Chapter 12: Bread & Roses on ICE

12: Bread & Roses on ICE

                                                              (Updated 2-23-15)

       After Emerson’s secret mission in Taiwan, and his convalescence from vasectomy, he threw himself into preparing his students for midterm examinations. The American labor union movement with the Industrial Workers of the World beckoned him back.

Shemp Hollander felt no surprise. He knew that if Xin-Mei could hook up with him she could hook up with anyone. He looked around the office he had carved out for himself in the abandoned tenement. There was the desk, broken drawer hanging lopsided over the stack of papers he'd piled on the floor to keep the desk up. When he picked up the phone, he remembered who he wanted to call but by the time he got to dialing, he had forgotten. He was a certain man, certain of wanting to have his notch in the world that he had hastily carved out with a kitchen knife intact. His world of broken banisters and steps that might fall through into the basement satisfied him. Shemp figured that since he wasn't living in luxury and that the tenants didn't have to pay rent regularly that he wasn't a slumlord or landlord or any lord at all. He took solace in thinking himself a common man, a friend to the new avant guard of the Lower Eastside. It was as simple as ABC and it was no Rio. 

      The smelly shoes Shemp had worn (for how long he couldn't remember) was the bottom that sandwiched his ragged body, thinning wiry hair on top up in all directions, not combed or brushed. The ragamuffins in his tenement shack loved him better for not doing so. Young dumpster divers and artsy-midnight vegans mixed their glop of homeless goop that they had accumulated to cook in Mr. Shemp Hollander’s kitchen. It passed through the wholesome meatless kitchen on his way to his office and gave a deep smell, so deep that his nostrils caused a shimmy in his stubbed lips that almost assembled a smile. He stood, looking at the virginal runaway chefs with babushkas on their unattended self-cut hair and said, "Smells good; save some for me." He would have eaten it himself, he said, if he had been around.

 But he left the ramshackle dilapidation to return across Rivington Street to his fine studio, the one with all the accouterments of basic bourgeois life: a shade on a light bulb, toilet paper, not old newspaper, on the rack near by the toilet. He could even change into a pair of comfy slippers if he wished, which he didn't. He wanted to call someone to ask if they knew where Xin-Mei had gone, taken the baby child and gone. The last accouterment of his alter-life would be an outdoors ceremony on the top a grassy knoll near a babbling stream with birds singing. If they got married, he told himself, it would be with flowers in their hair and bands of bells around their ankles. They would exchange hemp rings.  

      "Tell her I called," he said after the phone was picked up on the fifth ring and answered. The mother on the other end of the line didn't know where Xin-Mei was, either and was there something wrong? Was her daughter okay; she thought she and Shemp were getting along well. She had seen the two with the baby just a month ago. What happened? Shemp assured her that everything was alright and he just thought she might be there but shoe was probably at another friend's place. He hung up not concerned that he had made the grandmother of his common-law wife's child nervous; she isn't his mother-in-law, he told himself, because they weren't married. 

      Across the river Xin-Mei sat on the floor of the childcare room with a dozen not well dressed children horsing around and pulling out anything that didn't move. Downstairs in another dilapidated house somewhere in Bushwich, crushed between two warehouse yards, each with a troop of junkyard watchdogs, over a hundred latter day hippies squeezed through the narrow hallway where another hundred latter day hippies slouched, coughed, and smelled their sweet essence of freedom onto each others' convenience. The racquet of sound no so much enjoyed but felt with deep bass runs and someone's vocal 90% echo and 10% talked throughout the monotone raga. Out back, in the half sheltered yard, gotten to through a door barely passable in unpainted abandon as all doorways are unless painted, and down a half thought out step composed of half brick and half cement of two different colors, through three overweight young bearded vegan men who like their cigarettes self rolled and lipped, out there Adonis was starting to light a fire, a campfire he said, using a table leg and any other wood that didn't look like it was doing any good. He liked starting fires for any reason or none at all. On a sofa that the second party had removed after finding and left for this party to return to a house for the fourth coming sat four slumped fellows and a female who was one of the boys, passing a very large joint and trying not to squint awkwardly. Upstairs, right about the kitchen that abutted this junked backyard where Adonis made a barbecue "because I feel like making a fire" with nothing to barbecue of meat or vegetable matter, the smoke, brown and white with burned and steamed fuel drifted up past the wood plank foolishly placed over the barbecue pit essentially making half the small backyard and all dozen of its denizens part of the barbecue pit themselves, all smoked what they were smoking. The smoke footed up, when the firs died down thanks to pots of water splashed on the stupid idea from someone in the kitchen within tossing distance and a clear path from the sink to the window just above Adonis’ barbecue, the smoke rose and as it rose, the wind kindled the breeze, with the smoke hitchhiking, into the window where a dozen children of one to eight years old with no father or mother any more married than Mr. Hollander and Shin-Mei were. Shin-Mei sat with Mr. Covert who volunteered to be in the room with the children ("watching" the children not exactly required) since Shin-Mei was there, too, and he had shacked up with her when she showed a desire for him and left Rivington street digs. 

