Alex Chilton died of a heart attack today, at a too-young 59 years of age. While it’s sad, it’s not too surprising. I’d already written an obit about him five years ago, when he went missing in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
I still never travel far without a little Big Star.
It turns out maintaining a blog while taking on increasing responsibilities at work and trying to finish my Masters degree and trying to maintain some semblance of a personal life is a bit tricky. Plus, I think Facebook statuses suck up an alarming amount of my wit (or potential wit). But before I throw in the towel and start a Twitter, I’m going to try my hand at one of those lazy Larry King round-ups of commentary, reviews and “observations.” (Actually, I’ve never really seen a full installment of Mr. Suspenders’ program, so I’m really just aping those even lazier parodic send-ups of Larry King.) Either these are placeholders for bigger, better posts or else they are the aborted remains of very promising ideas.
…
There’s a certain poignancy in that moment of steeling oneself at the front door for a charging dog who will never again slam his 90 pound body into your knees. Or how a leash, brush and bowl in a plastic supermarket bag can require the same negotiation as a chest full of heirloom jewels at the reading of a will. And when does dropping little bits of food on the ground cease being nice, and start being rude?
…
Upon third listening, the new Spoon record (a sleeper, like all others before it) sounds like a new, incredible advance. Like many of “Transference’s” reviewers, I’m attracted by the idea of Britt Daniel & Co. fully embracing the bombast that they have spent four successive records stripping to the bone. But the more that the band breaks down their songs to the most spare and elemental, the more I enjoy following them on their journey. I’m ready for their next record, comprising the sounds of Daniels’ pencil scratching paper while Jim Eno tunes his snare.
…
How hard is it to find a good coffee table?! I realize that furniture is particularly subjective to taste (and there are few people more particular than me), but sheesh. If it’s not one thing, it’s the color. Black, for the record, is not tobacco, not coffee and certainly not mahogany. It seems like everything out there alternates between the extremely baroque or the post-post-modern. Gahd forbid you want to protect the wood finish with a little bit of glass. Oh, no. If you want a glass-top coffee table, the glass will be held aloft by skinny angular metal, positive vibes and pixie dust.
…
Having as many obituaries on my site as I do, I’ve grown accustomed to estranged friends of the deceased learning the bad news by stumbling upon my blarg via Gooooooogle searches. It is somewhat dispiriting to see how long it can take before a good college buddy, former comrade or ex-girlfriend decides to investigate a bounced email or missing Christmas card. The responses to one particular comrade’s death (no names, comrades) are notable for their extreme sadness and their extreme tardiness. Did he make deep, profound connections with his friends and then retreat into his own private world? Am I doomed to do the same?
I’m reminded of the outlaw country singer / mystery writer Kinky Friedman, who writes of his shared fear of dying in his apartment and being devoured by his hungry cat before anyone notices. In his novels, Kinky writes of the “M.I.T. System.” The idea is quite simple. “M.I.T.” stands for Man In Trouble, and the point is to establish a reciprocal understanding with a friend that every few days each will call the other and say nothing more than, “M.I.T., M.I.T., M.I.T.” (Because, really, who wants to force small talk every two or three days?) If you don’t receive an “M.I.T.” call from your friend after three days, convince his Super to let you into the apartment to search for his half-eaten corpse and lay some kibble out for the ravenous cat.
I’ve made “M.I.T.” arrangements with a handful of friends over the years and, come to think of it, I have not received a “M.I.T.” call from any of them, nor they from I, in a long while. Better start Goooooogling.
Socialism truly is a dying religion. Tonight, I’m lighting some red candles for some wonderful comrades who have passed on this year. Yesterday, I learned that Ruth Greenberg-Edelstein passed away on November 24th. Ruth was a stalwart of the Socialist Party in upstate New York. On the National Committee, she was an effective advocate for feminist process and gender balance. A retired faculty member at both SUNY and Rutgers, she had, more or less, left active service on the National Committee by the time I got on there – although she had clearly left her stamp. I remember her as a friendly and vivacious backbencher who genuinely enjoyed the company of her comrades – especially the younger ones. Herself, she seemed much younger than she must have actually been, which is why her death comes as such a shock.
Her death follows so closely that of her husband J. David Edelstein, who passed away this July. His death was – forgive me – slightly less of a shock. Retired from Syracuse University for goodness knows how long, he was 90 years old and physically frail. Mentally – and ideologically – he was sharp as ever, and firm and determined in his convictions. Maddeningly so, from my perspective as a teenage socialist. How could such a good Marxist reject our Socialist Party Presidential campaigns in favor of the Greens? In retrospect, I came to see the logic of his argument, but at the time I got hot and bothered in our debates, and out of line, while he remained calm and civil. Fortunately, I was able to apologize while it still mattered. He remained a calm presence and a beacon of sorts. Looking through my inbox, I found a four-year-old email from Dave, gently admonishing me for an irreverent (and highly controversial!) cover from my two-issue stint as editor of “The Socialist” magazine while firmly standing in favor of my continued tenure as editor.
Finally, the most upsetting passing of the year was of Robert W. Tucker. Rob was my favorite old man in the party. A Quaker pacifist and expert on socialized medicine, he had become a lovable curmudgeon by the time I joined the party. For example, Rob had used his (slight) loss in hearing to make a mockery out of Robert’s Rules. I remember a young comrade from Boston rising to make a speech during a convention, and Rob (LOUDLY) whispering to his brother beside him “HE’S THE BEST ONE WE HAVE IN THAT STATE – GOD HELP US!!!” Kinda took the wind out of the sails of the young man’s speech.
