A Peace with Justice Program for Indiana—and the World

Let it be said forthrightly: the first obstacle to be overcome in proposing and implementing an Indiana-relevant peace with social justice program is Indiana’s “traditional” left itself; here in Indianapolis, with spillover across the state, that means overcoming the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center (IPJC), a hoary body of aged pacifists that’s been in place now since the early 1980s, despite a track record of virtually nothing achieved. In fact, many of the same people who were in charge of things in the IPJC in the 1980s and 1990s are still around, having aged not like wine or cheese, but like garbage set out and allowed to sit and rot. “Living” proof, as it were, of what precious little religious pacifism has to offer anyone, other than a smug sense of sanctimonious self-righteousness among the pacifist “elect.” (And they do consider themselves elect.)

The same would apply to the Indiana Peace and Justice Network (IPJN), the “labor” group Community-Faith-Labor Coalition (“Coalition for what?” you may properly ask; good question—but try and get it answered!), Central Indiana Jobs with Justice (largely do-nothing local branch of a good but far from perfect national group, very much mired in “guns and butter” Hubert Humphrey-style liberalism; if Jobs with Justice does anything in Indiana, it’s done by the Southern Indiana branch, located in the college town of Bloomington, home of the main campus of Indiana University), and assorted churchy groups; they comprise the “respectable” left, the ones that the Democratic party likes, or at least gives lip-service to, and are the ones that will never, ever conjure up hidebound middle-class fears of “Anarchy! Bolshevism! Reckless, out-of-control youth!”

It wasn’t always this way, although it’s been this way for the last nine years. And especially in the 1980s and 1990s there was real activity on the part of Indianapolis’ “traditional” left, and even a few partial gains; most of all, groups like IPJC and the Community-Faith-Labor Coalition attracted and galvanized people, particularly youth, who are now not only totally absent, but look at those groups and members with universal disdain. And while the Occupy movements have sprouted throughout large parts of Indiana, the old-timers of those remaining groups such as the IPJC play no part in them; in fact, deliberately stand aloof from them. The torch has definitely not been passed, and now sputters and faces extinguishing.

But in the early 1990s IPJC had a dynamic leader at the helm, Tim Quigley, who galvanized action and built a mass movement in opposition to the First Gulf War that drew hundreds to demonstrations and rallies. Antiwar rallies occurred into the early part of the 21st Century. There were public forums and speakers, and national left luminaries such as Howard Zinn and Phillip Agee spoke on local campuses. In 2001 a group of feisty anarchist youth organized Solidarity Books (later called Paper Matches in its new location), an independent, non-sectarian left bookstore that provided a wide range of literature, including the pacifist literature so beloved of the “respectable peaceable religious.” This youth collective also organized mass activities to agitate for decent public transportation in Indianapolis, and was active in protesting the National Governors’ Conference in Indianapolis in 2003.

But because they were young and bold, and weren’t afraid to talk the language of revolution, they soon became anathema to the IPJC; and in one of the most ignominious passages in IPJC’s history, the Solidarity Books/Paper Matches collective was deliberately destroyed by leading IPJCers, through the machinations of a leading “movement” type who rented a house to the collective that was dilapidated, and had an equally-dilapidated furnace that would’ve spewed lethal gases if turned on; then another “leading movement activist” made an anonymous phone call to the Indianapolis police alleging that these youth had a weapons cache in the basement of their house, an absolutely false accusation that brought not only a police raid but continued police harassment; and then, as the coup de grace, their “movement” landlord (actually slumlord) sued them in small claims court in a specious lawsuit which he won (for, unlike the “respectables” of the IPJC, The Solidarity Books/Paper Matches collective was truly hated by the Indianapolis political establishment), with the small claims court judge refusing to give the reason for his decision. The upshot was that most of the collective left town in frustration and disgust, while those remaining dropped out of politics.

The Solidarity Books/Paper Matches collective was one of the very few organized groups of the “far left” to gain a foothold outside of college towns in very conservative Indiana, where the conservatives are troglodytes, most “leftists” are liberals at best, and the Democrats are thoroughly Blue Dog or in fear of retaliation from the Blue Dogs. While small Marxist-Leninist groups have led marginal existences in the college towns of Bloomington and West Lafayette (home of the main campus of Purdue University), declaring oneself a Marxist (or revolutionary anarchist) is the surest way in most of Indiana (and certainly in Indianapolis) to become not only politically isolated, but also socially ostracized—and not just by conservatives, but by the “progressives” as well. Hell, even not attending church regularly and not publicly professing Christian pacifism will get one ostracized! Needless to say, Indiana’s left is almost entirely lily-white, almost entirely Christian, with African Americans and Jews present only as tokens to represent “diversity” (because the putative Indiana and Indianapolis “traditional” left talks only to the already-converted, which means that white Christian pacifists and timid liberals talk only to other white Christian pacifists and timid liberals).