      He would have smelled the smoke if he was there, but he wasn't. Instead, Mr. Shemp Hollander sat in the studio preparing for another day at the place called Rio but looking more like the slums that surrounded the beaches of Brazil. He walked the block to the disaster and saw Emerson sitting on the stoop with a few of his fellow workers waiting for Mr. Hollander to arrive. It was the Sunday after the party in Bushwick and Emerson felt enough of responsibility to be at the meeting place early to meet easy arrivals and new members, to adjust the seats, and start the meeting at its scheduled time 1:00pm. It was approaching noon. "Does anyone have Mr. Hollander's number? Perhaps he's home." 

      "Why don't we just walk over; I know where he lives."

      "Okay you go; I'll wait here in case any else shows up. Hey, get me a cappuccino at the Cuban place on the corner while you're there," and Emerson stood looked left and right for any reason to stay, and walked to see if Mr. Hollander was home, or at least get a few cappuccinos.

      Mr. Hollander was met on the way to the Cuban place heading toward the tenement. "We're you looking for me? Here I am."

      "Hey, do you want a cappuccino," asked Emerson politely but Shemp had already had his coffee; he raised a paper cup he held by the bottom. Shemp said he would open the grate to fire up the kitchen with bags of ate for the others and not to worry and that's what he did, by then, another three homeless young men and women in urban attire were waiting, too. The Food Not Bombs staff was discarded corn, tomatoes, chick peas, and rice they found in the Griswold’s dumpster a few hours before the carting truck arrived. With the spices added, everyone agreed it was rather yummy.

      At IWW meetings, Emerson proposed reactions to the staging of the 2004 Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden, a slap in the face to New Yorkers, Emerson thought to a city where almost four thousand lives were obliterated due to the benign neglect of the Republicans in power, not to mention the hundreds of police officers and fire fighters who perished, the men killed when ordered by the mayor and police commissioner to enter the burning first tower without adequate protection or means of communication.

      The Republican Convention to re-nominate George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for four more years was set to take place in Manhattan from August 30^th to September 2^nd and New Yorkers were warned: Stay out of midtown that week. It was declared a National Special Security Event by the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service was put in charge of coordinating the FBI and NYPD into a crescendo of police presence, a presence that hadn’t abated since the Twin Towers were leveled three years earlier. Citizens of New York, with their own security and convenience at stake, were told it was a better idea not to be on the streets essentially handing over Manhattan to conventioneers, and the police.

Seventy million dollars in hardware, software, weapons, surveillance, and human resources was paid, from federal and local tax dollars. Ten thousand police officers were given over-time pay as “Hercules Teams” in full riot gear and body armor, with submachine guns and rifles. All commuters on trains and buses passing through Midtown were scrutinized and often stopped and frisked, especially if they looked the racial profile targeted. Emerson was more determined to give the visitors a proper New York welcome, with a Bronx cheer.

Buses across intersections were parked to cordon off the area. All employees within the zone were subjected search and bomb-sniffing dogs. Protest groups, even the IWW NYC GMB was infiltrated, with dossiers compiled on it and others. Almost two thousand people were arrested and finger-printed in pre-emptive strikes against possible disturbances.

Emerson said, “They can’t get me. There is space between those bumpers in the bus barricades. I will get inside their zone, easily,” and he did.

Obstructionists and spies abounded, not to mention jealous egotists within the union; they hindered any formidable reaction. For instance, Eupheus Crutch reminded members at meetings how sabotage, the main tactic of organizing workers against the ruling class, was disavowed officially by the Wobbly brass. Emerson thought, with Crutch, the NYPD didn’t need to send another spy; they already had one embedded.

That first evening, getting off the subway at 23^rd Street and walking up past the flower wholesalers on Avenue of the Americas, Emerson easily infiltrated the line of parked police busses at Herald Square and walked along 34^th Street smilingly as bus after bus of delegates queued up to walk their way to 7^th Avenue and enter Madison Square Garden. Macy’s was awash with Texas-accented ladies and Arizona rhinestone cowboy-hated old prune-skinned gentlemen each wanting a taste of that Yankee commercial ingenuity. Emerson just had to see all the conservative clowns for himself.

