Dregs

This very long blog entry is a detailed account of a matter that depicts a serious maliase on the left today, not just in Indianapolis, but across the country, and even worldwide--GF


“It’s come to this. It’s come to this. And wasn’t it a long way down?” These words from an old Judy Collins recording stick in my mind as I ruminate over the treachery by “comrades” in the miniscule Indianapolis socialist movement and its aftermath, which has moved me to completely reconsider my relationship to the organized left, even as I still uphold my left values.

Obviously, the place to begin is to recount what happened, and what this treachery consisted of. Put succinctly, I was the victim of a prima facie deliberate set-up at the May 2010 joint meeting of Greater Indianapolis Socialist Party USA (SPUSA), Central Indiana Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, deliberately set up out of personal spite by people I thought I had a positive rapport with and could trust, and because of this supposed trust, could express my thoughts honestly to them. Boy, was I proven wrong! These three treacherous conspirators—Becky the B and Mikey the M of SPUSA, and Marvey the W of DSA—took great personal umbrage at a series of e-mails I had sent to them, and only to them, giving my honest assessments of other comrades in our socialist grouplet, and what I saw as their fatal weaknesses that got in the way of building ourselves more effectively. While in retrospect I can see that the wiser course would’ve been to keep my assessments to myself, that would’ve only compounded the problem I saw—the fundamental inadequacy of the socialist movement in smug, complacent, hidebound Indianapolis, where even those who are “progressives,” supposed rebels against the status quo and critics of capitalism and conservatism, are themselves smug, complacent and hidebound.

“By what authority?” Marvey the W pointedly titled an e-mail to the four of us for writing down my assessment. Well, by the “authority” not only of free speech, but also by the “authority” on trying to move our socialist grouplet from stagnation to efficacy; by the “authority” of knowledge that one can’t construct a magnificent building out of what’s available in a garbage heap; by the “authority” of trying to goad toward effective action. And remember, this assessment of our socialists here was shared only with people I had thought I had rapport, with people I thought I could implicitly trust because of our most positive past relationship. After all, I had been in regular, even intimate, political contact with Becky the B, Mikey the M, and Marvey the W for the past six months. All three of them were the students in the classes I taught on Marxist theory. All three of them had regularly come to my apartment for these classes, all three of them had conversed freely with me over the course of several weeks on a regular basis, all three of them were people I liked and respected as good people because of this, and I thought all three of them also felt likewise about me. After all, these were people with whom I drank beer with and shared potato chips with in an atmosphere of comfort and relaxation. Whenever Marvey the W need a ride, because he didn’t have a car, I had volunteered to provide him transportation. With Becky the B I had been there when she needed someone to talk to, and had actively cajoled and encouraged her when she was down because of her sense of inferiority and ignorance that paralyzed her and made her indecisive. These were people I thought I could trust enough to unburden myself by being frank and direct; frank and direct the way I couldn’t be with others.

Further, I thought that the rapport I felt with them was reciprocated by their feeling of rapport with me. I had made it a point to go to them with my concerns precisely because I felt this rapport; and had assured them many times (or certainly tried to) that they could always come to me likewise. I had answered directly and honestly every one of Marvey the W’s pointed and nasty e-mails, not making excuses, but always trying to convey precisely why I had written the way I had. During the two weeks of Becky the B’s complete lack of communication with me (although a time when she was regularly talking to Marvey the W at length, according to Marvey himself; and assuredly with Mikey the M as well, who was, after all, her husband living with her), I had tried several times through both Marvey and Mikey to reach her and to find out what were her thoughts. (Becky the B was head of the local SPUSA branch, Marvey the W head of the DSA local.) But no avail; nor would Marvey volunteer any info on what he was discussing at length with Becky over several phone conversations, nor did I ask, as I had implicit trust in them and their straightforwardness. Boy, was I wrong! All this time, it seems, they were assiduously plotting against me, working on a way to set me up and humiliate me publicly at the May socialist meeting.