So, given the above, isn’t trying to develop an Indiana-relevant peace with justice program rather like imitating Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill? Perhaps, but it still must be done. Done in the hope of reaching persons truly interested in social change and willing to advance beyond parochial group loyalties, whether in the “traditional” peace and social justice groups or in Occupy movements; and possibly even reaching those who aren’t presently aware that there is any kind of left in Indiana, much less an effective one, but who would be interested in helping constitute an effective left. So with that in mind, here goes. I’ve developed this program in sections, with specific planks, goals and analyses arranged under appropriate headings.

I. RECOGNIZE THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF PEACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES

The strange “division of labor” that prevails on the Indiana putative “traditional” left means that groups like IPJC and IPJN confine themselves to being foreign-policy windbags who don’t touch on domestic issues, while the labor and social justice groups never bring up wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, and never mention antiwar, militarism, or foreign policy issues—essentially making them “guns and butter liberals” who confine themselves to talking only about butter and never about guns! Yet it is precisely the U.S.’s financially draining military costs and costs for wars such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq (of which this latter, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and a colleague calculated, will cost the U.S. four trillion dollars!) that take money away from providing employment for the unemployed through a new WPA such as worked so well in the 1930s, keep our badly-crumbling infrastructure in disrepair, and prevent shoring up our badly frayed social safety net. Thus, there should naturally be collaboration between antiwar and social justice groups in Indiana and elsewhere, not separation. The same would apply to issues of racial justice, immigrant rights, and police brutality issues. Yet, when the twain shall not meet, all groups, all constituencies, and all issues suffer, even though they’re all so interconnected. Indeed, several activists in antiwar causes doff their antiwar hats and go to other meetings where they put on their social justice hats, and vice versa—wearing each hat separately, as though they weren’t the same hats at all! To emphasize this interconnectedness and advance it in a program for effective action, I give the following proposals.

First on what might be considered “global” issues:

1. Advocating for peace and an end to wars in itself is not enough; the highly-militarized economy not only drains resources from social justice needs, it itself undermines addressing social justice needs such as full employment, decent infrastructure and schools, a meaningful social safety net, and other positive social needs, as well as destroying foreign cultures and peoples. It hurts all, domestically and abroad. Therefore, the antiwar movements must also address fulfilling domestic needs as well as ending militarism, while social justice needs must realize that their causes will not be adequately addressed as long as needed resources and monies are drained off to support militarism. Which is a way of saying that groups such as IPJC and IPJN must discuss and act on domestic social justice issues as well, while labor groups such as Community-Faith-Labor coalition and Jobs with Justice must realize that militarism undermines workers’ rights and full employment in useful civilian tasks, and both must join together to advance a common full employment, full social justice and antiwar program that satisfies the real needs of the peoples of Indiana, the U.S., and the world. Justice is indivisible.

2. The U.S. cannot, and should not, play Cop of the World; world peacekeeping needs should be addressed by a strengthened United Nations free to act independently of Great Power vetoes.

3. In this economically interconnected world, where financial crisis in one part of the world can cause financial crises in other parts of the world, global finance, investment and trade cannot be left strictly in private hands, subject to what multinational corporations find most profitable. The beginnings of a world economic order, where financial, investment and trade decisions and impacts are regulated for the benefit of all, must be put in place. We see the need for such now in the Eurozone, where the profitability of German banks comes at the cost of forcing austerity and misery on the peoples of Greece, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere.

4. The world North-South and East-West distribution of wealth must be drastically modified so that some countries are prosperous while others are mired in poverty and destitution.

5. Since all we peoples of the world must live on the same planet, and cannot live if the world is destroyed by ecological damage, world ecological sustainability must be a prime goal that must be achieved, and not subject to undermining by the whims of multinationals in search of profit or the parochial interests of certain countries at the expense of others.

