{"id":1459454,"date":"2024-01-23T06:55:45","date_gmt":"2024-01-23T06:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=311494"},"modified":"2024-01-23T06:55:45","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T06:55:45","slug":"is-michael-gaylord-james-of-rising-up-angry-still-angry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/01\/23\/is-michael-gaylord-james-of-rising-up-angry-still-angry\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Michael Gaylord James of Rising Up Angry Still Angry?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
\"\"

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair<\/p><\/div>\n

Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once said famously that \u201cThere are no second acts in American lives.\u201d\u00a0Fitzgerald\u00a0changed his mind, at least for New York City. In the midst of the Depression, when New York looked bleak economically speaking, he wrote, \u201cThere was certainly to be a second act to New York\u2019s boom days.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0He was right about that. One might borrow Fitzgerald\u2019s quotation and ask, \u201cDo American radicals have second and even third acts?\u201d Of course they do, though many of those acts have not made it into the historical record, and too many radicals, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin for example, died before they could round out their lives.<\/p>\n

Chicago\u2019s Michael Gaylord James has had more acts than many if not most of his contemporaries as an activist, a photographer, an entrepreneur, a radio host, a book publisher and more. But he has often been ignored by biographers who have written about American lefties.<\/p>\n

There are a few exceptions to that rule. Historian and author Paul Buhle, who has reviewed James\u2019s books, calls him\u00a0\u201ca Midwest legend\u201d and \u201ca larger-than-life figure who was swept into the radical movements of the early 1960s.\u201d\u00a0Buhle\u2019s comment is a reflection of a larger problem. James has been labeled a midwestern, early 1960s activist, and, while he hasn’t denied or soft peddled his roots in the midwest or his involvement in the causes of the early 1960s, he has aimed to show that he has gone beyond the 1960s in the Midwest, especially in his new book,\u00a0Crossing Borders.<\/em><\/p>\n

Published in 2023,\u00a0Crossing Borders<\/em>\u00a0contains dozens of photos James took in Mexico, Nicaragua, and Cuba from 1960 to 2007. More of an anti-imperialist now than ever before, he curiously has refrained from using that word to describe himself and has also refrained from using the word imperialism, where it might be appropriate. \u201cIsms cut the deepest,\u201d he has said.<\/p>\n

Read and look at his three previous books of photos, and you\u2019ll see that words like capitalism, socialism and Marxism rarely if ever appear in print.\u00a0\u201cMy photography is framed by the human condition,\u201d James wrote. Of the photos in\u00a0Crossing Borders<\/em>, he added, \u201cThese photos\u2026record the universality of the people\u2019s happiness and sadness, hardship and struggle, determination and conviction.\u201d Indeed, they depict poor people of color who work with their hands and who are often smiling and not just for the camera. James also captured on film President John F. Kennedy, when he toured Mexico City in a Mercedes, shortly before he was assassinated, to promote the Alliance for Progress, yet another imperialist scheme to keep Mexico underdeveloped.<\/p>\n

James didn\u2019t capture the flesh and blood Che, but he snapped an image of Che\u2019s face on a large banner at the Baseball Arena in Havana in 1961. Perhaps he and Che, who said that \u201cThe true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love,\u201d would have cruised the Americas on their motorcycles.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI like to have a camera with me,\u201d James told me in a recent conversation, just before his 82nd<\/sup>\u00a0birthday. \u201cI like to document things, people, places, you name it. Sometimes my camera, a Pentax or a Panasonic Lumix, has been a constant companion.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the founders of Rising up Angry, the organization which rocked white working class youth in Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s, James is poised for yet another round as a rebel with a cause. \u201cRising Up Angry\u201d was also the name of the organization\u2019s newspaper. \u201cI didn\u2019t read a lot of Lenin,\u201d James remembers. \u201cBut I read enough Lenin to know that a revolutionary organization had to have a paper to get out the word, bring people together and identify the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founded in July 1969, the newspaper\u2014 which honored Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X, the prisoner rebellion at Attica, the United Farm Workers and the Native American protest at Alcatraz\u2014 will celebrate the 55th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of its birth in July 2024.<\/p>\n

“Some history is remembered; some is not,” James muses. He knows that bittersweet story from his own experience. He also knows that many veterans of the Sixties don\u2019t have clear memories of Rising Up Angry, perhaps because the organization was based in Chicago\u2014 \u201cfly over country\u201d\u2014 not New York or California.<\/p>\n