In the true spirit of socialism, Rob would share his talent for LOUDLY whispering by acting as an amplifier for your private asides, as when the same young comrade from Boston took a shot at our YPSL National Secretary who was running for Vice Chair of the Party by questioning if the duties of both offices weren’t too overwhelming. “Well, I did them both at the same time,” I whispered to Rob. “YEAH, SHAUN DID THEM BOTH,” Rob shouted to the convention hall. No one ruled him out of order.
It was a bit of a kick in the guts to see see Rob quoted in Maurice Isserman’s biography of Michael Harrington, which I’ve been working my way through since before I learned of Rob’s passing. In it, Rob tells of Harrington’s tendency to date skinny minnie model-types who would sit – wearing their brand new leopard-skin pillbox hats – in the back of whatever hall Mike had dragged them to while he carried on with speeches and parliamentary maneuvers. Isserman does not publish the ribald conclusion of this anecdote that Rob loved to share, which involves (an unofficial) debate about the protein content of semen and Harrington admonishing all participants, “Oh, no, don’t tell her that!”
Nor does Isserman (or anyone as far as I can tell), share accounts of the younger Shachtmanites’ propensity for group-sex at conventions, in which, Rob, as a Quaker, was too prudish to participate but not too prudish to inquire what it was like. “It’s a wonderful feeling of comradeship,” he was told.
Rob was full of stories like these, and I loved hearing them. I don’t think I had seen Rob since the 2005 convention in Newark. By 2007, I had quit the party. Looking through my records, my last contact with Rob was at the time of my resignation from the party’s National Committee to which he responded with a fairly stern disapproval. Four days after I resigned from the party Rob noted his 50th year as a member, asking – a broad list; I was merely the audience – if he would finally be shown the secret handshake.
A few weeks ago, after being assigned to Philadelphia (Rob’s hometown) by my union in August, I wrote to Rob’s AOL email account to see if he was up to meeting for dinner. His wife – well, widow, now – Cornelia wrote back to inform me that Rob passed away in February after a long illness beginning the previous November. I cannot begin to tell you how shitty I feel that it took me so long to learn of Rob’s passing. I’m mad at a lot of people about not being informed at the time of his passing, but none more than myself.
Robert W. Tucker deserves a fuller obituary than this, and hopefully one day I’ll feel up to writing it. But for now, i just feel awful. But grateful to have written this much and to have known him while I could.
It’s been previously noted the unnatural oddness that is leaving behind a virtual representation of oneself on the myface. As this shit gets more mainstream, the awkwardness gets more familiar and yet more surreal. In the Times, Adam Cohen writes of a friend’s Facebook profile becoming a sort of living shrine to a dead-too-soon friend. At least it served that function to those who friended him up while he was still alive, and until his surviving family chooses to pull the plug on the profile. But what of those who die unloved, unmourned, unfriended?
I recently threw in the towel and joined Facebook, the creepy, creepy improvement on Friendster and MySpace. Immediately, the computer intelligence starts recommending friends I should connect with. How does this bloody thing know the names of girls that I went on one or two dates with three or four years ago? And why does this blasted thing want me to be friends with Don Busky? Busky died late last year, and in life we were something closer to enemies than friends.
He was always an odd fellow, more noted for his reclusiveness than his actual politics or personality. As an ambitious young turk, I quickly butted heads with the guy in an attempt to recruit eager new recruits to charter a more active Philadelphia local of the Socialist Party and overthrow an innocent savant who was more interested in publishing silly little zines with a socialist bent. Shortly after I showed up for work in the party’s national office, as a teenage socialist in 1996, my buddy Clement Joseph started cracking jokes about the disembodied brain in a jar that was Donald F. Busky. My only interactions with the comrade were a fairly acrimonious e-mail exchange over his failure to properly represent the party (or, indeed, turn up to a single meeting) in the “Unity 2000″ rally planning. His last message to me (and every party member for whom he could find an email address) was addressed, simply, “Cde. Richman owes some apologies.” I met him a few months later at a YPSL convention near Rittenhouse Square in 2001. We spoke not a word, but it was the first time I had been in his physical presence. The brain in a jar was a large man, shy and soft-spoken. He was a devoted Mac user, a labor buff and adjunct professor. We might have been friends if we hadn’t started as enemies. It was a sad loss, but C’est la vie. I soon left the party, and didn’t hear about Busky again until Gabe Ross passed on the unfortunate news about his death last December.
The next time I saw Cde. Busky’s name was on an open public records access request for the list of adjunct faculty at a community college down in southern New Jersey, where I’m helping the part-timers form a union. Prof. Donald F. Busky gets to be a voter in their union election, except that he couldn’t possibly vote “Union Yes” (as he surely would have) because he is No Longer Employed. Still, it was a kick in the guts to see his name on that OPRA list, just as it is a kick in the guts to see him recommended as a friend on Facebook whenever I log in, and to see his name and home address on a mailing label for a mailing we worked on last Friday for the union campaign.
I don’t think his elderly mother (if she’s still alive), or any other surviving relative knows enough to get Cde. Busky’s Facebook profile retired. Therefore, he will continue to haunt me. Perhaps I’ll learn to be a better comrade to those who have yet to shuffle off this mortal coil.
I learned today from a comrade that Sophie Gerson passed away on March 20, 2006 at the age of 96. Sophie was a lifelong Communist activist whose own work was overshadowed by her husband, Simon W. Gerson, the writer, champion of proportional democracy and shoulda been City Councilman from Brooklyn. At Si’s memorial a year earlier, speaker after speaker (including yours truly) paid tribute to his illustrious career as a public Communist and lightning rod for controversy, but only one (not me, perhaps it was Tim Wheeler) took the opportunity to point out that Sophie was notorious–indeed, framed for murder–before Si’s name was ever known.