These planks underscore for all of us that Utopia can no longer be considered utopian, but has become a necessity, a necessity underscored by the world recession since 2007 which threatens to become worse, threatens to become a new recession when the world has not recovered from the old one. Obviously, social justice must encompass racial justice as well, and gender and sexual preference justice also, as well as the traditional justice concerns of civil rights and liberties. Equality for women; end to all racial and ethnic discrimination; the right to practice one’s religion without hindrance, and concomitantly, the right to profess no religion at all; the right to engage in consensual sexual activity fully buttressed by access to birth control, abortion, and prophylactic protection from STDs are both social justice issues as well as issues of concern to peace groups, for bigotry and intolerance readily spill over into violence against despised minorities by bigots. Decent education for all that teaches not only how to make a living, but to live a fully human life is also such an issue, as is the rights of immigrants to live, work and contribute to the societies in which they become resident. The right to speak and write without fear either of overt censorship or the “necessity” to self-censor is also a fundamental right that cannot be undermined on the basis of “commercial,” “intellectual property” or other barriers—the right of creative and intellectual expression is fundamental to human life and dignity. We need even more forcefully to assert these rights in today’s world because they are under attack from a wide array of bigots and special interests—religious, political, commercial, ideological. Safety in mind and body is also a paramount right, as well as a most desirable social goal, yet undermined by a galaxy of forces, from poverty and repressive laws to corporate and individual irresponsibility. We live in a world that seems to be falling apart everywhere we look; it is time to address that.

II. USING THE ELECTORAL PROCESS PROACTIVELY

I am running for Lieutenant Governor of Indiana in the 2012 election as an independent write-in candidate with Donnie Howard Harris, an antiwar disabled Vietnam veteran, write-in for Governor. We believe in using the electoral process to advance a peace with social justice agenda to educate and raise consciousness on peace and social justice issues, and that is an arena that can, and should, be used more actively by concerned citizens. Democracy and citizen’s voice is very much as Dr. Ruth said famously about sex: “Use it or lose it.” Even running for state and local offices can be used in a proactive way to advance national and foreign policy issues, as means to raise local awareness of the wider world we live in, and the interconnectedness of various issues. Clearly, as we know all too well in Indiana, such matters as foreign trade and completion for jobs not only with other states but with other countries has had a big impact on Indiana—we see it in the figures for jobs lost in the Hoosier state. Further, independent candidates can play a pivotal role in educating people to the idea that we don’t have to automatically accept a choice between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, between a Tea Party Republican and a Blue Dog Democrat. It is time to enhance democracy and political participation by citizens, not eliminate or truncate it.

III. RECOGNIZING, COMBATING, HOOSIER MEDIOCRITY

Indiana’s Brain Drain is more than a catchy journalistic slogan; it’s an ugly and palpable Hoosier reality, where 46.6% of Indiana’s recent college graduates (according to the Indianapolis Star) leave the state immediately upon graduation, because there are no jobs for them. And those who stay behind, or are left behind, often end up economically stuck, trapped in low-wage, low-skill jobs, frequently forced to work only as temps, with their abilities and knowledge wasted. Indiana, once a haven for the uneducated and undereducated because factory and construction jobs were plentiful, now faces a double whammy as factories close and those new jobs created are increasingly service jobs which are either low-pay unskilled work or else high-level professional jobs which Indiana lacks the workforce to fill. Thus, as Indiana loses its college graduates who attend school in Indiana because they possess the “wrong” degrees—it increasingly imports college graduates with the “right” degrees from elsewhere. Talk about a Rube Goldberg economy!

 Again, according to the Indianapolis Star, quoting a Brookings Institution report, while Indianapolis has 32% of the college graduates in the state, it certainly doesn’t have 32% of its jobs available requiring college degrees. In fact, a long-term personal observation of jobs and college graduates indicates that Indianapolis probably has one of the most college-educated workforces of bartenders and servers anywhere!

But also, Indiana’s workforce as a whole is one of the least-educated in the nation, well below the national average for high school graduates as well as below the Midwest average for high school graduates. Indiana’s primary and secondary schools are noted as well for their educational inadequacy, and due to both this educational and job weakness, per capita income in Indiana consistently fell every year from 2005 to 2010, the last year statistics are available. (See http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/2012/02/eight-to-work-is-not-only-issue-in.html.) "We're stuck,” Philip Powell, Associate Professor of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington told the Indianapolis Star in 2009, “We're stuck because we don't have the knowledge base we need in the labor force. A lot of that is because of our really mediocre primary and secondary educational system."