But before I go on to relate what exactly happened at the May meeting, I need to provide a little more background on the Indianapolis-area socialists. First of all, it’s worthy of special note, the socialists here are extremely paltry in numbers: counting me, there had been a total of ten persons, all of whom were male except for Becky, who regularly attended the once-a-month socialist meetings (and who did almost nothing else). I had labeled us the Forlorn Ten, because we never grew beyond that number. At one time we had been the Forlorn Eleven, but the eleventh member had dropped out to form something called the Socialist Central Committee, which was now devoting its energies to attacking the national SPUSA for supposedly selling its influence and support to a motley bunch of “counterculturalists” who bought this influence and support simply by paying annual SPUSA dues; and this nefarious band of “counterculturalists” who were thus undermining “true” socialism was comprised of—feminists, environmentalists, antiwar activists and supposed New Age religious believers who supported the right of everyone to practice or not practice religion as they saw fit! Now, with my being railroaded out, the socialist grouplet is now the Forlorn Nine; and my leaving caused, due to the lore of small numbers, a 10% decline in active (such as it is) socialist membership in Indianapolis and near environs!

At the May meeting, though, only seven of the Forlorn Ten were in attendance. Besides myself, Becky the B, Mikey the M, and Marvey the W, they were: Ron the H, venerable member of the SPUSA who had headed the Indianapolis-area socialists prior to the ascendancy of Becky the B and Marvey the W, and who had done virtually nothing to build a socialist presence in Central Indiana for the past several years he’d been titular head of the Indianapolis-area socialists; and Peter the B and Gilbey the K, both of whom distinguished themselves time and again by saying virtually nothing meeting after meeting. Some more characterization of the Forlorn Ten: only one of them, Ike the W, was under thirty; Ike the W was a rather childish graduate student at a local theological seminary who had set up the websites for the Greater Indianapolis SPUSA and Central Indiana DSA back in mid-March 2010 (three weeks after he’d said he was going to do it) and, although monitor of the websites, hadn’t updated them at all in the subsequent two months, not even to the extent of listing meeting times and locations. But these websites were supposed to be the public face of Greater Indianapolis SPUSA and Central Indiana DSA to the interested public! As for the rest, the next-youngest members of the Forlorn Ten were Becky the B and Mikey the M, in their mid-to-late 50s; then came me, at 63; one or two who, like me, were in their 60s; and three or four (depending on whether one of the sixtysomethings is actually a seventysomething) all in their mid-to-late 70s. In fact, at least two of these are actually closer to 80 than they are to 70. Ike the W worked as a ministerial intern; only Becky, Mikey and I were still of working age. The remainder was all retirees. This leaves out John the S, who rounds out the Forlorn Ten, about whom virtually nothing is known, and who generally contributed only voluble objections to whatever was raised.

Needless to say, the Indianapolis socialists of all the above Forlorns are exclusively white, as are Indianapolis “progressives” generally. (As a whole, they do not like being called “left.”) Very few black or Hispanic activists relate to the “progressives” at all, and the “progressives” themselves are oriented almost exclusively toward the white peace churches such as the Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren, and their religious “mainstream denomination” kindred, as well as toward religious belief itself—secularists, atheists and agnostics who consider themselves progressive, left, or radical are quite unwelcome, especially if they’re open about their unbelief. On a general social and cultural level, Indianapolis is extremely self-segregating racially, not just de facto segregated.

