“Oh the time will come when the winds will stopDavid James here. May 7-8, 2008
And the breezes will cease to be breathin’
Like the stillness in the wind ‘fore the hurricane begins
The hour that the ship comes in.
Then the seas will split and the ships will hit
And the shore-line sands will be shaking
Then the tide will sound and the waves will pound
And the morning will be breaking.”
Bob Dylan, 1963
There’s a whole lotta good lines in this song that were running through my mind as I was out on the streets yesterday for Election Day. Apocalyptic? Naw, but an important time, for Hillary, for Obama, for Indiana, and boy, was I ever in the thick of it.
I’m an Obama supporter, living with a Hillary supporter, so we’ve had many engaging discussions. I heard a few remarks yesterday, from a mayor’s wife, from a former congressman. Both said it wasn’t all about the substance; the two candidates’ positions weren’t all that far apart on most of the issues. Both said it was more the tenor of the two campaigns, the way that Obama tended to inspire and call out the best efforts of his listeners; he was, for them, not just a politician angling for votes, but someone you could tell really believed in his message. How many times during the day and evening did I hear comparisons with the Bobby Kennedy campaign of 1968.
Believe it or not, I have seen both the dead Kennedys. My parents chaperoned a bunch of us to D.C. on the train for J.F.K.’s inauguration, and I heard the “ask not” speech, standing in some of the coldest D.C. weather on record. Despite the cold, he made me feel warm and strong, though I was all of fourteen years old.
It’s not just that Bobby Kennedy was here in South Bend, and I was there and saw him. It was the way he spoke during that campaign, trying hard to get you to believe him, believe in him. He made me feel as if he really could be elected, that this nightmare of a war in Vietnam that I was fighting against, that had consumed my life for the past year, would actually be brought to an end; that there was going to be a paradigm shift in the direction of the nation, away from war, toward peace and justice. I had only a short vacation of hope after he announced his candidacy before he, and Martin Luther King, were gone.
On April 4, 1968, Kennedy came to South Bend, and then gave a major address at the University of Notre Dame’s Stepan Center. I was there.
Our band—it was the latest incarnation of The Scum of the Earth—had somehow been contracted to play for the gathering crowd at the speech. Don’t ask me how we got that gig. I was so “freaked out” and frightened that Spring I’m not sure how anything happened to me. I did have a few things together, though. I got our band’s equipment, such as it was, to the Stepan Center the night before, and consulted with the sound guy there to hook up a line feed from our paltry sound gear to Stepan’s sound system, which though of less than high fidelity, was at least loud.
I proudly claim my time of membership in “The Scum.” We weren’t the hot rock band on campus. We were almost a joke in that category. We were, however, an expression of the times on campus: anti-war, pro peace, but cynical. One could not help but be cynical. Lyndon and his reference to “the enemies of freedom” in Vietnam as he bombed North Vietnam towns and countryside, killing millions of civilians; Lyndon and his military draft; Dow Chemical with their napalm recruiting on campus; “beware the Generals” and their war profiteering: justice was definitely not in the wind that Spring; it looked like more build-up, more war. Kennedy was really my only chance for a life that did not revolve around war; you see, I’d already been called up for my preliminary military draft physical. The next step was the draft itself, and a confrontation over my claim of conscientious objection, which they had twice denied me. Young men were going to jail to stop this war, and I was prepared and afraid I was going to be one of them.
I will not name the other members of The Scum. Even after this long time a couple of them might get in trouble on the job, so I’ll leave it to them. Our repertoire for the day included a great song called Quarrel With the Earth that one of us had written, a brilliant ecology song. We would, of course, do our theme song, Here Comes the Scum; we had a strong self-image as four of Franz Fanon’s “wretched of the earth.” And we would do Country Joe and the Fish’s One, Two, Three, What Are We Fighting For? The kicker song, that we knew might get us into trouble (but we didn’t care) was an anti war number that a friend had written with a refrain that repeated four agonizing times in the song. Here is the last verse:
“He says he’d like to make the world a loving sort of Christian wonderland.
But heaven help the ones that dare refuse the love of Christian helping hands.
A couple of million people learned the hard way in the swamps of Viet Nam.
Don’t know why it’s so,
But it seems them G-- D---ed Christians
Are the most un-Christian people in the land.”
It was a good hippie “country” song, sort-of like Up Against the Wall Red-necked Mothers. And, as it turned out, about 11,000 people, at the Stepan Center, outside in overflow, and on the radio live, heard us sing it. The Notre Dame powers that be were horrified, and the band was “banned from campus,” an honor I still delight in to this day. We didn’t have much of a chance to enjoy our notoriety before the news hit that Dr. King had been killed. I remember sitting in the living room of my South Street second floor slum apartment thinking “the good people are being killed.” Killed for what they believe in. In another two months Kennedy would be dead, and for the same purpose.