But it’s not just economically and educationally that Indiana demonstrates its fundamental limitations and social negatives. Indiana is among the “leaders” among the states in obesity, cigarette smoking, date rape, and minors involved in sex with adults. Dave Fey and I wrote a detailed account of this substantive Hoosier failure in the July 12, 2009 Bloomington Alternative, "Mediocrity--a Hoosier affliction," http://bloomingtonalternative.com/author/george-fish-and-dave-fey,

an article which garnered some notable—and needed—attention.  But, while the statistics in the article are dated, sadly, the social pathologies they quantified are still present.

Certainly key among Hoosier afflictions of mediocrity is Indiana politics, especially as shown in the General Assembly of 2012. With both houses of the Assembly dominated by Tea Party Republicans, not only was the Democratic minority continually harassed and basic parliamentary procedure consistently ignored, some of the worst, most inappropriate, legislation in Indiana history was rammed through. This was especially true of the Republicans’ pet legislative project, so-called “right-to-work,” rammed through in the face of union workers’ mobilized opposition that drew thousands daily to the Statehouse in outraged protest. No matter—what ordinary Hoosiers thought was of no concern. For the Republicans, unions were the cause of anemic job growth and continuing unemployment, and “right-to-work” the magic wand that would fix all of Indiana’s economic ills, despite study after study showing that was not the case. Further, because of legislation passed in the 2011 legislative season, unemployed workers now face a 25% cut in unemployment benefits, while employers get a 33% cut in taxes they pay for unemployment compensation. Low wages, poor working conditions, and desperate unemployed willing to take anything—that will be the engine of economic growth in Indiana!

 

Never mind that this panacea has been tried and failed to bring the expected results elsewhere, most recently in Oklahoma, which became a “right-to-work” state in 2002 and is still waiting for all those jobs promised to materialize. “I’m a Republican, don’t confuse me with economic facts!” was the legislature’s rallying cry. Besides, there were more pressing matters to deal with—such as extending what my friend John Zaphiriou calls the “nanny state” by making it more difficult to light up a cigarette in Indiana, and requiring religious creation stories to be taught as a regular part of the school curriculum, though not necessarily in the science classes—fortunately, this latter did not pass, though the former did. Truly a dismal showing by what the late Harrison Ullman, NUVO Editor Emeritus and Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame inductee had dubbed long before “America’s worst legislature.”

And somehow Indianapolis became truly a “big city” by hosting that commercial extravaganza, the Super Bowl, a lavish party for the very rich and the well-off steadily employed, yet another example of the city’s Third World growth model—bring money in from outside through tourism and shopping, and expect that trickle-down to generate low-wage service jobs catering to the whims of the visitors. Wages? Steady work? Who needs steady wages when, if you really hustle, you can get big tips!

Unfortunately, for many Hoosiers all this is peachy-keen. Indiana has never really been able to separate boosterism from providing actual substance, and has always regarded culture and education as something suspect. That’s the mindset that has led its two most able Indianapolis-born contemporary writers, Kurt Vonnegut and Dan Wakefield, to tellingly satirize the Circle City in two best-selling novels, Vonnegut’s 1973 Breakfast of Champions and Wakefield’s 1970 Going All the Way. It’s also the mindset that impelled Indianapolis blues drummer Furious George to remark, “People will think nothing of paying someone to fix their toilet, but they won’t pay a dime for creative or artistic work. They think you should just do it for free.”

But societal mediocrity and strong movements for peace with social justice no more mix than do oil and water. So for their own viability, peace and social justice movements in Indiana, including Occupy movements, will have to address Hoosier mediocrity as well, become insistent pedagogues that will, paraphrasing 1956 Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson’s famous campaign phrase, “Drag Hoosiers kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.” Toward that necessary end I propose:
6. Emphasize the need for quality education throughout all Indiana schools, especially the public schools.

7. Remind Hoosiers that the world does not begin and end at the Illinois and Ohio borders, that Indiana is interconnected to a much wider world than Hoosiers like to admit; and that Indiana is not the center of the universe, does not have everything one could desire, and is not complete in and of itself.

8. That in educating Hoosiers to the realities of Hoosier mediocrity and critiquing Hoosier self-centered parochialism we are not “insulting Hoosiers.”

9. That Indiana must become truly arts and culture conscious, not merely conscious of what is commercially successful.
10. That integral to Indiana being arts and culture conscious is recognizing and nurturing Indiana artists and cultural workers across the board, in popular arts as well as those traditionally “highbrow.”

