Singing anyone?...
One day quite by accident, a fellow Richmond Hi graduate attending Cal suggested I join the university glee club. Why not? I had participated in the high school glee club, could read music and thought it might be a good opportunity to be part of campus life.
I was accepted, but it was little to no fun. The director Bob Commanday (“Robert Paul Commanday... spent the 1950s at UC Berkeley, earning a master’s in musicology, teaching and leading the Glee Club and Treble Clef.” SFGate, Sept. 5, 2015) was not at all friendly, nor were the glee club members. Why? I had not offended anyone, could hold my part... Anti-semitism maybe, I thought.
Nope. The FBI had informed all the members of the Glee Club about my politics and urged a policy of shunning. I left the Glee Club after about a year.
Leo's sabotage at the “Cow Wow”...
In the mid-1950s, Mom used her background in the restaurant trade to open up the “Cow Wow,” a deluxe hamburger and bakery business in Richmond. It was going so well that Mom expanded with an outlet in the nearby El Cerrito: “EL CERRITO PLAZA TENANTS 1969: CAPWELL'S (with Kirby's Restaurant & Lounge and freestanding Tire Center) / F.W. WOOLWORTH (with luncheonette) / LONGS DRUGS (with luncheonette) / LUCKY STORES supermarket/ Cow Wow Bakery...” (MALL HALL OF FAME)
Leo pleaded with her to allow him to share in the business and took over the Plaza operation. On FBI orders, Leo promptly yelled at customers to drive them out, kept the place slovenly and distorted the pricing either up or down... Finally Mom kicked Leo out of the “Cow Wow” before his damage was utterly ruinous.
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Activism kicks up its heels and the US secret political police move to head off real danger...
With the US Senate censure of Joseph McCarthy in December, 1954, the most extreme phase of postwar red-baiting and political repression (McCarthyism) was partially lifted in America.
“… a story that vividly measured how deeply the fear generated by the anti-communist crusade of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his minions had permeated the American soul.
“(The CapTimes reporter) found that 111 Madison (Wisconsin) residents were too scared to sign the (US) Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights on the Fourth of July... Of the 112 people he talked to that day at Madison's Fourth of July celebration in Vilas Park, only one, a Madison insurance agent, agreed to sign the "petition." (50 years ago, fear ruled Fourth: Reporter's petition measured effect of McCarthy, The Cap Times, July 4, 2001)
With McCarthy gone, fear was not quite as all-encompassing as before. Then the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott initiated a new round of progressive struggle in the US.
“The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil-rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system, and one of the leaders of the boycott, a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., emerged as a prominent leader of the American civil rights movement.” (history.com)
The victory in Montgomery demonstrated that mass progressive struggle could achieve some, if only limited, success. An impetus to further struggle.
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The United States secret political police had to act, and as they characteristically do, preemptively.
In a previous post, I explained the rationale “Why Would The US Secret Political Police Set Up An 'Opposition'”? (Dictatorship USA – Part 9АA)
“At first glance, it might seem counter-productive, even absurd for the US government and its secret political police to spend whopping funds and devote enormous energy to sponsor and promote organizations and movements opposed to US policies, even opposed to the US political-economic system itself.
“Not at all 'absurd'... the promotion of a vast and variegated fake internal 'opposition' is entirely appropriate and in fact vital for the dominant ruling class.
“Genuine popular opposition to imperialist policies can and often does arise spontaneously in response to poverty, racism, exploitation, unjust wars, police brutality, official lies, etc. If the ruling class did nothing or, acting through its repressive organs, only overtly oppressed and jailed or killed activists, the class enemy and its dictatorship-state would become fully exposed. Genuine movements for progressive and eventually revolutionary change could become massive. Moreover, with the growth of genuine mass movements, progressive and genuine revolutionary ideology could develop with striking force.
“It is far, far, far better for the reactionary US (and not only the US!) ruling class to organize a manifold variety of fake movements which the secret political police entirely control. A great deal of noise and “furor” can be generated, but nothing permanent or meaningful develops. And the “movements” can be turned off when needed.
“Such massive fakery also serves to entrap unsuspecting honest activists, who find themselves not among comrades-in-struggle, but among disguised enemy... Moreover, a plethora of false 'peoples' or 'progressive' or 'communist' organizations and movements give the abjectly phony perception of the United States of America as a 'democracy.'”
Thus, the FBI gave birth on the UC Berkeley campus to:
“SLATE, a pioneer organization of the New Left and precursor of the Free Speech Movement and formative counterculture era, was a campus political party at the University of California, Berkeley from 1958 to 1966...
“SLATE took positions on a number of controversial public issues that emerged in its first years. It supported a Berkeley fair housing ordinance in 1959, opposed the hearings conducted by the House SUn-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in San Francisco in May 1960, supported the national Woolworth-Kress boycott called by civil rights organizations, opposed the execution of Caryl Chessman at San Quentin, and opposed continued nuclear weapon testing. SLATE also continued its advocacy for on-campus issues, including an end to compulsory ROTC, elimination of the Communist speaker ban, academic freedom, the rights of student organizations... “ (SLATE. Wikipedia)
I tried to become active in SLATE, but was rebuffed whenever I tried. There was no place for honest activists in this “movement.”
The real, reactionary essence of SLATE is evident in the later history of its “leaders:” “David Armor, SLATE's only student body president, made an unsuccessful run for a Los Angeles Congressional district in 1982 as a Reagan Republican, and Rick White found his neoconservative views treated respectfully... Jackie Goldberg served on the Los Angeles school board and city council and in the California Assembly, and Bill Lockyer for 25 years was in the California State Legislature, and would go on to serve as Attorney General of California...” (SLATE, Wikipedia)
Onetime “left-wing radicals” all – FBI version.
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Перед нами сейчас - коварный и опасный мошенник, расист, лжец и фашист Дональд Трамп, порочный Конгресс, нацистские ФБР - ЦРУ, кровавые милитаристы США и НАТО >>> а также и лживые, вредоносные американские СМ»И».
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Правительство США жестоко нарушало мои права человека при проведении кампании террора, которая заставила меня покинуть свою родину и получить политическое убежище в СССР. См. книгу «Безмолвный террор — История политических гонений на семью в США» - "Silent Terror: One family's history of political persecution in the United States» - arnoldlockshin.wordpress.com
Правительство США еще нарушает мои права, в течении 14 лет отказывается от выплаты причитающейся мне пенсии по старости. Властители США воруют пенсию!!
ФСБ - Федеральная служба «безопасности» России - вслед за позорным, предавшим страну предшественником КГБ, мерзко выполняет приказы секретного, кровавого хозяина (boss) - американского ЦРУ (CIA). Среди таких «задач» - мне запретить выступать в СМИ и не пропускать большинства отправленных мне комментариев. А это далеко не всё...
Арнольд Локшин, политэмигрант из США
BANNED – ЗАПРЕЩЕНО!!
ЦРУ - ФСБ забанили все мои посты и комментарии в Вконтакте!
… и в Макспарке!