediate changes you have made.




Crossposted at Native American Netroots

Mr. President, these truths should be factors in your decision in my opinion: the historical context of the Indian Boarding Schools which closed in the early 70’s, and the Forced Sterilizations of Indigenous Women in the mid 70’s. Both are not separate from being major contributing factors to the circumstances at the time of Peltier’s false arrest. They, in conjunction with the obvious genocidal colonial practices that preceded Indian Boarding Schools and Forced Sterilizations, created the violence. Correspondingly, you may not know of the CIA’s influence over some journalism and book publications in academia; consequently, I believe that should also be a factor in your decision to free Leonard Peltier.




Amnesty International urges Clinton to grant pardon to Leonard Peltier

Amnesty International is today calling on President Clinton to grant Leonard Peltier presidential pardon before leaving office. Leonard Peltier, a Native American Indian, has been in prison for 23 years for the murder of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents.

- snip –

Amnesty International believes that the evidence that Peltier shot the two FBI agents is far from conclusive. One of the organization's pivotal concerns was that his extradition from Canada was on the basis of a testimony by an alleged eye-witness who was coerced by the FBI into making false statements. In a recent public hearing in Toronto, Canada, Myrtle Poor Bear reasserted that her original claim -- that she was Peltier's girlfriend and that she saw him shoot the agents -- was false, and was a result of months of threats and harassment from FBI agents. She had also said that she had been 80 kilometers (50 miles) away from the scene at the time of the shooting.

Amnesty International has repeatedly voiced serious concerns over the fairness of the legal proceedings which led to Leonard Peltier's conviction and sentence, and believes that political factors may have influenced the way in which the case was conducted.



Source

Key witnesses were banned from testifying about FBI misconduct & testimony about the conditions and atmosphere on the Pine Ridge Reservation at the time of the shoot-out was severely restricted. Important evidence, such as conflicting ballistics reports, was ruled inadmissible. Still, the U.S. Prosecutor failed to produce a single witness who could identify Peltier as the shooter. Instead, the government tied a bullet casing found near the bodies of their agents to the alleged murder weapon, arguing that this gun had been the only one of its kind used during the shootout, and that it had belonged to Peltier.


Mr. President, every time I have heard about the FBI agent who wrote “American Indian Mafia” and has written in favor of keeping Peltier in prison, I think about this.


http://books.google.com/books?id=Z2ZGB8Ow_cQC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=unlearning+the+language+of+conquest+%2B+cia&source=bl&ots=3XBZwe4q4c&sig=AIPfUwEPv_NrpKVox8DcWb87JCs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

The CIA also developed remarkably close ties to journalism and, during the period 1947 – 1977, some 400 American journalists “secretly carried out assignments” for the agency, according to a classic investigative study by Carl Berstein…CIA influence extended to book publication…


The article states that it’s not specifically pertaining to “American Indian politics,” but does explore what it calls “close connections” with the CIA’s influence over some journalism and book publications in academia with the fact that the “victors have been writing the history.” That to me, Mr. President, is an indisputable fact. What’s more, is the reason "victors have been writing the history" is to acquire Tribal Lands and the natural resources on them.

Mr. President, have you ever heard of Alex White Plume?


Source

Alex White Plume, a Lakota living on the Pine Ridge Reservation, has grown industrial hemp on his land since 2000. That year, the DEA, with helicopters and machine guns, confiscated the crop (legal in the sovereign nation in which it was grown), costing taxpayers more than $200,000.00.

In 2001, the DEA came only with side arms and weed eaters, this time simply destroying the crop.

In 2002, Alex and his family again planted fields of industrial hemp, but were unable to complete their contract by delivering the crop to the Madison Hemp and Flax Co., because U.S. District Judge Battey (in Rapid City, So. Dak.), issued a civil injunction stating that if Alex so much as touches his hemp, he will be held in contempt of court and jailed for up to six months without a trial or a jury. As a result, the hemp was cut and piled by people unknown; the pile lying in silent testimony between Alex and the Madison Hemp & Flax buyer Craig Lee, both barred from touching it by the government. Delivery was made, but the deliveree could not accept the product.


He was and is innocent, and that’s why you should free Leonard Peltier. I have one more question with all due respect – when does it stop?

(Emphasis mine)

Subject: Protection for Mato Paha (Bear Butte)


Despite protests of American Indian People and other supporters, the county has granted alcohol licenses to the bars. Recently, a corporation has purchased majority ownership in the bar closest to Mato Paha and they are going to have helicopter rides over the butte. We are informed this corporation is affiliated with or are former Blackwater high clearance mercenaries and have already strong armed some American Indians who were on public land taking pictures.



When does it stop?



Even John Coltrane said,


“I’ve found you’ve got to look back at the old things and see them in a new light.”


and while he was obviously referring to music; I think it also applies where “victors have been writing the history” - especially since music is a universal language.

[Update]



Photobucket


AIM West, The Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee, The Leonard Peltier Support Group of Northern California, POOR Magazine and members of the community demonstrate in front of the Federal Building to protest the assault on Leonard Peltier in the US Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart, PA. Leonard Peltier is an elder, a political prisoner who has been wrongfully incarcerated for more than 3 decades. The people demand that he be given proper medical care, nutrition and that President Obama give this the attention it deserves by granting Leonard Peltier his freedom.







Photobucket



Photobucket




 
Permalink | 2 comments
The Facebook Danger and Opportunity
by AndrewMc | 1/24/2009 07:26:00 AM
Do you use Facebook? If so, for what? I'm a relative latecomer to Facebook (or fb, as it is commonly referred to), having joined about two or three years ago. It's a handy little tool for keeping in touch with family members and old friends.

