Remembering Gideon Rosenbluth

I spent a good chunk of yesterday at a memorial celebration for a great comrade, Gideon Rosenbluth, who died last fall. 80 people--family, neighbors, fellow union members and veterans, and, in large numbers, those who had been his comrades in the '70s and '80s--gathered to remember him.

Rather than starting this post at the obvious place, by reprinting the short review of Gideon's life from the memorial flier everyone present was given, I want to reprint the moving message Michael McPhearson, the executive director of Veterans For Peace, sent from St. Louis. His message cites the connection between Gideon and another comrade who died last year, Dave Cline, whose life Fire on the Mountain has posted about extensively, starting here.

Michael's words also contain a profound and sorrowful insight, which I have taken the liberty of highlighting in boldface, because they resonate so strongly with me:

I last spoke to Gideon Rosenbluth sometime ago after he left NYC. He was in good spirits and wanted to know what was happening nationally. He asked me about VFP vets in Kentucky and if they were active. We talked for a while. Before I hung up I promised to call him back and said I hoped to see him in the near future. Unfortunately, we never talked again.

Gideon was one of the first veterans I met when I joined Veterans For Peace. He, with a handful of others, was the first WWII vet outside of my uncle with whom I really had a chance to sit and talk. I met him during one of the NYC veteran meetings. I was impressed with his sharpness and fierce resistance to the hypocritical and immoral actions of our government. At the time he was also on the VFP board. I was recently reading past VFP board minutes and guess who nominated David Cline for VFP Board of Directors President on January 13, 2002 in Saint Louis ? That’s right, Gideon.

Gideon’s death is very sad for me because I wanted to know this great man better, but the demands of the struggle against this war have taken over all of our lives, and at the time his as well. Ironically the war has brought people together who would have never know each other, like me and Gideon. Then it steals our time and emotions from us so that we cannot fully enjoy life with each other. Gideon is a comrade VFP will sorely miss and one we are all happy and lucky to have known.

Thank you Gideon from everyone in VFP and especially from those who had the honor to serve with you.

Michael T. McPhearson
Veterans For Peace
Executive Director

What follows is a brief outline of Gideon's life, in the form it was given out at the celebration. A slideshow by his nephew and testimony from many who knew him put flesh on these bare bones and conjured up the Gideon we know and loved. Some of us want to try and set up a permanent website where all of this material and more can be available to those who knew him and to the many more who might benefit from the lessons his life story holds.

Gideon
1919-2007

Gideon Irving Rosenbluth

Born to a working class family in 1919, Gideon grew up poor in a Jewish neighborhood in New York, as it was rocked by the Great Depression. His family, his community and the broader world became a school where he learned that survival required struggle and class solidarity.

Gideon enlisted in the Army right after Pearl Harbor in 1941. He served in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany, and was demobilized as T-5 (sergeant) in 1945.

After the war, Gideon became a garment worker. He worked in the needle trades for 35 years, and was an active rank and filer in his union, District 65. When he felt the union leadership was wrong, Gideon was not one to bite his tongue. Even after he retired in the 1980’s and District 65 was merged into the United Auto Workers, Gideon served for years as President of UAW Local 2179 Retirees.

Gideon also became active around veteran's issues at the war's end, joining the battle in NYC for housing for married vets. (He and his wife Phyllis needed it, for themselves and their daughter Karen Eve Pass.) This was another struggle he stuck with for the rest of his life. He was active in supporting Veterans from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, protested the Vietnam War as a veteran, and became a core member of Chapter 34 of Veterans For Peace, becoming especially active after the invasion of Iraq.

Gideon Rosenbluth was, and remained to his death, a revolutionary, convinced that a better world is possible and determined to help bring that world into being. Those who came to know him over the last two or three decades of his life were always surprised to hear how old he really was. His verve, his sense of humor, his appetite for living and for struggling, kept him in the thick of things until close to the end.

He is missed...

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Dave Cline: Rank & File Rebel, Introduction

In an hour, I will be on my way to Jersey City, NJ where a ceremony will accompany the placing of a plaque honoring Dave Cline on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Community Center in Pershing Field. Dave is being honored because of his extensive work on behalf of veterans there, as recounted in this story from the Jersey City Reporter.

But for me, Jersey City is not just where Dave made his home. It is the home of the US Postal Service's New Jersey Bulk & Foreign Mail Center, the largest postal facility in the country and the scene of important wildcat strikes in 1974 and 1977, in which Dave played a leading role.

