Honor Few, Fear None is the memoir of “Doc” Cavazos (born in 1957), the former international president of the Mongols Motorcycle Club. The Mongols MC is one of the best known outlaw motorcycle gangs outside of the subculture’s “big four” (a law enforcement designation referring to the four largest outlaw groups: the Hells Angels, the Bandidos, Pagans, and Outlaws). Much of the notoriety of the Mongols MC comes from a rivalry with the Hells Angels that peaked (in terms of press coverage) after a violent melee at a casino in Laughlin Nevada during the 2002 Laughlin River Run, a major annual biker gathering. Two Hells Angels and one Mongol were killed in the course of an all-out brawl. Doc was a high ranking Mongol that the time, although not yet president of the organization.
Cavazos’ memoir focuses primarily on his life as a gang member. He and his brother, Al (AKA Al “the Suit”, another former high-ranking Mongol) were raised by their father in the tough Highland Park neighborhood in the Northeast of Los Angeles. Cavazos describes the violent climate of his neighborhood, and the necessity of joining a gang for protection from his social environment. In his adolescence Cavazos joined The Avenues, a notorious gang affiliated with the Mexican Mafia and an eventual rival of the Mongols. Doc described himself in typical gangster terms as someone who was always ready to act violently, and without fear, if a situation called for it, but not as someone who would instigate conflict.
Doc also describes his personal life as an adult, presenting himself as a responsible worker and parent. He has balanced his outlaw biker lifestyle with a career, having worked full-time as a professional radiologic technician at a Los Angeles medical institution. Furthermore he raised his son, Ruben Jr., as a single father. Ruben Jr. eventually became “Little Rubes”, a security professional, and a full patch member of the Mongols MC. Doc entered the world of 1% bikers because of a desire to leave the gang life behind in lieu of adult responsibilities, but also to maintain an element of danger in his life - something he felt membership in the Mongols offered.
In 2005 an ATF agent named William Queen authored a book titled Under and Alone in which Queen describes his infiltration of the Mongols MC San Fernando Valley Chapter under the alias of Billy St. John. Queen represented the Mongols as murders and rapists, which is exactly the image of outlaw bikers (and Mongols in particular) Cavazos attempts to contradict with his text. I believe that Queen and other undercover infiltrators of the 1% gangs exaggerate the criminality of bikers for the purpose of entrenching the value of their own positions and the expense of their operations. Cavazos, however, pulls too hard in the opposite direction, often making the claim in his text that the Mongols are not criminal at all and any crime that has occurred at the hands of a club member was either before his regime, due to the incompetence of other leaders, or due to a lack of discipline among individual members. The club chapter that William Queen became a full patch member of while working undercover, for example, was infiltrated due to leader incompetence and lack of adherence to club rules. Cavazos argued that chapter president Red Dog was simply building a membership for the dues each Mongol pays, and that so he could fuel a drug habit and let recruitment measures go slack. Incidentally, that’s what other Mongols accuse Cavazos of.
Also the Laughlin River riot occurred, according to Doc, because of the incompetence of his presidential predecessor, Roger Pinney. Meanwhile Doc discusses his management of the club in terms of building armies, and furthermore he speaks of incidents where he directly challenges Hells Angels to enter confrontation. He considers it a show of disrespect for the Mexican Mafia to have had a security detail in place during a meeting with their representatives, even though the Mongols had a similar unit operating at the same meeting. Finally, he suggests that much of the brutality attributed to the Mongols (and described in Under and Alone) occurred before he achieved command over the club. He considers a Mongol to be an individual who is ready for violence and willing to return fire but at the same time he resents the violent stereotype of the biker that is conveyed in media.
Ruben “Doc” Cavazos memoir is inconsistent with regards to how he represents himself and his former club. In the undertaking of such a memoir however, what else could he do but attempt to strike a balance between presenting his men as resolute fighters in the face of violent ongoing rivalries, and presenting them as motorcycle enthusiasts who get a little rough when they party in the face of a public view of 1%ers as bloodthirsty maniacs? Cavazos’ text is interesting simply because it shows how a recently active high-ranking biker talks about the subculture.