But I also find it useful as a means for connecting with my students. And therein lies the danger, and the opportunity [no, it isn't. Well, probably not.].

Back to the point. I've found Facebook to be everything that the media describes it to be: interesting, annoying, a great way to keep in touch with folks, and a font of more private information about people I only sort-of know than I'm really interested in knowing.

But . . . .



. . . . it can have its uses. For me Facebook allows me keep in touch with friends/family, and have a means of communication with students. I have about a hundred or so current and former students as friends. So, I'm fairly circumspect and quite careful about what I put up there. For instance, there are no pictures of me on my Facebook page. And, of course, I tell my family and friends not to "tag" me in pictures where we're having drinks, or doing anything that I think would look bad to students.

There's a danger, I think, in looking too unprofessional and breaking down some of the respect that is necessary for effective teaching (although I confess to being a notorious curser in class. Bad habit.). I also don't offer to "friend" my students, because I feel like the power differential makes my offer of friending different than an offer from one of their peers. It's odd, I know. But there it is.

I'm not completely uptight, though. I'm a "fan" of several different kinds of beer, for example. My students can see that. I'm in some political groups, of course, despite the fact that my students are overwhelmingly conservative. I have some other semi-personal information on my Fb page as well. But whenever I put something up on Facebook, I keep in mind that my students can and will read it.

So, I try to have some stuff up there that says "hey, I've been a student, and I had a hard time from time to time." I've also mentioned places I've lived and the jobs I've held. I've put up links to interesting, humorous, or educational webpages, blogs, and videos. I also try to update my "status" with humorous statements or strange cultural references. Most of my personal information, interests, etc., is meant to be humorous but somewhat thought-provoking, not serious. (My "religion" changes frequently. Student-friend, "Dr. Mc., what religion is "Discordianism?") It's a kind of a connection that I feel makes me look a bit more "real," without going overboard. It also goes well, I think, with the kind of easy rapport I build with my students.

Which brings me to a story. Last semester I taught the first half of Western Civ (as I always do) to a class of 84 students. I don't always teach a large section, because it makes it harder to connect to the students. In a class that big, there will always be some students who are harder to reach than others. One kid sat in the back for the first two months. He wasn't doing well, and he didn't answer my occasional e-mails offering help.

One morning I updated my Facebook status to say "So, when I die, do *I* go to Thug Mansion?" It was a pretty random update--in truth I didn't think about it too much. Just a cultural reference that I figured most wouldn't pay attention to.

That student was in my office that afternoon. "Oh man, Dr. Mc, that was hilarious. I about died laughing." I laughed and say "oh, yeah, yeah. Great song." Long pause, and then he said "You know, this class is really hard. I really need help."

Two or three years of status updates, posting and guarding information, and accepting a few friend offers here and there--worth the opportunity.


Labels: ,

 
Permalink | 9 comments
Final Inauguration Thoughts on Aretha Franklin's Hat and Joseph Lowery's Beard
by Ralph Brauer | 1/22/2009 10:28:00 PM



I doubt anyone will ever again sing "My Country Tis of Thee" the way Aretha Franklin sang it at the Obama Inauguration, because not even she will sing it that way again. That's because in gospel you sing what you feel. You testify. And if anyone testified on that singular day it was Aretha Franklin along with the man many term the father of the Civil Rights Movement, the Reverend Joseph Lowery.



As most people, know Franklin's roots are in gospel, in part because she is the daughter of one of the most revered figures in the African American Church, the Reverend C.L. Franklin, who also was a close friend of another African American minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. Her first album, recorded when she was 14, was a gospel album which was produced for the same label whose recordings of her father's sermons had made him a national figure.

One of my favorite Franklin albums is an all-gospel production that was recorded at her father's church many years ago. At one point in the recording, C. L. Franklin remarks, "she never left the church." Like Ray Charles, Franklin brought the rhythms and sounds of gospel to popular music, earning her the title the "Queen of Soul."

Those skills were showcased at the Obama inauguration where, like Charles, she took a patriotic song and endowed it with the soul of gospel. You knew this was going to be a performance for the ages when she gave the words "sweet" and "liberty" a particular cadence that reverberated with meaning.

Think for a minute of the task she faced as an African American celebrating the inauguration of America's first African American President. Her "testimony" had to both acknowledge the struggles of the past and yet also the triumph of the present. By drawing out those two words the way she did, she made you pause and acknowledge those meanings.

This took on even more meaning when she reached the words "land where my fathers died." Shortly after that she did an extraordinary thing I have not seen anyone acknowledge--she changed the words to the song, so that it directly referenced Dr. King's immortal words. The original lyrics read "every mountain side" which Franklin changed to "mountain top" the words King used. In addition, to highlight the change she repeats the word "every" several times so it sinks in.

Franklin then went on to sing the song's lesser-known final verse. By the time she reached the last two stanzas, I had lost it. The second-to-last stanza begins with the words "protect us by thy might." Franklin repeats "protect" over and over, so it becomes a kind of prayer and, given circumstances which provoked an extraordinary amount of security, also a wish for both the new President and the country.

Listen to her sing that one line again and again, for she endows it with all the hopes Americans had that day and have for the incoming administration. When she ends the song Franklin and her backup choir repeat again the desire to let freedom ring, in a way that she knew she was testifying. Had she sung it that way in her father's church there is little doubt in my mind that the audience would have been spontaneously shouting their own reactions.

Unfortunately, Franklin's singing became lost in the uproar over her hat. It was Ellen de Generes who put her foot in her mouth by wearing a reproduction of Franklin's hat, turning it into a joke. Actually had de Generes known what she was poking fun at, she might have thought differently, for the wearing of special hats--especially unique ones with a bit of flash--is an old custom for African American church women.

Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry celebrate this tradition in their book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats. Deirdre Guion calls it:
hattitude...there's a little more strut in your carriage when you wear a nice hat. There's something special about you.

The man who sold Franklin the hat, Luke Son, said the clientele for Mr. Song Millinery is 90% African American church-going women. So far from being a joke, Franklin's hat was the perfect accessory to her gospel-tinged version of "My Country Tis of Thee" and brought a historic piece of African American culture to the Inauguration.

The other person who brought a historic piece was the Reverend Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference along with Dr. King. It would take a space longer than this essay to detail Lowery's achievements, so suffice it to say if anyone in America deserved to deliver the Benediction at Barack Obama's Inauguration it was Lowery.

Lowery's beard--or more properly it should be termed a goatee--reminded me of W.E.B. DuBois, whose book The Souls of Black Folk used verses from what he termed the "sorrow songs" to introduce each chapter and in a chapter titled "Faith of Our Fathers" wrote of the African American church. He wrote:
The black and massive form of the preacher swayed and quivered as the words crowded to his lips and flew at us in singular eloquence. (p. 190)

The eighty-seven year old Lowery brought his own singular eloquence, proving a better poet than the official poet who preceded him. The rhyme and rhythm of his first phrases brought a hush to the audience.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears.

Now that is poetry whose rhythm directly echoes "My Country Tis of Thee." Think of the phrase "land where my father's died, land of the Pilgrim's pride." Lowery knew exactly what he was doing. To bring together weary years and silent tears, to hear those words from a man who knew exactly what he was talking about made he and Franklin the perfect bookends for the Inaugural. Ever the activist Lowery did not shy away from telling it like it is.
He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national and, indeed, the global fiscal climate.

For we know that, Lord, you're able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor or the least of these and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.

Lord knows what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney must have been thinking when they heard those words.

Having painted a picture of contemporary America, Lowery went on to preach of the hope that Obama's Presidency has brought to the nation.
And while we have sown the seeds of greed -- the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.

Near the end, Lowery takes a cue from Franklin evoking the same word she used.
And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.

Finally Lowery concludes with paragraphs that cannot help but complete the tie to his old friend Dr. King, even evoking the spirit and rhythm of that long ago day in Washington when King gazed toward where Lowery was speaking even as four score years later Lowery looked out to the place King had spoken from.
We go now to walk together, children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone, with your hands of power and your heart of love.

Help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

In the midst of Black History Month, a day after Martin Luther King Day, both Franklin and Lowery reminded us of the pivotal role the African American church has played in American history. In a way, the African American church elected Barack Obama.

When I say the African American church I mean the African American church, for it is not so much about ministers as about congregations, not so much about Biblical fundamentalism and thou-shalt-nots as about principles. The Lowerys and Kings have justifiably earned their place in American history, but we forget the fact that as transformational leaders, they would have accomplished little without their congregations.

Much has been written about the Obama campaign, but no one has thought to link it back to the traditions of the African American church. Civil Rights veterans like Lowery would recognize the Obama campaign's tactics, as would anyone who has been a member of an African American congregation.

So when I say the African American Church elected Barack Obama I mean that in three ways. First, church leaders and congregations backed the candidate as they have backed no candidate in history. The huge African American turnout proved pivotal in this election. Without it Barack Obama would not have been standing behind Joseph Lowery waiting to take the oath of office.

The second way the church played a role in the campaign was to endow it with a sense of principle. The Civil Rights movement grew from the African American church's insistence on principle. The Obama campaign came to symbolize a renewal of principles for many Americans who voted for him.

The third way the African American church elected Barack Obama lay in lending its tactics to the campaign. The image of the Civil Rights Movement many Southerners tried hard to reinforce was that it was a top-down movement, that if leaders like King and Lowery could be stopped then the Movement would whither away. But in the records of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission--a secret police force formed after the Brown decision--lies another story, one of thousands of people who put their lives on the line for freedom.

One moment in the Movement could have served as a blueprint for the Obama campaign. Deprived of the right to vote for African American candidates by the State of Mississippi, the Freedom Democratic Party organized a shadow vote they called the Freedom Ballot. All across the state African Americans voted on Freedom ballots to show the segregationists that they would not be denied the right to express the franchise.

This grassroots effort, conducted with a major boost from African American churches, knit together people across the state. Nothing like it had ever been seen in Mississippi or in America. To minimize the violent segregationists that would be attracted like moths to a flame, organizers mailed the Freedom Ballot over a four-day period. The courage behind the effort remains difficult to imagine, for everyone involved in printing, distributing, filling out and counting the ballots literally put their lives on the line, testifying to a communal strength and resolve determined to rid the state of oppression. When the counting ended, over 50,000 African Americans had sent in ballots, a collective shout for freedom that reverberated across Mississippi to the very halls of Congress.

Nothing like the Obama campaign's grassroots effort had been seen until this November. Even on election night commentators could not quite believe it, but like those who participated in the Freedom Ballot, the campaign organizers knew the strength of their grassroots work.

As we now move forward into the Obama Administration, we would be wise not to forget the African American church, for just as it lay behind the election of Barack Obama, its people, principles and tactics will be there for him to call on when the going gets tough. Aretha Franklin all but said so as she sang, Joseph Lowery all but said so as he preached.

This is going to be a administration the likes of which America has never seen before.

Labels: ,

 
Permalink | 2 comments
Please Excuse Our Dust
by Unknown | 1/20/2009 11:31:00 PM
ProgressiveHistorians will be experiencing a scheduled outage at 10 AM ET on Wednesday, as we transfer domain ownership to the new editor. The outage will hopefully last for only a few minutes. During that time, you can still access the site through our Blogspot address: http://progressivehistorians.blogspot.com.