I was reminded of this a couple weeks ago by a two page article in the most recent issue of the Union Mail, the newspaper of the New York Metro Area Postal Union (part of the American Postal Workers Union) remembering Dave. It was written by Flo Summergrad, another veteran of the struggles at the Bulk in those days. Flo still works at the Bulk and is active in defending postal workers against management attacks from the national level right down to the shop floor!

I knew it was time to keep the promise I made when I posted four pieces about Dave Cline in September. Those concentrated on his well-known role as a leader of the veterans and anti-war movements, where he made his greatest contributions, but I said I'd try to do something on his role as a rank and file union militant as well.

This is being posted in four parts (reading down, not up): this introduction, an overview of the 1978 postal wildcat by labor historian Michael Braun, followed by two poems drawing on the events of 1978, by Sean Ahern and Martin Zehr. This is only the tip of the iceberg, however. Much more remains to be written about these struggles. Bob? Chris? Lee? Jay? Ken? C'mon folks, chip in a little to this tribute to someone we all miss...

This is a plugger for a documentary film about the 1977 struggle.

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Dave Cline: Rank & File Rebel, Part 1

[I am very deeply obliged to scholar Michael Braun. At my request, Michael wrote this summary of the 1978 postal wildcat strike, in which Dave Cline was a key leader, based on a far more extensive paper Michael has written in preparation for doing a doctoral dissertation and publishing a book on this important working class battle. Without Michael's work, we might never have had Dave's reflections on these events 30 years later! Other posts under this heading are here, here, and introduced here.]

The 1978 Postal Wildcat

The 1974 "Battle of the Bulk"

In 1974, Dave Cline went to work for the United States Postal Service at their New Jersey Bulk and Foreign Mail Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, right across the river from NYC. The Bulk, as it was called, was not your mythical sleepy neighborhood post office with a single postal employee slowly sorting the mail. The Bulk was the first of twenty-one bulk mail centers, which were going to be the linchpins in a plan to quickly and aggressively transform the old sluggish United States Post Office into the United States Postal Service (USPS), an industrial giant.

The BMCs were created and placed outside the major urban centers to churn out the mail like the auto plants of Detroit made cars or the steel mills of Chicago-Gary turned out steel ingots. They were massive industrial factories filled with machinery and thousands of USPS workers where automation, massive use of new mail-sorting machinery and modern corporate methods became the order of the day. Workers protested the speedup, sub-standard safety conditions, and draconian repressive management measures that accompanied the creation of the BMC. The USPS saw increased profits and efficiency in its new facilities and new corporate management structure, while postal workers saw increased degradation and misery.

The Vietnam War was near its end and many of the new postal workers were veterans, partially reflecting the USPS quasi-federal governmental civil service hiring policy. Veterans received five extra points on the employment exam, while disabled veterans received an additional five points on top of that. Some Vietnam veterans infused the Bulk rank and file movement with their élan and character which at times was reflected in the militancy in the insurgency. Dave Cline, who had been shot three times in Vietnam reflected

That is one thing about returning soldiers, they expect better. That was one of the driving forces of our movement. We had a lot of ‘Namies.

Dave Cline became one of the leaders of the rank-and file insurgency at the Bulk. He joined Outlaw, an “anti-imperialist organization of postal workers” which had active members in USPS facilities throughout the New York City metro area. Outlaw emerged from the aftermath of nine-day 1970 postal strike where 173,000 workers successfully defied no-strike laws aimed at federal employees. The militancy of the 1970 strike was centered in New York City.

Dave was one of the leaders of a successful 4-day “job action” in 1974 at the Bulk protesting the USPS arbitrary changing of work schedules. Dave was a union steward of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), but also a big critic of the APWU’s leadership. Union leadership in the United States at this time, especially on the national level, was complacent, often more interested in collaboration with management than fighting for worker’s rights, and treacherous at times in foiling attempts by the rank and file to organize itself. The APWU was no different; Outlaw, with Dave as one of its leaders, was often locked in battle with Moe Biller, the president of the Metro local which represented all APWU members in the New York City area. Pitched battles, with chairs flying, erupted at union meetings, as Outlaw brought hundreds of Bulk workers to fight against the undemocratic methods of Biller and his cronies.

Dave, Ken Leiner, and P. McClosky were fired in 1976 and this had a chilling effect on the insurgency at the Bulk. However, one and a half years later the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that the USPS had acted illegally since they had terminated the three activists for what was deemed “union activity”. Leiner, Cline and McClosky got their jobs back, back pay, and marched back into the plant in April 1978. “I played it to the hilt, I walked in down the main aisle, with my fists over my head-Rocky style,” remembered Dave.