“Hello, y’all, welcome to New York! Have a nice day,” he shouted gleefully, bowing, and when they smiled back, nodding receptively, he added, “And make sure you go fuck yourselves, too. That’s right. Yes, M’am; you, too,” he repeated again and again down the queue as a thousand delegates looked back at him aghast. “Remember to go fuck yourself, and have a nice day, too,” he repeated. If a man looked at him like an honorary varmint, he repeated, “That’s right y’all, remember to fuck your mama up the ass, too.” Then he repeated it down the line. He was even thinking of joining the line with a name tag he found on the street and entering Madison Square Garden himself but that would have been boring, he thought, though not impossible. Emerson couldn’t count how many people had their stay in New York tarnished by him. The police, over-confidant, didn’t bother to throw a police dog in them there woods. Emerson wished his comrades had half the balls he had; they would have been rewarded with all the upset faces he saw, without anyone needing to know. “Have a nice day. Now, get the fuck out of my city!” he repeated, but he was all alone.

One police officer, on his way out, dared to accost Emerson and body searched him. Emerson merely noted his badge number, found his precinct, knew the shift change, followed him home in his car, and learned where he lived. Later, he took revenge; he found some soft dog shit, shoveled it into a brown paper, placed it on the officers front stoop, lit it on fire, rang the doorbell, then stood away out of sight to watch the law officer splatter shit all over his clothes and front door as he stamped on the bag with his foot to put out the flames. It was cheap thrills like that which kept Emerson sane.

Emerson once told me it was always fun to type, not print, triple-x magazine subscription forms and have them addressed to the officer’s home, too. Pedophile magazine subscriptions, or a magazine itself, were the best, so long as he left a typed anonymous note alerting his chief to his dastardly deed. The police had become the enemies of the people by then.

So what if he was the only one? He knew he wasn’t. But if Jack Covert could pretend he was doing clandestine Anarchism with-mail messages to Tasmanian butterflies that would flutter their wings and start a typhoon in Asia; if he was doing that as an excuse to cover up is pedophiliac trysts, surely Emerson could do it as it was meant to be; for the good of common people.

So it was that Emerson exercised his idea for bringing lower Manhattan to a halt at the heart of the Republican Convention, just when the buggers were in recess and encouraged to see the ruins of the World Trade Center and lay a wreath.

Emerson got the idea from the Surveillance Camera Players who would use the cameras around town to put on political art shows. The group formed in 1996 by Bill Brown would find a surveillance camera in an advantageous location and use it to stage shows of enlightenment. The monitors, in public places could be watched as you would watch a TV. Without sound, the players used word bubbles to show what the characters were saying. For example, they did a show on the tenth anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. They found a chunk of the wall being exhibited near a camera on 52^nd Street and they performed Wilhelm Reich’s “The Mass Psychology of Fascism” for those nearby to see. They announced the viewing on Indymedia.

For the convention, the players were doing a piece on the death of American democracy for a monitor outside the turnstiles at the Rector Street subway station, closest to the sight of the World Trade Center. Emerson thought he would participate the best way he knew how. He figured the police would try to disperse the crowd gathered to watch the Surveillance Players production. Emerson went underground to throw a wrench into the mix and distract the police to buy the Surveillance Players more time to perform. Emerson was going to bring the subway to a standstill.

Emerson told me the way to stop the trains was to pull the emergency brake cord hanging outside the motorman’s booth inside the subway train. The conductor would have to go through the train to find the car in which the cord was pulled and re-set it so the train could resume running. It would create a bottleneck for the trains following behind it. The RR train which ran from Herald Square near Madison square Garden passed by the now closed Cortland Street WTC Station but stopped a few short blocks north at City Hall and south at Rector Street; that’s where most of the delegates instructed to take the train would alight. Stopping the train would cause chaos possibly complicating the Republican ceremony above ground. The problem was, if Emerson pulled the red wooden knob at the end of the cord, the delegates in the car would see him pull it and he would be arrested immediately when the police arrived.

The trick went like this: Emerson got into the last car of the train at the first stop in Astoria, Queens. With the car empty awaiting its scheduled run, he took out thin transparent fishing line and tied an end around the emergency cord near the wooden knob. The line was loose and gently stuffed behind an aluminum corner guard to the subway car floor. It ran by his side as he sat in the corner seat holding the other end of the line with his shoe. He put in his earphones and turned the portable CD player on: “Volunteers of America,” Jefferson Airplane. As the train went south down Broadway, it started filling with passengers. At 34^th Street, the car became jammed with conventioneers heading to the WTC ceremony; not a space was open. When the train left the Canal Street Station, it curved west to meet Cortland Street. Emerson bent down as the train screeched through the curve as if to tie his shoe, pulled the cord, and stopped the train. The fishing line snapped and dropped off the cord. Emerson sat straight and acted naturally. Passengers nearly toppled over as the train came to a sudden halt; the air brakes locked.

Emerson knew it would take a good half hour for the conductor to reach the last car and re-set the brake. By then, the system would be backed-up in shambles, the Garden party ruined for the moment. By then, it was Buffalo Springfield on the portable CD player: “Sit down, I think I love you.” He sat back, tried to relax in the terrified delegate-packed car, and rode the music down to South Ferry, got out, and joined the Statue of Liberty in a toast before heading home. He read about the delayed ceremony the next day in the New York Times, one sentence in a long-winded commemorative story in a special pull-out section.