Andrew Cornell is a historian of American radical politics who teaches at New York University. His CV shows a wide array of interests within the field of anarchist and radical history, however it appears that much of his work focuses on radical campus activity. His article A New Anarchism Emerges: 1940-1954 does not cover campus politics but rather focuses on the period of the 20th century when American anarchism was at a low ebb. The old left of the IWW had passed its peak, the Communist Party was in decline, and American enthusiasm for World War II had dissipated much of the radical sentiments of the first half of the century.
During this period Cornell argues that while there was little that resembled a ‘movement’ with regards to anarchism, there were a number of publications and small groups of people whose work contributed to the rise of the radical 1960s. Cornell’s article is a survey of anarchist activity within the United States during a lull that occurred between two extended bursts of radical action. Cornell focuses on a number of now largely forgotten publications such as the anarcho-syndicalist newspaper, Why?, begun by the young syndicalist Audrey Goodfriend, and her older roommate, Dorothy Rogers. According to Cornell, the publication moved away from a strict program of anarcho-syndicalist ideas and news towards a broader program that included analysis of the Spanish Civil War and critiques of World War II.
Another publication Cornell discusses was a quarterly periodical titled Retort, published by Holley Cantine and Dorothy Paul. Retort emerged from Cantine’s adherence to the ideals of American transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau - Cornell points out that it was published out of a cabin built by Cantine - and it included literary works in addition to the standard political analysis and criticism of such journals. One of the first poem published in Retort was by radical San Francisco proto-beat poet Kenneth Rexroth. In a section under the heading of ‘Proto-Beats’ within Cornell’s article, Rexroth is placed at the forefront of a circle of west-coast poets and artists who foregrounded radical politics in their art.
In addition to Rexroth, some other well known figures were active during this period, although their best work was to come later. Eventual Chicago 8 defendant and former Union Theolgical Seminary student David Dellinger led protests against segregation in prison while he was incarcerated as a Conscientious Objector to WWII. Word of the protests spread to other prisons which eventually integrated their dining halls. Dellinger and his associates took a non-violent approach to their protests which Cornell suggested had some influence on the path of the later civil rights movement. (cf. see Glenda Elizabeth Gilmour's book, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950for a prehistory of the 1960s civil rights movement.) Furthermore, Dellinger entered the movement with a background in theological study and demonstrated the potential for spirituality in radical politics.
Cornell also discusses the early writings of the philosopher Paul Goodman, whose later work, Growing Up Absurd, about the unsatisfying and empty possibilities offered to American youth passing into adulthood during the mid-1950s, was an influential text on the burgeoning 1960s youth culture. Paul Goodman's may stand as a kernel of the essence of Cornell’s article, in that the anarchists of the 1940s developed new forms of political thought that intersected with the arts, spirituality, and action, and helped to produce the radical 1960s: that is the youth counterculture, the new left, the peace movement, and the civil rights movement. Goodman was multi-talented and contributed ideas to all of the facets of countercultural activity that made the 1960s a new golden age for American radicalism. Cornell describes a small and loosely connected network of anarchists who lacked anything resembling popular support, but were still very productive and provided the edifice upon which the radical 1960s were constructed.
The Irish Republican Army has been fighting for Irish Independence from the United Kingdom for much of the twentieth century. The organization first emerged as an armed guerrilla force against English occupiers in 1919, after the Irish Volunteers, an organization that, in turn was composed of earlier fighting forces dedicated to Irish nationalism, dissolved. An organization operating under the IRA banner has existed continuously since 1919. The first fought for Irish independence, and then for unification and sovereignty of the Irish Republic following the 1921 partition by the English of the six counties that make up Northern Ireland, from the rest of the island nation. The IRA as an organization, has experienced a number of splits in its long history, and has developed a complex internal structure as well as relations to numerous other Irish and nationalist organizations situated around the world.