The return of Leiner, Cline, and McClosky invigorated the moral of many militants at the Bulk and led to the formation of a new organization called the Good Contract Committee (GCC) to agitate around the new contract coming due in July 1978. They formulated demands such as Decent Wage Increase, Improved Cost of Living, No Mandatory Overtime, Right to Strike and others. The postal activists launched a newspaper called P.O.W. ( Post Office Worker) and distributed fifteen thousand issues at the Bulk, in New York and nationwide through contacts with other postal rank and file groups. Seventy-five thousand leaflets were distributed at postal facilities between May and the end of July 1978. The button of the GCC read “No Takeaways, Tradeoffs or Sellout. Good Contract in ’78.”

The New York locals of the APWU and the NALC issued calls for two demonstrations in front of the Manhattan GPO on 33rd Street to agitate around the contract in the months before the July 20th contract deadline. The GCC played a major role in building these demonstrations which attracted several thousand postal workers each time. Members of the GCC organized other Bulk workers to go to a July 13th rally in Washington, DC, where 6,000 disgruntled postal workers from around the US marched from the Washington Monument to the new, sleek headquarters of the USPS. “No Contract-No Work” was the most popular chant from the demonstration which postal executives described as the loudest and largest display they could recall.

However after midnight, July 20th in Washington, D.C. after the old contract had run out , postal management, the national union leadership, and the Carter Administration, amidst repeated talk of strike possibilities manufactured a collective agreement, which ignored most rank and file postal workers’ concerns. In Jersey City, N.J., a militant rank and file, with diverse and active rank and file leaders like Dave Cline would, in their desire to obtain what they considered to be a good and equitable contract, confront the USPS, their national and local union leadership, and the federal government with an informational picket line which with grew into a wildcat strike action. Dave, in remembering that 5:30 AM picket line said,

We were thinking about a nation-wide “Vote No” movement on the contract. We did not think strike action was in the picture at all… We thought an anti-contract demonstration could possibly spearhead a significant rank and file opposition, a “Vote No” to the contract.

Bulk workers were so angry at the meagerness of the proposed contract and what they saw as their national union leadership’s “sellout” that over ninety percent refused to go to work that morning and for the next four days the Jersey City postal plant was effectively shut down with Dave Cline and the rest of the Good Contract Committee in the leadership.

The Bulk Jersey City wildcat strike lasted from July 21-25, 1978 in an attempt to nullify the tentative national contract agreement between the various postal unions and the USPS. The conflict spread till eventually 4,750 postal workers were on strike nationwide. The Richmond, California bulk center was effectively shut down almost as long as the Bulk in Jersey City. There were two or three day walkouts in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia and sporadic walkouts or protests in Chicago, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Kearny, New Jersey, Miami, and Los Angeles at other bulk mail centers. After the strike was broken, 125 workers were fired, 130 were temporarily suspended, 2,500 received letters of warning, the union memberships did not ratify the proposed settlement, and an arbitrated contract settlement was imposed.

The 1978 wildcat strike was the largest strike of federal employees since the massive 1970 walkout of 173,000 postal workers during the creation of the USPS and the institution of federal employee collective bargaining. The 1978 Bulk wildcat strike was not surpassed in size among federal employees until 11,500 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) struck in August 1981.

Dave Cline was one of the Bulk workers who was fired and never got his job back. A vigorous three year amnesty campaign was successful in restoring many strikers to their jobs, but Dave was one of a few denied reinstatement because of his leadership role in the wildcat. Dave eventually got another job as a toll keeper for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) where he was an active steward and a valuable member of the bargaining committee of TWU Local 510, which represents Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) employees working at the MTA bridge and tunnel tollbooths and the three metro area airports for many years.

Dave Cline is a true hero of the working class. We remember him and honor him for his long and outstanding role as a leader in the veterans, labor and anti-war movements. Dave Cline ¡Presente!

The quotes from Dave Cline were taken from an interview with him on April 20, 2007.

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Dave Cline: Rank & File Rebel, Part 2

[This poem by Sean Ahern, a comrade of Dave's in the battles with the US Postal Service and the postal union leadership, comes out of a long close connection born in struggle. The "Clarence" referred to in the 6th stanza is the late Clarence Fitch, for whom the New York/New Jersey chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War is named. More about Dave, Clarence and what Sean is writing about can be found in the excellent documentary film, Another Brother. Other posts under this heading are here, here and introduced here.]


DC

I remember
Strong arms and shoulders
That pulled the cops off me
More than once
At GPO almost 30 years ago.