11. That art and culture consciousness is for the working class also, and not just the well-off; and that this consciousness depends on material security for Indiana’s workers.

12. That in providing this material security unions have a pivotal role to play, so that “right-to-work” needs to be repealed as soon as possible, and that the right of collective bargaining is necessary for a vibrant Indiana economy; that good-paying jobs actually help an economy more than hinder it, and everybody loses in an economic race-to-the-bottom.

IV. TOWARD A TRANSFORMATIVE SOCIETY

For many, probably most, Hoosiers, even “progressive” ones, this program will smack of “socialism,” something exotic, foreign and undesirable, even if socialism as such is not widely understood. Because of the ingrained conservatism and individualism in Hoosier political and social life, Hoosiers see concerted social action and using government to provide and distribute necessary social services to all as somehow suspect, somehow a swallowing up of hard-working ordinary citizens and taxpayers by a bloated monster called Big Government. Yet it is Indiana conservatism itself, as manifested in the deeds of Republican and Blue Dog Democratic politicians, that has swallowed up ordinary Indiana citizens; swallowed up through union-busting and favoritism toward business coupled with “culture wars” propaganda that has undermined the economic and social security and stability of ordinary Hoosiers. Swallowed up through measures such as Indiana joining in the lawsuit to undermine the extension of Medicaid, thus denying adequate healthcare coverage to many; measures such as rigid voter ID requirements that inhibit greater democratic participation in Indiana political life; propaganda that says Hoosier economic woes are the result of “illegal aliens,” “parasites collecting unemployment compensation” and “welfare queens,” not the business-fawning policies of Tea Party Republicans and their Blue Dog allies. Unfortunately, much of this propaganda succeeds, so that for many ordinary working men and women it is more important to them that they share the same tastes in country music with Chamber of Commerce business elites than it is to recognize that they are part of the 99% championed by Occupy movements; and that it is the Chamber of Commerce elites who are the real parasites, the real job and economic security killers.

Indiana’s all-too-hidebound conservatism drives far too many Hoosiers, under attack by this very conservatism expressed politically, to embrace as protest not Occupy movements, but the ersatz of Libertarianism. So an important part of political education by the traditional peace and social justice movements, in tandem with the Occupy movements, will be to emphasize that individual freedom and collective social action are not antitheses, but complements—and that the road to individual freedom lies in broader participation in political life, with fewer roadblocks in the way of democratic expression and participation. The traditional peace and social justice movements will have to see that they are not separate from Occupy movements; and that Occupy movements, with their energy and appeal to youth and action, are integral to the success of these more traditional peace and social justice movements. That far too heavy a price has been paid, and is still being paid, for standing aloof in “respectability,” and that these movements are seen as “respectable” by all the wrong people—the people who actually represent the 1%, the people who really don’t want peace with social justice, but who want to win the class war—for the elite 1%.

Thus does the movement toward the transformation of society begin with the transformation of consciousness, and the realization that the transformative society’s future lies in the hands of the Occupy movements, Occupy movements transformed into a cogent political force. (Becoming such, “institutionalizing” Occupy, will be a necessary task for Occupy movements to undertake; without it, I fear that Occupy movements will just burn themselves out in incoherence and lack of focus.) This will require leaving behind a lot of “respectable” baggage. But it is precisely the need for peace with social justice that demands it, not the chimera of quietly working behind the scenes; it means boldly speaking truth to, and making demands on, power, not begging “pretty please” for favors from it. But are the “respectables” ready to join with the “rowdy” Occupiers to achieve real peace with real social justice? Now is the time to answer that question squarely put.

“Dregs” Aftermath1: Letter from One of “the Masses”

I’ve been away from my blog for quite a while now, due to the time-draining constraints of both work and problematic health. But I plan to make up for it with more regular postings.—GF

My good friend John W, who knows me very well because he asks me questions and doesn’t just assume things about me, unlike the other Indianapolis “progressives” and “socialists,” has avidly followed my travails with the local “socialists” that I limned in my previous blog entry, “Dregs” (which is just below this one). He has also followed the course of this matter ever since then, and has read all the e-mail exchanges that have ensued. Because of this knowledge, he found himself considerably un-edified and quite distrustful of the Indianapolis “socialists” and all their pretensions. This motivated him to draft the letter below to these locals, primarily members of SPUSA and DSA who gather collectively under the umbrella of the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, but whom he addressed as the “Indianapolis Socialist Fellowship group.” I then typed up this letter from his handwritten copy and e-mailed to these local denizens of significant social change (John is not either a typing or an Internet man). I give the text of this letter below not simply as an affirmation of my original position, but also as an important view for us political activists of the left of just how our movement looks to an intelligent outsider.