As Bobby Kennedy boarded a plane at the South Bend airport after his Notre Dame speech, he heard that Martin King had been shot that afternoon in Memphis, TN. In Indianapolis for a campaign stop, he was due to open his state party headquarters and make a campaign speech. Instead, extemporaneously addressing the unknowing and jubilant crowd, he told them he’d just heard that Martin Luther King was shot. As wailing and stunned disbelief spread through the crowd, Kennedy spoke from the heart. He said those who were Black could be filled with "bitterness, and with hatred and a desire for revenge. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.” See the speech on YouTube (wow!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCg05pTYt0A&feature=related
and hold back a tear if you can.
On May 2, Bobby returned to South Bend and stopped by the West Side Democratic Club, the same place from which Obama volunteers worked and to which we were slated to rendezvous to watch the returns, and hopefully, to celebrate. A month later Kennedy was dead and I lost hope. From then on it was good times and bad times, yeah, but no more shared vision of America as The New Frontier of J.F.K.’s vision; just more war, and a government that was not “of the people.”
Until this year. Until Barack Obama lit that fire again, and held out the promise. Here’s what he said in an Email to me today:
David --
Before yesterday, some were saying the results from Indiana and North Carolina would be a game changer in this election.
But with your votes and with your voices, you said that the only game that needs changing is the one in Washington, D.C.
We knew our climb would be steep.
But in record numbers, you came out, spoke up, and made it clear that at this moment, in this election, there is something happening in America.
There is something happening when Americans who have never participated in politics get involved and knock on doors, make phone calls, and talk to each other about their vision for our country.
There is something happening when people vote not just for the party they belong to but for the hopes they hold in common.
Change is what's happening in America.
The momentum you created won't stop now. Together we're building a campaign that will compete in the general election -- and a united Democratic Party that can lead this country for the next generation.
Old as I am, as long as I’ve been anti-this and anti-that, there’s actually someone running for president that I can be FOR again, like I was for Gene McCarthy, and for Bobby Kennedy. Not just because I liked his message—there are plenty of aspects of it that seem lightweight to me. I am for single-payer health insurance, for example, and I haven’t heard that except from Dennis Kucinich. I am for a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq: if I had the reins of power I wouldn’t spend a minute before giving the order: “Everybody out! Get on the bus, Gus, get on the plane, Jane, go out the back, Jack, just get out of Iraq.”
But what he is doing to people! The South Bend Obama campaign was mighty rag-tag, but all the good people were a part of it. Black and white coming together like I haven’t seen in a long time, maybe since the Jesse campaign in the ‘80s. Better. We actually have a chance this time; we’re not just a movement—there, I’ve said it—we’ve also a chance to share the power. The Democratic Party standard-bearer and his V.P. will actually be people I can believe in. These are people like Lewis and Nash and Neblett and Grupper; maybe not them, but people like them who believe what they believe. I can’t wait!
So I showed up yesterday (Tuesday May 6, 2008) at about 10AM. The polls had been open since 6AM, and first I was sent to get some “numbers” from the VFW Hall on Mishawaka Ave. That done, I returned to the 111 W. Wayne satellite office to find the Illinois state senator who had replaced Obama after his election to national office giving a pep talk to those on hand. “Get out and do it, let’s put this one on ice.” O.K. I said, here goes.
The last time I said “here goes” was two years ago November, when, despite disagreeing with the 2nd District’s choice of a congressional candidate, I felt we had to get rid of Chris Chocola, Bush’s “man” in congress, and a neo-con con-man of the first order; here I was again, “anti-“ someone instead of really being for a candidate. And I worked so hard, that campaign, plus one day of heavy playing for a feis at the end of the week, precipitated a major heart attack. I all but died.
But I believe in Obama, and I’m fifteen pounds lighter and pretty much a vegan, so, despite there’s a feis that I’m playing for this Saturday (odd these coincidences) which is why I can’t be at the pre-Freedom-Summer-day activities. The feis has been on the books for a year, and it’s my tuition.
So I said “here goes” when the canvassing director said, “Are you ready to go out?” He handed me a sheaf of voter lists, and I looked it over.
It was the hard-core Southeast Side. Fellows, Rush, Marietta and High streets north-south; Pennsylvania, Broadway, Indiana, Dubail and Dayton streets east-west. This was the poorest section of town, and the blackest. Only within the last few years had the area received the attention of the housing renewal programs, seen new construction, and an attempt to really rebuild the neighborhood. But it was a tough battle against the looming recession, the lingering racism and discrimination, white flight; you-name-it, if it was poor people it was on the Southeast Side, and I was to be alone.
Well, what a stupid cynical unbeliever I am! Out of the whole day, only two small incidents. Once I shouted up to a porch where there was the beginnings of a serious party happening; “players.” All they did was look at me funny, and unfriendly-like. I moved on by. On one porch were two young Black men whom I shouldn’t have approached, obviously gang-banger types, but who knows? So I went up and asked if they were registered and were going to vote. Mistake! I was right the first time. They told me to “have a good day,” but also “get out of here.” I back-pedaled by little white ass back on the sidewalk and went on down the road.
Other than these two mild rebukes, the entire neighborhood was wonderful. I was in Obama country. People were happy to see me on their porches, genuinely ready to talk. Everybody, and I mean everybody that I met either had voted or were going to vote. Their families had voted. Only three—women, and I can understand that—votes for Hillary.