I remember the picket lines
In January and July
And flying chairs in Union meetings.

I remember the Editor
On Grove Street
Beating out
Sparse prose that meant something
On that selectric
For the leaflets and newspapers
That we hand cut and pasted and argued over
Using the three draft method
All night long.

I remember
That big old twelve string
Pounding out the blues.
I still have those Leadbelly, and
Robert Johnson tapes you made
For me.

I remember the basso voice
That filled my kitchen
And scared my little girl
And he cried with her
And for himself
"Don't sweat it Dave,
She's just a baby
You didn't mean no harm"
"She's afraid of me"
He grimaced, angry with himself

Thirty years ago
We fought hard,
Drank hard
Loved hard
Played hard
Too hard for our own
Good.
He flew by too fast
With war wounds that
Never really healed
I was 12 years junior
Who saw the scars
On the outside
But not
The ones on the inside.
I didn't get it
That you and Clarence
Left a war in Vietnam
For a war a home
With no chance to heal
The drink and drugs
Eased pain and caused more
I thought it was a
All part of the good fight and
Good times
Until Clarence shook his head
And asked me
"How can you just stop?"

I wish I could have been
A better friend to you both.
But life pulled me away.

DC, Drum major
For peace and freedom
Pounding out a beat
From Vietnam to Iraq

There beat a mighty heart
DC, Big brother
A diamond in the rough

Goodbye old friend
Warrior for peace
I remember so much more
And carry on
Thinking of you
With love


Sean Ahern
9/16/07

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Dave Cline: Rank & File Rebel, Part 3

[This poem, which looks at Dave Cline's whole life, starts with his role in the postal struggles of the '70s. It appeared at this site once before, in the comments section on the piece I wrote the day Dave died. I think it deserves broader distribution. Other posts under this heading are here, here and introduced here.]

A Tribute to Dave Cline
(by an old companero, Martin Zehr)

The union hacks in postal called him a "chronic malcontent";
And how right they were.
Never giving up the fight, never conceding defeat.
The work he did is our legacy,
The vision he held our hope.
A future without him is left missing a link,
The chains he sought to break are weaker for his work.

Stand fast vets!
Honor the combatants for justice,
The malcontents who strive for better,
March ceasely forward for humanity,
Fists raised in defiance
rifles pointed to the ground..
End the ceaseless slaughters,
stop the bloody carnages.
Dave's work is done,
much work remains.

Dewey Canyon III is the memorial
That negates all the lies,
Like the fire within Dave,
Formed from the anger of GIs
Never willing to surrender.

Chronic malcontents in their own time,
Never satisfied while others died,
Organizing for a better world,
Leaving it for us to carry it on..

The Russian poet, Tyutchev wrote:
"Blessed is he who visited this world
In moments of its fateful deeds:
The highest Gods invited him to come,
A guest, with them to sit at feast
And be a witness of their mighty spectacle."

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Brecht and Life: Two Poems [updated]

Here for your consideration are two short pieces by the German communist playwright, Bertolt Brecht.

I had been going to include death in the title of this post, because I decided to write it on Sunday, while I was at the memorial service for Annette Rubinstein, a personal hero, but in reading the two pieces, I realized they are really about something else. That something is what my friend Kathy Chamberlain calls the question of "how to be in the world."

I've have posted four pieces here at FotM in recent weeks about Dave Cline who died recently (and there's one more coming, for sure). The first one I crossposted at the left liberal DailyKos site, where several comments referred to this Brecht piece:

In Praise of the Fighters

Those who are weak don't fight.
Those who are stronger might fight
for an hour.
Those who are stronger still might fight
for many years.
The strongest fight
their whole life.
They are the indispensable ones.

That's from the version of The Mother that Brecht did with composer Hans Eisler in 1931.

While it is true, and provides a concise reminder of what we have lost with Dave's death, it also sets the bar a little higher than most of us are going to be able to reach.

So I was very glad that the cover of the little memorial book at Sunday's event for Annette featured another Brecht fragment:

Everything Changes

Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your latest breath.
But what has happened has happened. And the water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again.

What has happened has happened. The water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again, but
Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your latest breath.

Annette, who loved Brecht, was particularly partial to this poem, saying that in it Brecht has "succeeded in summing up the law of dialectics."

I don't know about that, but dialectical it is.

Yet as we know from our own experience, and from recent developments in cognition theory, fresh starts aren't always so easy to make.

But it's worth trying. And if it can help us make contributions like Dave and Annette did (and Bill Davis and Gideon Rosenbluth, and other fighters we have lost recently), it's worth trying hard...