[Update] That took a little longer than expected, but we're up and running again now. Thanks for your patience.

Please use this as an open thread.

Labels:

 
Permalink | 1 comments
The Inauguration of Barack Obama--a Singular Moment
by Ralph Brauer | 1/20/2009 12:36:00 PM

barack20obama20capitol



Blogging live on Inauguration Day, less than two hours before Barack Obama takes the oath of office.


The Backdrop: When the actor in Ronald Reagan moved the location of the presidential swearing-in from the front of the Capitol to the rear little could he have foreseen the consequences. Ever playing to the camera, Reagan chose to use the rear, which as millions of tourists know provides one of the most famous views in America as it looks down the mall towards the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and Jefferson Memorial and now the World War II Memorial. Across the river lies Arlington National Cemetery. There seems little question Reagan personally stage-managed this setting which he would invoke in his Inaugural Address.

With his actor's sense of symbolism symbolism Reagan thought that if the ceremony took in that view his words would resonate with the nation's past. The obelisk dedicated to the man known as the Father of Our Country would punctuate the event like a giant exclamation point while the stern visage of the Great Emancipator gazed on the scene. Across the river the dead at Arlington would lie like a Greek chorus silently overseeing it all. The Great Communicator worked the setting into his first Inaugural address, using it not at the beginning of his speech, as an ordinary speaker might have been tempted to do, but at the end:
This is the first time in history that this ceremony has been held, as you have been told, on this West Front of the Capitol. Standing here, one faces a magnificent vista, opening up on this city's special beauty and history. At the end of this open mall are those shrines to the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

Directly in front of me, the monument to a monumental man: George Washington, Father of our country. A man of humility who came to greatness reluctantly. He led America out of revolutionary victory into infant nationhood. Off to one side, the stately memorial to Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence flames with his eloquence. And then beyond the Reflecting Pool the dignified columns of the Lincoln Memorial.

Whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln. Beyond those monuments to heroism is the Potomac River, and on the far shore the sloping hills of Arlington National Cemetery with its row on row of simple white markers bearing crosses or Stars of David. They add up to only a tiny fraction of the price that has been paid for our freedom. Each one of those markers is a monument to the kinds of hero I spoke of earlier. Their lives ended in places called Belleau Wood, The Argonne, Omaha Beach, Salerno and halfway around the world on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pork Chop Hill, the Chosin Reservoir, and in a hundred rice paddies and jungles of a place called Vietnam.

Today, a quarter century later, Reagan's decision endows what is already a singular moment in our history with even more resonance. When Reagan moved the ceremony--and the decision was his--no one could have possibly predicted that a little more than two decades later an African American would stand where Reagan stood, his eloquence punctuated by a monument to a man who used slaves to labor at Mt. Vernon and presided over a Constitutional Convention that declared African Americans three-fifths of a person, not because the drafters believed they were persons but to better ascertain their value as property and to pad the electoral votes of the very slave-owners who brutalized them. Nor could Reagan have foreseen that as he spoke Barack Obama's view would take in the monument to the man who set those slaves free but at the same time believed the best solution to what would become known as the "race problem" was for African Americans to return to Africa.

But what resonates even more is that the Lincoln Memorial provided the backdrop for Dr. Martin Luther King, jr.'s dream. In outlining that dream King did not even dare imagine that as he looked down the Reflecting Pool he would be looking at a place where a black man would stand to deliver an Inaugural Address.

Finally there is Arlington, a cemetery created to hold the dead from the nation's Civil War, a spot purposely chosen because it was the grounds of the mansion of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee, whose residence now lies surrounded by tombstones and looks towards the eternal flame of John F. Kennedy.

It is said that great leaders make the impossible seem inevitable. Perhaps nothing about this singular moment is more remarkable than what now appears as its inevitability. A year ago the people of Iowa and New Hampshire had just made their Presidential choices and the idea of an African American President seemed anything but inevitable. As the issue of race surfaced again and again in both subtle and not-so-subtle contexts it seemed to grow larger, not smaller, as the nomination of Barack Obama became more inevitable. Even on election night the network talking heads spoke of a Bradley Effect even as the map behind them continued to turn blue.

Today, as millions of Americans sit glued to their television sets, it is to those graves in Arlington that my thoughts drift. To anyone who has walked that hill and looked out over Washington, the experience cannot help but grab you by the throat, especially as you watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which takes place in an eerie silence punctuated only by the measured steps of the Marines as they execute their carefully choreographed walk.

Those dead in Arlington fought to free African Americans from the bonds of slavery. Later when African Americans fought for their own freedom, they were segregated in death as they had been in life until Harry Truman issued his order for "equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed service" in 1948. Cemetery historian Tom Sherlock comments on the special significance Arlington holds or people of color.
These soldiers knew what it was like to fight for their freedom perhaps more than any U.S. soldier before or since they were literally fighting for their existence.

The Speech

It must be strange to know what someone is going to say before they make a great speech, as so many in the press do because they have advance copies. It takes all the spontaneity, all the emotion from the moment. They even know what they are going to write.

My eyes stayed dry only until Aretha Franklin began to sing and then I lost it. She turned "My Country Tis of Thee" into a gospel song whose roots lay back in the church of her father, the Reverend C.L. Franklin and the churches before his and those whose rhythms and harmonies lay behind what she sang. If you have ever heard Aretha's gospel album or one of C.L.'s recorded sermons, you know what I mean. This was truly America transformed scarcely half a century after they would not let Marian Anderson sing on the Mall and Eleanor Roosevelt resigned form the Daughters of the American Revolution because of it.