(WRITE ABOUT THE FUND RAISER HERE)

      On January, 20^th, 2005, at the 2005 Presidential Inauguration, two thousand anarchists participated in an inspiring display of resistance with direct action. Emerson was there with his Fellow Workers from the New York City General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World.

      The DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) had planned a rally at Malcolm X Park. When Emerson arrived speakers on stage were there damning the evils of the Bush Agenda. There had been a call for a “Militant Anti-Fascist Contingent” there so Emerson looked for the black flags of Anarchism and the red and black flags of Anarcho-Syndicalism

      Emerson felt like a member of a small community, dressed in black with their faces covered to conceal their identities and to stay warm. They all shared a common identity.

      At eleven o’clock, there was a commotion from behind him. “Fuck Nazi Sympathies” was chanted at them, a neo-fascist organization started a few years earlier which received funding from conservative organizations to show up at anti-war demonstrations to act as counter-protesters. There was a lot of anger and Emerson knew it was going to be a show-down. “The Proto-Fascist Bush Regime was having its coronation later that day,” thought Emerson. Some tried to rip the signs out of the hands of Emerson and his comrades. There was some kicking and yelling but, finally, the fascists were pushed back to a hill and forced to flee the park. The contingent slowly re-formed and prepared for the march.

      At noon on 16^th Street and “Q”, Emerson walking with the three-hundred strong contingent broke off from the main march and made their way to Logan Circle for the Anarchist march and anti-Authoritarian Bloc. It was an un-permitted march and the police followed them along on their motorcycles.

      Outmaneuvering the police several times, they made their way to Logan Circle to meet other contingents. A large Anarchist banner supported by PVC pipes was held by the brothers and sisters at the front of the now two-thousand strong contingent. They began marching out of Logan Circle. The police presence was incredible.

      “What’s the solution?”

      “PEOPLES’ REVOLUTION!”

      “What’s the reaction?”

      “DIRECT ACTION!” was chanted repeatedly, loudly. Emerson felt a great deal of pride as he marched. This was the last chance to save the nation.

      The police looked like they were going to keep Emerson and his comrades where they were and not allow them to move forward. Calls of “Keep it tight” and “Tighten up!” were heard throughout the contingent as they became concerned that if they were spread out too much, they would be easily dispersed. But someone noticed a snow-covered but easily passable parking lot to their left and they crossed. “”Why the fuck are we stopped? Go left! Go left!” Some brothers and sisters made snowballs and threw them at the police. One hit a police officer on the top of his head. He was wearing a helmet. They kept marching until, finally, they were stopped by police who blocked the entire street. There was no way for Emerson and his comrades to pass. The police began to push and shove the brothers and sisters at the front of the contingent. A count of: “One! Two! Three” was heard and on “Three!” they all rushed forward pushing back the police who had disrupted their peaceful march.

      With fear in their eyes, the police started swinging their telescopic batons and began to pepper spray Emerson and his comrades. He yelled out, “Pepper Spray! Pepper Spray!” to alert those behind him and turned his own head away to avoid being sprayed. There were some in front of Emerson who were not prepared with eye protection and were pulled from the front with shouts of “Medic” taking the place of screams. The street medics in their contingent went to their aid.

      They began to fall back as the police became more violent. One officer crouched down low, held his baton like a baseball bat and shouted “Come on!” to Emerson’s contingent. Emerson saw a fellow in his contingent, soaking wet from tear gas, getting slammed onto a car. The officers then pushed him to the ground and were just about to beat him when they managed to distract him and move away and avoid arrest. The contingent split and moved back. There were calls to stay in the street and lock arms. Emerson noticed many more inexperienced brothers ignoring the pleas and left him no choice but to flee.

      It was two o’clock on 14th and Pennsylvania. Spirits were still high. One protesters walked up to Emerson. “Hey brother, we’re going to 14^th and “H. Cell phone text messaging played an important part in spreading intelligence. Those who had signed up were quick to make collective decisions. Reports came in of more pepper spraying.

      Emerson took the opportunity to find an open convenience store to get a bite to eat, and then he read on his cell phone, “Spontaneous street party on Connecticut and “L”. He tried to find his way there. Walking down Vermont he spotted another contingent of anarchists on an unpermitted march turning onto “L” and joined them. Three hundred strong marched through Chinatown to the cheers of standers-buy and honking car horns of support.

“Union Station! Union Station! Party! Party! Party!” Not to join but to disturb Republicans there. They linked arm in arm. Two warning to9 disperse were issued. The police, seeing their defiance, began to drive into them on motorcycles. Emerson was nearly hit. One cop was hit in the leg by the motorcycle of another cop. They forced their way onto the sidewalks flashing middle fingers of defiance at the police. They were unafraid and resisted the police state, but there were not enough of them. There are never enough brave souls to resist the state.   