I am far from the only one to become a pariah among Indianapolis “leftists” and “progressives.” During my stint here as an activist, going back over thirty years to late February 1980, and prior to that, a seasoned veteran of the New Left, Trotskyist and antiwar movements since 1965, I can recall four separate occasions where longtime, dedicated activists were driven out in disgust for simply trying to get things done, and who, because of it, were backbitten, hounded, and passively-aggressively undermined and resisted by Indianapolis’s hidebound “progressive” community of overwhelmingly “respectable peace-church churchgoers” and their uncritical “secular” supporters. So resisted until they, despite their dedication, surrendered to the hidebound inertia and simply gave up, often dropping out completely or else leaving town altogether. There was Tim in the 1990s, President of the Indianapolis Peace & Justice Center (IPJC), for years the dominant “progressive” group here, but now in seemingly terminal decline. Although he had had some notable success in building an effective movement against the first Iraq War, his very success undermined his efforts among the “peace church progressives” who thought him too radical; same fate, from the same opposition, that had undermined attempts to galvanize the IPJC in the late 1980s. Then there were the anarchist youth who had formed a left-wing bookstore here in 2001, Solidarity Books, who were hounded out of existence by the passive-aggressive “pacifists” as a dangerous bunch of “violent radicals.” But they were just feisty, and a good bunch of youth to work with, as I found out for myself, one of the few “old-time progressives” to show them any regard. They were finally done in by a specious lawsuit against them by one of the leading “progressives,” and they, too, succumbed in disgust and most of them left town; since this happened, in 2006, there has been no substantive left youth movement here in Indianapolis whatsoever, although there are pockets of radical youth at local universities, which are simply ignored or patronized by their elders. Last, there was the activist who reconstituted DSA here and tried to turn it into a viable socialist organization, in which Marvey, Peter the B and I were involved, but he and I were the only ones who weren’t armchair socialists; and so, our attempts to do something were, once again, met with passive-aggressive resistance, and so this person also succumbed and retreated into a completely private life. But one of the last political things he did do was e-mail me on his discouragement, and characterize the Indianapolis left as “pathetic to inept.” True, indeed. And local “socialists” have frequently been in the vanguard of these efforts to undermine a more active and radical left here.

Little more needs to be said here, except that there have been a plethora of alphabet-soup “progressive” groups here in Indianapolis that never did anything more than hold monthly meetings. All of them, full of promise and even numbers of supporters at the beginning, soon succumbed to the deadly routine of being only “respectable opposition” lest the Democratic Party get too upset. This was true even of the nominally independent Green Party here. And a key player in keeping the “radicals” out and the “respectables” entrenched was the late Jane the H, wife of Ron the H and, like him, thoroughly embedded in the Quaker church and unable to see beyond it.

Such then sets the stage for recounting what happened that fateful Third Sunday in May, 2010. As I indicated above, not only did I have no inkling of what would actually transpire, I went into the meeting buoyed with hope and anticipation of positive, constructive results. The month earlier, I had submitted for consideration two written documents outlining an organizational structure and methods of carrying on work that I thought would be quite efficacious. The Forlorn Ten had a full month to read and comment on these documents, but to date no one had; and I had not seen this silence for what it actually was—the hiding of a massive iceberg that was intending to demolish my ship. In fact, Marvey the W had even written in the group’s newsletter, the Central Indiana Socialist, that my papers would be up for discussion and action. Positive action, I had assumed.

Monthly meetings of the Indianapolis socialists were divided into three parts. First was a regular business meeting of the SPUSA, which would often consist of only three or four SPUSA members—Becky the B as chair, Mikey the M, unless he was absent, Peter the B, who served as treasurer of both SPUSA and DSA, and Ron the H, whose presence was almost guaranteed because the socialists met in the Quaker meeting house where Ronnie attended worship services. As happenstance would have it, I’m omitting Gilbey the K who was always present, simply because he had to be to allow the meetings to take place (he lived in the meeting house); but Gilbey remained silent 99.99% of the time any meeting occurred, simply sitting there implacable, so it’s pretty easy not to notice someone who is actually the Tommy Newsom of Central Indiana socialism! Next would follow the regular business meeting of DSA, with Marvey as chair, Pete again, and for the past several meetings, me, since I was Vice-President of Central Indiana DSA (and still am, although Marvey the W would like to deny it; but no due process has removed me, and mere non-attendance cannot remove someone—if that were true, then well over 75% of all members of SPUSA and DSA in Indiana would be excluded, as they are paper members only who never attend meetings!). Ike the W was supposed to attend, since he was DSA’s secretary and was charged with keeping meetings, and he regularly promised to be in attendance, but more often was not, no matter what he’d promised. Following these two meetings was the meeting of something called the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, which had originally been organized to enable SPUSA and DSA to work together on common concerns in the Indianapolis area, but which was in doldrums, with it further being compromised because no one was sure of what the Fellowship was or was supposed to be doing; this had become a big issue because both Greater Indianapolis SPUSA and Central Indiana DSA, as chartered branches of their respective national organizations, had been ordered by their national leaderships to concentrate less on joint activities and concentrate far more on building the membership of their respective local branches. So orders had come from on high to let the Fellowship lapse. Since most members of the Fellowship were either members of SPUSA, DSA or both, and only one or two of those active in the Fellowship were not, that meant that SPUSA and DSA were to function independently of each other, for SPUSA was SPUSA, DSA was DSA, and neither the twain shall meet. Such was the ukase of the national leaderships.