Indeed, John could be “one of us” were we of the left able to effectively converse with our fellow humans—converse, that is, with real give-and-take, not simply hector, cajole, lecture, or try to convert. The hallmark of John’s style is that he asks questions; he is of an inquisitive, rather than a declamatory, bent, and it shows well in the letter below. He has inquired well into what happened, and drawn his conclusions, which he expresses pithily and pungently. If the result is an image of the “socialists” as a clique of pretentious do-nothings, it’s not due to any fault, may I say, in the eye of the painter, John; rather, it’s the result of what’s already present in the material he’s examined. And he has seen more than just my side: he has seen the nasty e-mails Marvey the W wrote to me, and he’s seen those of Frank Llewellyn, National Director of DSA, who has judged me from afar on the basis only of what he’s heard from Marvey. (These will be fully related and dissected in a forthcoming blog.) Living proof that parochialism can indeed exist in supposedly cosmopolitan New York City just as much as it can in the hinterland of Indiana.

But enough for now. I’ll have more to say later, but right now I’m going to yield to my friend John and his letter:

To: Indianapolis Socialist Fellowship Group
From: John W
Date: February 15, 2011

As a matter of introduction, I’m a retired Public Accountant who has lived in Indianapolis for the majority of my sixty-five years. A 1972 graduate of the University f Indianapolis, I worked with my dad in downtown Indianapolis for 37½ years.

In truth, I’m non-political and more concerned with humanitarian issues than Congressional bills or making good contacts.

George Fish is a good friend of mine. Recently, he shared with me his experiences with your organization; I immediately went into a state of shock. I said, “What? You’re kidding!”

I’ll briefly share some thoughts with you about your organization.

At the outset, I’m amazed that, considering my 65 years of Indiana residency, I’ve never even heard of your organization! You’re who, and you do what?

If your group were a major force in the political arena, perhaps making major contributions to American society, I’d like your club a lot more.

As I understand, your group meets one Sunday afternoon per month. Wow! This has to be somewhat of a comedy. How on earth can your members take this much time out of their busy schedules? And, by the way, what exactly has your club done lately?

Were your members aware of such events as the war in Afghanistan, the Egyptian revolution, the U.S. Recession/Depression, the plight of those in poverty or lack of adequate health care in this country? Has your club tackled the unemployment issue of concerned itself with the image of the U.S. overseas?

To continue the comedy from this non-political Public Accountant, what about your membership? I hear that on a good Sunday you’ll have all of ten members attending your meetings. Ten? Has your advertising committee disbanded? Are folks all over Indy beating a path to your door?

Speaking of doors, George told me that recently you slammed the door on his attendance at your meetings. Are you kidding me?” Of course, you realize that your membership just dropped, on a good Sunday, from ten to nine. Not to mention the loss of revenue to your club!

I could go on and on. Yet, I’m thinking this letter is sufficient to show you want an outsider sees as a most absurd group.

Thus the “socialists, as seen through the eyes of one of “the masses.” If it’s reproached that John is not “massy” enough, being a university graduate who worked as a white-collar professional, such characteristics fit the “socialists” also, and just not locally, but nationally. It can easily be said that those who call themselves socialists and are “active” enough to participate in socialist organizations—at least to the extent of attending meetings once a month—are more white-collar or professional than blue-collar (I’d say the most common occupation among professed socialists, at least in my experience, is college professor), and almost without exception, college students, former college students, or college graduates. And we are very small in numbers, as John pointedly observes, not only in Indianapolis, but nationally. I’d estimate that there are only about two million persons in the U.S. today who could be counted as left or socialist activists, at least in the sense of occasionally attending a rally or demonstration, or attend meetings of left political groups. Two million out of a current U.S. population of over 300 million—or less than 1% of the population! So, even on the national level that would constitute the left as, in John’s word, merely a “club.” And a club divided into many factions that bicker among themselves, and frequently go heresy-hunting, as did the local “socialists” toward me.