In early 1929, 19-year-old Sophie Melvin joined striking National Textile Workers Union members at the Loray Mill in Gastonia, NC. The Gastonia strike, one of NTWU’s smallest at the time, was part of a larger southern organizing campaign initiated by the Communist-led Trade Union Unity League. The T.U.U.L. presaged the C.I.O. movement in the 30′s, training many of activists whose work made that mass upsurge possible. The strike was called in January over some of the lowest-paying, most sped up and stretched out working conditions in the entire south.
Sophie organized a children’s support section in the strikers’ tent city and was present on June 7 when a carload of armed police invaded and declared war on the strikers. In the melee, one union organizer was seriously wounded, three police deputies were slightly wounded and the chief of police, O.F. Aderholt, was killed. Seventy-five strikers were arrested for the murder of the police chief and sixteen were eventually indicted. Among these were three women, Vera Buch, Amy Shechter and Sophie Melvin (this was not, notes Philip Foner in his History of the Labor Movement…, young Sophie’s first arrest connected to her union agitation). The three young women became an immediate cause celibre, their hefty bail raised by Communist charities and national speaking tours serving as strike support fundraisers. Public outcry caused local officials to drop the charges against the three young women, who continued their propaganda work in spite of the losing campaign. By September, strikers were returning to work without a union, although the Loray mill had reduced the work week to 50 hours(!). The real value of the strike was that it laid crucial groundwork for New Deal and C.I.O. organizing that was to shortly follow.
Si Gerson was a cub reporter for the Daily Worker when he was assigned to the Gastonia strike, met and fell in love with Sophie. Of course, they married and were a lovely couple. Sophie continued to be a political activist, in addition to being a mother and grandmother, but Si’s work cast a long shadow. It is a shame that while news of Si’s death reached me by notices from comrades in the Socialist Party, colleagues in the Coalition for Free and Open Elections and general e-mail listserve forwards, I had to learn about Sophie’s passing in passing conversation with a comrade, a year and a half after the fact. Sophie Gerson (nee Melvin) is truly an unsung American hero and deserves more of a monument than this little blog post.
If Gerald Ford was trying to live down his image as a bumbler, he made a curious choice of dying right after Christmas when most of the half-way decent reporters must be on vacation. On a good day, the New York Times annoys the crap out of me, but a couple of doozies slipped in that have really driven me nuts.
In a television column that itself comments on how substitutes are reporting the news of Ford’s death, reporter Alessandra Stanley notes:
On “Today” the NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell mentioned that she last spoke to Mr. Ford in California last February, “when he came over to see me, and we had lunch.” (It is hard to imagine a former president in his 90s going out of his way to meet a television reporter, so it was hard not to suspect that Mr. Ford was going out of his way not to invite Ms. Mitchell over to his house.)
How clever? What a fucking idiot! Either she doesn’t know that Andrea Mitchell is married to the then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, or else she was intentionally obscuring how cozy journalists and official Washington can get. Either way, it’s outrageous.
More outrageous is Sam Roberts’ attempt to exonerate Ford for his role in New York City’s fiscal crisis. Yes, it’s technically true that, just as Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake,” Ford never told New York to “Drop Dead,” but their actions and policies made clear the contempt that was summed up in the better copy that the journalists of their day (far better than this sorry lot) screamed in headlines. His defenders may insist that he “liked New York,” but insisting that the city raise the subway fare (part of the completely separate and solvent MTA budget), raise CUNY tuition, end rent control and hack away at public hospitals, museums and social services showed real – I’ll say it again – contempt for what New York stood for politically and for its heroic effort to be more than a playground for the rich and famous.
Roberts finds a number of people to praise Ford’s neoliberal hatchet job, mostly the politicians who subsequently turned New York into a playground for the rich and famous, but makes no attempt for balance. There is no questioning the wisdom of drastic cuts in public spending, nor the dubious “fact” that the crisis was the product of “inevitable hemorrhaging inflicted by bankrupt liberalism” (rather than a conspiracy of a handful of big banks that encouraged the city’s debt and then without warning demanded their money back).
The only voice of dissent slips in, almost by accident, from 30 years ago in DC37 chief Victor Gotbaum’s witty complaint that the Ford administration aimed to shrink government down to just police and fire protection, “and he’s not sure about fire.”
Frank Zeidler, former Mayor of Milwaukee and Chairman Emeritus of the Socialist Party USA, died last night at the age of 93. Frank occupies a unique place in history as the last bona-fide Socialist mayor of a major American city, serving three terms between 1948 and 1960. To the rest of the country, Milwaukee in the 1950′s seems so bland, so middle-American and middle-class that it was the setting of the tv sitcom “Happy Days.” The most political that “Happy Days” ever got was that Richie Cunningham voted for Adlai Stevenson while his father supported Ike. Meanwhile, their Socialist mayor was holding regular press conferences on the steps of City Hall to denounce the state’ red-baiting Senator, Joseph McCarthy.
The Socialists were a major political party in Milwaukee in the first half of the 20th century, electing numerous state legislators, city council members, a Congressman and two mayors before Frank. The first Mayor, Emil Seidel, served a brief term in 1910 focused on cleaning the city up, closing brothels and gambling parlors, establishing a fire department and improving sanitation and plumbing. The revolutionists of the era, and the “scientific” Marxists of today, scoff at this “sewer socialism,” but it did inspire voter loyalty and keep the party in power.
The Democrats and Republicans teamed up to vote Seidel out of office, but the Socialists returned to office in 1916 with Dan Hoan, who served a staggering 24 years as Mayor. Hoan focused on running an honest government and improving electricity, transportation and sewage. He did succeed in building the first public housing in the country in 1923, but otherwise the more progressive elements of his political agenda were frustrated by a moderate city council until the changed political climate of the 1930′s gave him room to experiment with jobs programs and public ownership.