UPDATE: I have revised the translation of "Everything Changes" to keep it materialist and not just dialectical.

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Dave Cline Part 4: Good-Bye, Bro...

Dave Clines's remains get cremated tonight, after a viewing and brief memorial service in Jersey City. I'll probably wind up with a bunch of vets from all over sleeping on my floor afterwards. Seems like a lot of people want to come and show their respects

Today I am posting a video of a speech Dave gave during the historic Walkin' To New Orleans protest of veterans and Katrina survivors in the spring of 2006. There are a number of other speeches of Dave's up on YouTube, but this one makes it crystal clear just how much we have lost. Please watch it.



In this brief talk, his voice ravaged by days of chanting and cadences while we marched, Dave give a matter of fact recounting of how the March came to be. In a few short minutes, he shows the depth of political understanding and grasp of how a movement has to address everyday folks that he had developed oin decades of struggle. Watching, we can understand how he did so much to build the vets and military families component, the spearhead, of the anti-war movement. He shows in practical terms the real ties that exist between the anti-war movement and other struggles, like the Black movement in the South, and how those ties can be built on if people only show a willingness to do the work. And his delight at the end, where he shows what he learned in the meetings we held with Black churches every night along the march route--man, Dave never stopped learning...

Gordon Soderberg, a New Orleans-based vet who was on the March the whole way, shot this footage and quicly cut and posted it on YouTube at my request. Gordon pointed out to me in an email that this was the only speech Dave gave in the whole week of the March:

David did not do long speeches. He was always direct and to the point. This was his only speech in public during the March. I was at every stop except at the churches, Stan Goff and Ward Reilly would be able to confirm. During the planning of the march David stated the this was for IVAW members to lead and find their public voices. VVAW and VFP were there for support and transportation not the limelight.

And this highlights still another important role Walkin' to New Orleans played. It was, to that time, the largest gathering where Iraq War vets came together for more than a few hours at a demonstration or meeting. The bonding that went on as we moved through the shattered Gulf Coast was an important step in the evolution of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

[For those, like me, who are reading everything we can in order to, at one and the same time, come to grips with Dave's death and seal the lessons we learned from him in our brains, here are a couple of links you might want to track down.

• One of IVAW's founders, Mike Hoffman, pays a moving tribute to Dave's role as midwife to the IVAW at the organization's website.
  

• There are online memorial "guestbooks" at the websites of both Veterans For Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War, where you can read tributes from Dave's old comrades, and new ones, and folks who never met him, but whose lives he touched.
  

• Dave's hometown paper, the Jersey Journal, published a respectful obituary.
  

And to learn more about Marchin' To New Orleans, and Dave's role in it, you could do worse than look at "Spearpoint," the summation by Stan Goff. Dave and Stan were the two who did the most to make it happen.

• Spearpoint, Part 1
• Spearpoint, Part 2
• Spearpoint, Part 3
• Spearpoint, Part 4

If you have other links to suggest, please post them in the comments.]

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Dave Cline, Part 3: The First Memorial

[photo by celticshel]

Friends, comrades and those who who may never have known Dave Cline, but want to pay tribute to a great fighter for peace, freedom and justice, can attend Dave's viewing and memorial service in Jersey City, NJ:

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 Viewing 6 pm-9 pm
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 Viewing 2 pm-4 pm, 6 pm-8 pm
Memorial Service 8 pm - 9 pm

Mc Laughlin Funeral Home
625 Pavonia Ave
Jersey City, NJ 07306
(201) 798-8700

This is far from the last memorial for Dave , to be sure.

More significant, it's not the first. That took place in Washington, DC on Sunday morning, as members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace and VVAW were released from the DC jails after their arrests in the Die-In protest at the Capitol steps on September 15.

Vietnam-era vet and longstanding friend of Dave's Pat McCann tells the story:

200+ of us got arrested beginning at 4pm EST on the US Capitol steps. 192 of us were booked at a US Capitol Police station in SE. Most of us spent 3-5 hours in handcuffs on the buses, then 9 - 10 hours in processing lockup. As I write, my wrists are still swollen and numb from the plastic handcuffs (which many of us eventually found our way out of). Who cares, I'm pumped! They have picked up a rock, only to drop it on their own foot. Like the youth of Soweto in 1976, we have only been emboldened by the experience!

We raised hell in that lockup! We criticized ourselves for being too cooperative when busted, and made immediate steps to correct that early mistake. Our militance rose decibels by the hour. When they told us to be silent, we laughed and chanted. When they told us to sit, we stood.