A Secret History of the IRA charts the course of the organization, with the career of current Sinn Féin (the political party that represents the interests of the Irish nationalist movement) president Gerry Adams as its central axis. The book’s author, Ed Moloney, is an Irish journalist who has based his career around following ‘the troubles’, the period of sectarian conflict between Irish Republican-Catholics and Protestant-Unionists in Northern Ireland between the years 1969 and 1998. In 1999, Moloney was named Irish Journalist of the Year. Moloney had also, in 1999, refused to hand over his interview notes to state authorities, an issue that was resolved when a Belfast High Court judge ruled in the reporter’s favour. Much of the information contained in Moloney’s Secret History is based upon interviews with IRA personnel, including former senior members, and it is unlikely that Moloney would be able to continue his profession if it were known that he was willing to collude with authorities.
The introduction to the book describes the IRA’s connections to Libya during the mid-1980s when Libyan leader Omar Kadaffi supplied the subaltern nationalist movement with weapons. In 1987 the IRA and the libyans conspired to clandestinely ship what was to be the largest illicit weapons shipment ever to enter the United Kingdom, except that their ploy was discovered. Moloney's introduction described a pivotal point in IRA history, where the armed struggle could have been escalated as the paramilitaries would have been supplied with decades worth of armaments, but because of the discovery, the organization was crippled and without showing their hand, the leadership embarked on the road to peace.
Moloney’s book is comprehensive in its coverage of the IRA history, and it achieves this sense of completeness through a jagged narrative structure. His chapters move through the history of 'the troubles' chronologically, although when some critical issue is introduced in his telling, he reaches back to find the origins of this issue and describes its genealogy up to his current point in history. This structure gives the reader a consistent flow of historical events that end close to the time of the books publication, with the IRA Good Friday Peace Agreement, but also describes all of the conditions and legacies that produced the situations of The Troubles.
Moloney’s work is also fairly even handed with regards to its portrayal of the Irish Republican Army, he maintains a critical distance throughout his text without showing any particular sympathy for the IRA, its splinters, or their various Protestant-Loyalist enemies. Moloney does however write with a great deal of sympathy for the population of Northern Ireland, as well as an understanding of the popular support these organizations engaged in sectarian armed struggle often received. The Catholics are a minority in Northern Ireland, and in the cities the Catholic neighborhoods have been subject to cruel abuse since the partition. Meanwhile Moloney describes the IRA as initially intending to be a defensive force against marauding Protestants, he also described numerous cases of outright cruelty the IRA dealt to wayward Protestants.
The primary focus of Moloney’s text is the career of Sinn Fein politician Gerry Adams. Adams was born in 1948 into a Belfast family with long roots in the Republican movement. According to Moloney, he was involved in the IRA since he was a young man, although he had a reputation of being distant from violence. Adams served time in prison during the early 1970s where Moloney states that the young nationalist developed the ideas that carried the IRA into the 1980s. Moloney charged Adams with restructuring the organization into a more rigidly hierarchical structure from its earlier constitution as a network of armed cells. Furthermore, according to Moloney, Adams innovated other subtle changes, such as invisible special operations units, referred to in the text as ‘the unknowns’, that reported directly to the nationalist leader. Adams denies having ever been a member of the IRA although the main thrust of Moloney’s text is how deeply intertwined Adams life was with the organization, and how Adams was dedicated to the struggle for Irish independence, but also to a struggle for power over the movement that lasted for decades.
Much of Moloney’s text describes Adam’s successful climb to the top of the IRA, and then to Sinn Fein. Adams attained a position of such prestige that, in the late 1990s, he had the ear of President Clinton with regards to negotiating an Irish peace. Allegedly, a number of strategies were deployed to distance Adams from the appearance of any connection to decision-making that resulted in violence. Moloney describes how some senior IRA members with combat experience distrusted men like Adams who held power but had no experience in armed struggle to make choices for the army. It is unknown how widespread this attitude actually was within the IRA (possibly not widespread considering Adams success and popularity) but it casts doubt upon the nature and scope of the politician’s involvement in the organization.