One thing that never occurred at any of these three meetings was discussion of politics; that ended up as de facto occurring only in the social chit-chat that preceded and followed the meetings, and never rose above the level of casual conversation and gossip. These business meetings were invariably paper-cut formalities in structure, with committee reports and the like, and also dry as dust: on the whole, they were as politically edifying as the business meeting of a Canasta club, but with one important difference—whereas a well-functioning Canasta club would at least arrange for its members to be able to play Canasta, the business meetings of SPUSA, DSA and the Fellowship rarely decided on any course of action, just endless bemoaning (if even that) about we socialists’ lack of growth and appeal to outside activists. But that follows when there’s no program of action formulated; when the only actions formulated are merely social gatherings in commemoration of May Day and Bastille Day; and when almost no one who was actually a member of SPUSA or DSA knew their own organization’s national programs and platforms, nor read their own organization’s national literature. That such was the direct consequence of Indiana’s notorious smug provincialism, which regarded anything that happened or which came from beyond its borders as having any importance—a smug provincialism regularly copied at the local level, where what was of importance only occurred within city or county boundaries, or even at the level of local cliques—was not only never considered, it was never even discussed, and woe to the one who would bring up such a heretical thought!

I had tried to change that; indeed, I had tried to change that within the broader group of Indiana and Indianapolis “progressives” the whole of my past thirty unfortunate years spent living in Indianapolis and active in “progressive” organizations. It had been to no avail; in fact, it had only garnered personal resentment of me among the “progressives,” a resentment coupled with much active backbiting and deliberate social ostracism. (Fortunately for me, this was not my lot among those who were apolitical, such as among my co-workers, or the creative and blues music communities—there I was much liked, and my activities and personal qualities much appreciated.) Certainly I had the credentials and experience to attempt such change: I had actively published many political articles in the national and regional left press, in small but respected national journals such as In These Times, Monthly Review, Socialism and Democracy, Against the Current, New Politics, and the like, where frequently I was among a small number of contributors who did not have a Ph.D., or was not a graduate student or professor! I also did the same in regional left and alternative publications such as the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal and the Bloomington Alternative (located in Bloomington, Indiana, home of the main campus of Indiana University, where I’d earned a degree in economics). Further, I had honed my organizational and political skills by being active in the left since 1965, first, as leader of the left wing of SDS at Michigan State University (MSU), (with my activities there actually chronicled in a history book on the anti-Vietnam War movement at non-elite universities, Kenneth Heineman’s Campus Wars(New York University Press, 1993); then in national SDS and other radical groups, locally and nationally, along with extensive freelance writing.

But provincial Indiana, including the Indiana “progressives,” looked down on all these activities, as they’d occurred outside the confines of the Hoosier State, and it was left here in Indianapolis (and elsewhere in Indiana) for those apolitical here locally, as well as for out-of-state leftists, to appreciate what I was doing and what I was writing. My activities in MSU SDS were derided by one local Veterans for Peace leader as “bragging about something obscure,” while Jane the H, Indianapolis’s Quaker “progressive” arbiter of what was “proper” and what was not, dismissing my frequent, favorable appearances in Campus Wars with “I’m sure it’s important to you,” because nothing of importance to anybody else in Indiana could possibly occur outside its borders!