After we were busted, IVAW went through the crowd raising $100 bail for each of their members who were arrested. Half of the national leadership of both IVAW and VFP were still in lockup at 4 this morning, 12 hours after we were busted.

I have never experienced such a learning curve in my life as I did these past 15 hours. We militantly resisted the police, strategized, and built community. We know now what we will do the next time we are busted in a mass way. We will develop mass responses from those who weren't busted to support those who were. Today was historical, and we have every intention of spreading our experience. 2006 was a year where mobilization turned to resistance; 2007 is the year to deepen the resistance! As a first step, we need to develop nationwide reports of what went down in the US Capitol Police processing center in SE DC.

Dave Cline, past president of VFP (2001 - 2007) and national organizer for VVAW, passed, the night before our night in lockup. As I head down with others to the Vietnam Memorial Wall to hold the first of what will be many memorials to him, I can think of no one who has contributed more to the US movement for peace. Dave, we know that you are proud of us for wasting no time to fill the tremendous void that you and Bill Davis have left! We miss you so much, but are so happy at where you helped to bring us in our movement.

Letting it go here; the tears flow again. As Rev. Yearwood of the Hip-Hop Caucus said yesterday, "Let's go get them."

Nuff luv and respect to all, P-Mac

This photo, by longtime vet activist Bill Perry, shows the gathering at the Wall that the freed protesters and their supporters held in Dave Cline's honor.



And Thomas Brinson, of VFP Chapter 138, Long Island, who spent the night in jail with Pat and took part in the Sunday morning memorial, was moved to write this afterwards:

Memoriam

The circle of us war veterans and supporters
Stood solemn in tattered grief in a circle on the dewy lawn
Opposite the poignant point of the long and deep black stone V
Marking all the lost veterans from one other distant unnecessary war

Most of us had just been released from fourteen-and-a-half hours
Of bureaucratic harassment by storm trooper US Capitol Police
For exercising the rights that many of us once ideally had thought
We were fighting to preserve in far-off foreign places such as the
Rock Pile, Anbar Province, Central Highlands, Tora Boro, Iron Triangle
Where Dave, our just passed brother yesterday morning,
Had brutally fought and been mortally wounded forty years ago

We were each sharing our tearful remembrances of Dave,
Valiant Veteran Activist, each of us touched in our own way
By memories of his tireless service to all victims of war anywhere
When a portly US Park Ranger told us we were unauthorized to do so
Since we were conducting an illegal political rally
Because one of us was carrying a Veterans For Peace flag
We respected her instructions to move away from the Wall
To finished our impromptu memorial service for Dave

As we finished our somber file along the Wall of engraved stone
Each of us touching a name as Dave had sung about
In his raspy, tear-seasoned voice while in East New Orleans
On the Veterans and Survivors Gulf Coast March he had organized
High-booted motorcycle cops confronted us and sternly ordered
We fold up the Veterans For Peace flag or be again arrested

I broke away from the group engaging the just-following-orders cops
Looked up at the three-warrior statue of us in our long-ago lost youth
Followed their heart-stricken gaze of bewildered grief at all our names
Saluted Dave, the latest addition to that black corridor of needless death
Thanked him for clearing away the stormy skies with his strong spirit
As he finally escaped the emaciated hull of his skin-and-bones body
So we his brothers and sisters could march in the bright sunlight
Of a new day for the never-ending struggle for peace with justice

September 17, 2007
Long Beach, NY

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Remembering Dave Cline: Part 2

This blog is going to be all Dave Cline for a while. I start by posting the incredibly moving tribute to Dave by Nancy and Charlie Lessin, co-founders of Military Families Speak Out. This puts meat on the bones of what I started to lay out here at FotM on Saturday when I heard the news of Dave's death:

Dave Cline will someday, in a better world, stand recognized as one of the great figures in the history of the United States since the Second World War.

The next two posts will highlight the first memorial to Dave--one so steeped in the struggle to end the occupation of Iraq Dave would have laughed--and one on an aspect of his life that has not been commented much so far, the time he spent as a militant rank and file union activist, who helped lead the "Battle of the Bulk" wildcat strike against the U.S. Postal Service in the late '70s.


A Death in the Family

We received word early on the morning of September 15th that Dave Cline had passed away at his home in Jersey City, New Jersey the night before. We are saddened beyond words to lose this extraordinary hero, warrior for peace, and friend.