 They were the governor's pistoleros," Flavio Sosa, a leader of the more radical protesters, told the Monitor radio network following the shootings. "Our fight is peaceful."

Photographs published online by the Mexico City daily Reforma showed men trying to revive a shirtless man identified as the slain photographer, who had a bullet wound in the upper torso. Other photographs published in the online editions of other newspapers showed pistol-carrying masked men, identified as activists.

"He had a camera in his hand. It was obvious he was doing the work of journalism," said Al Giordano, publisher of Narco News, an alternative Internet news site focused on Mexico and Latin America, who said he had known Will for a decade. "It could have been you or me."

'One more martyr'

Brad Will, who had also worked in Bolivia and elsewhere in Latin America, had gone to Oaxaca in early October to cover the protests there. His last story, published by Indymedia on Oct. 17, 2006 covered the death of an activist shot earlier this month.

"One more death, one more martyr in a dirty war," Will wrote about the slain activist 11 days ago. "One more time to cry and hurt. One more time to know power and its ugly head."

"What can you say about this movement — this revolutionary movement?" he continued in the article. "You know it is building, growing, shaping — you can feel it trying desperately for a direct democracy.”

"The next time you scream at me in front of the students, I'll kick you in the face," so said Jack Covert as Emerson drove them to the IWW meeting on Rivington Street. Emerson would have stopped the car and told Jack to step out and try to do it or just step out if they hadn't been on the BQE under the Brooklyn Heights Promenade at the time. Instead, he continued on driving.

      "The students had voted which items to put up on the bulletin board and you just put up what you wanted. I didn't 'scream' at you; I merely asked what you were doing." Emerson had the feeling that, with Jack, he was dealing with a sick puppy but he didn't know how passive-aggressive and insecure he actually was. He almost felt pity for Jack in that he was educated and open-minded yet he held such heavy baggage. 

      Emerson remembered back to the other times he had interacted with Jack; when they met on the steps of the high school having cigarettes, talking shop, to the advent of the Bread & Roses Club which Emerson entertained with Mr. Blue, the student organization faculty advisor. Emerson had chalked it up to Jack's shyness, a shyness that seemed to be erased when he was in front of children. So long as it didn't mask some perversion, Emerson could deal with it. When the charter for the club was approved, Emerson took the heat and demonstrated the tenor of the club to the founding student members and Mr. Blue who sat blubber faced, arms barely folded across his broad mid-section, in the back of the room. Jack sat in the back of the room, too, out of shyness. hen Emerson thought it over, he realized that Jack sat in the back of every room that had a meeting with adults in attendance. He didn't seem to have a problem standing in front of sixteen-year-olds in his classes,

       Emerson learned, toward the end of their friendship, that John had a reputation questionable behavior with female students, too; that the students had complained to their guidance counselor that Jack seemed to flake off to asides with female students during class. Emerson just thought it was Jack's strong hands-on teaching style that was being misunderstood and gave him the benefit of the doubt; the students weren't very good judges of teaching methodology. That was until some fishy business started swimming up with Jack. One of the young ladies that Jack cozied up to was a Hungarian student of his who joined the club. Emerson realized that it was in deference to her at the bulletin board in the hallway that day that mortified Jack enough to threaten to kick Emerson in the face. 

      Before Bread & Roses Club meetings, Emerson would approach Jack to discuss what the meeting would focus on; would there be a fund-raiser or a trip to discuss or perhaps a lesson from labor history to bring out.

      "We'll just let it happen," said Jack.

      "We can't just let it happen. What if Mr. Blue or the principal walk in and ask us what we're doing?"

      "Why are you worried about that?"

      "I'm not worried about that; we just have to decide."

      "Calm down; there you go again," said Jack quietly annoyed.

      "I'm not doing 'anything again, Jack," said Emerson frustrated that his college couldn't see what seemed appropriate to him.

      "How about this, Jack; Let's alternate being faculty advisors to the club; one week you can do what you want to do with them and the next week it will be my turn." Emerson sat on the stool in the former drafting classroom as Jack paced the floor slowly in contemplation. "What do you mean?" 

      "For example, I will direct the students to form an agenda and discuss the procedure for doing so with Robert's Rules and then let the club leader practice the collective decision making with the members."

      "Just let it happen," said Jack looking up from the floor at Emerson as he paced.

      "Jack, it won't just happen unless we show the students how to do it."

      "On the alternate week, you can run the meeting and let the students do what you'd like." Emerson thought this was a good solution to the different methodologies each advisor brought to this club. Their hearts were in the same place but their minds weren't. They agreed to try it.