Hoan was finally defeated for office in 1940 by the Democrat Carl Zeidler, who was Frank’s brother. Carl died “in office” while fighting in the war in Europe. Frank ran to fill out his term and came in fourth in the election.
Frank Zeidler joined the Socialist Party in 1922, when he was 20. Starting in the late 1930′s, he had been running as the party’s candidate for offices as varied as state treasurer, Congress and Governor of Wisconsin – winning a seat on the Milwaukee school board and the position of county surveyor. In 1948, the Socialist Party again asked Frank Zeidler to be its candidate for Mayor. The combination of the Zeidler family name and the Socialists’ still-impressive street organization resulted in Frank’s victory over a field of four candidates, including Dan Hoan who had abandoned the SP for the Democrats.
Zeidler’s administration was challenged to respond to post-war urban development, particularly “white flight” from the city. Zeidler’s masterstroke was the annexation of Milwaukee’s outlying areas, doubling the city’s size and shoring up its tax base to ensure that the city remain solvent and continue to provide services to all its residents. Zeidler was proud of the 3200 units of public housing he built, and the great expansion of the library and parks systems. “The most difficult problem,” Zeidler noted of his administration in a 1997 interview, “was defending the right of individuals of whatever race or ethnic stock to have equal opportunity in this city.” Faced with a reactionary coalition that planned a race-baiting campaign against a fourth Zeidler term, Frank sought to avoid such divisiveness and chose not to run again, citing health reasons.
He actually was in poor health. Frank was always in poor health. He actually dropped out of college because of heart problems. He had a quadruple bypass in 1997 that gave him a new lease on life, but he still maintained a dark, fatalistic humor about his health. If you invited him to any event, he would usually reply that he’d be glad to go if he was still alive.
Frank Zeidler remained a constant presence around Milwaukee, constantly lecturing and attending meetings and always available to the press for a quote. Kinda like Ed Koch, but pleasant. The Socialist Party’s street organization, though a shadow of its former self, remains and that, combined with the legacy of the Zeidler and Hoan administrations, makes the party still a contender in Milwaukee politics as in 2001 when its candidate, Wendell Harris, polled 20%, forcing a run-off. The press treated that election like a fluke that was more a vindication of Frank Zeidler (who remained a party stalwart despite declining fortunes) than of the idea of socialism. So beloved in Milwaukee was Frank that when I was doing publicity for the party’s 100th anniversary conference, a reporter from the Journal-Sentinel asked me what most party members thought of him and I replied that we all think that Frank is a really great man. That somehow was quoted as “the greatest living American,” which flattered and embarrassed Frank.
Frank remained a stalwart of the party. He rallied the party loyalists into a reorganization in 1973 when most of the “scientific” intellectuals marched into the Democratic and Republican parties. He ran for President in 1976 with the mission of saving the party. That campaign recruited the people who would staff the organization for the next three decades. He chaired the party for a number of years before stepping back to the more honorary position of Chairman Emeritus. Ever the Jimmy Higgins, he could often be found sweeping the floors at the party’s office on Old World Third Street.
Frank’s memoir of his years in office, “A Socialist in City Government,” was finally published last year. Bizarrely, the publishers retitled it “A Liberal in City Government,” wagering that readers would find the thought of a liberal in power so unique and fascinating that it would sell more. Go figure.
That book is still sitting on my “to read” pile, under all my school books. Maggie Phair had forwarded it to me a few months ago, during my brief tenure as editor of “Socialist” magazine, suggesting it as good source material for an obituary (which we didn’t think would be so urgently needed). Frank’s epitaph should be his socialist convictions. Speaking on the 100th anniversary of the Wisconsin party, he said, “The basic concept of socialism…still remains and illuminates a dark world. That concept is of a world of commonwealths cooperating with each other for the betterment of all peoples.”
It is a special peculiarity of our time that it is possible write an obituary for a friend that you have never met. I think I first heard about Jim Hurd, the Hoosier Socialist, from Jen Ray bitching about him (Hell, she bitched about everyone, so why not him?) ten years ago. Jim was a gadfly on the Socialists Unmoderated mailing list and a member of the Socialist Party. Jim quit the party over some stupid sectarian pronouncement of our National Committee and joined the CP, and he advanced – along with the internets – from listserves to blogs. He was an occasional commentator on this blarg (his most recent comment a quip in response to my “Being “Wrong” in the Socialist Party” piece that referenced Mark 6:4), and a gadfly blogger in his own right.
It’s a punch in the stomach to read that Jim Hurd died a week and a half ago after a long struggle with depression and alcoholism. With our tiny band of reds spread far and wide, it’s not unusual to meet a comrade through the internets. Eventually, you’ll meet at a conference or a rally. I never met Jim, though, even though he repeatedly reached out to me through e-mail and this website. And for that, I am truly sorry.
There will be a memorial for Jim at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bloomington, IN on Saturday, June 10th.
Hearing of Jane Jacobs’ death, I am reminded that Elana borrowed my copy of “Death and Life of Great American Cities” and never returned it (and people wonder why I’m stingy about lending out books and CDs). She does work in policy, and I’m just a union organizer. I would like to read it again, though.
When I was in my final semester at Queens College, I was able to indulge a budding interest in urban planning with a few courses on the subject. Within that stale air of academic urban planning – with baroque architecture, the White City of the Chicago World’s Fair, garden cities and Le Corbusier – Jacobs’ writing still is a breath of fresh air. Her simple theses about the “eyes on the street,” diversity of use and how success can drive out success remain such a useful way for viewing street life. I still think about these ideas when driving around on lawnguyland, with its lifeless cul de sacs, sterile office parks, smoggy highways and antiseptic shopping malls.