“Alas, we/Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” Brecht wrote disingenuously in the late 1930s, in his poem “To Posterity.” I say “disingenuously” because, if we of the left who “[c]ould not ourselves be kind” think that we’re still able to “lay the foundations of kindness,” then we are deluding ourselves. It takes much more than simply articulating good programmatic proposals to “lay the foundations of kindness;” for these good programmatic proposals of the left (and we of the left have far better ones than either the center or the right) are but the bricks, the congealed theoretical elements of those “foundations of kindness.” But for “foundations” to be laid out of bricks, it takes, in addition, bricklayers who know their craft, as well as mortar. “Kindness” from ourselves is the necessary mortar we of the left must provide, in addition to being a necessary requirement for our being bricklayers capable of “lay[ing] the foundations of kindness.” Without such, we of the left simply spout pretty words!

Without “kindness,” which is but human decency, we of the left simply become another one of those societal exponents of “Do as I say, not as I do” ethics, of which we already have a plethora. But we of the left too often cannot “ourselves be kind.” And for a putative agent of positive social change that is already bedraggled in society, whose cries and proposals for “socialism” are already imbued with a pervasive society-wide negativity that’s actively conveyed by the societal leaders and media to the masses we wish to reach, that lack of “kindness,” i.e., that inability in ourselves to be examples of that very element which we insouciantly proclaim ourselves to be the foundation-layers, can becomes deadly. In fact, it already has. “The fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.” Or, put another way, “We have found the enemy, and it is us.” If we of the left wonder why we are so much ignored by “the masses,” it would be wiser for us first of all to look to ourselves and how we act, how we are perceived by “the masses”—who are but the John W’s of the world.

But as I’ve shown earlier in “Dregs,” we don’t come across that well, and we ourselves are quite capable of the cruelties and injustices we fault the greater capitalist society for producing. Historically and in the present, the left has not only been a repository of virtue, human decency and striving for equity and justice, but also a repository of injustice and frame-up, of sectarianism, dogmatism, vigorous heresy-hunting within our ranks, of active expulsion and execration, of self-righteousness, betrayal of others and of our ideals, double standards, and political correctness. What happened to me as outlined in “Dregs” is but one case, and a relatively minor one at that, but a good case of what’s all too pervasive on the left, and has been recounted time and again by talented writers who’ve been in the maw of the left. We might look at the poignant story of Richard Wright, for example, as he relates it in The God that Failed (New York: Bantam Books, 1964, pp. 103-146). We can see it and feel it in the excellent recounting of life on the left that Vivian Gornick relates in The Romance of American Communism (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Being part of a beleaguered political sect such as the left is in the U.S., painfully aware of its isolation and marginalization, but with a vision of inclusiveness in equality and justice that supposedly makes us universally attractive to society’s have-nots, especially to those with both “consciousness and conscience,” it’s understandable that the left would embrace those defensive traits that hold sects together—cliquishness; distrust of the different; super-sensitivity to criticism, especially from within; quick retaliation toward the offender, especially the offender within the ranks. Understandable, but not forgivable. That’s why persons like my friend John W are so valuable for the left; precisely because they are not “members of the choir,” they can give us insights on how we really are, how we really look to those outside the choral gallery. And whether we of the left like it or not, the John W’s of the world are precisely those whom the left is going to have to convince, to gain support from, and to involve. But when we behave as the “socialists” did as recounted in “Dregs,” we should be very grateful indeed that there are John W’s in the world to write us letters of reproach, who make fun of our pomposities, and who hold up mirrors in which to view ourselves—warts and all.

Update--my co-worker Dave commented on the Indiana "socialists" to me as follows after reading my blogs. I quote him with his permission. He said, "My co-worker Dave read my blog entries & commented to me via e-mail on the local "socialists." I print his remarks with his permission. He said: "After browsing through the documents you attached and also your blog, I would concur with the assessment that you were set up by those three members of the Indiana Socialist Fellowship. It seems to me that they are more interested in maintaining a stranglehold on the control of that little group, even if it means the group will remain perpetually marginalized and insignificant. Yes, it may be small and insignificant, but it's their pond, and they're still the big fish in that tiny pond -- and I'll bet that's just the way they like it. And it will probably always be that way as long as they're still around, calling the shots."

This is the first of several commentaries by me that will draw up the lessons to be learned from both the successes and the failures of the left, in order that a better left can come into being, and become educated in the better ways. That’s really what this blog is all about—pedagogy. And like all good pedagogies, it draws upon both the carrot and the stick.—GF

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!!