For nearly all of his adult life, James has been in the business of bringing people together. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the U.S. New Left was often fragmented and in splinter groups and sects\u2014whether RYM I, RYM II, Progressive Labor, the Revolutionary Communist Party, The Revolutionary Union, Weatherman and more\u2014 James preached the gospel of unity; \u201ceverybody get together,\u201d in the words of the Youngbloods. Confrontation wasn\u2019t his priority.<\/p>\n

James had a habit of bringing people together. Along with Katy Hogan,\u00a0his longtime partner, he operated for decades Chicago’s \u201dlate great\u201d (as he calls it) Heartland Caf\u00e9. Now they\u2019re at work on a book called,\u00a0The Cafe: Hot Grits & Politics.\u00a0<\/em>\u201cWe had a good run,\u201d James says. \u201cWe had a healthy mix of food, politics and music.\u201d\u00a0He has also brought students together at the class titled \u201cActivists and Activism, 1960-1974,\u201d which he has taught at Chicago\u2019s DePaul University. With DePaul Professor Euan Hague he\u2019s finishing\u00a0a collection of interviews with Chicago organizers, such as Heather Booth, that\u2019s on track to be published by the University of Illinois Press. Once a week for years, James hosted a radio \/TV and internet\u00a0show,\u00a0\u201cLive from the Heartland\u201d that united the listening audience.<\/p>\n

Before, during and after the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago\u2014and the \u201cpolice riot\u201d as the Kerner Commission called the bloody clashes in the streets\u2014 James crossed urban borders and boundaries that cops, codes and customs aimed to enforce and that kept whites from Blacks and browns and Blacks and browns from whites. \u201cWorkers of the world unite\u201d was a faint echo in Chicago\u2019s white working class neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cSometimes we’ve been confused,\u201d James wrote in his first photo book which is now out-of-print. He added. \u201dMade to be confused.\u201d False consciousness played havoc in the\u00a0\u00a0working class communities and communities he knew in Chicago and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

James and his Rising up Angry brothers and sisters tell it like it is in\u00a0Rising Up Angry\u2014Our Fight for a Better World<\/em>\u00a0which was launched in November 2023. Diane Fager, known as \u201cStormy,\u201d emphasizes \u201cdialectical thinking.\u201d Peter Kuttner, who made the movie,\u00a0Trick Bag: The Story of Rising Up Angry,<\/em>\u00a0insists on confronting people opposed to equality.<\/p>\n

Long time labor organizer and union member, Bob Lawson sees greater disparity now between haves and have-nots than in the 1960s, the American military unchecked, environmental devastation worse today than yesterday and unions on the ropes. \u201cThe worst thing that has happened in American history is the virtual loss of\u00a0<\/strong>unions,\u201d Lawson says. James tends to be more optimistic than Lawson. He echoes the cry of the legendary organizer, Joe Hill: \u201cDon\u2019t Mourn, Organize,\u201d which has never gone out of fashion.<\/p>\n

Born in 1942 and raised in a Connecticut town he calls \u201cbourgeois,\u201d James attended grad school at Berkeley, read Lewis Coser, studied conflict theory and thought he might teach sociology and emphasize unity and togetherness. But he had a James Dean-like spirit of rebellion that kept him away from academia. In Chicago, after his stint in Berkeley, he worked with JOIN to build an interracial movement of the poor in a neighborhood known as \u201chillbilly Harlem,\u201dand where many of the residents had fled from Appalachia, and brought Confederate flags with them.<\/p>\n

Drawn to Black music and the gospel of Jesus\u2014 the working man\u2019s Jesus who stood with the poor and against the rich\u2014James smoked weed, wore a black leather jacket and bridged the gap between hippies and \u201cgreasers,\u201d as Chicago\u2019s white working class kids were often called, perhaps because they greased their hair, and or because they worked as \u201cgrease monkeys\u201d in garages. Like them, James grew up with a passion for hot rods, racing and sports and without a belief in white supremacy. In college, he played football. For a time he wanted to be a priest.<\/p>\n

In the late 1960s, James joined Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and recruited Bernardine Dohrn, who was then his girlfriend and who would go on to lead Weatherman and the Weather Underground. Later, she accomplished a lot as a professor at Northwestern University School of Law, though like James has not been recognized for the roles she has played on the left.<\/p>\n