      At their next meeting, seven students were in attendance. Jack slinked off to the side and started talking with Marina, the Hungarian beauty. Emerson went the front of the room and called the meeting to order. The elected student leader of the month, Vadim, was asked to take over and run the students through the meeting procedure; goods and welfare, announcements, approval of agenda, the volunteering of the time-keeper and minute writer, and the meeting itself, key point, the selection of a design for the club t-shirt. The meeting went well, all forty minutes of it, and Mr. Covert sat next to Marina throughout. If not for his beard, one could have mistaken him for a club member himself. 

      A few times after that, in the hallways during passing between classes, Emerson noticed Jack in hushed conversation with Marina, even escorting her out the main entrance reserved for teachers only and chatting with her before she smiled a glance at him and left the campus to her part-time job in a supermarket. Jack never talked with Emerson about it and Emerson never asked him; Emerson believed that Jack's intentions were good. He was so different from the other deadbeat teachers at the high school. His ways could have been easily misunderstood. A few times, colleagues had warned Emerson about Jack; that they had seen something questionable on a computer history that he had just added to. The sites he visited were strange, but Emerson just though these humdrum bureaucrats were just reacting to the radical Jack was, not the predator inside.

      Emerson never caught Jack in a compromising situation with a student and neither had anyone else, but colleagues wondered about his sexuality. Everyone had an interest in sex, except for Jack. Teachers would sit in the cafeteria and talk about the newest cute teacher to join the faculty or a star on TV who was particularly attractive, gay or straight. Jack didn't seem to be interested in any of it. When Emerson had good natured conversation with female colleagues, Jack stretched the undertones to seem improperly flirtatious, especially if the female was a lesbian. Jack liked it when Emerson was brushed off, but no one could brush off Jack; he was unapproachable to anyone but the administrator who hired him and the female student he impressed. 

      The alternate week meetings that Jack facilitated were chaotic. Emerson held his tongue and acted as a minute writer when no one volunteered or a time keeper when there was something on the agenda to keep time for; usually there wasn't. Jack jumped from one topic to another and bore down on a student with a question to see if he was paying attention, a task in itself since there wasn't a focus to pay attention to. Only Jack's convoluted reasoning patterns were the agenda; the students simply enjoyed the banter and forget why they were at a club meeting. Before anyone could realize it, the bell had runs and the period was over. 

      After going on like this for a few weeks, the students started requesting Emerson to give direction to the meeting. Emerson, who had held his tongue, discussed the situation with Jack.

      "The children would like to organize a trip. I told them it was a good idea," Emerson said to Jack. "They don't understand what you wanted them to do last week. They don't understand when you talk with them about anarchism; they don't know what you mean." Jack started shuffling his feet in nervousness. "They just want to have fun. They asked me to show them some places they could take a trip to. Do you have any plans for the next meeting?"

      "What do you mean?"

      "Is there anything you want them to put on the agenda?"

      "It's up to them."

      "They want to talk about the trip."

      "So, let them."

      "Would you mind if suggested some places to go?"

      "No."

      "Do you have any suggestions?"

      "We could go do silk screening at ABC No Rio."

      "Okay bring that up. We will have to get it approved though," said Emerson. Mr. Blue wants to know where we are taking them." Emerson was as daring as Jack and liked the idea.

      When the next meeting started, John milled around as the seven students chatted and had their snacks. Emerson, looking at his watch, waited for John to call the meeting to order, but it wasn't happening. Finally, Jack stood up and said, "Alright, where can you find out about the martyrs in the Spanish Revolution?"

      "On the web," called out one student flippantly.

      "Exactly," said Jack and went on talking about George Orwell involvement in Spain before World War II and Franco and the need for workers to take charge and run the factories themselves.

      "Jack, don't we have something to do at the meeting today?" asked Emerson above the din of rowdy students. "The trip? The trip."

      Jack stared at Emerson for having the nerve to tell him what to do and break his dream of consciousness.

      "Why don't you do what you want," said Jack, put a disgusted look on his face, grabbed his bag, and walked out of the room.

      "What's wrong with Mr. Covert?" A student who had seen the move asked.

      "Oh, he had to get something upstairs." Emerson stood up and roused the club to order. There was still twenty minutes left in the period. "Didn't you want to discuss our club trip?"

      When the students chatting in the back heard the magic word "trip" they stopped talking and paid attention.

      "Let's go to Great Adventure," said one student and a few other boys started loudly agreeing with the suggestion.

      "Now what does Great Adventure have to do which what we are doing in this club?" Emerson had said that the choices had to do with sweatshops and factory workers or labor history. He reminded the students. Three or four agreed that their club trip shouldn't be to Great Adventure.

      The meeting went on with Vadim as the point person, asking students to choose from a number of places around the city that Mr. Davinsky and Mr. Covert had suggested. One student wanted to go to a foster home for children that his religious mother volunteered at. At the end of the period, it was decided, by majority 5 to 2 vote, to go to the Lower Eastside Tenement Museum.  