A Secret History of the IRA, of course, covers all of the major events of ‘the troubles’, from the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, to the 1981 H Block hunger strikes, to numerous bombing campaigns, weapons drives, and peace negotiations. What makes the book a ‘secret’ history, however, has already been alluded to. This is the continual ‘behind the scenes’ struggles for power that took place within the Provisional IRA (the IRA organization most active during this period) and its associated organizations that made up the Republican movement. Secret shifts in policy towards informants, interpersonal rivalries, private attitudes towards actions that contradict public statements, the goings on of countless meetings and conventions; there was a vast amount of activity that took place within the organization, behind the public spectacle of terror and street fighting. Moloney has made the details of these subcutaneous struggles into the bulk of his book. Much of this information he owes to his unidentified, but often IRA affiliated, interview subjects. There is no one, really, to hold accountable for these facts, although it is likely that Moloney interviewed ex-IRA personnel at a moment when they were ready to discuss the specifics of the organization’s inner workings because so many of them were frustrated by the terms of the 1997 peace agreement.
All important names for organizations and individuals are indexed and annotated in a series of appendices at the end of the book. Moloney’s appendices are so comprehensive and sufficiently detailed that they that they may be useful to researchers, on their own, as quick reference guides to the Irish Republican movement. Additional appendices include important documents such as the Post 1996 IRA Constitution, and a chart that displays the organizational structure of Irish Republican Army. A chronology of events is featured in the back and maps of Ireland detailing sectarian geographies appear through the book. Moloney’s dedication to making his book useful as a research tool and not just a journalists account of a time and place is evident in these informational extras to his text.
The Provisional IRA entered a cease-fire agreement in 1998, but the terms of this agreement caused a split within the organization, giving the nation the Real IRA who continues the struggle. As of July 12, 2011 (the day I write this) sectarian riots broke out in Belfast following a Protestant parade. The Troubles continue?
Tariq Ali is a notable historian and an editor of the New Left Review, one of the journals that established a new direction for leftist politics in the 1960s. Ali has recently increased his status as a voice against empire through the publication of a number of books criticizing American and European foreign policy towards the Middle East. The New Revolutionaries, one of Ali’s first books, is a survey of worldwide radical left thought dating from the mid to late 1960s.
This book is edited by Ali however it also contains two writings by the well known activist, written while he was a student at Oxford University. The first of his pieces, titled 'The Extra-Parliamentary' Option, seeks alternative forms of social organization and governance to the parliamentary model. His second piece, the final essay of the book, ‘The Age of Permanent Revolution’, takes a brief survey of the radical-left activity in the world during the 1960s and also takes a survey of the material conditions that inspire such activity. Aside from Ali’s own pieces, there are eighteen other texts contained in this collection. These other texts are of various forms, for example a transcript of the court martial testimony by French rebel of the Bolivian Civil War (and professor of philosophy) Regis Debray is featured. Also featured is a letter by Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver, written from prison, and republished from Ramparts magazine. Also included are brief pieces by Stokley Charmichael and Fidel Castro. Additionally a number of other essays are included by authors who examine the situation of the radical left movement in a number of countries (Italy, Poland, China, Japan, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, and others).
Not much additional information is given regarding each written piece. The book contains an ‘about the authors’ section which gives a few details about each contributor and their commitment to the left, although it would be preferable if these brief biographical statements appeared as preambles to each essay. Futhermore Ali's introduction states that many of the pieces are republished from other journals and it would have improved the book to have listed each essay's original publication details. These simple changes and additions would have helped the reader (me) contextualize these writings and situate their writers. The book attempts to map out a global radical left and the inclusion of such information as the publication details may have underscored such a mapping by pointing to a global publication network of the left in addition to the global leftist will to action that these pieces describe. Despite such shortcomings, the book is, however, a handbook to a socio-political phenomena, and adequately notes the movement’s situation as of the late 1960s, during its peak.