But I’m also sympathetic to Le Corbusier and the idea of high rises and green space. It’s socialist, albeit the variety of socialism puts academic planning ahead of how people actually live their lives. And Jane Jacobs is so anti-socialist, particularly the convoluted plan for corporate welfare that she proffered as an alternative to simple, public housing (form does not follow function; publicly-owned housing doesn’t have to be cheap, drab and ghettoized – that’s just what capitalist politicians did to it).
Moreover, Jacobs’ simple observations missed the obvious points that not every street can be Christopher Street, and that no one wants to live in the tenement apartment building next door to the hog fat rendering plant. Some planning is required.
Paul Avrich died last week, aged 74. He was a respected anarchist, and a historian of anarchism (particularly Haymarket and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial) and the Russian Revolution. He was a Professor Emeritus at Queens College. I was fortunate enough to have been a student in the last regular undergraduate course that Dr. Avrich taught at Queens College. It was an invaluable experience to learn about the Russian Revolution from a talented and diligent scholar, who was sympathetic to the utopian goals of the revolution, while critical of the undemocratic nature of the Bolsheviks.
There will be a service tomorrow at 12:45 pm at the Riverside Chapel (Amsterdam and 78th).
Yesterday was Si Gerson’s memorial at the Tamiment Institute. There were many wonderful stories, memories and tributes from friends, family and comrades. It was good to meet Si’s daughter, Deborah, who invited me to speak, and his two grand-daughters, Timi and Frieda.
I was asked if I would post my comments on this website, which I shall in order to correct a few factual errors in my earlier post (which was written from memory, and didn’t benefit from the research I did last week at Tamiment) and to post a few scans I gleaned from Si’s archives.
Thank you. I worked with Si in the Coalition for Free and Open Elections, which Si played a vary large role in, serving as the organization’s secretary for many years, until I took over from him. CoFOE is a coalition of third parties and other pro-democracy groups that Si helped form, along with some of my comrades in the Socialist Party, and colleagues in the Libertarian party, the Prohibition party and other third parties – aimed at greater access to the ballot for third parties. I remember Si as a very good comrade, warm and friendly, a great source of information and enormously encouraging to younger activists.
When I met him, he asked me about my work, and I told him about stuff I was doing in the Young People’s Socialist League, and he perked up and told me what he had done in the Young Communist League, which included not only that excellent work in ending compulsory ROTC at City College, but protesting race discrimination in baseball. This story is largely forgotten in the whitewash of Branch Rickey magnanimously integrating the league. The fact is that race discrimination in hiring was illegal under New York State law, and the Young Communist League, and the Young People’s Socialist League and others, would hold demonstrations in the bleachers of Ebbets Field, demanding “Integration now!” It became a PR nightmare for Rickey, who decided to improve his image – and snatch up the best player in the Negro Leagues – before demonstrations and court orders forced him to integrate.
I tell my peers about Si’s life and achievements to underscore the point that socialists don’t have to be marginalized, that we can play an active role in civic life. We just have to be prepared to fight.
As I’m sure many of you know, Si Gerson was the focus of two huge controversies during the Popular Front era in New York. The Communist party, like many leftist organizations, was a part of the fabric of New York’s culture and street life, but not the government. Not until corruption investigations in the early 1930′s sent Mayor Jimmy Walker fleeing to Europe to avoid prosecution and temporarily wrested city hall from the grip of Tammany Hall – providing the first real opening for the left during this era.
The old Board of Alderman was replaced by a more representative City Council that would be elected by proportional representation. The Council elections were actually held on a borough-wide basis, with the number of seats apportioned to the boroughs based on population (say, 12 seats for Manhattan, 9 for Brooklyn, 7 for Queens and so on). So, in Brooklyn, for example, over 150 candidates would be on the same ballot for those nine city council seats, and the voter would rank as many of the candidates as he wished in the order in which he preferred them. So you could vote for a Communist as your first choice, an American Labor party representative as your second, a black Democrat as your third, a liberal Republican as your fourth, and on down the line until you couldn’t really stand the candidates that remained. Candidates had to receive proportional support in order to represent one-ninth of the borough.
If no candidate reached the magic number (the magic number was typically 75,000 in Brooklyn) on the first ballot, then counters would start at the bottom and redistribute the lowest vote-getter’s ballots (the guy who got two write-in votes) to their second choice candidates. As a candidate reached the magic number, his ballots would be taken off the table, and any new votes that were redistributed his way would instead go to the next candidate ranked on the ballot. And so it would go, with ballots being redistributed from the top – from candidates who had already reached the threshold and were awarded a council seat – or from the bottom, from candidates who had the least support until all the seats were filled.
This was New York City’s system for electing its City Council from 1937 until 1947. I hope this explanation isn’t too dry or unwelcome. I think it’s important that we advocates of representative democracy be able to describe this system of proportional representation that worked. I strongly recommend Si’s book, “Pete,” to scholars of NYC and leftist history for Si’s evocative day-to-day detailing of the campaigns and strategies, the vote counts and the convoluted workings of borough-based single transferrable voting – not mention fun memories of those Ebbets Field demonstrations. Hopefully we can look forward to a new edition of the book being published.
Young Si Gerson demonstrated a knack for campaign strategy and legalities, and managed the repeated campaigns of Peter V. Cacchione, a popular community activist and unemployment organizer in Brooklyn. In his first campaign, Pete Cacchione missed being elected to the city council by just 250 votes. But Si’s talent and hard work and the CP’s Popular Front alliances brought Si to the attention of Manhattan’s reforming Borough President, Stanley Isaacs, who hired him to be his Executive Assistant on January 1, 1938.