      Later, Emerson met Jack in the teachers' cafeteria. Jack wasn't happy as he peeled his blood orange. Emerson smiled. He was going to tell Jack about the student vote after he got his lunch tray from the counter, but when Emerson turned around with his food to sit back down, Jack was gone.

      It was the last meeting Jack attended the Bread & Roses Club. He left Emerson to explain where he was but Emerson wouldn't explain why Jack decided to leave because Emerson didn't know what to tell the students. Emerson would have to find someone else to escort the children with him on the trip. Jack still went outside to smoke cigarettes with the others, including Emerson, but it was different now. When Emerson came out, Jack went inside. 

      "Your friend is angry with you, Emerson," said Lao You-Tiao.

      "I don't know if he's my friend anymore."

      "Oh come on. It can't be that serious."

      "That's what I thought but he just walked out of the club meeting." 

      "I'll talk with him," said Mr. Lao. Mr. Lao's best friends at the school were Emerson and Jack. If they weren't talking to one another, what would he do? He would have to speak with each one separately.

Marty's pants returned to the seat below his body while Mr. Turd, Mr. Petersburg, Ms. Sweirdo, and Mr. Guadeloupe, Mr. Popovich. Peter Silecchia Mussolini

      Ms. Elmira Sweirdo’s gift to humanity was her clean conspiracies, using the union as a cover, to insure that no one was seen as union savvy as she was; she worked hard at it reading all the bulletins and newsletters from the Board of Education concerning workers. The retirees at I.C.E. were titillated by her in the audacity of her obstruction. They thrilled at the gossipy counterbalance of union personalities at Norman Thomas High School. They fancied themselves the opposition group to the mainstream and other opposition group; the middle path. To them, Emerson vs. Combs and Sweirdo were spy vs. spies a la Mad Magazine; they loved to see them get under each others’ skins. How delightful their cooperative destruction of Emerson. It didn’t matter that Emerson had joined I.C.E. for support; ultimately he was an enemy to I.C.E. leaders’ authority, too; he had to be neutralized.

      When the top-down decision-making of Harry Combs was questioned, his storm troopers, Ms. Sweirdo and a damaged-goods veteran teacher named Silecchia Mussolini, came out of the chalk bins to back him up. When collective decision making and meeting procedure of Roberts’ Rules was quoted, and seemed to the faculty to be working, it had to be sabotaged so they could keep their authority. Ms. Sweirdo had an advantage over her adversaries in the school union chapter; she was able to get the principal to loathe her for her slide insistence on rules to form over what was the best thing to do for the school, even if it meant hurting the faculty in the process.

      When Emerson found there was agreement in the faculty to form a discussion group in addition to the chapter meeting, they needed a room to meet and have their discussion. The date and time were chosen and the staff, all included, were invited. None of the members of the chapter committee decided to come; a boycott. Emerson and the others didn’t mind because they knew they would try to take over the meeting and filibuster any discussion.

      One room needed to be found. An empty music room with no class scheduled was located. The principal was informed that they were exercising their union rights, after school time, and she approved. But after the meeting, Ms. Sweirdo said she was called in to the principal’s office to be scolded for choosing a room without getting permission. Instead of saying she wasn’t involved with the meeting and letting cooler heads prevail, she sabotaged the good will that was created. She assumed responsibility for the meeting and must have irked the principal with her rude attitude so much that the committee was not allowed to ever meet in the building again. The funny thing was, and this was strange: Emerson and the other faculty never bothered to confirm from the principal that this edict of hers was true; Ms. Sweirdo could have made it all up; that’s how much residual power she had over the frail staff.

      There was another incident Emerson used to refer to, after the time he had engaged the support of I.C.E. and got the candidates for the citywide election to agree to campaign at Norman Thomas High School. The room and time were set and announced over the time clock and on the U.F.T. bulletin boards. Ms. Sweirdo, Mr. Turd, Mr. Petersburg, Mr. Guadeloupe, and Mr. Popovich joined Chapter Leader Harry Combs in intimidating the staff not to go to the meeting. Teachers are very easy to give up a fight with their “who needs this” attitude. They didn’t need the cold shoulders of the committee next time they needed a favor from the union, the union to them being an agency that helped from above and not a part of. They stayed away from meeting the other opposition group’s candidates.

      It was most revealing to Emerson how, after the miniscule turn-out at the meeting, attended only by Emerson’s closest colleagues, the hierarchy at I.C.E. made fun of Emerson for not getting the staff to turn out instead of blaming Mr. Combs and Ms. Sweirdo for intimidating them; they didn’t give Emerson their support. Emerson always thought they wanted to keep their power away from him. Emerson was boxed in by the anti-democratic obstructionists at his school as well as the leaders of the opposition group he had gone to for support. Both were against the collective decision making practiced at meetings of the IWW. The teachers didn’t want to join the union; they wanted the union to work for them. Emerson’s idea of participatory democracy scared most of the faculty, and the caucus in power and the leaders of two opposition groups weren’t going to share their power with the staffers.