We first met Dave before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in January, 2003, when the drumbeats for war were getting deafening. Dave was the president of Veterans For Peace, and he invited Military Families Speak Out to march with the Veterans For Peace contingent in a national demonstration in Washington, D.C. opposing a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

MFSO had formed just two months before, in November, 2002. We were at that time a small group of military families with loved ones already on their way to the Persian Gulf, or being prepared in various ways for deployment. The Veterans For Peace contingent included Vietnam Veterans and Veterans from other conflicts. They had signs calling out President Bush and Vice President Cheney as chicken-hawks who had never served in combat but were all too happy to send our children, our loved ones and another generation into a war on false pretences.

As we marched, Dave led us in cadence that spoke to us in a very special way:

HEY, HEY UNCLE SAM
WE REMEMBER VIET NAM
WE DON’T WANT YOUR IRAQ WAR
PEACE IS WHAT WE’RE MARCHIN’ FOR

IF THEY TELL YOU TO GO
THERE IS SOMETHING YOU SHOULD KNOW
THEY WAVE THE FLAG WHEN YOU ATTACK
WHEN YOU COME HOME THEY TURN THEIR BACK

BUSH AND CHENEY TALK THAT TALK
BUT WE KNOW THEY’RE CHICKEN HAWKS
IF THEY THINK THEY’RE SO DAMN RIGHT
LET BUSH AND CHENEY GO TO FIGHT

Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace became a family that January, and we have never been apart since. For this, we have Dave Cline to thank.

Dave brought Military Families Speak Out into the planning for a Veterans For Peace event in Washington, DC called “Operation Dire Distress”, to take place at the end of March, 2003. As it turned out, Operation Dire Distress took place about a week and a half after the bombs began dropping on Baghdad. Operation Dire Distress ended up being the first national event protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. While many other groups seemed to suffer a set-back in organizing once hostilities began, Operation Dire Distress helped Veterans For Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Military Families Speak Out move forward strategically and together, without missing a beat, to build our voices as Veterans and Military Families speaking out to separate “support for our troops” from “support for the war,” and to urge an end to a war we had hoped would never have started.

Dave Cline’s phone number was entered in our ‘speed dials;’ and his counsel, advice, vision and strategic sense helped MFSO grow during those first months of hostilities and beyond. On July 2, 2003, when George Bush uttered his infamous “Bring ‘em on!” in response to a reporter’s question about the presence of an armed Iraqi resistance, we were on the phone with Dave Cline in a heartbeat. With Dave and others we formulated a response, a campaign to challenge Bush’s statement and the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. As George Bush was saying “Bring ‘em on,” we said, “Bring ‘em home!” Out of these conversations grew the Bring Them Home NOW! campaign in August, 2003. This campaign planted a pole for the peace/anti-war movement and the country as a whole; as the months and years went by, more and more have moved to this position.

Dave Cline continued to be a large part of the heart and soul of the movement to end the war in Iraq. He supported Military Families Speak Out in more ways than we can ever express. On the painful first anniversary of this unjust and unjustifiable war, VFP, MFSO and others went to Fayetteville, North Carolina to hold a “Support Our Troops – Bring Them Home NOW” rally. Dave’s new set of cadences included a special one for Military Families Speak Out:

MILITARY FAMILIES SPEAK OUT
WE KNOW WHAT WE’RE TALKING BOUT
SONS AND DAUGHTERS, HUSBANDS, WIVES
BRING OUR LOVED ONES HOME ALIVE

With all due respect to those who have led cadence during demonstrations over the years and across the country, no one could do it quite like Dave. His voice would echo in our ears; now and for all time it will echo in our hearts.

In July, 2004 at the Veterans For Peace Conference in Boston, Massachusetts we stood proudly with Dave Cline and other members of Veterans For Peace and Military Families Speak Out as the eight founding members of a new organization – Iraq Veterans Against the War – held their first press conference. Dave was there at the beginning of that organization as well, and shared advice, counsel, vision and strategic planning with IVAW as it grew into the powerful organization it is today.

There is so much that Dave Cline helped to accomplish, building the movement for peace and justice over the years, across the country and around the world. We are so thankful that Dave Cline came into our lives when he did. His wit and wisdom helped guide the formation of Military Families Speak Out and our growth from 2 military families in November, 2002 to almost 3,700 today. We thank Dave for the inspiration, guidance and love that he gave to us, and to so many others.

Rest in Peace, Dave Cline!
With Gratitude and Love - In Peace and Solidarity,

Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson
Co-founders, Military Families Speak Out
September 16, 2007

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Dave Cline Is Dead

Dave Cline died last night at his home in Jersey City, NJ.

In one sense it comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked closely with Dave in recent years. He had lived for two decades with a severely compromised immune system and had recently been battling both Hepatitis C and the Veterans Administration health care system, which did a shitty job of treating it.