This was the first big “Gerson Controversy.” The city’s papers howled in protest. A Communist in government!? The New York World-Telegram was particularly nasty. One political cartoon portrayed Isaacs handing Si his appointment in front of a mass of forlorn-looking unemployed men. The cartoon Si, naturally, is waving a red flag that reads “Hurray for Stalin.”
Isaacs, for his part, shrugged off the controversy. In a typical letter to the World-Telegram, Isaacs objected to the paper’s editorial focus and defended his young assistant, saying:
“Anyone studying the rise of Fascism in Europe must have recognized the tactics employed. The very first effort was made to divide those who had faith in democracy into factions to destroy their unity…So far as I am concerned, whether I agree or disagree with the economic and social views of those who belong to the extreme left or the extreme right, will make no difference in my willingness to recognize their right, as citizens, and I shall continue to fill such posts as come within my jurisdiction where I may exercise the power of appointments with men best fitted for the job, without any discrimination because of race, creed, color or political affiliation.”
The controversy did not let up, however. Catholic organizations, in particular, targeted Stanley Isaacs’s “parlor Communist.” The Holy Name Society filed suit against the City, claiming that Si was ineligible for civil service because, as a member of the international Communist conspiracy, he could not honestly swear to uphold the constitution of the United States.
Si served in Isaacs’ office for three years, but eventually resigned because of the looming lawsuit and the city’s corporation counsel’s refusal to defend Si on the grounds that the Communist Party was not a subversive organization dedicated to the violent overthrow of the United States.
This allowed Si to focus back on Pete Cacchione’s campaigns. His rerun in 1939 (when Si was still embroiled in controversy on Isaacs’ staff) was derailed when his petitions were invalidated by machine hacks and his name was not allowed to appear on the ballot. Pete still received 24,000 write-in votes, but that was not enough.
Pete and Si knew that 1941 would be their year and focused on getting more than three times the amount of petitions needed to secure ballot status. Sure enough, Pete Cacchione secured the ninth and final city council seat in Brooklyn and became the first Communist City Councilman.
Pete was joined two years later by Ben Davis, the leader of the party’s Harlem organization. The early returns for Pete looked good on that 1943 election night – the highest first-vote count of all the candidates – 53,000 – and a shoo-in for re-election, but in Manhattan, there were reports of the votes from entire districts – Communist strongholds and minority districts – going missing. Please suspend your disbelief that not every vote in an election would be counted. Remember, this was a long time ago.
Pete, Si and their entire campaign team rushed to the location of the Manhattan count. Si, described in Davis’ memoirs as “the party’s ablest election worker” demanded that the vote count stop and the missing ballots be found and counted. A thorough search turned up nearly a thousand additional ballots – the margin of difference that sent Ben Davis to City Hall and created a Communist legislative team for the next four years.
In the council, Cacchione and Davis advocated rent control and price controls on bread and milk, ratification of subway fare increases by popular referendum, lowering city council salaries and introduced a host of anti-race discrimination bills. So popular was Cacchione that he won re-election to a four-year term in 1945 with the highest vote count in the borough: 75,000 votes.
When the war ended, Stanley Isaacs’ warning about dividing those who have faith in democracy into factions gained a new immediacy as Truman Doctrine Democrats set their sights on removing these two Communists from office.
They placed a referendum on the ballot to end New York City’s proportional representation. Big money went into the campaign to convince New York’s voters that there can be such a thing as “too much democracy.” Pete Cacchione gave his all in the campaign to defeat the ballot proposal, but he lost. Proportional representation was repealed and Pete’s heart literally gave out. He died in office, with two years remaining in his term.
The Communist Party, nominated Si Gerson to serve the remainder of Peter Cacchione’s term and thus began the other major “Gerson Controversy.” Under the laws at the time, a vacancy in office was to be filled by the City Council with a nominee of the party of the deceased legislator. Pete Cacchione was elected and twice re-elected to the City Council as a Communist – Row H. He, in fact, received more votes than any other candidate in Brooklyn. That same Communist Party nominated Si Gerson to serve the remainder of the term, but now the City Council’s Democratic majority was refusing to seat him because he was…a Communist.
Their paper-thin excuse was that the Communist Party did not have a ballot line in New York State and, therefore, was not a “party” under the law. Never mind the fact that the Communists had to collect about five times as many signatures as any major party candidate to get on the ballot and then received more votes than any of those major parties. The voters’ clear expression of their support for a Communist representative would be thwarted by a loophole.
A Citizen’s Committee to Defend Representative Government was formed to advocate Si Gerson’s placement on the City Council. Among those who signed on to the committee were Ben Davis, Mike Quill, Vito Marcantonio, WEB DuBois, some kid named Howard Zinn, representatives of 19 labor unions, five religious institutions and a number of good government organizations.
The Democrats succeeded in wearing down the clock and left Pete Cacchione’s seat vacant for two years. When Si Gerson ran for the seat in his own right in 1949, he received support from many of those same individuals and collected over 150,000 votes, but, without proportional representation, it was not enough.
Of course, Si had a very long and distinguished career after these early controversies, as an author and journalist and as a campaign manager. Si was an underutilized resource as a campaign advisor, and that’s all of our fault. Not just the Communist party, but to a large degree the Socialist Party, too, and the rest of the left, have largely abandoned independent electoral politics. And now we’ve lost an incredible resource.