Itzhak Perlman then follows Biden's oath of office with the old Shaker hymn "A Gift to be Simple," whose best-known incarnation is in Aaron Copeland's "Appalachian Spring." The Shakers received their name from their vigorous dancing which is described in the words to the song:
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Till by turning, turning we come round right.

That the Chief Justice cannot get the words to the Oath of Office right somehow seems both symbolic and has a certain element of premonition in it, for this President will undoubtedly tangle with Roberts and the Gang of Four. The outcome of that struggle will determine much about the next four years. He also seemed to unnecessarily draw out Obama's middle name, the way right wingers did on the Internet.

That the Chief Justice should stumble over the word "faithfully" seems significant, for this is a Court whose defintion of faithfully has been the source of great consternation.

An analysis of Obama's words will have to wait until they all sink in, but their tone still rings. There was something almost clarion-like in Obama's voice today that I have never heard in previous speeches. His voice seemed to ring out with a sense of history and clarity that this nation has not heard for many a year. The word I would use for it is conviction. There was steel in the sound of that voice that perhaps only those lying in Arlington could understand.

The substance of that steel lay in values forged by history. Perhaps no President since John F. Kennedy has done such a skillful job of evoking American history and placing it in the context of the present. As with Kennedy that evocation of the past lent a strength and confidence to his words.

Random Observations


On CNN they kept showing the face of John Lewis. As Obama walked out Lewis whispered something to him. We may never know what Lewis said, but we can imagine that the old lion must have commented on a moment for which he had laid his life on the line. In whatever words Lewis spoke lay that moment when he lay bleeding near a bridge in Selma.

There could not have been a more appropriate person to deliver the final prayer than Joseph Lowery, who cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. King. His poetry surpassed that of the designated poet, but it was his ending that said it all. Lowery said "Amen," and paused. Then he said "Amen" again and paused. At this point you thought he was probably finished because he paused even longer. Then with a tone that was both triumphant and defiant he said one final "Amen."

Much is already being made of Obama's walking the Bush's to the Presidential helicopter. Throughout the ceremony Bush did not evidence the grumpiness of Herbert Hoover, but rather a smiling relief in being rid of burdens he proved unable to handle. Nothing more need be said about Dick Cheney leaving the Capitol in a wheel chair.

The sea of faces on the Mall may have been the most inspirational sight of the day so far. When the cameras closed in on their faces, some in tears, you had to believe these people were here not merely because the moment was historic but because they believed in the promise of Barack Obama.

Labels: , , , ,

 
Permalink | 4 comments
Where Has America Been?
by Ralph Brauer | 1/19/2009 06:13:00 PM



There may be no more perplexing nation than our own, but then maybe everyone thinks that about their home country. America can inspire and infuriate. It can move you to tears and fits of anger and then, when you least expect it, it can produce a moment that makes shivers run up and down your spine.



Even the sight of our flag can induce contrary emotions. Some people have wanted to burn it or fly it upside down. Others have turned it into a tacky trinket, a public relations figleaf or an advertising gimmick whose disrespect may be as despicable as spitting on the flag. Perhaps it is fitting our national anthem should be about the flag and that that very flag should be enshrined in a special case at the Museum of American History as if it were the holiest of icons.

Perhaps nothing inspires these contradictory emotions more than American history itself. As schoolchildren we are taught about our past as if it were a long march of names and dates always moving forward with a Biblical sense of purpose. But even before we graduate from high school we know there is more to it than that causing some of us to react like that storied kid who asked of a worshiped athlete who suddenly became enveloped in scandal, "Say it ain't so, Joe."

In recent years we cannot even agree on what should be in those history schoolbooks so a somewhat dutiful formula has set in that dictates various groups each receive their allotted pages. The formula is under constant readjustment as events cause yet another calibration which brings a formerly forgotten figure back from obscurity to be placed on the pedestal from which it fell. Sometimes the pieces are too shattered, too scattered for even horses and men to put them together again.

In yet another American irony many of those shattered pieces involve people who never even made it on to the pedestal. We will never really know even a tiny fragment about slavery from the perspective of the enslaved. Literally millions of stolen sacred Native American objects lie in obscure museum drawers severed from their context and traditions, treated by their keepers as curiosities or artifacts while those for whom they have the most meaning regard them as living not corpses to be dissected. For yet others who may have carefully written their inner thoughts during moments stolen from oppressive drudgery that weighed them down like the uncomfortable garments they were forced to wear, their past was often discarded as if it were little more than another piece of garbage which had the potential to make people feel uncomfortable.

To be a first generation American in such a nation only heightens all the contradictions precisely because your family came not because this country represented a city on a hill, but both more and less than that. My grandparents didn't even stay and my father always retained an accent my friends could detect but I could not.

To be the child of an immigrant--especially a political one--is to find yourself personally subjected to the best and worst of this country in ways only others in your position can truly understand. Your past is neither here nor there, but converges like two torrents into rapids that threaten to upset your equilibrium. But those torrents also pulse with creative energy that you find difficult to hold back even when you wish it would go away. In that creative energy is also a unique perspective for we know we would not be alive today were it not for America.

That is why for several decades now I have experienced considerable frustration at people, some of them friends, who have allowed their frustrations to occasionally slide into cynicism that becomes expressed as contempt for the American people. Yet to lose faith in the American people is to lose faith in our nation, for at the heart of this singular democratic experiment lies an extraordinary gamble where even all the machinations of the nation's founders could not cut the odds.

They feared what James Madison in one of the most extraordinary political documents ever written--Federalist #10--called the issue of faction. Yet in the end despite all the safeguards they put in place, safeguards any fifth-grader can recite, it is the people on which they wagered their lives, fortunes and sacred honor.