      Emerson didn’t give up although it looked like he was fighting a losing battle. He continued to work outside his school to make I.C.E. a strong opposition group; they seemed more democratic than Ms. Sweirdo’s group. Emerson felt that grass root organizing was the key to improving conditions for the staff and students at New York City public schools. Like the industrial unionism of the IWW, all workers in one workplace were in one union to Emerson; all had to cooperate, parents included, to protect liberal education and workers rights. Without that grass root empowerment, regression of community parental involvement and staff work load would continue unabated, and finally collapse.

      Emerson was a visionary; look at what has happened in the years since he began to try to organize the grass roots in1999. Many schools had been closed or turned into charter schools, the probationary period a teacher waits for tenure increased to five years, the work time longer, the work load heavier, teacher evaluations based 50% on student test results, the firing of teachers without due process. It was no consolation to Emerson that he had retired by then with a good pension. He could hear the quiet tapping from the other shoe about to drop. There was no consolation at all for his colleagues and most of the teachers he knew who had stood by without supporting democratic reforms, actively or passively, they would eventually be sorry they had.

      The wretched staffers that inhabit high schools all over the capitalist world, specifically Norman Thomas High School in Midtown Manhattan, had no desire to increase their union participation or teaching methodology. There is no more a desire to help make students smarter. A teacher, such as Emerson Davinsky, who interacted with students to their hearts and minds are few. The administration knew them all too well to forgive the stubborn wickedness of their insecurity.

 Emerson only liked the cafeteria matron at school, Carol; so non-threatening. He was in the same working class as Carol who only wished to do her best at work, be friendly to the staff, and earn the respect of her gentle family at home. Carol, to the heart of every person a hug and smile, a married woman, neat and jocular, at the grand-parenting age, calm in duty and holding of tongue. Other teachers either ignored Carol or treated her as a servant, below their contempt or competition. Not so Emerson; she was like a sister to him, better to him than even his own sister. Administrators didn’t bother entering the teachers’ cafeteria. Even their lunch period had more importance to them than the staff. Carol was glad she didn’t have to serve them.

Emerson deflected every snub without a wisp of a breeze. He only caught the contemptuous corner of the eye from novices too green to hide their jealousy; they thought they had to give Emerson a hint of their contempt for him. He was as numb to their passive-aggressiveness as they were to his sensitivity.

Years later, after he was retired, his Facebook posts of his successes and happiness drew no comments and almost no “likes” from former colleagues;”he knew he was still being looked down at on from the corner of his former colleagues’ eyes; only mutual friends acknowledged respect for his doings after he had left the school, even if they themselves still suffered indignations from students, administration and union from within.

Emerson’s greatest measure of success was in not hearing a word from a former colleague who hated him, not even a comment attached to a friend’s post did he see from those jealous minds, the ones who pretended they weren’t interested in Emerson’s idealism. Their less than idealistic subterfuge could be tricked into assuming a wise-assed superiority by incorrect statements of fact to which they could chide Emerson publically not realizing that, by responding and correcting him, they had lost at their own game. The longer Emerson kept their Facebook “friendship,” the less they meant to him. It was like a staring contest; who would blink first and ‘unfriend’ the other? That was the person that had forever lost until Alzheimer’s erased the last trace of their obstruction for good for the Benny Goodman of all.

But while the colleagues worked in the same school, cliques brought the heat to the soldier and melted the walls together. Mot one union chapter leader ever visited the Bread & Roses Social Action Club or gave lip service to it. They absolutely could not allow each other down in keeping Emerson and his students out in the cold, just as the administration and greedy student affairs faculty advisor Greene had. The very goal of reaching a Sweatfree school perplexed them, or at least they pretended it perplexed them.

Years later, Emerson saw, on-line, a YouTube conference with the hash-tag: “Putting Socialism into the Classroom.” Tabled by three people, one of whom was a former faculty member at Norman Thomas High School, an enemy from the school based opposition group, it was strange for Emerson to hear her talk about the difficulties of having students feel in their guts that socialism was better for living. Yet this teacher had never visited the social action club Emerson was the faculty advisor of, not only to see how it was possible, but to see how it was being done right under her proverbial nose. He had to laugh and comment for any innocent viewers that this teacher was one sitting in a cave staring at a picture of a star when there was a real socialist star right there in her work place.

Emerson, sitting on the bench up the Han River in Taichung, said he took another deep breath of the stalk soaked air being burned from the rice paddies behind him, watched the progress of a beautiful red beetle as he swept it off his pant leg and it crossed his feet, looked at the warm green mountains to the east, the handsome joggers passing by behind him, and in his retirement, turned the page, closed the book, listened to the birds sing as they few across the sky, and headed back to his comfortable home on the sweetest bike he had ever owned.