I believe we should use this time to rededicate ourselves to some of Si’s biggest issues. Navigating the byzantine election requirements when working on Gus Hall’s presidential campaigns (The Truman Doctrine Democrats assaulted election laws across the country, beginning in 1947 and particularly after the Wallace campaign, ballot access laws became particularly onerous – tens of thousands of signatures with stringent requirements for getting a certain number of signatures in each county) convinced Si that third parties had to unite in order to pry open the political process, and that’s how the Coalition for Free and Open Elections came to be. Si always envisioned CoFOE being broader than just those third parties. David (McReynolds) misremembered the name of this group as the “Coalition for Free and Fair Elections.” That was actually the name taken by a breakaway group, led by the Libertarian and Green parties when they were experiencing real growth and victories in the 1990′s, and wanted to focus narrowly on lowering signature requirements. Si was very adament: free and open elections means not just lower petition requirements, but universal suffrage, campaign finance, proportional representation and a guarantee that all votes be counted. Mainstream politicians didn’t catch up with Si on this issue until we had a presidential election stolen from us.
I’m not sure if it means a local CoFOE or something else, but we should all unite on these issues, particularly proportional representation. We had it here in New York for many years, and it worked well, and now other cities are turning towards PR systems for their elections. We can win this.
I’d like to thank Deborah for inviting me to speak and the Tamiment Institute for hosting this memorial. In preparing for my talk, I actually reviewed Si’s papers, which are now housed but have not yet been catalogued by the library. I was searching for this needle in a haystack, information about Isaacs and Cacchione in 15 boxes of Si’s archives, and I found it right away. Si meticulously kept his papers in order so that they could be of use to future generations, and now that they’re here, I am sure they will be.
Si Gerson, the last vital link to the Communist Party’s glory days in NYC politics in the 1930′s and 40′s, died last December at the age of 95. Si was a valued colleague and comrade, and I miss him. The CP will be hosting a memorial in Si’s honor on June 10th.
Si was a journalist and political activist during the Popular Front era, when the CP enjoyed considerable mainstream clout as a partner in the American Labor Party, a New York coalition party consisting of labor activists, Socialists, Communists reform Democrats and liberal Republicans that effectively took back the city from Tammany Hall for a time.
Bookended by a corruption scandal that forced Mayor Jimmy Walker to flee the city in 1932 and by the start of anti-Communist hysteria in 1947, the era saw New York City freed from the grip of Tammany Hall hacks through political and electoral reform. The ancient Board of Alderman was replaced by a more representative City Council that would be elected by proportional representation (a ranked ballot that allowed the voter to express support for his favored candidates that could be redistributed to less favored candidates until one has won a majority vote). The CP’s Popular Front tactic was to run its candidates in its own name, but to support strong ALP and independent Black candidates where they existed.
Si demonstrated a knack for campaign strategy and legalities, and managed the repeated campaigns of Peter V. Cacchione, a popular community activist in Brooklyn, who, in his second campaign, became New York’s first Communist Councilman. Years later, Si wrote the political biography, “Pete.” The book is a fine legacy, and I strongly recommend it to scholars of NYC and leftist history for Si’s evocative day-to-day detailing of the campaigns and strategies, the vote counts and the convoluted workings of borough-based single transferrable voting – not mention fun memories of Young Communist League and Young People’s Socialist League members holding demonstrations in support of racial integration in the Ebbets Field bleachers, decades before the Dodgers finally hired Jackie Robinson.
Si Gerson was the focus of two major controversies during this period. First, as a cub reporter for the “Daily Worker,” Gerson was hired by Manhattan’s new progressive Borough President to be his executive assistant. The city’s papers (most notably, “The Daily News”) howled, and called on Stanley Isaacs to fire the young Communist. Isaacs brushed aside the criticism by insisting that Gerson was the best man for the job, and the controversy died. Gerson remained in the position for three years.
Gerson fared far worse when controversy reared its ugly head in 1947, as the Communist Party became Public Enemy #1 in the U.S.A. Proportional representation came under attack in New York since it had enabled not just Peter Cacchione but also Ben Davis, Communist from Harlem, to be elected to the City Council. A city charter revision was put on the ballot to revert elections to district-based winner-take-all contests. Cacchione campaigned with all his strength against the measure, but it passed and Pete’s heart literally broke. He died of a heart attack with one year left to his term.
Under the rules at the time, the vacancy on the City Council was to be filled with a member of the same party, nominated by the authorized party committee and ratified by the Council itself. Naturally, the members of the Communist Party selected Cacchione’s trusted partner, Si Gerson, to fill out the remainder of the term. The City Council balked at electing a Communist at a time when membership in the Communist Party was being outlawed. They delayed and allowed Pete’s term to expire.
Si Gerson was later arrested under the Smith Act, although by that time the law had been set aside and he served no prison time (Ben Davis, the Communist Councilman from Harlem, died in prison after his Smith Act conviction).
Si continued to write for the “Daily Worker,” becoming its Executive Editor, as it morphed into the “Daily World,” and, later, the “People’s Weekly World.” When the CP began running presidential tickets again in 1976, Si was the natural choice to serve as campaign manager. He remained the party’s resident election expert, although campaigns became fewer and farther between as the party increasingly supported the Democratic ticket following Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign for President.
Navigating the byzantine election requirements (the laws regulating ballot access across the country became much more draconian during the Red Scare) convinced Si that third parties had to unite in order to pry open the political process. He was a figure in just such a formation, the Coalition for Free and Open Elections, which is where I met and worked with Si, who served as the organization’s secretary until failing health forced him to step back and I succeeded him. In the mid-90′s, younger, successful third parties like the Greens and Libertarians came to dominate CoFOE and pushed for a narrow focus on knocking down signature requirements for ballot access. Si remained steadfast: free and open elections means not just lower petition requirements, but universal suffrage, campaign finance, proportional representation and a guarantee that all votes be counted. He felt vindicated by the recent election board monkey business in Florida, Ohio and elsewhere. Si, and his comrades, had been complaining about the lack of essential fairness in elections for years. Now the country was noticing what Si had been focused on for years.
