Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris

Author:Malcolm Harris [HARRIS, MALCOLM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2023-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

Footnotes

i Pankaj Mishra notes that the Bolshevik revolutionary government’s unilateral renunciation of Russia’s special concessions in China was important for building the moral authority of communism in colonized nations. Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 194.

ii In fact, the U.S. connected the Filipino farmworker struggles: “American authorities believed that a worldwide communist conspiracy was at the root of political unrest in the former U.S. colony and that Filipino labor activists in the United States communicated with insurgents in the Philippines through an elaborate spy ring that linked left-wing cadres across the globe.” Rick Baldoz, “‘Comrade Carlos Bulosan’: U.S. State Surveillance and the Cold War Suppression of Filipino Radicals,” Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no. 33 (August 19, 2014): 1.

iii No relation.

iv Lowenstein’s role in the southern movement is a heatedly contested historical question. I’m inclined to give credence to James Forman’s account. Forman knew Lowenstein through SNCC and before, in the National Student Association. Based on an abundance of evidence, he came to suspect Lowenstein was “close to CIA circles if not actually on its payroll.” Regardless of the exact nature of the relationship, Forman understood Lowenstein’s role in the southern movement as infiltration on behalf of “liberal-labor” social democrats to control the opposition and marginalize radicals. It’s an understanding others came to share after working with Lowenstein. James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries: A Personal Account (Macmillan, 1972), 358.

v It was still a step up from his fellow LSJU novelist John Steinbeck. Also presumed progressive based on his earlier work, Steinbeck was rabidly pro-war, and he turned himself into a militarist pundit. He even sent the White House a letter suggesting the Defense Department develop napalm grenades—American boys were already being trained to throw baseballs. He proposed to name the weapon the “Steinbeck super ball.” His letter was forwarded to the Department of Defense. Robert M. Nee, Napalm: An American Biography (Belknap Press, 2013), 110–11.

vi The school’s namesake is the childless, brotherless Samuel Merritt—original Oakland developer and no near relation to Hoover associate Ralph or the Tagus Ranch owners.

vii William Anderson notes that the sanctuary Cuba offered to black radicals was limited, especially if the guests’ ideas veered too far to the left. See William Anderson, The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition (AK Press, 2021).

viii RAM’s enduring cadres pursued different lines: The Detroit chapter switched its revolutionary subject to the black industrial working class and members General Baker and Glanton Dowdell helped form the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Ron Karenga in Los Angeles wooed the black middle class with the US Organization. Others moved to create an underground military fighting force, a Black Liberation Army to parallel the liberation armies at work from China to Yemen to Namibia to Colombia. RAM leadership asked poet Amiri Baraka to try and bring together a national front including RAM, BPP, US, and SNCC, but the parts were insoluble and the 1967 Newark Black Power Conference went on without the Panthers.

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