So I shouldn’t have been surprised at what happened to me at the hands of the Indianapolis “socialists,” even though the perpetrators were all people with whom I had been actively involved with, and assumed our mutual cordiality had built bonds of trust; but I found out the hard way that the “Socialist” Three—Becky the B, Mikey the M, and Marvey the W—were ingrained Hoosiers first, and as such, would “naturally” take personal umbrage with anyone who did something they disliked, and that the old Hoosier corruptions of cliquishness and venomous striking out would take precedence over any bonds of mutual trust and regard I’d thought I had forged. They had indeed taken such personal umbrage at my confidential criticisms of others that they had moved to conspire against me and deliberately set me up—such is the conclusion not only I have come to, but is the conclusion of others as well. It is the conclusion not only of three close friends to whom I’ve related this narrative of what transpired, my college-graduate friends Harold and John, both of whom know several of the actors involved and the nature of the Indianapolis “progressive” milieu; and also the conclusion reached by my former academic advisor; but, tellingly enough, it is the conclusion as well of one of the May meeting participants, Ron the H, certainly no personal friend of mine, but rather, someone who’s been antagonistic toward me many times. He’s told me directly that “It seems you were set up,” and plans on raising it as an issue with the “Socialist” Three.

But back to the meeting itself. As I related above, nothing suspicious had developed prior to the meeting. Marvey the W had merely stated that he’d had several long conversations with Becky the B, but had not indicated anything disapproving of me had been discussed. Same with Mikey the M, Becky’s husband—he’d expressed no prior hostility either. As for Becky herself, the only word I’d gotten from her at all for the past two weeks was an e-mail thanking Marvey for forwarding on my criticisms of Ike the W and keeping her informed; then, just before I was about to leave for the meeting, a plaintive e-mail from her saying that Ike the W’s annoying personal habit of nervous giggling was something he couldn’t help, to which I’d responded that in my own past I had overcome a bad stutter, so I didn’t think such a habit was intractable. In fact, I had defended my criticisms at length over the course of several e-mails, and thought the matter pretty much settled, and settled in a principled was—especially as my defenses had drawn no comment from any of the three parties! (I will gladly make the whole e-mail exchange public to any interested party—I have them all on my computer.) Not only that, my arrival had not been greeted hostilely by any of the three, and the meeting itself began inauspiciously enough. Marvey even initiated a friendly gesture toward me, handing me a packet of New York Timesarticles on Catholic priest-pedophilia, but otherwise didn’t utter a peep. Becky, as nominal chair of the SPUSA meeting, then turned the meeting over to husband Mikey, saying he had a better grasp of parliamentary procedure than she had. With Mikey now as chair, I raised a point that in the past had been a mere formality—the approval of Marvey and I as guests, since both of us were DSA members, but not SPUSA members. Mikey then responded that I would be allowed guest status only to introduce the documents I had prepared earlier. When that time came around (after a few preliminaries), I introduced the documents everyone had agreed at the April meeting were to be discussed—and there was no second from anyone! This thus precluded discussion of what I had written, and of course, was in direct contravention of what had been decided on at the April meeting.

Then the open treachery began. Marvey, who did have guest status and thus could speak, then re-introduced verbatim, word-for-word from what I had written two of the motions that were in my document, and they passed unanimously. What I had been unable to introduce myself as author was now accepted under Marvey’s auspices! Needless to say, I objected heatedly, but was told to shut up by an enraged Mikey, responding to me, as he did for the rest of the meeting, with a very vicious temper flare. Marvey then raised yet another motion from my document which discussed financial compensation for me for carrying on an educational project for the Fellowship (something that had in the recent past been encouraged by the “Socialist” Three following the success of my Marxism classes in which they had all been students); stating that it was unfeasible based on a conversation he’d had with Frank Llewellyn, national DSA Executive Director, which he’d never told me about, or in fact, had never raised objection with me about—even though the documents I had prepared (but which now could not be discussed, due to no second) had circulated among all the socialists on the regular attendee mailing list for a month, and on which I had specifically solicited discussion, comment and criticism—with none coming whatsoever until now! Needless to say, this motion attributed to me was now unanimously rejected—even though it was not raised under any kind of parliamentary procedure at all (so much for Mikey’s vast knowledge of parliamentary procedure!), and since the document in which the motion was present couldn’t even be properly discussed, as it hadn’t been seconded!