Walking With the Wind is a memoir, by progressive US Congressman John Lewis, of a life perpetually engaged in political struggle. D'Orso and Lewis' book was named one of the "50 Books of our Times" by Newsweek magazine in 2009, and it won the Robert F Kennedy book award in 1999. Lewis is currently the elected member of the US house of Congress for the State of Georgia’s 5th district, which covers most of the city of Atlanta. As a young man Lewis was heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement, he worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and attained the position of Chairman to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the major organizations involved in propelling that movement forward. After the movement dissipated, Lewis entered mainstream politics, first working on the Robert Kennedy campaign for the Democratic Party primaries in 1968, and in 1977 a failed bid at a congressional seat. In 1987 Lewis won the election for the congressional seat that he currently holds.
Here is an example of the contemporary John Lewis.
Lewis’ memoir recalls his impoverished youth (he was the child of sharecroppers) and his early development of a social consciousness that compelled him to eventually struggle for civil rights. The first few chapters of the memoir begin with Lewis discussing a recent visit to a southern city, and then proceeding into his memories of the movement that pertain to that locale. This structure does not hold through the entirety of the book, but it sufficiently anchors the voice of the author in the contemporary period, in case the reader forgets. Lewis is looking back on his participation in a political movement that sucessfully changed society to the extent that he, a black man, could now hold a position of political power in the American South.
Lewis’ recalls all of the major events of the Civil Rights movement; the freedom rides, the sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters, the violence, the indifference of law enforcement to the suffering of marchers at the hands of white mobs, the 1963 March on Washington DC, the tensions between black and white activists, the tensions between adherents to nonviolence and activists who advocated the use of violence and King's assassination. Lewis also recalls many of the little struggles, those that took place within the movement for individual power or for the purpose of advancing a particular shift in ideology or strategy. What makes Lewis’ book relevant to the literature on the civil rights movement is that it comes from the voice of a participant, and in particular a participant who used the momentum he gained from his participation in the movement to achieve mainstream political power in order to continue his struggle and to be a symbol of the movement’s success.
Walking with the Wind is replete with his unique thoughts on the movement events. He describes first hand the experiences of being physically attacked and then arrested by police. He discusses the speech he had prepared for that 1963 March on Washington D.C., the event at which Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” address. While Martin Luther King strongly uttering that one line has become appropriated as an iconic image of human (or perhaps merely ‘American’) potential, John Lewis delivered his own speech earlier in the day. Lewis recalls that King was among a group of men who pressured Lewis to soften his rhetoric. Such anecdotes from a high profile insider of the movement add inflection to the historical events that are commonly known as a series of images. Lewis was very critical of state power in their indifference (if not assistance) to the suffering of the American south’s black population, and furthermore he was a strict adherent to nonviolent activism (despite his frequent arrests and injuries). This strength of character pervades his memoir and colours his remembrances of interactions with individuals such as Malcolm X and his successor as SNCC chairman, Stokely Charmichael. Furthermore, Lewis’ memoir is relevant for inserting the names of forgotten activists back into the discourse of civil rights movement history.
To the extent that Lewis’ record speaks for itself, the reader of Walking With the Wind does not have to wonder whether or not the activist was, in 1998, altering his memories or his past attitudes to serve his present political career. Lewis is currently a fearless progressive politician who has fought for issues such as the prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation, and a bill supporting the right for conscientious objectors to be exempt from paying taxes towards military support. Walking with the Wind ends with a description of Lewis’ career in mainstream politics and a list of issues that continue to plague African-American communities. An interesting aspect to this final section of Lewis’ text is that he continues to use the langauge of radical politics as a United States congressman. He makes the call to ‘agitate, agitate, agitate!’ when discussing solutions to the unresolved problems of the poor communities he serves. Lewis and D'orso's book represents the life of a man who continues to fight for the same moral good he has always struggled for, and with the same force of language and character regardless of the status he holds.
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