My favorite conversation was with a 91-year-old Black woman from—honest-to-God—the Mississippi Delta! I knocked on her door and she answered me from inside her screen porch. I didn’t see her at first, but consulting my registration list saw—awestruck—that this voter was 91! So we yacked a little through the screen and she invited me to “set,” when she discovered I’d be down there only next week. She was waiting for her daughter who worked at I.U. South Bend’s library (You can be sure I’m going to stop by and say hello to her!) to come take her to vote. I’m sure I was on that porch an hour. We talked of cotton, of catfish. (You feed the “little ones” fertilizer, she said. Farm store fertilizer.) We talked about climbing trees with your four brothers; about mules and “jennies and jacks;” about the heat in Mississippi, about her coming up to South Bend finally, to take care of aging parents who had come during WWII, about what it was like to grow up Black in Mississippi during the Great Depression. She was proud of her family; everybody worked hard to keep food on the table, and she had no complaints about the way life had turned out for her. There she was, 91, in her own little house, healthy (damn skinny though, bones showing through her light housedress) and hale. I’m not sure those were her own teeth, although they were nice looking they were perfect. But her speech was easy to understand and she had a lovely Southern lilt. She loved “the Clintons,” but believed Obama’s message was more than just the talk of a politician. He got people involved; it was her that brought up the Kennedys, not me. 91. Hated “that Bush” for ruining the country and turning everyone against each other. I had, finally, to make my politeness and move on. I saw my friend Conrad Damien across the street mowing his lawn, and I wanted to say hello and get his sense of the “pulse” of the neighborhood before I moved down the block. Conrad was happy with what was going on.
Everywhere I knocked, people were happy to see me, even though others had been in the neighborhood before me. I saw the signs: lit in the screen door of vacant houses, hang-tags newly hung on screen-door knobs. I woke up a short-haul delivery truck driver. He said “Now you woke me up, I’ll take that ride to the polls.” So I went and cleared out my heap’s front seat and rode him over to St. Matt’s and back. My first ride of the day. He wasn’t the least upset at me for persisting to wake him up: he was eager, finally, to vote—for Obama. I learned later, from my third ride of the day, all the way to Stanley Clark school because she hadn’t transferred her address and didn’t have a car, that he had owned three trucks and his own little business, but gas costs had forced him to sell and go back to work for others. She was proud that he was working to “make it” again.
I took a 24-year-old white girl to St. Matts. She was awfully frail and short haired, and she related she was on “chemo” from ovarian cancer (“They think it’s gone.”) but she was optimistic and “loved Obama.” I was proud to take her to vote, and put on the limousine “show” of opening the door and handing her out. That was a gas, so I did it for the rest of the day, to four more rides. The last was another white girl in her twenties who was sitting in her living room when I came up. She threw up her hands and asked one friend who was there to watch her baby. She related on the trip to Lincoln School that I was “the tenth one” to knock on her door for Obama; so she gave up and decided we better get her vote.
Impressions:
The Southeast side is ripe for some “organizing.” There’s some optimism there that I was surprised to discover, but also some eagerness to “get going again.”
I need to get among Black people again. The Irish-Americans are all “like me.” And not just Black people, but other races too; do some work, come out I the sun again, get out of the comfort zone. I don’t know what, but Freedom Summer 08 is a start. It made me happy going up and down, down there.
Lotta vacant houses; come to think of it, lotta vacant houses in my neighborhood too. We need some jobs in this town or we’ll fade into the “labor pool for Notre Dame” instead of the home of Studebaker, Bendix, Wheel-Horse, A.M. General, Harvester, Cummings Diesel—all gone, alas!
We need peace. We need to spend some money on education, not just to employ yours, truly, but get everyone in school again (Kim) and bring up Michiana to a more desirable level. We need to spend American tax money on important stuff; we need to have people proud to pay their taxes because they believe in what’s being done with the money. I hated paying taxes ‘til Bill Clinton got in; lately I’ve resented every nickel given to Bush’s neo-con war machine.
The party after was at the West Side Democratic Club. That place hasn’t changed since I got here in the ‘Sixties. You go in, it smells like Polish sausage and kraut. (Oh how I wish I could still eat that stuff!) Bobby Kennedy could walk back in there and be right at home. Look at the video of his speech in Indianapolis; our crown looked like that, before they heard the sad news. Maybe 60/40 white/black. Mayor and bride, former Congressman Steve Roemer, like it’s real election day. Roemer’s for Obama, so’s the mayor. I leave before the fat lady sings, too tired. One more beer I’d be trouble. I hang with the labor crowd, with the always-astute Steve Francis, who was my choice for congress last time. I hang with the ObamaMamas, who had that lovely rally last Saturday. (“Got questions? Ask your mama!”) Everybody’s cheering the T.V. What I wanted to do was grab a mike and sing this song, get everybody singing with me:
“Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round
Turn me ‘round, turn me ‘round
Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round
Gonna keep on walkin’, keep on talkin’
‘Til we make it to Freedom Land.”
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