The game was now well afoot, but needless to say, my objections were “answered” only by Mikey’s vehement rage demanding I shut up. Now it was Becky the B’s turn. She now brought up the criticisms I had made privately in e-mails addressed only to the “Socialist” Three—which meant that the other three of the six attendees besides myself had no inkling of their contents. So Becky was now criticizing matters I wrote that were completely unknown to half those attending beside myself! It’s quite fascinating to note that, even though Becky was sitting next to me and the criticisms she was making of me were quite personal, she deliberately stared straight ahead and with her head lowered, in order to avoid my glance completely—so “brave” this self-proclaimed “feminist” was that she couldn’t even personally attack me to my very face! When she finished her litany of accusations that even included “Defaming a dead person,” the late Jane the H, who had done some very cruel things to me in her lifetime, Marvey was given the floor instead of I, and now he continued the “prosecution” thus: he said (and yes, this is verbatim as I distinctly recall it), “I’m afraid to open an e-mail from George, because it will contain criticism.” [!!!!!] Yes, word-for-word: Marvey’s very own “e-mail phobia,” evidently some new mental health disorder that has not yet found its way into the DSM (acronym for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the official compendium of mental disorders produced by the American Psychiatric Association). But in answer to Marvey’s “fear” I’d like to point out that I once had a job as a third-shift parking garage cashier, and twice was the victim of an armed robbery there. Staring down a gun barrel that’s aimed directly at one’s face—now that’s real cause for fear, not some mere e-mail!

More. I related Marvey’s remarks on his fearfulness of receiving e-mails from me to several of my trusted co-workers, all of them fellow college graduates like myself, and in all cases Marvey’s remarks were greeted with howls of contemptuous laughter! A fitting riposte from educated people. (It should be mentioned here that all of the “Socialist” Three are also college graduates, with at least two of them holders of Master’s degrees—Marvey in theology, Becky in nursing—so they’re all educated, and presumably intelligent, people.)

I’ve related my story informally to other apolitical friends of mine in Indianapolis besides the ones mentioned above, and their response was the same as those of Harold, John, and my old academic advisor: it appeared indeed that I had been set up, and they weren’t surprised, given the smug, sanctimonious arrogance that so easily prevails here. So I’ve not been without friends and supporters in my travail, have not been cut off and left to dangle due to my forced “retirement” Indianapolis has thrust upon me after forty-five years of left activism. In fact, I’m rather enjoying it, as I’ve found in apolitical people (by which I mean people who are not actively involved politically, but who have the same decent, humane values the left formally claims, and who would be real assets to any left movement worthy of them) the comfort, succor and support that was so actively and readily denied me among the “progressives.” Which is a real shame for the left, given its present-day isolation from the lives and concerns of ordinary people who are struggling, and who could readily gravitate to it had it something to offer other than sectarianism, cannibalistic feeding upon itself, and a ready penchant for talking at people, not talking to them. Faults that are seemingly everywhere, but significantly noticeable in the justly-named IndiaNOPLACE, native home to left writers Kurt Vonnegut and Dan Wakefield, who left it in such disgust they wouldn’t return for decades. Two writers who used their eloquent pens to satirize this, the Circle City, in two trenchant novels: Vonnegut, in his Breakfast of Champions of 1973, Wakefield in Going All the Way, published in 1971. They also hark back to another notable U.S. social satirist, Nobel Laureate Sinclair Lewis, who savagely, but truly, limned the social and cultural distress of the Midwest so well in novels such as Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith and Elmer Gantry. Funny but telling indeed that Lewis’s work from the 1920s, and Vonnegut’s and Wakefield’s works from the 1970s, could still be so apropos for Indianapolis and Indiana of the second decade of the 21st Century, but that is the enduring quality of true and trenchant art.