Perhaps that is why America senses how important tomorrow has become. First of all, it is testimony to the talents of one man, Barack Obama, who made that bet, but did so in a truly singular fashion against some pretty long odds. When I think of Obama and the moment he will place his hand on the Bible to become our first African American President, I can't help but think of buses.

It was a woman on a bus who symbolized the beginning of the path that pointed to this moment. She precipitated a bus boycott that brought forth a man whose holiday we celebrate today to the greatness that lay within him waiting to be awakened. It was buses that carried a delegation of Mississippi Freedom Democrats to Atlantic City in 1964 to remind America of what it stood for even as some sitting uncomfortably in their seats were not sure they would make it home alive.

It was from a bus that one of them, Fannie Lou Hamer, was pulled, placed in jail and beaten to near death. It was buses that carried the idealists of Freedom Summer and those participants of the march that ended in Lincoln's granite shadow where the man whose crusade had started with that bus boycott inspired this nation to its very soul.

Now again people are taking to the buses, only this time not in anger or protest but in celebration. I saw a picture of a woman climbing the steps to one of those buses and in her face was written the larger script of someone who had climbed on to one of those buses almost four score and seven years ago.

Buses are converging on Washington in a way they never have in America before for such an event. This is different than Coxey's Army or the Bonus March or any of dozens of other marches, for it is an expression of faith and hope. America has again confounded us. People like that woman perhaps understand perhaps best of all. The look on her face said that this is a moment to be there, to bear witness, to for once just be.

When those buses pull away from Washington in a few days carrying their loads of sated travelers they will again be enveloped in the fog that is America. No one can say where the visions they bear with them will travel, but all of us in America who are not on those buses should this time pledge to make sure they reach their destinations safely.

Labels: , , ,

 
Permalink | 4 comments
La Commune: The Bloody Week
by midtowng | 1/19/2009 12:01:00 PM
"Workers, do not be deceived: this is the final struggle, that of parasitism against labour, exploitation against production. If you are fed up of vegetating in ignorance and of wallowing in misery; if you want your children to be men getting the profit of their own labour, and not a sort of animal trained for the workshop of the battlefield, sweating themselves to make the fortunes of an exploiter or spilling their blood for a despot; if you no longer want your daughters, whom you cannot bring up and look after as you would like, to become objects of pleasure for the arms of that aristocrat, money; if you want an end to poverty forcing men to join the police and women the ranks of prostitution; finally workers, if you want the reign of justice, be intelligent and arise!"
- Paris Commune bulletin, April 5, 1871





This is the sixth and final part of the series. You can find part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5 at the links.

Hostages

The Commune responded that if the "bandits of Versailles" continued "to butcher or shoot our prisoners" that they would reply by shooting triple that number of hostages. But it was mostly an empty threat. Unlike Versailles, they simply didn't have that ruthless element in them.

The Jacobin members of the Commune revived the Law of Suspects from the 1792 Revolution, and a small number of hostages were rounded up. Leading this effort was Rigault, a disciple of Hebert with a hatred of the clergy.
When one of the arrested Jesuits answered Rigault's formal question as to the profession with the reply, "Servant of God," Rigault continued by asking him, "Where does your master live?" "Everywhere," was the Jesuit's answer. Rigault then dictated to his secretary: "Write down, X, calling himself the servant of one called God, a vagrant."

Rigault also happened to have saved the young life of painter Auguste Renoir. The still unknown Renoir was arrested as a suspected Versailles spy and was being marched to prison when he was spotted by Rigault.
Several years earlier Rigault was on the run from the government and just happened to have met Renoir painting in the forest at Fontainbleau. Renoir hid him from the authorities for several weeks. Now Rigault had the opportunity to return the favor. He gave Renoir a safe conduct pass and helped him leave Paris.

Rigault would be killed at the barricades during the final week. His body was left in the gutter for two days.



The Commune had already been attempting to use hostages to achieve an end. Louis Auguste Blanqui had been elected President of the Commune almost immediately upon its creation. However, Blanqui had been arrested by the Versailles government on March 17 - the day before the worker's uprising in Paris.
The Commune first offered Georges Darboy, the archbishop of Paris, in exchange for Blanqui. Then they offered every single hostage they had for Blanqui. Thiers turned them down flat. Attempts by the Commune to find out where Blanqui was being kept took too long.

In the end the Commune took a total of 74 hostages, most of them clergy. Only six of them were ordered to be shot, all during the final Bloody Week.

Vive Socialism

Where the Paris Commune set itself apart was its progressive legislation. Examples included:

* the right of women to vote

* the right of workers to take over and run a factory or store as a worker's co-operative if deserted by the owner (this was not nationalization). The owner would receive compensation

* the right to a secular education

* the separation of church and state

* granting pensions to the unmarried companions and children of National Guardsmen killed in battle

* abolition of some night work

* abolition of fines at work

* a 10-hour workday

* reforming the system of food distribution to the poor


Much of this legislation was far ahead of its time, although only part of it could be implemented in the short time the Commune existed.



One thing that should be stressed is that the Commune was not communism. One of the Commune members, Francois Jourde, referred to its policies as "practical socialism". He should have known - he was the Finance Delegate.

"I was poor when I entered the Ministry and so was I when I left."
- Francoise Jourde, at his trial

One good example of this was the Commune's policy towards the Central Bank of France. The Commune's hostages in no way influenced Theirs' attitude. But if the Commune had seized the over 1 Billion francs worth of bullion and securities in its vaults the story of the Commune would have ended much differently. Yet the idea of seizing such a valuable stash never seemed to have entered the minds of the Commune leaders.
The Commune was moral to a fault.