Si’s Memorial will be from 6:00 pm until 8:00 pm on Friday, June 10 at NYU’s Tamiment Library (70 Washington Square South).
As the round-the-clock Pope Deathwatch coverage on the cable news channels shifted from Friday night to early Saturday morning, and the Pontiff stubbornly lived a little longer, I am a little surprised that CNN didn’t change their news banner from “Pope Nears Death” to “Pope: Not Dead Yet” or “Pope: Any Minute Now.”
However, as soon as he passed on (a day after April Fools, alas), the news channels and websites immediately rolled out their long-in-the-can obituaries, and sidebars on pomp and ceremony and Papal bookmaking.
The best so far?
The London Guardian’s obituary notes that the original author of the obit died long before Karol Wojtyla, in 1994 to be precise.
Fox News inevitably credits John Paul II with bringing down Communism. It’s amazing how many people it took to “single-handedly” defeat the Red Menace. Actually, Lech Walesa only gives him half the credit:
“Fifty percent of the collapse of communism is his doing,” Walesa told The Associated Press on Friday. “More than one year after he [visited Poland], we were able to organize 10 million people for strikes, protests and negotiations. Earlier we tried, I tried, and we couldn’t do it. These are facts. Of course, communism would have fallen, but much later and in a bloody way. He was a gift from the heavens to us.”
The Washington Post, in the most incisive and even handed analysis of the promises, disappointments and contradictions of John Paul’s papacy that I have read so far notes:
But over the years, it became less clear if his popularity translated into moral authority. Communism in Poland was an easy, familiar target and his victory was clean. But later in his pontificate, John Paul began to focus on more difficult targets such as capitalism. And here, the will of the people was not always on his side…Ultimately, he was hard to categorize in the American context. The terms liberal and conservative “just don’t apply to him,” said Mary Anne Glendon, the philosopher. He opposed abortion and the death penalty; he was equally passionate about the role of the male priesthood as he was about workers’ rights. Conservatives accepted his teachings on morality but played down his emphasis on social justice and the limits of the free market. Liberals did the opposite. “But you can’t pick and choose,” Glendon said.
It has been an ignoble death, stretched out over these many months. From the endless teevee news diagrams of his feeding tube to that NY Press cover to all that Pope Watching at the hospital, it has not been a prime example of death with dignity. The Pope still breathes tonight, although he has reportedly received Last Rites.
As the Pope has lost the ability to speak for himself, the spokesmen at the Vatican have offered transparently ridiculous descriptions of a mute, bedridden pontiff directing the affairs of the Church through his Bishops and advisors. The truth is that the Catholic Church doesn’t need the Pope to continue operations. He’s mostly a figurehead. It is my dark belief that the Vatican has kept John Paul II alive only so long that he wouldn’t die on the same day as Terri Schiavo and have to share the covers of all those American tabloids. Instead he gets to die on April Fools Day. Much more appropriate.
As irrelevant as the Holy See is to the daily operations of the Catholic Church, he’s even more so to the beliefs of the vast majority of American Catholics. Don’t get me wrong. Catholics love the Pope. He’s such a cuddly old bigot. But a narrow-minded bigot he is. How many Catholics agree with the Church’s prejudice against gays? How many Catholics use birth control? Who actually listens to the Pope? (Heck, I wish more people would listen to his strong words against capital punishment!)
It reminds me of a funny joke from the BBC comedy, “The Young Ones,” in which two cops are idly discussing their weekend. One of the cops had spent the weekend meeting his girlfriend’s parents. The dinner went well, he reported, until he started criticizing the Pope. “That’s stupid,” his partner retorts, “You know she’s Catholic.” “Yeah,” he says, “but I didn’t know the Pope was.”
The anticipated passing of John Paul II is cause for real concern. Over the course of his two and a half decades in Rome, he has basically appointed all of the Bishops and Cardinals who currently serve the Church and who will choose his successor. Almost to a man, they are reactionary, arch-conservatives. While many of the world’s religions have been busy pursuing a narrowly conservative political agenda, the Catholic Church has mostly abstained from direct politicking. The next Pope might change all that.
I was at a Save the Plaza rally when I heard the grim news that one of my former co-workers, Dan Hennessey, had died on Sunday morning. He was hit by a car near his home in Woodside. Apparently it was all over the news. The Daily News headlined the story, “Queens Grandpa Killed by Driver Fleeing Police.”
The driver was some jerk who was pulled over by a cop for talking on his cellphone while driving his obnoxious sports car. Rather than deal with a ticket, he sped away and killed an innocent old man.
Dan was 76 years old. He wasn’t in the best health, and he had left the job last spring in order to care for his wife, who was also ill. His wife, Margaret, survived him. “He was a good husband,” she said to the News. “He was just ready to enjoy life.”
Dan worked as a banquet bartender at the Palace hotel for many years. He served the union as the Shop Chairman in the hotel, the top shop steward with significant power to negotiate with management. After he retired from the hotel, the union asked him to join the staff in a part-time capacity. He was the “Officer of the Day,” the Business Agent who stayed in the office to deal with members who walked in with grievances and no appointment.
He was a colorful character in the office, well-liked and loud (louder than Alan Amalgamated!). He could be gruff with the members, but it came from working in the industry for so many years and having no tolerance for bullshit. Those of us who were kids hired by the union from outside the rank and file were counseled to take every member’s grievances seriously and to diligently investigate every crazy claim, while Dan could be heard throughout the hallways shouting, “YOU CAN’T DO THAT, MA’AM!” I can picture him right now, yelling that on the phone, his short sleeve shirt exposing his old school anchor tattoo from his days in the Navy. No one who worked with him will ever forget him.