So I’ve spent the time cultivating my friendships among the apolitical, as well as continuing to participate in the left nationally through writing. After thirty years of putting up with the “progressives” here, I am coming at last to feel “unfettered and alive” for the first time, fulfilling that yearning that Joni Mitchell sang of in her song, “Free Man in Paris.” Still, at heart I am still a political activist and a man of the left who is not leaving the left, despite its leaving him—and in the lurch at that.

Not all see it this way, and one of my most hostile critics outside of Indianapolis is one Dave Finkel (the only person who’s full real name I’m giving here, as he is truly a public personage), Managing Editor of the left bimonthly Against the Current, and leader in Solidarity, a small socialist group I still maintain active membership in. Speaking from his perch at Solidarity’s National Office in Detroit, Finkel maintains that I brought all these problems on myself, that the SPUSA and DSA “leadership” in Indianapolis surely had “good reasons” for their treachery, and that, anyway, they certainly hadn’t betrayed my trust because they were merely “drinking buddies,” an inference he drew from my indicating that they had been guests in my apartment and we had sometimes shared a beer together. But then, he has not heard my full story; in fact, refused any attempts by me to relate it to him, so, should he read this, it will be the first time ever that he has confronted any narrative of what divided me from the Indianapolis “socialists.” But it won’t be the first time Finkel has found me entirely at fault, and by his own admission, he does not care to know what exactly transpires here in this place so separated from the empyrean realms of Detroit, where he holds court, and where his “Marxist” wisdom enables him to see and understand all things.

But the matter looks entirely different to my friend and fellow Solidarity comrade Phil D., who actually lives in Indiana and was appalled at what transpired here. Although he does not live in Indianapolis now, he did a few years ago, and was himself deliberately politically isolated and socially ostracized because his open Marxism made him a pariah, a “disrupter of the natural harmony” that infused the world view of “respectable Quaker progressive” Jane the H, who treated him the same way she treated me—indeed, as all the leading “progressives” of this justly-named Naptown did. So, by no means do I lack support and supporters—even if I must endure “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” from the hidebound and willfully blind.

But life goes on, and I continue, and part of this continuing on is to tell my story above, and tell it with political import. I would not object to being given the chance to be politically active again, but it is no longer the burning priority I had given it in the past. I would even have a civil rapprochement with the “Socialist” Three, although we will never be friends again—I certainly can never again trust these obvious Three Musketeers of Cowardice. Nor, as I’ve indicated above, am I alone among the Indianapolis socialists in feeling that I was betrayed. Ron the H, for at least one, is unsettled by the matter, and wishes to pursue the matter. And I will gladly stand by my offer to make the whole of the e-mail exchange public to anyone who wishes it. I do offer a heartfelt partial apology for losing my temper in the face of the vicious onslaught and vindictive temper tantrum of Mikey, but I do not retreat one iota from the criticisms of comrades I made in the e-mails: I believe I spoke frankly, without embellishment or euphemism, and that my speaking as I did was for the benefit of Indianapolis socialism. Certainly one has to build a movement with the personnel one has on hand, but that never means that a fruitful, constructive movement can be built from the material found on a garbage heap, same as the building I alluded to at the beginning of this essay. The test of my position is still to come, and will come soon enough—let us see where the Indianapolis socialists are in May 2011, and whether they are at all different from the Forlorn Nine they are today! Marvey can go back to attending his Indiana Pacers home games, a great “socialist” pastime he likes to indulge in, even as he lets his ‘socialist” conscience evade the fact that our sterling NBA basketball team, these very Pacers, recently extorted $33.5 million from the City of Indianapolis so that they would stay here, demanding this payment due to “poverty” while Indianapolis was considering the permanent closing of public library branches due to lack of revenue, and lacks money for its schools and even road repair. But what other priority would “good socialists” such as Marvey and his ilk have!!