Much talk and effort was put into creating a secular public school system. The leaders of the Commune were very aware that a republic could only exist with educated citizens. In 1870 about a third of the children in Paris received no education at all, and another third received little. The creation of a system of free compulsory public education was well under way when the Commune was crushed.
It should be no surprise that this system of secular public education was one of the first things the aristocrats dismantled after defeating the Commune.

Outside of Paris the official propaganda was that the city had been taken over by crazed, bloodthirsty radicals. Because Versailles had established a siege of Paris (with Prussia's help), the Commune was unable to defend itself from the charges against it. Here's an example of how the Commune was portrayed.



In reality, life in Paris during the Commune was somewhat safer than before the war, despite the lack of a government police force on the streets.
While there was much talk about the "heroes of '93", there was no effort to bring back "the Terror". In fact, one of the most notable public events during the Commune was the public burning of a guillotine taken from a local prison.
The other public event that was probably the most remembered was the destruction of the Vendome column. The Vendome column was created by Napoleon I after his victory at Austerlitz, and made from the hundreds of brass cannons captured there. The Commune objected to very things it represented - militarism and imperialism.



This picture was later used by Versailles to identify Communards for execution.

The Second Siege



Ever since the defeat of the Grande Sortie on April 4, the Commune had hid behind the forts and walls of Paris. The most important fort of all was Fort Issy.
From Fort Issy the Commune dominated all the best approaches to Paris, and so for a full month the forces of Versailles bombarded the fort, while the cannons of Fort Issy, commanded by Louis Rossel, the Minister of War, kept them off of Paris.


Louis Rossel

Rossel was one of only two competent and experienced military officers, but he was handicapped by the lack of clear leadership and military structure in the Commune. The National Guard was controlled at a local level only, so it was never clear how many men would turn out and obey an order. Rossel was also in constant conflict with his mortal enemy, Felix Pyat, called "the evil genius of the Commune" by fellow Commune member Benoit Malon.
Pyat would escape Paris.


Felix Pyat

The only other notable military commander was Jaroslav Dombrowski, who for nearly two weeks fought the forces of Versailles to a standstill in the wealthy suburb of Neuilly.

By the first week of May the Commune had to abandon the nearly destroyed Neuilly neighborhood. On May 4 the redoubt at Moulin-Saquet fell to Versailles.
On May 9 Fort Issy, which had been almost completely leveled in the unrelenting bombardment, was finally abandoned to Versailles. There were now few Commune forces outside of the wall of Paris. Rossel resigned as Minister the same day. Dombrowski would be killed in the Bloody Week. Rossel would escape but be captured and executed.
Charles Delescluze was appointed the Minister of War the following day.


Louis Charles Delescluze

This meant that Versailles was free to bombard Paris at will, which it did. One of the ironies of the Second Siege was how the Versailles politicians who so enthusiastically bombarded the civilian neighborhoods of Paris were outraged when the Prussians did the same thing just a few months earlier during the First Siege.

La Semaine Sanglante

On Sunday, May 21, around 2 p.m., a Versailles officer saw a white handkerchief being waved on the wall near the Point-du-Jour gate. One M. Ducatel, a civil servant, who was later richly rewarded by Versailles for betraying the Commune, noticed that there were no National Guard troops in the area.
Ever since Fort Issy was abandoned the morale of the disorganized National Guard was dropping to the point of fatalism. The Guardsmen were returning to their neighborhoods of the popular sectors to prepare for their last stands at the barricades. Point-du-Jour was in a bourgeois sector and thus had few troops loyal to the Commune.
Before the night was over 60,000 Versailles troops had entered Paris. The final days of the Paris Commune were here.



Despite the inevitability of Versailles entering Paris, surprisingly few preparations had been made. By Monday morning the entire western third of Paris had been occupied by Versailles with almost no fighting. 1,500 National Guard had surrendered and multiple cannon batteries had been taken.
Then resistance stiffened. Around 600 barricades were erected in all. Most were just 5 feet high or so, and made out of cobblestones, metal grills, trees, and equipped with a cannon and a red flag. But some were enormous obstacles, 18 feet high, packed with earth, and layered. Women, children, and the elderly all helped in the defenses.

Like the June Days Revolt, coordination by the defenders was spotty at best. Most of the National Guard wanted to die defending their own homes. The only exception was in the areas around the Hotel de Ville and the Tuileries.
In Montmarte, 85 cannons and 20 machine-guns lay scattered around and dirty from where they were left after the March 18 revolt that started the events. The heights were practically abandoned, and thus were taken by Versailles with only a modest fight.
Prussian forces opened up their lines to Versailles troops so that they could enter Paris via Porte Saint-Ouen. The Prussian troops closed their lines afterward based on an agreement with Thiers not to let any communards escape.



As the Versailles advance ground to a bloody slog, so the atrocities escalated. 18 communards captured in the rue de Bac were executed at their barricades. 42 men, three women, and four children was shot in front of the wall where Lecomte and Clement had been killed two months earlier.
But this was just the start of Versailles' bloodlust. For the rest of the week batches of communard prisoners were brought there for a quick court martial, and an equally quick execution. Bareheaded, they were made to kneel down before the wall until their turn came.

It was around this time that some buildings were set on fire by Versailles incendiary shells. The communards responded by burning buildings threatening barricades by sheltering snipers.
By the time the barricades at the Place de la Concorde had been taken on the 24th, the entire rue de Rivoli was a sheet of flames. The Hotel de Ville fire was so strong that it couldn't be put out. the final 30 defenders were taken prisoner and shot. One old woman put her fingers to her nose as the firing squad leveled their rifles and worked them 'after the manner of the defiant of all ages.'