When Weathermen and women went underground, the clandestine and the subterranean didn\u2019t appeal to James. \u201cWe\u2019re not underground,\u201d he wrote in his first book, though he grasped the necessity for the underground abortion network, the Janes Collective. In 1968, he managed Peggy Terry\u2019s campaign for vice president when she ran with Eldridge Cleaver on the Peace & Freedom party ticket. Now, he\u2019s in the thick of hyper local politics in the city that has been his home for more than half-a-century.<\/p>\n

In the 1960s and 1970s, members of Rising Up Angry cruised the gritty streets of Chicago and talked with greasers and hippies. \u201cPigs hassling you?\u201d was often the question that would break the ice and lead to in-depth conversations, though James was not and still isn\u2019t automatically anti-cop. \u201cIt was good to know some cops,\u201d he says. \u201cWe need a police force.\u201d (He was not big on the recent defund the police campaign.) James and others in Rising Up Angry took photos of\u00a0\u00a0greasers and published them in the newspaper on a page called \u201cStone Grease Grapevine.\u201d Of course, the greasers loved seeing their beautiful smiling faces in print.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were no role models for radical whites organizing in white working class neighborhoods,\u201d James says, though in the 1960s, he knew about Tom Watson, the populist who organized poor Blacks and poor whites to unite and fight. Then, Watson changed his tune and espoused white supremacy, the big bugaboo for white working class organizers. When he was a spokesman for Rising Up Angry, James also knew about Joe Hill and the Industrial Workers of the World. Still, he and his comrades had to make it up as it went along. (The name of the organization comes from a song in the 1968 movie,\u00a0Wild in the Streets,<\/em>\u00a0that exploited the narrative of youth in rebellion.)<\/p>\n

Inspired by the Black Panther Party, Rising Up Angry moved. in the early 1970s, away from militancy and from an emphasis on anger and toughness to compassionate programs that served and nurtured working people. The organization had a health clinic, and a legal program. It helped vets returning from Vietnam, operated a bookstore,\u00a0hosted dances (until Mayor Daley canceled them),\u00a0staged outdoor concerts and offered a people\u2019s sports program,<\/p>\n

The organization was in it for the long haul, not a single season or a summer vacation,\u00a0\u00a0but in 1975, when the Sixties ended its long run, Rising Up Angry folded. James is still in it for the long haul, still hopeful and yet also apprehensive. \u201cI can\u2019t believe that Trump might win the 2024 election,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m concerned that we\u2019ll lose many of our gains, including the right to an abortion and gay marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0He adds, \u201cMy hope is that one day the U.S. will be recognized in the world community\u00a0as a nation that worked for the good of the Earth, and that white people will be recognized as a group that worked for the good of all the people.\u201d For James that\u2019s not magical thinking.<\/p>\n

Historian Paul Buhle, who has written eloquently about that other James, (C.LR<\/a>.) thinks that Michael James \u201cdeserves the biography that will never be written.\u201d Michael is still writing his own story; someday someone might tell his tale, though he\u2019s not holding his breath and waiting for that day. Perhaps that book will talk about race and class, which have played havoc with American politics and politicians, and perhaps it will show how James aimed to transcend deeply ingrained contradictions.<\/p>\n

Is Michael James still angry? Yes and no. Not as angry as he once was, but still with some of the anger that once fueled him. He\u2019s proud of the accomplishments of Rising up Angry, and eager for the organization and the newspaper to be recognized by historians and veterans of the Sixties, as well as organizers and activists today. He\u2019d be pleased if generations younger than his appreciated the role that he and his comrades played at a time when whites were often divided from Blacks and Blacks divided from whites, and when Rising up Angry crossed racial borders and built bridges when some of his contemporaries said they couldn\u2019t be built.<\/p>\n

The post Is Michael Gaylord James of Rising Up Angry Still Angry?\u00a0<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once said famously that \u201cThere are no second acts in American lives.\u201d\u00a0Fitzgerald\u00a0changed his mind, at least for New York City. In the midst of the Depression, when New York looked bleak economically speaking, he wrote, \u201cThere was certainly to be a second act to New York\u2019s boom days.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0He was right about More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Is Michael Gaylord James of Rising Up Angry Still Angry?\u00a0<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1459456,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459454\/revisions\/1459456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}