Stan Goff reached me first with the news, crying at the loss. I have been surrounded by death recently--Stans's call came while I was sitting in a memorial service for an old friend, longtime fighter for socialism and Black liberation Vicki Garvin.

The news hasn't really sunk in yet, and I have no idea how it will hit when it does, or how hard.

But I do want to say a few things right now to set some context for what will surely be a great outpouring of sorrow and memory in weeks to come.

Dave Cline will someday, in a better world, stand recognized as one of the great figures in the history of the United States since the Second World War. After a tour in Vietnam as a grunt, where he was shot and shot at others, he returned to become an early member and leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Through tireless organizing and dramatic events like Operation Dewey Canyon III, where hundreds of vets threw their medals on the Capitol steps, and the Winter Soldier Hearings into war crimes committed during the occupation of Vietnam, VVAW did much to finally doom the U.S. government's murderous assault on the heroic people of Vietnam.

I have here on my desk a 1969 flier from SDS (the original one, not version 2.0) on the GI Revolt. It's an interview with Dave and another vet, fresh out of uniform and into the anti-war struggle. I am reminded by it to recommend that everyone reading this check out the recent documentary "Sir, No Sir!" Dave is featured in it as a young vet and as a present-day fighter against the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

And this last role is where Dave truly became great. He stayed active in VVAW right up to the present day, but also joined another organization called Veterans For Peace, which united vets from all eras in an essentially pacifist oppostion to war, military recruitng, US aggression abroad and the neglect of those who had served in the armed forces.

Dave Cline was in his first term as president of Vets For Peace when the attack on the World Trade Center took place. He helped guide the small group through a period of war fever and jingoism in this country and growing concern as the Bush/Cheney regime prepared to attack Iraq--and did. Dave presided over the rapid, severalfold growth of VFP and its conversion into a dynamic and leading force against the war. He helped forge a tight alliance with Military Families Speak Out and birth the Bring Them Home Now! campaign. The handful of young men and women just back from Iraq who initiated Iraq Veterans Against the War consulted with Dave on a near-daily basis and grew to become the most dynamic element in the alliance.

This alliance has played the role of spearhead in the movement to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home now. Without a sharp point, capable of cutting through defenses, a spear is just a fat stick, but without the weight of the spear, the whole anti-war movement, behind it, the spearhead lacks real momentum. Just weeks ago I was discussing with him the role this force could play in the Iraq Moratorium project.

Dave was the leader of this informal but vital alliance of forces with roots in the "military community" or, it would be more accurate to say, he gave it leadership. He could play this role because of his long experience, and because of how he had summed up and internalized that esxperience. That was in no small part a matter of style. Dave could be contentious but he had also become genuinely humble and thoughtful, always trying to avoid repeating mistakes he had made earlier in the struggle and also to help others avoid those mistakes or sum them up quickly and move on.

One instance where the breadth of his contribution can be seen most clearly is in the historic "Walkin' To New Orleans" march of veterans and survivors of Hurricane Katrina from Mobile to New Orleans last year on the fourth anniversary of the invasion. The conception of the march, linking the horrors of the war with the horrors of Katrina and concretely working to bring the struggle of Black people in the South closer to heart of the anti-war movement--that was Dave's. And, with Stan Goff and a handful of others, he saw to the planning and execution of the march as well.

Hell, there's so much more I could say about Dave, now the floodgates are open, about his revolutionary stance until the day he died, of the arrogance of the young Dave and the kindness of the older one, concerning the drinking and the clay feet, about the music.

But I will close by underlining my basic point: Dave Cline made a substantial difference in the world. He did it by struggling against oppression and militarism; he did it by drawing lessons from earlier battles and by living those lessons, so he, and all who worked with him, could fight better in the new struggles history presented us with.

Call it wisdom. Call it leadership. We have suffered a great loss, and those who feel that loss are just going to have to step up and try to fill the hole.

 
[UPDATE: More Dave Cline memories:

Remembering Dave Cline, Part 2 (a moving tribute by Nancy and Charlie Richardson of Military Families Speak Out)

Dave Cline, Part 3: The First Memorial

Dave Cline, Part 4: Goodbye, Bro... ( a short talk by Dave in NOLA, more memories and some links)

Fire on the Mountain also carried a series of four articles on Dave's activism as a militant labor rank and filer, especially in the major wildcat strike in The NJ Bulk Mail Center of the US Postal Service in 1978. The first, Dave Cline: Rank & File Rebel, Introduction, contains links to the other three parts.]

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