"This people, heroes in the face of the foreigner, must therefore by called assassins, criminals, wretches, because they died for the Universal Republic, because in defense of their beliefs, their concience, their idea, they preferred, in their fierce enthusiasm, to bury themselves in the ruins of Paris rather than abandon it to the coalition of despots a thousand times more cruel and more lasting than any foreigner."
- Lissagaray



The Ministry of Finance, the Tuileries, and Louvre Library, the Hotel de Ville, the Legion of Honor, the Prefecture of Police, the Gobelins gallery, the La Villette docks, and many, many more buildings were gutted. Whole blocks were destroyed in the Bastille area.
Some of the fires were started by Versailles cannons. Most were started by communards simply as a means of defense.



A pattern had emerged. Each time a barricade fell the defenders were put up against a wall and shot. 30 communards were thrown into a ditch before the Saint-Florentin barricade. 300 were shot after defenders fled into the Madeleine church. When the Versailles troops captured the seminary at Saint-Sulpice, which had been turned into a hospital by the Commune, they proceeded to execute all the medical staff and patients, leaving behind 80 corpses.
Piles of corpses were left everywhere by the Versailles troops - in the fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens, in the Cluny Theatre, in the rue de la Huchette, on a cart in the rue des Ecoles.
Delescluze, 62 years old and his health broken by long stints in prison, calmly walked out to the barricade at the Place du Chateau dEau, using his cane to do so. His climbed to the top of the barricade and was promptly killed by three bullets. Three people were killed while trying to reclaim his body.

"May God punish me for not having killed more [Versailles troops]. I had two sons at Issy; they were both killed. And two at Neuilly. My husband died at this barricade - and now do what you want with me."
- Female communard shortly before being executed

The crowds of Paris were driven insane by these massacres, and so looked for revenge. Their only available targets were the hostages. Without orders these mobs descended on the defenseless prisoners and slaughtered 70 of them.

The fighting now was confined to Belleville. Ideas were floated for the Commune to surrender in order to stop the bloodshed, but were dismissed. The reputation of the Commune would be that it went down fighting.
One of the last battlegrounds was at the Pere-Lachaise cemetery. 200 National Guard fought to the death in the graveyard. Those not killed outright were lined up and executed. The executions continued here for several days afterward.
Around noon the following day the last cannon was shot and the last barricade was taken.



The Commune was no more.

Repression

The battle may have been over, but the killing wasn't. Thiers may have given strict orders to the troops to obey the rules of war, but he never lifted a finger to enforce those orders.

"Today, clemency equals lunacy. What is a republican? A savage beast. We must track down those who are hiding, like wild animals. Without pity, without anger, simply with steadfastness of an honest man doing his duty."
- the Figaro, May 1871

To put it simply, Paris was sacked by the French army. Special martial courts were set up and the prisoners were divided into two group - one group to be shot, the other group to be sent to a Versailles prison. No one was set free.
Anyone who was in Paris was suspect. Anyone denounced was likely to be arrested and shot. Wearing a pair of army boots, having a watch, or simply having blackened hands was reason enough to be executed. One chimney sweeper was shot for having dirty hands.



Marquis de Gallifet, a Versailles officer was in charge of conducting the prisoners to Versailles. He was known for having prisoners shot for being wounded, being old, or being ugly. One time he had 111 prisoners executed for having white hair.


"I am Gallifet. You may think me cruel, but I am far more cruel than you think."

Gallifet's war crimes didn't stop his political career. He became Minister of War in 1899.

Prisoners were killed because they were too exhausted to walk any further. Sometimes they were killed by being dragged behind the cavalry horses. Once reaching Versailles they were pelted with mud and stones thrown at them from the bourgeois crowds, hitting them with canes and parasols.

Around this time stories began being told of arms sticking out of the ground from the shallow graves, indicating that some were buried alive. The swarming of flies made the city appear to have been struck by the plague.
The crematoria couldn't keep up with the supply of bodies and corpses began to burnt in open air pits.



There are no exact number of deaths. The number of Parisians killed were somewhere around 25,000, compared to 877 Versailles battle deaths and 6,454 wounded.
This was far more than were killed during The Terror of 1793-94, or the White Terror that followed, or even more than died in any one battle during the Franco-Prussian war.

Somewhere between 39,000 and 50,000 had been arrested and were imprisoned in the most appalling conditions. Elegant crowds would come and inspect them while they grovelled for biscuits thrown at them.
26 court martials were set up. Most of the prisoners had no lawyers to defend them. Only 23 were actually executed by the court martials.
20,000 were released after months in prison without ever being accused of a crime. 10,000 were condemned. 1,169 were sent to a fortified prison. 3,417 were deported, mostly to New Caledonia.
3,300 escaped and lived in exile, condemned to death if they ever returned to France.

In the July 1871 election, there were 40,000 fewer voters. An acute labor shortage hit Paris, especially in manual labor, because so many workers had been either killed or imprisoned.
In 1872 new laws were passed to outlaw all organizing by leftist parties, including labor unions. The International was outlawed and representatives were rounded up.
Paris remained under martial law until 1876. In 1880 a general amnesty was passed for any communards still alive.

Epilogue

Vladimir Lenin was a scholar of the Paris Commune. At his funeral, his body was wrapped in the remains of a red and white flag preserved from the Commune.
More importantly, Lenin learned the lesson from the event that a worker's uprising must be quick and ruthless. The ruling class would show no mercy if it was to regain control.

In August 1878, while New Caledonia was still full of exiled communards, the native Kanak tribe revolted against the ruling French authority. 1,000 natives were killed in the failed revolt.

Labels: ,

 
Permalink | 0 comments